Ask HN: What do GitHub stars mean to you when evaluating a project, if anything? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I treat it as one indicator out of many that I use to evaluate a project. IMO, commit activity, quality of communication on PRs and open issues, quality of documentation, attention to detail in README, etc. are usually more important. Stars are more of an indicator of whether I'll be able to find blog posts and answered questions on Stack Overflow.

And something to keep in mind: if you're comparing two projects, you should pay attention to which project is older. If I see a fork or a newer project that has almost as many stars as a much older project, that is a very positive indicator to me, since it means that people are actively deciding to go with the newer project.

<comment><USER3> I'm surprised at how much dislike there is for the stars metric, and I wonder if it's an allergy that devs tend to have for software development metrics (which is understandable when they are abused).

I try my best, at minimum, to star anything I use on github as a way of supporting it , and in addition to other factors you mention, take this number as an indication of the likelihood it will continue to be developed.

Some discounting and adjustment sometimes needs to be done for projects that managed to get on the front-page for something 'cool', but then that's where the other factors help.

<comment><USER4> > how much dislike there is for the stars metric

From the giving standpoint, people read too much into the meaning of individuals starring repos. Employee for $CORP starring a repo just means that person felt compelled to star the repo, and has no broader implication that $CORP is using the project in question. Maintainers behind the repo sometimes construe that as a company endorsement, and in some cases use that as the basis for including logos in marketing material.

From the interpretation side, the statistic itself is subject to gamification. There used to be a website where you could essentially "buy stars", ultimately calling into question any sort of usage-based signaling.

From the maintainer side, GitHub stars are basically the equivalent of likes and retweets. There's no magical bank that we can go to exchange GitHub stars for dollars. While it is certainly exciting to see major thresholds crossed, the prospect of receiving extra stars does not usually compel people to put more time and energy into a project.

(full disclosure: our largest open source project [https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx/](https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx/) has over 10K stars and the perceived popularity certainly is surprising for a seemingly niche project)

<comment><USER3> Metrics like Github stars can be gamed, but it doesn't mean that the number has no value. I would conjecture that the # of stars correlates strongly with other desirable things.

I think of it as similar to the # of citations that an academic paper has - genius can remain ignored and undiscovered, but overall the citation count has embedded in it a whole series of factors that correlate to "should I bother reading this".

Ironically before citing a paper that studied this very thing, I checked many citations it had :)

[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7816479/](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7816479/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nothing really for me. Personally I like to look at: 1) Last commit date 2) Number of open issues vs closed 3) Number of open PRs vs closed

I am way more interested in how active the community is supporting the project than any popularity contest.

<comment><USER6> But projects that draw an active, supportive community are generally, by definition, popular.

<comment><USER5> The flip side is nothing stops a lot of users from starring something and that's it. The implied popularity of a library only comes from how active the project is, not how many stars it has.

A recent example: I saw an advertisement on the freeway for some tire brand I've never heard of, with the quote "The most liked tire page on Facebook." What does liking (or in the case of staring something) have to do with the quality of the project, especially when liking/staring takes so little effort?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For me, staring GitHub repos means that I like this project, I will not remember it though in the future, so I star it to find it easily. Also, I revisit my stars list every 6-12 months and usually un-star projects I'm no longer interested, or I have learned and now can find them with their name.

</comment><comment><USER8> When evaluating projects for business projects, I'm going to look at github stars as a rough indicator of popularity and community. The larger the number of stars, the less likely the project will be abandoned, and the more likely it will be supported in some way. The immediate next thing I look at is the date of the last commit and the issues. How recent were the changes, how responsive are they to issues, how long do PRs hang around without comment? Then I start looking at documentation and potentially the code to see if this would fit my need.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's a sign that there's a corporate backer whose social media person thinks stars are important. But I usually already know if it has a corporate backer, and I've usually already decided whether that is relevant.

</comment><comment><USER10> If the project is fairly new, a large number of stars mean that the author is popular/famous and/or they won the Show HN lottery.

<comment><USER11> LOL I posted my GitHub project here on HN a few years back and picked up 8 stars. More like a scratch-off win for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I star repos when I want to bookmark them. I plan to use it in the future or am interested in reading through the source.

There are many factors, "stars" among the more important and obvious ones. It indicates that this project was popular at one time for one reason or another. There's not enough info in the "stars" alone to draw any more conclusions without looking at other factors (although I am biased and favor a project with a lot of stars without looking at any other factors).

Other factors that I will consider:

* How old is the last commit? (is this actively maintained)

* How many contributors? (have multiple developers reviewed and worked on this code base)

* How many open issues (vs how many closed issues)?

* When was the last issue resolved? (also actively maintained)

* Are there CI tests built in and are they passing?

* Is there test coverage reported and is it acceptable?

I'll also:

* read through a few issues, make sure no one is saying "This does not build" etc.

* scroll through some of the dependencies (badges can help by indicating if the dependencies are out of date).

</comment><comment><USER13> I've found that the average age of uncommented, open issues are the best indicators of the likelihood that a project is actively maintained (even if it's in the "no activity because it's already finished" stage). Another good but not as useful indicator is raw number of commits.

</comment><comment><USER14> For golang projects I usually check go-search.org [0] to see how many other packages import a given package.

Number of users of a package seems like a better metric than number of people who "favorited" something through the stars feature.

Would be really cool if github provided a way to surface "number of users" or "number of downloads" data in a way that it could be used to rank github search results [1].

[0] [https://go-search.org/](https://go-search.org/)

[1] [https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=&type=](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=&type=)

<comment><USER15> What about golang projects that are not imported?

For example [https://github.com/ochinchina/supervisord](https://github.com/ochinchina/supervisord)

<comment><USER14> That's a good point, today it has 0 imports:

[https://go-search.org/search?q=supervisord](https://go- search.org/search?q=supervisord)

I guess we can say that while it'd be a useful metric, clearly not in all cases :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nothing. Nothing whatsoever.

I look first at whether the project solves my problem within my constraints. Then I look at who is involved, what is their commitment level to the project (if it matters), and how they seem to be handling issues and PRs. Then I do a quick scan of the code to see if it's reasonable, look at dependencies, etc.

Then I test it out.

If I'm weighing it against other projects, I usually do a back-of-the-envelope muscow type analysis and comparison and weight them based on my proclivities.

General popularity? Not usually a big factor unless it seems like the project might get abandoned (if that even matters).

</comment><comment><USER17> My concern is over the quality of the stars.

What percentage of people star repo's where they like the idea but never get pass the Readme....thinking they'll come back to it but never unstar it.

What about people who star something, try it and decided it's not very good and will keep it starred to see how it evolves...

</comment><comment><USER18> Nothing at all. My biggest indicators are, amount of commit activity, the recency of said activity, and most importantly how widely used is it?

Think Netty or Guava vs MyCollegeDataStructureLibrary

I never star repos myself so I suspect stars don't represent real endorsement. But using people using a library is.

</comment><comment><USER19> Loose correlation with adoption and community size. For me it's one more signal to consider when choosing a specific tool or library for a production environment. More popular projects usually have a lower chance of being abandoned and have better docs, tests, etc.

<comment><USER20> With regards to the signal aspect of it, I personally only star repos that I am using on a project.

I naively believe that there are many others like me and it helps me determine which projects are "I actually use this" vs "I starred this because it's the cool thing to do/use".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not a whole lot by itself. But certainly an indicator of quality/use that I'll use when evaluating options. # of stars, contributors, commits, branches, what the README looks like, check out the pulse on a weekly/monthly basis, contributions per person (is 99% of it written by 1-2 people). When were the last meaningful commits, is the build passing. Many other things go into evaluating a project when I'm considering taking it on as a dependency. But those are just a few I look at glancing at the repo for a minute or so. And of course, I compare all these metrics to the alternatives.

Edit: another couple I forgot was # of issues (and what those issues are ie. bugs vs feature requests), and types of PRs open

</comment><comment><USER22> I'll use it while comparing multiple projects to guage community support and how "alive" the project is. Stars are obviously not the best representation, but it's a nice way to see how many other people have evualuated the project and are either using it or at least thought it looked good in some way.

This past weekend, while trying to choose a JS framework for a webapp, stars played a decent role in my choice when it came down to two that seemed to have similar features and comparable commit activity. One project has ~200 stars, while the other had ~13,000, which definitely helped push me toward the latter.

</comment><comment><USER23> This seems like it might be a bit of a contrarian view based on the other comments but I use them to get a quick overall sense of a project. Generally I'm interested in using projects with a relatively proven history and a good community -- both of which roughly translates to stars. They're also a pretty good metric for comparing similar projects at a glance.

That said, I'm certainly not put off by or dismiss project with few or no stars, it just means that I'll look slightly deeper before making an assessment.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is not an answer, but today I was hunting for an implementation of Aho- Corasick in Go.

[https://github.com/cloudflare/ahocorasick](https://github.com/cloudflare/ahocorasick) \- 285 stars. [https://github.com/anknown/ahocorasick](https://github.com/anknown/ahocorasick) \- 70 stars

Anknown's implementation is more than 10x faster than CloudFlare's, and typically uses 10% of the memory!

</comment><comment><USER25> Well I star things just to remember to go back and see if they're any use to me: so I think that should give you an indication of how reliable they are as a measure of quality.

</comment><comment><USER26> To me it signals that the community support is good on a project and I am more likely to go with a project with more stars over one that has less (that is a substitute project).

</comment><comment><USER27> I will not even possibly consider introducing a 3rd party dependency unless it has one of the following:

1\. A reasonably release cadence of packages (APT/PPA/RPM).

2\. A well defined release cycle with a sane download path (for tarballs).

3\. Obvious community support by way of GitHub stars, pull requests, issues.

That said, in the traditional adoption curve, I am somewhere between 'late majority' and 'laggard'. Mostly because I don't have time to evaluate most things.

<comment><USER28> I'd add one more option to that list: it is _finished_ (and implemented in a language with good backwards-compatibility discipline).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> To me they mean merely that other people have also looked at this project and found it interesting enough to star, so I might expect less resistance from others to using it if I too decide it's cool and want to use it.

I wouldn't be comfortable inferring much about adoption from number of stars, based on my own starring behavior, which is often "this seems cool, maybe I'll look into it more deeply later".

</comment><comment><USER30> If there are competing projects that I am unfamiliar with, stars count and last commit date decide which I try using first. If it works, I go with it.

I may star both repos in case an issue comes up and I need to try something else. I use stars to "save" repos so I can find them later if I forget the names.

I am a bootstrapped founder and I find this to be the quickest approach.

</comment><comment><USER31> Stars mean different things to different people. Some people use them to like something, others just to bookmark it for later.

<comment><USER32> I use stars as bookmarks, but i also use the watch feature to keep track of stuff i find interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Less than ~20 stars = I'm gonna have to maintain it myself. Whether this is practical depends on the scope.

Anything else is pretty meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER11> A star means "I think your project is cool, but just not enough to contribute to it (with a fork)."

<comment><USER34> GitHub forks aren't contribution, they are just github forks. People fork without any intention to contribute all the time.

Both stars and github forks are the same for me. A tiny metric used to indicate how interesting a project is to the general masses. This _is_ useful data, it's just not all that important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> if stars == 0: Nobody heard of it yet.

elif stars < 10: Probably shared with some friends or tweeted.

elif stars < 1000: Probably announced officially, shared on some news aggregators, maybe there's a blog post about it.

elif stars < 10000: Probably pushed by a funded company or a tech celeb.

elif stars < 100000: Probably a meme.

else: Probably a bug in Github.

</comment><comment><USER36> I assumed stars were like favorites.

</comment><comment><USER37> I find if I want to explore a new API I like to find boilerplate projects that are usually <Something>-Example. I know if they have one star, it's probably high-quality boilerplate.

If there's no stars, I might still investigate, but it's likely unusable.

</comment><comment><USER38> There are three things to figure out when you use a project

1\. Quality

2\. Maintenance

3\. Adoption

Github stars imply #3 adoption, moreso I believe than raw download stats.

It doesn't tell you the quality or maintenance of the project. It tells you how large the community is, and what you can expect on eyeballs, public Q/A forums, etc.

</comment><comment><USER39> Github watches mean much more than stars imo. it means people are actively paying attention

</comment><comment><USER40> They don't mean anything for me. To be honest, I barely even remember they exist, let alone look at what score a project has when I look it up on Github.

Maybe it's the way it's placed on screen that makes it so easy to overlook for me...

</comment><comment><USER41> Literally nothing. If it's a thing I need to use, I look at how actively it's being maintained, whether issues get responded to quickly, and whether issues get closed within a reasonable time or linger for three years.

</comment><comment><USER42> Depends a lot on the type of project. If it's something trendy, like a new JS framework, it means nothing for me. If it's something more specific and there are other alternatives, then it starts to mean something.

</comment><comment><USER43> Lack of stars usually means that project is dead or has absolutely no community, so a red flag. Plenty of stars only says it's popular, not that it's a good fit for you.

</comment><comment><USER44> Absolutely nothing.

More interesting is what uses it (if it is a library), when the last commit was, and is there any old issues with no updates from owners.

</comment><comment><USER45> How many people have viewed this repository and decided to save it for later. Basically, how many people have bookmarked this project?

</comment><comment><USER46> I use them to bookmark something I want to evaluate for use later and don't really use them for any other reason.

</comment><comment><USER47> That it's popular. Nothing more. There are cases where it matters, there are cases where it does not.

</comment><comment><USER48> i feel stars is a fair indicator of popularity but is low on the list of metrics used to evaluate the project.

documentation over everything, followed by using a rough mental calculation of open issues and recency of commits.

</comment><comment><USER49> Single digits stars are a signal to me that no-one has used the code yet.

</comment><comment><USER50> I honestly didn't even realize they were still a thing that existed.

</comment><comment><USER51> A quick way to select top 3 options for a deeper look.

</comment><comment><USER52> Coolness of the project and/or the author.

</comment><comment><USER53> Meaningless</comment>


Cuisenaire rods - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisenaire_rods

<comment><USER2> I'm using these rods to help my daughter (6 years old) with number sense right now. I've found them to be pretty effective at helping her build the concepts around manipulating numbers for arithmetic. The only pitfall we've run into was in connecting the manipulation of the rods with the manipulation of the more abstract numbers.

They've really helped in the area of modeling the problems. Depending on where you put the unknown, there are several ways to ask the same arithmetic question, eg:

        _ + 2 = 5
        3 + 2 = _
        3 + _ = 5

Using the rods to model the knowns and unknowns has been really helpful for her to connect the abstract ideas of the equations with the reality of what the numbers mean, and how the manipulations work on each side of the equality.

Overall I think they're a pretty powerful tool, but they require some creativity to really get the most value from them, and they definitely require the use of other learning aids in conjunction like number lines, 99-charts, and base-ten blocks. We also use money, marbles, and other things to try to avoid getting too dependent on a particular manipulative.

Actually the biggest breakthrough we had was making up a card game to learn complements of ten. If you've played "set" you know the basic idea - we lay down 12 cards numbered 0-10, and we compete to see who can make pairs or triples that sum to ten the fastest. She loves it, and she's gotten to where I really have to work to keep up.

<comment><USER3> We used them in my education too.

Do you have the track?[1] It can help with the concrete/abstract correlation.

[1] [http://marcialmiller.com/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2011/0...](http://marcialmiller.com/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2011/01/Staircasesandrodtracks.jpg)

<comment><USER2> I don't... thanks for the tip. That looks like it would be really handy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The brilliance of the cuisinaire rods is they are accurate and so the way they fit together was immensly pleasing to me when I was little.

The smallest one is a cube, then a red rod exactly two cubes.

I loved the cuisinaire rods I had as a child, the colours were harmonious and I can still count in that spectrum.

None of my other blocks made patterns as well, they were just innacurate and at a certain age I loved patterns & ziggurats.

They were my absolute favourite building blocks and perhaps helped me become numerate, I certainly knew how many red blocks matched a green and understood add, multiply, & divide operations with coloured blocks intuitively before I knew number symbols.

I think the only change I would try is to add the base 10 number symbols to each one which might make the transition to symbols easier ( maybe put binary notation on the other side* ;)

*[ my dad was a programmer so I learned binary, octal and hex counting as well as base 10 ]

I didn't have the numbered track that seems really cool but there was a very long one in my box, longer than 36 units, maybe it was 100, can't remember, was less fun than the coloured ones.

That the numbers on the track are not coloured according to the blocks seems odd, it is not quite as pretty as the blocks. Perhaps putting symbols on the blocks would make them less appealing to the infant mind ?

</comment><comment><USER5> These are amazing, primarily because they teach the related concepts of numeracy and geometry/scale all at once. From free play and 'building' to patterns, simple arithmetic, they just keep providing a direct physical analogue for numerical operations. Used on me, and on my children.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wouldn't have remembered that I actually used this if this wasn't posted here!

I don't recall when or in what depth, but I definitely recall them being involved in my education when I was learning addition and maybe even multiplication.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool nostalgia

Like to see some evidence they work and to know why they have gone out of fashion.

[edit] Reading the conclusion in one thesis, their findings were the colors did more harm than good. But the concept of using blocks might have befit.

[http://www.worldcat.org/title/study-of-the-cuisenaire- gatteg...](http://www.worldcat.org/title/study-of-the-cuisenaire-gattegno- method-as-opposed-to-an-eclectic-approach-for-promoting-growth-in-operational- technique-and-concept-maturity-with-first-grade-children/oclc/166335225)

</comment><comment><USER8> My early math education was based on these rods, as well as a stackable Lego- like plastic clone[0].

I used to think it didn't have very much impact. But in retrospect, I think it really opened my young mind to math as spatial reasoning. It wasn't long before I could visualize the answer, or at least a very close approximation, to complex algebra much more quickly than I could do actual calculations.

[0] [http://www.mathusee.com/](http://www.mathusee.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow, that brings back memories. My parents had me using these from preschool to probably fourth grade. They sure made math a lot more fun. It's funny, I can actually trace my number synesthesia back to the colors of the pieces. The only exception was the number 2. I remember being frustrated that the Cuisenaire 2s were red when 2 was so obviously yellow. Sometimes I would even avoid using those pieces, just because they didn't match the numbers I was writing down.

</comment><comment><USER10> These were used in my math education. Theoretically, it's a good way to explain base ten but I don't think it helped me much.

Oddly enough dominoes somehow lodged themselves in my mind though, I still picture the number ten as two sets of five dots arranged.

<comment><USER11> how is "base 10" related to these rods?

<comment><USER12> The rods often (typically?) have 10 units on them.

<comment><USER13> More than that, they are 1cm^3 for the base unit and the orange rods are 10 cm's long. The precision is pretty good on the ones I had growing up. 10 of the long rods fit a meter measuring stick to within the precision of the markings on the ruler.

If you wanted to use them to teach continuous variables, it would be easy to do so by analogy using the volume of the numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had these as a child. I think I learned multiplication more from Lego blocks but I liked them.

<comment><USER4> I liked lego much later than cuisinaire but lego was not based on a unit cube like cuisinaire.

Lego has a different unit height than unit width.

Cuisinaire were better for flat math rather than cubic math ziggurats that I dimly recall building.

<comment><USER4> \\\ _correction_

replace "Cuisinaire were..." with "Lego were better for flat math rather than the cubic math ziggurats..."

Large Cuisinaire would be good, one could start younger like Duplo but cuisinaire - it seems to me there is a lot of value playing with cuisinaire at a younger age, before any numbers are introduced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We had "unit cubes". We used them to ... something. Still terrible at arithmetic.</comment>


Breaking https' AES-GCM - <AUTHOR> https://www.cryptologie.net/article/361/nonce-disrespecting-adversaries-practical-forgery-attacks-on-gcm-in-tls/ <comment><USER2> I've never seen AES-CCM used in practice. As far as I know, no browser supports it, and neither do most crypto libs - I think OpenSSL is the only one that does. I've heard many very smart people say bad things about GCM for a while now, and some have mentioned a preference for CCM - does anyone have any background on why it's not more widely used?

I use ChaCha20-Poly1305 in several places, which avoids GCM weaknesses, and while it's far more performant on mobile clients, it does seem to sacrifice a some amount of performance on current desktops (DJB's mail, posted to HN earlier, provides some hope that this may change in the future).</comment>


The Free Universal Construction Kit - <AUTHOR> http://fffff.at/free-universal-construction-kit/ <comment><USER2> After the initial reaction of "Neato!" I started thinking what it would mean if when I first got my legos (a big tub, hand-me-down from an older cousin), they had come with a few dozen of these. I can't imagine _what_ I would have built, but it certainly would have been more interesting... and I might have grown up with somewhat stronger convictions about interoperability and the senselessness of walled gardens :)

<comment><USER3> I don't find walled gardens senseless at all. One of the nice things about a box full of Lego (not legos) is that you can take consistency for granted. It's the difference between a language with a clear grammar and a pidgin language.

I'm not against things like this, but there's no guarantee of interoperability producing superior results. You're just as likely to end up with a chaotic mess if you don't build with a plan in mind; one of the other benefits of a single system is that it forces you into more creative problem-solving.

<comment><USER2> > Lego (not legos)

Actually, "Lego® bricks." Lego severely admonishes using their name as a noun, whether pluralized or not. But, due to that admonishment and a thing called reactance[1], I was being purposefully breezy with my language. :)

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_(psychology)>

<comment><USER4> Any time you see a demand to use special characters or formatting in 'how you should refer to our stuff', feel free to completely ignore it, since at that point it's just marketing fluff.

I remember one company whose marketing department demanded that every mention of our product be in the assigned font, bolded, with part of the name subscripted and ®'d. Even in support emails. Even in followups. They never saw just how amazingly artificial it was and how it actually created (mild) barriers to rapport with users. Needless to say, everyone in sales and support that had a clue decided to put that directive into the round file.

<comment><USER5> I agree. However - 'Legos' is just stupid. Who decided a single brick was a 'lego' and therefore the plural was 'legos'? It sounds bizarre to me as a Brit :)

PS It's maths, not math.

<comment><USER4> I was thinking about this, and I'm not sure what the rule is.

On the one hand you have 'Meccano', 'Playmobile' and similar, when referring to collections of brand items.

But on the other hand, you would refer to a single brand car park as 'Toyotas' or a collection of single brand laptops as 'Lenovos' without anyone batting an eye.

I'm with you - 'legos' sounds stupid to me - but really I need someone more formally trained in grammar for this one :)

<comment> alex-g It comes down to whether the stuff is perceived as lots of little indistinguishable bits, or a few big chunks. The former category (mass or non- count nouns) includes water, grain (in the sense of a quantity of grain, not lots of kinds of grains), sand, snow, etc. They are not inflected for the plural and do not take numbers - we say "three grains of sand" not "three sands". It's plausible for Lego to work the same way - so "ten pieces of lego", not "ten legos".

Perhaps in these oft-cited days of lego sets that _are_ more like a few big pieces than lots of little pieces, people will start to think differently.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. In English "Lego" is a mass noun, like water and sand. We say "a piece of lego" or "a lego piece" to identify a single brick.

I guess in American they don't treat it as a mass noun, and maybe they say "a lego" instead of "a piece of lego".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unfortunately, the Makerbot is no longer open source, which rather ruins their point in mentioning it (the UCK was first published before MB went closed and evil, MB technology is entirely derived from originally open hardware and software).

<comment><USER8> What's evil about it? You can simply build the older generation makerbot. It's no different than what Apple did with FreeBSD and NetBSD by way of Next, apart from the fact that Apple did not actually make FreeBSD or NetBSD.

Anybody, including Makerbot could make a commercial successor to Makerbot.

<comment><USER7> What's evil is taking open hardware and closing it. There is nothing in their machine that is not a direct derivative of GPL-licensed reprap technology, and they give neither attribution nor source back. In addition, they are patenting technology developed openly. It's a pretty disgusting thing to do.

<comment><USER8> I agree it's disgusting. So, the best way to deal with it is very simple: utterly ignore them. Those patents aren't worth the paper they are printed on, prior art abounds. The hobbyist community won't care about those patents at all, but any other commercial entity they plan to sue will wipe them out with _their_ portfolio, CNC stuff is a patent minefield. Okuma, Heidenhain, Bosch, Deckel and tons of other very large, very wealthy and established companies will not be impressed at all and have enough patents of their own that they could probably stop them from going to market at all if they desired to do so.

Additive or subtractive, it's a detail and lots of these companies are active in both fields.

I really don't see the problem. Simply ignore them, beat them on price and features and they'll go to their deserved end, which is to cease to exist.

And if you want to speed it up then you should sue them for taking what's yours (if you were a contributor to some bit that made it into their commercial offering), a lawsuit testing the GPL in that fashion is overdue anyway. Probably they'll fold before it goes to trial, as they always do.

<comment><USER7> Ignoring them is my strategy as well, but it doesn't help that others are mentioning them so prominently as an open option. I felt it was necessary to say something to point out this is no longer the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had both Fisher Technik and lego, and combining them in one project required some serious fiddling. I'd rigged my own connector pieces, some lego blocks with the stubs cut off glued to some fisher elements. Even without a 3D printer, if you want it badly enough and you can afford to sacrifice a few pieces there are ways to get what you want.

When I was a kid fisher technik was considered better than lego but far far more expensive. There were analog electronic and logic blocks and it was (far) easier to make functioning machinery with Fisher Technik than it was with lego (back then the lego robotics revolution had definitely not happened yet).

</comment><comment><USER9> Whether it was intentional or not, it's hard to ignore the acronym, when spelled out.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am puzzled by the non-commercial restriction. If someone could produce those kits and sell them at scale, it will make such kits more universally accessible.

<comment><USER11> "Some may express concern that the Free Universal Construction Kit infringes such corporate prerogatives as copyright, [etc.]. [...] the public is legally allowed to make 3D prints that mate with proprietary parts, especially in cases (the "Must Fit Exception") where a piece's shape "is determined by the need to connect to or fit into or around another product""

Further down he notes that this only holds for private _and_ non-commercial use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The FUCK?

<comment><AUTHOR> I see what you did there. (to people downvoting parent, it's the acronym for this kit)

<comment><USER13> Right, that jumped out at me right away, and I wasn't sure if this was a parody or not. Seems like an unnecessary inside joke for something ultimately for kids.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am I the only one who doesn't find this terribly exciting? I mean, it's a neat idea, but I don't see it to be that interesting to actually play with.

The beauty of each set is its self-consistency. If you attached this to that, then there's a good chance that 3rd and 4th will fit right in too. But once you start mixing sets, all the proportions fly out of the window and so to assemble something meaningful you would still need to build modules from the same set and then use these adapters to connect them together. Nice to have, certainly, but it doesn't sound _that_ dramatically more interesting.

</comment><comment><USER15> i don't see how this could really work.

the tolerances required for legos to work are quite small. they mention this in the implementation section which says they use 2.5 micron measurement.

but 3D printers are not nearly so accurate. makerbot's page says their latest is 100 micron.

so if you print the design, it will have the wrong measurements.

what's missing here?

<comment><USER16> It's just a coupling system. If you want to attach Legos to K'Nex, they will work fine in a handful of spots.

Building an entire structure out of an AM construction set would be a disaster. Even professional grade printers aren't even close to 2.5 micron.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is an interface mapper for hardware. V. cool.

</comment><comment><USER18> So, this is the kid version of The Universal Business Adapter? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIOqOxI0K_I>

</comment><comment> nezza-_- Is their logo for 'Free Art' just the NBC logo mirrored and with other colors? Even the pecker is in it ...

</comment><comment><USER19> It's not actually free items, it's free plans.

This is not a good title.

<comment><USER20> Think free as in freedom, not as in beer.

<comment><USER21> Maybe they ought to call it Libre Universal Construction Kit instead.

<comment><USER22> That would certainly form a more palatable acronym.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


BMW Considers Upping i3 Production - <AUTHOR> http://www.plugincars.com/bmw-considers-upping-i3-production-face-overwhelming-demand-128586.html

<comment><USER2> What's with that unspoken rule among auto designers to make electric cars look _really_ weird and ugly? I'd like to drive an electric car, but not one I'd be ashamed to own !

It almost seems they're doing it on purpose to cast shame on you if you buy it. You'll be "that woohoo guy". I just want to drive the frigging thing.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.teslamotors.com/](http://www.teslamotors.com/)

<comment><USER2> Except Tesla, goes without saying. And that's my point.

It's BMW, a German constructor with a minimum good taste expected, a history of coolness. It wouldn't have surprised me coming from Chevrolet or Ford or other European constructors like Renault, Peugeot or Citroën (which even the regular cars they make look hideous).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Microsoft's reply to Chromebook - <AUTHOR>

Is there a chance that Microsoft will come up with a Chromebook competitor or is already working on? And it makes sense also at least in US and other developed countries where fast internet facilities are always available. Also they have got everything they need: Bing, One Drive, Office 365, Browser Spartan and Windows Store. It will be best for all those people who mostly work on the internet and removing all the legacy code of Windows would definitely make it much more secure and fast or may be they can build on top of linux kernel. Above all, it will be cool to have one!!
Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> No. Windows 8.1 is almost as lean as Android (although for saying that, I'm probably going to be downvoted by the portion of HN that still thinks Windows is the same as it was 15 years ago).

As far as price goes, we've seen decent models under $350, and the very low end is under $200: [http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/01/lenovo-tablets- mwc2015/](http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/01/lenovo-tablets-mwc2015/)

In short, Microsoft has no reason to create a less-functional, web-only version of Windows 8.1.

<comment><AUTHOR> What I think it is not about the price. It is mostly about the utility of that thing and coolness factor. We know that one of the reason Microsoft is not so popular now is that people don't think it as to be cool anymore. And Apple's products will continue to break records as long as it remains in fashion sense and is a status symbol.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: are all of foursquare venues user generated? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to figure out if FourSquare gets venue data from another source, or if it is and always was user generated?
I know they have this page
http://foursquare.com/add_venue, but I'm trying to figure out if that is the only method that venues get added to FourSquare.
The reason I'm asking is I'm trying to figure out for a new site I'm working on (not location based) how much you can rely on users to generate reliable content similar to locations? <comment><USER2> I'm not sure how reliable this is:

<http://aboutfoursquare.com/foursquares-data-problem/>

 _Every bit of venue data on Foursquare has been entered by users. That has led to a wide variety of problems throughout the system._</comment>


Stateless: Run your backend in the cloud for free - looking for Beta testers! - <AUTHOR> http://statelesscloud.com <comment><AUTHOR> Some friends and I got sick of going through the same 20 steps every time we wanted to deploy a project so we built a service that handles it for you.

If you give us a container image, we'll automatically run it in the cloud for you, provide you with a public URL to access it and set up SSL.

We'd love for the Hacker News community to check out the work we've done so far and give us feedback!

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice!

</comment><comment><USER3> neat!!!</comment>


When would be a good time to quit an Internet startup, and how do you know? - <AUTHOR>

When would be a good time to quit an internet startup, and how do you know? <comment><USER2> 1pm on Friday. It's always better to quit on a Friday.

<comment><AUTHOR> :)</comment></comment>


OnePlus Nord review: Android's best bang for your buck - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/?p=1691277 <comment><USER2> Best bang for the buck? The Pocophone F1 is at least close, maybe better.</comment>


Facebook users don't give a heck about apps notifications anymore - <AUTHOR> http://piotrzaniewicz.posterous.com/lets-face-it-facebook-users-dont-give-a-heck <comment><USER2> We stopped caring about notifications because spammy Facebook "games" poisoned the well, and now you want to do this to requests?

</comment><comment><USER3> This post seems to focus on requests for games that are played on the Facebook website, but what about mobile apps? I am actually in the process of integrating requests into my Android app and other than a bug I ran into, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the way the request works. Since my app is only on Android, the notifications only appear on Android devices. If you invite people who are not using an Android device, they will never see the notification. If the user doesn't have the app installed, the notification will bring them to Google Play, otherwise, it will launch them into the app. This feels a lot less spammy overall and it at least feels as though it will be moderately effective. Anyone have any data on this?

<comment><USER4> Yes, I work on FB apps that span multiple types of devices. You are correct in that only android users will see the request. I don't see it working all that well for you though, because the requestor won't know which friend uses android. So the requestor might need to send twenty requests to hit one friend with Android.

Obviously, it is better to have an app that spans all the devices. That way Android users can request to iPhone, who can request to mobile web, who can request to canvas. Personally I think it is so important to be present on all of the devices that it is better to have slimmed down apps everywhere than one good app somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I started blocking all requests from people who sent me game requests. I've then decided I don't need apps at all and disabled them in their entirety.

If you want me to use an app on FB, I'm not part of your target market. I just got fed up with the "Lets play jewelquest" spam.

<comment><USER6> I have a feeling that these apps are going to be a primary constituent of FB's MySpace moment that I think is going to come eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr

Users do not accept invites to new apps anymore. Notifications can be used to increase the retention (with give-a-life, send-a-life feature).

</comment><comment><USER4> This is false - there exists a class of apps where all they do is have a well tuned requests funnel (seriously, that's all the app is), and they are alive and well. See e.g. the MyCalendar franchise:

<http://appdata.com/apps/facebook/33699672217-birthdays> [http://appdata.com/apps/facebook/202577393268-micalendario-c...](http://appdata.com/apps/facebook/202577393268-micalendario- cumplea-os)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm unclear on what their API would allow, but I think that there is a huge opportunity to present the important stuff on Facebook to users in a cleaner, more elegant way...we've seen so many attempts at cleaning up the inbox; I'd be interested to see someone focus on the News Feed.

</comment><comment><USER6> 100% bad UX, which I believe to be intentional. Un-disablable garbage that only benefits the spammer. In fact, the chief evolutionary contribution of Facebook to the world may only ever be new forms of spam.

<comment><USER8> Un-disablable? Un-true:

<https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app_notifications/>

You can turn off notifications from any app very easily.

<comment><USER5> <https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy> \--> Apps, Games and Websites \--> Click "Turn off", it is purposely hidden as normal text even though it is the blue hyperlink color it blends in quite well.

If facebook had a (physical)complaints box it would be just out of arms reach above a large rose bush.

<comment><USER9> except doing so means that you can't use any third party apps for facebook yourself, such as tweetdeck, other integrating social networks, etc.

<comment><USER5> If they use oauth then I have my google account. Otherwise I'm not their target audience.

The only things that have required me to use FB app forced login is marketing from "free stuffz" vendors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can hardly be bothered to check my FB anymore. No more vanity browsing for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> Too bad they don't give a damn about privacy either.

<comment><USER11> Ooo, ouch! Facebookers get mad?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> fb suxs

</comment><comment><USER13> Face what?</comment>


Onpage: Some messages cannot wait - <AUTHOR> http://onpage.com/solutions/onpage-priority-messaging

<comment><AUTHOR> It finally happened - 15 years of receiving various and sundry "unsolicited email advertisements" (aka SPAM) - I finally was intrigued enough to click on a link and actually try something. I figured I would celebrate this event by sharing said app with the broader sysadmin community at HN.

One heads up - it does a skeezy "OnPage Would like to Access your contacts" without asking me in advance. So, possible chance that in addition to being spammers, they going to suck in your address book without permission. Uh, No. (Thanks IOS 6 for stopping that. :-)

[Edit: Cool Feature #1 - Somehow, even with the AudioSwitch changed to "Silent" - my iPhone still comes out screaming with pages. Presumably they are hooking the Alarm System? Interesting that Apple allowed that, though this is a good use for that as long as I can turn it off]

</comment><comment><USER2> Hi There - This is OnPage! Thanks for actually trying our service. Did I read a hint of compliment there, "Intrigued enough" :-) ? Well, We don't suck in your address book - What we do is scan it for contacts with emails suffix of "@onpage.com". Once we find these contacts we bring them to your OnPage contact book so it is easy for you. So, we are not spam, we are not a game, we don't have any worms, and nothing is reported back to us - All stays within your phone!! What we are is priority messaging application, an enterprise grade productive tool. Just like phone vs. smartphone, you may look at it as pager vs. smarpager</comment>


The Fallacy of Modern Web Development - <AUTHOR> http://jtaby.com/2011/08/01/fallacy-of-modern-web-development.html?

<comment><USER2> I love how he's so certain he's right and everyone else is wrong.

Sorry, but other people aren't here to do what you want. They are free to innovate or fail to innovate in any way they desire. The one-true-framework has not been invented yet and probably never will be. Constant improvement and competition are what drive everything right now, and asking us to stop it is insanity.

<comment><USER3> I have a vested interest in seeing SproutCore succeed, but the point I'm making does not. Backbone.js and Cappuccino are other examples of javascript frameworks which fit the same criteria I talk about.

Backbone and Cappuccino have both proven that they will last and have dedicated communities building them. All these projects need people to contribute to them and make them amazing. A core team can build it, but the community makes it a real project.

Everyone today wants to get the personal glory out of their own little pet project instead of getting the glory out of contributing important patches to existing projects.

<comment><USER4> > Everyone today wants to get the personal glory out of their own little pet > project instead of getting the glory out of contributing important patches > to existing projects.

Maybe you're right and it's personal glory. It could also be the (admittedly, often-naïve) assumption that maybe, just _maybe_ , you have a better idea about how to do things. When John Resig [thought up jQuery](<http://ejohn.org/blog/selectors-in-javascript/>) five years ago, both Prototypejs and Behavior.js were already around. If he had decided to contribute to those projects instead, we'd have a much different landscape today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's the problem with micro-frameworks or libraries? I prefer to be able to find a nice, compact solution to a problem and be able to jump in any make any modifications I need rather than sifting though a behemoth. It certainly takes more effort on my end to figure out the one-true-framework to the point that it abstracts what I already know. That's doubly ineffective.

I'm much more comfortable with the OS project ecosystem we have now with a ton of tools you can just download and use to your whim. Most of the time you don't even need to modify the code to suit what you want. Granted, it takes a bit more skill to be able to know which solution to choose - but that's something we should all be good at.

This article also sounds like someone who doesn't actually like the art of programming and just wants to see the end result. I'm only frustrated when I'm shackled by a technology or code framework/library. Other than that you have to enjoy the ride because the end result is never as good as you imagine it to be.

<comment><USER6> The problem is there is no guarantee they will play nicely together, not clash, or provide similar and compatible APIs. JavaScript developers are running into a very similar set of problems and having everyone cobble together their own solutions is pretty clearly not an answer, which obvious to those who have tried. You may already know what is being abstracted by some of the more expansive frameworks (Cappuccino, SproutCore, Backbone, etc) but there are a lot of people who do not know or do not want to deal with the differences in browsers, etc.

I'm assuming that you don't consider jQuery or its ilk restrictive as far as abstracting the DOM. I don't know of many application developers who would prefer to deal with the low-level DOM API (which differs across browsers, etc) instead of a library like jQuery. There are many people who approach application structure from a similar viewpoint. Instead of rolling their own and running into problems scaling and maintaining their applications, they can use a framework that provides an abstraction that is proven to work. Everyone tries to roll their own pet framework project because that's where the glory is. That's not necessarily the best thing for the future of the web.

<comment><USER7> Here's you:

> Everyone tries to roll their own pet framework project because that's where > the glory is.

Here's jtaby about twenty minutes earlier:

> Everyone today wants to get the personal glory out of their own little pet > project instead of getting the glory out of contributing important patches > to existing projects.

Talking point much?

<comment><USER3> Not a talking point, we just have a lot of conversations about this at the office :)

<comment><USER8> The diminutive "little pet" prefix at one point applied to: linux kernel, kde, gnome, jquery, prototype.js, node.js, ruby, &etc. Your dismissal of small, young projects is akin to saying "Don't start a startup, just join a big business!"

You're calling out to people in the Bazaar and asking them to join your Cathedral. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Open source software is not a zero-sum game, or a limited resource to be rationed out. There is no such thing as a tragedy of the commons with open source code, because the more of it you give away, the more you have.

<comment><USER3> A bunch of mildly different Javascript frameworks creates a paradox of choice for the users. It means that when users start developing a new project, they have to weigh the benefits and costs of each of the framework. This not only increases the barrier to entry, but as Barry Schwartz outlines in his book "The Paradox of Choice", it also creates a paralysis and unhappy decisions.

That's only one of the problems. Another problem is that by having all these smart people dedicate their time to solving the same problem over and over, we get stuck at the same level of abstraction. If instead of solving the same problem in slightly different ways, we iterate and build abstractions, we can make apps previously impossible to build in reasonable budgets and time, possible.

It doesn't need to be Sproutcore that we coalesce around. It could be Backbone.

This has already happened with jQuery. The JavaScript community coalesced around the framework, contributed API changes, bug fixes, documentation, unit tests, and as a result, we can operate and build applications without having to re-implement the same cross-browser, low-level code.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...](http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html)

<comment><USER9> Barry Schwartz also talks about the different vinegars, olive oils to make your own salad dressing. Mix & Match. Are you proposing we only have a few salad dressings?

I consider jQuery an olive oil, SproutCore a dressing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not to mention that SproutCore itself is a bunch of micro-frameworks all packaged together. _sigh_

What jtaby's saying, in a nutshell, is: other developers should just stop working on their own (micro-)framework(s), and instead...work on Strobe's (micro-)framework(s).

Coming from a Strobe employee (who has skin in the game), this is somewhat disingenuous...

<comment><USER11> That's actually not at all what Majd is saying. He's saying that a few good answers with a large community is better than dozens of one-off weekend projects that siphon energy from application developers and open source contributors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are so many interesting jumping off points in this post.

* Must web apps go the same route (of consolidation) as desktop apps have (largely resulting in a Windows monopoly)?

* What's to be said about the fact that we're now seeing a dramatic _increase_ in platform diversity in the form of mobile platforms, web apps, and even an increase in the diversity of desktop computing platforms?

* Web apps (HTML/CSS/JS) are one interface to the Internet; what about apps with the Internet as transport and APIs as the endpoint?

* Have we forgotten how young all this internet technology is? The GUI was born (commercially) in 1984 with the release of the Macintosh, making it almost 30 years old. The timeline for web apps is a lot fuzzier. In 1995 NSFNET disappeared and the Internet was 100% available to commercial organizations, but didn't take off right away. Still, if you take 1995 as the "beginning" of the web application, that makes it half as old as the GUI.

<comment><USER13> IMHO, your third point about "apps with the Internet as transport and APIs as the endpoint" is now where all the interesting client behavior is. Web apps in this regard are just clients implemented in JavaScript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm a big lover of arrogance, controversy and challenging status quo... But seriously? Challenging it with "lets all come together, in a one-size-fits- all, uniform, productivity parade honoring the propaganda department of Apple"??

I hated really the Microsoft experience and was so disappointed by the earliest Linux distribution I switched to OS X when it came out and I have never looked back. I recognize Apple's great contributions to UX and their truly awesome dedication to their mantra "It just works" but I also recognize when they are wrong. I am not blinded by their sales-pitch. And no one with respect for the "Apple-philosophy" should ever be colored by the works of their marketing department. No one should be lead to believe there is reason to settle and not try harder. Apple certainly would not do that themselves. Their core idea is to challenge everything and keep pushing the envelope.

We all do different things for different reasons. Thank ____for that.

Productivity, efficiency, status and financial success is not the common motivator for all mankind and I hope it never will be. This I say because I believe we can do far better than that.

Experimenting, trying out new things and failing is all a part of the learning experience. Embrace it.

</comment><comment><USER15> tl;dr _We're the first people to really build an end-to-end solution for web development._ If you don't use our system you're not thinking straight.

<comment><USER11> Nah. I think Majd was just saying that we've been thinking about a lot of the problems for a while.

<comment><USER16> Actually, he was saying you're the only people who are thinking about a lot of the problems, which is both arrogant and absurd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Since when are CSS3 transformations well known and well documentation. Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't new CSS3 trasformations being added to WebKit every couple of months?

Until recently I don't think too many people thought of using them for more than just a nifty effect. Certainly not build an app around them. The debate was whether to build on canvas or svg. Now that's changed with a few recently apps created in purely CSS3 transformations. I don't think anyone is surprised that iCloud is smooth; CSS3 transformations are hardware accelerated.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sure, sure, sounds great. Unfortunately I'm not in a position to demand that the company that provides my income effectively abandon around 80% of its customer base for whiz-bang features they'll never see nor increase development time/budget for those features.

But I'm confused, is he talking web development or mobile application development? From my perspective those are two different things that may occasionally overlap.

</comment><comment><USER19> Yeah, he's not wrong about this, but I also don't think that we have settled on what's best right now for developing big time interactive apps for web, which is why there's 40 thousand microframeworks right now. I do think this will start to grind to a halt naturally as HTML5/JS developers mature and apps become proven in the market.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am unimpressed by a UX that displays a message that IE8 support is coming soon as being something so awesome.

<comment><USER11> It's a developer preview. I've seen people around here talking about dumping IE entirely if a sufficiently small number of their users used IE8. How is this different?

<comment><USER20> The author is premature in such sweeping praise.

"They prove that a buttery-smooth UI is not impossible to build on the web."

In my opinion, this application has not proven such a thing (yet), since it doesn't work in IE. I don't build UIs that don't work in IE.

"It shouldn't be a magical surprised that a good, no-compromise UX is possible on the web."

And yet, currently it DOES compromise. It doesn't work in what is currently the leading browser.

Don't get me wrong, I hate IE and the iCloud application is nice and slick. But it's not currently a viable UX for the most popular browser in use, and therefore is not a viable UX for many web applications. Yet. I have hope for them, though. It does look promising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I guess im the only one that feels the icloud interface feels heavy and bloated, much like a flash interface.

</comment><comment><USER22> Trailer for a movie wherein a member of the crew spends 3 minutes telling you (unconvincingly) that film making is broken and nothing about his movie. Poor form.

</comment><comment><USER23> Great rallying cry.. Now what's the call to action?

<comment><USER7> You should throw all your weight into a framework that's in early beta right now. Also, Barack Obama.

<https://github.com/sproutcore/sproutcore20>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I guess I am the only one who uses my ipod without itunes..</comment>


Battlefield 1 Open Access Beta 31st of August - <AUTHOR> http://www.ittechpages.com/battlefield-1-beta-officially-opens-31st-august/ <comment><USER2> As much flack as they have gotten and deserved for BF4 and the launch/netcode issues, they have resolved a lot of the technical problems with having such a large multiplayer FPS. Of course it will look and sound amazing, I am mostly interested to see what new things they bring to the series.</comment>


Huawei Mate 30 Blocked from Using Google Apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/29/huawei-mate-30-phone-blocked-from-using-google-apps <comment><USER2> Not a good move by the US.

So Huawei loses a market of 350 million. That's not OK, because Google will lose a market of 1.4 billion in retaliation.

"It may not happen overnight, but it will happen."</comment>


Notepad++ leaves SourceForge - <AUTHOR> https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/notepad-plus-plus-leaves-sf.html <comment><USER2> They moved to github([https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus- plus](https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus)). It wasn't obvious from the link.

<comment><USER3> It seems they moved to github for development a while back (May), but have moved binary downloads away from SF now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doesn't SourceForge routinely inject malware into the little install bundle executables, too? Once upon a time, SourceForge was revered for its good will and the ripples it was making in the FOSS pond. Too bad the site they've become can't close down soon enough.

<comment><USER5> It tends to make the download link the wrapper software, which installs the malware and downloads the actual software. This lets them supply _e.g._ unmodified Firefox binaries but still malware you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find the rapidly increasing collapse of the 'monetize downloads' business model quite refreshing. I hope Github has enough revenue to not have to revert to things like this in the future.

<comment><USER7> I imagine so. I don't think SourceForge's commercial offerings ever had much wind behind them, but pretty much every company I've done any kind of work for in recent years has a commercial GitHub account.

<comment><USER8> Sourceforge sold their commercial offerings (SFEE) to CollabNet in 2007...and they haven't directly competed in that space since.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have always thought this is something Github could capture on. GitHub is missing download of Compiled Binary, and some forum for user ( not developers ) interaction.

But then Github has always been a Dev focus site.

How will Notepad++ handle the delivery?

<comment><USER10> GitHub does handle binaries, available through the "releases" link on the repo navigation bar. Developers can relate releases to tags and upload binaries.

[https://github.com/beefsack/git- mirror/releases](https://github.com/beefsack/git-mirror/releases)

<comment><USER11> You can also potentially wire this up to CI services, to automatically build and deploy a release binary for every new commit on a given branch.

<comment><USER12> Some popular GitHub CI integrators already do this:

[http://docs.travis-ci.com/user/deployment/releases/](http://docs.travis- ci.com/user/deployment/releases/)

[http://www.appveyor.com/docs/deployment/github](http://www.appveyor.com/docs/deployment/github)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dan-silver Looks like the SourceForge n++ page is still there([http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad- plus/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus/)), but downloads have been removed. I find it interesting that they're directing people to their github page and not their website. Considering that users are going to sourceforge to download the application, not build it from source.

<comment><USER13> [https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus- plus/relea...](https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus- plus/releases)

<comment> dan-silver All I see under the title "Notepad++ 6.7.9 release" is a direct link to download the source code and a link to download the binaries from their site. It seems like they should be directly linking to their website from the sourceforge page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are still major projects hosted on SourceForge?!

<comment><USER15> \- hunspell (one of the major spell-check engines, used by Firefox, LibreOffice, et cetera)

\- Mesa3d

\- Many Linux-kernel utilities (e2fsprogs, procps-ng (ps, top, uptime, watch, ...), fuse, jfs, sysfsutil, net-tools, NFS, acpiclient/acpid, et cetera)

\- PCRE

\- Flex (the lexical analyzer generator)

\- TCL (the language)

\- Many lower-level media libraries (freetype, liba52, libmpeg2, libmtp, libwpd, libpwg, opencore-amr, giflib, libcddb, libebook, libexif, et cetera)

<comment><USER16> A lot of what you've listed either ships along with other software as libraries on platforms like Windows and Mac and/or ship as part of linux distos. Hence SF would not benefit spending time infecting these and as a consequence, the owners have little reason to move away from SF.

<comment><USER15> That is absolutely true, I had the same thought. I should add that my list was biased away from Windows applications, as I made the list by summarizing the output of:

        pacman -Qi|grep ^URL|grep -i -e '\bsf\.net' -e sourceforge|sort -u

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think if I was any project leaving sourceforge, I would try and delete as much as possible, including the user account. Failing that, I would upload as the last release an "installer" that just gives notice that downloads through sourceforge are no longer supported due to their scammy behaviour, and a link of where to get the valid download.

</comment><comment><USER18> I also just found out today that Mumble has moved their binaries and source to Github as well (the update prompt for 1.2.9 pointed to the Github binary directly).

Last time I checked, their download links all pointed to SourceForge.

[https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble](https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble)

</comment><comment><USER19> At least he didn't put out another update that opens a new tab and starts typing out more of his thoughts automatically.

<comment><USER20> Do you remember which release this was?

<comment><USER21> [https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/notepad-6.7.4-je-suis- cha...](https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/notepad-6.7.4-je-suis-charlie- edition.html)

<comment><USER20> Doesn't look like it was _too_ bad of a way to add an "easter egg" \- [https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus- plus/commi...](https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus- plus/commit/00f664188f844d0c58f8c73a9c7b7e89ae72b41e#diff-7d3fc7e5f1b5493bc1d4b60d89689354R216)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sourceforge is to Gamestop as Huffington Post is to Verizon.

Hopefully the new ownership puts an end to the site. Though I expect they will sell it to an outside investor.

</comment><comment><USER23> so what's the deal with the 'injection'? They've been bundling crapware with the installers for a few years at least right? But for a long while there was always an option on the file list/downloads page that users in the know could click to get a clean installer 'direct download'. That appears removed now, is that what everyone is up in arms about?

<comment><USER5> A couple of years ago they started using a malware wrapper, that installed adware then did the real download. Projects got very upset and they swore they wouldn't do this again, then offered profitsharing (which some projects took them up on, _e.g._ Filezilla).

Then, two years after promising they would never do this again, they started doing it again.</comment></comment>


The most under-taught skill in machine learning - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-under-taught-skill-in-machine-learning-f5f7c03d1b8e?curator=MediaREDEF <comment><AUTHOR> saved you a click:

>How will the results of your model be delivered to the end user? There's a knowledge gap here.</comment>


Ask HN: Billing for atomized pricing? - <AUTHOR>

My business partner and I have recently observed that a growing number of web services seem to be moving toward 'atomized' business models instead of a typical flat-rate subscription model.
A simple example of this is Amazon with their cloud solutions: they bill you in extremely small increments depending on your usage.
We are currently considering building what could be described as the Recurly or Chargify for atomized payments as neither of these handle the exact use case I'm talking about.
As many members of HN would be part of the initial target market and will of course have many interesting thoughts, does anyone here have a need for such a product? If so, feel free to leave your email at http://atompay.semblancesystems.com so we can give you updates!
General discussion also welcome: Do you think more SaaS businesses will follow this model in the future? What other solutions have you seen in the wild? <comment><USER2> Any time I'm paying only for what I consume (atomized) I'm happier than when I'm stuck in a slot in a pricing table somebody created with very little idea about which features I really need, how many users I need and how much of the service I need to consume per month.

But coding atomized pricing for a platform is often much harder than coding a price/feature table so anything that offered atomized billing as a service (ABaaS?) would be great.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm interested in this for ninjablocks, too - I think we're currently bundling a small number of resources (SMSes etc) with each account, but then perhaps more fine-grained tracking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. How about we talk about it face-to-face :).

<comment><USER3> good idea - i might even manage a complete and coherent sentence.</comment></comment></comment>


What makes the US health care system so expensive - <AUTHOR> https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/what-makes-the-us-health-care-system-so-expensive-introduction/ <comment><USER2> It's simple and the article misses the reason: Profit

<comment><USER3> Allied to the 'profit' reason is that there is nobody strong enough to force a low-enough price for services.

Countries with single-payer health schemes usually have the government being both the payer and the designator of service-providers. If your price is too high, then you have several options:

Drop your price to be in line with the single-payer's payment level.

Lose your designation as a recognized service-provider if you're not going to drop your price. In effect, that takes you out of the common level and into the 'specialized' level of services because you can't compete with other service-providers on price.

Leave the industry altogether.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Interesting ideas for a weekend project? - <AUTHOR>

Looking for interesting things to do over the Labor Day weekend.
CS Student. Done a mix of web, Python & Java.
I have a couple ideas, but would love to hear your thoughts.
- HN seems to love their functional languages. Learn Lisp? - I'm a Emacs user. Write an emacs plugin? - Have a Leap Motion, Raspberry Pi, and Apple TV sitting around. But no idea what to do with them. - iPhone user. Learn Objective-C and write an app? - Oh-My-Zsh plugin with ExplainShell
Thoughts? Additions? <comment><USER2> If you're looking to learn iOS, I'd suggest contributing to an open source application.

An app requires a bit of setup so taking someones app means that most of the minutia is set up. Therefore you can take on manageable size chunks. Also, and maybe more importantly, you'll have an experienced iOS developer review your code.

[https://github.com/nothingmagical/cheddar- ios](https://github.com/nothingmagical/cheddar-ios) is a good one. Shameless plug: [https://github.com/Ink/ThatInbox](https://github.com/Ink/ThatInbox), ThatPDF, ThatPhoto, ThatCloud are ones that my company open sourced.

Related: [https://learn.thoughtbot.com/ios](https://learn.thoughtbot.com/ios) is a good listing of iOS resources to get started.

</comment><comment><USER3> Emacs plugin you say? I would love to see someone create an emulator-dev minor mode that would take a code project like is defined in the emacs-project-mode and create a disk image that could be loaded by a target emulator.

Ideally it could be set up to configure and launch an emulator which would then build the code tree with the platform's native development tools (if needed).

Here's a concrete example:

      1. Use emacs to write an AppleSoft BASIC program, myfile.txt"
      2. C-x <run-on-emulator>
      3. Automatically create a *.dsk file image, with the following files
         a) PRODOS and BASIC.SYSTEM installed
         b) a STARTUP program that executes the file, i.e.
            10 PRINT $CHR(4);"-MYFILE.TXT"

      4. Create (for example) a linapple configuration file to load this DSK image
      5. Start the emulator

</comment><comment><USER4> A few thoughts:

1) Scrolling through [http://firespotting.com/](http://firespotting.com/) I found this nice idea: [http://firespotting.com/item?id=2353](http://firespotting.com/item?id=2353) \- Common app for Jobs - Maybe linkedin integration or even just something simple you can open source for startups to use or do what [http://www.crowdhoster.com/](http://www.crowdhoster.com/) did for kickstarter

2) Give this a read/inspiration: [https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/rainy_day...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/rainy_day_ideas)

good luck - be sure to post code on ShowHN

</comment><comment><USER5> When I browse, I often have multiple windows with lots of tabs open at once. Chrome gives me an option to "Continue where I left off" but only does this for a single window at a time.

Create an extension that lets me press a single button to close all of Chrome. It should also automatically restore all these windows when I start Chrome. My current workaround is to kill the Chrome process and it'll attempt to restore when I restart Chrome.

I'm not familiar with Chrome extensions so I'm not sure how hard this would be. But if someone built this, I'd definitely use it!

<comment><USER6> OneTab. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbolifaimnlloiipkdnihall?hl=en)

<comment><USER5> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love re-interpreting existing tools or ideas as practice and fun, like how an artist does studies of master artists' work to improve their technical skills or just to gain some perspective.

So perhaps if you can't think of something new, try re-inventing something that exists, in a new language or one you already know and like?

Though I'm partial to people building doodads with things like Arduinos and Raspberry Pis. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Some of the ideas & side projects you can take a look - [http://sideprojectors.com](http://sideprojectors.com) (disclaimer, I run the website) :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Would love to hear what you built :)</comment>


An Introduction to jQuery - shay-howe http://learn.shayhowe.com/advanced-html-css/jquery

<comment><AUTHOR> Disappointingly, this week's issue has poorly reviewed copy and out of date information (Jquery Ready).</comment>


How to Get the Windows 10 November 2019 Update - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2019/11/12/how-to-get-the-windows-10-november-2019-update/ <comment><USER2> "We're updating the search box in File Explorer to now be powered by Windows Search. This change will help integrate your OneDrive content online with the traditional indexed results"

Oh great...</comment>


Bitcoin Could Be the Answer to Debt-Based Ponzi Schemes - <AUTHOR> https://www.btcwires.com/c-buzz/bitcoin-could-be-the-answer-to-debt-based-ponzi-schemes/ <comment><USER2> Everything above "Final Thoughts" is a direct, uncredited rip from this article:

[https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-not-gold-remains-best-bet- aga...](https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-not-gold-remains-best-bet-against-debt- based-fiat-ponzi-scheme/)</comment>


Canoo wants to sell the world's first subscription-only EV - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/09/24/canoo-electric-vehicle-revealed/ <comment><USER2> I can't see anything about this particular vehicle that would make it any more suitable to sell via subscription than any other EV (or indeed ICE). Wouldn't there be a greater chance of success if they focussed on one or the other: being a subscription car service OR an (electric) car maker?</comment>


Startups, This Is How Design Works - <AUTHOR> http://startupsthisishowdesignworks.com/

<comment><USER2> Good one. Is there any forum, where I can submit my designs or websites and designer around the world review it. Its hard for Startups to afford designers and harder to find good ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> repost?</comment>


Is Google far too much in love with engineering? - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20008253-71.html

<comment><USER3> >However, I wonder whether such slight, but no doubt data-driven, infelicities, such as the launch of Google Buzz, the riotously misguided home page designs, or the launch of Nexus One, might have done with one or two fewer data-driven managers and one or two more people who offered suggestions about what real people like and how they might react?

It's very easy to look at a company like Google and find examples of significant failures.

Though actually, I think the 'failures' he brings up are not quite the failures he thinks they are. They're not actually data-driven decisions. They're data-collecting experiments. Google is in no way wedded to any given device or approach. It's pivot, pivot, pivot, often in eight directions at once. Releasing a polished product with top-notch marketing is a good way to make a lot of money in the short term, but your customers get very attached to what you've given them, and it makes it a lot harder to innovate in the long term.

</comment><comment><USER4> The author of this article backs up his argument with little substance. No decision-making process is perfect; pointing out the warts in Google's isn't much of an indictment. Really, to my mind the whole thing comes across as a bit whiny.

<comment><USER5> Here's a personal beef describing how Google places too much emphasis on engineering and too little on the experience paying customers have with its services: Google Apps. Support is almost nonexistent for nearly anything that isn't already on their roadmap, the roadmap is set by engineering and not based on customer feedback, the deployment schedule is completely closed and updates frequently surprise domain admins & their users, billing for various services (GSAs, GAPE, Postini) is non consolidated, and various features break at regular intervals. It doesn't help that a lot of their engineering showcases in Gmail -- Labs features -- they pitch and great improvements to Gmail, but offer zero support for. This included Offline when it was in Labs.

Google is a great engineering company, but it still doesn't "get" the enterprise.

<comment><USER6> I paid for the Premium Google Apps for one of my domains. When it was about to expire, I got emails almost daily reminding me to renew. The day before it was to expire, someone from Google Apps actually called my cell about renewing.

For a different domain that I was using regular Google Apps on, I couldn't get an email response to a support question I sent several months prior.

Whatever their focus, it's not on customer service.

<comment><USER7> > Whatever their focus, it's not on customer service.

No, that's exactly their focus. You got a lot of attention regarding the product that you were a customer of, the premium paid apps.

In the other instance, you were the product: a pair of eyeballs they could sell to advertisers. And the advertisers are the customers in that instance.

<comment><USER6> I should add that they were never so helpful when I inquired from my premium domain in the past. I only received a lot of attention when it was time to renew.

For example, I couldn't figure out how to cancel the premium account, and I sent an email asking. No response ever came.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, Google could be pretty successful if only they didn't focus so much on engineering.

<comment><USER9> Are you arguing that anybody who is successful is by definition doing everything right?

Maybe they are successful because they do more rights than wrongs. Or they were in the right place at the right time. Or because they lacked a better competitor. The history of IT is littered with wildly successful yet sub- optimal companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Do complex interview questions really test your educational achievement? ...

When interviewing prospective software engineer employees, a Google interviewer asks software engineering related questions, to test the interviewee's knowledge of software engineering. Questions like these:

<http://jpaint.drizzlehosting.com/google.html>

That's a nice illustration of the balance of creativity, lateral thinking, logical thinking, and technical competence Google expects from the engineers it interviews. Note that the interview questions aren't in the form of, "Where did you complete your expected MSc in Computer Science?" Instead, the interviewee is expected to demonstrate real achievement from their education; i.e., knowledge and thinking ability.

But Google hires non-engineer craftsmen, too. Catering staff, to steal the article author's example. Just a hunch: Google conducts more than one type of interview: catering staff are not expected to design class libraries or database tables as part of their interview process.

</comment><comment><USER11> _This is how Dodge explained it: "The engineering background brings a rigorous thought process that questions assumptions and requires accurate data in the decision process. That doesn't mean every decision will be perfect, but it will be based on data...not opinions."_

I think that strategy is unimpeachable. I've worked at plenty of non- engineering companies, and the inability to question assumptions seems rampant. If Google manages to avoid that, then whatever it costs will likely be worth it.

</comment><comment><USER12> What's wrong with the Nexus One launch?

<comment><USER13> Right. The Nexus One is a working, production, reference implementation of what an Android phone SHOULD be, not something Google expected to make them rich.

<comment><USER14> Well that makes the point of focusing too much on the engineering side...corporations are for-profit entities and they are not there to make the "perfect" product but rather a marketable product that will generate them net positive cash flows...after all, if you are a shareholder of Google, you expect them to MAXIMIZE their earnings, not just make things for the fun of it, or cause its interesting (example: the free optical network they want to give to a select bunch of small to medium-size cities...)

<comment><USER15> Honestly, why is it such a bad thing when a company with absurdly high profit margins delegates some of the income back into improving the general standard of living for everyone.

Call it what you like. Write it off as them improving their image with the public, or as getting more users into the ecosystem, or becoming more vertically integrated.

But fundamentally, why is doing something that is good for people looked at as such a bad thing. From what I understand the public don't even have the majority stake in the company, and don't really have to get a say in how it is run. If they don't like that they can buy other companies stock.

If ones goal is to maximize happiness (or some other equivalent metric), there will be times at which the decision to maximize profit will diverge from this goal, and the ethical decision will be to spend money (which you have from profits in other sectors) to develop something at a net loss because you think its right.

(I'm not affiliated with google, this is just a broader point that irritates me).

<comment><USER14> Most companies try to show they are ethical by donating or being a corporate sponsor for a charity or event. I like Google's concept of just giving things out for free since I am a great benefactor of that.

Google can make some of the money back through increased ads, but its not always clear how they do it for some products where there isn't any visible ads at all.

<comment><USER16> I think you mean beneficiary, not benefactor.

<comment><USER14> yup you are right, sorry

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think it's funny this article showed up on the front page at the same time as another article about the Dunning-Krueger effect.

</comment><comment><USER18> The question should be: Is cluelessness in "soft skills" worse than technical cluelessness? Really, both are bad. (Example: Cuil)

<comment><USER19> Google's success wasn't so much coming up with the best web search technology but finding a way of converting that to billions of dollars in revenues and profits.

To me Google have excelled at both the technology _and_ the marketing - <USER2> is why they are so successful.

Having said that, if you can't manage to be good at both technology and marketing, I suspect that you are better off being weak at technology than marketing. Plenty companies thrive with average/poor technology but an excellent understanding of what the market wants. I've known plenty companies (some from the inside) where the technology was good but the marketing was weak - things generally don't turn out too well.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. Anyone that tries big things often enough will have both successes and failures.

And I do seem to recall an overwhelming success like Windows starting off as somewhat of a failure.</comment></comment></comment>