Stranger Things: meet the design genius behind TV's most talked about title font - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/on-demand/0/stranger-things-meet-the-design-genius-behind-tvs-most-talked-ab/ <comment><USER2> Previously discussed: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12175861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12175861)

<comment><AUTHOR> This article goes into more detail on the career of the designer in question, Ed Benguiat, than the one discussed in that thread does. It also includes an interview with him. Not sure why it's been flagged as a dupe.

<comment><USER3> Probably flagged based on the titles. This story could stand on its own independent of the recent rise in popularity of ITC Benguiat or the TV show. One thing I found particularly interesting is the way ITC came to monopolize digital typography in the 1970's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's unfortunate that the best part of this show was the opening title sequence. Binge watched the entire season in one sitting, what a cliched disappointment. Checked off all of the 80's tick boxes; single mom raising boys during tough times and a deadbeat father, kids on BMX bikes solving issues much larger than themselves while being bullied, tired cop getting a new chance at something meaningful, set in a Stephen King town with Spielberg characters/settings and a megacorp alien cover. Brought down by an ultimately unfulfilling conclusion, that even some great acting(by Eleven) couldn't prop up. Bummer.

<comment><USER5> I share the same sentiments.

Decent production values, run-of-the-mill plot and uneven acting. What bothered me the most was the lack of a theme. There simply was no vision behind the whole show; the creators wanted to cater to (or cash-in on) 80s nostalgia but forgot to actually tell something about that era or ourselves in the process.

Unfortunately I think this is what the future of television will be: craftfully made harmless industrial fare.</comment></comment>


Experts consider consequences of 'leap second' elimination - <AUTHOR> http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2013/Advisory-14.aspx#.Ujtk4BYmyUU <comment><USER2> Finally!

The only consequence would be a very, very slow drift between the "wall clock" time and the time of sunrise/midday/sunset. Given that people living at +/\- 30 minutes off from the sun-time (borders of current time zones) experience no problems at all, then we should have ~2000 years before the difference is significant - and by that time, hopefully, we'll be living on more than one planet and won't care that much about synchronising everything with the rotation a single large rock.

<comment><USER3> Couldn't we just redefine the second by a tiny amount so it fits the day?

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately the day fluctuates, and is actually lengthening over time: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluctuations_in_the_length_of_d...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluctuations_in_the_length_of_day)

We need at least one unit of time which is fixed and unchanging in order to do scientific calculations, and we have chosen the second to be that unit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We already have several time options without leap seconds, such as International Atomic Time [1] and GPS Time [2]?

Why can't people who want to avoid leap seconds just use those?

If we switch to leap-minutes or leap-hours they'll be rare enough that software bugs won't get exposed enough to get fixed - it'll be like Y2K every time.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Time) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_time#Timekeeping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_time#Timekeeping)

<comment><USER6> Personally, I prefer xkcd time. [http://xkcd.com/1047/](http://xkcd.com/1047/)

Seconds in a year: 75^4 seconds

Age of the universe = 15^15 seconds

Planck's constant: 1/30^pi^e

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're interested in this topic, I recommend you peruse the archives of LEAPSECS mailing list ( [http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/leapsecs/](http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/leapsecs/) ), where experts have discussed some of the thorny issues over the years.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's cool to see the ".int" TLD for once---by far the most obscure of the original seven (.com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, .org, [and .arpa, if you're old]).

<comment><USER9> Whoa me too, in about 15 years of surfing the web I've never noticed any .int TLD. Not old enough for .arpa but this is cool. I would have not seen this without your pointing it out. Thanks for the life experience! ;) With mobile browsers these days most of the time the URL isn't even shown.. So I hope everyone can appreciate this

<comment><USER10> The European Union web page is europa.eu.int. That's the biggest one I can think of.

I do admit that one probably don't see that one a lot if you don't live in Europe.

<comment><USER11> > The European Union web page is europa.eu.int

You're a little out of date there, I'm afraid. They officially switched from europa.eu.int to europa.eu in May 2006, after the EU's successful campaign to get their own .eu TLD in 2005.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't see the point in this, you can't dumb down the complexities of the real world just because it'll make some engineers happier.

<comment><USER13> > you can't dumb down the complexities of the real world just because it'll > make some engineers happier

Except that everything in science and engineering is about dumbing down the complexities of the real world so that it makes more sense to us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While we are on it, can we also get rid of time zones and switch to 10-based (kiloseconds etc) time units?

</comment><comment><USER15> This will suck for astronomers and anyone doing celestial navigation.

<comment><USER2> Can celestial navigation really measure stuff up to 1 second accuracy? Can astronomers anyway use the "wall-clock" time directly? Unless they're located in Greenwich, they anyway need to adjust for their exact location since it is not exactly in the middle of a time zone; after such changes they'd just automatically sync the relevant clock not to UTC but to some "Astronomical- UTC" time zone and that's it.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Security Essentials misses 39% of malware in Dennis test - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/386185/microsoft-security-essentials-misses-39-of-malware-in-dennis-test <comment><USER2> Think before upvoting. Report says:

"To create a fair testing environment, each product was installed on a clean Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit target system. The operating system was updated with Service Pack 1 (SP1), although no later patches or updates were applied."

Security Essentials gets definition updates from Windows Update. So, if you don't update your system, you are stuck with what coems with the first install.

Windows 7 sp1 was released to public on February 9, 2011.

The report is here [http://dennistechnologylabs.com/reports/s/a-m/2013/DTL_2013_...](http://dennistechnologylabs.com/reports/s/a-m/2013/DTL_2013_Q4_Home.1.pdf) and it features such gems as:

"Our aim is to test the security product and not the protection provided by keeping systems completely up to date with patches and other mechanisms. Patching will inevitably improve the security of the system and readers are advised to keep all software updated."

and

"A selection of legitimate but vulnerable software was pre-installed on the target systems. These posed security risks, as they contained known security issues. They included versions of Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader and Java."

<comment><USER3> I reacted strongly to the same point.

It's a completely unfair test, they should have tested only Anti-virus software from 2011 if it would be fair - then i'd guess most softwares would perform just as bad or even worse.

The whole test is biased FUD against Microsoft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The report says they don't believe in keeping their system up to date i.e. ignore important security updates and expect the computer to be secure.

<comment><USER3> That makes no sense at all, it would mean that they want to be safe from someone physically accessing the computer and no matter what anti- virus/malware you have there is nothing that protects against that.

The alternative - surfing the net without any updates, why the hell would someone even do that?</comment></comment>


BountySource campaign to modernize the AVR back end in GCC - <AUTHOR> https://www.bountysource.com/issues/84630749-avr-convert-the-backend-to-mode_cc-so-it-can-be-kept-in-future-releases <comment><AUTHOR> This is a BountySource campaign I created that aims at funding the work on the AVR backend in GCC so it can be converted from the cc0 to the MODE_CC register representation similar to the m68k backend.

Without this conversion work, the AVR backend would be removed in the GCC-11 development cycle.

Relevant links:

* m68k campaign: [https://www.bountysource.com/issues/80706251-m68k-convert-th...](https://www.bountysource.com/issues/80706251-m68k-convert-the-backend-to-mode_cc-so-it-can-be-kept-in-future-releases)

* GCC bug report: [https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=92729](https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=92729)

* GCC wiki on cc0 transition: [https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/CC0Transition](https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/CC0Transition)

* Deprecation notice for cc0: [https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2019-09/msg01256.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2019-09/msg01256.html)

If you are interested in keeping the AVR backend in GCC-11 and beyond, please consider supporting this campaign with a one-time donation.</comment>


An insomniac's guide to the group theory of mattress flipping (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/group-theory-in-the-bedroom/99999 <comment><USER2> Summary: the dihedral group D2 (isomorphic to the Klein 4 group) needs 2 generators, so you can't keep performing a single flip/operation on your mattress and get all viable positions out of it.

For folks trying to learn group theory, I recommend Nathan Carter's book _Visual Group Theory_ , an approachable introduction written in conversational style, full of great pictures (unlike most group theory textbooks, which are abstract and symbol-heavy). [http://web.bentley.edu/empl/c/ncarter/vgt/](http://web.bentley.edu/empl/c/ncarter/vgt/) [http://amzn.com/088385757X](http://amzn.com/088385757X)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not just write the name of a season on a corner for each of the 4 configurations and call it a day? The incorrect season on the same side would be written upside down. If the season is wrong, flip/rotate accordingly.

      </comment><comment>----  </comment><comment>----

      ɹǝɯɯnS----  ƃuıɹdS----

      </comment><comment>----  </comment><comment>----

      </comment><comment>----  </comment><comment>----

      ----Winter  </comment><comment>Fall

      </comment><comment>----  </comment><comment>----

While not flip or rotate, it is a _single operation_ : "Align the current season to the bottom"

<comment><USER4> But if you are heaviest in the winter, every winter, it will result in uneven wear :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you like this kind of thing, Brian Hayes (the author) has a whole book of similar mathematical anecdotes/puzzles: [http://www.amazon.com/Group-Theory- Bedroom-Mathematical-Dive...](http://www.amazon.com/Group-Theory-Bedroom- Mathematical-Diversions/dp/0809052172)

</comment><comment><USER6> If your mattress has a tag in one corner, it becomes pretty simple to know which operation to perform next.

If, when facing the headboard, the tag is to your right, rotate; else, flip (on the roll axis).

</comment><comment><USER7> Pun Maths: "Mattress multiplication"

</comment><comment><USER8> nothing to see here, just a friday afternoon deadline article about the dihedral group

</comment><comment><USER9> Brian Hayes always writes great stuff [http://bit-player.org](http://bit- player.org)

</comment><comment><USER10> This post was interesting, though less interesting than I expected based on the title.

<comment><USER11> We changed the title to the subtitle for obvious reasons.

<comment><USER12> Is that really better? On the one hand, it makes it more specific what the example domain is ("mattress flipping" vs. "the bedroom"), on the other, it makes it less specific what its being used as an example _of_ ("mathematics" vs. "group theory".)

It seems to me that the change is a net loss in terms of useful information about whether this is something you want to click through to.

<comment><USER11> Ok, we replaced 'curious mathematics' with 'group theory'.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: The best way to discover web comics - <AUTHOR>

I came up with the idea for this site a couple weeks ago and spent a few days hacking together an MVP. The basic premise is that there are two opposing issues surrounding web comics: sharing & copyright infringement. Sites like Pinterest make it easy to share comics, but people share the comics in full with no requirement to link to the original source. Other sites like Reddit are sensitive to copyright, thus only showing text links, but it's a very non-visual way of browsing highly visual content.
So I had the idea that showing only the first frame of each comic serves the needs/wants of both creator and audience. The audience gets a fun visual way of browsing all of the latest web comics. But only getting the first frame, they must click through to the original source if they want to enjoy it in full. Thus, the creators receive 100% of the deserved traffic, which comes with their own ad impressions and anything else they are promoting on their websites.
To me, that's kind of a win-win. I'd love to hear any thoughts!
Link: http://www.justthefirstframe.com <comment><USER2> Great idea! I'd suggest as a next step a user account system to store your favorite comics.

Are you manually entering the number of frames or do you automate that? Its sortof a neat gimmick but I'm not sure it really adds much useful information to the UE to be worth lots of extra work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Yes I'm manually entering the frames. With the variety of comic styles and the way the frames are bordered, I'm not sure there would be any easy way to write an algorithm that automates this task. But I'm pretty darn fast at Photoshop and it takes me about 15 seconds in all to copy the url, note the number of frames, and crop out/export the first frame.

Regarding a user account system, that's definitely on my feature list. This site is just the result of a weekend of coding, so I just wanted to see if it would garner interest first before investing more time to add more robust functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://www.justthefirstframe.com></comment>


An Update on Aereo - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aereo.com/2014/06/letter-consumers-standing-together-innovation-progress-technology-update-aereo/

<comment><USER2> Aereo employee here.

Just wanted to say "thank you" to the HN community for all the support over the past few years. Some of the most interesting and thoughtful analysis I've seen on Aereo has been in the comments here. Of course, some of the worst, too. But that's what makes it Hacker News.

This has obviously been a pretty difficult week for Aereo, and lots of people are speculating about what will happen to the company – but I don't think we're done just yet.

<comment><USER3> One would think, since SCOTUS said since Aereo walks, talks, and acts like a cableco, then Aereo is also available to license rebroadcast rights under the compulsory license clause, as cablecos are.

That said, I think Aereo is wonderful, but blew it in oral arguments before SCOTUS. I've never heard such a pathetic display as in this case. Example:

Chief Justice Roberts served up Aereo a softball with this statement, "I mean, there's no technological reason for you to have 10,000 dimesized antenna, other than to get around the copyright laws."

To which the lawyer's reply started with "Well." Right there the case was lost. Rather than answer this way, "Well, the point of the copyright laws, though, Your Honor, shouldn't turn on the number of antennas..." He should have replied:

"On the contrary your honor, we do it this way to _adhere_ to copyright law. The entire point of our service is a remote antenna and DVR service, and in order to do that and comply with copyright law, we have to have thousands of individual antennas. To do otherwise would violate the letter and the spirit of the law, and we have chosen instead to abide by it and provide a very specific service, we provide a rented, individual conduit. We are not duplicating cable systems, we are simply lengthening the wire between the consumer and their individual antenna."

But no. He started with a weasley sounding answer and blew the case. Aereo deserved to win, and could have. I hope Aereo goes the compulsory license route. Broadcasters can't both claim Aereo is a cable company and thus must buy licenses, and that Aereo isn't a cableco and isn't eligible for a compulsory license.

<comment><USER2> First off, I think we were all exceptionally happy with our counsel. It's easy to look at these things from the outside and say "Hey, I'm a smart guy. Here's how I would have argued it"... but the reality is that it just isn't that simple.

As for the answer... Justice Roberts asked for a _technological_ reason. He fully understood the _legal_ reason, even if he didn't necessarily agree with it.

<comment><USER4> "Justice Roberts asked for a _technological_ reason."

But counsel didn't answer (from what I'm reading, if I'm wrong please correct me obviously) with a technological answer.

If I say to you "speed isn't important to me so why should I get an SSD drive instead of a hard drive" you need to answer that question in a way that the person asking says "ok they've answered my question".

<comment><USER5> There was no technological reason. Aero exists solely to comply with the letter of copyright law, and, I believe, they do. (As did Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts).

As it turns out, complying with the letter of the Law, was not sufficient to win their day in court.

Ben Thompson, in his _awesome_ daily update to subscribers, did a great constitutional law analysis of the case (In addition to being a Technology analyst, he also majored in Constitutional Law)

A small excerpt (I highly encourage you to sign up for his daily update at [http://stratechery.com](http://stratechery.com), it's frequently the highlight of my day)

 _You will note, of course, that the author of this decision was none other than Justice Breyer, and the author of the dissent one Justice Scalia. What Justice Breyer has effectively argued is that the sort of activity that Aereo is engaging in was clearly the sort of activity that Congress was seeking to legislate in the Copyright Act of 1976. And, quite frankly he's right.

Scalia, on the other hand, argues that Aereo is abiding by the letter of the law: they have carefully implemented a solution that abides by the Copyright Act of 1976's prohibition on public performances (your own private antenna!), and that is enough to make it legal. You can see the different doctrines clearly in Scalia's admission that Aereo is exploiting a loophole._

<comment><USER4> "There was no technological reason."

Ok stipulated. But under the "every man for himself", um, "doctrine" the attorney should have made a more noble effort even if it ended up in failure. [1]

Kind of the related a bit to the "better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt". Here give it a try the best you can. [2] In this case an answer was needed to the question. Not a white house dodge. Stipulate it didn't exist. Doesn't mean he couldn't have creatively offered something that at least attempted to pass the smell test. And I don't think that would have been disrespectful either.

[1] At the very least to burnish his reputation.

[2] Isn't that what attorney's do? Try to win the case even against all odds with a "guilty" client? Buy being creative?

<comment><USER5> I actually agree with you in the "Don't Dodge" part. He could have saved everyone time and effort by just saying, "No. The particular configuration of equipment at Aero exists solely so that they abide by the law, and, in fact, they do abide by the law, obeying all relevant statutes regarding transmission."

There was no need to start with a "Well" when it was abundantly clear that Aero is basically a very clever hack on the legal system, which, unfortunately, ran into some justices who don't care so much for the letter of the law, as they do the spirt of the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think we should just reclaim the EM spectrum (IIRC, roughly 450-700 MHz) used by the broadcasters to build a better wireless network owned by the people. Perhaps a mesh network of sorts; the specifics could be worked out, but it should be considered. What a large piece of spectrum to waste on one- way communication, mostly filled with crappy adverts.

<comment><USER7> I kinda like this "scorched earth" policy: If public airwaves paradoxically cannot be used by the public because of performance/copyright laws, why not just scrap it?

I had a curious thought this morning, probably echoing some of the sentiments I've read here (and elsewhere). We're overlooking the precipice of a sort of "regulation paralysis" that's threatening the tech industry in the US. If we continue down this path, in 20 years, we're going to be substantially _behind_ other nations. And to what end? To protect incumbent companies that have deep pockets for lobbying efforts in their financial favor?

Where was that study that suggested reading news leads to depression? I should stop while I'm ahead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could Aereo pivot to selling a physical device that one would plug into a home router and do roughly the same thing?

<comment><USER9> That would be the right direction. From my understanding, there are devices like that now but the price points are higher up front and technical to set up. A plug and play approach with a monthly lease could work (assuming you can't actually make one for $30.) The bigger issue is, can this model scale and survive 5 years out? If it can not, it may be better to pull the plug.

This is a bigger loss to the TV stations than it is to Aereo users. How many Aereo users are going to go out and re-connect their televisions? Even if they do, the limitations can only reduce their viewing time. Friends who still have antenna televisions or were using Aereo largely did so because their wives liked to watch stupid reality TV shows. I never connected an antenna to my television. I have not had cable for three years. Broadcast TV stations could not make me a viewer if I was paid to watch. Between Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, Youtube, and Twitch why would I choose to watch broadcast? It is only a matter of short time before the mass market sees it this way as well.

<comment><USER10> _Between Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, Youtube, and Twitch why would I choose to watch broadcast? It is only a matter of short time before the mass market sees it this way as well. reply_

A few main reasons the mass market won't see it your way.

1\. Sports - you can't generally stream sports in your local market.

2\. TV shows don't hit those services usually until a year or so after their original air date.

3\. There's a lot of TV viewing that happens more on a 'browsing' basis. Food Network, DIY, Discovery, a lot of the viewing that happens on these networks are because folks are just bored and scanning the channels. Non serialized shows like cooking or The Daily Show, have a hard time transitioning to the services you mentioned.

4\. Cost effectiveness. Once you add up the cost of many of the services you mentioned the cost of monthly fees and individual show rentals is going to get very close to your normal cable bill.

<comment><USER11> TV shows on Hulu come out the day after (and usually on the network's website as well) except for some like Fox, who put it under subscriber-only for a week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can someone explain to me how it hurts the content owners to have more eyeballs watching their freely broadcasted, advertisement supported shows?

<comment><USER13> One issue is subtle. Broadcast television appears to be free for any consumer with an antenna, but it really isn't. The tiny minority of consumers who watch antenna TV are subsidized by the overwhelming majority of consumers who pay to watch TV via DBS, cable, or IPTV. The revenue streams from retrans fees fund content development and acquisition.

Further, both broadcasters and pay TV providers are unhappy with any streaming service that interferes with advertising, either by making it simple to skip ads or by making it harder for advertisers to value airtime.

<comment><USER14> I think the last part of your answer is the important one. Eyeballs don't matter if you can't count them.

<comment><USER15> But with IP delivery the counting is perfect? And you even have better demographics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wasn't an Aereo customer, but were they streaming in standard video streaming formats? If so, would it be viable for them to _really_ lease the antennas to people and stream the non-decoded HDTV signal? It would require some sort of software defined radio decoding on the client side and would certainly reduce the features they could offer easily, but by doing that they basically become a simple signal repeater service - a commercial "range extender."

<comment><USER17> That kind of nitpicky detail won't matter to the entertainment lobbies that effectively own a huge chunk of our government. Aereo was already built on a bunch of clever, detail-focused legal loopholes and caveats that should have protected them, but the case got reversed at the supreme court after they won.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Forgive my ignorance of the judicial system, but why would the issue be returned to the lower courts?

My understanding is that a Supreme Court decision was about as final as something could get- Is there any paths to Aereo being able to win some other battle and potentially come back to life?

Can you appeal a Supreme Court decision?

<comment><USER19> IANAL, but I believe the Supreme Court only ruled on one specific claim in the lawsuit not the lawsuit itself. There were other claims and the lawsuit is technically ongoing, but this one crucial aspect has been decided.

No, you cannot appeal a Supreme Court decision.

<comment><USER14> You can't appeal a Supreme Court decision, but you can invalidate it by changing the law or amending the Constitution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The battle may have been lost but the fact that Aereo became as successful as it was in the short time it existed is a step in the right direction.

Unless it's encrypted information, I find it absurd that the courts would side with the cable companies on what is essentially a beam of publicly accessible light.

<comment><USER21> I'm sorry, I completely respect your opinion, but frankly any company that can "use" "free" data from the air and resell it much cheaper than, say, the $150 cable bill, is going to be successful. That doesn't make it lawful, or even good for content creators.

I know I hold a very unpopular opinion in this forum, but I think it's unwise to treat Aereo like some angel of free speech. The truth is, this is a for- profit company with investors hoping to make money. They make that money by shortcutting the existing distribution system and selling something very cheaply that they got for "free."

Is it good for consumers? In the short-term, it seems to be. People love the service as far as I can tell and it's cheap.

But in the long-term, I worry about a service that syphons money away from content producers (and distributors, to whom I'm less sympathetic) and puts it instead in their own pockets.

I simply can't wrap my brain around how content can be produced, grabbed for free, and - importantly - re-sold for profit. I do not think this is a "public demonstration" of work.

Finally, I think it's unfair, as some have, to claim that SCOTUS is a bunch of thieves in bed with Comcast on one hand, but heroic and commendable on another hand with regard to the warrant cell phone case. It may actually be — actually, now it _is_ the case - that if you have an exception with the law, you will need to work to change it.

<comment><USER22> Why are you putting free in quotes? OTA television is completely free to consume.

Nobody is being undercut. Cable companies use most of that $150 to buy private content. Nobody is advocating for splicing into private wires and making copies.

We're in this weird situation where local TV companies tricked their distributor into paying them, even though they previously shouldered the costs of distribution themselves. I see that as the biggest injustice here.

>I simply can't wrap my brain around how content can be produced, grabbed for free, and - importantly - re-sold for profit.

Imagine a taxi that brings you to a free concert. There is nothing wrong with making a profit off of providing _convenient access_ to something. That's what every ISP in the world does. They're not selling the TV shows. They're connecting you with the antenna that sends out free TV.</comment></comment></comment>


An Introduction to the Mathematics of Uncertainty (2010) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.creighton.edu/fileadmin/user/CCAS/programs/fuzzy_math/docs/MOU.pdf <comment><USER2> It is important to distinguish between risk and uncertainty.

> "Uncertainty must be taken in a sense radically distinct from the familiar > notion of Risk, from which it has never been properly separated.... The > essential fact is that 'risk' means in some cases a quantity susceptible of > measurement, while at other times it is something distinctly not of this > character; and there are far-reaching and crucial differences in the > bearings of the phenomena depending on which of the two is really present > and operating.... It will appear that a measurable uncertainty, or 'risk' > proper, as we shall use the term, is so far different from an unmeasurable > one that it is not in effect an uncertainty at all."

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

<comment><USER3> The concept was popularized a few years ago by Rumsfeld with his "known unknowns" (risk) and "unknown unknowns" (uncertainty).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone give a high level summary of what you can accomplish with fuzzy logic that you can't do with more classical probability theory?

What's the 'elevator pitch' for why someone should learn the theory?

<comment><USER5> Fuzzy sets allow you to use set theoretic tools over objects with varying degrees of membership. This is a useful construct when trying to reason over probabilistic evidence, and IMO can be a useful modelling tool.

<comment><USER6> > set theoretic tools over objects with varying degrees of membership

you can also do exactly that in probability theory by multiplying the probabilities. Is there any difference?

<comment><USER7> enruquito says>"you can also do exactly that in probability theory by multiplying the probabilities."

Have you got a concrete example?

i.e., show us the probability version precisely with mathematics and maybe someone can tell you the corresponding fuzzy version, if any.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not Bayesian, that's Fuzzy!

</comment><comment><USER9> OT but the fonts are awful, the title page isn't even centred properly, figures lose quality when zoomed in... Just use LaTeX, people.

<comment><USER10> Actually, this was made with LaTeX. Sadly, LaTeX doesn't prohibit you from making ugly documents.

<comment><USER9> Oh... My bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great book! Getting folks to understand statistics and data in terms of uncertainty is always a challenge!</comment>


Ask HN - Best way to find an apt in NYC? - <AUTHOR>

Craigslist sucks - the same ads are repeated (sometimes 4-5 times in the same day), lots of spammers/scammers, hours upon hours wasted with nothing to show for it.  Any other website that is not this bad, without using brokers?
I set up an alert on ifttt.com - if anyone from ifttt is reading this: is it possible for you to filter out the ads, based on address? I mean, the same ad is posted 5 times a day, with the same address, text slightly different.  If you could use the address to detect if it is the same ad, and not send multiple alerts, that would be awesome. <comment><USER2> A couple of days ago someone posted this, might be worth checking it out

<http://apartable.com>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4184440>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, this one looks nice

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Google maps allows you to search for apartments as well; Its in the options as a map overlay.

The last two I lived in worked out quite well… one in midtown and the other in Williamsburg.</comment>


Matrix at FOSDEM 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://matrix.org/blog/2019/02/04/matrix-at-fosdem-2019/ <comment><USER3> I found Matrix and Riot a while back while I was searching for an encrypted, open-source alternative to Rocket Chat for my team.

While there are still some things that need improving, they're mostly just rough edges. All of my coworkers are at least semi-technical, so that makes things a little easier for us. At times, the key verification can be frustrating, but I think this is just a hard problem to solve in general.

As I began to use Matrix more, I realized that there's potential for Matrix to be much, much more than just a Slack/Mattermost/Rocket Chat killer. I could see this replacing texting, what's app, group chat for business and outside of work. I haven't tested much of the video chat or phone calling features, but if support for those become robust, I could see Matrix replacing almost every form of communication I currently have. That would be really excellent considering most of the communication channels I currently use are controlled by corporations I don't like and don't trust.

Following that line of thought, your Matrix address could become a universal point of contact. A Matrix address seems so much simpler than a phone number, and you don't have to worry about the fact that you may not be able to transfer numbers between carriers or something like that.

I have so much hope for this project. We need an open-source, encrypted, decentralized communications standard. This is the best and broadest attempt I've seen at this so far.

<comment><USER4> > This is the best and broadest attempt I've seen at this so far

The old chaps around here had exactly the same hope for XMPP that you're having right now. It had it all, except, crucially, marketing.

<comment><USER5> And let's not forget the mess that is push support - this murders it on mobile and therefore more or less the biggest messaging market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Okay, so this project sounds exciting. But it's really hard to figure out what is currently possible and how to get started. (I find this ironic for a project that is focused on improving communication.)

Here is where I am after jumping around the docs for 15 minutes. Can someone with more Matrix experience help?

So as of right now:

* Can I have one app on my iOS device that allows me to seamlessly message people on platforms like messenger and whatsapp and email? (Is there even one 30-60s video clip demo'ing Matrix?)

* Do I need to run my own server to get going? (Public servers are discouraged for auth'ing with my private messages, or that's not even implemented.)

* Can I just plop the docker onto a server and I'm done? I suspect I have to do something with the bridges, but how much?

* Overall, how long will it take me to get running and have satisfaction?

One an end note, I think this project has so much potential, and is potentially killing itself with its super-dev-focused information layout and messaging. We need to get non-technical end-users _excited_ about this project!

Okay I'm going to gripe in my postscripts now:

p.s. This blog post makes the common release announcement mistake of not even telling you what the software does in the first few paragraphs.

p.p.s. "If you want to… Just get started! Then read… [Getting Involved [link]" Really? There's no end-user getting started page? It's a getting involved page where one option is to write my own server?

<comment><USER7> The other comments already gave you some great info, but I'll just link some good documentation for anyone looking to get started. I discovered Matrix the other day and decided to set up a toy matrix-synapse server, which took less than two days' worth of free time for someone with a programming background and no serious IT expertise.

Build matrix-synapse server from source: [https://github.com/matrix- org/synapse](https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse)

Install matrix-synapse server on a DO droplet (the smallest/cheapest droplet or excess resources on an existing one should be plenty): [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to- inst...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install- matrix-synapse-on-ubuntu-16-04)

I hope this project gets more traction because it's a fantastic, secure, self- hosted, full-featured, (inhales), open-source version of slack/telegram/kind of discord. Not perfect yet, but really great so far. Even pretty easy to set up e2e-encrypted voice and video calling through your server.

<comment><USER8> > Build matrix-synapse server from source: [https://github.com/matrix- > org/synapse](https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse)

Or use a distro that has a binary package, e.g. [https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/matrix- syna...](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/matrix-synapse/)

<comment><USER7> Ah, I probably should've mentioned that the DigitalOcean article I linked shows how to install/configure a synapse binary with apt-get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a Matrix homeserver running on an Odroid XU4 that sits under my TV. I also have bridge servers running for iMessage, Slack, and Hangouts (which includes Google Voice) that connect those services into Matrix.

Being able to see and respond to all my messages from all those services while I'm ssh'd into a weechat client is surreal and amazing. Going back to tapping out messages on my phone in iMessage or opening up the god-awful hangouts web client that shows my chat in a phone-sized window even on my 43 inch monitor feels like a joke at this point.

For now, that kind of setup isn't really accessible to a non-technical user, but even so it's the killer feature. Matrix has a few rough edges, but it genuinely feels like it's growing into something that is objectively better than all the other proprietary services out there.

<comment><USER10> I have made a similar setup with IRC. I have set up bitlbee with Facebook, Telegram, Hangouts and Steam plugins, bitlbee is connected to quassel-core and I use native Quassel clients on all my platforms to connect to the core (trough VPN if needed).

The only rough edge I have with this setup is that I lose video playback in client compared to say Messenger or TG. Maybe one day...

<comment><USER9> How well does the Steam integration work? I haven't tried setting up a bridge yet, but even on the web client I constantly get logged out.

<comment><USER11> Ironically the native client constantly logs me in, even when I don't want to. I've never wanted to be Online or Available, but ever since they shipped the new "Friends" thing it's made quite difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've learned about, installed, and configured both Synapse (official Python server implementation) and riot-web (browser version of Riot, the official client) recently, to give me and some friends a post-IRC means of modern, secured chat.

There are some wrinkles, but in the main I think the project is making significant progress on making the whole thing work well for both admins of the hosted server and riot-web, and people signing up to and using the network with Riot.

Key management and verification needs the most work in Riot (even the redesigned client), especially for secure channels. That's the biggest point of friction for me and my friends so far.

I'm very much looking forward to what Matrix can do as a network, and what both rich clients like Riot, combined with esoteric clients that do strange and wonderful things, can enable.

<comment><USER13> Do you have an idea how this compares to Keybase.io and their team based chat?

What's the main difference with matrix? Is Keybase something you were aware of and decided against for some reason?

<comment><AUTHOR> Matrix is an open standard protocol ([https://matrix.org/docs/spec](https://matrix.org/docs/spec)) and an open network like the Web, but for realtime comms. Anyone can spin up a server and start participating in the network, and in Matrix the conversations are replicated over all the servers whose users participate in that conversation, so there is no single point of failure or control: the conversations are owned by the users. All the implementations we release as matrix.org are Apache licensed FOSS.

Now, Keybase is cool - particularly how it's effectively a key management system which drives a collaboration tool. We hoped originally they would provide it as a decentralised identity management system that we could hook into Matrix to replace our identity service. But in practice it seems to be centralised, and whilst the client is FOSS ([https://github.com/keybase/client](https://github.com/keybase/client)) the server isn't. So, it's more an E2EE-capable centralised collaboration tool built on a cool key management system. I believe their E2EE is based on shared keys rather than a cryptographic ratchet (Matrix uses inspired-by-Signal Double Ratchet with extensions), which is a simpler approach, but doesn't give you the option of PFS. I'm also not sure if their crypto has been audited (whereas we have a slightly ageing audit of Matrix's implementation over at [https://matrix.org/blog/2016/11/21/matrixs-olm-end-to-end- en...](https://matrix.org/blog/2016/11/21/matrixs-olm-end-to-end-encryption- security-assessment-released-and-implemented-cross-platform-on-riot-at- last/)).

[disclaimer: I'm project lead of Matrix and the author of the OP]

<comment><USER14> Any plans to focus on Riot as a, let's say, WhatsApp/Signal alternative too from what it actually seems as of now which is just being Slack/IRC alternative?

And with that any chances an easier way of having an ID/username? @<user>:matrix.org seems extremely easy and convenient for me but may not be the same for my friends and family without whom any messaging platform is useless.

PS. Totally rooting for you guys! I wish Signal was federated though.

<comment><USER15> Riot is already a pretty servicable Signal / WhatsApp alternative. You can start conversations by username or email in one on one rooms that you can encrypt and they show up as separate entries besides the groupchats in Riots UI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Matrix people-- please update your section on E2EE:

[https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq#which-matrix-clients- supp...](https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq#which-matrix-clients- support-e2e%3F)

* Riot webpage claims their E2EE support is still in beta

* nheko links to a github repo that is apparently no longer maintained

Not sure about the SDK links. But I'd strongly suggest changing the text to a simple, "None yet." At least until you have stable, _default_ E2EE in at least one client for a few releases.

<comment><USER17> There's a fork of nheko that's under active development:

[https://github.com/Nheko-Reborn/nheko](https://github.com/Nheko-Reborn/nheko)

I'll reach out to the matrix folks and ask about getting the website updated.

</comment></comment><comment> dane-pgp While I'm very excited about the prospects for Matrix in 2019, the reality of client choice for end-to-end encrypted Matrix chat is currently disappointing compared to the potential it has.

Someone on reddit gathered some data [1] about E2EE support a few months ago, and Debian maintain a wiki page [2] about their progress packaging Matrix- implementing applications.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/9avyen/sad_state_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/9avyen/sad_state_of_e2ee_in_matrix_clients/)

[2] [https://wiki.debian.org/Matrix](https://wiki.debian.org/Matrix)

<comment><USER18> I bear no ill-will towards the Matrix project, but this fact pattern (I knew about it in the abstract but hadn't seen it laid out like this) makes me actually angry about the people who have recommended Matrix as a replacement for the Signal Protocol messengers like Signal, WhatsApp, and Wire. Telling people to switch to Matrix from those is simply malpractice.

<comment><AUTHOR> tptacek: the reddit article there is a bit flawed (as uhoreg tries to gently point out in the response). the reality is that we provide decent E2EE stacks on web, iOS and Android which get used in the flagship client (Riot) that most people use. These are pretty solid and getting better, as per the SAS verif and cross-signing work. Other clients like Seaglass which build on the same SDKs obviously get the same experience. I would argue that these provide a decent decentralised alternative to Signal, WA or Wire, especially if you run your own server (given we don't do log minimisation on matrix.org).

Now, there's a long tail of other random clients which don't do E2EE, which is inevitable given doing a good secure job of an independent E2EE implementation is obviously tough. But is that actually a problem, given the most usable mainstream clients do have it?

It's a bit like declaring that the Web is in a disastrous sad state because of the number of HTTP clients out there which don't have a CSS engine in them...

<comment><USER19> > Now, there's a long tail of other random clients which don't do E2EE, which > is inevitable given doing a good secure job of an independent E2EE > implementation is obviously tough. But is that actually a problem, given the > most usable mainstream clients do have it?

Well, given that decentralisation is the primary differentiator from Signal (as far as I can see), everybody having to use the same client to get it is a bummer. I would even go as far as to say that it's a clear example of the problems Moxie sees with making Signal decentralised.

<comment><AUTHOR> But they don't have to use the same client? The web, iOS/macOS & Android SDKs are completely independent, and have different clients written on them. Riot may be the main one, but Seaglass (on the macOS SDK) has full E2E support, and there are loads of projects building on the matrix-js-sdk which inherit its E2E support. Meanwhile the nheko project has an independent from-scratch implementation of the E2E stack, Fractal is adding it too (thanks to funding from Purism), and even Pidgin has it (albeit read-only currently). (N.B. that the reddit post gets almost all of this wrong :|)

So yes: Moxie has a point that the more implementations you have, the more bugs and security holes you may have, and the slower the project can evolve. But for us, freedom to control your own data and conversations and provide an open network & platform to build on is more important.

<comment> dane-pgp > Meanwhile the nheko project has an independent from-scratch implementation > of the E2E stack

True, but here is the repo:

[https://github.com/mujx/nheko](https://github.com/mujx/nheko)

"Note regarding End-to-End encryption - Currently the implementation is at best a proof of concept and it should only be used for testing purposes."

and:

"No longer maintained - Desktop client for the Matrix protocol"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is a bright future where individual users can trivially (like one click deployment trivial) spin up a Mastodon and Matrix container and have their own social network and IM server running in minutes that federates with all the others in a giant decentralized web. Again.

I'll keep pressuring everyone I know to migrate to federated replacements for monolithic proprietary alternatives.

<comment><USER20> What are you using for "one click deployment" of Mastodon and Matrix?

<comment><USER21> Have you ever heard about docker, cr-io (not sure if this one can be used standalone), buildah, podman?

It probably won't be docker itself, but if you start deploy your stuff as docker containers now there will probably be a migration path to whatever it will be.

<comment><USER20> I was only aware of docker. Thanks for the list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Running Matrix + Riot.im for my "family chat" server since Hangouts is going away. Bit hokey to setup but highly recommended.

Fast enough for us and it's nice to be able to save all the pictures your family sends in full quality. They stream straight to my S3 buckets. Run this on a 5$/month digital ocean droplet and it could probably support hundreds of users.

The mobile and desktop apps are easy enough for mid-60s parents to figure out, a huge shortcoming to all the other OSS chat solutions I know of

</comment><comment><USER23> the matrix is the great irc replacement that never was. i wanted to like the matrix, i still do, yet every time I use it, the list of terrible user experiences remains the same. its slow. its so slow. the riot design/layout is klunky. its slow. the federation is confusing. for example searching or browsing the list of channels 'works' maybe 5% of the time and its not clear how broad the search is attempting to be. its slow. I've got an invite that cannot be accepted or declined, so its there forever. its slow. the distinction between a person to person chat vs a room is confusing. i cant get the freenode bridge bot to change my nick. it says the bridge bot is offline when im talking to it and its responding.

there has been time to fix all this but it has happened. at this point I'm not sure if the api is simply hard to implement or if the go-lang server will help.

i've even looked at the ircv3 spec for innovation. thats how desperate ive become for some kind of advancement (grin). I enjoy writing chatbots and new features are hindered by irc's lack of per-message ID. I've run a synapse server and an irc bridge and was disappointed in the complexity and resource usage. so i stay in 1992 with good ol' irc and freenode.

<comment><AUTHOR> have you tried riot.im/develop for a less clunky riot?

in terms of perf: yup, synapse is still nothing like as performant as it should be. as the talk in the OP explains, we opted to focus on getting a 1.0 which is 'correct' (in terms of stability and bugs and no design flaws) rather than fast. Fast comes next, and it should be more than noticeable.

<comment><USER23> thanks for the tip on riot.im/develop. looks like progress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> When rewriting Synapse in Python 3, did you use new language level features and optimizations? And what was your experience in doing so?

I've heard a lot on both sides of the fence as far as adopting python 3 exclusive language features for optimizations as well as using Cython everywhere but I'm not really sure where consensus lands. Kudos to you however, this is one of my favorite projects and will continue to be!

<comment><AUTHOR> Synapse currently runs on both Python 2 and 3, so we're not using any of the Python 3 specific language level features yet. We're considering dropping Python 2 support around April however to open up all the Py3 specific stuff.

We've seen significant perf improvements anyway however - both due to switching to UTF8 for string encoding and some dict operations getting much faster.

[https://matrix.org/blog/2018/12/21/porting-synapse-to- python...](https://matrix.org/blog/2018/12/21/porting-synapse-to-python-3/) has all the gory details :)

<comment><USER25> Has performance been looked at on the database side at all?

While picking apart the Synapse database, I noticed some design choices that would cause very significant performance hits, particularly the use of string keys everywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> not yet, frankly. with 1.0 we've focused exclusively on the correctness of the protocol and the implementation. next up is making it fast (at last).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I watched "Breaking the 100 bits per second barrier with Matrix". Great work! This is the type of thing I hoped a messaging protocol would be considering, I am really impressed.

</comment><comment><USER27> I tried to use Matrix a while back, but I got put off when it asked me to agree to its Terms of Service... what kind of decentralised system has a terms of service? It's meant to serve the user, not the developer.

I found Ricochet IM ([https://ricochet.im/](https://ricochet.im/)) to be much more to my taste. Your Ricochet ID is just a Tor hidden service, and when someone wants to chat to you their client connects to your Tor hidden service.

Using Tor gets you encryption and onion-routing for free. That means anyone MITM'ing your network traffic can't tell who you're speaking to or what you're saying.

It also gets NAT-traversal as a happy side effect.

<comment><USER28> The Matirx ToS is for using (or federating to) their servers. You can setup your own homeserver and there is no ToS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately it's illegal under GDPR to run a web service without telling users how their data is used and getting them to confirm they understand. We hate it too, but we have no choice. In future as Matrix becomes more P2P (like Ricochet) then this will go away, unless you choose to store your data on someone else's server.

Most people are happy that we actually spent the time & effort to explain what happens to their data in Matrix (especially given it's unusual relative to a centralised service), and to do so in non-legalese. [https://github.com/vector- im/policies/blob/master/docs/matri...](https://github.com/vector- im/policies/blob/master/docs/matrix-org/privacy_notice.md) is the doc in question fwiw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I spent some time looking into this recently. My vs was rocket chat.

While Matrix is very impressive in its ambition, in the end we went with rocket chat because it's more mature, and frankly a simpler stack is easier to wrap your head around and start making meaningful changes.

That said, I really hope this ends up being a useful protocol for interoperation between services. The potential is huge.

</comment><comment><USER30> I was at Matthew's talk. Great energy and highly informative talk.

I really wish though that instead of rewriting Synapse in Python 3 that they would adopt Status' new favourite language: Nim :)

<comment><AUTHOR> the Synapse port to Python 3 is complete :D However, the next-gen one we're working on ([https://github.com/matrix- org/dendrite](https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite)) is in Go. Nim rocks though, and it'd be wonderful for someone to write a Nim homeserver (especially as we finally have a stable release of the server-server API at last!!)

<comment><USER31> Can you give a rough idea about how long it will take for Dendrite to be ready? I want to run a homeserver for friends, but I'd like to go straight to Dendrite and not have to deal with Synapse if possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> it'll be a while yet. we've been focusing on hitting Matrix 1.0 by iterating on the Python codebase (Synapse) rather than diluting the effort by doing it on Dendrite in parallel. Once 1.0 is safely out the door and the first wave of post-1.0 features and perf have landed in Synapse then I suspect Dendrite will see more love.

tl;dr: Synapse is getting (much) better; i wouldn't wait for Dendrite but give Synapse a go on Py3 instead for now.

that said, once Dendrite lands, it should be 1-2 orders of magnitude more efficient by most metrics :)

<comment><USER31> Thanks. I think you're doing the right thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can someone give me a benefit of matrix over telegram? I not 'shilling' for tg but I hear a lot about their weakness being "rolling out their own crypto" and I don't buy that argument. One downside to tg as I see is that if their key can be compromised by comprising the server then chats can be read. They have secret chat for that.

Is there anything matrix/signal etc do better?

<comment><USER33> End to end encryption of all your chats by default. Telegram has you cross- device chats stored on their servers. This is not the case for Matrix (when they finally enable this) and e.g. Wire.

Telegram's "secret chats" don't solve anything because you need to convince everybody involved in secret chats to give up cross-device sync. The existence of the option doesn't solve anything if it isn't the default and comes at the cost of convenience. How many of your own chats are actually "secret"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> So I see a lot of conversation about how matrix is a IRC replacement. But I think, it could be a powerful Slack replacement as well. A federated chat self-hosted infrastructure could theoretically be more scalable than a centralised product.

But I think the product will need to be radically better to go down this road. Not tech...but product. And yes I have evaluated the new experimental release very closely (we were about to purchase a 300 seat license for a Hipchat replacement).

Personally I think that the infrastructure can be simplified and corrected - <USER2> think that instead of a python based server with a react based reference client (riot), it would be simpler to have the reference server and client in Typescript. The packaging and development is simpler and you also get type safety (which would be very important for innovation at the cryptographic protocols level).

<comment><USER35> How is moving everything to Typescript a "product" decision, that's like the worst technical decision possible (complete rewrite for very little benefit).

<comment><USER34> I didn't downvote you, but let me explain. The product improvement point was separate from this point and in all honesty is just my personal opinion.

I'm seeing a bunch of type safety bugs crop up periodically (e.g. [https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/3191](https://github.com/matrix- org/synapse/issues/3191) and [https://github.com/matrix- org/synapse/issues/4112](https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/4112)). I think there is also Dendrite in golang which is a higher performance and typesafe server in golang. Personally i think since the reference client in react is unavoidable (and that's where the product innovation really happens), it is probably more efficient for the org to have everything in typescript and make life easy for engineers/contributors.

I have my startup founder hat on when I say this.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Reasonable expectations for designers? - <AUTHOR>

I've worked with and hired several graphic designers who all claimed to know HTML/CSS/JS. They have all produced beautiful .psds of their designs, and offered to help implement it.
However, without fail, when it comes to actual code, they disappoint. For example:
-They never know how to use any sort of source control (so I have to manually merge things together every night).
-Their Javascript is always spaghetti code, and demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of scoping, closures, the libraries they use, and the JS object system.
-They insist on going and modifying the .css files for libraries we're using. Often the CSS they write is repetitive and brittle.
Am I being unreasonable to hope my designer can both code and do graphic design? Should I be hiring a separate 'front end developer' to help implement the designer's vision? (I can do 'front end coding' myself, but have other things to attend to, which is why I need to 'outsource' some of it).
If these mythical creatures do exist - how can I find them?
(I'm a regular here but am just posting under a different account) <comment><USER2> I've been a front-end engineer for 8 years, and I haven't yet worked with someone who was a truly top-notch graphical designer _and_ an expert-level programmer. (I'm sure there are some out there, but they're not easy to find.) The best projects I've worked on have always split that work between at least two people, though the exact division of labor differs. Sometimes the graphic designer just hands raw Photoshop files to the developer to implement from scratch, while in other cases the designer does the basic CSS and markup and the developer provides tools/frameworks and does integration work.

I think the best situation is to hire a web developer and a designer who already know how to work together as a team. Web development agencies can provide that. Or hire a freelance developer who can subcontract or recommend a designer.

<comment><USER3> I've upvoted you and would like to add some things. Being a programmer is a whole job. You can't expect someone to be awesome at design and know how to use source control (properly), bug/issue, javascript, browser incompatibilities, w3c validation, etc, etc.

Other fields of work are the same, btw. Architects can use hammers but I'm pretty sure only a few could handle a pneumatic drill properly and with safety.

The designers probably said they knew front-end coding because whatever they had to do previously was good enough for the past clients. The OP has higher standards, which now requires a professional to do it (shameless plug, I'm available for freelancing work).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If front end work is important to your company and you want to invest in that competency I would suggest a little on the job training. I've been teaching myself a little more coding and the hard thing for designers is knowing what good code is. Design school training doesn't really get into many technical subjects, so sharing some websites, books, etc. with some of those ideas fleshed out would help a lot. If you can spare the time a code review would be another approach that could pay huge dividends over time. Imagine the situation was reversed, you knew how to use Photoshop passably, but were weak on aesthetics. What would you be looking for helpwise.

If it isn't so important, then I would hire a front end engineer and outsource design work. You can find passable designers easier than passable engineers, IME.</comment>


Fuchsia (A New Operating System by Google?) - <AUTHOR> https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> In the readme to 'Magenta' which appears to be the operating systems kernel the project is described as "Magenta targets modern phones and modern personal computers with fast processors, non-trivial amounts of ram with arbitrary peripherals doing open ended computation."[1]

[1][https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/magenta/+/HEAD/docs/mg_and_...](https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/magenta/+/HEAD/docs/mg_and_lk.md)

<comment><USER2> Hmm... possibly a core replacement for Android/ChromeOS.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Comforable VPN Setup for some services but not others? - <AUTHOR> I'm thinking of getting a VPN again (PIA or Mullvad, leaning PIA) but I was wondering what setups do people have?
E.g. I am not sure if I want everything to go through the VPN - for example stuff like games will just have a higher lantecy, but also it seems nicer to be able to choose which sites to be accessed via VPN and which not.
I'm (mostly) a Chrome user in Germany.
So what Setups and advice do people here have? <comment><USER2> First question: Why?

If you're buying into the "prevent people from spring on you" propaganda just keep in mind that the VPN only encrypts the data from your home to the VPN gateway, so the VPN provider itself can now spy on your traffic instead of your ISP.

Getting around geoblocking would be a valid concern but is also difficult to pull off for many services in the way you want ("split tunnel"), since many services are using a cloud provider in some way, so you can't just route the IP addresses the website is using through the tunnel without it affecting a bunch of other untreated stuff. Even just gathering a complete list of all addresses owned and potentially used by someone like Google (for YouTube) and keeping that up to date might prove difficult. So if you still wanna do that it might be simpler to just turn the VPN on whether you need it. If it's just about browsing though a provider that offers a browser plugin might do the trick on a per-tab basis.

What might work for you is having a dedicated VM for the VPN that is constantly tunneled, so just use that one whenever you want to visit some blocked site.

<comment><AUTHOR> >If you're buying into the "prevent people from spring on you" propaganda just keep in mind that the VPN only encrypts the data from your home to the VPN gateway, so the VPN provider itself can now spy on your traffic instead of your ISP.

Both PIA and Mullvad have a better track record than my ISP so it seems like a good trade.

But also it is for stuff like geoblocking, yes ( a lot is blocked in Germany)

I mean, worse case scenario you can tunnel one browser through VPN and an another browser through your normal connection. That's what I used to do with "ssd -d" but it feels like you should be able to isolate all request specific to a given tab nowadays to do what I want. Or at minimum for different users.

<comment><USER2> I think their browser extension offer just that functionality, but I haven't used a VPN in quite a while. But I think your approach with two different browsers has an advantage too: It's much easier to differentiate by just memorizing that chrome is for VPN and Firefox isn't. You're less likely to accidentally browse to some website where you want to circumvent geoblocking without the VPN enabled. Thanks to cookies they might then perfectly know your actual location. I used to use a VPN for YouTube before they signed an agreement with GEMA and occasionally didn't enable the VPN and after a while Google tagged the static address of my VPN as German although it was in the US. Although you probably won't run into this problem when sharing the endpoint with people from all over the world.</comment></comment></comment>


An O(N) Sorting Algorithm: Machine Learning Sort - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.04272v2 <comment><USER2> The last sentence before the conclusion is

> We have to admit that, if there are too many numbers that fall into the tail > intervals, the Machine Learning Sort might fail.

It's interesting to have a sorting algorithm with a worst case time complexity of "might fail".

<comment><USER3> It's not great wording. They mean fail to run in O(n), not crash or give incorrect answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So doesn't this mean supervised learning sort? In other words, restricted domain sort? In that case, I don't think O(n) should be surprising. Radix sort, for example, is also O(n) for restricted input.

</comment><comment><USER5> This work looks promising, but it's important to note that the authors didnt prove worst case time complexity.

This algorithm can get much, much slower than O(n)

</comment><comment><USER3> tldr: Assume input that are real numbers with some distribution. Approximate distribution with ML and use it to predict where every element should go. Using prediction monotonous in value means no inversions but possible collisions. Fix that up into a sorted array.

The authors never proved that this will give O(n) in the presence of not- perfect estimation of the distribution, but their numerical experiments look promising.

</comment><comment><USER6> Earlier discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17064170](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17064170)

</comment><comment><USER7> Invert distribution. Radix sort.

Where's the ML?

<comment><USER7> Sorry, this was a jerk comment. I was probably annoyed by the tortuous exposition. Please eliminate the first 3 paragraphs.

Real question: "there is no lower bound for M like log(N)"

I would challenge this statement because the number of neurons is like the number of gaussian mixture components, which limits resolution of the radix buckets. In order for it to work, the divergence between real and modeled distributions must meet an upper bound which decreases as the inverse of N, and you might say that the divergence lower bound decreases as the inverse of M (although not sure). So given any distribution that cannot be modeled with a gaussian mixture, M must scale with N.</comment></comment>


The word entrepreneur and its baggage - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1685-the-word-entrepreneur-and-its-baggage <comment><USER2> I hate these kinds of blog posts, because they make it sound like starting a business isn't about risk or hard work anymore. Supposedly, the advent of technology has made succeeding at your own company so easy that _anyone_ can do it. You don't need to write a business plan, get an MBA, or even have any experience. Furthermore, you won't even need to work hard at it!

The problem is that the barriers to entry don't just drop for you...they drop for your competitors too. So now it's even harder to compete within a given market because of the sheer volume of competition. You may find cases at the edge (37signals' home and soapbox) where money, risk, hard work, a plan, education, experience, and connections didn't matter, but they're complete outliers. You're probably better off playing the lottery.

<comment><USER3> Agreed.

By the way, why does this concept pop up so often currently in our culture? (even an amateur can be successful)

ie, American Idol, World Series of Poker, Millionaire gameshows...etc

<comment><USER4> It's part of the american folk mythology (for a real obvious-in-hindsight example, consider Star Wars (original trilogy): Luke goes from farm hand to ace fighter pilot with no training, and becomes a passable jedi with a few months of training...).

It probably originates 50% from the urban/rural divide and 50% from the underlying outlook of protestantism. In brief:

\- much of american history consists of pioneers going and settling the land, then -- decades later -- the 'experts' show up (these could be anything from farm scientists to law enforcement to general government busybodies). So there's this weird split between respect for learning and accomplishment (no, really!) but on the other hand the belief that you can really boostrap yourself / figure things out by yourself just fine. Anything that plays into the belief you could perform at an 'expert' level with only a very minimal amount of training is therefore good entertainment.

\- the basic protestant outlook is that your (personal) salvation is predetermined (though perhaps you can mess it up), and that consequently nothing you do can earn salvation if you weren't already gifted it; however, there's a parallel belief that God will show favor upon the saved, eg by granting them success in their worldly endeavors...and so, loosely speaking, a protestant-minded person would interpret someone attaining expert-level performance in a very short period of time as a sign that that person had been gifted with salvation.

At this point in time I'd say neither of those reasons is self-consciously driving the meme's dominance, but those are some of the deep roots of that particular outlook, most likely.

<comment><USER2> _the basic protestant outlook is that your (personal) salvation is predetermined_

Totally OT, but I wanted to point out that predestination is most closely associated with Calvinism, which only occupies a subset of Protestantism. The Arminian school of theology is also part of Protestantism.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Calvinist- Arminian_d...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Calvinist- Arminian_debate)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but cf your copy of _The Protestant Work Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism_ to see this argument brought out in full; I'll also handwave and point out that in general, even when the nitty-gritty specifics of belief systems are the stuff wars are fought over, it's surprisingly common for second-order attudinal-and-behavioral consequences of a particular group's outlook to thoroughly permeate the broader society it's found in.

That's a fancy way of saying that, eg., even though the predestination thing is a mainly Calvinist outlook, the knock-on effects of that belief -- working hard but hoping for some 'answer from above' to arrive in the form of earthly success -- have pretty much permeated the deep subconscious of the American outlook.

You can see it manifest all the time, with people attributing success to innate characteristics -- eg, smarts or talent or whatnot -- and not to the work and training that developed those characteristics; this is a more- rational take on the same basic idea (earthly success == sign of grace, not earthly success == mix of lucky breaks and hard effort).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found five examples to back up my case, so listen to me! As all the YC companies can tell you, for your average case building a business still takes a lot of work.

<comment><USER2> Forget the YC companies...almost _anyone_ who has started any kind of business will tell you that it's a lot of work.

<comment><USER6> It seems like it would be a natural equilibrium for it to be a lot of work unless it's something where it's basically impossible to not work a lot. If person A works 5 hours a week, and person B does 20, even if person B only gets twice as much done as A, there's still twice as much going into the business. I guess there are outliers, where someone gets really lucky and manages to stumble on to some sort of very easily defensible barrier to entry, but that's not the norm.

<comment><USER7> Depends on the business. If A's shorter working hours allow him to offer dramatically lowered costs, then he may succeed.

<comment><USER2> Example?

<comment><USER7> Startups like other companies, too, have to pay for their factors of production. Labour is one of them. The labour of the founder also has to be payed --- either explicit or implicit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I heard about this guy who preached a "4 hour workweek" yet he probably worked >80 hours a week.

</comment><comment><USER9> what a lame article</comment>


How Tuition Works At Oxford University (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.lawrence.edu/conference/tutorials/2007/gwilliams.pdf

<comment><USER2> How _Tutorials_ Work at Oxford. Tuition works by becoming astronomical, with a whopping increase in 2012.</comment>


JDK 14 Early-Access Builds - <AUTHOR> http://jdk.java.net/14/ <comment><USER2> hmmmm looks like some Oracle boffs are trying very hard to save their licencing SNAFU</comment>


PleaseWait.js – Show your users a beautiful loading page while your app loads - <AUTHOR> http://pathgather.github.io/please-wait/

<comment><USER3> Why is this any different than Flash preloaders just a moment ago? And even worse - it doesn't show any progress so there isn't any user feedback. Every (bad) pattern seems to repeat itself. Just using current-cool-tech.

I would much more appreciate that dev time would be put into a framework that allows graceful enchancement by deferring loading more heavy components and to allow user to interact with the site ASAP.

Having a skeleton project for gulp (or any other system) that shows how to properly split big, non essential, components and lazy load them would go much further to ease developing big applications and smoothen UX.

EDIT: typos.

<comment><AUTHOR> Using PleaseWait to actually show progress can be achieved by simply updating the loading HTML to show a number percentage, but we may update the API to make this easier in the future.

And I agree that a skeleton project to show proper modularization of different components would be great! Our blog just started an Angular series, so we'll try to write one on how we split up our large Angular enterprise app in this regard :)

<comment><USER3> But it's missing the point - just like other comments said - if you need this you're doing it wrong.

I sure was guilty of big sites just as much as the next guy. It just saddens me that insted of promoting what we've learned it the past years and applying to current projects we're doomed to repeat bad UX from before.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe you're right, but I certainly think there are some valid cases where this could be useful. I'm not saying use it in every project, or use it as a workaround to a larger architectural issue, but if you have a single page app that does not render templates on the server, showing something like this while you make a few AJAX calls and compile the data returned into your client-side templates isn't the worse thing in the world. Slack and Asana do similar things, and I would hardly say that their engineering teams did a ton wrong. We actually built this because we're customers of both and enjoyed the screens they showed, so we wanted to see if we could make a generic library that others could use to do the same.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you on this. There's a large subset of the web development community who are shifting towards building desktop applications with web technology (atom-shell, node-webkit, brackets-shell, etc.). In a lot of these cases, the app bootstrap process is actually loading data/content that is __required __for proper app functionality. Desktop apps commonly use loading screens on boot to indicate this process (Photoshop is the example that comes to mind). I think this is a great tool, and will fit well with that subset of the web-dev community particularly well.

<comment><USER5> The point is: most of these applications (say, Photoshop, Gimp, Eclipse, OpenOffice, probably others) are things that you load once to work with them for a couple hours, and don't mind when they consume a lot of your system resources.

If you look at web applications, Google's music app ("My Music" in Google Play) uses a load screen (complete with progress bar) because it's seriously bloated, while Amazon's Cloudplayer just loads and does its thing (which is, playing music).

Needing a load screen is a sign that your app is not, or aims at not being, a Web app anymore - in the sense that you'd also want to loosen the other restrictions - give it its own window, possibly have local file storage or FS caching, etc.; In that case, something like TideSDK ( [http://www.tidesdk.org/](http://www.tidesdk.org/) ) may come in handy to deliver a desktop app to power users that is based on the same codebase. And, maybe you'd still want a web app that is functional and lean. (As an example for two apps with non-identical possibilities, Google's My Music allows you to change song metadata on desktop browsers but not in the Android app - <USER2> another sign that My Music is meant as a desktop-y app).

In many cases it can be a sign of hubris or lazyness that you cannot get rid of the bloat. Be real and think whether your users actually enjoy waiting that time, since they'll be doing it more often, on machines with less resources and/or slower connection, than yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used to be a Flash developer, now a Javascript developer. Everything that was raised as an issue with flash (except web's open nature) is now an issue with Javascript development today. Preloaders, skip intros, single page apps, browser back button issues, SEO incompatibility. all of it. loving this.

<comment><USER5> The point is not (merely) the technology behind it, it's the agencies' model of selling the customers "rich internet sites" whose main point is to show off to other people that you have pockets full of money.

A good intro can help to sell your site project to a customer (and help them selling it to their superiors), but no longtime user would protest if you took it away.

Single page apps are a way to fit in an interaction model that doesn't fit the idea of "one address, one page, one text" that was the idea behind the Web in the first place. So, yes, you give up some of the benefits of the Web (navigation with bookmarks, back button) or have to fight hard to get them back, while keeping others (mostly, platform independence and a built-in client-server architecture)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> No. It's not beautiful. Stop saying that! That word is so overused in software that it is no devoid of all meaning.

It's a loading screen. It's perhaps even a nice looking loading screen. Well, it's not ugly. It is missing a lot of functionality though. But it's less rage inducing than the spinning pin wheel so that's good I guess.

2015 would be a better year if we all agreed to stop using the word beautiful with respect to any and all things digital.

<comment><USER8> Can a loading screen not be beautiful? Would the world really be a better place if we all said "very pretty" instead of "beautiful"?

Maybe you just don't like it as much as other people do. That just means your tastes differ, not that others are abusing language.

<comment><USER9> Calling everything beautiful diminishes the value of the word. And most apps posted to HN are described as beautiful. It's mostly just become filler text now. Worse, this judgment isn't coming from an impartial critic, but usually the author himself/herself. Maybe it's a cultural thing, but not telling others how to judge your product was drilled into me.

Also, being beautiful isn't an inherently valuable attribute. If your product is utterly useless, but good looking, then it's still utterly useless. Some form of user study about the utility of the aesthetic design would be a nice addition in these sorts of declarations.

I don't think the issue is with this project per se, but the trend in the presentation of these sorts of "show HN" posts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The best loading page is the one that I never see.

</comment><comment><USER11> "You look nice today". This habit of saying horribly false compliments to the user is an awful trend that is affecting programmers everywhere.

See [https://www.npmjs.com/login](https://www.npmjs.com/login), for example.

<comment><USER12> Like the AMC theatres pre-show messages where it says something along the lines of "Thank you for being _absolutely amazing!_"

Makes me cringe SO HARD every time. Why are we telling people they're amazing for existing? Haven't we identified the issue with much of today's youth is that their egos were often overinflated by their parents, teachers, etc, leading to problems of entitlement and whatever else that entails?

<comment><USER13> I suspect it's because people feel better about themselves and have a happier outlook when they receive compliments. These warm fuzzies are associated with the product / setting, positively affecting people's opinion of the service.

I'm not sure why you're confused -- is it because things aren't the way that you think they should be? To me, the explanation above is pretty concise and fits the situation neatly.

<comment><USER12> I guess I wasn't seriously questioning the reasons why they would do it. It does make sense but isn't there some point where complimenting your customers to make them feel all warm could go "too far"? I'm pretty laid back with not very high expectations of customer service (not a pessimistic person, just easy to please) and it just comes off as rather excessive, at least with the way it's presented.

This probably comes off as looking the gift horse in the mouth but at some point it does come off as excessive, like when I get bum rushed to be helped the second I look at a product in a department store.

<comment><USER14> As a European, I hate the false friendliness you get from waiters and shop staff in the States. Give me a grumpy Spanish waiter any day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'll be the odd one out and say that the presentation is actually gorgeous. It's really not a whole lot of extra resources that need to be pulled in to do it, either. You could do it in a few lines of HTML/CSS if you were so inclined.

That said, I will agree that the use case is very small (page opening) and for most these days even showing this for more than 2 or 3 seconds might lead to some wrong assumptions and showing it for only a split second would be odd/no good/etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> Click Here to Skip Intro

</comment><comment><USER16> Ah, funny, I came up with a similar name for a little script I published last week named PleaseRotate.js [1]. It displays a message to mobile users if they are viewing the site in the wrong orientation. I wouldn't recommend it for most sites, but it has its uses (I use it on tech demos that I build).

[1] [https://github.com/arscan/pleaserotate.js](https://github.com/arscan/pleaserotate.js)

</comment><comment><USER17> Not every app can load instantly. Better to have a reasonable loading screen than an ugly, flickery, reflowy startup experience.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is it just me, or does anybody else think that it's a problem that the world even _needs_ this in the first place?

I expect splash screens and slightly longer load times from desktop apps... if I click on a link to something in my browser, not so much. TBH, if a page/app takes more than a second or two to load, I assume there's something wrong with it (or my net connection).

<comment><AUTHOR> For SPAs, something like this can be quite useful for a few reasons: branding (see Slack's and Asana's cool examples), having in-app authentication on any page (see the login form example on the demo page), and yes, showing some sort of notification while a good bit of data loads in the background.

For the majority of sites, I agree this may be overkill, but if you have a SPA that needs to load a good bit of data on the user's first use of your app (and verify authentication), this can (hopefully) be useful.

<comment><USER19> You missed the point. If you "need to load a good bit of data on the user's first use" you've already failed. I've been coding professionally for about 20 years now and the _only_ reason i've ever seen for loading a bit of data on the initial hit, is that the developer didn't spend the time to think about how to load the necessary pieces incrementally, as they were needed _by the user_. Instead they designed a system that needed a whole pile of crap on startup even if the user didn't.

<comment><USER20> I tend to disagree with the statement that you've already failed if you decide to eagerly load resources before they are used or needed. Take queue from Google or others who pre-fetch resources based on anticipated usage. In the world of SPAs and client-side heavy apps, combining resources into a single or logically grouped set of resources is common practice to cut down on the amount of overhead that many http(s) calls impose.

Also, the intended use of PleaseWait.js doesn't have to be used to stall while client side resources are brought down. This concept could easily be used for long running, server side processing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This _is_ very beautiful, and it's great -- no, _essential_ \-- to think of your users!

But speaking of that, please _THINK_ of your users and _despise_ loading times. Hate them with a passion. As they say, kill them with fire!

Do NOT make them prettier, it only makes it easy to think it's OK. It is not OK! Your app can load faster. Way faster. It's easier than you think. And even if it's not, it's worth it.

When you have done everything you can do to speed up the loading time, NOW you can think about loading screens.

Except, don't make it a loading screen. Fake it. Make it look like you loaded faster than you did:

\- Let the fastest content load asynchronously with the slower content.

\- Is caching for your entire app too hard? Start by caching the entry points from previous visits and show that (although beware of unsettling flashes/jumps in data!)

\- If that's too hard, fake it with a screenshot from the last view the user saw (it's been done -- iOS apps).

Once you've done all the above, and exhausted every other idea that you can think of because you know your users better then I do...

... then, only then, you can think -- for maybe an hour or two -- about making the gap a nicer experience. But remember, it must be a NICE experience. _BEAUTIFUL_ does not always equal _NICE_.

And until that gap is gone, _never_ cross this item off your list!

[Disclaimer: To the creators of this module, I'm not saying your time has been wasted. I'm only talking to app owners, not to you! Thanks for thinking of how to make bad things better! ]

</comment><comment><USER22> Jesus, we've sure defined down "beautiful" haven't we.

</comment><comment><USER23> What's wrong with an animated GIF? Is this a problem that needs to be solved? I thought it was solved in the early 90s?

On a positive note, those animations would be great if they were GIFs - they're nice.

</comment><comment><USER24> Funny not long ago there was a HN comment saying this would be a good idea ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8765778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8765778))

Of course it all depends how keen your users are to wait for the thing. If it is an online game and they clicked a link to play it then they may be happy to wait.

For most sites this would make me hit the back button if it didn't load in 5 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER25> This pattern really ruins the experience for me. I know of a few apps that while loading will show an inspirational quote or some other distraction. For me it cheapens the experience. I understand scaling is #hard but there are better experiences than a loading screen that can make the end user experience much better.

</comment><comment><USER26> I can't believe that this post got upvoted 140 times on HN. Only one day left to 2015 and we have distribution networks, abroad datacenters. Are we still not able to build a system which doesn't require a loading screen? What a shame...

<comment><USER27> It's hard to fix slow clients that require tons of data and resources, but feed a desire for apps to do crazy things, and limited dev time. Trade offs have to be made somewhere, a loading screen at the beginning of an application is one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> You know what's even better? Having server-side rendering that delegates to the client on load so you can avoid this kind of thing all-together. Looking at you react, stay awesome!

</comment><comment><USER29> The page doesn't load, it's stuck on the progress bar.

</comment><comment><USER30> If your page takes that long to load to the point where you want to use PleaseWait.js, that's an indication that you need to optimize your page so that it loads faster.

<comment><USER8> Yes but, in the mean time, why not also use PleaseWait.js?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> NOOOOOOoooooooo!!!

Wrong thinking! just make it load quicker!

</comment><comment><USER32> Very nice and exactly what I needed.</comment>


Terminology, start-up vs project - <AUTHOR>

Does anybody else have this feeling:
I see the words 'start-up' and 'project' as being used interchangeably on HN, and it doesn't ring true to me.
If you're going to put together some website in a couple of days with a couple of guys then it's not a start-up, it's a project.
If you all cancel your jobs, pool your resources and set up an office in your garage, then it's a start-up.
To use the word start-up for every tiny little project that gets started devaluates the amount of risk taken and dedication given to 'real' start-ups. <comment><USER2> To me "Start-up" always indicated a business (which not all projects are; some are (or remain) hobbies).

My Oxford dictionary show start-up as referring to the process of setting (anything) in motion. It goes on to list "a newly established business" as a separate, specific meaning.

I think YCombinator is interested in _business_ start-ups. But among hackers like those you'll find in HN... you never know when hobby start-up projects are going to burst out with commercial potential. I suspect that pg et al. appreciate that cross-pollination of "hobby" ideas here has real value for seeding business start-ups.

</comment><comment><USER3> I realise we're all pedantic hackers here (hell, I consider a good dose of pedantry to be a quality - language should be exact where possible) - but this is hardly worthy of special discussion. Yes, of course people have this feeling, but there's nothing to talk about.

People will continue to misuse the English language whether or not you use up one of the 25 front page slots with this moan. Get used to it, that's the way the world goes.

Move along. Nothing to see here.

<comment><AUTHOR> so, "language should be exact where possible" and "People will continue to misuse the English language whether or not you use up one of the 25 front page slots with this moan."

That's a pretty strong contradiction.

then "Move along. Nothing to see here."

What's wrong with discussion, I did not place this 'in the 25 front page slots', the accumulated votes + the front page algorithm did that, no need to attack me personally for that.

"move along, nothing to see here." to me smacks of trying to stifle discussion, if you did not want to discuss it then why bother writing what you did ? Or is that your way of saying you should have the last word on this ?

For me the difference between a startup and some trial project is a major decider in whether or not I'm going to spend time on reviewing something. The items that have been labelled 'start-up' on HN sometimes are worthy of the term, but quite frequently - and not to get anybody's goat here - the term trial balloon or some other term would be more applicable.

It would be nice if the distinction was a bit more clear, if not before long 'start-up' will be just another buzz-word on the ignore list and that would be a waste. I think real start-ups deserve all the attention and help they can get.

<comment><USER3> _so, "language should be exact where possible" and "People will continue to misuse the English language whether or not you use up one of the 25 front page slots with this moan."_

/me remembers to emphasize " __ __ __WHERE POSSIBLE __ __ __" "The web" is not a place where it is possible to enforce exact language. Hopefully that's not news to you, otherwise you're in for some rude shocks.

 _What's wrong with discussion_

What discussion? I see no discussion here, just a moan and a couple of replies moaning along. What discussion could there _possibly_ be on this topic? It's a non-topic. It's not a discussion, it's a moan. Like "Death sucks" or "I hate going to school", this ("People mix up start-ups and projects") is just a useless rant.

 _For me the difference between a startup and some trial project is a major decider in whether or not I'm going to spend time on reviewing something. The items that have been labelled 'start-up' on HN sometimes are worthy of the term, but quite frequently - and not to get anybody's goat here - the term trial balloon or some other term would be more applicable._

Do you think people will change their posting behaviours because of this rant? Of course they won't.

 _if not before long 'start-up' will be just another buzz-word on the ignore list and that would be a waste_

"Start-up" _IS_ a buzz-word. Have been for about 10 years now.

 _I think real start-ups deserve all the attention and help they can get._

Exactly, so stop wasting this space debating terminology and leave that front page spot open to actual start-up news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > To use the word start-up for every tiny little project that gets started > devaluates the amount of risk taken and dedication given to 'real' start- > ups.

I'm not sure this matters much. What matters the most to a startup is the product and the product's users. I don't think users care much about the actual company, but rather the company's product (unless the company is some sort of outlier, one that invests publicly in bad things, or something).

Who cares if you call your project a startup? If it gains users and makes money, who cares what you call it?</comment>