Ask HN: Which Domain Registrar Do You Use? - <AUTHOR>

I hate GoDaddy, but I've been working with them for several years. I find the marketing to be very unprofessional, and it feels as though features either creep up in cost or have hidden fees.<p>What do you use, and why? <comment><USER2> I'm a fan of both Hover.com and NameCheap.com. Both are great, however Hover focuses on just domains and I like their simpler interface and no hosting upsells and because whois privacy is factored into the domain price so I don't have to buy anything separate.

If you want to use my referral link, [https://hover.com/puShQcGy](https://hover.com/puShQcGy) or just [http://hover.com](http://hover.com) if not. Hope it helps.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell I use gkg.net for grepular.com because they provide both an API and a web interface for adding your DNSSEC public keys to the parent zone.

I use badger.com for emailprivacytester.com because they gave me some free credit when they initially launched. Also, they have the nicest web interface I've seen for a domain registrar.

</comment><comment><USER3> namecheap.com - absolutely no problems in the 2+ years I've been using them.

<comment><USER4> Another vote for NameCheap. Also, search for the monthly coupons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Gandi.net -- No BS registrar.

<comment><USER6> Gandi's contracts are an 11/10 on the BS scale; the "no BS" thing is marketing. You are agreeing to enforce their moral and ethical code upon yourself and your site visitors, and should you or your site visitors violate it, your domain can be confiscated.

Some excerpts:

[http://www.gandi.net/static/contracts/en/g2/pdf/MSA-1.3-EN.p...](http://www.gandi.net/static/contracts/en/g2/pdf/MSA-1.3-EN.pdf)

> By accepting Our Contracts and using Our services, You agree to abide to Our > code of ethics which consists, in particular, of ... protecting and > respecting minors, human dignity, public order and good moral standards, the > fight against abusive and/or deviant uses of the Internet...

> You also commit Yourself to ensuring that any third party to whom You would > ... grant any access or ability to modify any published Contents, will fully > abide by the terms and conditions herein, and that You are able to > effectively guarantee this commitment with regards to Gandi.

> You acknowledge and accept that the use of Our service is expressly > forbidden for use in any way that engages or participates in practices that > are deviant, abusive, illegal, or prejudicial...must be appropriate to the > age and sensibility of each of the individuals that any of the content is > destined for.

This kind of agreement is ridiculous for commodity domain registration. Nobody else asks that of you. You cannot reasonably run a blog with comments without breaching this contract (you can't enforce the code of ethics on commentors, which you guaranteed); don't even think of running a "hacker news" type site. Discussing hacking is one of the "deviant uses of the internet" you agreed to not only abstain from, but to actively fight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use iwantmyname.com, I switched from godaddy a while ago. It was very easy to switch, I'd recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER8> dnscentral.com

simple and reliable, they host the name and let me set the pointers to the nameservers I use.

</comment><comment><USER9> Moniker.com, they have great bulk domain management.

</comment><comment><USER10> name.com No hidden fees.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hover or 10dollar.ca.</comment>


TensorFlow is coming to Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://www.somatic.io/blog/tensorflow-is-coming-to-ruby <comment><USER2> > somatic.io will pay: $1800 US to the student to work on this via paypal.

This went from cute to sketchy fast.</comment>


Linkers, part 1 (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.airs.com/blog/archives/38 <comment><USER2> Perhaps some linker enthousiast could give me feedback on an idea for a compiler I'm working on. My strategy is that my compiler produces a database of externally visible functions in an position independent format and with a metadata table that has information about each reference to an undefined symbol, that information would be fully qualified paths and types. A static linker would then walk a tree from the main function down to each referenced external function, concatenating them and resolving the locations.

A dynamic link would simply be the same but then embedded as a runtime of the executable.

I have read the ELF book, and am now reading this article series. I think my strategy is pretty similar to how ELF works with its PLT, but I'd like to do the dynamic linking at load time, not with a jump table. The fully qualified path and types are just a case of fancier symbol names probably.

The idea of the compiler+linker would be to bring a Java/C# like experience to a native compiled language. Perhaps Rust could be an inspiration, I haven't read much about their compile process yet.

<comment><USER3> This is fairly typical and, except for the use of a database, the way most object files are converted to executables: that is they make it easy to access the list of unresolved references and include some (generally minimal) data about the reference they're expecting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> here's a toc with links to all 20 articles of the series [http://lwn.net/Articles/276782/](http://lwn.net/Articles/276782/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is an in-depth introduction to linkers by Ian Lance Taylor, the author of the gold linker. Before reading this I thought I knew what linker did and how it worked, this series set me straight.

<comment><USER5> >what linker did and how it worked

But isn't that highly language and implementation specific? E.g. if I recall correctly the original Turbo Pascal linker was a trivial piece of software and did very little while modern C++ linkers (like gold linker) are monstrously complex and do a hell lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> thanks for posting, this and the 19 other articles that follow were great.</comment>


{less} CSS for .Net - <AUTHOR> http://clipperhouse.com/blog/post/less-CSS-for-Net.aspx

<comment><USER2> [http://haacked.com/archive/2009/12/02/t4-template-for- less-c...](http://haacked.com/archive/2009/12/02/t4-template-for-less- css.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am curious about your experience with less, is it a significant time saver? Are there Java based compilers or others on Linux/Unix?

<comment><USER4> Don't know of any java-based one, but I use the original version from <http://lesscss.org> quite a bit. (That can run stand-alone and generate CSS files, or it can run as a plugin for Ruby-based sites.) It offers a lot of what SASS has, but uses a superset of CSS instead of a different mini- language, which made it a lot quicker to get going with when I tried both.</comment></comment>


Microsoft updates their Terms of Service to an easily readable Q&A format - <AUTHOR> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/microsoft-services-agreement <comment><USER2> What caught my eye here is the expert handling of procedures for consumer disputes.

In legalese, this can be summed up as follows: if you live in the U.S., you agree to binding arbitration and to waive any right to participate in a class action (Section 10); before you can initiate arbitration, you are required to give a notice of dispute to Microsoft and to go through a 60-day period of trying to resolve it informally (10.1); nothing in this arrangement prevents you from taking your dispute through small claims court at any time in lieu of arbitration and whether or not you went through informal negotiations first (10.2); if informal negotiation fails or if you do not use small claims court, you agree to give up your right to litigate your dispute before a judge or jury and to pursue your claims exclusively through binding arbitration under AAA rules (10.3); you agree that your claim will be resolved exclusively "on an individual basis" and that it will not be combined with other claims, either in arbitration or in the courts, where a party acts as a representative in a class action (10.4); you agree that the arbitrator can only grant remedies besides a money award (e.g., injunctive relief) only to the extent required to satisfy your individual claim (10.5); if you are an individual and you use the services for personal or household use, or if the value of the dispute is $75,000 or less whether or not you are an individual, your dispute will be resolved under the AAA's special simplified-procedure rules for consumer-related disputes (10.5); you are required to initiate your dispute with AAA either in your county of residence or in King County, WA and Microsoft will promptly reimburse you for your filing fees and will pay for the arbitrator's fees and expenses (10.5, 10.6); in the case of such small disputes, if you reject Microsoft's last written offer made before the arbitrator was appointed and thereafter get a better result when an award is made, Microsoft will pay the greater of the award or $1,000, will pay twice your reasonable attorneys' fees, and will reimburse you for expenses that your attorney incurs in preparing and proving the your claim through arbitration (normal AAA rules on these issues apply if your claim exceeds $75,000) (10.6); in turn, Microsoft will ask for reimbursement of the arbitrator's fees and expenses only if the arbitrator finds that your claim was frivolous or filed for an improper purpose (10.6); all claims are subject to a private statute of limitations expiring within one year (10.8).

Translated, here is what Microsoft is saying:

1\. If you have a real problem with us as a consumer, we want to hear about it and deal with it if possible before you initiate a formal fight over it.

2\. If we can't agree, we will give you every opportunity possible to make your case easily and without procedural barriers _outside_ the regular court system, whether in small claims court or using streamlined AAA procedures in which we pay _all_ the processing costs, including your filing fees.

3\. If our negotiations with you yielded an offer from us that is less than what you get through a formal process, we will pay you even more, including double your attorneys' fees.

4\. We will not play games with you by saying that arbitration can be held only on our home turf but will make certain that the prescribed procedures let you fight the battle in your local area, ensuring that you do not face arbitrary obstacles in getting your claim decided.

Whether one agrees with the approach or not, the message here is loud and clear: if you deal with Microsoft as a consumer, there will be no juries (i.e., no realistic chances of getting punitive damage awards), no claims by which lawyers try to get nuisance payouts by grinding little claims through the formal court system, no arbitrations by which lawyers try to use complex discovery, etc. to arbitrarily complicate what should be an otherwise straightforward claim, no class actions (either in court or through attempts to aggregate claims in arbitration), and no broad injunctive or declaratory relief remedies that might disrupt an existing business model.

Many large companies have tried to use binding arbitration to corral consumers into little boxes from which they can only fight at an unfair disadvantage. Perhaps Microsoft is trying to do the same thing here in reality but I doubt it. I read this as Microsoft's declaring, in effect, "we have no problem dealing honestly with real complaints about our service but we're sure not about to let ourselves get set up to pay large awards over inflated claims concocted by lawyers - and we are ready to pay a price directly to the aggrieved consumer (e.g., expense reimbursement, attorneys' fees) for the privilege of being free of the mess that is our modern court system."

Sorry to bore people with legalese but this approach is actually quite innovative and worthy of note and I just thought I would highlight it.

As to format, it is helpful when this is improved but a contract is a contract and, when it has to cover all sorts of potentially complex legal possibilities for services offered throughout the U.S. and the world, it can only be simplified so much. It can be made clean and clear in its wording - and that is what makes for deft handling from the lawyer side - but, in the end, reading a complex Terms of Service agreement will always remain somewhere between a visit to the dentist and having to read through a 10-page 6-point- type insurance policy in terms of how we can relate to it. That is just a fact of life, unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER3> Like virtually everything else about which people say "this should be better!", it's not as simple as it sounds to toss up a 500 word document that covers the bases.

It's an attempt to convey something very precise (a legal document) in an imprecise format (English). We should be more sympathetic. We have formal languages, they don't. If we had to explain the operation of quicksort in written prose to use and communicate it, we'd quickly develop some long-winded idioms that got frequently reused.

Think of it not as English, but as a coordinated layer of precise rules on top of English that results in very verbose output when compiled.

Any attempt to shorten it to "plain English" also takes on the liability of any ambiguities you almost certainly introduce in shortening it.

<comment><USER4> A counterpoint is that Japan's emperor had to be translated when he addressed his citizens about Japan surrendering in WW2. While he spoke Japanese, he did not speak Japanese any common non-royal Japanese could understand.

This isn't much different, the goal is to convey the ideas and/or goals of the document to those that do not speak the language, in this case the same language the document is written in (human language that is, not legal/vs non). It is a good start too, more companies need to do this. If they spell out things such as: arbitration is us just not wanting to go to court, not as a way to sue you, it greatly reduces the invectives that people will assume about the company.

While it might be "obvious" to someone that can read legal print, conveying the goals in regular language to the target audience is in my opinion long overdue in the legal world. Yes it won't convey every minute nit-picky detail.

Just like translating "saudade" from Portuguese to English as lets say nostalgia is likely wrong and not 100% accurate, it will at least get the general point across to a non-portuguese speaker.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade> if you've never come across the word before. One of my favorite words for an emotion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think "easily readable" is quite a stretch, but I do like the new format and the fact that they're putting effort into improving their ToS. It looks much better than that of most places.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's still long enough that it needs a table of contents with links, as well as long enough that the only people reading it are people looking for legal recourse.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure why you expected any different, better formatting doesn't make a boring content any less boring; if you don't enjoy legalese pretty colors and bold sections aren't going to change that.

Still, a lot better than a lot of other TOS out there that you can't properly read even if you want to because ALL CAPS EVERYWHERE.

<comment><USER8> They could have gone with the CC approach:

For humans: <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/>

For lawyers: <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode>

Granted, Microsoft's lawyers probably wouldn't approve (because people might argue that they're agreeing to the simplified terms that have wriggle room and not the iron-clad legalese).

<comment><USER9> I think that works for CC because the people using the license are using the license and not the summary. It's ok if a third party to the licensor provides a summary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Microsoft is starting to listen.... Interesting turn of events!

</comment><comment><USER11> Great step forward but if it is still over 50,000 words then there needs to be a new way of doing this.

</comment><comment><USER12> My favorite is still the ToS for 500px: <http://500px.com/terms>

Each section of legalese has a plain text explanation to the right of it, which makes the document very easy to read and understand.

</comment><comment><USER13> As a sidenote, I copied the text into the <http://www.BlaBlaMeter.com> bullshit detector and the first 15000 characters returned a value of [0.82, "This reeks"]

</comment><comment><USER14> The reason people don't read these is length, not the organization of the text.

<comment><USER15> Really? Do you have evidence for your statement of fact?

I would think both are a factor.

<comment><USER16> This doesn't really back up his argument, but Nielsen's done all sorts of research on how much people read:

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/percent-text-read.html>

In summary: On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.

So length is definitely an issue. Not sure on organization, but I really can't see the simpler FAQ style /not/ helping with scanning the page.

<comment><USER17> I read 0% of 100% of the Terms of Service I encounter because they're not worth my time to parse. I actually read through this one. Anecdata.

<comment><USER16> The best kind of data! :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It would be really great if they did the same for their EULAs.

<comment><USER19> [http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-radically-overhauls- license-a...](http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-radically-overhauls-license- agreements-for-windows-8-7000002866/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why, oh why, oh why, is that Windows icon so fuzzy. It's like the articles announcing the new logo and Windows 8 that had their respective logos as enlarged JPEGs with artifacts intact. Have some pride.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is anything by easily readable. Ugh. And its not even internally consistent - somewhere down the scroll, the questions fade away and are replaced by the same old lawyer-ism that characterizes most TOS.

I recently re-wrote ours to be more useful and I can't help thinking that whomever did this was rushed and/or got bored or over-challenged by the task about half-way through and just published an incomplete draft. A for effort, C- in execution.

<comment><USER21> Some day I'll understand the real connection between what I write and how people mod it.

I was really just trying to say that I didn't think at all that it was a very readable document and that if you read through it, the whole "Starts with a question" mode faded away somewhere in the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the document - leaving just a regular old TOS to follow.</comment></comment>


Earliest wall art (37,000 years before present) is found in France - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gMCyK5oTw8icc-StsTS8yyX0uR_Q?docId=CNG.e2e54aa5b44f9d99e0dc6a6da2435057.5a1

<comment><AUTHOR> Science 2.0 reporting with photographs:

[http://www.science20.com/news_articles/earliest_aurignacian_...](http://www.science20.com/news_articles/earliest_aurignacian_wall_art_37000_years_old-90025)

New York Times reporting:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/science/oldest-cave-art- in...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/science/oldest-cave-art-includes- drawings-of-female-anatomy.html)

Abstract of study from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

<http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/05/08/1119663109></comment>


Ask HN: Why Is This Flagged? - <AUTHOR> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17468033
This is a neutral, academic article which satisfies everything the HN guidelines solicit.
Is there a hidden rule to not talk about such topics on HN? <comment><USER2> I guess because it's an encyclopedia article, and not super on-topic for HN which is mostly focused on news around startups and technical stuff. If we submitted every encyclopedia article to HN there would be quite a flood of off topic stuff.

But mostly because it's 'meh' and off topic enough that not enough people cared to click the vouch button when it was active. And it's not news.

You can perhaps point to HN links to other off topic articles that have not been flagged, even encyclopedia articles maybe, but you have to consider that this topic is quite an outlier and sensitive/private for some people, and not something they want the discussion to turn into on HN.

So (recapping a bit) they flag, and nobody cares strongly about taking HN off track into this topic, so the flag remains.

<comment><USER3> From what I have seen, it seems like the preferred encyclopedia here for non tech things is Atlas Obscura.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Ligify iOS App – One-Tap Save or Share Your Live Photos as GIF or MOV - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1048863900 <comment><AUTHOR> I created an iOS app called Ligify that lets you one-tap convert your Live Photos to GIF/MOV for easier sharing. It was previously called Lively. I also wrote a little story about the idea behind the app and why it was renamed:

[http://hboon.com/story-behind-ligify-one-tap-save-or- share-y...](http://hboon.com/story-behind-ligify-one-tap-save-or-share-your- live-photos-as-gif-or-mov/)

Couple of promo codes:

JYHHJTA4EXJY

63636APWYTPP

Y43P4MJ66J79

PPFFYTPKLKE4

J9J6ARKPKHFJ

KMT7PXW4F6W4

PJRP7A4P6M3H

FLY9XX3JKXEW

J63HJP973AL9

JEK6F94AAKRA

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the promo code!</comment></comment>


This Is How the World Gets Sick - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/3068949/the-next-deadly-global-viral-pandemic <comment><USER2> Wow, Fastcompany now goes above and beyond in obnoxious video forcing.

Not only does it have an autostart video, but _even after manually pausing_ the video, it resumes _every time you scroll_ the article. Yay.

[Update: reloading the page within a browser context doesn't force the video again in that session... but it _does_ slap 29 trackers on the page load. _Twenty-Nine_.]</comment>


Physics of the Piano (2012) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://nanohub.org/resources/18884/download/2013.06.19-Giordano-REU.pdf <comment><USER2> Sadly no words in the article about the physics of sympathetic resonance, which is a great part of the rich sound of acoustic instruments. The 'secret' of the missing fundamentals is just there.

<comment><USER3> Do you know a good resource about it?

I think it would be a fun experiment to model a piano in software. Though probably way more complicated than my wildest imaginations.

[edit] Wow... I have a piano and I never noticed this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNKiFGvigrQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNKiFGvigrQ)

But in a normal scenario most of the strings will be damped, so how does that work then?

<comment><USER4> >I think it would be a fun experiment to model a piano in software.

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

<comment><USER5> Also [http://www.truepianos.com](http://www.truepianos.com), which I was just playing with yesterday. It's incredibly playable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A related video on the numbers behind piano music, on why it is mathematically impossible to perfectly tune a piano :

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hqm0dYKUx4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hqm0dYKUx4)

<comment><USER7> Interesting video, I just have a few nitpicks.

The problem is not that the piano has too many strings, it's that the notes are fixed. The same is true for any string instrument with frets, like a guitar, or wind instruments with fixed holes, like a flute.

The video also refers to the fact that equal temperament allows playing in any key, but doesn't really explain why that's important or what the tuning has to do with it. (Short answer, before equal temperament, different compromises were made in which notes were out of tune with respect to which others, and the schemes commonly chosen only allowed some of the keys (as in "c major" not the physical key) to be sufficiently in tune to be usable.)

<comment><USER8> As I understand it, people were aware of the problems of the temperaments, but a temperament is a technology. Each of the old temperaments came with an algorithm, that your regular Joe musician could use to keep their own instrument in tune. This in turn was needed because instruments didn't stay in tune for very long.

Equal temperament requires an expert, which in turn requires an instrument with stable tuning -- the modern piano.

Wind instruments actually have no straightforward temperament, but are just as close as possible, and the musician is expected to bend notes as needed. For all practical purposes, an orchestra is an un-tempered instrument.

<comment><USER7> OK. I guess I shouldn't have talked about instruments I don't know well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Crawling Wikipedia for Piano ancestors was very interesting.</comment>


Show HN: Want to learn design? Try Design Lab. - <AUTHOR> http://www.trydesignlab.com <comment><USER2> In my experience, of the best ways to get started in design is to replicate other people's designs as perfectly as you can, just to get the hang of designing something good.

For example, the other day I recreated the hat icon here: <http://hicksdesign.co.uk>. This is mine: <http://cl.ly/GYHw>.

If you make one thing every day, you'll eventually be pretty good at fleshing out your own ideas.

 _Resources:_ <http://pttrns.com>; <http://teehanlax.com/blog/iphone-4-gui- psd-retina-display>; <http://dribbble.com>

<comment><USER3> Hey that sounds like a great idea. Could that also be a good way to practice iOS or android development?

<comment><USER2> If only apps released their source code more often..but you could look at open source apps: [http://maniacdev.com/2010/06/35-open-source-iphone-app- store...](http://maniacdev.com/2010/06/35-open-source-iphone-app-store-apps- updated-with-10-new-apps).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not to be an ass, but the first thing I questioned when I came to the site was "If this is the best design they could come up with, what does that mean for the education?"

Sign up and design failure aside, I question what this site will do. Design a logo in 30 minutes? Design a one-page flyer with a minimum of 5 typefaces? Those aren't exercises, those are bad practices.

There's an overabundance of people who call themselves designers and not enough people who truly understand it and care about it at a depth that creates good products, not broken experiences. There's already an influx of graduates with degrees that show nothing except that they put the time in. There's an abundance of sites ( _ahem_ Awwwards, Smashing Magazine, Dribbble) that do their part to promote bad design as good design. And not to speak ill of any good designers who work for Google, but as a company they're not exactly known for it - quite the opposite. I would prefer qualified guest designers or actual professors as opposed to 'vetted' corporate employees to judge my work.

I don't think people need Design 101 anymore. I think we need a place for seasoned designers and people who are making the switch from print to web or design to front-end coding to fully understand what they're getting into.

<comment><USER5> Ah, but as a developer, if we cannot speak the language, how do we communicate effectively? Let's say that I'm design an app - I'm looking through portfolios for a contractor to do some design work. If I have that vocabulary, I can more effectively judge what is good from what isn't good, and I can quantify things past, "this looks a bit weird."

I got to work with a good UX/UI crew at exactly one of my jobs, but it completely changed how I thought about thinking about design. That, combined with some reading, was my "design 101" education. I would argue that every full stack developer needs that "design 101" education, and we have new developers every day.

I'm going to take the class - It's an interesting stretching exercise for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As others have pointed out, the signup is broken/down.

But also: how much does it cost? "Get started for free." is interpreted by my cynical self to include the closing phrase "and as soon as you're interested, it's going to cost a lot to continue."

No contact information, no price information... what is this except an email harvesting exercise?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's free with no plans to charge for anything, don't worry! "Get started for free" is simply a call-to-action to make that apparent. Cynicism warranted... that should've been more clearly explained.

email us at hello@trydesignlab with any questions or issues!

<comment><USER7> If it's free, don't ask people to sign up. My email address has value to me. I'll give it to you if you earn it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're going to design an online course to teach design, you actually have to know something about teaching design.

The foundation of a solid design education is actually the fine arts -- that's why since the days of the Bauhaus first year students study fine arts in a foundation year, and then spend the next few years studying applied design. The reason? Because before you can play with layout and typography you need to know about color theory and yes even subjects like art history. Learning the techniques of design without the basics is like trying to be a writer by learning all the functions of MS Word but not having read Shakespeare.

PS It's also slightly dishonest to put to put a photo of Steve Jobs down there which indirectly implies that he would approve.

<comment><USER9> > Learning the techniques of design without the basics is like trying to be a > writer by learning all the functions of MS Word but not having read > Shakespeare.

You can be a perfectly good writer without having read a word of Shakespeare.

<comment><USER10> Do you really think you can be a good writer without having read any good writers?

<comment><USER9> I didn't say _any_ good writers, I said Shakespeare. There are many routes to becoming a good writer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hey guys - cool idea. I tried entering my email, and there's no success indicator. Click the button, and nothing. Not sure if I just signed up 10 times, or failed to sign up at all :/

<comment><USER12> Request URL: <http://www.trydesignlab.com/>

Request Method: POST

Status Code: 500 Internal Server Error

It's broken

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This sites design is....not good. The font is hard to read at that size, the icons are blurry, the quotes at the bottom look like endorsements on first view.

Needs some more time in the oven I think.

<comment><USER14> Looks great on my mac! Maybe they use a font-face that they should've tested cross-platform?

<comment><USER15> Agreed, well the icons still aren't great on my Mac, but the font looks fine to me. Then again, I'm also a developer so I don't know everything about good design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, we've noticed that people are starting to understand how valuable design is these days - in order to make great products, design is arguably as important as engineering. Like HN-er @shl says, "everyone in a company needs to learn design literacy" ([http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669189/pinterests- founding-desi...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669189/pinterests-founding- designer-shares-his-dead-simple-design-philosophy)). The problem is, we haven't yet found a straightforward way to learn how to become a better designer.

We built a simple product to address this, based on one core principle: the best way to learn design is by doing projects that force you to master the concepts, while allowing you to practice your creativity.

We'll start sending out the first project emails in a couple weeks, so sign up and save a spot! We'd love any and all feedback about this. Thanks!

<comment><USER16> Any idea if the sign up is broken?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys-- this is terrible, we were not expecting this much traffic. Signups are indeed working, we're pushing a quick fix to address the issue. (if you already signed up, you don't have to enter your email again)

<comment><USER17> Can you reveal the traffic figures and your server spec?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not to be mean but the site's fonts look absolutely horrible on Chrome 20 in Windows 7. The top ones look messy and thick and the bottom one looks much too thin:

<http://i.imgur.com/KUVwh.png>

<comment><USER19> Presumably Windows' fault, since it has awful font rendering systemwide. Looks fine in Chrome 20 on Lion.

<comment><USER20> Windows has a couple of different font rendering systems. Chrome uses GDI, IE9 uses DirectWrite, and Firefox can use either. DirectWrite is a lot smoother, and that's most of the reason why I prefer Firefox in Windows.

The fonts on this site look worst in Win/FF. They're not great in Win/Chrome, but at least they look well matched. It looks good in OSX/Chrome. Probably because that's what it was developed in.

Protip: different browsers render fonts differently. Test your site before you release it into the wild.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Tried signing up through your Sign Up text box on the website, but when I click the "Sign Up" button to submit my email, nothing happens.

<comment><USER22> Same here. Good design lives or dies on the details. Not a good sign.

<comment><USER14> Same. Just got a confirmation email though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For those experiencing issues, I can attest that it was working perfectly a short time ago.

I've gotten a confirmation email, and the "View the full curriculum" link resulted in an overlay.

 _Edit_ : Just a note here. The "View the full curriculum" link doesn't work because designlab.js contains HTML instead of the script.

Link: <http://s3.amazonaws.com/designlab_static/js/designlab.js>

</comment><comment><USER24> There was that book called Bootstrapping Design (<http://bootstrappingdesign.com/>)

[http://blog.studiofellow.com/2011/11/01/bootstrapping- design...](http://blog.studiofellow.com/2011/11/01/bootstrapping-design/)

</comment><comment><USER25> As a designer, it makes me sad to see that while Design Lab is using a dot grid background, they failed to align the elements on top of the grid. (Good example of this: [http://gridness.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/sushi-and- rob...](http://gridness.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/sushi-and- robots-2.jpg))

It's that kind of attention that really makes designs shine, not to mention aligning elements like that does a lot to make a design feel cohesive and less chaotic. It's disappointing to see a website purporting to teach design to miss a detail like that.

</comment><comment><USER26> (Big fat notice: This is not a criticism!)

I love how the row of quotes about design from Jobs, Graham, and Maeda look and feel like testimonials due to their format and placing, yet are not. This is an interesting technique. As a random visitor used to analyzing my internal responses to things like this, it makes me feel good yet analytically I realize anyone can throw up quotes like this. Clever!

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm excited about this. I've been reading design books for a while looking to become a more well-rounded developer but have struggled turning reading a book into actual design projects. So I'm excited about this format - weekly design challenges, feedback from peers and experts, and progressively advanced challenges.

Also, the sign up worked for me. So it must be fixed by now.

</comment><comment><USER28> Are you guys part of the H&FJ web font beta? Or are you using Gotham on the web in violation of your license agreement with them?

<comment><USER29> The fonts appear to be 404ing now, so I'm guessing the latter...

(The site doesn't appear all too well designed in its new Times New Roman guise).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't think I want to learn design from a site that hurts my eyes. Great concept but should be done by people that can design.

</comment><comment><USER31> I must confess my heart sunk for a split second as we're working on the exact same problem with a very similar approach at <http://method.ac>, but as they say: if there's no existing competitors it means that the problem likely doesn't exist in the first place.

Looking forward to competing when we launch too!

</comment><comment><USER32> Very cool, but this portion is hard to read - and made me an immediate skeptic of the authority behind the product: <http://i.imgur.com/1kddf.png>

</comment><comment><USER33> Great idea but wish sign up wasn't busted (as everyone points out).

I am interested to actually see what the curriculum looks like when you get in. I think you can cover a lot of design principals effectively without studying art history. I am sure you will find a great many designers just fell into their current field with no formal training.

I don't know if it's so much about having the formal training and instead would be having an eye and then developing that eye. Design is really whatever you want it to be.

</comment><comment><USER34> The site is functionally and visually broken:

\- Not cross-browser compatible, completely broken in IE

\- UI lacks instant feedback for submitting forms

\- Not pixel perfect (icons are blurry, poor font choice)

\- Broken links

<comment><USER35> Yep, it apparently triggers quirks mode in IE9. Probably because of the missing doctype ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I want to describe this as the "Codecademy for Design" but Codecademy lets you complete lessons before pushing you to sign up. I would've never signed up otherwise -- because I already know how to code but the interface/approach appealed to me. I know it would require a slight infrastructure change on your part to implement this but might pull in more users in the end.

</comment><comment><USER37> No offense. But if you are making a site to teach people how to be better designers, you shouldn't make the site so ugly. This seems like a simple bootstrap site, but much uglier. I think it would have been better to just use the defaults. You might want to work on the design of the site to get more people to sign up. I probably would have signed up otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER38> I have some good things and some bad things to say.

In the good column, I signed up (looks like you fixed the signup) and am looking forward to taking the course. Alas, I can't design my way out of a wet paper bag, so it may prove to be an exercise in futility...:)

In bad news, the site looks horrid in Chromium 18 for Ubuntu 11.04. Feel free to send me email if you'd like a screen shot.

</comment><comment><USER39> In a "watch and learn" example of the halo effect, note the quoting of people on why to learn design. Personally the effect would work much better if they hadn't quoted Jobs. At a quick glance if they had just Graham, John Maeda and one other person or equal stature it might have seemed like a personal endorsement of sorts.

</comment><comment><USER40> I like the idea of setting challenges, it's certainly more useful to me than the tutorial route.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is a cool idea. Initially I wondered how you would be able to 'teach' such an amorphous skill set but your use of experts/peers seems smart.

I'd like to be more involved than a user= if you all were open to it but I don't consider myself an 'expert'.

</comment><comment><USER42> I would expect a site like this to provide a good user experience, e.g. confirmation that my email address was accepted. Signed up all the same because it sounds like a great idea and just what I'm looking for.

</comment><comment><USER43> Nothing happens when I click the Sign Up button. Chrome Beta, Win7.

</comment><comment><USER44> I like the site. I decided to sign up. There was problem. After, I hit the sign up button, nothing occurs. I have not received a confirmation email. Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER45> I bet there are designers who read HN who would like to teach developers design in exchange for development tutorials. Is there a HN Academy? Perhaps we should start one.

<comment><USER4> I would love this. Sign me up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I think a plain white background for the site would have sufficed. It adds contrast, minimizes the noise and makes things cleaner and more legible.

</comment><comment><USER47> Has anybody tried to email the website to ask a specific question and the delivery failed? I could possibly be emailing the incorrect email.

</comment><comment><USER48> I wasn't really sure what to do after I got on the website..I just gave you my email but is the curriculum supposed to come via email?

</comment><comment><USER49> I think the OP needs to pay attention a bit on the UX of his site first, getting 500 error is not a good sign.

</comment><comment><USER50> Not exactly a confidence booster, is it possible that hits are the goal? Pretty weak sauce if so.

</comment><comment><USER51> Being as commenters here are criticizing this site, what are some alternatives?

</comment><comment><USER52> My Chrome JS console gives me a 500 error when I try to sign up.

</comment><comment><USER53> I get a 500 when I try to sign up.

</comment><comment><USER49> Getting 500 error.

</comment><comment><USER54> Site's down.

<comment><USER55> 500.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> My lord, someone look at it in IE9.

This is just laughable.

<comment><USER57> Yes it is. Designed for Mac users? I also like that there is minimal client- side validation for when you out in a nonemail. The easy fix would have been to use HTML5 form validation especially since it's not like they support older browsers</comment></comment>


For $6k, I'll turn your idea for an app into a clickthrough prototype - <AUTHOR> For $6k, I'll turn your idea for an app into a clickthrough prototype, in 14 days.<p>- All I need is a rough outline of the app - I'll improve the UX - Design the UI - Turn the UI screens into a clickthrough prototype<p>Deliverables are: Production ready Sketch files, UX wireframes as well as the clickable prototype. <comment><USER2> It could be a heck of a lot. Or it might be quite cheap GIVEN THE SIZE AND COMPLEXITY of the app.

If I were I customer I would ask for a specific quote based on the app that I had. I would ask for each step to be broken down into stages and the length of time needed to do each stage. I would ask for deliverables at each stage. I would try to figure out what I was paying the provider. If I saw any inclination to hide this info I would move to another provider. Like anything else I would be trying to establish if I were getting VALUE for what I was paying for.

</comment><comment><USER3> After that, for $4k you can pass it to me for front end and back end development.

All i need are production ready Sketch files, UX wireframes as well as the clickable prototype.

That's how you get an app made by professionals for $10k.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think a lot more people need to build a prototype to validate their ideas, before jumping into development. Have you had any luck getting paying customers at that price?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll do it for $5k.

<comment><USER6> $4.5k here...

.

Seriously though - am I grossly underestimating how complex the conversion of an outline into a non-functioning clickable Sketch prototype is? It's been a while since I was a full-time web dev/designer (my lumping the two together should indicate how much time.. :) but $6k sounds like a helluva lot?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Could you convert that into a per screen charge?</comment>


It's all about being productive - <AUTHOR> http://savanne.be/791-its-all-about-being-productive/

<comment><USER2> I've come to the view that CoffeeScript is the marmite of programming languages, and that issues like this will rage on for years to come.

I'd dare and suggest that TJ is JavaScript's DHH; very talented and productive, but also very vocal about he doesn't like.

Programmers are some of the most argumentative people that I know, my father being one of them. When you're immersed in a community, it becomes easy to develop the kind of language bigotry that happens between Rails and Node.js, which is sad and regrettable.

I think that mature programmers see code for what it is and don't get religious or wound up over these things; in the end of the day it's all a bunch of 1s and 0s.

<comment><USER3> Thinking of food analogies: maybe CS is the salt of programming languages. It's not great by itself, it's just slightly nicer than what you were using before. No-one discusses salt by itself, but they see some bland food and know it would be better with some more salt. Some people are addicted, but nobody thinks salt sucks. Except some zealots, but you always try to change the topic when they bring it up.

[not to argue analogies, of course; I see what you were going for]

<comment><USER4> Well, I believe our bodies need salt, so eliminating it altogether isn't really an option. Maybe the paprika of programming languages...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can't believe this is even an issue. CoffeeScript and JS are basically the same language; CS just has a nicer syntax.

If these guys were going to be valuable contributors, they'd take the 20 minutes it takes to learn CoffeeScript and then actually try and contribute. You'll suffer no loss "excluding" them from your project.

<comment><USER5> > CoffeeScript and JS are basically the same language; CS just has a nicer > syntax.

I especially like how TJ authored yet another CSS preprocessor, yet takes the time to ridicule CoffeeScript which is essentially just a JavaScript preprocesser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how much of the hate for newer and easier approaches stems from the fact that people made an investment by learning a more complicated technology and are now trying to protect this investment by ridiculing the new approach.

<comment><USER7> My problem is that it's not _really_ a newer and easier approach, it's a newer and _slightly different_ approach. Javascript was a perfectly good language to begin with, Coffeescript just made it shorter and with a bit different syntax here and there and with a feature or two for handling closures better. Not bad, surely, but not really that great either. My experience working in Coffeescript so far has been that it's still important to understand the javascript it's going to be translated into, to understand the subtleties of closures and scope as they're implemented in coffeescript.

Why, then, use coffeescript? It's so much clearer for me to simply see that an anonymous function is being defined to pass this scope and do this yada yada, and while longer, I much prefer that over a language that hides the true meaning in an attempt to reach some sort of syntax simplicity that doesn't really have that big an effect in the end. It's not a protection of an investment, it's that I can't imagine ever being able to use or understand Coffeescript without _also_ having an expert grasp on Javascript. I don't know of anyone who knows Coffeescript on its own. You still need to understand what it's doing, fundamentally; or at least, it's useful to; or failing that, it's _right_ to understand it.

I don't know if I want a developer who knows only Coffeescript. I don't want someone who doesn't understand what it's being compiled into. Frankly, the same goes for other languages: you really should understand what assembly fundamentally does, and how your IF statements and loops are translated. It makes a ton of sense that we don't write our code in ASM these days, but for Javascript it just seems lazy. Javascript is a perfectly serviceable extremely high-level language. It's not that hard to learn or to work in, and if you know it well, it's actually quite nice and has many interesting features. Coffeescript, as a rejection of Javascript, makes little sense to me because Javascript just isn't that bad.

However, Coffeescript as a response to wanting another language on the web; wanting a slightly clearer syntax for writing asynchronous callbacks and classes and whatnot—sure, that makes some sense. It just still feels dirty. At its most basic level it just feels like a lazy hack, because it's layered on top of this other perfectly useful high-level language that might be 50% more lines of code, but would work perfectly fine.

What it really means is that the browser is the new CPU and Javascript is the new machine code. It's just another layer of abstraction. In the end, I don't like it because Javascript is just not that hard. I imagine this is echoing the arguments of C die-hards upon the advent of newer, higher-level languages. It all makes sense, but sometimes it's hard to swallow.

<comment><USER8> As a former C programmer who truly loves C... I wouldn't use it DIRECTLY for anything except things that couldn't be done in any other language, things where you really need that fine-grained memory control for performance or deeper technical issues. By all means, wrap code in more abstract languages!

I feel the same about Coffeescript. A while back, I spent a couple of months as a full-time Javascript coder. I like a lot of things about JS, but the line-noiseish syntax (especially around callbacks and anonymous function declaration) was damned annoying. Compared to its elegant-syntax contemporaries like Ruby and Python, it felt awkward.

Coffeescript is a hack, yes, but it's a nice one. It plagiarizes some of the best syntax ideas from more graceful languages (list comprehensions, splats, whitespace significance, etc), and adds them to the good ideas and functionality of JS. I agree that in order to write good Coffeescript, you should be able to write good Javascript too, in order to see the gotchas. But that doesn't mean a preprocessor is a bad thing, not if it gives this much readability and functionality.

Sadly, I think there's a bit of machismo involved in the sneering at Coffeescript, not a real technical issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gotta go with TJ on this one. I am unlikely to use it if it is written in coffeescript. If the rest of your codebase is in coffeescript I guess it could make sense but how many projects is that true for outside of Rails apps? I am deterred by the idea of adding the extra over head of having to use another style and fracturing my codebase. Just my two cents.

<comment><AUTHOR> Slava @ rethink here. I'd like to understand your reasoning a little more -- could you explain what would turn you off from the driver? The node package ships as Javascript, and the API is extremely rigorously defined. If you use it from your Javascript app you never have to think about Coffeescript, nor even know that the driver is maintained in Coffeescript.

This is an implementation detail that _shouldn't_ affect anyone but potential contributors in any way. Would you mind taking a moment to explain your rationale? (it would really help us)

<comment><USER10> It's because incorporating any open source product into your own project means you _will_ need to read and/or modify its source code eventually. I work around deficient documentation by reading source code several times every day. And eventually you're gonna need to report or fix a bug, or in the best-case scenario add a feature yourself.

The sensible answer to this is "just learn CoffeeScript, then". I guess a lot of people don't want to, for whatever reason. Personally, I know I'm still a bit skeptical of the whole affair myself. The alternative to reading and learning CoffeeScript would be reading compiled JavaScript code. As somebody who occasionally works on something that compiles JavaScript, I know from experience that reading that stuff isn't very fun either!

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose this makes sense. In my experience, overwhelming majority of people using open source software never read the code. Some minority of people _do_ read the code (but in that case, they'd be reading Javascript because that's how we ship the driver). A small proportion of the people reading the code actually end up modifying it themselves, and this admittedly is a problem (though I find Coffeescript so easy to pick up, I don't think it's a serious barrier for anyone who really wants to make changes).

<comment><USER11> Not that it's really an issue here because Coffescript is basically Javascript anyway, but legible source is important even for developers who don't end up reading it.

The people who actually read the code are a small subset of the group that depends on being able to read the code if necessary. I haven't needed to dive into the source for everything I've integrated into a product because of inadequate API documentation or bugs, but it happens, and it's not something you can generally tell ahead of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't agree ... BASIC was an extremely productive language, and so is Perl, but both are a terrible bet in the long run due to debugging/maintainability/readability issues. Being able to throw new code at something isn't everything, unless you plan on throwing it all away after 5 years in favor of the next fad.

<comment><USER13> Works both ways really, people might hate your project because you stick to old & known C, rather than write it in e.g. Go.

<comment><USER12> Go is a _great_ language for maintainability, much better than C. So it would be a good choice and arguably quite productive too.

<comment><USER13> That's sort of not the point here. It's not always that "new fad" is better than "old and established", it might be the other way around.

What matters is what's most productive for the project, for the people working on it.

What doesn't help is making a fuss about it. Spend your time contributing and get over the fact that not everyone thinks the same. Or walk away, because nobody is forcing anyone to get involved.

Let's just stay constructive and respect what people are doing.

If you really want to do it differently, just go out and do it, prove people wrong with results, rather than arguments and flames. That way everyone wins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well I've just lost a lot of respect for TJ - shame really.

<comment><USER15> Why? He just stated his opinion that JavaScript drivers should be written in JavaScript which is an opinion many of us share. He's quite well known for speaking his mind and he was even fairly polite about it in the GitHub discussion.

It's stuff like this: <https://github.com/visionmedia/express/issues/1613> that makes me lose respect for people.

<comment><USER16> Complaining about an open source project's language choice is a bit much. Issue 1613 would have been inappropriate only if it wasn't in response to TJ's views on the rethinkdb thread.

And plain JS has many warts is an opinion that some of us share.

<comment><USER16> EDIT: Not saying that I have lost respect for TJ. But the link you posted wouldn't matter to me either. It's just a joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> TJ didn't even know it was written in CoffeeScript. He ignored the whole repo after finding out. Stop overreacting.

While I agree on the productivity issue, I think developing in CoffeeScript imposes an unnecessary barrier for other people. Basho guys felt the same for their Riak driver: <http://basho.com/a-fresh-start-for-riak-js/>

</comment><comment><USER18> Code and religion don't mix well

</comment><comment><USER19> I would say the same thing-- "it's all about being productive"-- with regard to technology wars but I take a different stance. I'm not going to limit the focus to OS projects, though it applies to them, but also to peoples' jobs.

When Ruby programmers brag about being "Java-free for 5 years", as the stereotype goes, what they would mean to say if they had more insight into the situation is that they've been in _high-productivity_ programming for 5 years. That's what actually matters. Language correlates somewhat to low vs. high productivity, but it's actually the productivity level that matters.

On one side, there's the risk-averse corporate bullshit where you do what a boss tells you to do and you're lucky to crank out 10 LoC per day, because most of what you do is maintenance and catch-up and filling out on makework so you can be evaluated (in a years-long dues-paying period) for real work, which is allocated as a political token. Working in those jobs rots your brain, but that probably what 75+ percent of professional programmers face.

Then there's high-productivity programming, in which you write code like it actually matters, because it does. 100-500 delta-lines per day is typical. (That doesn't mean you grow the codebase by 100 lines; removing 100 lines can be just as potent.) Every day, you leave the state of the software in a materially better state than it was in when you began the day (or, occasionally, you fail to do so but you improve your _knowledge_ ).

Risk-averse manageosaurs like low-productivity programming because it's "safe" and easy to commoditize. Scaling up means hiring five times as many CommodityDevelopers. It also makes it easier to undertake Big Software projects-- monolithic Java/C#/VB programs, with bulky Despondency Infarction Frameworks attached, on which disengaged developers plug along at 7.35 LoC per day. It is, however, a horrible way to build software. It makes awful products, and it's bad for peoples' careers (except managers) because people actually decline as the years go on.

That's what's actually at stake in language wars. It's not worth it to alienate whole communities because you think Ruby is slightly better than Clojure or vice versa. Agree to disagree, and use the right tool for the job (which may be the other guy's language just because you're in a better position to adapt than he; deal with it). It is, however, worth it to fight for a high-productivity environment and to name and shame the horsemen of the low-productivity apocalypse.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who associate JVM => low-productivity programming and Ruby => high-productivity when they're only catching one slice of the story. A true high-producitivity programmer uses the right tool for the job-- sometimes Ruby or Clojure, sometimes C, sometimes Python, sometimes Scala.

I do hate hate hate low-productivity programming. God intended the programmer- to-program relationship to be one-to-many, not many-to-one. However, I don't think it's useful to attack everything _Java_ just because of the historical association (I used to be that way; then I grew up). Corporate hell is not James Gosling's fault.</comment>


Critical Software Update for Kindle E-Readers - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=help_search_1-6?nodeId=201994710&qid=1458317761&sr=1-6&ie=UTF8 <comment><USER2> The framing of this put a bad taste in my mouth. A few weeks ago, Amazon sent out notifications that basically said "you must run this binary blob on your device or you'll no longer be able to use it with our service" without providing _any_ information about the content.

It reinforces the feeling that you don't buy Amazon devices — you buy the privilege to use them on Amazon's terms.

<comment><USER3> It's pretty trivial to load up an epub file (or a few other formats, IIRC) onto the device. It exposes itself as USB storage, so you just mount and copy your files over. There aren't as many fancy features like position syncing, but it's definitely a great piece of hardware even if you don't want to use Amazon services.

<comment><USER4> Even better is you can send PDF's/EPUB's etc to a special amazon email address and it converts them for you and syncs them over wireless.

<comment><USER5> And if you jailbreak your kindle you get SSH. I have my kindle mounted via sftp so I don't even have to send anything to amazon just to have it sent back to my device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm pretty surprised that the Kindle 1st Generation is from 2007. It's pretty cool that Amazon is still supporting a product from 9 years ago. I would have expected support to drop off or at least not issue any new updates period.

<comment><USER7> observe the free falling sales of ereaders in more recent years (any public market research will do), and you'd understand that Amazons ebooks business needs these old devices more and more.

<comment><USER8> With phones getting bigger there's less need for dedicated ereaders. I mostly read on my phone, and I know other people who do too. The convenience of having books in your pocket outweighs the small screen size. From a 2015 article on phone reading ( [http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-phone- reading-143939...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-phone- reading-1439398395) ):

"The number of people who read [e-books] primarily on phones has risen to 14% in the first quarter of 2015 from 9% in 2012."

I can't find more recent statistics but I expect it's continuing to rise. Convenience always beats quality, eg. MP3 vs CDs, early LCDs vs CRTs.

<comment><USER9> Heavy users may be more likely to use dedicated readers so % of total users is less important than % of book sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No worries. As the page states, if you don't automatically update your device by March 22, you can still do so _manually_. This is very easy -- connect via USB cable and then drag and drop the update onto the device.

</comment><comment><USER11> Had an interesting experience with this - we haven't updated my wife's older Kindle and Amazon mailed us a paper postcard warning about this. Losing the ability to OTA update puts them in a tough situation...

</comment><comment><USER12> Almost missed this. Hadn't used my kindle in a long time and then I turned it back on. Apparently they keep a list of the people who recently used a kindle. The moment I turned mine on it sent me emails about it.

<comment><USER13> I never did see an email. I only found out by this thread. But I get so much spam from Amazon (and now Amazon.uk, since I gifted an open source dev in the UK from his wish list) that everything from them goes straight to junk. I even communicated directly with Amazon.uk and asked them to remove me, but the emails keep showing up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Totally screwed. Battery completely dead on an older generation model I hadn't used for some time. I can't even get the charging light to come on despite trying all the tricks. Too late to get any kind of battery replacement and still get the update.

Bricked by the cloud.

<comment><USER15> If it's a first generation, I have some tips for you, since I had the same problem. If not, I have no help for you but I'll go ahead and describe what I did anyway in case there are any first generation owners having the problem.

The first thing to check is that you actually _are_ trying to charge it. I had completely forgotten that the first generation Kindle does _not_ charge via the USB cable. It only charges via a small barrel jack. So of course when I plugged it into a USB charger, the charging light did not come on.

The first generation has a removable battery, which looks like this: [http://i.imgur.com/5Bv0EA3.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/5Bv0EA3.jpg)

I took it out and checked it out on my multimeter. It was down to 2.3 volts. That's bad, and many chargers will not try to charge a lithium polymer battery that has been discharged that far. I assumed that this was why mine was not charging (I still thought at this point that it was supposed to charge via USB).

I had done some reading on recovering over-discharged lithium polymer batteries. It turns out there is quite a bit on the web about that, largely at sites in the radio controlled model vehicle communities. Apparently, those people have somewhat of a habit of accidentally running their batteries into the ground (all puns intended).

The danger in trying to recharge an over-discharged battery seems to be that the internal resistance goes up the more overly discharged the battery is. Chargers will push current appropriate for a regular battery through them, and the over-discharged battery will heat up much more than a regular battery because of the increased resistance (and also produce gases at a higher rate). The result is that you can cause the battery to burst into flames.

You can actually buy special pouches to put your lithium batteries in while they are charging that are designed to contain lithium battery fires and explosions...the very existence of these is scary [1] [2] [3].

Based on my reading, it seemed that as long as I kept the current low it would be safe to try to recharge the battery. I kludged together something on a breadboard to try this: [http://i.imgur.com/UMW7EH2.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/UMW7EH2.jpg)

The power supply on the write is producing 3.3 volts. Normally you would charge a lithium polymer at 4.3 volts, but my goal wasn't to fully charge the thing. I just wanted to get its voltage up to where the Kindle would be willing to charge it (at this point I still thought it charged via USB and so was assuming the reason it would not charge was the battery being so low that the kindle considered it unsafe to try).

The resistor was chosen so that (3.3v - Vbattery)/R was around 10 mA. The hope was that this was sufficiently below the normal charging current (probably around 150-300 mA) that even if the resistance was high it would not heat the battery too much, and I intended to frequently feel the battery and stop if I detected any heating. (The two leads going out of the picture go to the multimeter, which is monitoring the current).

When I started this going, I got the current I expected, and detected no heating of the battery. As I watched, the current started falling off, and the battery continued showing no signs of heating. I took this as a sign that the battery voltage was actually going up, and so the current was going down. I cut power and measured the battery voltage, and it was indeed up to around 2.5 volts!

I switched out the resistor for one that would give about 50 mA, and started charging again. The battery did not show any signs of heating, and the current again started going down as the voltage came up.

I kept doing this, lowing the resistance (aiming now for around 60-70 mA) and running until the current had fallen significantly, and then repeating, until finally I was using no resistor.

I got the battery up to about 3.2 volts this way, and actually got a some signs of life out of the Kindle. Still would not charge in the Kindle (and I was still thinking it was supposed to charge through USB).

Since it was now well above 3.0 volts, and so in the range that should be acceptable to most chargers, I switched over to a little USB-powered lipo charger I got from Sparkfun: [http://i.imgur.com/Rw0Mpzx.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Rw0Mpzx.jpg)

I let that run a while, checking frequently to make sure the battery was not heating. I'd stop on occasion to check the voltage, and it was going up. I let it go up to around 3.7 or 3.8.

The Kindle would now boot and I could connect it to the computer via USB, which means I had a means to install the update without relying on wifi. I didn't want to use wifi yet because I wasn't sure what the battery capacity was. I've read that over-discharging could reduce the capacity of the battery.

I noticed that the charge light did come on when the Kindle was plugged into a computer while the Kindle was running, but I wasn't sure if it was actually charging. This was when I happened to look in the manual for something, and saw that for charging you have to use the barrel jack. I had _completely_ forgotten about that. I then searched a while and found the Kindle power adaptor, plugged it in...and it charged!

So now I'm left now knowing if it would have actually been find back when it was only 2.3 volts, if I had just found the charger and used it, or if it would have refused to charge because the battery was over-dischargred and so my breadboard kludge to inch up above 3.0 volts was necessary.

You may have noticed from the battery photo that it has 5 wires, when a single cell lithium polymer battery only needs 2 wires. Taking one of the black wires as reference, the other black wire and the white wire are at 0 volts, and the two red wires were initially at 2.3 volts, and rose as I charged it. There is no resistance between the two black wires or between the two red wires. There is 11k ohms between the white wire and either black wire.

It is also possible to buy old Kindle batteries at reasonable prices, such as this one for $5.32: [http://www.powerbookmedic.com/Amazon-Kindle-Battery- Replacem...](http://www.powerbookmedic.com/Amazon-Kindle-Battery-Replacement ---1st-Generation-p-17831.html)

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Dynamite-Li-Po-Charge-Protection- Small...](http://www.amazon.com/Dynamite-Li-Po-Charge-Protection- Small/dp/B002JSV4LU)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00T01LLP8](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00T01LLP8)

[3] [http://www.amazon.com/Safty-Guard-Charging- Large-180mm/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Safty-Guard-Charging- Large-180mm/dp/B00TRUIY3E)

<comment><USER14> Thanks to all!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Expired cert?

<comment><USER17> iirc, they're dropping support for SSLv3 which was used on older firmwares.

There's some discussion about this on the mobileread forums [0]. Thought that was discussed, but can't find the post so I might not be remembering correctly.

[0]: [http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=150](http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=150)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if this will undo a jailbreak? I mainly use CoolReader to read ePub books on my trusty Kindle Keyboard, because of its better kerning and hyphenation.

<comment><USER19> Generally jailbreaks can be saved across kindle updates, but you should update to the latest version of the jailbreak and hotfix first. Some extensions might require reinstalling.

Of course, if you have an old device, it's probably jail breakable even on the newest supported version. Latest jailbreak is for 5.6.5, and it's been confirmed that you can update to the latest version after jailbreaking and keep it.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for that info. It's been so long since I've done the jailbreak that I barely remember the process.

<comment><USER19> Ask on mobileread, the devs are super friendly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nylas N1 – The extensible, open source mail app - <AUTHOR> https://www.nylas.com/ <comment><USER2> doesn this still require the custom server install, or trust their server with all mail or can it be used without a server now?</comment>


Concord: How I built a screen sharing application in two weeks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bradziolko/concord-how-i-built-a-screen-sharing-application-in-two-weeks-bef3f6a56ec4 <comment><USER2> I'm surprised the author doesn't mention Chrome remote desktop. Works like a charm even for technologically challenged users where they can give you a code to connect to their machine.

<comment><USER3> Which encoder does Chrome RDP use?</comment></comment>


URL shortener uses unicode to make url really short - <AUTHOR> http://tinyarro.ws/

<comment><USER2> dup <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=498051>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This for example links to <http://news.ycombinator.com>

<http://➡.ws/z>

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey, we made tinyarro.ws, thanks for posting this!

If any of you are so inclined, please click one of the images on the front page of TA-- people have been asking the various Twitter apps to improve their international domain and unicode support, and so we collected those requests in a handy list.

Twitter itself works great, but the community of tools has been pretty rough with regards to supporting content in non-western languages.

</comment><comment><USER4> Better: <http://dickensurl.com/></comment>


How I built a Slack bot to help me find an apartment in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> https://www.dataquest.io/blog/apartment-finding-slackbot/ <comment><USER2> We should just encourage all those people being evicted by greedy landlords to learn Python. SQL, and JavaScript and then they, too, can write something like this and so, one day be competitive enough in the rental marketplace to be worthy of living in the city they have lived in all their lives...</s></comment>


What's New in Swift 4 - <AUTHOR> https://academy.realm.io/posts/daniel-steinberg-whats-new-in-swift-4/ <comment><USER2> Swift has evolved quickly, and it has finally been large adopted by the iOS community:

[https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/](https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/)

What's missing is non-Apple adoption. I'm hoping Swift becomes an acceptable/competive option on other platforms.

<comment><USER3> How easy is it to build a Swift app that uses the same codebase for Mac, Windows, and Android?

What are the target environments like in non-Apple systems?

<comment><USER4> Its not terribly difficult to use swift on linux, theres a a working group trying make it easier for developers to use swift on the server [0]

[0] [https://github.com/swift-server/work-group](https://github.com/swift- server/work-group)

<comment><USER5> Yes, but the main question is: what for? You can't use it even to do what it's been created for: writing iOS apps (maybe some backend modules if you're obstinate enough). There is a great choice of languages in Linux with rich libraries and vibrant communities - why on Earth should I choose Swift?

<comment><USER4> I'm an iOS developer and I use it for writing iOS apps, testing, and managing my test environments. I have the luxury of assuming a macOS host though.

I think the reason you'd pick it for a server language is because the strengths of the language and ecosystem meet your server requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really tried couple of times to use swift in production. One of my MAS apps is pure swift. However I can't force myself to like it. Maybe I am missing some brilliant part of it that I missed but I just can't love it.

<comment><USER7> What do you love? I can't love Go as a language, but love the projects, standard library, community, and have no replacement yet for the space where Go is.

<comment><USER6> I went trough C and Pascal some 30 years ago and still prefer C above anything else. Objective C obviously being close enough so I can write efficient (or at least visually pleasing code). Last straw with Swift for me was banishing of ++ operator. C has beauty and smartness to write _a lot_ of code in one line. I don't like C++ that much.

Anything that makes code beautiful works for me. Swift somehow can't be per_line_efficient and aesthetically pleasing to me.

<comment><USER2> Sounds like you like what you're used to. What do you mean by per line efficient? C and Objective C are more verbose. Declaring non-null, implicit types, and immutable in Swift is a big plus.

let x = "Hello world"

var isDone = false

Filtering an array in one line is much nicer than a for loop:

let newList = anArray.filter(...)

No header files reduces code significantly.

<comment><USER6> For instance tight while loop with ++ increments where needed. You can't do that in Swift. Or one liner if in the middle of other code.

I am using a lot of different languages so 'what I am used to' means lots of different stuff. Ruby has some of C beauty. Python does not. Haskell is probably most beautiful of them all. All individual and from my point of view of course.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps you can be less abstract and illustrate your point with sample code. In most comparisons, Swift looks a lot nicer.

[https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/should-i-use- objecti...](https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/should-i-use-objective-c- or-swift-for-writing-ios-apps/)

The ++ operator was removed from Swift. Haskell uses ++ for concatenation. The case where ++ to add 1 is desirable occurs much less often than a variable declaration, which is better in Swift.

<comment><USER6> For instance C copy routine:

      while (*d++ = *s++);

Or sort in Haskell:

      qsort []     = []
      qsort (x:xs) = qsort (filter (< x) xs) ++ [x] ++ qsort (filter (>= x) xs)

<comment><USER2> What's the value of the Haskell code? It's a great language but not really supported on iOS. Would love for it to be.

Back to the one idiomatic C example. The few places where it's terse does not make up for the many other places where it's not. You also have memory management with malloc for additional code. If you compare nontrivial code, Swift is a more modern, safer, less verbose, etc way to develop iOS apps vs Objective C.

<comment><USER6> Swift wants to be much more than just iOS specific language so it is fair to compare its pros and cons with other general purpose languages. If you look at iOS only then there is not much to compare to, just ObjC and few JS abominations. Staying iOS specific is not what Swift wants to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Swift 4 is the release that says, "We need to stabilize the source code."

Stabilizing source code doesn't have any meaning that I know of. But the updates to the language and library are good!

Looking forward to what they come up with regarding ownership semantics.

<comment><USER9> _Stabilizing source code doesn 't have any meaning that I know of._

Programs written in Swift 4 will compile under the Swift 5 compiler, etc.

<comment><USER8> Oh, source code compatibility for real? That's super nice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> since they're keen on intervals I wonder if they'll provide interval algebra

        if a..b ∩ ..<c:</comment>


Ractive.js is faster than Ember's Glimmer or Underscore - <AUTHOR> http://www.rich-harris.co.uk/ractive-dbmonster/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is intended in the same friendly competitive spirit as Jeremy Ashkenas' demo yesterday ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9141321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9141321)) - no disrespect intended to the Ember community, who are rightly proud of what looks like a terrific piece of work. I built this for my own curiosity in a few minutes, and felt compelled to share it when I saw the results.

More info here: [https://github.com/rich-harris/ractive- dbmonster](https://github.com/rich-harris/ractive-dbmonster)

</comment><comment><USER2> I made the switch from ember to ractive and all I can say is that speed is not the only selling point for ractive. It's much MUCH easier to develop in ractive. Maybe it was just a matter of taste or I was doing things differently (I don't think so) but I was always felling like fighting against the framework. Ractive is so easy, flexible, fast. I hope it gets more attention from the JS community. It really deserves it.</comment>


Show HN: I wrote a book on Practical Evolutionary Algorithms in Python notebooks - <AUTHOR> https://shahinrostami.com/posts/search-and-optimisation/practical-evolutionary-algorithms/preface/ <comment><AUTHOR> All of these are Jupyter notebooks which I've made available for free. It's a practical book and I wanted everything from the input to the output to be reproducible, so if you click "Source", you can download the source IPYNB that was used to generate the page. I then wrote a script that uses puppeteer ([https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer](https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer)) to generate a book ([https://store.shahinrostami.com/product/practical- evolutiona...](https://store.shahinrostami.com/product/practical-evolutionary- algorithms-book/)) using every section.

I've settled on some tools I'm happy to use long term, but I did end up trying many old/new solutions before I found them!</comment>


Petition to double NASA's annual budget - <AUTHOR> https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/least-double-nasa%E2%80%99s-annual-budget-one-penny-every-government-dollar-spent/WHRSzLRj?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl

<comment><USER2> Thanks for starting this effort. But we need a better language that rationalizes the petition. I'm sure Nasa must have presented their data points on how more budget would be helpful and what projects would get derailed if there were budget cuts. You should consider spending time on researching these data points. Simply saying that govt has lots of money and so it should give it to Nasa doesn't justify much of the anything.

You also want to gather references on expert opinions on why govt should continue invest on space program (as opposed to only hoping private sector do things). My personal opinion on this is that private sector is driven by profits and space is more of a scientific/academic research innately driven by our need to explore. There would be several areas left untouched and/or won't be attempted if govt pulls out its effort (such as private sector would have little or no interest on doing Hubble telescope or probing in to deep space or measure background uwave radiation with high precision). This is very similar to what's happening in several other areas like medicine research where private companies are folding research which is otherwise pure scientific curiosity or only has long term perspective but have no direct profitable opportunities in short term.

Again, these are not the data points you need to invent. I'm sure these are well documented by expert on this subject. The petition's task should be to gather them at one place and bring public support for it. Without doing this home work, this petition is pretty juvenile and does not have much of a backbone.

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely agree with you, and though I feel that this petition can be more eloquently stated and logically founded, I think it's a good way to at least start the ball rolling on getting a proper petition out there. (I didn't start the petition, but as an advocate of NASA, I figured HN seemed to be a good place for this to be discussed.)

As for private sector space, though much of it is currently driven by profits, my thoughts are that if the private sector can lay out an infrastructure to make it easier to access space, then the scientific community has more of a capability to continue research at a lower cost. This is the same idea of how NASA is continuing to send supplies (and eventually astronauts) to space through SpaceX. Eventually, NASA won't have to spend as much on transportation costs, because the private sector will have made reaching space cheaper. Or at least here's to hoping!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with over-ambitious managers who just push you too hard? - <AUTHOR> How do you deal with over-ambitious managers who set bars so high that's humanly impossible to meet, while knowing that the manager isn't really meaning to help you become the best but is actually pushing you to work too hard - just to get himself in top management's spotlight and claim his fame for steering the firm to success. <comment><USER2> By saying no. No, I'm not going to work massive amounts of overtime so you can take the credit. No, I'm not going to work myself to death so that you can be the hero.

Manage your own life. Don't expect that your manager will do it for you.

Note well, however: This can get you fired, especially if you're on a team, and others note that you aren't knuckling under to the unreasonable demands.</comment>


Greasemonkey script to remove iPad stories from HN - tomh-

For convinience I also included the keywords "lisp" and "clojure" in the recommended version:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2196687/ybs-lisp.user.js
or you can download the ipad only version at:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2196687/ybs.user.js
Have fun! <comment><AUTHOR> As annoying as all of the iPad stuff has been, no one seemed to have any problem with the pure rumor stories that poured all over HN in the days preceding the announcement.

And actually, as someone who first thought "Oh god, this thing sucks..." -- some of the commentary I've read has been quite enlightening and now has me considering an iPad for my girlfriend's mother.

The quality of the stories on iPads that are being submitted are not in question IMO. I will not be filtering them.

Finally, I will _certainly_ not be filtering lisp or Clojure. If you want to keep your mind closed off to things you don't know much about, be my guest. If you've made up your mind on something and never want to think about it again, then again, be my guest. Not for me.

<comment><USER2> First, I take this and other no-more-ipad stories a little tongue-in-cheek and guess others do the same. In fact I'm reading both the linked articles and the comments of most submissions. I'd even buy one of those things if I could.

That said, I do question the quality of the stories, specially the misguided arguments and the tone that they're delivered with. A lot of the writers seems to think that the critics are saying that the iPad won't sell or that nobody will like the device. And they think that's because critics are asocial geeks that have no clue on how the real world works, and should be educated to dismiss such superfluous luxury as freedom to install programs, connect to a printer or download movies, luxuries that _normal people_ doesn't want or care about.

That's annoying and the most annoying thing is saying that a system like the app store is actually good and "revolutionary" and that whoever doesn't like it is because he doesn't "get it".

All right, I believe that this device could sell very well and be a big hit among very diverse people, with technical background or otherwise, mainly because the well designed multitouch interface. But that doesn't make the whole thing _desirable_ or needed,

The device seems great. It sucks that it's so closed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why Lisp and Clojure, of all the things?

<comment><USER4> I for one love HN but have no interest in Lisp or Clojure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> On Safari, your script messes up the layout of the front page. All items compress into each other.

Anyway, if you want to make it really good, get it to put a little textbox at the bottom where we can type in a regex. That would be more generally useful and isn't hard to do. I might give it a go even.. :-) (Plug: I recently wrote a GM script to change new style RTs into old style ones on Twitter - <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/66951>)

</comment><comment><USER6> Settle down, it'll all be over soon enough.

<comment><USER7> That's right.

         --- sent from my iPad(tm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How about one for Erlang?

Seriously though, the iPad is just the shiny new thing of the day, it won't be nearly as big news in a few days. Not worth worrying about.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why not just use Xichekolas's script at <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039> ? It is very flexible and does a bit more.

</comment><comment><USER10> would the script remove this story?

</comment><comment><USER11> Don't tempt me!

</comment><comment><USER12> great.......i like this one.....</comment>


Does this gif contain an animation? - <AUTHOR> https://doesthisgifcontainananimation.com/

<comment><USER2> [https://github.com/KlausTrainer/dtgcaa](https://github.com/KlausTrainer/dtgcaa)</comment>


Inside Pixar's Leadership - <AUTHOR> http://scottberkun.com/2010/inside-pixars-leadership/

<comment><USER2> Ed is one of the world's greatest managers. He has created something very special at Pixar, where creativity continues to flourish, the team absolutely loves working there, and where art and technology coexist.

<comment><USER3> Not only that, but a marvelous scientist whose name carries enormous credibility and respect in the field of computer graphics!

<comment><USER4> Agreed. The article didn't really touch on this too much but you pretty much can't do any work in computer graphics without seeing his name all over the place because of how much of the fundamental technology he either invented or co-invented.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The Pixar Touch_ (<http://www.amazon.com/The-Pixar-Touch- ebook/dp/B0010SKT0M/>) is a great book about Catmull and Pixar.

</comment><comment><USER6> _Ed Catmull, Pixar: Keep Your Crises Small_ , Stanford Graduate School of Business <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc> (54:11)

Long. Worth it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Even Disney's offerings, specifically "Tangled", have bumped up the quality under Pixar's leadership.</comment>


The Future of Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/09/the-future-of-amazon-ambitious-diverse-and-expansve/

<comment><USER2> "Given Amazon's ability to experiment and execute, I also wouldn't be surprised to see the company also look into aerial drones as delivery channels"

Seriously?

</comment><comment><USER3> I think Amazon is taking the right approach. I love the Amazon Doctorine: Above all else, align with customers. Win when they win. Win _only_ when they win.

This approach will serve Amazon well if they follow through.

Apple's approach of making the best products in the world and selling them at a profit works for Apple, but to carve out a niche, Amazon has taken their own way.

Interesting, with the Nexus 7, Google admitted basically that they are willing to follow Amazon's lead and try and be more of a content/commerce oriented device, but Amazon already got there and it does it better with the Kindle Fire than Google does with the Nexus 7 and the Play store.

Google trying to follow Amazon's lead seems like a mistake. Google has never really been a media/content or even a commerce company. They are an advertising and technology company. Google doesn't love selling things, they love giving things away for free and wrapping them in ads. Google isn't good at getting people to pay for things yet. I'm not sure that Google wants to be good at selling things.

Google should play to their strengths and make a 7" Motorola tablet that is advertising subsidized and sells for $100. Just matching price with the previous Kindle Fire is not going to get them success in the tablet market.

So, Apple is built around selling high end devices that delight customers. Amazon is about getting you to purchase stuff from Amazon.com and is building an ecosystem of devices and software to make that the best experience in the world. Google is built around repackaging 3rd party content and wrapping it in advertising. Microsoft is built around selling entertainment and productivity software and services.

All of these companies have a different approach that will take them different places. I don't know that any of them executing their strategy will be a huge detriment of the success of the others.

<comment><USER4> > _I love the Amazon Doctorine: Above all else, align with customers_

"... but let's not carried away now." (epub-on-kindle _whoops_ , etc)

I like Amazon, they're mostly a very good company from a customer's point of view. But it's not like they're immune to the usual business impulses....</comment></comment>


I hate college essays, and now professors use my jeremiad in class - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2016/02/i_hate_college_essays_and_now_professors_use_my_jeremiad_in_class.single.html <comment><AUTHOR> I teach English and technical writing, and now I'm tempted to use both the original essay and this essay in class.

Essays in school are tough as a genre ([http://jakeseliger.com/2011/12/02/paul-graham-and-not- being-...](http://jakeseliger.com/2011/12/02/paul-graham-and-not-being-as- right-as-he-could-be-in-the-age-of-the-essay/)), but the chief problem with getting rid of them is simple: What's the best alternative?</comment>


IBM is hiring developers for numerically intensive libraries - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6520052849932529664 <comment><USER2> Are they planning to implement "The End of Error" ([https://www.amazon.com/End-Error-Computing-Chapman- Computati...](https://www.amazon.com/End-Error-Computing-Chapman- Computational/dp/1482239868)) algorithms?</comment>