Ask HN: Does sometimes post get removed from the front page all of a sudden? - <AUTHOR> There was an interesting (and lively) discussion about Bodega here:
LINK: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15291795
, being 4th in the home page.
I tried to re-read it after 5 minutes and it was nowhere to be found, suddenly being positioned at rank 80.
Seeing how this thread had been active in the past few minutes while the threads around 80 hadn't been active since yesterday it does look a little weird. <comment><USER2> My guess are:

* It was flagged by users

* It triggered the automatic penalty because it has much more comments than upvotes

For an official answer, you can try writing the mods email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, generally posts with more comments than upvotes above a certain threshold (~40 iirc) get pushed down 50+ positions. They tend to be more argument than discussion.

<comment><USER4> Very interesting. That's actually a rather strong metric.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sometimes posts just get lowered off the first page pretty quickly. I've seen it happen to my posts.. either from other people posting, or upvoting posts without yours getting any votes at all will likely push it down.</comment>


Bill Gates's new website: The Gates Notes - <AUTHOR> http://www.thegatesnotes.com/ <comment><USER2> I think that Bill can do a world of good by sharing his thoughts via a blog like this. Assuming he is candid and fosters real communication, that is. Sections like 'What I'm thinking about/what I'm learning' is exactly the right attitude.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that Bill Gates only reads books that reinforce his existing beliefs. That's why he's so pro-KIPP, because he doesn't have any interest in authors like John Taylor Gatto. (Or at least this is what I heard from someone who had lunch with him recently.)

<comment><USER4> That's hardly unique to Bill Gates. People rarely re-examine what they presume to be correct, and when people call that a "problem" I tend to think that it just means "he's wrong and pig-headed." Which he may likely be, but let's at least speak plainly.

<comment><USER5> I also take it as an indication that the person saying "he's wrong and pig- headed" is also so entrenched in their viewpoint that they are not likely to examine evidence to the contrary either.

<comment><USER3> Well in my case I've read a couple books about KIPP looking for evidence that I was wrong, but I didn't find any. The problem is that while KIPP is probably the fastest way to improve kids performance on Things That Can Be Measured, there's a lot of research showing how this approach is really bad for kids. And the pro-KIPP literature doesn't take any of this into account. My problem with Gates specifically is that not only does he not know what these problems are, but even when told about them he has no interest in learning about them despite the fact that they are extremely serious.

<comment><USER5> "The problem is that while KIPP is probably the fastest way to improve kids performance on Things That Can Be Measured, there's a lot of research showing how this approach is really bad for kids."

I don't understand this point here. If you cannot measure something, how can you determine what is an improvement and what is not?

<comment><USER6> I think what he means is: you can't measure a specific metric but you can see from the end result that some other technique ended up with a better overall result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why am I not surprised that it is using both WebForms and Silverlight... I see that big chunk of viewstate there Bill.

<comment><USER8> I honestly wouldn't have guessed. The layout is understated, the page loads quickly, and it's easy to navigate and read. I wonder if the site is based on some existing content management system, or if it's something custom. It would be kind of a cool surprise if it turned out that Bill authored the site himself for fun (but that seems unlikely).

<comment><USER9> Why does it seem unlikely? It could be that he is using these technologies purely out of personal interest.

<comment><USER10> I think it seems unlikely because we all think of BillG as a business man and not a hacker. Maybe I should only speak for myself, but the thought of him tinkering away into the early morning on his new site is such a wonderful juxtaposition of my image of him.

<comment><USER11> But remember, Bill Gates started out as a hacker. He spent his whole high school days learning on a computer his Mom's Club purchased for their kids. He says he was probably one of 50 kids in the country that had that much access to a computer in his High School days.

<comment><USER10> Yeah totally, I certainly meant no disrespect. The man can hack. It'd be nothing but exciting to hear about him doing more of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just confirming.. built with Microsoft technology :)

<http://builtwith.com/?http%3A//www.thegatesnotes.com/>

<comment><USER13> The .ASPX extension in the URLs led me to make the same assumption

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> // Workaround for a bug in ASP.NET Ajax Beta, you don't need this in the final version

and this is also kind of funny: <!--[if lt IE 7]> ...

</comment><comment><USER15> This is doing the rounds on the net too:

<http://www.thegatesnotes.com/robots.txt>

It doesn't mention Bing. Amusing, and useless.

<comment><USER16> Why is it useless (I've never worked with robots.txt)? Are the /css and /js files not large enough to bother skipping?

<comment><USER15> Useless in the sense it doesn't really need to mention Bing.

Blocking /css and /js makes sense because they don't add value in being crawled. Not necessary, but doesn't hurt.

Best practice: Always have a robots.txt file, even if it's empty.

<comment><USER17> What is the reason for your Best Practice advice?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Really pretty, really well-done website. (Even if it's going to get grief because it uses Silverlight).

<comment><USER19> I humbly disagree.

The fonts are microscopic here and when I increase the size to something half- readable then stuff gets pushed out the right side. (on the section-overview pages that is)

I also found this sidebar on the right of the articles very distracting. Don't throw unrelated content at me while I'm reading.

<comment><USER20> This is one of the few sites I've browsed on a Windows machine that made me instinctively think "oh the fonts look like crap because someone designed it on Windows and didn't think about Mac usability", since I'm usually on a Mac. That the fonts look nearly unreadable at any size on a windows machine is hilarious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Some notes on the design: IMO { The navigation feels a little fragile, maybe because of the small font size and delicate lines. But it's also quite original, especially the "view by topic" branch. The right column (only visible on some pages) could easily be mistaken for advertising, possibly because of the tiny sans-serif type. Overall the style and copy gives a personal, likable impression. }

<comment><USER22> No favicon

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Do you think he's actually writing/doing all this himself? (vs. having an intern or something like that be his social media face)

<comment><USER24> I'm sure he's got some other people doing stuff on the site (code, server, etc), but I'm likely to believe that this is indeed him writing the content. Maybe he's got someone proofing it, but Bill like most of us probably find something nice about writing out your thoughts and interacting with people through a blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Doesn't validate for HTML or CSS and has to include IE specific fixes for proper display of PNG.

Wish he'd had to code it to spec for himself.

</comment><comment><USER26> No RSS feed? :/

</comment><comment><USER12> In the introduction note, Bill says:

"I take a lot of notes, and often share them and my own thoughts on the subject with others through email"

Besides email (which isn't that great if you don't have GMail style threads), I wonder whether he and other prominent personalities use a closed discussion forum to engage in discourse about interesting topics like HN does. I can understand why he would be hesitant to comment on a public forum like HN.

That said, it's great to see people like PG, DHH (and others) mix with the no- names (or future-names) on HN.

</comment><comment><USER27> First twitter and now a website?

Looking over the content on the site I was depressed by all the philanthropy and environmentalism. Not that these aren't good things but I think Bill has been so successful at building software and corporations that his time would be better used teaching people these things.

Imagine the articles and insight we could get if he would convert into someone like Paul Graham.

<comment><USER28> actually, I completely disagree.

What Bill was truly good at, was hiring smart people and getting them to all work towards something big. Putting a computer on every desk was a big goal. Eradicating Malaria and the other things the foundation is working on are big goals. And to be honest - I'm impressed by the way he is going about it.

This site isn't about him resting on his laurels - looking back at the success he had. This is the posts/information on what he is working on now. So it wont have the deep insight that he would have about software/corporations. But the fact he is applying that insight to Philanthropy and to the world of NGO's is fantastic and I applaud him for it.

<comment><USER29> Totally agree - and also at the very least I rest comfortable knowing that such a large amount of wealth (Most of Buffets' empire also) is bookmarked to at least try and do good. Not somewhere else (ie: funding weapons)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I find this line from the greeting letter a bit odd, "It often feels like I'm back in school, as I spend a lot of my time learning about issues I'm passionate about." Didn't he drop out of college to start MS presumably because he felt like the things he was learning in school were a waste of his time?

<comment><USER31> What about elementary, middle and high school?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's amazing how the design of the website almost cries "don't read me".

</comment><comment><USER33> Several typos on the front page... I guess it's just another blog but, I don't know, I would expect Bill Gates to put his stuff through some proper proof- reading.

</comment><comment><USER34> I can has rss feed?

</comment><comment><USER35> Such a childish signature.

<comment><USER36> Yup, he'll never make it in the real world if he doesn't master this fourth grade handwriting course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> <tin-foil-hat>

He could be doing all this because he wants to run for office. The site frequently refers to Gates in the third person, it's kinda structured like a lot of political candidates sites.

</tin-foil-hat>

<comment><USER38> Microsoft for President!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think Gates should turn comments on. People should be registered, perhaps using Facebook/LinkedIn credentials.

I do agree he needs to be exposed to opinions outside his comfort zone.

</comment><comment><USER40> Lulz:

<!--[if lt IE 7]> <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/unitpngfix.js"></script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/ie6.css" /> <![endif]--></comment>


Your talent drought is your fault - <AUTHOR> https://builttoadapt.io/your-talent-drought-is-your-fault-1db93a7e7d2c <comment><USER2> the CIO said, "But we don't have superstar developers like Netflix does," as an excuse for his team not iterating quickly. Adrian's response, "Where do you think we got our developers? We hired them from you."</comment>


The Incredible 23: Only 23 Founder CEO's are Fortune 500 CEOs - <AUTHOR> http://shervster.tumblr.com/post/37617149364

<comment><USER2> First thing that jumped out to me is the error of listing Warren Buffet as the founder of Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire Hathaway has been around since the mid 1800s. Makes me skeptical of the accuracy of the rest of the list. Especially of omissions.

Given the age of many Fortune 500 companies - many of their founders would be dead - what would be more interesting to see is a list/count/percentage of CEOs who founded their company and remained CEO through the company's original growth phase into the Fortune 500.

An obvious example would be someone like Bill Gates. Even though he's not the CEO anymore, he guided the company through its growth from a few people to Fortune 500 status, and deserves recognition at least equal to the folks on the list here.</comment>


The Enchantments of Elm – writing a roguelike using FRP: Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://sridattalabs.com/2013/12/25/elm/ <comment><USER2> Nice simple demo Sridatta!

Nobody likes the tilde-arrow lift syntax! The last line could be rewritten as follows. Does anybody think it's better or worse? I tend to prefer it, though many don't like it.

        main = lift2 display Window.dimensions <| lift renderState gameState

        main = display <~ Window.dimensions ~ (renderState <~ gameState)

Signals exhibit the characteristics of an applicative functor, after all, so pure functions of any arity can be lifted without needing to think if you're using lift2, lift3, etc.

<comment><USER3> I never use it in examples, but mainly because of feedback that I get. When I use them, beginners tell me they can't figure out what's going on. When I don't use them, no one tells me things! :) So for a beginner text, I think it's reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe I'm old, but whenever I see references to "Elm", I only think of the MUA: [http://www.instinct.org/elm/](http://www.instinct.org/elm/)

<comment><USER5> me Too.. I was thinking "Huh, why would they try that"..

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the screenshot at the top is an indication of what your game will look like, I'd first ask Nintendo for permission to use assets from Legend of Zelda. That way you get told no right from the start and can design sprites that aren't closely protected by an external copyright holder.

<comment><USER7> OpenGameArt is a great resource for free art to get programmers get by: [http://opengameart.org/](http://opengameart.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a bit skeptical if the term FRP really applies here. The usual FRP programs are written so that you first define a few primitive signals (I use the term signal for the sake of this thread being about Elm) and then use them together with a set of combinators to build up a entire signal network that defines the program. In Elm you already have the primitives and then just step state like you would do in a FP language normally.

Elm is theoretically classic FRP with a option of a arrow interface, but the combinators for building signal networks is not provided by defult. Therefore I feel its a bit unfair to call it FRP and not having a prefix explaining that its a derivitive there of.

<comment><USER2> A few disparate points: The Elm runtime is an implementation of CFRP, where the C stands for concurrent. The primitives already exist for convenience, and can be transformed by pure functions, or new ones can be defined using the FFI.

Your observation isn't new, most Elm games' signal graphs have the same shape - a bunch of input signals merged into one, the 'main' loop as a step state, and the drawing code.'

In particular, which kinds of Signal combinators do you feel are lacking?

[http://docs.elm-lang.org/library/Signal.elm](http://docs.elm- lang.org/library/Signal.elm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel like the title is woefully misleading. This is just a hello world tutorial.

<comment><USER10> Considering it's part one in the series, it's not unreasonable.

<comment><USER11> It's not unreasonable for the first part to be simple, but you might be better off writing the first 2 or 3 parts, then releasing them all at once to get things rolling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You should post this to [http://reddit.com/r/elm](http://reddit.com/r/elm) too.</comment>


Ask HN: What does your contingency plan look like if you are stranded? - <AUTHOR> This week I was stranded with two small kids on a lake in the urgent need of calling a family member to pick us up, but I didn't had a working phone anymore. Since I don't remember any smartphone number I needed a device with internet to login to my Google account. I asked the first guy for his phone and internet access, but his data volume was throttled so Google run into a timeout. The second guy had decent mobile internet, but Google didn't recognise the device - who knew! - and asked for a second factor.
Long story short: I couldn't access any of my data (quickly) and I was carrying two kids while hiking home.
I have two questions for you. First one is: Do you have still a way to access your data (contacts) quickly if you only have a mobile device from a stranger and would you mind telling me?
Second question: I had the idea of a GitHub hosted page that stores my emergency contacts encrypted. I have built up a prototype [1] but I am by now means a security expert and I am not sure if my encryption method is secure (enough) to host contacts online. Anyone mind giving me some feedback?
[1]: https://github.com/jwillmer/emergency-contacts <comment><USER2> This is a problem that does not need a tech solution. Put a piece of paper in your wallet with a couple of family member's phone numbers on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've memorized landline and cell numbers for two family members and one family friend. Phone numbers aren't all that difficult to memorize, though some repetition helps. (This was easier to do naturally back in the landline days.)

Try printing out a list of your most frequent contacts and posting it on the fridge. When you call one of them from your home, dial the number into your phone instead of selecting them from contacts/recents/favorites.

Bonus: you can call them in situations where you get cell reception but no data, or where the only phone made available to you is a land line (pay phone, hospital, police station.)

I also recommend having your kids memorize the numbers for you and your spouse, their grandparents, and at least one trusted family friend - in case they ever get separated from the adults who are supposed to be responsible for them.</comment>


How the quantum search algorithm works - <AUTHOR> https://quantum.country/search/ <comment><USER2> I organized a quantum computing seminar back in school and two resources I thought were excellent

* [https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/f16quantum.html](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/f16quantum.html)

* [https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computing-since-Democritus-Aa...](https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computing-since-Democritus-Aaronson/dp/0521199565/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=quantum+computing&qid=1555525833&s=gateway&sr=8-4)

This reference also looks solid and I'm looking forward to reading it in more depth.

</comment><comment><USER3> > When I first heard about the quantum search algorithm I thought it > [O(sqrt(N)) run time] sounded impossible. I just couldn't imagine any way it > could be true.

It's curious to hear this from Nielsen himself. Personally, learning about Grover's algorithm was when I realised why "if you're not surprised by quantum mechanics, you cannot have understood a thing" (attributed to Bohr, I think).

<comment><USER4> What is a quantum computer? [https://outline.com/9SVe9h](https://outline.com/9SVe9h)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For me, the usage of spaced repetition ("a medium which makes memory a choice") built into the essay was more interesting than the content itself. Now we just need a standard for embedding these sorts of question and answer in documents so you can use the spaced repetition software of your choice (or just publish an anki deck for it).

<comment><USER6> Very glad you're enjoying that! While we've explored some of the possibilities in this space in the essays here, it does feel early to standardize: lots we're still excited to explore in purpose-built contexts first. :)

<comment><USER7> I have read "quantum computing for the very curious" and I found it impressive, its a great article and a great way to teach. For your records, here are the few downsides I found :

\- Some questions seem to be of little relevance (I am not interested in memorizing an Einstein quote for life but I have no way of signaling it).

\- The order of the questions is deterministic within a session (I always get some related questions on after the other).

\- I received no email notification when "How the quantum search algorithm works" went out.

<comment><USER6> This is helpful feedback; thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have no background in quantum anything at all, just cs & some undergrad math, and I found this article and the one preceding it extremely accessible.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been working through the preceding article to this today and have found it extremely well written and very accessible for someone with an undergraduate CS/Math degree.

I also, coincidentally, have just started talking with a local company working on quantum computing. Things lined up nicely!

</comment><comment><USER10> This is the best QC intro I've seen so far, even without the space repetition thing. There are some rough edges, but still -- the authors clearly know how to teach.

<comment><USER11> Too bad there are no quantum computers. Who knew Hesse's "Glass Bead Game" would be the most important book I read in physics grad school?

<comment><AUTHOR> I read Hesse in high school, liked Steppenwolf, but found Glass Bead Game quite boring (probably didn't get it, don't remember much about it). Why is it important to you?

<comment><USER11> Because physics has turned into an impotent glass bead game, devoid of experimental result or insight. "quantum information theory" being the latest steaming pile of garbage to replace noodle theory as the favored ego boosting nonsense to appeal to theoretical game players who don't understand how matter works.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Co-founder - <AUTHOR> https://complementors.com/?src=ycomb

<comment><AUTHOR> We invite you to SIGN UP for the BETA! Complementors.com is an open peer-to- peer mentoring platform with smart matching technology which provides mentors and mentees alike with the perfect match to grow or transmit their skills in the most efficient way. With complementors, everyone can be a mentor and a mentee at the same time because everyone has something to share and learn from others</comment>


Am I doing Open Source wrong? - <AUTHOR>

TL;DR: A lot of people contact me saying they'd like to help out with my Open Source project, but don't actually <i>do</i> anything. Can I fix this? When employers get an applicant who claims they worked on an Open Source project, does the employer actually verify this activity?
I have a small, niche Open Source project. Unnamed to protect the guilty :) It doesn't have a lot of followers but there is international interest.
My dilemma is I have received requests to become a "member" and "help out" since the beginning. But when I email back, saying "great! here are some bugs or areas you might help out with!", 99% of the time I get no further response. <p>For Open Source, my understanding has always been to work on a project, you must:
1. Dig in yourself,
2. Find something to fix or create,
3. Create a patch or set of files, 4. Submit it to the project moderators for approval, 5. Be invited to "join" based on your success in steps 1-4.
Have the "rules" changed? I explain to the requestors that I won't give "member" access right away: they have to write some code or make some other contribution, submit it for approval, and I'll consider letting them join. After that ... nothing.
Can I fix this? Am I doing this wrong? Is this exactly what I can expect?
I see other Open Source projects explicitly spell out the above join process. Do other projects have a better application/contribution ratio?
Related question: I've seen here on Hacker News that employers suggest candidates include pointers to Open Source projects they've done. Do employers actually _look_ at whether the candidate has actually _done_ anything?
I look at the profile of the people who contact me and most of the time they've done nothing even if
they are a member of an Open Source project. <comment><USER2> I've been a project maintainer for GNU for years. Most of the people who wrote to me expressing interest in helping never actually did anything.

But on the other hand, quite a few people just submitted helpful patches out of the blue and then disappeared, never to be heard from again.</comment>


Indian ISP's Block Pastebin and GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://secureall.org/news/blog/indian-isps-block-free-paste-website-pastebin-git-hosting-repository-github/

<comment><AUTHOR> On my ISP, BSNL, I can access them over https. However for my friends', it's not working at all. For some changing DNS to Google or OpenDNS fixes the issue, but not for everyone.

But why GitHub :-( Earlier Pastebin was once banned saying it was used to share links to torrents of movies. Now some idiot might have thought even GitHub is also same as Pastebin. This is just my speculation.

<comment><USER2> #PK effect ? O_o</comment></comment>


TSA can't identify DC - <AUTHOR> http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/orlando-tsa-agents-getting-geography-refresher/ngfmH/

<comment><USER2> We don't pay enough to get smart, educated people into the job. All we can hope for is basic competence and seriousness about the job. [http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/TSA-Transportation- Security-...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/TSA-Transportation-Security- Administration-Salaries-E41347.htm)</comment>


A List of Congressmen Who Voted For and Against the Amash Amendment - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/24/a-list-of-congressmen-who-voted-for-against-the-amendment-to-stop-nsa-spying/

<comment><USER2> As far as I can see there isn't a pattern in industry or funding company here. It may be the pressure is so widespread it doesn't emerge in a noticeable way or, more likely, it could be from inside the government.</comment>


The crowd-sourced, social media swarm that is betting Tesla will crash and burn - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-short-sellers-musk-20190408-story.html <comment><USER2> From the NYT article linked in this:

> In 2018, Tesla said, it delivered 245,000 cars, mostly in the United States. > The research firm IHS Markit, which tracks state motor-vehicle data, counted > registrations of 164,000 new Teslas nationwide.

That's a pretty interesting and potentially damning finding. I don't see why anyone would buy an expensive car from Tesla and then fail to register it. It's possible that IHS is just missing legitimately registered cars, but given the long list of exaggerated or just plain false claims made by Musk and Tesla it doesn't seem impossible that they are exaggerating their metric for number of cars delivered.

<comment><USER3> Hmmm... I don't see any reason why Tesla would lie about their delivery numbers though. Halon's Razor would argue that Tesla's grossly accelerated deliveries in Q4 (end-of-the-year) is leading to errors in IHS Markit's numbers.

Overall, Tesla clearly has a demand-problem demonstrated by Q1 numbers (30% drop in deliveries, even as the company cut prices worldwide and expanded to China + Europe deliveries). But I don't see any reason to distrust the numbers Tesla is giving out.

<comment><USER4> Delivering to resellers or dealers lots may count. Their accounting is known to be... creative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know short sellers claim they improve price discovery and market efficiency by seeking out negativity, but in the case of Tesla where Elon has pushed electric vehicles forward 5-10 years, having millionaires like Josh Wolfe sitting on Twitter day and night nitpicking seems really Petty and pointless.

<comment><USER6> If the worst of what short sellers believe about Elon Musk & Tesla turns out to be true, the resulting backlash may set electric vehicles _back_ many years instead.

At any rate, large individual EVs with zippy 0-60 times are a piss-poor solution to the problem of climate change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The man says he works for a short seller who goes by the Twitter handle > Latrilife. In return for scouting out and monitoring Tesla delivery centers > and storage sites around L.A., he gets $20 an hour.

20 bucks an hour is not bad money for just a few photos

</comment><comment><USER8> > Of its 173 million shares, about 17% are held by short sellers.

Can someone explain to me what this means? that a share is held by a short seller?

<comment><USER3> A short seller borrows their shares from someone, and sells them to someone else. In effect, a short-seller inverts the process: they SELL... THEN they Buy at a later date.

In essence: a short-seller is betting that the price will drop in the future. The practice is controversial with TSLA shareholders because Elon Musk constantly hates on the practice, but its not really considered a bad thing by the greater investing community.

Short-sellers lose if the stock price goes up, or if dividends are distributed. In effect: short-sellers can ONLY make money if the company money in the long run.

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

Long-holders (typical shareholders) win from short-sellers, because short- sellers provide more shares for the company without actually diluting the overall stock.

Lets say 1-million shares exist, but 17% of them are held by short sellers. That means the company has 1,170,000 shares in circulation (+17%), allowing more long-holders to benefit in case the share price goes up.

Furthermore, the long-holder that is loaning their shares to the short-seller benefits: because when you loan your shares out, the short-seller pays you an interest rate.

This is the classic "bulls vs bears" situation. If the stock price drops in the long term, short-sellers win. If the price increases in the long term, then long-holders win.

<comment><USER9> I'm familiar with short-selling, but not the phrasing there. As you note, the point of short selling is that you borrow the stock ... then sell it. So short-sellers shouldn't ever be "holding" the shares to begin with, except very briefly.

What I think it means is that the value of the short positions is 17% of Tesla's market cap?

<comment><USER3> Ah, I see.

The article's wording is definitely imprecise. I agree with you there. Here's my interpretation: The share is held by a lender, who has sold the share to a short-seller. In effect, 17% of the shares are "double-counted".

If there are 1,000,000 total shares, but 17% short-interest, then there would be 1,170,000 shares in circulation. It seems clear to me that the article is talking about short-interest (but is using somewhat imprecise words at that).

So its not so much that the share is being "held by a short-seller", but the share is "double-counted because of a short seller". It probably would have been better if the article more precisely said "17% short interest", which is probably the precise and technical wording for this situation.

<comment><USER9> Ah, okay. Or "17% of shares are out on loan to some short-seller".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good books on Hardware Startups? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Here's one for fiction: The Soul of a New Machine dives heavily into the production of a computer by team of engineers in the 1980s. The book doesn't deal with a startup but a large company.</comment>


Lightning Memory-Mapped Database (LMDB) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Memory-Mapped_Database <comment><AUTHOR> I think more developers should learn about LMDB. When people think about embedded databases they usually think about SQLite, and during the last year I've seen many posts about it, yet I never see anyone even mention LMDB, which seems like a shame considering how powerful it can be for certain use-cases.

I've linked to the Wikipedia article because it has the most useful information for a first encounter with the technology within a single page.

In comparison, the official page [0] has rather janky styles and a very enterprise-y design, which I think might turn off some people from giving it a fair chance. With that said, the technical information page [1] actually has a lot of good links including a list of some of the big projects using LMDB and a list of bindings for all major programming languages.

There's also their documentation page [2], although it looks like it hasn't been updated since 2015. For anyone interested in trying it out, you'll want to read through their Getting Started [3] page. Many of the binding also include great docs, which might be a viable alternative for someone that's not as comfortable or experienced with C.

Many of their blog posts [4] are worth reading if you're interested in its design and the different tradeoffs made.

[0] [https://symas.com/lmdb/](https://symas.com/lmdb/)

[1] [https://symas.com/lmdb/technical/](https://symas.com/lmdb/technical/)

[2] [http://www.lmdb.tech/doc/](http://www.lmdb.tech/doc/)

[3] [http://www.lmdb.tech/doc/starting.html](http://www.lmdb.tech/doc/starting.html)

[4] [https://symas.com/category/lmdb/](https://symas.com/category/lmdb/)

<comment><USER2> Hey, thanks for your interest. I gotta say, I hate the enterprisey page too. But, enterprises buy the support contracts that put food on my table, so I finally had to relent on that. (The original page, which was my handwritten HTML, is still at [http://www.lmdb.tech/oldindex.html](http://www.lmdb.tech/oldindex.html) but I'm no longer updating it. My updates just go to symas.com/lmdb/technical now.)

The doc page hasn't really needed any updates since the API has been stable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Best random key search performance I've ever seen.</comment>


Suicide rising across the US - <AUTHOR> https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/suicide/ <comment><USER2> Feels awkward posting this but I'll leave it here just in case:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

<comment><USER3> And for those who prefer written communication, there's Crisis Text Line[1]: Text 741741 (US only)

Disclaimer: I'm a volunteer.

[1] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/r-u](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/r-u)

<comment><USER4> Oh man I'm so happy that exists. As a teen I absolutely would not call and talk with a stranger. Found help online. Would have loved to text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The accelerationism of the world is really taking it's toll. I feel like the political and economical system is, idk, a result of over-application of certain tenets that might have been justified in the past but are increasingly less valid but certain forces are clinging to them because these tenets are all they have.

It's not just the US, the world feels like such a blur. Very important and fucked up things are happening multiple times daily. Things that don't affect me but a lot of times actually really do. Some thousand year old struggles seem to be getting kicked into the internet age and as a result the whole world is getting involved in local conflicts and is forced to take sides.

I legit feel as if some sort of new conception of government, nations, states, rights, is really needed. I don't know what but I'm all ears.

<comment><USER6> > the world feels like such a blur

Get off of social media and twitter.

Stop watching/reading the news every day. If you want to keep up with current events, read a politically neutral monthly periodical.

I grew up in the 70's and 80's. Every generation looks back on its youth as "the good old days" but things really were much less stressful then and the main difference I see is that you were not connected to a firehose of real- time updates on everything.

<comment><USER7> The dilemma is that leaving social media is increasingly tantamount to leaving society, which is the basis for what remains of politics. On the other hand, the "politics" that occurs on social media is increasingly nothing other than a popularity contest. It seems hopeless.

<comment><USER8> > The dilemma is that leaving social media is increasingly tantamount to > leaving society

Aside from my debilitating addiction to HN, I don't use social media. I have a job, family, large circle of friends, and all the usual attachments to society. I vote and love to debate politics with pretty much anyone interested. How exactly would my attachment to society be improved by more social media? If HN went away tomorrow, would I no longer be a part of society?

I have found fruitful, enjoyable political discussion and social media to be more or less incompatible. Twitter and Facebook work great for the purpose of "rallying the base." Tweeting or sharing the latest polemic showing all your friends how truly liberal or conservative you are doesn't do much to bring in converts. But the political bases in the US are quickly approaching max rallied-ness. From here on out is the actually difficult tasks of changing hearts and minds, and that doesn't happen on social media.

If you care about politics, the further you get from social media the better.

<comment><USER9> I dunno about this. I consider HN social media (we are socializing via media of sorts), but even on Facebook, when I post something that I believe validates my perspective, my social graph includes intellectually honest people who chime in with thoughtful counters and we're allowed to have thoughtful dialogues, and have benefited from their influence (as well as those types of discussions in meatspace as well). I've also had less enjoyable discussions in both areas. When I see relatives post things that are flagrantly one-sided or even untrue, I try to engage respectfully and try to offer another take. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

But I think increasing communication is one of the side effects, and overall, generally a good thing. As I like to repeat often, clarity is more important than agreement, and having more ways to connect with people gives alot more clarity into who they are, as well as valid counters to my own preconceived notions. Sometimes, others viewpoints don't change my mind overnight, but often they either long-term influence more nuance in my own ideas, or even gird my thoughts to a more defensible position.

And like any social network, virtual or physical, we all tend to have those oddballs in our lives that are really into watching random things online and sharing them with others, and that to me just means more spice to life.

Twitter on the other hand ranges from pointless to toxic when it comes to conversations. It's a broadcast network that by nature narrows positions into extremes, in my experience.

Of course, like my real world relationships, I need to do some amount of curation or a break from certain folks or sometimes the entire system, but overall, it's been a net gain for me socially. YMMV :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not finding any breakdown of suicide rates by age, which would be useful especially comparing to the previous period they measure.

In fact, I'm unable to find which exact baseline period and the "rising" period they refer to. The article only states "from 1999 through 2016" but one of their data sources only started collecting data in 2003, in a limited number of states (16 in 2010, 18 in 2014): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Violent_Death_Reporti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Violent_Death_Reporting_System) . Others like the NIS ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_Cost_and_Utilizatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_Cost_and_Utilization_Project)) started collecting earlier, 1988 in this case, and it's unclear how they aggregated this data together.

I'm aware that best-case approaches to disparate data such as this is often as good as it gets but I'm uncomfortable with how it's being described without being able to see the methodology the analysts used.

<comment><USER11> I agree. I find the CDC suicide statistics very hard to work with.

Here's something from the UK: [https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/whoismostatriskofsuicide/2017-09-07)

In England we have three main tools.

1) Public Health _Fingertips_ : [https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile- group/mental-health/pr...](https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental- health/profile/suicide)

2) The Office for National Statistics: [https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/suicideinenglandandwales)

3) The National Confidential Inquiry into suicide and homicide by people with mental illness: [http://research.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/cmhs/research/centrefor...](http://research.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/cmhs/research/centreforsuicideprevention/nci/reports/2017-report.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Something that doesn't get noted enough in the tech community (and surprised me).

Farming, fishing, and forestry far outweighs other occupational groups in suicide rates for men [1].

When standardized against population, at a rate of 90.5 per 100,000 people [2]; vs the next highest, construction and extraction (52.5).

For comparison, computer and mathematical was at 32.8 for men and 12.5 for women.

[1] CDC, 2012 [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6525a1.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6525a1.htm)

[2] [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6525a1.htm#modalIdS...](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6525a1.htm#modalIdString_CDCTable_1)

<comment><USER13> I've worked in 2 out of those 3 professions. I'm a little surprised they are at the top of the list. Contact with nature on a daily basis is really refreshing. However, economic struggle in these fields is really bad: low wages, price competition from industrial-scale companies, seasonal instability. Still surprising that those are the top 3.

<comment><USER14> Farming and the like have always been tough economically - you have to fork out for equipment and land but the income from the crop varies dramatically - good year and there is a glut and the prices drop, bad year not much crop and so on. I think it may be better to either have corporations do it where no one is hurt so bad if they go bust, or a regulated subsidised market like the EU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Without encouraging or condoning this type of behavior, I really wish people had a chance to conduct an exit interview from life. Only after the decision was solidified and all other methods of outreach had failed.

The data would be remarkable and might save many lives.

World: We're sorry to see you go. Please let us know why you are leaving, and what we could to do make this a better place to live in the future. Thank you for giving us a chance to know you.

<comment><USER16> I have attempted suicide. I am frequently suicidal. I don't hesitate to comment on it in forums. I sometimes blog about it.

Most people genuinely aren't interested in understanding it. If they understood, they might feel compelled to treat other people better and that isn't on their agenda in most cases, basically.

<comment><USER17> I understand it. It's not like the world is a super happy place and everybody is like 'why would you want to leave this place - it's amazing!'.

Everybody has their own experiences. Their life is unique. Telling other people that they should stick around can even be selfish, depending on what they are going through.

However. Living life is a skill, and I believe can you get quite satisfactory skill levels by making hard choices and changing your life for the better until it becomes pretty fine. You may even feel happy. Takes hard work though, and it's very hard to find that energy when you are depressed and your brain is telling you that your problems are unsolvable. But they are not. That's the good news I guess. :)

<comment><USER16> No, you clearly don't really understand it. If you did, you should know that telling a suicidal person "chin up, it's fixable!" is the worst thing you can do. Another big sin is offering me encouragement unsolicited as if I need it when I am not even saying that I am currently suicidal.

Last, I have a genetic disorder. There is no cure for that. Your assumption that anything is fixable if you just try hard enough is monstrously wrong.

The hell of it is, I am getting myself well anyway, for which the entire world would like me to know I am insane, an egomaniac, a teller of tall tales, etc and generally heap abuse on me.

But don't let the facts confuse you. Just carry on with doing things that could push someone over the edge if you did this to them while they were actively feeling suicidal.

<comment><USER10> > "chin up, it's fixable!"

Having been suicidal for a number of years myself and having overcome it, in my case it was fixable. People suggesting that unfortunately may not be familiar with something as agonizing as a genetic disorder, and I'm sorry for what you're going through.

<comment><USER16> I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm looking to put out useful information.

Telling an internet stranger "it's fixable" when you don't know what the problem is tends to go very bad places.

My initial assertion was that, no, most people don't really want to understand because then they might have to be kinder and that isn't usually on their agenda. Given the pile on of down votes and every reply to me being dismissive and argumentative, I stand by that assertion.

Whatever interest I had in trying to do some kind of PSA here has basically died. I think I am done here. I have made my point, though, no, most people won't see that. They are too busy trying to come up with counterarguments proving they aren't somehow part of the problem.

<comment><USER18> This resonates with me. It's very hard to win empathy from those who haven't struggled with suicide. And it's frustrating how many people will confidently offer you advice they've never needed themselves.

Trying to rationalize suicide to someone will almost always lead to more self- alienation, so it's a conversation I avoid almost entirely.

Thanks for being forward. Suicide is nothing to be ashamed of and I believe most of the other comments exemplify the problem. Your message is mostly lost here but I wanted to make a point that you aren't alone.

<comment><USER16> I'm extremely tired today, so I am probably not making my points as eloquently as I would like. Although this is a new account, I've participated on HN nearly 9 years and some folks are well aware of that. I get recognized as also being that other handle by a surprising number of people. I have long addressed controversial issues like suicide. That isn't anything new.

Today is my birthday. I am trying to tongue-in-cheek look upon the down votes as HN's birthday gift to me.;-)

<comment><USER19> Happy birthday! Hope you don't let any downvotes bother you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article avoids pointing out the obvious, but the map makes it clear this rise is predominantly among white Americans.

<comment><USER21> Clustered in the central US states, primarily due to relationship issues.

<comment><USER22> It's not really surprising that middle-aged men who have been raked over the coals in a divorce and left with a hole they'll never get out of, would opt for an end to the pain.

<comment><USER21> Agreed. Divorce is one of the most financially devastating events that can happen in one's life. The longer I'm alive, the longer I recommend to people to never get married. Live together, but keep your finances separate (does not apply in community property states; watch out!).

<comment><USER6> Prenuptial agreements are a thing. Though there's probably some sound thinking behind the point of view that if you aren't willing to get married without a prenup, then you really shouldn't be getting married.

<comment><USER23> Good luck actually getting that pre-nup enforced in court!

Just don't get married, unless you are ready to lose it all if it goes south.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Desperation is on the rise. That map of suicides by state looks like a map of "flyover states" that are probably disproportionately hit by the downturn in manual labor jobs.

<comment><USER25> This. Trade deals like NAFTA totally destabilized (if not disintegrated) industrialized regions of the US. This may not be the only cause of suicide, but it's part of the story for sure. The coasts don't care, they seem to celebrate it. What I think those people are missing is that this disease can continue onward and spread throughout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> If there's ever a reminder to be kind to others and to talk to people who might need help, this is it.

<comment><USER27> Kindness doesn't solve this problem.

<comment><USER28> Not alone, no. But it doesn't hurt, either.

Suicidal urges often last a very short amount of time (ten minutes or so), and for some percentage of people, a kind word at the right time absolutely does make the difference. It may be a small percentage, but it's worth being kind to all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Young (white) men are completely lost in the US right now. The most exciting thing in the majority of my friends lives right now (23-26 years old) are the current challenges in Fortnite. Everyone is scared of longterm, meaningful relationships and Tinder provides the instant artificial validation to make those long-term relationships seem unnecessary. You're a tryhard if you have serious career aspirations or goals. We go to work during the week to get fucked up on the weekends. The common political/social narrative is that you're "the problem". If you're college educated, you're most likely drowning in debt. Most guys I know actively express feeling stuck in a rut or display behavior that strongly suggests it. This report doesn't surprise me at all.

Love him or hate him, agree with him or disagree with him, this is why Jordan Peterson rose to fame so quickly. Guys my age in this country are almost completely aimless and without meaningful purpose. This report doesn't surprise me at all...

<comment><USER30> >Young (white) men are completely lost in the US right now.

None of the anxiety or malaise you describe in your comment exclusively applies to white people or men, so the parenthetical seems irrelevant.

<comment><USER29> Suicide rates for non-Hispanic white Americans are the highest. Clearly, race isn't irrelevant.

> By race/ethnicity, non-Hispanic whites and American Indian/Alaska Natives > had the highest rates of suicide, with rates for both groups showing notable > increases across periods [1999-2007, 2008-2015] (from 14.9 to 18.1 and from > 15.8 to 20.0, respectively). Rates among non-Hispanic blacks and > Asian/Pacific Islanders and among Hispanics were much lower and showed > comparatively modest increases across periods.

From [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6610a2.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6610a2.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What are they doing right in Nevada?

<comment><USER32> The graph is only showing changes in suicide rates. Perhaps Nevada's was already high?

<comment><USER33> I dug up some stats and Nevada is pretty high on the list.

<comment><USER31> The hypothesis being that there is some upper limit to suicide rate that a society will tend to approach asymptotically but never reach?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Reducing firearm ownership would reduce suicides: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/wonkblog/su...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/wonkblog/suicide- rates/)

The common response is that "people will just find another way" but that's not supported by evidence.

>"Anything that builds in delay is working in your favor because that fever- pitch time when you're actually willing to swallow the poison or pull the trigger is often fairly narrow," said Cathy Barber, who directs a suicide- reduction campaign at the Harvard School of Public Health.

<comment><USER35> I am a psychologist and to be honest, I think focusing on methods is well- intended but misguided because it leaves the pain but takes away the mechanism.

I'm not convinced that even eliminating firearms completely would reduce suicide rates as much as some think because people would find another means. Even the linked piece states "nobody knows what would happen if firearm availability in the US resembled levels of other developed countries." In countries where firearms aren't as available, other methods are more prevalent. I also think there's a lot of differences between the US and other developed countries along a lot of dimensions other than firearm use.

Even if it did reduce suicides, though, what does that leave people with? It's akin to saying "we're going to take away this only out for your pain without addressing your problems."

Sure, keeping them alive long enough might allow you to intervene and reduce their pain, but the fact that they are driven to suicide to begin with suggests something failed earlier along the chain.

What we want are people who don't feel driven to suicide, not people who are unable to commit suicide.

<comment><USER11> > I am a psychologist and to be honest, I think focusing on methods is well- > intended but misguided because it leaves the pain but takes away the > mechanism.

I work in suicide prevention in a country that has seen decreasing rates of suicide at a time when the government has been defunding mental health care.

Reducing access to means and methods of suicide is the most important thing we can do to stop people killing themselves.

Barriers on bridges and multi-storey carparsk _save lives_. Smaller pack sizes of paracetamol prevents death. Gun control would absolutely save lives.

We've had a wide range of natural experiments for this. Two notable examples are when the UK changed the domestic gas supply from coal gas to natural gas; and when the UK introduced laws for catalytic converters. Two very common methods went, and rates declined for some years after.

Of course you need the bio-psycho-social support too, but method removal is crucial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's interesting they didn't mention the high rates amongst veterans.

According to Wikipedia ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_veteran...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_veteran_suicide)), in 2012 there were 6,500 which seems like enough to get a slice in a pie chart.

</comment><comment><USER37> Relevant recent SSC post: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/31/in-search-of- missing-us...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/31/in-search-of-missing-us- suicides/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Just an interesting observation: People with known mental health conditions are twice as likely to poison themselves in a suicide than those without known mental health conditions.

<comment><USER39> Firearms are more popular with men and poison is more popular with women. (edit: source [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide#Differing_methods_by_gender)) The charts in the article show that women who commit suicide are more likely to have a known mental health condition than men, so that could explain the correlation.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Fastflux – Functional reactive state management for React - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rvikmanis/fastflux <comment><USER2> As someone who makes heavy use of redux-rx[1], this looks fantastic. While using Redux, one of the greatest productivity gains I encountered was moving more parts of my application to frp. In particular, I've found that reflecting portions of my apps state in the URL was challenging with vanilla redux + redux-router, as I had many actions that relied upon componentWillMount and componentWillUpdate watching the url for changes.

Fastflux looks like a step in the right direction towards the promised land of of a functional-oriented UI written with javascript.

1: [https://github.com/acdlite/redux-rx](https://github.com/acdlite/redux-rx)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

As someone with FRP experience, what do you think is the minumum viable set of functional transformers (like map, filter etc.) that should be implemented for a library like this?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, feedback welcome. And I'll try to anwser any questions you may have.

For instance: "Do we need yet another flux library?"

Well, why not? The ecosystem is still evolving. By bringing in more ideas and refined approaches, we may well reach equilibrium sooner.

<comment><USER3> I'm going to ask the obvious one: What's your "sales pitch" compared to Redux?

<comment><AUTHOR> * A single store is not enough.

But seriously, Fastflux just continues further in the logical direction established by Redux (and arguably React itself) -- a more reactive approach to software development.

Fastflux does this by using an implementation of the Observable FRP primitive as a superclass for stores and actions.

Also reduction of boilerplate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A support channel is now online at #fastflux on Freenode IRC.</comment>


Compile like it's 1992 - <AUTHOR> http://fabiensanglard.net/Compile_Like_Its_1992/ <comment><USER2> Have to hand it out to Fabien, he's not just an amazing developer with baffling skills to understand code and graphical routines, his dedication to understanding old games of yore is second to none.

Nice job, Fabien!

<comment><USER3> Thanks for those kind words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Its nice that they made it public domain. There are 1000 more games from that era whose code will simply dissapear despite being simply bits and bytes that may be perfectly preserved for ever.

<comment><USER5> Only the engine is open, though, not the data files. EDIT: And it's not "public domain" either. Look at the license.doc in the github repository, there are tons of restrictions as to what you can do with the code. [https://github.com/id-Software/wolf3d](https://github.com/id-Software/wolf3d)

<comment><USER6> It is like when Microsoft released the source code for MS-DOS 2.0 and MS-Word 1.1C not open sourced but some kind of commercial license that limits use and derivatives.

It kind of reminds me of that old Borland Museum that had the old Turbo languages for free download. [http://edn.embarcadero.com/museum](http://edn.embarcadero.com/museum)

Sadly they stopped releasing old versions in 2005. I had hoped there to be a Delphi 1.0 release. I actually got Delphi 1.0 on a magazine CD-ROM from some UK magazine I bought, and then forgot where I placed it. I used to program in Delphi 1.0 and 2.0 I still got my 2.0 book and how to make code Y2K compatible in it.

I got old Visual BASIC versions as well.

It seems this is the Wolf3D source code without the data files so you have to use the shareware version of Wolf3D or Spear or buy the commercial versions.

It is written for 16 bit code for DOS, so converting it to 32 bits won't work. They had to use a lot of tricks for 386 and under machines just to get it to work in 3D mode. 486+ machines run it better but at a certain level it does not scale very well.

Basically it was a f __*-it by ID, just release the code for the LULZ, throw on a commercial license to limit use, and then see what happens to it.

<comment><USER7> This is so different from the gpl of before. Did id only do the gpl before because of John Carmack?

<comment><USER8> This was their first source release, before the GPL was widely known, so that's why they used this specific license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In a similar vein, here is Lua 5.2 being compiled with Turbo C 1.0 (impressive that software written in 2013 compiles unmodified on a 1990 compiler!)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jvLY5pUwic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jvLY5pUwic)

<comment><USER10> Thats what happens when you used a language which has an ISO or similar standard.

<comment><USER11> Sure, but you also have to stick to the older standards. This wouldn't work if Lua were using any of the new features of C99.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Borland 3.1 also came as a graphical IDE. For a while Borland was ahead of Microsoft's character-based Programmer's Workbench. Borland had a great IDE.

My company stuck with Borland until 4.5. We parted ways when the compiler generated code that GPF'ed when calling 'new' in a DLL, or declared some global variables undefined that had successfully compiled a few modules earlier. Also, Borland couldn't step through 32-bit code in debug mode. Visual Studio 6 could.

</comment><comment><USER13> I remember getting the Borland C compiler as a ten or eleven year old and thinking, twenty megabytes! What in the world could they need twenty megabytes for? That was like, my entire hard drive.

N.B. you have a typo

        Z:/> mount c ~/systen/c

<comment><USER14> Honestly, I still think that 12MB for a system like Borland C is overkill.

<comment><USER15>
      00:18 shephard-osx2:bin shephard$ ls -lh /usr/bin/clang
      -rwxr-xr-x  1 root  admin    35M Jul 15 16:27 /usr/bin/clang

<comment><USER16>
        $ ls -lh ~/p9/386/bin/6c
        -rwxr-xr-x  1 fn  staff   326K May  6  2011 /Users/fn/p9/386/bin/6c
        $

\-- Plan 9's C compiler for the Intel 386 platform. It doesn't use shared libraries, either.

The linker is 141KB, and assembler (6a) is 123KB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone else find it sorta ironically odd that one of the masterminds behind this great stuff is now a .... _gasp_ Facebook ... employee?? my heart kinda aches.

<comment><USER18> No. Why would it be ironic? Facebook has a huge amount of engineering talent.

<comment><USER17> An Aug 2nd tweet from John Carmack started "Onboarding at Facebook went well...". My thought was "nobody onboards that guy?!?! he onboards YOU!!" I just hope talent like John Carmack can still spread their wings in that environment and do the things that got them to that point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice trip down memory lane (and a good counter-example to those who claim that web development today is soooo much more complicated and tedious than desktop development was back in the day...).

<comment><USER20> I am yet to find CSS/HTML/JavaScript tooling as easy as using Turbo Vision, Object Windows Library or Visual Components Library.

<comment><USER19> Familiarity?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Will it build with a modern compiler?

<comment><USER3> Nope, the code is mean to run in Real-Mode, a mode where registers are 16 bits and memory is severely segmented.

No to mention the direct access to the VGA which modern Operating System forbid.

<comment><USER22> Well, that's true but it could still technically "build", I suppose, what you describe are runtime issues, not build issues. I assume there are other reasons that prevent building with modern compilers?

I would assume that the first problem would be to find a modern compiler that could target 16bit DOS in the first place...

<comment><USER23> Looks like the code has inline x86 assembly in the Borland format, so that would probably need to be converted for a different C compiler. There are likely to be other, not so obvious dependencies on compiler-specific features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> nostalgic :'-(</comment>


Editable static HTML docs inside an AWS S3 bucket - <AUTHOR> http://public.docs.xstatic.site/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> In case of DNS problems (as reported by reddit), the underlying bucket URL is: [http://public.docs.xstatic.site.s3-website-us- west-1.amazona...](http://public.docs.xstatic.site.s3-website-us- west-1.amazonaws.com/index.html)</comment>


RescueTime Gets a Shiny New Logo (Less red, still a plus) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rescuetime.com/2008/08/12/rescuetime-gets-a-shiny-new-logo/

<comment><USER2> I'm sure Swatch will eventually get around to sending a letter too. I had a Swatch watch with a face that looked almost exactly like this logo (with black hands even), except that the background was red instead of transparent. (Photo: [http://www.switzerwatch.com/product_info.php?products_id=138...](http://www.switzerwatch.com/product_info.php?products_id=138&language=en))

I think that the logo would look better without the 3D effect--especially in the favicon and in the smaller version of the icon that is on the homepage. The gray shading makes the logo look dirty when the logo is on a white background (or printed on letterhead); when it is on a gray background (like the favicon often is), it is hard to make out.

Logo design is hard.

<comment><USER3> Except that watch looks more like a stylised version of the Swiss flag - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flag_of_Switzerland.svg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I actually like the new logo better. Cheers to Red Cross for acting like real people over this and not a bunch of Suits.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hmm, I signed up for rescuetime a long time ago, and I stopped using it, and they never send me any updates. Don't they love me anymore?

Rescuetime has improved since I last used it, but I never thought to check back. It would have been nice if they emailed me when they update the site.

</comment><comment><USER6> I like the old one more...the old one is stronger and more memorable. Maybe too strong for some people. don't know.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> what a brave corporate logo!

</comment><comment><USER7> new logo? how does this relate to hacker news?

<comment><USER8> Because of the reason for the change.</comment></comment>


Need testers/feedback – Global clock to eliminate time zone calculations forever - <AUTHOR> https://www.thehtime.com <comment><USER2> Anytime someone starts talking about creating a solution to the time zone problem, I will invite them to ensure they've at least thought about the problems raised at:

[https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods- program...](https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-time) [http://www.creativedeletion.com/2015/01/28/falsehoods- progra...](http://www.creativedeletion.com/2015/01/28/falsehoods-programmers- date-time-zones.html) [https://puzzling.org/technology/computer- programming/2012/06...](https://puzzling.org/technology/computer- programming/2012/06/more-falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time/)

And so on.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm working on a global clock that makes time difference calculations obsolete. Why? Well, it all began a few years ago when I felt the frustrations that came with scheduling calls across different time zones. That experience has been and still is messy!

The solution here is a new clock concept utilizing a new UTC, a UTC that rotates with you according to you location on Earth. So, the clock knows where you are and adjusts itself for you. This unifies the reading of time everywhere at any given moment. Thus, time zone calculations can be eliminated.

There are 3 main features implemented with the clock: 1- Intersect: to find the best time for online calls based on office hours between different time zones 2- Range: to help users define and share their global work hours or availability 3- Location: to see the clock in different locations so to eliminate the calculation of what 9am in San Francisco would be in your local time

Other solutions out there couldn't help me, unfortunately. Almost all of them work by stacking different times zone together, which doesn't really solve the problem from the roots. Calculations are still needed in many use cases, which makes no sense. There should be one language of time everywhere, a global time. It's there and is called UTC, but the problem is that it's not integrated in our daily life. This clock does that.

The idea of the clock is to have a unified time zone that works for all locations on earth by using the same time system we all know (24 hours, 60 minutes, 60 seconds) and adding on top of it a rotating UTC layer as the global time. This layer is presented in alphabet. The reason for that is to distinguish the local time in numbers form the global one in letters.

If you like to know more details, check this 8-min-read about hTime [https://medium.com/adventures-in-consumer- technology/introdu...](https://medium.com/adventures-in-consumer- technology/introducing-solutions-to-solve-the-mess-of-time-zones-cdf44a7ee4ae)

I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback, thanks!</comment>


Trusty URIs: Verifiable, Immutable, and Permanent Digital Artifacts [pdf] - dj-wonk http://2014.eswc-conferences.org/sites/default/files/papers/paper_106.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> First off, let me say that I'm always happy to see people thinking about the robustness of scientific data. It's a thing we do not do well at all, at present, and should be much more urgent, given its importance to the enterprise. However, this work has a number of small problems and mostly seems like rehashing (no pun intended) well-trodden ground.

Like so many similar works, this fails to cite the magnet: URI scheme (see, for starters, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_URI_scheme](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_URI_scheme)) of which trusty URLs and the cited niURI scheme both seem to be small subsets. Introduced in 2002, these already defined a way of stably identifying an immutable object and providing one (or more!) suggestions for retrieval, which the present paper calls "authorities" but are likely better viewed as caches; one cache may be authoritative, but that's optional. The "modules" defined are probably better encoded as MIME types (and could be integrated into a magnet URI as "x.mime=.../..." attributes; the draft standard does not have a field for MIME type, sadly), rather than introducing yet another namespace for describing document types.

Speaking of caches, the paper's assertion that "any artifact that is available on the web for a sufficiently long time will remain available forever" is extremely worrying; the search engines of the Internet (other than Internet Archive, perhaps) are not altruistic entities out to serve your data forever. Their caches cannot and must not be depended upon by the scientific community; we must host our own data or pay for its archival, as much as that may be painful. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

The trick for deriving self-reference is analogous to how IP packets carry their own checksum; it's an old trick, dating back to at least RFC 791 (section 3.1, heading Header Checksum; earlier RFCs do not seem to ) but almost surely earlier, and probably merits a citation of something. The use of the same technique for Skolemization is cute, providing a nice workaround for RDF's poor handling of existentials.

The performance numbers are worrying; streaming a search-and-replace pass (to transform out self-references) followed by a SHA256 verification through 177GB of data should not take 29 hours, especially given that the data is already sorted. CheckSortedRdf and CheckLargeRdf both exhibit linear time in figure 3, suggesting that the data being verified is already sorted (which would be consistent with earlier assertions that the existing implementation only generates sorted files); a better comparison would be to show CheckLargeRdf on randomized inputs, as all we see now is the overhead of a pre-processing pass that is, essentially, just verifying the sortedness of input.

<comment><USER2> (disclaimer: I am an author of the paper)

Thanks for your comments. First off: yes, most (perhaps all) of the applied methods are not novel, some of them have been around for a long time. We only claim novelty on how these existing methods are combined to solve the problem of data availability and integrity on the web.

Yes, the magnet URI scheme is highly related, and we probably should have referred to it in one way or another. However, there are crucial features that magnet links do not provide (as far as I know): you cannot generate a hash that represents content on a more abstract level than byte sequences (MIME types by themselves don't solve that problem), and you can also not have self- references. All of the features from our list of requirements are supported by some approaches, but (to our knowledge) no approach supports all of them at the same time.

In terms of search engines caching research data, I agree! We shouldn't trust existing providers too much but build a dedicated decentralized infrastructure for scientific purposes (this is what I am working on now).

I am sure the performance measures can be improved (incremental cryptography might allow us to get rid of sorting altogether). The shape of the curve is however not much affected by the fact whether the statements are already sorted or not (they are not sorted for TransformRdf and TransformLargeRdf!).

I hope this clarifies some things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your response; it does clarify things.

But, I don't think I understand your concern about abstract hashing and how it would need to be something fundamentally new. Both the order normalization and self-reference are simply preprocessing stages on your data, albeit slightly different forms. The sortedness requirement, I think, is captured by MIME type parameters (the "charset=" in "text/html;charset=UTF-8"), as it does not change the fact that the document is an RDF graph. For the placeholder trick, I think you're right and that you'd want something like a "text/rdf+selfref" MIME type to indicate that it is not in fact valid RDF until preprocessing has been performed. All told, your RDF module would be described in MIME as something like "text/rdf+selfref;sorted=".

<comment><USER2> Right, I guess you could define everything into a new MIME type, but I think that would be quite a weird thing to do and wouldn't really be faithful to the idea of MIME types. This MIME type would stand for a type that nobody would be directly using for files, but it would only stand for some internal intermediate representation (I will not be able to convince people using RDF to switch to my new strange format instead of TriG or N-Quads!). And that means that there would be two MIME types involved for a single file: the actual type (such as application/rdf+xml or application/trig) and then the type for normalization and hash calculation (something like "text/rdf+selfref;sorted="). I think this shows that MIME types are not a straightforward solution to the given problem and I think this justifies to introduce this new level and a new scheme for the trusty URI modules (e.g. "RA").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've often thought about this when including eg. style sheets and JavaScript for Bootstrap (or any other highly popular .css and .js file) in HTML: every time I have to get the URL for the file in question. And I have to trust that this URL is reliable, and continues to be reliable.

It would be a lot easier if I could just specify the SHA-256 hash of the file in question, like so:

        <link rel="stylesheet" href_sha256="f0fa7e4b0123ff9618fc51f1e54c0842072605412113a6daaf23758c67952d0c">

instead of the current solution:

        <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/bootswatch/3.0.0/flatly/bootstrap.min.css">

Specifying the hash allows the browser to retrieve this file from the quickest source, whether that be the global cache (maybe I visited some other web page that used the same file), or the browser knows a list of CDNs that have the file, and fetches from the fastest one.

It avoids having to specify the source of the file. As a developer, I really don't care where the file comes from -- I don't particularly want it to be sent from netdna.bootstrapcdn.com, but there's not sane standard to specify otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agitate browser implementers to add support for magnet: URIs and you can do exactly that without needing to add new attributes to HTML. :)

There's a bug for firefox here: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=528148](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=528148)

<comment><USER3> Would certainly be nice to avoid tons of different href_sha256, href_sha512, href_sha3-512 etc. attributes.

But the browser supporting identifying files via hashes is vastly different from it fetching files via BitTorrent.

I think it makes more sense to pursue each separately. Even though magnet URI support will deprecate any existing implementation of hash support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I am the main author of the paper. Happy to discuss and clarify if needed.

<comment><USER4> What happens to other URLs embedded in the document that you link to with trusty URLs (other than self-references?). For example your document could include images, and javascript that could completely the meaning of the document, while keeping the hash of the document the same.

Do you require all URLs contained in the document to be trusty URIs too?

<comment><USER2> No, there can be contained URIs that are not trusty (probably the majority of contained URIs will be of that type). You can verify the entire reference tree as long as you follow trusty links, but of course this cannot go on indefinitely. Furthermore not all resources have the form of what I call a "digital artifact" (e.g. foaf:knows does not stand for a digital artifact), but they reach out to the real world (these URIs might not even return a representation, i.e. they might not be URLs).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dj-wonk I'd be interested in hearing from others about (1) other papers and implementations along these lines; (2) commentary on the approach outlined in the paper.

<comment> dj-wonk "This document describes the CCNx protocol, the transport protocol for a communications architecture called Content-Centric Networking (CCN) built on named data. CCN has no notion of host at its lowest level — a packet "address" names content, not location. The CCNx protocol efficiently delivers named content rather than connecting hosts to other hosts. Every packet of data may be cached at any CCNx router — combined with intrinsic support for multicast or broadcast delivery this leads to a very efficient use of the network when many people are interested in the same content."

from [http://www.ccnx.org/releases/latest/doc/technical/CCNxProtoc...](http://www.ccnx.org/releases/latest/doc/technical/CCNxProtocol.html)

</comment></comment><comment> dj-wonk See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5622209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5622209)</comment>


Building a Chat App with Express, React and Socket.io with GIFs Support - <AUTHOR> https://quantizd.com/build-chat-app-with-express-react-socket-io/ <comment><USER2> React native is one the best chat app. Looking a chat app developer? Here this post are showcasing top chat developers [http://www.trustfirms.com/top- healthcare-software-developmen...](http://www.trustfirms.com/top-healthcare- software-development-companies/) Choose the best chat app developer from this post.</comment>


Ask HN: Hosted customer support (for cheap) - <AUTHOR>

I'm starting to drown in support requests for my site: http://www.obsidianportal.com  I manage it with one other guy, and we get several emails a day with basic requests.  Sometimes both of us answer the same email, other times we dodge it and it falls through the cracks.
Further, we set up a forum a long time ago for people to report bugs / request features.  It was great...until we got popular and the influx of requests overwhelmed us.  Now, we haven't checked in months and the thought of it terrifies me.
So, we're looking at using a tool for this kind of thing, and we'd like something that crowdsources it as much as possible.  I know that sounds lazy, but we want to reserve our time for the stuff only we can do (like database edits) and leave the "I can't figure out how to X" to the crowd.
Any suggestions on tools to use?  We're looking at GetSatisfaction, FogBugz, and TenderApp.  If anyone uses these (or others) and has any very strong positive or negative feelings, I'd love to know.
Thanks, Micah <comment><USER2> We're using Basecamp for this, and I'm happy with it. Basecamp will work better if you have a small number of customers with intense engagement; it's not a good public support site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we have a large, vocal userbase.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why desktop apps are moving to browser but mobile apps to native? - <AUTHOR> This is something I have been wondering fir a while. It looks like on the desktop there is a clear trend of more and more stuff being done in browser instead of native apps . But in the mobile ecosystem everyone are pushing their native apps. Why is this difference?
Is it UX differences? Economical incentive differences? Someone with wested interested pushing things in one or both? Just a fashion thing?
And is this trend sustainable? Or is that going to reverse or are thing going to migrate into either native or browser apps in both ecosystems?
I just do not get my head around why this is happening. <comment><USER2> I've thought about this quite a lot too. I think other people's comments about fragmentation are quite correct. I'd also just add the UX and DX angle. After developing and releasing a few apps in SwiftUI and playing around with Jetpack Compose, to me developing mobile UIs for the web feels much slower in comparison and end result is always lacking and developer tooling is a little all over the place. I know it's not that important to everyone but I do feel that I'm able to produce a much higher quality UI/UX natively and faster than I could with web technologies. I think there is also just a fundamental difference in how we use our computers with a mouse and keyboard vs the way we use our phones, there is a much higher level of fidelity of interactions and subtle gestures on mobile that are quite hard to replicate on the web, it always just feels a bit off. Desktop apps with a lot of input and forms and clicking around suit the web's model much better and I think in that context the web is excellent. Having said all that I think developers should be free to choose how they want to develop and distribute their apps as my opinions aren't shared by everyone, I support opening up more web APIs to make web apps more useful on mobile as there are likely whole classes of apps that would work well there.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's funny how this became the case; Apple pushed Web Apps until they realized that native App Delivery is a profitable revenue stream.

In 2007, Steve Jobs' originally intended "iPhone OS" apps to be only browser based web apps; way before Google uttered the term "Progressive Web Apps."

Apple's early web app SDK didn't win too many fans. As it turns out, users were not impressed with the contrast between the robustness of first party native apps, and the lagging fit, finish, and performance of Web apps in Safari on a 2G device. In 2008, native App Store arrives.

Ever since the App Store debuted with iPhone OS 2, Apple has chose not to implement and champion improvements in mobileSafari that make Web apps work as well as they do on Desktop.

This is strategic, App Store is a lucrative business that gives Apple absolute control over iOS. They heavily promote development for native apps with Swift. They give developers much more to work with in terms of stimulating user engagement and tracking; and users prefer the polished experience of a native app with fewer compromises.

Apple continues to prohibit adding any app with a Web Engine other than WebKit, hindering any further improvement possible with other Web Engines. Imagine someone could deploy an app with a modern web engine that allows a user to have a new web based App Store that bypasses the Apple app review process.

It took Apple forever to half implement Service Workers and other Progressive Web App standards.

Apple doesn't have the same control over what goes on the desktop. It's a fragmented mess.

There's now only two major mobile platforms, but there are PCs with 32-Bit ARM and x86, 64-Bit ARM64 and X64 processors running variations of Windows, Macs, and Unix / Linux operating systems. It's just not economically viable to try and target them all unless it's an app that produces content. Users that produce content usually do so on system resource intensive apps from the likes of AutoDesk and Adobe on Desktop - but this is also changing.

<comment><USER4> Everybody keeps citing how "Steve Jobs wanted web apps" from Walter Isaacson's biography, but I don't think he was all that strongly dead set against them:

He was against them "partly because he felt his team did not have the bandwidth to figure out all the complexities that would be involved in policing third-party app developers."

[https://www.cultofmac.com/125180/steve-jobs-was- originally-d...](https://www.cultofmac.com/125180/steve-jobs-was-originally- dead-set-against-third-party-apps-for-the-iphone/)

In my opinion, I don't think Steve was actually against an App Store by any sort of philosophical ideal. He was working with a much smaller Apple was trying to get a 1.0 product out the door.

The iPhone barely worked long enough to run the demos for the original keynote. I recall reading that it was a miracle that the software got through it without crashing. "Web apps" was the excuse for the App Store not being ready: personally I think it was part of the plan by that point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the developer's point of view, mobile apps give you more ways to retain the user's attention (a home screen icon, pop-up notifications, hooks for actions, etc.).

As a rule, desktop apps are used for producing and mobile apps for consuming. Which means that desktop apps generally don't need to pull the user in as much as mobile apps do - the user will come back on their own because that's where they're doing their work.

For apps used for consuming, the user's attention is everything, so mobile apps are preferred - the user is much less likely to find their way back on their own.

<comment><USER6> > As a rule, desktop apps are used for producing and mobile apps for > consuming.

That's an interesting observation. I am not really interested in web IDE's, but I am happy to use google docs. Though I spend maybe 20 times more time writing code than documents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Web on mobile always feels "off" compared to native. It could be the UI (Material on iOS sticks out like sore thumb), but also the way interactions are handled (back button, scrolling, swipe events, dialogs, ...)

We are in a state where we can make decent mobile-first web apps but they don't hold their own compared to native. It is like an uncanny valley, where a web-app can pretend to be native but it is off-putting to the average user.

<comment><USER8> I always assumed this was intentional to push users to the app so telemetry and tracking work more reliably, and to bypass adblockers. The reddit mobile site is a classic example. No new functionality in years, but it's borderline unusable on a phone these days, and the constant nag screens to install the app betray their intentions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Because there's not an easy way to force monetize (app store) native apps on desktops, since you would have to take something away that was already there.

</comment><comment><USER10> _> Is it UX differences? Economical incentive differences? Someone with wested interested pushing things in one or both? Just a fashion thing?_

The main difference between desktop pc vs mobile is the _availability of programmable APIs to access underlying hardware_. This leads to many apps using native API SDK on smartphones but many desktop software (especially newer software) to be browser apps.

On mobile, the underlying hardware is _changing_ and getting _enhanced_ at a faster rate than the standard browser APIs can keep up. Although smartphone innovation is slowing, the new phones released each year still add new features faster than a standards committee for the Javascript api can adopt. E.g. front & rear cameras instead of just rear cameras, accelerometers, voice recognition, fingerprint id, etc. In short, there's a _delta of functionality_ between the native iOS/Swift/Android/Java SDKs vs the web api with Javascript. If that missing functionality in browser Javascript is important, you'll end up with native apps.

As just one example, look at the web browsers API compatibility list to see if there's a standard unified way to query the accelerometer: [https://caniuse.com/#search=Accelerometer](https://caniuse.com/#search=Accelerometer)

Notice all those red rectangles instead of green ones? Developers notice that Apple Safari doesn't support the web api accelerometer. That's one example of pushing developers towards native iOS API+Swift instead of web Safari+Javascript. Another difference between mobile native vs web is push notification from apps.

On desktop, the pc hardware has _matured and is more stable_. The motivations for choosing native would still be accessing hardware specific advantages but these become more advanced use cases for "power users". E.g. creating arrays in RAM larger than 4GB in size, accessing GPU, use latest cpu instruction sets, etc. E.g. a banking app that let's customers check balances and move money around doesn't need any advanced hardware access and can be written with Javascript for web browsers. However, CPU and RAM intensive software like CAD modeling or After Effects video rendering will be written in C++. The lower resource apps like banking are more common on pc than Autodesk and Adobe. Widespread adoption of WASM would eventually bring more cpu intensive desktop apps to the browser but the gap will remain for many years. On the desktop, there's also a delta of functionality between web browser and native but it's _less important for common use cases_ so browser apps will suffice.

</comment><comment><USER11> Desktop: native to web

\- finally possible to have big apps in the browser

\- for easy cross-platform

\- can actually be used in hybrid apps, so cross platform includes mobile browses and apps (more on that see below)

\- good for SaaS pricing

\- bonus: sync across devices

Mobile: web to native

\- notifications

\- icon on home screen

\- sensors

\- performance (a really snappy UI is hard in any browser)

\- easy payment and subscriptions

\- discovery through the app-store

\- integration (share button, storage)

\- Actually you might see hybrids without knowing: menu and extra functionality natively, actual main-view is just a browser. Feasible since maybe 5 years, before apps where big because they had to bundle the browser. (twitter, insta, uber etc: [https://www.excellentwebworld.com/hybrid-app- examples/](https://www.excellentwebworld.com/hybrid-app-examples/) )

\- and more meta: Apple doesn't want web-apps to become powerful because they can't get their 30% cut from them. (google is a bit more progressive: [https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/your- first-p...](https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/your-first- pwapp/#0) )

</comment><comment><USER12> Theres too much fragmentation with desktops and desktop like environments, Mac, Windows, Linux, Ipad.

It's quite hard to make native apps for all these, previously you would just go for Windows. So easier to make a web app targeting them all.

For iOS and Android there's less fragmentation so you can either go react native, a webkit type app and the most costly option: native for each.

<comment><USER13> Desktop is dominanted by a single OS. there is still duopoly at least in America on the mobile side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Desktop apps are moving to browser mainly because most software is becoming SaaS which is easier to enforce on browser. Also websites are much easier and quicker to push updates to, most people won't bother updating their native desktop apps. Maybe the mobile market is not as business software oriented.

</comment><comment><USER15> I may be off the mark but my immediate gut reaction to this question is that distribution/discovery is partly why. On desktop, web apps are more easily distributed, especially back in the Windows era. Downloading and installing a windows program was a lot of effort to casual users. But you send someone a link, or they click around the web, and they're in the web app immediately. On mobile, the app/play store makes distribution and discovery arguably even easier. Similarly after that, the macOS app store appears to drive a resurgence in desktop apps (for the Mac at least).

</comment><comment><USER16> It's a combination of numbers and technology.

Numbers: Android and iOS each have over a billion users, so it makes more sense to make dedicated apps for those platforms. Desktop platforms are much smaller, so it makes less sense to dedicate the resources.

Technology: Chromium is available on desktop platforms, which allows you to easily make cross-platform apps. Chromium is not available on iOS, because Apple has enforced a WebKit monopoly. There's not a great cross-platform app technology that covers iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac, otherwise developers would probably go for that.

</comment><comment><USER17> One thing that may influence it is the readily available tooling for web developers to easily build cross platform apps with web tech. This technology exists on the desktop too, but I feel like it's not as well recognized. You can build your frontend in reactjs and your mobile app in react native and share a lot of code between the too. I can't think of another option that works together quite so well.

</comment><comment><USER6> Desktop apps to browser makes sense as it's more platform independent and you can access them from different machines. You don't need to worry about saving your data and carryin it around on a disk.

(IDE's are one thing that I don't think are ready for the browser yet, maybe I haven't tried a decent one though).

Mobile native apps seem to be a bit smoother than web apps.

<comment><USER18> [https://github.com/cdr/code-server](https://github.com/cdr/code-server) is an interesting way of running VSCode in the browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Mobile apps can track users much more easily. Especially on Android. Web apps are inside the browser, on small screens.

Desktop apps are a bit too much sometimes. Users don't install apps easily. You have to download from some random store or Github, install the exe, configure it, etc.

Just make a website. Runs on every browser on every OS.

</comment><comment><USER20> Command-line programs should also be considered. So can various types of VMs (of which HTML might be considered one of the most complicated, but certainly not the only one available). Also, telnet and SSH should strongly be considered, too.

</comment><comment><USER21> among reasons other have pointed to I'd also argue that the desktop is simply becoming a niche platform. A lot of companies built for mobile first because it's the primary end-user platform, and web tech works everywhere, while a standalone desktop platform might not be worth it depending on the product.

</comment><comment><USER22> mobile phones now come in varied sizes, screen resolutions and many capabilities. and app has to look native and feel responsive so simple web views don't work well anymore.

camera,bluetooth,qrcode scanner, fingerprint/face id for authentication, don't have good equivalent api in web standards.

<comment><USER7> SSO is also a big turnoff for me.

When I have Facebook or Google already on my phone, I hate it when mobile web- apps open a web-view and make me login to those providers again to use SSO (which kind of defeats the point)</comment></comment>


Pittsburgh is better for tech workers than Silicon Valley? - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/01/23/pittsburgh-is-better-for-tech-workers-than-silicon-valley/ <comment><AUTHOR> I think this is the actual data: [https://wallethub.com/edu/best-cities-for- jobs/2173/](https://wallethub.com/edu/best-cities-for-jobs/2173/)

where Pittsburgh is 13 and San Jose is 15. According to their findings.

Others in the "top 10" include Scottsdale and Tempe AZ, Austin TX, Boise ID, Boston, Fremont CA, San Francisco, and Portland Maine. Seattle is at 21.</comment>


Show HN: New web scraping tool driven by sample - <AUTHOR> http://thewebminer.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> demo tab from first page video is now called tools and you can find it here [http://thewebminer.com/get-by-sample](http://thewebminer.com/get-by-sample)</comment>


Nginx gains support for WebSockets - <AUTHOR> http://thechangelog.com/nginx-gains-support-for-websockets/

<comment><USER2> I created live feed for our site using socket.io just today and was thinking whether to use it without WebSockets or install another proxy in front of nginx. So this 1.3.13 release is quite a surprising coincidence. Now I'm thinking how "stable" is the "development" release. Will wait a few days to let it get discovered :)</comment>