How traders 'pump and dump' cryptocurrencies - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-traders-pump-and-dump-cryptocurrencies-2017-11 <comment><USER2> This article is complete bullshit.

I'm a member of this group, only because I was added without my consent, which is probably the case for most of the users in the group.

Just for giggles, I watched them do a pump and dump one time, and they basically sold the pump hard, managed to get about 10 Bitcoin in some tiny market cap coin, and then one guy sold all the way back down and left the "members" of the group holding the bag.

This group is a scam, but not in the way that this article says.

Also, telegram isn't encrypted as far as I know.

<comment><USER3> Telegram's key feature is encryption. [https://telegram.org](https://telegram.org)

<comment><USER4> Only on phones, there is no option to encrypt on desktop.

<comment><USER3> According to their website all data is encrypted. From what I understand it's transparent and does not require enabling via an option.

<comment><USER5> This is a longstanding issue with Telegram, and deceptive advertising that a lot of people have an issue with. They use client-server encryption sure, but unlike Signal or WhatsApp, they do not employ end-to-end encryption by default; you must enable it for two person chats, and it is not available for group chats. Unless something has changed, you get full chat history when you log in from a new device or are invited to a pre-existing group, meaning that the chat history is stored on their servers, and if not in plain text it can be unencrypted for new group members or devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds more like whale/s telling people to raise the price of a coin then dumping on them, rather than some kind of a 'collaborative' pump.

The article is talking about minutes after all so there's likely no outside buyers fast enough to react. Essentially most 'members of the community' will lose, but some lucky ones will be fast enough to dump before the whale for at least some cash.

<comment><USER7> >The article is talking about minutes after all so there's likely no outside buyers fast enough to react.

The article doesn't talk about it, but there are campaigns organized over days and weeks to talk up a coin. It's not all about minute timescales.

<comment><USER8> Do you have evidence of these?

Don't get me wrong, I believe you, but convincing evidence, even anecdotal, would be useful.

Of the big coins, not the hundreds of random ones with "To The Moon" Reddit comments.

<comment><USER7> >Of the big coins, not the hundreds of random ones with "To The Moon" Reddit comments.

In terms of personal experience, I've not seen anything as explicit as this article. And nothing with a giant market cap coin. More like a gray area between pump and dump and a bunch of over enthusiastic marketers.

Like I'll be reading a forum and notice a ton of people hyping up a small market cap coin. Check their post histories and they are generally new or they've only talked about the coin. Eventually find the slack/discord for the coin, people are posting links to forums/threads/mentions of the coin in the discord, and people are organizing shifts to give support. The comments are all purportedly coming from a genuine place (and to an extend they may be) but they were posted as if they were just random people stumbling across this discussion -- not an organized group explicitly trying to spread the good word.

<comment><USER9> Pump'n'Dump of that sort for small coins has been going on since literally the beginning of altcoins. I'm not in the altcoin arena now, but I assume it's the same as it was.

Really, there wasn't much different between that era and the yahoo penny stock boards of the late 90s.

Learning to detect and filter that noise is a crucial skill if you're gonna trade those things.

<comment><USER10> "Really, there wasn't much different between that era and the yahoo penny stock boards of the late 90s."

I came here to say exactly this. Coins are extremely similar in nature to pink sheets. Bitcoinforums et al are the new yahoo finance forums. Full of shills and pumpers, be very VERY wary.

I was doing "research" this weekend for some long tail alts I could ride the pump on next. I couldn't help but note the number of template Diva Wordpress sites out there, all using the exact same template just with different fonts and minor style changes. All have some bullshit "whitepaper" (overused term of the year). Then I thought this can't be that hard to start my own. So, I am. Hopefully I'll pump my own coin within the next few weeks. I've noted a few criteria that I'm sure will attract some gamblers/fools.

On a side note, the eBay market for mining rigs and accessories is stunningly healthy.

<comment><USER11> I am interested in the criteria you have identified.

Would you be willing to discuss this further? I have some silly ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How traders pump and dump sub 50 btc volume coins is a more accurate title.

Manipulating a coin with 1k+ volume is significantly harder.

<comment><USER13> I've been hearing talk about 1k people own >40% of BTC[1]. I think having that kind of market share gives you that kind of power, especially if you coordinate your moves (like the article suggests).

This article more seems like spammers. Same kind of thing that the stock spammers did with emails. There's a nice DefCon video about this [2]. Basically some people have a lot of the stock (or coin), get people to buy, and dump on them. I think the evidence that people have been doing this with the smaller stock exchanges show that it can be done with BTC. I think if you watch BTCs price long enough, you can even see these patterns.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the- bitco...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the-bitcoin- whales-1-000-people-who-own-40-percent-of-the-market)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytDamqTjPwg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytDamqTjPwg)

<comment><USER14> > I've been hearing talk about 1k people own >40% of BTC[1].

That seems dubious. These numbers usually don't account for custodial wallets e.g. exchanges

<comment><USER15> "The Bitcoin system is the best known and most widely used alternative payment scheme, but so far it was very difficult to get accurate information about how it is used in practice. In this paper we describe a large number of statistical properties of the Bitcoin transaction graph, which contains all the transactions which were carried out by all the users until May 13th 2012. We discovered that most of the minted bitcoins remain dormant in addresses which had never participated in any outgoing transactions. We found out that there is a huge number of tiny transactions which move only a small fraction of a single bit- coin, but there are also hundreds of transactions which move more than 50,000 bitcoins. We analyzed all these large transactions by following in detail the way these sums were accumulated and the way they were dispersed, and realized that almost all these large transactions were descendants of a single transaction which was carried out in November 2010. Finally, we noted that the subgraph which contains these large transactions along with their neighborhood has many strange looking structures which could be an attempt to conceal the existence and relationship between these transactions, but such an attempt can be foiled by following the money trail in a sufficiently persistent way." \- Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir

ref: [https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am on Telegram and none of these channels really have any bearing on pumping a coin. There might be some movement on smaller coins but these channels rarely play a major part.

Typically what happens, is a whale starts buying a particular currency and magically you start to see news articles appear on major and smaller niche crypto blogs. Then the reddit posts start appearing causing a even more hurried frenzy to buy the coin. It is very similar to how traditional stocks are pumped.

On a side note, I am noticing a trend from Forbes, Business Insider, and CBS News that are very hostile to the crypto space. They will literally grasp at any resemblance of shadyness to write a negative article.

<comment><USER17> feels like a fear and smear campaign to allow the government sweeping authorities and regulations "for everyone's own good" that probably offer little help to the problem the fear and smear campaign was calling out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Happening every day at the penny stock stalls in small doses, but in crypto currency, these guys get off scott free with huge sums

</comment><comment><USER19> Is coordinated buying really considered pumping? Don't you also have to distribute misleading information?

</comment><comment><USER20> I have a feeling these businessinsider articles are actually coming from the pump and dump groups' press kits.

</comment><comment><USER21> Oh, this brings back memories. Back in 2013/2014 when bitcoin first touched 1k, I got to know some of these groups.

First, there are positive campaigns run for multiple coins through YT channels (some really respected ones), reddit posts, bitcointalk forum etc. Once enough frenzy is generated a pump date is announced but not the coin name. The coin name depends on various factors like -how many coins these guys have accumulated, which coin is generating some vibe outside their efforts, how much of the supply has been mined etc.

Once the time arrives, the coin name is announced in the chat group, twitter etc. And the coin price flies on a particular exchange. It seems obvious that the price should tank. But it doesn't. Because there are a lot of things going on here:

a. In the cryptocurrency world, everyone has a constant FOMO fever. So, if they see a coin flying they buy irrespective.

b. Then there is lot of belief in technical analysis too. So, if there is some MA crossover, RSI crossever etc happens then people buy irrespective.

c. There are a lot of "arbitragers" who have automated setups to try and catch up the difference. So they sell at the high price exchange and buy at low price exchange. But, the imperfect market ensures that they actually end up pulling the price at the lower exchange. The price does drop but it doesn't go to the previous low price.

d. Lastly and most importantly the orderbook gets messed up and price is re- framed.

These coins are thinly traded. So, there is some form of equilibrium at the low price - there are both buyers and sellers at this price. Once the pump is over the price has inched higher. The bag holders have bought the coins at a higher price so they wont sell for a loss. Then the FOMO, TA and arbs come in to create an equilibrium market at the higher prices.

Things don't end there. The pump and dump schemers also are unable to get out at the high so, they keep creating positive buzz for the coins. In most cases, the same coin gets pumped up by many (or maybe same) groups multiple times.

Look at the chart for the Magi Coin mentioned in the article:

[https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/magi/#charts](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/magi/#charts)

It is going higher and higher.

If you look at the market on bittrex, which btw is the go to market for these schemes:

[https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=BTC- XMG](https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=BTC-XMG)

you will find multiple price swings, which are actually prices being pumped.

Does it work for big coins? Yes it does. But, those are much more nuanced than telling people to pump a coin. There it takes form of some announcement - mostly it is a vaporware feature which remains WIP for a long time or some collaboration.

</comment><comment><USER22> you had me at...

 _" Russian messaging app Telegram is heavily encrypted and,..."_

enough of the mccarthyism.

anyway, time to log off of my freedom infused american hacker news app and go work for a bit in my almost fascist italian code editor on my communist chinese computer

<comment><USER23> It's not even really Russian. It's based in Germany. Pretty sure the founder and his brother of VK fame haven't been back to Russia since Telegram was created. Either are dual citizens or only have non-Russian passports now too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The current link anchors to the bottom of the page.

<comment><USER25> Thanks, we've removed that from the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> These days, iN KOREA, it is crazy!! Several days, it shows going down tread, but in las weekend it goes up and upper! you guys, I want to ask you, how long does this situation go?</comment>


Etcd – The Road to 1.0 - <AUTHOR> http://coreos.com/blog/etcd-The-Road-to-1.0/ <comment><USER2> Is there any benefit to using coreOS when you don't need a million machines? How much work is it to start with, for example, if you have no idea what your scaling needs will be in the future?

<comment><USER3> No work at all; basic coreos is just docker managed by systemd. Can you make your application docker-izable? Were you planning on using process management? If you answered yes to both of these questions... :)

Further, coreos tries to make you write applications in a 12-factor-y way, so when the time _does_ come for you to use a million machines, you won't need to make huge adjustments to your deployments (just plug the container and init script into fleet and let it roll).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know that there are lots of heavyweight folks who swear by Zookeeper as both a reliable and powerful tool, and for good reason. Unfortunately the docs can be fairly inscrutable, even for experts, and it typically requires the maintenance of a separate cluster of Zookeeper nodes.

So I like that etcd is a fundamental component of CoreOS, with these features:

      1. Written from scratch in Go
      2. Implements the Raft protocol for node coordination
      3. Has a useful command line app
      4. Runs on every node in a cluster
      5. Enables auto-discovery
      6. Allows CoreOS nodes to share state

<comment><USER5> No offense, I just don't get it: Why is 1) a feature for you? Everything else on the list kinda makes sense (I understand that this describes something I'd call a feature), but 'written from scratch' or 'in Go'?

Can you explain what excites you about that?

<comment><USER4> I listed what I like. "Excites" is your word.

I guess what I meant by "from scratch" is that they aren't burdened by legacy code, and aren't limited to using the Paxos algorithm.

If you look at Deis, for example, it basically outsources a lot of node management to Chef Server, which in my view creates a great deal of technical debt on day one.

<comment><USER5> You read negative connotations into 'excites'. That wasn't intended.

I was just curious, since 'from scratch' can just as well mean 'untested' although I certainly agree that it sometimes is the Right Thing. The reference to Go was another thing that threw me off, since I rarely (admittedly .. sometimes) judge software projects by the language it is written in.

Thank you for the answer and some more references.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whats the communities opinion on Serf? How does it measure up against Etcd?

<comment><USER7> While similar, Serf and Etcd solve a different problem. Etcd is strong consistent (all nodes will see the same data, however a partition may cause the system to not accept writes) while Serf is eventually consistent (all nodes are not guaranteed to see the same data, however the system will always accept writes)

So somethings like a distributed lock is impossible to implement with Serf.

<comment><USER6> Very interesting, wasn't aware that ETCD is strongly consistent. This makes alot of sense in terms of Brewster's theorem. Thanks for clarifying!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is etcd?

Don't write about something without defining what it is for those not familiar with it (or you, or your service(s)).

<comment><USER9> Config data accessible via HTTP instead of files.

Although its not limited to config data necessarily.

I suggest reading [http://sysadvent.blogspot.com/2013/12/day-20-distributed- con...](http://sysadvent.blogspot.com/2013/12/day-20-distributed- configuration-data.html)</comment></comment>


Revision3 cuts shows including 'Pop Siren' and distribution deals including 'Wine Library' - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/video-site-revision3-cuts-shows-distribution-deals

<comment><USER2> Looking forward to hearing Gary's rant about Wine Library being dropped!

<comment><USER3> why is it a big deal? he still has distribution deals with ustream and hulu. on top of which he pushes his content to a variety of other places. rev3 probably dropped him because they couldn't come to an agreement on an exclusive. it's more reflective of how badly rev3 is being run than the quality of the content -- okay actually internet superstar sucks -- being dropped.</comment></comment>


Cardano – An open-sourced, public blockchain with integrated smart contracts - <AUTHOR> https://achainofblocks.com/2018/09/15/basics-of-cardano-ada-simply-explained/ <comment><USER2> I'm in love with this project. It touches a bunch of things that I love in computer science: cryptography (quantum safe cryptography in particular), distributed systems (blockchain, PoS), [Pure] Functional Programming (Haskell, Rust to some extent), OSI and TCP/IP new-age alternative (RINA), a peer- reviewed research oriented development cycle etc etc.

It certainly has its flaws though. The roadmap moves really, really slowly (blame the peer-reviews I guess). I'm not saying it doesn't move at all, but we're 1 year into the project and it still didn't bootstrap out of the 3-party centralized consensus that it runs currently, i.e., we still haven't seen the Ouroboros consensus protocol in action at scale. Also, the most recent Cardano Foundation fiasco does not help, and it shows some mismanagement or miscalculation happened in the conception of the whole development/support ecosystem.

Nonetheless, it is a very exciting project and it is one of the few crypto- craze related projects that I think will prevail after all the dust settles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your passion shines through, appreciate your time reading the article.

I too agree that this technology will remain for the long term. As I talk about continually, this stage is about determining the best platforms and protocols to bring this technology to the masses.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are you currently working on? - <AUTHOR> Let's talk about the project/startup/business you are currently working on.
Please include :
Name of the project and URL Elevator pitch or simply a explainer video
Any details you want to add: What stage are you in? How many employees or founders?
Are you looking for anything? (Feedback/Hiring/Investment) <comment><USER2> I just resumed work on Open Competencies, which allows anyone to openly create, share, and revise education standards.

Education standards are currently a cobbled-together set developed by independent bodies. We have Math and English standards from Common Core, Next Generation Science Standards developed by a different group, and so on. Open Competencies allows people to develop a set of standards that all have the same structure, which will be significantly beneficial when developing curriculum and other educational infrastructure. (This project is not a reaction to Common Core; the issue of inconsistent standards has been a longstanding problem in education.)

The project is live at [http://opencompetencies.org](http://opencompetencies.org), and the code lives on github at [https://github.com/openlearningtools/opencompetencies](https://github.com/openlearningtools/opencompetencies).

</comment><comment><USER3> Name: Practive

Elevator Pitch: Gives you enough insight into problems your customers are experiencing in realtime so that you can call them right away to make it right, instead of waiting for them to call you...or worse, leave your platform.

Stage: 10% & 2 founders - Integrated with Stripe, MixPanel, Mandrill, Gmail, MailChimp, Desk.com and Zendesk. Ingesting and correlating datapoints with customer profiles in order to trigger automated alerts.

Data is again siloed in third party partner systems. Time to bring it all back home and see the end to end customer experience and act on problems regardless of where they happen. Today's modern SaaS platforms generate enough data for customer service or success reps to spot problems in real time and be proactive about helping customers. We have the data, we just need to look at it.

Looking for: Feedback, Beta customers, Investors

</comment><comment><USER4> Name: Send To My Cloud [https://SendToMyCloud.com](https://SendToMyCloud.com)

Send To My Cloud solves the "How can I have people send me large files?" problem, for users of Dropbox of Google Drive. This problem usually exists for designers, scrapbookers, contest organizers, etc. The "How do I _send_ large files?" problem is already solved for GDrive and Dropbox users, so we don't attempt to solve it.

Stage: Solo founder, making a few bucks on the side. Not looking for help, investment or partners.

Looking for: Customers!

\---

I'm also working on a word game for Android and iOS. Hopefully I'll launch soon.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've mentioned this I other recent threads so I don't want to sound like a broken record, but oh well. I'm working on an finger-drawing-infinite-canvas- DAW-ish sort of thing for iPad that makes sketching out musical ideas a whole lot easier — especially if you can't play a musical instrument very well. I feel there aren't a whole lot of ways for non-instrumentalists to experiment with music in an environment with a tight, intuitive feedback loop, which makes music a daunting field to get into as compared to other creative fields like writing or painting. This app isn't for kids, though; I'm making it largely for my own use, since I have a ton of musical ideas but none of the instrumental chops to iterate on them or put them into practice. Everything runs on MIDI, and I even added support for microtonal scales the other day (via .scl files), just 'cause. Dunno when it'll be out, but I'm hoping in a few months. After that, I expect to keep updating and expanding it for as long as I use it myself, which should be many years.

Early demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra8OvnoxKQw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra8OvnoxKQw)

(Sorry about the dissonance, I was just putting down notes at random!)

</comment><comment><USER6> Name: Insightico ([http://getinsightico.com](http://getinsightico.com))

Elevator Pitch: Helping businesses get new insights and understand the markets their in.

Stage: MVP - 2 founders and 0 employees

Looking for: Feedback and Investment

Sign up on our home page and we'll send you a link to test things out (We just wanted to respect those who had previously signed up). We've had several users tell us it's useful so far but we would like to build out more functionality.

</comment><comment><USER7> Name: Carmatic ([http://www.carmatic.co](http://www.carmatic.co)), @trycarmatic

Elevator Pitch: (On-demand car repair) Help car owners live stress free life by providing an end-to-end car repair service

Stage: MVP - Solo Founder

Would love to chat with anyone who is interested in the car repair industry and understands the pain point of getting maintenance/repair for your car. Also, any feedback will be incredibly helpful.

<comment><USER8> Ah the good ol' ondemand wave. 4 years ago, I looked into that exact idea... turned out to have a lot of overhead.

<comment><USER7> yeah there is a lot of overhead. Its really ops intensive, which I didn't see coming. Any advice/suggestion you would like to give me?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Name: Dayswork

Pitch: Good software estimates are hard, get time estimates from real industry experts. Submit your brief (we also help you refine it etc.), choose how many estimates you'd like (2, 4, or 6), and then view & compare your project time estimates results from our experts.

Target(s): Non tech peeps wanting a "ballpark" dev. time estimate. Or, devs/agencies wanting to sanity check an estimate they have already done.

Stage: MVP - Solo founder.

Love to get feedback on this... The main idea behind it is: Estimates are hard, some other opinions would be good. Properly defining & communicating requirements is also super hard - so the submission workflow goes deep into that (with clear examples etc).

Would love feedback on pricing... How much would you pay to get 2 time estimates on a software project (from experts, familiar with the tech etc.)?

</comment><comment><USER10> Name: Debugging Design

Elevator Pitch: Ebook on UI/UX Design for Developers

Stage: 60% of content complete. Creating video content now for premium tier.

Would LOVE for more user feedback, specifically anyone interested in telling me what they struggle with design-wise & what they would love to see in a resource.

firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER11> I am working on the app for my newly invented method and way to work called TimeBlock.

It's a lot of entrepreneurial ways of working mixed and simplified into a method I can explain in twenty minutes.

The website and SaaS app is available at [http://timeblock.com](http://timeblock.com)

I have pitched the method to around 30 companies, half of those are working after the method now (ranging from 1 to 60 employees) and of those, 6 is using the app (two are paying customers \o/)

I am looking for podcast and blogs who would like to talk about the method and how it helps Makers and Managers become happier and more effective.

</comment><comment><USER12> Building up my consultancy business.

[http://jcurcioconsulting.com](http://jcurcioconsulting.com)

Custom web and mobile development, primarily working with small businesses in Maryland.

Feedback on the website is always welcomed.

<comment><USER6> When I first land on your homepage, the first words that stood out were "What I Offer" and "Experience". I would recommend replacing those words with the details found in your paragraph summarized to maybe 5-6 words.

You also mentioned you have experience with a variety of platforms and programming languages. I would list them out specifically - list your strongest ones first. It might help with SEO but more importantly, help me as a reader understand what your skillset is.

<comment><USER12> Changes have been made. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Continuing towards my goal of actually finishing a game this year, here is a still unfinished attempt at Space Invaders[0] in C++ and SDL, and the barebones entity-component system i'm testing with it[1].

[0][https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/spaceinvaders](https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/spaceinvaders)

[1][https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/ecsframework](https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/ecsframework)

</comment><comment><USER14> I am working on a new programming language aptly named "A Programmer Experience," or APX (like APL, but with an X!). It supports (or will support) live programming, aggressive type inference in the presence of subtyping, multi-core execution without locking, and a declarative state model that can deal with side effects. Oh, and it comes with an editor that supports live meta-text (like LightTable and Flogo II) and niceties like code completion (type inference is good for that).

</comment><comment><USER15> Name: Max's Guide to Programming (with C)

Pitch: I have not found a good resource for learning to code or even learning C in general. I decided to start writing a textbook to help my friends who are new to the field.

Target(s): People who are new to the field or new to C.

Stage: Sole writer. Am looking for feedback if you have time to read over! It's very early stage.

</comment><comment><USER16> [http://ars.io](http://ars.io) \- resume/hiring tools, alpha, side project [http://www.discuss.io](http://www.discuss.io) \- customer interview platform - mature, 3 founders, 11 employees, funded, profit

</comment><comment><USER17> (You didn't say why you want to talk about this)

Name: Interview Kickstart ([http://InterviewKickstart.com](http://InterviewKickstart.com))

Elevator Pitch: Nail your next coding interview.

Stage: Bootstrapped. Profitable.

Employees: One fulltime (me) and about 18 people contracting (teachers, interviewers)

Looking for: Feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! I thought if people share what they are currently working on under the same thread, they can give feedback to each other more easily. I also believe it's a good way to get to know community.

Here is my feedback : I was expecting to see tuition on your landing page. Saying not cheap, seems confident but it makes it hard for me to take incentive to ask for an invite.

> If you get into Google, Facebook or Palantir, we'll refund 100% of tuition. > No catch.

I wonder how people approach this kind of offer. Seems tempting, may also increase motivation but I wanted to know what people say about this ?

<comment><USER18> > If you get into Google, Facebook or Palantir, we'll refund 100% of tuition. > No catch.

Seems kinda backward to me ... we'll teach you how to do this well, and if it works we'll refund you?

I get you aren't the only variable at play, but saying you'll refund if they fail the interview would be much more compelling! (But economically unfeasible I'd guess)

<comment><USER17> Yep, economically unfeasible, but more importantly, if we give that kind of reverse guarantee, then people actually won't be motivated to work. That's exactly why no single educational institute gives a guarantee of that kind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Name: Skyrunner

I'm working on a way to bring the power of IPython Notebooks to the non-hacker crowd - think scientists, researchers and analysts.

It's still very much a work in progress, but I would appreciate any feedback about features you'd like to see and frustrations you'd like to resolve.

</comment><comment><USER20> [http://dam.io/real/](http://dam.io/real/)

It's a game where you can play on your own drawings

It's not really ready for non-ultra-technical users but it's quite nice! You can send me drawings if you like it!

</comment><comment><USER21> I've wasted ~10 hours trying to create a server implementation for Agar.io in Haskell. I haven't got very far, but I've learned that live streaming the process helps me stay motivated.

<comment><USER22> What are you currently stuck on?

<comment><USER21> I'm not stuck on anything at the moment. The problem was that I've spent a lot of time trying to understand how the client code works. On the Haskell side of things, things couldn't be going smoother. There's a good websockets library and ByteStrings seem easy to work with. I've only ever programmed a game server once before, but Haskell has made it much more enjoyable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Name: www.voiceclonr.com

A fun text to speech side project with some famous voices. Only looking for feedback and see how I make it interesting (or if it is even worthwhile to spend more time into it:)

</comment><comment><USER24> I am working a micro business. I am also an event which is helping the poor child.two of my friend are the founder of this project ...we need more worker...</comment>


The Fed's Paycheck Protection Program Gave a Tiny NJ Bank $5.3B - <AUTHOR> https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/06/the-feds-paycheck-protection-program-gave-a-tiny-nj-bank-5-3-billion-9-percent-of-all-the-money-its-spent-thus-far/ <comment><USER2> The article's complaints seem to be:

(A) This bank has a tiny number of employees. They suggest that the number of PPP loans is in line with the number of loans the bank makes normally, but they do it with a lot fewer employees than Wells Fargo.

(B) This bank doesn't use humans to underwrite its loans.

Honestly, while I know nothing about Cross River, this article makes it sound to me like they are doing it RIGHT. It is a GOOD thing to remove the need for large number of human underwriters examining each loan (and introducing various human errors and biases).

Nor does the PPP loan process (the one targeted by this article) require extensive underwriting processes. The program, as envisioned by Congress, requires banks to verify that companies are, in fact, genuine small businesses who are submitting accurate information about things like their number of employees and the cost of salaries. But Congress specifically decided NOT to evaluate the creditworthiness of the borrowers (which is the hard part of underwriting).

Automated processes frequently have flaws and can be outperformed by a human. I would be completely willing to believe that Cross River's systems are failing to meet the appropriate standards. But the article doesn't present any evidence or even a claim that this is the case -- they only gripe that Cross River is "tiny" (in number of employees) and yet is doing a large amount of lending.

<comment><AUTHOR> (C) "In 2018 the FDIC found that Cross River Bank "engaged in unsafe or unsound banking practices by failing to ensure an adequate compliance management system was in place…." The FDIC fined the bank $641,750 and made it contribute to a $20 million restitution fund to reimburse harmed consumers." [0]

"Cross River Bank originates C+ Loans, an unsecured debt consolidation loan product, through FFAM. C+ Loans are offered exclusively to consumers who contract with Freedom Debt Relief (FDR), a FFAM-affiliated debt settlement company. C+ Loans were marketed as a way for consumers to quickly resolve their outstanding debts. Consumers are charged a settlement fee of up to 25 percent of each debt enrolled in FDR's program.

The FDIC determined that Cross River Bank and FFAM violated federal law prohibiting unfair and deceptive practices, by, among other things:

\- Requiring borrowers to sign loan documents without knowing the essential terms and conditions of the loan;

\- Failing to inform borrowers that certain major creditors will not negotiate debts with FDR and including related debt settlement fees into C+ Loans, when in fact, borrowers had to negotiate such debts themselves;

\- Misrepresenting to consumers that the C+ Loans would result in the settlement of all their debts within 30 to 45 days or 30 to 90 days, which was not true for nearly half of the consumers; and

\- Misrepresenting that the consumers' creditworthiness would improve by obtaining a C+ Loan."[1]

[0][1] [https://www.fdic.gov/news/news/press/2018/pr18021.html](https://www.fdic.gov/news/news/press/2018/pr18021.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> These articles attempting to incite conspiracy theories of massive banning fraud at every corner are getting tiring.

CrossRiver Bank is a FinTech focused bank with a focus on providing and servicing loans.

As a FinTech, they most likely had the PPP application process in the pipeline much quicker than traditional banks. Wells Fargo didn't even get me the application until the same week when the first round of funding ran out.</comment>


Headius aka Charles Nutter of the JRuby fame is angry about _why's departure - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/headius/status/3422389034

<comment><USER2> It's so easy to judge people without being in their shoes. There are a million reasons why it would be ok to disappear.</comment>


ASUS Motherboard Ships With Embedded Linux, Web Browser (boots in 5 sec flat!) - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=869&num=2 <comment><USER2> It'd be nice to provide more than just Skype and Firefox. OpenOffice, Pidgin and Evince would be worthwhile additions.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, without a hard drive, OO and Pidgin aren't too useful, unless you're going to carry a thumb drive for that stuff.

<comment><USER2> The system has a hard drive - as the article mentions, drivers would be easy to set up. Linux has had stable NTFS drivers for a year now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> cool, wish their website would work in safari though

<comment><USER2> Ditto other webkit browsers - from my Nokia N95 this looks horrible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> thinnest. client. ever.</comment>


Ask HN: Covid-19 Hospitals prohibiting staff from wearing PPE. How to fix? - <AUTHOR> Several doctors I know are prohibited from wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) such as masks because the administration at the hospitals where they work think it will scare the patients. These doctors aren't working directly with Covid-19 patients, but given the nature of a doctors work and the fact that they are working in hospitals it's very likely that they are at a higher than normal risk for being exposed to the virus. It seems incredibly irresponsible and dangerous that they aren't allowed to wear any protective equipment at all.
None of these doctors want to create a fuss and risk their jobs so they aren't fighting back.
Do you guys have any ideas or strategies that can be used to persuade hospital administration to allow their employees to protect themselves? I've thought about calling local news stations on their behalf, but is there a better way to persuade them? <comment><USER2> > I've thought about calling local news stations on their behalf, but is there > a better way to persuade them

Sadly, public embarrassment is likely the fastest way to get a change in attitude out of the admins at any individual hospital. So yeah, try to get the local news stations to carry the story (and to call those admins and ask pointed questions).

The slower, but more reliable way that helps everyone everywhere, would be to convince their regulatory bodies (CDC? or whomever) to issue a decree that all medical personnel should be wearing masks at all times. Then, because it is a requirement from "on high" the local admins will likely relent.

</comment><comment><USER3> What the actual fuck?

The staff probably have grounds for an OSHA case (if this is in the US; equivalent body in any other developed country) and/or a lawsuit.

The media is probably the way to get the quickest action; but you may want to also look into getting legal representation.

</comment><comment><USER4> Contact Matt Richtel from NYT, and your local stations too</comment>


Is Google's Proprietary Tech Stack Destroying Its Acquisitions? - <AUTHOR> http://techdirt.com/articles/20080717/2255221720.shtml

<comment><USER2> Google thinks that you can scale only if you use their infrastructure: BigTable + Python/Java and MapReduce when needed. It seems that when you're purchased by Google, you immediately stop working on the "old" codebase and you start transitioning and rewriting everything into Python/Java. This has happened to both YouTube and Jaiku. Now, YouTube transition has been successful and Jaiku... no one even remembers it.

<comment><USER3> It's not that they think that there's only one way to scale, but they only want one way in their company, so they can spend all their resources on optimizing that one architecture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The actual post is here:

[http://www.techcrunchit.com/2008/07/16/google-where- companie...](http://www.techcrunchit.com/2008/07/16/google-where-companies-go- to-die/)</comment>


New gaming laptop with innovative UI by Razer - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/razer-to-release-stylish-2800-gaming-laptop-complete-with-dynamic-buttons.ars <comment><USER2> I think you are all missing the point. There already is a massive market for high end gaming pcs and laptops. Compare these prices and specs to what is available from Alienware or MSI.

This laptop only misgiving is the fact it does not have an SSD. However, it is competitively priced in comparison to its competition and with a sleek sexy design this is a very interesting entry into the market.

<comment><USER3> There is no way this laptop is competitively priced with Alienware and MSI. For about $1200 you can get an Alienware with the same GPU(which accounts for 90 percent of your framerate). For under 1500 you can get an MSI or Asus laptop with a GTX 560M which is significantly better than the GT 555M. If you actually wanted a high-end gaming system you could go all out and get a M18X Alienware with dual 6990M GPUs. Just so we can rule this out as a gaming computer once and for all, here is a performance comparison.

$2880 Razer "gaming" computer - GT 555M Bad Company 2 Ultra Settings - 17-20 FPS $1799 Alienware M17X with single 6990M - Bad Company 2 Ultra Settings - 57-59 FPS $2499 Alienware M18X with dual 6990Ms - Bad Company 2 Ultra Settings - 110 FPS

[http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Laptop- Graphics-C...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Laptop-Graphics- Cards.130.0.html)

[http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon- HD-6990M-Crossfire.5...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon- HD-6990M-Crossfire.58862.0.html)

So price/performance wise, the Razer laptop offers about $550 worth of gaming performance, but it is lighter and also has a $2200 dollar trackpad that no one in their right mind would use to play a real video game.

<comment><USER4> Owning one of those Alienware M15X Laptops, I can say that they are heavy and bulky. The form factor of this new laptop is a lot better, and would make a huge impact on my desire to buy it if I actually want to take it anywhere.

Hell, I about broke my back trying to lug my Alienware around a conference. I'll never do that again. I'd pay quite a bit for the ability to actually have my notebook computer be portable, and yet still able to play games.

<comment><USER3> I agree that gaming laptops are a huge pain to carry around, but Razer's system is outrageously expensive for what you get. You could still save hundreds of dollars by purchasing a normal laptop for 300-500 to take to the office and then buy an Alienware or Clevo with a 6990M in it for about 1500-1800. If you decide to buy a desktop instead of the Alienware, you can save another 1k. If one is happy with a GT 555M's performance, you can find a 5.5 lb laptop for about 700-800 dollars which has the same card and the same CPU.

<comment> old-gregg "CPU... GPU..." who cares? The laptop is composed of a shell, battery, keyboard and the most importantly - the LCD. Nowhere in your post you mentioned the quality of those 4 critical difference-making components. Comparing computers based on irrelevant commodity (chips) is like comparing automobiles by how many wheels they have.

<comment><USER3> Please allow me to address the "4 critical-difference-making components."

1- Shell - I love the idea of having a gaming laptop with apple's build quality, but its hard to fit a decent GPU and cooling system in such a slim, stylish case. Gamers know this and are generally willing to compromise. While I hate the way alienware computers look, many reviewers gush about their excellent build quality.

2.-Battery - High-end GPUs use a lot of power. Unfortunately, current technology only allows for the battery to act as a glorified UPS. This is unfortunate but anyone who is purchasing a gaming computer should understand the limitations of such hardware.

3.-The keyboard is very important. Alienware keyboards aren't the very best keyboards, but they are better than the overwhelming majority. On the other hand the Razer has a "chiclet" keyboard which is considered by many to be inferior to traditional laptop keyboards.

4.-The LCD - If you purchased a gaming computer, would you rather play a game at 17 FPS on a beautiful screen or play the same game at 60 FPS on a computer possessing a marginally worse panel.

When you are talking about a gaming computer, the GPU is pretty much the only thing that matters. If you want battery power, a nice shell, and a nice LCD you can get a SAMSUNG laptop with the same specs as the Razer for 2k cheaper.

<comment><USER5> #4 is a bit disingenuous no? There is a _ridiculous_ gap between the shittiest laptop panels and the best ones. The difference is anything but "marginal".

If I'm going to push 60fps in Crysis 2 on a laptop I want good screen contrast, proper color rendition, proper brightness, no light leaks from the edges, etc. What is the point of the world's most powerful mobile GPU if it feels like I'm looking at the game world through a bad Photoshop filter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"Today, there hasn't been a single PC laptop that anyone has been passionate about for the longest time. It's not because there's no innovation, but [because] the big PC guys just don't want to innovate anymore," Min-Liang Tan, the CEO and Creative Director of Razer, told Ars._

Completely true. For example Lenovo/Thinkpad stopped producing the 4:3 screens that all their business users loved. Too hard/expensive to produce, 16:9 screens are the future, etc.

Until Apple produces millions and millions of 4:3 iPad displays. Now can we reopen the discussion?

I don't think Razer's expensive hardware and new UI is the answer, but that doesn't mean every PC laptop needs to ship with a just a shitty touchpad and 2 buttons. How about a 3rd button? A mousewheel? Start small and build from there.

The part I really don't understand is how the PC _mouse_ industry is so innovative/over-the-top. 7 buttons, independent DPI controls, lazer tracking, ergonomic designs, etc. But then every laptop has the same terrible small touchpad and two badly-designed buttons. Seems like adding a 30-cent mousewheel to your case would instantly differentiate you from all your competitors.

<comment><USER7> I think part of the reason for the insane PC mouse industry is the relatively low cost of the periphreals and the (perceived) direct impact it has on the skill of the player playing a game. Where the PC gamer will drool over the 500$ amazing graphics card he can't afford, he can placate himself with a 70$ crazy ten-thousand button mouse.

Why there isn't any innovation in laptop input devices I'm without a clue. It seems like there are so many better ways to input data than a touchpad and two buttons.

<comment><USER8> Because it's a poor risk to take - you have this whole product you've designed, and if you built in an unproven pointing device and it flops, the whole product is a dud. At least with desktops a mouse or trackpad is cheap to replace, so a user might be willing to buy a computer with an unconventional input device knowing that it's only $50 to replace. Buy a laptop and find out you hate the pointing input, you're out 2 grand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The last thing the PC gaming community needs right now is another insanely expensive piece of hardware with a gimmick attached. I really cannot see this going anywhere within the community. I'm guessing that those who largely play the PC games that would require such high specs aren't likely to want to play them outside of their homes. Besides you can purchase a comparably spec'd desktop system for a quarter of the price.

Heck, the most popular PC game at the moment (World of Warcraft) can be played on relatively cheap laptops already.

<comment><USER10> I would definitely consider buying one. Why do people think that high priced, high design PC's can't sell when Apple has been selling exactly this with great success? The PC crowd has been lulled into cheap hardware but not everyone wants that. I typically buy high end Sony Vaio's just because of the sheer elegance of the product. I have raved on here about my Vaio Z, portable "workstation" power in 3 pounds of 13" goodness. I think there is a market for this.

<comment><USER11> People think that because the high-end PC gear can't compete right now on price, design, longevity, toughness, etc.

For instance, this laptop can't manage to hit the MacBook Pro price point, and it's in a plastic case, as opposed to a single-piece slab of aluminum. Which do you think will hold up better? Who would you rather deal with for warranty repairs and replacement? Which company is more likely to still be alive at the end of the machine's life?

<comment><USER10> I have to add a comment that personally I dislike Apple's aluminum slab design. I have friends with MacBooks who's legs are red from the heat transfer after it's been on their (insert irony here...) lap. Also I have never had a problem with a well designed "plastic" cased laptop standing up. The Thinkpad is generally considered one of the the toughest laptops around and it's in a plastic case.

<comment><USER12> Apple sells "notebooks", not "laptops".

Edit: ooh - feel the downvotes! Go to apple.com and count the number of mentions of 'notebooks' vs. the number of mentions of 'laptops'. The only place you really see the word 'laptop' is in quotes in the customer success stories.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, weasel words are wonderful things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a great marketing gimmick for the keyboard they're selling:

<http://www.razerzone.com/swtor/keyboard>

At around $200 this is a lot more likely to sell.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I'm a fool with too much money, but that keyboard looks SOOOO cool, like an almost reasonably priced Optimus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _"The hardest thing was convincing a manufacturing partner to consider our designs," Tan said. "No one wanted to do it. They all said there's no market, it's too expensive, no one wants this. Gamers would want something big, thick, and cheap."_

Serious gamers actually flesh out a lot of money on their setups. And I don't know much about any scenes except Starcraft 2, but I know those tournaments give out products from certain companies who sponsor the event as prizes, I could see this computer fitting in that way. SC2 game "casters" have been doing the same thing on their own, and it's normally equipment of this sort of high end pricing.

The question here is can the gamers who build their own custom set-ups piece by piece be convinced to buy this kind of all-in-one package instead?

</comment><comment><USER3> The laptop looks very nice as far as design goes, but as a 3k gaming machine it leaves a lot to be desired. I am starting to wonder if some of these technology companies are intentionally trying to lose money.

The GT 555M is a mainstream consumer video card. It can be found on laptops around $700 and I doubt it will run BF3 well at anything higher than medium settings. As a $3000 gaming machine that hasn't even been released yet, it should have a 6990M or a GTX 580M.

Finally, what kind of gamer who is willing to spend $3000 on a laptop is even going to use a trackpad? I wonder how much this ridiculous, unnecessary addition adds to the price of the system.

To put things in perspective, an Alienware M17x with a 6990M starts at 1799, and an identical clevo/sager would run about 1600.

<comment><USER17> So one has to fork out $3000 every 6mos/year instead of $700 to just upgrade a graphics card?

Looks cool, doesn't seem practical to replace a gaming rig.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a nice looking laptop. It's expensive, but it's the first of its kind so there's not market price set for it yet.

I hope it's easy for programs to change the look of the multitouch display buttons. It almost bring the Optimus keyboard into the mobile realm!

</comment><comment><USER19> I can't believe it took this long to make a non-apple laptop that isn't ugly. Simple, sleek and smooth. It really isn't that difficult.

<comment><USER20> Reading the quotes from Razer in the article, it really makes me angry at the big PC manufacturers and happy that HP got out. Nothing Apple does is truly that amazing or innovative. The difference is that Apple actually has the balls to try to produce a high quality product. Not expensive for the sake of being expensive like Sony, but quality worth paying for. HP and Dell would rather sell low margin crap at high volume than try at the high quality game.

Go Razer! Glad they're the only PC company out there will the balls to compete on quality and innovation.

<comment><USER21> "Nothing Apple does is truly that amazing or innovative."

That's absurdly unfair, companies like RIM didn't even think the iPhone was possible before it came out [1]. The iPad completely changed the "slate" market in an unimaginable way. People may or may not be wrong about a post-PC era, but its undeniably closely related to the iPad and its predecessor the iPhone (especially given Android's UI before and after the iPhone [2]). If your comment referred specifically to the laptop/desktop market, go back to the original Macintosh GUI, unibody design, the high battery life and relatively low cost of the Macbook Air (sure, they existed in the 90s as slim as an MBA but not with equivalent design or battery--and the rest of the market was into netbooks when the MBA came out anyway), touchpad gestures, and MagSafe. And when other companies announce these features, like Razer here, it usually ends with a $2800 Sure, you can name prior art on alot of these innovations but having 'balls' is PART of innovation--execution is just as important as the idea.

[1] [http://www.razorianfly.com/2010/12/28/rim-we-thought- apple-w...](http://www.razorianfly.com/2010/12/28/rim-we-thought-apple-was- lying-about-the-iphone-in-fact-we-didnt-think-it-was-possible/) [2] [http://random.andrewwarner.com/what-googles-android- looked-l...](http://random.andrewwarner.com/what-googles-android-looked-like- before-and-after-the-launch-of-iphone/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I love the idea of having a touchscreen instead of a touchpad. The possibilities! Just that one aspect of this box seems like highly innovative and hopefully a harbinger of things to come in the PC world.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've always found the idea of a secondary display on a laptop intriguing. Would be nice to be able to look down at the keyboard and have docs for whatever I'm working on already there, without having to page over to another screen or such. I would presume the screen has some sort of API (or at least a WebView mode) so this sort of thing would be possible.

On the flip side, a 17" display means you have room to keep both on the screen at once, negating the extra display. 15" model please?

<comment><USER19> You know what would be really nice on a gaming laptop? A foot pedal. It would actually be really nice for browsing too. As it is, I don't use my feet for anything... it's only intuitive that a foot pedal should be developed.

<comment><USER24> Theyve been around for a long time - <http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/fs-savant- elite.htm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I understand they say they don't care if there's no market, but I'm curious who's going to buy it. Pro gamers will not care about a trackpad, or dynamic key-screens, as they don't want to spend time looking at the keys when they're looking at the screen. They have everything memorized anyway. But they are the ones who can justify spending ~$3000 on a laptop. Casual gamers would like these features, but don't spend $2800 on gaming.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would buy it if I had the money. I was looking to build a gaming desktop and that's what I would end up paying anyway.

You're right it's not for a casual gamer but all Razer's products are not for casual gamers and somehow they can make living.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> More info from engadget (including lots of pics): [http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/26/razer-blade-hands-on- with...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/26/razer-blade-hands-on- with-17-inches-of-gaming-greatness/)

<comment><USER27> The pictures look like real ones here and not like CG.

Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The dynamic keys remind me of Art Lebedev's Optimus keyboard designs: <http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/>

</comment><comment><USER29> Their advertisement took a stab at PC gaming vs console gaming and then they release a $2,800 device? This puts it in a different market (one that I don't think is very big).

<comment><USER30> Their advertisement had nothing to do with consoles. It was simply a statement that PC gaming is not dead.

If you want to spend $400 and play games, buy a console. You're not the target market for pc games.

Alienware made a name for itself selling $5k gaming rigs. They were incredibly successful at it. Since Dell bought them, their products have gotten crappier and crappier. If Razer wants to fill that void, more power to them.

<comment><USER31> I certainly hope they succeed. Not only has Alienware's quality reputation been slipping, but they've always been absolutely hideous eyesores. This razer actually looks pretty sexy.

<comment><USER30> Indeed. Compare the razer to Alienware's comparable offering, the m17x: <http://www.thelaptopauthority.com/image/m17x.jpg>

The Razer Blade may be a fairly blatant MBP ripoff, but at least it looks good. Alienware seems to be pursuing the clunky F117-inspired look, complete with superfluous LEDs. This is, unfortunately, not unique to Alienware. Asus teamed up with Lamborghini to offer the VX7: [http://rumors.automobilemag.com/files/2011/04/asus- vx7-lambo...](http://rumors.automobilemag.com/files/2011/04/asus- vx7-lamborghini-laptop-rear.jpg)

Lamborghini makes beautiful cars, but I'm not keen on plopping one on my desk in the middle of class. The Razer looks like something I'd actually feel good about being seen with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I bet this'll be as successful as Windows SideShow. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_SideShow>)

Games could already hook up to the pocket-sized multitouch high-res color screens that we all carry with us already. Why not start with that and, if there are actually some usages that work well, then consider building it into the device itself?

Innovation != just stick another screen on there.

</comment><comment><USER33> Whenever I play a game with a laptop I use a real mouse. Anything else is a bit painful for me. Because of that, as a righty I'd rather have the dynamic buttons on the left side of the keyboard.

Heck, make the whole keyboard dynamic. Then when you're playing a game, instead of an alphanumeric symbol on the key being displayed, the action it's bound to can be displayed.

<comment><USER16> A person using hotkeys probably never has to look at the keyboard, I don't know how useful a fully customizable keyboard would be.

<comment><USER33> I always have trouble remembering my lesser used hotkeys (e.g. if you have 20+), but maybe I'm the only one. A quick glance at the keyboard could make it easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Apple's legacy lives on in Razer. Finally, a company not afraid to build a quality product for fear of raising the price.

</comment><comment><USER35> I can't really imagine anyone in the FPS/RTS crowd wanting to look down on their keyboard during gameplay. Normally you have to set their chair on fire if you want them to break eye-contact with the main-screen...

Perhaps there are slower paced games where this makes sense, though.

<comment><USER36> For gaming, mostly agree. Although I think that the pretty graphics are mostly for show, the real power will be the ability to customize gestures for any application, and the utility you get out of these gestures can well be worth looking down at a "mouse screen."

I'm imagining being able to manipulate a CAD model in isolation, freely rotating items in PowerPoint, redistributing power among throttle/lasers/shields using sliding bars (X-wing, anyone?)...I'm sure there are many more.

I'd almost argue to keep a normal track pad for dedicated cursor navigation and have the awesome set of touchscreens as a peripheral. Then have an amazing API for software developers to do creative things with it, and have an amazing UI for the layman to create their own mappings. That might get adoption for this type of thing going faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Instead of a handful of keys with tiny LCD's inside of them, I'd like to see a full keyboard that has e-paper on top of every key.

<comment><USER38> god, thats a sexy idea. but then again im the kinda person who choses laptops based on what their keyboard looks like. (ifi could get macbook pro style, with ubuntu, for not quite macbook prices, life would be good.) and by macbbok style, i mean yes, metal case, sexy keyboard, and awesome track pad features go a long way with me. and I dont think im too much of an outlier when it comes to asthetics. the pc world needs more innovation in this direction, and even if razor doesnt hit exactly the bullseye, its not giving up without a fight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Anyone know if you can buy just the touchpad or the keyboard+touchpad? I don't want the laptop, but that looks awesome.

</comment><comment><USER40> question - why is everyone making alumninium unibody notebooks ? Is carbon fiber not lighter and (arguably) just as strong. Is it just the design aesthetic that everyone is trying to reach out for or is there something else.

<comment><USER20> Because CF is still ridiculously expensive. It's cheaper now to make than before and you might see it around more often, but it's still an exotic material. Otherwise, we would see it everywhere.

<comment><USER40> sony makes laptops using carbon fiber - [http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisp...](http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&identifier=S_Z_SERIES_PAGE)

same ballpark pricing ~2000 USD. Is unibody aluminium that commonplace a manufacturing process that it is much more feasible than carbon fiber ?

<comment><USER41> Oh nice. That looks like a pretty slick laptop. I like the lightpeak integration w/ external video card & BluRay support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Incredibly thin and light for a gaming laptop mm? Arstechnica got paid to write that I guess. I can fit 4 light AlienWare gaming laptops of 13" for the weight of that 17". Even a big MBP is lighter... Odd.

<comment><USER43> You are really comparing a 17" gaming laptop with

\- 13" gaming laptops (really? Those are lighter?)

\- a popular 17" laptop that lacks in gaming power

Why the snark?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What if you're left-handed? Seems like you're kind of screwed on this one.

<comment><USER44> razer makes quite a few right handed products. it's a trade off to make it better for 90% and lose some customers. i think in this case it's even more important than with mice. trackpad below keyboard instead of to the side is not so good for gaming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I don't get why they didn't produce the Switchblade [1] instead of this expensive overpowered monstrosity.

[1] <http://www.razerzone.com/switchblade>

<comment><USER46> From the looks of the pictures in the article I was certain it was the Switchblade, but now looking back at the old pics on their site, I realized that it's not the same Switchblade I saw months ago. In the article they even named it "Switchblade User Interface". They said from the beginning that the Switchblade was a concept, so I'm just glad they are releasing it earlier than I though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> But what will the battery life be? At least when the gaming laptops are big and bulky they also have a huge battery. This thing looks like it'll run out of juice flat in 1 hour.

<comment><USER48> Depends on what you're doing. It's got a 60Wh battery, so it should last a little less than a macbook pro, so 2 to 7 hours.

<comment><USER49> Not while gaming it wont

<comment><USER48> Well gaming will make it last about 2 hours. It _depends_ on what you're doing.

<comment><USER47> Gaming laptop is for gaming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> A $2800 laptop without an SSD and with a smallish (by current standards) hard drive?

</comment><comment><USER51> :) No love for left handers. That's another reason trackpads are centered.

</comment><comment><USER52> eeekeyboard had this. was a total failure.

i still want one. but the price point was just crazy.

</comment><comment><USER53> These guys took out an ad in The Wall Street journal drumming up hype for this release.

Guys: I can buy a Sony Playstation 3 for a little over $200. Call it $300.

I can then buy an large television for $1000, and a solid set of speakers for $200.

That's $1500 all-in, for something that will play every single PS3 game flawlessly.

Why would I spend $2800 on this? What I am getting for $1300?

If it's the variety of PC games like minecraft, I can throw an additional $500 at a low-end gaming PC, hook it to my television, and play console _and_ PC games.

A gaming _laptop_? Why?

<comment><USER54> Selling expensive products to rich people is a lot easier than selling affordable products to poor people.

<comment><USER55> And usually more profitable, I bet.

<comment><USER56> I doubt it, you don't have that many rich people to sell to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> It also looks to have an innovative lawsuit inducing ID. Seems pretty lazy to just anodized a MacBook Pro black, swap the logo and call it a day.

<comment><USER50> I didn't realize MacBook Pros had touchscreens on the keyboard...

<comment><USER57> Look at this gallery of product shots:

<http://www.engadget.com/photos/razer-blade-0/>

That is Apple's industrial design language. They could have made it look like anything and they chose to ape apple, that's lazy.

<comment><USER58> Are you seriously proposing that Apple has some monopoly on the idea of a rectangle with rounded corners? There's only so many practical shapes that a laptop can be.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacking Image Interpolation for Fun and Profit - <AUTHOR> https://peterhrynkow.com/performance/2019/01/13/blowing-up-images-to-make-them-small.html?hn=1 <comment><USER2> Now we need some tooling where you put in a maximum error bound, and it automatically finds the lowest resolution you can get away with. I wonder if one of those video-codec-based image formats (WebP, HEIC, AVIF) would already do something pretty similar if you just set a quality factor?

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems obvious in insight but I never used this before. An interesting front end trick, though adding gradient backgrounds is something I avoid as it's mostly eye candy

<comment><USER4> It does, thought i'd never imagined the browser did any interpolation at all !

Neat trick, thanks for the share ;)

<comment><USER2> They didn't used to, because it slowed down rendering. Then they started blurring stuff which worked well most of the time but not e.g. for retro artists who wanted the pixely look. So eventually they added some CSS properties to control it. [https://builtvisible.com/image-scaling-in- css/](https://builtvisible.com/image-scaling-in-css/) [https://caniuse.com/#search=image%20rendering](https://caniuse.com/#search=image%20rendering)

<comment><USER4> wow, I just learned so much from such a simple concept !! Thanks for the links ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Where's the hacking? It's common knowledge that if you stretch a small image, it blurs. As far as I'm aware, this is commonly used for backgrounds.</comment>


The ergonomic mouse that saved my wrist - <AUTHOR> https://eftegarie.com/the-ergonomic-mouse-that-saved-my-wrist/ <comment><USER2> I developed wrist pain when I was working as a corporate lawyer. Instead of a mouse, I then tried trackballs large and small, and then someone suggested an Evoluent vertical mouse. Within a few days, my wrist pain was gone. I used it for years, until I left the firm.

I am no longer a lawyer and now use an Apple trackpad. If I started developing problems again, I would get an Evoluent mouse for sure.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've never used that particular mouse, but $110 seems steep to me. $40 used seems pretty reasonable though. Fwiw I got a $25 ergonomic mouse off Amazon that has served me well for two years now.

I agree with the article though, it works great and no wrist pain at all. I even game with it.</comment>


VPaint: An experimental vector graphics editor - <AUTHOR> http://www.vpaint.org/ <comment><USER2> BTW when researching competitive advantage, I noticed Adobe dominated vector graphics, with postscript (and pdf) - apart from Macromedia's Flash, which was progressing quickly, including an optionally typed version of Javascript (ActionScript 3.0), with performance comparable to Java.

A few months later, boom, Adobe bought Macromdia. Retaining their monopoly? Since then, Flash development strangely languished...

Just sayin, keep going, and you may get a call from Adobe M&A.

</comment><comment><USER3> Impressive. FYI, source is at: [https://github.com/dalboris/vpaint](https://github.com/dalboris/vpaint)

<comment><USER4> Piggybacking to mention that the download links on their landing page are all hosted on SourceForge, but their releases page on GH has the same version (1.5) for all three platforms:

[https://github.com/dalboris/vpaint/releases](https://github.com/dalboris/vpaint/releases)

I won't download any binaries from SF if I can help it, due to the _recent unpleasantness_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Working on something kind of similar: \- vector graphics/drawings created by freehand / writing [http://write- live.com/d/dba21681-8d3f-4fbe-8b4b-e5c1983df934](http://write- live.com/d/dba21681-8d3f-4fbe-8b4b-e5c1983df934)

[http://write-live.com/d/8f9b7846-a7b9-4e5c-b704-dad9aa87d14e](http://write- live.com/d/8f9b7846-a7b9-4e5c-b704-dad9aa87d14e)

\- unlimited* levels of zoom [http://docs.write- live.com/WriteliveServer/webview.html?d=34...](http://docs.write- live.com/WriteliveServer/webview.html?d=3483c3de-b329-4af1-97d7-2d7f27d96ad1)

\- draw on a tablet, view on tablet / web [http://write- live.com/d/538254c5-7d31-41f2-83bb-bcd0a7cee7ab](http://write- live.com/d/538254c5-7d31-41f2-83bb-bcd0a7cee7ab)

A bit like if google docs had a baby with OneNote :)

Exploring now a possibility to render digital ink via webgl as Canvas poses performance problems for very complex drawings.

<comment><USER6> How is this similar? VPaint is a unique animation tool; your tool has no animation.

<comment><USER5> Hah. We _have_ ideas to allow creating of animations in future releases. For now vector graphics is THE similarity :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a damn shame that the executable downloads are hosted on SourceForge. I'd be willing to give it a try, but it'll have to wait until I have the time to go through the rigmarole of compiling the source code.

<comment><USER8> I'm confused, what's the problem with them being hosted on SourceForge?

<comment><USER9> See here:

[http://www.howtogeek.com/218764/warning- don%E2%80%99t-downlo...](http://www.howtogeek.com/218764/warning- don%E2%80%99t-download-software-from-sourceforge-if-you-can-help-it/)

and here:

[http://www.information- age.com/industry/software/123459675/h...](http://www.information- age.com/industry/software/123459675/hotbed-malware-another-blow-sourceforge- google-discovers-588-pages-malicious-software)

etc...

<comment><USER10> The second article suggests GitHub has a similar problem and the first says that SourceForge has an opt-in policy. I can obviously understand people wanting to boycott SF but no-one is talking about avoiding GH downloads. Did I miss an element of this story?

<comment><USER11> I guess the main difference is that it is SF themselves that add some of the crapware in binaries distributed by them. As far as I know, Github have never done that.

That people may upload malware to their github repo is quite different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very impressive tool. Not hard to pick up at all. It builds and runs on Fedora 22 without having to battle with dependencies, which is way easier than I expected :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Flash actually can do very similar things with their IDE via Object Tweens. And yes in flags you could edit the interpolated frames and "adjust it" However, at least with my experience with flash, the interpolations never did exactly what you wanted, and this tool seems to better predict what is desired.

With that said, despite being free I am not sure if VPaint interface is that much better than Flash.

<comment><USER14> From my experience, Object Tweens "never doing _exactly_ what you wanted" is an understatement - they're pretty much useless for any non-trivial shape, not doing anything remotely sensible.

There seems to be a lot of room for improvement in 2D interpolation, and their video shows stuff that looks impressive enough. I'd have to try it to form an opinion, of course... I hope I will find the time

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Watching the SIGRAPH video... isn't this basically how Flash animation works? Does anyone know the major differences?

<comment><USER16> It does seem like this technology is either old or just a decade or two too late. Aren't there ways nowadays of generating 3D models from 2D sketches that would serve better for this kind of intuitive topology animation?

<comment><USER17> Most of the examples they used in the video are topology changes in 2d that results from motion without topology changes in 3d, so you have a good point. But animation of topology changes is not a subject that has been well researched yet, in 3d or 2d, so if you're interested, it might be worth looking into exactly what is new here and why its coming out now.

In case you don't know about SIGGRAPH, it has historically been the best showcase of breaking graphics research and techniques. That doesn't guarantee something is new or good, but its one of the best first-order approximations there is, so, even when a SIGGRAPH paper looks simplistic or old-hat to me at first, I will generally give it the benefit of the doubt, because multiple experts in the field have reviewed it and found it worthy, so chances are I'm overlooking something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is an API on the roadmap? Before 2.0?

</comment><comment><USER19> So is this kind of like Flash and Illustrator rolled into one free product?

If so that's pretty amazing.

</comment><comment><USER20> Homebrew Cask request: [https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew- cask/issues/13121](https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask/issues/13121)

</comment><comment><USER21> When compiling, as specified on Github [1], I get a SIGSEV

[1] [https://github.com/dalboris/vpaint#linux](https://github.com/dalboris/vpaint#linux)

</comment><comment><USER22> Anyone get this loaded on windows 10 ?

</comment><comment><USER23> phpBB and sourceforge? what a throwback!

</comment><comment><USER24> Version numbering is that 1 is beta. Why are people fine with this but when KDE did a KDE 4.0 with publishing saying don't include it with your distro they got killed.

P.S. I think all beta should any number people say it is beta and people shouldn't get mad about numbering.

<comment><USER24> So I do a post on why people should not get mad at Beta numbering and I get 4 down votes Nice. Maybe it is because I missed a word "be" before any number. Just say why you don't like the post and don't just down vote. Let your voice be heard instead of being passive. Engage with differences.</comment></comment>


How to Make a Whiteboard for $4 [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBMUI-Mj_YU

<comment><USER2> Wow. This really did not need to be 7 minutes long. A short textual description (even a tweet) would have sufficed.

<comment><USER3> People in a hurry should add #t=5m58s to the youtube link, that is where he uses it.

<comment><USER4> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBMUI-Mj_YU#t=5m58s>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://rumkin.com/reference/whiteboard/surfaces.php>

<comment><USER6> There is one missing: Glass. In one corporate office, we had glass walls. I taped a large sheet of white paper on the _outside_ of the glass wall and used the inside as a whiteboard. Probably the most durable surface for that purpose.

And I have heard of mounting a piece of glass in front of a white wall to act as a whiteboard.

<comment><USER7> Any sense if plexiglass is as good?

<comment><USER8> If you must use plastic, use "Lexan". Its harder and sturdier than regular plexi. It costs 4 times as much, but ghosts much less and resists scratching much better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We created a sexy setup with plexiglass, glass fogging spray paint, and mirror hangers. We get lots of compliments.

It cost a hell of a lot more than $4, but it looks a lot better too.

Here's a few pics (pardon the sweet coloring from the iPhone camera): <http://drp.ly/8Az8f>

You can also get plexiglass pre-fogged, but it costs more. We liked the subtle background paint color showing through.

</comment><comment><USER10> Not a bad idea, but really didn't need to be 7 minutes long.

A while ago, I bought a box of page protectors, slipped a sheet of white paper in each and put them in 3 ring binders. Now I have dry erase sketch pads.

[http://www.amazon.com/Standard-Archival-Protectors- UNV21125-...](http://www.amazon.com/Standard-Archival-Protectors- UNV21125-Category/dp/B001E6C6GK/)

<comment><USER11> Damn clever.

I have a small whiteboard that fits in my laptop bag that I've used for sketching out things. I would then photograph the board and use Gimp to clean up the images for long-term saving (if I had something worth saving).

The page-protectors approach is so much more convenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Haha, it's an ad. I love how he fakes reading the name off of the product slowly, as if he's never read it before, then proceeds to repeat it, and the web address where you can buy it.

"I've discovered a product.." Discovered a product.

<comment><USER13> You _really_ think this guy is pushing $4.00 cellophane wrap? I'm sure he's getting a huge cut of the "computer nerds who run to Michael's and buy cellophane wrap to stick it to their wall for a whiteboard" market.

Worse case scenario (if you consider promotion inherently evil) he's a business consultant or something and the YouTube video serves as buzz for this. Either way it's a cool hack.

<comment><USER12> Yes, I do think he is pushing it.

Your other two sentences are irrelevant to the fact that this video is a shitty ad.

<comment><USER14> Do you have some sort of evidence that he is working for Highlander or are you just making an accusation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why not just get some tileboard? It's $12 for a 4'x8' chunk at Home Depot: [http://www.johnmurch.com/2007/10/20/diy-whiteboard-on-the- ch...](http://www.johnmurch.com/2007/10/20/diy-whiteboard-on-the-cheap/)

<comment><USER16> Two issues with the $12 tileboard:

(1) ghosting: they erase well when new, and when the ink hasn't been there for long, but over time they get murky.

(2) mounting: it's not easy to cut to size; it has enough thickness and weight that mounting tape or small tacks are iffy (and prone to failure sometime after installation).

The same issues come up for other surfaces short of fairly-expensive true glass.

 _If_ this 'clearphane' continues to be cleanly erasible after a while in use, or with ink that's been present for days/weeks, then this is a really neat idea I hadn't heard before. I'll definitely be trying it out.

<comment><USER15> Well, for ghosting, they're so damn cheap that replacing them isn't a cost concern for anyone but those where ramen profitability is a lofty goal :)

But perhaps you could combine the two? Tileboard for a solid white back and this cellophane for a covering to protect against ghosting. Sounds like a winner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice idea. The problem I see with his demonstration is that He is going to be in big trouble with the clothes he hangs in that door at the side. (unless he wears all black) nobody noticed?

</comment><comment><USER18> A very good idea. I made myself a blackboard of wood with a very expensive paint so I can use color chalks. I love it, but is bulky and heavy, and dusty.

I will try this need method.

</comment><comment><USER19> Text version?

<comment><USER20> 1\. Get hold of some clear cellophane (the stuff used in the video is for gift-wrapping fruit baskets and the like)

2\. Use pins/tacks to attach a top corner to a wall, unravel to desired width and pin/tack the far top-corner

3\. Use a sharp blade to trim, then tack bottom corners

4\. Tile surfaces and repeat for wider coverage

5\. Use white-board pens and eraser as normal

Bingo!

<comment><USER21> It may require properties of the specific cellophane he's using. The thing that's interesting about the video is how clean the erase is. He calls it Clearphane by Highlander. They have a ridiculous website, <http://www.highlandsupply.com/>

<comment><USER22> After filling out their form all I got was an SQL Error. This must be some secret-ops-CIA-type of Company...

But if this thing works, it is exactly what I'v been looking for over the last years.

IdeaPaint got me hoping. Their idea: Paint your wall with whiteboard color. The Problem is: You can't enter the room with the painted wall for a couple of days until its dry. Some students foundet the company, because during their time on campus they felt whiteboards were rediculous expensive. So they dropped this product on the market, for the exact same amount of money per whiteboard-m²... but its so easy! Ah I forgot, you have to paint your wall...

<comment><USER11> "After filling out their form all I got was an SQL Error. This must be some secret-ops-CIA-type of Company..."

Weird. I filled it out using the same single character for every field and it worked fine. They apparently do zero validation of input.

Anyways, this may be handy:

<http://www.highlandsupply.com/PDF/FilmSection.pdf></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


OpenHAB 2.1 brings IKEA Trådfri and VSCode integration - <AUTHOR> http://www.kaikreuzer.de/2017/06/28/openhab21/ <comment><AUTHOR> I had my fair share of endeavors with closed and open home automation solutions and this one really hit it off. openHAB is an amazingly flexible center for your smart home, regardless if you are playing around with ESP8266's or driving a whole KNX installation. It's open source and the ~200 add-ons can talk to nearly everything out there, from Z-Wave over Alexa and IFTTT, your Tesla car and up to whatever you get onto MQTT. One warning though: "With great power comes great responsibility" ;) openHAB is not a point and shoot adventure. Setting up the SmartHome takes a few minutes. But it's totally worth it! Happy Hacking!</comment>


Unofficial Google+ Read/Write JavaScript API - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/116805285176805120365/posts/JYiVWmFbeSn

<comment><USER2> Awesome - love the fact that you have this on GitHub... however, an API needs to be stable. This doesn't look like it will be very stable at all!

Given that last time you were unhappy about the wholescale changes to the DOM that G+ made, can't they change the XHR calls at will and break any extension you write?

Like I say, love what you are doing, but doesn't seem like a good basis for development :(</comment>


The Pencil iPad Stand - <AUTHOR> http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/the-pencil-ipad-stand-07-07-2010/ <comment><USER2> "The metal connectors that hold the eraser to the pencil [...]"

That'd be the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrule>. An awesome word.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a quick iPad stand solution proposed by Russians: [http://san-teh- nik.ru/2010/07/01/ivantuz-santekhnika-na-sluz...](http://san-teh- nik.ru/2010/07/01/ivantuz-santekhnika-na-sluzhbe-vysokikh-tekhnologijj.html)

Sorry, just couldn't resist.

<comment><USER4> I upvoted you since I got a good laugh, but it's actually a much slower solution than most stands in terms of "construction" and usage -- you have to spend time finding that special sized plunger and it every time you use it, you have to turn you ipad face down, use force to stick the plunger to the ipad, and unsticking it seems to be an even harder operation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like you'd have to buy really nice pencils and rubber bands to match the general aesthetic of the iPad.

</comment><comment><USER6> they cut down trees to get wood to make pencils to make a DIY stand for an iPad which can be used to read books so no paper is used which would have come from cutting down trees to ....

gotta love modern technology! :)

</comment><comment><USER7> An alternative to standing it on the metal ferrule of the pencil is to wrap another two rubber bands around those a couple of times to form a rubbery "pad." (6 pencils and 6 rubber bands.)

</comment><comment><USER8> it's probably better NOT to sharpen the pencils :-)

</comment><comment><USER9> I just use this: <http://blog.shrt.nl/zero-cost-ipad-dock></comment>


Markov's Heart of Darkness - <AUTHOR> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3277

<comment><USER2> Not sure if paragraph length distribution is correlated to anything interesting but the discussion with JL in the comments is entertaining.</comment>


People building companies, not "startups"? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
Are there any recent examples in the consumer tech space that have, or are, building themselves up with the goal of being a profitable company and remaining majority owned by the founders?
I'd really like to start a company and pay my bills with it and eventually make good money, not get rich quick. <comment><USER2> Check out <http://billflagg.blogspot.com>

It can be done, you just have to ignore a lot of the buzz since it wont apply to you.

</comment><comment><USER3> You probably want to look for the term "bootstrapping". That should lead you to quite a bit of information that might help you.</comment>


Ask HN: Teaching a non-programmer web development? - <AUTHOR>

I have an old friend who called me last night to tell me about an idea he had for a web application that he would like to pursue (it's an interesting idea in itself but that's not the point of this post).
My friend has a marketing and business background and is the president of a networking group at his college and is actually majoring in Entrepreneurial Studies so that is clearly his strong point.
He wants to learn about web development.  He doesn't have any experience with it (hasn't even done HTML/CSS).
My background includes HTML/CSS, Photoshop, and Rails so I have a good grasp of start to finish development, so I could help him in that direction, but I'm not sure if that should be the path a person completely new to all things programming should take.  I'm tempted to start him on PHP and find him some good screencasts to follow along to.
What path do you think I should push him along and what resources do you think would be valuable to a non-programmer who wants to learn web development? <comment><USER2> Send him toward a toolkit that's ostensibly usable by "non-programmers". Have him put up a Wordpress blog. Hand him a copy of _Using Drupal_ (but certainly not _Pro Drupal Development_ yet, unless you _want_ to scare him witless).

The advantage of these things is threefold. First, getting a basic Wordpress or Drupal installation up and running is excellent practice in the boring but essential skills of web development: Knowing what a server is, renting a shared host, using SSH and FTP, editing text files, debugging, searching Google, learning how to find and question your local guru, appreciating how much work it's all going to be and why it's going to take you years to learn. ;)

Second, there's always the chance that one of these toolkits is all the guy needs. These systems are actually used to build production sites. They have logins and stuff! They have nifty looking themes that look like real websites! That makes them more rewarding for a beginner with business aspirations than some primitive-blog-in-fifteen-minutes demo app. It's even possible that the guy will find that he doesn't need to learn to build an entire site from scratch in Django. He might be able to figure out how to assemble his site from open-source components -- or, once he learns about the existence of the components, he might rather spend time coming up with new business ideas that leverage those, rather than spending time learning Python syntax.

Finally, it's generally easier to tinker with an existing toolkit than to write a webapp from scratch. And, even if you really are better off writing your webapp from scratch, it pays to understand _why_ you're doing that instead of building on top of a toolkit. Which in turn requires some experience with toolkits.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wrote this a while back in response to that question.

[http://iamelgringo.blogspot.com/2008/05/teach-yourself- you-t...](http://iamelgringo.blogspot.com/2008/05/teach-yourself-you-to-hack- in-6-9.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> HTML first. Do it yourself HTML is better than using web design software or prepackaged templates. Hand coded HTML gives you an understanding of what is going on. Start first with a static web site to limit complexity. CSS is next, but it can be a major conceptual leap, particularly with browser incompatibilities, so I would suggest that you create some simple style sheets, and let him experiment with it.

JavaScript is the next step. I recommend JQuery as a fundamental library. He should concentrate on simple aids for the user, until he gets a feel for it. JS is a bigger hurdle than HTML.

On the server side, I am a Python fan, but since you know Rails, that might be a good way to go, if you are into helping him. PHP is relatively easy, but it encourages really bad code. I would recommend against it.

Photoshop is a huge monster. Unless he needs it, it's a distraction.

As far as learning resources, there is lots online or get highly rated books from Amazon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I'm kind of steering away from giving him all of the tools to learn web development in addition to Photoshop as I think it might just become discouraging for him at first.

I'm curious about your JQuery recommendation: why not just the core Javascript language first? Quicker results? I ask because I only have hacker level knowledge of both Javascript & JQuery and am looking to improve my skills but was unsure whether to attack the main language or just focus on JQuery itself...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a background in business as well, and decided to learn programming around 1½ years ago. So my situation is probably similar. Looking back at my experience here's my two cents:

\- Start by learning HTML to get the basics straight. This isn't hard once you grasp the basic concept.

\- PHP is a good place to start, since you can almost always find help in the huge PHP community. I used www.w3schools.com for reference, and google would always point me to an answer when I had a stupid question.

\- Do a real project, it's the best way to learn. I did a HN clone just to learn how stuff worked, how to deploy, etc. (www.deloghersk.dk)

The one thing I missed was a real person I could ask whenever there was something I conceptually didn't understand. Google isn't very good at answering these questions. Seems like our friend is in a better position here :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> ordered by importance:

touch typing: 10 fingers + numbers

a decent editor: vim

html+css

jquery (i guess it's the lispiest framework)

server-side: lisp / scheme

unix command: piping, awk, grep, find, xargs (a 'mapping' equivalent)

gimp: script-fu (tiny-scheme) and imagemagick of course

os: openbsd (i find it easier -- altho more stern -- than linux)

<comment><AUTHOR> So many ideas that I never would have thought of, AND all open source...

I dig it. Thanks.

<comment><USER6> i'm more into fp and using lisp so for my experience-based suggestion the dev technologies are all aligned (lisp, jquery, script-fu)

a less parallel could be erlang, jquery, python-fu where one needs to learn 3 distincts techs -> takes more time

for oop, it could be ruby, prototype, <insert ruby for photo>, and of course sql

i didn't put sql because i don't use it now since my data structure (linked list) is not easily mapped into tables _shrug_ and i use a lot of regex on top of it ... but it would be sqlite if i have to use sql again

abundant open source options ... choose the smallest set</comment></comment></comment>