French startups disrupting the way you experience fashion online - <AUTHOR> http://www.rudebaguette.com/2014/02/14/10-french-startups-fashion-marketplace/

<comment><USER2> In about 1.5 months I would love to show HN some actual innovation to the fashion space.

I'm getting things buttoned up (pun intended) on a startup we're developing in NYC working a full range of bleeding API's and we've done some heavy surgery on the Youtube API in order to add some pretty cool new UI features. Simply put, we are focused on content creation and curation in a simple, tumblr-esque way.

As we sit now in a closed 'alpha' stage we have a slick new html5 WYSIWG and hopefully we'll be launching with an interesting feature thats inspired by some older, commonly used html tricks using "hotspots" or "Image Mapping". Essentially we wrap up that under-used html trick and make it easy for the user to do on their own, in their browser or device. And without spoiling the fun of the surprise, we'll be using that feature to monetize content for our content creators (and we've also implemented it directly on videos).

<comment><USER3> Sounds like you're saying that Youtube content creators will be able to tag items in their videos and this could directly link to say an Amazon affiliate link to buy the product in the video. If so, this sounds like a really profitable idea. How far off am I?

<comment><USER2> ;) You have the right state-of-mind.

But step back a little and see the bigger picture. Real world implementation of the old affiliate system is high-quality spam in exchange for pennies on the dollar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://flink.io/](http://flink.io/)

iOS only? Not even a website equivelant? I for the life of me cannot understand this strategy. How do you tell your friends to use it? They all have to own iPhones? You don't want your service to be browseable at work or at home on your laptop? I just don't get it.

<comment><USER5> and the iOS app is not even that great...

<comment><USER6> would have appreciated a disclosure :) why do you think the app is not great by the way?

<comment><USER5> too slow to be great (btw what do you mean about the disclosure thing?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if something like hemingwayapp.com could disrupt the way people use the phrase "disrupt the way"...

<comment><USER8> LinkedIn made a great report, a year ago, I think, on what words were over- used in CVs; not sure if they compared it to common English, or click-though of the profile. I guess Hewingway could do the same, but they'll need your usual reading activity for that: outside of SV/HN, 'disrupt' is still mainly something rude you do to a speaker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Definite emphasis in this list on experiencing _fashion_ , as opposed to online shopping. Some eye-catching sites (and products, and prices I presume).

So it's probably off topic of me to ask for any thoughts or links for buying great suits online - not invitation-only great, but wearable and stylish. Or does no-one in the Valley wear suits these day?

<comment><USER10> > Or does no-one in the Valley wear suits these day?

not to be _that_ guy, but there are markets for stuff beyond SV...

<comment><USER11> Sure, but would you ask people _here_ about such things?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm in a 2/3 French startup. We don't disrupt fashion, but here's a fashion- related example of what we do: [http://wesawit.com/events/mercedesbenz- fashion-week-at-linco...](http://wesawit.com/events/mercedesbenz-fashion-week- at-lincoln-center-for-the-performing-arts-2014-02-07-52f4fa66734b3)

All feedback is greatly appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER5> What are this companies doing that you think is so disrupting? I could not see anything really new there. At the contrary they all seem to be doing not anything innovative or new.

I checked flink and the app could barely keep up when scrolling so they execution quality is not there either...

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how those sites can keep up with technology compared to Net-A-Porter, Amazon, etc.

Paying programmers who can develop such sites looks expensive, and reaching a scale with sales margins is rather difficult I would say.

<comment> adam-_- I dare say that if anything they can outpace established companies with technology and risk taking, that's one of the benefits of being small and unknown. What will be harder is whether they can break into an industry dominated by "who you know, not what you know" and if they can build enough of a successful reputation and useful connections to compete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Guys if you have any questions about Wheretoget.it (my startup), feel free to ask :)

<comment><USER5> It seems like a clone of fashiolista.com (disclaimer: I work there)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really like Dymant. That's an innovative approach, extremely interesting for selling luxury items.</comment>


How to Build Electron Apps with React - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/tesh254/how-to-build-electron-apps-with-react-36b <comment><USER2> > What was holding me off throughout the years was, I wasn't interested in > learning C++ or Java to make them. I wanted to build Desktop apps with > Javascript

This isn't the first time I've come across this aversion to learning something new from JS devs. Most other devs I've worked with love learning new languages.

Could someone please help me understand why javascript devs seem to have a thing against other languages.

<comment><AUTHOR> My point of view: Even I have the same aversion towards TypeScript. I feel it's about the language construct. Coming from a PHP & JavaScript background, I love the duck typed languages - as opposed to the typed ones.

I love the freedom of assignment without declaring the data type and mixing & matching the assignment of different types of data and reusing the variable. I don't really see a reason why should I use TypeScript, if I am coding stuff with, say, Notepad or Vim.</comment></comment>


Show HN: The Summer of Swift - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/realm/summer-of-swift

<comment><USER2> I'm definitely into this.

I've had a prototype of my [Mac GIFs app]([https://github.com/orta/gifs](https://github.com/orta/gifs)) partially written in Swift. Will be signing up for this.

<comment><USER3> Loved the iOS 8 keyboard version of this GIF app you built at the CocoaPods hackathon, but we'll accept this too ;) Did you ever upload the iOS8 version somewhere?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Summer of Swift, Summer of Code, Steam Summer Sale.

It's winter where I am.

Unless your event is local please don't use seasons to denote a timeframe.

<comment><USER4> Ok so this is my first post on hn to get so many downvotes. I'm sorry if this annoyed you. To me the continued use of northern seasons for global events is an actual problem. You're welcome to downvote me without giving reasons but I'd love to hear a reply that defends the practice.

<comment><USER3> Hi, co-organizer here. I definitely hear you on this. I actually ran something called the "NOSQL Summer" a few years back and we ran into a similar question, so we created a bunch of "NOSQL Winter" aliases to cover people in the Southern hemisphere. We may do something like that for the SoS as well.

It's hard to resist names with Summer in them, because it's a handy trope with lots of positive connotations. Summer (no matter which months of the year it happens in) is a good time for passion projects and the like. Plus there is the trend established by the "Google Summer of Code", "Rails Girls Summer of Code", "Infinite Summer", etc.

<comment><USER4> Thanks Tim, I know it wasn't malicious. The only reason I decided to make the point was because it is a trend. And because I think to half the world it's an invisible problem.

<comment><USER5> Only about 10% of the human population lives in the southern hemisphere. That doesn't necessarily justify it, but it's far from 50/50.

<comment><USER6> I am in the tropics on the equator and the concept of 4 seasons is meaningless here.

At least when I was in New Zealand I could just inverse the seasons to see what USA based companies and people were talking about when they referenced their seasons. Now I have to do a mental calculation (which is hard to remember, as as I said, you don't get seasons here at all) to work out time frames when people are talking about stuff like this.

A decent chunk of the population of the planet (most of it, I think?) lives around the equator

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> anyone here knows if swift is used by apple for any of their apps ?

<comment><USER8> The WWDC app is supposedly done with Swift.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I built a website to track the newest DeFi projects - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone,
I was looking for a website that tracks the newest, hottest DeFi projects since it's pretty time consuming to subscribe and read all the newsletters, follow influencers and blogs. The noise is just overwhelming.
I couldn't find a tool that lists these fresh projects so I decided to build one.
This website currently lists a bunch of DeFi projects (the list is incomplete RN) and also highlights the new projects and the ones with an upcoming token sale (Dex offering).
The main value proposition here is to make new projects easily discoverable by visiting the website or subscribing to the newsletter.
The website is far from complete, but I wanted to show you guys and early version to get some feedback. What do you think? Is it sg that provides value to you? What's missing?
Website: https://www.defirise.com/
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> I'd start by explaining what DeFi is and why we would be interested to discover DeFi projects.</comment>


Show HN: Explore your Firefox history using Metabase - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mattarderne/firefox_explore <comment><AUTHOR> I've been pitching Metabase to small businesses for a while and think it is a great entry to business intelligence tools, and has been growing nicely as an open source project []. Firefox exposes a sqlite db and so this project is a nice way to demo some of the ways of using it.

[] [https://github.com/metabase/metabase](https://github.com/metabase/metabase)</comment>


Why we run a daily all-hands meeting - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/poll-everywhere/why-we-run-a-daily-all-hands-meeting-268341a26a23 <comment><USER2> Get to the chopper - grea way to the start the morning. Will implement this in our smaller 6 person team!</comment>


Google announced one of the biggest green pledges from tech yet - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/14/21436228/google-climate-change-pledge-2030-renewable-energy <comment><USER2> Dup of this, I think: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24468892](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24468892)</comment>


JetBrains Gogland (Golang IDE) Early Access Preview #7 Released Today - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jetbrains.com/go/2017/03/22/gogland-eap-7-faster-completion-package-rename-2017-1-platform-features-plugin-and-more/ <comment><AUTHOR> This release has a bunch of fixes to the debugger, which (for people on OSX and Windows) helps a lot.

Still some debugging specific things are still not quite right, but it's definitely usable for the vast majority of daily Go dev work.</comment>


Ask HN: how to acquire customers which are small businesses via internet? - <AUTHOR> We are building a service to help small business manage data they have in the cloud. We got to point that we are profitable but growth is anemic.
We have the problem that somehow majority of people signing up to our service are not at all potential customers.
Majority of blogs and advices we got are actually about how to acquire customers in consumer segment.
There is very little blogs on how to acquire customers which are small businesses (real estate, etc.) via internet.
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> Step 0: Verify that small businesses actually have a problem managing the data they have in the cloud, which is highly non-obvious to me.

After that, since small businesses don't think of themselves as "small businesses" but rather as "law firms", "hairdressers", "financial services", etc, you niche like crazy and target each of those with dedicated landing pages / etc. This, again, assumes that "law firm cloud data management" is something which anyone in the world is actually looking for.

<comment><USER3> To expand on the "niche like crazy" sentiment, you can use the service "Reference USA" to generate a list of customers for a given niche. It's an online database that will give you all the companies that fall under the specified NAICS code. You can then contact them individually and try to drum up sales.

Here's a small sample of the information you'll get:

* Business Name

* Address

* Contact Information

* Number of Employees

* Number of PCs

* Location Sales Volume (in dollars)

* Credit Rating Score

* Names of Management and their Titles

* $ spent on accounting

* $ spent on contract labor

* $ spent on advertising

And this information is all free to you thanks to your local public library. Here's how to get access to it:

1) Get the NAICS code for the industry you're selling to. This code is used by the government to classify businesses. <http://www.census.gov/eos/www/naics/>

2) Go to your local library to access the ReferenceUSA online database. You may even be able to do that through the library's website (I can through mine).

3) Click on U.S. Businesses under Available Databases

4) Customer Search

5) Enter the NAICS code in one of the boxes at the bottom of Business Type -> Keyword/SIC/NAICS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you mean "small business" in the federal definition which includes companies with up to 1500 employees and $20m in revenue, or the colloquial definition which is 1-5 employees in a home office?

The latter is closer to selling to consumers than businesses - you deal directly with the principals and they pay you directly. Some things I learned from selling IT services to these clients as a young entrepreneur:

1\. They are frugal. $1000 is considerable sum of money to them (even if just psychologically). They are very wary of subscription services/increasing their fixed outgoings and prefer to just fix stuff when it breaks.

2\. They care about saving money and saving time, in that order. Anything that does not contribute to the core business function is extraneous to requirements. They will spend money on things you can directly show will save them time/money. Selling backup services or preventative maintenance is difficult until they have a disaster and see how expensive it is to clean up.

Companies who have scaled this market successfully and should be studied are Vistaprint and GoDaddy. Hostgator, Hubspot and Wix/Weebly are also successful companies in this space who operate mostly online and with smaller budgets (ie. no superbowl ads, but scaling SMB marketing is still going to be expensive).

Any other good small biz web companies who have good marketing? I'm also interested in this space as it seems like there is a huge opportunity there, but after a few years of looking for the best way to target them I'm wondering if it's just a tempting mirage on the horizon - promises of untold riches, but you'll get dashed on the rocks trying to reach them.

<comment><USER5> > They care about saving money and saving time, in that order.

I don't think this is true. For most businesses saving time is more important than saving money, but with a big caveat. Your service needs to actually save me time, not save me time "once I change my business processes and learn how to use your service." So if your service can save time right out of the box, businesses are not only more likely to pay for it, but they'll also probably pay more.

Of course, a necessary precondition is whatever your selling needs to solve a problem businesses believe they have. So if you're not solving a problem businesses believe they have, even if you're giving it away, few businesses will use it.

The flip side is if you're solving a problem businesses believe to be important, companies are more willing to invest a lot of time if they believe the end state will be substantially better than where they are now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Small businesses can be tricky for a number of reasons. The biggest challenge is that they are generally run by 1 or 2 people who are aged 40 - 60 years old, and these folks aren't online all that much as they busily running their companies. Add to that the fact that they may be distrustful of the Internet and things they find there.

Before you go crazy on channels online it might be a good idea to think through why they go online and what their intent is when they are there. Maybe its to socialize with friends/kids/family on Facebook, but more likely it is to do research or read the news.

Research = Search will probably play a huge role in your business getting discovered

News = PR is the way they're going to discover you without doing an explicit search

I would also go where the small business owners are - FORUMS! Find out where they are talking and get yourself and your company into the conversation. These forums and communities are usually segmented by industry: real estate, hospitality, restaurants, beauty, retail, etc. and then sometimes even sub- categories within that

My gut says you will probably have to combine online self-service sales with some amount of more direct sales to make this work. If you have something free that they can play with and give you their email for, then a followup email or phone call within 24 hours could go a long way toward winning them over (and you'll come to understand them better in the process)

</comment><comment><USER7> One plan I used in the UK and it worked well, was to send every new UK company formed the previous day a letter detailing what we could do for them. In the UK there about 100-300 companies formed everyday that are discoverable via the companies house website. Obviously this requires a small amount of capital to send the letters but it is minimal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent idea. We know even the exact type of companies, so should be easy to get the list.

Are you aware of any online service which can automate for us sending of sales letters and brochures? Something like sendgrid but for letters / brochures.

<comment><USER4> I researched this idea a while back and found that Vistaprint has the automated sending service. I don't think it'll have the API approach of Sendgrid though.

There's also a whole industry of fulfillment houses for direct mail, but in my experience they're pricey and very traditional in their approach (sales- people, couriered proofs, no/printed analytics reports etc).

If you're going to do this regularly you can save a ton of postage by signing up for a business account with the PO and pre-printing the envelopes in a special format (although I always wondered if hand-writing would boost the conversion rate).

Also, try postcards rather than letters as USPS postcard rates + biz account will let you get your rates down to < $0.20/mailing - but sales letters may have a far higher conversion rate depending on your product, making them worth the extra postage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of this depends on your location. In South FLorida, for example, you won't find the people you need on the net. Sure they're on FB and (maybe) Twitter - but for the most part you will need to be face to face

It also depends on "how small". Are we taking store front shops or companies with 50+ people? Small to me is a company with under 25 employees. But You might have a different idea.

Ok some suggestions:

1\. The local Chamber of Commerce (not the national group, but the local one). You probably have a few in your city. Pick the biggest. Join and start going to the networking groups. You'll need business cards, by the way. Oh and since you mentioned Real Estate - The Chamber always has lawyers and Real estate agents in attendence . :)

The Chamber also hosts leads groups and other events where you can showcase your services.

2\. Another example, assuming you selling to the geeks that work at these business, the local tech meets. In FTL Microsoft hosts monthly meetings/parties. Doesn't matter if you run MS or not. Everyone trolls through it at one time or another. A great place to be networking. Again bring, lots of business cards.

There are various other events. But really.. you have to go where your customers are.

Also, fine turning your google search is a good idea. But if you selling to this market, don't expect them to find you on google. In fact, they probably don't know what you do. So you gotta train your potential customer. The Chamber events are great place for this; proving to your potential customers why _they_ _need_ _you_.

Also if you selling nationally your best bet is to setup sales people in those areas who can work off commissions. Sort of what the local carriers do.

<comment><USER9> Working for a small business (as well as trying to target small businesses myself), I think this is all great advice.

I would add that you can't underestimate the non-traditional forms of marketing. Pick a sub-segment of your business. If you sell widgits, chances are some people specialize in dark green widgits from France. Find out if there is a French Dark Green Widgit Trade Journal, and see what their rates are. Find out if there is any specialized software which these people use, and see if you can talk to those vendors about advertising. In my experience, unless you're doing extremely specific Ad-Words targeting, most of the usual online "wisdom" is completely useless when it comes to targeting small businesses (which is tragic, since they're such a huge market).

I'm not sure official sales people are going to work, given that they're having trouble getting initial traction. I would think this would be more effective once they've gained some momentum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just like patio11 said: Make sure there is a need. How do you do that? Ask them. Call them up, introduce yourself, and let them know you are not selling anything. Get their permission to answer a few quick questions regarding your product idea. Do this with at least 25 businesses. The more, the better. Store their information for future campaigns.

Once you have validated the idea the real work starts. Yet you already have a group of people that validated your idea by stating that they do indeed need what you offer. Great.

This is where your marketing campaign starts. I would start by sending them a free informational package (can be an email) regarding the stuff you both talked about. Then send them a monthly newsletter about how other businesses like theirs have brought your product (and how they love it and couldn't live without it). Call them every few weeks to say hello and to offer them some limited time promotion. Just be nice, and don't be sleazy. I would suggest that you also send them a newsletter that has nothing to do with your product, but everything to do with them ( as a person). I've sent out newsletters about positive news, and people still ask if I plan to send more (or when).

Now, read patio11's post. Realize that there is no such thing as a small business. Just people doing a type of business. Don't market yourself as a "small business product", but as a law firm information technology expert or as a beauty salon technology consultant. Give yourself the title of expert in their specific niche, and let them put you on a pedestal. After all, you know your stuff. Nothing wrong with bragging. Adapt this technique to what I said above. Instead of sending out one generic newsletter to everyone, send one newsletter to law firms, one to beauty salons, one to mechanics, etc. The same newsletter, but with a slightly different design. Hire a low cost graphic designer to do this for you. It doesnt need to be fancy, just easy to read. Oh, and keep it short. 3-4 pages is enough. Use 14point font for easy reading.

Since you are programmers, you can really automate most of this stuff. Now, I suggest you get some part-time help with the marketing side of things. Dont try to do it all, or you wont do shit.

Good luck.

PS. Email in profile if you have any (short) questions. =)

</comment><comment><USER11> A couple points. The first thing is that you need a systematic approach. This means trying to orient a lot of things towards getting traction. See it as a core aspect of how you think about your business.

Blogging is a good thing. Try to get your blog syndicated. Try to make your web site useful enough that your target audience comes back for more stuff all the time (think Amazon reviews here as something which has this function).

Don't be shy about hiring a real marketing firm either. Tradeshows are good but be prepared and make sure you put in the time ahead of time to ensure your marketing material is tailored to the audience at the trade show.

Pursue PR at every opportunity. Think of PR as something that infects everything your business does. (EDIT: Tech support is PR in a different context, for example.)

Also pursue strategic partners, even if that is with the competition.

Once you have a bit of a name for yourself, start advertising.

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd look into figuring out which search terms your potential customers are using. And then targeting those words with AdWords.

If it proves to be effective, you could invest more time and energy on using SEO to target those words.

Also, how are your competitors acquiring customers? That would be a good starting point.

</comment><comment><USER13> Been doing this for a couple of years. I've had some success using...

1\. LinkedIn Ads - Expensive but you can setup the targetting options to show them to, for example, only: 'CEOs/Managing Directors/Owners of companies with 10-50 employees'

2\. Business networking events - Not internet based but perhaps you could set up some kind of affiliate scheme?

3\. Referrals - LOADS of our sales come from referrals. Try incentivizing or just asking your happiest customers for referrals.

4\. Free workshops and educational events - Perhaps run webinars on how the cloud can help small businesses or what a CRM system is? Include a short and non-pushy sales pitch on your services plus a special offer for attendees only in the last 5 mins of the talk. We run seminars on marketing metrics and planning - people love them.

Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER14> I would assume you are looking at a self serve model for small businesses? Many of them are traditional in nature and might not be so savvy of using a cloud based solution.

Do you have a assistant program where independent agents can go and sell to small businesses and get a commission from you?

We are also building solutions for small retailers and (in our case being in India) we are doing direct sales.

</comment><comment><USER15> Pivot and figure out how to turn the people who are actually interested in your product (aka "signups") into a revenue stream. In other words, you are getting your message across, you are just not closing the sale and it appears to be because you are focused on the wrong target market rather than monetizing low hanging fruit.

</comment><comment><USER16> A good place to look might be at your competitors. If your product is better, easier or cheaper then that might be a good source of potential customers as you know they understand the problem and already have/maybe pay for a solution.

Here comes the non-shameless plug, BuiltWith TrendsPro might be a good tool to find these sorts of businesses.

</comment><comment><USER17> Radius provides an excellent tool to make selling to small businesses easier: <https://radiusintel.com/>

They used to be Fwix, but saw this huge opportunity and shifted to saas.

</comment><comment><USER18> You might want to ask this over here: <http://answers.onstartups.com/>

</comment><comment><USER19> Facebook ads.

</comment><comment><USER20> I would like to suggest the following: I am not an affiliate and have no vested interest in the services.

<http://www.ericward.com/> <http://www.urlwire.com/#FAQ></comment>


Preference for youth in tech recruiting (aka ageism) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/mm/status/294179421462609920

<comment><USER2> I had submitted a link to a story about this tweet:

[http://brianshall.com/blog/does-morgan-missen-have-thing- rea...](http://brianshall.com/blog/does-morgan-missen-have-thing-really- really-young-guys)

Since I had no idea who this person was. Some sort of self promoting recruiter.

<comment><USER3> I'm glad someone else noticed this. I actually left a comment on that post which I'll paste here since Disqus and blog comments can be flagged/deleted easily:

I am over 40. In fact, I moved to Silicon Valley when I turned 40. That means I've experienced just over 40 rotations of the Earth around the Sun. I'm looking forward to my new career in celestial mechanics.

I'll pause while you absorb that.

If you are 40 years of age then it is likely you have some number of career accomplishments that can be enumerated and, oh, I dunno... described. However, to simply state you have 10, 11, 13, 20, or more years of experience means little or nothing. "Years of experience" is simply a throw away resume filler on par with 'fresh new ideas un-jaded by years of experience' would be for someone with zero years of experience. i.e. nothing to brag about

Perhaps, focus instead (see also: brag) about career accomplishments that can be enumerated, what you want to accomplish, and who you want to accomplish it with and when.

Lastly, I'm searching for any substance in your post beyond name dropping as a blog post slug, not so thinly veiled personal animosity, and garden variety denigration of women.</comment></comment>


Anne Wojcicki Speaks Out About the F.D.A. Crackdown on 23andMe - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/anne-wojcicki-speaks-out-about-the-f-d-a-crackdown-on-23andme/ <comment><USER2> One of the comments on the submitted article on its website nails it:

"What 23 and me is saying is not accurate. The reason why the FDA has a problem with them is not the fact that they are decoding DNA for people, it is the fact that they are interpreting the results to diagnose specific medical conditions direct to the public.

"This is against FDA regulations unless it is waived (CLIA waived). In order for a test to be CLIA waived it has to be 'simple laboratory examinations and procedures that have an insignificant risk of an erroneous result.' Examples include glucose tests and pregnancy tests. DNA testing is FAR from that.

"I am a member of 23 and me and they scour scientific research papers to assign medical conditions to certain genomes. They rate the quality of the research from 1 to 4 stars based on how established the research is. How they determine this is unknown. Genomics is rapidly expanding and it is often hard to determine disease correlation with a genetic marker."

Hear. Hear. I have a local friend whom I grew up with who is an electrical engineer who works on medical devices. By any reasonable reading of the FDA regulations adopted under statutory authority from Congress, the product and service combination on offer from 23andMe falls within the scope of FDA's regulatory authority, and the company's consumer-facing product claims are extraordinary claims for which the company has not provided evidence. That's bad.

An article from Fast Company previously submitted to HN and discussed here points out that 23andMe's business model is basically to gather a lot of cell samples and a lot of personal health data from consumers, and then gradually infer genetic relationships to disease risk that might be valid and actionable. But that's not how it is marketing itself to consumers today.

[http://www.fastcompany.com/3018598/for-99-this-ceo-can- tell-...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3018598/for-99-this-ceo-can-tell-you- what-might-kill-you-inside-23andme-founder-anne-wojcickis-dna-r)

<comment><USER3> Creating hyperlinks between genes and research papers is not what I'd call diagnosing. You find evidence of ABCD gene, you search all research papers that cite ABCD, you curate and rank papers by quality, summarize related conditions with statistical correlations.

This is just a high-tech version of me using WrongDiagnosis.com, typing in 5 or 6 symptoms, and having it return all possible articles that cite those symptoms, ranked by number of simultaneous occurrences.

The potential hack to defeat the FDA here is to simply split the company in 2 parts.

Company #1 sells a $99 service which gives does the test. Company #2 is a partner of Company #1 through an API. Consumers can elect to OAuth access of their gene data from Company #1 to Company #2.

Company #2 takes gene data over an API and sells you linked and ranked reports on it. Company #2 sells no devices, performs no tests. They are pure software bioinformatics. They take standard file formats and produce reports.

Consumers can elect not to use Company #2's services, get their own private data in raw format and write their own python scripts if they want.

Or, consumers can buy Company #2's services, but supply their own data from any company that offers personal genomics raw-data dumps.

The idea that me reading ranked reports to research papers linked to my personal health data is 'extraordinary claims' and a danger to me is frankly offensive. I would hope that a company offering software that parsed and processed genetic data and turned it into linked reports from crawled research papers could be considered a first amendment right.

But if not, the github approach is certainly a worthwhile approach.

Again, as I said in other posts, the FDA doesn't regulate supplements, doesn't regulate Dianetics/Scientology, didn't stop "The Secret" from killing people with heat-stroke therapy. It's enormously offensive to me that the government spends so much time going after stuff like this, pot smokers, et al, instead of massively beefing up enforcement over the hundreds or thousands of hucksters selling harmful bullshit health products on radio and late night TV ads.

Does no one remember [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeadOn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeadOn) ? Coldeze? Five Hour Energy, which may have actually killed people, and still gets away with deceptive ads.

What about Hoodia? Yeah, the FDA advises people not to purchase it, but does nothing to stop consumers from buying it based on false claims of efficacy.

People don't like this style of reasoning, but in my opinion, the government regulatory agencies have limited resources. I want the SEC going after big banks and investment firms, not small time insider traders. I want the IRS auditing people who avoided millions or billions in taxes, not the guy who owes $1000. I want the FDA going after things which are much much more likely to be ripping off and harming consumers, either financially, or physically, and on the scale of possible things that can harm you, this is way way down the list based on a really loose theory of someone avoiding treatment by false negative, when in reality, if anything, the majority of people are going to be having more conversations with their doctor over this product.

It's like complaining about the people who lost under Obamacare and ignoring the fact that tens of millions more couldn't get any health insurance in the first place.

<comment><USER4> > The potential hack to defeat the FDA here is to simply split the company in > 2 parts.

The easier "hack" is to just stop making unwarranted health claims. Or, if the claims are not unwarranted, to provide the support for them.

> Again, as I said in other posts, the FDA doesn't regulate supplements

Yes, it does, but the scope of its regulatory authority set by Congress over supplements is different than the scope it has over food, drugs, and medical devices.

> doesn't regulate Dianetics/Scientology

Dianetics/Scientology is neither a food, drug, supplement, medical device, nor anything else vaguely related to the FDA's scope of regulatory authority.

> didn't stop "The Secret" from killing people with heat-stroke therapy.

As with Dianetics/Scientology, this is not within the scope of FDA's regulatory authority.

> It's enormously offensive to me that the government spends so much time > going after stuff like this, pot smokers, et al, instead of massively > beefing up enforcement over the hundreds or thousands of hucksters selling > harmful bullshit health products on radio and late night TV ads.

I don't think the government is actually spending all that much time on the things you are complaining about (I think you are confusing the amount of time that people spend on the internet _talking_ abou thte government doing something with the amount of time/effort the government spends doing it), but if you want to advocate that Congress should expand the FDA's regulatory authority so that the things you complain that they aren't doing are actually within their scope fo regulatory authority, feel free.

I still don't see that as an argument that the FDA shouldn't act thoroughly within the domain they are _charged_ with regulating now.

<comment><USER3> >Yes, it does, but the scope of its regulatory authority set by Congress over supplements is different than the scope it has over food, drugs, and medical devices.

It does a piss poor job of it. Stop wasting time on 23andme, and pour resources in that. The FDA admitted that a whopping 70% of all supplements violate their rules.

>Dianetics/Scientology is neither a food, drug, supplement, medical device, nor anything else vaguely related to the FDA's scope of regulatory authority.

Point is, these things make unwarranted health claims and cause consumers of them to take actions which directly harm themselves. If someone published health recommendations that tell people to drink bleach to "cleanse" themselves, the FDA can do nothing, but if someone tells them they have the BRCA gene and here's a link to resource that shows it increases risk of breast cancer, well then, shut em down.

> I still don't see that as an argument that the FDA shouldn't act thoroughly > within the domain they are charged with regulating now.

Right, the law says smoking pot is illegal, so there are millions of people who have had their lives ruined by the criminal justice system because of that rule, and millions more who have to pay billions for prison funds. But yes, that is not an argument that cops and judges shouldn't prosecute pot smokers to the fullest extent of the law and not prioritize, because, well, it's the law! Ditto for illegal immigrants. Just ship em all back because it's the law. Obama has been asked to de-prioritize going after pot smokers and illegals, do you think that is a bad idea and instead, he should prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law up until the last minute when the law is changed?

The law can be wrong. In this case, the FDA has been given the power to regulate something that straddles an entirely new industry and they are preemptively intervening before any harm has been shown. My argument is, regardless of the law, one can shift around one's priorities. The FDA claims 70% of supplement makers are violating rules. Companies like Ranbaxy are shipping adulterated generics. These are actually harming people and the FDA has at least some authority.

There's an entirely new industry cropping up around the "Quantified Self". Individuals are gaining more and more power to monitor their biological systems, and personal genomics are just another in a long line of this evolution. The traditional power structures in the medical community do not like this decentralization towards consumers being able to get medical information about themselves without consulting doctors first, without doctors ordering tests, without doctors first interpreting the results.

I am stone cold libertarian on this. When it comes to my body, I demand the right to do anything to it, even if it may be bad for me, and to have any information on it, and to contract with those who can provide such information. My own concern is real fraud, that is, if someone says here's a blood pressure monitor, that doesn't actually measure BP, or here's someone selling a DNA test, which actually gives me a totally false randomized DNA profile. My concern is not over someone giving my a dump of my DNA and then generating a series of correlated links to potential diseases. I will ultimately take that information and do the research myself. Anymore than I am not concerned with a health site that takes my medical records or personal survey, and gives me a bunch of self-diagnoses diseases that match.

In short, where you and the FDA see "health claims", I see a search engine.

<comment><USER4> > Stop wasting time on 23andme, and pour resources in that.

AFAICT, the time wasting that has gone on with regard to 23andMe has been the FDA bending over backwards to try to help them get into compliance.

I agree that the FDA, in retrospect, shouldn't have done that and should have spent that time more productively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some interesting perspectives in this article:

First, calling the FDA "a very important partner" is overly glib. The FDA is not a "partner" in the sense that they will accompany you or assist you on your journey. They are only there to put the brakes on you. They are not merely "important," they are _vital_.

Second, the article is skewed to make it sound like people aren't entitled to our own DNA information. That's not what is contested. Of course, you can have access to your own DNA data, as long as the proper checks are made to ensure you're actually getting an accurate reading.

The issue is whether telling you have a disease with life-scale consequences requires validation of these claims.

There is something to be said for their tactic of giving a large number of answers instead of validating single tests, but it still requires a thorough level of validation to protect people from exploitation and it wouldn't hurt their cause to present themselves more respectfully to the authorities. Perhaps they're trying to fake casualness, that's certainly my reading, but I hope they don't screw this all up but not thinking it through and throwing around lots of bullshit.

For example, comparing themselves to Google is ludicrous. First, google's indexing search engine HAD been doing before, by altavista, webcrawler, etc., etc. Second, there was no question that whether what they were doing could negatively influence people's health and well-being. Perhaps the scholar/books scanning was a bit controversial. Perhaps some were surprised at Streetview, but that was actually legal and in both cases, they took several key measures, voluntarily, to keep themselves well inside the law. BTW, I'm no google fanboy, but to compare their IT stunts and magic tricks with potentially delivering low-quality information about life-threatening health conditions "isn't in the same ballpark. It isn't even the same goddamn sport." -Jules.

<comment><USER6> Is anyone actually contesting that 23andMe doesn't get an accurate enough reading of DNA? I thought the problem was all with interpretation.

[https://www.23andme.com/more/science/](https://www.23andme.com/more/science/) states "Data quality starts with the laboratory that processes your DNA. Our contracted laboratory is licensed by the federal government to perform clinical testing. It uses standardized processes and procedures that ensure highly accurate genetic data." and so far I haven't seen anyone contesting this. That is, DNA reading part is already regulated.

<comment><USER5> Yes. The FDA is contesting that 23andMe doesn't get an accurate enough reading of DNA. FTFA:

"Last week, the F.D.A. ordered 23andMe to stop marketing its genetic test because it said the company had not provided adequate evidence that the tests were accurate,"

<comment><USER6> "genetic test (of diseases)" is quite different from reading DNA, and presumably includes interpretation. I don't understand how can reading DNA part can be inadequate, given that it's the same lab doing the same process as other clinical testings. 23andMe is using off-the-shelf SNP array, it's not like it's doing anything special with respect to reading DNA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How long before 23andMe sells your personal DNA information up the river to advertisement corporations?

Don't trust corporations with your personal information because, with few exceptions, they are more than willing to sell you out to make a quick buck. And then they claim that their slogan is 'Don't be evil.'

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe one of their goals is to crowd source medical information and possibly sell the results. Right now they have a "23 and We" research program where you can voluntarily opt in. Even if you don't when you go on their site they try to get you to answer questions about yourself from time to time. I have never answered them and they seem very innocuous such as is your earwax wet?. I am not sure if they dig deeper if you answer those questions in future questions

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Philip Greenspun (of the famous "tenth rule of programming"!) had an interesting question [1]:

 _Question: would it be illegal for 23andme to relocate to Singapore, for example, and have people mail DNA samples to Singapore and then email them the results? The company's web site indicates that customers in Singapore (and a bunch of other countries) can send their DNA to have it tested. Would the FDA have jurisdiction to prevent a Singapore-based company from accepting packages from consumers in the U.S.?_

[1] [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/11/25/good- example-o...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/11/25/good-example-of- regulatory-risk-23andme/)

</comment><comment><USER9> You really trust a large government bureaucracy that's been beholden to large pharmaceuticals to get this right? Really? The danger of the information is that great? I'm just not buying it and the comments in this thread so pure "anti-disruption" bias which apparently is the new hipster anti-hipster sentiment. 23andme provides information that can be used in conversation qualified professionals. You might was well shut down every medical related forum, Yahoo Answers, WebMD and the rest if you really think that information or misinformation is the danger. Really people take a step back the current memeset at look at the facts.

<comment><USER10> I think this comment is conflating "regulation" with "shutting down".

As a society, in the USA, we have created the FDA and empowered it to cast a watchful eye over certain types of marketing and manufacture. Regulation limits the rate of innovation in exchange for attempting to limit harm.

<comment><USER9> Except that that function has been completely perverted by economic dynamics.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Apps Ruled By the Few - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/08/facebook-apps-ruled-by-the-few/ <comment><USER2> I'd like to see that graph on a log-log scale.</comment>


AMD vs. Intel CPU Market Share: 7nm Makes Landfall as Price War Begins - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vs-intel-cpu-market-share-7nm-makes-landfall-as-price-war-begins <comment><USER2> Wait... what?

> Intel CFO George Davis implied during an interview with Barron's this week > that the company is digging in its heels for the long haul, saying "What > we've said though, the delay in 10 nanometer means that we're going to be a > little bit disadvantaged on unit cost for a period of time." Davis then > noted the company expects to return to revenue growth and margin expansion > in 2023 when it overcomes the late ramp to 10nm. As a result, it's rational > to expect lower pricing on Intel's upcoming 10th-Gen Comet Lake processors, > too.

If everything goes right for Intel, they don't expect revenue growth until 2023?

By the time Intel hits 10nm in stride, TSMC plans to be rolling out their 3nm... [1]

[1] [https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/2567/tsmc-talks-7nm-5nm- yield...](https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/2567/tsmc-talks-7nm-5nm-yield-and- next-gen-5g-and-hpc-packaging/)

<comment><USER3> Intel plans to start shipping 7nm in 2021, and 5nm would be coming online perhaps 2023. See [https://www.anandtech.com/show/14312/intel-process- technolog...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/14312/intel-process-technology- roadmap-refined-nodes-specialized-technologies) as a source.

<comment><USER4> The thing is, Intel can't progress to their 7nm node if they can't even spin up 10nm one.

Siltronics (Intel's wafer supplier) is said to now to have a field day. Intel haven't opened any new 14nm fabs, and those were maxed out years ago. The only explanation why Intel not only expanded their orders to Siltronics, but even entered new negotiations with other suppliers, is that they are spending a whack a lot of wafer on something other than existing 14nm manufacturing.

It is either their GPU's are actually being taped out in extreme secrecy, or the yield on 10nm is so low that they are "bruteforcing" it

<comment><USER5> My bet is on the later, considering early 10nm CPUs had the iGPU fused off and fairly abysmal and inconsistent overclock performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This illustrates one of the truism's in semi-conductors which is that you need to hold an advantage for 18 months before you have enough momentum to actually move the needle. If I were AMD's marketing team I would start hammering on ECC memory in the desktop and on laptops. Anything with 16GB or more of main memory. Intel has held that as a Xeon differentiator for a long time and it adds something like 20% margin to the part. That AMD can push PCIe 4.0 and ECC at 'desktop' prices is pretty neat.

<comment><USER7> Outside of our bubble, people don't care about ECC memory on their laptop or desktop. It also adds ~12% (iirc) more memory cells, meaning higher memory cost, which is going to be a hard sell given that it's a solution to a problem that most customers don't even know about, nor would most care much if it was explained to them. From a user perspective, memory is fine as it is, and if memory corruption does occur, it's probably blamed on buggy software. That would make any such push look like a desperate "we need a differentiator to tell people why they should buy our CPUs and upsell them in the process" move. Competing on price, speed, and (for laptops) power consumption would appear much more promising.

<comment><USER8> It needs to be marketed as a reliability improvement it is. Lots of people simply don't know about it at all, but would love better stability.

<comment> kube-system This is mass market retail we're talking about. Unless it's easily demonstrable, people are going to buy the prettier box on the shelf or the one that's cheaper.

I'd bet money that when company X adds ECC and calls it "super stable memory", company Y adds a button in the settings menu that calls fsck and calls that "hyper stable memory" and undercuts company X by 12%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have two questions for people at intel and the peanut gallery

\- If I want a high performance CPU that's not "workstation" class: why should I buy an i7 over a 3700x or 3800x?

\- How meaningful is the "intel inside" brand when IT/GIS departments buy machines in bulk for their enterprise users?

<comment><USER10> I think why you want to buy a Intel now is:

\- Laptop ( battery life is better on Intel CPU's), but AMD has this covered next Q.

\- Intel NUC ( it's very practical )

\- For Single core optimized applications ( eg. Some games) when you don't care about the total price at all. Intel's one core performance was better and support in games is lacking for a lot of cores. I think next Ryzen will handle this.

\- When AMD is sold out completely and you need a CPU now :p

Other than that, i think it's all AMD (eg. ECC memory, price, performance and buying the "underdog" ).

Except if someone just wants to pay the highest price just for show, then you could still buy an Intel.

Intel inside is an OEM partnership, that i hope AMD will break :) .

<comment><USER11> When I was building a PC last December, I considered AMD until I saw that [https://github.com/mozilla/rr](https://github.com/mozilla/rr) requires an Intel processor.

> rr currently requires an Intel CPU with Nehalem (2010) or later > microarchitecture.

I don't even use rr at the moment, but I hate the idea of building a monster machine only to find that I'm left out of some cutting-edge technology because I went off-brand.

<comment><USER12> They have been working on AMD support, see for example: [https://github.com/mozilla/rr/issues/2034](https://github.com/mozilla/rr/issues/2034)

The problem is that AMD CPUs have lots of bugs in their performance counter implementation. Intel CPUs don't have those bugs. With newer generations of AMD CPUs, AMD has fixed some of these bugs, but others remain.

I wonder why AMD hasn't stepped up to get involved in this project. There might be nothing that can be done with currently shipping silicon, but at least AMD could make sure that on their future silicon it all works. Fixing their performance counter bugs would likely benefit other projects as well.

<comment><USER13> >With newer generations of AMD CPUs, AMD has fixed some of these bugs

Or rather, broke something. There are suitable counters working correctly on late Bulldozer iterations, but not on Zen.

<comment><USER5> Considering Zen is a groundup new architecture, it's hard to call that "breaking" it, it wasn't correctly implemented on the new design.

<comment><USER12> Isn't this a sign that AMD's test suites are incomplete?

If they implement a feature correctly then break it in the new design, it suggests their test suites didn't exercise it properly, otherwise (you'd think) they would have caught the regression in the new design and fixed it before release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's nuts how Intel is using it's monopoly. I don't have any other explanation why more OEM's changed to AMD for desktop and only recently Intel dropped prices.

For laptops, we'll see in the next iteration as battery is the most important aspect there and the next awaited version is coming soon.

Interesting times ^^

<comment><USER14> You mean new types of batteries?

<comment><USER10> Improved Ryzen for laptops so battery life would be better ;)

Current iteration is "not good enough" on that aspect ( = battery life).</comment></comment></comment>


The Codeless Code - Tales to make wiser programmers.  - <AUTHOR> http://thecodelesscode.com/contents <comment><USER2> Many thanks to those who emailed me directly as a result of this posting. I very much agree that these do not approach the subtlety (and worth) of genuine koans: they are just stories I was possessed to write, expressing various thoughts I have had during my years as a software engineer. I am glad to know that some have found them enjoyable; that was always the point.

Regards to all here,

Qi.

<comment><USER3> thanks for sharing these. i enjoyed reading some of them this morning, hope to read the rest soon :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These lack the subtlety of the koans they are attempting to emulate. It's more like Aesop's Code than Codeless Code.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. What they inherit from koans appears to be merely the violence that the koans take for granted. My favorite example of this is the story of Gutei's Finger:

        It is said that Master Gutei would always raise a finger wisely when
        teaching about Zen. Now in his monastery there were young boys studying
        to be Zen masters themselves, and one boy, when he was asked questions
        by his teachers, began also to raise his finger when answering Zen
        questions. The teachers told Gutei about this and Gutei summoned him to
        a rare audience with the master! Gutei asked him a simple question which
        the boy could answer confidently, and the boy raised his finger as he
        responded.

        Gutei immediately grabbed the finger and in one motion cut it off with a
        concealed knife. The boy screamed and ran to the far side of the room.
        Gutei called him to stop and return, and the boy recovered his composure
        and plodded back in front of the master. Gutei raised his own finger
        before the boy, and in that moment the boy was enlightened.

        Indeed, on his deathbed Gutei's last words were: "My teacher Tenryu
        taught me the Zen in my finger, and though I used it my whole life, I
        couldn't use it up."

I think the first thing anybody notices about this story is just the violence. When I told it to my brother he asked, "the lesson is, do not f--k with the Master?" But there is a deep set of Zen ideas -- lifting fingers which you do not have, and not getting attached to idiosyncrasy. Perhaps the boy even thought, "I should cut off the Master's finger," as he attained enlightenment.

<comment><USER6> Violent koans aren't particularly common, they just stand out. However, they do reflect a fundamentally destructive aspect of spiritual practice, namely, that it undermines the conditioning behind cherished identities. The point of the story is that the boy was chasing after validation as a Zen master and had adopted the finger-raising ritual as a part of his identity as a competent Zen practitioner. When Gutei cut it off, he was removing a support for a cherished identity, and this was the basis for the boy's identity at that moment.

<comment><USER6> s/basis for the boy's identity/led to the boy's enlightenment/. True as written, just a bit redundant, and not what I meant. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A young monk gazed over the walls of the temple at the town in the valley below. Upon seeing the townspeople toiling at meaningless tasks, he asked the master, "Why do they not seek enlightenment?"

The master replied, "They are unaware of the darkness."

The monk resolved to help the townspeople, and began every day to lecture about the importance of enlightenment in the temple square. Every day, his fellow monks cheered and applauded his speech, and reassured him that he spoke the truth.

After a week, the master approached the monk and asked whether he was making progress with the townspeople.

The monk replied, "I keep exhorting them to seek enlightenment, but not a single townsperson has stepped foot inside the temple."

The master shook his head sadly and went on. After another week of preaching in the temple square, the monk still had no success. In frustration he sought out the master, asking "Why do the townspeople remain unenlightened?"

After a moment of silence, the master replied, "The fool searches in the light for that which is found in darkness."

</comment><comment><USER8> As someone who used to read a lot of books on Zen, I've been enjoying these. The one on triggers made me laugh -- at work we have a running joke about triggers. I've expressed so much dislike for them that when discussing a problem people will say "we could use triggers to do that!" just to get a rise out of me.

<comment><USER9> People likewise goad me at work by suggesting extensive use of design patterns (particularly in absurd combinations like AbstractFlyweightFactory).

<comment><USER10> At my shop we use extensive use of point-less _ahem_ point-free code. Of course, you can also always use more category theory. And, the best remedy against the type system giving you headaches, is: more types!

(If you haven't guessed, yet, we use Haskell.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No need to be so negative. I actually think the S&M character of these stories goes well with their content (Java development and best practices).

</comment><comment><USER12> I quite like these. Regarding the negative comments, these stories were not intended to conform strictly to the traditional kōan form, and are clearly not expected be taken entirely seriously (the About page makes this clear!)

As a personal bonus for me, the author makes reference to the book "Gödel, Escher, Bach", of which I was somehow not previously aware. It sounds like it's right up my street.

<comment><USER13> I cannot recommend this book enough. I know it's not for everyone, but if you're one of those do like it you'll probably never forget it. I'm not sure I agree with everything in it, but damn that book made me think ;)

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure GEB is intended to be agreed or disagreed with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of the book called "The Tao of Programming", from 1987. If you like these you might consider checking the book out as well.

<comment><USER16> "The Tao of Programming" was much, much better. Great book as an introduction to OOP.

<comment><USER17> Haters gonna hate.

Not everyone can be incredibly incredible.

<comment><USER18> There's no hate in that post. (Unless it's been edited)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can anyone explain the one on cups? <http://thecodelesscode.com/case/30>

<comment><USER20> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two%27s_complement>

<comment><USER19> Ah. I was confused because of this: "the index — a one-byte integer — could never exceed 255 by definition." If it can hold the value 255, it couldn't be a signed integer, so there would be no room for negative numbers. Though I suppose this must have been their mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is the Elephant's Footprint Clan hiring?

</comment><comment><USER22> "Satisfactory."

</comment><comment><USER23> Some stories reminded me of "Kung Fu Panda" !!!.

<comment><USER24> Haha, I actually thought the same thing.

<comment><USER23> Good to know that I am not the only one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> God help us from those kind "enlightenments".

</comment><comment><USER26> This is extremely lame. Cool graphic on the side though.</comment>


How Google Is Cleaning The Web Of Comment Spam - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/15/how-google-is-cleaning-the-web-of-comment-spam/ <comment><USER2> It's cute, but negative SEO can lead to extortion.

A blackhat actor puts links to your site all over their network of bad content sites and then forces you to pay them to remove their link.

A competitor might create bad links to your site to push you down in Google's SERP and you'd never know what was going on if you didn't know how to look this up.

A "disavowal tool" was meant to help combat this kind of extortion, but imagine how much work it would be to monitor this kind of activity and disavow all sites that might want to create bad links to your site to drive you down.

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER3> Google should penalize sites that allow comment spam. Incentives are then clearly aligned, as the affected site has the power to fix its problem. Sites that can't afford to moderate their contents should just turn comments off.

As mentioned in other comments, the changes described may just change the spam. Instead of linking to your own site, you instead link to sites ranked above yours.

</comment><comment><USER4> I suspect that if Google put it's collective brain power on it they could do what we've done and not rank comment links. One of the 'easy' things to do is run your ranker on the crawl where you disregard any reader contributed content. That does wonders. What is less doable is when the blogger is in on it (as they were with the recent scandal) and the links are in the page.

But here is the thing, Google has a content evaluator as part of their Adsense for Content product and they should be able to compute the equivalent of the 'hamming distance' between the linked pages and the content on the current page and construct a decent rank. Certainly that is what I would do if I had the resources to crawl as much of the web as they do.

<comment><USER5> I'm fairly certain that Google in their 15+ year existence has already done what you mentioned in first paragraph.

<comment><USER6> "Done" is the important word here - done as in wrote the code and performance tested it and looked at the impact - yes of course. Done as in made PageRank across Google use it officially - made the algorithm driving billions of dollars of spending on line ignore all comments. that's a big ask.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article seems overly optimistic. SEOs can now add spam links to competitor sites to negatively affect their pagerank.

<comment><USER8> Exactly, and now it puts the onus on the website owners to make use of the disavowal tool, which can only be done with extra monitoring on their part.

<comment><USER9> Does the disavowal tool negatively affect the sites being disavowed?

<comment><USER10> It 'shouldn't otherwise it too could be used as a tool for negative campaigns. I would assume though that it will be used for looking at trends, footprints and other methods of better refining the detection algorithms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Danny Sullivan and Rand Fishkin just don't know how to do any kind of SEO beyond link building. Kelly Clay at Forbes wrote a much better article about how SEO has changed.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/11/19/seo-isnt- de...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/11/19/seo-isnt-dead-long- live-seo/)

The spammers have more tricks than they used to, and aren't telling most of the SEO's how to game the system, but Spam is actually easier because Google is weeding out the people who don't have the time or ability to do Page Construction spam.

<comment><USER12> You honestly think that Fishkin doesn't know his SEO? Thing is, he has to keep his reputation squeaky clean because unlike black hats he actually wants it to last beyond the next ranking update. Most black hats and their clients get caught sooner or later and then you find them bitching and moaning around the web how Google's latest ranking algorithm update is unfair and running them out of business. Guys like Rand Fishkin are smarter than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The sooner we devalue the link of its SEO power entirely, the better.

I've run a small wiki for many years. I'm probably going to shutter it because it's such a target for link spammers. (MediaWiki's anti-spam tools aren't very good unless you have many dedicated editors.)

Now that a critical mass of people are using Chrome, I suspect that there is a much better signal in the haystack of user behavior data than back links. A much better algorithm in theory could be built using the actual usage patterns of discriminating humans rather than the link landscape of the web.

<comment><USER6> That sounds terrible - dystopian even.

I would far rather the google data be made public

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I always felt Disqus was trying to solve the issue of comment spam.

<comment><USER15> How?

<comment><USER14> Authentication before commenting being the biggest. People have been trying to do link spamming on comments forever. Disqus attempts to legitimize and monetize it with their sponsored stories/links.

<comment><USER16> Eh, all of the forum spam I get is from "users" who have actually _created accounts_ and sometimes posted halfway legit comments (it's a music theory forum, and they obviously don't know anything about theory, but post something that tries to fake it) before starting to post spam.

The best solution is removing the incentive (though I've had rel="nofollow" auto-added to all links since it was first proposed, to no avail...).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra Meanwhile Yandex is trying to move past ranking based on incoming links. Coming soon: search results with zero ranking weight of any links (on commercially heavy queries, anyway).

[http://www.seroundtable.com/yandex- links-17786.html](http://www.seroundtable.com/yandex-links-17786.html)

<comment><USER17> At present moment the no-links ranking technology from Yandex is vaporware, though I certainly think it may be better for some of the queries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _...Google is obviously well versed in this economics stuff, that incentives matter....If you change the incentives then you will change peoples' behavior._

Google has a $50 billion annual revenue inventive from advertisers to not give a shit about our privacy. There's very little incentive to protect user privacy because people are easily tricked into believing that trading their privacy gets them something free in return when in fact it is not free at all, and in fact even more expensive than it would have been [1].

What is needed is a non-profit, open-source search engine. And the same for social networking. Perhaps Wikipedia style. Let's ditch the bad incentives.

[1] No free lunch, no free web, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6624666](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6624666)

</comment><comment><USER19> I would pay for a service that clean [my] phpBB forums!

<comment><USER20> I'm really surprised this doesn't exist. Moderation-as-a-Service, with a team of well-trained subject-neutral moderators.

<comment><USER21> There is such a service. You just have to look for it. I'm building a wiki, so it is something that I could conceivably use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Google must care enough about comment spam to clean it up because their algo still relies too much on it. If they just ignored comment spam altogether and their organic algorithm didn't rely on it then they wouldn't be spending time and resources to clean it up.</comment>


Why don't software development methodologies work? (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://typicalprogrammer.com/why-dont-software-development-methodologies-work <comment><USER2> Here's the deal:

Skilled, knowledgeable programmers with strong work ethics will produce well- crafted software in a reasonable amount of time.

Unskilled, unfocused developers will take an excessively long time to produce crappy, buggy, unmaintainable software.

That's the starting point. Methodologies will not magically produce above- average results from below-average programmers. But the evangelists of various methodologies never seem to acknowledge that. They claim that if you follow their recipe, you'll get stellar results, and if you didn't, well, then, you didn't follow the recipe correctly.</comment>


WinJS: the Windows Library for JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dn632015 <comment><USER2> Welcome to 2014, where Microsoft web stuff still works best in Microsoft Internet Explorer...

They had an actual shot on getting up to par with proper HTML5, with funky ms extensions being optional where absolutely neccessary. Instead, they rely on an astounding number of non-cross-browser methods and features, as they have done since '95

[https://github.com/winjs/winjs/issues](https://github.com/winjs/winjs/issues) Most issues listed currently are about stuff that just doesn't work on any other browser/platform than IE

Footnote: I'm a web developer myself and I use Windows 8.1. How tempted have I been at fiddling with the winjs flavour myself? _not_ at all.

Footnote2: I do have to give them credit for the roadmap though. It seems like they're on the right track [https://github.com/winjs/winjs/wiki/Roadmap](https://github.com/winjs/winjs/wiki/Roadmap)

Footnote3: I've been fooled into thinking that Microsoft was on the right track again and again.

<comment><USER3> It wouldn't be fair to mention this without mentioning of the 3 fixes landed since that repo was created, 2 are for cross-browser compatibility bugs..

That aside, I love how this negativity only seems to stick to Microsoft when every other major player has their own private set of bits that only work well on their platform (WebOS, Firefox OS "proposed standard" mobility APIs, Chrome endless variety of "we're doing it so it's going to be a standard" APIs, etc). It's no excuse, but it's hardly unique to MS

<comment><USER4> There's a giant difference between "only work well on their platform" and "purposefully designed to only work on their platform."

There is NO EXCUSE for a TOGGLE to not work, cross-browser, in the year 2014.

[http://try.buildwinjs.com/default.aspx#toggle](http://try.buildwinjs.com/default.aspx#toggle)

<comment><USER5> Works for me on Android Chrome. What browsers don't display this correctly?

<comment><USER6> I'm on Chrome 33 (latest stable) @ Windows 8.1 and it doesn't work.

<comment><USER5> You're right, it doesn't work on my Desktop either. It's very weird that it works fine on Chrome for Android.

<comment><USER7> It works for me if I enable touch emulation (Google Chrome on Linux). I don't see the styling that you apparently get in IE though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> WinJS started out as a tool for creating Metro apps with HTML5 and JavaScript as an alternative to XAML and C#. I don't know if Microsoft is now spinning it as a general purpose web tool but that was not its original purpose. And this has always been explicit. The default ASP.NET MVC template, for example, bundles Bootstrap and jQuery. And if you look at the SPA examples they're all in tools like AngularJS and Knockout. In fact, in one of their build sessions they teach how to create a SPA with AngularJS. As far as I know the ASP.NET team has never used WinJS.

So it wouldn't surprise me if this library didn't work great on the web on any browser because it wasn't created for that purpose.

<comment><USER9> At first I thought it was a cross platform app building something-or-another (kinda like Xamarin), but now that I actually am building it and playing around with it I see that it's something else entirely.

I'm actually glad this happened though. Seems like MS is finally rallying around C# as the defacto language for building apps (as opposed to Visual Basic or even Visual C++). This project might succeed (or at least find a nitch) among developers who are building touch centric web applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know everyone has their reservations about Microsoft and their developer ecosystem, but WinJS really is a delight to use, at least in my limited experience. A WinJS app is really just a zip of a bunch of JS (using WinJS's nice APIs for fancy stuff), CSS, and HTML, so most web developers who are used to the modern tool chain should be pretty comfortable with it. And yes, you can supposedly use it alongside Backbone/Angular/whatever. Worth a closer look.

<comment><USER11> To be honest I've always wanted a file format that is exactly as you described. A zipped up front end web app. No internet dependencies so it works 100%. User can open the open the format and it opens in their browser of choice. All the files contained within are "hosted" from a static "webserver" that just hosts the files within the .zip.

I can't say much to WinJS yet, but I am interested in their choice of container.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like a java war file (just add container).

<comment><USER13> More like Java Web Start. Which would've been great if it worked with a decent UI framework.

<comment><USER12> You mean JavaFX. That works with web start :)

You can do ClickOnce and WPF as well if you want.

I rather like these solutions. I've built several of both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An example of why this sucks:

[http://try.buildwinjs.com/default.aspx#toggle](http://try.buildwinjs.com/default.aspx#toggle)

"GitHub issue 9: This control currently works only in IE due to its dependency on IE-only styles ::-ms-fill-lower, ::-ms-fill-upper, ::-ms-ticks-before, ::-ms-ticks-after, and ::-ms-tooltip."

Another reason why this sucks, you can even't copy that stupid text from that page in Chrome.

/me smashes monitor with keyboard, then ragequits.

<comment><USER14> I could! `GitHub issue 9: This control currently works only in IE due to its dependency on IE-only styles ::-ms-fill-lower, ::-ms-fill-upper, ::-ms-ticks- before, ::-ms-ticks-after, and ::-ms-tooltip.`

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why call it Win JS? Is it meant to be Windows only? If not then why give a multi-platform open source library a branded name?

<comment><USER16> The fact that it's branded with Windows makes me hesitant to use it for non- Microsoft environments.

<comment><USER17> [https://github.com/winjs/winjs/blob/master/License.txt](https://github.com/winjs/winjs/blob/master/License.txt)

It's Apache 2.0. If it's good _right now_ , there is no reason whatsoever to not use it.

<comment><USER18> Unfortunately it isn't good right now. It's pretty much IE only in practice. It might become good eventually but it's not there yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Am I the only person who had to come here to the comments to even find out what this library does?

The winjs page is just a bunch of buzzwords randomly strung together.

</comment><comment><USER20> Issues like [https://github.com/winjs/winjs/issues/25](https://github.com/winjs/winjs/issues/25) continue saying that MS is maintaining an internal project and dropping things to Github and then synching back. That's the last mile, the thing that desperately needs to change to gain full credibility within the open-source community. It should only be on Github and all development should be in the open.

Disclaimer: I'm ex-msft.

</comment><comment><USER21> Had no idea the Skype and Music app UI's were built with WinJS. Playing around with the demo's really does pass the eye test. This is really good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's like XAML for the web. I can't wait to write some SPAs with it.

<comment><USER23> You should check out custom elements and Polymer: [http://www.polymer- project.org/](http://www.polymer-project.org/)

WinJS looks like another soon-to-be-legacy wrapping framework. It doesn't use Shadow DOM, or allow developers to create new elements, which means that you end up with div-soup and important APIs and state that should be part of the view are in separate objects.

Because of this, WinJS will have a hard time interoperating with other wrapping frameworks like Angular, Ember, GWT, Ext-JS, etc.

Custom elements and Shadow DOM are hugely important for composable web applications. At this point, for SPAs, I wouldn't use anything that doesn't support them, even at the cost of IE8 support.

<comment><USER24> Just wanted to point out that can.Component[1] is a custom element implementation that _does_ support IE8.

[1][http://canjs.com/docs/can.Component.html](http://canjs.com/docs/can.Component.html)

<comment><USER23> Unless I'm reading something wrong, that doesn't look like W3C custom elements ( [http://www.w3.org/TR/custom-elements/](http://www.w3.org/TR/custom- elements/) ), but CanJS's own system for recognizing custom tag names, like Angular directives. The docs even say "Currently, this only works within can.Mustache templates."

W3C custom elements allow the browser to still parse the document, and when it encounters a tag that has been registered with document.register() it calls user code to create construct element. By having the browser be in charge of parsing and element construction, custom elements work without a framework, and when you modify the DOM via things like innerHtml.

Approaches like Angular directives, and I'm guessing CanJS components, usually break down when the DOM is modified outside of certain blessed APIs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why would anyone want to use another JavaScript UI library when there are already libraries that are out there that are more mature and don't have a companies bias?

<comment><USER26> With that logic you would never ever again be able to use a new library...

<comment><USER27> Could you elaborate with an example?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Its for building Windows 8 apps. Lot of people seem to be misunderstanding.

<comment><USER4> It's for building HTML + JS applications that can only run in Internet Explorer.

You seem to be misunderstanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I give them this much. It's a great start for a toolkit of animations and interactions. Transitions really follow the animations of Windows 8. It looks really nice.

Problem is that I am not sure if they made a full and good UI framework. How does it compare with something like Angular? Is this just animations on top of what can be done in js already?

</comment><comment><USER30> Prominent "View on GitHub" button is really indicative of the progressive changes Windows has been making lately.

</comment><comment><USER31> Should this be used for "standard" desktop application? Like building the UI for Photoshop for example?

</comment><comment><USER32> One thing that isn't clear at all is if it is necessary to use Visual Studio to build a WinJS app. Can I develop and test the app on a MacBook or Linux laptop in a web browser, and only involve Visual Studio when I need to package the app for the store? Or is VS required to even get started?

<comment><USER33> They have a project file for Sublime Text 3 and are using grunt as a build system so you should be able to use it on a Mac or in Linux. However from their road map it looks like they are still trying to fix a lot things that only work in IE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> That's what I got when I clicked on the "Output" button of the "Datasource edits" sample:

[http://i.imgur.com/fQFAv1R.png](http://i.imgur.com/fQFAv1R.png)

Nice. For a crazy second I thought Microsoft devs were really insane or got hacked, before coming to the more likely conclusion that it's just random letters and I got lucky - if you can call it that.

It's even less likely to happen because only FF seems to be showing 4 letters instead of 15.

(Note: I refreshed to check the randomness theory before taking a screenshot, so the linked screenshot is actually forged with the inspector. But it looks just the same as it really did.)

</comment><comment><USER35> I'll be interesting to see if the community adopts it or if all improvements and fixes will have to go through Microsoft.

<comment><USER36> I find it most interesting that it's on GitHub. MS not moving fast enough for the community? Fork it.

<comment><USER37> Agreed. I wonder how the Codeplex team feel about it.

<comment><USER35> Considering all external signs, I think "feeling" too much about it will be a career-limiting move.

I still think most of their stack sucks, but I am quite surprised with this new Microsoft. It'll be fun to compete against them again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I thought Microsoft was working on Typescript as an alternate to pure JavaScript. How does WinJS fit into that picture?

<comment><USER39> Go to the link and read about it. It's not for web. It's a way for web dev to create WinStore/Metro apps.

Jesus f Christ! 100% of people commenting here don't even fucking bother to read what the fuck WinJs is about before shooting off their mouth.

<comment><USER40> How does that invalidate parent's question? TypeScript compiles to JS. Couldn't MS have developed "WinTS" instead?

<comment><USER41> Though I haven't checked, I would guess that WinJS has strongly-typed TypeScript bindings, for those who choose to use TypeScript. But releasing the library itself in JS makes it available to a wider audience and doesn't prevent it from being used in TypeScript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> We have been developing Lightswitch SPA Apps with VS2013.

WinJS is at the core of Lightswitch development coupled with JQueryMobile.

</comment><comment><USER43> /bias rant/

I'm writing this on a brand new, never used, lenovo thinkpad loaner with windows 7 because my 3yr old macbookpro decided to die. (Took it to apple in NYC, they'll fix it and send it to me in Portland, OR.) I can't begin to describe the awful feeling I have knowing that I have to use windows for the next week. This laptop has already frozen twice while using outlook. It takes forever just to figure out which packages to install to manage mssql server. I'm installing something now and am not sure it's even the right thing. I've already had to reboot several times.

Everything Microsoft does is counter intuitive, user and developer hostile and proprietary in some fashion. Just take a look at the Download Center. It's as if a horde of product managers were released into a Microsoft hunger games and the ones with the most esoteric description and versioning/ marketing scheme came out alive.

How anybody would willingly invest time, money or resources on anything Microsoft related is beyond me.

/bias rant/

<comment> at-fates-hands As someone who has a love/hate relationship with MS, I feel your pain. I've found as long as you stick within the MS family, all is well. Try to deviate from that pseudo-walled garden and its brutal.

For instance, doing Python or Ruby or ROR on a windows machine? No way. I just started doing more MEAN (Mongo, Express, Angular, Node) stack stuff and after several days of cursing the heavens and trying to figure stuff out on my Windows 7 PC, I just said screw this and went to my box running Linux Mint and within 15 minutes was up, running and coding.

<comment><USER27> Whenever I look at the CV for Windows developers, all I see is MS technologies. I think to myself "how can you tie yourself to a single company? don't you explorer?"

But it's because it's difficult for them to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> These examples are half working in chrome, and not a single one is working for me in IE10.

</comment><comment><USER45> Has anyone tried to "port"/augment bootstrap CSS for this?

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm surprised they decided to re-implement a lot of the available open source libraries (like WinJS.Promise looks a lot like kriskowal/q). Why re-invent the wheel?

<comment><USER27> It goes against their "not invented here" culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Wait am I reading this right? Is this Windows' answer to AngularJS? Is this a javascript framework or is this something else?

<comment><USER8> Negative. This is just a tool for creating Metro apps and it has existed since Windows 8 came out. People are talking about it now because Microsoft just open sourced it.

How does it compare with AngularJS? There might be some overlap but it is not a competitor. In fact, Microsoft uses AngularJS frequently on their sessions, documents, templates, etc.

[http://channel9.msdn.com/events/build/2014?sort=sequential&d...](http://channel9.msdn.com/events/build/2014?sort=sequential&direction=desc&term=angular#theSessions)

Edit: It seems like Microsoft is transforming WinJS into a general purpose JS library.

[https://github.com/winjs/winjs/wiki/Roadmap#the- present](https://github.com/winjs/winjs/wiki/Roadmap#the-present)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Very excited for what WinJS's success could mean for IndexedDB. MSFT is a surprise champion of this HTML5 API.

<comment><USER48> It's still sad that because of Mozilla and Microsoft we have no SQL API in all HTML5 browsers :(

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

IndexedDB is fine for storing JSON objects, etc. but a relational database with SQL query syntax, indexes, etc. more powerful and means less code to write. With IndexedDB one has to reinvent the wheel to just get basic query features.

<comment><USER3> That's because both thoroughly understand the difference between a standard, and picking a random implementation that all other browsers would need to inherit (which was exactly what WebSQL would have led to).

Instead we got a kickass asynchronous IO ordered map + secondary indices implementation, which is vastly simpler to describe and implement in a uniform fashion, on top of which one could easily write an SQL parser/planner, or simply use it as a blobstore for a cross-compiled SQLite binary, or whatever else.

(Funny how SQLite is about the only SQL implementation that would even be suitable for this. Same reason WebSQL was a bad idea.. it essentially required SQLite's exact semantics)

<comment><USER48> WebSQL is not deprecation, the W3C Working Group Note actually says 'This specification is no longer in active maintenance and the Web Applications Working Group does not intend to maintain it further'.

As SQLite is in public domain, no company would "loose their face" if they choose to use it. They could fork off SQLite and change the SQL query syntax (parser) to whatever the W3C finds suitable.

Mozilla Firefox and FirefoxOS both already ship SQLite for years and can be accessed by its internal JavaScript API. And several Microsoft products already use it anyway (e.g. Forza Xbox games). Microsoft has of course also various other SQL database libraries like MS Access JetRed ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Storage_Engine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Storage_Engine) ), MS Outlook JetBlue ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Storage_Engine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Storage_Engine) ) and MS SQL Server Express ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_Server_Express](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_Server_Express) ) the SQL backend originally forked off for WinFS for Longhorn (Vista beta). It would be trivial for Microsoft to choose one of its many SQL engines and add it to IE 12. The same goes for Mozilla (just expose the API).

For some reason Oracle and Mozilla pushed IndexedDB. Oracle has conflicting interests, as it owns OracleDB(SQL), MySQL (SQL) and BerkeleyDB (NoSQL and now also SQL support, based on SQLite). Oracle is an official "sponsor" of SQLite development and even ships it as part of it's BerkeleyDB package: [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/database- technolo...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/database- technologies/berkeleydb/overview/index.html)

One can speculate that a less powerful HTML5 API translates in the long run to more SQL server licenses for Oracle and Microsoft. If the web app devs cannot do the processing & storage on the client side, one has to do it on the server side.

Anyway, I hope that we get a SQL API for HTML 5.x that also Mozilla and/or Microsoft implements. As of now WebSQL works fine in webkit based browser which includes Safari, Chrome, Opera and includes also 95% of all smart phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> So, this would basically be Microsoft's Windows-only version of node- webkit[1], then? (I've been thinking the comparison was pretty clear since Metro JS apps first appeared, but now that they're going to be able to be window-ified as well, it's much more stark.)

[1] [https://github.com/rogerwang/node- webkit](https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit)

<comment><USER50> no. In order to do that, they would have to release the IE html rendering engine (i think they call it Trident) to open-source, and bind it to the nodejs engine..

This(WinJS) is basically a library that wraps UI components in JS, CSS and HTML DOM.. its sugar for baked and easy to use UI components (in theory in any html rendering engine)

<comment><USER49> I didn't mean implementation-wise, I meant in practice: they're both technologies that allow you to ship a zipped blob of HTML+CSS+JS that presents itself as a program, and has additional native APIs, beyond the regular HTML5 ones, exposed to the Javascript engine.

<comment><USER50> > has additional native APIs, beyond the regular HTML5 ones

I think maybe in windows you have native bindings to windows-specific api's.. but whats is shipped here is only the UI + databindings, mvc voodoo for plain HTML5.. for aditional native api's exposed to the javascript engine, you will need something like node-webkit..

This use nodejs just to compile giving a minified js + css styles.. so it's more like bootstrap or ionic framework

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Their creepy designer forgot to use padding on that site. Looks like shit on my ipad.

</comment><comment><USER52> What happened to "developers, developers, developers, developers"?

</comment><comment><USER53> i'd love a html wysiwyg editor that supports copy/paste from word.. bummer that's not a part of these controls.

</comment><comment><USER54> Holy crap what's gotten into HN? Like the top five stories are all Microsoft. I'm not complaining, just a bit weirded out.

<comment><USER55> Today is the first day of Microsoft's developer conference, BUILD. (There is also a non-trivial number of MS employees who read HN, including me.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Am I only one who found it odd that WinJS uses GitHub while TypeScript is released on CodePlex? Make up your mind, Microsoft!

<comment><USER57> Its almost like more than one person works at Microsoft, there might even be multiple teams of people who make different decisions for whatever reason.

Codeplex at least supports Git.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Just when I'm excited to jump in to start coding on WinJS, HN comes to the rescue...

</comment><comment><USER59> Why not TypeScript?

</comment><comment><USER60> one day they will stop thinking about windows only.

</comment><comment><USER61> "Controls" ha</comment>


The Dreams in Which I'm Dying: The vanity of the zombie apocalypse - <AUTHOR> http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/08/29/the-dreams-in-which-im-dying/

<comment><USER2> _Zombies have always functioned as emotional shorthand for a condition in which it's morally allowable to attack everything, to see every encountered life as a possible threat, while resenting or mistrusting the last few survivors._

Not strictly accurate...if you consider the plight of folks in Romero's ____ of the Dead_ series, you see that that isn't the case. Zombies are a convenient standin for a constant, seething, but not largely dangerous existential threat, a backdrop against which human drama can be cast.

That's the best bit of the article--especially towards the end, the author plays a few "mmmm yes privileged males pandering" cards and fails to critically evaluate their own claims. As an example, consider the _Left 4 Dead_ series approach to zombie apocalypse: people still work together, laugh, cry, and try to make the most of things while supporting each other.

There is a good conversation to be had about why apocalyptic memes are so popular in fiction (interactive and otherwise) today, but the author doesn't really _do_ anything with that. Maybe we'll fare better here.</comment>


Mass Compromise of the Obsolete - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.cisco.com/security/mass-compromise-of-the-obsolete/

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems too vague to really be useful is this real or imagined? No CVE? No details at to vector?</comment>


10 Personal Finance Lessons for Technology Professionals - <AUTHOR> https://www.troyhunt.com/10-personal-finance-lessons-for-technology-professionals/ <comment><USER2> Reasonable over view.

Not really for tech professionals exclusively. His reasoning should really be replaced by: 0\. Get a well paid job.

Theres also this "Bad debt is the likes you have on a credit card. It's almost always accrued on a depreciating asset (for example, a new TV) and it's very often at a high interest rate" Why is depreciation always mentioned as a problem of bad debt? My house will depreciate if I don't maintain it.

Surely bad debt is a combination of interest rate, and whether you actually need, and can afford the thing you're buying on credit.</comment>


What is the best way to manage variable in memory for Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/q/15358591/330867

<comment><AUTHOR> I shared that link because I believe some hackers will have the knowledge to explain the difference betweens those three examples.

Moreover, I believe it will be helpful for others to know the difference and which is best.</comment>


Outsourced consulting infrastructure help - <AUTHOR>

I'm transitioning to being a consultant/freelancer and would _love_ to have a company handle the accounting paperwork for me. Invoicing my small number of customers regularly, dealing with receipts, etc. Can anyone recommend a good accountant or service that handles this sort of task? <comment><USER2> One of the smartest things I ever did was find a local bookkeeper who knew her stuff. You could deal with one completely online, but having one nearby that you can physically go visit is very helpful.</comment>