Io.js 2.0.0 Released - <AUTHOR> https://iojs.org/en/index.html?2.0.0 <comment><USER2> Just like all statistics, these should be taken with a grain of salt, but I think Github's "pulse" breakdowns between Iojs and Node are pretty sobering.

Iojs: 49 authors have pushed 168 commits to master and 572 commits to all branches. On master, 8,474 files have changed and there have been 1,524,012 additions and 708,276 deletions.

Node: 30 authors have pushed 5 commits to master and 95 commits to all branches. On master, 10 files have changed and there have been 294 additions and 36 deletions.

That's for the last month.

<comment><USER3> Did I read the number wrong, or is that an absurd amount of changes (note: I haven't look at the commit myself, as I have no idea how to get all the stats from github interface)?

That's about 800000 additional lines of code for 49 developers in a months, or ~16000 LOC for each developer. Unless additions and deletions are counted on a different unit, can anyone knowledgeable explain to me how the numbers are reasonable at all?

<comment><USER4> Joyent used to have the license on the top of virtually EVERY file in the repo for node. Someone removed all but one (6430 deletions) [https://github.com/iojs/io.js/pull/311/files](https://github.com/iojs/io.js/pull/311/files)

I can imagine this makes up for a portion of it.

<comment><USER5> If Joyent has the copyright, why could they remove these notes?

Or is this just a cosmetic thing and they removed it from the files but kept it in a separate license file?

<comment><USER6> The commit message:

"The copyright and license notice is already in the LICENSE file. There is no justifiable reason to also require that it be included in every file, since the individual files are not individually distributed except as part of the entire package."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Now we just need io.js to merge with node. I feel like I can't use io.js for anything beyond experimentation until the inevitable happens.

Edit: Damn that was quickly downvoted. It seems the HN community is more behind io.js than it was a few months ago. I still think node and io.js using the same package manager is simply untenable so I'm just waiting for something to give before I decide to use io.js beyond experimentation.

<comment><USER8> > I still think node and io.js using the same package manager is simply > untenable

There are a whole bunch of packages in npm that are targeted at environments other than node (e.g. the browser).

For me the big difference is not between node/io.js for which a simple setting in your packages.json would be enough to sort out, but rather between es6 style modules and node style modules. I'd probably rather have a separate repository for es6 style modules.

<comment><USER7> > For me the big difference is not between node/io.js for which a simple > setting in your packages.json would be enough to sort out, but rather > between es6 style modules and node style modules.

Setting the engine will separate things but this also means your package is now _only_ available for that engine. npm doesn't give you a way to submit the same module multiple times to target different engines. So setting this limits the amount of environments your module. Maybe that's okay but the great thing about node + npm has been the ability to install and use any module you find; separating things would mean you'll come across modules you need and you might not be able to use. This kills the experience in my opinion.

> I'd probably rather have a separate repository for es6 style modules.

Why would you want one repository for ECMAScript 5 modules and one for ECMAScript 6? The end goal is to move everything towards ECMAScript 6 so would you want this to merge back into regular npm after a certain amount of time? Creating a different repository for modules that use language improvements seems like a bad idea to me. It's a good way to segregate modules from one another.

<comment><USER8> > Creating a different repository for modules that use language improvements > seems like a bad idea to me.

It's not just the language improvements in general, I'm thinking of the es6 module spec in particular. I've experimented with es6 modules that 6to5 post install or things like that, but the way es6 modules interact with npm is a bit kludgy at the moment. I'd like something that made es6 modules feel native, natural and the default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "process.nextTick() performance has been improved by between 2-42% across the benchmark suite, notable because this is heavily used across core (Brian White)"

That is pretty amazing.

</comment><comment><USER10> Congrats to the io.js team! I know there's lots going on in the node vs. io.js world/debate/comparison/everything, but regardless it's so great to see a team working on an OSS project so well.

</comment><comment><USER11> Ryan Dahl in 2011 interview: "Hopefully in the next 6 months we'll release a 1.0 version of Node. The idea is to constrain what goes into "core" and not allow it to grow too big - so there will not be endless stream of feature additions. 1.0 will look pretty much like Node does now" [http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2011/01/31/node-js- interview-4...](http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2011/01/31/node-js- interview-4-questions-with-creator-ryan-dahl/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Confusing name. I just spent a while trying to figure out _what_ this thing is. It should be hereafter forbidden to name anything ".js" unless it actually is a library written IN JavaScript and designed to be used within JavaScript code.

<comment><USER13> > io.js is an npm compatible platform originally based on Node.js™. Doesn't > that explain it pretty well?

<comment><USER12> The first time I read this sentence, I thought it was some kind of I/O library for users of Node. I thought "npm-compatible platform" meant "this is some kind of library that can be installed/added to your project by using npm".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was at a conference recently and had the privilege of mikeal (@mikeal) explain the differences between io.js and node.js, as well as the future that he and the io.js team saw for node as a whole.

All that he articulated at the conference is pretty much what you see on iojs.org. What struck me in particular was how reasonable and level-headed he was about the entire controversy. While it would be very easy to castigate Joyent for their incompetence, mikeal was positive throughout the whole presentation, without having that positivity detract from the mission of io.js (i.e. he said things that were nice, but not empty or hollow.)

His fellow, emilyrose (also on github), also seemed like a fairly intelligent person.

From that short encounter alone, I would say IO.JS appears have quite to have a healthy community. Here's hoping they can take Node off of Joyent's hands, and merge IO.JS into it.

</comment><comment><USER15> The V8 4.2 update adds support for Native Classes in JavaScript: [https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/1393](https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/1393)

Significant & controversial.

</comment><comment><USER16> Very exciting! It's great to see ES6 slowly rolling out as well. I've been using it with babeljs and it's been a blast.

</comment><comment><USER17> If there wasn't a new cool kid on the block every month making last month's cool kid look like a douche, it just wouldn't be JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER18> Changelog: [https://github.com/iojs/io.js/blob/7c89c4c7acdaa2035ec42195a...](https://github.com/iojs/io.js/blob/7c89c4c7acdaa2035ec42195ade689419209c2fd/CHANGELOG.md)

</comment><comment><USER19> Should I be ditching node for io?

<comment><USER5> There seem to be a few people who like to merge node and IO, but I have the impression most of the community doesn't want to merge.

I think node will go down in favor of IO, because they can't keep up.

<comment><USER20> I think it's still entirely possible for Node's new org to pretty much adopt iojs's technical committee nearly as-is. There's still no version conflicts. There's a minor support niggle for some internationalization bits in node 0.12's core, but beyond that, there's still a chance.

My only thought is that when io.js/node reaches a point for an LTS release, that they do a major bump for the LTS, and another for the ongoing dev... so that #.x.x is LTS. instead of ~#.#.x

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Every time I wake up it seems like there is a new version of iojs.

<comment><USER22> That's why I always say that Node.js is the best server side JS framework. Pretty stable in terms of never getting updates quickly / etc.

<comment><USER23> And is that a good thing?

You are not forced to update (in another environment, I have customers with Rails apps in production of version 2.3, 3.0, 3.2, 4.0, 4.2) but you have the option to develop with the latest technology. In those Rails examples: I'll start new projects with Rails 4.2 and Ruby 2.2.2 and not with what I had two years ago. In the JS world, I'd start with ES6 and the latest v8, not the old one from node.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I know I'm coming to this a little late, but I'd be really interested in knowing what the Node creators think is happening with node currently. The current top comment here[0] cites an active community with iojs, and a not so active community with node . However, I can't imagine that the node creators would say that node is stagnant or perfect, so before we start comparing node to IE, has anyone done any kind of reconciliation with the node devs?

I understand why iojs forked, but I really hate to see communities get abandoned or go stagnant like this.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9490843#9490962](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9490843#9490962)

<comment><USER25> As far as I understand, the majority of Node core contributors thought it necessary to move Node.js to io.js, and are now active there. io.js is basically the new Node.js, barring the name. It's less a fork, and more a rename, to get control back from Joyent who could have threatened some of the core team over the trademark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Man, if there was ever a cool domain name to use the .io TLD it'd be iojs...WHY ARE THEY .ORG!!

<comment><USER27> Well .org is pretty much the standard TLD for open source projects. While it would be "cool" to use .io it might confuse some people.

It's very common for example that projects have an .org for their Open Source software and .com or other for their business behind it (see wordpress.org vs wordpress.com)

<comment><USER26> Ya, makes sense. What about all the trendy open source stuff that have the TLD .io as their suffix like socket.io etc? How did the .io trend start anyway?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just in case anyone is concerned, as I was, you can reach this site at [https://iojs.io/en/index.html](https://iojs.io/en/index.html) :)</comment>


Skype security issue allows to steal any account - <AUTHOR> http://qbakanet.tumblr.com/post/35675187921/skype-password-recovery-issue-allows-you-to-steal-any

<comment><USER2> I've just tried on OS X, Skype v184.108.40.20646. The password marker doesn't appear in the Skype client under the new account; only in the Inbox.

UPD: Tested on Windows 7, Skype v22.214.171.124. The notification about the password reset token does appear in the Skype client, but no reset code is shown. And I couldn't figure out making it visible or click-able.

Verdict: can't reproduce.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try refreshing the welcome page in Skype client to see Facebook page, close it, and then you will see the password marker.

<comment><USER2> OMG! You're totally right! I've pressed Ctrl+F5 on the home screen, skipped the Facebook thing, and here they are! <http://www.xiag.ch/share/2012-11-14_1021.png>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A Google translate version of the original report was on the frontpage but now has vanished. Weird!

</comment><comment><USER2> Has anyone bothered actually checking this? Is there a proof video or smth?

<comment><AUTHOR> Lots of people already tried, several of my friends did experienced account hijacking. And I also tried myself (tested on my good friend account just to make sure). It is working. At least it was two hours ago. And as far as I know, it is still the issue.</comment></comment>


Laws hold the porn industry accountable for dangerous content - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/why-xhamster-is-so-much-better-at-content-moderation-than-facebook-ec318919b0e4 <comment><USER4> This is one of the worst articles I've read in a long time. The author is able to weasel their way out of holding them accountable to their opinions when they say that if porn can "thrive" with such extreme moderation, social media can "thrive" with a lesser degree. The problem with this is that they don't specify what in particular social media companies should do.

The inability to post content without it being moderated beforehand is treated as if it's a good thing, suggesting it's something social media companies should do but distancing themselves from the implication enough to maintain plausible deniability.

Especially ironic is that many porn sites make much of their money through ads that harvest personal data or prey on male insecurity.

There are strong arguments I disagree with in favor of regulating social media. Those arguments are also prescriptive, not general "we should do something". This is a very weak one.

Downvotes are the single best indicator of the problem with volunteer content moderation. People don't just downvote for bad comments, they downvote for comments they disagree with. Good luck getting edgy content through YouTube's Volunteer Force, it'll hurt causes you may agree with.

</comment><comment><USER5> "We have had a legion of volunteers... who review uploads in exchange for in- site rewards, as well as the health of the community."

...or in exchange to see the stuff they can't get to see anywhere else? I wonder for how many of these "volunteers" this is the main motivation - <USER2> this a quasi-legal way to see illegal content?

<comment><USER6> That's a really weird assumption - if you're looking for dodgy videos it's trivial to find them the dark web. Volunteers who do the same jobs for companies like google or facebook frequently say they are traumatized by content they see - it's not just sexual stuff, there's plenty of really explicit gore and abuse videos that come through. And if you're the kind of person who gets off on that stuff then like I said, it's not exactly difficult to find on the dark web.

My point is - doing this like you said "quasi-legally" must be the worst way of doing it, as you're giving the company all your real details to be employed - the very second anyone suspects you're doing it for the thrills(maybe you are the only employee who actually watches every video to the end?) you'd be in deep trouble.

<comment><USER7> > the very second anyone suspects you're doing it for the thrills (maybe you > are the only employee who actually watches every video to the end?)

This would be unlikely. Stipulating that ordinary xHamster users are watching the ordinary videos for the thrills... how many of them watch every video to the end?

<comment><USER6> I mean - if you see an abuse video, a regular employee would flag it immediately and stop watching. Someone doing it for the thrill would watch it till the end and then flag it. It would be pretty obvious from the data I think.

<comment><USER7> > Someone doing it for the thrill would watch it till the end and then flag > it.

Why do you believe this? It's not at all similar to how the regular user base watches videos. Compare PornHub's in-video display of how popular various timestamps are.

<comment><USER8> You're getting hung up on the exact wording. Maybe not to the _end_ , but they're not going to get any enjoyment if they close it five seconds after they part they're seeking starts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While there might be some legal factors to it, I think the problem spaces are a little different on these two websites (or generally speaking any porn site compared to facebook).

Facebook revolves around user interaction, that is videos, photos and text (in various forms, even links to external sources). Adult entertainment deals with those too, but those sites are mostly used like YouTube with lower session times.

Every minute "510,000 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated, and 136,000 photos are uploaded"[0] on facebook, on Pornhub it is 22 video comments and 122 messages[1]. Xhamster should be comparable to that. The difference in volume is striking.

Now with lower volume it is easier to moderate. Scanning videos isn't easy but AI should help, but AI these days fails for text, at least for anything else than an easy classification task. Hate speech isn't just random insults, there is more to it, and current AI systems can't possibly understand the whole context to something.

Even if content wasn't released immediately on facebook, there aren't enough people in the world to moderate the amount of content posted on facebook everyday.

I really think the comparison of those sites doesn't make sense.

[0]: [https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook- statistics/](https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/)

[1]: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2018/12/11/pornhub...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2018/12/11/pornhub-2018-year- in-review-insights-report/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Of course porn websites will say they have advanced measures to moderate content. The reality is that these platforms do host illegal content [1]. Even beyond child pornography, they facilitate the sharing of revenge porn which content-wise might not be considered illegal, so I don't see any way an algorithm would remove it on its own (even a human would probably be unable to do so without additional information). Once that is out, victims are unable to do much about it. Perhaps the original video might be deleted but copies can spread around, even on the same website and are not taken down.

[1] [https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/766b96c0-fdb0-11e9-8343-7...](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/766b96c0-fdb0-11e9-8343-786bb3fac9c1)

<comment><USER11> Beyond facilitation of child pornography distribution, there have been lawsuits related to rape being filmed and distributed. During the course of these lawsuits the videos typically remain up for streaming. There's also the underlying human trafficking problem that makes consumption of any pornography, even mainstream, a probabilistic endorsement and generation of demand for trafficking.

<comment><USER12> Would you mind linking to some resources? I've heard this before but could never track down any good sources.

<comment><USER10> Recent case of mainstream pornographers being charged with sex trafficking [1].

Also here's a [2012] article about the connection [https://www.rescuefreedom.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/10/sla...](https://www.rescuefreedom.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/10/slave-and-the-porn-star.pdf)

[1] [https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/girlsdoporn-owners- and-...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/girlsdoporn-owners-and- employees-charged-sex-trafficking-conspiracy)

<comment><USER12> Thanks, those describe some horrific scenarios. I'm also trying to find more information on how common it is and policy options that would help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> xHamster is Russian owned and controlled. I know all of their C-levels, they are here in Cyprus. It is really a brilliant company and they perfectly know what we are doing.

Quite unlike Facebook - there is a Russian company that makes and sells fake Facebook accounts, and being used correctly, they can live for months and even years without being banned (used to buy ads advertising dodgy stuff). Facebook is really helpless to stop it.

</comment><comment><USER14> The author is essentially arguing that it's okay to regulate the tech industry because the porn industry survived regulation. It's fine to try to do good by regulating an industry but it doesn't free us from the burden of evaluating the value of each proposed law. Just because it's okay to regulate in general doesn't mean every law is reasonable.

It sounds like a pretext for end-to-end encryption regulation.

</comment><comment><USER15> TLDR;

1\. They don't have to worry about latency due to review delays.

2\. They can use vision based detection algos for classification which are much reliable than NLP based understanding.

3\. They recruit users to do reviews for in-site benefits.

Unsaid but I suspect they also don't have to worry about user driven random virality for any content.

<comment><USER16> Surely there's a volume difference too ? I would expect images, videos etc. that people post to facebook outnumbers what people post to porn sites by many orders of magnitudes.

<comment><USER17> There is also the issue where a lot of data posted on FB is meant to be semi- private, while content posted on these websites are meant to be public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is the same strategy Google and Apple use with their app stores. This level of moderation is definitely possible in the valley.

<comment><USER19> i absolutely don't want the web to end up like shitty walled gardens

<comment><USER20> Facebook isn't the web, it's already a shitty walled garden.

<comment><USER19> the problem is that any regulation that affects FB will affect the web

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The answer has always been obvious. Facebook (and Google, etc) would rather keep the tens of billions of dollars in profit they make each year and keep growing that number, too.

They don't have need for "cost centers" such as customer support, moderation teams, etc. Facebook doesn't even have a large enough support team for _advertisers_ let alone anyone else that might have some real issues with their accounts, which I think should probably be illegal. You can't offer a service and then not respond to your customers issues/problems, especially if they pay for it.

There definitely needs to be more regulation in tech regarding this aspect. These companies have all the money they need to solve some of these issues, and then some. They'd rather keep that money for themselves and try to enter completely different markets so they can become an even bigger monopoly instead, though (which is yet another good reason to put restrictions on this stuff, because the goal should be to minimize the number of monopolies).

<comment><USER22> I vouched for this comment, because I don't see what was so objectionable about it. It seems like a genuinely held opinion, expressed in a relatively measured tone. If you disagree, reply with your reasons rather than trying to get it removed.

<comment><USER23> Nobody tried to get that comment removed.

<comment><USER24> Downvoting is effectively voting for a comment to removed.

<comment><USER25> How so? Downvoted comments can still be seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have a Facebook account, but I've not logged in for many years now, I've never had the app installed on any of my phones (last time I used Facebook the chat app was still working in the mobile version of the web app) and recently some kids seriously asked me what Facebook even is. As far as I'm concerned it's dead and I wonder how they are still even making any money?

Is it really just some old people there now and a bunch of _influenza_ seeking self confirmation through meaningless likes and then the majority which is left is perhaps some bots and political activits to spam those few old people with shit that nobody outside their bubble gives a damn? This is a serious question, what's happening on Facebook nowadays that still keeps that domain alive?

> If a porn site were the subject of an investigation that revealed it had > been home to millions of images of child abuse content, its parent company > probably wouldn't remain in business for much longer. For Facebook, however, > a Times piece that alleged an epidemic of child abuse on its platform was > just a bad news day. That's a stark difference in reaction to the same > offense, and one that should give us all pause.

So true. How is Facebook not being penalised really badly for this? Facebook distributing child absue through their unmoderated platform is the same as if Facebook would have build a bunch of robots who would have handed out child abuse magazines to millions of households. It is literally the same - <USER3> machine, which allegedely can't _see_ \- publicising horrendous content to millions of people. In the latter case Zuck would be locked into a prision cell on Guantanamo Bay for the rest of his life, in the former he just shruggs it off like nothing and keeps being one of the richest people on earth because of it. Quite stark contrast.

<comment><USER27> Facebook is still alive because it serves its primary purpose as a searchable book of faces. Even if gen z kids are not signing up anymore millennials will occasionally check in on their high school and college cohort and use it to look new people up. Meanwhile boomers actively use it to stay connected with family, especially if they have family abroad. It doesn't matter if everyone is in a little bubble, that's what they want. FB can still happily serve them ads. Twitter is for people with a global focus, it is where bubbles clash, Facebook is for confirmation and support from friends and family. Different people want different things.

<comment><USER25> You do realize that the oldest "millennials" are now 38? But what I've found is that the older people get (over 25) and start having busier lives and move away from their family and friends, the more they use FB. If you are a teenager in high school, you see your friends everyday.

<comment><USER27> I'm saying millennials checking on their highschool and college cohort after they graduated, like how did he or she do in the last 10 years? sort of thing. I'm aware that all school age kids are gen Z by now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A slideshow of colorful fractals to brighten your day - <AUTHOR> https://victorribeiro.com/showFractal/ <comment><AUTHOR> Well, I don't think anyone is having a super great time these days, so I made this slideshow of fractals in hope it brings joy to your day / night.

All the fractals on the slideshow were generated with my previous project shared here.</comment>


Italian 'Old School' politicians are scared by Beppe Grillo: why - <AUTHOR> http://blog.giuseppeurso.net/italian-old-school-politicians-are-scaried-by-beppe-grillo-why/index.html <comment><USER2> Beppe Grillo is not "new school". And "old school" politicians could not care less about him (except career-wise).

He is just a clown (in the bad sense) that got some of the protest votes of people for the lack of anything better to vote for.

Politics-wise Italy was been in a downward spiral ever since the seventies. It's not even politics anymore what they have, it's like a parody of politics, or a lame soap opera.</comment>


Doctors Say 'I'm Sorry' Before 'See You in Court' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/us/18apology.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1211130296-/4FiKXpddteqcHfzxmsIrA <comment><USER2> Short version: USA rediscovers common sense and humanity.

<comment><USER3> Here's my take: treating a wronged person as a human, opening a discussion and offering reparations is likely to make them less angry and litigious, as compared to stonewalling and denying everything. This news is brought to you by some American hospitals.

<comment><USER4> Well, but how are lawyers going to make money If people quit suing each other?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honesty is the best policy. Who'd thunk it?

</comment><comment><USER6> If you apologize sincerely, the victim will be less angry? Really? You're kidding, right?

</comment><comment><USER7> That's great taht you're posting this here - THANK YOU.</comment>


Show HN: Browse Slack message history beyond 10K limit, on Free plan - <AUTHOR> https://slarck.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! My friends and I got annoyed with Slack's "Your team has more than 10,000 messages... but you can't see them" nag, and have put together a web app to view and search history of a team's channels, with markdown formatting, attachments and emoji.

Slack allows you to export all the history, even beyond the 10k limit. You upload the exported zip, it is parsed and rendered for you to see. It's a simple as this. We want to make Slarck.com a single place to store message archives from different services, even when those services are not used anymore (or discontinued, or switched from). We added HipChat support as well (yesterday :)

Slack's paid plans are not an option, as a lot of my friends (and myself) are bootstrap startuppers, so we'll have to live with the free plan to survive. Lots of Open Source projects can't afford to pay too.

I've seen slackarchive.io, but I can't use it: it's Slack-only, it's bot-based and consumes one of scarce integration slots, and it's upside down! And being bot-based, it can't display past messages.

<comment><USER2> I have mixed feelings about this... but Slack does provide the capability of their own volition, and browsing our archive could be very useful to my small Slack community. Thanks!</comment></comment>


KLM airline lets you pick a seatmate using Facebook - Suraj-Sun http://travelkit.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/03/10310585-klm-wants-air-travelers-to-get-social-in-the-sky

<comment><AUTHOR> See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3550059></comment>


How Silver Lake Sees The Skype Situation - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/skype-scandal-silver-lake-2011-6

<comment><AUTHOR> From the article: _"But the big difference between Skype and most Silicon Valley venture-backed companies--a difference that is inflaming this scandal-- is that Skype is a private-equity deal, not a venture capital deal. And standard operating procedure (SOP) in private-equity deals is different than SOP in venture capital deals"_

</comment><comment><USER2> Fantastic, an anonymously-sourced hit-piece on Lee. I think this ham-handed pushback illustrates one thing for sure: Skype is weak in the PR department and thus the brand is likely fragile and dependent on public perception. Perhaps with MS behind them that might change, but if Skype-related hinkiness continues I'll predict Microsoft just kills the Skype name/brand and folds it into Live or whatever.</comment>


AT&T to spend $150m on Launching Nokia Windows 8 phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/04/10/is-this-device-more-important-than-the-iphone/

<comment><USER2> I actually ventured out Easter Sunday to buy myself the new Nokia. I then discovered that all AT&T stores in my area were closed for the holiday. In the grand scheme of things it probably doesn't matter as far as sales go, but for building buzz it seems odd to schedule your launch when your retail stores are closed. I'd like to know what discussions (or lack thereof) occurred by the various marketing departments leading up to the launch.</comment>


Pingdom shows Twitter's June 2008 response time at over 3000ms... - <AUTHOR> http://www.pingdom.com/reports/vb1395a6sww3/check_overview/?name=twitter.com%2Fhome

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting too, because Google is starting to drop the hammer on sites that have long response times.</comment>


Norway, Sweden and Denmark Say "No" to Cash - <AUTHOR> http://cointelegraph.com/news/cash-electronic-money-scandinavia <comment><USER2> It should be great to give corps and government even more control over us.</comment>


CSS single-file stylesheets that you can drop into an HTML5 document - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1030985251940491266 <comment><USER2> A nice way to compare how various CSS resets and frameworks style HTML elements is [[https://kemar.github.io/html- elements/](https://kemar.github...](https://kemar.github.io/html- elements/\]\(https://kemar.github.io/html-elements/\)).

<comment><USER3> [https://kemar.github.io/html-elements/](https://kemar.github.io/html- elements/)</comment></comment>


Now sites can fingerprint you online even when you use multiple browsers - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/now-sites-can-fingerprint-you-online-even-when-you-use-multiple-browsers/ <comment><USER2> Another reason to block javascript from your browser. I find myself leaning more and more towards only unblocking js for very very select few trusted sites.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is from early 2017 so I'm sure it's circulated around.

If anyone is looking for a solution, I have high regards for the guy running treaty.io. No relation, I'm simply a very happy customer: I drop in his library (effortless installation) for my clients fighting transaction card fraud.

<comment><USER4> Am I missing something here? The website states that it will "Identify devices across browsers and websites — without cookies." When visiting the site in Chrome it calculated a unique device ID for me. Out of curiosity, I then visited the site using Firefox. The calculated device ID was different.</comment></comment>


Get Shit Done Bootstrap3 UI Kit - <AUTHOR> http://www.creative-tim.com/get-shit-done

<comment><USER2> bootstrap 2 just looks so much more "friendly".</comment>


Story of a Successful Migration to Google Cloud Platform - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/meilleursagents-engineering/story-of-a-successful-migration-to-google-cloud-platform-6bc7fa0798e8 <comment><AUTHOR> Based on some of the areas where there was difficulty (moving from NetApp, Postgres) it seems as though AWS might have been a better choice. EFS is a drop in replacement for NetApp and Aurora Postgres would step in for their own Postgres server. Especially since they are still dependent on AWS anyway.</comment>


L-cheapo diode laser cutter review - <AUTHOR>

\ we made 2.1 watt and 3.5 diode laser. Using it you can covert 3D printer or and CNC device into cutting or engraving machine. Would you like to write a review about our laser? We can send you one for test or we can give any answers as you need to write a review. <comment><USER2> Look interesting, but this is the wrong format for a submission here and it probably will not be very popular.

Try this:

You write a technical review of the laser, with many details. Problems with the construction? Cool detectors to measure the power? What is inside? Protecting glasses?

Add some photos, I think that 6 or 8 photos are a good number. Try to show how you use the laser for some simple application. Cut a paper? Draw something? (Be careful.)

Bonus point for one or two short videos.

Some inspiration: "What's Perky? My Handmade Keyboard" [http://homepage2.nifty.com/perky/index.htm](http://homepage2.nifty.com/perky/index.htm) HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8510800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8510800) (33 points, 284 days ago, 13 comments)</comment>


7 Things You Must Be Doing with Docker - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getcrane.com/7-things-must-docker

<comment><USER2> "Over the next eighteen months, your enterprise will need to adopt container technology at pace. And that will put pressure on you to assess the role containers can play and adapt your infrastructure to support them"

Technology adoption for the sake of it? I managed 12 years so far without Docker, why do I suddenly need it now? I Already know how to use virtualenv with Python, or a full virtual machine. Why do I suddenly need another level?

Fad driven development.

<comment><USER3> Whilst the article is written a bit like a sales pitch I believe docker makes the difference when having infrustructures requiring several machines/roles</comment></comment>


Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter considering "nuclear option" to protest SOPA - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/111543-google-amazon-facebook-and-twitter-considering-nuclear-option-to-protest-sopa

<comment><USER2> Good. I hope they do it, not only to ruin the political careers of those supporting SOPA now, but also to put such a scare into all politicians when they receive all the millions of calls redirected from those sites, that they'll never try something like this again, or at least not for the next 10 years or so.

In the meantime we can work on pushing a Constitution Amendment or two that clearly define you can't mess with the Internet, and that it needs to stay free and open, because apparently the 1st Amendment is not enough to deter these companies and politicians supporting SOPA and PIPA.</comment>


Why we migrated away from Librato to InfluxDB? - <AUTHOR> http://zemanta.github.io/2016/05/10/from-librato-to-influxdb/ <comment><USER2> A couple thoughts from a Librato founder here:

\- Appreciate the thorough and balanced approach you took here, there's a lot of great feedback, most of which helps validate our current roadmap and 1-2 things we'll certainly consider.

\- The tradeoff of providing a true utility service where you only pay for what you use is that the actual makeup of your bill can become complex (think of your AWS bill). We do pro-rate usage to the hour right now (matching AWS), so unless your metric "lifetimes" are sub-hour there's shouldn't be a huge issue.

\- There's a similar power/complexity tradeoff with rollups. Unlike some solutions that only rollup via average we track multiple summary statistics e.g. min, max, sum, count, weighted average. Managing the differences between these can be confusing in some cases, so we're currently working on a simpler interface to toggle between these. More details can be found here: [https://www.librato.com/docs/kb/visualize/faq/rollups_retent...](https://www.librato.com/docs/kb/visualize/faq/rollups_retention_resolution.html)

\- Mobile support is something we've been incrementally adding and will continue until it's complete e.g. the actual alerts page you land on from a notification is now mobile-ready.

\- Tagging. In the years since we first launched (when AFAIK only OpenTSDB supported this) it's become clear that this is becoming more and more a standard capability. Which is why we've been building out a next-generation data-store, which supports indexed tagging and a bunch of other new capabilities. We expect it to be in beta this summer.

<comment><USER3> I'm really glad you've noticed this post and that librato will continue to improve based on the feedback.

I hope my post will NOT get across as "picking librato in the first place was a mistake", because we definitely don't regret starting with you guys. We were up and running quickly with metrics and alerting in no time and we got to learn how important it is to be able to filter metrics per host. We definitely didn't had the time to set up everything by ourselves and your platform + great support provided the right solution.

At the time, the alternative was to set up our own graphite and from my experience, internal tools that you don't have time to _really_ invest in, will break faster than you can think of. Having dealt with non-maintained, internally owned self managed graphite+syren stack before, I have 0 regrets :)

But as we grew and InfluxDB matured, we've done a bit of research, discovered cool features (e.g. tags) we can make great use of and later on decided to go with managed InfluxDB solution and the ecosystem it brings along.

In the post I also argue that librato is a good pick, if you're a small team with no ops people and need a metrics+alerting backend ASAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We went on the hunt for a time-series data-store a while ago and ended up picking OpenTSDB. It seems they are planning on supporting Cassandra (which sounds like it will be easier to maintain than HBase): [http://opentsdb.net/docs/build/html/user_guide/backends/cass...](http://opentsdb.net/docs/build/html/user_guide/backends/cassandra.html) Another worthy contender was KairosDB: [https://kairosdb.github.io/](https://kairosdb.github.io/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Can I ask, what tool have you used for the 3d charts?

<comment><USER6> [https://cloudcraft.co/](https://cloudcraft.co/)

<comment><USER7> It looks very cool but it's terribly difficult to read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How many transactions per second? Is all this really necessary?

</comment><comment><USER9> excellent post

<comment><USER10> i know this is just too easy now, but... we told you so :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: What's a Facebook User Worth? A real-time infographic quick-hack - <AUTHOR> http://FacebookWorth.com

<comment><AUTHOR> There are so many fascinating stats about Facebook and its IPO, but we thought one important metric was missing

Facebook Worth uses Google Finance data and some published Facebook statistics to display real-time, what a user and their friends are worth to Facebook.

Just some web fun for the IPO day. Enjoy!</comment>


Show HN: OverflowMonthly - <AUTHOR> http://www.overflowmonthly.com/

<comment><USER2> Guys, I want to see a discussion on copyright issues here.

At first I thought that gt5050 might be infringing copyright. In particular, if asked, I would have guessed that ownership of the content posted on Stack remained with the askers/answerers. Or, at worse, that the content was released under a non-commercial creative commons license. In fact, it's released under a generic creative commons license (source: [http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/5546/who-is-the- copy...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/5546/who-is-the-copyright- holder-of-stackoverflow-user-contributed-content)).

How do people feel about an answerer putting x amount of time into writing a free, articulate, well-explained answer, and having that answer repackaged and sold without compensation (or even correspondence)? That kinda' grinds my gears.

To be explicit, although I have similar qualms with Hacker Monthly, they're largely settled by the fact that Cheng Soon contacts the authors and gets explicit permission (even if he doesn't pay them).

That said, gt5050, I mean to take nothing away from the kudos you deserve for delivering a product.

<comment><USER3>
        > How do people feel about an answerer putting x amount
        > of time into writing a free, articulate, well-explained
        > answer, and having that answer repackaged and sold
        > without compensation (or even correspondence)?

It says at the bottom of every page "user contributions licensed under cc- wiki"; by posting content on the site you agree to those terms. They're not being "cheated"[1]—

        You are free:

        to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
        to Remix — to adapt the work
        to make commercial use of the work

[1] <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First, thanks for making this!

Just a little note, I think there's a bug in your profile picture retrieval: asker & answerer have different usernames but the same pictures; e.g. John Skeet & Remus Rusanu on p. 9.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am looking into this. EDIT: It is fixed. Will upload the corrected pdf. The problem was only with the pdf version and not with the mobi version

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great idea, but make it a website instead of a pdf (or as well as) so sorting and searching and stuff can be done?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion, would try and setup website as well. In the meantime if you can have a look at this <http://stackoverflow.com/?tab=month>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really nice, would love to have the questions sorted according to the topics

</comment><comment><USER7> good concept buddy ... The links were missing from the pdf. If pdf could have the links to the original content then it would be more easy to get to the original content

<comment><AUTHOR> I am using Qt to render the content to pdf ,and some how links are not working in the rendered pdf.Will work on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice idea, a separate edition that excludes everything made by microsoft would probably get me to part with money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for trying it out. I would be creating separate ebooks on different topics.</comment></comment>


Google Reader is awesome - <AUTHOR> http://photographybanzai.com/2011/05/14/following-photography-websites-and-blogs/

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess not. :( The site cut off my full title.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is news?</comment>


Ask YC: Advice re: consultancy agreement (ownership) - <AUTHOR>

In a consultancy agreement that is work for hire, who owns the rights to work done outside the working hours? Is that also implicitly owned by the CLIENT or does it belong to the consultant?<p>I guess, what does the following mean with regards to work on free time?<p>"All product and services rendered by Contractor shall be a "work made for hire" and shall be owned by CLIENT and CLIENT shall maintain any and all related copyrights therein. In the event that any content, products or services are deemed not to be a work for hire, Contractor agrees to assign, and does hereby irrevocably assign, to CLIENT all right, title and interest in such." <comment><USER2> One of my employees ran into this exact kind of problem. We let our guys work on their own projects, but one of his clients wanted rights to any developments he may come up with as a result of any _other_ projects. That meant company stuff as well, and that wasn't going to cut it.

If you haven't signed that contract yet, I would immediately demand the client rewrite that and talk with them about licensing issues before you run into some serious issues with someone wanting to profit from your stuff where otherwise they should not be.

What that quote means is that if you work for this person, and you develop anything that your client can use, even if it's on your own time, you will have to give it to the client, the rights, and any profits you'd otherwise make from that development. That is NOT what you want.

I'm noticing more and more clients who know absolutely nothing about web development/software engineering try to pull this kind of shit all the time. Talk with them immediately if you haven't already signed the contract and change that, share with them your stance on the matter how you want to protect your intellectual property.

</comment><comment><USER3> If its on your own time and unrelated to what you're doing, its yours. I think that second sentence merely protects the client if the first sentence fails to do so, its not saying "everything you do is ours." There is no rationale for the client owning unrelated things you do outside of work that they don't pay for. There is a reason for the client to own the things you do for them, which is what that part of the contract does.

If what you do outside of work is closely related to what you do at work for the client, you are going to run into problems. ie. the Facebook debacle. Building a website selling widgets using method A and then turning around and saying "Oh, I just decided to build a website on my own selling widgets using method A as well" is going to get you into serious trouble. Working on your blog at home is not.

<comment><USER3> I should clarify that you and the client should talk about this beforehand and it really matters what you're hired to do. If you're building someone an e-commerce site and you decide to work on your iPhone puzzle game at home, its doubtful there'll be problems. But if someone has hired you to come up with ideas and program them, then you've really sold your idea making process as well as your coding skills, and it will be harder for you to claim ideas as yours.</comment></comment>


Opener Unveils First USA and Canada-Qualified Personal Electric VTOL Aircraft - <AUTHOR> http://opener.aero <comment><USER2> Strange that there are no comments. This seems like a neat idea, not for commuting of course but there must be a lot of other applications for something like this.</comment>


Grep Match: Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates - <AUTHOR> http://blekko.com/webgrep?page=view&id=dcfdbb23e0279fed28b08d7b764a3839

<comment><USER2> Not surprising given the number of apple fans out there</comment>


The South Korean Military produces an elaborate Les Miserables parody - <AUTHOR> http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201302072131-0022532

<comment><USER2> Hilarious. This is what happens when you have compulsory military service as a nation which (although constantly under threat) rarely if ever actually sees combat. I can't decide whether it's a better or worse waste of time then the Air Force's professional StarCraft team, but either way, bravo.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds more like what I imagined Kim Jong Il did with his movie kick.

</comment><comment><USER4> Amusing though this is, I fail to see what it has to do with HN.</comment>


Laptop Keyboards, No More Page Up/Down for You - <AUTHOR> http://xahlee.info/kbd/laptop_keyboards.html

<comment><USER2> For a design oriented article, it has an absolutely horrible design. The article itself is poorly written with contradictions. For example, the author writes about a 90's IBM Thinkpad but gives a screenshot of a Lenovo Thinkpad. The asus keyboard does have a page up/page down function (The up/down arrow used in combination with the function key provides this functionality)

</comment><comment><USER3> on mine there is not even a end/home key and also no pgdn/pgup key... writing is terribley slow with it

theres a solution i saw before on autohotkey forums where a small app runs on the desktop in always on top mode - with 4 buttons that are pgup pgdn home end, or you can bind a hotkey to them</comment>


San Francisco's first automated restaurant is 'pure magic' - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-future-of-the-machine-worker-is-here-2016-3 <comment><USER2> I find it weird that this is called "San Francisco's first automated restaurant". Automated restaurants were widespread throughout the early-to- mid-20th century.

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

From the descriptions, it's not clear that the level of automation in the new automated restaurant is that much higher than in a traditional automat. (Like in previous automats, there are still human beings working in a kitchen out- of-sight behind the wall.) Other journalists called this particular restaurant "a new take on an old model", "a new take on the classic automat", and "the return of the automat".

An automat company was "once the world's largest restaurant chain":

[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/meet-me-at-the- automat...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/meet-me-at-the- automat-47804151/?no-ist)

</comment><comment><USER3> This sounds more like a mechanical turk than actual automation. A restaurant without waiters is usually called a cafeteria or a deli, not "pure magic." This article is credulous and obfuscating to the point of dishonesty, even if only through emphasis.

By the dubious logic shown here, if Uber put a divider between the passenger and the driver, it would be a self-driving car. Their definition of automatic seems to be "not seeing a person" instead of "not needing a person."

</comment><comment><USER4> This article is originally from The Guardian (where it has better images) [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/19/robot- base...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/19/robot-based- economy-san-francisco)</comment>


Genetic Expression Technique Helps Uncover Function of Individual Neurons - <AUTHOR> http://www.medgadget.com/archives/2009/09/genetic_expression_technique_based_on_light_switching_proteins_helps_uncover_function_of_individual.html <comment><USER2> Looks similar to the stuff in this Google Tech Talk <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SLdSbp6VjM>

</comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting. This will most probably be a big boost to neuroscience.</comment>


Linux apps that run anywhere - <AUTHOR> https://appimage.org/ <comment><USER2> FYI, AppImages do _not_ run anywhere. There are a lot of issues with them in NixOS, since NixOS is all about having explicitly-linked dependencies, and AppImages still often have implicit dependencies that aren't in the image itself, since they are assumed to exist on the host system.

See [https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/51060](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/51060) for an example.

<comment><USER3> but who really uses NixOS? a 0.001% of linux users?

<comment><USER4> How did you came up with that number ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the issues I've had with things distributed as Snaps or Flatpaks is that they tend not to pickup the settings and preferences that I've configured on my workstation.

For example, if I've setup themes, fonts, scaling factors, custom keyboard shortcuts, etc., they tend not to be available/utilized by the applications which are distributed in these bundling formats. For the most part, that's why I avoid using them.

I assume, but don't actually know, that this also true of AppImage. Can anybody who knows better confirm, or deny, that?

<comment><USER6> I was surprised when VSCode snap told me that I should start using different snap to install new versions if VSCode and that my settings would be kept. And it did. So there is some way to respect users settings across snaps at least

<comment><USER7> The official VS Code snap is unconfined, ie. it only uses snap for package management without the sandbox. This means it can access the settings stored in your home directory just the same as if it was installed through apt.

Snaps with strict confinement can also ask for home directory access as a specific permission.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It makes me really sad that this is necessary. Unix _has_ a concept of shared libraries. And somehow it managed to get ruined so irrevocably that there's no going back. This—this was a solved problem! It really was. It was solved, and then we unsolved it when we decided that 'move fast and break things' was more important than ABI stability. And now shared libraries are completely useless. I struggle to name a single useful c library that's useful as a system-wide shared library nowadays. Libc/m doesn't really count because it's part of the language, and libz is small enough that everyone who needs it statically links it. Everything else is neither ubiquitous nor stable enough to be used. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

<comment><USER9> Private developer wants to distribute binary + shared dependency libs. On Windows they package it into an installer which unpacks it into the target destination & everything works. On MacOS the user gets a folder that acts like file within which everything is stored. Additionally there are reliable releases so something targeting a minimum of MacOS 10.14 has a reliable way to specify that in the toolchain & know that the prerequisite runtimes are there (Windows is a bit less elegant here but still manageable).

On Linux you have to provide RPMs for Redhat, DEB files for Debian-variants, ??? for Gentoo users. Moreover, your dependencies have to be managed in a totally bizarre way & you need special launchers to put your shared libraries elsewhere & add them to the path to avoid making assumptions about whether or not the user has the right prerequisites. Or you run your own apt/yum/etc servers to host your packages & play nice within the ecosystem. Additionally, some do periodic releases. Some do rolling releases. Considering how small of a population Linux it makes it more headache than it's worth to target for commercial shops that are cross platform as most of their customers are. That also isn't getting into the mess that 32-bit vs 64-bit is on Linux.

Finally, the big advantage is that the release is done by the author. No more package maintainers providing questionable maintenance across a bunch of distros.

<comment><USER10> >Finally, the big advantage is that the release is done by the author

I see that as the biggest net win of the current system although it may seem inefficient or bureaucratic. I do not trust the authors. The only modicum of sanity and trust comes from the fact that debain/fedora maintainers are actually on your (the user's) side and have strong rules and guidelines about everything. Desktop linux doesn't have that much meaningful isolation or sandboxing that malicous apps cannot circumvent. It's only now that we are seeing some efforts in this direction. Still, it's quite far from something like android where you can quite safely run arbitrary applications.

<comment><USER11> With your logic, you've already lost.

If you don't trust the developer of an application you already run, you're screwed in any scenario.

Yours is not a realistic threat model.

<comment><USER12> Developers don't deserve that trust.

It's not just threat model, developers are increasingly focusing on fast iteration and annoying users with constant and often unwanted updates, something debian saves users from, very few users care about always having the latest features and bugs or want to become beta testers. Not to mention the privacy shitshow from developers wanting telemetry or more nefarious reasons.

Software repositories like debian and the apple app store are great because the put a layer between the developer and the users and require a 1-1 trust calculation.

<comment><USER11> Distributions in their current form are almost harmful. I like what they do, conceptually, but that model you're describing should only apply for the base system. I want Firefox to update ASAP, I want VLC to update ASAP.

The distribution model should only apply to libraries and base tools. And even those should be versioned so they can coexist easily and I'm easily able to install any app, from the ones that want GTK1 to the ones that want GTKLatest.

<comment><USER12> > I want Firefox to update ASAP

Firefox is the perfect example of why I hate user facing apps updating constantly. They're always adding random features, breaking plugins (still don't have vertical tabs working properly) and shifting the UI around. It was much better back when they had stable releases.

> The distribution model should only apply to libraries and base tools.

As long as nothing breaks it doesn't worry me how many times libc is updated, it's the user facing changes that interrupt me I want to avoid.

> And even those should be versioned so they can coexist easily and I'm easily > able to install any app, from the ones that want GTK1 to the ones that want > GTKLatest.

If they can't commit to stable releases and non-breaking API then they aren't going to commit to maintaining the 15 versions of GTK that you'd end up with on your system, that's the worst of every world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Video introduction to AppImage (linked on the AppImage website): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVVP77jC8Fc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVVP77jC8Fc)

Also, a side point -- is it wrong to want people to spend more energy on building fat binaries? To me they are the ultimate in portability (by definition), and investing in projects like musl libc and distributions like alpine, languages like go and rust that build portable static binaries is so much more accessible to me as a developer.

All the approaches to portable apps seem to just be hacking around the problem but I wonder if we should instead be pouring energy into making fully static binaries easier to build, _then_ trying to optimize them to get them smaller.

<comment><USER14> What if another heartbleed happens? Wouldn't it be better to update a single shared library?

<comment> mickael-kerjean In theory. In practise it's much faster to push for a fix to your users with a brand new fat binary than having to figure out the mess that is distributing your software on every possible Linux distribution (obligatory XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)).

Also shared libaries assumed your software will work on a different version of a library which is quite a bold assumption that may or may be true depending on the phase of the moon

<comment><USER15> > In theory. In practise it's much faster to push for a fix to your users with > a brand new fat binary than having to figure out the mess that is > distributing your software on every possible Linux distribution (obligatory > XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)).

Electron seems to have disproved this. There are many Electron based applications that are broken with glibc >= 2.28 even though a fixed version of Electron has been out for it for nearly a year.

Fat binaries (or fat binpacks) are a failure.

<comment><USER13> Would you mind explaining more about this? I'm not sure I understand completely what you mean -- glibc is basically impossible to statically build and is linked. It's part of the reason why "static" builds don't really exist on debian and many other distributions. Correct me if I'm wrong but glibc just isn't portable -- this is why I mentioned having to go into alpine & build with musl libc. Seems like the electron project has chosen not to support it[0].

Another aspect worth considering is the software logistics/delivery problem -- it absolutely _would_ be great to have dynamically linked software updates if:

1) Your software could always ensure to get the version it expects with the version it expects

2) It wasn't hard to distribute the software (AKA X > 5 providers are hard to package for)

Assuming I'm not completely misunderstanding your point, if the electron based applications you're discussing were truly fat binaries, _nothing_ could break them, outside of CPU architecture level impropriety.

BTW, there are some systems like Nix & Guix that have solved #1 -- it's extremely easy to ensure that your program gets the exact version of some dependency.

[0]: [https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/9662](https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/9662)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You know if even Linus Torvalds likes it, you've done something right. I love the idea of solving the current approaches to installing / maintaining software on Linux. This is one approach I do like, but I still appreciate maintaining packages through a package manager. I would love to see a best of both worlds, packages like deb that can both run directly and be managed through the package manager, depending on how you choose to run them.

<comment><USER17> The quote doesn't say he liked it. The quote says it is 'just very cool'. Maybe I've dealt with too many out of context book blurbs and sound bites in my time, but a single dubious endorsement like that is worse than no endorsements.

<comment><USER18> Full quote: [https://web.archive.org/web/20170914030116/https://plus.goog...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170914030116/https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/WyrATKUnmrS)

<comment><USER17> Would suggest "This is just very cool [...] works very well" to avoid people like me reading through the lines ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Every app packaging its own shared library and runtime because someone didn't want to deal with packaging software.

I foresee someone in five years complaining about how much RAM linux on the desktop uses. And somebody else blaming it on shared libraries not actually being shared because all the "apps" load their own snowflake library. So multiple copies of glibc, multiple copies of gtk, multiple copies of everything.

RIP RAM AND WALLET.

</comment><comment><USER20> Don't forget about trade-offs. Such kind of bundled packages have worse security than distro packaged method, where dependencies are getting patches and fixes. Because most developers won't ever bother patching their bundled dependencies.

So know what you are paying with.

</comment><comment><USER21> What people use it for at the top, what it does in the middle, and how it works at the bottom, buried in a video - typical modern sites (except this one at least has the video).

What I would like to see: 1\. Problem statement 2\. How this solves it 3\. Usage guide 4\. Source code link 5\. No appeal to authority of who's using it

<comment><USER22> > and how it works at the bottom, buried in a video

A video that plays for _12 minutes_ before it explains the bit about using an ELF header which mounts a disk image payload using FUSE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd rather see people use Guix or Nix when their native package manager doesn't have something.

</comment><comment><USER24> Anybody has strong feelings about AppImage vs Snap vs Flatpack (and any other similar ones)?

<comment><USER25> I like the concept of AppImage much more than Snap and Flatpak.

I fully embrace the idea of decentralized distribution of applications, as opposed to the way package managers work (central repository mantained by the distro)

I believe the operating system should only be concerned about the _base_ software and present a sane interface so that the user can then install the specific programs they need, the OS should not care about how or where the user gets those programs.

Appimage is the only project I know that respects that idea. Snap and Flatpak are centralized AFAIK (or are unnecessarily hard to use in a decentralized manner).

<comment><USER26> How is this different from windows? I think this is good for dependency heavy apps, such as krita, but you should still try to keep things as centralized as possible, makes updates easier and painless

<comment><USER25> it's not fundamentally different.

The practical difference is that the ecosystem of Linux applications is composed almost entirely of open source software. Consequently, installing something you downloaded from the web is much less dangerous than installing a closed source program on Window, provided that you trust the website.

I agree that the centralized scheme is easier to use in the 80% of cases. i.e. when:

(1) The package you want is in the repos, and ... (2) The version of the package you want is in the repos.

But, when those 2 conditions are not met, installing software is usually harder than on Windows. Additionally, I don't like the very nature of centralized things, even if they are managed by _the good guys_.

<comment><USER27> Unless somebody else built the app from source and reproduced exactly the same binaries there is no guarantee that the binaries you download were actually built from the source you're looking at. Open source per se doesn't magically imply any benefits wrt security. Things look differently if the binaries were built on a central & trusted platform or by trusted packers.

<comment><USER25> > Things look differently if the binaries were built on a central & trusted > platform or by trusted packers.

How so? I believe the same principle applies for centralized distribution. How do I know the packer didn't change the code?. The same way I trust repo mantainers I can trust application developers, or any other third party.

And reproducible builds are possible both in decentralized and centralized modalities of distribution. Aren't they?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> TBF-RnD Come on guys, I see a lot of negativity here but we can have the cake and eat it. Look at the following imaginary but likely scenario. A promising coder creates an app in C using cmake or whatever. For a veteran linux user to use git and compile is not a problem. Our up and comming coder want to reach out to a wider audience however so instead of creating X packages he provides an appimage. All of the sudden all the fedora, debian and ubuntu guys etcetera can run it without the hassle.

Now imagine if the project turns out to be a silver bullet for some really important problem. What will happen, the maintainers for the bigger distros will simply download the code and there will be maintainers that steps up and maintains the software for the repos.

Voila, the best of two worlds.

... and if the project doesn't become a huge mainstream access users now can get it via source or appimage .

As far as commercial projects are concerned they will operate according to different dynamics. But who cares we want open source solutions for our linux systems anyway.

</comment><comment><USER28> What I'm disappointed about with AppImage is that it doesn't deal with differing architectures as far as I can tell. Which would really help me right now as I had to send my laptop to Dell for repairs and I'm now using just my Android phone and my Raspberry Pi 3B+ as a desktop. And compiling stuff on the Pi is SO SLOW!

</comment><comment><USER29> If you want portable apps just make one fully staticly compiled binary.

This is the worst of all worlds. No security updates for used libraries and no performance gain that comes with static linking.

<comment><USER30> The static linking ship has sailed years ago for glibc based apps (no static linking support).

<comment><USER29> Always use musl for static linking. As a bonus you might get an even smaller binary than a dynamically linked glibc binary.

<comment><USER31> Keep in mind, however, that AFAIK musl won't respect /etc/nsswitch.conf, so if for instance the machine is configured to lookup users on ldap, a musl static linked program won't be able to correctly lookup users.

<comment><USER32> There are certainly cases where you need the features of glibc over musl, but those are pretty rare IMO, and you can always implement a missing piece yourself if using musl saves you enough in maintenance overhead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What is the difference between appimage and just a binary marked as executable?

<comment><USER34> It's supposed to contain all its dependencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does it work on Android? For cli apps running under adb, at least?

</comment><comment><USER35> "To run an AppImage, simply:

Make it executable

$ chmod a+x Subsurface _.AppImage

and run!

$ ./Subsurface_.AppImage

That was easy, wasn't it?"

No. How about click/double click the app icon in your menu/desktop/the folder where you downloaded it into?

<comment><USER36> You need .desktop files in /use/share/apps

<comment><USER35> I, as a user, do not need any files in /usr/share/apps. The system might need. And I don't want to deal with those.

All other major operating systems (can) work like this; download something > click it > it works. No need to launch terminal, set executable permissions and type the name of file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This website just makes me angry:

\- Fixed social media share buttons that cover the text on mobile

\- It auto-translates to German even though my system language is set to English (seems like they use geolocation for this which is bad practise)

\- Center aligned text that is annoying to read

</comment><comment><USER38> "No need to install". This is every system administrator's nightmare: users running arbitrary executables bypassing operating system packaging. Come time to upgrade or reinstall what can happen? If there are security updates which are needed to the program, what could happen, since this is statically linked?

This is the pinnacle of destructive lazyness and amateurism in IT: as a developer it is one's job to master every operating system packaging format for the target platform one develops for. OS packaging is a tool invented for developers, not a tool meant to be subverted at every turn and opportunity like this.

<comment><USER39> Literally the reason why PCs won over mainframes. Users want to run the software they want to run.

If you don't trust your users to run software on your server you probably shouldn't let them on your server in the first place... or else contain and isolate them with a VM or similar.

Multi-user operating systems are feeling a bit like they are going the way of the dodo, to me... That is acutall multi-user systems, not user accounts for system services.

<comment><USER38> What do you think powers the InterNet that you're connected to right now? Multiuser systems, running applications under different logins. Even the much hated systemd brought physical multiuser computing back to GNU/Linux.

<comment><USER39> Yeah, but the user accounts are at the application level not the os level.

I doubt there is a top internet company around that makes a unix account for each web user. That would be an antipattern...

<comment><USER38> Search for "free shell accounts". You might be surprised.

<comment><USER39> It kind of reminds me of shared hosting providers without root access. Sure they exist but really have been overtaken in a big way by virtual private servers... That's what I mean by they seem going out of style.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Web apps aren't tech. They're "tech" - <AUTHOR> https://questinglog.com/web-apps-arent-tech <comment><USER3> if you studied computer science before 1960 you did maths and electronic engineering. If you studied computer science after 1970 you probably learned a subset speciality. All fields change and all work looks different 10 years later.

Web apps are sufficiently turing-complete that the arrogance of "thats not tech" is just wrong.

Carmack wouldn't write asm for a device now, in all cases. He might do Verilog for an FPGA but he might be doing something else.

<comment><USER4> I think the author's point is that modern toolchains make spinning up a basic web app more like following a recipe, and as such is free of many (novel) technical challenges. As technology goes, it's still complex, but so is building a microwave oven and yet we don't call GE's white goods department a tech company. It's a challenge that's already been tackled and is well understood.

If your web app is doing something that's never been done before, which requires the application of scientific principles and so on, like... translating baby babbles into English, then it's still technology, but that would not be _because_ it's a web app.

<comment><USER3> There is a great spanish saying (I got this from historical fiction) "let no new thing arise"

Vonnegut wrote a course for eng. lit creative writing on the 7 canonical plotlines of all stories. ever. I thought "goodness whats the point in writing now" but it hasn't stopped people making good entertaining fiction

All code is variations over abstraction, synthesis, loops, decision forks, recursion (tail or not) and all data structures iterate back over lists and arrays, over trees and DAGs.

"never been done before" is pretty rare anywhere.

<comment><USER5> That's not really true. Unless you're specifically following a recipe, chances are most of what you're doing has never been done before, at least in some aspects of it.

But I do think it's a bad way of evaluating this. Personally, I would say that a more important distinction between tech and "tech" is the degree to which the technology makes or breaks the business.

For example, for Uber, the tech is an enabler, but the business is made or broken by the cabs, the vetting, the pricing, the number of cabs they can hire, the salaries and benefits they can avoid etc. Sure, the tech has to work, but there is no reason that Uber would be falling behind if their tech went into maintenance mode today - even if their competitors kept investing in new tech. So, Uber is a "tech" company in my book (even though they have spent inordinate amounts of money on the tech before).

On the other hand, a company like Cisco must make ever better routers or Arista or F5 or whoever will quickly steal their lunch. So Cisco is a tech company, at least on the NEM side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > But people don't talk about ancient inventions as "technology", outside of a > historical context. When we call something technology, we generally mean > something invented recently

This is rediculous, the whole articles schtick is based on an inline redefining of the word its about.

Well I guess the sky isn't blue anymore because the word blue doesn't mean blue anymore, it means red.

I dunno about you all, but when I talk about technology, I am referring to the accepted definition meaning. Not "recent tech", although a lot of contexts this can be assumed.

But nobody out there is assuming you mean recent tech when you're talking about ancient Egyptian technology.

Words mean things, so does context, stop trying to redefine the meaning of words all the time, it's tiring, and we usually have a word for what you want to convey already.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you refer to cars, microwaves, refrigerators or light bulbs as "tech"?

<comment><USER7> yes.

<comment><USER8> They're undoubtedly technologies, but I don't think that in practice people would call those industries part of "tech".

The whole "tech" label needs to die as it's overstayed its welcome and now just funnels engineers towards narrower and narrower segments of the economy where the benefits are less and less clear.

If you estimate the "tech-iness" of a domain by the depth of the tech tree or the "height" of the leaves people are working on, most "tech" work these days is working on CRUD apps based on a 20-ish (?) year old paradigm. It's hardly cutting edge, and probably isn't the most deserving of the label.

<comment><USER6> Homeware companies refer to their technology divisions all the time.

What you're calling "tech" the rest of the world calls "I.T."

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't mind that re-labeling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From it's own definitions this article is patently false. Quote: "applying scientific knowledge for practical purposes" You're doing that when you try to reduce time to display from 1 second to 1000ms, when trying to chose algorithms that better match your users real usage of the site, to just plain moving a button a few pixels so people see it better. It doesn't have to be the new shiny to make an actual impact.

<comment><USER10> I 100% agree with you, and to dismiss web apps in this way is to devalue making thinking easier for people. However, I'm also amused by the Freudian slip of 1 second to 1000 ms, which would of course be "tech" instead of tech.

<comment><USER11> WeWork is a "tech" company in the sense that the actual business is a thin tech veneer around an established business model (like Regus Group). A huge number of SaaS services are effectively a thin design layer around a database, a technology that has been established decades ago. I think that's the real thrust of the post.

<comment><USER9> I tried writing this three times, and I'm probably going to screw it up anyways but here's my take on business models and "tech": If the entirety of your approach is an existing model but "on the internet" and you don't spend any effort on what "on the internet" really means, then you might be in "tech". However if you take the time to carefully apply yourself to how the new environment changes your business model and your relationship with customers, and exercise sound technical and product focused expertise in so doing, then you're in tech. Efficiency, expanded markets, better experience, ease of use, etc are real tangible benefits, even if the whole product is just a shell around a 1970s COBOL database.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Aside: When I moved to SF for my first job in 2014 I thought I'd be working in "software". I was a bit surprised to learn that what I'm actually working in is "tech" (and that I'm something called a "techie" as well). It seemed to me that nobody really talked like this in college - you wouldn't say you majored in "tech", my fellow ACM members weren't "techies". Since we are almost always talking about software, the label seems a bit odd. I suspect it's the influence of finance that lumps all these industries together, but the work and environment is very different in HW vs SW.

</comment><comment><USER13> In this thread: heated discussions that boil down to different definitions of the word "tech".

Since "tech" is mostly a marketing term, this seems fairly pointless. For suitable definitions, a real-estate company is hot "tech". For other reasonable definitions anything that is is mass production is not "tech".

<comment><AUTHOR> My intents were:

1) Share something I found profoundly encouraging for newcomers trying to make a dent with their technical skills

2) Explore how conflating two different (but overlapping) things we use the same word for makes it easy to mistakenly feel like it's "too late" to make a dent with technical skills.

Given just how many people got upset after interpreting it along entirely different lines, this piece is clearly going to take some more revision.

<comment><USER14> I think what you're really trying to describe is disruptive innovation. The way new technological development creates new market / business opportunities.

It's not just about technology itself, but the relationship and timing between the technology's capabilities and potential customers.

And you're right, that technical skills will be invaluable to these businesses because in many cases, these technologies still have technical challenges to overcome before it'll meet the customer needs, i.e. technical risk.

I think it's great that you expressed your ideas, shipped it and then iterated on the clarity because many engineers with entrepreneurial ambitions will find your insights useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I thought this was going to be another blog about how Javascript isn't a real programming language and web apps are cancer.

It's not.

It's actually a very nice article about the BAFTA acceptance speech that John Carmack gave.

> _I do hear sometimes from programmers who are kind of sad that they don 't > have the opportunity to write game engines from scratch like I did and have > it matter or make an impact..._

> _here 's where some perspective really helps - I can remember when I was a > teenager, I thought I had missed the Golden Age of 8-bit Apple 2 gaming, > that I was never going to be Richard Garriott...time went by, and I got to > make my own marks in things after that. And, in that time, I also see so > many opportunities that have come by._

> _The 90s PC wave was great - I was happy to be there, and I 'm glad I took a > swing and knocked one out of the park with that. But since then, we've seen > mobile games, and web games, and free-to-play games, the Steam > revolution...and now virtual reality. And all of these are amazing!_

> _So, yeah, the opportunities that I had aren 't there for people today - <USER2> > there are new and better ones. And personally, I'm more excited about these > than anything that's come before. So, thank you very much for this honor, > but I'm just getting started._

> _-John Carmack (BAFTA acceptance speech)_

</comment><comment><USER16> So unless you are building a strong AI or a full-dive VR set you are not building `tech`?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're doing something that's been widespread for 15 years, you'll likely have so much competition that it will be about marketing, not technology.

<comment><USER6> You're confusing innovation and technology.

And the gatekeeping is really unbecoming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gatekeeping? Literally, the entire thrust is encouraging someone just getting started.

Large companies gatekeep the markets that boomed in the 2000s, but there's still a lot of open space and there will be more waves to catch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In our own spheres of tech, we have a nostalgia for the childhood that we missed. A childhood where everything was still new and magical. Where fairies might plausibly be lurking around the corner. Things like realizing that phone lines were using sounds as control signals let you play in this field more easily. I imagine living in the era where they were just realizing that you could define a common interface for different instruction sets that allowed portability and I wonder how many of those ideas I would have come up with.

That's what I attribute "golden age" talk to. I guess the author's point is that there are other field of technology that are currently young. I agree, but it's not exactly the same magic: Computer Tech is uniquely accessible, and our freedom to explore and play in other fields is limited by the current economic situation.

However, even if I'd been born earlier, the golden age wouldn't have been as accessible to me geographically (I'd be in <small-mountain-town>, India).

Also, my current goal _is_ to get myself to a place where I can play in mature fields and explore younger ones.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think the author is reading way too much into the word "tech". Using general words to abbreviate specific concepts is pretty common in English. Gas usually refers to a specific fuel used in cars (gasoline) even though it is also referring to a much broader category that describes a state of matter and any material in that state. This leads to situations where words Autogas and gas refer to completely different things.

The word tech has a colloquial meaning which doesn't actually stand for technology in general. Tech actually stands for a very narrow form of technology namely information technology. In other languages you see the exact opposite. Instead of using a broad category to abbreviate a specific meaning the abbreviation is actually based around the meaning of the word itself. Information technology isn't "Techno" in German, it's "Informatik". In French it is "Informatique". In Italian its "Informatica".

This article is primarily a complaint about the English language than about "tech" itself.

</comment><comment><USER19> I read that.

I still don't know what the title / that line is supposed to mean.

<comment><AUTHOR> Much of what we call "tech" is 10 to 20 old technology. We still call an interactive website tech, but in reality, they're no more cutting edge now than CDs were in 2010.

The fact that it's not new technology is part of why there's so much competition and so much of the market is controlled by established players.

It used to be possible to reach a massive audience with a trivial iPhone app 10 years ago or with a plain text blog a few years before that.

New those spaces are crowded but there are new ones opening up.

<comment><USER18> I'd say most of what we consider a webapp has been "perfected" around 10 years ago. There have been some major usability upgrades such as flexbox but again this is only a productivity booster. It was possible to do everything without flexbox and the price you had to pay was only the cost of your sanity. Now that youtube has changed its algorithm I keep seeing videos from 2013 and in terms of quality they might as well be made in 2020. 1080p has become a well established standard and Youtube no longer skimps heavily on compression. The biggest reason why videos look "old" today is that people just compress videos heavily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ok we got it. Websites/Online-Stores and custom coded backends are not "tech" according to the article (much as CDs/Videos are not tech). But still the ways of building these things change every day. UX/UI patterns change. Frontend Frameworks change. Its all about the tech in "tech" in my opinion. The web and how we perceive content in 10 years will be much different than it is today and its our job to make this happen.

</comment><comment><USER21> Tech as in _technology_ is literally anything that makes a task easier...

If you're working on something that makes a task easier, congratulations you're working in tech!</comment>


Calacanis launches Mahalo - crappy site, big SEO play - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/mahalo-launches-my-critical-review <comment><USER2> That's what came into my mind, why not just use Wikipedia content.</comment>


What if Zuck invented the web? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/05/15/whatIfZuckInventedTheWeb.html <comment><USER2> If Zuck had invented the web...

It would look a lot like AOL. Huge, proprietary, popular with the public, overvaluated in the market, and fatally committed to platform over protocol.

Remember when AOL bought Time-Warner? This has all happened before. Unless Facebook takes a radically different turn, the first competitor to solve the graph problem is going to eat their lunch.

</comment><comment><USER3> People seem to be responding to the title rather than the content of this article. Funny enough, but the linked post is actually not about that thought experiment. It's Winer's response to someone else writing about the "What if?".

Winer more or less defends Zucker via the Joe Hewitt argument that the web is stagnating, that the web is not a sufficiently rich platform for apps and that the only (best?) way to move forward is to innovate on one's own without (any? too much?) consideration for standards.

I don't even understand this argument, to be frank. Winer says "We were making richer software than the stuff you can run in the web browser 20 years ago." But he gives no examples. I don't know what he has in mind, but really? Richer than 280slides? Richer than Gmail? Richer than Etherpad? Really?

As for the stagnating web, I don't buy that either. Even if it isn't all rainbows and ponies, there's a _lot_ going on with web-based software in the last few years - arguably far more than on the desktop.

Edit: here's the original thought experiment post

[http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2010/05/15/if-mark- zuckerber...](http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2010/05/15/if-mark-zuckerberg- invented-the-web)

</comment><comment><USER4> Dear god. I just realized that Mark Zuckerberg is the new Bill Gates. I give it another week before trolls all over the web start writing referring to Facebook as Fa$ebook.

</comment><comment><USER5> He did, in his dreams. However, reality slapped him in the face and he hopefully woke up.

Now i'm not so much interested in what he/facebook has done, but what they will be doing - I think this matters most. My thoughts are that they will still be heading in the same direction with the same plan, but just less transparent about it.

<comment><USER6> Actually, there's evidence (plenty posted on HN) that he's still hitting the snooze button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Luckily, he didn't. No need to give each other nightmares, is there?</comment>