Free Public Speaking Workshop For Women - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1781-free-public-speaking-workshop-for-women <comment><USER2> This is an awesome way for github to help solve the "women not speaking at conferences" problem -- there are qualified female engineers who have built things, but they tend to not be comfortable presenting, so you end up with a very small number of female speakers who get invited to speak at every event, and who thus turn down a lot of things.

(The other stage in the funnel which needs work is the "going into engineering" stage, but that's much earlier.)

The other stage to help out would be someone covering travel expenses/etc. for the pool of qualified and willing female speakers to attend events they otherwise might not. I wonder if any tech companies would contribute to that.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a good thing that all men are naturally confident, adept public speakers already.

<comment><USER4> This is the kind of troll comment that really makes me cringe. :/

GitHub is hosting a FREE event to support a group of hackers that are under- represented and discriminated against at conferences. How is this anything but wonderful?

Stop heckling. Your sarcasm is laced with entitlement and ignorance. It doesn't help anyone.

<comment><USER5> As this event demonstrates, men are discriminated against also. And as the op pointed out, many men(like many women) are bad speakers and lack confidence. It is not wonderful that github excludes them.

Note: the values driving this post are a respect for individual rights regardless of gender. What are your values? When you clearly state them you will probably understand the point of disagreement.

<comment><USER6> The issue isn't that there are men who aren't good at public speaking too, but rather that speaker slots are still dominated by men and men are more visible in the tech community in general. Github is making an effort to provide a public speaking workshop specifically for women because of this.

> Note: the values driving this post are a respect for individual rights > regardless of gender.

I don't see how individual rights has anything to do with this. Github is not obligated to provide a workshop for every person and Github employees have a right to create a workshop that targets women. Nobody is being prevented from running their own workshop or being forced to attend a workshop.

<comment><USER7> I'm going to be ridiculously blunt:

Assuming the following:

\- the amount of women in tech is a fraction of the amount of men

\- the intelligence/experience/skills of all of these men and women is about even

\- percentage-wise there are just about as many men as women that are crap at public speaking

\- the intent is to put more women in front of crowds

Assuming these, teaching none but women how to speak (or, none but men, for that matter) only serves to make the level of these events lower. You want the best, not the /best of this or that minority/.

This goes both ways, and that's what the OP pointed out, with an unhealthy dose of sarcasm.

That said, I think having some women up there might actually help. It gives the youth a better impression, perhaps even inspiring some women to have a go at IT.

<comment><USER8> To illustrate the problem with your point, go one step further. If women are 1%, say, of the developer community, why not only give them 1% of stage time -- maybe 24 minutes on a 3 day conference?

Your argument is predicated on the idea that the only fair allocation is a pro-rata distribution of time, resembling almost perfectly the demographics of the audience. Consider instead that the echo chamber effect is real, and it is to the benefit of the community that people with fundamentally different backgrounds will introduce perspectives which, when mixed with those of the majority, will make the entire community more robust.

Second, your concept of applying quality standards, while ostensibly a desirable thing, is problematic in application. In a community where majority/minority dynamics apply, invariably the assessment of quality will tend towards what the majority feels is most aligned with its own sensibilities. Those of course are informed by their own experiences, and to the extent that there are strongly overlapping elements, the consensus view will contain blind spots. I don't know what the answer is to that, but it's something to think about if you want to take the issue seriously.

So yeah, if you think that the best thing for a conference, or a community in general is to only hear from perspectives in equal proportion to how they occur in the population at large -- which is the effect of so-called meritorious approaches such as yours -- then by all means you should count the allotment of every second. Black programmers should be invited to give 30-second lightning talks whereas smart, young white males from middle class backgrounds should pontificate for hours.

I personally think that the quality of your conference will be much worse. I would rather see someone decide to give a woman a chance, yes because she's a woman but also because she's smart, so as to give a voice to people who don't normally get a chance to be heard much.

<comment><USER7> Read the last line.

The one starting with the words _I think_. I was just pointing out what the OP meant.

In other words, don't address your comment to me. I'm on your side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think everyone is digging way too deep into the significance of this event. Public speaking is hard for everyone and most people could benefit from workshops like these no matter the gender. One of the hardest aspects of public speaking is feeling comfortable being the center of attention. I imagine a tech specific speaking workshop, which is open to everyone, would involve the usual gender discrepancy, making standing out more amplified. This group is just one way in which to ease into the uncomfortableness of standing out.

</comment><comment><USER10> The amount of spoon feeding women in tech require is staggering.

</comment><comment><USER11> I am honestly curious if "Badass Lady Dev" and "generally rad person" are at all similar to how male speakers in the tech world are typically described. (I have not been to a tech conference since GIS school. I have been to a lot more urban planning things.)

Thanks.

<comment><USER12> Eh, I routinely see descriptions like "Kickass Rockstar JS Hacker-Ninja" (only slightly exaggerated), and titles like "_______ Guru"

I do tend to reflexively discount those people.

<comment><USER11> As a woman who gets "too much" attention at times, I have found it seriously detrimental to try to tell people that I am "awesome" or the like. I find that backfires. People think I have poor self esteem, I am exaggerating, etc. So it concerned me to see the fairly extreme hype for this page.

Thanks for replying.

<comment><USER13> Well, there's a difference between describing oneself that way and describing others the same way. Julie describes Mina Markham as a "Badass Lady Dev," while her description of herself is the much more modest "Passion Projects Creator, Developer, and Designer of Websites and Also Slides."

<comment><USER11> I am well aware of that. I am also aware that women generally have trouble being taken seriously and often feel the need to justify, etc. In my own case, when I state the facts without embellishment, it is often taken as telling tall tales. If I don't state the facts, gee, no one knows what I have done. So I continue to wrestle with how to prove myself or show credentials...etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Meh. The conference scene seems largely a waste of time anyway.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice idea!

</comment><comment><USER16> This should be an event put on by a women's organization, sponsored by github.

As a github event, it is alienating, off putting, sexist, and creepy.

Male programmers need public speaking skills just as much as female programmers do.

What this tells me for the nth time, is that github as a company has their head wedged, and I would never want a job with them, they are clearly sexist, agenda driven, and whether explicit or not will almost certainly have quotas favoring women developers.

Edit: It's a shame downvotes do not require that a comment in reply first be made.

<comment><USER6> > What this tells me for the nth time, is that github as a company has their > head wedged, and I would never want a job with them, they are clearly > sexist, agenda driven, and whether explicit or not will almost certainly > have quotas favoring women developers.

I like how you mix affirmative action quotas, sexism, and having an agenda all together as though Github is orchestrating some anti-male conspiracy.

1) Putting on a workshop for women on public speaking != hiring quotas based on gender 2) Excluding a dominant group from a workshop is not sexism, the dominant group is not having its collective power threatened in any way 3) There is nothing wrong with having an agenda, people and organizations have them all the time

<comment><USER14> >> Excluding a dominant group from a workshop is not sexism, the dominant group is not having its collective power threatened in any way

I am not a dominant group, I am an individual and I am excluded based on my genitals. This does not seem right.

<comment><USER6> First of all, genitals != gender. Second, if you are a cisgender man, then yes you are a part of the dominant group in tech. Lastly, this one public speaking workshop doesn't change anything about gender balances and dynamics in tech and conferences, so this really doesn't threaten men in a any way unless you consider extra participation from women in the tech community to be a threat.

<comment><USER14> No, I am an individual and I am barred from certain groups and activities based on my genitals/gender/whatever. This is an anti-pattern so far as I'm concerned.

It's not a threat to me and I don't honestly care about conferences. But that is what it comes down to.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Notable programmers in the history of software - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programmers#L <comment><USER2> There are some great, great names on this list: Woz, Brad Cox, Jeff Minter, Charles Moore are among my faves. But there are a couple who are notable for promulgating opinions about programming rather than actually producing widely used codebases: Grady Booch and Martin Fowler. As Linus says: show me the code!</comment>


Google must be broken up due to its 'overwhelming' power, News Corp says - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/mar/12/google-must-be-broken-up-due-to-its-overwhelming-power-news-corp-says <comment><USER2> Of all the people who might make that claim, News Corp is the one who I am least interested in. Not solely because they're like a second-place runner looking for excuses to call foul on the one in first place, but because they mix politics and propaganda in both the US and Australia (among others).

I can practically guarantee that News Corp's first action on diminishing Google's hold over media would be a ConservaSearch. It's not that they're necessarily wrong about Google's power, but that their motives for it are at least as evil.

<comment><USER3> > ConservaSearch

Will never work from a mathematical perspective. The most valuable thing that Google ever gave society was a mathematical algorithm for search that then used crowd-sourcing for additional improvement of results. This will never work for propaganda movements because information born from observation tend towards resolution while other kinds of information tend towards bifurcation.

In order to describe what I mean, we can look at the scientific process around climate change, where the vast, vast, majority of the scientific community has been able to reach a common conclusion: Humans are causing climate change, and we should probably stop. As more studies and changes occur, this will solidify, although there isn't much further that we can move in support of climate change from the scientific community at this point.

On the other end, we can look at groups of faith and see how much different sects of Christianity differ throughout the world, given how they share the same source material.

If we were to try to build ConservaPedia today, let's say I downloaded or wrote a similar algorithm to Google, because quality of search is important or nobody will use it, and then try to remove ... objectionable material. Who determines what is objectionable? How do I use the results and clicks of people to move things to the top, to make the search more usable, if the end user cannot test the veracity of the results? Don't the results then only become a total crapshoot? The hands-on approach isn't going to work for long. I imagine that this is why Google is having trouble with attempts to build out for the Chinese market.

I don't think that the world of search can ever work effectively with any kind of adherence to dogma. This is why ideological dogma is typical spread in social networks instead, which is a far better way to spread dogmatic memes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 100 chuhe khakar billi Haj ko Chali...

<comment><USER5> Haha what happened to the other 800

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> pot, kettle

<comment><USER7> Precisely, I welcome having 20 little Mini-Googles and the return of independent local news stations and papers.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Feedback from hackers on unpublished articles - <AUTHOR>

TL;DR: I need feedback on an unpublished article and I don't know where to get it.
I've recently begun writing again, and I'd like some way to get critique of my writing before it's published. Ideally, it would be something I could use in the future, as well.
I don't know any hackers personally (the tech scene in Alaska is pretty sparse), so I can't turn to personal connections.
To clarify - I don't need proofreading, I need critique. I'd like feedback on my structure, sentiment, and argument, not on my grammar and spelling (if issues with grammar and spelling were found, that would be fine, but I don't tend to have much of a problem with that.)
This could be a startup idea, if it's not already implemented, but I would like something that already exists, if possible. <comment><USER2> Maybe you don't necessarily need hackers. In that case there are many internet communities for writers. AbsoluteWrite is one.

<http://absolutewrite.com/forums/index.php></comment>


Obama: How the Presidency Made Me a Better Father - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barack-obama/how-the-presidency-made-me-a-better-father_b_7632178.html

<comment><USER2> Certainly did not make him a better human being between condoning torture, kill lists, and his utter disregard for human liberties. I wonder how any child could respect such a bloodthirsty parent.</comment>


Criminal charges against Programmer for actions of the user - <AUTHOR> The US Government is attempting to make programmers criminally liable for the intentions of the users of the software. Programmers may end up bankrupting themselves in defense of felony jail time for the hidden intentions of their employers and clients if the prosecution wins this precedent-setting case.
Jitesh Thakkar legally immigrated to the United States from India in 1989 at the age of 13 to live the American Dream.  He learned English, graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a Computer Engineering degree, and founded his own small programming business. Now he faces unprecedented criminal charges because his company created software that a client later used to engage in unlawful CME futures trading without his knowledge.
Make no mistake about it—Jitesh is innocent of the charges.  He did not know what the trader would do with the software he created, which had legitimate uses.  But Jitesh now faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills because he must go to trial to prove his innocence, even though he has no prior criminal record or even any regulatory infractions.
Jitesh is a fighter and has utilized every monetary resource available to retain a prominent law firm to represent him. The case is scheduled to go to trial on April 1, 2019, in U.S. District Court in Chicago. The financial technology industry and small business owners everywhere will be watching intently because this case could set a precedent that would be used against other innocent programmers.
For those interested in helping out - I have created a Go Fund Me to help him pay for his defense.
https://www.gofundme.com/programmer-vs-us-govt-legal-defense-fund?sharetype=teams&member=1647830&rcid=r01-154975040165-67224aa5f0804395&pc=ot_co_campmgmt_w <comment><USER2> The government's side of the story can be found here:

[https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr7689-18](https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr7689-18)

A link to the indictment can be found here:

[https://www.justice.gov/criminal-vns/case/jitesh- thakkar](https://www.justice.gov/criminal-vns/case/jitesh-thakkar)

<comment><USER3> Is Thakkar's position that his company did not understand that this "back of book" feature was against the law, or is it a legal feature (perhaps supported by other platforms) that "Trader A" happened to use in an illegal manner?

Does it seem odd that the identity of "Trader A" is shielded given they are the party that directly violated the law? Is "Trader A" taking a plea deal to testify against Thakkar?

I'm sure the truth lies someplace in between, but the government allegations (if taken at face value) seem (to me) to be both plausible and damning. Personally, I hope "Trader A" pays a price and not just these devs.

Unfortunately, at the moment, the government's side sure does read like "Trader A" said: "Hey I would like to break the law, can you help me?" and the devs said "Sure, we can do that."

<comment><USER2> The trader's identity is revealed on page 2 of the actual indictment: "Navinder Sarao was a futures trader who lived in the United Kingdom."

Apparently, he played a role in the 2010 "Flash Crash":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash#Evidence_of_m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash#Evidence_of_market_manipulation_and_arrest)

Looks like he pled guilty in a Chicago court in 2016 and is currently in prison:

[http://fortune.com/2016/11/13/sarao-flash-crash-trader- fraud](http://fortune.com/2016/11/13/sarao-flash-crash-trader-fraud)

> _Navinder Singh Sarao, a London-based stock trader, has pled guilty to one > count of wire fraud and one count of "spoofing" in a Chicago court. He is > expected to serve 78 to 97 months in jail and surrender nearly $13 million, > according to the Telegraph._

> _Sarao's crime involved manipulating derivatives prices by placing and > quickly cancelling a massive number of orders on the Chicago Mercantile > Exchange. Between 2009 and 2014, Sarao reportedly earned $40 million through > manipulation._

<comment><USER4> Sounds like the guy is an ass. I would not be surprised if he mislead the developer and when "cooperating" with cftc made it sound like he knew that software broke the law.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Inspire – Collection of UX Flows on Popular Apps - <AUTHOR> http://canvasflip.com/inspire.php?utm_source=hackernews <comment><AUTHOR> Hello Hackers,

We built "Inspire - a collection of prototypes showing UX flow / task on popular apps.

We will keep adding 10-15 prototypes everyday.

If you created something that inspires you or others, drop a comment or leave an email to vipul[at]CanvasFlip.com

We will be happy to add your prototypes to the "inspire" collection.

Keep Inspiring!! \- Vipul</comment>


Security for Elasticsearch is now free - <AUTHOR> https://www.elastic.co/blog/security-for-elasticsearch-is-now-free <comment><USER2> Great news! Although we use Elastic cloud on AWS, this is great addition to open source. Now real question is whether Elastic team did this to stop Amazon Opensource elastic stack (see here [https://opendistro.github.io/for- elasticsearch/](https://opendistro.github.io/for-elasticsearch/)).

This looks like early contention plan to fields ELK users from going to amazon.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good news and a welcome addition. Too many elasticsearch clusters have been completely exposed and have been leaking data.

In our case we've had elasticsearch container behind our firewall only exposed to our application servers behind a reverse proxy. Did the trick.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it also opensource? Or just free?</comment>


Ask HN: SaaS Startups- What solutions work to ensure payment from customers? - <AUTHOR> - We bill via invoice (net 30), even though we have 1 year contracts in place, many of our customers are very untimely in paying us, sometimes >1 month late, despite many follow up emails. These customers are large, we're not worried that they don't have cash flow.<p>- Have you had any experience with outsourcing collections / some sort of service or product, and to what degree of success have you found?<p>- Is it common to have a hard time collecting on cash post sale? <comment><USER2> Are your invoices a subscription payment, or are they for one-off services?

How do customers usually pay for them at the moment? Is it automatable (credit cards, etc) or is it highly manual (cheques, etc)

My recommendation would be to stop giving out free lunch if you don't want people having free lunch. Collect full payment _before_ the service is provided.

As far as 1-year contracts go, just don't have them. Contracts are impossible to enforce. Instead, have a monthly price, and then a discounted yearly price if you pay for a year _in advance_ with no refunds. Essentially the same as a contract but with no way for people to stop paying midway through.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice reaching out cold to find B2B customer development interviewees? - <AUTHOR> In the past, I'd dive in straight to product development. I'm determined not to repeat mistakes of the past.
My idea is centered around more effective collaboration in companies and teams. I'm realizing that the CEO/COO/someone in a similar capacity would be someone I'd ideally like to talk to, primarily because she/he sees the business as a whole and is most concerned with ensuring things are running well in the company.
Reaching out to CEOs of well-known companies on LinkedIn though sounds to me like a bad idea. One I'm not sure they even check their LIs and two, I wonder if LI connect is as effective anymore.
What has worked for you when starting cold and prospecting interviewees for your customer interviews (pre-product)? <comment><USER2> It really isn't easy to do what youre asking. You'll just be the next salesman trying to get in touch with a CEO. The best way is an introduction or getting to someone lower/someone with a lower time premium who also has access to the pursestrings with a cold call.

They probably do check their Linkedin but don't respond because you've become a salesman and they don't have interest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you speaking from experience? Just curious as to how you got around it. A piece of advice I see being mentioned is to specifically call out in your message that you're not selling anything (as you don't even have a product). I can imagine it works with some, not with others.</comment></comment>


Monitoring You - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@myusuf3/monitoring-you-a1b5f029ae77#.ampxfoag4 <comment><USER2> Writer of the post here I can answer any questions or dig up any data you might be interested about me in Gyroscope</comment>


Internet advertising is out of control Get early access - <AUTHOR> https://haloads.com <comment><USER2> More vapourware. I _hate_ this trend - if you have something, great. If you don't stop telling us about this thing you don't have and how wonderful it will be.

Just. Stop it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Colin,

Thanks for your response.

I would tend to agree with you on some of these sort of posts.

We are still working on the service and decided to inform some more people about the potential to join an early beta as we believe online advertising is really bad at the moment. It really would be nice to not have to download multiple megs just in order to see some product you are not that interested in at the end; or have to use an AdBlocker as an alternative as way too many online sites and blogs rely heavily on ads to continue going; so we really would like to help everyone out in this market.

Kind regards, Andrew

<comment><USER2> Write a blog post, have some content, make it worth having cluck through to the page.

The page is gorgeous and _totally content free._

Provide some value.</comment></comment></comment>


What goes in the lib/ directory? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codeclimate.com/blog/2012/02/07/what-code-goes-in-the-lib-directory/

<comment><USER2> Please edit the title to make clear it's Rails specific (and not about, say, /lib/ on a Linux install).</comment>


Scaling DOT to Scala – Soundness - <AUTHOR> http://scala-lang.org/blog/2016/02/17/scaling-dot-soundness.html <comment><AUTHOR> I find this work interesting not just for Scala, but for all languages that are attempting to fuse OOP, FP, and static typing. And at the moment, that seems to be a lot of languages, especially if you count the efforts to bring gradual typing to traditionally dynamic languages.</comment>


IBM Selectric Bug - <AUTHOR> https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/selectric/ <comment><USER2> If you're ever in DC and want to see more of this kind of stuff, definitely check out the Spy Museum. It's unbelievable the lengths both countries went to for even the most basic of intelligence!

</comment><comment><USER3> Coincidentally I happen to be reading a book on the same subject. From memory, how the commies picked up the signal was even more interesting. In a false chimney attached to the Embassy they installed a remotely controlled Yagi antenna, that could be pointed at a particular target. At the top of the 'chimney' was a copper v-shaped dome serving to gather and focus the weak signal from the typewriters. The signal from the antenna was then sent through an amplifier and cable down a tunnel into the Soviet sector. The transmission from the typewriter consisted of a compressed burst-mode signal hidden in the side-bands of near-by television transmissions, making it virtually impossible to detect using normal bug detecting equipment. When the existence of such was reported to the ambassador, he said: can you bring us 100% proof the commies are bugging us.

</comment><comment><USER4> Another great story of the ingeniousness of Soviet eavesdropping is "The Thing," which operated for 7 years or so and had no power supply.

Also known as "The Great Seal Bug."

[https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/thing/index.htm](https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/thing/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER5> This one never ceases to amaze me. The degree of craftsmanship in building this so it would withstand close inspection is off the scale.</comment>


The Billionaires and The Guru: How an Indian Family Burned Through $2B - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-16/billionaires-and-the-guru-how-an-indian-family-lost-2-billion <comment><USER2> As someone who left India for the US, this article gives me pause as to whether things have actually changed in shining New India or if it's just a facade with air conditioning.

More specifically, I'd like to move back at some point and I'm not sure if I ever should.

<comment><USER3> I don't share the negative sentiments expressed by others in response to your question. I think things have changed significantly for the better. I'll leave you with these two images - you can decide for yourself if anything has changed:

[https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/in...](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/india-2012.jpg) [https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/in...](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/india-2016.jpg)

Source: [https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/new-night- lights-m...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/new-night-lights-maps- open-up-possible-real-time-applications)

Scroll down to India's map and play with it for a while and then ask yourself whether India has changed for the better.

You may not feel the difference as much as India's villagers and poor.

<comment><USER4> These two images don't answer the "if it's just a facade with air conditioning" question.

This just shows that now there are more airconditioners there (well, lights).

Parent was explicitly trying to differentiate between more money/technical change and different mentality.

<comment><USER5> Neither do those images show severe lack of hamburgers. Transporting cows can and has lead to lynchings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds to me like two indian brothers realized that a likely result of an arbitration would indirectly bankrupt their public companies so they started funneling money to a person they trust to hold onto it for them. just my 2c

<comment><USER5> This makes sense. This cult has been on a real estate buying spree near their HQ. Even threatening farmers who refuse to sell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> And here I thought that "Wild Wild Country" on Netflix was too crazy to be true and something like that would not happen again. (*fixed typos)

<comment><USER8> Trust me, you haven't seen anything at all.

<comment><USER9> It's funny that people are downvoting you for your manner, but frankly speaking that's exactly the reaction I had to the post.

"Too good to be true"? You're joking, right?

There's loads of people in the world with a high enough status, but who still are gullible enough because they never really had any deep relationships. Be it friends, lovers or family.

That's exactly the kind of weaknesses upon which people build religions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's the deal with these Gurus, and how can they have millions of followers? They are simply cult leaders and fraudsters.

<comment><USER11> "Gurus" in India are "Churches" in USA.

<comment><USER10> Oh, I agree. I guess guru and cults have 24x7 compounds; churches don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any indian who has some understanding of veda and caste system will immediately identify the problem here. It is run by singhs and singhs are not hindus by that i mean they discard varna system, vedas and caste system. The current government BJP is a strong religious organization with Brahmins in key positions who have lots to lose if caste system is abolished. The move by the indian BJP government is to progress hindutva ideology.

</comment><comment><USER13> It is interesting to see Indians talking of themselves and India as a separate entity. Now, I am fine with people moving out of the country and I can understand the appeal. A lot of problems in India have been long solved in the west and there are problems which are unique to India. But it is hypocritical to blame the ills on "India" as if it exists without it's people. Citizens make a country and they are equally responsible whether they like it or not.

<comment><USER14> >It is interesting to see Indians talking of themselves and India as a separate entity.

Apropos of that, I have an Indian acquaintance who is an activist, focusing on women's rights and poverty. She's told a couple of stories stories about going into tiny, remote villages in India and telling people about their basic rights under the law, only to be asked "what is India?" and having to explain that the place these people live is called "India".

<comment><USER15> Probably because India is the name in english. It is called Bharat in Hindi, other names in other vernaculars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Side note, has anybody read the TOS at bloomberg? Along with getting violation notices? I MUST allow JS?

[https://imgur.com/a/hsTANvy](https://imgur.com/a/hsTANvy)

Also, their entire TOS looks like one of those shrink wrap licenses. I feel like people really don't understand how the internet works, and in the long run they are simply going to break it if the law dictates what software I have to run or not run to view a website.

EDIT: Link to TOS: [https://www.bloomberg.com/notices/tos/](https://www.bloomberg.com/notices/tos/)

Really guys, this sort of stuff should not stand, the idea that they own the ability for you to link to their site is hideous. Even if they are "granting" that ability today allowing people to front like they have that power should be stopped. Otherwise next generations will just obey because "it's in the tos", "it's the law".

<comment><USER17> Isn't the 'you need JS' in order to let the captcha work?

I believe I have to whitelist certain scripts in uMatrix before those things work (or even appear!).

edit: also the website just works for me even without scripts. I think your IP has triggered a flood warning leading the captcha and for that to work you need JS (which makes sense).

<comment><USER16> Regardless of why I was interrupted, the TOS is total crap.

<comment><USER18> As they typically are. Hence why they so rarely actually get tested in a court of law

<comment><USER16> Even if it won't really hold up in a court of law I feel like the notion is to set some sort of precedence that gives it validity the logger it sits there unchecked. This is the sort of thing that shapes the next generations of judges, lawyers, juries and law makers. Over time sentiment will change and we will be stuck with "well it has always been this way right?".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Original title: The Billionaires and The Guru: How a Family Burned Through $2 Billion

<comment><USER20> The original title is a much better title, not sure why it was changed... This is more so a story about the brothers and the spiritual leader who apparently took a bunch of cash from them, not about abuses of India's ruling class

<comment> B-Con Now it's

> How an Indian family lost $2 Billion

I think we're on the 3rd title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is this number of title changes normal?

<comment><USER22> I've seen some writer change their article titles a few times after publishing — I would guess they're trying to A/B test or just indecisive.</comment></comment>


Designing Web Interfaces: Standard Screen Patterns - <AUTHOR> http://designingwebinterfaces.com/designing-web-interfaces-12-screen-patterns

<comment><USER2> Vast majority of these patterns are from desktop apps, not web apps. Majority of the example screenshots are from desktop apps as well.

While desktop and web apps share a lot of similarity, they're not the same. Web and desktop apps have different limitations and as a result have different evolutionary paths. Also, people expect them to behave differently so you can't present a UI to the user that doesn't behave like they expect it to behave.

<comment><USER3> They say "These are are broadly applicable solutions for general problems that arise in enterprise software and productivity web app design. They are not web site patterns, which have already been cataloged and explored quite thoroughly*."

You say desktop and web apps are not the same. Sure, but the question is whether their logical UI differences are determined more by their webiness/desktopness or by the fact that most desktop apps are enterprise/productivity apps whilst the majority of web apps is not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my daily browsing, I often see Designs that are not on that list.

For example Hacker News is a very standard interface to me. I would call it "Forum".

"Search" looks like it has multiple columns, but in my daily experience the main characteristic of "search" is that it only has a single column of results. (Google, Amazon, Yeahit...)

Another standard Layout, I would call "Portal". Yahoo is an example. Most pages are more or less "Portal" these days. (Another name for "Portal" is "utter mess".)

<comment><USER5> Speaking of the design of Hacker News. I think that not having a footer that gives visual feedback that you've reached the end of the page is a glaring usability flaw!

On HN, when you scroll down page by page and you reach the bottom there is no visual indication that you are at the bottom. And since you haven't scrolled a complete page down you are forced to rescan the page to find where you left off reading.

The NYT gets this right. Their footer is big enough so that with a regular window you'll always scroll complete pages until you see the footer.

I like the HN contents, so I put up with the design flaw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm no web designer expert but won't screen patterns be used as default design for web site when they shouldn't. I mean, will they be as overused as programming design patterns? Don't forget that the singleton ruined a part of my life.

<comment><USER7> I think UI patterns are a good thing because there is only a small number of good solutions to any given UI-problem but an infinite number of ways to screw it up. Identifying and explaining a few proven solutions for the most common tasks can help newcomers to make good choices instead of reinventing the wheel (potentially badly) every time.

<comment><USER6> I'm really on both sides of the fence here. I said that because I'm currently writing an app that has a completly non-standard design because every app that does what I want uses "search/results" design but it just doesn't work (at least for me).

On the other side, I'm happy to see that maybe a bad UI idea will be standardized into something usable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I started reading this book on Oreilly's Safari service a couple days ago, recommend it (nb: I am a remote services/concurrency guy learning UI principles/techniques, not an experienced designer).

</comment><comment><USER9> I think this is great. Excellent work. I think we need more work identifying useful patterns to: 1. make it easier for users & 2\. save development time and effort on standard views.

</comment><comment><USER10> Someone should make Balsamiq templates (<http://www.mockupstogo.net/>) for each of these...

<comment><USER11> Well... I am not sure about Balsamiq, but I am inclined to do so for Django, if there isn't one already.

<comment><USER10> I think we're talking about different levels of templates here... balsamiq is just a mockup tool, not a web app framework.

<comment><USER11> I know, but several of them seem to be quite modular and easy to generalize in useful ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you like these, you may also be interested in this flickr collection of search UI patterns: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/morville/collections/7215760378...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/morville/collections/72157603785835882/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not a UI guy, but I found this incredibly useful. It'd be interesting to find the anti-pattern in all this and implement that instead. Seems ironic to standardize such a creative aspect of development.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've started saving and tagging screen captures of sites I like; this terminology will definitely make it easier to consistently tag/identify layouts.</comment>


Ask HN: Did your side project become your main source of income in 2013? - <AUTHOR>

Did you leave your day job? How long have you worked on them? Share your story! <comment><USER2> I created a side project this summer based on an open source tool which I use in my day job. My idea was to offer this open source tool as a service.

So I set aside a week to travel down the East Coast. Every day I went to offices and MeetUps and demo'ed the original open source project and my service built on it. Each day was 15 hours, door to door. One time I had to patch a shoe with duct tape.

A week after my return, I'll admit that the service is a failure. The idea is a good one, and everyone wanted to try it, but no one committed themselves to using it, much less paying for it. The trip was still a success! When you show people crazy projects, they show you theirs. The projects I heard about, I had no idea that they existed. Networking was good. Being new places was good.

</comment><comment><USER3> 9 months of engineering for a core piece of tech.

Wrote the first commercial application for it within a month or so.

Doing great so far.

</comment><comment><USER4> The startup I was working on went under and I was on unemployment looking for a new job. A friend suggested starting a website that would make money from affiliate commissions. The goal was to make some extra money for coffee and to cover my cell phone bill while I looked for a new job. It ended up being a full time job and 3 years later I'm still working on it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've gone from §50 per week to §300 pw this year. Still long way to go before I can quit my job, but slowly getting closer to it every month.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Did your side project become your main source of income in 2013?

No. My side projects are just my main source of expenditures so far :).

</comment><comment><USER7> No

</comment><comment><USER8> This is going to be a long one.

I started working on Wall Street shortly after the housing bubble in late 2007 for a very well-known firm. After two years of building various computational models based on esoteric distributions purposed for HFT, I realized that I could do it myself on albeit a smaller scale. I decided to target bitcoin because it is highly volatile and makes for a good asset to hedge against. I'm now making about 20,000 a week just on bitcoin trading with about 100k liquid (80k earned from trading itself, 20k from savings originally.)

I look at jobs as a good way to learn what is profitable, and self-projects to make the real cash. Salaried jobs are never going to give a person the freedom they need. And no programmers are "rockstars", musicians are..

<comment><USER9> I've been wanting to do something similar to this in the future after my education. If you don't mind me asking, did you major in Math?

<comment><USER8> I can't mention the specific degree because it would probably let the firm know who I am but I did not major in math, most of my knowledge of statistics, calculus, number theory, was self-learned out of curiosity.

<comment><USER10> This is something I'm very interested in. Can you recommend some books/courses that focus more on the financial/HTF side of things?

Cheers</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:investing in mobile game development - <AUTHOR>

I am considering funding development of two smartphone games. Games would be developed by 5 person development studio. We are based in Europe. The idea is that studio could use extra funding to build portfolio and make more money and obviously I could make some money of it as well. The deal we plan is my investment of X% of development budget and getting Y% of return in game sales where X is close/equal to Y. Game concept looks good ( yes I know is extremely vague description, game is in sports category )
About me: I have developer's background but I don't code for living for ~10 years. I am able to verify game studio experience and skill set but I am not a gamer at all (mobile nor console). Last time I spent serious time playing games was in Commodore 64 heydays... I consider my lack of mobile gaming experience biggest drawback.
About game studio: limited portfolio of mobile games - 5 titles, only one quite successful in number of countries ( ~4 times return on 1 man-year development budget). They have pretty good understanding of technology and some design talent. Significant experience on PS console an older devices like Gameboy. They have every good, well known publisher.
Obviously the biggest risk is if the games are going to catch on and get sales. Even more obvious - coming up with good game concept is the hardest part and mobile game market is crowded
Did any anyone try this kind of investment approach from investor or hacker perspective? Would you take a shot at estimating  risk and expected value of return?
Thanks <comment><USER2> As with most investments of this nature, a large part of the decision to invest will depend on how much you believe in the team/project. If you've done your homework and the numbers look good and you trust the team, go with it.</comment>


Show HN: Minecraft terrain generation on the GPU with JavaCL - <AUTHOR> http://biomesplus.blogspot.com/2011/11/noisy-terrain-brought-to-you-by-my-gpu.html <comment><USER2> NoScript: Your _whole site_ is blank. No content whatsoever. It took me a while to actually consider the possibility that there's a problem with JavaScript (or - rather without) and not a slashdot/HN effect, slowing down the server to a crawl.

I understand degraded experiences if I turn off Javascript. But a completely empty page is surprisingly bad.

\--

Edit/follow-up (sorry for the noise): Okay, it's a combination of user error and Google mess. When I went to that link the first time for some reason my NoScript setup allowed everything on blogspot.com. Which bypasses the sites noscript tag and serves me a JS only page, containing nothing but script tags and a stylesheet - from another host, blogblog.com. That was _not_ on my white list.

If I _disable_ JS for blogspot.com I get

      This site requires JavaScript.
      You can still visit a non-dynamic version of this blog.

with a link to <http://biomesplus.blogspot.com/?v=0>

So - mea culpa.

<comment><USER3> It is 2011. Even googlebot supports javascript now.

I wouldn't spend time getting a webapp to work without javascript (a webpage is another matter, as is a cms).

<comment><USER2> I'm talking about his blog, right? That's - a webpage. Dynamic content maybe, CMS if you like.

It's 2011 and JS is source code that you download from a couple of places on the internet, put in a bowl and execute it in a 'will it blend' kind of style on your machine. In one of a a number of different sandboxes.

There are valid reasons for not trusting every random script. Let me turn your response on its head instead:

It is 2011. You should be able to either give me ~something~ ('Sorry, you have no JS enabled and I won't give you any content without enabling it first') or, better because it's 2011 and all, have a site that actually shows the (Interesting! Cool! I'll come back to check that author's site again and know that this is a meta discussion here) content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Boom, subscribed to the atom feed on your blog. The rainforest screenshots look interesting, I'm curious to see further development.

(I only wish I had more free time to "waste" on walking in minecraft's often beautiful landscapes.)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! I'm still a student so I try to use my luxury of free time as good as possible.</comment></comment>


A sudoku solver in 33 lines of Clojure - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/3217582 <comment><USER2> Code snippet author here.

More details about this code here <http://dosync.posterous.com/sudoku> and here <http://dosync.posterous.com/friendlier-shorter>

This is based on the excellent work of Claire Alvis, Will Byrd & Dan Friedman who continue to improve their Scheme miniKanren system. miniKanren embeds Prolog semantics into Scheme. core.logic implements and extends that work in Clojure. This code highlights the new cKanren extensions Claire et. al. have developed which enables Constraint Logic Programming in miniKanren - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constraint_logic_programming>.

One neat bit about this is that this is surprisingly efficient given the generality and how new this work is. The HN crowd will be familiar with Norvig's fantastic sudoku solver in Python - <http://norvig.com/sudoku.html>. This core.logic solver can solve easy sudoku problems ~6-7ms. Norvig's hard one that takes 188 seconds in Python takes ~60ms. More benchmarking needs to be done, but this is promising especially since this is a generic all- different FD constraint over small domains as well as intervals - so it's not specific to sudoku.

Feel free to ask any questions.

UPDATE: to be extra clear this is not just about sudoku. The following is also now possible to express under the same framework -

      (run* [q]
        (fresh [x y z]
          (infd x y z (interval 1 3))
          (+fd x y z)
          (== q [x y z])))
      ;; => ([1 1 2] [2 1 3] [1 2 3])

This program shows all possibilities where x, y & z range over 1, 2, 3 where x & y add up to z.

<comment><USER3> Have you found any multiple-order-of-magnitude spike of processing time for any other "hard" ones? Or, more generally, any quantization of time as a function of difficulty?

<comment><USER2> Yes I had time to check that one of the hardest ones listed on Wikipedia takes ~570ms on my machine, so that's nearly 100X slower. I haven't had time yet to do any real comprehensive benchmarking or quantization a la Norvig. Hopefully soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People thinking "Oh god, not another _x_ in _y_ lines of _z_ " (I first thought this as well), be open minded and try to read the code. It might not be in a language you know, but try and see if you can understand the last part:

      (run 1 [q]
        (== q vars)
        (everyo #(infd % (domain 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9)) vars)
        (init vars hints)
        (everyo distinctfd rows)
        (everyo distinctfd cols)
        (everyo distinctfd sqs))

Which, for me, reads "Take one solution and return q, where q is equal to vars, and every var is either 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9. Then initialize the variables with the already placed elements we've been given, and ensure that every row, column and square has only distinct elements."

Now, I don't know about you, but this sounds actually like the rules of Sudoku for me, not some algorithm on how to solve it. That's amazing, and should really get you to think about trying out logic programming if you haven't already. There's a lot of power in it, and using it in production code might not be as far away as it seems.

<comment><USER5> Coding in Prolog feels very much the same, 'though the syntax is frustrating. My solver came out somewhat more declarative but a little more verbose, 'though.

<comment><USER6> Just FYI, "though" is an English word, synonymous with "although." It doesn't require an apostrophe, and in fact "although" is incorrect when used at the end of a sentence.

<comment><USER7> It can be used as an adverb though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another Sudoku solver in k, which is only 72 bytes, and a translation into q which is slightly longer for those interested.

[http://thesweeheng.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/more-sudoku- solv...](http://thesweeheng.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/more-sudoku-solvers-in-k- and-q/)

</comment><comment><USER9> What happens if you input a puzzle that's unsolvable? Does the program run forever trying to seek a solution, or can it realize the puzzle is unsolvable?

<comment><USER10> I think you get the core.logic equivalent of prolog's "no" result.

I know nothing of clojure and core.logic, but a quick test:

        *sum=> (run*  [q] (fresh [a b] (== a 1) (== b 2) (== a b) (== q [a b])))

        ()

        *sum=> (run*  [q] (fresh [a b] (== a 1) (== b 1) (== a b) (== q [a b])))

       ([1 1])

the first has no solutions, while the latter returns one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a solver in 11 lines of AMPL (<http://www.ampl.com>), a modeling language for optimization problems:

      param n:=9;
      set N := 1..n;
      var x {N,N,N} binary;
      param fix {N,N} integer;
      minimize obj: x [1,1,1];
      assign {i in N, j in N}: sum {k in N} x [i,j,k] = 1;
      row  {i in N, k in N}: sum {j in N} x [i,j,k] = 1;
      col  {j in N, k in N}: sum {i in N} x [i,j,k] = 1;
      cell {c1 in 0..2, c2 in 0..2, k in N}:
        sum {i in (c1*3+1)..(c1*3+3), j in (c2*3+1)..(c2*3+3)} x [i,j,k] = 1;
      fixit {i in N, j in N: fix [i,j] != 0}: x [i,j,fix[i,j]] = 1;

      data;
      param fix:
        1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 :=
      1 1 0 0 0 0 7 0 9 0
      2 0 3 0 0 2 0 0 0 8
      3 0 0 9 6 0 0 5 0 0
      4 0 0 5 3 0 0 9 0 0
      5 0 1 0 0 8 0 0 0 2
      6 6 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 0
      7 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
      8 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 7
      9 0 0 7 0 0 0 3 0 0;

You can solve it by submitting it on line at, for instance, <http://neos.mcs.anl.gov/neos/solvers/milp:scip/AMPL.html> (just save it to a file and submit it in the "AMPL model" field).

This is an optimization model of an assignment problem. Certain problems should be approached not only with the right language, but also with the right tool. Optimization solvers are not always the best tool for feasibility problems, but this solver (of the branch-and-bound type) can also solve difficult sudoku instances.

[Edit: clarification]

</comment><comment><USER12> Pah, he really should have used TDD...

[http://ravimohan.blogspot.com.au/2007/04/learning-from- sudok...](http://ravimohan.blogspot.com.au/2007/04/learning-from-sudoku- solvers.html)

<comment><USER13> That was absolutely horrifying. It's like a train wreck. I can look away. I read the entire thing.

I'm sure that my thought process while developing code is ugly and messy and scattered too. However, this level of TDD just strikes me as a mechanism to generate legacy code to maintain. It's as if, upon embarking on a new project, these people so miss their giant codebases, with slow builds, and spaghetti grep results, that they have concocted a way to maximize the rate of legacy code generation, so they can feel at home again. The result is that you do a lot of what _feels_ like work. You're constantly moving code around, changing names, tweaking stuff. You tell yourself that you're "Refactoring" and that's how it's supposed to work.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. Why would he write tests if it's just play.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For another core.logic example check out the Game of Thrones Genealogy

<https://gist.github.com/3219448>

h/t @swannodette

<comment><USER16> Thanks for this, there's some beautiful clojure in there.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> core.logic is a truly amazing addition to the Clojure ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you're into short sudoku solvers, here's one in 140 characters (Javascript) from a few months back.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3047148>

<comment><USER2> To clarify this code snippet is not just about solving sudoku. This demonstrates brevity, generality, and it's zippy to boot! It's an extensible CLP framework, see my other comment.

<comment><USER17> Should I just remove it? It was a knee-jerk reaction to seeing what I thought was just another short suduko solver and was not terribly relevant.

<comment><USER2> No other people might miss that point :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe this might help some helpless other Clojure newbees like me: I just compiled clojure and core.logic from the github repos, and it seems that the author just changed "everyo" to "everyg" very recently:

[https://github.com/clojure/core.logic/commit/f831accb0659d04...](https://github.com/clojure/core.logic/commit/f831accb0659d04fde043288826942dda6650dfa)

<comment><USER2> Will fix thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> core.logic is awesome and if you want an entertaining introduction take a look at the video of the session that Edmund Jackson did at EuroClojure 2012

<https://vimeo.com/45128721>

</comment><comment><USER20> I can't run your code right now, but I'm curious how long it takes to solve this one: <http://ompldr.org/vZW4wcw/sudoku.png>

<comment><USER21> It took core.logic ~1100 msecs on my Macbook Air.

        (time (sudokufd
                [8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
                 0 0 3 6 0 0 0 0 0
                 0 7 0 0 9 0 2 0 0
                 0 5 0 0 0 7 0 0 0
                 0 0 0 0 4 5 7 0 0
                 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 0
                 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 6 8
                 0 0 8 5 0 0 0 1 0
                 0 9 0 0 0 0 4 0 0]))

        ;; "Elapsed time: 1029.618 msecs"
        ((8 1 2 7 5 3 6 4 9
          9 4 3 6 8 2 1 7 5
          6 7 5 4 9 1 2 8 3
          1 5 4 2 3 7 8 9 6
          3 6 9 8 4 5 7 2 1
          2 8 7 1 6 9 5 3 4
          5 2 1 9 7 4 3 6 8
          4 3 8 5 2 6 9 1 7
          7 9 6 3 1 8 4 5 2))

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Confusing post. It's an example of core.logic, not really an interesting Sudoku-solver, as all of the logic is in core.logic

<comment><USER23> Confusing post. It's an example of machine code, not really an interesting Sudoku-solver, as all of the logic is in the CPU.</comment></comment>


Birds and Frogs (2009) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ams.org/journals/notices/200902/rtx090200212p.pdf <comment><USER2> This is an article by Freeman Dyson from the Feb 2009 issue of Notices of the AMS. He explains the necessity of both birds, those that explore in breadth, and frogs, those that explore in depth.</comment>


Why I Went From Python To Go (and not Node.js) (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://jordanorelli.com/post/31533769172/why-i-went-from-python-to-go-and-not-node-js

<comment><USER2> It's a pity the only thing he has to say about Erlang is

"insane Erlang programmers who are content writing sumerian cuneiform all day long"

Seems kind of equivalent to: "no, I never looked at Python - I heard it uses white space".

<comment><USER3> The context of that paragraph though shows an understanding of the entire scale of the development spectrum and was one of the most credible arguments that peaked my interest in his reasoning. I have to say, this was the most convincing argument I have read on going to Go and concurrency is very important. I saw that line more as a joking punchline.

I am in the same Python to Node.js transition recently but still do lots of Python, but new projects are Node.js more and more. I might dig into Go again some more. The reason I think Node.js is still nicer, at least for now, is it mimics the package scale of Python in that there is a package for everything. A platform is all about the packages after the language/tools.

<comment><USER2> I got that he was joking a bit, but since he never mentioned Erlang again, and he wanted something good at doing concurrent programming, it seemed a bit "hah, hah, only serious". There are plenty of good things about Go, so I'm sure it's a fine language for what he is doing, but I was wondering why Erlang was never heard from again.

<comment><USER3> I see, yes Erlang really did revive the concurrency focus. But I also think that the syntax is a major hurdle to widespread adoption. Mochimedia did some cool stuff with Mochiweb in Erlang. Indeed though, you really shouldn't brush over Erlang when talking concurrency as your main feature to decide on. But he is right, syntax will hold it back, where Go doesn't really have that problem as much. We have all experienced the tab push back on Python, dial that up on Erlang.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Being a Python programmer

I yearn for the day when we'll stop calling ourselves X programmer, and writing articles about "switching languages" or "going from one to the other".

A language is a tool, not an identity.

<comment><USER5> Learning a language, tooling and ecosystem represents a significant time investment.

Whilst I aspire to being a polyglot and agree that it's a desirable trait, until you can arrange me a 30 hour day and a 10 day week, I'm going to spend my time where I get the highest return at the moment - getting things done in the best way I know how.

<comment><USER6> This is the age of Google. And in top of that all oop languages are basically based off eachothor. On top of that intellisense. I don't see what's so hard.

<comment><USER7> Try some non-oop languages (e.g. Haskell, Clojure, Prolog, etc.) They're not so easy to switch between.

<comment><USER8> However, once you grok a new language paradigm -- like functional programming or logic programming if you only knew OOP -- you get to see the world in a whole new way and then you realize the new way isn't harder, it's just different. It's experiences like these that reveal a bigger picture. It's experiences like these where you become more aware of how easy and limiting it is for our minds to get locked into certain ways of thinking.

With each new lens you come face to face with the reality that the fewer mental models you have, the more each one colors what you see, think, and believe -- the thought patterns driving your decisions and ultimately setting your trajectory. It's experiences like these that transcend tech and reveal what Alan Kay means when he says "we see things not as they are, but as we are" and "a change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So he went from one language to another language instead of a framework... Ok. I went from C++ to a C# instead of buying a kilo of bananas. Those are just different things.

I expected to see something like "I looked at my specific class of problems and it is not the kind of problems where Node.js gives a distinctive advantage to justify dealing with a flawed language, so I decided to pick a framework around a modern well-designed language, so that framework is..."

</comment><comment><USER10> I was hoping to learn something, but I found this blog post to be lacking in actual content or substantial reasoned arguments. Phrases like "What? Come on.", "Seriously?" and "It was clear-ish." don't tell us anything about what the author does or doesn't like about a particular language or framework.

I thought Hacker School banned "feigned surprise" \- ([https://www.hackerschool.com/manual](https://www.hackerschool.com/manual)) - maybe the author attended before this rule was put in place.

I'd love to read a re-write with all of those types of phrases swapped for detailed explanations breaking down what and why the author thinks X is better or worse than Y.

<comment><USER11> Feigned surprise is a different concept. Feigned surprise is when you act surprised that someone else doesn't know something; it's when surprise is used to illustrate that someone has failed to meet your expectations. "you've never programmed Haskell?!?!" would be feigning surprise. For one thing, it's not surprising that someone would have not programmed Haskell; lots of people have not programmed Haskell. For another thing, it doesn't add anything; it's tantamount to saying "I'm disappointed you haven't programmed Haskell". The idea is that if someone hasn't seen or experienced something, you shouldn't act surprised; you should act excited to introduce something new to the person.

<comment><USER10> Hey there, thanks for the reply. Maybe "feigned surprise" isn't the exact same concept, but I think it's in the same ballpark. In any case, nothing personal. I checked out the rest of your blog and plan to go back and read your more in- depth posts about Go when I get a chance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Go is great! It's also a good choice for concurrency operations thanks to goroutines, which are not really threads nor other processes (this is what node.js does in the cluster module, it fires a new process every time you fork the main process - not very efficient by the way).

<comment><USER13> IMHO a good choice would be a language where this can be/is implemented as a library and doesn't not have to be baked in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> OP is describing a WSGI problem, he then abandoned Python.

I wonder how soon he will abandon Go because of other minor issues.

BTW background processing without any extra library in Django+WSGI is totally possible and deadly simple. The catch is that it's syncrhonous. But async with Django+Gevent/uWSGI/Tornado

<comment><USER15> Django noob here. Could you give more details about the mechanism for doing background processing you mention? (Not sure how it helps the user not wait if it's synchronous.)

<comment><USER16> Celery is over-engineered but it does get the job done for most of the types of background tasks that I want a webserver to be involved with.

Sending emails, making thumbnails, building 8MB xml files and uploading them to other servers, validating objects, sending messages to people, geocoding addresses with google etc.

These types of things I do not want happening on the webserver at all. Its on a separate machine. I certainly don't want to block the user from getting a web response even while waiting for the email to connect and send.

But Django and python could really use lightweight synchronous support for small things.

> (Not sure how it helps the user not wait if it's synchronous.)

example: Checking several URLs in parallel, collecting all the responses then returning some summary to the user. User is waiting, but at least the python doesn't have to do these sequentially so the wait is less.

<comment><USER16> though note that if you are blocking a request for some remote response or slow thing that your worker is not able to do anything else. it can't start working on the next request. so in django its not a useable design style if you have high traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am just about to begin work at a new company that's looking to leverage node.js to develop a fairly robust REST API that should be able to support a lot on concurrent clients. I've been looking for an opportunity to learn Go.

Would it be worth investigating building it in Go rather than node?

<comment><USER18> Why not just Java with an JAX-RS-based REST framework, such as Jersey or RESTEasy? Maybe it's boring, but it is proven technology, the JVM scales very well. You can develop on OS X and deploy on Linux without recompiles. Added to that, Java has an enormous ecosystem, including good IDEs (such as IntelliJ) and libraries.

<comment><USER19> Go is pretty much proven at this point.

The JVM scales well for CPU cycles and considerably less well for memory usage.

Recompiling is a non-issue when it only takes 2 seconds to compile a relatively large application (larger than any REST API is likely to be).

The Go ecosystem is quite robust, you have multiple choices for pretty much any functionality you need (and where you don't it's because the only one that exists is just that good).

There are a lot of good editor plugins for Go. You don't generally need an IDE per se. Auto-complete and go to definition is really all you need, and you can get that in any major editor you like.

<comment><USER20> I don't mean to be pedantic, but I disagree that the Go ecosystem has a good choice for pretty much any functionality.

I think one major omission from the current Go ecosystem is a decent GUI library. There have been some attempts however, to my knowledge, they are mostly alpha/beta quality at best, and most of them are missing important functionality (the major ones I'm aware of are go-gtk, go-ui, go-fltk, wxGo, and none of them could be considered production ready IMHO).

I only point this out because I really like Go, and I think Go would actually be a very interesting language to do client side desktop application development in.

<comment><USER19> Take a look at go QML. I think it'll be the one GUI library to really take off, if for no other reason than the guy working on it (Gustavo), is pretty brilliant, and it's going to be used to write applications for Ubuntu Touch.

<comment><USER20> QML is awesome, and I'm a huge fan of it - and for that matter declarative GUIs in general.

However the QML-go project, while promising, is definitely not production ready. Their github page contains a large bold header that says: "this is alpha software", and it specifically warns about stability issues.

Also QML in general, has some shortcomings right now (granted those problems are being fixed) when using it for desktop software (specifically the lack of desktop style widgets).

So while I think the project is awesome and I'm wishing it success, I wouldn't want to use it for production quality software. I think my original point still stands.

<comment><USER19> That's a valid criticism. Mostly wanted to point your attention to the project, because I think it'll be a big deal in the next year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Why I Went From Tractor To Dirigible (and not Balloon)"

</comment><comment><USER22> The post seems a bit undercooked for my liking. Isn't there a library from Guido called Tulip for doing Async tasks?

That said, reaching "true" concurrency in Python will always be impossible no matter how you twist the language or monkey patch it. But one has to also decide on the trade of. I've personally used Celery in almost all my tasks, and even though it is bit over-loaded with features, you can always trim it down to your use, and it works pretty damn smoothly. There is a talk by Instagram developer Rick Branson regarding the usage of Celery in Instagram. I would suggest people to check it out.

I'm also surprised that there wasn't a mention of Erlang, which is being predominantly used by Facebook chat, and Haskel or Clojure, which would allow us to achieve concurrent programming without breaking a sweat. Surely, one doesn't have to be a grey beard wizard to learn any one of these three languages?

Good luck to the him, though. Go seems like a very exciting language, whenever I've used to it. Sometimes, it doesn't even seem like a new programming language, just a weird concoction of Java, C++ and Python.

</comment><comment><USER23> I was expecting an article like this to showcase some real advantages of Go over python, but the cornerstone of the argument is a reference to authority and a claim that it is faster. This is very disappointing, especially given the focus on concurrency and not performance.

The article never mentioned any of a number of interesting and relevant concepts like channels, goroutines or CSP. The specific problem of doing small amount of work in the background is easily solved using goroutines, but this isn't even mentioned and the Go code sample at the end is barely relevant to the rest of the discussion.

Also, I find the derision of Erlang to be out of place in an article on Go and concurrency since both Go and Erlang base their concurrency model on CSP (albeit with significant differences in interpretation).

</comment><comment><USER24> I think that for concurrent programs, there aren't a lot of languages currently out there that can match Go. I quite like go, but for some things I really prefer a dynamic language.

The flexibility of Django's object abstraction would be a lot harder to create with Go. If I don't need to use a database I use Go, but if I do; python is my language of choice.

<comment><USER25> What do you mean by "match"? There are a number of languages whose concurrency capabilities are a superset of Go's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > _Something in my gut said that using a plain-old, library-level function to > spawn a new background process was unnatural._

Nothing unnatural about it. Besides, that's how Rust and Clojure also do it, iirc.

Oh, and in this case, it doesn't even spawn a "new background process".

</comment><comment><USER27> Didn't see any problem with gevent example... Looks like the standard parallel code.

<comment><USER28> I've never looked at code using gevent before and that sample looks very clear and easy to understand - no idea why the author would think it is "cumbersome".

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> 'hacker school' \- I'm probably too old, this sounds so entirely lame.

</comment><comment><USER30> Sounds lame. Background email sending? No problem. Just write management command and call it from cron...

<comment><USER31> No, do it with Celery! It does everything cron can, but better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Did you try to put "line-height: 1.5em;"? is a lot more readable (:

</comment><comment><USER33> so fucking full of himself</comment>


American Astronomy's Future Goes on Trial in Washington - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/science/telescopes-decadal-survey-hawaii.html <comment><USER2> So if we are hundreds of millions of dollars short, then just a single F-35 could cover 150-350 million. Will we invest in moving science forward? This is a hard choice because it's a time of increasing budget deficits in the us with a lot of other things we need to do (like help the economy recover after covad19).</comment>


Full-Length TV Now Playing on YouTube - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/full-length-tv-now-playing-on-youtube-15050.php <comment><USER2> This is an example of Google's poor aesthetic taste really hurting them. With Hulu, the bottom bar disappears entirely and you get true full-screen. With YouTube, no dice: you get a quite large bar taking up space at the bottom.

<comment><USER3> With hulu the entire thing is a no-go if you live outside the US.

In other words pretty useless to most of the internet.

<comment><USER4> But perfectly hitting the advertiser's target market, and also still supporting a significant part of the internet.

Sadly, I think this localisation will continue to be a part of online TV, as otherwise it ends up costing the content provider high bandwidth fees for ads that are not reaching the expected audience.

<comment><USER2> That's why I think that for video sites, making deals with foreign providers will eventually prove to be the sensible thing to do. If Hulu finds a collaborator overseas, it would help them a lot. The problem is motivation on their part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On a somewhat related side note, last night the wife and I wanted to watch some of the Tina Fey/SNL Palin spoofs and by default we headed to YouTube to search. After not finding much, we backed out and found NBC was streaming the full clips.

The point? It will take a while for big media to encroach on GooTube's dominance. With deals like this, it will make it even harder.

<comment><USER6> SNL sketches are a huge driving force introducing and moving people from user- generated video sites like YouTube to studio-backed sites like Hulu.

I personally find 90% of YouTube content abysmal. Hulu, on the other hand, I use almost daily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "This video is not available in your country."

At least they didn't add "Yet" to the end of it like Hulu and other video sites. That just winds me up, because you know they likely don't have any plans to roll out internationally.

If YouTube can make money out of me when I'm watching kids getting kicked in the balls, they should be able to do it on decent content. Until then — BitTorrent for me. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> This video is not available in your country.

</comment><comment><USER9> "This video is not available in your country."

Where is that globalization when you need it. And yes I did try to replace watch?v= with v/ in the URL - it says "the video is no longer available". I guess I can profit by reminding myself that watching Startrek isn't the best thing I could be doing now.. although people claim its good.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice for learning Linux system administration? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN!
I'm looking for tips on learning Linux system administration. I've been programming for ~15 years on a variety of OS'es, including Debian and Windows. Most of the admin stuff I know is just from random googling on my current problems.
I've been asked to help administer a Linux box (CentOS).
What should I do to make sure I have the chops for Linux system administration?
TIA <comment><USER2> Runjake gave you some excellent advice - you should definitely use CentOS to run your personal device(s).

Aside from that, I have a few other recommendations:

1.) Don't just let the client use one box. You need a production box and a staging box. You need a staging box because simple things (ie - doing updates) will sometimes fuck things up beyond repair. It is way better to have a fucked up staging box than a fucked up prod box!!

2.) If you're looking for information on security and monitoring, I'd suggest reading over the PCI-DSS documentation. Vast swaths of PCI-DSS are festering crap, but it will give you a good look at how some people like to monitor their systems. While you're at it, read Owasp's secure configuration guide and NIST's publication on server monitoring. You're not likely to get solid answers here, but you should get a sense of the trade offs that sysadmins have to make.

3.) If I were in your shoes, I'd build a Vagrant box that exactly matches what you'll use in staging/prod. This box is purely for fun. It's way easier to try new things on your local!

4.) Have fun!! Sysadmin is a dark art, but it's also incredibly fun. Enjoy learning and have fun!

</comment><comment><USER3> Get one of those really thick Linux books (you know the Linux Bible ones) I think any edition may work fine (though later ones will cover new technologies like systemd) Read it from cover to cover - not every word, take in what you can of what you see, glance over the complex parts and go back later, bookmark the interesting ones (you'll have a lot of bookmarks). This helps quite a lot to get an idea of the Linux big picture.

Now pick up an administrators guide, and use a spare machine to play with and start working through it. I'd probably start on the basics like installing Linux, compiling programs (compile a a game to play if you find it boring) configuration (change Internet settings, set up a web server, file server) make a backup script, restore your backup, etc.

Learn to document what you do so you: a) can see what you did later on and b) can do it again if you need to.

I'm gonna say its going to take at least a 1/2 dozen linux installs and configures before you get the hang of how all that works and other things will be a little trial and error till you hit on the right way to do it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Bad news first: your life of googling is not over.

You will Google a lot even if you become a Pro sysadmin.

But you have an advantage^Wsuperpower: you can read code. That means when there is some weird log entry somewhere you can grep the codebase and try to find out what made it happen.

Some skills you'll find useful:

\- Learn to read man pages. The info for almost everything is there. You need time to get used to man pages but as soon as you know how to skip most of the content you will be fine.

\- tail -f is your friend. Use it whenever you need to know what's happening.

\- Sharpen your communication skills. You will have to report stuff that happened late at night and what you did to make it work while you were supposed to be sleeping. Hint: Emails with good subject lines, using the first paragraph to summarize all, then add a technical explanation section below makes the boss and coworkers happy.

\- Learn something about devops, automations, and infrastructure that can be validated with scripts. You'll have future there :)

Cheers from another programmer .ade sysadmin... 20 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a serious answer:

1.) Get a machine.

2.) Install CentOS on it.

3.) Dogfood (use) that machine full-time.

You'll be up to speed in no time.

<comment><AUTHOR> :-) I like the dogfood part

The main issue is that this is a server which many people will use and there are some business-important services that will run on it.

I'm definitely planning on installing and using CentOS as a personal machine to help learn.

I was thinking more along the lines of security and monitoring.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> BTW, I have found this:

[https://www.centos.org/docs/4/4.5/pdf/System_Administration_...](https://www.centos.org/docs/4/4.5/pdf/System_Administration_Guide-450.pdf)</comment>


Show HN: Google Glass + Tesla Model S = GlassTesla - <AUTHOR> http://glasstesla.com In case you didn't guess, it this app lets Tesla Model S owners interact with their vehicle with Google Glass.
Here's what it can do:
- View vehicle charging status. Start or stop charging via Glass. You can even open the charge port without having to get back into your car.
- Locate your Model S on a map and get directions to it. You can even honk the horns or flash the headlights if you still can't spot it.
- See whether the doors, trunks, or sunroof is open/closed. Of course, you can lock or unlock your car remotely and even control the sunroof too.
- You can view the car's interior and exterior temperatures. With a single tap, you can enable "auto climate" to either cool or heat your vehicle to an optimal temperature remotely.
What do you guys think? <comment><USER2> After clicking half a dozen times on the arrow, I realized I had to scroll down. I think there's something to do here to make a little more obvious, like actually start scrolling when you click on the arrow, or at least removing the fade effect on the click (otherwise it actually makes me believe that clicking was the expected behavior!)

[edit] I tried again and realized that the fade effect was not triggered by my click, I was just super-synchronized ;)

<comment><USER3> You can save yourself trying to guess how to navigate a page and simply use page up / page down :) It's also faster that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would rather see a different kind of mashup - install the Google Glass into the car.

Put the camera on the rearview mirror facing forward, and install a small heads-up display to reflect off the windshield. This could be a lot more interesting than Apple's in dash iOS approach.

Then you could use all the glass apps + features while driving, without having to wear the headset. From what I hear it will be basically impossible to use glass while driving because you have to look up and to the right to see the screen.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I have been waiting for them to pivot to this since they first introduced the product, it seems like such a more obvious and useful use of the technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Id imagine that Google Glass will fall under the same laws banning cell phones and electronics while driving so Im not so sure how much potential this has besides putting the ability to unlock your car on Glass.

<comment><USER7> I imagine it won't, at least, it won't fall under some of the existing laws which specifically prohibit the use of electronic devices that aren't hands- free while driving.

<comment><USER8> But it will be banned eventually. There is a reason why car entertainment systems arent allowed to playback visual media while driving, mobile phone use is banned etc. Its about distracting the driver and as soon as these devices get more popular they will be included in these laws, thats certain.

<comment><USER7> > Its about distracting the driver and as soon as these devices get more > popular they will be included in these laws, thats certain.

That's usually the stated justification, but in reality what gets banned is pretty much completely unrelated to the empirical evidence as to actual sources of distraction; most places explicitly ban non-hands-free device use, even though, IIRC, studies have shown that hands-free and non-hands-free device use have similar effects on driving ability (and that using a phone, hands free or not, has similar impact on driving ability to carrying on a conversation with a passenger, which is also not banned.)

If there's any justification for the actual bans we see , is that there is an industry wants to sell in-car hands free devices and hands-free add-ons for devices

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wouldn't it be possible to do something like that for "normal" cars too, using the ODB2 interface (that, by law, car makers have to include since years).

Use an ODB2 Bluetooth adapter to read the car data onto a cellphone (Obviously you won't get as much stuff as the Tesla offer, but at least you should be able to get the current speed/gas left), then send this data from your phone to the Glass.

I'm not sure if the phone can send data directly to the Glass, otherwise you would probably have to send this data to a server, and then retrieve it using the Mirror API. Slower and dumber, but it should work.

Anyway, very cool project. I wish I had Glass and a Tesla to try it out.

<comment><USER10> There are already a lot of projects for Android that do just that. Plenty of Bluetooth ODB2 dongles for sale for doing it as well.

For instance: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0O5RZeXTDc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0O5RZeXTDc)

<comment><USER11> Are there any Glass applications for regular cars?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As others have said, Glass + driving will lead to increased accidents and will likely be banned in the same manner as texting while driving. A recent study by AAA showed that voice-to-text messaging is more distracting than making calls with a cell phone. For the average person, multitasking while driving will almost always be more dangerous. Pilot HUDs are not comparable, because they are focused on flying, the task at hand, and pilots are highly trained in using them. I doubt that users will restrict themselves to map apps while driving.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady Google Glass will probably be banned when driving (and rightly so - it'll also be much easier to catch people using Glass than mobile phones). I think something like Siri is much more likely to take off in cars due the the hands and eyes free ability. It's a nice concept you've made but I can't see it being very useful.

I'm interested to know if you considered this and have a different opinion.

<comment><USER13> Why do you think it's easier to catch people using Glass?

You can operate Google Glass hands-free.

<comment> k-mcgrady Because it's attached to your face and incredibly easy to spot/very noticeable. People can easily text on phones by holding it by their lap out of sight of passing motorists/police.

I know it can be operated hands free but you still have a potentially distracting display.

<comment><USER14> The display is only on when you activate it. The alternative isn't glass or nothing, it's glass or what people currently do which is often looking down at their phone for directions. Directions on glass are far less distracting than any other navigation setup I've seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is pretty cool. How many people have both though?

<comment><USER16> Probably a lot, if Google buys Tesla.

<comment><USER17> Google is not a car company. I don't see how that would be good for either of them. A joint venture seems more likely. Money is only part of the equitation and Elon Musk actually want's to change the status quo so we don't suffocate with CO2. Assimilation politics would not further that goal.

A collaboration would be very beneficial for both parties though. Tesla and Google could focus on what they can do best and bring out a product in a joint venture that unifies they're strength sharing the profit.

But maybe I'm naive?

<comment><USER18> Google may not be a car company, but they are developing self driving cars.

<comment> k-mcgrady They are developing the technology to make car self-driving. They are not developing the cars. They use Toyota Prius and I think some Lexus model too. I could see them partnering with Tesla to make it the first company to use the technology though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Doesn't Google Glass force all apps to communicate via Google's servers? When I read the API the day it was announced, it certainly seemed that way.

So basically Google Glass is a massive camera & audio surveillance device, with most probably instant access by "government" intelligence agencies.

</comment><comment><USER20> I heard that you have to basically look at the ceiling in your car in order to fully see Glass' interface since you need a dark background for Glass to be correctly visible. Am I wrong? Seems like Glass would be even less safe for driving than a cell phone.

<comment><AUTHOR> It really depends. Google Glass does very well in dark places AND even under bright sunlight since the photochromic lens turns black.

However, the photochromic glass doesn't turn black when you happen to be standing under shade when outdoors. So that's the one situation where it's a bit difficult to see.

In a car, I found that just putting down the visor helps. I don't need to move my head up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you have that much money, why not just get your butler to do it for you.

</comment><comment><USER22> God, I wish I was in the target market for this app.

</comment><comment><USER23> I can imagine the user base for this is a tiny yet interesting bunch.

</comment><comment><USER24> Two awesome toys and I don't own either one. Way to make me feel poor and abandoned outside the cool club!</comment>


The Product Manager vs. The Engineering Manager - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aha.io/index.php/the-product-manager-vs-the-engineering-manager/

<comment><USER2> One thing that bothered me about this was the choice of pronouns for the two roles. Probably, its more likely that a product manager is female, and an engineering manager is male, but wouldn't it have made just as much sense using neutral pronouns?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is always a no win situation. I am actually a male product leader and it was written by a female product leader. It is much easier to write (and read) with a "he" of "she" vs "they." We are sensitive to this issue and do our best to mix the pronouns in posts. Thanks for the comment.</comment></comment>


Show HN:  Happy tweets are red, sad are blue, neutral are green - <AUTHOR> http://22.214.171.124:3000/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's another side project from a couple years ago. It's called Austin's Sweet and Sour. Tweets from the Austin area are overlaid on a map of Austin with the their sentiment classified. Happy tweets show up as red, sad as blue, and neutral as green. Hover over the markers to see the tweet.

The API I used to classify the tweets isn't totally accurate (50% of the time it works every time), but it's still pretty fun seeing the tweets on a map with a rough sentiment. The link directly below is Austin's Sweet and Sour.

[http://184.108.40.206:3000/](http://220.127.116.11:3000/)

[https://github.com/amend/austins-sweet-and- sour](https://github.com/amend/austins-sweet-and-sour)

<comment><USER2> Really cool project. Out of curiosity, what made you choose red for happy?

<comment><AUTHOR> It was a while ago so I don't remember. But if I had to guess, probably bc hearts are red and they're associated with liking things online

<comment><USER3> really cool!

thought I would share that usually I associate yellow with happy and red with angry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that makes sense since smiley faces are yellow and red is traditionally an angrey color. Maybe I should have done that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hah, this is a great idea. It'd be really interesting to see a timelapse of a specific area/event over time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice!</comment>


Nintendo's Wii-U misunderstands what made the Wii a success - <AUTHOR> http://analogmoment.com/post/nintendos-wii-u-misunderstands-what-made-the-wii-a-success

<comment><USER2> Good article. Interesting thoughts.

> and that name certainly didn't help, I suspect most people didn't know it > was a different console from the Wii

I've met people who even now think the Wii U is a new controller for the Wii. The "New 3DS" isn't any better. Nintendo suck at naming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I'd forgotten about 'New 3DS'. Almost as bad as the iPad Air > iPad 2 mess Apple had going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> An interesting article, but there is an important point that I don't think it addresses as well as it ought to.

> Gathering people in front of a big screen in a living room to play together > is an experience that smartphones can't match.

True. Wii games are something people do _together_. With all the ways we twist the word "social" today, it can be easy to forget that (say) Facebook is not really _social_ in the way that two people playing Mario Kart on a Wii in the same room is. Facebook is you staring at your own screen. The same goes for many multiplayer games. The Wii is different.

But the Wii-U is _not_ different. Everyone gets a handheld screen. Of course there is the big screen that everyone can look at, but does anyone actually do that? In the Wii-U commercials, all those excited, happy people are constantly glancing from the screen they are holding to the big screen and back. Obviously, the actors were told to do that; I doubt too many real people do it.

That changes things greatly. People playing a Wii game in the same room are _together_. People playing a Wii-U game in the same room are not.

<comment><USER4> Everyone does not get a handheld screen - there is only one Gamepad per Wii-U

<comment><USER3> Really now? Well, my comment was based on Wii-U commercials, which seem to have misinformed me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bear in mind that the majority of the Wii U's best-selling games support local co-op multiplayer.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best- selling_Wii_U_vide...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best- selling_Wii_U_video_games)

But one of the major points of the article is that the Wii Remote made local multiplayer gaming enticing to casual gamers, and the Wii U Gamepad does not. That's fair. But I'm not convinced that _any_ Wii title besides Wii Sports actually achieved the goal that the author claims to characterize the best Wii games generally. For example, the best-selling Wii game was Mario Kart 8, but my impression is that few gamers, casual or otherwise, found the motion controls appealing after the initial novelty had faded. And there's a strong sense among many Nintendo observers that while Wii Sports was a brilliant game, it was also a dead end.

</comment><comment><USER6> They did make a more accurate "Wii Remote 2", except its called Wii Remote Plus and came out before the Wii U.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I shall update the post to clarify</comment></comment>