Ask HN: Good courses on design? - <AUTHOR> Are there any good resources or free online courses that I could try to see if I like design?<p>Ideally it'd be something me and my non-technical wife could learn together but my google-fu is unable to find anything good so I'll take whatever comes my way. <comment><USER2> There are some really good design tracks on treehouse: [http://teamtreehouse.com](http://teamtreehouse.com)

Here are some other things I found:

[https://hackdesign.org/](https://hackdesign.org/) [http://www.designcourse.com/](http://www.designcourse.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> +1 for [https://hackdesign.org/](https://hackdesign.org/)</comment>


Tracr – Diamond traceability using blockchain technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.tracr.com/ <comment><USER2> I have no interest in any project run by the De Beers group. They are a monopoly and they massively manipulate the market for diamonds.</comment>


Myths about JavaFX, Android, and J2ME - <AUTHOR> http://www.bitsandbuzz.com/article/myths-about-javafx-android-and-j2me/

<comment><USER2> Android kept the Java language, and pitched out the JVM.

Does this seem backwards to anyone else?

<comment><USER3> It does. What would be the rationale for this? Is it just that they didn't want the standard Java ME runtime?

<comment><USER4> Here is some speculation on why: <http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/110/>

<comment><USER3> It looks like this is good news for anything that targets the JVM though, as it looks like the path to Dalvik bytecode is:

        .java -> [javac] -,-> .class -> [dx] -> .dex
                         /
        ??? </comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>'

Has anyone done this, with Clojure, for example?

</comment><comment><USER5> _Most of these high-profile phones do not have Java out of the box, and getting a Java runtime can even be challenging. For example, there is no JavaVM out of the box on iPhone, Android G2/HTC-Magic, and Treo 750 WinMobile (I could not find one on my old Treo 750 WinMobile). And for the rest—well, the J2ME market is very fragmented._

Loopt seems to get it done in J2ME quite well. I don't buy it.

<comment><USER6> As a US mobile users, I can't get Java on any of my phones (G2 or Treo), and I am a geek. There might be some JVM, but I did not find them.</comment></comment>


The Notification Problem - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hopper_travel/the-notification-problem-50267cbabad2

<comment><USER2> I think their onboarding screen doesn't do to great of a job at explaining how the feature works. If the app only sends notifications after being explicitly asked to do so by the user, the text should reflect that. (something like: "You can mark flights you want to buy tickets for, and the bunny will send you a notification when they have the best price. We won't send you any other notifications.") It sort of hints at it, but doesn't spell it out clearly.</comment>


Show HN: Weekend project - HTML5 Game Engines: which is right for you? - <AUTHOR> http://html5gameengine.com/

<comment><USER2> I am a big fan of Crafty. Glad to see it on the list I've used it successfully in a few projects its a great 'get shit done' game framework. Has an interesting composition inheritance model.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be great to see a bit more information than "free", such as which license the engine/library is under.

<comment><AUTHOR> That info is in the "More Details" section. With that said, do you still think it should go in the main table? Was trying to keep it from being too cluttered.

<comment><USER4> It might be good to include brief license information in the cost column -- for example: "free (MIT)". There's probably at least vertical space in the column for that along with a price, and it's conceptually related, particularly for licenses that carry responsibilties with them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added :)

<comment><USER5> Nifty. Since you're here, can I suggest that you work out a way to differentiate between "0 stars" and "unreviewed"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Done

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really liked playing around with Quintus. It's one of the newest, and feels the most like modern JavaScript development. Almost like Backbone for games.

</comment><comment><USER7> Construct 2 makes it really easy, but I would like to see them add a way to easily put in multi-player mode.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice resource. I'm curious how you're going to manage the content and keep it accurate?

Example: under Three.js there is a game listed "Super Grammar Ninja" that is clearly not using 3D. (Seems to use Impact.js)

</comment><comment><USER9> There are a few new 3D engines: <http://wp.me/puh71-9M>

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice list, glad to see Construct 2 on there :)

<comment><USER11> i didnt know much about construct 2, but the screenshots/feature sets make it look quite nice. Can you write a bit about what features, limitations and other facets that's in construct 2?

<comment><USER10> This page gives the best info! <https://www.scirra.com/construct2>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> i like to be able to open relevant "More Detail" pages in new tabs... i.e. middle click on "More Detail"

<comment><AUTHOR> Done - should work now. Ex. <http://html5gameengine.com/details/4>

<comment><USER12> your a camp :)</comment></comment></comment>


Caught up in a riot? Uber can charge you up to $250 for damage to their cars - <AUTHOR> https://pando.com/2015/06/26/caught-riot-uber-can-charge-you-250-damage-their-cars/1d0602a6a26309f8b29e56ee2668d9ee32bcc890/

<comment><USER2> The title seems quite misleading. The $ 250 is for "passenger caused damage", so a riot does not sound like something that would be charged to the passenger. The case with the bicycle sounds like the passenger opened the door without looking and hit a cyclist with it. While it is up for discussion whether it isn't (partly) the driver's fault for stopping in that location, it is definitely not comparable to a riot.

</comment><comment><USER3> _But according to one Pando reader, that's precisely what happened to him here in the US after the Uber X he was riding in was hit by a cyclist.

According to the passenger, the cyclist rammed into the car's open door because the driver was rushing to get the passenger out of the car before a traffic light changed._

Note that in most jurisdictions it's the responsibility of the person getting out of the car to avoid hitting cyclists; being "doored" like this by careless drivers/passengers is a common cause of death of cyclists in cities.

The Uber driver is lucky his passenger didn't kill the cyclist; it might have gotten a lot more expensive than a $250 deductible on his insurance, especially if he admits that he "was rushing to get the passenger out of the car before a traffic light changed."

<comment><USER4> Hmm. I'm not so sure I read the story that way.

There's a couple of things which are relevant :

1\. It seems unclear if it was the driver who had opened the door to rush the passenger out at a set of lights (not sure of the SF rules on that, but in various European countries, the police can ticket drivers for that alone - traffic lights are not a legal spot for passenger entry or exit).

2\. The picture of the supposed damage shows a very minor scratch in the trim. Something more akin to normal wear and tear. The $1,600 bill for that supposed damage seems like a lot of bill padding.

In fact, it sounds like a scam by the driver to me and the uber customer is stuck with a $250 bill and no way to dispute it or the facts involved in the case.

Normally, for insurance, if you have to pay out, you get salvage rights on the replaced part. The best course would be for the customer to claim the supposed replaced door as salvage and then try to sell it on eBay (I'm sure some publicity will help get a good price). It also makes sure this supposed replaced door is really replaced.</comment></comment>


F*EX – Frams' Fast File EXchange - <AUTHOR> http://fex.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/ <comment><USER2> Classic and relevant quote from 1985-ish: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

Today, the equivalent may be an autopilot Tesla Model X full of microSD cards. Terabyte-per-second calculations left as an exercise to the reader.

<comment><USER3> Assuming the internal storage volume of the Tesla (which I assume is actually the boots/trunks of the car) is 88.1 cubic feet [[https://www.tesla.com/support/model-x- specifications](https://www.tesla.com/support/model-x-specifications)] or _2.49 m^3_.

A microSD card is _165 mm^3 = 1.65e-7 m^3_.

Dividing one by the other: 15090909 microSD cards could be put in the car [This is simultaneously probably unrealistically high due to the assumed ideal packing and also low due to the large amount of space left in the car].

256GB is the largest microSD card I can actually buy: This is gives us 3.8 exabytes of data hurtling down the highway.

How to efficiently load/unload this data is beyond me. (Short of magic wireless microSD).

V unira'g purpxrq nal bs guvf, V'z n ovg qehax.

<comment><USER4> A similar calc with LTO-8 tapes comes out at 126PB per Model X. Not as dense, but the advantage is that tape robots and tape libraries go a little way towards automating the load/unload.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Less than 1GB, encrypted, 24 hour expiration or one time use URL then it denies the URL exists or existed, and deletes the file. [https://send.firefox.com/](https://send.firefox.com/)

<comment><USER6> Shameless plug: I wrote a CLI interface for it: [https://github.com/nneonneo/ffsend](https://github.com/nneonneo/ffsend)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> magic-wormhole is a pretty neat solution and lets you transfer where both ends are behind NAT. [https://github.com/warner/magic- wormhole](https://github.com/warner/magic-wormhole)

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. My questions (1) what is the timestamp of this page (created or last modified)? (2) Could you use a torrent client to solve this problem?

<comment><USER9> 1\. From [http://fex.belwue.de/fex.html](http://fex.belwue.de/fex.html), it looks like the software can't be any older than 2006. Looking at the source, it uses things like rel="prefetch". The style is just an explicit aesthetic, then, like that of Craigslist.

2\. Some of it could, yeah. Torrents make it easy to share files _directly_ from your computer to a peer's. FEX solves a slightly different problem, though—the asynchronous "put the file somewhere, then let the peer get it while your computer is offline" use-case. It's somewhat cumbersome to use torrents for this (though possible: you and the server join the swarm, the server leeches from you, you leave the swarm, the peer joins the swarm, they leech from the server.) But, if you do use torrents that way, you won't [by default] get the "auto-deletion of the server's copy" property that FEX has.

(You could probably match 99% of FEX's functionality with a torrent client running on a server + a daemon running alongside it that can control the torrent client through RPC; but I don't know of any attempt to build such a thing.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A more modern approach is to stream the file from the sender's web browser directly to the recipient's web browser, using WebRTC and related web APIs.

An example implementation, on top of WebTorrent: [https://instant.io/](https://instant.io/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Does it encrypt? Is there any privacy? They complain about the lack of privacy for other services so I assume they're doing better somehow?

<comment><USER12> You run it on your own server so it offers as much privacy as you can provide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can you put it behind nginx or does it only work as a stand alone service?

EDIT: probably, [https://fex.rus.uni- stuttgart.de/usecases/reverseproxy.html](https://fex.rus.uni- stuttgart.de/usecases/reverseproxy.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> A time before Syncthing, dark indeed.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not going to reliably without a resumable upload/download manager with fallback to traditional means. Murphy's Law insists a transfer will get to 99.753% of a 3.5 PiB data set and time-out.

AWS Snowmobile/Edge, Snowball and Import/Export; SneakerNet™ and PostalNet™ for other needs.

<comment><USER15> "Main features of F*EX

...

RESEND and REGET for resuming after link failures at last sent byte"</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Electrical Eng. PhD, Thinking of Moving to Programming Jobs. Worth It? - <AUTHOR> So, I've a PhD in Electrical Engineering from one of the good schools and am doing okay at my job. However, my earning potential doesn't seem to be as good as those at Google / FB etc.
I have some experience in programming and web development. But not a lot.
These days I see these grand packages for people working at the big software companies and wonder if I should move to programming as a career choice. I would say I am currently at Senior Engineer to Staff Engineer level at a semiconductor company. I am in the Bay Area.
Here are my motivations:
1. I seem to like programming tasks in my current job, but that is usually not my primary responsibility. I am good with logical thinking  / reasoning etc.
2. I think I have at least 25 years of career ahead and making a switch in early 30s to a more lucrative area doesn't sound like a bad idea.
3. I believe I can come back to my area and get a job, even after doing some programming jobs, as being good in programming is usually seen as an asset.
But I wonder if it is really practical to leave a pretty good job, and start as a beginner at software company (possibly at a lower salary) assuming that you will do better in the long term.
It would be interesting to see the thoughts of the HN community. <comment><USER2> I'm an EE (with both electrical and electronics/communications experience). I'm wrapping up a P/T PhD in software engineering.

From my perspective the big _new_ opportunities are more in the IoE / IoT / WoT area. Hardware is becoming a lucrative new frontier for startups.

With your background you might want to explore that area where you existing semiconductor engineering skills would be very well regarded.

Web development is a rather competitive space. Wouldn't be my idea of a good starting point. IMHO looking at Google / FB, et al with your level of experience would be a huge step backwards. Researching the up and coming opportunities that capitalize on your existing and desired skills should identify better options for the future.

Shoot me an email (in my profile) if you'd like to explore / debate this issue deeper. BEST OF LUCK!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the perspective. I too am thinking of going in that direction, moving outside of my current comfort zone, but try to stay in the hardware area where I will be able to contribute more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Simple question you should ask yourself. Will switching to programing will make me happier?

Personally, programming is a passion I have and would most likely will do regardless of payment.

Goodluck.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hang on. Your lifetime expectation value of earnings may be higher than those of flash in the pan coders, with more young coders coming up every year, and advances in coding automation.

Also, you made this decision already. You knew how to code some, at a young age. But you chose against it - you went for straight EE. This says to me that you were not particularly enamored of coding, and probably had no particular talent for it. Coding is not the same as learning language syntax. Aptitude means you can do it quickly -- quicker than 80% of people -- so you can earn above average wages. Aptitude you're interested in it, that you'd consider doing it just because you like it.

Finally don't snoop at other's wages so much. Shitty apartments might be $2500-3000 in coder hives. And you lived better in grad school, anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I agree that it is probably wise to give up on hard-earned specialization and pursue something seemingly lucrative in short term.

But I am slightly concerned if the semiconductor market itself is not very good in the long term, and software is.

I guess I am looking for a risk free way of testing if I could do better in software jobs in the longterm. I don't think there is ever going to be such an option.

May be next time I am looking for a job, I would take short break and try something different just to see how it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why start again as a glorified code monkey? From a similar pattern and ten years down your line, you might want to consider exploiting programming techniques within your hard-earned domain expertise to make the biggest impact.

</comment><comment><USER6> I used be in the same situation and software is a better option. Semiconductors is very cyclical. The pay sucks. Even if you aren't at goog/fb there are a lot more options when compared to semi.

<comment><USER7> What do you think the cause of the pay difference is?

<comment><USER6> I guess this what bill gates realized 40 years ago. Compare the number of hardware chips to all the software being written. There is one Intel or arm or ..., but think of how many people write software for it. Therefore there are more opportunity for software making salaries higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Motivations;

0) Why did you get your PhD in EE? What was your expectation?

</comment><comment><USER9> It depends, what are your career ambitions?</comment>


Docker and Microsoft partner to drive adoption of distributed applications - <AUTHOR> https://blog.docker.com/2014/10/docker-microsoft-partner-distributed-applications/ <comment><USER2> This is hands down the best news I have heard in the MS development space in a long long time.

We have 3 apps over 32 servers and 5 environments, and operationally it's like pulling teeth. This has the chance to change everything!

<comment><USER3> What about windows 10 actually having a usable console with features such as selecting text and line wrapping?

<comment><USER4> Win10 includes a terminal that has text selection and line wrapping?

This changes everything!

<comment><USER5> What's next? Tabs? (I wish...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nick Stinemates @ Docker here. I run BD/Tech Alliances. A lot of blood and sweat went in to this one! I'm here to answer any questions you may have about the announcement, the details, or anything about Docker.

<comment><USER7> are you working with Apple to bring native docker to that platfrom?

<comment><USER8> I really hope the Microsoft partnership does put some pressure on Apple to provide this support as well. But it just feels like something that isn't really their style. While having software components appear like "just another container" is great for developers, its very anti-Apple. They don't view the iphone as "just another smartphone". Everything Apple is standout/special in some way. I hope I am wrong though because I love Docker and would welcome this with open arms.

<comment><USER6> Outside of the frame of talking about partnerships but talking as an apple/Docker fan, Docker running on ios would be awesome

<comment><USER9> you mean on osx, right?

<comment><USER6> Nope, I meant ios :)

<comment><USER8> I suppose "open arms" is now a pun then :)

<comment><USER6> :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also announced by Microsoft:

[http://news.microsoft.com/2014/10/15/DockerPR/](http://news.microsoft.com/2014/10/15/DockerPR/)

"Microsoft Corp. and Docker Inc., the company behind the fast-growing Docker open platform for distributed applications, on Wednesday announced a strategic partnership to provide Docker with support for new container technologies that will be delivered in a future release of Windows Server."

I strongly suspected that Windows Server vNext would have some sort of 'container' support after the wild success of Docker.

<comment><USER11> Frankly I don't see this working unless Windows Server has MUCH better support for IO and Network prioritisation than it does today.

You can set a process's CPU schedule, you can also set it to a "background" priority which reduces both its CPU and IO to the lowest, but you don't really have fine-tune control of how much IO/Network a process has (irrespective of CPU).

This means on Windows in general it is very easy for a single process to run away with all of the machine's IO and there isn't a lot you can do about it except killing the process (I've seen backup clients, anti-virus scanners, etc do this).

It wouldn't be as big of a problem on Linux because first off the IO scheduler seems to be better, but even if it wasn't you can go in and manually configure a process's maximum throughput in a bunch of different ways.

If Windows didn't support this then what is stopping a single Windows-Docker container from stealing all of the system's IO or network capacity?

<comment><USER12> The recommended way of doing this is to use Hyper-V and multiple VMs. Windows VMs start _very_ fast on Hyper-V.

That gives you virtual LAN bandwidth control, "Storage QoS" (IOPS limits), partitioning, affinity and CPU limits. Not only that you have virtual SAN and network fabric. It's pretty awesome!

If you utilise it by deploying your app to a .wim file and then use wim2vhd and fart it at a Hyper-V host, docker already exists on Windows so I'm not sure what all the fuss is.

Yes we do this.

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately you need a Windows license per VM.

I guess that at many places you'd just buy datacenter edition, but that's a bit too much for small businesses.

<comment><USER14> If you're using Hyper-V, you get an unlimited number of guests if you've purchased Windows Server Enterprise Edition. Last I checked, it's not even that expensive of an upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reading the comments, this is the official announcement of the bifurcation of the docker ecosystem. This completely shatters docker's original promise of a universal application container. Now we will have standard gauge cars that won't run in the South. Maersk containers that can't be shipped on MSC.

Congratulations to MS though, I think this is a good initiative. Not sure why you even need a partnership with docker TBH as they didn't create the underlying OS technologies that make containerization possible on Linux.. But, with the acquisition of Mojang it is apparent MS is placing a lot of emphasis on acquiring mind share.

<comment><USER16> They didn't create the underlying technologies for containerization on Windows, either. Docker is just providing compatibility with the new container API in Windows Server so that you can use the same tools regardless of the OS. It's no different from what they already do, which is wrap the LXC API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Theoretically I'm guessing this could enable multi-platform gaming? Ex: "Download this docker image, and play our game: Windows or Linux, or boot2docker Mac!"

Secondary, a native Darwin Docker server would be killer.

The mobile implications could be huge if this made it out of Windows Server.

<comment><USER18> Very very doubtful. You will not be able to run ELF (linux format) executables on windows any more than you'll ever be able to run PE (windows format) executables on Linux.

You'll have 2 hubs, the "windows hub" and the "linux hub".

<comment><USER6> > You'll have 2 hubs, the "windows hub" and the "linux hub".

This is incorrect.

That said, it's true that Windows won't all of the sudden gain the ability to run ELF.

<comment><USER18> Well I meant that in the sense that you can't run a windows app on Linux and you can't run a Linux app on windows. Even if it is the same hub, you'd want to filter "by windows" or "by linux" containers is what I meant.

Running boot2docker on windows is sort of cheating in that it is a virtual machine running docker apps and this effort appears to be a native dockerd running on Windows. Thoughts?

<comment><USER6> I think the UX is slightly more nuanced.

From any machine, you should be able to `docker run` any application, and docker will be smart enough to find (or create!) the best place run it.

The base pieces of the lego are currently in flight in Docker proper to enable this, with great tools built around the Docker API for more advanced topics (like clustering and scheduling)

> Running boot2docker on windows is sort of cheating in that it is a virtual > machine running docker apps and this effort appears to be a native dockerd > running on Windows.

I wouldn't say it's cheating. If your target is all linux machines, you need a cheap, local, efficient way of developing and testing those applications. Boot2Docker is an option (but not the only one - you could use a cloud service, internal vm infra, etc. etc.)

Love the dialogue - keep it coming.

<comment><USER18> Ok so I read that as you saying:

If you're running docker on windows and you try to run a linux container, it will magically start boot2docker and start your linux container inside that vm if you are running on a windows box.

Now if that is true, my question would be: How do you boot2windows for windows docker images when you can't freely distribute a windows vm?

As I think both being able to support both would be amazing, I don't see how it fits into the current scheme of things.

<comment><USER6> > If you're running docker on windows and you try to run a linux container, it > will magically start boot2docker and start your linux container inside that > vm if you are running on a windows box.

Maybe! Or you've used something like the new `docker hosts` feature, which could create a new instance for you on any infrastructure provider. Or you could be pointing to a boot2docker node, etc.

> Now if that is true, my question would be: How do you boot2windows for > windows docker images when you can't freely distribute a windows vm?

I don't have a good answer for this, as we do not have a boot2windows product or announcement (I assume this is the opposite case, if you have a linux machine and want to run a windows image)

My guess instead is you'd be pointing to a set of infrastructure that can find (or create) Windows Docker Hosts and it would run there.

<comment><USER18> I'm excited to see what the future brings! Can't wait to see some of the service discovery stuff like you can build with etcd and consul make it into libswarm.

<comment><USER6> Not libswarm, docker proper.

See [https://github.com/bfirsh/docker/tree/host- management](https://github.com/bfirsh/docker/tree/host-management)

There's also a relevant thread on the docker-dev mailing list

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would be awesome to have Microsoft Office as Docker container.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't it? Also imagine, every time you do a build inside of something like Visual Studio, being able to test and distribute that in its own container.

The tangential benefits/integrations start to get really interesting.

<comment><USER20> yes this would be interesting. We have application severs with multiple windows apps running on them with different versions of the .Net framework. I had to pull teeth with our SysAdmin to get the .Net upgraded on the server. It would be nice to have a container for each so I (as a dev) could run the each app with it's own needed dependencies instead of having to install them on the server.

<comment><USER21> This is already happening in .NET land independently of this announcement. ASP.NET vNext Katana (1) completes the move away from a perspective monolithic framework and instead individual NuGet packages. Ie - when you deploy your app you deploy your assemblies and into that folder goes everything needed to run the app independently, including and up to .NET core assemblies or BCLs.

Your app is a folder and that folder contains everything needed to run the application even up to the point of self-hosting with OWIN - IIS is not needed anymore!

(1) [http://www.asp.net/aspnet/overview/owin-and-katana/an- overvi...](http://www.asp.net/aspnet/overview/owin-and-katana/an-overview-of- project-katana)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What would a base Windows image look like, just a PowerShell prompt? How would you use the build file to install your dependencies without a package manager?

<comment><USER23> From what I've read (I'm not expert in this space) there is Chocolatey [1] availabe now for package management and Microsoft's OneGet on the horizon [2].

[1] [https://chocolatey.org/](https://chocolatey.org/) [2] [https://oneget.codeplex.com/](https://oneget.codeplex.com/)

<comment><USER22> Ok, so Windows Server 10 Core with OneGet would make a lot of sense for a base image. Thanks for the answer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> John Gossman from Microsoft here. I'm an architect on the Azure team and have been working with Nick and others from Docker. Happy to answer questions.

<comment><USER22> What does the future of Docker deployment look like an Azure? Will it be more Heroku-like? Can I just provide a build file or a link to Docker repo image and have a server running? When I push an update to an image will my servers update? Can I control how many instances and resources each running Docker image will use? How do I orchestrate several instances that need to work together?

<comment><USER25> Hey, this is Madhan from Azure team. Thanks for your comment.

All great ideas and we are currently thinking though exactly the same ideas as well. Which of these ideas would you like to see happen first, what would be most important to you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great move for MS.

Not sure this is a good idea for Docker though. Doesn't it mean they lose their focus on Linux? Seems to complicate things a lot, and potentially introduce conflicts when prioritising what to do next. Simple is good. Serving a closed source operating system looks unwise, given the nature of their business.

<comment><USER6> I completely understand the feeling about focus and slowing down.

I referred to this above, but big partners working on meaty objectives is actually a positive success criteria that the governance model is built for.

That said, we try very hard to ensure that the flow of the project remains unencumbered.

Docker is a community project; one of the beautiful benefits of that is that Docker can change as long as you can reach critical consensus on any design proposal.

Without the partnership, Docker could be brought to Windows at some undetermined point in the future as soon as those native capabilities existed.

With the partnership, we have a set of dedicated Engineers from Microsoft and the community who are eager to build consensus around getting Docker integrated to the new API/Services that they're creating _as soon as possible_.

There's no free lunch - if the contributions don't stand the scrutiny of the maintainers, they will continue to work with them until it does.

I hope that helps - happy to discuss further!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This has been coming for a while, because it screams common sense..however with Microsofts previous I'm still a little surprised.

I wonder if Steven Sinofsky would have been game for this?

A lot of Windows developers use commercial Windows for development (i.e. Win7) with these features I anticipate more developers using (the more expensive) Windows Server.

If your build output could be a container (VS build process?) that you can ship, or as in a lot of "enterprise" organisations pass on to QA / UAT then this is a big deal and a massive huge step.

<comment><USER6> That process you describe excites me on so many levels. I'm literally giddy at the possibilities of developer and ops productivity. All we have to do now is not mess it up :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How does the licensing work for Docker (Apache2 license, i know... It's more about the pricing behind it) together with Windows? I can't seem to find any info about this. I don't assume Windows is suddenly free of charge. The Windows virtualization licensing isn't obvious anyway: [http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about- licensing/virtualiz...](http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about- licensing/virtualization.aspx)

<comment><USER6> Docker is an open source project governed by the Apache 2 license. Referenced here: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/docker/docker/master/LICEN...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/docker/docker/master/LICENSE)

Any contribution by Microsoft to the Docker project (currently slated, the Docker Daemon for Windows) will be governed over said license.

What Microsoft chooses to do with Windows/kernel features/how that is licensed is left to their discretion.

<comment><USER28> I'm actually wondering more about the cost of spinning Docker with Windows Server 2012 for example.. I suppose Docker should enable me to spin up an MVC website with Windows Server 2012.

How much would this cost and how is the pricing evaluated?

<comment><USER6> Docker is free to use.

I don't know the price of the next version of Windows Server, but, Microsoft has committed to make Docker available on that.

So, to use Docker on the next version of Windows Server, it will be the cost of the Windows Server license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Things like this make me wonder if Windows (Server) ecosystem will be able to compete with Linux in long term.

I do realize corpo-world is filled with Windows Servers now but it seemed Linux/Docker could change this with containers as a 'standardized server app format' with super easy provisioning process.

Now since Windows will get more or less the same - Linux/Docker and Windows/Docker will compete on tools and raw perf.

<comment><USER6> > Now since Windows will get more or less the same - Linux/Docker and > Windows/Docker will compete on tools and raw perf.

Pretty cool evolution, isn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does this change one of the fundamental tenets of docker, namely that docker images are portable (thanks to the linux kernel providing a very high degree of backwards compatibility).

In order words, will there now be Windows images and Linux images, and Windows images will run on Windows hosts and Linux images on Linux hosts?

<comment><USER31> Docker images already weren't portable between Linux/x86-64, Linux/ARM, and Linux/Power, so Windows/x86-64 is one more platform. I wouldn't be surprised to see Illumos/x86-64 at some point.

<comment><USER6> There is a budding Docker/ARM community I cannot wait to support.

More on that soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It mentions extending Docker to support numbers of distributed Docker containers. I am building a PaaS around Docker so can I get a hint how that will work? I would rather add value than duplicate an existing effort.

Is it something like an integration of Mesos, Fig and Docker?

<comment><USER33> I'm building one as well. Want to discuss?

<comment><USER32> Sure.. I think yours is called Matrix AI right? "orchestrate massive distributed infrastructure so that they become self-healing, self-organising, and self-adaptable"

It sounds like Docker is going to eventually put something out that touches on some of this stuff (although not necessarily self-healing etc.), just wondering how we can take advantage of that or avoid duplicating functionality.

<comment><USER33> There's alot of parts to orchestration that isnt just container implementations, and there are already tons of tools that do the different parts of orchestration, so there's already some duplicated effort right now, in fact everybody reinvents the wheel slightly when building new distributed systems. The problem is putting it all together in an scalable model is very difficult. Send me an email at roger.qiu ([{at}]) matrix.ai

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is this the "embrace" step of "embrace, extend, extinguish"?

<comment><USER6> I think it's right to question that, but I haven't seen any indication of that. I look to the Azure team, and how they're operating.

Oracle DB is available. That's got to say something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> very smart move from Microsoft's part.

<comment><USER36> I think there may be a growing consensus in their organization that have to keep making decisions like this if they want to remain relevant.

<comment><USER12> I think its more that they have the cash to do everything so that's what they are doing. When you do everything you are unavoidable.

Not a bad strategy.

They haven't lost a bit of relevance with the majority of the paying user base. However the tech press like to spin it that way. When I see a Mac or a Linux box in a 2000+ seat corporate network, then perhaps I'll believe it. The only markets they aren't winning are the freshly created volatile ones.

<comment><USER36> I should have added that I'm a .NET developer who's recently returned working with in an open source shop. The problem I see is not that they don't have good tools or relevant solutions for real world problems. The problem I see is I'm in my late thirties and I find myself to be one of the younger developers when I go out to MS related user groups and events.

Spending time in the open source world with younger developers, it's clear the only value they get from Microsoft is for their gaming machines at home. While a number of them respect the development tools, it doesn't matter because Microsoft has done a great job tying it to the Windows titanic.

I recall interviewing with a number of companies in the mid 90's and talking with the programmers who worked with DEC based tools. The ones I talked to had nothing but good things to say about their tools and systems and how they had _real_ implementations of various systems that PC's were trying to implement at the time. I can't help but look back and find myself in the same position on a course towards becoming irrelevant in 10-20 years.

I guess what I was trying to get at is Microsoft is going to have to make a considerable effort to focus on luring the generation they lost if they want to remain relevant. That generation of developers isn't simply going to pony up for slightly better tools. They demand having access to software when it's available so they can download it immediately with one of twenty different package managers.

I'm not predicting Microsoft's doom, but I am saying that Microsoft is facing an incredible number of challenges that will make "do everything" a bad strategy. On too many fronts they're faced with competition that ranges any from inferior to superior, but free. In development tools, they're up against a huge community of open source tools with some of them funded by huge companies whose revenues don't depend on the sale of software. MS Office's share is eroding, not just to direct competition, but to indirect alternatives that posit that complicated word processors and spreadsheets are the wrong answer.

I also don't think Microsoft can do everything because software is going through a Cambrian type of explosion where you're seeing all sorts of manifestations of species and hybrids. Sure a lot of these species will die out, but as we witness new species of databases and operating systems it will be difficult for a large company like Microsoft to predict which ideas it needs to pay attention to and which to ignore. Adapting the complicated markets is an incredible challenge, but there are companies that have done a remarkable job staying on top.

<comment><USER37> The formatting on your comment is messed up, hopefully this helps:

I should have added that I'm a .NET developer who's recently returned working with in an open source shop. The problem I see is not that they don't have good tools or relevant solutions for real world problems. The problem I see is I'm in my late thirties and I find myself to be one of the younger developers when I go out to MS related user groups and events.

Spending time in the open source world with younger developers, it's clear the only value they get from Microsoft is for their gaming machines at home. While a number of them respect the development tools, it doesn't matter because Microsoft has done a great job tying it to the Windows titanic.

I recall interviewing with a number of companies in the mid 90's and talking with the programmers who worked with DEC based tools. The ones I talked to had nothing but good things to say about their tools and systems and how they had _real_ implementations of various systems that PC's were trying to implement at the time. I can't help but look back and find myself in the same position on a course towards becoming irrelevant in 10-20 years.

I guess what I was trying to get at is Microsoft is going to have to make a considerable effort to focus on luring the generation they lost if they want to remain relevant. That generation of developers isn't simply going to pony up for slightly better tools. They demand having access to software when it's available so they can download it immediately with one of twenty different package managers.

I'm not predicting Microsoft's doom, but I am saying that Microsoft is facing an incredible number of challenges that will make "do everything" a bad strategy. On too many fronts they're faced with competition that ranges any from inferior to superior, but free. In development tools, they're up against a huge community of open source tools with some of them funded by huge companies whose revenues don't depend on the sale of software. MS Office's share is eroding, not just to direct competition, but to indirect alternatives that posit that complicated word processors and spreadsheets are the wrong answer.

I also don't think Microsoft can do everything because software is going through a Cambrian type of explosion where you're seeing all sorts of manifestations of species and hybrids. Sure a lot of these species will die out, but as we witness new species of databases and operating systems it will be difficult for a large company like Microsoft to predict which ideas it needs to pay attention to and which to ignore. Adapting the complicated markets is an incredible challenge, but there are companies that have done a remarkable job staying on top.

<comment><USER36> Thanks. I guess Hacker News doesn't like leading spaces with paragraphs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I really hope this doesn't distract from Linux development - there are a number of bugs that have been hanging around for some time without updates now.

</comment><comment><USER39> Partnering with Microsoft [almost] never ends well.

Good luck to Docker.

</comment><comment><USER40> I wonder how this will impact spoon.net, since they recently launched their windows container tech.

<comment><USER6> I wish them the best of luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The site apparently only accepts RC4 as the cipher, I get: Error code: ssl_error_no_cypher_overlap

<comment><USER42> Thank you.

Our website (docker.com) and the Docker Hub (hub.docker.com), our hosted service, are managed directly by Docker employees and offer a better maintained and security-focused cipher suite than our blog.

Unfortunately, we are aware that the blog's SSL/TLS configuration is not ideal. It is on externally hosted infrastructure and we have been working with our service provider to rectify these issues. We have high expectations of the services we consume and will do what is necessary for the long-term security and confidence of our users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> What kind of Windows server/kernel features does Docker need/want/like from MS?

<comment><USER6> The equivalent of c groups and namespaces, along with services that need to be container aware (like svchost.exe) and a separate registry per container.

<comment><USER43> Is the docker for Windows is mainly CLI only?

Or the GUI exe will be also isolated from each container session?

<comment><USER6> A future version of Windows will have Container capabilities, and Microsoft has committed to contributing Docker Daemon code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> DockerHub-based Windows Package Manager - coming soon to an OS near you

<comment><USER6> Don't know why you were down voted - this is exactly what is in the press release.

<comment><USER44> _shrugs_. In all seriousness though, thank the people around your office for me! There are some substantial hurdles to make this integration a practical reality, but if Docker and Msoft can actually pull it off we will see a new world of crazy possibilities. I can't wait!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> microsoft has been cornered for a long time, it has lost many ooportunities, glad it's not reacting.

</comment><comment><USER46> Worst news ever.

Docker people will spend more time fixing and making bugs due to Microsoft, the documentation will become a mess (it cant possibly be same documentation for that different systems), the Linux-side of docker will be more mediocre compared to what it could have been if all effort went to it.

Remember Internet Explorer 6, Visual Basic, the horror that is Excel and the whole Office suite, Asp.net, Windows Millenium, The attempt to kill Linux by Microsoft through SCO.

<comment><USER6> The announcement clearly states that Microsoft are becoming "Docker people" -> they're contributing the code in the Docker ecosystem, which means precisely that our problems become their problems.

This isn't any different than Red Hat contributing the Device Mapper backend to Docker so it can run unmodified on RHEL. Nothing about the UX changed/fragmented from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Microsoft is going about this the wrong way. They should adopt GNU/Linux, supporting containers, file systems, etc. as their kernel, and then add the proprietary Windows layer on top, e.g. WINE.

Otherwise existing Dockerfiles will not build on Windows - right?

<comment><USER48> This is about getting container/docker tooling running on windows, for windows applications. You are correct, this will not run Linux containers directly on Windows, or vice-versa.

It's still a compelling option, but I'm not quite certain of the value that it will bring to the table here.</comment></comment>


Windows Defender is still one of the best antivirus solutions, indie lab says - <AUTHOR> https://www.techspot.com/news/82392-windows-defender-one-best-antivirus-solutions-independent-testing.html <comment><USER2> It's been one of the "best" for years.

</comment><comment><USER3> this translates for me to "there is no effective AV solution"</comment>


Show HN: Real-time Collaboration Made Easy - <AUTHOR>

Dynajot (http://www.dynajot.com) aims to be an extremely low friction way to create real-time collaborative applications. With a single javascript include, the library syncs DOM nodes for multiple users across browsers.<p>You can view the code on Github here: https://github.com/rabidsnail/dynajot-sync <comment><USER2> Very cool.

So you sync the DOM right? Wouldn't it make more sense to sync at the "model" level? I'm assuming most applications are generated from some model as follows:

       model --render()--> DOM

in that case syncing the DOMs would not sync the models of the two applications.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty cool. But why would I use this over Etherpad?</comment>


Ask HN: Charging for an application - <AUTHOR>

I've got an application that is part iPhone app (perhaps other smart phones in the future) and part web site. Believing in the start charging immediately philosophy, I want to do just that.
What I can figure out is how.  I've written a blog post at http://softwaremaven.innerbrane.com/2009/05/how-to-charge-for-application.html that goes into some details, but I'd love feedback on the best way to move forward.
If I left something out, please point out my ignorance. <comment><USER2> "The second problem is that it will likely reduce the penetration of the application. Remember, one of my goals is to help patients get better health care. I'd hate for a couple of dollars to stand in the way."

The phone costs 300 dollars and the minimum plan is, what 80 bucks a month? And this is a health app that saves people money? Free versus 2 bucks is a false choice.

Charge 80 dollars. Yes, I'm serious.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is an interesting take. While I haven't gone to that extreme in my thinking, perhaps I'm being too conservative.

I have definitely thought about a free, time-limited version. Use it for free for two-four weeks and see if it makes your life better.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if apple allows demoware like that, but I think that's a great idea. I like to try before I buy, I've seen a lot of software with descriptions and demos that do not match reality.</comment></comment></comment>


PSA: Some Major News Outlets Are Also Sending Data Directly to Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1103190266930913281 <comment><USER2> >SOME MAJOR TECH JOURNALS ARE STILL SENDING DATA DIRECTLY TO FACEBOOK

Sound the alarms? Pretty much every site you visit has facebook, google, and 20 other adtech pixels on it. Go download ghostery and check for yourself. Any business that wants to make money is using these pixels.. advertising would be nearly useless without them.

How else would you know who visits your site? How would you know if someone who made a purchase had seen one of your ads? If they were a new customer or old customer? If they might be interested in complementary products?

The go to answer is 'check the logs'. Good luck telling your 19 year marketing intern to check the logs. Or your director of marketing. Or your CMO. Or your agency.

<comment><USER3> Yes, there's a pretty major difference between this and the story it's referencing about in-app Facebook tracking. ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19319215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19319215))

Sites running tracking pixels are consciously tracking their users and feeding info to advertising players for their own benefit. I suspect many people would be surprised that this happens even when you're not signed into the relevant service and don't see anything like a "share this on Facebook" icon, but the basic concept of browser tracking isn't that weird. That pixel on The Verge didn't end up their by accident.

On the other hand, the Facebook SDK fires an event every time you open an app using it - by default, even if you aren't signed into Facebook, even if the app's creator never intended that behavior and gets no benefit from it. And, of course, auditing or controlling app behavior and data exchange is way harder than doing the same for browsers. The average person who runs uBlock or Privacy Badger still isn't emulating every app they download to study its behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think its safe to say "Almost All Major News Outlets Are Also Sending Data Directly to Facebook".

<comment><USER3> Particularly horrible/funny, though, that the Verge article _about_ Android apps doing this is also doing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apparently 10% (I just made this number) of people working in tech industry are working to collect, store, and process personal data. It is shocking to see how few of these 10% speak up.

We put Hackers into jail for stealing personal data. Not comparing them together, but from moral perspective they seem equal to me.

<comment><USER6> They're not stealing personal data: users are willingly giving them this data.

There is a solution to this, and that's to have stronger privacy laws like the EU does, but American voters have flatly rejected anything like that and don't want such laws.

<comment><USER7> American politicians won't enact laws that impair the data broker industry which has been around for decades. Voters are kept largely in the dark by a press that doesn't want to expose how the sausage is made since they have a seat at the table.

<comment><USER6> I don't buy this stuff about "the press" at all. The press in America was firmly behind Hillary in the 2016 election, and look what happened. The voters do have a will of their own and they're not just doing what the press tells them. (This isn't to say the voters made the right choice: the way the voters have voted is why we don't have strong data-protection laws, along with a lot of other things the Europeans have such as a better-functioning healthcare system, better public transit, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why is Google never brought up in these? Isn't Facebook pixel similar to Google Analytics?

<comment><USER8> While at it, should we put Segment, Mixpanel, Optimizely, etc. on the list? I'm not saying they're good or bad in terms of data tracking, I'm just saying they should be in the same bucket. Tech companies harvest data to improve their businesses...

<comment><USER9> Well, while we (Countly) are direct competitor to Mixpanel, we cannot talk about this as there is no evidence and all of them are clear about what they do with your data. Speaking of product analytics, the best way is to keep your own data on your premises (shameless plug here).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > I check _every_ time some tech outlet posts the usual, dumb, silly FB post > about how presumably FB leaks or ingests your data...and they're _always_ > leaking your data to FB, among other, far sketchier players.

Newflash: the developers that make technology choices for the website and the journalists writing the articles for it are in _entirely different organizations_. It's usually dysfunctional when business users have the power to dictate technology choices to the tech team.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can't speak to this specifically but many news publishers use FB for ads. Yes, Facebook does ads outside of their platform.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes, I know, analytics (especially _outsourced_ analytics) are fundamentally evil.

Just like paywalls are evil. And just like ads are evil.

But, I'm not exactly clear on how these things are supposed to all fit together.

<comment><USER13> I don't like paywalls, but in what way are they evil? To be specific, a paywall in front of privately funded content is annoying but fair. Elsevier- style paywalls are another matter.</comment></comment>


Toyota Suspends Orders for RAV4 Prime Three Weeks After Launch - <AUTHOR> https://insideevs.com/news/431351/japan-toyota-suspends-orders-rav4-prime/ <comment><USER2> Because they focused on Corolla hybrids, not the big ones. But apparently people still like it bigger. not just americans.</comment>


A typo skewed the history of HIV in the US and vilified an innocent man - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/a-typo-skewed-the-history-of-hiv-in-the-us-and-vilified-an-innocent-man/ <comment><USER2> I'd thought that "Patient Zero" was jargon from the world of public health, but it apparently became widely used only after the publication of "And the Band Played On," a 1987 bestseller about the AIDS epidemic by Randy Shilts:

 _Back in 1984, the term Patient Zero was not normally used to describe an outbreak's first case, said Dr. Jaffe, a co-author of the new Nature paper. "I don't remember who first used it," he said. "But after Randy Shilts did, we started saying it ourselves."_[1]

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/health/hiv-patient-zero- ge...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/health/hiv-patient-zero-genetic- analysis.html)

<comment><USER3> CBS' "60 Minutes" did a story on him that was itself entitled "Patient Zero": [http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/patient- zero/](http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/patient-zero/)</comment></comment>


Ustwo: An Open Source Example of a React-Powered WordPress Site - <AUTHOR> https://wptavern.com/ustwo-an-open-source-example-of-a-react-powered-wordpress-site <comment><USER2> Any specific tool for making the architecture frames [0] ?

[0] [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ustwo/ustwo.com- frontend/m...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ustwo/ustwo.com- frontend/master/docs/infrastructure.png)</comment>


The Air Force Will Start Work on Flying Cars This Fall - <AUTHOR> https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/09/air-force-will-start-work-flying-cars-fall/159917/ <comment><USER2> It's about time...</comment>


HowTo use now PlayJson stand-alone module introduced in Play-2.2-SNAPSHOT master - <AUTHOR> http://mandubian.com/2013/02/21/play-json-stand-alone/

<comment><USER2> What I really like in this library is it provides an automatic case class <> json binding (so it's convenient) but without using any Reflection: It uses the Scala Macros and is type-safe. See also: <http://mandubian.com/2012/11/11/JSON-inception/>

<comment><AUTHOR> and naturally it provides real Json validation with error aggregation which is interesting in many cases (not only Web actually)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone really lost weight using Kinect? - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone tried to lost weight using Kinect games like Nike Training e.g ?<p>Especially I'm really curious about if anyone ever succeeded to achieve significant weight / fat loss following the exercise programs and routines in those games. <comment><USER2> I had some initial hopes. Didn't really get into using Kinect much. I was most excited about the weight loss possibilities of the old Dance Dance Revolution game (back in the old days). I also bought a wiifit back in the day that never got much use.

One idea a friend tried that worked _somewhat_ was playing normal video games while on an exercise bicycle. The two ideas I am currently trying to pursue is walk on a treadmill playing programming lectures and playing squash. The first one is working out really well since my workout room has wifi and the treadmill has a place to hold my iPad.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not me. I gained weight actually but I think that was due to the proximity to the fridge full of snacks which gave a glucose boost. Untraining this took a couple of weeks. Much better to get outside and go for a run or ride.

</comment><comment><USER4> I followed their Get Lean program religiously for about 3 months, but I was already a daily runner to begin with so there wasn't much weight to lose. Although, I did get ridiculously toned. The cardio circuits in Nike Training could get downright challenging for a "game" and I followed the program on a schedule of 5-6x/week so the change was quickly noticeable.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've found it to be a useful way to get some cardio whilst in the office. The Kinect Adventures game and the UFC Trainer were both pretty good.

Exercise is in general a pretty terrible way to lose weight (diet's the thing) but I'm pretty sure I noticed some fitness gains.</comment>


Code as photo-op - <AUTHOR> http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/05/12/codeAsPhotoop.html <comment><USER2> I'm sooo confused...

      Release early and often.
      Get eyeballs, then monetize.
      Bootstrap.
      Get basic version working, then add features.
      Get basic version working, then scale.
      Get basic version working, then license the technology.
      Get basic version working, then sell to enterprises.
      Get free version working, then upgrade them to premium.
      Get free version working, then sell support.
      Get free version working, then sell services.
      Get free version working, then put it on your resume.
      Raise money, hire wisely.
      Be first to market.
      Be second to market.
      Wait for market to clear, then enter with second wave.
      Find your niche.
      Have the lowest price.
      Have the highest price.
      Use technology as a barrier to competition.
      Win a business plan competition.
      Get into an incubator.
      Get into a seed accelerator.
      Find an angel.
      Find a mentor.
      Crowd source fund raising.
      Get press to raise money.
      Raise money to get press.

I think I'll just fall back on the only thing I know:

      Build something people will pay for.

<comment><USER3> This comment should be hyperlinked from the main bar of HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He doesn't make a very compelling case for this being irresponsible journalism. Maybe it's mediocre journalism but I don't see any attempt to misrepresent the situation. The take-away is smaller companies/projects will try to challenge Facebook. That's it. Is that irresponsible? It seems to be a completely accurate mainstream sort of way to look at things for an audience that doesn't care about the nitty gritty details as much.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dave winer needs to build his open source Twitter thing already. He's capable of it and can get the press. He mentions it everyday but hasn't done it. Dave, just fucking do it.

<comment><USER5> The world has more than enough Twitter clients already. What would be a lot more interesting is an open source Twitter server.

<comment><USER6> What about <http://status.net/> ?

<comment><USER5> They're on the right track, but they need to make it 100% compatible with the Twitter API, not just 95%. Client developers must be able to simply replace "twitter.com" with some other endpoint and have everything work.

This would allow all the client developers (who now suddenly find themselves competing with Twitter Inc) to immediately rally their users to a new social graph.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "A 2005 Times article by John Markoff about a new startup that aims to commercialize podcasting. Didn't happen."

The article is on Odeo. The people involved seem to have turned out all right. This is a joke?

<comment><USER8> I had the same reaction until I realized Odeo is down _"until the first week of May"_ : <http://odeo.com/>

and it looks like the whole site is down, i.e.: <http://odeo.com/channels/1844-2600-The-Hacker-Quarterly>

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure if you're joking or not but...

Odeo turned into Twitter. Hence the comment "The people involved seemed to turn out alright".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There isn't any code yet, but that nice picture got them a pretty nice chunk of money, which will hopefully fund some nice code and infrastructure.

<comment><USER11> Well this is what I find bizarre. People are throwing money at them, when they haven't even shown that they have a good idea of what they're doing, while existing projects struggle along.

<comment><USER12> I think these other projects need to spend some time marketing themselves, come up with a catchy name, and find a blackboard to stand in front off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Who cares? This is what the Times frequently does - these types of articles are less about finding something actually currently-breaking-ground rather than the NYT appearing to be hip to the latest trend.

<comment><USER13> I would say there written on interest, some startups that are going well probably aren't as interesting as this. Mainstream press has always been about what will draw the interest of the most readers, everyone knows facebook and anyone reading tech at all would have heard about the privacy concerns of late.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _We could really use a great open source Twitter client_

Nitpicking a little, but he probably doesn't mean "client" here. And I think the need for an open source, distributed Facebook is greater than for Twitter, considering the relative amounts of influence and information the two services wield.

<comment><USER15> I am not sure why laconica (errr, whatever identi.ca's code is called these days) doesn't fit the bill for him...

<comment><USER15> Actually, he clarifies in the comments that he really does mean a "client" and not Status.net (what Laconica is called these days). But, there are definitely quite a few out there. Gwibber, Spaz, Canary, etc, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I thought about working in this problem space. Maybe I should think about it again, and receive wads of money as a result. Except I'm not that young, or working in Ruby on Rails so I won't just get handed money before producing any working code. Even then, there are plenty of one-man projects with working code up on google code, codeplex, github etc. that get nothing at all.

When I last thought about it, I became convinced that we don't need a single _implementation_ , we need _standards_ for multiple implementations to interact. Stuff like RSS, OpenId, OAuth, etc. It's a lot less glamorous to work to these, and to try to push them forward, but it's a lot more useful.

</comment><comment><USER17> The real problem with a crowdsourced startup is that there's less room to pivot to a new product or business model once it becomes clear the original plan's not going to work.

VCs are happy when startups pivot as long as they get a big payout. Folks who donate to an open federated Facebook aren't going to be nearly as supportive of major shifts in focus.

<comment><USER13> You have no obligation to them though, most are donating small amounts of money to support while knowing the realistically the dream may never become a reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't know if I'm understanding their concept , they basically want to store locally (users computers) every data ?

If so, how would this work ? A special app ? A plugin on FF to connect to it ? Will it store your friends data as well ? What if your HD drops dead or something ?

Sorry if I missed their concept :\

<comment><USER19> "What if your HD drops dead or something?"

This is the crux of the matter. You've got two options: store your data locally, or store it in the cloud.

Local storage minimizes the chance of loss; Cloud storage sacrifices you privacy. Pick your poison. It comes down to what you're more afraid of, and I am much more afraid of losing pictures than being subject to some sort of privacy violation.

Not saying one is better than the other, but if you sampled 1000 random people, my money says that people err on the side of keeping their pictures safe.

<comment><USER18> Well, I can see the reason why. I just don't think they will pull this off. I'm thinking that for every profile, there will be a node(computer), so for instance, if a computer is not connected, will it not be available for viewing that users photos,etc..

But, if they save all of the content (personal info, friends info, pictures...) locally like say a repository(GIT, SVN, etc..) wouldn't this miss the whole point of owning your data, since instead of my picture being in one server..it's living in all of my friends computers.

<comment><USER19> Exactly, I don't think this project will get far trying to deliver privacy at the expense of redundancy/availability.

<comment><USER20> Store encrypted data redundantly in the cloud, with peer-to-peer crypto magic for key distribution?

I have no idea how you'd protect against one of your "friends" deciding to release your stuff in plaintext.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Right story, right place, right time. Doesn't matter that it's vaporwear.

The money is real. [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora- the-p...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the- personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr)

</comment><comment><USER22> Sounds like Chandler all over again. "Hey gang! Let's build an Outlook killer!"

<comment><USER23> <http://www.google.com/search?q=chandler+kapor>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> i loved this

[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/technology/25podcast.html?...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/technology/25podcast.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1273716038-3er+cO6SuhaxaIdcqBxZLg)

</comment><comment><USER25> In this case I would say that buzz just may be exactly what's needed to get this thing off the ground.

</comment><comment><USER26> Just shut up and let them be. That article alone has produced them more than $50K already.

There are two types of people in the world, those who do and those who blog.

<comment><USER27> And there is a third -- those who criticize without doing a tiny bit of fact- checking first.

Either on his own or with others, Dave Winer has created a lot of the tools we take for granted for today. Outliners, RSS, OPML, podcasting, roll-your-own blogging tools, etc.

I don't know him personally, but I've been reading his blog and DaveNets for over 10 years. Go back and do some digging and you'll find he's the real deal.

Regardless of what you feel about him personally, his point is valid. There are plenty of other efforts out there to create a forked version of Facebook (and Twitter, for that matter). Why puff up some guys who haven't actually written any code yet? Most folks would call that what it actually is -- vaporware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm just gonna say this much:

1) It's a Rails app, so

2) I will be contributing to it as long as round 1 is not absolute crap</comment>


Self-referencing 'We the People' petition has only one day left - <AUTHOR> https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/%21/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl

<comment><USER2> Why should I consider it desirable that the white house listen to those who like to talk the most, rather than assuming that my views are represented by my representatives elected in an organized process?

Overly participatory democracy leads to government of the busy bodies, the people with too much time on their hands and too enthusiastic about government power to solve problems.

For every worthwhile public uproar like SOPA, there hundreds of little groups out there trying to get the government to listen to incredibly stupid demands.

<comment><USER3> The US style of winner-take-all representative democracy creates a huge collective action problem. My ballot choices boil down to "mediocre to useless", "complete wingnut", and a few somewhat preferable third party candidates I don't dare vote for because dividing the mediocre vote guarantees the wingnut wins. A third party can't succeed unless they somehow manage to attract today's left and right wing voters in equal and large numbers. In the meantime, my views are being safely ignored—they just never seem to be on the radar of my only feasible choice from the ballot.

I would much prefer direct democracy within a sharply limited scope of government powers. A laboratory of the states, with a couple dozen hellholes and a few places I'd be eager to live. But I don't see a path from here to there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Between refreshes, the number of signatures needed jumped from 3 to 16. I wonder what happened.</comment>


Bad Copyright Bill Moves Forward with No Serious Understanding of Its Dangers - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/bad-copyright-bill-moves-forward-no-serious-understanding-its-dangershttps://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/bad-copyright-bill-moves-forward-no-serious-understanding-its-dangers <comment><USER2> [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/bad-copyright-bill- mov...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/bad-copyright-bill-moves- forward-no-serious-understanding-its-dangers)</comment>