Learning Haskell through category theory - <AUTHOR> http://dekudekuplex.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/learning-haskell-through-category-theory-and-adventuring-in-category-land-like-flatterland-only-about-categories/

<comment><USER2> The first book on his list, Conceptual Mathematics, is the the way to go. Most intros assume you are a math student and are already familiar with abstract algebra.

It's available on google books: [http://books.google.com/books?id=o1tHw4W5MZQC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=o1tHw4W5MZQC&printsec=frontcover)

It's also written by the guy who was a driving force in the development of category theory. More so than even its creators, who laughed at him when as a student he first told them his idea of it being a foundation for all mathematics.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Will certainly read some of it online, and then maybe head out to the bookstore.

I have always wondered if learning the Math behind languages like Haskell will help me understand Haskell (and FP) better, and part of my resolution this year has been to "go back to the basics". I am certainly looking forward to having this book on my reading list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Considering I am knee deep in Haskell right now, can anyone here tell me why Category theory is necessary to learn Haskell, and furthermore, a text that they know of? (No offense to the other, but that was a lot of books he listed. I am looking for a starting point)

Edit - I meant to say "No offense to the _author_

<comment><USER4> My understanding is that a lot of the concepts and terminology of Haskell are rooted in category theory (e.g., monad, functor, etc.). I don't think its necessary to learn category theory, but it might help if you're mathematically inclined.

<comment><USER5> Understanding category theory would help you understand at a deeper level the idea of a monad, et al. Haskell uses a small subset of the math, IIRC.

This is more for mathy people who want to see where it comes from. I'm not sure it would actually be helpful in understanding (as Haskell is a few notches down the abstraction post than categories).

EDIT: Furthermore, it might require a heftier background in abstract algebra than most people have/want.

<comment><USER6> Pretty much _everything_ is below category theory in terms of abstraction.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Javascript for Beginner  - <AUTHOR>

I want to learn javascript and I am an absolute beginner. Which is the best book to start off with ? Which do I have to read first : "DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model"by Jeremy Keith or
Learning Javascript by Shelly Powers? <comment><USER2> I don't think you can jump into DOM Scripting (building page structures) without a proper knowledge of the language. At least if you're not comfortable with programming already.

<comment><AUTHOR> I heard some say that I need to know DOM if I want to write Js ! so do I start with Learning Js by SHelly Powers or Java script the good parts by Douglas Crockford ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> w3 schools is good.

<comment><USER4> I agree. W3 should get you started on the right track. Learning code in books has never worked for me. Learning online is the way to go because you can test everything on your own and go through their tutorials along the way.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> bump</comment>


Ask HN: Failed one-person online businesses (and lessons learned)? - <AUTHOR> A recent thread discussed successful one-person online businesses (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21332072)<p>I'm curious about the failed attempts, lessons learned, and what advice others would offer.<p>* How many people here have tried starting a one-person online business but feel that they have failed?<p>* What would you do better next time? What lessons did you learn? <comment><USER2> This is about as interesting as asking the audience at an NBA game their basketball playing experiences.</comment>


Kanban – The Secret Engineer Killer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aha.io/index.php/kanban-the-secret-engineer-killer/ <comment><USER2> If you just read the subtitles, I'd almost think your article was a piece in _favor_ of Kanban.

Engineers aren't assembly workers: so why do other methodologies seem to be so prescriptive on what can be accomplished in a given time frame? New problems arise, priorities shift, and unexpected news arrives. I appreciate the flexibility of a pull-type system because it lets me transparently show what I'm working on.

I've really hated telling people no or watching a manager struggle to change up something we really need just because it doesn't fit in the right shape time box or might affect the current sprint's plans.

You can't trust yourself: I always ended up hating sprint planning meetings where "points" are a constant source of conflict between stakeholders and estimates are fantastical. These sort of meetings just allow the quality knob to turn down while scope and schedule remain fixed. Having an entire team minimizes estimates problems, but for the effort involved I'm not sure the gains are worth it.

Also, I think you may have inadvertently taken Anderson's quote out of context as well—Kanban isn't a way to run software. It's merely a way to expose your current process so you can improve it. Kanban is something that sits on top and allows you to identify bottlenecks, be realistic about results (instead of estimates) and provide immediate transparency into what you're working on. It doesn't specifically prescribe what the steps are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the quality comments. I want to pick up the last one in particular and respond. I think that while you appreciate that Kanban is not a "way to run software" the folks who I have spoken with do not understand that. They consider it to be a leaner and more pure form of "agile." So, they do not use it to improve an existing dev methodology, rather they think it is one -- and there is the crux of the problem.

<comment><USER2> I should say I totally agree with one sentiment from the original post: _don 't blindly pick up Kanban as a magical solution for your problems!_

If your underlying process (or lack of process) sucks, then you'll still be in trouble. Fix your process first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am a fan of Kanban, so whatever I say will be through the rose tinted glasses of a fan. There maybe various reasons why Kanban has failed for many companies. I haven't worked in those teams so I have no way to say is it because of Kanban or is it because of management misunderstanding kanban.

From your article, the main reason touted is that the Marketing loses it's way. Which to me sounds strange! In fact I have seen it the otherways. We effectively delink marketing cadence from engineering cadence! Thus resulting in derisking the whole big bang releases.

For e.g. Marketing decides that they are going to make a big marketing push on a conference or a tradeshow. So the PM come up with a list of features they will showcase for the given event. (say 10 features are decided upon). The engineering team works on these features as a que. Releasing each of these as and when they are done. But do note an engineering release to production does not mean a marketing release. This allows the PM to experiment on features, build up case studies, etc ... for these features.

And as the marketing releases dates come closer, everybody knows that we always have a working copy with only the pending items in the que. This results in a high confidence level within the marketing / engineering on what is being touted about. There are no last minute scramble to get a working system. etc ... The most valuable feature was heavily tested and used by everyone before the big bang marketing release.

It also allows the PM to make A/B experiments before the actual marketing push. Thus adding another confidence layer to the whole process.

In a worst case scenario the least valuable features never get released for the marketing push.

I see this as an effective way to derisk the whole marketing push and reduce their dependency on the engineering team to deliver stuff when they said they would.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately not all of us are blessed to work with well organized stakeholders who are able to plan ahead rather than wait until the last minute to request whatever they need from engineering. Agile only works when the entire organization abides by its rules, sure engineering teams can train their stakeholders to some degree but upper management can just overule the process and insist engineering should be like a service desk that responds to whatever is needed today. Sucks, but it's a reality in many workplaces.

<comment><USER3> I agree. That's the reason I love Kanban. It allows us to capture metrics on what is being done, how long it took and where are we spending most of our time. This numbers in turn allow us to push the story to management on what they are doing wrong.

For e.g. We worked on a team where Sales made a feature request (1 day, PM and design team worked on it and released it to engineering (5 weeks) and engineering released it to sandbox (2 weeks), qa tested it and released it to production (1 week).

Guess where the bottleneck is? The whole cadence for the feature was 8 weeks. Obviously Sales where jumping on us for not getting it done on time. This way of looking at the whole board, allowed us to identify a bottleneck and push for changes on how the whole company operates. If you kanban a board only for engineering then you lose the big picture, How is the system as a whole operating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The 95%-of-diets-fail number comes from a single study in an obesity clinic performed in 1959. Followup studies, also at obesity clinics, found comparably high rates of recidivism.

But when you take the most pathological cases of obesity in a time before obesity was the norm, unsurprisingly those cases are ... _pathological_. There is a _pathology_.

These aren't normal people who grew overweight under conditions of stunning caloric abundance.

So let's stop quoting this statistic because the sample bias is kindly _stupidly important_ to its interpretation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. I actually spent a considerably amount of time looking for a meaningful reference. I found the Popkess-Vawter 1998 reference, but could not find the original text. Do you have a better number for "failure" or reference that I could use? I would be happy to update the post.

<comment><USER5> Hard to say. Either you rely on clinical studies, which give you pathologically-skewed sample bias, or you use the National Weight Control Registry, which will be skewed to people wanting to report successful weight control.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I am not an expert in this area (diet success data) and was simply trying to use an analogy. I guess I will leave it as is. I am not sure what else to do -- it seems that leaving it with no reference would be worse.

<comment><USER5> Well at least you can join the noble ranks of folk whose writing was tangentially nitpicked in the very first HN comment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Happens every time. I have learned to expect it. It does make me spend a little more time though thinking through the counter arguments that are likely to be fired like spears.

<comment><USER5> Comments like mine are why I always answer "please no" in those hypotheticals about meeting yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an industrial engineer, this is the equivalent of a developer walking into a factory and hearing about how "the mythical man-month" is a terrible book/idea because it allows for waste.

Right. The Mythical Man-Month is a great book/concept for creative/engineering projects. Kanban is a wonderful way of implementing a Just-In-Time manufacturing system.

Props to the OP for explaining the origin of kanban. May this post help fix the co-opting of an IE term for something totally different.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate that. I really do. It's rare to receive an ounce of props on HN. I must admit that I was totally surprised to learn that it was not designed for software development and that the author of the Lean Methodology has been trying to convince folks to stop using it.

<comment><USER7> What do you mean the author of the Lean Methodology has been trying to stop folks from using it? Are you suggesting David Anderson wants us to stop using Kanban for Knowledge Work?

<comment><USER6> From TFA:

      David Anderson, the creator of The Kanban Method   (discussed above) wrote the following in late 2010.

      "Kanban is NOT a software development life cycle or project management
      methodology! It is not a way of making software or  running projects that make software!"

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, the tendency to overload terms with multiple meanings is confusing the situation. It is very common for the word kanban to be used incorrectly because there are three commonly confused meanings for the word.

kanban - visual signal, signboard kanban system - pull-based, wip limited flow management system Kanban Method - an approach to incremental, evolutionary process and systems change for organizations

So yes, the Kanban Method is not an SDLC method. It is a meta-method that will allow for the emergence of an appropriate SDLC within an organization. That SDLC may be Agile (very good things in Agile mindset), may be waterfall, may be Scrum or Scrumban-ish, but it should be appropriate for then context.

Please refer to this wikipedia entry: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_\(development\))

You don't see any SDLC specific tactics or guidance in there. That is true. You don't see any Agile language in there. It doesn't provide any specific Agile guidance.

Does the Agile Manifesto have any specific SDLC tactics? Please refer to [http://www.agilemanifesto.org](http://www.agilemanifesto.org)

You won't find any specific tactics for software development in the Agile Manifesto either. But out of the mindset comes specific SDLCs that are aligned to the manifesto like Scrum or XP or any of the million "custom" Agile methodologies that have no name but are used by IT organizations everywhere.

David Anderson absolutely wants the Kanban Method to be used (as appropriate) in organizations that do knowledge work (software development is knowledge work) to help those organizations develop the best workflow and capability for a given context and to create a culture of learning, growth, and continuous improvement. I've talked to him many times about these very topics! Many of the case studies that we quote in our work are from software development organizations.

The quote used above has been taken out of context, isolated, and used to create fear, uncertainty and doubt about The Kanban Method and I find that kind of behaviour negligent at best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What the heck do kanban have to do with project management? Speaking -as- a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (still can't type that with a straight face) in the healthcare sector, I can't even imagine how someone would set out using a kanban to run a company.

That's just so wildly divorced from what it is or what it's for that that article made no sense to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is somewhat the point. Engineering managers have started to reach for Kanban -- and it does not fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm loath to take this on faith without better description of the dataset. 150 companies sounds impressive, but, where are they based? What areas do they work in? How long have they been doing it? Have other factors, such as the health of these companies, been considered?

Still, many of these points resonated with me.

I started recently on a team that follows kanban-ish practices. Fortunately nobody here is that process-focused that we follow it exactly. Also, there is nothing that says you have to work on only one thing at a time, and we typically don't. In fact, I work part-time on _another_ team, and the other one does not do kanban.

But I don't much like the kanban system: Give me a satisfyingly large component, and let me work on it entirely.

So for kanban in general, here's another facet to consider, and one that probably explains why engineers are "leaving in droves": As TFA says, you end up working on many small pieces of a larger whole. The good part is, you could end up becoming aware of all parts of the system that you touch.

But! When you interview elsewhere, or heck, even when you're updating your resume, and it comes to answering the inevitable question, "What did you work on in this project", the honest answer is, "Uhh, many parts but nothing _overarching_ as such..."

And right then, even to yourself, that sounds like such a weasel-wordy answer. You could go on and explain, "Well, I wrote method A of component X, and feature B of webpage Y and an implementation C of interface Z for cases where Q is R." But to an interviewer, I'd guess it all sounds like "I worked on nothing worthwhile."

On the other hand, since you have better awareness of the project as a whole, you could say you worked on _all of it_ , and make up more impressive-sounding responsibilities as you go along.

But I find it much easier if I just do something impressive and be straightforward during interviews.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comments. The companies have been distributed across the country (with a few outside of the US as well). They have been of different shapes and sizes, but I did not do a good job tracking all of their characteristics. The purpose of the calls was to discuss Aha! -- not different engineering methodologies. A few trends jumped out at me and this was one of them, so I decided to write about it and try to be fair that the ideas are based on qualitative research (discussions). I appreciate your thoughts and the idea that engineers should own large components of a project or entire projects resonates with us. We think it creates real pride of ownership and interest in customer success and it has been how we have organized our engineering teams at three different companies now. It's clearly better for individuals (as you mentioned) and the companies they work for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Really interesting piece. It is amazing that a technique used to optimize shop floors has been applied to the engineering field which I believe to be so creative versus "industrial."

<comment><AUTHOR> That surprised me as well. I think engineering managers are willing to try just about anything to regain some control and deliver software more predictably. My sense from talking to many companies is that it is unfortunately having the opposite effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a confusing argument.

Kanban/lean is a pretty simple idea (not always easy to execute): eliminate waste in your work by smoothing the flow of requirements/changes. This treats your end-to-end delivery capability as a syatem and one that should not be overburdened.

The clearest sign of being overburdened is when you have a lot of work in progress but nothing to show for it. So instead of a genius PM/business analyst/product owner handling out a tome of requirwments from on high with a thud, you break the work down into a minimally useful / marketable chunks, minimize work in progress, deliver according to some priority, and iterate and learn from the results.

This is the philsophical foundation of lean Startups (customer development), lean development, and much of the work on Devops.

So the article rails against Kanban ... And almost seems like its advocating for the same thing with its goal-driven approach to delivery (?).

Any methodology or process framework is subject to misinterpretation or abuse. This is why "agile" and "scrum" are dirty words to many - it's hard to tell what you're getting, as the term has been twisted to suit vested interests. It looks like it is Lean and Kanban's turn to be trashed due to ersatz versions being forced on teams.

But articles like this aren't helpful unless they explain what they mean Kanban, and what aspects are ineffective - clichés like "software is different" don't illuminate.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried to clearly define Kanban as a "Kanban (meaning signboard or billboard) is a scheduling system for lean and just-in-time production. It's a system to control the logistical chain from a production point of view. Kanban was developed by Taiichi Ohno, at Toyota, to find a system to improve and maintain a high level of production. The Kanban Method was later added to as an approach to incremental, evolutionary process improvement for organizations."

The point is that it is a mistake to take a methodology that was created for incremental process enhancement along a manufacturing line and apply it to software development.

<comment><USER11> So, I've had the opposite experience: lean-type incremental process enhancement has had dramatic improvements on the end-to-end results of more than one company I've been involved with.

I look at a book like The Phoenix Project, written by some fairly respected software industry folks like Gene Kim, and they also recommend the opposite: that software development and IT operations actually are a lot like an industrial shop floor and benefit from being organized in an end-to-end pull flow like Kanban.

I look at Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank, or Lean Startup by Eric Ries, while they aren't specifically dictating a Kanban board in their work, they're clearly philosophically in the camp of a pull-based approach to organizing work and limiting work-in-progress.

So, what I haven't determined from your article is, what specifically is flawed with these authors views and my experiences? Am I being over-broad in their inclusion? My interprtation of your article this far is a well-meaning but under-argued philosophical aversion to being lumped in with other industrial engineering practices.

Edit: clarity

<comment><AUTHOR> From my experience and from what I am hearing it (meaning Kanban) does not work for most folks or companies. That's it. It might work well for you and that's great too. I don't think Kanban and Agile philosophies are the same though - but that's at least another long blog post.

<comment><USER11> Fair ball. I'd say if its being latched onto as a panacea, almost all approaches to process will fail if you lack the basics: a good market, an insightful product owner/manager, good engineers, and at least an adequate morale in the company.

I've seen companies/projects with all of those things still fail because of a poor process. This is where something like Kanban can help, IMO. Not trivial to implement though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As others have noted the definition of kanban comes too late in your article. Also, I think a citation to wikipedia is in order if you're going to copy it and simply expand the initialisms.

Regardless, it's not a particularly helpful definition for anybody that's never heard of kanban, and certainly doesn't help anybody familiar with kanban to know what specifically you're evaluating; you need to get everybody on the same page from the outset.

Given lack of concrete examples and your previous posting history I would consider this more of an advertisement for your product, to which I've now applied for an invitation, but you seem to be genuinely responding to comments here and nobody else has complained. I suppose either way, well played.

I have other comments but I'll hold them until I find out exactly what you mean by kanban, because I've been admittedly self-identifying the process I'm using as kanban and maybe it's not.

I will say this much though, the practices of kanban (visualization, limited work-in-progress, managed flow, feedback loops, etc.) are all valuable in my opinion and I wonder which of these you see leading to, or how you see them leading to, the problems you've cited. Also, I wouldn't mind some more concrete metrics to back up such an inflammatory title.

</comment><comment><USER13> Pick the right tool for the right job. For a product team Kanban does not make much sense. I agree with your comments in general. But for a PS or Custom Development team, where most projects are integration type projects or custom reports and tend to take 2-3 days to complete, it is a good way to go.

</comment><comment><USER14> Summary of this article: Kanban sucks, use our tool to make roadmaps! To me, this is clearly a case of trying to stir up controversy to get people to sign- up for his tool.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why wait until the sixth paragraph to define the term?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point. I was not certain where to add it. My belief, based on my conversations was that many have heard about it -- so I did not want to bore those in the know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> tl;dr: author of the article is laboring under many false assumptions about Kanban (and lean software development in general) likely due to a combination of inexperience using such methods personally and unfamiliarity with the available literature. The following is a rather long attempt to correct the base misunderstandings in the article, with pointers to relevant source material. Enjoy!

First, an operational definition: Kanban as it's used in lean software development is 1. visual representation of the work that's in the system and what state it is in and 2. an opportunity to limit the amount of work that can be in each state.

That's it.

Almost every organization that writes software uses something to keep track of the work, and what state it is in - by this logic the title of the article could be "spreadsheets - the secret engineer killer", or "JIRA - the secret engineer killer".

According to the article though, Kanban is ruining engineering teams in "nearly every company" that has adopted Kanban out of the 150 companies the author talked to in the last 60 days. (Some numbers on how many of them are using Kanban, and for how long, would have been nice facts to include, btw.)

So, let's unpack some reasons why this is:

"Engineers are not assembly line workers" \- Implying Kanban and pull-based systems only work for "widget producers" and forces engineers to focus on the individual trees, not the forest. I think this sort of highlights the author's misunderstanding of Kanban (and to an extent any pull-based system) and what role it serves in an organization. Kanban isn't magic - it not an organizational design, it's not a product development strategy, and it's definitely not a substitute for leadership. It's a chart on a wall that shows what the work of the product development organization looks like, right now.

For an example of an overall software product development strategy that incorporates pull-based systems as one component, I recommend checking out "Principles of Product Development Flow" by Don Reinertsen.

"It teaches you that you and your engineers cannot be trusted to estimate work or handle complex multi-faceted projects." \- How does it do this? Nothing about Kanban implies no estimates. In fact if you use Kanban and measure cycle time, you will be doing evidence-based scheduling which will allow you to make _better_ estimates. As for "complex multi-faceted projects" \- I don't know what the author is talking about. Please read "Scaling Lean & Agile Development" by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde for some actual evidence and lessons learned on lean / agile approaches being used on huge software projects. Also "Scaling Agile at Spotify" by Henrik Kniberg is worth a read, as Kanban features there (by team choice!) as one small component in a lean software development org design / product development strategy.

"Kanban forces a 'one work item at a time' mentality and resists milestones." This is simply not true and such a basic misunderstanding I have to wonder if the author of the article has taken the time to read any of the introductory literature. If not, I suggest the aptly titled "Kanban" by David J. Anderson. Kanban wants you to limit work in progress, which is one of the basic goals of any product development system. It doesn't say how much it should be limited, or where it should be limited. Every system, everywhere, already has limited- WIP in the form of bottlenecks. The hopeful goal of pull-based systems in general and lean software development specifically is that you'll use these simple tools to look at your process and eliminate wasteful activities and streamline those bottlenecks that must exist to deliver maximum value to your customers. In this sense, you can use Kanban as a tool to maximize the whole of the product development process which is certainly a macro (org level) goal and outcome that stands in stark contrast to the claims in the article that Kanban in general promotes micro optimizations and misses the big picture.

For more general reading on why limiting work in progress is a good idea, I suggest "The Goal" by Eli Goldratt or more recently "The Phoenix Project" by Gene Kim. As far as milestones go, nothing in a pull-based system is incompatible with milestones of fixed date or fixed scope. If your idea of milestones is chucking arbitrary dates on a calendar based on an estimate before work begins and then stubbornly refusing to adapt those milestones when the situation on the ground changes (i.e. milestones of fixed date and fixed scope), then I could see the potential nature for conflict, but surely you're not out there doing that in real life, right? (Right???) If you are, and that's the issue - Kanban isn't the problem, the problem is the assumptions you are operating on are faulty - nothing will work for you. Smarter folks than me have written about the perils of fixed date and fixed scope development, I suggest googling for Neil Killick's thoughts on the matter.

"High performance individuals and companies are goal and date driven." Citation needed. I know many people really, really believe this but you should really verify. Also, see Fred Brooks "Mythical Man Month".

"Kanban was never intended for software development" \- What? Again, the guy you quote actually wrote a book on using Kanban with software development teams. You should read it, as it would probably correct 90% of the misunderstandings in your article.

Those are the key arguments in the article about why Kanban is "the secret engineer killer". Hopefully by now it's clear that these arguments aren't very good and it certainly wasn't any trouble for me to refute them along with a bibliography for further reading. That doesn't mean Kanban or lean are perfect though - there still is no silver bullet. Hopefully this inspires some folks to launch a more throughly-researched critique of lean, kanban, or pull-based systems in the future as I think that kind of discussion can be really beneficial.

<comment><USER17> Well said. I find it is very common to use the straw-man criticism technique [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man) about bad management practices. The quality of management is often bad. The quality of management, even of good practices, is often bad.

Criticizing those implementation of the practice is perfectly fine. But claiming that the practice is suppose to be something different than it is, is not fine. I agree with you here, that is the biggest problem. If you understand how kanban for software is suppose to be done, the criticisms don't make sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I agree. It doesn't allow the engineer to really own a project from start to finish. Thanks for a great post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I appreciate the thought. It's rare on HN to have someone write something nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Like 'fad diets' most of the reasons that kanban fails is because the organization was sick to begin with and kanban would have helped if not for the structure of the organization in the first place.

Fad diets mostly fail because people go back to eating the same shitty way they did before, just as when a team adopts kanban marketing and product go back to the same stupid way of doing things they did before.

The sad part is that in the vast majority of organization engineering actually knows more about the product than product or marketing.

The core of it is that most engineers don't want to work on the stupid fucking ideas that product and marketing come up with instead preferring to make the product 'good' instead of creating feature parity with some competitor.

If product and marketing were actually good at their jobs they should at least be able to convince the engineers in their own fucking company that what they are thinking is a good idea. Right now I'm picturing the eye-rolls at Porsche when product and marketing announced the idea for the Panamara.

[http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2012/09/of-course-we- need...](http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2012/09/of-course-we-need-a- porsche-station-wagon.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with your thoughts around dysfunction as it relates to fad diets and poor habits. I also think that many engineers think they know best, but in a well functioning org PM actually knows the customers and market and has a collaborative relationship with engineering. Do you think that PM has no role or that in most cases they just don't do it well?

<comment><USER3> On the contrary in the Kanban process, PM is the pivotal role. They control the que, the cadence of feature releases, etc ... Without an effective PM, the whole thing will fall as a pack of cards.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. But PM needs to pick its head up and think more broadly. A "one in one out" queue is contrary to delivering winning product.

<comment><USER3> As I have said below ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6119175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6119175)) You need to delink engineering releases from marketing releases. Where is it written that when the engineering releases a feature you need to make a marketing push? When you have a collection of features ready which as a whole makes sense for marketing, then you make a marketing release with all the related PR, hype cycle, etc ...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AlpineJS Guides and Examples - <AUTHOR> https://www.alpinetoolbox.com/ <comment><USER2> I have been using AlpineJS for a while, and I absolutely love it. It's a minimal, very lightweight and forms the perfect bridge between jQuery and Vue.js. Nothing against jQuery, but DOM manipulation isn't ideal and it tends to get messy. I am not a fan of frameworks either unless I am sure I need to build a rich, dynamic app.

AlpineJs allows me to create those little dynamic stuff that website often needs: form validations, modals, filters, dynamic dropdowns, tooltips etc. This is much better option than hunting for libraries that to do simple stuff like that, or using jQuery.

AlpineJs + TailwindCSS is a highly recommended stack for anyone who wants to get things done fast.

<comment><USER3> I would like to recommend Kutty as a component framework that is using Tailwind + AlpineJS. ([https://kutty.netlify.app/](https://kutty.netlify.app/))

Any other similar recommendation?

<comment><USER4> Is this yours?

htmx [1] (by the guy who created intercooler.js) was renamed from "kutty" to "htmx" after this comment [2]:

> YSK that in Dutch the name kutty resembles the popular term for the female > reproductive organs.

[1]: [https://htmx.org/](https://htmx.org/)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23196095](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23196095)

<comment><USER5> lol well time for a name change, but I don't know what to change it to

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At first I thought this was a JS port of Alpine Linux and got very excited! Then I remembered I already came across that before, so I shouldn't have gotten that excited... [https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?url=alpine-x86-xwin.cfg&...](https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?url=alpine-x86-xwin.cfg&mem=256&graphic=1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, the name is a bit confusing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've used it on a few sites and really liked its simplicity. It's Tailwind for JS.

That said, does AlpineJS offer any framework for extension? What I mean is the ability to build on it with custom JS to create custom small components on the page? I know that it's not necessarily intended to to this, but I find this is the gulf between "do it yourself" and "use Vue/React/..." that is hard to fill.

For example, with Tailwind I can use @apply to build my own class-based CSS components if I really need to. 90% of the time I shouldn't need to do this, but the reality is there's 10% of the time when Tailwind doesn't cover my use case.

Does Alpine have this?

<comment><USER8> Maybe custom elements would help? [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Web_Components/...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Web_Components/Using_custom_elements)

There's also spruce when you need to share data across components [https://github.com/ryangjchandler/spruce](https://github.com/ryangjchandler/spruce)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another member of the AlpineJS fanclub here, no more jQuery, and no longer feel like I need to invest days and days learning Vue (which I never quite get round to).

We use Alpine + [https://tachyons.io/](https://tachyons.io/) for CSS (powered by Craft CMS) on almost all our projects now.

</comment><comment><USER10> > if you already know Vue, you basically know Alpine, making it perfect for > Vue developers to turn to for projects where Vue is simply overkill

So funny to read this, as this value prop was the reason our team to chose Vue a few years back instead React/Angular.

</comment><comment><USER11> _" Alpine requires absolutely no build, you simply include the library and away you go, all features included."_

Interesting. Maybe an easier path for those trying to get away from jQuery.

</comment><comment><USER12> How would it be if compared to Svelte?

<comment><USER13> It doesn't require a build step at all, and really lends itself well to static sites. I have used Svelte for years and its still my go-to for web apps, but honestly 95% of the projects I take on are better dealt with as a largely static site than a PWA. We can thank react for how many basic content sites come along with JS runtimes running in the background.

I do like Alpine, but after having used it on a few projects it kind of sits in a dead zone for me. I first used it for a mobile menu toggle and a couple other small bits of interactivity, but realized I might as well just right that little bit of JS myself and inline it to save the roundtrip dependency. If I need more JS functionality like shared, client side state management I'll go back to Svelte

<comment><USER12> Very interesting. In the last year I've been doing backend but I see myself easily leaning to this too for fullstack needs. Thanks for the input</comment></comment></comment>


Nearly Half of US Think New Recession Is Coming: Poll - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/43412781

<comment><USER2> It's not entirely clear to me that the old recession ever ended.</comment>


If you've got it, flaw-nt it: flawed medieval manuscripts - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2018/03/if-youve-got-it-flaw-nt-it.html <comment><USER2> At first glance of the title I thought it was a clever name for a Windows vulnerability.

But I definitely like this more :)

<comment><USER3> Can you explain what "flaw-nt" is supposed to mean?

<comment><USER4> It's a pun on "flaunt".

<comment><USER5> and "Flaw in NT".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Protect your domain quickly with PrivacyTrail tips - <AUTHOR> https://www.privacytrail.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

Please see my new tool, PrivacyTrail. Feedback, comment and tips to improve much appreciated.

The goal of developing PrivacyTrail was to allow organisations of all sizes to assess their digital privacy, especially those who can't afford expensive threat intelligence tooling or haven't got the time to do it themselves.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is great. I'd love to see automated recurring scheduled scans and it e-mails me the results if anything changes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for giving it a whirl! Having some kind of subscription and monitoring service is definitely an option in terms of where to take it. I'm torn on whether my time is best spent doing that or adding features and improving the UI. Good to know its useful!</comment></comment>


Show HN: My first OSS project (Java) - <AUTHOR>

I would like to share with you my first OSS project feedback is welcome, currently on v1.2 nearly releasing 1.3 (due to bugs).
Link: http://mementocode.blogspot.pt/2015/07/my-first-open-source-project.html
The link is a post on my blog (where I would like to be able to spare some more time writing) <comment><USER2> Congratulation for your first contribution to the Open Source universe! You put a great attention in your commits messages and this is a pure joy to read. Keep working hard. You'll probably do many projects in your career but only a few of them will be finished. Each finished project is a victory for OSS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback, I will try to keep the project alive and have some other ideas that may become OSS projects too. About the commit messages I just try to keep them simple and descriptive enough for me in the future.</comment></comment>


Germany to Legislate 30 Percent Quota for Women on Company Boards - <AUTHOR> http://www.dw.de/germany-to-legislate-30-percent-quota-for-women-on-company-boards/a-18088840

<comment><USER2> Should they have smaller quota for smaller boards? If the change of selecting woman or man would be totally equal, 11-18% of company boards with 5-8 members would fail this criteria.

Where is the line between discrimination and unconscious prejudice and should we treat them differently? For example, it seems that height is as important as race or gender as a determinant of wages and leadership roles.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2002/0...](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2002/03/short_changed.html)

[http://gladwell.com/blink/why-do-we-love-tall- men/](http://gladwell.com/blink/why-do-we-love-tall-men/)

>In the U.S. population, about 14.5 percent of all men are six feet or over. Among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, that number is 58 percent.</comment>


Ask HN:Where and when do you code?  - <AUTHOR>

lol no I dont mean where in the virtual address space...I mean where in the real world do you actually sit down and write code.?..What kind of lighting conditions are there? it is open air?..Is there music playing in the background...What time of the day seems to be ideal?
I have been trying to solve this problem for a while and it seems like some places and times are better than others to the programming mind.Please let me know what your thoughts are and also point me in the right direction if any of you have thought about this problem before.
Thanks<AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm most productive in a silent, mostly empty room at 2:00am. I'm pretty much worthless as a programmer if I'm in the presence of other people.

<comment><AUTHOR> hahah...yeah tht holds true for me too!!...especially in presence of people i know!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If its a technology I'm not great with (most things these days), I usually need to learn as I code. And since I do my best learning in silence, thats what I go for. But programming with a familiar framework, I'm fine with whenever and whatever except silence; need some background white noise. I usually DON'T use music for white noise (I get distracted because I know the songs), preferring instead a lounge, cafe or a 7/10 movie playing in the background.

I've been working on an iOS contract job for the past two weeks. I wrote at home in silence as I knew very little of the features they asked me to implement (using vDSP, MapKit, GameKit, Remote I/O Audio in conjunction). I went to client location only to put finishing touches/last minute addons/testing. (Client Location wasn't exactly geared for a productive developer environment - too much noise, too many distractions)

Turned out to be great app - they loved it and it taught me a lot about iOS, DSP, and my working preferences.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the response....what kind of places do you go to .....starbucks?....i agree that most corporate offices are not very good for programming at all!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find being in the right frame of mind is more important than location. I code at my desk, I code on the sofa, I code on public transport, I code at the pub if I get there before my friends, I code in bed in the middle of the night if I cannot sleep.

Sometimes I need to listen to music to block out distractions. Sometimes I don't.

You say that "it seems like some places and times are better than others to the programming mind." That's true, but it's also dependent on the programming mind in question, both in terms of different people having different optima, and individual people having different optima over time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it is dependent on the programming mind in question..my asusmption is that programming minds are similar and would react similarly to the same stimuli!!

I agree that getting into the right frame of find is important..what I am trying to do is trying to find ways to get my brain into the right frame

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like to program whenever I'm not tired. I usually listen to music with headphones on. This helps to block out other people in the office or the tv/other people at home. Programming when tired leads to errors and forgetting where you left off when you have to stop or take a break. I rarely program outside. The glare on the screen is too much to deal with.

<comment><AUTHOR> agreed...programming when tired is very unproductive...headphones is a good idea too!!...to not forget where you left off I try to write down a small note to my future self in the last git commit!!

>The glare on the screen is too much to deal with. Now tht can be solved with a laptop with a good display and and some shade!Remember the quote from Office Space "Human beings were not supposed to sit in their cubicles all day looking at computer screens"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like to sit in cafes and code. It's not as socially isolating and the distractions are easy to block out because they are random and unimportant to me. Distractions at home or the office are much more difficult to ignore.

<comment><AUTHOR> well it seems like social isolation works sometimes and sometimes you need people around you...i am going to try cafes from next week....although the problem is not many places are open all night....thanks for the response..:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> At a marker board, in a notebook, in the shower, on the bus...the typing part is largely just data entry and debugging.</comment>


Jesus, Republicans and NRA banned on school network - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/06/19/jesus-republicans-and-nra-banned-on-school-website/

<comment><USER2> This article is important because it shows the unintended consequences of network filtering.

However, the author veers into conspiratard territory when he regurgitates the right-wing victim-hood trope:

 _Andrew has discovered the issue I write about in my new book, "God Less America." Public schools have become leftwing indoctrination centers._

This statement is unfounded. I'm sure plenty of lefty, libertarian or non- Republican websites fall under the "political/advocacy group" category. I imagine PETA, LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition), Democrat campaign web sites, etc would be banned. A dozen right-wing web sites on a ban list containing thousands of entries is not statistically significant. Only a proper analysis can show an actual, demonstrable bias.</comment>


New Search Strategy for Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/yahoo-and-mozilla-form-strategic-partnership/ <comment><USER2> This is why Google built Chrome. Google's strategy has been to remove the layers between the user's intent to search and Google's own server. Every intermediate layer that Google does not control is a risk to their business.

When viewed through these lens, many of the seemingly ancillary Google business units start to make strategic sense. Android (control the device), Chrome (control the browser), Fiber (control the tubes).

Each of these channels is an opportunity for disruption by some competitor search engine and Google wants to make sure they don't get blindsided. Or one of the gateways could demand a massive tribute for Google to pass through (cable companies are pushing for this via the war against net neutrality).

If Google didn't have Chrome and Firefox was the leading browser, they'd be in big trouble with this news. Lucky for them they thought about this a long time ago and built a browser which now accounts for 50% of market share.

Yahoo NEEDS this deal. For Google, it's a nice to have.

<comment><USER3> > This is why Google built Chrome.

Seriously? Do you remember what browsers were like before Chrome?

<comment><USER4> Maybe your memory is failing you, but FF and Safari were still great browsers when Chrome first came out. Chrome took over slowly because of constant improvement, it wasn't much different except for some technical details and clean UI.

<comment><USER5> For simple pages Chrome was faster. But the tradeoff was that you didn't get things like MathML- which was important to- maybe- three of us. And iirc, SVG was better on FF (I did physics tutorial and animation stuff- I told people to use FF).

Also, I still prefer video on FF. Chrome is choppier with a lousy connection or hardware. But Chrome is quicker to load a simple site which makes it overall a better experience for passive web browsing. (But to be fair my FF is loaded with add-ons so that may slow it down a bit).

<comment><USER6> You should restart FF with addons disabled (Help > Restart with Add-ons Disabled) and then compare the two. If you want a "passive web browsing experience" on FF, you could create a separate profile.

<comment><USER7> Or you know, use Chrome. That way, I don't have to consider what type of "web browsing experience" I need to have today.

<comment><USER6> I have installed lots of extensions on FF because I find them to be useful. If I were to use Chrome as my primary browser and wanted the same features that my current FF setup gives me, then I would have to install extensions. But the extensions would slow Chrome down and then I would be back to square one. So "just use Chrome" is not a solution.

<comment><USER7> Maybe not for everyone. I find myself alone amongst many because I hate tools. The need for a tool means there is some problem that has to be solved. For instance, I much prefer languages that don't necessitate an IDE. I'd much rather program in Ruby, Python, Javascript, or anything else I can do competently in vi, with a 5 line .vimrc file. Even when in vi I only use like 5 commands. I find other ways to be effective. I can boot up Eclipse or IntelliJ or whatever and get the job done, but certainly there has to be a better way?

I installed Chrome because its fast. I liked it for web development because it had "Firebug" essentially built in. I eventually peeked back at Firefox to see if was doing anything interesting on the development side, but by that point much preferred the overall speed and simplicity of Chrome that I simply haven't bothered to go back.

Compared to IE, developing for both platforms rarely requires you to even check Firefox for correctness or performance once you get around the quirks or use more recently developed JS libraries.

I think the only extension I installed for Chrome was TamperMonkey. And a couple of things developed for work purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some more details:

* This is a new, more flexible partnership strategy.

* Continuing the existing relationship with Google was an option, but Mozilla chose to end the Google relationship.

* All the options Mozilla considered had strong, improved economic terms (but the concrete numbers are not public). Because all the options had improved economics, that allowed Mozilla to really consider the strategic outlook.

* The Yahoo agreement in the US is for five years.

* Yahoo will be rolling out a new, improved search tool soon.

* Mozilla has agreements with Yandex and Baidu for Russia and China.

* Google will remain an included option in Firefox and Mozilla will continue to support its use.

<comment><USER9> How does promoting Yandex and Baidu in regions where they are already dominant (Russia and China, respectively) align with Mozilla's new mission? I'm not sure how entrenching their hold on their home markets promotes user choice, innovation, or privacy.

<comment><USER10> Because it prevents the worldwide biggest search provider from eventually also taking over those remaining holdouts?

<comment><USER9> I don't think there's any danger of Google taking over the Chinese market...

Perhaps Yandex is more at risk, but my impression is that Yandex dominates Russia much as Google leads the US. In Russia, Google is the underdog. Firefox's switch can only dampen competition in the Russian market, while users in markets without Yandex neither gain nor lose.

The rest of the world _may_ stand to benefit, if these national champions expand beyond their borders, and if they offer users a better choice than the competition. But that remains to be proven. In the meantime, Mozilla's switch will certainly have a measurable impact on the current competitive landscape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> (throwaway account)

While I believe the party line is probably true ("Mozilla decided not to go with Google"), it's also disingenuous.

Mozilla chose not to go with Google because Google wasn't willing to pay what they were before. They straight up told Mozilla this 3 years ago when they signed the billion dollar contract; Mozilla had 3 years to become profitable. That's why they switched focus to FirefoxOS; they thought that by now they'd be profitable via selling phones and the app store. (At the time, Bing was bidding against Google, however Mozilla went with the smaller check from Google because they knew using Bing would seem like selling out.)

For the record, Google made _billions_ off being Firefox's default search engine. They paid Firefox $300mil a year for three years, but that was only a small fraction of how much Google profited from Firefox searches. Not sure if it's still true, but three years ago they made more from Firefox than they did from Chrome.

So, yes, Mozilla could have gone with Google still. It's not like Google said "nope, you can't use us as the default!". However, they went with Yahoo! because Google wasn't willing to pay what Mozilla needed. The whole "Mozilla picked Yahoo! to enable choice" has been tweeted by every Mozillian I know (and said multiple times in this thread), but it's a meaningless statement. If they really meant that, you'd be prompted when you opened Firefox the first time to pick a search engine.

<comment><USER12> Is there any monetary reason to pick many search providers instead of just Google? This is possible, your guess is as good as mine. Regardless, I believe that not going with Google is a very sound strategy. If Mozilla has the choice between an alliance with a competitor with overwhelming firepower and whose clear interest is making Mozilla obsolete and an underdog with an interest in growing along with Mozilla, why pick the competitor?

Also, regarding your comment on FirefoxOS: I don't know where you heard that Mozilla expected to support itself through Firefox OS / Firefox Marketplace revenue, but I never heard anybody claiming this (I work at Mozilla). The main reason to introduce Firefox OS was (and still is) to promote openness on the mobile world (i.e. "wrestle duoplogy from Apple and Google"), just as Mozilla/Phoenix/Firefox was introduced to promote openness on the web (i.e. "wrestle monopoly from Microsoft").

Edit: clarifications.

<comment><USER13> I also see FirefoxOS as Mozilla's long-shot hedge against the spectre of walled gardens. With first iOS and then WinRT disallowing third-party browsers, a world dominated by locked-down platforms would be a death sentence for Firefox.

<comment><USER14> I always wondered why no one tried lawsuit on that topic in Europe for iOS devices? It is arguably worse than the IE situation (you used IE just once to get a real browser), but right now Safari is only game in town for no technical reason and everyone is cool with that. No addons, no adblock ...

<comment><USER15> I suppose that's fine legally unless you're a monopoly. Windows is (or was?). iOS, arguably, not really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Mozilla is making some major moves these days. They've ditched Google as their main revenue source, partnering with Tor and Yahoo.

Yahoo is angling to be a digital magazine, which I like as a business model much more than Google's.

Firefox is making a strong case for itself as the privacy centric browser.

I still remember when Firefox started gaining market share. Even non-tech- savvy people were getting firefox, because IE was so bad for security, and so hard to maintain.

Excited to see what the next few months brings.

<comment><USER17> > Firefox is making a strong case for itself as the privacy centric browser.

They try their best to market themselves as a privacy-centric browser. To promote themselves as so they add some shiny things like making clearing browser history a two mouse clicks more accessible. But I'm still worried.

I'm really nitpicking but... That 3rd party cookie controversy that lasted for almost an year, the "oh, we're full of FLOSS ideals and are firmly against DRM but... hey, wait, users want Netflix, gotta support DRM" controversy, the recent "sponsored tiles" controversy, the update of over-engineered and undocumented proprietary Firefox Sync/Accounts that makes it even harder to not depend on their servers, the complete ignorance on TLS client certificates' UI and usability (which is why we're still stuck with passwords), the BrowserID/Persona thingy that happily continued the trend that makes your identity owned by a third party, and so on. I know, it's not good to complain in such rude manner, but the issues do exist. Personally, I wouldn't really trust Firefox. Not without lots of addons, at least.

Unfortunately, I guess this can't be helped. A large project like Firefox seems to be impossible without steady and fairly big money income, and since this money comes from advertisers whose interests are in complete opposite of users' privacy, Mozilla just have to make some sacrifices.

Still, among the mainstream browsers they're better than competitors.

<comment><USER18> I'm not going to rebut each mischaracterization, but I did work on Persona, so:

> the BrowserID/Persona thingy that happily continued the trend that makes > your identity owned by a third party

Nah. You could happily choose any Identity Provider that implemented the protocol, including a self-hosted one.

<comment><USER17> Nope, that's a pretty common misconception though. You surely can own a server (I do) but you just can't own a domain. You're merely leasing one from a registrar.

You see, I strongly believe identity's an intrinsic property of a person, and if you need a provider for one there's something really wrong with the setup. I'm completely fine with asserting notaries, but not providers.

<comment><USER19> > you just can't own a domain. You're merely leasing one from a registrar.

That is not true, in a very strict juridical sense.

<comment><USER17> I don't know about juridical sense and I'm not sure there's one applicable worldwide.

This is true in practice, though. "Your" domain can be seized, blocked or transferred to a third party, its lease terms can be changed to make it unaffordable - and generally there's nothing you can do to prevent this before this happen, since anything of this can happen _without involving you at all_. That is, because you never possessed this domain, it was merely provided to you. You may just seek the legal remedy after the fact.

On the contrary, identity is something you __possess __. It can 't be revoked by anyone. Your passport (notary assertion) may be stolen, seized or revoked, but your friends won't stop recognizing you as a person. It's just that you won't be able to prove "I'm recognized as $legal_name by government" anymore.

You just won't wake up and see your password set is blocked so you can't login anywhere. Yeah, you can be forced to disclose your credentials, but it's a different story.

<comment><USER19> > I don't know about juridical sense and I'm not sure there's one applicable > worldwide.

The statement is even less true then. I would certainly guess that in every country that leasing is a term, it doesn't match your agreement with your registrar.

> "Your" domain can be seized, blocked or transferred to a third party,

That is trivially true with pretty much anything, in pretty much any country. The police will take back a stolen bicycle and return it to a third party, for example.

But it is a system governed by rules. And so is the domain name. It is yours to use, and will remain yours unless you break the rules. In most countries you can challenge any stolen or revoked domain in court.

<comment><USER17> > I would certainly guess that in every country that leasing is a term

I'm not talking about how it's called legally. I'm talking how it's actually working. You pay money, you're allowed to control the resource. That looks exactly like leasing to me. You can't buy a domain, so you can't own it. It's that simple

> That is trivially true with pretty much anything, in pretty much any > country.

Wrong. It's impossible to make you disclose your private key without your presence, ability and willingness to do so (although you can be forced to disclose, but that's completely another matter). And, obviously, your identity cannot be revoked or seized even if you'd wish for so.

> But it is a system governed by rules. And so is the domain name.

And the rules are made by others and others may change it at any time.

> In most countries you can challenge any stolen or revoked domain in court.

But why do I have to do so in a first place?

Seriously, can you explain me why do I need to entrust my identity to some registrar and ask government to handle that? Or why do I have to pay for a right to posses my identity? I've used to live without those, but now everyone's (Google, Facebook and - what's important and what's the basis of my complaint - Mozilla's continuing the trend) trying to tie me to this third- party-is-necessary approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's always seemed as though Google's and Mozilla's relationship would weaken over the years, though honestly I expected Bing rather than Yahoo to be the one to step up and fill Google's shoes. Also surprising is that apparently Mozilla was the one to initiate the switch.

As a Firefox user, all in all I'm rather pleased. I've just tried a few of my typical searches on Yahoo and though the expected links aren't the top results (seeing links for Rust-the-game instead of Rust-the-language...), they're on the first page. Let's see if that improves with time as I use it more. And I'm happy to support some more diversity in this space.

<comment><USER8> The new Yahoo search that's coming soon is meant to be much better. So I suggest you reserve your judgment until then :)

<comment><USER20> Is it still based on Bing?

<comment><USER21> Nope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Note that Mozilla is making Yahoo reinstate support for Do-Not-Track, which it had dropped earlier this year.

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150981/yahoo-drops-do-not- tr...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150981/yahoo-drops-do-not-track-policy- in-favor-of-personalized-experience.html)

<comment><USER23> Yahoo will only respect DNT for Firefox users. This is because DNT was essentially ruined after Microsoft turned DNT on by default in IE. Since it didn't represent an explicit user choice, it carried much less weight. It is an explicit choice in Firefox.

<comment><USER24> What if, and this is crazy I know, you needed an explicit action to track me instead of relying on users not knowing such a thing exists to avoid.

<comment><USER8> You're going to love Firefox's new Tracking Protection feature, which is currently under development: [http://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/11/12/quantifying-t...](http://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/11/12/quantifying- the-effects-of-firefoxs-tracking-protection/)

It allows you to block things coming from known tracking domains, giving better privacy _and_ faster page loads on many sites.

<comment><USER25> Why would anyone need that when there's ghostery and noscript? Furthermore, what benefits does that feature have over ghostery? Seems like ghostery blocks more than that feature does, which makes it seem like that's a waste of effort.

I suppose it might have some use if it's actually on by default, but they haven't stated that it will be, and if it isn't on by default, then anyone who would know to turn it out would be able to install ghostery anyway.

<comment><USER23> The benefit is that this is built in to the browser, meaning more users will use it. If you want the extra protection of Ghostery, then by all means, go for it. This is easier for other users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The correct link is [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting- choice-an...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-and- innovation-on-the-web/). Seems the link was changed.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're separate posts, I hadn't seen that one until you shared it. I think it's a better article than this one, and would be happy if a mod changed the link and title. :D

<comment><USER26> Oh, my mistake entirely.

<comment><AUTHOR> The original link is now redirecting to the better link anyway, so I've changed the title to match the new article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Looks like a smart move by Yahoo to be the default search for a major browser: google/chrome, bing/ie. This also means that Firefox will likely get some serious support from Yahoo in $$s to build back market share. Question is can they catch Google?

<comment><USER28> It'll be very interesting to see what this does to Bing's marketshare in six months or so, since Yahoo's search runs through Bing.

Although we might never find out, I'm very curious to find out the terms of the deal. Did Yahoo pay more? What about Microsoft? Were MS as motivated since they, essentially had two horses in the race (Bing and Yahoo) vs. Google? Lots of fun little details.

Edit: Typos

<comment><USER29> >It'll be very interesting to see what this does to Bing's marketshare in six months or so, since Yahoo's search runs through Bing.

Does Yahoo do their own tweaks? I just checked my site's ranking for a few terms in Bing vs. Yahoo. Bing gave much the same results as Google, whereas my site ranked significantly worse in Yahoo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Yahoo! is OK, but... Yandex and Baidu are not exactly recommended company for an organization that pretends to hold the Open Web's moral higher ground. They practice large-scale censorship, they are instruments of repressive regimes. How does that make any sense?

<comment><USER31> Note that Mozilla has had revenue arrangements with Yandex and Baidu previously. And Google doesn't exactly have clean hands in China itself.

<comment><USER32> > Note that Mozilla has had revenue arrangements with Yandex and Baidu > previously. And Google doesn't exactly have clean hands in China itself.

What did Google do in China? I remember them pulling out of China, declining to participate further in censorship there, and being attacked (hacked) by the Chinese government. What am I forgetting?

<comment><USER31> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google#China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google#China) has a short summary. You're correct that since 2010 they've refused to assist with government censorship; I had been thinking of what came before that. I think you have a good point that today, Google is the better actor in China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> andrewl-hn Note that is affects only U.S.-based users of Firefox. Good move for both parties, and I hope they can struck deals with regional search engines in other locations as well. Diversification is good for everybody.

<comment><USER33> I too think that diversity helps: google has a monopoly in search, and a push for yahoo in search queries may even help them make the search engine better, and maybe they will become a much needed google competitor.

<comment><USER34> Mozilla and Google have been "frenemies" for a while. Now that Firefox is no longer supporting Google's search monopoly, I wonder how Google's search traffic (and stock price) will look in six months. I think Mozilla's decision is good for increasing search competition.

<comment><USER14> It will be same. Unless Yahoo have a real winning product (which given their track record, I doubt) people will just switch to google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The real question is did Google stop paying? did Yahoo offer way more? Or did Mozilla want to break out from Google's shadow?

Edit: I mean to say did Google decide to end it, or did Mozilla, and why?

<comment><USER36> There was a strong option in place from Google, but Mozilla decided not to go with them as a global default in order to promote choice.

<comment><USER37> I don't think I follow this argument. Can you explain it further? It feels like Yahoo probably just offered more money.

<comment><USER31> Compared to the previous deal (where Google was the global default), the new deal also leaves Mozilla more free to pursue different partnerships worldwide. For example, Yandex is now the default Firefox search engine in Russia (as it was three years ago, before the global Google deal).

<comment><USER38> You mean Yandex in Russia. Baidu is China :)

<comment><USER31> Fixed, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Yikes I never realized Mozilla was so dependent on Google

      % of Revenue from Google Search Royalties:

      2013 Not released yet (usually 11 months! after end of year)
      2012 88% (90% of 304,539/311,005)
      2011 84% (85% of 161,904/163,474)
      2010 83% (84% of 121,109/123,206)
      2009 84% (86% of 101,537/104,305)
      2008 98% (91% of 83,600/77,737)
      2007 80% (88% of 68,238,803/75,125,640)
      2006 78% (85% of 61,561,496/66,840,850)
      2005 91% (95% of 50,516,268/52,906,602)

Sources:

2012 - [https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en- US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi...](https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en- US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Financials_2012.pdf)

2011 - [http://static.mozilla.com/moco/en- US/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundatio...](http://static.mozilla.com/moco/en- US/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundation%20and%20Subsidiaries%202011%20Audited%20Financial%20Statement.pdf)

2010 - [http://static.mozilla.com/moco/en- US/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundatio...](http://static.mozilla.com/moco/en- US/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundation%20and%20Subsidiaries%202010%20Audited%20Financial%20Statement.pdf)

2009 - [http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2009-audit...](http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2009-audited- financial-statement.pdf)

2008 - [http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2008-audit...](http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2008-audited- financial-statement.pdf)

2007 - [http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2007-audit...](http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2007-audited- financial-statement.pdf)

2006 - [http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2006-audit...](http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2006-audited- financial-statement.pdf)

2005 - [http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2005-audit...](http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2005-audited- financial-statement.pdf)

<comment><USER40> Where else did you imagine their money coming from?

<comment><USER39> It's a non-profit serving the public interest so I had assumed donations from individuals and foundations would be a bigger source of revenue. It looks like they have collected less than $2.2 million in the 8 years covered by the financials. This is nothing for a organization that spent $150 million last year.

I hope they got a generous deal from Yahoo - who has a ton of Alibaba cash burning a hole in their pocket - but the fundamentals of a shrinking desktop advertising market and share don't look good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Honestly I dont see how this is a "choice". In fact this sounds exactly opposite of the choice. In this particular case Firefox has made the choice on our behalf that we are better off using Yahoo's crappy search results instead of market leader Google.

If you are making a browser which is focused on giving freedom to users you are supposed to :

1\. Either let the users chose the search engine as an on-boarding step. 2\. Offer industry best/leader as default.

In this particular case Firefox has made a suboptimal choice on our behalf in the name of "choice".

How exactly is this different from :

1\. Comcast taking more money from Netflix to give them better bandwidth ?

Now my grandmother will end up seeing 0 organic search results above the fold and will have to learn to either change the search settings or simply use that icon with Red Green and Yellow around a blue dot (Chrome).

<comment><USER42> Mozilla are known for their doublespeak (best example to-date being [https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish...](https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher- transformation-with-users-at-the-center/)), but this is one of their more honest pieces - they _are_ giving users a choice of search engines; nonetheless, I can see why the title rubs you the wrong way, and I'd also prefer the original one which was "Yahoo and Mozilla form Strategic Partnership".

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Haven't they done something like this before? I remember Yahoo promoting a Yahoo-branded Firefox. It's default search and homepage were Yahoo, and every titlebar had "Firefox and Yahoo" at the end instead of just "Firefox."

<comment><USER12> Yeah, there was an experimental Firefox + Yahoo distro, for download on Yahoo's servers. There was also a Firefox + Bing distro, iirc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This seems like a positive step forward for Mozilla (away from Google) but there's no denying how much more awesome this announcement would have been if the new default search provider was DuckDuckGo :)

</comment><comment><USER45> I'd swear this happened already... I updated Firefox on an old Android tablet yesterday and the default search was already switched to Yahoo. Edit: ah, now that you mention it, it was a Beta version.

<comment><USER34> Firefox for Android has been testing Yahoo as the default search engine for a few months. Mozilla's search deal with Google did not cover mobile browsers. Firefox OS uses Bing.

<comment><USER46> Firefox OS does not use Bing. It used Bing a long time ago but all consumer devices are set to Google these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> "Google will also continue to power the Safe Browsing and Geolocation features of Firefox."

It's disappointing to hear that Firefox isn't yet using Mozilla's location services project [1].

Background: These are the services that will, say, take the SSID of your current WiFI access point and map that to a latitude/longitude. My understanding is that almost all commercial users subscribe to Skyhook Wireless's database[2], other than Google, which has built its own WiFi AP maps using its StreetView trucks.

I think Mozilla's "open" service, contributed by individual users, is a welcome alternative, since it means you no longer have to send your location to a large corporation on every look-up.

[1] [https://location.services.mozilla.com/](https://location.services.mozilla.com/)

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

<comment><USER48> It's almost certainly down to the fact the Mozilla project just doesn't have the coverage yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm getting 500 errors. Google cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oALd2oT...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oALd2oTUZ2AJ:https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/yahoo- and-mozilla-form-strategic-partnership/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER50> For me at least then moving away from google is a huge selling point. I think if they marketed themselves as a googless web experience it could be really good for them.

</comment><comment><USER51> What will be the default engine in countries not listed in post? It is not exactly clear, apart from saying that Google will be pre-installed (but not default?).

</comment><comment><USER52> Does this mean Yahoo outbid Google for being the new default search? How much is the deal worth? What about outside the US?

<comment><USER10> Outside the US it's Yandex and Baidu for their respective locales.

<comment><USER53> Um, there's more to the world outside the US than Russia and China...

<comment><USER10> That doesn't appear to have been announced. I wonder if it's because the EU was asleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> One question: wasn't Yahoo supposed to be a part of Bing at some point?

<comment><USER28> When Microsoft failed to purchase Yahoo to $47.5bn billion in 2008, they reached a 10-year deal in 2009 for Yahoo to use Bing's infrastructure and "backend" for search [1]. Yahoo provides their own UI/UX and Microsoft provides the actual data.

So, technically, Firefox will be showing very similar (if not identical) results to Bing.

[1]: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174763.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174763.stm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I can't get at the post, so maybe they answer this, but... in this thread, I'm seeing that it's Yahoo! in the U.S., Yandex in Russia, Baidu in China. That seems to leave... a lot of the globe unspoken for. What's the default search for those places?

<comment><USER53> I can get at the post and I also couldn't see anything about the default outside of US/Russia/China.

What makes this particularly interesting is the rest of the globe includes some of Firefox's strongest markets. My gut suggests this is obscure because Google will remain the default there, but that's just a guess.

EDIT: My gut seems to be wrong. The Yahoo post on this ( [http://yahoo.tumblr.com/1313](http://yahoo.tumblr.com/1313) ) mentions "the long-term framework we developed with Mozilla for future product integrations and expansion into international markets". I think that means Yahoo will end up being the default outside Russia and China, though the rollout may take some time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Related blog post: [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice- an...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-and- innovation-on-the-web/)

More details, Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China, etc.

</comment><comment><USER57> Anyone have any insights into this? From the outside it looks like Mozilla is parting ways with Google because of Chrome. Interesting they went with Yahoo and not Bing.

<comment><USER58> > Anyone have any insights into this? From the outside it looks like Mozilla > is parting ways with Google because of Chrome.

Looks more like Mozilla is parting ways with Google because of money -- whether Yahoo! offering more than Google has in the past or Google offering less.

(Though, looking at historical usage share measures, there's a good argument that if Google is offering less, its likely because Chrome eclipsing Firefox -- and by some measures IE -- has reduced the _value_ of default search placement in Firefox.)

<comment><USER10> _if Google is offering less, its likely because Chrome eclipsing Firefox -- and by some measures IE -- has reduced the value of default search placement in Firefox_

Yahoo is looking at the same marketshare numbers, so that actually can't be the reason.

<comment><USER58> > Yahoo is looking at the same marketshare numbers, so that actually can't be > the reason.

It certainly can be the reason that Google's offer isn't as strong -- the value of default search place in the third-place-with-continuing-declining- share browser is conceivably quite different to a party that owns what is, depending on which measure you look at, either the first- or second-place browser and a party that doesn't have any browser.

<comment><USER10> I don't see how that follows. Why would it? That x% of users represents X amount of users who click ads, which means y% of lost revenue. Why would the monetary value of that y% be so different to another search engine vendor?

Either it's scaling effects (owning a few percent makes you more known, which drives new users) or Yahoo is better at selling ads through those users. Note that in the former case, there's even more incentive for Google to block. And if the second is true, oh boy, they certainly have a problem at G...

<comment><USER59> It's not that interesting. Yahoo is under a lot of pressure to grow and just got a windfall of cash from the Alibaba IPO. This is an easy place for them to grow their revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> google has been apple's greatest competitor for a while. apple has > $160B in cash. mobile bing is comparable to mobile google. the strategic value of weakening google seems to far outweigh the financial value of defaulting to google search (assuming google is willing to outbid microsoft). so why hasn't apple defaulted to bing yet, and when will it?

</comment><comment><USER41> It is hard to figure out what a "strategic partnership" really means at the moment but ..

\- I hope this strategic partnership does not mean 0 organic search results above the fold. That is what Yahoo is doing at the moment. \- I hope FF does not come up with any Yahoo spyware/Toolbars etc.

Search is a weird thing on internet.

<comment><USER36> I don't believe that will be the case. I personally believe Yahoo can step up and deliver an improved search experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> It would be nice to have search engine keybindings too. Stupid example Ctrl+K Ctrl+<Initial> to pick an engine (hopefully not too many starts with the same letter).

Even better, hell revolutionary : multiple search at once. /s/m

<comment><USER12> I do * Ctrl + L to use DDG (my default search engine); * Ctrl + L "go" to use Google; * Ctrl + L "tlf" to search in my dictionary; * etc.

To set this up, lookup the documentation of "keywords" in Firefox.

<comment><USER61> Pardon my french, but Dude, where did you learn about that ? I'm not the finest follower but I care about this kind of features and scroll through changelogs and missed this entirely. This is beautiful.

damn, the abstracted bookmark url is at least from 2006 [http://www- archive.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/keywords.html](http://www- archive.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/keywords.html)

#dumbfounded

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'm really curious about the financial angle of this. I'm wondering how much was gained/lost based on the decision they made versus making a deal with Google for a similar system as in the past.

</comment><comment><USER63> Anyone interested in search engine alternatives should look into yacy! Its distributed and runs locally. You can share your node with others of you really want to help :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> FYI blog.mozilla.org is down, IT people are working on it.

</comment><comment><USER64> Is this why Firefox mobile started using Yahoo as the default and I can't change it? I tried changing it and it just kept using Yahoo.

<comment><USER65> I use mobile firefox as well and it switched to yahoo as well. i could change it back without any issue. i think they changed defaults - but if you had put your own engine yourself it didnt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Curious - do people here view the Yahoo! Search Experience to be better or worse than Google Search?

<comment><USER23> This is kind of a moot point. If you read the article carefully, you'll notice that Yahoo will be bringing "a new, re-imagined Yahoo search experience to Firefox users in the U.S"

<comment><USER34> > "a new, re-imagined Yahoo search experience to Firefox users in the U.S"

I wonder if or how Yahoo's "re-imagined" search experience will be affected for non-Firefox users.

UPDATE: Yahoo's press release says their "clean, modern, and immersive search experience that will launch first to Firefox's U.S. users in December and then to all Yahoo users in early 2015."

[http://yahoo.tumblr.com/1313](http://yahoo.tumblr.com/1313)

<comment><USER67> Interesting that Firefox users get it first. If they're clever (I think they are), that's a tactic to help Mozilla with user acquisition. (assuming the reimagined search experience is something that they can make people want to try)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> To be blunt, where's the innovation in Yahoo! Search? They're using Bing data and the result page images in the article look like a clone of Google's.

</comment><comment><USER69> Here's the option to suppress the change - [http://i.imgur.com/HwHqQU9.png](http://i.imgur.com/HwHqQU9.png)

<comment><USER70> It's worth noting that Google isn't disappearing from Firefox; you will still be able to manage your search engines as you have before.

<comment><USER24> But not in the "new tab" page I assume?

<comment><USER31> The "new tab" page in recent versions of Firefox uses whichever search engine you select in the search toolbar. So it's easy to switch it to Google, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, or others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Doesn't that mean that Google giving up on one of the biggest markets means they no longer need Mozilla and it can ditch it's support altogether? Will Yahoo be able to support Moz as Google did? Will this became precedence for other countries too (aside from exceptions like Russia's yandex)?

<comment><USER38> You're assuming Google gave up on Mozilla, and not the other way around. Your assumption is incorrect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> This makes me less likely to use Mozilla, but I was already a Chrome or Safari user (despite supporting the Mozilla mission).

Seems like a bad decision for Mozilla.

<comment><USER73> Why would this be a bad decision, or make you less likely to use Firefox? Mozilla _exists_ in large part due to the abuses that come with monopolistic control over the Internet. Google is dangerously close to that line.

Choosing a different partner seems like the most mission-aligned option for Mozilla.

<comment><USER72> Making the product worse, from the perspective users care about, for ideals.

FF, for instance, made their multi-browser "sync" horribly complicated for users, to preserve zero knowledge, which is the opposite of what 99% of users wanted.

Chrome made it simple (and THEN added a fairly decent ZK option buried in advanced).

What makes Mozilla/Firefox relevant is having enough users that it can't be ignored. Mozilla is already increasingly irrelevant due to mobile (Firefox OS is nice promise, but Safari and Chrome are dominating the space); marginalizing their desktop product doesn't help.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, Sync could be improved a lot. The good news is that we are working on it, and I have hopes that the next version will solve all issues (both performance and UX) without sacrificing privacy.

Now, if the question is whether adopting Yahoo & co will be bad for the user experience, Mozilla is betting on the fact that these smaller search providers can deliver not just a comparable experience, but also innovation from many sources.

<comment><USER23> "The next version" is already out. We moved away from the ZK sync a while ago, and use a much more user friendly model now.

<comment><USER12> I was thinking of CloudSync.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Teach Yourself Programming in 10 Years - <AUTHOR> http://norvig.com/21-days.html

<comment><USER2> FYI been posted already: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1060176></comment>


WebFWD: Innovation Accelerator from Mozilla - <AUTHOR> http://webfwd.org/

<comment><USER2> Stark contrast to startup accelerators/incubators: Everything must be triple-y open sourced. Profiting from the idea is fine but not required (or even heavily encouraged). No equity involved. Emphasis on technical mentorship from Mozilla crew.

Sounds like a program that accelerates your chance of getting recruited by Mozilla to keep working on your project. None of this is a bad thing, it just depends on your particular bend in life. If I was trying to make the next jQuery or Modernizer, for example, I would be bouncing off the walls trying to get into this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Only code written during the incubation is required to be open source, teams are free to fork it after that and continue onward (with traditional VC funding). However, Mozilla does encourage keeping the source open; certainly open source does not imply not profitable.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, it seems like it would be considered bad taste if you kept working on the project but no longer open sourced the results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think the big catch is that they want your project to be open sourced. Otherwise, it sounds great.

<comment><USER4> If that's a catch, then you're not in the right spot.

This is about fostering innovation, community, and openness on the web. Fundamentally, that's what Mozilla is about: Improving technology for everyone. And so this is a really fantastic opportunity for getting involved, and hopefully driving some cool new stuff for everyone to use.</comment></comment>


Edge tech news - my shit hot startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.edgene.ws/ Edge is a real work in progress at the moment. I learned that the best thing to do is just say fuck it and get an MVP online as soon as possible.
It doesn't matter to start with if it looks like shit or has usability issues, they can all be ironed out. First of all make sure the idea works and then expand on it.
So here it is, the first iteration of my new startup Edge Technology News.
I aggregate content from the webs hottest tech blogs and display it all together in one place.
Edge also aggregates content from kickstarter and github so you can see the latest tech developments around.
There is a lot of work left to do on the site. Clearly usability and design need some work. At the moment I'm concentrating on getting the news aggregation working perfectly before moving on to the development section of the site.
Just like with hacker news and reddit signup only requires an email and password. Then you can favourite the links you want to keep for later.
So check it out! Leave some comments with the feedback plugin at the side of the site. <comment><AUTHOR> Edge is a real work in progress at the moment. I learned that the best thing to do is just say fuck it and get an MVP online as soon as possible.

It doesn't matter to start with if it looks like shit or has usability issues, they can all be ironed out. First of all make sure the idea works and then expand on it.

So here it is, the first iteration of my new startup Edge Technology News.

I aggregate content from the webs hottest tech blogs and display it all together in one place.

Edge also aggregates content from kickstarter and github so you can see the latest tech developments around.

There is a lot of work left to do on the site. Clearly usability and design need some work. At the moment I'm concentrating on getting the news aggregation working perfectly before moving on to the development section of the site.</comment>


Magic Leap Says Ex-Engineer Copied Headset for China - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-18/secretive-magic-leap-says-ex-engineer-copied-headset-for-china <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure they'd have to have significant evidence that plans were stolen and shifted out of the country. California has some pretty strict laws on anything that prevents an employee from taking another job in the same field. Unless they paid out a $BOATLOAD$ of cash to keep the Engineer in question from taking another job, it may not hold up.

IANAL though, so who knows. In the end, if the Engineer in question is in China and never comes back to the US, I don't know that China would give him up. Especially given how public the trade war has started to become.

<comment><USER3> Magic Leap is based in Florida, so CA laws would not apply.

<comment><USER2> Was going from where the court case is being held...

> The case is Magic Leap Inc. v. Xu, 19-cv-03445, U.S. District Court, > Northern District of California (San Francisco).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not really versed in law but how will this lawsuit work? Could this guy who was accused just ignore it?

<comment><USER5> There is quite a bit that can be done. IANAL, but I can point to this episode of Planet Money that has a similar situation: [https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...](https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=622044460)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd had such big hopes for magic leap after Google invested in it and was secretly hoping that it would be something as revolutionary as the iPhone was, but now the cats out of the bag. I never understood how they convinced so many investors to put in so much money for something that is a little better than hololens (which too is arguable)</comment>


Patent troll Intellectual Ventures seeks "VP of Global Good" - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/08/07/patent-troll-intellectual-ventures-seeks-vp-of-global-good/

<comment><USER2> The other day when IV came up, I decided to check out their Careers page. My mission was threefold:

1) See what kind of people they like to hire and what they claim those people will be doing.

2) See what their mission statement and recruiting copy looked like.

3) See if there was a job that I could apply to, not because I have any interest at all in working there, but because I thought detailed notes of the process might make a good blog post.

1 was pretty generic -- generally just lawyers to do lawyer things, and a few engineers and project managers for some nebulous "projects.

3 didn't really lead me anywhere -- I couldn't find a position that I could apply to to even get offered an interview.

2 was the most interesting. Reading their website, it sounds like what they are doing is trying to make the world better by helping inventors get their inventions out and defending poor inventors who have great ideas but are being crushed by big companies.

I really really hoped that they aren't so delusional that they actually believe their own hype, but I fear that they are and they do.

<comment><USER3> Oh they are. They really are. If you haven't already, you should listen to "When patents attack" from This American Life ( [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/441/w...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack/) ). The guys over at IV are really doing their best to sound like they are genuinely protecting their the poor inventors from the bad guys.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why do you use DuckDuckGo? - <AUTHOR> DuckDuckGo usage seems to have roughly doubled over the past year. If you are one of the people who use it, when did you start, and why? Do you use it for all searches or just some of them? Are there other ways it's better than Google besides not tracking you? <comment><USER2> I decided to live an almost Google-free life. I do not use Gmail or Chrome anymore (Fastmail and Firefox), and I try its search only when the results on DDG are unsatisfactory. Unfortunately, the DDG search is not on par with Google's in my country (Brazil), but it is generally good enough and getting better.

</comment><comment><USER3> I started using it 1-2 years ago to decrease the amount of data Google has on me. I still return to Google for some things (unit conversions; searches where DDG's results are unhelpful [Google seems to be more effective when you're trying to buy things]; certain time-based searches DDG doesn't support). When you're looking for a particular meaning of something with multiple meanings or information about a food but not recipes, etc. sometimes one engine will be more effective than the other.

DDG is now my default engine on my phone (where I pretty much never return to Google) and at home, but I still use Google at work.

</comment><comment><USER4> I found it to be inferior to google but I use it for not tracking and not seeing news results for search words.</comment>