Insect-sized Flying Robots - <AUTHOR> http://robohub.org/controlling-insect-sized-flying-robots/

<comment><USER2> Clever use of materials and construction - like the laser cut carbon fiber.</comment>


30,000 empty homes and nowhere to live: inside Dublin's housing crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/nov/29/empty-dublin-housing-crisis-airbnb-homelessness-landlords <comment><USER2> It's hard to untangle problems like this from supply and demand of housing. Are the hotels in Dublin vacant because everyone prefers AirBnBs? Ie. is tourist lodging over or under-supplied?

Two straightforward treatments I'd want to see tested:

1\. A significant "hotel tax" or "vacancy tax" to make it very expensive to let housing sit idle. Reduce the profitability of tourist rental and units will shift back to local rent.

2\. Significantly expand the supply of housing by removing barriers to development. This phenomenon is happening around the world as cities try to keep existing neighborhoods under glass and prevent any change, damning younger generations to have no place to live.

Another thing I would love to see is the development of new cities with robust transit connection to the nearby older ones. I don't know enough about Dublin to be specific, but I do know that across the US one of the things that is happening is a generational trend toward wanting urban living, to the point that many people don't even consider living in suburban or rural towns. However there's no reason we can't build new "urban" cities: places starting with a Main Street, compact walkable design, street grid, designed to organically scale up to a genuine large urban center over time. This was common practice in the 1800s, and we have plenty of models around the world to copy from, we just quit doing this in the car age. Why not bring this back?

<comment><USER3> I would not want to see a vacancy tax however a hotel tax serves its purpose because it targets the use of the property. still i would limit the hotel tax to housing employed for that purpose for a majority of the year. this would let those who summer elsewhere to enjoy the benefits of their home while only hitting those who choose to live elsewhere all the time.

the second point you made is a well known issue across the world, it simply comes down to a politically correct version of red lining. the terms are changed to make it palatable but the effect is the same. those in need are forced out, their presence is only desired during work hours to perform work

<comment><USER4> You can summer elsewhere without getting hit by a vacancy tax.

A house that's empty most of the year really is making the problem worse, and if they don't want to change then they can pay some money to offset the harm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is happening in places like Toronto as well. I visited there an stayed at an Airbnb near the CN Tower. The condo itself was newer and large swathes of the condo were occupied by Airbnbers. It was obvious, people with luggage were coming in and out at all hours of the day. The Uber driver I got also said he was maintaining 2 condos in downtown Toronto for Airbnb.

The next time there's a recession, things like this will only worsen it because people will be foreclosing on large numbers of housing properties because they were used for investment.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure that it's Airbnb. if properties can appreciated at 10% per year. Then they are a much better investment and safer investment vehicle than most of what is out there. If I truly believe I can buy a house somewhere and get 10% year in and year out. I'm going to buy one. I might keep it vacant since I don't feel like being a landlord or dealing with rent control laws. When it's time to get my money out, I'll sell and move on.

While some of us might not believe this, there are enough people who see real estate as such a safe investment. Some of them are from other countries and they're looking for a place to park their money that's not a bank or volatile like the stock market.

<comment><USER7> Plus - housing is fairly secured and unlikely to ever go to zero, it's tied to an asset, and you can invest on loaned principal without extreme risk in case of failure.

<comment><USER8> Assuming you purchased your house with 20% down and 80% mortgage (which is very common), housing only has to go down 20% for you to "go to zero."

Further, unlike stocks, buying/selling houses incurs fees (round-trip fees can be anywhere from 5% to 12% depending on your city/state/country), so really, a house going down 15% is like you going to zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > homeless families stay in hotels, and tourists stay in houses.

Great quote that applies worldwide. And agreed its dumb. Hotels should be most efficient, I dont know how houses can be cheaper.

<comment><USER10> Hotels have to follow many laws. AirBnB renters do not.

Alone a 24h reception will cost you. 3 people around the clock? Weekends? How many rooms do you have?

<comment><USER11> A stayed in at least two different hotels in UK and there were no 24h receptionists there. There was self check-in/out machine in the lobby. Hotels were about 50-80 rooms in size.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Potential regulatory solution in Boston:

"The new law allows short-term rentals to be offered only by owners who live in the properties they rent out. Owners of small multifamily buildings who live on premises may also rent out one of the other units in the building along with the unit they live in."

[https://www.avalara.com/mylodgetax/en/blog/2018/06/boston- ci...](https://www.avalara.com/mylodgetax/en/blog/2018/06/boston-city-council- passes-strict-new-short-term-rental-law.html)

<comment><USER13> This is the law in NYC and I still see entire apartments listed on my block every time I check Airbnb. It is very hard to enforce because you need someone to complain, then the police have to catch visitors 'in the act,' and then you have to go through the whole fining and prosecution process.

<comment><USER14> That's interesting that they need someone to complain?

Vancouver just enacted a similar law to Boston's - AirBnbs only allowed in a secondary suite in a primary residence. In exchange for being allowed to continue operating in the city, AirBnb requires a city business license (which is only granted for secondary suites) from all Vancouver BnBs, and forwards the list of all BnBs to the city every month. Then if an address doesn't match up with a business license, the city fines the property owner. If you don't pay, the city takes you or your house to court and you get a nice fat lien on the property.

This doesn't seem to work as well with condos and apartments, though. I think the city has left enforcement up to strata orgs which is probably a mistake?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Property tax should be progressive. If you own 10 apartments you should need to sell 10th to pay yearly tax for the 9 remaining ones. Taxes gathered this way should found basic income.

This would crash the property market but it would make flats available nearly to all who need it.

Flats can't be both affordable and good investment for superrich.

Top 500 richest folks got their money differnt ways but the most common source is real estate, usually 3rd generation of hoarders.

<comment><USER16> I'm sorry, I lived in a socialist country behind iron curtain. You do not want to repeat same mistakes, if someone worked (few family generations worked for them, more likely) for those 10 apartments it should be theirs, period.

<comment><USER17> So did I, but still don't get it: your parents worked hard - all the kudos to them.

What does it have to do with you and your wealth you've gotten from them for free without even lifting a finger?

<comment><USER18> If you are going with the premise that someone's parents rightfully earned their wealth and it is fully theirs for them to do what they please with it - then it is also theirs to give to their children.

It is not about child's right to that wealth - it is about parent's right to give it to their children.

<comment><USER17> It is absolutely within parents' rights to give their property to whoever they want - as long as the child pays the income tax on the money that fell from the sky.

<comment><USER19> The parents already paid income tax. Where is the problem?

Children inherit lots of things from their parents like their genetics, upbringing, location, food, clothing and a place to live without paying taxes on those things so why should the inherited money or property be taxed? All of those things "fell from the sky", how is money different?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 1 Bed apartment in city center Dublin 2K a month. Thats 24K a year. For the sake of simplicity, that means you earn 48K to pay for that 24k (Tax) The landlord gets 24K into their pocket. They pay the government 12K in tax (50% threshold assumed again)

Landlord spends that 12k on fun activities. They pay 23% VAT

The government is making an absolute fortune with this absurd rental market.

Let's not even get into the high cost of mortgages because the government has a non trivial share in banks after they went bust 10 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER21> Housing needs to not be an investment; it needs to not be /attractive/ as an investment.

Maybe that means massive taxes on the property if the owner isn't using it as a residence for at least 1/3rd of the year (to allow for snow-bird dual-home setups that are popular).

<comment><USER22> One reason there isn't much political will for this in Ireland: [https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/nearly-one-in-five- tds...](https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/nearly-one-in-five-tds-are- landlords-registry-shows-399892.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I strongly doubt Airbnb has anything to do with it. The idea seems ridiculous, especially for Dublin. From what I've seen, Dublin suffers from a chronic lack of government planning and spending on housing and general urban planning; has a sizable part of the population that lives and has lived maybe for centuries in serious poverty, helped (and kept quiet) by the dole; it's a tech hub in a tiny country with a formidable capacity of attraction of tech companies and skilled workers, who inevitably compete with the natives for housing; but being small, it's not flexible enough to accommodate the amount of immigrants, and it's very sensitive to boom and busts: rents are now 2.5 times what they were in 2009. Many council houses are horrific in build quality and lack of maintenance. Developers, in the (apparent) complete lack of planning are incredibly greedy, and happily destroy any existing building in the city centre to replace it with brand new, extremely expensive ones. At the same time a lot of old/ historical buildings in the city center are left empty and rotting, amid wastegrounds closed by iron fences and barbed wire.

Ireland's culture seems to me a strange mix of great heart, fatalism, happy go lucky attitude, greed and complete inability to plan the future.

Check this: an Irish comedian around 2008, when the crisis hit Ireland and the properties prices crashed:

[https://youtu.be/ZD9R1LMM5Zs](https://youtu.be/ZD9R1LMM5Zs)

<comment><USER24> > I strongly doubt Airbnb has anything to do with it.

In Dublin, there have consistently been more complete units for short term let in any moment on AirBnB than there are units available to rent.

Introducing new supply won't solve the problem but it will significantly ease it.

<comment><USER23> The listings on Airbnb at any given moment are _all_ the flats on offer in the city, while the ones on offer for long term rental are there only for a few weeks before disappearing from the market for years. So simply comparing the absolute amount of flats on offer on Airbnb and, say, Daft.ie or Rent.ie doesn't make much sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I moved to Dublin in 2000 to go to college, and finding a place to rent was extremely hard, they were very expensive, very low quality (eg. tiny mouldy basement) and you had no protection, there was no PRTB as far as I was aware, the landlords would always just keep your deposit and do whatever they wanted. I learned to never pay the last months rent (just keep fobbing them off with sob stories for a month) as the landlord would surely never give back my deposit.

from roughly 2000, to 2010, things got much better, it actually felt like a renters market at times. You could rent a whole house in the city for a reasonable amount, and tenancies could new be registered with the PRTB. So both parties had protection.

After that I found things gradually harder and harder. Harder to find a place, more crummy places for more money, landlords no longer registering with PRTB, doing whatever they want again, cus they know any tenant will have to put up with it and just feel lucky to have a place.

In 2016, I had had enough of it. I moved down to the country. It was a great move, I can go on great walks and cycles from my door, its quiet and peaceful, and I am avoiding all the noise, air pollution, scumbags, and issues of housing in Dublin.

<comment><USER26> Where'd you go? Doing the same thing myself.

<comment><USER25> To my parents house in a very remote spot in Co. Kilkenny.

I kept my lump sum that I had almost used to get a mortgage to get a house in Dublin.. and now I'm just living off of it without needing to work for a few years. :)

<comment><USER26> Hah, looked at a place in kilkenny ourselves. Waterford too, which seems underrated. Looks like we'll wind up in Offaly, buying a modest place cash with what we saved for a deposit in Dublin.

<comment><USER27> I assume you have the option to work remotely then. Sounds like the best of all worlds.... as long as.... (and this gets to what has been IMO one of the causes of the housing problem) ... you do not need access to a hospital or a university.

For as long as I can remember there have been calls to decentralize government infrastructure to rural locations to both ease the resource demands in Dublin and to allow people in the countryside to get a job near their families. By and large it has not happened. And when that has been coupled with the actual shutting of rural services (An Post, hospitals etc) using the excuse of austerity (itself triggered by housing speculation) the situation is just exacerbated.

Good luck in Offaly. I chose to move abroad over a decade ago instead of dealing with the implications of a gombeen state.

<comment><USER26> This goverment suffers from a lack of imagination regarding rural Ireland. You'd think all they care about is cars and cows if you asked FG. Giving folks a bigger motorway to congest with two hour commutes won't save it. Yet I know plenty of Dubs who feel trapped renting kips and are open to other lifestyles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'd like to think that this situation could be improved by restricting flows of capital across borders for residential property purchase, and by not allowing domestic vulture capital/private equity firms to buy residential properties. Not sure how this passes constitutional muster here in the US, so perhaps we need a housing rights amendment.

<comment><USER29> I think it's easier to cut into the profits of those owning more than one house/flat. Here in Austria we have a 10% sales tax on the rent I pay, why can't that be fully shifted to the owners regardless if the apartments is rented out or not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> They keep saying "let's build more houses!". Who's going to build them? Conor Reddy, an undergraduate in genetics? Erica Fleming studying for her degree in English? Or Jenny Quinn, the PA?

I guess we'll have to invite some guys from Poland. Oh, wait...

</comment><comment><USER30> There is a question that nobody is asking: How can we increase the market to make it attractive for people to build?

People think by increasing regulations on house owners that this will be solved. This is false. Decreasing regulations allow more business men to invest in housing in the city. This increases competition in the long term, thereby bringing costs down.

Instead of increasing regulations on Airbnb letters, why not decrease regulations on renters and provide incentive?

<comment><USER31> No. The Irish government have been attempting just that and it's actually be exacerbating the problem.

The solution is for the government to behave if a countercyclical fashion: if the market isn't doing its job, the government has to compensate for the market failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've been told by some fellow HN'ers in other threads that housing problems like this are akin to domain squatting. SMH.

</comment><comment><USER33> Maybe this is cultural and I have been grossly desensitized to how temporary rent/lease arrangements are in the US (except in rent controlled places), but I don't quite understand the aversion to going with a private market renter apartment, subsidized by the government (council?).

What makes it so undesirable that the article protagonists are willing to put their kids through the wait in what is basically a shoe box?! (10 sq.m. is not big enough for two people!)

The risk of having to look for another place to rent in a year is the same in most of US. They appear to be protected from the increases by the subsidy, so doesn't feel so bad.

</comment><comment><USER34> It sounds like government needs to adjust the laws so it encourages the homeowners to rent rather then Airbnb.

<comment><USER13> Dublin is a tourist town. The only thing that can compete with 100 euros a night is a rent of 3000 euros a month.

<comment><USER35> Or fines for short-term renting which make normal rent the more feasible option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It seems cities with housing problems where AirBnB is a factor could adopt a property tax scheme similar to what US counties implement already -

1) Tax based on property value (ad valorem); 2) Ad valorem deduction if owner lives on property (homestead exemption)

PLUS some tax distinction for "declared" \- not sure if verifiable - long-term (6 - 12 month minimum) vs short-term (AirBnB) rental.

I think taxes might work better or at least sound less draconian than simply banning AirBnB or restrictions such as when rooms can be let (e.g. Jacksonville Beach FL had some kind of ordinance restricting lets to certain months of the year.)

<comment><USER2> Another approach is land value tax, ie. make it very expensive to have idle buildings or parking lots in the city center. You can still have some deductions for primary residences to lessen the impact on them, while creating incentives to keep landlords from low-occupancy uses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm not convinced by the journalism in the article.

First, the journalist writes:

"The Greater Dublin area is reckoned to have more than 30,000 properties that are completely empty, many of which are owned by the local council."

However, they then don't get a quote from the council saying why their properties are empty.

That tells me they had a specific story they wanted to tell, without digging into why the systems the country has (state housing) to provide assistance aren't working.

</comment><comment><USER38> Tax the hell out of all forms of residential-property-as-investment. Allow tax breaks on second properties if you can show you are using them and not renting them out or letting them go to seed and there should also be some exceptions for collective ownership and also stuff like homes for the elderly and other forms of sheltered care, but in general the commercial use of residential property shout be taxed to the hilt.

<comment><USER27> This is absolutely the simplest and probably most effective response to the problem. It does need to be couple with a commitment to building new housing stock by the government though (as pointed out by the article).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> How about building up? There's a huge lack of any sizable flat developments in Dublin, it's all housing sprawl out into Meath and Kildare.

It's a fine place to visit but no way I'd live there (again). Traffic woes, housing woes etc. I dunno how the Dubs do it tbh.

</comment><comment><USER40> They like to simulate them being big cities like New York or Tokyo in terms of cost of living and rent prices.

The country just build HOUSES for few people and nothing high or apartment blocks... Again, instead, we build offices.

Truth is Dublin is one of the most appalling cities in the world.

</comment><comment><USER41> People would rather make more money in less time...

<comment><USER14> ...hence regulations and laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > Dublin came out as the world's worst capital for affordable accommodation

They should try Stockholm. It can't be worse than Stockholm, surely.

</comment><comment><USER27> One important point not mentioned in the discussion of this has been the accumulation of vast parcels of land by venture capitalists during the last housing crisis. There are people sitting on huge amounts of land that they acquired at knock-down prices during the government fire-sale. Media coverage has focused on the outright corruption alleged to have occurred in some cases (google NAMA and scandal) but even in the "legal" transfer of land the Irish taxpayers have effectively subsidized the purchase of these landbanks by private investors.

It is probably time for compulsory purchase orders at prices fair to the taxpayers. Hopefully this will scare off other predators as Ireland becomes known as a bad place to do dirty business in.

((I am dreaming... that will never happen... the Irish public by-and-large are neoliberal true believers... these are the fruits of their dearly held ideology))

</comment><comment><USER43> Just another story about the evils of zoning and housing regulation. How much do you want to bet builders aren't allowed to build more housing there?

<comment><USER44> It's considered bad practice to comment on HN stories one hasn't read. Did you happen to see anything in this story about zoning or housing regulation, or have specific knowledge to that affect?

<comment><USER43> That's exactly my point. They're not talking about the real cause of the problem, thus misleading all the readers and ignoring the elephant in the room.

Housing shortages are almost always a market failure due to regulation of some sort. They keep talking about it like the problem was existing landlords/AirBNB and to whom they're renting it out, etc. Instead of focusing on the real problem: lack of supply.

<comment><USER27> The lack of supply comes because neo-liberals decided the government should stop building social housing. So... yeah.. you are right, but for reasons that you won't like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I think it is also a problem of perception and living within your means. It is mentioned a lot of people 'are commuting crazy distances', and 'Four hours a day in a car or a bus.' I commuted up to four hours a day for several years in order to have a nice, affordable home on a lake. I couldn't afford NYC rents, and I was born and bred in Brooklyn with family and friends to assist in finding deals on rents. Meanwhile, I had friends who I grew up living in NYC with rent control, and collecting unemployment in between waiting/waitressing jobs. I thought a lot of work in Ireland was call center/IT work. Can young people, other than students, work remotely? How about online courses with a 4 hour commute once a week to check in with advisors and other students? The world will adapt. Government can't regulate fixes.

<comment><USER2> But governments do a LOT to restrict housing supply, particularly of compact, affordable, walkable development. They could remove those barriers and let more housing be built if they wanted the situation to improve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> When an exceptionally esteemed mathematician like Atiyah proposes a proof for the Riemann hypothesis, it can still be wrong.

I think that's important--letting experts or ideas be wrong. I don't see evidence of humanity having success solving difficult problems without competition and experimentation.

But this particular problem will continue to grow because it wont be addressed in this way. Committees, bureaucracies, academics and journalists will surely discuss it though.

Orwell speaks more eloquently about this concept in The Lion and the Unicorn.</comment>


Wasted – Bought that girl an expensive cocktail? - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wasted-bought-that-girl-expensive/id898491279?mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> Purchased a coffee you didn't really need? Add it to Wasted. Splurged on a $100 top because it was "on sale"? Wasted.

Bought that girl an expensive cocktail only for her boyfriend to show up a minute later? Wasted.

The Simplest, most efficient way to track money you wasted.

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks cool.</comment>


How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-17/how-apple-scaled-back-its-titanic-plan-to-take-on-detroit <comment><USER2> Did Apple ever really have a "titanic plan to take on Detroit?" There's no indication that they even built a prototype chassis. This may just be mis- reporting of autonomous vehicle R&D.

Apple's strength in automatic driving should be the development of better, and better-looking, sensors. Apple does electronics and small hardware well. Those Velodyne LIDAR things are rotating kludges, look awful, and cost way too much. There are better approaches known. (I'm a fan of the Advanced Scientific Concepts LIDAR, which works great but costs too much because it's made by PhD physicists in Santa Barbara.) Existing automotive radars are dumber than they could be. Those are straightforward engineering problems that Apple could solve.

Building cars is a low-margin business. If Apple became a successful car company, their stock would decline.

<comment><USER3> > Building cars is a low-margin business.

So is building phones.

<comment><USER2> Not for Apple.[1] Margins on iPhones are huge.

[1] [http://fortune.com/2016/04/04/apple-iphone- se-3/](http://fortune.com/2016/04/04/apple-iphone-se-3/)

<comment><USER4> But the cost of phones is a couple of zeros ( at least 1.x zeros ) off the cost of cars. What keeps people from buying more expensive cars is how much ( and what sort of ) financing they can qualify for.

<comment><USER5> So Apple needs to start a bank as well as a car company!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Speaking from Michigan and not Silicon Valley I've got to wonder which auto manufacturer would buy Apple's software?

All the major manufacturers have announced programs for self-driving cars except Fiat/Chrysler. They mention Ford which has stated they will be in production by 2019.

Now I would suppose if Ford, GM, Mercedes, Toyoto or any of the Chinese car makers were to have their software fail Apple might be an awfully nice fallback.

FYI Ford learned massively from its problems with Microsoft's Sync technology. All the engineers knew it would be a complete disaster but that news wasn't passed up to the execs. Now engineers have been brought into the process.

[http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/ford/2016/10...](http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/ford/2016/10/06/myford- touch-system-suit/91704242/)

<comment><USER7> Most automotive companies don't do software themselves and even don't have the skills to do it but buy it from a supplier or contractor according to their specification. At least that's the case for the infotainment domain I'm working with. So I guess those plans and concepts for self-driving technology also heavily utilize 3rd party software from suppliers who have specialized in that. In this case Apple would just replace the other supplier. Of course with the risk that the feature set and behavior of the software does not match what the OEM expects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Making cars, while a hard problem, isn't as hard as making cars self driving. Seems sensible to master the second first.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. Let's pretend that Apple released a car two years from now, that in true Apple fashion is highly polished, but does not include some sort of self driving functionality while their competitors do. I doubt in that scenario that Apple's car efforts would fare well as self driving is going to change the way we think about cars.

<comment><USER10> They could license Google's driving tech: Google is open to partnership. The first iPhone proved that Apple hardware and Google software can be a winning combination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Apple's move into auto seems to have been about recruiting. For a brief time some of the most talented young engineers were favoring Tesla over Apple because the mission was more interesting.

<comment><USER12> Has this stopped?

<comment><USER13> Yes. People are starting to realize how brutal it can be working for tesla.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _By the end of 2015, the project was blighted by internal strife. Managers battled about the project's direction, according to people with knowledge of the operations. "It was an incredible failure of leadership," one of the people said._

This is in stark contrast to the compartmentalization of new projects that Apple under Steve Jobs was able to accomplish with the development of the Macintosh and the iPhone. Is this evidence that Apple is unable to do that now?

<comment><USER15> Maybe. Could also be that a car project is much more complex with more opportunities for "battl[ing] about the project's direction." One manager wants to emphasize a modern cockpit, one an electric drivetrain, and one full autonomy. And a leader that understands consumer electronics well enough to navigate "an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator" might not understand cars enough to navigate a car project the same way.

Thus, we get Mansfield in to say "no, we're focusing on this first; we don't have a car without it." This would be like Jobs (or Forstall) coming in to say "we're focusing on a multi-touch OS X first; we don't have a phone without it."

So, to answer your question: maybe. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The sheer complexity of establishing a car brand is not what it used to be, but it's still something on the order of nation-state hard - I have a source who used to work an Hyundai back before the S. Korean economy crashed in the Asian Tigers mess ( he then emigrated to the US ) and the car-making experience in Korea was akin to war by his lights.

Since he was also in the Korean Marines, I trust his judgement.

</comment><comment><USER16> As an Apple shareholder, I am thankful Apple has shelved plans to dump billions into a cyclical, low margin, low return business.

<comment><USER17> Low margin? They wouldn't be making Yugos. Like with their laptops and such, they'd be targeting the higher end of the market.

Cyclical is also great -- that's exactly what the laptop and especially the phone market are.

<comment><USER18> Apple products haven't been the high end of the market for a long time, they're mass produced, mass consumed, purely disposable tech.

<comment><USER19> Do tell us what the high end of the laptop and mobile device market looks like and what products occupy it.

<comment><USER18> My current Macbook Pro cost me about £1100. No part of it is user serviceable so it's disposable.

My first Apple laptop, a Titanium Powerbook was almost 3 times that. Hard drive, keyboard, ram, battery were all user serviceable.

My point was the company isn't what it once was, it's not a high end tech company for the few but a disposable tech company for the many.

<comment><USER17> > _My current Macbook Pro cost me about £1100. No part of it is user > serviceable so it 's disposable._

In that sense maybe, but not in the "low quality" sense (which disposable also implies, e.g. disposable razors etc). Besides modern cars are not "user serviceable" like 70s cars for the most part either, but they are not "disposable".

> _My first Apple laptop, a Titanium Powerbook was almost 3 times that._

The overall price for the high end laptops on the market dropped since the Titanium powerbook though, and modern MBPrs are still priced at the high end segment of today's prices.

You can't expect 1999 prices for a 2016 computer when the tech innovations make both low and high end products more affordable all the time.

> _My point was the company isn 't what it once was, it's not a high end tech > company for the few but a disposable tech company for the many._

"High end tech company" does not necessitate "user serviceable".

The tech in the Mac, compared to the average laptop, is way higher, and the engineering process to build a new MacBook Pro Retina model (from the machining to the logic board, batteries, etc) is far more advanced. Hence, high end of the market.

Nor was the Mac ever "for the few" \-- it was always intended as a mass market PC, for those with the money to spare, not just some tinkering propellerhead elite ("the computer for the rest of us"). Heck, they even sold cheaper models back in the day (the Mac Classic, the original iMac, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good!

Maybe they can get back to making some new laptops, and some desktops (Mac Pro, Mac Mini), that don't suck!

We shall see what October brings.

<comment><USER21> Blame the stock market. Once a company has a solid product line in one area that doesn't suck, every publicly traded company is under tremendous pressure to move into new markets rather than iterating on previous successes, often to the detriment of preexisting products. The stock market for tech companies rewards growth and just about nothing but growth (and punishes a lack of growth), Amazon being a perfect example. In a way, Amazon's strategy since its inception could be characterized as playing to investor expectations of growth more than running a business.

Also, if you look at all the big tech companies (American ones at least) over the past 30 years, there's a recurring pattern of a company becoming preposterously successful, then spending a decade or more reaping the benefits of that success while repeatedly throwing money at the wall for different new projects to try and find something else that sticks. Meanwhile core businesses can lose focus and wither on the vine while huge piles of money and engineering talent get wasted on things that either go nowhere, or break even and fade away years later.

Until the last few years, post-1995 Microsoft was a perfect example of this. If there was a product category that was significant enough to be the basis of some other company's entire business (dialup Internet access or search engines or personal finance software, for example), they would spend many years and billions of dollars creating a Microsoft version of that product, based on the idea that they could siphon growth from a known and already-proven segment of the industry. I don't think this was due to a lack of vision or incompetence, I think that that just appeared to be the most effective way to meet investors' demand for growth and new revenue sources.

Google is in a similar bind. Think of how long it's been since they have effectively attained a search monopoly. They created a perpetual money machine (ads) that to this day provide the vast majority of their revenues. For 15+ years they have been expending titanic resources on trying to find a way to transition from a company that gets >= 90% of its revenue from ads, to a much larger company with many more revenue streams. They've had some great successes, but they have yet to break out of the trap of fundamentally being a company driven by ad revenue.

<comment><USER22> > _Blame the stock market. Once a company has a solid product line in one area > that doesn 't suck, every publicly traded company is under tremendous > pressure to move into new markets rather than iterating on previous > successes, often to the detriment of preexisting products._

First of all, I'm not sure there's any evidence to support your claim that public companies are under pressure to diversify over iterate.

Second, public companies have _chosen_ to go public. It doesn't just happen. So, blame _them_.

> _lso, if you look at all the big tech companies (American ones at least) > over the past 30 years, there 's a recurring pattern of a company becoming > preposterously successful, then spending a decade or more reaping the > benefits of that success while repeatedly throwing money at the wall for > different new projects to try and find something else that sticks._

In other words, luck is a substantial portion of success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think Detroit and other manufactures are fearful of automation. If you ask them what the future looks like its driving assist technology. Fully automated driving kills the emotional experience that is used to sell cars.

<comment><USER24> The bigger issue is that autonomous cars make it extremely easy to massively boost utilization: driver assist still means your car sits at home, work, etc when not in use. This in turn means more cars are required by society. Autonomous cars can achieve much higher levels of utilization.

This is the real reason legacy car makers don't want fully autonomous vehicles.

<comment><USER25> A car being driven all day (especially in cities, where the demand will be highest) is going to wear cars down incredibly fast. Manufacturers won't see that big of a hit if fewer people buy cars, if those people will replace it every year or two.

<comment><USER26> If it is profitable, it will be financeable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Apple could just buy Tesla instead, it's only $20b or so. Pocket change.

<comment><USER28> Teslas Market cap is over $28B, and to buy it, Apple would have to pay a large premium on top of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It will be interesting if Tesla's "unexpected announcement" is related to this!

</comment><comment><USER30> So Apple change to the approach that Google have been taking all along?

</comment><comment><USER31> The dilemma here is this - make your own car or partner with a manufacturer.

Partnership means smaller profit margin in a very tight market. The Big 3 for example barely make any money when selling cars (as opposed to pickups) these days, so to get a reasonable margin the price would need to be jacked up...

Making your own - the barrier to entry in that industry is VERY high which the article kind of alludes to talking about how it's hard to find suppliers willing to sell small batches of parts etc. There's a reason there aren't that many auto manufacturers around, and the ones that are out there aren't exactly the kinds of revenue generating machines as apples and googles of the world.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's only when Steve isn't at the helm that we hear about internal projects that have no direction. It was good while it lasted.

<comment><USER33> The interesting question is what has Jony Ive been up to? The Apple Watch needed a design reboot (and the Edition is practically dead) and now supposedly so does the Apple Car (at his behest[1]). A third iteration of the iPhone design and no new Macs designs (yet). He/Cook seized power from Forstall but there's been little outright success/breakthroughs to show since then

[1] [http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/25/apples-project- tit...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/25/apples-project-titan-at- crossroads-team-in-hiring-freeze-source-says)

<comment><USER34> From what I've heard (and take this with a pyramid of salt because it's an anonomous internet comment) Jony Ive is essentially on a sabbatical and hasn't been seen on Apple's campus since before Summer. If I had to guess, he wants to leave Apple, but is staying on either until some unspecified product reveal or because he has to wait-out stock options or something.

<comment><USER33> He wasn't at the Fall iPhone event iirc...

<comment><USER35> he was. you can see him chatting with Stephen Fry in the background of this product shot.

[http://imgur.com/a/f8lt9](http://imgur.com/a/f8lt9)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> A couple of takeaways from this article:

Apple has a problem with leadership. When managers aren't buying into a vision, mostly because it's murky at best, that is a big problem.

SV hubris believing you can go into any industry and disrupt the incompetent incumbents is laughable. FB found this out with phones and it sounds like Apple and Google are now figuring it out with cars.

The Netflix idea works here too: Apple and Google have to become more like GM and BMW before GM and BMW become more like Apple and Google. GM will have an awesome electric with a better range than a Tesla Model 3 this year! If they ever figure out aesthetics and software they will win.

Finally this article highlights what Musk has done at Tesla. They are the closest SV company to actually figure out manufacturing. It still remains to be seen but if they do it Tesla will be the market leader in cars.

<comment><USER17> > _Apple has a problem with leadership. When managers aren 't buying into a > vision, mostly because it's murky at best, that is a big problem._

That's the inverse of what would actually be a big problem: managers BUYING into a "murky at best" vision.

> _SV hubris believing you can go into any industry and disrupt the > incompetent incumbents is laughable._

Isn't that what people said about music players and then about phones? Heck, they are already the #2 watchmaker in the world in profits too...

> _FB found this out with phones and it sounds like Apple and Google are now > figuring it out with cars._

Neither Google nor Apple have ever released in car. If anything, their setbacks are related to the advanced self-driving stuff they aspire to make, not some issue competing with existing car tech or distribution or anything.

Besides, tons of companies have entered the car market and gave established car companies a run for their money already. The Japanese obliterated the established Detroit order for example, and new Chinese cars are as good as anybody's for general use. Tesla also come out of nowhere and cornered a niche of the market. Heck, traditional car companies are so complacent and derivative that if anything it's the inverse of hubris to believe one can do better.

Nowadays, when most of the manufacturing the expertise is in assembly lines in China and the like, creating a new car to compete with existing models is laughably easy -- especially if you have $500 billion lying around.

<comment><USER37> You're comparing entirely different things.

Chinese cars are barely being imported in the U.S. (Three models so far). It has taken many years to get this far, and will take longer for them to have a similar reputation as, say, Korea.

Tesla has done well in the luxury car market, but they've been late and had quality issues. The Tesla 3 is not out yet and there is still a big risk they'll fail.

So, "laughably easy" is a major exaggeration. It's possible to launch a new car company but nobody finds it easy.

<comment><USER17> > _Chinese cars are barely being imported in the U.S. (Three models so far). > It has taken many years to get this far, and will take longer for them to > have a similar reputation as, say, Korea._

Yes, but the US is a mere 5% of the global population and about 20% of global GDP (down from decades ago). You can be a huge player and not even play in the US market. The Chinese are already selling their cars in many global markets.

> _Tesla has done well in the luxury car market, but they 've been late and > had quality issues. The Tesla 3 is not out yet and there is still a big risk > they'll fail._

Tesla doesn't have Apple's half a trillion in the bank though. And which established car maker didn't have quality issues at various times (and still today)?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Learning Go by porting a medium-sized web back end from Python - <AUTHOR> http://benhoyt.com/writings/learning-go/ <comment><USER2> I can agree with most of the article, but for some it looks like we have not been using the same language ecosystem at all.

Go really feels opinionated around the wrong things, in order to claim "simplicity" as a feature:

\- No generics just mean you're going to be handing interface{} all the way in your stack, it makes things more complex and less readable for no reason (and less safe)

\- error handling which is essentially string-based, in 2017? Give me a type system, please

\- gofmt is a good idea (just like clang-format or yapf), and having it is great, but the maintainers specifically refuse to add simple features, saying "running it in an automated process is not supported", despite all github projects already having it in their automated CI suite

\- go test is good, but in the end it is found lacking

\- dep, well, if you don't mind dumping the code for all your deps in the source tree, it's probably ok, but it solves a deficiency that the language should not even have (see next point)

\- stability: the language itself is fine on that, but the ecosystem really isn't. The fact that they don't even have the package management quality of python (which I find awful already) is baffling. I don't even know how they could think "yeah, github-importing is a good idea, let's do it". Go is eight years old tomorrow and you still have to rely on third-party tooling to do proper imports that don't burn your house.

<comment><USER3> The opinions expressed in Go are solely those of Google about the productivity of Google programmers. Nothing else is driving design. It is by Google employees for Google employees. Making it widely available and open source is a strategy for extracting value in the form of bug reports and patches and Google friendly upgrades from a world wide community for the price of a few conference talks and some sticker swag.

That Go solves some problems for programmers outside Google is a side effect of being a general purpose programming language. It is not a primary business goal except in so far as it raises Google's bottom line, creates a hiring pipeline, and keeps its employee moral off the floor.

<comment><USER4> I think if you're replacing "Google" with "those Bell Labs guys", you're closer to the truth. A lot of the design decisions are quite familiar if you look at the past work of e.g. Rob Pike.

It's not necessarily all about peak efficiency for specific enterprise applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I've noticed, and personally experienced, about these porting projects is that they're generally a premature optimization but are a great way to learn a new language. The gains from a port are largely intrinsic in nature, residing with the programmers. However, systems and operations largely carry on just fine with the original language chosen.

Only __one story __comes to mind where a programmer had a _legitimate_ problem using a high-level language and solved it with a lower-level language, and that was Armin Roacher, who solved a significant performance issue using Rust: [https://blog.sentry.io/2016/10/19/fixing-python- performance-...](https://blog.sentry.io/2016/10/19/fixing-python-performance- with-rust.html)

Can you think of other stories? Please, share.

I encourage all to be more skeptical about potential gains and realistic about who is actually gaining.

<comment><USER6> Writing in a fast compiled language is not premature optimization.

Premature optimization would be something that makes the code more complicated and more difficult to follow but produce better performance.

Writing the same code in a fast compiled language is just the default thing that you should be doing when you are not doing premature optimization.

Writing in a slow interpreted language is more like premature "deoptimization" (if that's a word).

<comment><USER7> I don't follow this logic. Why not use C all the time by default then?

<comment><USER8> Let's say that C produces 100% of the performance available. How much does Go produce? Maybe 90%? How much does Python, say, produce? 25%? So going from Python to a compiled language produces a huge gain, and going from Go to C produces a little bit more.

But why not get all the gain? Well, sure, _if performance is the only thing you care about_. But it usually isn't. You might also care about networking, or multithreading. Would I rather write that code in C, or in Go? Is it enough better in Go to be worth that last 10% of performance? Arguably, yes.

When someone says "X matters", it doesn't mean that they are saying "X is the _only_ thing that matters". It is not correct to conclude that they should, for consistency, be saying "turn the X knob as far as you can". Instead, interpret it as saying "given your other constraints, look for a sweet spot where X is somewhat toward this end of its range."

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's my point. It is premature optimization, because you do not have a use case for such performance. Instead you might want Python's extensive numerical libraries, or you enjoy its quick prototyping capacities. The same way that you do not always go for C, and sometimes prefer Go, because of non performance related requirements.

That's why saying a compiled performant language should be default is not logic I understand. Default should be whatever you need for your requirements. If you don't need anything special, just go with what you already know well.

<comment><USER8> Fine, but if that's your point, _don 't_ say "Why not use C all the time by default then?" Actually make that point, rather than leaving us all guessing as to what your point is, and more important, _why_ it's your point.

And, as I said, "Why not use C all the time by default then?" does not actually follow as the logical endpoint of the argument that your trying to answer, so making that your response really doesn't contribute much to the advancement of the conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Recently I have had the opportunity to write a microservice in Go. It was a very refreshing experience switching from Scala. Go is a lot faster to compile and runs with a far smaller footprint. The channels are nice. On the other hand the testing feels wrong because its so annoying to do mocks. And don't even get me started on the dependency management.

Overall Go feels to me like some version compiled PHP with better concurrency support.

<comment><USER10> I really wish that there was a language which had these features:

\- simple (so not Scala, Haskell, Perl 6, etc.; no Rust either, unfortunately)

\- clean (nice syntax, preferably Python inspired, but consistent)

\- modern (generics, some functional features, string interpolation, etc.)

\- decent concurrency/parallelism story

\- good IDE, preferably supported by the core dev team

\- compilation to a (possibly static) native binary

\- decently big ecosystem

\- and a big enough community of contributors or commercial backing from at least 1 stable entity

\- also preferably didn't have a lot of historical baggage

From what I gather C# might actually be close to this, 2-3 years from now, if the .Net Core transition happens smoothly and the OSS community adopts it... Who knows, maybe even Kotlin 2019 or so?

<comment><USER11> Nim has everything nailed down except the ecosystem/commercial backing; It does have some of those, but not to the extent that I would blindly tell you they are there.

It's as fun as writing Python (with a similar syntax), but it has essentially all the goodies you want from Lisp when you need them, runs as fast as equally optimized C, produces standalone native binaries, _or_ standalone JavaScript if that's your thing.

<comment><USER12> Cheers to Nim. I'm learning it in my spare time for fun. However, I will not consider using it for anything more than toy projects until it hits 1.0. Hopefully soon.

<comment><USER13> > _I will not consider using it for anything more than toy projects until it > hits 1.0. Hopefully soon._

It should happen soon (TM), but from what I understand it will be just another version, just this time renamed to 1.0 - this basically means you could start using it more seriously even now.

<comment><USER12> Yeah. I understand that it will be just another version with not that many changes. Nim as it currently already feels stable and solid. But, I believe v1.0 release will carry a commitment to not introduce breaking changes at least for reasonable period of time after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm at the same spot myself, trying to learn Go by building a simple web app. Your article was a refreshing read to me.

One extra thing that is the major motivation for me to go to Go is the ability to deploy as a single God damn binary and not deal with dependancies and pip. pip and counting on OS repositories may be the right thing to do, but it is just too cumbersome. I have an air gapped setup at work, and there is no easy way for me to deploy Python applications - because all projects just say pip instal this and pip install that. It would make my life so much easier building something on my laptop, scp the binary to servers and expect them to "just work".

<comment> proto-n Coming from a data science background, don't anaconda and environment description files [1] solve this problem with python? Not even sudo is needed to install anaconda and setup / clone environments, also it can manage python versions independently from the system's python.

[1] [https://conda.io/docs/user-guide/tasks/manage- environments.h...](https://conda.io/docs/user-guide/tasks/manage- environments.html#building-identical-conda-environments)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for your comment.

I have just started using Conda locally to learn before taking it to work. I'm a new sysadmin and my predecessor maintained a restricted list of python packages on all cluster systems like a dictator. I don't want to be one.

Does conda cloning the environment mean I can just copy the project directory to another server and expect my program to run without it looking for the packages on the internet?

<comment> proto-n No, the intended way of cloning works by exporting the exact specifications to a text file and re-creating the environment from the text file.

If you use packages from conda channels (which are repositories of packages), then it should work flawlessly. Usually basically everything is available from either the official channel (anaconda) or some community channel (like conda- forge). At least in the data-science domain. I'm not really familiar with the python web-development scene, so not sure about that.

Edit: actually once I had to copy an environment from one machine to another (because of connection problems), and I seem to recall that worked too, but I don't think this method is officially supported.

<comment><USER10> > No, the intended way of cloning works by exporting the exact specifications > to a text file and re-creating the environment from the text file.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory :)

But I'm not sure who to believe, the other reply to the parent comment says that copying things around is actually possible.

<comment> proto-n Well, as my edit says, I've had success with installing anaconda on an other machine and copying the environment folder to the proper place inside the installation, but AFAIK that's not an officially supported way of doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > compiles very fast (for a statically-typed language).

Like Turbo Pascal 4.0 in 1987 or Modula-2 in 1978, as two possible examples. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> I am doing some python to go conversions for some performance gains in parts of my stack - I really like it so far because of how they brought some of the perks of languages like python into a compiled language. One thing I really miss though is ipdb.

The Delve debugger still doesn't let you run functions and I miss all the autocomplete fun with ipdb. I hope they can make go a little more friendly to debugging in general.

</comment><comment><USER16> >However, it was only 1900 lines of Go (about 50% more than the 1300 lines of Python).

>However, I'd seriously consider using Go for larger projects (static typing makes refactoring easier)

Assuming a fully tested codebase and a relatively sane runtime type system, I'd _much_ , _much_ rather maintain the shorter codebase than the statically typed one.

Having less code makes refactoring easier.

<comment><USER17> Assuming a fully tested codebase, there is an overhead in writing and maintaining unit tests that has to be considered as well, and using a static type system obviates a whole category of them. You move the type specification out of tests and manual documentation directly into the code where you'll find out at compile time what you did wrong. Not at run-time, or during testing because you diligently wrote a test that considered the case.

I agree that brevity sometimes aids refactoring, but there are many parameters that have to be weighed in, and often I find that the benefit of static typing outweigh whatever ignoring the type or checking it at run-time might offer.

<comment><USER16> >Assuming a fully tested codebase, there is an overhead in writing and maintaining unit tests that has to be considered as well, and using a static type system obviates a whole category of them.

I've not found this to be true, and tests that do type checking are a waste of time in any language.

Bugs that are caught by static type systems are almost always caught by a combination of behavior tests and a sprinkling of sanity/type checks on border code (e.g. a module's publicly facing API).

>you'll find out at compile time what you did wrong

In a fully tested code base that is regularly tested the distinction between compile time and runtime does not matter a lot.

By contrast n code bases in _dire_ need of tests (which is more common than generally assumed), the distinction is absolutely vital.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure about Javascript, but why do you have to have two APIs when you have async? At least in C# you write the async version of the API and that's it.

Then you go asyncStuff.Request on it, and it blocks. There are some quirks but I remember that it worked all right.

</comment><comment><USER18> I really liked to read the article. You gave your opinion and didn't try to sound that this was the way, it was clear that it was YOUR opinion. Thanks for it.</comment>


8bit city maps - <AUTHOR> http://8bitcity.com/

<comment><USER2> This is awesome, but someone really needs to take it to the next logical step and let me play some fucking Zelda in Manhattan.

<comment><USER3> Bit of a tangent, but have you gone to Come out and Play? <http://www.comeoutandplay.org/>

<comment><USER4> These types of things (come out and play, improve everywhere etc) really make me miss NY and hate living in the cultural wasteland I do now....

<comment><USER3> move back!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice to see that OpenLayers can be put to such bizarre uses too :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> Pretty nice, but it went down about 60 seconds after my first view of it.

However, some Dragon Warrior music and a little character walking around would be pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is fantastic. What would street view look like?

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice. Reminds me a lot of the AMSTRAD CPC days, what a machine that was.</comment>


Zapier Email Parser: Extract Text From Automated Emails - <AUTHOR> http://parser.zapier.com/?welcome=back <comment><USER2> This is a killer feature for Zapier and i'm really excited. Zapier has been a huge time saver for us at BetterVoice.com.

How many times do you get approached by customers or other vendors about "when are you going to integrate with XYZ" product? If you just integrate ONE time with Zapier, you're immediately connected with over 200 other online services. Then your answer to those customers/vendors can be: "We're integrated with Zapier, so you guys should integrate with them too and you'll get all the other benefits as well". With that answer you accomplish 2 things: 1) you shift the burden to them (2) you can use Zapier as a "testing ground" to see how popular an integration with a particular service is. If one particular Zapier connection starts taking off, then you can consider a direct integration. If only a few people use a particular service connection, then you haven't lost anything.

<comment><USER3> For some reason, this comment really read like a marketing testimonial.

<comment><USER4> If you want infuriating marketing, try Googling for an integration between two obscure web services.

The Zapier "Zapbook" automatically makes a page for each possible combination of the services they hook into, giving useless bullshit like [https://zapier.com/zapbook/ducksboard/aim/](https://zapier.com/zapbook/ducksboard/aim/) (which, by the way, isn't the same as [https://zapier.com/zapbook/aim/ducksboard/](https://zapier.com/zapbook/aim/ducksboard/) either).

<comment><USER3> Zapier lets you connect apps together in interesting ways, whether or not it really makes sense to. Maybe someone out there will find it useful to be able to manage their dashboards with instant messages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, we actually have users doing both of those examples! (None have opted to share their zaps, so the parents' links remain barren.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Happy to answer any questions! This tool has been in use for many months by some select Zapier users and we decided to finally release it. I definitely want to open source the core extractor bits and document the REST API that powers the Zapier integration.

We have more information on using it in Zapier (the main use case at the moment) here: [https://zapier.com/zapbook/updates/308/introducing-zapier- em...](https://zapier.com/zapbook/updates/308/introducing-zapier-email- parser/)

<comment><USER5> Very nice! This looks very useful and easy to use.

How much boilerplate text do you need on either side of a token in order to identify it? Put another way, how much can the template emails vary? If the template format changes is there any sort of notification? Did you use the simplest implementation that could work or is this much more complicate than it looks?

<comment><AUTHOR> It can actually get pretty complex, the technique we're using is a wacky hacky hodgepodge of Google diff-match-patch that works _surprisingly_ well! If you run into any that don't work, just let us know and we can add it to the test suite and figure it out.

<comment><USER6> We've got some particularly complicated html RegEx for Email parsing at our company. We manually write new ones for new email layouts as we get them. I'd be interested in any information on how you're solving the issue, as I love how you've tackled it at least on the UI end.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure! In very broad strokes:

First, download yourself a copy of Google's diff-match-patch.

Second, make a template for the email you have (think "Your shipment will be delivered {{date}}. Thank you!" vs. the original raw email "Your shipment will be delivered 2014-04-04. Thank you!").

Third, run it through diff-match-patch.

Forth, walk over the change tree and record the insertion (1), a deletion (-1) or equality (0) transformations (one as keys the other as values).

(There are a _lot_ of edge cases to handle between the forth and fifth step, but test cases make those pretty obvious (if not very frustrating.)

Fifth, collate the keys/values into a dictionary and do some last minute cleanups.

We will be documenting a REST API so you can use parser.zapier.com directly, and it is pretty easy to forward emails automatically to our robot (so you can conceivably avoid writing anything at all and just use the app).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good luck Zapier. I've spent many an hour on this exact problem.

If the templates don't change at all (no ads, nothing contextual or optional) then this is possible, but in my experience emails have a surprising amount of variation when trying to do stuff like this. Paid with an online check this time versus a credit card? Billing address, last 4 numbers, etc might now be gone, which totally messes up the extraction.

Hopefully though people will be using this for more niche tools than Amazon receipts.

<comment><USER8> It's difficult, but not impossible. My university has a spin-off company, which does parsing of documents. One thing that they do is parsing of CVs. You give it a pdf file of any CV in any format and it will convert that into a machine readable format. Obviously that requires domain knowledge, but it's possible.

I don't know how Zapier works, but it is possible that they do some kind of fuzzy matching, that is robust to those things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can someone share a use case?

It seems cool for... _something_.

edit: thanks all, very interesting.

<comment><USER10> Sure, so whenever someone cancels their Planscope account I send myself an email with their name, email address, LTV, plan, and cancelation reason (this is also stored in my database.)

With this, I could simply CC that email to Zapier, they'll yank out all that info and shove it into a Google Spreadsheet, which will let me do certain things that would be a pain to program myself.

<comment><USER11> I don't understand.. if you send automated emails to yourself in a human- friendly format, why not just use a Google API to push the same data into the spreadsheet at the same time?

Zapier may be really cool, but it still seems like you're taking raw data, converting it to human-readable form, then sending that to Zapier to attempt to extract the raw data again. Or am I misunderstanding?

<comment><USER12> The difference is that you have to do new work every time the destination of the data changes. Using an interface to say "here are the relevant parts" is a lot nicer than having to code it yourself.

<comment><USER13> Or just push your entire object to google spreadsheet: [https://github.com/firmafon/to_google_spreadsheet](https://github.com/firmafon/to_google_spreadsheet)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Congratulations Bryan for launching it!

We are doing the same at [http://mailparser.io](http://mailparser.io) and I can confirm that there is a real need for a solution like that. A lot of our existing customers use mailparser.io in combination with Zapier. Those customers can now directly use the parser of Zapier. Which sucks for us but which is surely great for the customer and Zapier ... :-)

One caveat though, a lot of use-cases are not the static "contact form" email where nothing moves except the values. We get a lot of requests for parsing lists, tables etc. Curious how the chosen approach works on this kind of parsing jobs.

<comment><USER15> How would you parse lists and tables from a website? e.g. parsing an online schedule in order to use the data in a responsive mobile or native app?

Random site example: peoplewhodance.net/events/NYE/schedule.html

<comment><AUTHOR> You might look into [http://www.kimonolabs.com/](http://www.kimonolabs.com/).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This seems really useful but I can't think of an example usage. Can someone share an example where this is useful?

<comment><USER17> "Set up firstname.lastname@example.com as Google hosted email, automatically parse all Amazon/SaaS subscription/etc emails and update the bookkeeping system" would already save me (or, well, my bookkeeper) 5+ hours a year.

<comment><USER18> Shouldn't this kind of notifications be handled with the Paypal / Amazon API directly for more reliability?

<comment><USER17> These are business expenses rather than things I am selling. As such, they're on my corporate credit cards. Regrettably, those don't have API access, and the best way to get information from them is currently "Log in once a month, dump a PDF file, and email it to the bookkeeper."

<comment><USER19> As a tech guy, I always feel extremely guilty about it, but my Italian accountant is cool with me dumping a big pile of receipts and papers in his office every few months. Even US accountants are often more or less ok with this, even if it makes me a bit sick to my stomach.

<comment><USER20> > As a tech guy, I always feel extremely guilty about it

As a tech guy, business people routinely dump big piles of raw data in my office every few days. I mutter a bit about how this is why we invented databases and then laugh all the way to the bank.

And I guarantee you the business people don't feel at all guilty about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We have been using the feature for a while, it has become an integral part of our system. The Zapier team is great and always willing to help out with any issues we have, above and beyond what you would expect.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is incredibly clever. Zapier has already built a fast-expanding platform to relate structured business data, and now is taking steps to grow it even further by structuring unstructured data. SaaS mainstays, watch out.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you think this feature is cool, I would encourage you to take a look at my company: Taskflow.io

It's basically a visual drag-and-drop tool to automate business processes.

You can drag-and-drop many different actions together (including email) to automate and track many processes you organization might have.

I would love to hear your feedback as we are just getting off the ground.

</comment><comment><USER24> I just noticed Google started doing something like this. I got Google search results about purchases I'd made from Apple. They parsed a receipt from my Gmail account and displayed it in a card in my search results.

I was a bit taken aback by that.

<comment><USER25> IIRC, this is not _parsing_ , there is a Gmail API mentioned during 2013 Google IO

[https://developers.google.com/schemas/tutorials/google- now-c...](https://developers.google.com/schemas/tutorials/google-now-cards)

[https://developers.google.com/gmail/actions/getting- started](https://developers.google.com/gmail/actions/getting-started)

<comment><USER26> They do parsing as well.

I forward all my work flight itineraries to Gmail (so I get Google Now notifications) after cut & pasting them out of the Word document I get them in.

Gmail parses them and displays them using the "Flight details" format, even though there is none of the information required for the "Actions" thing linked above.

<comment><USER27> Gmail doesn't do any parsing, Gmail provides the SDK described here [https://developers.google.com/schemas/tutorials/google- now-c...](https://developers.google.com/schemas/tutorials/google-now-cards)

When developer / brands create emails following Gmail quick action guidelines, and you have Google Now enabled, then you will see Google Now cards.

<comment><USER26> Did you read my post?

I cut and paste plain text out of a word document and send it, and that triggers the Google Now cards.

It's parsing

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It seems like an awesome feature. Just I don't like the landing page... If patio11 wouldn't have shared on twitter saying how awesome it is, I would have closed without caring too much - just one more thing on The Internet I simply am not bothered with.

The explanation, the first paragraph simply doesn't really give a clear idea on what it does and what's the benefit for me, and, imho a random user is not really motivated to try and figure it out.

I believe a simple nice diagram

[email] -> [zapier] -> [internet]

with some example integrated in it would do a much better job.

</comment><comment><USER29> Could anyone more versed in being a sysadmin comment on using this for logging?

I know there are things like logstash, but this one seems like something that could be complementary. What about feeding log files for known events, and, I don't know, have a pretty dashboard will all the stats or something? what other use for this feature plus logging can you think of?

Disclaimer: I'm currently thinking of a way of doing logging and security audits to some CA server I'm about to configure, so right now everything looks like a nail I guess...

</comment><comment><USER30> I think you've got a typo of "chose" vs "choose" in the step that asks the user to "chose" where the data should be sent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, thanks! Fix committed and pushing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is it possible to extract repeating patterns? example would be extracting repo name, number of stars, language and project description from GitHub Archive daily digests.

sample mail: [http://us5.campaign- archive2.com/?u=439aa16a39e4b10e0b65ff2e...](http://us5.campaign- archive2.com/?u=439aa16a39e4b10e0b65ff2ef&id=65070f9ad1&e=d43ad64ef4)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not possible to extract something (today) that would be generated inside a for loop. I'd be curious if anyone has ideas on how you might do that.

If you need support for more complex emails and extraction rules, you might look into using [http://mailparser.io/](http://mailparser.io/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Would love to see an open source tool like this for parsing general text / csv / fixedwidth / html in a similar way.

Very nifty concept.

<comment><USER33> I made an open source tool that does something like this using a modified version of the Levenshtein distance algorithm: [https://github.com/nathanathan/fuzzyTemplateMatcher](https://github.com/nathanathan/fuzzyTemplateMatcher)

Here's a demo you can play around with: [http://nathanathan.com/fuzzyTemplateMatcher/](http://nathanathan.com/fuzzyTemplateMatcher/)

<comment><USER34> It has some problems e.g. take out the dog, call my mother (it is entirely possible I missed the point of the code)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> We've been doing this for a couple of years over at [http://getdispatch.com](http://getdispatch.com), with a particular focus on sales leads.

</comment><comment><USER36> A host-it-yourself version of this would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER37> can someone here explain the difference between ifttt and Zapier? At least from a macro perspective they seem the same

<comment><USER38> Zapier has more business integrations. IFTTT more consumer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Man, that's some cool software ! I love it when I see software that's simple yet high quality. Good job.

</comment><comment><USER40> I would like this for PDFs. Do you know an app that can handle that?

<comment><USER41> If the text in your PDFs has enough structure (i.e. fixed field names or punctuation) then it should be possible to convert the PDF to text and then pass it to Zapier's parser.

<comment><USER40> Great to know!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Make an enterprise offering. Ops teams would kill for this.</comment>


Super Bowl Ads on Twitter: Visualizing the Buzz - <AUTHOR> http://hotspots.io/superbowl

<comment><USER2> It doesn't measure whether the tweet is positive v negative, which surely has a large impact.

I think the 'reach' figure is reaching as well, because I am guessing they just counted the number of followers the person who tweeted has, but of course, there is no way to know that every follower read that tweet.

<comment><USER3> Funny you should mention it, I actually made an Android app that does basic sentiment analysis on tweets given a search term. Not very sophisticated, but it uses large corpuses assembled by text mining researchers.

Shameless plug: <https://market.android.com/details?id=com.txtmine.txtminer>

<comment><USER4> How accurate is it? (Recall, Precision etc)

I was under the impression tweets are near impossible to get right to a usable degree because of how short they are on top of the usual problems of sentiment analysis.

<comment><USER3> I would say it's not very accurate on a per-tweet basis, but when you analyze a bunch and you look at the breakdown of positive:neutral:negative and the different keywords, it can be pretty telling.

The best results obviously come with things that people feel strongly about, because they are more likely to use strong words associated with their sentiment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And once again the take-away message from this: Sex and fuzzy animals sell (see the H&M/David Beckham in his underwear and Coca-Cola Polar Bears and the tops spots).

</comment><comment><USER6> Oh Twitter, ad-free social network. We hardly knew ye ...

</comment><comment><USER7> Acura is the big winner of this year's superbowl!

</comment><comment><USER8> Doesn't work on IE9. Have to wait til I get home. :(</comment>


Ask HN: Recommended running apps for iPhone? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for running apps on my iPhone. Seems like this space is filled with lots of options. Any recommendations? Preferable something that's simple but motivating to use. <comment><AUTHOR> I've tried RunKeeper btw, but it seems soo complex to use, so looking for more running apps to try</comment>


Native Google Chrome on Mac OS X: First Impressions - <AUTHOR> http://www.manu-j.com/blog/google-chrome-on-mac-os-x-first-impressions/226/

<comment><USER2> It is zippy and although the full-screen view breaks Spaces it gets rid of the already minimal "chrome" (to access click the address bar arrows). Some standard options - even a Preferences menu - are grayed out so it feels very bare-bones. I keep getting the aw, Snap! error message (<http://s3.amazonaws.com/2009/chrome.png>) for no apparent reason and there doesn't appear to be any developer tools for the user yet. So I won't be using Chrome for demos anytime soon but it was fun to explore for a couple minutes what has been strictly a Windows phenomenon.

<comment><USER3> (Just wanted to say that Chrome for Linux/Mac is still definitely in the pre- alpha stage, and that current appearance/flakiness is hopefully not indicative of the final product. I switched to Chrome for most of my regular web browsing, and I hope you will revisit it when its ready ;))

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If it is indeed comparable in speed to the excellent Safari 4 beta, I'll stick with Safari. It has worked very well for me over the past few weeks. In fact I've yet to find a single problem with it.

<comment><USER5> I've been running WebKit nightlies on OS X for a year or so and generally been happy with Safari. That said I think there are two big things to look forward to in Chrome:

\- Plugins in separate processes. No more beach balls or crashes from Flash.

\- Tabs in separate processes. No more beach balls or crashes from Google apps.

<comment><USER6> If its just Flash that is eating up cpu or crashing Safari, give ClickToFlash (<http://github.com/rentzsch/clicktoflash/tree/master>) a try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The graph is less helpful without a nightly-to-nightly comparison.

Safari 4.0 beta was released recently, but is still using technology from a much older WebKit nightly.</comment>


Atlassian Marketplace revenues soar ($100M in 2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.enterprisetimes.co.uk/2017/05/03/atlassian-marketplace-revenues-soar/ <comment><AUTHOR> 0.003% of those revenues came from my own add-on (for Bitbucket Server). :-D :-D :-D

Any other marketplace.atlassian.com vendors here on HN?

Anyone thinking of trying it out?

<comment><USER2> I might try it out if I had a good idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any part of Bamboo, JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket, or Hipchat driving you insane? That's how I started.

(I don't think Sourcetree takes add-ons, and Crucible/Fisheye are pretty much dead.)</comment></comment></comment>


A 1-1 network pipe that auto discovers other peers using mDNS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mafintosh/airpaste

<comment><USER2> This is awesome for me. Few reasons:

1\. I don't own Apple products, so I don't have Airdrop. I'm not against Apple or anything, I just prefer using Linux. However, I do think it's quite awesome that this removes the "airdrop" power from apple. Except on phones. Because out-of-the-box smartphones can't open terminals :(

2\. It's written in JavaScript and shows really awesome use of streams & modules. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Neat.

This should be obvious, but you probably don't want to use it with private data on networks with untrusted hosts.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am pretty sure some combination of piping through some encrypting can be employed, since it works with streams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems pretty cool to me, but I can't think of any use cases. Can you give an example of any? tia.

<comment><USER5> You are sitting by a friend in an airport and want to send them a great video of a cat.

      You$ airpaste cat < funny-cat.m4v

      Them$ airpaste cat > the-stupid-video-i-have-to-watch-now.m4v

You don't have to dig out your IP address. You also don't have to toss it up to a server with some awful upload speed, it all stays local.

The name suggests the author was thinking of Apple's AirDrop system which does sort of the same thing. You can share content to an iOS device or Mac without leaving your local network. You pick a recipient from the available, acceptable, recipients and if they accept the content transfers. The usual way of filtering recipients is to only see recipients who are in your contacts.

<comment><USER6> or just: airpaste cat | mplayer -

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is pretty cool, thanks for posting it!</comment>


NoSQL as a governance arbitrage - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thestateofme.com/2011/09/24/nosql-as-a-governance-arbitrage/

<comment><USER2> Hi,

On the one hand I hope his friend is right: RDBMS isn't suddenly a useless technology. It does, however, suffer from an image problem. Both in terms of the 'cult of the DBA' (and their friends the 'priesthood of storage') as well as more emotional reactions to limitations of certain widespread and freely available engines. It seems that RDBMS as a whole has been tarred with that brush.

From where I'm standing, most of the NoSQL advocates have had a bad experience and want something else. That doesn't mean that the big, professional, commercial engines haven't been pulling their weight for a long time on enormous data sets. It's just that perhaps NoSQL users have never had the opportunity to either see that, or afford it. I find it hard to believe that the average NoSQL user today has significantly more data than the biggest RDBMS users of yesteryear.

Of course, there are other factors in play as well. RDBMS has always had a reputation of being difficult to use and difficult or costly to architect for. Data Architecture as a discipline seems to be well and truly out of fashion and I'm guessing that the majority of NoSQL deployments are still small enough that it's possible to brute force the way through, especially with hardware being what it is today. It remains to be seen whether this becomes a problem, or is admitted as a problem, in the long term.

There's also the issue of talent. Using NoSQL allows you to attract the kind of developer that likes to use modern tools and keep themselves current. We have a quote on file from a CTO of a large web company that attests to the fact that his decision to "Go NoSQL" was motivated more by his desire to attract a generation of new talant than the feature lists of the engines.

Finally, whilst it may be the case that NoSQL users currently have relatively small datasets, the fact that it's now possible to juggle large amounts of data inexpensively will almost certainly open up a whole host of opportunities that would previously have gone unexplored.

Regards, @ndy</comment>


Was the Efail disclosure horribly screwed up? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/05/17/was-the-efail-disclosure-horribly-screwed-up/ <comment><AUTHOR> A fair bit of the blame here goes to HN, where the PGP cheering section uncritically repeated statements by members of the Enigmail and GnuPG teams that turned out to be contradicted by the public record. In one case, someone posted a mailing list post by Werner Koch from GnuPG that established the November 2017 timeline, and HN found a way to argue that it might be evidence _in favor of_ the position that the researchers had botched the disclosure.

More evidence could come to light, but from what we have now, it looks pretty clear that what happened was the Efail researchers made an unusually strong effort to notify and coordinate, and were thwarted by the judgement of the GnuPG project members that the vulnerability was "boring" and not worth liasing over.

<comment><USER2> Was there some other, weirder discussion on HN that made this worse? The one linked in the article has a total of 26 comments. Even if you assume, for the sake of argument, that every single one of them is nuts, 26 nutty HN comments on a given popular topic seems hardly worth mentioning. Especially compared to the torrent of bananas tweets about this particular one.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know about the one in the article, but the front page story had almost 300 comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17064129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17064129)

<comment><USER2> Ah that makes more sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the congruence of lives are at stake and this is not a bug. There's a warning. If you don't read it, you deserve to die. What else could possibly be done?</comment>


Android 4.0 ICS Growth Disappointing - <AUTHOR> http://www.techiediy.com/android-4-0-ics-growth-disappointing

<comment><USER2> If only the carriers/manufacturers made the ICS update available! I have a Galaxy S2 free from operator and I'm stuck to GB 2.3.4. Go figure...</comment>


R.I.P. Bitcoin. It's time to move on - <AUTHOR> http://wadhwa.com/2016/01/19/r-i-p-bitcoin-its-time-to-move-on/ <comment><USER2> oh look bitcoin is dead again.

If bitcoin survived the exit of Satoshi Nakamoto it will survive the exit of Mike Hearn. This article picks up one data point, that when he sold his coins the price dropped 10%, a loss it has since regained and the same sort of dip that was seen when Silk Road was taken down.

Bitcoin will be dead when the miners stop mining, until then I will keep watching it.</comment>


See what apps were built in a day - <AUTHOR> http://browseology.posterous.com/one-day-app-final-results

<comment><USER2> For a while, I wanted as an exercise to build a minimum viable product (<http://venturehacks.com/articles/minimum-viable-product>) very quickly. I also wanted to round out my web development experience, and take a project from start to completion (at least, deployed). So I participated in this event.

The day of the event, there were a handle of people on the channel who had no idea what to work on but wanted to hack something. I was amazed to find a fellow who wanted to work with me, without knowing really anything about each other. We just sat and coded for the entire day. I have no idea where he even lives or what he looks like.

But our work dynamic was great. We rarely stepped on each other's toes, we covered each others weaknesses, and we didn't have any arguments. In sum total, we sat and developed an MVP and deployed it:

       http://doubleblind.at

The goal is to see if enough people like to take this quiz and give us their email address, so we can get enough data to do interesting NLP and ML and bootstrap a collaborative filtering system.

We literally spent the first 6 hours (1/3rd of our entire effort) trying to get Twitter-Django-Oauth working, because we were convinced it was crucial. Instead, we should have considered alternatives (e.g. Friendfeed) earlier.

The organizers, who do browseology.com, created a new URL shortening service <http://kiw.is>. It shortens your URL and it gives your reader a 10 second personalized message before delivering the final link to them. Cute idea, right? But it might not get any attention if it was released on its own. So co-announcing this microapp as part of a one day app event---especially if only one or two things get built and deployed---will get them more attention than it would otherwise.

Lessons learned:

1\. Django deployment isn't that difficult.

2\. If you want to find a collaborator who will actually build stuff (instead of just talking about building stuff), participate in a one-day-app event. It automatically disqualifies people who cannot or will not actually make the time to hack. It's also a good way to determine quickly whether you and someone can work together effectively.

3\. Any time you feel that something is 100% (or very) necessary it for your success, that should be a red flag. Examine this assumption before investing too heavily into it.

4\. Twitter-OAuth-Django integration is a PITA, and cost us several hours. Conversely, simple authentication with Friendfeed was a breeze.

5\. If you want to promote a microapp, organize a hackday and roll your announcement into the overall press release.

I am also discussing this event in the Eric Ries's lean-startup-circle group ([http://groups.google.com/group/lean-startup- circle/browse_th...](http://groups.google.com/group/lean-startup- circle/browse_thread/thread/2f934d1137dd9f3)), if you are interested.

<comment><USER3> If you can, it'd be great to see the lessons you learned (or even some code) for Twitter-OAuth-Django.

<comment><USER2> I used the directions in this blog for Django-OAuth-Twitter: [http://agileweb.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/step-by-step- guide-...](http://agileweb.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/step-by-step-guide-to-use- sign-in-with-twitter-with-django/)

It took several hours to get us to authenticate. The next several hours we couldn't get it to serve requests, even ones that required no authentication. We kept coding hoping that the problem would magically go away, but that never really happens.

It's conceivable that both of us were both doing something stupid, but it's also equally likely that the implementation was not simple.

My collaborator, @ricree, has some refinements to these instructions on the blog post above, following on what he did to get the authentication working. I am asking him to write those up. But we could _not_ , I stress, make nearly all subsequent API requests, even ones that didn't require authentication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The 24 hour Business Camp that took place in a Japanese spa in the archipelago outside Stockholm in January was one of the best, most fun, most inspiring things I've done:

<http://www.24hourbusinesscamp.com/>

We were 90 people that worked for 24 hours to build 52 "startups". The list is here: [http://www.24hourbusinesscamp.com/2009/01/vote-for-your- favo...](http://www.24hourbusinesscamp.com/2009/01/vote-for-your-favourite- start-up.html) (Some of it in Swedish.)

It was an eye opening experience to build something in such a short timeframe. To say you have to focus on the essentials is an understatement. I think I slept for 2 hours before finishing the last touches in the morning. Afterwards I felt a high that lasted for weeks. This event changed me.

Here's my Flickr-set from Yasuragi where 24hbc took place: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/erikstarck/sets/721576128250229...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/erikstarck/sets/72157612825022965/)

Note the Japanese bath robes.

<comment><AUTHOR> seems much more relaxing than what we did!!! thanks for all the links and the heads up for other similar events.

<comment><USER5> Here are some more programming/app contests that i think are still open, if anyones interested:

<http://www.twilio.com/contest/netbook/> [Every monday]

<https://www.code7contest.com/Default.aspx> [15 Aug??]

<http://www.componentart.com/community/competition2009/> [Deadline Sep 27]

<http://www.ineta.org/codechallenge/> [Deadline 25th Aug]

\--- <http://www.ideaconnection.com/contests/index-ideas.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was really fun. I think the time constraint of 1 day allows you to focus on what really matters and how you can be really efficient with productivity.

Constraints are interesting. Twitter = 140 characters, One Day App = 24 hours. What seems like a hindrance turns out to be what makes them popular and engaging. We can show what we can accomplish in 1 day, and it makes the apps featured here that much more impressive.

I know we learned a lot about what can be optimized and where the time sinks really are when making apps that appear to be simple at first glance. There was a pretty lengthy discussion on HN over the past weeks about the perceived ease of building a site like Stack Overflow. Participating in an event like this shows you first hand all the edge cases and details that get in your way when building an app over the course of a weekend (or in this case, 24 hours). There are always things that come up that you don't think of in the planning stages. For me, I always remind myself to use less theory and more action. It's an easy trap to fall into, endlessly planning and trying to figure out everything in your mind. But in my experience it's often better to work through a problem rather than guess at how I _would_ work through it. Sounds like a simple distinction, but it often makes a big difference.

I hope this becomes a recurring event! It was fun to see what we can accomplish in one day.

<comment><USER5> Maybe we could also try a format that involves more people working together on 1-2 things rather than each an individual app. So we learn something from each other in addition as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> The next event will definitely be more structured and planned out. thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Developers put out some awesome apps yesterday! Check out what could be done in a single day. We had 10 applicants for this spontaneous event, and 4 teams came together and put together some pretty solid products. From what I can tell, the applicants were all from our Hacker News community.

Big thanks to Chatterous for fixing up our room, Wufoo for the forms that helped keep everything in line and organized, Posterous for the sweet blog platform to help post our announcements, and all the other support we got from the community. All the participants could not have done it without you!

All the teams will add comments about their story in the blog post. So please leave us some feedback here.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It was a fun experience to put this event together. It was very spontaneous and casual.

We used kiw.is, a domain I had registered a few weeks ago because it was a fun name, and decided to use it for the web address and name.

We wanted an idea that could have some use to it, and also be done in a day. The technology used was all very simple, robust, secure, and well supported. All those factors made it easy. We thought up making a prestitial kind of page for people to add messages to a link that were completely customizable. Without needing to rely on messages inline with a link, such as twitter, users can now attach messages right before the actual page. Not a new idea in general, but new for this specific application of it.

It's currently in beta invite, and for the Hacker News community we made a few for you guys to try it out:

Beta Invite Code: hackernews09

<comment><USER7> My first reaction to kiw.is was "okay, this is pretty obnoxious for me as the link-follower," but after a little bit of thought it occurred to me that something like this would actually be perfect for links to anything that is potentially NSFW or sensitive. I think if you played up that angle and then furthermore became known for it, the service might actually be a good "second- favorite URL shortener."

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, the big differentiator here isn't just the short url and name, but that extra message you can give, either a warning a funny inspirational image, or your own comment.

I used it recently to link to a photographer's portfolio, noting the pictures I really enjoyed. I could send this across any medium and know that as it's shared, people will see this message.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This was great fun to do, and I am planning to keep <http://qitika.com/news> going, 24 hours is just enough time to build a foundation and get a concept together...the hardest part of course is keeping the momentum going....

<comment><USER2> I am not sure the voting is working for me. Could you maybe also write an About page, describing your site and its goal?

<comment><USER8> As a note You must be logged in to vote. And yes, an about page is a good idea, I will get right on that. Thanks for the feedback...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Jamie, something might be wrong with my key, but the vote page gives me an internal error. I will check it a bit later and try to see if there's a pattern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Related: next ludum dare contest takes place end of August (48h game programming competition).

[http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2009/07/23/ludum- dare-15-augu...](http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2009/07/23/ludum- dare-15-august-28th-30th-weekend/)

<comment><USER5> Cool, I'll probably participate in this one too.

<comment><USER9> I think you can already submit ideas for the theme. Ludum Dare is great fun.</comment></comment></comment>