When to move startup from shared space to own office - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2011/09/27/when-is-it-time-to-graduate-from-co-working-to-your-own-office/

<comment><USER2> Can't you just find your own section of a co-working space and kind of make it the office?

This advice doesn't help most startups, who haven't raised big funding.

<comment><USER3> In my experience, it worked the same way as sharing a room in University. Yes, your side of the room certainly has a "you" quality to it, but even with partitions and clever arrangements of closets and shelves, it's not the same.

When you have your own space, you're completely free to roam. You no longer need consent/approval from anyone else and you're free to customize things as much as you want. When you share a space with someone, you always partially depend on them in some capacity. When you're only sharing with people in your own company it's much easier to deal.

Also, in a co-working space, you could be sharing the conference call set-ups, the conference rooms, you have to arrange splitting the electricity/water bills, etc. All in all, it just results in more headaches.

<comment><USER4> Private offices can solve the headache of a bad co-tenant, but have their own headaches as well. The obvious one is that it's more expensive. A less obvious one is that you loose the access to outside people. If you're working near someone else, it's fairly trivial to go ask them what they think about something. You're likely to talk to them anyway, so it's an easy way to get an outside perspective by someone probably in the same industry. It's a natural form of networking as well. There are certainly benefits to having a private office, but it's not nearly as cut-and-dry as you're implying.</comment></comment></comment>


Scientists warn sun will 'go to sleep' in 2030 and cause temperatures to plummet - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3156594/Is-mini-ICE-AGE-way-Scientists-warn-sun-sleep-2020-cause-temperatures-plummet.html

<comment><USER2> The material comes from [http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/2680-irregular- heartbea...](http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/2680-irregular-heartbeat-of- the-sun-driven-by-double-dynamo) , with the more prosaic title "Irregular heartbeat of the Sun driven by double dynamo".

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps our refusal to curb greenhouse gas emissions will come in handy after all

</comment><comment><USER4> Great. Now the Koch brothers will be bragging about how they saved us all from freezing to death.</comment>


In Davos, experts predict Uber-like disruption in other industries - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/3025914/mobile-wireless/in-davos-experts-predict-uber-like-disruption-in-other-industries.html <comment><USER2> I don't think uber isn't a winner take all market. 1. uber sets pricing. 2. uber is a 2 sided market not an n sided market like a communication platform. The premise that more drivers equals less wait time and lower prices is partial wrong. more drivers waiting on fares will decrease wait time. I predict a second player that offers higher wages per trip would entice drivers to wait longer for fairs offering much faster times to customers.

<comment><USER2> also, if you have a grid with a 16x16 with a point in the middle it would need to travel ~4*1.4 to reach the furthest point on the grid. in order to 1/2 the time it takes you need split into 4 quadrants and add 3 more cars. if you want to half the time again your looking at 17 cars. so to go from 10 minutes down to 5 minutes down to 2.5 minutes it takes ~4 times as many drivers each half. rough calculation. if anyone would like to add a better approximation I love to hear it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is an important lesson to be learned from each generation of digital disruption. Like Airbnb, the leading search engine Google, leading social network Facebook, and leading video platform YouTube have limited competition, making platforms a high-stakes, winner-takes-all game. Every company facing digital transformation runs the risk of losing relevance and becoming redundant in a future consolidated by platforms.</comment>


Gamification: The Key to Re-Engaging High School Dropouts - <AUTHOR> http://26gems.io/blog/gamification-the-key-to-re-engaging-high-school-dropouts/

<comment><USER2> Gamification can play a role in a program for dropouts, but it by no means is suitable as the sole treatment: It just patches over the underlying problems[1], among others lack of robust archivement motivation in combination with lack of learning competence. To worsen things, working class students (who have a higher probability of being a dropout) also attribute bad performance in school with lack of talent rather than lack of effort more often than middle class students. A treatment in a school context that has been shown to be both sustainable and effective is continuous feedback on the _relative improvement_ in archivements of the specific student (school marks comparing the individual performance to the class usually make the percieved talent-mark correlation worse as the high-performing students often didn't need much effort to get their marks). Luckily this is one of the seldom cases where a treatment has stronger effects on the students with learning problems compared to the high performers, too (thats usually a big problem in pedagogy).

[1] Leaving out the the sociological context. I really doubt "boredom" was a real reason, boredom sounds too much like self assessment.

edit: typos

</comment><comment><USER3> I think there is a bit of merit to this - part of the problem of schools (which i've read about off and on for years) is the expectation that students sit there and absorb lectures without any actual interaction with the information they are supposedly learning. I find this would be a decent bit of solution if it were used in conjunction with other changes. But considering in some places they make a fairly grand issue about whether or not students should learn cursive writing (Indiana has had this) and there are people that think education should go back to "reading, writing, and 'rithmatic", I doubt schools are going to consider this approach, let alone others that try to solve a number of issues with people dropping out of high school.

</comment><comment><USER4> The article laments a disconnect between learning and work force skills. On the other hand, they claim a high school diploma makes $260k difference in life time earnings.

So what value does a high school diploma provide? What's the reason for the $260k increase?

</comment><comment><USER5> Gamification is great, but from personal experience I find it only works when I'm already engaged. e.g. I'm interested in what's going on HN and the karma points help motivate me to contribute, or get a sense of whether my comments are valuable to the community etc. Same with StackOverflow etc.

Gamification won't convince me to do something I'm not already interested in doing, and to some extent, even things I would _like_ to do (e.g. learn a new language), but which are hard - gamification helps, but won't be enough to keep me learning.

That's just my personal observation. I do not know if it applies to others.

</comment><comment><USER6> Many people believe Gamification is the key to the problem of motivation. But only in a few cases it could be applied successfully up till today. Posting the same post 5 years ago might have resulted in a lot of positive discussion and feedback, but nowadays people are already a little disappointed of how Gamification performs in general. It's still a good argument but it shouldn't be the only one and it should have some examples from successful applications by the author.

The same goes for the software that 26gems plans to implement. Gamification should not be its main selling point, but it can be an awesome finishing.

<comment><USER7> I agree - we are only now coming to where we understand gamification enough. I do believe that gamification is very important for some of the rote, but necessary, aspects of educations. It's not a cure-all, but perhaps it's good for drilling basic math, building vocabulary, and learning grammar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The TV tells us that we have millions of college-educated people who are eager and engaged but still can't find a sustainable job.

Do high-school dropouts really have a chance in such a competition if they need gamification to become re-engaged?

<comment><USER9> As soon as high-school dropouts learn marketable skills that do not require credentials or formal education, sure they have a chance. Some of those skills are: coding, design, copywriting, UX/UI design, etc.

<comment><USER8> Wait, wait - learning any of those skills can surely be done, but it naturally requires motivation, time and engagement.

That's the whole point - if we're expecting employers to use gamification to engage them after hiring, then can we expect them (the majority of them, not the best of them) to learn nontrivial marketable skills on their own before getting that job?

<comment><USER9> Well, programming and coding education is already gamified (codeschool, treehouse) so if gamification works for that target audience it will work at the education stage, too.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Live 10 years longer through playing a game - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_the_game_that_can_give_you_10_extra_years_of_life.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out superbetter.com to play the game. It apparently is a scientifically supported way of extending your life and happiness :) Especially for those that struggle with depression and motivation issues. Things that entrepreneurs often seem to suffer from.</comment>


Should one join a company whose has committed fraud - <AUTHOR> hi, I have a good offer from a company who has committed some serious crimes but should I judge it on it previous track, will it effect me if I switch to other companies abroad.
company site: http://axact.com
they have been accused of tax invasions, fake degrees and corruptions. <comment><USER2> Sounds like it's time for you to watch the Tom Cruise movie - The Firm. ;)

Seriously though - I personally wouldn't touch a company with a bargepole if it had a track record of convictions.

<comment><AUTHOR> downloading the movie, thanks for the feedback, i was really confused but now I am clear money is not the matter, credibility is a major thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you can work anywhere else, then no. It'll taint your resume, even if all the crimes happened before you arrived.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you for the reply, helped me a lot.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle Kubernetes manifest source control? - <AUTHOR> How do you handle maintaining manifests for Kubernetes clusters when you have multiple clusters running slightly tweaked variations of each manifest? <comment><USER3> This reminded me of a previous discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22011251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22011251) that might be useful to you.

(and FWIW - currently my approach is to require that each environment is config-identical, allowing simple source control to provide the solution - <USER2> I appreciate that's probably a property that's very hard to maintain in many environments)</comment>


Sublime Text Build 3101 - chris-at https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/dev-build-3101/17027 <comment><AUTHOR> Atom is so slow it's a sideshow. It also has the problem of jEdit and Komodo, not a native app so they greatly reduce battery life on laptops.

Just because Sublime's developer isn't updating it as much as he used to doesn't mean anything. What more could you want? The community hasn't stopped with plugin development which is what really counts.

This just reminds me of the consumer software mindset where a new version needs to come out every year, just for the sake of it. There's nothing wrong with using 'old' software that just works.

<comment><USER2> > Atom is so slow it's a sideshow. It also has the problem of jEdit and > Komodo, not a native app so they greatly reduce battery life on laptops.

Granted I would expected it to be slower using an interpreted language and all but other than opening large files the only thing noticeably slower to me is start-up. That's it. The plug-in ecosystem got me to permanently switch to Atom and it's very fast. I also haven't noticed any battery issues yet as I still will frequently use my MacBook for sometimes most of a day before needing to charge.

I'm not sure if you were speaking from experience with Atom or just approximating but it's surprisingly good. I know I was extremely skeptical to the point of calling it a dumb idea to write an editor in the way they did but after they dumped react I don't notice any slowdowns.

<comment><USER3> Can I ask what you mean with large files? I haven't tried Atom in a while but I recall it having issues with something as small as 2MB.

Granted, I typically use Sublime in a way that others probably do not...more for manipulating / viewing data than actual coding. Outside of HTML, JS & CSS, I tend to use IDEs for development (VS for C#, XCode for ObjC and Jetbrains for most everything else). Maybe Atom isn't meant for that type of use and it much more suited for use as something akin to an IDE.

All that being said, I have found nothing that compares to Sublime for simple data viewing / manipulation (regex)...it seems to have no issues with 100+ MB files where as I don't even know if Atom could open something that large.

<comment><USER2> > Can I ask what you mean with large files? I haven't tried Atom in a while > but I recall it having issues with something as small as 2MB.

Since I only use Atom to write code I would consider anything over, say, 200kb a large file. Unless it's a log file I never open anything larger than that in Atom. A few MB usually isn't too bad but once I hit around 5MB it gets to be just too slow.

I use sublime for browsing log files :)

<comment><USER4> I have to with with C files that have _single macros_ that weigh in at 5+MB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why the heck doesn't he stop calling 3 'beta'? Many people are being led by the naming and web page instructions to install 2, only to find that 3 'beta' is really the one everyone in the know is using, and that plugins are being developed for.

<comment><USER6> well I'm using the version 2 precisely because the 3rd is marked "beta". So yeah I would appreciate an official release.

<comment><USER7> Were you also not using Node because it was called 0.xx?

<comment><USER5> Dude, you go to the SublimeText web page, and it leads you to download ST2.

There's no way to know 'everyone' is really using ST3 beta except if you learn it from a social network.

Yes, if I go to a website for a product I haven't used before, and there's a big download link for X.0 version, and a link somewhere else on some other page for x+1.0.beta, I'm going to download the X.0 even if I _do_ find that other page.

<comment><USER7> > _There 's no way to know 'everyone' is really using ST3 beta except if you > learn it from a social network._

A social network, tons of posts and articles on the subject on blogs and web outlets, Hacker News (which has covered the editor several times in the past), plus the official forums.

If it's a tool you use everyday for hours on end (which is what programmers do with their editor), then you can go out and read a few things about that. People spend hours reading on their favorite shows, car models, NFL games, movies etc -- and those are just hobbies, whereas this is a professional tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A huge portion of value with any of these text editors come from plugins and ubiquity. Over the years I have seen text editors come and go as the new "one true editor", but only Vim and Emacs have had true staying power.

Back when it was hot (some of you are probably too young to remember this) I used jEdit. It is still around and gets some maintenance updates from time to time ([http://www.jedit.org/](http://www.jedit.org/)), but the plugin ecosystem has languished so you better be ready to roll your own.

With Vim and Emacs (Vim for me) I can trust it to go anywhere I want to be. If I'm ssh-ing into a Redhat 5 production server needing to do an emergency fix at 3 in the am Vim is there for me.

And when I need syntax support or any plugin under the sun, that is available as well. Vim is also blazingly fast compared to Atom (the latest fad) which is sluggish by comparison. Sublime seems to be falling into that sunsetting stage the same as jEdit

Just my 2 cents.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure I understand what your comment has to do with Sublime...but in any case, Sublime does have a very active plugin ecosystem: [https://packagecontrol.io/](https://packagecontrol.io/)

<comment><USER8> I thought my points were fairly clear.

1) Vim and Emacs are already on your production servers so a large number of people have to use them anyway so that's extra mental overhead.

2) Sublime development is languishing this will eventually lead to a stalled plugin pipeline and the need to learn a new tool or write your own plugins.

3) Stick with a tool that you can have a level of faith will still be well supported for the next 20 years.

<comment><USER10> Not all of us are stuck in the cult of the editing paradigm of the 70s despite the fervent mistaken belief that it is objectively superior.

<comment><USER11> How is sublime fundamentally different? Sure, it might be shinier and easier to get into, but is it a different "paradigm"? No way.

If anything, vim is the most unique editor with the most unique "paradigm" I've ever really had much experience with. Atom, Sublime and Emacs all seem pretty much the same in terms of how you interact with them.

Pretty sure saint ignucius will damn you to proprietary software hell for dissing on the One True Editor (tm).

<comment><USER12> If vim is different from sublime, then sublime must, by definition, be different from vim.

Parent is saying that vim is a 70's paradigm and people not stuck in the past enjoy the modern paradigm that sublime follows.

<comment><USER11> Emacs is also from the 70s, so that's why what he said doesn't really make sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sublime is a great editor. I purchased Sublime many years ago and improved my ability to work. Now I'm using Atom because I like the way it looks, it does everything I need it to do, and while it may be slow to open, I leave it open anyway so it's not really an issue for me (note: Of course I want everything to be as fast as possible).

That said, I still support Sublime and would still even buy the upgrade to the new version if it ever comes out.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think its time to just move to using atom. To me its ahead of Sublime now.

Its clear that Sublime is no longer being developed as a priority like it used to.

<comment><USER15> I hope someone's already working on the successor to Atom. A piece of software like text-editor only has a shelf-life of a few short years before you need to start from scratch and write a new one.

EDIT: Do I really need to say /s ?

<comment><USER16> I disagree. Vim and emacs are still here and powerful

<comment><USER17> /s grandparent, methinks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, I didn't know that sublime forum had migrated to discourse platform. Looks great.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, it happened maybe a month ago?

<comment><USER20> Is that because of all the forum spam? I went to the forum a month or two ago looking for an update on where Sublime was at and it was just overrun with junk posts.

<comment><USER19> I presume so, at least that would've played a big part in it.

As a moderator of the forum, I try my best to keep on top of it. The old forum didn't have mail notifications or a decent spam blocker, so it was a lot of manual work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great to see, also very happy that development has really sped up this year.

<comment><USER19> Last year wasn't that quiet when you consider the different features that arrived such as the new syntax system.

<comment><USER21> I have to be honest - I didn't even notice there was a new syntax system?

<comment><USER19> Yeah, ".sublime-syntax" rather than using the ".tmTheme" files. It offers a lot more flexibility from what I've seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just going to throw one of my favorite editors out there.

[http://www.jedit.org/](http://www.jedit.org/)

Very customizable, very nice font rendering, healthy plugin ecosystem and tons of themes, lots of shortcuts and features, GPL v2 license.

I use this at work and home. I love vim, but I haven't mastered it more than I have jEdit.

I am taking a shot in the dark but I'm guessing the lack of popularity is due to it being dependent on the jvm. It's a non-issue for me.

</comment><comment><USER23> I installed textmate 2 for S and Gs. I have to say it is elegantly impressive. Many not all of the bundles many would need. My only gripe I miss it on Linux. Sublime Text ubiquitous nature is a big attraction in this regard.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know what features are missing from the dev builds before an actual release of version 3?

It seems to me that Sublime lost a lot of community support due to the very long development time of version 3.

<comment><USER24> If ST 2 is any indication, it'll be in beta for a while longer, then 4.0 beta will start (paid upgrade) and 3 will no longer be developed. It's a bit of a silly way to monetize. I haven't actually gotten a license for 3 because of that, I'd rather not pay for beta software or for software that I know will hardly be maintained once out of beta.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure current license keys work for both 2 and 3. Although it's not doc'd clearly, which does not inspire confidence. But my existing license key for 2 worked for 3 beta, and the FAQ[1] says "A license is valid for Sublime Text 3, and includes all point updates, as well as access to prior versions (e.g., Sublime Text 2). Future major versions, such as Sublime Text 4, will be a paid upgrade."

But if you already have a license key for 2, there's no risk, download 3 and see if it accepts your existing license key -- I think it might.

I have no idea why 3 is still called 'beta'.

[1] [https://www.sublimetext.com/sales_faq](https://www.sublimetext.com/sales_faq)

<comment><USER25> Just tried, at it works for beta, displaying this message:

>>Thanks for trying out Sublime Text 3!

Sublime Text 3 is a paid upgrade from Sublime Text 2, and an upgrade will be required for use when 3.0 is released.

Until then, please enjoy Sublime Text 3 Beta.

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't worry about 3.0 being released, it doesn't seem like it's going to happen anytime... ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I really like sublime text, i have considered buying it several times. I go to the buy page and see the price tag - $70 US! Nope.

Given the very slow and infrequent development and the fact that its just a text editor (albeit a fancy one), i really can't justify the price.

I would consider buying if it was receiving regular updates (bug fixes, new features, etc) and had a bit of certainty with its future. But really, if it was priced around $20, i would have bought it ages ago - and if it hadn't then, I'd buy it now.

<comment><USER27> Nice excuse for being cheap. Is Sublime unstable or lacking any major feature? Why the pressure of getting more regular updates if there's not anything critical missing. On the contrary, it has a lot of features, there's a massive eco system of plugins for it.

Do you use Sublime for work? If so, you should pay for it. Any other excuse is just you, being cheap. $70 is nothing for it offers.

<comment><USER28> He's not saying "I would never pay for a text editor, that's ridiculous!", he's saying $70 is just a little steep for a text editor. What exactly is it offering that makes it worth $70 vs something more reasonable?

Panic's Coda is priced similarly, but it also offers a lot of web-dev targeted features that other editors either don't provide or only provide less user- friendly plugins for

When you strip out plugins made by someone who isn't getting a cut of that $70, what are the tangible features Sublime has over the glut of free editors out there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Please build for the Pi.

I want to buy another license.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER30> This broke my Material theme - the project tree is now white.</comment>


IntelliJ IDEA 13 is Released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2013/12/intellij-idea-13-is-released-work-miracles-in-java-and-beyond/ <comment><USER2> Having used the beta, and as a Scala developer on a large multi-module project, this release is a game-changer performance-wise. The memory footprint is a small fraction of what it once was (literally). While memory is not really a big issue for a developer these days, this is huge because previously we were forced to run at large heaps, which would cause 'fun' GC pauses while typing. The code completion is now fast enough to put back into auto mode. Similarly, the find functionality is now instantaneous, even when you're finding variables. They've clearly been playing around with threading on the editor, because there seem to be many fewer situations where typing slows down while the system is thinking about other things.

I've appreciated every IntelliJ upgrade. IntelliJ was 'mature' many years ago, but they continue to push and push and rethink features and experiment. This release just wowed me enough to gush about it :).

<comment><USER3> I've also been using IntelliJ for various large projects written in Scala, currently on the fence deciding whether upgrading to 13 worthwhile. Really hoping for an upgrade discount for all those who purchased IntelliJ in the "end of the world" sale last year. I also wish they'd add better support for profiling and heap dump analysis.

<comment><USER4> I don't follow what you're asking for. Since you got a really cheap initial price, you feel that you should get a cheap upgrade price?

<comment><USER5> I think (s)he is hoping that an upgrade will be cheaper than buying whole new license irrespective of the cheap initial price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The mind-reader IDE, as we used to call it. It's sometimes scary when you create a new variable in a class and it gives you the perfect suggestion (based on what you did elsewhere in the code).

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't that be potential evidence for the idea that the code is likely quite redundant?

In Java you indeed do need lots of stuff like getters and setters.

<comment><USER8> No, that's an orthogonal concern. You have to use it to understand (edit: or you have to find someone smarter than me to explain it to you ;).

Jetbrains does something similar with their Ruby ide, but it feels more advanced in IntelliJ. Certainly the static analysis can gather more information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I got my IntelliJ IDEA 12 license at the doomsday sale. I wish there were another end of the world ;)

<comment><USER10> According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events) next sale on 22 February :)

<comment><USER11> Can anyone confirm this sale date?

<comment><USER10> No. Just joking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My day job and most of my time is spent writing C/C++ code, so I'm usually working in vim. But IntelliJ is really, really good.

The auto-completion is so phenomenal in IntelliJ, you'll be tempted to learn Java just to use it. Yes, that's fairly hyperbolic, but after using IntelliJ, I just can't ever go back to Eclipse or any other Java IDE.

The ability to edit programs while they were running and then see the changes nearly instantaneously after saving without restarting the program was fantastic. (Worked just as well as Eclipse's after a few tweaks.)

What I'm really looking forward to is what they do with C/C++ and possibly Go some day.

IntelliJ is worth every penny if you write Java code; don't doubt it for a moment. Download the trial and use it if you find that hard to believe.

<comment><USER13> > The ability to edit programs while they were running and then see the > changes nearly instantaneously after saving without restarting the program > was fantastic.

This feature is news to me. That is, unless you're talking about using it with the jrebel plugin (and intellij can't really take credit for that). If this is not what you're referring to, do you have a link where I can learn more?

<comment><USER12> Sure:

[http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/webhelp/reloading- classes.html](http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/webhelp/reloading-classes.html)

Mind you it's limited to the built-in method swapping that the JVM offers.

But you can get more; see also:

[http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2013/07/get-true-hot-swap- in-...](http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2013/07/get-true-hot-swap-in-java-with- dcevm-and-intellij-idea/)

It was more than sufficient for my needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Since there seem to be some IntelliJ folks here, I'd like to bring up my pet peeve: please take advantage of modern, gigantic _wide_ monitors.

It makes no sense for code to be in a single column on the left of the monitor while 2/3 of the right side is almost completely empty space. Instead of just allowing vertical scrolling, why not allow multiple columns and horizontal scrolling? This will result in the ability to see twice, in some cases three times as much code on screen!

<comment><USER15> Open the context menu for a tab by right-clicking it, select "Split Vertically", and you'll have two columns for tabs.

<comment><USER14> I don't have intellij installed on my computer here, when you say 'split vertically,' do you mean it basically opens two views of same file next to each other, each view scrolling independently? If so, that isn't what I want -- almost every IDE and text editor already does that.

What I want is similar to how MS Word takes a single blob of text and reflows it in multiple columns.

<comment><USER16> Interesting idea. Don't think it's been done with an IDE before. Expanding code based on context would be cool too. (eg. second column shows the implementation of whatever the first column's cursor is on - super handy when stepping through code)

<comment><USER17> Not sure if it counts as an IDE, but emacs has follow-mode which does this.

[http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html%5Fnode/emacs/F...](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html%5Fnode/emacs/Follow- Mode.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Over with Open Dylan ([http://opendylan.org/](http://opendylan.org/)), we've been building a new IDE using IntelliJ CE and it has been a joy. Even though we've gone the route of writing a whole new parser and doing new static analysis tools, it has been a pretty good experience so far. Can't say enough positive things about this.

</comment><comment><USER19> I can't begin to describe how much I love IntelliJ. I sometimes use eclipse or visual studio, but no one does IDE's like JetBrains. The best thing about Visual Studios is ReSharper. If you are a VS guy go buy the VS ReSharper Wrapper from JetBrains.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm still looking forward to the 'Sublime Text'-like column mode selection feature[1], currently the top voted feature request, which will be an excellent addition to IntelliJ. Unfortunately it looks like we'll have to wait until version 14 for this.

[1] - [http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-80056](http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-80056)

<comment><USER21> with jetbrains folks in here it would be nice to get a comment from them on this. Even just something that says its not coming would be better than no response at all. I love intellij, but sublime multi cursors would be a huge performance improvement. Right now I keep idea, sublime and notepad++ open most of the day.

<comment><USER22> please find my comment above

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wish they offered to download the release via torrent, the download speed from their servers is terrible (currently getting only +- 150 KB/s).

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not a java developer, but their tools are fantastic. I started using PyCharm about 2 years ago, and nothing else compares. Only complaint I have is that PyCharm's updates aren't as quick as INtelliJ's, so when you guys get the nice features, we have to wait for it in PyCharm land.

<comment><USER25> Depending on which features of PyCharm you use the most, you actually may benefit from the recent open-sourcing of PyCharm Community Edition. Now you can use (and theoretically fix bugs in) the master builds which track IJ development very closely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Switched from Eclipse to IntelliJ for Java development about a year back and never looked back. It's amazing how good the tooling and autocomplete is. It's worth every dollar!

</comment><comment><USER27> I hear they're working on a C++ IDE, I can't wait for it to come out.

<comment><AUTHOR> C/C++ IDE, try subscribe to preview: [http://www.jetbrains.com/objc/features/cpp.html](http://www.jetbrains.com/objc/features/cpp.html)

<comment><USER28> Since moving to OS X fully I've become a real fan of Xcode. I'm curious to see how AppCode is when you can actually write Objective-C++ in it. I'm a fan of IDEA, but I'm a little skeptical of this (as AppCode right now isn't as nice as Xcode anyway).

<comment><USER29> What do you miss most in AppCode from your XCode experience?

<comment><USER28> In no particular order (and I just downloaded 2.5 to check stuff so I wouldn't waste your time):

\- Counterparts. If it's there I can't find it. (Bonus points if it can do what Counterparts can't: jump-to-definition in the right pane puts the appropriate header in the left pane.)

\- Xcode-style back/forward buttons. Coupled with Counterparts, this is really flexible and pleasant to use. I'm familiar with ctrl-tab switching in IDEA but I don't really like it as much.

\- The debugger interface feels clunky. I'm used to it with Java/Scala in IDEA, but I feel like Xcode doesn't aggravate me as much. Perhaps it's just because it's more responsive in its presentation?

\- Having to remember to hit "Debug" rather than just "Run" is annoying. I get why it exists, but the first time I went "wait, why are my breakpoints not firing?", the need to make that decision lost me.

\- UI clutter everywhere. There's too much thrown at me, too fast. Opening AppCode's preferences pane is overwhelming _even though_ I'm very familiar with IDEA (it's not good there either). There's too much crap thrown at me that I don't care about. I don't care about HTTP proxying. I don't care about XSLT files. I don't care about Live Templates. But they're taking up eye- and brain-space. I would strongly recommend that JetBrains figure out exactly what the 95% case actually _use_ and find a way to progressively reveal remaining features for the 5%.

\- Native widgets. Everything just feels wrong and it's competing against a really wonderful native UI and experience, to its detriment. I really like IDEA because it's head and shoulders above Eclipse and NetBeans, but going from native Cocoa widgets to AppCode is very unpleasant. I strongly feel that the native widgets in Xcode make it feel more responsive, with animations and transitions that lend a feeling of "snappiness"; I don't know if it actually is faster than AppCode, but it feels it.

\- In this vein, making me go from the eye-shock that is AppCode to Xcode to use IB is probably not helping matters from a marketing perspective. Old- hotness/new-busted is reminding me of the pluses of Xcode, which probably isn't what JetBrains wants me to be thinking about.

There are some things that I really enjoy in it - I like that it Just Works with my Xcode projects, I love that, when I use liblogog, the file/line paths that are emitted by logging statements become hyperlinks in the output window - but overall it's like using Linux on the desktop: there are a thousand little frustrations that make it less pleasant and pleasurable to use.

<comment><USER30> @eropple I hope you get that I'm not trying to minimize or trivialize your concerns. I just wanted to point out something that impressed me. @olegstepanov the guy that just asked you for your feedback... he's the CEO of Jetbrains.

I'm _really_ glad that my friend introduced me to IDEA and it's what I use for nearly all of my work with code.

These guys make _kickass_ products, and the fact that they really enjoy their work comes out in the quality of their stuff, and how they treat their customers.

<comment><USER28> Yeah I'm aware, and I was impressed that he'd be hanging around here. And don't get me wrong: I'm a fan of JetBrains. TeamCity saves my bacon on the regular and both dotPeek and ReSharper are great when I'm working in .NET. From the perspective of an Android developer (day job) and a Scala fan, I love IDEA--it's very smart where I need it to be smart. Thing is, I don't need my IDE to be nearly as smart when writing C++, or even what Objective-C I have to write for tools and such. I need it to not frustrate me, and I'm very willing to spend money on tools that do that. I'd love it if AppCode progressed to a point where I felt like it was a good investment.

And, too, I'm sympathetic with regards to most of the stuff I enumerated in my previous post - a lot of it comes down to being non-native, and trying to match that in Java is kind of like having your foot in a bucket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Great--now when can we get decent font rendering for IDEA in Linux? The Swing rendering is horrible.

<comment><USER32> I had those with Android Studio. _Removing_ these lines from studio$ARCH.vmoptions fixes the font issues on Arch Linux:

        -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=lcd
        -Dswing.aatext=false

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Slightly off topic, the Pinterest-style layout (not horizontally-aligned) is annoying. It's difficult to read.

Other than that, congrats! IntelliJ is the only IDE that keeps surprising me in positive ways (like, "OMG, it can do that?")

EDIT: Arrgh, seriously it's difficult to read. Is there a list with conventional layout?

</comment><comment><USER34> So I've never really understood how the products are differentiated from each other. If I bought Intellij IDEA, does that mean I can download free plugins to get the same functionality as PyCharm? Does PyCharm support Javascript? If I want to do Django _and_ Javascript, do I need to buy IDEA?

<comment><USER35> As I understand it, the plugins give the exact functionality that the more language-specific products offer. However they are typically one version behind. e.g. if RubyMine is on v6, the ruby plugin for IDEA will have equivalent features of RubyMine v5

<comment><USER36> IntelliJ IDEA is released once a year, and smaller IDEs are about twice a year. Because of this the plugins may miss some features for some time, that's true. But now, after the release of IntelliJ IDEA they will be updated with the latest Ruby, Python, PHP, etc. functionality

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm a recent convert. Most everything I do outside of Java development (C, Python, JavaScript) is in vim, but I just can't kick the IDE habit for Java dev. And then here comes IDEA making it even harder to quit! Being that I'm working on large codebases (GeoServer/GeoTools, and our own stuff), I'm really looking forward to the performance enhancements. I'm also _very_ happy with the recent improvements to the IdeaVIM plugin. Still not quite as snappy as real vim, but it's getting closer with each release.

Also, it looks like their download servers are getting hit pretty hard at the moment (getting 30-60KiB/sec on a 100Mbit downstream link). I'll take that as a strong vote of confidence!

</comment><comment><USER38> I had unrealistic expectations of this IDE... Some of the current enhancements are nice (Search anywhere, for example).. The favorite theme they tout (Darcula) is not yet upto Sublime's theme, IMO. Somehow it feels gratuitously helpful-- and I can't accuse it of getting in the way (an easy trap to fall into). When it came to Python, I could not stand Pycharm - which uses the kernel from the java Idea-IDE. (disclosure: when i code Python I use emacs, idle, or Wing Ide). So there is something in its DNA that I end up tolerating - but am not crazy about. edit: I ran away from eclipse - that atrocity, so Idea was a refugee camp.

<comment><USER39> There's definitely a difference between PyCharm and IDEA. I think it's that the code completion is psychic in IDEA, so I find myself writing about 1/3rd of each line and then hitting enter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If anyone else is having symbol resolution / syntax highlighter problems with their Play 2.x / Scala / SBT project after upgrading: be sure to File -> Invalidate Caches / Restart...

[http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/SCL-6337](http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/SCL-6337) [http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/SCL-6338](http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/SCL-6338)

[http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/webhelp/cleaning-system- cache....](http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/webhelp/cleaning-system-cache.html)

<comment><USER41> Holy shit, there it is. Thanks, man.

On side note: you can see how they follow OS X patterns in filling blank space: then that cloth, now just dark texture (like notif center)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'd love them to do a Mono / .NET IDE so that I wouldn't have to use Xamarin Studio on Linux / Mac anymore. Actually, I'm going to see if I can go put this on a wish list somewhere...

</comment><comment><USER43> I actually own licenses for various JetBrains products, I just wished they'd introduce bundled pricing.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've been using the EAP for a while now, and it's been a real improvement over 12. I'd totally pay for the upgrade...and a Go IDE (hint, hint)

<comment><USER45> Go IDE +1

<comment><USER46> Add another for Golang

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Offtopic, of course, but I'll post here anyway...

I've been meaning to post a bug report about this - I can't get conditional breakpoints to work with Grails debugging. Regular breakpoints, fine, but conditionals... I get an error that "'this' is not available" when it hits the breakpoint.

Searched around - can't find any other reports of this, but it's been a problem since at least IntelliJ 12, and in the 13 beta that I tried - I don't have 11 around any more, but I could swear it used to work.

EDIT: added bug report: [http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-117458](http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-117458) although it looks like it was reported and marked as 'fixed' in [http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-100647](http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-100647). Still doesn't seem to work though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll make sure the team is aware of your comment here.

<comment><USER47> thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> My day to day would be significantly harder, less fun, and more frustrating without IntelliJ. Big thanks to the team for making such an incredible product.

No major updates for me in 13, but all the little things add up to a nice update.

</comment><comment><USER49> I love and hate Eclipse/STS, but I don't think I will ever switch to IDEA, I love my freedom more. The least I can do for open source community is to use open source products and report bugs.

<comment><USER50> If you are a professional, why not use a professional tool?

<comment><USER51> You seem to be suggesting that professional coders don't use open source tools or that open source tools aren't professional?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The most annoying thing about IntelliJ is the way it's keyboard shortcuts clash with virtually every keyboard shortcut of your average Linux distro. Other than that it's an awesome tool.

<comment><USER53> You can edit them to your heart's content though. I have never had an issue, but I use the "Default for XWin" setting. There are about a dozen other keymap templates available by default, though.

<comment><USER52> I use the defaults, and then set about removing all shortcuts from my desktop

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Great update, but still no support for Java 7 only in OS X. :(

<comment><USER55> I take that you mean running IntelliJ under Java 7? JDK 7 and 8 work fine for development!

<comment><USER54> Exactly. I should've mentioned that. You can't run IDEA with only Oracle JRE 7. You need to install Apple's JRE 6 too.

<comment><USER56> I think it has to do with retina display support in the Oracle JRE 7.

I remember searching for retina display stuff in JDKs and saw a post from the people from JetBrains post differences between the JDK 6 from Apple and JDK 7 from Oracle. It was also a very informative post as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I never thought I'd say it but it seems that they are getting close to the end of the line feature wise! Not a lot here that is making want to upgrade from 12...

<comment><USER58> At the office our jaws regularly drop at JetBrains' attention to detail, too. PHP development would be nightmare without their tools. If you're ever reading this, thank you guys very much.

<comment><AUTHOR> The team is definitely reading this and thank you for your kind works.

<comment><USER59> RubyMine allowed me to learn Rails well and make a living for me and my family. Definitely the best $70 I've invested in my career. It literally changed my life by allowing me to make much more money as a Rails developer. Send my thanks to the RubyMine team! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> The team wants to know if they can use this on our website :-)

Drop me a line at robert(dot)demmer[at]jetbrains(dot)com if you're willing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Thanks for supporting Renderscript syntax highlighting.

Please add support for building Android projects with Renderscript source files. That's the last reason why I use ADT.

</comment><comment><USER61> Just trying the Scala plugin now. I really want to leave Eclipse. I wonder if it will show me implicit conversions and parameters, and if will handle hairy stuff like macros. And does it use the presentation compiler like ScalaIDE/Eclipse? If not I'll be surprised if can handle macros. So far, so good though. Need to import a bigger project as a test...

<comment><USER62> It does highlight implicit conversions by default (they're underlined and have a light blue background colour). I don't think it does anything special w.r.t. macros, but I might be wrong.

As far as I know, they use their own compiler for highlighting type errors in the editor etc. and SBT for the "actual" compilation. The presentation compiler didn't exist when they started Scala support, so they rolled their own solution.

<comment><USER61> My tests so far are encouraging. I'd like to know their intent with Scala. That plugin seemed to go nowhere for years, and ScalaIDE/Eclipse looked like it would be the only option. But ScalaIDE is still pretty buggy. If they are committed to making Scala support as good as their Java stuff, that would be awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Anyone know how to use the new Scala plugin with sbt (tutotial link)? I've imported my sbt project, but it doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER64> I've been using IntelliJ IDEA for many years (coming from C++ in EMACS), and it truly made me more productive: [http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/17/programmer-productivity- em...](http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/17/programmer-productivity-emacs-versus- intellij-idea/)

<comment><USER49> Besides IDEA what else have you used as a real IDE?

<comment><USER64> I haven't used any other IDEs really, so it is possible there are _even better_ IDEs, but the step from Emacs to IDEA was huge (but of course it was also a switch from C++ to Java).

Editor-wise it's Emacs and Vim (for the past year or so).

What's your experience with IDEs?

<comment><USER49> My thought was that any IDE would've made you more productive imho. That's the point of an IDE to give you as much possible so you could focus on your tasks...

<comment><USER65> True story: Before Intellij, I was working for a client whose IDE standard was VisualCafe. I hated it so much and kept interfering with what I was doing that I actually reverted to Notepad and building/testing via command line.

Not all IDEs can make you more productive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> How much is it? If I had the version 12, that I bought recently, do I need to pay for the new version to upgrade?

<comment><USER67> It seems to be 180 EUR for new developers.

<comment><USER45> It's a great IDE and totally worth the money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> So, Android is supported in IDEA now? Nice.

It is kind of annoying having two IDEs, one for Android development and one for everything else.

Edit: Badly worded. What I meant to say are the Android Studio improvements and updates are now in Ultimate, which is nice.

<comment><USER69> IDEA's done Android for years now. And now it's the basis of Google's Android Studio.

<comment><AUTHOR> IntelliJ IDEA is the base for Android Studio, the new IDE for Android developers.

Read all about it: [http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea- is-t...](http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-is-the-base- for-android-studio-the-new-ide-for-android-developers/)

<comment><USER68> Badly worded on my part. What I meant was that Android Studio updates are now included in Ultimate since it was based on version 13, which is nice.

<comment><USER70> IMO, Android Studio is still far behind IDEA 12. There are some new features in AS, but IDEA is far more stable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Still no support for projects on UNC paths, so not terribly useful for those forced to use folder remapping in Windows. I'd love to switch our students away from Eclipse, but without UNC support it can't happen.

<comment><USER72> You can't code on a folder on the desktop, and copy it off to network drive when done? Or better yet, push up to a git repo?

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Anyone else also have this problem? When I try to start IntelliJ 13 on OS X, I get this in system.log:

Dec 3 18:21:12 tk com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[281] (com.jetbrains.intellij.61632[52967]): Exited with code: 1

</comment><comment><USER74> I won't use it... It has so many bugs when I using android UI design tool. These bugs are annoying me.

I'll use version 12 when version 13 is stable.

</comment><comment><USER75> Awesome! The only thing that I am really wanting is multi key timeouts in the ideavim plugin. So you can have jj remap to Esc in insert mode.

<comment><USER76> If you haven't already, it might be a good idea to vote for that feature: [http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/VIM-448](http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/VIM-448) and [http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/VIM-518](http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/VIM-518)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Even in community (free, open source) edition you can use the Haxe plugin, which will allow you to work with latest (3.0) Haxe version.

</comment><comment><USER78> Looking at Spring request mappings is the last thing I could do in Eclipse that I couldn't do in IntelliJ.

</comment><comment><USER79> I got a free upgrade license since my purchase date is so close to the release date :D. JetBrains is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER80> Hopefully this might display a little better than IJ12 does with HiDPI in windows. It currently looks awful..</comment>


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We'd really love your feedback ! Cheers ! <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines this might make a good Show HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style of Mass Opinion [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/wp.txstate.edu/dist/5/671/files/2015/08/OliverWood.pdf <comment><USER2> The very term "conspiracy theory" has been shaped into a type of mind control to make people stop asking questions or identify them as unstable and/or paranoid. Almost all of us know of or have been affected by conspiracy FACT in one form or another, and it's a natural function of the human brain to draw conclusions from impartial datasets: hypothesis is part of the scientific method after all.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Replication data (CSV files and R code): [https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi...](https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/22976)</comment>


My Logo Design Brief in a One Page PDF - <AUTHOR> http://imjustcreative.com/logo-design-brief-one-page-pdf/2013/12/05 <comment><USER2> if it's one page... made it HTML...</comment>


The Sad State of Mobile XMPP in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://op-co.de/blog/posts/mobile_xmpp_in_2014/

<comment><USER2> The state of instant messaging is sad overall. There was a steady evolution to my own IM usage: from a proprietary, walled-garden IM solution (ICQ) via a reverse engineered multi-network client (a la Trillian) to a federated, free protocol, XMPP. I figured everybody would be using XMPP of some sorts and we'd be on our merry way to solve more interesting problems on that basis.

Instead, everybody is back to walled gardens that can't interoperate, and I'm using 5 or more services to talk to acquaintances -- SMS, Jabber, Google Talk, Skype, the list goes on -- and fall back to good old email for people where I don't have access to their IM of choice (such as Facebook chat or Whatsapp). It's such a pain in the ass.

It's 2014, I expect it to be matter of course to be able to chat with everyone I know with all the bells and whistles -- OTR-support, offline messages, synced history where desired, file transfer. It's an odd twist of technical history that we're not there yet.

<comment><USER3> What is he benefit or point in Facebook or Google doing interop with other IM systems? Interop seems like a desperate last-chance measure when you realise you're losing users.

I don't think there's anything technical involved. Unless spam is considered a technical problem, but denying federation seems to solve that problem considerably,

<comment><USER4> This is a purely business perspective, completely dropping the interests of the user.

All older communication companies (providing e.g. phone calls, fax, SMS) have working, interoperable systems that work on a global scale for _any customer of one company to any customer of another company_. By using a globally unique number.

It is, quite frankly, a disgrace that we now run around and find excuses for companies to re-introduce closed networks on a medium that provides working low-level routing on a global scale for almost all connected parties already. We're talking short messages here. I went back to SMS because of all this bull __ __. Not even iMessage. It works. With everyone. Everywhere. Without installing something.

From a users perspective, the current situation is horrible and a huge step back.

I couldn't care less about what the benefit for Google or Facebook is.

<comment><USER3> >This is a purely business perspective

Yep, pretty much. Do you expect multi-billion dollar companies to do something just because it sounded nice? Acting like that only works if they can get enough users onboard to commoditize the service. IM is far from that point (see the rise of new messenger apps/networks, decades after the first ones). These companies want their users inside their apps as much as possible.

Not to mention, allowing federation doesn't help the vast majority of their users, who are on other closed networks. So for it to be relevant, two networks need to interconnect. Without any solid reason or threat, why would they do that?

SMS BTW is a rather crappy example; I don't think I've ever used any other service that was so unreliable, slow, and expensive. And the only reason you have competition in many companies is due to the government coming in and breaking things up or allowing competition. Even today on phones, various companies are still doing their best to create lock-in or jam users, by, say, charging ridiculously high prices to call into their networks.

<comment><USER4> If SMS is crappy for you, just take phone calls. There is still jam-in, yes, but you can mostly find a cheap phone connection from any place in the world to any other. I regularly call cross-continent and with some googling, you get a decent rate.

The point being: the system is there and there is competition that drives the prices down.

Also, I don't believe that for a "vast majority of users", federation doesn't matter. Everyone I know uses multiple messenger apps on their phone _or just use SMS_. SMS is the base line.

This is a failure of a model. Sure, Google has no interest of federating with Facebook. What this leads to is the aforementioned silos of peoples communications. "How do I contact this person? WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter DM, Jabber, Google Talk, jadajadajada?

The only thing that comes close is email.

No, I don't expect multi-billion dollar companies to do something that sounds nice. Which still makes the model as a whole a failure. Obviously, multi- billion dollar companies cannot be trusted with providing reliable and easy reach-ability on a global scale.

<comment><USER3> >The point being: the system is there and there is competition that drives the prices down.

Eh, not really. Many countries still use the state-run monopoly. Connecting to them has a specific price. The demand for calls into their country is more-or- less fixed, and will remain so no matter the price. If you're seeing a price much below the actual price, then it's due to someone doing some illegal maneuver, such as sticking their cell phone on a VoIP system. (Despite it being illegal, I applaud such efforts.) Even for countries that aren't run like that (Europe?), prices can be well in excess of $0.20 a minute. The price to the receiver of the call is $0.00 so perhaps that limits competition. Some places even put an international tax on all calls, so that calls from outside the area are forced to pay more. Some places do the inverse.

Do you have info on people that use SMS across countries? For many countries I've seen, the price-per-message makes it a true last resort. (Inside the US or inside EU, this may not be an issue.) This makes WhatsApp so useful.

Do you have a real proposal, or is this a "it'd be nice if our government helped some companies build and run an IM infrastructure for very low cost for us"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is the state of power saving related XEPs which are critical for battery life on mobile? Looks like nothing is moving anywhere. For example XEP-0273 is still deferred:

[http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0273.html](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0273.html)

I'd worry about this even before anything else when it comes to XMPP on mobile, since otherwise your client can be a hungry monster eating up your battery in no time.

<comment><AUTHOR> The main problem with energy saving are short-living NAT session in the "carrier grade" NAT systems deployed by mobile ISPs.

You need to ping the server aggressively to prevent a NAT timeout from killing your connection. On most networks, ping intervals of 15 minutes are sufficient, but some ISPs seem to be brain-dead enough to kill TCP connections even earlier, enforcing additional load on their own networks.

However, it is hard to make a proper guessing algorithm to estimate the time between ping messages, so most apps hard-code it. yaxim is using 15mins and hoping for the best. Xabber is working with 1min (or 30s, not sure), Google's cloud connection is using a similarly low interval.

<comment><USER5> How is IPv6 deployment going in the mobile networks? That could solve all these NAT problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Zero deployment on the networks I have access to. Also I would not be surprised if the carriers manage to break permanent connectivity there with stateful firewalls.

<comment><USER6> T-Mobile deploys IPv6 exclusively to Android devices with 4.4 (Kitkat): [http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/TMobile-Goes-IPv6-Only- on...](http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/TMobile-Goes-IPv6-Only-on- Android-44-Devices-126506)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why would anybody want to use XMPP with mobile anyways? The protocol is very noisy and as a result it will keep turning your radio on/off in the background, effectively killing your battery.

<comment><USER8> _Why would anybody want to use XMPP with mobile anyways?_

Anyone with an Android-device is already using it. Android's push-notification depends on XMPP to work, and Gtalk/Hangouts is already piggybacking on that, making it a free ride.

So, unless you are on the patent-troll side of mobile, you have no reason not to use it.

<comment><USER9> >Android's push-notification depends on XMPP to work

Do you have a source for this info?

<comment><AUTHOR> In the early Android versions (pre 1.0), the Android API actually included XMPP methods. I also remember reading debug messages containing "XMPP" in the function names related to GCM. These are just hints, and the protocol might have been changed since then, but the GCM uplink feature also indicates that it still at least relates to XMPP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't deal in the iOS ecosystem, but the fact that the only way to get data to the device using push is insecure is just pathetic.

In a perfect world, the public would care. Instead, we scream into our own echo chamber.

<comment><USER11> iOS 7 supports background wake-up-and-do-things for apps, so this problem is actually solved now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you care to elaborate? The only thing I found in the apple docs is that calling your app callback is a "best effort" service not guaranteed to do anything if your app is not running already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> An interesting thing is the Push Notification system used by Firefox OS which does not maintain a connection with the server like Android or iOS, instead the carrier has a notification server so that when you send a push notification, the carrier sends a signal to the phone and awakes the app.

Making IM apps that don't need to keep a connection open is a great way to reduce battery. This way whenever you receive any message the carrier pings the phone, the app awakes and open the connection to retrieve the messages.

More info at [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/WebAPI/Simple_Push](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/WebAPI/Simple_Push)

I am sure that this can be used to make a XMPP client that makes good use of the battery by only keeping the connection open while people are talking and effectively closing it once the chat goes idle.

<comment><AUTHOR> As I wrote, it is hard to keep the conversation private in such an offline+push context. On the other hand, the additional battery load induced by a properly implemented XMPP connection is low. Apple's main fear is probably badly designed apps which really drain the battery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> iOS user here. I have Colloquy Mobile, with a backend of ZNC/Bitlbee, which bounces IRC and various IM protocols to my phone.

But it's by no means a layman's solution...

<comment><USER14> Does that require your mac to bounce the messages to you?

<comment><USER13> Nope, ZNC has a colloquy mobile bouncer: [http://wiki.znc.in/Colloquy](http://wiki.znc.in/Colloquy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I suspect some companies don't implement XMPP because it's too complex for simple messaging with very little upside. For a startup why worry about potential future interoperability with Google services(?), which would add months of engineering to get things right? YAGNI.

</comment><comment><USER16> Layer ([http://layer.com](http://layer.com)) is building a successor to XMPP that's optimized for mobile and solves device coordination problems. The inventor of XMPP, Jeremy Miller, works there.

<comment><USER17> This looks interesting. I looked at their site and documentation for implementing a client (once they are up and running). Do they provide any other information about their goals? Do you know if they have a goal to let anyone run a Layer server with interopability like xmpp does?

<comment><USER17> Ahh.. found their blog.

[https://layer.com/blog/post/why-I-joined-layer- jeremie](https://layer.com/blog/post/why-I-joined-layer-jeremie)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For me the worst thing was the way it handles multiple devices -- AFAIK when there are few clients with the same priority connected, the server delivers messages completely arbitrarily, usually only to a one of them and based on some crazy criterion like the last connection time; not to mention that the context is always lost. I ended up using SSH client and irssi :(

<comment><USER11> My experience has been:

* Google: Delivers incoming messages to whichever client most recently talked; occasionally 'resets' and delivers messages everywhere until a client talks again.

* Facebook: Delivers incoming and outgoing messages to web client; incoming messages only to XMPP clients (i.e. no outgoing message sync); occasionally outgoing XMPP messages are never sent or recorded at Facebook (this seems to happen and then stay a problem forever), resulting in your messages being silently lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe someday I'll be able to use my iMessage-to-XMPP scripts to communicate with several devices instead of just my Android phone.

And maybe someday I can build a bridge between FaceTime and XMPP once all the media protocols get sorted out.

It may currently be a sad state, but it's exciting to see the direction things are/can be going.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't like that most of the XMPP client on Android are presenting the roster of contacts instead of my conversations I'm currently having. Those are important to me. That is why I prefer systems like Hangouts or WhatsApp.

So most XMPP clients looks odd for me, they try to look like desktop clients. Which doesn't work on Android I think.

</comment><comment><USER21> As we move to mobile platform, privacy becomes more and more exotic.

</comment><comment><USER22> When we were developing a messaging system for our app, we looked at XMPP, and it wasn't a hard choice to not use it.

As it's meant to be a constant-connected protocol, it's a poor choice for mobile. But beyond that, the various plug-ins are overly complicated, difficult to configure and most of the existing servers are "black boxes" that tend to not be easily hackable.

It was easier to make a chat protocol over HTTP from scratch than scale XMPP. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER23> I remember a post mortem for XMPP/jabber from 5 or 7 years ago. The author described what went wrong and the title was something like "the state of xmpp and why it's dead" or something.

Does anyone here remember that ? I have been looking over the internet but my google-fu failed me and I really wished I could read it again.

</comment><comment><USER24> "If we can manage that, we can also convince all the users of WhatsApp, Facebook and Google Hangouts to switch to an open protocol that is ready for the challenges of 2014."

Not sure if serious. Let's hope not.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was tongue-in-cheek, though my agenda is to make mobile xmpp as reliable and user-friendly as the proprietary apps.

Can you elaborate your reasons for hoping I'm not serious?</comment></comment>


IE9 Released - <AUTHOR> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/products/ie/home

<comment><USER2> IE9 was released last week, so this is old news. I'm still up voting because I want everyone to install it who can. People will probably be happier with Chrome or Firefox, but in the event that a version of IE is launched, I want the stats counters, etc to see IE9 as the most used IE. In a couple of years IE's < 9 will just be a bad memory.</comment>


Show HN: A Forever Free Alternative to Pingdom/Uptimerobot/Statuscake - <AUTHOR> https://www.freshworks.com/website-monitoring/ <comment><USER2> I've never cared that I have to pay for service uptime monitors — in fact, I _want_ to pay for services like this. I'm not sure why being free is such a big selling point, for me at least.

<comment><USER3> A lot of times you have to monitor your personal blogs, websites, etc. You don't make _any_ money from those.

While I agree with paying for software, I can understand the idea behind not wanting to pay for uptime monitors. The advantage is that the service (at least on the free tier with no priority support or anything) is so cheap to offer that companies can offer a generous free tier that they can still turn into profit thanks to a few enterprise clients.

<comment><USER2> I agree with the personal blogs, etc. And I thought the same thing, too, about them turning profit on larger customers, but then I was confused when their enterprise tier was only $42/mo. Not a dig at the product, just more curious as to who their target market is.

When I see "forever free", I usually avoid it, especially for business use, for fear or it not existing in a year or 2. If "free" if your main selling point, to me, that screams low quality.

Is it a lead gen for the main product? Seems disconnected if so, but they likely know their market better, so maybe it isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Forever is a word I don't like to use. Especially with pricing. Good luck!

<comment><USER5> Almost all monitoring services used to have a free plan... now many of them don't

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> uptimerobot has a free plan... Guess its a race to the bottom for all these monitoring solutions?

<comment><USER5> Many of its competitors removed the free plan because they offer something different, which is worth paying for. For example websitepulse code the custom web transaction scripts for free</comment></comment>


Useful tool for finding company culture - <AUTHOR> https://cultureswarm.com <comment><USER2> hmm... doesn't seem to do anything. but then again, i'm on an android phone.

<comment><USER3> Managed to click through on desktop but I'm not sure what it's supposed to be, a questionnaire of some sort lead me to the name of one company culture with a link to a paper as explanation. The rest is a list of affiliate(?) links to a few books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess it's an ad?</comment>


Here's Why Amazon Bought Zappos - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/07/22/amazon-bought-zappos/ <comment><USER2> zero insight.</comment>