Ask HN: Best talks of 2018? - <AUTHOR> What's your favourite talks of 2018? It can be anything, programming, management, life, anything. <comment><USER2> "Q: Why Do Keynote Speakers Keep Suggesting That Improving Security Is Possible? A: Because Keynote Speakers Make Bad Life Decisions and Are Poor Role Models"

James Mickens

[https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity18/presentat...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity18/presentation/mickens)

<comment><USER3> This guy is a philosopher

<comment><USER4> He's fun for sure. Also there are actual philosophers like Jaron Lanier with higher level and more poignant analysis of the same problem that I can't recommend enough as at least a good read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recent but great talk posted here, What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System [1] by Prof. Michael Levin. He talks about how long term low energy electrical networks between all cells in living organisms shape how the organism grows. I think what he talks about will be the future of medicine as it allows for an amazing degree of high level control over how animals grow.

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg)

<comment><USER6> Wow, just wow!

I've often felt that we (humanity) have pushed the boundaries of our knowledge right to some really hard lines to cross: relativity won't allow interstellar travel anytime soon, we are making progress in "soft AI" but "hard AI" is still insurmountable, even fusion seems as far as it's always been. Further "real" progress seems sometimes nearly impossible, or very arduous and slow at best.

Then this guy shows up, cuts a frog's leg, shines some weird lights on the wound... and the frog regenerates it! (frogs do not normally regenerate legs). This has been really astonishing to me. I hope this whole research area lives up to my excitement after listening to that talk, because really awesome things may come out of it.

I highly recommend this talk to literally anybody who has scientific curiosity en general!

<comment><USER5> I definitely agree with you, this feels like REAL progress. I feel like this is a revolution in our understanding of how life as a collection of cells is able to function with such repeat ability and reliability. What is even more amazing is how this talk isn't even just going over our lack of understanding in this area, its saying hey everyone we just filled in this massive gap in our understanding, and look at what real things we can do with it.

It does feel like this research crosses a big line in science. Especially with the recent articles about how gene editing can cause weird defects that we don't understand, this shows we don't need to tinker at the lower levels when life already has the tools for higher level control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Maybe Not" by Rich Hickey: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5WdGrpoug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5WdGrpoug)

Another excellent talk by the creator of Clojure, and like the previous ones, relevant for all programmers.

<comment><USER8> I thought this was one of the notably bad talks this year. The whole premise that a function of Maybe a should be a function of a without an API change is neither intuitive to me nor really justified by Hickey. Different things are different. It's sad to see someone build such a wall around himself when faced by something (type theory) that he doesn't understand.

<comment><USER9> The sad thing is that Rich Hickey had some very good videos when Clojure was a new thing back in 2008–2009. Unfortunately, I've disagreed vehemently with most of his talks since then. In this case, it's completely illogical that a function `Maybe a -> b` should be callable as if it were a function `a -> b`. Do you want to know how I know? Because it would be just as illogical to allow a function `Vec a -> b` to be called as `a -> b`. And Rich must agree because Clojure itself does not support that!

I've learned that videos of his talks are just not worth my time.

<comment><USER10> Why is it illogical to say that a Maybe a -> b should be callable as if it were a -> b?

His point is that Maybe a should be composed of all the values of a, plus one more value, nil. A value of type a is a member of the set (nil + a). Why should having a more specific value reduce the things you can do with it? It breaks composition, fundamentally. It's like saying (+) works on integers, but not on 3. I'm saying this someone who really enjoys type systems, including haskell.

<comment><USER11> > His point is that Maybe a should be composed of all the values of a, plus > one more value, nil

No, that's a simple union type. There are very good reasons for Maybe to be different than unions (Maybe can nest meaningfully, simple unions can't.)

Maybe Maybe a is valid, and often useful, type.

Of course, if you have a function of type a -> b and find out you need a more general Maybe a -> b, instead of a breaking change, you just write a wrapper function that produces the correct result for Nothing and delegates to the existing function for Some(a) and you're done without breaking existing clients.

(Now, I suppose, if you're u had something like Scala implicits available, having an implicit a -> Maybe a conversion might sometimes be useful, though it does make code less clear.)

<comment><USER10> I agree that there are reasons for Maybe a to be a different type from (a | nil) but there are also good reasons to prefer (a | nil). Like most things, it's a set of tradeoffs. What I appreciated about this talk was that he went into the benefits of thinking about types in this way. It's (relatively) common to see the benefits of Maybe a explained, but more rare to see the benefits of full union types explained.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some of my favorite talks from Strange Loop:

* Contracts For Getting More Programs Less Wrong: [https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/contracts-for-getting-mo...](https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/contracts-for-getting-more-programs-less-wrong.html)

* "It's Just Matrix Multiplication": Notation for Weaving: [https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/its-just-matrix-multipli...](https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/its-just-matrix-multiplication-notation-for-weaving.html)

* Hackett: a metaprogrammable Haskell: [https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/hackett-a-metaprogrammab...](https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/hackett-a-metaprogrammable-haskell.html)

* Git from the Ground Up: [https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/git-from-the-ground-up.h...](https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/git-from-the-ground-up.html)

From PyCon:

* Beyond Unit Tests: Taking Your Testing to the Next Level: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYucYon2-lk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYucYon2-lk)

* Dataclasses: The code generator to end all code generator: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-TwcmT6Rcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-TwcmT6Rcw)

* Automating Code Quality: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1lDk_WKXvY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1lDk_WKXvY)

There are probably more I might add later as I remember them.

<comment><USER13> > "Beyond Unit Tests: Taking Your Testing to the Next Level"

+1 Very interesting. I will make sure to check the `Hypothesis` module.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The Hard Parts of Open Source" by Evan Czaplicki [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_4EX4dPppA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_4EX4dPppA)

</comment><comment><USER15> "Design Microservice Architectures the Right Way" by Michael Bryzek [1]

Really good discussion on event-collaborative microservice systems that scale well for performance and maintenance as well as a good argument and use case for server and client code generation.

Definitely my favorite so far.

[1] [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/microservices-arch- infra...](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/microservices-arch- infrastructure-cd)

<comment><USER16> it's said microservice is phasing out to serverless?

<comment><USER15> I think more and more it's a case of people realizing there is no definitive "microservice" architecture. Because of that architects around the industry are now focusing on the flow of data and using whichever tools are best to get the right behavior in their business.

What was called microservices imo was just a higher level modularization of code to allow easier parallel development and maintenance/scaling, but since it needs a server that meant some boilerplate to initialize and keep the app running. A lot of people went about this in different ways which made things a bit chaotic to those new to the idea I think. The next logical step would be to remove that server code by running on a serverless architecture to focus on the functions that operate on data rather than having to maintain the initialization code and other boilerplate as well.

Among all of this advancement, an architect thinking the way Michael Bryzek does would have no problem using either approach since the focus is on the data and how data is used.

Still, server-based microservices are still very prominent, and I'd argue they are also much more platform agnostic if done right whereas (if I'm not mistaken) much of serverless is done in specific platforms causing you to be vendor-locked due to different deployment processes for each platform. I think research is being done to make platform-agnostic serverless deployments easier, but I haven't read much on it yet and am unaware of current advancements in that area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From Deconstruct:

Nabil Hassein: Computing, Climate Change, and All Our Relationships [https://www.deconstructconf.com/2018/nabil-hassein- computing...](https://www.deconstructconf.com/2018/nabil-hassein-computing- climate-change-and-all-our-relationships)

Tom 7: Reverse emulating the NES to give it SUPER POWERS! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar9WRwCiSr0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar9WRwCiSr0)

<comment><USER18> This. I was at Deconstruct too, and Nabil's talk got a standing ovation. It ran way over time, and I didn't notice. Tech people _need_ to hear this. Tom's talk is also amazing in its own right.

Let's Program a Banjo Grammar was also one of my favorites. :D

[https://www.deconstructconf.com/2018/ryan-herr-lets- program-...](https://www.deconstructconf.com/2018/ryan-herr-lets-program-a- banjo-grammar)

Edit: I just looked at your username...that you, Ryan? :)

<comment><USER17> Yep, that was me — thank you for the kind words!

Gary Bernhardt had a creative concept for selecting speakers. Half were invited, internet famous people like Tom 7 and Julia Evans. Half were people who'd never spoke at a conference before, like Nabil and I. For the call for proposals, we submitted 2 minute videos instead of abstracts. Gary invested a lot of time mentoring the new speakers, which I'm so grateful for!

In September, I did another, kind of similar talk at Strange Loop, called "Picasso, Geometry, Jupyter." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYJ77F_8kq0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYJ77F_8kq0)

The topic and ideas were good, probably better than my Deconstruct talk. But my execution and presentation were uneven and unpolished, so I'd like to try it again at another conference. I'm submitting to PyCon — we'll see!

<comment><USER18> Hey, that's great! Even if the execution wasn't up to your standards, I'm looking forward to watching! I heard from someone at the conference (maybe it was you even?) about how Gary curated the talks. I'm really glad he did that, because all around it was my favorite tech conference I've been to and I'll definitely be back. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Some of the better talks are yet to come

[https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2018/Fahrplan/index....](https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2018/Fahrplan/index.html)

<comment><USER20> Do you know of anywhere to watch them live? I found this [https://streaming.media.ccc.de/](https://streaming.media.ccc.de/) but I'm not 100% sure it's what I want

<comment><USER21> That is probably the correct location for live streams. If it doesn't work, [https://twitter.com/c3voc](https://twitter.com/c3voc) will know what's up.

The Streams will later be edited and uploaded to [https://media.ccc.de/](https://media.ccc.de/) where they will appear incrementally a few days (or sometimes even hours) after the talks are over. So it's usually not a problem to miss a talk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I rather enjoyed RustConf 2018's Closing Keynote, "Using Rust For Game Development" by Catherine West: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKLntZcp27M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKLntZcp27M)

I learned about the ECS pattern and got to see some Rust refactoring in action.

Previous HN discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17977906](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17977906)

<comment><USER12> Jonathon Blow had a really interesting but subtle response to this talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1K66dMhWk&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1K66dMhWk&feature=youtu.be)

<comment><USER23> Thanks, very interesting. He is right, the Rust borrow checker can not deal with arbitrary graphs and she added a memory management layer on top of the Rust one. However, you would have to do the same in C++. It is an interesting obervation. I spoke to Benedikt Meurer from the Google V8 team recently and he pointed out the same for Javascript Engines. If you do not have DAGs, Rust can't help you with safety. (at least it can not prevent use after free) I still like the whole ECS idea and it makes sense for me that using ECS in Rust will provide a performant and clean architecture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Lessons Learned Implementing Common Lisp with LLVM

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdXeRBbgDM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdXeRBbgDM)

<comment><USER25> Author here - thanks folks! I'm glad you liked it.

<comment><USER24> I will take this opportunity to thank you. Not only was your talk very interesting and informative, I also found it very inspiring. It really made me rethink what my goals are as a developer. Hope to see more from you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Alex Hannold's Ted Talk on how he free soloed El Cap.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iM6M_7wBMc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iM6M_7wBMc)

Another favorite one of mine was Jimmy Chin talking about how they shot Free Solo.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq_vvnxZ6I0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq_vvnxZ6I0)

<comment><USER27> To other people not getting what free solo is, it means climbing a cliff without ropes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Kristen Jacobs' talk on low level container networking at Kubecon 2018 in Seattle.

[https://kccna18.sched.com/event/GrWx/container-networking- fr...](https://kccna18.sched.com/event/GrWx/container-networking-from-scratch- kristen-jacobs-oracle?iframe=yes&w=100%&sidebar=yes&bg=no#)

<comment><USER29> YouTube link for this talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v_BDHIgOY8&index=255&list=P...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v_BDHIgOY8&index=255&list=PLj6h78yzYM2PZf9eA7bhWnIh_mK1vyOfU&t=0s)

</comment></comment><comment> open-source-ux I really liked this talk about the history of programming and how so many ideas we consider recent or modern are in fact much older than many of us realise. Watching this talk merely amplifies the feeling that the programming profession is in a perpetual loop - discarding or forgetting ideas or concepts, then re-discovering them anew. What's also striking is how rich and varied were the programming ideas that emerged from the 60s and 70s.

 _Kevlin Henney - Procedural Programming: It 's Back? It Never Went Away_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAcmD6XEEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAcmD6XEEE)

<comment><USER30> Although a bit repetitive from one talk to the next, Kevlin Henney's talks are of great quality, both in content and form.

If you're interested in a deep analysis on software development behaviours, through patterns either at the code or organisational level, his talks are gold.

I particularly enjoyed his take on management analysis, it resonates with a lot of "failure" situations that I had experienced in my previous job:

 _Kevlin Henney - Agility != Speed_ [https://youtu.be/kmFcNyZrUNM](https://youtu.be/kmFcNyZrUNM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Deviant Ollam - The Hotel Room Gourmet [https://youtu.be/qtFV73wpEAw](https://youtu.be/qtFV73wpEAw)

Also not 2018 but his elevator with Howard Payne talk: [https://youtu.be/oHf1vD5_b5I](https://youtu.be/oHf1vD5_b5I) (1h version) [https://youtu.be/ZUvGfuLlZus](https://youtu.be/ZUvGfuLlZus) (2h version)

And the search for the perfect door: [https://youtu.be/4YYvBLAF4T8](https://youtu.be/4YYvBLAF4T8)

<comment><USER32> Deviant Ollam seriously needs an award.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Deep Learning to solve Challenging Problems" by Jeff Dean [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jzi3cvCde4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jzi3cvCde4)

I'll watch Jeff Dean talk about pretty much anything, and his keynote "stump speeches" are more or less a greatest hits compilation of recent stuff from Google Brain.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's not a _talk_ , but worth a mention. Joe Rogan interviews Matthew Walker, a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Founder and Director of the Center for Human Sleep Science and author of the book "Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig)

</comment><comment><USER35> 2018 LLVM Developers' Meeting: C. Schafmeister "Lessons Learned Implementing Common Lisp with LLVM"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdXeRBbgDM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdXeRBbgDM)

</comment><comment><USER36> I really liked Paul Hill's "Failure is not an option: Building a culture of continuous improvement at NASA", the keynote from this year's DashCon: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMkgk-7aIBc&index=16&list=PL...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMkgk-7aIBc&index=16&list=PLdh- RwQzDsaN-evaS8HbRZW6THM-L4Ine&t=101s)

It was really nice to see that the current Devops/SRE best practices are reflections of engineering/operations best practices in other fields

</comment><comment><USER37> Kelsey Hightower's talk on the "Path to Serverless".

[https://youtu.be/oNa3xK2GFKY](https://youtu.be/oNa3xK2GFKY)

<comment><USER38> I really enjoy Kelsey on all his talks. The most laid-back and funny presenter. All my initial Kubernetes knowledge was drawn from his lectures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> What bodies think about - by Michael Levin at NeurIPS 2018.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg)

I dont really know anything about biology, but this piqued my interest.One of the most interesting talks of 2018.

<comment><USER40> Seconded. Had no idea what it was going to be about and thought it might have been the most interesting talk I've ever seen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why Germany cannot and should not pay to save the Eurozone, by Yanis Varoufakis (Video in English)

[http://www.cesifo- group.de/de/ifoHome/events/seminars/Muench...](http://www.cesifo- group.de/de/ifoHome/events/seminars/Muenchner- Seminare/Archive/mucsem_20180611_Varoufakis.html)

<comment><USER42> Any talk by Varoufakis is worth listening to.

<comment><USER43> He is a very controversial figure in both Greece and Europe as a whole.

<comment><USER44> Controversial in the very least. I also got the impression that he was quite anti-EU with his whole Greece rhetoric during the discussions about another Greek buyout. Maybe I got him wrong..?

<comment><USER45> The guy is a jerk. He fucked up in an unprecedented way, his whole negotiation strategy was just a blackmail toward EU-Germany that eventually backfired. In the meantime all his proposals for reforming the public sector were laughable, like the idea of giving cameras to tourists to record tax evading shops.

He may be good at writing books or giving lectures but he was a complete disaster as minister of finance.

<comment><USER46> Not sure about that. He was trying to get the best deal for Greece, Germany called his bluff and he was left holding the bag, but he had the right intentions. In retrospect he probably should have gone with the Grexit. The Germans would have capitulated, and, had they not, you'd still be better off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> The 2018 Turing Award lecture, by John Hennessy (MIPS, Stanford, Alphabet) and David Patterson (Berkeley, RISC)

[https://iscaconf.org/isca2018/turing_lecture.html](https://iscaconf.org/isca2018/turing_lecture.html)

 _> Titled "A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture: Domain-Specific Hardware/Software Co-Design, Enhanced Security, Open Instruction Sets, and Agile Chip Development," the talk covers recent developments and future directions in computer architecture. Hennessy and Patterson were recognized with the Turing Award for "pioneering a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry."_

</comment><comment><USER48> Not necessarily the best, but definitely one that should be watched "Escaping the Global Banking Cartel" by Andreas M. Antonopoulos [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgI0liAee4s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgI0liAee4s)

</comment><comment><USER49> I thought Hillel Wayne's talk, Everything about distributed systems is terrible, was probably the best talk for the motivation behind why you should be using TLA+ to design systems:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfnldxWlOhM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfnldxWlOhM)

</comment><comment><USER50> A Serverless Journey: AWS Lambda Under the Hood

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzV04T_kec](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzV04T_kec)

</comment><comment><USER51> Eugenia Cheng: "The Art of Logic: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHZKX0H6cUE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHZKX0H6cUE)

I saw an other version at Scala Exchange but that one requires registration [1] and it's seems to be almost the same talk.

It's very impressive summary of her latest book ("The Art Of Logic") about the importance of abstract logic in every day life and how abstraction can help us to understand each other (together with emotions).

[1]: [https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/12089-keynote- conveying...](https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/12089-keynote-conveying- the-power-of-abstraction)

</comment><comment><USER52> The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Create It. But Is It Already Too Late? by Alan Kay [https://videocast.nih.gov/Summary.asp?Live=28442&bhcp=1](https://videocast.nih.gov/Summary.asp?Live=28442&bhcp=1)

<comment><USER53> Kay begins at 4:00.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I love any talk with Joe Armstrong or Alan Kay in it.

Joe Armstrong - Keynote: The Forgotten Ideas in Computer Science - Code BEAM SF 2018

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I_jE0l7sYQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I_jE0l7sYQ)

</comment><comment><USER55> I liked Erica Joy's keynote at Strange Loop a lot. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi02tn3K2b4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi02tn3K2b4)

</comment><comment><USER56> One of my favourites was James Governor's Sympathy for the DevRel. A call for people in tech to take better care of themselves.

[https://devrel.net/dev-rel/sympathy-for-the-devrel](https://devrel.net/dev- rel/sympathy-for-the-devrel)

</comment><comment><USER57> "Be Human To Your Machines" — Scott Ganz at TedXSanFrancisco 2018.

[https://youtu.be/Y6eNSf4br5Y](https://youtu.be/Y6eNSf4br5Y)

Emmy-winning TV comedy writer becomes award-winning AI conversation designer, frets about the dismissive way humans interact with computers and the corrosive social effects of badly-designed bots. Explains why conversation interfaces need to stick up for themselves and push back on bad behavior, for the good of human discourse.

</comment><comment><USER58> "How to Win" by Daniel Gross[1]

It's an approach to living your life in a way that lets you be effective at accomplishing whatever you're after. Starting on something similar to a Mazlow's heirarchy(in that you must establish each level before going to the next one), you eventually find a way of not only living better and more effectively yourself, but finding how to expand that to your team and those around you. I didn't expect it to be good, but I liken it to Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People"\- it gets to the core of the problem in the best way possible.

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH1bewTg-P4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH1bewTg-P4)

</comment><comment><USER59> Blockchains Are a Bad Idea (James Mickens)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15RTC22Z2xI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15RTC22Z2xI)

I find almost all from GOTO 2018 very insightful.

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=goto+2018](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=goto+2018)

esp ones listed below.

GOTO 2018 • The Do's and Don'ts of Error Handling • Joe Armstrong

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTM_b7EJg5E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTM_b7EJg5E)

GOTO 2018 • Pragmatic Event-Driven Microservices • Allard Buijze

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSd_0zGxsIU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSd_0zGxsIU)

GOTO 2018 • Why Business Cases are Toxic • Chris Matts

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvOcjmpPQCc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvOcjmpPQCc)

GOTO 2018 • Unconditional Code • Michael Feathers

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnZ0uTOerUI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnZ0uTOerUI)

</comment><comment><USER60> A walk through of PDF's history and file format, check out Chas Emerick's 2018 Red Monk tech talk:

"Building 100 year systems in the shadow of PDF". [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EPn6plqkEs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EPn6plqkEs)

</comment><comment><USER60> Jeff Vogel from Spiderweb Software gave an awesome retrospective on 24 years of creating old-school-style fantasy RPGs at GDC 2018:

"Failing to Fill: The Spiderweb Software Way" [https://youtu.be/stxVBJem3Rs](https://youtu.be/stxVBJem3Rs)

</comment><comment><USER61> It is not only about the content but the energy and how to present it.

They rock presenting great content in a great way.

\---

Monica Dinculescu ([https://github.com/notwaldorf](https://github.com/notwaldorf))

PWA starter kit: build fast, scalable, modern apps with Web Components (Google I/O '18)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we3lLo- UFtk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we3lLo-UFtk)

\---

Kelsey Hightower ([https://github.com/kelseyhightower/](https://github.com/kelseyhightower/))

Keynote: Kubernetes and the Path to Serverless - Kelsey Hightower, Staff Developer Advocate, Google

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNa3xK2GFKY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNa3xK2GFKY)

</comment><comment><USER62> I made a playlist of all the youtube links form this section: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh6DLqe0B3ZCLi1bYvQrn...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh6DLqe0B3ZCLi1bYvQrnYPeTYjB5OrNF)

<comment> dawid-s Thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> My favorite talk was called "Generations @ Work", presented at Red Hat Summit 2018.

It was about different generations in the workplace, what each grouping typically liked, disliked, was motivated by, and how they communicated differently.

I really liked it because of the content, but also because it was given by a small panel, I was a member of it. :)

Why did I propose such a talk? I usually submit technical talks to conferences, sometimes they are chosen. This year I did NOT have a technical talk selected by the Summit committee, but on a whim I had submitted this 'softball/managerial' title. It was the one that got me a ticket to Summit! You never know.

</comment><comment><USER64> AWS re:Invent 2018: Close Loops & Opening Minds: How to Take Control of Systems, Big & Small

[https://youtu.be/O8xLxNje30M](https://youtu.be/O8xLxNje30M)

<comment><USER65> I haven't seen the talk, but just from the title, a "taking control" talk related to AWS is kind of ironic.

I'll have to watch it though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> This one struck a chord for me, related to trying to share your personal/health situation at work, not a topic that is talked about alot - [https://ministryoftesting.com/dojo/lessons/i-have-a- secret-a...](https://ministryoftesting.com/dojo/lessons/i-have-a-secret- anusha-nirmalananthan)

</comment><comment><USER67> I enjoyed Juan Benet's Long Now talk about the permanent web [http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/aug/06/long-term-info- stru...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/aug/06/long-term-info-structure/)

</comment><comment><USER68> Inside The Fake Science Factory from DefCon 26. First you'll laugh. And then you'll weep for humanity!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ras_VYgA77Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ras_VYgA77Q)

Also really dug Jeremy Rifkin's The Third Industrial Revolution: A Radical New Sharing Economy. Outlines the rollout of a possible new engineering platform consisting of free energy, satellite internet, and AI.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3M8Ka9vUA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3M8Ka9vUA)

Keep the links coming, please. Terrific counter-programming for holiday down time ;)

</comment><comment><USER69> Dave Ackley's Retirement Talk [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtzKgTxtVH8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtzKgTxtVH8)

</comment><comment><USER32> Joe Rogan has had an incredible year.

Joe Rogan interviews Dr. Andrew Weil [https://youtu.be/WjYYdMNUXF8](https://youtu.be/WjYYdMNUXF8)

Joe Rogan interviews Elon Musk [https://youtu.be/ycPr5-27vSI](https://youtu.be/ycPr5-27vSI)

Joe Rogan interviews James Hetfield [https://youtu.be/5O6QPTawR14](https://youtu.be/5O6QPTawR14)

</comment><comment><USER70> 2018 is not over yet and CCC happening again next week usually delivers talks that place very high in my personal ranking.

</comment><comment><USER71> The upcoming "chaos communication congress" always has a few gems [https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2018/Fahrplan/events...](https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2018/Fahrplan/events.html)

</comment><comment><USER72> I thought this was incredible: What's Next for Marketplace Startups [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl14Ty5-0Ko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl14Ty5-0Ko)

Great explanation of this space and their views on augmenting existing regulated markets.

</comment><comment><USER73> Machine Learning for JS Developers : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xm8ox1mmzE&frags=pl%2Cwn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xm8ox1mmzE&frags=pl%2Cwn)

</comment><comment><USER74> Teaching kids to code at goto berlin: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=patyK226zeE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=patyK226zeE)

</comment><comment><USER75> I quite liked Johann Hari on Sam Harris's podcast on addiction, depression, etc. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msP0-NqRhZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msP0-NqRhZE)

</comment><comment><USER76> Sam Harris talks to leading AI theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky about why humanity will probably be killed off by AI (if not by something else first) [https://youtu.be/AaNLX71Hl88](https://youtu.be/AaNLX71Hl88)

</comment><comment><USER77> Most articles on Idlewords.com

</comment><comment><USER78> joe rogan and jake the snake

</comment><comment><USER79> Peter Thiel on Trump, Gawker, and Leaving Silicon Valley

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0t5prZD57s&t](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0t5prZD57s&t)

</comment><comment><USER80> Nothing can beat Charles Stress talk in my eyes: [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude- you...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude-you-broke- the-future.html)

<comment><USER81> > _Charles Stress_

A pretty apt typo given what feeling many of his blog posts induce in readers :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Shameless plug for my talk in haystack in April, which was a couple years of casual research rolled up. I really enjoyed giving the talk and I've had lots of great feedback, so thought I'd share it with y'all.

"Algorithmic extraction of keywords, concepts, and vocabularies."

Sorry only slides and no video: [https://www.slideshare.net/MaxIrwin/haystack-2018-algorithmi...](https://www.slideshare.net/MaxIrwin/haystack-2018-algorithmic- extraction-of-keywords-concepts-and-vocabularies)

<comment><USER83> You forgot to mention the talk's subject.

<comment><USER82> Added, thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> I am really proud of a talk I gave in March about my motivations for designing open source 3D printed robots:

[https://youtu.be/V6HWLJqTASA](https://youtu.be/V6HWLJqTASA)

And this talk I gave about Starting a Business in Silicon Valley got a lot of traction on HN: [https://youtu.be/V6HWLJqTASA](https://youtu.be/V6HWLJqTASA)</comment>


How I Start: Elixir - <AUTHOR> http://howistart.org/posts/elixir/1 <comment><USER2> I like Elixir and Erlang. For some Elixir will be an easier and more accessible path toward using Erlang VM (BEAM), which, I think is an outstanding piece of engineering.

Elixir besides looking more familiar has macros and can let you re-assign variables (data structures are still immutable).

Usually I hear complaints about Erlang syntax. My personal opinion is Erlang's syntax is consistent and elegant. I prefer consistent and elegant over "curly braces" but with ambiguity and complexity. Usually it is things like thinking about actors, of functional paradigms (using recursion vs iteration), dealing with distributed nodes that are much interesting and harder. But everyone is different, so for those that syntax itself is a stumbling block, Elixir is an option.

And just to be complete there are also Lisp, Prolog, Lua and basic Python integration all in various stages of maturity:

[http://lfe.io/](http://lfe.io/)

[http://joxa.org/](http://joxa.org/)

[https://github.com/rvirding/luerl](https://github.com/rvirding/luerl)

[https://github.com/rvirding/erlog](https://github.com/rvirding/erlog)

[http://erlport.org/docs/python.html](http://erlport.org/docs/python.html) (integration with Python not Python implemented in Erlang)

<comment><USER3> Another advantage of Erlang's unconventional syntax, as well as its single- binding variables, is that it doesn't look like a typical imperative language. Because of this, I'm not as tempted to think in imperative terms when programming in Erlang. That having been said, I do like Elixir's string- handling functions.

<comment><USER4> > That having been said, I do like Elixir's string-handling functions.

That's impressive, considering that Erlang and it's standard lib is mostly string agnostic. I need to do my research on Elixir's libraries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone interested in a job programming elixir full time?

We've got a startup-like environment, without the hassle of trying to find backing or traction.

We get to work with new technology all the time, though we're primarily an Elixir/Ember shop.

If you're located in Austin or interested in relocating, drop a line to: firstname.lastname@example.com

PS- We are running elixir in production, right now.

</comment><comment><USER6> Elixir is awesome. A syntax similar to Ruby, but with all the fault tolerance and scalability of the Erlang virtual machine. So all the cool stuff of Erlang with none of the warts!

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it me, or should there be a bit at the end of how to reach the variables instantiated in room2 in room1?

I realize the "blue" "channel" is in room1, but shouldn't I be able to inspect/instantiate some form of "portal" handle on both "sides"?

Other than that, great article.

Btw, there's a recent enough erlang in wheezy-backports to play with elixir, for those running conservative desktops, like myself.

<comment><USER8> To bring it back to a normal Erlang analogy level, the rooms are instances of Erlang VMs. Since Erlang has isolated memory between processes, the only way to ask one process in one virtual machine (reaching it either by its registered name or if you know the pid somehow) for data (i.e. values of variables) is to send messages to it. You can't access variables/data across VMs/processes directly, you have to talk to them.

Regarding Erlang on Wheezy, I'd recommend the Erlang Solutions repository with pre-built and tested packages: [https://www.erlang- solutions.com/downloads/download-erlang-o...](https://www.erlang- solutions.com/downloads/download-erlang-otp)

<comment><USER7> I suppose I want the example to show how, when I push data through the portal, it appears on the other side. I'm guessing the idomatic way has to do something with registering a function to be called on message/data received on the "other" end. It just feel like the article could/should be extended a bit there, to make it "full circle" so to speak.

What's already there is good, but it leaves me hungry for more, and a little lost as to how to achieve more.

Thanks for the tip on upstream packages for Debian -- I somehow missed the fact that there was a repo for Debian (well, that, and I already had wheezy- backports enabled, and it turned out to work fine with Elixir from source).

<comment><USER9> I don't understand what you are asking here. The example at the beginning of the "Distribution" section shows how to get the value from the door in room1 while running on the node corresponding to room2.

The same way you can call 'Portal.Door.get({:orange, :"room2@COMPUTER-NAME"})' on the first node (the one corresponding to room1).

<comment><USER7> Hm, I believe that is what I was asking :) I'll have to look when I'm back at my computer with the example code (and and more importantly an elixir install).

<comment><USER7> Ok, now I see a little more of how things are connected. In my opinion, it would've been nice to be a) more explicit about the naming/aliasing of blue/orange in the final section, and b) Show how to actually read data sent from room2 in room1, eg:

        # Start session for room1, shoot orange portal in room1
        $ iex --sname room1 --cookie secrit -S mix
        iex(room1@COMPUTER-NAME)1> Portal.shoot(:blue)
        {:ok, #PID<0.67.0>}

        # Start session for room2, shoot orange portal in room2
        $ iex --sname room2 --cookie secret -S mix
        iex(room2@COMPUTER-NAME)1> Portal.shoot(:orange)

        # set up aliases/variables for blue/orange in room2
        iex(room2@COMPUTER-NAME)1> blue = {:blue, :"room1@COMPUTER-NAME"}
        {:blue, :room1@COMPUTER-NAME}
        {:ok, #PID<0.68.0>}
        iex(room2@COMPUTER-NAME)3> orange = {:orange, :"room2@COMPUTER-NAME"}
        {:orange, :room2@COMPUTER-NAME}

        # Use aliases to set up portal transfer in room2
        iex(room2@COMPUTER-NAME)4> portal = Portal.transfer(orange, blue, [1,2,3,4])
        #Portal<
          {:orange, :room2@COMPUTER-NAME} <=> {:blue, :room1@COMPUTER-NAME}
                        [1, 2, 3, 4] <=> []

        iex(room2@COMPUTER-NAME)5> Portal.push_right(portal)
        #Portal<
          {:orange, :room2@COMPUTER-NAME} <=> {:blue, :room1@COMPUTER-NAME}
                           [1, 2, 3] <=> [4]

        # set up aliases/variables for blue/orange in room1 (saves typing!)
        iex(room1@COMPUTER-NAME)2> orange = {:orange, :"room2@COMPUTER-NAME"}
        {:orange, :room2@COMPUTER-NAME}
        iex(room1@COMPUTER-NAME)3> blue = {:blue, :"room1@COMPUTER-NAME"}
        {:blue, :room1@COMPUTER-NAME}

        # Anything in the door?
        iex(room1@COMPUTER-NAME)4> Portal.Door.get(orange)
        [4, 3, 2, 1]
        iex(room1@COMPUTER-NAME)5> Portal.Door.get(blue)
        []

        #Switch to room2, push a value:
        iex(room1@COMPUTER-NAME)6> Portal.Door.get(blue)
        [4]
        iex(room1@COMPUTER-NAME)7> Portal.Door.get(orange)
        [3, 2, 1]

        # Verify that we're communicating, in room1:
        iex(room1@kuromaki)6> Portal.Door.get(blue)
        [4]
        iex(room1@kuromaki)7> Portal.Door.get(orange)
        [3, 2, 1]

I'm still not entirely clear on if it's possible to access the "portal" from both rooms [edit: to call push_right from room1 on the portal instantiated in the session in room2] -- could I get at it from room1 by qualifying it with room2@COMPUTER-NAME? If so what would the implications be? I assume functions are called via message passing, so this would be safe?

I think a lot of the stuff up to the very last bit is good, I just feel the article stops a little short. Maybe I just need to read it again (and play more with elixir).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love the concept of Elixir, but is it used out in the wild much? A language's popularity, or lack thereof, has little influence on whether I'll learn it or not, but I'm always curious about this.

<comment><USER11> I use it for some minor automation tasks at work (munging data in files and the like). That's one of the coolest things about Elixir in my opinion; it's great for the kind of stuff you used to use Perl for, while still being fantastic at the kind of stuff Erlang is used for. I'm obviously not using the full power of the language by any means and I'm yet to use all the OTP stuff except for toy applications for fun. But it's a refreshingly enjoyable language to work in. I haven't built anything that a client has directly paid for with Elixir yet, but sooner or later I hope to get something like an Elixir version of one of our Rails apps going in my free time and convince my boss we should give it a try for real.

<comment><USER10> I definitely see how this would be useful for automated tasks. I have some python scripts doing a fair bit of automated data munging that would probably benefit from being written in Erlang/Elixir.

Slight tangent - people often say learning Haskell is worth it for the eye opening experience it provides, regardless of whether you get to use it day- to-day. Would you say the same of Erlang and Elixir?

<comment><USER11> Funny you should ask. I actually started giving an honest go at learning Haskell before I started learning Erlang and later Elixir. So for me, I wouldn't say they were as eye opening as Haskell (truthfully Common Lisp and Scheme gave me more "woah!" moments than anything else so far) simply because of the order in which I learned them.

However, if you've never learned Haskell, OCaml, or F# I don't think it's a stretch to say that Elixir/Erlang's similar use of pattern matching and guards would have an eye opening effect that makes it worth learning. In both Haskell and Elixir/Erlang they're a core part of using the languages idiomatically. Once you see it in action you'd be hard pressed to not take some of the lessons with you elsewhere.

So, yes. Elixir and Erlang will make you rethink some assumptions about how to solve problems you probably never knew you had. Such as the "necessity" of explicit conditional statements. If anything you'll get better at using recursion to solve actual problems instead of just for contrived classroom- type problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am kind of a fanboy for this concept and I'm super excited that Jose was willing to contribute a write-up! Elixir is an incredibly exciting language in my opinion, mixing some of the things that attracted me to Python years ago with some extremely powerful tools and capabilities borrowed from Erlang's virtual machine, check it out!

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're out shopping for a new language to learn, I would recommend giving Elixir as much (or more :)) weight as you might give Go, Rust or Clojure.

Here's a few things that I really like about Elixir:

\- There's a ton of great resources already out for learning Elixir. José's article here is a good intro but Elixir's official website has a very in-depth getting started guide[0]. Dave Thomas, the author of Pragmatic Programmer and Programming Ruby (arguably the book that helped Ruby grow pre-Rails), has written a great book titled "Programming Elixir"[1]. Authors at Manning and O'Reilly are also working on Elixir books to the best of my knowledge.

\- Elixir ships with a great build tool, task runner and dependency manager named Mix. There is also a package manager already built named Hex[2].

\- Elixir compiles directly to Erlang byte code, so you get to not only take advantage of a very mature virtual machine, but you also get direct interoperability with Erlang libraries! This gives Elixir a robust ecosystem of tools and libraries to use right out of the gate so you can be productive.

\- I try not to judge a language by its syntax anymore, but I realize that some do. If that's your thing, Elixir has a Ruby-inspired syntax as well as great support for metaprogramming via macros.

\- Elixir development is going very fast and the language is stabilizing more and more by the day. If you need the "1.0 stamp of approval", that should only be weeks to a couple months away at most. The community feels very strong for a language this early in the game. The creator of the language, José Valim, is also very fair and considerate when discussing the language.

\- The pipe operator lets you take all of your small functions and easily show the flow of how the operations are applied. This is one of the killer features of Elixir for sure and I'm not sure when I'll feel like I've overused it.

\- Testing is at the very forefront of Elixir. All projects generated using Mix (the build tool described above) come with a ready to go test runner. You can also embed tests in the documentation of your code and they too will be tested for correctness.

Now, to be fair, here's a couple things to keep in mind when learning Elixir. These might seem like negatives or challenging at first, but they quickly become some of your favorite parts of Elixir:

\- Elixir is a functional programming language, so that can be quite different as most of us on HN I feel come from OOP backgrounds. You have to stop thinking in classes, methods and state and start thinking about data structures, functions and immutability. Elixir is dynamic though, so picking it up isn't quite as challenging as learning a functional language and type system at the same time.

\- Pattern matching and recursion are going to be at the core of writing expressive systems. Thinking about problems recursively is mind-bending at first but will start to feel natural. Pattern matching will both make you never look at an equals sign the same way again and help you write very easy to understand function bodies.

\- OTP and its well thought out patterns are going to be pervasive to your Elixir programs. If you've ever ran into an Erlang zealot, they probably were ranting and raving about how well Erlang scales and handles failure. OTP and the Erlang VM are the secret sauce. How this all gets accomplished will feel very foreign at first (thinking in Supervision trees and message passing) but stick with it.

0 - [http://pragprog.com/book/elixir/programming- elixir](http://pragprog.com/book/elixir/programming-elixir)

1 - [http://elixir-lang.org/getting_started/1.html](http://elixir- lang.org/getting_started/1.html)

2 - [http://hex.pm](http://hex.pm)

<comment> fisher-lebo I've considered Elixir as something worth picking up next, but my question is, why would I chose it over Clojure when Clojure gives me similar functionality (macros, some concurrency), but much deeper library options?

<comment><USER14> The concurrency model of Clojure is different than that of Erlang (and Elixir), especially Erlang is easier to scale to many machines (it's actually built right into the language/VM).

But to be honest, I think you should just learn both. Clojure is an interesting language, even if I disagree with some design decisions (no reader macros...), with interesting capabilities and so is Erlang and even more so Elixir, but that's really the end of similarities between them. Error handling, metaprogramming, concurrency and pretty much every other aspect of these languages are different, so learning both is not redundant IMHO in the least.

<comment><USER15> Out of curiosity, what use cases do you have for reader macros that tagged literals do not cover?

[http://clojure.org/reader#The%20Reader-- Tagged%20Literals](http://clojure.org/reader#The%20Reader--Tagged%20Literals)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> ¿No RSS or ATOM feed available? Feedly doesn't find any feed on [http://howistart.org/](http://howistart.org/)

I know I can get updates by twitter but feeds are a commodity I'm used to :(

<comment><USER17> [https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/1603](https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/1603) ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I work in the telephony field, and Erlang comes up every other sentence. I have limited experience with that, but Elixir in my opinion makes it far easier to jump in.

I sort of agree with the common argument about OTP needing a rename, but in the end if a developer can't get past a name, he can't get past a lot of other things either.

<comment><USER19> What is wrong with Outlaw Techno Psychobitch [1] ?

[1] [http://www.gar1t.com/blog/erlang-the-movie-ii-the- sequel.htm...](http://www.gar1t.com/blog/erlang-the-movie-ii-the-sequel.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yes it is nice language, but why the author did not create a ruby implementation over Beam? Maybe elixir has extra features than ruby, so why he does not create a superset of ruby? Try to image all ruby gems that support the feature of Elixir at zero cost, instead we have a new language new libs...

<comment><USER14> Ruby semantics wouldn't map to BEAM cleanly. Pervasive immutability, error handling and concurrency constructs are very different between Ruby and Erlang, I don't think trying to bridge the gap would be an easy task.</comment></comment>


Onestop.mid - the mysterious Windows midi - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/shareables/files/2010/04/Onestop.jpg

<comment><USER2> this song should definitely be called "i love the funk".</comment>


SFLC: Microsoft violated the GPL - <AUTHOR> http://www.sdtimes.com/link/33641

<comment><USER2> Meh, when has the SFLC ever been helpful, rather than a bully. Bully for the good guys, yeah, but they're still lawyers/bullies.

</comment><comment><USER3> ...and the SFLC putting out press releases like this when Microsoft was trying to do the right thing is not helping.

<comment><USER4> Microsoft used GPLd code which it shouldn't have used in the first place. That's the reason why they released the code for some linux drivers. They did a mistake, but corrected it anyways.

<comment><USER3> It's a stretch to say they _used_ GPLed code.

They wrote a kernel module that is unavoidably tightly coupled to the Linux kernel, which means that it must be GPLv2 as a derived work. They appear to have intended to release it as GPLv2, it just took a while.

The GPL does not require them to release the code on the internet publicly, just to release it under the GPLv2 to people who have received the code in some form (binaries) when they ask for it. Someone asked for it, and they provided it. They were decent about it.

The only real 'violation' is that they didn't initially release the binary with GPLv2 license text. I forgive them.</comment></comment></comment>


Bridge: A faster way to integrate with APIs [video] - <AUTHOR> http://bridge.nudgepad.com/video.html

<comment><USER2> Why did you invent a proprietary new language with no new features rather than use JSON, arguably the de facto standard for APIs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Space is open source ([https://github.com/nudgepad/space](https://github.com/nudgepad/space)) and MIT licensed.

JSON is great. And critical. I think it's worth it to investigate whether or not something in such widespread use could be improved, don't you?

Are there any features or pain points you currently have with JSON or API integrations in general?</comment></comment>


Signed Distance Field rendering of color bit planes - <AUTHOR> http://gpuhacks.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/signed-distance-field-rendering-of-color-bit-planes/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not the owner of the blog, but this looks like a pretty amazing technique I thought I should share...</comment>


Why Microsoft Needs All the Code: To Build a Virtuous Cycle for Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> http://arc.applause.com/2015/05/01/microsoft-windows-10-ios-and-android-apps/

<comment><AUTHOR> Microsoft needs all the code from iOS and Android to help escape the vicious cycle it created with Windows 8.</comment>


Did Google train its own enemies with Android? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/11/did_google_train_its_own_enemi.html

<comment><USER2> This is from a year ago (wasn't really a relevant worry then, but even less so now).</comment>


Assessing Employee Performance: You're Doing It Rong - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/javascript-scene/assessing-employee-performance-1a8bdee45c1a

<comment><USER2> So true. This has a huge impact on the tech industry.</comment>


When the Beatles Walked Offstage: Fifty Years of "Abbey Road" - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/when-the-beatles-walked-offstage-fifty-years-of-abbey-road <comment><USER2> Of the relatively small catalog of Beatles albums, to me, Abbey Road is a shining star, possibly eclipsed only by Sgt. Pepper. Almost the entire record depicts the group at the very height of their musical prowess and features a couple pieces by Harrison that place him firmly on the same level as Lennon and McCartney. And that cover! A real work of genius.

The 60's were a glorious time for musical expression for which the Beatles were a quintessential factor. Abbey Road was a great bookend to both the era and to The Beatles work as a group.</comment>


Exposure for Startup in Beta - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
I'm part of a team who are launching a startup in August.. Right now we're finalising the site design/layouts and doing the final bits of code.
We have a landing page at the moment which was featured on Beta List just the other day.
Wondering if anyone would care to share some other avenues to gain good exposure on an idea we think might do well.
We're looking for early adopters and people who are interested in beta testing our product too.
It is fully bootstrapped and we're running on empty, but we're almost there :) <comment><AUTHOR> Hit submit before finishing, but the site is <http://www.howsto.com>

It is a user driven content site where members can earn revenue from tutuorials they produce and submit.

Love to hear from you all.

Best, Rob</comment>


Making GIFs From Video Files With Python - <AUTHOR> http://zulko.github.io/blog/2014/01/23/making-animated-gifs-from-video-files-with-python/# <comment><USER2> Please use silent HTML5 videos instead of animated GIFs wherever possible. They are much more bandwidth- and CPU-efficient. This site allows you to automatically upload/convert animated GIFs into that format: [http://gfycat.com/](http://gfycat.com/)

The links allow you to see the animated GIFs as well, if viewer's device doesn't support HTML5.

<comment><USER3> The problem, for me, is that HTML5 video is a technical solution with no social advantage. There are so many places on the web where images are allowed that videos will never be allowed -- for good reason. Forums, comment threads, etc.

What we need is an image container format that allows for a silent (and only silent) video stream to be embedded. A better GIF. Something that site maintainers would feel entirely comfortable in allowing.

<comment><USER4> A new format would be overkill. Websites can just set the "muted" attribute on video elements. If you also set "loop" & "autoplay" and hide the controls, you've got a video that acts just like a GIF.

<comment><USER5> Example, with sound on: [http://home.comcast.net/~yugami/lean.html](http://home.comcast.net/~yugami/lean.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Originally from/more discussion at [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1w2c58/a_few_an...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1w2c58/a_few_animated_gifs_and_their_python_code_xpost/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice! Also check out: "Stupid programmer tricks and Star Wars .gif": [http://rarlindseysmash.com/posts/stupid-programmer-tricks- an...](http://rarlindseysmash.com/posts/stupid-programmer-tricks-and-star- wars-gifs)

Also Python, but uses VideoLan (VLC) to some extent to create really nifty Star Wars gifs.

</comment><comment><USER7> (on 'jessie'):

apt-cache search 'movie.<asterisk>python|python.<asterisk>movie'

... <squatmo-germane> ...

well, nutz.

(and how the hell do you type a real asterisk in this comment forum? tried escapes... tried html entities...)

<comment><USER8> For code, just put a couple spaces before the line:

      apt-cache search 'movie.*python|python.*movie'

In general, you can also stick a space after them * * *.

<comment><USER7> thank you. i would've never thought of that. * * _

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is awesome and much easier than writing FFMPEG commands (which is what I do now). An enhancement could be adding voice to text.

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone done a benchmark of this vs AVISynth? I have software I wrote in AVISynth for doing 2d to 3d Stereoscopic upconversion based on motion and parallax. I have often wished I had it in something more "real" like Python.

<comment><USER11> Have you tried VaporSynth? It's kind of a spiritual successor to AviSynth in the form of a Python module. Can even load AviSynth plugins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is nifty! Though it's tempting to draft a GUI for it.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is much nicer than my normal method of getting the frames with mplayer -vo png and then using ImageMagick to assemble the frames into an animated GIF.

</comment><comment><USER14> I just watched the whole 'Pigs in a polka' video and it is so good! The API is also very cool :)

</comment><comment><USER15> @Schneems has a really good tutorial on this using ffmpeg. [http://www.schneems.com/post/41104255619/use-gifs-in-your- pu...](http://www.schneems.com/post/41104255619/use-gifs-in-your-pull-request- for-good-not-evil/)

</comment><comment><USER16> mplayer can do this as well:

        mplayer videofile -vo gif89a:fps=15:output=video.gif

You can use mplayer's other options to set the start time, duration, and cropping.

</comment><comment><USER17> Thank you! I've never met MoviePy and it looks really good. I'm waiting for libopenshot to be released, what do you think about it?

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't this overkill? You can get the exact same result with FFMPEG and a single shell command.

Seems like a solution in search of a problem.

<comment><USER19> Can you easily integrate django with a shell command? Or with the python imgur image hosting? Easy online creation of gifs seems kind of useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I use [http://www.gifrocket.com/](http://www.gifrocket.com/) for Mac.

</comment><comment><USER21> Nice, kept me occupied for an hour :) also I must say author did a great job with module and documentation.

</comment><comment><USER22> Very well made tutorial.

</comment><comment><USER23> Very nice API.

</comment><comment><USER24> this is awesome</comment>


IPad Usability Study Reveals What We Do and Don't Like In Apps - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/apple/ipad-usability-study-reveals-what-we-do-and-dont-like-in-apps/ <comment> Apple-Guy they _forgot_ to mention the faux study has a minuscule sample size of 16 people.</comment>


Instagram is down? - <AUTHOR> http://instagram.com/

<comment><USER2> It seems to be fine from here (San Francisco, CA)</comment>


Picturelife joins StreamNation - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/Yr6SsHLL <comment><USER2> Here's the CEO insulting founders who sell or quit (he just did both): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7605027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7605027)

<comment><USER3> One caveat to your point: in that comment, the Picturelife CEO was apparently criticizing Loom for shutting down their service after being acquired by Dropbox. In this case, it sounds like Streamnation really intends to keep running (and improve) the existing Picturelife service. [1]

[1] "We love Picturelife": [https://www.streamnation.com/blog/index.php/we- love-picturel...](https://www.streamnation.com/blog/index.php/we-love- picturelife/)</comment></comment>


Starting my YC app....right now. - <AUTHOR>

Just decided to go ahead and apply again. Cutting it a little close I suppose :) <comment><USER2> You can make a video introducing yourself and partners that quick? Or is the video optional?

<comment><AUTHOR> Done with the app with 2 minutes to spare. Vid is not optional; had one in the vault :)

This was great, btw. No over-thinking, just busting out the responses as they came to me. Maybe simple is better sometimes.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you create additional income streams? - <AUTHOR> Nowadays it's common for people to have income streams in addition to salary. It is even better if these streams are "passive" and do not require continuous involvement.
How do create additional income streams?
Is there a process that you use to find new opportunities to get additional income? <comment><USER2> Find a niche that needs filling. If you can write software, write something that helps fill a need. You can then sell the software (or at least try to). If that fails, you can embed ads into it such that they're not annoying. Most people understand it. If there are ads, they'll ignore them, but it generates revenue for you. Your skills and billboard space (your creations) are what generate income.

If you can build something, do it. There will always be a customer, whether they'll pay well is another question.

If you want to do it the blackhat way, churn and burn. It's the reason why the internet is full of garbage now, why there are millions of blogs that talk and talk but say nothing. Do you like lists? Write those down and catch someone's attention, then backlink other blogs using keywords and SEO. Feed off of each other's client stream, the clients being the soul-drained tube riders that would rather click through a thousand boring pointless lists than talk to the rider next to them. Then find ways to amplify that.</comment>


"Time of the Magicians" – philosophy's great decade? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/13/time-of-the-magicians-by-wolfram-eilenberger-review-philosophys-great-decade <comment><USER2> No, the _next_ decade, the 1930s, was the philosophical goldrush. Von Neumann, Gödel, Turing, and Tarski published their collective destruction of the formalist and structuralist programs; Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli laid down the foundations of quantum mechanics. The former program destroyed any belief that we might be able to use formal tactics to analyze truth or other semantics; the latter program gave us positive evidence that reality is contextual and non-concrete.

<comment><USER3> None of the people you mention are philosophers, and their influence on philosophy is indirect at best.

<comment><USER4> They are not commonly classified as philosophers. However:

Logic is often classed as a branch of philosophy, and that covers the Gödel work, and more, mentioned.

There is plenty of writing, much of it by real philosophers, about how foundational work in QM, for example, did have profound philosophical implications and did influence the development of philosophy.

The physicists who invented QM had many discussions about its philosophical implications, and these discussions have been studied by philosophers and influence philosophy.

The division separating "philosophy" from mathematics, physics, and even logic is recent and arbitrary.

And finally, if an academic philosopher finds math too hard, that is not a good reason to disqualify it from being considered "philosophy".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Odd to frame this as a story about the 1920s when one of the quartet, Wittgenstein, spent the decade in philosophical exile. He finished the Tractatus in 1919 and didn't return to Cambridge until 1929.

<comment><USER6> He never stopped thinking about philosophical problems, and when he returned to academia his views had changed radically.

<comment><USER7> He published Some Remarks on Logical Form in 1929. It's been 10 years since I was reading Wittgenstein, but my recollection is that work was still Tractarian. The blue and brown books came in the 30s.

<comment><USER6> So it looks like I was mistaken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There does seem to be something special about the 1920s, even ignoring the claims for philosophical greatness here.

It also saw the flowering of both modern literature and modern physics (perhaps only Einstein's great achievements are particularly notable by omission for being slightly earlier).

I don't know enough about art to comment on that.

Certainly it's hard to think of a more obvious recent period of intellectual brilliance than that of the time between the wars, the 20s in particular.

<comment><USER9> I dunno, for philosophy, it seems to me most decades between 1800 and 1920 were more momentous than the 1920s. I have no idea what Walter Benjamin and Cassirer are doing in there with Wittgenstein and Heidegger either. I mean, I like me some Walter Benjamin ... but I never thought of him as a Philosopher. Cassirer is just obscure; I can think of a half dozen better known philosophers of that time.

Pretty good decade for physics though; haven't had one like that since then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's some historical background. In the 19th century the West enjoyed an extraordinary period of peace, prosperity, and technological progress, all under the guidance of Enlightenment philosophy, with its focus on the supposedly unlimited powers of human reason, and Liberal political philosophy.

But then there was what we now call World War I, which was remarkably destructive and killed of much of an entire generation of young men. And that in turn lead to the Communist revolution in Russia, and great political instability in Germany, which had been seen as the most civilized of nations, which lead to the rise of the Nazis, and also the Fascist regime in Italy. In addition modern developments such as radio and the automobile produced considerably cultural disruption.

All this produced great confusion and despair among much of the intellectual class, and a great many abandoned Liberalism and Enlightenment philosophy. The book in question discusses three philosophers who searched for alternatives, and one who stuck with the Enlightenment.

<comment><USER10> > _the West enjoyed an extraordinary period of peace, prosperity, and > technological progress, all under the guidance of Enlightenment [...] But > then there was [...] great political instability [...] In addition modern > developments such as radio and the automobile produced considerably cultural > disruption. All this produced great confusion and despair among much of the > intellectual class, and a great many abandoned Liberalism and Enlightenment > philosophy._

What will happen in the 2020s-2030s? What will become the new replacement of Neoliberalism? From time to time, I find myself considering this question. The historical background now is remarkably similar. I bet some Hacker News headlines (e.g. "UK votes to leave EU") we've seen has already appeared in a 2060 exam on the early 2010s-2030s, not unlike the our impression of early 1910s-1930s history.

<comment><USER11> What's the difference between liberalism and neoliberalism? I'd like to read something about that.

<comment><USER2> Wikipedia has a fine overview on all of this.

All liberals, from classical liberals to metaliberals, believe in basic tenets of freedom which are required to have a consenting and aware government, like free speech and freedom to keep private property. Neoliberals are right-of- center liberals who focus on fiscal power, consumerist economy, and free markets.

The main distinction worth highlighting is that neoliberalism does not view it as a problem when large piles of money participate in politics. After all, free markets imply that market leaders must know something about something and aren't merely lucky; therefore they are worth putting in charge of government. In Hong Kong, we see this taken to an extreme, with banks directly voting to choose legislators, but we also see variants all over the world, like the infamous Citizens United vs FEC decision in the USA which allows corporations to directly steer political action committees.

Liberalism is the ACLU; neoliberalism is Disney. The ACLU works to defend everybody's rights; Disney just wants to make money.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for that rundown; I found it useful, because I'm also hazy about this terminology.

I hesitate to take this into what might be an irrelevant and contentious side road, but I just want to remark that the ACLU is not considered an organization that defends "everybody's" rights by everybody. They've historically done a fantastic job at defending freedom of speech, press, and assembly, and also 4th amendment rights. Aside from that, it depends on the cultural background of whatever lawyers happen to have influence in the organization. I don't think most gun owners would say the the ACLU is interested in defending them against the government's infringement of their rights to keep and bear arms, for example. And, more recently, they've taken stances that some people consider misogynistic, by telling women that they have no right to women-only spaces, for example. Women have increasing reason to feel that the ACLU is not defending their rights, in this sphere. So are they a good example of Liberalism? I guess it's complicated.

<comment><USER12> These things are never clean.

In the context of 20th century liberalism, some rights are more broadly accepted than others. Freedom of speech, press, free assembly, political association, rule of law, religion, property etc... these are the core freedoms.. the liberties liberalism refers to. Gun rights are somewhat unique to America so IDK how to treat them.

Other rights... these are not necessarily "liberal" rights. Socialism, for example, always criticised liberals for leaving workers rights and economic rights out of the equation. The ones that exist in law came about later, from socialist (progressives in US terms) agitations that came from "left" of the liberals.

Women only spaces, other such rights... I'm not sure how they relate to liberalism. Feminism generally has not been a purely liberal movement. It had/has many camps and influences.

Liberalism does not mean support for every right. In fact, early liberalism opposed the "rights and privileges" of monarchs, clergy and the aristocracy. Those rights, for example, are part of the UK constitution, but liberals are against them.

<comment><USER4> I think that clarifies something. Any right, even a basic human right, is in conflict with something that someone else might consider an opposing right. So Liberalism is more specific than recognition of rights of man, or something like that. It is the elevation of a particular set of rights. It is a taking of sides. Would you agree with that?

<comment><USER2> No, the entire conception of rights is tied to liberalism, and itself is not the end of human moral ideology. Rights are good compromises: If we all broadly agree that humans are entitled to some right R, then R will become a social institution which we enshrine and protect, and that is good enough for society to make progress and people to get on with their lives.

For a deeper look, try this Marxist approach, "The Problem With Human Rights" [0]. As both they and I want to emphasize, the goal isn't to take away rights or to disenfranchise people, but to explore exactly what we _mean_ when we say that people are endowed with inalienable rights and what we want governments to do about it.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhRBsJYWR8Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhRBsJYWR8Q)

<comment><USER12> _the entire conception of rights is tied to liberalism_

Tied to, yes. But the liberals were using a framework that already existed.

The concept of rights was already used in a constitutional way referring to the "divine and privileges" of the King, the "rights and privileges" of Clergy, the Church, Aristocracy & such.

Rights were already seen as the basis of politcal systems.

Marxism is pretty vast, so almost anything can be marxist. That said, Marx himself didn't speak about rights positively, and was critical of liberalism. His premise was that rights don't matter. Material conditions matter.

<comment><USER2> You could stand to actually watch the video I linked. To quote its opening line:

> Human rights today have the kind of status that the divine right of kings > had in the Middle Ages. They are so deeply ingrained in our political > thinking that imagining a society without them seems almost impossible.

And then:

> That human rights "simply follow from the definition of justice" [quoting > John Rawls] is at the very least a strange claim, because the notion of > "justice" has been theorized at least since the ancient Greeks, whereas the > doctrine of human rights was not fully formulated until the 17th Century.

The Greeks?

> Ancient Greek philosophers commonly saw what is right, what is lawful, as > being determined by the moral order of the world itself. What is right was > not to be found in individuals but in the harmonious order of things.

Continuing on the Greeks and Romans (Hellenistic tradition):

> What was due to a person was determined not by the individual rights they > possessed, but by their position in the larger community, and their > relationship to the other members of the community. The point of such > distributive justice was to aim at social harmony, something that can only > be understood in light of the community as a whole; rather than in terms of > isolated individual rights.

What changed? Christianity. Ensoulment and God crowded out the harmony of the community.

> Because of [the arguments of Christians], gradually, the moral law came to > be seen not as something inherent in the order of things, but something > stemming from the Will of God. The importance of order is replaced by the > importance of will. [...] The result is a morality built on universal > abstract rights which emanate from the will of each individual by virtue of > a shared human essence.

And that's just the first quarter of the video. Go watch; it's very informative and lays out its sources and citations in a way that are easy to examine for yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The four philosophers who the article claims made the 1920's great were Heidegger, Benjamin, Cassirer, and Wittgenstein.

Of these, only Heidegger and Wittgenstein are really giants in the field. Benjamin had influence in only a rather circumscribed subfield of philosophy: critical theory. Cassirer is virtually unknown.

So I'm really not sure why this is supposed to make the 20's "philosophy's great decade".

Arguably, Heidegger and Wittgenstein are enough.. but, really, you could easily find many other decades in history when other giants of philosophy lived.

How about the decades when Socrates and Plato lived? Or Plato and Aristotle? There probably were no more influential Western philosophers in history than these, and not only did they live at the same time and know each other, but they were each other's teachers and students.

Or how about the decades of Sartre, Camus, Foucault, Russell, Chomsky, and Popper?

Or those of Rousseau, Voltaire, Hume, and Kant? Or of Marx, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche?

If we expand our horizons to include non-Western philosophy, the choice of "great decades" become even greater. For instance, Confucious was a contemporary of Lao Tzu, and their influence is arguably as great as any of the Western philosophers mentioned earlier.

We could go on and on and on. The 1920s weren't that special.

<comment><USER13> You are reading the title too literally: it's the great decade of 20th century European philosophy; we live in a world deeply shaped by both Heidegger and Wittgenstein (and I would add Russel); other profoundly influential philosophers like Quine, Church, and Kripke (just to pick three influential on my work) would not have "existed" without those three priors.

Benjamin gets short shift in this essay which is unfair; outside the philosophy departments he's been more influential than he is here credited with.</comment></comment>


Massively Multiplayer Minesweeper - <AUTHOR> https://minesweep.glitch.me/ <comment><USER2> Can someone post a screenshot? This is the only thing I can see:

> _failed to start application on minesweep.glitch.me_

> _This is most likely because your project has a code error._

> _Check your project logs, fix the error and try again._

<comment><USER3> "Multiplayer" \- checked. "Massively" \- not so much ;)

<comment><USER4> The author of the app took the project down. As far as I know, it's a student project that is still a work in progress, so they might not yet be ready for full HN scrutiny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love seeing little niche MMO games like this! Anyone remember mienfield.com? This site reminds me of that, but that site kept going down and coming back up, and reddit.com/r/mienfield kind of narrates the life and eventual death of that site, which is neat to see unfold over time. But what's most interesting to me is that although so many people found this kind of simple MMO game extremely fun and kept going back to it (our family played mienfield on and off for weeks, maybe months!), the site couldn't find a way to support itself financially and eventually died. I'm not sure what would have been the best financial model for it either. But either way, it's super cool and inspired me to buy editfight.com and transform it into a new kind of MMO game every few months. To me the best part of these kind of games like minesweep.glitch.me here is that people have to find ways to interact and communicate with very little conventional ways (no comments, no live chat, etc) and instead have to use the game itself to communicate, to coordinate and plan, or just to say hi to each other! It's like getting back to the raw fundamentals of human interaction before there was formalized speech or writing!

</comment><comment><USER6> For anyone really in to minesweeper, I want to recommend the Hexcells series of games, available on Steam.

It's hexagonal minesweeper that gradually introduces new clues, and there is always enough information that you don't have to guess. It's a really well done puzzle game.

(No affiliation, just a big fan)

</comment><comment><USER7> There used to be a much more polished implementation of this idea at [http://www.mienfield.com/](http://www.mienfield.com/), but it appears to have gone defunct sometime in the last few months.

<comment><USER8> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11158897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11158897) (Feb 2016)

> _game like this_ [http://gameofbombs.com/](http://gameofbombs.com/)

Apparently being offline has happened before:

> _it was down and didn 't get back up for at least 200 days_

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Neat. I can just right click everything though

Also is there a penalty for being a jerk and just clicking everything regardless of if it's a mine or not?

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure if there's a controls summary that I'm missing, but here we go:

Left click: reveal a tile

Right click: flag a tile as containing a mine, or reveal it if it doesn't contain one (score penalty)

Drag (either button): move across the field

</comment><comment><USER11> Doesn't work? I left / right click does nothing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Love me some minesweeper. My favorite version is probably on the Vive. Nothing is cooler than FPV minesweeper, planting flags and working the field.

I wish this one had some zoom control.

</comment><comment><USER10> Huh. The server crashed (all the tiles reset)... and when it came back, every single tile contained a bomb. This is a bit odd...

[edit] Five minutes later, it's back to normal.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems like there's a co-op aspect where clicks only take effect after multiple players have acted on a particular box?

</comment><comment><USER14> Cool idea. What's to stop a player from just right clicking and planting either a flag or uncovering a square?

<comment><USER15> Score. If a square is uncovered by right-click it's penalized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Concept is pretty cool. Needs a little work still though.

</comment><comment><USER17> Next up, Massive Multiplayer Solitaire.

</comment><comment><USER18> anyone remember "tetrinet" ?

I used to _love_ playing multiplayer tetris.. it was such a fun challenge!

<comment><USER19> Yes i do, it was a very fun game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> i did not realize how addicting minesweeper can be until today

</comment><comment><USER19> minesweeper.io Is another fun multiplayer minesweeper

</comment><comment><USER21> Another multiplayer minesweeper is [http://minesweeper.io](http://minesweeper.io)</comment>


Show HN: Turn sketches on paper into app prototypes - <AUTHOR> https://marvelapp.com/iphone/

<comment><USER2> Fantastic! We need more of this kind of thinking. "No computer required" should be the default, not the exception.

I've been playing with some ideas in my head for a while now that we should be able to build most apps this way, and not just prototypes. If we can extract the default widgets and behaviour from applications and make them reusable and connectable without code, then we'd be taking steps towards a real revolution.

I am really excited about the direction we're going in with products and tech like this.

<comment><USER3> I agree this is a great idea for prototypes but I disagree that this is a way to build anything but the most basic of apps. There are way to many subtle choices that we make as developers, that require knowledge and reasoning, and an understanding of what we are trying to build. Visual programming has been tried multiple times, but it has never had any mainstream success.

<comment><USER4> Blueprints in UnrealEngine4 I think are a great example of successful visual programming.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the pointer. Never used Unreal Engine but just watched some of their Blueprint demos. Pretty cool stuff!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does this differ to popapp ( [https://popapp.in](https://popapp.in) ) which I've been using for over a year now ?

<comment><USER7> No offense, but did you bother to research Marvel _at all_ before asking this question? popapp app's landing page makes it very clear the workflow is physical paper -> photo -> storyboard, whereas Marvel's landing page is very clear their workflow is PSD/etc. -> storyboard.

Sometimes I feel like HN asks "how is this different from X app" without doing any research, just to be lazy.

<comment><USER8> No offense, I don't know where you did your research but I don't see anywhere on Marvel's landing page where it makes clear its main flow is PSD -> storyboard. In my opinion, Marvel's landing page makes it very clear that workflow is paper -> photo -> storyboard just like Popapp, but also supports importing a PSD image (which doesn't seem like a groundbreaking differentiation). Granted, the founder explained the difference somewhere above but they're still "improvements", they fundamentally do the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey all, happy to answer any questions about our new app! It's been a long road to get a stable version of this out so keen to get any feedback

<comment><USER9> Any plans to increase the depth of the prototype beyond simple wireframe linking? (e.g., a drawn camera icon pops open the devices camera, editable fields, etc.)

<comment><AUTHOR> We have some plans to try and add more and more realism without needing much user input. For example on the web app you can access your iPhone prototype and add things like fixed header and footers, app icons, iOS7 transitions etc

The hardest part i've found is trying to include this all in the iPhone app design. This version is definitely our base, from here we can start adding a few more things to make your prototypes more app-like

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What a great idea! I've been using Balsamiq for a few years now, but I usually sketch my idea out on paper before translating that to the editor manually. I would kill for this kind of hot-linking functionality for general web apps with the off-the-cuff feel of hand-drawn sketches.

Just browsing your site, it looks like your main app is used like that, albeit apparently for more refined mockups (I'm sure I'm mixing up terminology here, but I'm not a designer so bear with me). Next time I have to design a site I'll try integrating Marvel with my Balsamiq workflow and see what happens.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great combo. We wanted to make something that fits into the full workflow, from sketches on paper to wireframes and high-fidelity visuals.

So you can easily use the iPhone app to start with sketches and then use the web app to get into more detail

<comment><USER10> Ah, there you go, that makes sense. Now I just need to get an iPhone ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> App looks nice (can't check it out, no iDevice). I like the simplicity of it. Do you plan on adding any vision capabilities, like auto-detecting rectangles as candidates for buttons, circles as candidates for radio buttons, etc? I can also see you app used to make quick&funny games, which you can send your friends. Think taking a picture of a street, with a bar door as a button, and then taking a picture inside, making the bartender a button, then a picture of the drink, etc...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! You could give our web app a spin [http://www.marvelapp.com](http://www.marvelapp.com), no iPhone needed :)

We don't have any image recognition stuff coming or pre-made elements but we are adding transitions/animations so that you can get a sense of what your apps might feel like.

<comment><USER11> Very nice! It took me roughly 2 minutes to upload the sample photos I had on my dropbox account, and link between them like a little game. Very intuitive interface.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is great - reminds me of a hackathon project, Scribe, from a while back. We never finished, but the idea was a three-step process.

1\. Sketch a web app on paper.

2\. Snap a picture of your drawing.

3\. Our app generates a live site, displaying a link to share.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZAbQi_8y_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZAbQi_8y_A) [video]

</comment><comment><USER13> It's a beautiful site. Are you at all worried about the name Marvel? Especially now that Marvel Comics is trying to work with designers and developers too? [1]

[1][http://developer.marvel.com/](http://developer.marvel.com/)

<comment><USER14> Also this from ElasticSearch: [http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/marvel/](http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/marvel/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice work on the website. Went in, saw the video, got exactly what it's about, all in 30 seconds.

Especially compared to all those scrolling websites that move things around while you scroll and leave you with no idea about the product.

</comment><comment><USER16> Awesome idea. Will definitely check it out. Any plans for an android version?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes 100%, one of my co-founders is a iOS dev so made sense to get the iPhone out first but Android is definitely coming

If you use the official Dropbox app, you could upload your sketches into the web app in the mean time however :)

<comment><USER16> Sweet. I'm sold :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Stumbled upon this last week and used it in conjunction with FiftyThree's Paper app to create a pretty impressive prototype that I was able to view right on my device.

Bit more of a process when using Paper, as it only seems to be able to export an entire notebook in PDF, requiring me save pages individually in order to use them in the app. I seem to recall reading somewhere that MarvelApp was capable of dealing with PDFs, but I'm obviously mistaken. Would have been a nice feature, though I'm not sure if many others would benefit from such functionality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! We're close to PDF support, i think next month we'll have it in.

It's actually a pretty common request as many people have their wireframes and visuals in PDF format and want to prototype it up so you're not alone :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Marvel App Prototyping would like access to .ai files, .eps files, .pdf files, .psd files, .sketch files, and images in your Dropbox."

It needs access to a hell of a lot of files in my dropbox account. _Definitely_ not something I want scouring my files, just so it can show a few mockups - is there any way to restrict it to being able to access just a single folder, or is it really an all-or-nothing problem with Dropbox auth?

 _edit_ quoted auth-request page & formatting

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually started with a single folder but the UX wasn't great. It meant that everyone had to drag their existing projects and files into a specific Marvel folder in Dropbox/apps.

After we saw that no one was doing it, we figured it would be better to go to the files, rather than force people to bring the files to us.

We only access the files you choose, also Marvel was approved by the DB API team to use the service (a bit like the App Store)

<comment><USER18> Well, it's pretty frightening that you're asking for such massive, wide-scale permissions.

I understand that people are permission-clicky-happy nowadays, so it's probably something that won't even remotely affect your growth - it's just a shock to see new, tech-friendly services going with permission-grabs (even if it is, as you say, to allow for better UX)

I can't imagine why _anyone_ would want to give up such massive access, and potentially commercially sensitive info (that they possibly don't own), but I definitely wish you all the best with this

 _edit_ typo

<comment><AUTHOR> Sadly we had to request access to your image files otherwise we wouldn't be able to allow you to use them in your prototype and keep them in sync.

It's a delicate subject I totally understand, thanks for the best wishes!

<comment><USER19> How hard would it be to offer both options? I.e. access restricted to one or several folders, vs. access to the whole Dropbox. Also at least between users you can grant permissions for folders to other Users from within Dropbox. Is there a way to do the same for Apps?

<comment><AUTHOR> I _think_ this might be possible, i'll look into it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Love it.

Old old sketches of something similar looks ugly as sheit I know :)

[http://000fff.org/uploads/NewFlow_02.png](http://000fff.org/uploads/NewFlow_02.png)

[http://000fff.org/uploads/NewFlow1.png](http://000fff.org/uploads/NewFlow1.png)

We had an idea for how to do a dynamic matrix generator which made a lot of swipe navigation possible very easily, Will see if I can find the HTML prototype somewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow this looks great, would love to see the prototype

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Awesome. I've been using POP which uses the same concept. Will give this a try!

[https://popapp.in/](https://popapp.in/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I've put together a blog post evaluating your iPhone app landing page. Feel free to reach out for clarification or further evaluation. Just started this service and ready to evaluate anyone else's product as well.

[http://www.criticalgaze.com/study-on-marvels-iphone-app- land...](http://www.criticalgaze.com/study-on-marvels-iphone-app-landing- page/)

<comment><USER23> How about mine? [http://spinmealarm.com](http://spinmealarm.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great work on the app and page. Everything is laid out very clearly and I'll definitely use this on our next iOS app project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Hope you find it useful :)

<comment><USER24> Quick question about marvelapp which I'm going to try out as well. Why make dropbox or google drive a requirement to use it? Doesn't that create a higher barrier to entry for your visitors? Why not just allow anyone to sign up and upload files? (Like invisionapp)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question!

After freelancing in agencies, startups and design teams for so long I saw that everyone was using Dropbox for projects and design file storage.

With designers making hundreds of changes to their designs each day, the time it would take to keep your prototype updated is prohibative. So we figured instead of forcing the user to bring the files to our cloud solution, why don't we just go to theirs?

If we let users leave their files where they are it's one less click and thing to manage. We just keep the files in sync so the prototypes update automatically with the user lifting a finger.

On the flip-side, no everyone uses Dropbox of course and it's a barrier. But it allows us to save money on storage which we pass back onto the user and provide a great free plan (no upload or project limits)

<comment><USER24> Makes sense! Keep up the good work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Too funny, I spent an hour the other day figuring out what font was being used in Murat's Break App rendering on dribbble. Great work on marvel.

[https://dribbble.com/shots/1468163-Break- app?list=searches&o...](https://dribbble.com/shots/1468163-Break- app?list=searches&offset=56)

<comment><AUTHOR> haha it's Din Pro!

<comment><USER25> Ah, I was close! I knew it was Din after some comparing and settled on DINAlternate-Bold as it was a native ios font.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I love this idea. I'm thrown by 'discriminate' being misspelled [1] on the most public, visible page they have.

[1] [https://marvelapp.com/iphone/](https://marvelapp.com/iphone/) 'Take your pick, we don't descriminate.'

<comment><AUTHOR> The shame. I'll get that changed, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Downloaded. Really well-designed app. Love how it's for web and mobile. Any chance you'll support Sketch files?

Edit: Another comment here implies you already do. Went to go confirm but your menu button doesn't seem to be working (iPhone 5)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We actually finished .sketch support weeks ago, however the Dropbox API doesn't recognise the format yet (it sees it as a folder) so we've got to wait until it becomes available. Soon as it does we'll push it live :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> App looks great and really useful, but those Dropbox permissions are excessive.

</comment><comment><USER29> I love this! I could see this being a HUGE timesaver with my workflow.

Question for you: Is working with prototypes offline in your roadmap? I have limited connectivity where I work, and playing with your app has been troublesome.

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes that's 100% coming, we just need a bit more time to get it right.

We launched a feature in the web app where you can download your prototype as a ZIP containing html/css/js to run offline but we really want to have offline in-browser working for everyone

<comment><USER29> Nice! Really cool feature.

In my comment I was more referring to the iPhone app side of things as that's my typical use case. I noticed that I need an active connection to do pretty much anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is definitely something we have planned, our main aim was just to get this version released (it was a long painful road) but the next step is sorting out its offline capabilities

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Great work. What I really like about this is how it lowers the barrier of entry for non-tech people. It is the sort of application I can show my wife or kids and let them play.

</comment><comment><USER31> Where did they get those printouts of the iPhone? Is there one with 3.5 inch and 4 inch screen?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here you go! I made some for the site but it hasn't gone live yet [https://www.dropbox.com/s/zacd5pe198irch0/iphone5x3.pdf](https://www.dropbox.com/s/zacd5pe198irch0/iphone5x3.pdf)

<comment><USER31> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I like the idea, but taking a picture of text with my phone feels clunky.

</comment><comment><USER33> I can already do the same with Sketch and their Mirror app but I like the Dropbox feature.

<comment><USER34> Are you sure? You can flick through the artboards in Sketch but you absolutely can not let a user independently operate a prototype.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> nice app! dropbox integration is a plus.

</comment><comment><USER36> seems like a mock up app

</comment><comment><USER37> Everytime I see "No coding required." I laugh hard and then proceed to prototype with code on a real device, using the native framework.

</comment><comment><USER38> Video is narrated by Wilfred</comment>