Why geeks need to learn how to delegate - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/03/25/a-lesson-from-richard-branson-why-geeks-need-to-learn-how-to-delegate/ <comment><USER2> When you have a particular task at hand, and you also have someone available who you trust can do that task better than you can, delegation is easy.

Sure, there's a minor jolt to letting anything go, but it's a no-brainer.

Harder: delegating a task you don't understand well, to someone you aren't sure you can trust to handle it well (whatever they claim). This one's stressful, and sometimes you'll screw it up, but your hand is forced; you can't do it yourself.

Hardest: delegating a task you understand well and could _knock out of the park_ (if you had the time) to someone you're fairly sure will have to battle with it.

The insidious aspect of that last one is that you're likely to overestimate how well you'd do the task, and underestimate how the other person will do (as well as the benefits to you and your company if _they_ do it).

You're still up at the high level, for one thing (not down in the dirty details where the complexities turn up...). But secondly, if you're the only one in the company who has done X-difficult-task before, think about that for a second.

Wouldn't you like to have _two_ people in your company who've done X-difficult-thing before? And how did _you_ end up doing it the first time? (Was it a disaster? Probably not.)

If you're surrounding yourself with talented people, there are huge benefits in letting them do as much of the "hard stuff" as possible (you're transforming them into better people through experience).

Still hard as hell to let go, though.

<comment><USER3> > If you're surrounding yourself with talented people

In certain contexts, Yours Truly isn't the one doing the surrounding, so that's a pretty major assumption to make. Any tips for delegating to merely- proficient people?

<comment><USER4> For those, the mental model I'd suggest using would be "mentoring" rather than "delegation". Details vary greatly depending on the people (mentor and, err, mentee?), of course, but check in frequently and expect to spend some time talking through some of the hairier details. Hopefully you'll still spend significantly less time on the task, take only a minor quality penalty, and create a stronger team member as a result. Of course, flip all three of those and that's what can go wrong, too. :)

<comment><USER5> The initial process of mentoring takes considerably more time and effort than doing it yourself, and it can feel like a waste of time if the "merely proficient" never reach the level of competence you have.

It may be the best thing to do under the circumstances, but it's _hard_ , especially if you are a geek who has spend most of his live doing stuff rather than delegating the doing part.

<comment><USER4> "The initial process of mentoring takes considerably more time and effort than doing it yourself,"

Well, I suppose I can't honestly say "you're doing it wrong", but I can say "you're doing it differently than me". But then, even when I'm mentoring I tend to expect that I'm mentoring someone who fundamentally wants to know, and is willing to put time in to learning whatever it is on their own, and I'm just coming in every so often and saving time on pointing them to the next place to go. I am lucky enough to be in a position where I can essentially count on that, and thus "mentoring" != "hand holding".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article doesn't answer the question put forth in its title. Why DO geeks need to learn how to delegate?

This is a very common behavior used by people who want to distance themselves from technical work. They pick something technical roles don't do and don't have any control over, and then make broad generalizing statements about how technical roles are bad at it (implying that the author is in his or her position because they are good at it). For instance most geeks are in front- line technical roles as individual contributors and don't have anyone to delegate to. It's like a battlefield lieutenant, scared of being sent to the front line and getting shot, proclaiming 'soldiers should learn to simply delegate combat duty.' Dishonest and smug.

</comment><comment><USER7> A 'geek', being someone who solves problems and therefore does actual work, is a member of the working class.

The middle manager, equivalent to a slave overseer, has a different skillset related to the manipulation and control of personnel, that takes time and practice to develop.

In order for a technical worker to 'learn to delegate', i.e., adopt the ownership mentality and become a member of that class, he must make both a moral adjustment and learn a whole new set of personal manipulation and politicking skills.

But before that is even possible he must gain enough capital to purchase the workers.

Perhaps the secret to gaining capital is simply to appear as if one is already a member of the ownership class, whether that is really true or not.

<comment><USER8> Did you time travel from communist Russia?

<comment><USER7> Welcome to the Dawn of a New Day in Americka. In New Americka, Communism Comes To You.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07REkvATHb8>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To bad most entry level managers are really just team leads with supervisor responsibilities. In the past I have had to spend a considerable amount of time getting the team far enough ahead of the day to day minitua so we can focus on more long term strategy. When I fight piddly day to day problems I feel like a supervisor, when I get to focus the team on long term I feel like a manager. I wish I could spend more time as a manager/leader but most businesses have it honed to a science to give you what feels like less resources than the bare minimum, so to step out of that comfort zone and hand off a risky technical problem to a junior employee that is most likely going to fail and make you more behind is very very tough, but I am improving.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great article. It is really important to learn to delegate.

The other side is making great team where people share common interest to make great/best product or service.

I read it and remembered the situation when I got division and delegated work to other people. It was a great experience and lesson.

P.S. Good lecture pointing about similar problem can be found here named "Managing people, managing teams": [http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/building-a- business/id38...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/building-a- business/id381702699)

</comment><comment><USER11> linkbait. the author talks about himself the whole time with a single sentence about richard branson, pasted below in its entirety:

He talked about how entrepreneurs need to own the vision of the company and learn to delegate</comment>


What's the future for the .tel domain name? - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/02/whats-the-future-for-the-tel-domain-name/ <comment><USER2> I was one of those 256k early adopters. I found that there just wasn't that much demand for a site listing my contact info. Everybody just added me to their address book after calling or emailing me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, same here.</comment></comment>


Device Distribution For A Universal iOS App - <AUTHOR> http://stuartkhall.com/posts/device-distribution-for-a-universal-ios-app

<comment><USER2> Wow. Looking at that data, you can see that devices with mobile internet accounts for 77% of the total usage. Of these 77% only 10% comes from CDMA- based devices. I pictured the CDMA share would be much higher.

At this rate we'll be rid of CDMA in just a few years time and finally we can have one, world-wide, standardized GSM network with none of the carrier- shenanigans, due to the customer mobility that GSM brings.

When the time comes, that'll be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm surprised by the large skew towards CDMA vs GSM for iPhone 5 devices. Verizon winning converts from AT&T?

<comment><USER4> No, Verizon, AT&T and Sprint all broke out iPhone sales in their recent quarterly reports. Verizon + Sprint didn't outsell AT&T on total iPhones, so it would make no sense for them to be winning iPhone 5 converts fast enough to create this sort of version skew. Instead, I think we're seeing an artifact of how the models are reported.

If you look at Apple's iPhone 5 specification page ( <http://support.apple.com/kb/SP655> ), you'll see that the CDMA iPhone 5 and the non-US GSM iPhone 5 have the same model number. That says to me that they are probably reported together in this sort of device breakdown (and may well even be almost the same phone under-the-covers modulo some configuration bits). In other words, the iPhone 5 on almost everyone but AT&T is massively outselling the iPhone 5 on AT&T, which seems much more reasonable.

<comment><USER5> There are two model numbers; you are confused by that breakdown as both models cover basic GSM: the difference is only in the LTE bands that each device supports.

<comment><USER4> On Apple's spec page I'm seeing "CDMA model A1429" and "GSM model A1429" (vs "GSM model A1428" for AT&T). I'll agree that the first two are different model names, but they look like the same model number ("A1429") to me. That's why I suspect the differences between the two devices are smaller than we might ordinarily expect (possibly including smaller identification differences).

Do the two A1429 models actually show up differently in this sort of breakdown (presumably with "GSM model A1429" as iPhone 5,3)?

<comment><USER5> You win this round (edit: maybe). I thought there were only two models:

1) A1429: Verizon. supports GSM (basic), CDMA (basic + LTE)

2) A1428: AT&T. supports GSM (basic), GSM (LTE)

However, there really are three. (edit: Or not. I've been asking around and there are mixed opinions. We generally care deeply, being those crazy jailbreak people, but we haven't gotten to that stage on the 5 yet.)

I can then say that there are only two device names: iPhone5,1 and iPhone5,2, so yeah: normal ways to differentiate them won't work, you'd have to do something special.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's a lot of retina.</comment>


Palo Alto Hacker News? - <AUTHOR>

Would any founders, entrepreneurs, engineers etc. be interested to have a Palo Alto HN 'meetup'? Or perhaps there already is an active one I don't know about?<p>Seems like there should be a big HN community here. <comment><AUTHOR> I created a Meetup, let's see how it goes :)

[http://www.meetup.com/Palo-Alto-Hacker-News- Meetup/events/16...](http://www.meetup.com/Palo-Alto-Hacker-News- Meetup/events/160483142/)

If there's some other time / venue that works better, let me know. Perhaps I should repost in a separate thread.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'd be game, and don't already know of one.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd be game</comment>


A note on the martyrdom of Aaron Swartz - <AUTHOR> http://www.deseret-tech.com/journal/a-note-on-the-martyrdom-of-aaron-swartz/

<comment><USER2> Aaron isn't the first person whose life and untimely death has been a fillip to a cause.

Aaron's story today has 3 strands.

1) Depression and suicide, and the improvements in mental health that can be achieved

2) Judicial over reach and lawyers being bullies vs doing their jobs by going to the limits

3) The state of affairs with copy right law and the causes which Aaron himself fought for

Each strand has been taken up and defended, and of course not all of them can be done at once.

As far as I can tell, this topic is being taken up and handled better than it usually would be, when it would get spun into a political talking point without reflection on the events and their triggers.

I suspect that there are some sites and articles which lean to one angle or the other, but this must always be the case. Such is life.

Do note - the most recent article landing up on HN (the Slate article) has been a great example of Good Journalism, and it let the readers (largely) draw their own conclusions

Maybe there are other vastly biased articles, which I have missed.

\----

The poster isn't quite accurate on how someone contemplating suicide thinks.

> There's an obvious connection here. If we want to stop people from killing > either each other or themselves, we shouldn't martyrize people who > distribute death, whether to self or others. Despite external pressures, > Aaron Swartz holds the ultimate responsibility for what he did.

Someone who intends to see suicide through, is NOT looking for attention or to be made a Martyr.

I am pretty sure that this has been discussed on HN. Others have taken this view, and fortunately people with an understanding of the factors behind suicide have commented how this isn't how it works.

The line "Suicide is a cop out" comes to mind, and its dangerous impact on driving people away from help has been mentioned.

The Human body is a vast complicated machine which is designed to do everything in its power to survive.

When its pushed to a level of compromised programming to the extent that it actively plans to end itself, a comment like that utterly mis reads whats going on, and does vastly more harm than good.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't like the use of the word Martyrdom here. Although there are quite a few definitions of the word, in general it means someone killed themselves to send a message or prove a point. I very much doubt Aaron killed himself to be a martyr, but largely because he was depressed (in the clinical meaning) and couldn't see a way out or a future.

<comment><AUTHOR> Then what's with the outrage? If his death was merely a symptom of clinical depression, why all this unrelated activism in his name? It's not like a big fund for the Depressed Peoples' Support Group was set up, we're trying to get his prosecutors fired.

<comment><USER3> That he he was forced into that position is what outrages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depression took Aaron Schwartz's life. Others then took the anger at the obvioous waste of a life and directed it at prosecutors, or turned the anger into momentum for the causes which he held dear in his life.

He did not choose to take his life in order to promote his causes. I know you did not say that. But you did say the next will. But the next talented young person who will take their life will not do so for a desire for martyrdom either - depression will take their lives. Just as it did for Aaron

So if you are one of the OPs talented famous people, talk to someone - you, like Aaron, are more good to us alive than dead.

</comment><comment><USER5> Two things: It's a but late for this. Second, I don't think the world works that way. We like to think that public pleas for individuals to abstain from voluntary action are effective, but it doesn't seem likely.

Consider that the number of people reading the web is in the millions to billions. Even if that message made it to all of them, there is very little chance that it will do much to deter the 50 or so people who choose to write something up and the several thousand who upvote those write-ups. The spread is too wide and there are enough people who are likely to consider the issues around his suicide more important than something as diffuse and hypothetical as copycats.

TL;DR 6 billion people don't act like a village.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not that people shouldn't talk about the issues around it, really, it's just that they shouldn't make him a martyr. Every post is about the righteousness of Swartz and the big mean bullies who made him kill himself. Very few place any culpability or responsibility on him. He's getting a treatment normally reserved for victims of aberrant crimes, what with the law getting his name on it and everything.

Talking about Aaron Swartz and how and why he died is fine. Doing it sanctimoniously and refusing to recognize any personal responsibility Swartz may rightly hold, which is the vibe of most articles I've seen, is effectively idolizing Swartz as a martyr, and that kind of religious exercise isn't productive for this case imo. It communicates to others that if they have a minor platform and are well-liked, they can be martyred too.

Also, I don't seriously expect people to stop writing about it because of this. Just a thing that's been bothering me, and thought it may provoke some interesting discussion.

<comment><USER5> It's human nature. People have done this for millennia and I think that they always will. That's why I don't get upset about it. I don't expect anything different from human beings. This is the way we act in aggregate.

Fight the battles you can win.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's absurd. People are fetishizing someone who did nothing but kill himself. People need to get over his needless sacrifice and realize that the "onerous plea bargain" was merely six months in prison.

Or were we supposed to engage in a witchhunt against some prosecutor? I forget what we're supposed to do for "justice".

<comment><USER7> As I understand it, being branded a felon in the U.S is a big deal... you essentially lose a bunch of 'rights' that you have as a citizen. This dominos on to making it harder to find jobs, places to live, loans... etc.

You could argue someone with Swartz status in the community would alleviate some of those things... but I'm not sure how far that goes.

<comment><USER8> One of the founders of YCombinator was convicted of a felony under the CFAA. In addition to having made enough money with pg to do that sort of thing, he's also an (excellent) professor at MIT.

A felony conviction sucks, but it's not a huge price to pay if you're serious about changing the world (or think you'll probably lose at trial).</comment></comment></comment>


In Praise of Theory in Design Research: How Lévi-Strauss Redefined Workflow - <AUTHOR> https://www.epicpeople.org/theory-in-design-research/ <comment><AUTHOR> The idea of workflows supported by "simple, atomic tools they can understand independently and also provide them with affordances to combine together" resonates with the Unix philosophy of tools that "do one thing, and do it well".

To me it seems that developers understand the value in that proposition, but are unable to incorporate it at the application level when they build tools for others. We are able to do it at the platform level, but using platforms requires understanding programming languages.

I miss the concept of components that end-users can recombine to define their own workflows. Some time ago there was this craze about widgets on the desktop and web, but it didn't materialize beyond some mostly read-only or single- action components that didn't really combine well with each other.</comment>


How devs should respond: Memory allocation for very large element sizes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/RaftLib/RaftLib/issues/60 <comment><AUTHOR> Found this after reading the tastes paper on front page. It's the most fabulously long and complete GitHub issues post I've ever seen, almost a blog post in and of itself. I can definitely appreciate the details in the allocation process the authors of RaftLib have implemented after reading this. I've never seen garbage collection implemented in a dataflow framework before..actually, haven't seen that many actual dataflow/channels implementations for C++...they typically die out quickly. Definitely going to check this out more.</comment>


F-Droid (Android FOSS Repository) - <AUTHOR> https://f-droid.org/

<comment><USER2> Wow, high time for this!

[https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/Build_Server_Setup](https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/Build_Server_Setup) seems to have some clues on the automated build system.</comment>


Dotcloud Is Shutting Down on February 29 - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/22/dotcloud-the-cloud-service-that-gave-birth-to-docker-is-shutting-down-on-february-29/ <comment><USER2> Yea to be clear. This article is kind of written horribly and the title is click-bait. Everyone who follows Docker should know that Dotcloud used to be the name of Docker.

However, as the article explained horribly, many like my self didn't know they sold their PaaS service where they originally developed Docker to another company.

The original dotCloud (aka. Docker) is still fine. Is not going bankrupt or shutting down. The owners of the service they originally built is going down.

<comment><USER3> I take your point, though in fairness many who follow Docker will have noted the sale at the time as it was all over HN etc. Followed not all that long after by the acquisition of Tutum interestingly, getting them right back into the PaaS space again.

<comment><USER2> Ah, and the plot thickens. Yea, I just wished the article had made it clear in first few sentences which company we were talking about and what was going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Somewhat sad to hear it. When I was working on my startup, we got our start on Dotcloud. We ended up migrating mid-stream to Heroku, which was more expensive but ultimately better designed and faster at progressing.

But it's been gratifying to see that the original team found a very potent niche in containerization. It's kind of funny that Docker is now probably the hotter of the two companies.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sort of like when Pantera stopped being Glam Metal. RIP an era which got replaced by something much better!

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought DotCloud renamed itself to Docker, and completely pivoted? I guess not

<comment><USER7> They did. It was in the article.

> ... dotCloud the startup pivoted to focus on Docker and changed its name to > Docker as well. Then, in August 2014, Docker sold dotCloud to cloudControl.

<comment><USER8> Yep ... but I wouldn't say it's a YC graduate shutting down. A company that bought a "product line" from them is shutting down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> is PaaS dead? > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10894624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10894624)

<comment><USER10> PaaS at a loss maybe

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm sure I'm not the only person that had to check the year and make sure that there _was_ a February 29th this year, and that this wasn't some sort of early April Fools joke.</comment>


Why We Chose API First Development at Our Startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pop.co/post/67465239611/why-we-chose-api-first-development <comment><USER2> I find the biggest win about API first development is it forces discipline upon you. I find I can get most of the benefits if I code in a disciplined fashion. It's usually not easy though.

In many ways, I find API first development most useful in languages such as python, which lacks the idea of an interface. Similarly, I find interfaces not much more than yet another tool that forces discipline upon you.

It seems like as we develop these abstractions which increasingly force more discipline upon us we forget that classes and functions are supposed to be abstractions themselves. We are supposed to be relying on the interface of those classes and functions, not the actual implementations, even if the class itself doesn't use the interface keyword.

One of the oft maligned issues of c++ is the .h file. I rather like them though. They're a constant reminder that "this is all you should know". It becomes obvious when you add cruft onto it because you don't have that cruft obscured by hundreds of lines of implementation. It's much more difficult to notice it in languages where the implementation of a class or module is present alongside its interface.

<comment><USER3> Yep I agree. APIs are often much easier to test as well. Proper testing is part of being disciplined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the past 6 months, at the urging of my friend Dave (sup!), who suggested this style of development, it's all I've done, even for small personal projects. I sort of take it further, eschewing frameworks somewhat, relying on libraries around actual "Business Logic" to deliver stuff as needed to outside clients.

It's been an eye opener. Sometimes it requires a little more upfront thought, but I end up with a much more maintainable project at the end of it. TDD is your new best friend if you go down this road, and the best part is: it's easier to do test driven development when things are nicely separated like this!

It's basically SRP writ large, and something tells me it's another one of those "ideas" that the grey-beards learned a long time ago that we are only re-learning now. Although REST does kick the crap out of SOAP...

<comment><USER5> Two problems:

1) Search engine indexing is broken with client-side rendering

2) Page takes longer to load, and so you will want some server-side rendering to take place (even if to seed your initial models, so they don't have to call back immediately).

<comment><USER6> _1) Search engine indexing is broken with client-side rendering_

There is no rule stating that an API must be consumed client-side, and obviously a great many can't be (depending on how auth is set up, etc). For projects where SEO matters but where an API will also be useful (or if you've just gotten into the habit of building user-facing bits around an API) you can render everything server-side, or first loads server-side and subsequent loads client-side. Airbnb's Rendr ([https://github.com/airbnb/rendr](https://github.com/airbnb/rendr)) is neat for this, although there are a million other ways to do it.

If you combine this approach with something like CouchDB, your API can basically just be your DB interface and you can focus on building the user- facing bits.

EDIT: Sorry, everyone wrote the same thing at the same time :)

<comment><USER5> >There is no rule stating that an API must be consumed client-side, and obviously a great many can't be

I wrote several responses to this but here's another one, if the server is serving rendered HTML to the client, how is that API-first development?

I'm not disputing the merits of this approach, I'm just wondering what we're arguing for here.

<comment><USER7> You develop a backend--a piece of software, running on your servers--with an API as its interface. Then you develop a frontend--another piece of software, running on your servers--that consumes that API, and has HTML as its interface. These are two separate projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I did this when I first started writing REST APIs. It felt natural and the "right" way to do it. However, it didn't scale well.

And I'm not talking about website scalability with traffic.

It eventually made development more difficult than it was worth. For example, doing things like enabling/disabling an object is a whole API call rather than a simple UPDATE statement. Either you have to set up an API endpoint to handle toggling the status of that object, or you have to send a whole (sparse) request just to flip a flag. Stuff like that can be tedious.

I love REST APIs and I loved what they have done for the web, but I've changed my mind over the last few months that this separation of design is always necessary.

<comment><USER9> The other mistake that I've seen people make is to try to build their application completely on top of a public API. Sometimes you want to do things in your application that, either for security or scaling reasons, you don't want someone consuming the public API to be able to do (bulk operations, administrative functions, cross-account updates, etc).

You either need private API functions or you need to allow actions that aren't triggered by an API call.

<comment><USER10> Our public API is a front end for our other services with auth added on and better guarantees against breaking. We don't depend on it directly for anything public facing and I wouldn't suggest anyone completely rely the same API they offer partners/openly to avoid getting into a tough spot with managing changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> REST APIs are nice, right up to the point you need a transaction... three things need to happen in the correct order, and all succeed or are rolled back. If the API is too granular, then you end up pushing this logic to the client, and that turns into a disaster.

I'd personally rather go back and extract the smallest possible functional API, rather than build a massive API upfront. You don't really know where the transaction boundaries are as you are developing, and it is easy to expose an API that not really possible.

<comment><USER10> The way we handle this (we have 18 internal services) is that processes requiring transactions are formalized into a endpoint/resource. The actual transaction becomes tangible (e.g. you can cancel them by DELETE-ing on the resource) instead of just being documented. Only logic the client needs is the data to kick off the process. Async or long-running processes get a little tricker, but polling or webhook callbacks work fine for us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You missed another benefit towards API first development: it makes it much easier to get a head start on mobile development as you can reuse many of your endpoints for common operations.

<comment><AUTHOR> You bring up a great point. I didn't cover mobile development specifically as we hadn't had a use case for a mobile app yet as the site is full responsive. I opted for more of a blanketed statement in the section on "Developer Liberation" as to how the API covers all client bases equally well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love this development and it's something I fight to try to get places that I work to adopt. Building your service through the eyes of a client gives so much clarity about both the what and the how. It pairs really nicely with TDD as well. You also end up getting an API for free out of it and have an easy transition to Service Oriented Architecture if you so choose.

</comment><comment><USER14> I thought all modern web/mobile apps were architected this way? Is this novel information?

</comment><comment><USER15> How do you handle authentication and sessions? Just curious on the approach you took.

<comment><AUTHOR> We use CORS, which unfortunately is more of a headache than it's worth and lacks IE <10 support. Our backend proxies and handles session management via a secure, hashed cookie helper library which maintains expirys among other things. We take advantage of shared cookies on a global cookie domain . There's some ugly handling for IE10 regarding CORS and how it handles cookies which I won't get into. Authentication state is managed via the session, which we actually query our backend for on page requests. It's a bit of overhead to have to always be querying for the user/auth object to check login status, but it's easily cacheable (and bustable).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This approach is very attractive to developers because it makes things so neat and tidy and perfect, but there are two problems that you quickly run into:

1) Search engines can't index your page properly. If you rely on this to drive traffic, you'll have a problem

2) Your page takes a longer load (even more noticeable on mobile), so you will inevitably move some work back to server, whether to render some or all parts of the page, or seed your initial models with current values so that they don't have to immediately call back.

<comment><USER16> 1\. Not really true nowadays. Google can trawl Javascript sites. Other search engines may be able to as well.

2\. Initial page load will be slightly higher (and subsequent pages will be much faster) but I can't imagine it'll be too noticeable. People get away with a lot - even on mobile - loading numerous JS libraries, tonnes of CSS, etc. As long as you go easy in other regards, this shouldn't be a problem.

There's no reason that API driven design has to involve client-side rendering. You can always consume your API on the backend and render on the server.

<comment><USER5> >There's no reason that API driven design has to involve client-side rendering. You can always consume your API on the backend and render on the server.

I'll give you that I suppose, though I understand it as a lightweight server, and heavier client. On the other hand, splitting up your components into API and page-rendering servers (in addition to your database, caching, messaging servers and your reverse proxies and load-balancers) complicates your deployment and maintenance and you pay for that - so it isn't quite the panacea and now you really have to decide whether it makes sense to go down that route, that early.

<comment><USER16> It's not really any more or less complicated than doing it on the client-side, especially if you use something like Her ([https://github.com/remiprev/her](https://github.com/remiprev/her)). It's definitely more complicated than just using a database though - whichever way you do it. It's the other advantages that it brings that makes it potentially worth doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Are there some go to standards for API design that are followed?

<comment><USER18> I use the following sources as standards:

\- Vinay Sahni's Best Practices for Designing a Pragmatic RESTful API: [http://www.vinaysahni.com/best-practices-for-a-pragmatic- res...](http://www.vinaysahni.com/best-practices-for-a-pragmatic-restful-api)

\- HN discussion on Vinay's post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5819231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5819231)

\- Twitter's Error Codes & Responses: [https://dev.twitter.com/docs/error- codes-responses](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/error-codes-responses)

<comment><USER10> If I can throw my own in: [http://john-sheehan.com/blog/dont-build-the-best- rest-api-bu...](http://john-sheehan.com/blog/dont-build-the-best-rest-api- build-the-best-http-api)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A "How We Developed POP.co Following the API Driven Development Approach" would find a lot of people quite interested too, I think.

</comment><comment><USER20> Perfect timing!! I was looking for it. Do you know any opensource or free tool that can generate the commented code + API Documentation required, from the API spec?

Only found: [http://apiary.io/](http://apiary.io/) but it doesn't generate any code.

</comment><comment><USER21> This merely sounds like they're adhering to the buzzword of the year 2008 - SOA. I'm I wrong? (Not that there's anything wrong in that, just nothing new)

<comment><USER10> It's a lighter weight form of the same idea. SOA had a lot of great benefits for its time. This revision of those ideas also has a lot of merit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if API first approach is suitable for all type of app. Is there anyone taking this approach for a CMS site, a eCommerce site or a stock trading site?

</comment><comment><USER23> Great initiative, I personally prefer to refer to this as "Eat your own sh*t".

</comment><comment><USER24> How do you handle authentication?

<comment><AUTHOR> Vaguely answered here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6763221](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6763221)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'll just leave this here:

CLIFMO: CLI's First, Maybe Only

life will be better. trust me. it's a beautiful thing.

(Also a big fan of RDD or README Driven Development. I didn't coin that term but I was doing it long before I finally heard somebody coin it. RDD and CLIFMO FTW. I have only a love/hate relationship for TDD, in comparison -- it's a mixed bag, advantages and disadvantages, awesome and terrible, depending -- but only pure love for RDD and CLIFMO.)

<comment><USER26> Our entire software deployment system across all of our servers is built on systems built on systems built on a command-line tool I wrote in my first month.

It's really useful because anything that you can do from our deployment panel you can do by hand by logging into the server (and actually, even more stuff which isn't exposed).

The one thing I haven't gotten around to doing is revamping the tool to properly support JSON output for all commands. It might require a new logging module to handle errors though…

<comment><USER25> nice! that sounds like CLIFMO to me. yeah it's amazing how much easier it makes so many things. development-wise it yields so many freebies that pay off later.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best way to build a data collection pipeline? - <AUTHOR> I'm building a predictive analytics SaaS tool. I need to collect a massive amount of data coming from my own customers. Do you have some good advice or know any useful API product to seamlessly collect event data? <comment><USER2> Bistro Streams is an open source light-weight stream analytics engine: [https://github.com/asavinov/bistro](https://github.com/asavinov/bistro)

It is a general-purpose and highly configurable data processing engine which can be applied to many workloads and scenarios including data integration, data migration, ETL, big data processing etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Snowplow open source or managed solution ($$$) - give it a look. [http://www.snowplowanalytics.com](http://www.snowplowanalytics.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> Kafka is probably the best option in this case.</comment>


The heart still bleeds - <AUTHOR> https://vagn.es/post/the-heart-still-bleeds/ <comment><USER2> "Incomplete auditing of the code for bugs caused Heartbleed."

Code audits of C code bases can not find all vulnerabilities, this seems to put way too much hope into code audits.

There are also obviously many circumstances that conspired to create this vulnerability, and it could be prevented in many ways.</comment>


How to crack my software and add a back door - <AUTHOR> http://blog.strategiccyber.com/2013/09/05/how-to-crack-cobalt-strike-and-backdoor-it/

<comment><USER2> This is satire, right?

"A plaintext file requires a special tool, called a text editor, to change its content."

"I recommend notepad.exe or pico. Linux hackers may use WINE to run notepad.exe." [rofl]

EDIT: I think it's just the author's sense of humor, not actually satire.

<comment><USER3> Correct. Tongue was planted firmly in cheek of the authour when he wrote this. It's great.

<comment><USER4> lol, not just wrote it but did it. The screenshot at the end is Notepad in Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's an interesting anti-pirating technique... Demonstrate how to crack your own licensing, while at the same time adding a backdoor to make users conflate the two. Obviously, all cracked versions of his software have backdoors in them...

Except his attack is valid against all unsigned binaries... even his own. He could be distributing a backdoor and not even be aware of it...

<comment><AUTHOR> My startup creates software for use in penetration tests and red team assessments. I distribute backdoors and I'm quite aware of it. :)

I wrote this post to show how to use my software to backdoor a pirated copy of my software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's brilliant. Make it as easy as possible for "cracked" versions of your product to contain malicious back doors, thus encouraging people to avoid the cracked copies and pay for a properly licensed one.

<comment><USER7> Nope... If his target audience was supposed to be average consumer then may be this will be an interesting move. But looks like his target audience is sufficiently sophisticated users. Those people will now realize that it is actually much easier to crack the trial software by themselves instead of getting from elsewhere. BTW, this software cost couple of grands PER user PER year. However I remain to be skeptical who wants this thing because (1) it requires social engineering and (2) there are much better and powerful and safer open source alternatives to run exploits.

<comment><AUTHOR> (1) Social engineering is a key component of several high profile intrusions that happen today. The best way to help an organization understand their ability to detect, mitigate, and/or contain this type of attack is to do it.

[https://www.google.com/#q=phishing&tbm=nws](https://www.google.com/#q=phishing&tbm=nws)

(1a) Statements, such as "it requires social engineering" [it's not a valid vector] represent a dated understanding of hacker tactics and part of my work is to help folks with your view move their understanding forward. Usually the conversation is not a response to an adversarial comment like yours.

Here are a few talks/papers that I recommend:

[http://blog.strategiccyber.com/2012/12/19/hacking-like- apt/](http://blog.strategiccyber.com/2012/12/19/hacking-like-apt/)

(2) Cobalt Strike builds on something called the Metasploit Framework. The Metasploit Framework is the largest open source collection of safe exploits. My product addresses gaps in this kit for executing attacks that mimic those high profile intrusions mentioned a moment ago. A successful operation requires more than an email with something bad attached.

[http://blog.strategiccyber.com/2013/01/14/tactics-to-hack- an...](http://blog.strategiccyber.com/2013/01/14/tactics-to-hack-an- enterprise-network/)

(2a) Cobalt Strike's open source little sister is Armitage. A popular user interface and collaboration tool for the aforementioned "better and powerful and safer open source alternative to run exploits". I'm the developer of Armitage as well.

[http://www.fastandeasyhacking.com/](http://www.fastandeasyhacking.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is really funny - but the content shows the author's dedication to teaching (and learning) penetration techniques, even when it involves his own software. I would imagine that losing potential customers isn't a concern because the kind of people buying this software (generally) wouldn't run pirated versions. So instead, it makes a cool demo. Very cool, raffi.

</comment><comment><USER9> Good means of exercising damage control...

"The cracked versions are backdoored! Use official release to be safe."

<comment><USER10> Or "The cracked versions are backdoored! Use the official trial and crack it using the method I supplied to be safe", if you can't afford the hefty $2500 price tag due to not being a professional hacker/pentester.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've actually wondered if the cracked versions of Photoshop tend to have backdoors... and with the recent articles on the NSA, if the NSA itself is trying to put out the most popular cracked versions. I mean, if there's a single piece of software that is more pirated, I don't know what it is. They probably have more sophisticated ways, but you never know.

<comment><USER12> Why bother with applications when you can have the OS?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's why I am of a firm belief that if you are going to pirate software, at least have the common decency to crack it your self and NOT REDISTRIBUTE.

On a side note I am amazed that more developers do not sign their own code with checksums and alteration verification routines. Sign your software, then do a runtime check if the code has been altered. If so, after few hours of use, present the user with a nice message:

"Congratulations, you have a cracked copy of our software. We find it sad that you did not want to buy it from us. It's possible that we may starve as a result. In any case, we would like you to stop using this copy. To encourage you to do so we are going to begin now uploading the contents of your hard drive to our servers. You may stop this process at any time by closing the program and removing it from your computer. Thank you."

<comment><USER14> This DRM just turns things into an arms race, and eventually makes your software seem more and more like malware.

A non-game example off the top of my head is Milkshape 3d, a basic modelling software that was popular in the early 00s because it had importers and exporters for the games that were wildly popular then such as Counter-Strike.

The teenagers using it had no money to pay for the full version, so cracking of it was rife. Eventually the "anti-piracy" mechanisms built into it by the author got crazy enough that the program was essentially broken.

I can't really remember specifics, except that it crashed your computer (!) if you tried to use a certain app-sniffing software.

<comment><USER15> For a game example, google "starforce breaking dvd drives". The irony(?) here being that an on-disc copy protection mechanism breaks your disc reader and makes it impossible to play the game you bought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This would seem like the perfect tactic if the software also has a quiet phone-home system built in that contacts the author if the file checksums don't match. I bet you could get interesting statistics on how many people would try this method after publishing such an article.

</comment><comment><USER17> That entitled attitude of the complainer is so familiar. Hate that shit.

<comment><USER18> He writes software to demonstrate security flaws to a fairly niche market. I'd say his actions are justified - he's just showing that it isn't safe at all to download a cracked version of a pentesting software package.

<comment><USER19> shadowOfShadow's wording is a little unclear, but I suspect he was talking about the email exchange with a non customer complaining about lack of support.

<comment><AUTHOR> I read shadowOfShadow's comment the same way you do. (for others reading this): in the comments section, I reproduce an exchange (anonymized, of course) I had with someone complaining about my support--when they were trying to install a cracked version of my software. This exchange is what led to the blog post linked here.

<comment><USER20> That user appears to claim he has a valid license to your software (third e-mail). Is that wrong?

<comment><USER21> He only has the license for a trial version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What if the software requires an internet connection to dial back home & verify the software authenticity .. say once every 30 days? Is that too annoying for users?

<comment><USER18> I think it's quite obvious that the author is very well aware of how to implement DRM in such a way that it can't be circumvented, but it easily enters the territory of whether or not he would actually gain users from it.

Cobalt Strike isn't exactly a $100 copy of Office - potential users who are going to use it to its full extent are going to be willing to pay the steep cost of entry as it is.

In other words, while it would be possible to guard against piracy, the end result wouldn't be more sales of Cobalt Strike.

<comment><USER22> Oh, I was asking that for my knowledge. Since you can easily patch all licensing methods on a binary (I guess including checksums), the only way to verify integrity is to compare it with a trusted copy at the authors home.

<comment><USER23> Why don't you patch away that check?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> shell.sl? Is this a dialect of Smalltalk?

<comment><USER25> It the authors own programming language, Sleep: [http://sleep.dashnine.org/manual/](http://sleep.dashnine.org/manual/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why is he root on his own machine when he uses unzip?

I hope this is satire. "The unzip tool uses a sophisticated algorithm based on LZ77 and Huffman coding". Oh wow. Who would have thought. " These files do not represent the socio-economic status of the code." Oh.

Lame humor.

<comment><USER8> Obviously he's just joking, and most of the people in this thread got it. He's not incompetent, he wrote both Armitage and Cobalt Strike, and the latter has some really incredible features that are hard to find elsewhere. I'd say he knows his way around a computer.

Snarking about why he's root when he runs unzip does not advance the discussion and despite your efforts, it does not make you look smarter than him.

<comment><USER26> It is just too lame humor, I wasnt criticizing or questioning the smarts of the author.

If anything, Im critizing his writing style, the blog article is not fun to read as it comes from a presumptions and arrogant/entitled position.

Or maybe its just me I dont see anything funny in that article, I just dont find the poking at virtual Linux users and people interested in cracking from a position of authority funny.

Effectively the entire article is making fun of hackers, people who are curious how to break software and make it do unspecified things, people who dare poke and dare crack. But its his software, so it is ok for him to make fun of others right?

The cracking culture is many peoples first step into hacking and programming, we wouldnt be here if all of us really payed for the stuff we used as kids.

<comment><USER27> He's walking through how to crack his own software and you are complaining that he is anti cracking culture? If this is your attempt at humor, it's really failing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


This mighty Porsche 919 just broke the F1 lap record at Spa - <AUTHOR> https://www.goodwood.com/grrc/race/modern/2018/4/video-what-is-porsche-up-to-with-this-crazy-919/ <comment><USER2> Tons of equipment not legal for F1, but there is no denying the 919 is an absurdly fast car. Porsche is getting very good at using electric motors to make fast cars into insanely fast cars. 918 is a terrifyingly fast car, 919 is one of the all-time great endurance cars, and adding a hybrid to the panamera has only made it quicker.

Mission E could be a real monster with the lessons porsche learns in Formula E. One of the biggest ways you can tell tesla isn't a car guy car company is they don't have a Model S race series to beat their cars into the ground. Racing will find your poorly designed parts awfully quick.

Fast 0-60 launches a couple times is impressive, but consistent hot laps on a track is much, much harder. Model S can do a couple hot laps before giving up. I fully expect the Mission E to have a lot less quit in it.

<comment><USER3> Tesla doesn't need PR or marketing though, they are production limited as far as I know?

<comment><USER2> Racing isn't just for PR. It's extreme abuse on every component. Automakers put their cars through intense testing before they hit showrooms. Racing just does it faster.

And then when you crash (and you will crash) you find out how easy or hard it is to repair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This year's F1 cars are faster than they were last year, when the lap record by Lewis Hamilton (in qualifying) was 1:42.553. Spa is a long circuit, it's not impossible that the F1s take back the record at the end of August.

In the two races so far, the qualifying lap times were about 1s and .8s faster than last year. A similar improvement for Spa would break the 1.41.770 time of the 919.

Either way, that Porsche is a fantastic monster of a car. I'd really love to see Porsche enter and compete in F1.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't want to see them sponsor a team. They probably don't have the money to commit to that and win. On the other hand, it'd be fairly exciting to see them supply a drivetrain to one or two of the mid-level teams. (even developing that would be stupidly expensive, however)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is insanely fast...like one of those videos that are sped up to make the car look fast.

If you've ever seen F1 in person, especially around the curves, then this video becomes mind boggling in how freaking fast this beast is.

Porsche engineering in incredible. And yes, I know it's not race legal, but holy cow, did you watch the video?!?!?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Good article:

[https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/04/faster-than- an-f1-car-p...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/04/faster-than-an-f1-car- porsche-is-breaking-records-with-the-919-hybrid/)

 _To make this new feat even more impressive, Porsche set that time in weather barely warm enough for the tires to switch on—the ambient temperature was just 12 degrees Celsius (53.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to 17 degrees Celsius (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit) for the F1 event that took place in August._</comment>


Apple News hits 125M monthly active users - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/30/apple-news-hits-125-million-monthly-active-users/ <comment><USER2> IMO, Apple News is still a hobby looking for a purpose, since it was launched close to five years ago and is still available in only a few countries. Forget about the Apple News+ subscription, even the app isn't available in other countries (you can get around this by setting the region of your device to one of the supported ones). It doesn't look like Apple devotes much effort to keep it afloat or widen its reach.

What's even worse is that the Apple News app could allow adding RSS feeds from sites, but it doesn't recognize RSS officially but will use it internally for sites in Apple's whitelist. If it allowed adding any random feed, it could potentially be my go to app for news.

Contrast that to Google News — which is predicated on collecting information and showing ads (edit: Google News doesn't insert ads into news sources, as pointed by gundmc in a reply) — that's widely available. In Google News, you can get a link of the original article to share with others (and with perhaps an additional step in some cases, avoid tracking of where from and how the link came). In Apple News, sharing a link gives you a cryptic Apple News domain link, which tracks all clicks. I trust Apple more on privacy than I trust Google, but this is one of those annoying things.

I'm sure Apple isn't trying to beat Google on this front. Apple is just hoping to get paying subscribers while retaining a huge cut of the revenues.

<comment><USER3> As far as I can tell setting the region doesn't really work. Even on my USA iPhone with USA region, when I travel internationally the Apple news app refuses to load. Even the widget refuses to load. All based on my current physical location. It's infuriating.

And to be clear, I'm just talking about free news content, no subscriptions, nothing you couldn't get easily by going to the actual website, so any paid licensing geo restrictions shouldn't really be relevant.

<comment><USER4> I'm using USA region without actually being there and non-USA store account. Something like a few months ago Apple News didn't load for me neither no matter what country VPN was set to. But now that I tried it again, it actually works just fine on iPadOS 13.4.1 correctly loading the USA stories based solely on the region settings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Conversely, the introduction of News+ and the overwhelming amount of News+ exclusive articles made me delete the app entirely.

At least with Apple Music, I could turn the features off. With News+, I can't.

I replaced it with Reuters and a RSS reader for other news websites. I get way more relevant 'breaking news' notifications from Reuters now than I did with News, so it's been a win on that front.

</comment><comment><USER6> The annoying thing about Apple News is that it allows tabloids, sensational crap, bloggers with a dollar, and anyone else that has a junky website, to masquerade as actual, real, and relevant news.

I started to read articles from tabloids without realizing that they are tabloids. Because on the internet, nobody knows that you're a dog. You have to actually investigate them, to find out that they are a gossipy tabloid.

Fortunately the app allows you to unsubscribe from it. But this makes it even harder, because now, you're actively exposed to their sensational reporting and fake news.

</comment><comment><USER7> \+ still _not_ available in most countries, including mine

> Apple News is only available in the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia

[https://www.imore.com/how-get-apple-news-uk-australia- canada...](https://www.imore.com/how-get-apple-news-uk-australia-canada-and- more)

<comment><USER8> Just missing New Zealand to be identical to Five Eyes.

Is it a language issue? Do they offer it for french language media in Canada?

<comment><USER9> They need to contract with a large number of unwilling partners. Makes sense they are going for the big markets first.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but Australia isn't exactly a big market. From that angle, I'd expect France and Germany to be on the list, not necessarily Canada and Australia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article doesn't state what an 'active user' is. It does clarify these are not paying users. Is it just anyone who has opened the app?

<comment><USER11> I don't think Apple has specified the way they measure _active users_ in their SEC filings, but if they followed the same methodology as the analytics in App Store Connect it would mean 125M people opened the News app for at least one session of at least 2 seconds.

In Connect this doesn't map 1:1 to users (it shows active _devices_ and is gated by the user's analytics privacy settings) but close enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It still doesn't let you block particular news outlets entirely either, if they make it into top stories they still show up. Given the behaviour of some outlets, this makes Apple News a non-starter for me.

</comment><comment><USER13> I deleted the news app when it was flooded with News+ articles

<comment><USER14> I made it a habit to block every channel that came up as News+, now it ends up being a decent enough experience.

(You can tell that the algorithm generating the feed will _always_ leave at least one spot for a News+ article though, which means it has to dig deeper and deeper into weird recommendations since I keep blocking every News+ channel. I've seen golf digest, good housekeeping, and a bunch of obscure ones come up before I block them.)

It's a real shame, too. I watched the keynote where they announced News+ and I got really excited about it. I thought it was a really good deal and I was happy to pay money to get real journalism from reputable sources.

But alas, they shoved it in my face from day one. You couldn't browse regular Apple news without giant News+-pushing article previews shoved in your face, entire sections of the UI dedicated to getting you to accidentally click an article you don't have access to, etc.

A personal policy of mine is to not engage with a platform if I feel I'm being "engineered into it" (with things like UI dark patterns and constant nagging reminders to sign up for a free trial, etc), so ultimately I never signed up for News+. It's a real shame.

Same with AppleTV+: Apple used their market position as the company that makes my AppleTV to try and shove TV+ and Apple Arcade in my face at every possible turn, so I won't be signing up for them (again, a shame, because there were shows I actually wanted to watch on there and I literally have a free year of it. Sorry Apple, not if you're forcing it down my throat.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd be amazed if anyone on the Apple News team enjoyed using the app to read news.

</comment><comment><USER16> I pay for Apple News just to get WSJ. It's effectively half price.

<comment><USER17> I have a similar get with it, but for New Yorker, Architectural Digest and a smattering of random things that I probably wouldn't buy otherwise but am happy to have access to incidentally.

Honestly a great value for me.

It's too bad so many people are anti paying for quality content, there's quite a lot packed into a single News+ sub. The best stuff is the paid stuff, but, I can't justify subbing to so many individual services.

<comment><USER18> I'm in the camp of people who won't pay for content - it's just not worth it to me.

Journalism began to die with the repeal of the fairness doctrine.

<comment><USER17> I don't know if what I am paying for really is what one would call journalism. Maybe sometimes. But more often it's just better writing, more depth, more thought. An alternative to reading a dense tome but with the same relative degree of satisfaction.

Or in other cases it's amazing photography and in depth looks at things nobody else has access to with experts able to explain or describe things, etc.

I think this kind of thing is valuable and in a capitalist society the people who take the time to make it deserve to be paid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm generally pro-apple but every time I accidentally click a link that loads in the news app instead of my browser it irritates me. If anything its worse than loading an amp page - at least that doesn't open an complete new app that I don't use.

<comment><USER20> Why not delete the app?

<comment><USER21> I tried, I had to mount the disk. The next update brought it back again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Google News is better, but that kind of makes sense given Google's search foundation.

</comment><comment><USER23> Google News & Apple News are trying to become the new gatekeepers of information by curating "verified" news sources and installing unadjustable feeds.

Orwell said omission is the most powerful form lying.

</comment><comment><USER24> People don't want to research themselves. How can they think that a news-feed thinks the way they do?

</comment><comment><USER25> I am one of those users, I've read apple news for some time now, I guess they were able to get it in front of me with those widgets.

However the push for News+ and interspersing paid articles sort of makes me mad. I get that they want to advertise but I wish they would just put in ads, not weave unreadable articles throughout the readable ones.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why doesn't Apple start a News Store, where journalists can offer their work for a fee and Apple takes a 30% cut? /s</comment>


Ask HN: How to make yourself more attractive to companies as a developer? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> At which stage of the process?

If it's about getting initial interest at all, you want to do things that builds your brand or you can put on your resume. Write a blog, maintain a personal website, do side projects, etc.

If it's about getting past one of the screening stages, you'll want to focus more on soft skills. Voice coaches and voice therapists are a thing, and speaking in a likable way is extraordinarily under-emphasized. Similar things with body posture, confidence, and communication style in on-site interviews.

If you're getting a lot of "we like you, but not sure you're a good enough coder" then it's time to binge-solve problems in "Cracking the Coding Interview". The problems will help some with the last paragraph of issues to some extent as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have a portfolio, post free things on Github, write about what you do as a developer. Sometimes you have to pay your dues and do at-cost or volunteer work.

<comment><USER4> Is it better to have one big project in the portfolio or multiple smaller ones?

<comment><USER3> It's better to be well-rounded and doing projects that reach an audience. Maybe a couple small projects and a whale. Or a couple whales. Bonus points if you continue to work on that project for more than 1 year. It helps demonstrate your experience and value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Be professionally visible, beyond a Linkedin profile.

Regularly attend Meet-ups, Conferences, and Workshops. Build-up a network of friends & industry contacts. Think of them as your personal brain-trust, guys you can tap into for guidance.</comment>


Gift from Ballmer Will Expand Computer Science Faculty at Harvard - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/gift-from-ballmer-will-expand-computer-science-faculty-at-harvard/?ref=technology

<comment><USER2> Good for Harvard, but unfortunately the same money could go a lot farther and help a lot more students at lower tier universities. University of Southern Maine recently cut its CS faculty in half, from six to three right in the middle of the academic year in a desperate bid to save money. Public universities across the country are suffering from 15 years of near-annual cuts to state subsidies.

Harvard would survive and even thrive without donations like Ballmer's, but I'm not sure about the tier of higher education that serves the vast majority of college students.

<comment><USER3> Then raise some money for Maine and quit telling other people what to do with their money. If the United States requires a few benevolent rich people to give money to keep the public system working then something is seriously wrong. Everyone here pays fewer taxes than their European counterparts, for example. Raise taxes in Maine.

<comment><USER4> Harvard (and other private colleges) enjoy a tax exempt status where it comes to endowment growth, and private colleges are recipients of massive amounts of government research funds. Harvard enrolls a tiny undergraduate class, with an even tinier percentage of low income students (UC Berkeley enrolls more low income students than the entire ivy league combined). Interestingly, numbers of grad students are roughly the same at the two institutions.

I'm pleased that Ballmer is giving money to support more research, but I don't have a problem with asking what society is getting in return for that massive tax break and colossal infusion of public funding.

The answer, to me, is: quite a lot. Harvard's contributions to research are remarkable, and the world is better for it. But I think it's reasonable to question such a favored tax status and high level of public funding for a university that keeps its undergraduate enrollment so low (especially for low income students).

<comment><USER3> Can you provide me links with some facts? Is Harvard that much different than Princeton, Stanford, Columbia or Yale? Why are you comparing the big state school model with the Ivy model? Probably every big state school enrolls more low-income students than any Ivy league school. And shouldn't government research money go to the schools with the best research? I checked and Harvard isn't in the top 10: [http://247wallst.com/special- report/2013/04/25/universities-...](http://247wallst.com/special- report/2013/04/25/universities-getting-the-most-government-money/)

A few Ivy Schools for comparison.

[http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/...](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/harvard-university-2155?int=d1415b)

[http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/94/opinions_college08_Yale-...](http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/94/opinions_college08_Yale- University_94568.html)

[http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/...](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/princeton-university-2627?int=d1415b)

[http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/...](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/stanford-1305?int=d1415b)

[http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/...](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/columbia-university-2707?int=d1415b)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The "Ballmer" Chair position will be thrown at some of the great up-and-coming researchers at Harvard.

<comment><USER6> I half expect the next hack (prank) that MIT will pull on Harvard would involve the mysterious appearance of a "Ballmer Memorial Launchable Chair" in Harvard's CS building.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ballmer has an AmA on Reddit right at 11:15pst ([http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2m7cmt/were_steve_ball...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2m7cmt/were_steve_ballmer_harvard_college_class_of_77/)) in case any of you are interested to just ask him. Or discuss.

</comment><comment><USER8> FYI, Harvard currently has a $30B endowment.

<comment><USER8> So Gates retires, spends his fortune trying to reduce global poverty and cure malaria. Ballmer retires, spends his fortune on a basketball team and donates to what is already the richest school in the country.

<comment><USER9> So my disclaimer is that if I ever retired with a net worth in that neighborhood, I would also put the bulk of it to work combating poverty.

That said, it's his money. He can spend as he sees fit and unless he sees clubbing baby seals or something equally morally reprehensible as his aim, who are we to take aim?

<comment><USER3> Why not try to combat poverty now? The hypothetical "if I were rich..." adds zero value to the world, and it's so easy to say.

<comment><USER9> And I do. I donate regularly to several charities that are focused on poverty (both at a local and global level) and volunteer time at some of those. What my comment was meant to communicate is that if I had a substantially higher income/net worth, I'd be able to put a _much_ higher portion of it to work doing that than I can right now, where more of my income has to go to a mortgage, car payments, and diapers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it weird that the size of the faculty (inluding proportion among departments) is determined by the whims of wealthy alumni?

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't know what to say besides kudos. Harvard will need to build a new building for CS now.

<comment><USER12> They already are, across the river in Allston - much to the dismay of some the faculty, as the CS department is currently based just north of Harvard Yard. The entire school of engineering will be moving in the next few years.

Oddly enough, the current building the Harvard CS department is based in (Maxwell Dworkin) was itself funded by Ballmer as part of a previous gift with Bill Gates (Maxwell and Dworkin being their mothers' maiden names).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this is good. It wasn't all that long ago that a B.S. in C.S. from Harvard was an immediate red flag...a person who went to the school purely for the impressive name, but Harvard's C.S. program was not terribly well known.

It's definitely in an upward swing, likely because "these fancy computer things" are the key to making serious money and influence these days and are only going to be more so, it's nice to see some good work coming out of their program and better funding of the program is going to be very helpful towards equalizing the prestige of Harvard C.S. with Harvard Law, etc.</comment>


First look at bus1, a new Linux IPC mechanism. From systemd.conf 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zN0b6BfgLY <comment><USER2> Actually, the world has already looked at it. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10724206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10724206) for example. (-:</comment>


Shake your head while looking at the pic - <AUTHOR> https://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/photo/925485_460s.jpg

<comment><USER2> You don't have to shake your head, it is very plain to see without moving!</comment>


Forget piracy, U.S. government is going after Bitcoin  - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/08/government-crackdown-on-bitcoin/

<comment><USER2> A little bit off topic: I was curious if you can really do something with bitcoins aside from speculation. It turns out that there are some places that accept bitcoins. But it seems that actually _using_ bitcoins as a currency instead of a speculative asset doesn't seem like a good idea right now:

The sites seem to either try to adjust prices often, or don't. The sites that don't are hopelessly overpriced: Let's say I want the biggest vps for sale at <http://lightfoot.dashjr.org/?page=vps> . I can either go through the hassle of buying 49 bitcoins for ~1450$ at mtgox to pay for the vps, or I could pay 118$ directly. Even the sites that adjust the price have a huge problem: If I convert dollars to bitcoins, I would be tempted to wait a couple of days and sell on mtgox and then buy the service with dollars.

So, buying stuff with bitcoins is not the best idea right now. If you want to do something with bitcoins, buy them and sell them at a higher exchange rate later. The only problem is that we all know that this can't go on forever. Therefore, the exchange rate is bound to go down sooner or later. If that happens, we would be in a mirror inverted situation: Selling stuff for bitcoins would suck. Prices would have to reflect the overhead of continuously adjusting prices and converting bitcoins, putting them at a disadvantage against "real" currency.

Price instability is poisonous for a currency. Some aspects of bitcoins lead to excessive speculation, and therefore, prices will always be unstable, therefore, there is no incentive to use bitcoins as a way to buy or sell (legal) goods.

<comment><USER3>
       > If I convert dollars to bitcoins, I would be tempted to wait a couple of days and sell on mtgox and then buy the service with dollars.

Remove the "purchasing a service" element out of the equation and this still holds up -- the temptation to put money aside in bitcoins is still there.

As the service is a month-to-month thing, there's a limit on the amount of time you can wait if you did purchase by bitcoins. Also, if the price of bitcoins is going up, it's encouraging customers to pay earlier and earlier which is a good thing as most customers seem to wait until the last day (but server bills come up before then...).

<comment><USER2> No, it's encouraging the customer use an established, stable currency which doesn't force him to closely monitor the exchange rate. Usually, he doesn't want every transaction to be highly speculative.

<comment><USER4> It also depends, psychologically, on how early you got in. If you bought a bunch of bitcoins at $1 per BTC (or less), and a company is selling X for 1 BTC, you might think "Ooh, I'm getting X for just $1!" (Or if you do mining, calculate the electricity costs.) Sure, 1 BTC may be worth ~$30 right now, but you presumably want item X _right now_. Plus you get a physical asset worth ~$30 for what cost you in stable-money $1. (Though with the surge over the past week or so I'd agree with you on avoiding spending for that period if possible.)

<comment><USER2> No way. Say I bought 49 coins for 49$. I wouldn't use them to buy one month of vps. I would convert them to ~1400$ and use 118 of those good old dollars to buy the service, tell myself how clever I am and spend the rest on cocaine or something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No it's not. A few senators are pressing the issue. The founder of BC is scheduled to give talks at the CIA, if they were going to bust him, they would have been more upfront then about the issue. I don't doubt that BC will be pressured by the government, but venturebeat is jumping the gun with this one.

<comment><USER6> Gavin isn't the founder. He's the current maintainer of the open source software. The founder was Satoshi Nakamoto who is apparently no longer involved with the project.

<comment><USER7> And may not actually exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Might be a topic of interest of a company that rivalled Paypal: 'Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold' [0]. A guy had an ambition to have currency backed by gold rather than the Federal reserve. In his execution, he had also allowed anonymous accounts but soon had trouble with the FBI due to the anonymity.

[0] <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/e-gold/>

<comment><USER9> A lot of the U.S. power comes from our currency and its stability(relative to the rest of the world). To challenge this would mean an increased risk, both financially and militarily. That being said, I think instead of attacking this rising trend, maybe an open(more likely not-so-open) discussion is needed from many branches of the government and a lot of simulation to assess systemic risk.

<comment><USER10> Interesting, considering the #1 entity that's challenging the US Dollar is the government. You make it sound like Bitcoin is suddenly grounds to be concerned about the future of the dollar while the government has been pilfering its worth for decades.

<comment><USER9> "Interesting, considering the #1 entity that's challenging the US Dollar is the government."

I'm in 100% agreement, along with many other heavily-vested countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I believe the same Senators are trying to go after Tor as well, which is comical because Tor was originally sponsored by the US Naval Research Laboratory.

Remember when Congress tried to get encryption banned (or hobbled) too, once they realized that people other than the government could use it?

Anyway, I think they'll probably start focusing on issues the general public can understand as election season gets closer.

<comment><USER12> _"I believe the same Senators are trying to go after Tor as well ... Remember when Congress tried to get encryption banned (or hobbled) too, once they realized that people other than the government could use it?"_

The difference is that encryption is critically important for much of the internet's infrastructure, while Tor isn't.

So they couldn't eliminate the use of encryption without crippling the internet, while getting rid of Tor wouldn't have much of an effect on the internet at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Unlike other currencies, Bitcoin uses a peer-to-peer technology to manage transactions and validate payments. Since no bank is involved, purchases don't leave a paper trail for law enforcement agencies to track criminal activity._

How is this different than us dollars in cash?

<comment><USER7> There are a large number of laws that create a paper trail when substantial amounts of cash are used.

If you withdraw more than $10,000 in cash, your bank has to report it to the government.

If the bank thinks you're 'suspicious', they have to report it to the government.

If a business accepts more than $10,000 in cash it has to report you to the government.

The US is actually more lenient in this regard than some countries, where large cash purchases are (or will soon be) banned outright.

<comment><USER14> Apologies for my curiosity. But which countries ban (or are about to ban) large cash purchases?

Very much appreciated if you have references or pointers.

<comment><USER15> Italy has already been mentioned in the replies.

Sweden is another one. Actually they are currently discussing/planing to completely ban cash transactions: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world- europe-10538032>

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the link.

I'm not surprised regarding Italy (where I had to produce a passport and get myself registered in order to use an internet cafe), but Sweden does surprise me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if this is going to be Barbara Streisand moment of bitcoin. Up until now, it was largely techies who had interest in the currency. This and the ensuing media interest might take it to mainstream.

<comment><USER15> A few days after this German lobby group argued against Bitcoin the Bitcoin value (in EUR) nearly doubled. In addition, even my non-techie friends now know about Bitcoin.

<comment><USER17> There are some indications that at the moment the real limiting factor to Bitcoin's ascent is the ability to funnel USD into it: this is purely anecdotal, but I've noticed that every time a batch of Dwolla transactions clears through MtGox, BTC spikes substantially, and in between these times it does relatively little.

That's not necessarily a good thing for BTC, since it means that the theoretical unrestricted market is, in fact, heavily bottlenecked at the USD faucet. From what I've heard it's just as difficult, if not more, to get money out quickly, which means this market is effed up in all sorts of ways.

IMO, the best thing Bitcoin could do would be to enable an identity-connected sub-system that directly tied Bitcoins to individuals, so that transactions could be better tracked and regulated - the fact is, most people don't need anonymity in their transactions, and the legal shadiness of the current approach means that it's never going to be simple to move money in and out.

When BTC is as easy to get into and out of as euros or yen, that's when things will start to get seriously interesting...

<comment><USER15> I think the bitmarket.eu approach works quite fine:

The seller stores his Bitcoins at the bitmarket.eu (free) escrow service. The buyer wires the money via bank transfer directly to the seller. The seller releases the Bitcoins on bitmarket.

At least in Europe bank transfers are easily possible between foreign countries and even free (or at least very cheap) between European countries.

Saying that I wouldn't buy any Bitcoins right now. While there is a huge demand, I do not see any indication that those coins are used for any significant amount of real trading (i.e., buying services). Seems that most of those people just buy the Bitcoins due to speculation. When the hype is gone there is a very good chance that the market crashes again - if the real market does not grow with the current bubble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really don't see how they can regulate Bitcoin -- that's kind of the whole point. Unlike e-gold there's no central authority to take down. The exchanges could simply move to a friendly host country, much like The Pirate Bay.

<comment><USER19> The government can declare the use of bitcoin illegal. This won't stop regular users, like it doesn't stop them from using the pirate bay. But no business will be able to accept bitcoins anymore and as such bitcoin's potential will be severely limited.

<comment><USER20> My guess is that the only people left to use Bitcoins is precisely for those illegals activities... Precisely the people they're trying to stop. It's not because something isn't legal that it stops working.

<comment><USER19> When the government makes bitcoin illegal they will ofcourse claim it's to prevent child pornography, terrorism and drug selling. However the real reason will be tax evasion and the law would be successful in taking care of that _real target_.

<comment><USER4> The silly thing is that if they do make it illegal because some businesses won't report bitcoin profits to the IRS, that will just guarantee that _all_ businesses (licensed or unlicensed) using bitcoin won't report profits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Replace "Bitcoin" with "money laundering" and "tax evasion" to understand why.

<comment><USER11> The only method of payment for these illegal purchases is money laundering.

The only method of payment for these illegal purchases is tax evasion.

Hmm...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> They lost me at:

> The only method of payment for these illegal purchases is ... Bitcoins.

</comment><comment><USER23> Another example of the intentional hype around Bitcoin, made by the holders of Bitcoins, designed to increase interest, and therefore the value of their existing Bitcoins. We are being conned, and spammed.

<comment><USER24> You think those two senators are holders of Bitcoins and only made that announcement to increase the value of their holdings?

<comment><USER11> Of course, didn't you know that the New World Order, Shadow Government, and Illuminati don't even take Visa? Bitcoin only at the Area 51 gift shop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just imagine if it weren't a complete and utter pain in the _ass_ to purchase and sell bitcoins. (And, please, don't tell me it isn't.)

<comment><USER11> Bank transfer through Dwolla is easy. Of course, it takes so goddamn long that by the time you actually buy some bitcoin it's gone up 80% from when you initiated the transfer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Now the real trial by fire for bitcoin begins...

One thing is for sure, this is going to be interesting.

/me gets popcorn

</comment><comment><USER27> I know a little bit about all the rigmarole that banks and companies like paypal and amazon have to go through in order to comply with various money laundering and tax evasion laws. I'm not surprised that bitcoin hasn't done their due diligence on the subject and are now catching flack.

<comment><USER28> That's hardly surprising, because _there is no bank or company involved_ to hold accountable.

<comment><USER3> While it depends on the country, you don't have to be a bank to be regulated in the UK.

For example, the Financial Services Authority says you need to be registered for accepting deposits or issuing e-money: <http://www.fsa.gov.uk/Pages/Doing/Do/index.shtml>

I have no idea whether this is simply or cheap though...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Misleading title is misleading</comment>


Show HN: How the US voted - <AUTHOR> https://we-voted.us/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's an interactive election map, with full results from every county in the US.

No frameworks, no server, just a FusionTable database and 216 lines of gloriously vanilla JS.

Credit to mkearney for the election data: [https://github.com/mkearney/presidential_election_county_res...](https://github.com/mkearney/presidential_election_county_results_2016)</comment>


Quora keeps searching for growth, this time with user-generated product reviews - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/03/06/quora-keeps-searching-for-growth-this-time-with-user-generated-product-reviews/

<comment><USER2> I'm an active Quora user and I feel irritated by the whole flood of reviews that is polluting my feed. There is also a huge internal rage against the feature. It is like turning university classrooms into a bar.</comment>


Vinyl-like super SSDs could make hard disk drives obsolete - <AUTHOR> https://www.techradar.com/news/incredible-vinyl-like-ssds-could-make-hard-disk-drives-obsolete <comment><USER2> The title makes no sense to me, there's nothing vinyl-like about it:

> Wafer-level SSDs

In a nutshell, Kioxia proposes to skip dicing, assembly, chip packaging, and SSD drive assembly, but use a whole wafer with 3D NAND instead.</comment>


Germany: Remove Hate Speech in 24 Hours or Face $57M Fines - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/german-parliament-debates-online-hate-speech-law-48368036 <comment><AUTHOR> I already submitted a story to an article on the same topic published by the New York Times [1] which got flagged reasonably because I edited the HN title to be more provocative in order to point the discussion towards the issue of free speech. However, I would love to see a discussion here, which is why I am trying again with another source.

In my opinion, the law is problematic for several reasons:

Deciding whether an input to a discussion is legal is not always easy. There have been cases where legal decisions have been revised. Furthermore, the presumption of innocence is removed. As soon as a contribution is accused to violate any laws, it will be removed.

Before, regular courts without any other incentives than administering justice would have decided on this kind of issue. Obviously, this does not scale which is one of the main reasons for the introduction of this law. Still, we cannot simply outsource the decision on legal questions because the quality of the outcome cannot be guaranteed at all. There is a reason for judges requiring university education. What will now happen on social network sites is comparable to a black box without any insights on the internal process.

The high fines up to $57 million incentivize social network sites to rather delete content than keep it up. It is reasonable to assume that comments which are not subject to freedom of expression are only a subset of those being deleted because of this newly introduced bill. As a result, free speech is limited.

[1]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/business/germany- facebook...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/business/germany-facebook- google-twitter.html)</comment>


Loading ... - <AUTHOR> http://www.prettyloaded.com/

<comment><USER2> Lighten up guys :)

This is an old site and is pretty popular in the creative industry.

Not because of the technical accomplishments but because of the ideas. It should judged as that.

<comment><USER3> >Not because of the technical accomplishments but because of the ideas. It should judged as that.

It should be judged by whatever criteria the judge deems important, just like everything else.

<comment><USER2> That's up to you. All I am saying is that you are missing out on something if all you judge it on is how much CPU is being used.

Kind of like judging code on what typography the editor uses to display it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When a loader itself takes about 80-90% of cpu time, i kill it and don't visit the page again.

<comment><USER5> i386sx?

<comment><USER4> Nope, T3400 - generations younger & faster.

Btw I remember browsing the web with early versions of Netscape on X console of an i386sx server which at the same time had dozens of irc-and-whatever- doing users. The browsing experience was smoother than now.

Of course there were no flash, js and other pile of technologies. But face the facts, most of these novelties are used today to deliver the content of questionable value in a way which will make it better memes, nothing more.

If you look at it from a distance it's quite stupid use for such advancved technologies. I still believe in an idea that computers are here to free us from a boring repetitive work - to _compute_ things for us. The outcome of it would be that average user spent _less_ time by the computers, enjoying what he likes in a life instead. But today's situation is that the software industry is making users sitting _more_ by the computers, because this industry is all about trading the information, memes and advertisements, luring the users into false comfort zones like social networks, ad target groups via portals and stuff like that.

It's just stupid. Flash loaders are just part of this counter-productive culture. Usually the more CPU they eat the less interesting the content showed afterwards is. It's like that because CPU-eating intro shows something about the state of mind of people who created it (or hired the creators) and most likely such people will not have anything interesting to show as a real content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Watching this induces acid-flashback type remembrances of all the times I've waited for unnecessary Flash sites to load... mainly movie websites.

Thinking back, the only person I have to blame is myself.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was having issues with flash today, and ended up at neverloaded! <http://www.prettyloaded.com/noflash.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> Some of these look a lot like iPhone game loaders. It's really interesting how limitations in hardware spur creativity.

<comment><USER9> Some of the loaders I've seen (Coke's sites in particular, in my experience) have _ridiculous_ system requirements to appear smooth. Add in that they're using Flash, which pretty much allows you to do _anything_... and they're examples of what the _removal_ of limitations has spurred. Google's pacman is a good example of creativity within limitations, given that it's a bunch of divs and even works on IE6, instead of something more capable like <canvas>.

Not that I'm denying limitations spur creativity. There are some _awesome_ things in the Demoscene, and older hardware, and more power can often result in less focus.

<comment><USER10> The Pacman loading bar [1] is actually very interesting. I think it's just a static image – doomed to be stuck at 60% forever. Since load times are low that doesn't really matter. It's instantly recognized for what it is and that might be all that's needed (and it fits the theme better than those newfangled spinning indicators).

[1] Empty your cache (if you visited before), load and quickly click "Insert Coin", you might see it for a fraction of a second: <http://google.com/pacman>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yeah, there we can watch loading screens for hours, without ever getting anything at the end.

</comment><comment><USER12> Art is nice, but why isn't the browser loading bar accessible in js?

</comment><comment><USER13> It took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on... silly me

<comment><USER14> Here's the alternate content, which I saw before allowing scripts:

Once upon a time, in a land of sputtering dial-up connections, websites took ages to load. Folks yearned for the 100% mark. But as soon as that figure arrived, the beloved (or bemoaned) preloader disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. Until now.

Pretty Loaded is an archive of preloaders that preload other preloaders…which in turn reveal yet more preloaders. Copy that? It's a tribute to a vanishing art form amid a constantly changing digital landscape.

This infinite loader is being put together with help from friends across the interactive community. We'll continue to add to it over time, so keep on coming back.

Pretty Loaded is created and curated by Big Spaceship. Kindly direct your observations and inquiries right this way: info |at symbol| prettyloaded |dot| com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Only thing to miss when HTML5 take over. No more loaders.

<comment><USER16> Don't worry, there will be loaders with HTML5.

When your application uses a lot of assets, it's pretty much unavoidable, independently of underlying technology.

In fact, it's probably going to be worse, at least at the beginning, as JS currently lacks a good way to handle packs of binary resources.

Just check Google IO presentation from team that ported Quake 2 to JS [1]. Resource loading was a big pain point, they had to resort to pack data in UTF strings.

[http://code.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/gwt- html5.htm...](http://code.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/gwt-html5.html)

<comment><USER17> One thing though, is that browsers cache the data with HTML.

Cappuccino uses UTF strings for data, but I wouldn't say "has to resort," it's actually a great experience for both the developer and the user.

<comment><USER18> Silverlight also uses the browser cache. I'm surprised that Flash doesn't make use of it (if I had to guess I'd say it does, or rather at least it can).

<comment><USER19> Flash has used the browser cache since the inception of the plugin. In fact it routes all http requests through the browser itself, it has no built-in stack of it's own. (unless you're on the desktop)

<comment><USER18> SL uses the browser stack by default, but also lets you use its own HTTP client stack.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Qt Creator 4.8.0 released – Support for LSP added - <AUTHOR> http://blog.qt.io/blog/2018/12/06/qt-creator-4-8-0-released/ <comment><USER2> This implement of Language Server Protocol is pretty neat. I really like Qt Creator and wish it had more language support, but we still only have Python successfully implemented.

I am wondering if they might now make it easier to incorporate new alternative languages into Qt Creator? I am guessing this is just for C++, QML, javascript and Python but it would be nice if this was expanded.</comment>