Show HN: Myth – CSS the way it was imagined - <AUTHOR> http://www.myth.io/ <comment><USER2> Wow. I'm shocked at the disgusting responses I'm reading here. No wonder people get terrible anxiety about releasing their hard work for feedback. Hacker News seems to be a den of vipers, waiting to strike at the tiniest opportunity to nitpick. And then folks have the gall to bicker and argue over whether the project even has fundamental merit, on the very thread that the author tries to show the "community" what he/she has made. I've been working on a project myself, something I'm passionate about and looking forward to my own "Show HN" thread, but this trend of negativity really makes me hesitate.

I think this is a really cool project, and I commend ianstormtaylor for pushing the envelope and advancing the state of the web. Good job!

 _edit: I understand criticism has its place in Show HN. But for God 's sake, I had to scroll _all the way to the bottom_ to find some kind words of encouragement. You folks should really read some Dale Carnegie_

<comment><USER3> I can't decide if people are overly competitive and frightened with the increase in the developer population, or if we're just bitter and cynical towards anything we can't put our name on.

<comment> __--__ You know those meetings where three or four guys go back and forth trying to prove who's the smartest guy in the room? HN is that on a larger scale.

I can't help but think this tendency of ours can't be hacked into something more productive, but I have no solution as of yet. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This only polyfills some of these features in the most superficial way. To polyfill some of these features according to spec., you need to do it in the browser.

For example:

        <!DOCTYPE html>
        <title>CSS Variable Test</title>

If I load that document in a browser that supports CSS variables, the title will be blue. But if I run it through Myth, it drops the blue rule and makes the title red. This is because CSS variables are inherited throughout the document and can be overridden at any time. The calculated value of the CSS property that uses the variable depends on the document structure.

Likewise with calc() - if you multiply values like in their example, it works, but if you try to add two values of different units (e.g. 2em + 30%), it silently falls back to requiring browser support for calc().

This might be useful in narrow circumstances, but it should have big warning signs because it doesn't come close to being a proper polyfill.

<comment><USER5> Aha, yes. This is pretty damning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Myth lets you write pure CSS while still giving you the benefits of tools > like LESS and Sass._

Having a "polyfill" is certainly a valid justification. But this doesn't come close to LESS/Sass -- I'd argue that the main feature of those is nested rules, and then mixins.

Variables and calculations are great, but most LESS code I've encountered uses nesting and mixins to a far greater extent. Advertising the project as "the benefits of tools like LESS and Sass" seems misleading, and seems to set up expectations that Myth doesn't fulfill.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that's definitely true that it doesn't support all of the features of Sass or LESS. But it does support some of the core features that people use everyday, and could replace a lot of the need for preprocessing.

From everything I've seen nesting rules is an anti-pattern. It's useful for writing code as fast as possible, but for any project of reasonable size maintenance is a far bigger worry than LOC per second, and nesting makes for some horrible to maintain CSS. Until we have native extending in CSS you're much better off going the "one-class-per-element" route for maintenance.

As for mixins, I actually think they are an anti-pattern too. They're usually used for two different things. The first is to simply make vendor-prefixing easier, which this library already eliminates. For example the LESS homepage shows mixins being used when really it's just a regular old `border-radius` property. And the second is for extending classes with groups of properties, but mixins are a bad practice there because they just duplicate the code instead of doing any smart inheritance, so you end up with huge code bloat.

The real missing feature from preprocessors in my opinion is the idea of "extending", but I wanted to wait for the CSS spec for extensions to be more thought out before adding it, in case it varies a lot from how preprocessors do it.

\---

The reason this came about is because we went back to writing pure CSS at Segment.io (after having used LESS, Stylus and Sass at different points) and realized that we shouldn't need to give up things like variables just because we don't want the extra weight of a new syntax.

<comment><USER6> If you think nesting rules is an anti-pattern, I feel like you've never worked on a large-scale web project. When you need to ensure that sections of pages are self-contained, and components likewise, you _need_ to start every rule with ".titlebar" or ".large-button", etc. Nesting just makes your CSS much cleaner, by writing ".titlebar" once instead of 30 times (for each of the 30 rules that apply to things inside the title bar), and making your stylesheet more organized and easier to browse. It doesn't mean you need to nest every single element, but it's a _fantastic_ tool for organization, particularly when multiple people are working on a project.

Likewise, I feel like you're missing one of the main points of mixins -- that they allow you to repeat commonly used calculations that may involve multiple properties in complex ways. For example, a mixin I often use lets me create a vertical gradient by specifying a base color and a brightess spread amount, instead of start/end colors. It's incredibly valuable, and it also allows me to automatically support IE and specify a fallback base color. Mixins are hugely valuable for creating classes based on sprite positioning too. Going back to pure CSS without mixins would be a huge step backwards in maintainability for any project of decent size which I've worked on.

Obviously, both nesting and mixins can be abused or used inappropriately, but I'd never call them anti-patterns -- to the contrary, they're essential for front-end development on sites that reach a certain level of complexity, for cleanly factored code.

<comment><AUTHOR> I could be wrong, and they both _can_ work if extreme caution is applied. My general take is that they make it way too easy to do the wrong thing though, at very little gain (assuming other parts of your system are setup properly).

\---

For nesting, the problem with nesting is that is messed with specificity way too much. Since adding an extra class inside a nested block is trivial, people start adding more and more. But even just 2 classes is already too much in my opinion. Ideally each component would have classes on each of its inner elements, so that the component-level styles always have a specificity of 0010:

        <input class="textfield-input">

If you have a setup like that, you never need to nest because your CSS ends up looking like this:

      .textfield {}
      .textfield-label {}
      .textfield-input {}

And that way all of your selectors are minimally invasive in terms of specificity. The problem with nesting is that you end up with selectors that have a specificity of 0020, which means anyone implements those components needs to be sure to achieve that level of specificity or greater to override them.

But honestly, when working with small components there just isn't that much typing to justify the possible downsides. Sure I have to type out the extra selectors in the beginning a few more times, but its worth it to do without the unintended consequences of the magic.

The one case where nesting really does come in handy is for page-specific or app-specific stylesheet files. Places where you are adding the "glue" CSS that should always be namespaced to avoid collisions.

\---

For mixins, I feel like they only seem useful if the components you're using are broken into small enough pieces to begin with. For example, if you want a complex gradient system on your buttons, put that inside your button styles and then don't touch it from anywhere else. If you're constantly needing to use a mixin to re-define those styles, something else is wrong. Because realistically how many different color variations of those buttons do you need to make? It should be somewhat limited, and they should be able to exist in a single file without issue.

Where things really get screwed is if you aren't versioning your mixins (which most people aren't doing). At that point, you're just tightly coupling changes to that mixins across your entire codebase. If you want to change the way the buttons implement the gradient, with the mixin system you go change the mixin, but now you need to visit every other component that uses that mixin and double-check that you didn't break anything.

Instead, if you didn't use a mixin and the component just contained its gradient logic (slightly more verbose maybe, but way more maintainable) then you don't have that problem.

The other solution is to strictly version your mixins using something like Component and maintain your mixins in a separate repository on GitHub that gets versioned, then that also works because each other component can peg the version of the mixin it is using.

\---

My big takeaway from CSS though is that none of the solutions for it are nice right now. And most of these problems should disappear (I think) with proper native extension.

<comment><USER7> You can use LESS's nested syntax in order to generate prefixed CSS classes instead of nested CSS selectors, if you prefer them. That gives you the advantage of prefixed CSS classes, but you don't have to repeat the prefix and you have all classes with the same prefix grouped together, which IMHO makes large projects easier to maintain.

      .textfield {
        &-label {
          ...
        }
        &-input {
          ...
        }
      }

<comment><AUTHOR> That is pretty cool. I think generally that the components themselves should be more limited in functionality to the point where it's just not that big of a deal to write out `textfield` two more times. As in, I think it's optimizing for a case that isn't that important. If you write a component, the number of times you're going to change the root class name of the component is very small, so it doesn't need quick rename-ability. And then the number of nested elements inside of it should also be small, so you don't have that many gains there either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've avoided the CSS preprocessors for some reason, something about learning a CSS pseudo-language just didn't feel right. The idea behind this however is awesome. You're writing simple, true CSS and it does the annoying work of making it crappy CSS that browsers want. I might actually be able to get behind this.

<comment><USER9> There's nothing to learn. Even if you use nothing more than nesting it's a huge boon to productivity and readability.

<comment><USER8> Well, I don't know how to do nesting right now so there WOULD be something to learn :D

Maybe it was that a clear winner never arose between LESS and SASS or maybe that I always let things play out a bit before jumping onto a trendy technology. I guess I'll have to just get with it since it's not really going away.

<comment><USER10> It's literally:

        .header {
            background-color: orange;

            p {
                font-size: 16px;
            }
        }

You nest the selectors and it spits out .header{} and .header p {}. Much cleaner to write and maintain.

<comment><USER8> Well, now I learned something. Also, that's pretty awesome. I could definitely use that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You all should be aware that it is impossible for CSS preprocessors/postprocessor to fully replicate calc() and var(). For example, you won't be able to do something like calc(100% - 200px) or have scoped variables.

<comment><USER12> Yes. This should be the top-voted comment, IMHO. Myth is fairly misleading!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oops. Landing page font is almost unreadable in Chrome Version 30.0.1599.101 (Windows XP)

<comment><USER14> Chrome works for me. (Version 31.0.1650.63 on Ubuntu 13.10)

<comment><USER15> It's only an issue on Windows because Chrome uses GDI to render text there, instead of DirectWrite like Firefox/IE use.

<comment><USER16> A lot of the text looks bad in Firefox on XP.

<comment><USER15> Because Firefox also used GDI on XP. It doesn't on newer versions of Windows.

<comment><USER17> What's the workaround for this problem? This is the first I've heard of it, and it looks pretty bad.

<comment><USER18> Test on windows?

A lot of thin fonts look bad in Windows especially chrome. So you could probably make a safe bet that if a font is thin on OSX then it will be much thinner (sometimes unreadable) on Windows.

If you want to use thin fonts only use them for the titles (but even here it looks like that causes problems).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's basically a rework ([https://github.com/visionmedia/rework](https://github.com/visionmedia/rework)) distribution with a couple of plugins bult in.

I you need finer grained control, take a look at rework itself. We have been using it for a while and it's just great.

</comment><comment><USER20> Despite its assertion to the contrary, that looks like a preprocessor to me.

<comment><USER21> I agree, I'm not sure what postprocessor would even mean in this context.

<comment><USER22> I think they chose "post-process" based on the following feature:

      Taking plain CSS as an input also means you can use Myth to post-process anyone else's CSS, adding the browser support you need, without having to re-write their code in a completely different syntax.

What distinguishes it from LESS or SASS or whatever is that the input has to be valid CSS, as well as the output. Their claim is that it makes your CSS act now like it will in the future once the version of the spec they're targeting has been fully adopted.

<comment><USER23> LESS, SASS and rework/stylus are all supersets of CSS, so they can too "post- process" anyone else's CSS.

<comment><USER24> That would be a noop with LESS/SASS unless the input CSS was not a "valid" CSS.

This project will "enhance" "normal" CSS to take care of polyfill, which alone is a win. Take _any_ CSS file you got, and it suddenly has all browser prefixes thanks to this tool. This is something LESS/SASS _can not_ do.

<comment><USER23> Styl(us) can. My point is that calling it a 'post-processor' is a misnomer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Very cool, but once you start working in something like LESS or Sass, it totally changes how you write styling and becomes something more than "CSS with variables". The possibilities they offer are more than features, it changes your entire workflow. Personally, I won't go back.

But besides all that, it's pretty sweet to have something more like "CSS with variables". That can come in super-handy sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER26> The site looks gorgeous and is perfectly readable in Firefox 25 on Ubuntu.

Also this looks pretty neat; I wasn't super interested in learning to use Sass/LESS or working it into my development cycle, but this looks like a good step towards not having to make much of a change while still reaping some nice benefits.

</comment><comment><USER27> This looks pretty cool. It should probably explain that it's a static subset of the spec, and not actually a polyfill for the spec itself. Since the spec allows for dynamic, cascading variables, as well as dynamic calculations.

</comment><comment><USER28> What's up with the font? It looks like a disaster on Chrome @ Windows.

<comment><USER15> All custom fonts look like a disaster on Chrome in Windows. It's the only browser that uses GDI to render text in Windows where Firefox/IE use DirectDraw. All fonts end up being rendered very thin, and if they're thin to start with, that causes discontinuities in the glyphs. It also affects the color; the rendered color may be significantly different than the text color specified in CSS.

It's been an open bug on Chromium/Chrome for several years.

<comment><USER10> Link to the bug?

<comment><USER29> [http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692](http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692)

<comment><USER30> This is depressing. They closed the comments so they don't have to hear anything from their userbase. If this kind of problems happened in Mac, the bug would have been resolved for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wow what a great idea. Nicely executed, love the demo page.

</comment><comment><USER32> "Myth - CSS the way it was imagined "

I totally read that completely differently. Complete document/style separation _is_ a myth.

</comment><comment><USER33> lots of readability issues on this page. Purple tiny text on black background != easy to read.

</comment><comment><USER34> Definitely going to give this a try. I really appreciate the apparent simplicity and creativity of this tool. It avoids the need to learn the odd syntax of LESS/Sass for those of us who need reliable cross-browser support while providing many (though not all) of the benefits of precompilers.

Seriously great work.

</comment><comment><USER35> Long-term I'm not sure how well this will work.

After all, SCSS was based on "CSS3" so we wouldn't have to rewrite our CSS. It's still around ... so we don't have to rewrite our SCSS.

I'm happy to see innovation here, but I also wish IE would just auto-update already. :D

</comment><comment><USER36> Man I really hate when the creator of the site expects me to scroll down. I have a 1080p monitor, if I can't see any content at that height I have to assume there isn't any.

<comment><USER37> Agreed. It seems to be a design trend that's on the upswing lately, and it's frustrating. I encountered a mobile site yesterday that did that... to me it's the equivalent of the "click to enter" home page of bygone days. Uh, no thanks.

<comment><USER38> I honestly can't tell if your guys are being serious. Click to enter was absurd because they were page loads just for the sake of page loads. Scrolling down is just spacing out your content to get a visual feel. This one in particular is giving a short explanation to let you decide if you want to scroll down first. There's no cost here, just the courtesy of not overwhelming anyone who isn't actually interested in the details.

<comment><USER36> I don't have a problem with the concept if the fact that I have to scroll is obvious. I opened that page, read the title and "What am I doing here again?" I'm on a Mac so there's no scrollbars. Do you just want me to guess that there's something down there? The least you can do is hint at the content below.

<comment><USER39> > I'm on a Mac so there's no scrollbars. There's your problem.

<comment><USER36> Congratulations on being an ignorant elitist. I have both Mac and PC and have been using both for a very long time. The point of my statement is that whether or not I can see my scrollbar, I shouldn't have to look at the size of the bar to determine the functionality of the site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wish there were a revolt against W3C. They have consistently made a mess of everything they touch (and take forever to do it). Why reinvent the wheel yet again with another fuglier syntax? We already have Sass and LESS which are widely used and quite beloved. Just adopt the best of those and save us from yet another "XSL-FO". Please! For God's sake, man!

<comment><USER41> So, in your world, we'd all have to compile our stylesheets? I don't like that idea at all.

<comment><USER42> No. The reason sass or less require compiling is to support features that aren't actually a part of the CSS standard, so they need to be compiled down to things that are a part of the css standard.

In his world, the best of those features would be part of the CSS standard and supported by browsers, so you could just give them right to browsers without compiling anything.

<comment><USER41> Well I'm glad I phrased it as a question then :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> "post-processor"? What does that mean?

Looks a lot like a pre-processor to me, except that its functionality is limited to what can be defined by pure CSS. I'm not sure why you would choose this preprocessor over one with more functionality.

Somebody must have thought it was a good idea to have gone through so much effort, so perhaps I'm missing something.

</comment><comment><USER44> this is cool, but the problem i have with the variables is that it's based on a suggestion of a spec that mozilla hasn't even finalized... if it changes in the future, this could break

</comment><comment><USER45> Can Myth postprocess LESS output and guarantee that it'll "just work"? I like the vendor prefix feature (although there's a 'LESS Prefixer' project too).

<comment><USER46> Is there anything wrong with LESS + Autoprefixer? I'm using Sass + Autoprefixer on a project currently and it works just fine.

<comment><USER45> Yes, I didn't know about it :). I'll probably go with autoprefixer, but with Myth I could also use some of the other features and perhaps aim for a slow transition from LESS to CSS over the coming years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally, that's the idea :) — and yeah you should absolutely be able to post- process LESS output and have everything work fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why do front-end developers not test their website cross-browser and platform?

The font chosen doesn't render properly on Windows with Opera or Chrome.

<comment><USER48> Can confirm, the text renders miserably on Chrome in Windows 8. Somewhat ironic considering the product being advertised.

For anyone wondering, here's what it looks like: [http://imgur.com/XbZJpC6.png](http://imgur.com/XbZJpC6.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Interesting. Shouldn't the 2nd "a" in the right column under "Color Manipulation" be an "a:hover"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Why yes, yes it should :) fixing now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> SIde note but I have never seen "Star on GitHub" before ... does that mean contributions are not welcome?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nah, I just personally think the "Fork on GitHub" line is wrong because I'm very rarely trying to go from a tool's site directly to the "fork" action. Instead I think something like "Source on GitHub" or "View on GitHub" is more appropriate. And since I just launched it, in this case I thought "Star on GitHub" could work. I don't mind too much really, just anything but forking :)

<comment><USER50> Ah ok, that makes sense. I think "View the code on Github" is the best way to say it. Star on Github reminded me of those people who bug you for reviews on the app store, which only helps you and not them. View the code is a two-way trade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Tiny text is unreadable on Windows Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER52> I imagine a CSS where the outer divs submit to the inners (but only when I want to).

</comment><comment><USER53> A little tough to read the text.looks cool.</comment>


Show HN: PinChoo Marbles Lite, a tricky "marbles-based" puzzle game - <AUTHOR>

A "marbles-based" puzzle game, feels a little bit like pool, and a little bit like breakout, but it has its own flavor. Three worlds of linear gameplay in single-player mode, with a total of 36 levels, which the player can solve either by a few quick trick shots, or with a patient step-by-step approach. Shared screen mode to play against a friend.
Our first title, feedback appreciated.
This is the "lite" version, completely free, no ads. The full version has 5 worlds and 200+ levels.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apsisware.pinchoomarbleslite <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apsisware....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apsisware.pinchoomarbleslite)</comment>


Waffle.io - <AUTHOR> https://waffle.io/ <comment><USER3> I would urge you to take another look at the flow of your landing page. I have literally no clue what your product does even after reading the infographic at the top of the page a few times.

\- GitHub users want a way to help out on open source projects

\- waffle.io places a dynamic badge in your GitHub README file for all to see where they can help

\- Clicking that badge takes anyone to your public waffle.io board where users can view and edit tasks.

What?

<comment><USER4> I strongly dislike everything about waffle.io. I feel bad about it, because these are good people who more than likely love their product and it's getting a lot of hate here despite them coming here to respond to feedback... but.

1\. Most people here are confused about what this is for. After understanding what it's for, I find that it's not even a solution looking for a problem... it's a _force-fed_ solution to a non-existant problem for most people. This solves something maybe 1% of us have encountered, but makes the assumption that everyone on Github would benefit from this.

2\. "waffle.io" seriously? Is this the result of an internal "I need a random english word that is available on .io" poll, or is there a deeper more disturbing connotation with the pronounced blue theme on the site? I'm sure naming your service like this doesn't help the "I have no idea what this is about" crowd. I can't be the only one tired of those completely meaningless names... I mean specifically the hyper-generic names of services targeted at specifically the github/bitbucket crowd. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but some of these names are trying too hard to be cutesy and random. Maybe I'm seeing something that's not there though.

<comment><USER5> I think that's being rather harsh - to me it's trying to link a Trello style community/team tool on top of Github. And as someone who has tried to get a largish team, including non developers, to collaborate using existing Github features this might well be a good idea.

Also the name - very few domain names seem to have much connection with the domain anymore, picking on this crowd for having a weird domain name hardly seems fair when _everyone_ pretty much has weird domain names these days (unless they have boat loads of cash).

Edit: If anyone from waffle.io is here, first of all well done - looks like an interesting tool, secondly I'm not sure your "Why don't you open source your workflow?" is doing your product justice - I was _slightly_ confused when trying to understand that first diagram, but maybe that's just me. When I scrolled further down the page and saw the example it all seemed clear - <USER2> not everyone might scroll down.

<comment><USER6> Thanks. :) I posted this below, but in case you missed it, we agree. We have a new landing page getting ready to launch. Here's a preview of what we're working towards:

[http://screencast.com/t/IZnoWChXyQ](http://screencast.com/t/IZnoWChXyQ)

<comment><USER7> We love Github Issues at our company, but it's missing one thing we really need: metrics. We need to track when a milestone was started, who completed how many issues in a milestone, what was the issue estimated at and what was to actual time to complete. We need data on what there is to be done and what will be done.

That being said, I don't think this is a feature set _for_ Github issues. This is not an open source concern; it's a business concern and I don't think business should drive Github.

So a third party integration is perfect for this. Is this something on the roadmap of waffle.io?

<comment><USER6> Yep. We're definitely looking at adding more planning functionality and metrics around milestones in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like how they set the price:

      $(function() {
        var price = localStorage.getItem('price');
        if(!price) {
          price = Math.ceil(Math.random() * 3);
          localStorage.setItem('price', price);
        }
        $('#price').html(price);
      });

<comment><USER9> This is interesting. Any one know what is the reason to use "random" pricing? Especially only diff 1-2 dollars.

<comment><USER10> Waffle user here...they're just doing some market/price testing. They don't actually charge a fee yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I get this. Yes, you could use the GitHub issues board; no problem. But the issues there are not inviting, and it's non-obvious to newcomers if they should pick up a task.

Here you're inviting people - literally, "please, come help us with this" \- and making it super-clear that they should jump in. I think there's more to do to make open source projects friendly (better, happier documentation, for a start), but I don't think this is a bad addition at all.

Also, waffles are tasty.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is wonderful.

The main page doesn't mention the term, but the easiest way to describe this is that it is adding a Kanban board to Github.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board)

The simplicity to effectiveness ratio of Kanban boards really impress me.

<comment><USER13> Huboard [http://huboard.com](http://huboard.com) is the Kanban board my employer uses for github and its pretty nice. It'll autoupdate if any team member changes the board.

<comment><USER14> There's also TaskTub: [http://www.tasktub.com/](http://www.tasktub.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Come on people. I'm so tired of most of my comments being reminders to check your UX!

[http://imgur.com/82DqYXl](http://imgur.com/82DqYXl)

I'll short out most, if not all, of your responses here.

I'm on mobile. I don't care if you designed for the desktop web or not, most visitors will be mobile web. Just test it. And for Cthulu's sake rotate your phone 90 degrees to make sure it works.

<comment><USER16> Or use the iOS Simulator if you're on Mac. It's simple, it launches in seconds, you can point it to localhost on your machine if you're serving locally for testing, and you can check old versions of the OS with older versions of Safari (like 7.0 where you couldn't minimize the UI).

In their defense users who actually want to contribute will likely be on desktop but I get your point. You're reading HN on mobile and want to be able to see the site.

<comment><USER17> Start by just using basic viewport size testing, resizing your browser or using a tool like Firefox's responsive design mode (Ctrl+Shift+M, not sure about the shortcut on Mac OS X).

<comment><USER18> Nice, I never knew about that feature, thanks! Just tried it out on some of my work, and it's a breeze to use. However, seems that scrollbars behave slightly differently in it. In my case they aren't appearing in certain sub-containers. Have you had any such issues with it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like the idea, it seems really helpful, but just as a warning if you call your site Waffle and blue is the prominent color, especially on the logo, you're going to cause people to make connections that shouldn't be made...

<comment><USER20> If its any consolation for the OP I have absolutely no idea what this is referring to and haven't made any connections even after reading this and trying to... blue waffles?

<comment><USER19> Sorry, I should have included more information: [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/blue- waffle](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/blue-waffle)

I recommend against just googling it. It's used as one of those "gotcha" images for unsuspecting internet users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I tried to view on mobile and the page is unreadable. OP, if you are the creator of the site, please consider having some sort of mobile optimized page! (Even if it is just an info page)

<comment><USER22> Even a site that I could read on mobile would be good. Resizing doesn't help with this one so some text and images can't be viewed.

<comment><USER23> Rally Software, the parent behind this product, doesn't even have a mobile optimized version of their core agile product [1]. It's outrageously frustrating when I need to update my tasks or add stories on the go.

[1] [http://www.rallydev.com/](http://www.rallydev.com/)

<comment><USER24> Experimental mobile support for the core product, ALM: [https://github.com/RallySoftwareLabs/alm- mobile](https://github.com/RallySoftwareLabs/alm-mobile)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am also confused what this is. I think it is a dashboard of tasks for a GitHub project. If so, why not just use GitHub issues directly for the task list?

<comment><USER26> I believe the idea is that Waffle makes it easier to prioritize and organize issues, e.g. GitHub issues + kanban

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> We use kanban for the Brackets[1] project, so I've been looking into tools like this recently. The most promising one I've seen so far is Octokan[2]. What I like about Octokan is that it:

1\. uses GitHub Issue labels to represent the columns (unlike Waffle) 2\. doesn't require all of our open issues to be "on the board" 3\. is faster than Huboard 4\. uses horizontal scrolling with fixed width columns like Trello rather than trying to pack all of the columns into the width of the window (also in contrast to Huboard)

We currently use Trello for our backlog and kanban[3] but it is kind of painful to synchronize this with GitHub (and so we don't... there's a lot of "small item" work that happens only in GitHub and is not tracked through our kanban flow).

None of the tools I've seen provide us with cycle time and throughput metrics, which is a drag. We're likely to write a script to pull the data out of GitHub and calculate those values. (GitHub, alas, does not track when labels are added or removed... so we have to start there in our custom work.)

I think it's great that there are people building better visualizations on top of GitHub Issues and I'm looking forward to seeing how tools like Waffle, Octokan, Huboard, etc. evolve.

[1]: [http://brackets.io](http://brackets.io) [2]: [http://octokan.com/](http://octokan.com/) [3]: [https://trello.com/b/LCDud1Nd/brackets](https://trello.com/b/LCDud1Nd/brackets)

</comment><comment><USER28> Communicating the progress of a project or feature is something really important I think open-source people need to realize, when they have a fairly non-technical audience.

I think GitHub milestones are central to productivity and communicating progress to a base of interested parties, so I would recommend focusing on milestones specifically—also to encourage their use—rather than showing one huge list of issues by default. It's fairly disorienting, even to me as a regular GitHub user and contributor.

Those cards take up an awful lot of vertical space, which I don't think is going to scale well with a large project. Look at project like Bootstrap: [https://waffle.io/twbs/bootstrap](https://waffle.io/twbs/bootstrap). Because you load the issue on scroll, I can't even get an idea of how many issues there are from the size of my scroll bar. Milestones are the main way for repo owners to manage a large number of issues.

From what I could tell, you can sort by milestones using a filter, but for some reason, the list of milestones wouldn't load?

A while back, I created a small never-to-be-finished project called milestones.js to involve a general audience in the progress of upcoming features—taking advantage of milestones: [https://github.com/ndarville/milestones.js](https://github.com/ndarville/milestones.js). At the bottom of the README are some related projects that might be of interest to you as well.

In other words:

1\. Find out who you want your users to be.

2\. Find out what they should be shown.

3\. Focus on milestones, GitHub's killer productivity feature.

4\. Fit more issues vertically; the card metaphor isn't that important.

5\. Know that the dynamic loading of issues on scroll is working against you from a UX perspective.

</comment><comment><USER29> You need to clean up the wording some. When I first read

      Clicking that badge takes anyone to your public
      waffle.io board where users can view and edit tasks.

It sounds like random github users can decide what tasks get worked on. "Users" is vague here.

Also "opensource your workflow" isn't clear. I had no idea that meant "make your kanban board public".

Why not "Waffle.io is a public kanban board that deeply integrates with github issues"? Clear, to the point, no one complains that they can't tell what the product does.

</comment><comment><USER30> the benefit of open sourcing my code is that other people can use it or contribute to it. why would i ever want to open source my task queue?

if this is a valid use case, how does this really differ from something like Github issues or a public Trello board?

comparing [https://waffle.io/waffleio/waffle.io](https://waffle.io/waffleio/waffle.io) to [https://trello.com/b/nC8QJJoZ/trello- development](https://trello.com/b/nC8QJJoZ/trello-development) i'm having trouble differentiating.

<comment><USER31> As a recent comment suggests it's a "kanban board".

<comment><USER32> From the Trello wiki page - "Trello uses a paradigm for managing projects known as kanban"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think something good might come out of this and I actually loved the name (I clicked on this because waffle.io souded cool). What I really think , in terms of design, is that you should get rid of that 3d rendered waffle.io image with that shadow. Not only it makes the website look like something of 5+ years ago but you can also see that the image is heavily compressed and is not looking good at all.

</comment><comment><USER34> I have a rule, if I can't understand what your start-up is about from your home page then it won't work.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think this is a fantastic idea. I've often felt that the Github issues page is too uninviting for non-developers (and that may be okay for lots of projects) but it's obvious to me how beneficial it is to provide a kanban interface for end-users that ties directly to the github issues.

</comment><comment><USER36> Great idea. Obscure landing page.

It's practically impossible to know what this does,unless you click on the [our board] link. Even after scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page where you are asked to part with money.

It would be a shame for such a great idea to be passed by due to lack of clarity.

</comment><comment><USER37> Like the old (now left to rot by Atlassian) Bitbucket Cards. This kind of scrum/kanban board with issues integration is really useful, I'm developing my version as well.

[1] [http://www.bitbucketcards.com](http://www.bitbucketcards.com)

</comment><comment><USER38> This seems fairly similar to HuBoard. Anyone know of a reason to use this over that?

</comment><comment><USER39> Other than taking the nominal appearance of a Kanban board, I can't figure out what is possible to do with this that isn't possible to do with Github issues, in a non-vertical format.

</comment><comment><USER40> Notice that this app was created by a group of interns at Rally, which is a larger, publicly traded company. This isn't just someone's side project...

</comment><comment><USER41> My favourite part about their front page is the quote at the bottom:

"A waffle is like a pancake with a syrup trap." \- Mitch Hedberg

</comment><comment><USER42> Awesome!! It remains me the UI of Trello boards which is pretty cool IMHO</comment>


Every So Often - <AUTHOR> http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/2016/01/every-so-often.html <comment><USER2> "The more you know, the less you understand."</comment>


Google Cloud outage brings down Layer - <AUTHOR> http://status.layer.com/ <comment><USER2> I am so turned off when I click a "Pricing" link and get a contact form. Even more so when I read that, "our pricing team" [will get back to you].

So, you have an entire team of people who will try and maximize how much I pay? Sounds like a great experience doing business with you. /heavysarcasm

<comment><USER3> I automatically skip any product where I have to speak to a human at any time

<comment><USER4> Is it me, or are a lot of web-based service providers very chatty lately?

I won't name and shame any particular ones, but I will say I've found myself regretting signing up for trials of certain services because of the almost sycophantic attention I'd receive from the oh-so-personable and friendly CEOs who make it a point to personally message all customers. I usually respond, initially, but then it quickly becomes pushy and intrusive, e.g. "Hi, I've noticed you haven't used [x] feature yet." "Hello? Are you getting my emails?" "Hello?"

I don't mean to be rude, but I didn't sign up for the "omg you're so friendly and amazingly helpful" show. I just wanted to try the service out. Kindly stop breathing down my neck! :/

<comment><USER5> This happens because it works, though not necessarily so much for the HN crowd.

<comment><USER6> Does it though? In my experience a good product or service doesn't require constant spamming. It has nothing to with whether someone reads HN or not.

<comment><USER5> Does your request for confirmation incorporate the ancient HN discussion I linked?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't like the attitude. Pointing fingers doesn't help paying customers trapped by Layer poor design choices.

<comment><USER8> Especially when they seem to be referencing only a single region. Multi-region deployments is the most basic protection against outages when using IaaS.

<comment><USER9> They should at least be in multiple availability zones. Multiple regions often comes with a lot of challenges, but there isn't much reason not to be redundant in multiple AZs.

<comment><USER10> Were they or were they not in multiple AZs? Developing for multiple availability zones is trivial when creating cloud-first software (and it's irresponsible not to use AZs!), multi-region comes with its own set of problems.

<comment><USER11> In the report they say they're looking at moving to a new region, but Google apparently told them that us-central1-a was down. The "-a" makes it an AZ. It sounds like they're only on one AZ and may not fully understand the difference.

[correction: they accidentally called usc1-a a region, but everything mentioned in their outage was a zone. They specifically called it a "deployment zone" not an availability zone, so it sounds like an issue of inexperience with best practices.]

[obligatory disclaimer: I'm a Google employee. I don't have a relationship with Layer]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > As we are now several hours into this outage and do not have satisfactory > timeline for resolution, we have begun the process of migrating our hosts > into another deployment zone within GCE

Wait, what? Isn't running in multiple zones something like rule #1 or #3 in "how to run in the cloud"?

So why did they not already do this?

</comment><comment><USER13> > _As we are now several hours into this outage and do not have satisfactory > timeline for resolution, we have begun the process of migrating our hosts > into another deployment zone within GCE. We will have a baseline set of > services migrated within the hour and evaluate our ability to operate in a > split deployment. Should we need to pursue a complete migration of hosts > across zones then we would expect another 4-5 hours to return to full > operational capacity._

Wait, their service isn't setup to operate in a split environment out of the box? I think it's time SaaS companies start documenting their IaaS setup so purchasers can do a high level audit before they decide to use it for potentially a core part of their own product/service.

<comment><USER14> I like how Algolia does that, [https://www.algolia.com/infra](https://www.algolia.com/infra) (their blogposts and presentations go into much more detail)

Currently thinking of creating a similar page for getstream.io, at the moment we always explain it during sales/onboarding calls. (we replicate our data to 3 different instances across multiple AZs)

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the link. We are taking a look at what Algolia has done here and will likely put together a public infrastructure overview page for Layer as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It doesn't do any good to point the finger at your vendors when your service goes down; that data isn't useful for your customers. Never forget the lesson of [http://www.whoownsmyavailability.com/](http://www.whoownsmyavailability.com/)

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure I agree. Customers like to know why it doesn't work. If it was a physical machine, they would have said something like "the disks are broken and we are replacing them". But it is cloud and they said "Google persistent disks are currently unavailable and they are fixing it".

<comment><USER12> But the real reason is "we didn't set up our system properly".

This is like saying "Hitachi Storage hard drives broke" when you actually mean "we didn't run RAID".

<comment><USER17> You can't compare persistent disks failing in a whole zone, with a RAID array failing in a single machine.

There is a reason why Amazon and Google takes EBS/Persistent Disk failures very seriously: there are not supposed to be unavailable during several hours, except if the whole datacenter is unable to operate (flood, fire, etc.), but it's not the case here.

If your RAID fails, and you have a support contract which guarantees restoration within 1 hour, and it's not restored within 1 hour, then I think you can legitimately say something was wrong at your provider. It's not pointing fingers. Everyone does mistakes. It's taking responsibility.

That said, I agree they should have run in multiple zones, as recommended by Google, if they need/want to avoid that kind of downtime.

But I maintain Google Compute Engine Persistent Disk are not supposed to fail in such a way, and I'm quite sure Google will do whatever they can to avoid this in the future, instead of saying "don't point finger at us, it's supposed to happen".

<comment><USER18> Two clarifications: the disks were not "unavailable", they had high latency (slow I/O) in one zone only (us-central1-a); and this affected only SSD PDs, not "regular" PDs. Per the SLA [1], it's "downtime" when PDs are completely unavailable for >5 minutes in at least two zones, and neither condition was met here.

[1] [https://cloud.google.com/compute/sla](https://cloud.google.com/compute/sla)

All that said, people choose SSD because it's faster and has higher throughput, so SSDs _not_ being fast is obviously a real problem for applications relying on this, and rest assured we are indeed doing whatever we can to avoid this in the future.

Disclaimer: I work in Google Cloud Support.

<comment><USER19> this is a typical Google Cloud Support response (I used to host on GCloud). Stretching the definitions to somehow get out of responsibility. If the SSDs have super high latency, then for most purposes they are indeed 'unavailable'. There is a reason why the user provisioned SSDs and not a regular disk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most concise summary of Layer I could find on the internet quickly.

> Layer is an amazingly elegant and light-weight solution for video > communication. Layer is currently in a private beta primarily focused on > Video, Voice and Chat on Android and iPhone. [1]

Comment was in 2014.

[1]: [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between- PubNub-...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-PubNub-and- Layer)

<comment><USER21> If you just go to layer.com, the first text you see on the page does a pretty good job of spelling out what it is. At least, it did for me. It's also more up-to-date than that comment, it would seem.

<comment><USER14> Layer is just a building block for adding chat to your app. Similar to how you would use Elastic for search or Sendgrid for email.

<comment><USER22> That reminds me, I wonder what ever came of the Adria Richards v. Sendgrid issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Slightly OOT: Anyone know good alternative to Layer?

<comment><USER24> CometChat works seamlessly on web, mobile & desktop! Your users can be on any platform and communicate with each other.

Check out the demo here: [https://www.cometchat.com/demo](https://www.cometchat.com/demo)</comment></comment>


Does anyone know how to get Uber to stop spamming my cell number? - <AUTHOR>

Expressed interest in a driver's position and now it seems like that was the wrong thing to do. They have been spamming my phone number pretty heavily with text messages about their service and specials every single day, multiple times a day. I've tried calling them, texting them back, emailing them, and even using their online forms to ask them to stop spamming my number, but have heard nothing back from them.<p>In some way I think my rights are being violated. They are always texting me from some random number so I can't even block that. There's seemingly no kind of opt-out list I'm aware of. Is there anything else anyone can tell me to let them know I'm not interested in their service? Would it be worth my time to take them to small claims court here in California? Thanks. <comment><USER2> There's a legal option which doesn't require you filing a court case: [http://www.fcc.gov/guides/spam-unwanted-text-messages-and- em...](http://www.fcc.gov/guides/spam-unwanted-text-messages-and-email)

Another option is playing "Guess Uber's telephony provider" and then asking them to block you, so that you don't have to make a FCC complaint. I predict they would be very happy to do that. To save you some guessing: [https://www.twilio.com/customers/stories/uber](https://www.twilio.com/customers/stories/uber)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Same but I don't mind it, it's an experiment to me to see how long they will keep acting like it's my last chance to sign up.</comment>


Why I'm Not learning to code - <AUTHOR> http://writing.makeshift.io/pieces/why-i-m-not-learning-to-code

<comment><USER2> Learning to code is the best way to understand coders. Plus you'll be able to build your own stuff to boot! Seems like a no-brainer to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> learning to code is easy than understand code and review, but understand code more important than code. If you understand code - you know all. Try to understand linux kernel code or gcc</comment>


Former SEC Attorney Explains Which Ethereum ICOs Will Be Targeted with Action - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/ktorpey/2017/08/31/former-sec-attorney-explains-which-ethereum-icos-will-be-targeted-with-regulatory-action <comment><USER4> >In Morgan's view, the key part of the Howey Test in terms of ICOs is whether the expectation of profit relied on the effort of others

This makes sense and is precisely how its been done, nothing new here but..

>What [the SEC are] trying to do is decide whether the investors are really passive investors or whether they're actively involved in creating value

Is this to say that the decision to take action is based on perceived investment opportunity rather than something that is explicitly sold as an investment opportunity? This would be a quite dramatic change in the ICO world.

<comment><USER5> >Is this to say that the decision to take action is based on perceived investment opportunity rather than something that is explicitly sold as an investment opportunity?

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but that is not my reading of it. I believe he means that tokens for applications that gain value from the activity of users, like Bitcoin or Ethereum, would fall outside the definition of a security, while tokens of applications dependent mostly on the activity of a management team to earn revenue, like the DAO vis-à-vis Slock.it - <USER2> the SEC concluded was expected to manage the projects the DAO voted on - <USER3> fall within the definition of a security.

<comment><USER4> I see, that makes much more sense. I wasn't entirely sure what was meant by that statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So this guy thinks the SEC will act only for really blatant scams.

It's a great time to run a scam.

</comment><comment><USER7>
       In addition to complaints from disgruntled investors, Morgan pointed
      out that the SEC's whistleblower program could be another source of
      an investigation. Through this program, whistleblowers are awarded a
      percentage of monetary remedies that are imposed and collected by the
      SEC if and when enforcement action takes place.

      According to Morgan, some bounties in the SEC's whistleblower program
      have been worth tens of millions of dollars.

      "I wouldn't be surprised, particularly given the difficult nature of
      enforcing the securities laws in this context, if an ICO case comes
      out of a whistleblower seeking a bounty," said Morgan.

OH YEAH!</comment>


Spanish Polluted Air Long Before Industrial Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2015/02/spanish-polluted-air-long-industrial-revolution <comment><USER2> Wood burning creates quite a bit of indoor pollution. It gets worse for people living where there aren't much trees, who resort to burning dung.</comment>


News Site Held Responsible for Users' Defamatory Comments - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/10/11/news-site-held-responsible-for-users-defamatory-comments/

<comment><USER2> I do recall an article being submitted to HN saying that the UK also has a law making site owners liable for user-generated comments unless they pro-actively moderate them. I don't understand there logic behind it, it's not possible to moderate any website with a decent amount of traffic.

I'm suprised this is happening in Estonia, I always thought of Estonia as excelling in the tech world compared with most EU countries.

<comment><USER3> > I do recall an article being submitted to HN saying that the UK also has a > law making site owners liable for user-generated comments unless they pro- > actively moderate them. I don't understand there logic behind it, it's not > possible to moderate any website with a decent amount of traffic.

The idea that publishers have a positive duty to assure that what they publish is not harmful (libelous, or otherwise) with limited defenses is pretty common globally; the US idea that the freedom of speech is so strong publishers have a fairly minimal duty in this regard so long as harms are not intentional (or reckless in some cases) is, AFAIK, less common.

So the fact that it is burdensome on publishers and creates costs that would make certain forms of interaction difficult isn't considered problematic from that perspective -- what's problematic is the unpoliceable publications.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. It's a classic example of the clash of incommensurable goods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Tim Worstall at Forbes makes a very different assessment of the ruling [1]. He concludes that news portals might now be liable under all the different laws of their readers different jurisdictions.

I'm quite doubtful that the international laws would work that way. But maybe someone with more of a background in law can shed some light on these differing opinions? Might there actually be reason for concern for every web page operator who allows comments?

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/10/11/every- web...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/10/11/every-website-that- accepts-comments-now-has-a-european-problem/)

<comment><USER5> well the part that worries me is the references to "hate speech". How much restricted speech is there in the EU? The most obvious bugaboo I can think of would be Nazis. Is that at the member level or EU wide?

The idea that popularity has been decided increase risk of going beyond the boundaries of "acceptable" speech is door wide open to abuse. It basically tells any site operator the more popular the more diligent you must be because you should know better

<comment><USER6> Probably in every european country there is some extremist group with an agenda "let's kill all [ethnic] or at least drive them out of our country", and of course it shows up in internet comments, so some hate speech exists - but the regulation of it varies from country to country.

<comment><USER7> It's even a continuous political issue, since there are always talks about the next countries entering Schengen, UE or Eurozone and the associated inner- migrations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is time to protest:

> _The judgment isn't final. During the three-month period following its > delivery, any party may request that the case be referred to the Grand > Chamber of the Court. If such a request is made, a panel of five judges > considers whether the case deserves further examination. If it believes so, > the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final judgment. If not, > the original judgment becomes final on that day._

I'm not sure what particulars of Estonian law compelled them to unanimously decide this way. Maybe there is some strangeness there that means the ruling won't apply broadly, but it sure sounds wacky and problematic.

<comment><USER9> There's nothing in the Estonian law that compelled them, since as TFA says, the court was not looking at Estonian law. All the ECHR did look at the decision of Estonian courts and say, "this does not violate essential human rights".

Personally, I don't see why we should blame them for stupid Estonian laws and/or judges.</comment></comment>


Fast CI with pytest-split and GitHub Actions - jerry-hn https://blog.jerrycodes.com/pytest-split-and-github-actions/ <comment> jerry-hn Long story short, pytest-xdist was not a good fit with a large scale Python project which has a fairly fragile test suite so I ended up implementing a new pytest plugin, pytest-split, which makes it possible to split the full test suite into n "sub suites" based on the execution time of the tests. GitHub offers 20 concurrent jobs (free plan) for GitHub Actions based workflows. By combining these two, it's relatively easy to boost the CI of a large Python test suite.

Blog post (e.g. more about the motivation behind pytest-split): [https://blog.jerrycodes.com/pytest-split-and-github- actions/](https://blog.jerrycodes.com/pytest-split-and-github-actions/)

pytest-split: [https://github.com/jerry-git/pytest- split](https://github.com/jerry-git/pytest-split)

Demo project (pytest-split + GitHub Actions): [https://github.com/jerry- git/pytest-split-gh-actions-demo](https://github.com/jerry-git/pytest-split- gh-actions-demo)

Opinions and thoughts are very welcome :)</comment>


The Election Won't Be Rigged. But It Could Be Hacked - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/opinion/campaign-stops/the-election-wont-be-rigged-but-it-could-be-hacked.html?_r=0&referer= <comment><USER2> Clinton Foundation Donors

$1,000,000-$5,000,000

Carlos Slim - Chairman & CEO of Telmex, largest New York Times shareholder

Can't see that mentioned on the page

[http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton- foundati...](http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton-foundation- donors-include-dozens-of-media-organizations-individuals-207228)</comment>


Google just added augmented reality walking directions into maps and it's WILD - <AUTHOR> https://stadivm.com/threads/google-just-added-augmented-reality-walking-directions-into-maps-and-its-wild.184/ <comment><USER2> How do you gain access to this capability? I tried, couldn't find it.

<comment><USER3> I believe it's Yet to be rolled out. From [https://mashable.com/article/google-ar- maps/](https://mashable.com/article/google-ar-maps/) > WSJ claims the feature will roll out "soon" to a few Local Guides, but it will only become widely available when Google is "satisfied that it's ready," which will probably take a while. In the meantime, Maps users will have to make do with the traditional map view.</comment></comment>


Science fiction's dark star: Alfred Bester at 100 - <AUTHOR> http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christandpopculture/2013/12/science-fictions-dark-star-alfred-bester-at-100/ <comment><USER2> Bester is one of my favorite SF writers, and it's almost criminal how few people know about his work. In addition to The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination (the latter my all-time favorite SF novel), he also wrote probably the best science fiction short story ever written, "Fondly Fahrenheit". Bester was a master of plot, of wordplay, of action, of emotion, and his stories were so exciting you were left out of breath when you got to the end.

</comment><comment><USER3> They don't seem to get much love, but I really enjoyed his later novels Extro, also published under the name The Computer Connection, and The Deceivers.

I've always thought that The Stars My Destination would make an awesome movie but it has never been made for some reason.

<comment><USER4> The Computer Connection/Extro is a lot of fun, although it's quite a bit darker than his earlier novels. It's a pageturner; Bester's books always moved along at a fast, efficient pace, and pulled the reader along with him, but I think that book is the most extreme. Within the first couple of pages, the main character has already traveled back in time to 1770s London in an attempt to save Thomas Chatterton from dying (a favour to a friend, nicknamed H. G. Wells, who uses a time machine to transport gold back into the past in order to attempt to save impoverished artists and poet such as Mozart).

Stay away from his later novel Golem^100, though. It's a sad, often mean- spirited shadow of his best work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fun fact: The character Alfred Bester in B5 was named after this Alfred Bester.

<comment><USER6> The first time we hear his first-name is when his love-interest shows up, and I was dying on the floor laughing (which was somewhat inappropriate for the scene) and had to explain to my friend who Alfred Bester is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Coincidentally, I just this week threw away one of his short story collections. In an introduction to a story, he gleefully quoted a nasty song one of his friends had written about the Lindberg kidnapping. Classy fucker.

<comment><USER8> Did it happen to be this one, by any chance?

[http://wallpaperroses.tumblr.com/post/67148629666/frank- sina...](http://wallpaperroses.tumblr.com/post/67148629666/frank-sinatra-who- put-the-snatch-on-the)

I think our literature would be much less interesting and authentic if we required our authors to stay 'classy'!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bester was my introduction to science fiction. My father would tell me bedtime stories from "The Stars My Destination" long before I ever read them.

I remember sitting up in bed listening raptly to the scene where Foyle has his nemesis on an operating table, chest ripped open, kept alive on life support machines.

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.loa.org/sciencefiction/biographies/bester_writing...](http://www.loa.org/sciencefiction/biographies/bester_writings.jsp)

This link was in a HN thread some months(?) ago and I pinboarded it then. I keep _almost_ buying a Bester novel...</comment>


Ask HN: What was the name of the proto-IDE that used an Xbox controller? - <AUTHOR>

I think it was on the front page a while back; some awesome person's personal project, that used code folding and copy-paste, to help make programming more accessible for non-keyboardists.<p>I wanted to revisit it but I don't know what it is called anymore. Is there any chance you might know? Thanks! <comment><USER2> This?

<http://www.tiledtext.com/>

Youtube video:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=t...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tztmgCcZaM4)

And the original HN post:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5306155>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! Thank you - I've been searching for about an hour, and this is just awesome.</comment></comment>


Oracle Buys Vitrue - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/23/idUS128989+23-May-2012+MW20120523 <comment><USER2> Techcrunch is saying the purchase price was $300m - <http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/23/more/>

</comment><comment><USER3> The only way Oracle could ever be virtuous is to actually purchase Virtue.</comment>


Is Big Data an Economic Dud? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/sunday-review/is-big-data-an-economic-big-dud.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> Someone needs a lesson in the difference between correlation and causation.

</comment><comment><USER3> doubt it, people just aren't thinking about it right</comment>


Light – Learning in Interactive Games with Humans and Text - <AUTHOR> https://parl.ai/projects/light/ <comment><USER2> I'm very interested in this project, but I don't really understand the 'crowd sourcing' aspect. Is it hosted somewhere? How do you contribute back the new data? The paper shows some interface but it's not clear how to get it up and running?</comment>


Ask HN: What were your achievements this year? - <AUTHOR> Career, financial, relationships, learning, business, spiritual... What did you achieve that you're most happy about? <comment><USER2>
      Managed to allocate 4 hrs/week for a sport

      After 4 years of trail and errors finally launched a product that is generating revenue

Next year Goals

      continue the 4 hrs/week for a sport to sweat

      join a startup by first quarter

      restrict to 10-15 hrs/week for the current side product

      work on another side project

</comment><comment><USER3> Realized I didn't have to care about why my experience couldn't fit the narrative of someone else who had gone through a 'similar situation'.

Don't be judgy about someone else's experience, instead appreciate them sharing it with you. You don't have to add "I have experienced/understand that too" to every sentence from others. It's OK to not relate sometimes and understand that's why you are you, not x.

</comment><comment><USER4> \- Lose 14 kg \- Triple my savings \- Deliver one of the biggest project at work \- Rediscover other hobbies.

</comment><comment><USER5> Deployed solutions (for clients with different problems) on Azure,AWS and GCP.

Built a woodshed, currently stacked with 5 bush cords of hardwood for the woodstove.

Raised my rates twice.

Made double payments on my mortgage.

Started trout fishing again after a thirty year hiatus.

<comment><USER6> How much did you manage to raise your rates?

<comment><USER5> About 25% and 20%. Also structured time from individual hours to bigger time block commitments, and I invoice in advance rather than at the end of the month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Started writing macOS and iOS apps full-time and launched 4 apps for [https://mattebot.co](https://mattebot.co)

</comment><comment><USER8> Finished my master`s degree and found well-paid remote work :)</comment>


Cops Around the Country Can Now Unlock iPhones, Records Show - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbxxxd/unlock-iphone-ios11-graykey-grayshift-police <comment><USER2> Any know how this device works or gets around wiping the phone on 10 failed attempts?</comment>


Show HN: 5factsabout.me - <AUTHOR>

http://5factsabout.me
My recent project, using rails (mainly to get me acquainted with rails. Inspired by the threewords.me website.
What do you think? <comment><USER2> Looks pretty good. The layout is nice and clean. For some reason the "Hello there friend..." message seems a bit creepy, but it might just be me.

How long did it take you using Rails if I may ask?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say from initial idea to working concept. 2 weeks. Add in time for bugs + design.

Glad you like it. Had a bit of a rough start. Moral of this story. Always check every line of code. (And anons are a pain in the ass)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://5factsabout.me></comment>


We lead boring lives while hanging around people who lead interesting lives - <AUTHOR> http://www.wfu.edu/news/release/2007.05.21.b.php Well I've got bad news for you. I'm not that rich and I'm not that successful. But I have been around successful people. You see I'm a journalist. If you go to a stadium and you see the crowd doing the wave, there are some people who just sit there watching. Those people are journalists. We lead boring lives while hanging around people who lead interesting lives.
And I've observed a few things about the few really great people I've had a chance to meet and cover. First, they tend to have really big heads. As someone once said, what they have doesn't look like a head. It looks like a container for a head. They also can't sit still. They need to be around people. You and I require sleep. They require people
People who talk to the dead want to feel connection to this procession through the ages. They need to feel in their bones where they have come from, and what ultimately they will leave behind <comment><USER2> "Merely famous people have pictures of themselves on the wall. Really great people have pictures of dead people on the wall, and on their desks. It's one of the first things I look for when I go into somebody's office."

I think the point about connecting to the past is a good one. I'm not completely sure why, but great people and projects certainly seem to have a sense that they are connected to a long line of predecessors.

(Go Deacons!!)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Love this as well:

"Well I've got bad news for you. I'm not that rich and I'm not that successful. But I have been around successful people. You see I'm a journalist. If you go to a stadium and you see the crowd doing the wave, there are some people who just sit there watching. Those people are journalists. We lead boring lives while hanging around people who lead interesting lives.

And I've observed a few things about the few really great people I've had a chance to meet and cover. First, they tend to have really big heads. As someone once said, what they have doesn't look like a head. It looks like a container for a head. They also can't sit still. They need to be around people. You and I require sleep. They require people."</comment>


My Dream Phone – the iPhone-Lite - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kaseyb002/my-dream-phone-the-iphone-lite-31386f8ac66d <comment><USER2> I've been looking for a phone like this, but can't find one. A few tweaks I'd make though:

* Email is allowed, but no push notifications

* Anything that works with Android Auto or Apple Carplay should work _while the phone is connected to my car_. But only apps explicitly meant for use in the car. I'd actually prefer it if all other apps _don 't_ work in the car, since it's tempting to respond to a text while driving, even when I know it's dangerous.

* $5 for 15 minutes of browser is a bit steep. $1 going to charity for every 15 minutes I use my browser will mean a good amount of money going to charity, but will still keep me thoughtful in terms of how I use my phone</comment>


Show HN: Geo-Info – Fast and simple reverse geocoding - <AUTHOR> https://geo-info.co <comment><USER2> Sadly it's important to know where the data is coming from, and what the provider is doing with the data. Ease-of-use is great, but without more information about the company I personally won't use it.

<comment><USER3> Most likely OP is trying to make a small side income from an open data set. See their previous submissions with the same title</comment></comment>


Bloomberg Shits the Bed Again on Cybersecurity - <AUTHOR> https://daringfireball.net/2019/05/bloomberg_shits_the_bed_again_on_cybersecurity <comment><USER2> Agree. But bloomberg is communicating with an audience that has no idea what any of this means.

For an unsophisticated user the phrase "end-to-end encryption still not safe" is an accurate summary of what to expect when you pick up your android phone and message someone, while you happen to be the target of a three letter agency or hacking exploit.

<comment><USER3> A more accurate analogy is

Your friend drops a package for you in a mail box.

The package is delivered to your doorstep

A criminal steals it from your doorstep.

Therefore there was no reason for the usps mailbox to be secure.

Or:

A letter is dropped into your mailbox. A criminal breaks into it. Therefore there was no value in having a lock.

Etc, etc

 _that_ is how you explain it

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Gruber rants, fairly, about the changing headline. But then he creates a misleading headline of his own.

From Wikipedia: _Leonid Bershidsky ... is a Russian Berlin-based journalist and columnist for Bloomberg View, the editorial division of Bloomberg News._

This article appears in Bershidsky's column in the Opinion section of Bloomberg. IMO a more appropriate title would have been:

Bloomberg _Columnist_ ...</comment>


Ask HN: What does plasma propulsion engine fuel look like? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> you need gas plasma, and electric current and a lot of techknowhow

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

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_\(physics\))

at this point in the game it looks like a cylinder of compressed gas

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for pointing me in the right direction!</comment></comment>


Leaked documents point to cooperative European surveillance program - <AUTHOR> http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2013/1102/Europe-spies-too-Leaked-documents-point-to-cooperative-surveillance-program

<comment><USER2> Here's the original Guardian report: [http://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2013/nov/01/gchq-europe-s...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2013/nov/01/gchq-europe-spy-agencies-mass-surveillance-snowden)

Completely unsurprising, except for the sheer amount of hypocrisy of European governments who pretended to be shocked at the American reveals.

<comment><USER3> I called it recently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6564469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6564469)

and of course the reaction was denial & vitriol.

It bears repeating: the world's governments can be divided into exactly two groups -- those that are monitoring the internet, and those that are trying to. Vigilance must be applied to _all_ of them, not just some.

<comment><USER4> I don't think anyone is surprised that governments monitor the internet in some way, and would target individuals or organizations under suspicion. They would also cooperate with each other, see for example Interpol. The issue is collecting and storing information on the private actions of individuals for whom there is no reason to suspect an involvement in anything criminal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where in any of these articles does it state that they were expressly not storing information on the private actions of individuals for whom there is no reason to suspect an involvement in anything criminal?

<comment><USER4> >expressly not storing information

I'm not sure what you mean? It is now widely recognized that intelligence services were storing information on people who were not under any suspicion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How I raised $10M in venture capital - <AUTHOR> https://www.tristantoday.com/home/2019/3/31/how-i-raised-10m-in-venture-capital <comment><USER2> ok

<comment><AUTHOR> lol - i updated the title now</comment></comment>


Swarm is a CRDT-based replicated model library (M of MVC) - <AUTHOR> http://ppyr.us:8000/example/demo3/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> React is saying it's V of MVC and this library is interesting. And it works with React too.</comment>


Google didn't lead the self-driving vehicle revolution, John Deere did - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/06/22/google-didnt-lead-the-self-driving-vehicle-revolution-john-deere-did/ <comment><USER3> While I certainly agree that self-driving farm equipment is revolutionary, I'd argue that Google's technological advances are in the field of being able to understand how to drive on a road which marked for humans to drive on, and which is simultaneously in use by human drivers as well.

I'm sure that there are problems and issues which arise from navigating a field and manipulating whatever equipment you've got for whatever task you're working on that I'm just not fully appreciating. However, I really question if that task is anywhere near as complex as safely navigating traffic while obeying all the laws of the road when you can't even be sure of the state of the road you'll be travelling on.

It's just a totally different problem being solved. This is apples and oranges.

<comment><USER4> This smacks of "Apple didn't invent tablets, Microsoft did!!" kind of thinking.

Who cares who _invented_ it, especially if they were incapable of bringing the technology to the mass market themselves? The real heroes are those who make it useful for the mass market, not those who keep it on the 8th shelf in their "R&D Lab" or even those who manage to sell 10,000 units a year globally.

Also, as you say, there's a _big difference_ between "self-driving farm vehicles" and self-driving road cars, just like there' a big difference between an unusable 2h battery life and $2000 XP "tablet" from the 2000 compared to the 2010 iPad. In other words, there was been a lot more "invention" added to the iPad since the Microsoft tablets appeared as well.

<comment><USER5> Exactly, which is why people who claim that Apple invented tablets still deserve to be corrected.

<comment><USER6> That's OK, I'm sure when you delightfully correct people about this oversight, you don't skim over things like the Newton or the Palm Pilot, or the prop from 2001 that was hugely inspirational, and that you go into great detail about all the technical and usability differences between iPads and early-2000s tablet PCs. I'm sure you give fair and equal coverage to all of these topics when you are correcting people, since you seem to care about history and stuff. Just giving you the benefit of the doubt here.

<comment><USER7> I bought a Compaq TC1000 when I graduated highschool for $750~. It was one of the very first "Tablet" PCs. It received a LOT of very positive attention when I used it on campus in college. It was a great machine and was very usable even with limited OS support.

Microsoft had a marketing problem (they still do) and not a usability problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> DARPA jump-started the industry with their three autonomous vehicle competitions a decade ago. Most of the entrants were university mechanical engineering departments. No one came close to completing the first challenge. But they got pretty good by the third one. Google and the auto indutry continued funding thereafter.

<comment><USER9> The DARPA grand challenge was certainly a pivotal event, but I wouldn't say it jump-started the industry. The two biggest teams in the second race, from CMU and Stanford, were both spinoffs of the Field Robotics Center at CMU, which had been doing this for a long time:

[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tjochem/nhaa/Journal.html](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tjochem/nhaa/Journal.html) [http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript705.htm](http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript705.htm)

Disclosure: I was a grad student at CMU at the time, in the building, and saw a lot of this up close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> John Deere does not receive any credit for any innovations they may have made in the area of self driving vehicles until they acknowledge the right of vehicle owners to service their own machines and release all required documentation, source code, and diagnostic tools to facilitate this.

<comment><USER11> I have a hunch future retail self driving cars will have the same restrictions, unfortunately.

<comment><USER12> Who wants to actually own their own bare metal anymore? Why do you want to be tied to this specific server or car, this specific package of molecules?

The SPSD Car[1] will not be something that can be _owned_ by individuals. You can use your smartphone to request a pickup, which will be fulfilled by any of a number of nearby cars. You'll lease a license to be transported in one car, and the app will automatically transfer that license to the car that's fulfilling your trip.

Your Leased License to be Transported in a Car will only apply for the duration of the trip, and gives you no rights or responsibilities to the underlying vehicle.

[1] (Solar Powered Self Driving)

<comment><USER13> We are a long way from that. In a cab, its somebody's job to keep it clean and safe. An auto-car may arrive with dog droppings, vomit, trash in the back seat with slashed upholstery and condom wrappers. How is that going to be managed?

<comment><USER14> I think this isn't such a big issue. I use Car2Go all the time, never had any of those things in a car I drove.

<comment><USER13> Maybe its different when you're driving, vs chilling in the back of an auto- car for a half-hour with your sweety. I think young folks will be very creative filling the time.

<comment><USER12> I think you're obsessed with this one exception. So I'll state your concern outright: How do you prevent people from having sex in an auto-car?

Well, how do you prevent people from having sex in rental cars? First, people that can get a rental car usually can get more comfortable accommodations for other activities. Second, the rental car is only in the renter's control for a short duration, and that duration isn't cheap. Third, the rental agency will hold the renter responsible for any damages caused by this activity.

I'm sure that Zipcar, Car2Go, Enterprise, Avis, and others have solutions for these situations.

<comment><USER13> Its not that one thing - its a stand-in for the issue of idle folks in a private space, that they don't own or have responsibility for.

There's no other transportation option in existence that combines privacy and anonymity without the requirement to drive. Nookie is only the beginning of what idle folks will get up to.

Rental cars are not the same - we're supposed to be using auto-cars as an everyday thing, to get to work or school or shopping or anything really. Not just on a business trip.

Actually, I can think of one similar place where people have time on their hands in a private space - public restroom stalls. And look how wonderfully that works out for everybody.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd say Daimler and co. got there first:

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

Google has obviously taken taken that _a lot_ further (no driver reacting every 9km)

> "We kind of laugh when we see news stories about self-driving cars, because > we've had that for years," Poole said.

Yup, no wonder he is a farmer (to be fair: if you're running a tractor at 2 am you may well imagine there to be heavy traffic on the field...).

<comment><USER16> Daimler is also doing quite a bit with self driving trucks. I'd guess they have to be a leader in that domain. Admittedly they weren't really on my radar until the recent news about their tests in Nevada.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> From a layman perspective, it sounds much easier to automate a vehicle moving in a field, where you have a low chance of hitting a pedestrian or a cyclist.

<comment><USER18> To be fair, they also started working on the problem before Google even existed, with technology more primitive than Google's first servers.

<comment><USER19> Yes, I know of professors who were doing field trials of self-driving tractors 30 years ago, and I'm sure they weren't the first.

<comment><USER20> The mining industry has dreamed of self driving vehicles to replace humans in dangerous work conditions for ages.

<comment><USER21> Nothing new here : [http://mining.sandvik.com/en/products/equipment/mine- automat...](http://mining.sandvik.com/en/products/equipment/mine-automation- systems/equipment-automation)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Driving a car is a social exercise. The challenge is making something navigate through human chaos, not make it move.

Even the article itself hints that comparing the two is kind of stupid: "[...]where there are few pesky pedestrians or federal rules to get in the way." and then immediately proceeds laughing at the general population ignorance because farmers did it first.

I remember when I was a child, my father explained to me that depressing the right pedal makes the car go forward, the left one makes it stop and this round thing makes it turn. "WOW! Easy!" I exclaimed, "I know to drive now!" Yeah right.

Elevators are automated. Subways are automated. Even mother fucking planes can fly and land themselves (with the right equipment). Yup those giant flying monsters containing hundreds of human souls got automated before our cars.

But wait, Google is stupid because it didn't do it first.

EDIT: missing sentence

</comment><comment><USER23> How about we all just agree this is a click-bait article and we've all gone chomp on the hook.

I don't want to write 'who cares' but realistically neither John Deer or Google did. There were gifted individuals at both companies who wrote the code and developed the hardware and one day someone will write a book and it might be an interesting read.

To argue for JD or Google is just playing into the marketers hands.

/rant

</comment><comment><USER24> I think a lot of the commenters here are correct in pointing out that the problem John Deere have solved is very different from the problem that Google, Tesla, Uber are trying to solve.

That said, I think there is a "human acceptance" piece necessary for autonomous vehicles to be allowed on roads. A lot of people are going to fear, dislike, or be otherwise opposed to sharing the road with autonomous vehicles. A lot of people simply don't believe that it is possible for an autonomous vehicle to handle certain driving situations. To be able to point to tractors driving themselves around fields for the past X years is valuable in getting humans to accept robotic cars.

<comment><USER25> It's useful but I guess people will just raise that same reservation - <USER2> because they work in the field...blah blah blah.

My guess is that insurance will force people's hands in the switch. Most accidents on the road are due to human error (I assume, or rather had there not been human involvement the situation could have been avoided). Let's assume that self driving technology reaches the safety level that most of us here believe it will. Insurers, hedging against risk will have to financially penalise manual driving, since it will carry a much higher risk.

Hopefully that takes the irrational opposition out of the equation and let's the raw statistics take charge :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Self-driving tractors are incredibly dumb. They just follow a predefined path using GPS. Most don't even have any obstacle sensing. They probably should at least have a basic obstacle detection radar, but at present, they don't.

I saw the original John Deere differential GPS prototype tractor in use at Stanford many years ago. There used to be an empty field next to the Stanford horse barn where they tested. It's now a parking lot.

</comment><comment><USER18> This article is giving credit to a market leader, but I'm pretty sure there were a number of GPS technology companies and precision ag startups that were working on automating farm equipment first. John Deere has many times been a late adopter in terms of technology, waiting to see what pans out in the market, then relying on the penetration of their dealer network to distribute proven technologies to a much wider audience.

<comment><USER27> Yes, this a ridiculous PR puff-piece. JD saw something coming and got into the business along with a bunch of other companies. There are a lot of competing GPS technology companies that make products just as good if not better and sell well in the absence of the advantages that JD had from the start.

Hemisphere GNSS, whose (Outback) products I use, has a superior product in my opinion and started a few years before Deere got interested in the business at all.

<comment><USER18> Or just journalistic naivete and laziness of not thoroughly researching a sector. It looks like the author normally covers consumer technology, so she probably doesn't know much about the agriculture or GPS industries. I would give her the benefit of the doubt of not knowing (which in journalism isn't really an excuse), but either way it's bad journalism.

<comment><USER28> True of 99% of journalism, you know if you read articles about your field of expertise how wrong they are, they're just as wrong about everything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How about no.... Driving a tractor through a predetermined path in a predictable pattern is no where near the same as driving on our roads with human error and the like. Also I'm not about to get behind a company that won't let you service your own machinery.

</comment><comment><USER30> Instead of self-driving cars, I'd say focus on eliminating the need for "going somewhere"/vehicles in general. Would be so cool if we could just 'beam' in to work. 3D virtual presence. But hey, its not my money they're investing.

<comment><USER13> How about 3D bio-printing you at work? Oh but at the end of the day, do you get rid of the copy, or get rid of you? Could be some trouble either way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> John Deere didn't invent the technology though, Autonomous Solutions Inc. (ASI) did. They partnered in ~2000.

[http://www.asirobots.com/news/](http://www.asirobots.com/news/)

[http://www.asirobots.com/farming/](http://www.asirobots.com/farming/)

[http://www.asirobots.com/products/mobius/](http://www.asirobots.com/products/mobius/)

<comment><USER32> ASI were hardly the first, and Deere had their AutoTrac system before they started working with ASI.

> The Beeline Navigator was developed in 1993 by Australian engineer, Rob > Mailer. [1]

[1] [http://www.queenslandcountrylife.com.au/news/agriculture/mac...](http://www.queenslandcountrylife.com.au/news/agriculture/machinery/general- news/agsystems-beeline-to-world-sales/33130.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Comparing this tractor to a self-driving car is like calling someone an ace pilot even though they don't know how to take off or land.

</comment><comment><USER34> Spot-on but unimportant.

"Apple didn't lead the mobile device revolution. Blackberry did."

Technologies succeeding in the gauntlet of consumer electronics makes a bigger splash in public media---for obvious reasons---than those same technologies applied to the problems of specific trades.

</comment><comment><USER35> In the most recent user guide (2013), they talk about "mapping".

[https://stellarsupport.deere.com/en_US/support/pdf/om/en/PFP...](https://stellarsupport.deere.com/en_US/support/pdf/om/en/PFP13445_2630_userguide.pdf)

You can record a map with the GPS and replay it. It's a little bit like waypoints for drones.

There are other companies that make driverless tractors:

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

It also reminds me the machines in Interstellar (the indian drone that can fly 10 years and the tractor).

</comment><comment><USER36> Not actually. John Deer doest not build vehicles, he builds machinery.

John Deer machines work in a strict set of environments, and although they may be very sophisticated and react to a range of adverse situations, these situations are still much more predictable and the route much better known in advance than roads and streets.

If the autonomous vehicle problem were dealing with different roads, pavements and other pre-programmed vehicles, the self driving car would be a thing from the 80s, together with the robot car welder.

</comment><comment><USER37> Will someone who works at Amazon and reads HN please ask Jeff Bezos to tell the Washington Post to grow out of this smartass fake journalism? Most people are well aware that agribusiness depends heavily on automation. Most people are equally well aware that it's a lot easier to drive around a field when you are the only thing in it than to drive on a public road. That's why you only need a driving license for the latter case.

The entire article is one giant straw man fallacy.

<comment><USER38> > Most people are well aware that agribusiness depends heavily on automation.

While it doesn't necessarily invalidate your criticism, this couldn't be less true. Most people in the Washington Post's reader base have exactly zero awareness of agriculture, full stop. Food comes in a box they buy at the supermarket, and that's the extent of their knowledge. If they have any thoughts beyond that, it's probably either an understanding of farming they got from a quaint children's book, or some kind of poorly-reasoned Monsanto/GMO FUD they heard at a fashionable dinner party. The idea that they know what kind of ag equipment is on the market, what it does, how it works, or what it costs is ludicrous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Last time I checked I didn't see any farming in my local main street. Not sure to what extent technology from John Deere can be used for public vehicle. May be not much.

</comment><comment><USER40> What's especially laughable is the article's mention of robotic lawn mowers. I happen to have bought one today, and those things (although admittedly there are models that are more intelligent) just ride around randomly until they hit a hard object or the perimeter, which is signaled by a wire that is dug into the ground. An 'autonomous vehicle' this is not (or only for the most basic definition of the concept).

<comment><USER41> The way robotic lawn mowers work sounds awfully like the beginner LEGO Mondstorms projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is an apples to oranges comparison of technologies.

</comment><comment><USER43> >But another is pure necessity: There's a labor crunch in rural America - young people move to the cities, leaving the average age of U.S. farmers at 58, according to the Department of Agriculture. Similar forces are pushing self-driving tech into other industrial sectors at a pace that outstrips the consumer market. >

Oh sure, that's the reason. All the job seekers dried up.

</comment><comment><USER44> Many years ago, I dreamed of huge roadways with wi-fi embedded in the road. Cars would broadcast their destination and the network would adjust the speed of all cars to facilitate a smooth entry to the freeway and subsequent navigation.

Self-driving cars are really cool. However, if every car is trying to optimize for itself then traffic will still be an issue.

</comment><comment><USER45> Forgive my laziness, but the last time I did any long research about self- driving cars, I understood that the problem of night-time driving and driving in precipitation still hadn't been solved. Anyone know if this is still the case?

</comment><comment><USER46> It is more comparable to automated lawnmowers, than it is to selfdriving cars.

</comment><comment><USER47> So did any of Google Moon-shoots actually had ANY impact on society so far besides being a cool news story? It looks like most of their cool projects got to the point, where they stale and cannot move ahead.

</comment><comment><USER48> To be more clear, here's what JD equipment doesn't have to worry about that Google's does

\- Pedestrians

\- Other vehicles and obstacles (and automatically detecting them)

\- Roads

\- Traffic laws

JDs tractors are choreographed, it's not really 'self-driving'

<comment><USER49> Or even speed. What's the average speed of a tractor in exercise ? 15 mph ?[1] anticipation need, which was already pretty low in a field, gets even closer to zero.

[1] quick googling says some countries impose speed limit of 20mph but I don't know if it's on public roads and not private land. [http://www.fwi.co.uk/machinery/road-rules-for-tractors-in- th...](http://www.fwi.co.uk/machinery/road-rules-for-tractors-in-the-uk-and- europe.htm)

<comment><USER48> Probably on public roads, speed is lower when harvesting

<comment><USER49> So I fail to see what Deere did. A 10mph, pretty stable, on mostly flat (curved, but locally flat) land, with almost nothing of its size to interfere (won't a beef move away if a tractor aims at him ?), except avoiding the occasional tree .. I fail to see what problem they had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Self-driving tractor in 1978: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3xS3eIHzLk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3xS3eIHzLk)

</comment><comment><USER51> Sure, but none of the engineers who work for John Deere would ever be allowed to publish their developments, nor would they get any public recognition for them.

</comment><comment><USER52> Time to buy $DE</comment>