Ask HN: Profitable Web Startups - <AUTHOR>

I'm wondering if sites like Reddit, Digg, Dropbox, Foursquare (any "famous" Web startups) are profitable or not and how long did it take to reach profitability. Just shoot the ones you know about or ask if you want to know about a specific startup. <comment><USER2> You can get some decent information on that kind of thing on Crunchbase. For example, <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/dropbox>

You might want to differentiate between those that have plenty of cash from investment, and those that are profitably bootstrapped. For the latter, there is a series on 37signals' blog: <http://37signals.com/svn/></comment>


Brian Kernighan on the Typesetting of "The Go Programming Language" Book - <AUTHOR> https://rkrishnan.org/posts/2016-03-07-how-is-gopl-typeset.html <comment><USER2> Sadly the tool used is not maintained currently

GNU troff is looking for a maintainer. If you're interested, please take a look at this general information about GNU packages and being a GNU maintainer, and then email firstname.lastname@example.com with a bit about your background and particular interest in this package. Thanks.

Please note that maintaining this package requires assigning copyright to the FSF, and ensuring that any future contributors also execute papers, since that is what past authors and contributors have done.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a typesetting aficionado, I have tried most of the suggestions here (Prince, Troff, Lout, Docbook XML, Asciidoc, LaTeX, ConTeXt, .. except GUI typesetting tools.)

TeX appears bad from a distance, mostly from hearsay, until you have to write an actual technical book of certain expected high production standards and you realize TeX gives you the best shot at doing so.

There is a learning curve. It is an investment of your time, but it pays off.

Also, it is not like LaTeX et al are standing still in time. There are companies and teams working on improving the ecosystem everyday. I personally like ConTeXt unless I'm doing a predefined template exists (for conferences etc.,) where it makes sense to just use their LaTeX guidelines.

<comment><USER2> Sadly I have to work in Windows at times. Context seems to not be the most supported Windows platform. (The link to the Windows simplified package is 404) There is a New Installer [http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Windows_Installation_new](http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Windows_Installation_new) which does not contain a working binary. The only way to find anything for windows leads to a tar file.

I still think there is a better way to do typesetting in 2016 but all I have seen are a bunch of smaller projects without much support.

Personally I would love a markup language redefined with built in PDF-X support and a simple infrastructure. Context is Ruby, Tex, and ConText. I find LaTex to work well (for the most part) but it is not very flexible but I found the MikText Package Manager as a big step forward.

<comment><USER4> For LaTeX on Windows I enjoy [http://miktex.org/](http://miktex.org/).

<comment><USER2> Well ConTex is in addition to MikTex

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ironically this page typesets Prof. Kernighan's email in a
 tag so mobile users could enjoy scrolling left and right 100 times to read it.

<comment><USER6> Same here, to help future mobile readers:

Hi, Ramakrishnan --

Thanks for the kind words on the typography. The core formatting is just troff (groff, really) with the -ms macro package. We tried Latex briefly but neither Alan or I care for its output, and I personally find it impossible to control. Troff is the devil I know -- it's ugly and irregular in many ways but it will put characters where you want them.

The input was in XML, with a tag set of about 25 items for headings, paragraphs, index terms, program insertion, simple tables, and the like. A Go program converted this either into HTML for rapid viewing on the screen and potentially for an e-book version, or into troff for printing. Using XML was a mild nuisance when writing but the error checking was very helpful.

We wrote a variety of small Go programs and scripts to fix things up, including one that rewrites troff output to do vertical justification so all pages are the same height. There is also some fiddling with the generated postscript to put on printer's marks.

The fonts are Alan's choice, the result of a lot of work on his part to find them and get the right sizes and appearances. The handful of Asian characters were tough to get right; troff doesn't do wide Unicode characters properly, and there are a few places where we rewrote text to hide that fact.

The drawings are all Alan's work, using Google's drawing program. We toyed briefly with using pic but it wasn't really up to the job, and it would not have worked with HTML without a lot of work. We avoided mathematics beyond superscripts, and the tables are pretty limited; eqn and tbl would have been ok but again would not have dealt with HTML.

We should probably write a more organized description of what we did and make the tools available, though I think most readers are less interested in the process than you (and I) are. The other thing is that although one starts with grand ideas of being clean and orderly, by the end the process is somewhat of a mess, with a complicated makefile to keep it running.

Thanks again for writing.

Brian

<comment><USER7> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Recently I've been playing with Prince [1] and I've found it to be very powerful with excellent support for paged media. Given that HTML, CSS, Javascript, SVG is used to build the document, it's also familiar to most people already. There doesn't seem to be any open source competitor to Prince though.

[1]: [http://www.princexml.com/](http://www.princexml.com/)

<comment><USER9> It also means your documents are locked to a proprietary standard that isn't that widely used (compared to say MS Word) and as such, may not be totally recoverable 10,20 or 30 years from now. You want to keep that in mind when you choose which typesetting system to use - for the record, I keep a digital diary that I intend should still exist 50 years from now. I use only markdown, and the occasional entry that mention really private stuff is ascii encrypted with GPG.

<comment><USER10> >It also means your documents are locked to a proprietary standard that isn't that widely used (compared to say MS Word)

HTML and CSS?

<comment><USER9> I assume there is some additional special sauce that enables you to do things that are not possible in a browser, which means you still won't get the exact formatting, index, etc correct.

<comment><USER8> To extent of my knowledge, Prince only implements web standards set by w3. The reason browsers can't do what Prince does is because they lack support for those standards.

Wikipedia lists some of what Prince does that others don't:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_\(Cascading_Style_Sheets\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Life:

        The other thing is that although one starts with grand ideas of being clean and orderly, by the end the process is somewhat of a mess, with a complicated makefile to keep it running.

<comment><USER12> Yes! I loved that even Brian Kernighan can make a mess when trying to get something done :-) There is hope for us all!

<comment><USER6> Another way of looking at it is that, if even Kernighan can make a mess when trying to get something done, there's no hope for anyone.

…

Your take on it is more uplifting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's sad that a complete structure writing/publishing workflow is still so hard. XSL-FO is awkward and limited, and will probably remain so. TeX is not design-friendly. On the other side, InDesign is mostly visual only. Framemaker seems to be only serious tool but it's very expensive.

<comment><USER14> I was a devoted FrameMaker user until Adobe killed the Mac product. I used to have to do fairly complicated legal documents, and it was worth every penny. Plus, it was a very good word processor--you never had to leave the program to edit text. So I used it for everything I had to write.

A book like this could have been handled fairly easily in FrameMaker, but sadly Adobe has decided to position in it to be only for large enterprise shops running Windows. They're probably (rightfully) afraid it would cannabalize InDesign sales if they made it more accessible.

<comment><USER15> Hm. I never heard of FrameMaker before, but their 2015 release is available at $29.99/month, which is hardly "positioned only for large enterprises".

<comment><USER14> Yeah, just out of curiosity I looked at what the current deal was, and that might almost be reasonable if a) I were still going to be using it every day and b) there were still a Mac/Linux version. I wouldn't do a subscription deal it just for personal use, but that's a different issue. But 'positioning' is partly a marketing thing. Not having a Mac version clearly separates the product from Indesign for a lot of users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Heirloom troff supports OpenType and OpenType features. I still haven't found time to look into it, but it sounds awesome.

</comment><comment><USER17> Written in XML?! That's the first I've heard. Though also a fine proof that _what_ you're writing is much more important than _how_ you're writing it.

(Still, though -- XML?)

<comment><USER18> Why not XML? XML was made for documents, they were writing a document.

<comment><USER19> XML may have been made for documents but it is certainly one of the worst language families ever for actually _typing documents by hand._

<comment><USER18> What would you use instead that would allow you to define your own markup? LaTeX? \em{Hello} isn't much better than Hello.

<comment><USER20> Sure, a single small example looks almost (but not quite) as bad, but in larger texts LaTeX is basically the text-you're-writing, plus some control stuff, whereas XML interferes with _everything_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For anyone missing the lede here: the book is typeset in troff. This is astonishing because troff is 40+ years old and AFAIK hasn't gotten significant development in ~10 years. If it ain't broke don't fix it. [http://www.troff.org/history.html](http://www.troff.org/history.html)

<comment><USER22> I wrote to Kernighan a few years ago, when "D is for Digital" came out, to ask him, in effect, if troff had been made obsolete by TeX. At the time I had begun using it, and wondered if it was worth investing my time to learn.

He answered that he still preferred to use groff, having tried alternatives. Since then I have used groff exclusively for writing documentation and papers. It never runs out of gas, and always produces attractive output. It offers a complete suite -- math, tables, pictures, graphs -- all in one package. It's fast, adaptable, and easy to learn. It has the highest ratio of text to markup of any typesetting system, including TeX and Markdown. It is the single most overlooked and under appreciated project on the planet.

Whether it's had "significant" development in the past 10 years depends on what that means. Current groff produces PDF format directly, without a Postscript intermediary. The PDF macros support links and TOC generation. I think that all took place in the last few years.

<comment><USER23> What platform do you write on? Linux? Mac? I'm genuinely curious.

I have been looking for substitutes to Latex ever since writing my dissertation in Latex and having to debug/tweak an already horrendous Latex .sty file. I basically decided that I would either write technical documents in Tex or not at all after that. For me, Latex is great, until it isn't, and then it's Jinga-on-a-unicycle frustration.

<comment><USER3> The problem with LaTeX is that you are given an already unstable jinga (ie., style file etc.,).

You can always go back to the basics and use simple TeX for your documents if you think groff/troff is simpler.

However, I'd encourage you to give ConteXt [http://wiki.contextgarden.net/](http://wiki.contextgarden.net/) a try because it is the spiritual successor to TeX (one tool for all the typesetting) instead of having to depend on "third party" stuff like LaTeX, most of which very few of us (outside the original sty author) understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > We wrote a variety of small Go programs and scripts to fix things up, > including one that rewrites troff output to do vertical justification so all > pages are the same height.

That sounds weird, why would they want that, wouldn't that make the pages pretty irregular internally? Like varying line heights..?

<comment><USER25> Not if the paper is opaque and there are lots of snippets (you align the space of the floats, not the line height).

<comment><USER24> That makes sense, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> HTML with CSS with lend itself to generate PDFs. Are there open alternatives to Prince XML? Browsers don't support all page-layout related CSS2/3 attributes, like a page break.

<comment><USER27> wkhtmltopdf has some extensions for forcing a page break etc.

I used it for generating some documents from a groundup rebuild of bootstrap meant purely for printing (meant we could just use a lot of the web templates with minor changes) and it worked pretty well for our uses.

PrinceXML however is in a class of its own (as you'd expect for $3.8k per server)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Kickass iOS/Mobile Dev Company needed - <AUTHOR>

HN:
My company has a spin off application that we built an engineering prototype of that does indoor location (patent pending) and we have several very large tech companies in the bay interested in being the first client.
I have a spec and UI, mocks and story boards for the next client. We will be partnering with a dev consultancy to build the initial product and also build this out to a stand alone company.
There is a server, mobile client and 3rd party API integration required to build this.
Any HNers in the SFBay that have an iOS dev company similar to Pivital Labs that would be interested in quoting the work. (Must be a team - this is not a single developer type project) <comment><USER2> You could check out Lift (<http://takethelift.com>)</comment>


Ask HN: Advice for a US consultant wishing to live abroad for 1-2 years? - <AUTHOR>

I am in a situation where most of my work is done remotely. I lived in NYC for  a while and built  up a pretty good network of consulting work. I can live pretty much wherever I like.
However, most countries require an obscene amount of paperwork to stay there for an extended amount of time (as in 1-2 years).
Are there any countries where such a "working vacation" is possible? My family (spouse, one child) would be coming with me, so that complicates things somewhat (New Zealand, for example, will let you stay for a while but only if you're under 30 and have no family with you).
I prefer somewhere in Europe. My second preference is somewhere in South America.
Have any of you done this? If so, can you share your experience? Thanks! <comment><USER2> FRANCE

France now has something called the Competence and Talents visa. I believe you are allowed to be self-employed with this visa.

NETHERLANDS

1\. If you're an american citizen, there's some "Dutch American Friendship Treaty" that this link claims requires capital of as low as EUR4500 for a self-employment visa.

      http://www.expatlaw.nl/dutch_american_friendship_treaty.htm

2\. If you are not American (or American who doesn't want to go via route #1), you can try working for a Dutch company via a "Kennismigrant" visa; make sure to ask about the 30% rule. Visa processing time for this approach is quite fast (as fast as 2 weeks).

3\. Even if you are going to start your own business via the treaty in #1, ask your Dutch lawyer if you can set it up so you qualify for 30% rule.

</comment><comment><USER3> I lived in Japan for about a year. I just renewed the tourist visa every 3 months, or whatever the timeframe was. I did some work for Japanese companies too but it was all under the table. I have friends and family who do this sort of thing all the time.

I don't think living abroad is really all that hard, the people on hn.yc just have a bug up their butt when it comes to doing visas in the officially sanctioned manner. A bizarre attitude coming from a pack of break-the-rules startup mavericks, IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm doing the same thing, although with no family.

In August I'm heading down to Uruguay and getting permanent residency. The paperwork required hasn't been bad so far. I only needed to sign a few documents and get my birth certificate legalized. I've got a lawyer assisting me and helping handle my appointments (including a medical checkup) once I arrive. The law firm's website is www.fs.com.uy/sitio/en/

One thing to watch out for is that Uruguay may start taxing income (domestic and foreign) for residents who are there longer than 183 days of the year. That's why I'm also going to get residency in Paraguay (no income taxes and not much more difficult to acquire permanent residency).

</comment><comment><USER5> Germany.

The process is very easy. Just show up, show them your contract or if you do a lot of freelance work, register yourself as a freelancer. The only caveat is you will be required to start German lessons. The wife and kids should be fine also. There is a minimum salary you have to make as well.

Pro Tip: Go to a city where there is a lot of volume in foreign skilled labor such as Dusseldorf. (besides, imho, it's one of the EU's hidden gems)

<comment><USER5> actually, if you know java fairly well, I can introduce you to some EU contacts that could make the move possible for you next month :)

If you (or anyone who wants to work in Germany) wish to send over a resume, I'll happily forward it. (no promises though!)

email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Panama is pretty decent. It used to be easier, but you can still typically enter for up to 30 days, but then extend that to 90 days once you arrive. When you get close to the 90 days, you can pop over the border to costa rica or cartagena for a few days and then return for your next 30-90 days. Getting longer visas and residency is actually a lot easier than many other places, so that's something to consider researching too. good luck!

</comment><comment><USER7> I believe the penalty for overstaying your six month visa in the Dominican Republic is $28. I have a client who is doing precisely what you propose doing. He is happy. Two small kids, a wife, and decent internet access. He is making a good living. Watch out for your US tax filings though.

</comment><comment><USER8> Doing exactly this in the Philippines. Most people you will encounter speak English. You can extend your tourist visa for 16! months before having to do a visa run. When you do need to do a visa run you can catch a flight to Singapore for as low as $30 each way.</comment>


Why We Should Fear the Tech Oligarchs - <AUTHOR> http://www.newgeography.com/content/003875-entrepreneurs-turn-oligarchs

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know political leanings of this writer, but he makes lots of valid points for both the left and the right. I found this article to be very insightful and very important.</comment>


How I Met 75 Investors and Raised $650,000 - <AUTHOR> http://aihuiong.com/post/45228990160/how-i-met-75-investors-and-raised-650-000

<comment><USER3> 1) Wear your Company T-shirt

heh.

I've actually thought about this a lot. I always wear a company shirt, yeah, but I also tend to wear the same clothing all the time, too, on the theory that it makes me more recognizable, and that being recognized is good.

My theory (which may, of course, be wrong) is that in branding? being consistent and recognizable is far more important than looking good. But then, I'm trying to generate word of mouth for small customers, not trying to get investors, so the rules may be different... but it sounds like she has a similar philosophy.

<comment><USER4> Maybe it's just me, but I always thought wearing your company t-shirt makes you look obnoxious, specially if no one has heard of the company.

<comment><USER5> it is just you (kidding). How would they hear of you? Why not wear a t-shirt! T-shirts are a pretty low-cost investment in promotion. I can buy a black shirt with a single color imprint for $3.50 in small runs. A good pen with the company name on it would cost the same. (source: I have been buying giveaway crud for 20+ years)

Giving away a metric ton of shirts can have some other interesting effects. In the early days of my manufacturing company we gave away many shirts to people within the industry. We started getting calls about 'our people' attending events that we did not attend. It turns out that some of our customers really saw other customers at trade events, but there were so many people with our company shirt on that they impression was that we were attending in force - <USER2> werent at the trade event.

After giving away 20,000 shirts in a four year period, our customers started complaining about having too many shirts. So the technique does not last forever. It did always amaze me the delight a grown adult would show when they were given a $3 shirt. Almost always a better investment than a pen.

Best ideas: Have a decent looking shirt that people want to wear; change base shirt colors so people can have an option. Some people like blue, some like red. Give them what they want, it doesn't change the cost of the shirt.

<comment><USER3> well, for $3.50, you aren't getting a good T shirt, so it'd be better to compare it to the $0.25 pens.

Personally, I spend about 3x that, maybe 4x on small runs, and get nice T shirts. But then, it's rare I see people that I don't know/ that don't know they will be seeing me wearing the shirts. (and I've only given out a couple hundred) so it's possible that the 'blanket 'em with cheap shirts' strategy works better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please don't get me wrong, but it seems a lot of work in the wrong thing instead of developing and improving the product, even more wrong if you are a solo. Just my opinion.

<comment><USER7> Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but $650k seems like a huge return on 3 months of one person's work, which they can then pour back into the product, hopefully improving it far more than they could've in 3 months without $650k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the kind of thing independent filmmakers would do to raise funds. There was no Internet or VC funds in those days to help. They'd pitch professionals who needed to invest: doctors, lawyers, accountants, dentists, and the like. Do people still go after them to raise funds for tech startups too?

<comment><USER9> Spending so much time on sites like HN and TechCrunch, it's easy to forget that there are over half a million businesses started in the U.S. per year, with only a tiny smattering of those being VC funded tech startups.

Determined entrepreneurs get money however they can, but mostly pay out of their own pocket or borrow from local banks or credit unions. VC funded businesses are few and far between (except in SF), but seem to get a lion's share of the attention.

Source: <http://web.sba.gov/faqs/faqindex.cfm>

<comment><USER10> Yea, if you venture outside the HN/500startups tech ecosystem, you notice that there are many, many companies working on the same problems that YC companies are attempting to solve. They just don't get any recognition on HN, which is a little dangerous for HNers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "One thing Singaporeans love to talk about is FOOD and I made sure our conversation was filled with that."

Isn't your company called LOVE WITH FOOD? Aren't you supposed to talk about food regardless?

<comment><USER12> In the context of that quote, she was referring to how that particular investor was from Singapore. So they might have talked about their favorite foods from their home as an ice-breaker?

<comment><USER11> Maybe but it wasn't clear from the post. I think a good take away is that entrepreneurs have to relate to other people when they pitch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Meeting 75 investors is a great indication of much entrepreneurs (here Aihui) believe in what they are doing and ready to go to what extent. Rejections can get on to you and worst is when they start making you doubt the very purpose of what you are doing. It becomes difficult to fuel yourself with passion all the time.

Some of the meetings even get you great feedback (along with VC boilerplates). But alls well that ends well.

Congrats to Aihui.

<comment><USER10> It takes a special kind of person, or a fanatical belief in yourself or the product/company, to handle rejection after rejection after rejection. Supreme confidence in the company and the ability to channel that confidence to investors can be as valuable as a great engineer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Being a single founder how did the business travel during those 3 months of what must have been near fulltime fundraising?

<comment><USER15> I'd guess that she built some small prototypes first on a shoestring budget, then used that to raise the funds over 3 months. Now that she has $650K, she can probably hire a few extra people and work on it full time for a couple years.

Fairly standard way to go. Putting the breaks on to acquire funding to continue is common.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's the terms of that $650k that matter...

</comment><comment><USER17> Thanks for all the comments and encouragement. Everyone has a different experience and would love to hear other's fundraising experience.

I bootstrapped Love With Food 6 months before being accepted into 500 Startups. I'm a Rails developer and was able to build and market the product all by myself. At 500 Startups, I hired 2 more people to join the team. We've been very scrappy even after raising $650,000. Now we are a team of 8. The funding has definitely helped our business scale to a different level.

</comment><comment><USER18> Congrats!

Concern: is 650k after 75 investors inefficient?

<comment><USER19> It's more efficient than 75 investors and $0.

Though seriously, there are no overnight successes and no-one is just going to give you $1m regardless of what we read on HN.

I don't have my notebook at hand to cite the exact number, but Matthew Prince of Cloudflare pitched to something like 60 or 70 investors. This was with Project Honeypot in the bag, and a stack of existing users via that, and the basis for what became Cloudflare tested.

My point is: Even with the idea and execution you're not just going to get the investment.

I think the real thing that Aihui achieved in a short time was to demonstrate determination, perseverance... and in the words of Mark Suster ( [http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/11/15/invest-in- line...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/11/15/invest-in-lines-not- dots/) ) showed that her company (led by her) is a line going up and to the right, rather than a dot. It was most likely the weekly check-ins and constant hard grind at the communication that helped her get the investment.

<comment><USER20> But is it more efficient than 0 investors and $0? It seems like if most people doing startups are having 70 investor meetings they could be better spending that time working on the product right? I think cloudflare is kind of an outlying example here.

<comment><USER21> If you don't have a business at all, its efficiency is somewhat irrelevant. Not all startups can bootstrap their way up from nothing; some do require initial capital.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That is some serious tenacity - love it!

</comment><comment><USER23> Checked out her site, anyone else feel like she's outed the kool-aid man's family on the icon pack?

</comment><comment><USER24> Congrats, Aihui!

</comment><comment><USER25> A) What did you give up for $650K?

B) $650K seems such a low amount of money, it's barely enough to hire 2-3 senior level developers for a year, and rent an office space. I have no idea how you guys launch startups with such small amounts of money.

<comment><USER26> Are you serious?

<comment><USER27> That's not far from the truth for locations like SF bay area.</comment></comment></comment>


Best way to find a Software Developer for a startup - <AUTHOR>

Brief Background: We are a brand-new startup and currently at an early stage of development. We are already working with several clients on an innovative solution that fits their needs. We are looking to hire a lead software developer who is passionate about technology and entrepreneurship. We'll give an equity stake in the company as compensation.<p>What do you guys think are some effective ways to find a great developer? What are the most important qualities of a good software developer? <comment><USER2> I'd cut the hassle. Find someone who's working on (or leading) open source projects that are complimentary to your overall technology needs and approach them directly.

<comment><USER3> This is the best way. They'll be interested in something that monetizes their interest, and you can evaluate both their code and approach to the problem before hiring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It takes one to know one. I'd find somebody technical to do your hiring for you.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate the advice guys. Thanks.</comment>


Oink.cd founder Alan Ellis cleared of fraud charges - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/tees/8461879.stm <comment><USER2> Alan Ellis deserved to make money for what he did - he built a successful, efficient, popular service for people to find music. Instead of suing him, the record companies should have bought oink.cd of him and added some kind of monthly subscription model and/or a pay-to-buy-ratio system.

Importantly... does this mean that other people can now run free torrent sites like Oink with no legal risk? I'm not sure how British law works, in terms of setting precedents and the like...

<comment><USER3> I don't understand this logic. He may have built a successful, efficient and popular service. But he still did so on the basis of other people's work and the entire basis of the site was to take away the creator's control over their own work. Sure his site itself contained nothing illegal and all that. But the fact remains that the people who create a piece of intellectual property must retain the rights to do with it as they please. They shouldn't have to be taken at the whims of the community just because a lot of people happen to like/want it. If Salinger had decided he never wanted any of his books published and no one should ever read them, that's his choice, not ours. If we can't respect the people that create and/or own the intellectual property, then we are part of a disgusting society.

<comment><USER2> _If Salinger had decided he never wanted any of his books published and no one should ever read them, that's his choice, not ours._

Absolutely. Until Salinger hits the metaphorical "publish" button, his books belong to him and no one else. But the minute he decides to share them with the world he enters into the realm of copyright law, which is (at least originally) designed to create a good enough bargain to incentivise him to publish, but which ultimately results in all these works entering the public domain.

There is no such thing as intellectual _property_ \- merely intellectual licensing agreements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Users were required to make a donation to be able to invite friends to join the site."

I'm pretty sure this wasn't the case. Someone who is not me invited several people and didn't ever donate.

Glad to hear he's been cleared, though.

<comment><USER5> If the donation thing is incorrect or exaggerated, how did he make the $300,000 he supposedly had (<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tees/8446247.stm>) when the police raided his home? Seems impressive if it's just ad revenue.

<comment><USER6> Donations weren't required. He did accept donations, however.

That $300,000 thing hasn't really been substantiated AFAICT. It's directly from the mouth of the prosecutor. As someone who helps run a website where we ask users for money (but don't require it), $300,000 seems insane.

<comment><USER7> and the donations did buy additional access to features on the site, yes?

<comment><USER6> I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure a good ratio got you all the same stuff a donation would have. So a donation might have made up for a low ratio in some ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's the better, less mainstream-media article from torrentfreak: [http://torrentfreak.com/oink-admin-found-not-guilty-walks- fr...](http://torrentfreak.com/oink-admin-found-not-guilty-walks-free-100115/)

<comment><USER9> I'd rather read what TorrentFreak sources (but doesn't link to directly) instead:

[http://ts1.gazettelive.co.uk/local-news/middlesbrough-man- de...](http://ts1.gazettelive.co.uk/local-news/middlesbrough-man-denies- website-plot-to-defraud-music-industry.html)

[http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside- news/2010/01/14/i...](http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside- news/2010/01/14/it-expert-denies-profiting-from-oink-website-84229-25600018/)

And presumably the BBC article, since its the earliest report of the decision on the case that I can find.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So presumably he could re-open the site, and not face further prosecution, provided the service didn't change?

<comment><USER11> wouldn't each new torrent uploaded be a separate case of copyright infringement that could be tried?

<comment><USER12> The torrents themselves are not copyright. They contain no copyrighted data. He didn't actually share the copyrighted data, just provided a facility for others to share the torrents.

<comment><USER11> i'm aware of that, but that doesn't mean someone won't still try to drag him to court for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> :) This may be the most positive news in the history of file sharing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yeah, but who compensates two years of downtime?

</comment><comment><USER15> .. so can oink re-open now? : D

I sincerely hope so. It was the best torrent site I have ever had the pleasure of using.

<comment><USER16> There has been a few that have stepped into its place and provided the same high-level of quality and selection (for ex. what.cd). But they are difficult to get in to.

For those are unfamiliar with these sites, they have pretty much every album imaginable. Including tiny indie bands and vinyl rips from the 50s. They have very strict sharing requirements (you have to contribute not just leech).

<comment><USER17> > _But they are difficult to get in to._

Not really. I joined one just to see what it was like. All I had to do was show up in an IRC channel and go through some 'testing process.' Apparently if I was referred by someone I could have forgone that process. My 'membership' recently lapsed because I never used it, but it wasn't hard to get in.

They did have some onerous rules though. Like getting kicked out if someone you referred breaks a rule. I think you even got kicked out if someone referred by a person that you referred got kicked out.

> _They have very strict sharing requirements (you have to contribute not just > leech)._

The problem being that there are _many_ torrents with _only seeders_ connected to them. So it would be hard to keep your 'quota' without a concerted effort. It's not just 'leave your torrent client open when the downloading finishes.'

<comment><USER18> Seems like the way to keep sharing ratios up on sites like these is to pay for seedbox servers to keep a fast upload line going.

<comment><USER19> Actually, the best strategy on Oink was to troll the latest uploads, download them, and then make sure to seed for a week or two. The trick was guessing which ones were likely to be popular, but there were some obvious freebies and as long as you didn't download really big torrents you never took too much of a hit.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Biasing slider scales using histogram equalization - <AUTHOR> http://www.howdoi.me/blog/slider-scaling.html <comment><USER2> For the example given I am not primarily interested in controlling how many results I get: when filtering by price I want to filter by the precise amount money I am willing to spend.

Putting in weird non-linear mappings between slider position and slider value is ok if the slider value is in some meaningless units, but if I am to filter by something that has meaning to me, I usually want to control it predictably...</comment>


Wristwatch in only HTML/CSS - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/TheSisb/pen/eAHyJ

<comment><USER2> I love it how the HTML is 30 lines and the CSS is like 300 or so. It's an awesome watch.

Keyframes are a beautiful thing in CSS but boy oh boy I wish jQuery implemented them to reduce CSS size. It's becomming insane to have so many keyframes with 0%, 40%, 80%, 100% and so on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a zero image version: <http://codepen.io/anon/pen/rEfKk>

Using a CSS texture from <http://lea.verou.me/css3patterns/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm going to take this as a pull request and adjust my pen. How would you like to be credited? (name/link/anything else)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the cool project. I'm also brianshumate on Github & a link there is cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Replace line 58 with a base64 encoding of the image to make it pure HTML/CSS!

<comment><AUTHOR> I removed the image completely now courtesy of another commenter. Anyhow, wouldn't base64 be cheating? ;)

<comment><USER5> well, technically you're using javascript, so it's already cheating. Obviously, you have to use it, but it does break the claim of using only html/css

<comment><AUTHOR> The javascript was added much later by popular demand to make the time accurate. Remove it and it remains functional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very cool, but I am still amazed by how CSS animations are killing modern desktop CPU. I guess this is because my Chrome browser is not using GPU acceleration for CSS?

If I duplicate 10 times the watch, my CPU hits 100%.

<comment><USER7> It eats one of my cores completely..

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A little disappointed to see Javascript being used even if it's only for getting a users local time. Seems like a trivial thing to me when just having a CSS wristwatch is awesome enough without having to make it accurate. Besides that, this is awesome. Funny to see that a lot of the CSS is in-fact browser prefixed CSS and that if all browsers supported the same properties it would be much smaller.

Aside: the CSS animations absolutely decimate my core i7 PC and almost makes Chrome become unresponsive. The CPU usage is through the roof, can't wait until CSS animations are stable and more widely supported.

<comment><USER9> I don't know much about CPU's and which ones are better than others. They all seem fast enough to run a text editor and a browser for my needs.

That being said — I seem to have no issues viewing a fully functional watch on an iPhone 4S. The areas I actually have trouble with seem to be the usual suspects — the code display doesn't translate to touch at all so I can't scroll vertically to see how this was done beyond what is shown as a "page" worth of code.

Call me impressed in general with the work that was done. Call me doubly impressed that it works on a computer that fits in my pocket and had a primary purpose at one time of making telephone calls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very cool! Though the title isn't quite right - there definitely are images in the source, so it's not actually 'only HTML/CSS'

<comment><AUTHOR> There's only one image for the band's texture. The rest is CSS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Image now removed courtesy of another commenter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The exposed CSS source code seems to be missing the following:

#glass #center #smallHand, #glass #center #midHand, #glass #center #bigHand { -webkit-transform-origin: 0% 50%; }

It's working in your demo, so I'm guessing you simply forgot to copy it over to the exposed CSS source code? Awesome work, by the way! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I misunderstood but isn't it right there on line 222?

<comment><USER11> For line 222, I see: transform-origin: 0% 50%;

I needed: -webkit-transform-origin: 0% 50%;

It didn't work in my chrome browser without the "-webkit-" one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yea, CSS animations are insanely CPU heavy. CodePen has to kill them after 5 seconds to keep the site responsive.

<comment><USER13> Main page of codepen.io uses JS code to kill animations after 3-5 secs. When you click on single codepens it opens without JS animation killing restrictions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Awesome wristwatch a while ago I created a WordClock. The Clock is pure CSS. The logic is made in JS. The idea comes from a German company called Biegert & Funk. <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4344107> Hope you like it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Shouldn't lines 217-221 have 12*3600 = 43200s instead of 86400? Because now it's a 24 hours watch. Fixed: <http://codepen.io/anon/full/nieIh>

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops! Made the change. :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is it generally accepted that "only HTML/CSS" really means "HTML/CSS/JS"?

To me the title is inaccurate but no one else seems to have mentioned it so...

<comment><USER17> the comment in the JS states:

        The following JS is only added to start the time at your local time.

<comment><USER16> Welp, that is me looking like an idiot, I totally missed that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cool thing!

</comment><comment> martin-adams ummm, anyone else notice the time is wrong ... :)

<comment><USER19> Depends when you view it

<comment><USER15> "Even a broken clock is right twice a day"

<comment><USER20> depends on the broken behavior it exhibits.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building NoodleApp, an App.net web client - <AUTHOR> http://ednapiranha.com/2012/noodleapp/

<comment><USER2> Soon there will be more App.net users than clients. I'm not judging, I still have to decide if I consider this good or bad, it's just interesting.</comment>


How to generate Yoda-voice by your text in 5 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://broutonlab.com/blog/generate-Yoda-voice-by-your-text-in-5-minutes <comment><USER2> That sample sounds less like Yoda than it would if I taught my chihuahua to speak.

Don't mean to sound harsh, but doesn't it seem like given the title and content of the link, the audio should somewhat resemble Yoda's voice? If you played this to me blind, I probably wouldn't guess it was supposed to be Yoda in my first 3 tries...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Article and colab demo on voice generation by source audio where in the end we will have a complete understanding of the topic and will be made up Yoda or even your own voice by a given text</comment>


Over 400 Counties at Risk Following Mass Exodus of Mega-Insurers from Obamacare - <AUTHOR> http://blog.enigma.io/over-400-counties-at-risk-following-mass-exodus-of-mega-insurers-from-obamacare-visualizing-the-data/ <comment><USER2> Well, I guess the Federal Government will just have to step in and underwrite the health insurance for millions of people who purchased new policies last year. Medicare should be able to handle the extra load, after some additional hiring and a tax increase to cover the costs. After the election, President Clinton will be happy to see her dream of a single payer system finally come to fruition.</comment>


Ask HN: I'm thinking about starting an activist group. Do I have a worthy cause? - <AUTHOR> This NYtimes article summarizes the issue succinctly:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/starbucks-workers-scheduling-hours.html
I grew up upper-middle class. The book "Working Poor" really opened up my mind to what life is like for low income workers.
When I first heard about the $15/hour minimum wage movement, I initially rejected it. I studied Economics in college and I'm concerned what the effects would be to job growth. I'm still undecided.
What I think is a more pressing issue is "on call scheduling". Technology should improve the quality of living for humanity. Instead, software is wrecking havoc on the home lives of the lowest paid employees.
I'm thinking about starting an activist group. Do you think people would get behind it if I executed properly? <comment><USER2> No. My suggestion would be to find one of the groups already working in this field, get involved with them, and learn the ropes first, before starting your own group.

You have no activism experience. You likely have no organization experience in activism. It reads like your economics training focused on the needs of capital, and not of labor. What do you know of labor history in the US? What are the other groups working on this topc? Eg, I see the AFL-CIO is against on-call scheduling, and [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-on-call- scheduling-201...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-on-call- scheduling-20150413-story.html) from 2016 says:

> A coalition of advocates launched a national campaign Tuesday to press large > retailers, restaurant chains and other companies to end on-call and last- > minute scheduling, which allows companies to assign shifts to workers with > only a few hours' notice.

How aligned are you with their positions, what are your differences, and why should your group get funding instead of theirs?

That NYT article from 3 years ago says "Legislators and activists are now promoting proposals and laws to mitigate the scheduling problems", and concerns California. Have those laws gone into place? Do you think the right solution is to improve the laws? Or better enforcement of the laws already present?

Is on call scheduling your only focus? Or primary focus? How does it tie in with wage theft, calls to raise the minimum wage, and other labor issues?

Suppose someone says that on-call scheduling promotes job growth. What principles do you use to judge the balance between the desires of those who control capital and those who labor, and decide we should do something which might lead to less job growth but a better home life?

</comment><comment><USER3> Seattle recently passed a law about scheduling designed to address some of these issues - [http://www.seattle.gov/council/issues/secure- scheduling](http://www.seattle.gov/council/issues/secure-scheduling) You could start by getting in touch with the groups that campaigned for it. I think your chances of starting an activist group are pretty poor if your exposure to this issue is entirely second hand and you would do better to find existing groups to support and help organize, even if they are not primarily focused on this issue.</comment>


Host-key rotation in OpenSSH 6.8 - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/637156/

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure I understand why this feature was added. Providing new keys - <USER2> revoking them - already works using SSH's CA support: [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to- crea...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-an- ssh-ca-to-validate-hosts-and-clients-with-ubuntu)

A client can verify new Host keys, and a server can verify new user keys, all by checking if it's signed or revoked by the CA. This prevents a client from receiving a host key generated by an attacker on a compromised host, and it allows a server to authenticate clients even if they've never received the client user's key.

If this functionality is used properly, it should be _more_ secure than the new feature mentioned above. The only advantage the new feature has is it'll work with clients that support the new feature without having to modify their configuration (but it still doesn't provide all the features or security the CA provides).

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the main problem is that there are a lot of SSH servers already deployed without using the CA approach and migrating HostKeys is a pain without causing horrible warnings to the clients.

Take GitHub for example. If this feature was mainstream they would be able to phase out their DSA key without people noticing.</comment></comment>


Media Temple goes down, provides a nice case study for downtime transparency - <AUTHOR> http://www.transparentuptime.com/2009/02/media-temple-downtime-twitter.html

<comment><USER2> It wasn't transparent while it was happening. They host their status blog themselves, so it was down too.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wouldn't be so quick to point out mediatemple alone, nor that a separately- hosted status site would have necessarily...been available. AS 47868 was causing issues for all sorts of providers worldwide.

<comment><AUTHOR> An offsite status site would certainly not guarantee that it won't go down at the same time, however it would dramatically improve the chances that one is always up</comment></comment>


Don't Work on Someone Else's Dream - <AUTHOR> http://blackhole0173.blogspot.com/2011/09/importance-of-importance.html

<comment><USER2> "I go to college (but rarely attend classes), and in general am not a little boy anymore. "

... That is not what I'd call 'mature'. But at least it matches the rest of the post.

When you're a little older, you'll look back and think, "I could have been getting paid to learn these things. I would have had co-workers to look up to and learn from. Everything would have been so much easier if I'd been working for others instead of blindly chasing my dreams. If I had worked for others, I could accomplish my dream today, instead of struggling so much."

You know how I know this? Because it happened to me. I think about all the things I could have learned if I had started my professional programming career 10 years earlier, instead of going off and doing whatever I wanted to. I say this because I've learned more about programming in the past 5 years than entire rest of my life combined. And enjoined every bit of it. Even more so than fiddling with my own projects.

And now I'm in a position to actually pursue my own projects, confident that most of the newbie mistakes are behind me and I can concentrate on getting things done.

So no, you aren't smarter than your elders. You just think you are, like every other kid out there.

<comment><USER3> But are you _actually_ pursuing your own projects now?

<comment><USER2> In my free time, I actually am, yes. And if one of them takes off, I'll be doing it all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am 18. All I want is to become web developer. And to make a living from it. My parents want to me on college next year. I had a job almost all the time since I was 15. Working in PC service, or working with flyers on the street. I get almost no money, but its ok.

My parents are always saying " Look, you earned 0 from your programming carrier, and from PC service you earned at least something. Better start practicing math for your college".

I started learning ruby now, since my future with PHP is not very bright as you can see. I hope I will be able to make a app that will give me at least some cash so I can start believing in my web development carrier.

<comment><USER5> First of all, it's spelled career not carrier.

PHP vs Ruby is not going to make a big difference. What matters is how you good you are.

Listen to your parents and go to college. If you love working with computers so much, a Computer Science degree will be fun. There's a lot more stuff to learn in CS than merely becoming an expert RubyonRails programmer. Do your web development stuff while you're studying and if you do become the next Zuckerberg, drop out then!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Googled around trying to figure out what " a project most people dismiss as a childish fantasy since I was 18. " might be. context please ?</comment>


Heathrow fire on Boeing Dreamliner 'started in battery component' - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/18/heathrow-fire-boeing-dreamliner-battery

<comment><AUTHOR> The AAIB (the UK equivalent of the NTSB) special bulletin referred to in the article is here[1] with a few more technical details.

Looks like it's just unlucky that this happened with a 787, given that the ELT is a standalone component apparently fitted to around 6000 planes of various types.

[1] [http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/S5-2013%20ET-...](http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/S5-2013%20ET- AOP.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER2> _" the component, an emergency locator transmitter powered by lithium- manganese dioxide batteries"_

So not the same batteries as the last time apparently. I wonder if they made the same "fireproof box enclosure" change to these batteries as they did the others. If these batteries were similarly isolated and still caused a fire that bad, that doesn't say very good things about the continued state of battery safety on those planes.

<comment><USER3> This transmitter whose battery is implicated is a stock, off-the-shelf component used in multiple models of aircraft. It is not unique to the 787, was not developed for the 787, and it seems to be an unfortunate coincidence that the failure of one of those units occurred in a 787, when allegedly something like 6000 of these transmitter units have been in service for nearly a decade. Honeywell (which makes the transmitter) may be in for trouble, but apparently Boeing's stock price has rebounded a bit since people in the market actually, you know, read the available information and realized this isn't a "Boeing 787 battery problem".

Of course, I'm sure that any moment Elon Musk (PBUH) will be along to explain why the entire aviation industry was wrong to use these transmitters.

<comment><USER4> _Of course, I 'm sure that any moment Elon Musk (PBUH) will be along to explain why the entire aviation industry was wrong to use these transmitters._

Was he wrong in his assessment of the original 787 battery overheating issue?

You realize that they still have _no earthly idea_ what happened to the batteries involved in the earlier incidents, correct? The "fix," such as it is, simply involves the implementation of more robust containment measures.

<comment><USER3> _Was he wrong in his assessment of the original 787 battery overheating issue?_

Everything Elon (PBUH) declares is truth beyond question. Allow me to state that up-front so as to appease his followers.

 _You realize that they still have no earthly idea what happened to the batteries involved in the earlier incidents, correct?_

And you realize you're replying to a comment which wasn't about the earlier incidents except insofar as it pointed out that this incident seems to be unrelated and really appears to just be an off-the-shelf component failing in a way that it could have failed on any of the other aircraft types it's deployed in?

My reference to Elon Musk (PBUH) was mostly because I'm already seeing in this thread the same sort of frankly religious worship of Elon (PBUH) we saw during the incidents which were unique to the 787, and I make a point of hammering on that whenever possible, since although Elon (PBUH) is a smart guy who does cool stuff, he's not quite at the divine-omniscience level seemingly attributed to him any time the 787 gets mentioned on HN.

<comment><USER5> What's PBUH?

<comment><USER6> "Peace Be Upon Him" \-- usually used for the Prophet Mohammed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A separate 787 out of Boston has been turned around, possible fuel pump issue -

[http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2013/07/18/ja...](http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2013/07/18/japan- airlines-dreamliner-returning-boston/YfoA2lZgM1q78MNLhNRs3N/story.html)

When it rains it pours.

<comment><USER8> That kind of diversion is very common for a new type entering service. The crew doesn't have a lot of time in the type, they know MX doesn't have a ton of time working on the type, and so their default when anything seems amiss is to get the plane on the ground and have it looked at.

The diversion rate right now for the 787 is enormous, but nearly all the diversions are "abundance of caution" calls by the crew.

<comment><USER7> gonna cost a lot of money and inconvenience a lot of passengers. if a non- emergency, wouldn't they loop in dispatch and maybe a Boeing engineer before turning it around? makes you think, better to wait til they work out kinks before taking one.

<comment><USER9> Can't work out all the bugs without running the thing you built.

<comment><USER7> yeah, I hear you. it's just, I don't know that they turn the plane around just because the 'check engine' light came on... and whether it's an abundance of caution or not, for myself, sounds like a situation I'd rather avoid as a passenger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Years late and regularly bursts into flames. It sounds like Boeing ran the 787 program like it was a software project.

<comment><USER11> To be fair to Boeing, this Honeywell ELT has nothing to do with them and is on thousands of planes. It seems it may just have been an unlucky coincidence that the first fire was on a 787.

<comment><USER12> On top of that, there are probably several hundred consumer devices with Lithium ion batteries on board the average flight, none of which are avionics grade, and more than a few probably stowed out of sight in the overhead lockers. It's surprising there haven't been more fires; or it's evidence that these spontaneous battery fires really are quite rare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My only fear with this recurring disaster is that their sheer incompetence will ruin the public perception of new battery technology. That could spell doom for companies like Tesla, wh o have been designing for safety first, instead of outsourcing critical components to the lowest bidder.

<comment><USER14> I think Musk got out ahead of this one actually.

He called them out after the first incident happend: [http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate- intelligence/2013/02/26/elon-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate- intelligence/2013/02/26/elon-musks-solution-to-boeings-battery-problem/)

Boeing probably should have licensed Tesla tech after the first incident.

<comment><USER15> _As PR moves go_ "calling them out" was a good one.

But even if Boeing had achieved the extremely unlikelihood of being able to get Tesla car batteries modified, fitted to their aircraft and approved by the relevant licensing bodies, it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference to the totally unrelated Honeywell bit of kit suspected of catching fire in the Ethiopian 787

<comment><USER16> I don't think Elon was suggesting Tesla batteries so much as the batteries similar to the ones used on the Falcon 9.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cobra Effect - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect <comment><USER2> Can someone explain to me why this is in my feed and how I can stop it. Bloody bots.</comment>


Men born between 1893 and 1897 reminded to register for the draft - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/07/10/the-selective-service-just-reminded-14000-men-born-between-1893-and-1897-to-register-for-the-draft/

<comment><USER2> I registered for the selective service and all of that, and it never really crossed my mind. 12 years later, the act seems alarmingly misandristic. It also makes me wonder if any feminists are fighting to have this law updated to include all citizens and not just males...

<comment><USER3> Not sure about feminist efforts, but all recent efforts to reinstate some kind of draft included women: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_National_Service_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_National_Service_Act)

I know the National Organization of Women's position has always been that they oppose any kind of draft, but if it has to continue they would like women to be included. I think most feminists would understandably rather work to get rid of all selective service rather than include women.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "These letters were sent due to a computer error, the agency said in a message posted online"

No this is a human error. Are they trying to avoid responsibility when this is a minor (and a little funny) mistake ?

<comment><USER5> This gets sort of philosophical. What would be an example of a computer error?

<comment><USER6> That would be a pure hardware error. For example a cosmic ray hitting a cell the DRAM and flipping a bit. Or maybe the Intel FP-Bug, could also be a computer error.

Anything else in software is a programming error, but not necessarily a programmer error, since it might start with wrong HW specs, compiler bugs, etc.

<comment><USER5> So "computer error" is when the hardware designer screws up and "human error" is when the software designer screws up? That seems pretty arbitrary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article said 14,000 men. Is that possible that there are that many folks in Pennsylvania that were born between those dates?

<comment><USER8> The article also said that they sent letters addressed to individuals who were no longer living.

<comment><USER9> That must be distressing for the families.

As an aside: Do the SS send letters to dead people born between 1993-1997? You'd assume they'd check for death records or have some way of being notified about that.

For example if a boy is born in 1993 but died at age 5, do the parents get a letter from the SS in 2011 telling the boy to register for the SS?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > the agency uses a two-digit code for the birth year

I find that surprising, I would expect even newcomer professionals to at least have heard about the Y2K bug.

<comment><USER11> Not sure why anyone is memory conservative these days anyway, but it's possible they thought about it but figured that there weren't that many people over the age of 118 floating around, and even if they get a letter reminding them to register for the draft, they'd just ignore it.

<comment><USER12> Or it's a legacy system they never bothered properly fixing and just used some quick hack when 2000 rolled around.

<comment><USER13> It is 2014, males born in the 2000s are not yet at an age where they would be harassed by the selective service.

My estimate is we will see this blow up again in 2018.

<comment><USER11> I don't think so. It's always 118-126 years, no matter what year it is right now, so we'll only see this blow up if there's an explosion in that population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Earlier discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8018399](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8018399)

</comment><comment><USER15> Or maybe it's part of the global project to eliminate the world's installed base of land mines.</comment>


Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy - happy-go-lucky https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/wind-turbines-are-neither-clean-nor-green-and-they-provide-zero-global-energy/ <comment><AUTHOR> Meanwhile, wind energy accounted for 14.2% of net public electricity production in Germany in 2016.

Here's the breakup[1] according to the Frauenhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems[2].

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/Xi6ZpiI.png](http://i.imgur.com/Xi6ZpiI.png)

[2] [https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...](https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Stromerzeugung_2016.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER2> From the Author of other works like:

"The climate change agenda is a conspiracy against the poor"

"How hunting and shooting help wildlife – and not just in Africa"

"Why climate change is good for the world"

"The windfarm delusion"

"Say no to wind farms: Shale of the century"

Fucking bozo.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is some blatant massaging of the numbers in this article. As if they are merelly hell-bent against renewables.</comment>


Google Chrome OS Screenshots? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/08/15/google-chrome-os-screenshots/ <comment><USER2> I believe these are fake. Chrome OS is not in beta -- Chrome for Linux is in alpha, and Google releases betas. Also, the maximized window with all that white space is bad design. My expectation is that Chrome OS will look like a maximized version of Chrome the browser with task management inside of the browser window instead of outside of the browser window like in these screenshots. Though I won't be too upset if these screenshots are real.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like it doesn't include support for taking screenshots…

</comment><comment><USER4> According to google, the Chrome OS is a lightweight Linux kernel and a new, simple window manager. I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. I guess maybe it will be packaged as a consumer appliance in a way that Linux hardly ever has been.

<comment><USER5> If I can't use it as a programmer's workstation as well as a simplified desktop, its of no use to me. I realize their target audience may be thin consumer devices, but if they want good stuff dev'd on it, developers need to work directly on it as well. Time will tell.

<comment><USER6> "... but if they want good stuff dev'd on it"

I think this completely misses the point. Applications are _web_ apps. You're not _supposed_ to dev for the OS.

Edit: formatting

<comment><USER5> nope, wasn't missing the point at all.

Imagine if you will, I'm developing a webapp. I want to target ChromeOS users. I could run a separate VM to test on, but no, I want to dev and test on one system for the most part. I want my app framework stack and all the tools running on this thing and use the web browser to look things up on localhost, right.

Also, if this is to end up being a good open source citizen and google doesn't expect to do _all_ the work, developers need to be able to work on the platform as developers and not use it remotely to test and debug.

Thats' what I 'm talkin' 'bout ;) I get the whole HTML 5 and Web 2.0++ thing.

<comment><USER7> For testing you use Chrome on a real OS.

<comment><USER5> I probably didn't make myself very clear in the last post.

Lets say ChromeOS gets put on netbooks and is a solid option compared to a Windows 7 or Linux netbook. Am I, a hacker, going to use such a device? No, I have more to do than just use webapps. So as a hacker, its of little interest to me unless I can also use a good subset of linux dev tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What seems funny to me about these screenshots is that even though they appear they are on a desktop computer, if you look in the bottom corner of one of the screens you can see what appears to be a battery meter(as you would see on a laptop).

But who knows, maybe its just a laptop hooked up to a monitor...

</comment><comment><USER9> That looks like a new BeOS. Nice.

<comment><USER10> To me, the idea of running applications in the "cloud" on JavaScript and HTML is the _total opposite_ of a new BeOS. BeOS is supposed to be lightweight and highly responsive. The Web is not. That doesn't mean that ChromeOS won't have its uses, but any other modern OS will get you closer to BeOS than this.

<comment><USER11> Not really true. I think Gears is a clear indicator of how Google sees the post-HTML5 world. Given that I think one of the driving ideas behind a ChromeOS is that programs and data will be cached to some extent on the desktop (a view that seems to be shared with Adobe (AIR) and Microsoft (Silverlight))

Web apps that are cached should be both light weight and responsive

<comment><USER10> Compared to BeOS, Web apps that are cached are in no way lightweight and responsive. Maybe we're defining lightweight and responsive differently. I am thinking about the real-time media capabilities of BeOS which let you drag around videos on Pentium IIs. I'm thinking about native C++ applications and a completely multithreaded system. I'm thinking about Gobe Productive and native e-mail clients. For me, lightweight runs on a Pentium Pro with 64MB RAM.

Gmail is not lightweight. Compared to Yahoo Mail or Live Mail, its design is airy, and it's well-optimized. Let's be honest: Chrome OS is only here to tap the netbooks. It's not going to revive the massive amount of old hardware that BeOS could use. YouTube isn't lightweight. Chrome's process-per-tab system isn't lightweight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> seems very similar to the current chrome 3 developer's preview which changed the start page last week to one without a sidebar as in these shots. seems like they're preparing to use this space for something more sophisticated.

</comment><comment><USER13> Fake.

</comment><comment><USER14> Real!?

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure. It depends whether they'd use that kind of monitor at Google!

Having said that, all you'd need for a Google OS would be:

       +Vesa VGA drivers up to big resolutions
       +Ethernet/Wifi drivers (these are pretty much standard these days)
       +Keyboard/mouse/sound drivers
       +A web browser

<comment><USER16> That does not look like a standard-issue Google monitor, but maybe it's a test machine with very low specs. Not unlikely considering the target market.</comment></comment></comment>


SOPA is the problem and not the solution - <AUTHOR> http://aplusk.posterous.com/87693122

<comment><USER3> SOPA is a disaster but there seems to be far too much groupthink going on to consider an obvious point: if people treated their internet with more respect we wouldn't be ending up here.

Forget 'copyrights' - forget boogeyman #1 RIAA and boogeyman #2 TPB -- if there was even a modicum of respect for treating others - people who work hard to produce content - fairly, treating them the way you'd want to be treated yourself, things like SOPA would never have seen the light of day.

But instead we get movies posted to streaming and torrent sites before they are released. Entire albums leaked before they drop. iPhones jailbroken so apps can be ripped off. Game-consoles hacked so that people can play games without paying for the service. The list goes on and on and on. It's a culture of petty thievery. The definition of sharing needs to change, for sure, but it's new definition will never be like the start of this paragraph.

What we have now is a totally unbalanced system. As noted elsewhere, it is like the older generation who thought a one-way relationship with planet earth was as reasonable as it was convenient - take whatever you need, dump whatever you don't - nothing bad will ever come of it and if it does it's always someone else's problem.

"I don't need to pay for this movie - plenty of people already have." "I don't need to recycle - so many people are already doing that."

"So even if some bands don't make it, there'll always be other bands. They need to adapt" "We've got so many species, is it a big deal if we lose some? That's evolution isn't it?"

"I don't feel bad ripping stuff off - I spend plenty of money on media anyway." "I don't feel bad about dumping garbage in the woods - I pay my taxes."

When you live like that, you live with the consequences of having no regard for the balance of the system - and you reap the whirlwind you whip up.

I don't support SOPA - but I also think the total lack of respect for the side of content-producers is a miserable state of affairs - and amounts to a enacted prejudice against people who produce content, shamefully defended with the language of equality and freedom. If one wants to release stuff for free and seed their own torrents - they have every right to choose that 'business model' - but to force that choice, to force artists into situations that make them into sharecroppers - is consumerism every bit as wicked and morally empty as capitalism has been. "Let them eat cake!" [Let them sell t-shirts] Does it make it okay because Ashton Kutcher says so? To cover his investments and enhance his street cred?

I don't have a solution for SOPA. I do have ideas about how to ease piracy in a positive way - but no idea stands up when most people don't give a damn - and they don't. Reading some of the exculpatory comments on SOPA/piracy threads has made that embarrassingly clear.

<comment><USER4> _if people treated their internet with more respect we wouldn't be ending up here_

No this is not clear thinking, here's why: it only takes one person to upload the prerelease movie. Any system where a 99% "respectful" rate of content- consumers is insufficient is unworkable under any scheme. Perhaps downloading is rampant among certain demographics, but there are open questions there (e.g. about the degree to which that may simply represent a pricing failure in an artificial monopoly-supply market).

Sorry to tell you this but, no, most people don't have a shred of respect for the handful of media conglomerates or their business model. They're notorious for ripping off the artists they supposedly "represent".

 _iPhones jailbroken so apps can be ripped off_

I'm sorry to ask this, but are you just trolling? Everyone I know jailbreaks their iPhones and none of them are ripping off apps.

SOPA/PIPA represent a choice we have to make. Are we better off as a civilization with a happy entertainment industry and censorship-happy government or with a well-functioning and free Internet where an entrepreneur can start a website (and maybe even make a buck) without an army of lawyers?

It's pretty obvious to me it's the latter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're curious why Ashton Kutcher is commenting on this: a couple of years ago he got into tech venture funding. He has a financial interest (and also hopefully and ideological one) in seeing SOPA fail.

<comment><USER6> Though as film/tv actor, he also has an interest in seeing it succeed - <USER2> SOPA will help the film/tv industry as its proponents claim.

It would be great to see some film/tv identities with more clear-cut loyalties to come out in opposition to SOPA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> (ashton kutcher) -- have other actors spoken out against sopa yet?

<comment><USER8> Bieber has. Kutcher could do with a spelling and grammar check and actors shouldn't use the words "bad actor" dammit!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ashton may be right about SOPA but he's wrong about the DMCA, and failure by the tech community to recognize the shortcomings of the DMCA is why media companies continue to take it upon themselves to propose new legislation that overreaches. The first step toward avoiding bills like SOPA is to recognize that the DMCA is not working, and then work together to fix it.

The problem with the DMCA is that not only are you asking artists, authors, independent labels, publishers and others to police the entire internet for their content, but there is no penalty for sites based on widespread infringement across multiple parties. Most of these companies and content creators do not have the means to sue these companies individually, nor would it be equitable. So, you get sites like Grooveshark who respond to takedown requests, then let the content go back up, then take it down, then let it go back up. No individual content creator or independent label has the means or motivation to sue them, and there is no penalty for infringing on a massive scale because there are only civil penalties. Only when the major labels no longer find it funny is there potential recourse, and then only for those labels, even though a massive amount of the value that was taken was from other creators. In the meantime, a massive business was built on the backs of copyrighted material - and they're right here in the US.

The route to addressing the shortcomings of the DMCA is two-fold:

\- Centralize the way in which takedown requests are issued, tracked, processed and tallied. Score companies based on their compliance history and penalize them for repeat violations of the same content without requiring the content creator to drag them into court. Leverage government resources to penalize these companies and distribute the monetary penalties to all those who had to issue multiple takedown requests.

\- Recognize that there are companies whose sole purpose is to provide access to infringing content, and that protecting the rights of content creators is more important than protecting the rights of these low-value companies. Once you've defined a very high threshold for identifying these parasitic companies, be prepared to shut them down.

Until these things happen, and also until the tech community stops defending piracy under the misguided banner of "free information", you're going to keep getting SOPA in its various forms year after year. Let's stop waiting for that to happen, and fix the DMCA.

I wrote more about that here: [http://blog.earbits.com/online_radio/a-real- alternative-to-s...](http://blog.earbits.com/online_radio/a-real-alternative- to-sopa-or-fixing-the-dmca/)

<comment><USER10> I _wish_ I lived in the dreamworld where the primary problem with the DMCA is that it's too hard on _IP owners_.

<comment><USER9> It's too hard on everybody, and equally ineffective. If you don't think it's too hard for IP owners, talk to a couple independent labels.

<comment><USER11> > It's too hard on everybody, and equally ineffective.

That, in a nutshell, is why most people hate SOPA.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Free/Open source software to plot an extremely long dataseries - <AUTHOR>

I've got a 4 column {Time, var-1, var-2, var3}, 6000 row CSV file whose data I'd like to plot as a smooth line graph (3 separate lines). Excel, Numbers, Plot (for Mac) and Grapher, not to mention Google spreadsheet, have all crashed or been rendered unusably slow by that amount of data.<p>Do any of you know of a utility which can handle that amount of data relatively smoothly? <comment><USER2> Octave is "a free version of MatLab" for Linux, I think it should work.

</comment><comment><USER3> R or python/matplotlib would probably work.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to learn frontend development nowadays? - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone! I consider myself a jack-of-all-trades programmer and have done basic frontend work in the past, but I'd like to get up to speed on frontend development circa 2016. I'm a fan of server-side rendered templates, not too much javascript, and practices that can be learned and implemented quickly. Looking at the frontend landscape today is, to be blunt, frightening. It's changing so quickly and I get anxious just thinking about it. Any advice or tips on how to learn contemporary frontend dev without pulling my hair out? Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> I'm not a front end dev but am an experienced programmer. About 3 years ago I took a few evenings and to work through Angular tutorials - at the time I didn't realize these new frameworks rendered client side.

After I had a few things on the screen I added Bootstrap and started to learn CSS from scratch.

My advice is pick a framework, I like Angular 2 ( or any batteries included framework) and just work through the tutorials. Type it all out instead of downloading the starters. It helps if you have an idea of an app to build rather than just banging out Todo apps, you can then apply what you learned to a project that means something to you.

</comment><comment><USER3> I come from a graphic design education, so I entered web development from the design side and am working my way through frontend, hoping someday to have full stack skills.

You can get distracted learning the ever-changing frameworks, patterns, and tools - the way I have been able to learn best has been by focusing on writing vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Also, while learning, dont be afraid to write lots and lots of throwaway code! You learn something better doing it 1000 times, than doing it once. Build at a scale where you have time and effort to build lots and lots of little things.

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't think too hard about it. Just pick a framework/library and make something with it. Once you've learned a few picking up new ones is easy because you'll be familiar with most of the different concepts.

</comment><comment><USER5> This was posted a few days ago:

Step-by-step tutorial to build a modern JavaScript stack from scratch

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12823937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12823937)

</comment><comment><USER6> The constant in all of it is JavaScript. Frameworks and libraries have advantages and tradeoffs relative to that constant. Evaluating them as the flavor of the day changes will always be in that context...even backend versus frontend architectures ultimately is.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know there are a lot of online resource/tutorials that can be found online that are free, though Pluralsight is not free, I would recommend it, you can actually register a Microsoft account at Visual Studio online and get some free courses.</comment>


Only 22% of searches on Amazon include a brand name - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/only-22-of-searches-on-amazon-include-a-brand-name <comment><USER2> "Only"? These seems like a very believable result.

<comment><USER3> Or high, even. I almost never use a brand name in an Amazon query.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazon author searches are an anti pattern. Search for John Grisham by name and your top ten DELIBERATELY includes other authors for your reading pleasure: Amazon use you to drive readers to other authors. Search is an economic weapon not a tool.

<comment><USER5> That's funny, because it's how all searching really works.

"goodyear car tires"

(blast!)

"goodyear car tires -toyo -falken -michelin (etc)"

<comment><USER4> Yes. I do know that, but Amazon is particularly eggregious because they offer "author search" as a lead-in and work their damn hardest to hide the 'exact match only' option.

If this was a library catalog, search would not work this way!

In your example, Google _has_ (they were made to by the FTC) distinguish between paid responses, and search responses. And, the likelihood of a 'in the style of john grisham' author being shown _before_ all the john grisham as author works is low.

Amazon don't care. They know you wanted to find books by John Grisham, and they did show you the top five (and not in publication order, or series order, or anything useful) but they also intruded with no distinction unrelated works.

<comment><USER6> So is Netflix. If you search for a _specific title_ that they do not have, they will bury you in titles that may or may not relate to the one you sought... and they will _never_ acknowledge that they just plain don't have what you requested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would think the whole way people search is generic to specific anyway.</comment>


Would we need a startup to get RSS into Hacker News? - <AUTHOR>

I was just wondering... Is just me that am not skilled enough or we really can't read Hacker News using RSS? <comment><USER2> You mean this?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/rss>

Link at the bottom of main page.

<comment><USER3> You and I (and now aykall) certainly know that the link is there, but it's needlessly non-standard UI.

User Interfaces are best when people get what they expect, and they don't need to overthink what they're doing.

In this case, it means that news.yc probably SHOULD support Feed Autodiscovery, by having link rel="alternate" specified, so firefox and other browsers put the easy to see RSS button on the corner.

Is it necessary? Of course not. But if a user is trying to stay abreast of what goes on on your site, it's usually better to give them what they expect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Checkout Feedity - <http://feedity.com> for creating custom RSS feeds from any webpage

(Shameless self promo)</comment>


How Bill Atkinson got the idea for the "marching ants" effect - <AUTHOR> http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=MacPaint_Evolution.txt <comment><USER2> This is similar to how I get the most creative ideas for solving a problem. As a friend of mine once said sometimes you have to go out and do unrelated things to seed your random number generator.</comment>


The "Dagger of Faith" in the Digital Age - <AUTHOR> http://tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/183443/dagger-digital-age?all=1

<comment><USER2> What a chore. The author could have made his point in almost half as many words. I think he really does spend too much time buried in lengthy manuscripts.</comment>


DDR4 memory: Twice the speed, less power - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/27/jedec_ddr4_spec/ <comment><USER2> It's important to note that "twice the speed" refers to transfer speed, not latency or cycle time. Modern DRAM technology has capped out at a cycle time of about 30MHz, and isn't going to change much in the future. That time is limited by the time required to precharge the bit lines to a voltage accurate enough to measure the stored values against. These are big wires going across the whole chip by definition, so they don't see improvements due to process shrinkage. On a modern DDR3-1600 part, there are 1.6G potential transfers per second, but a full random access cycle requires about 60 of these (10-10-10-30 timings are typical). The time taken to issue the command is 2 clocks, and the time taken to read the data is 4. The rest is just idle waiting. So even "infinitely clocked" dram would be only about 10% faster in the worst case.

<comment><USER3> Is this 30Mhz value per chip, or per memory channel? Would it be possible to increase total random access throughput by adding more chips to a channel and pipelining more requests?

<comment><USER2> It's per "bank". Chips often are partitioned into multiple banks, each with its own row/column array. This gives some parallelism, because an access to one bank won't invalidate the already-loaded row in the others (reads of bits in the same row as the previous one are faster because they are stored/cached in digital logic -- this is why sequential access to DRAM is faster than random acccess).

Obviously the width of the DRAM bus itself is a parallelism design: fundamentally DRAM is always "one bit wide", you get wider busses by using multiple devices and feeding them the same commands.

And you can get even more parallelism by using more than one DRAM channel. Intel Desktop CPUs have 2x 64 bit channels, the LGA2011 server parts have 4x64, Apple's new A6 made news this week by moving to a 2x32 bit design.

But note that those are all bandwidth improvements. They don't do anything to the time it takes to get a bit out of an idle DRAM part. DRAM latency is largely fixed in the modern world, until we find a different way of storing bits.

<comment><USER4> Or switch to more expensive but faster SRAM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I recall correctly, memory manufacturers have ready to manufacture / release DDR4 for some time now. The CPU companies are the ones that aren't making the move until 2014.

<comment><USER6> Not being familiar with the DDR4 spec, I wonder how much performance benefit DDR4 brings without increasing the size of the processor's cache line? As others have mentioned, the latency for random access is quite high, and DDR effectively just multiplies the bus width. For DMA and filling cache lines DDRx is a win because you usually want to grab all those bits anyway (although in those cases, the addresses tend to be contiguous anyway, so it's not as slow as "random"). But if your cache grabs bunches of 512 bits, having a memory that is only faster when transferring a contiguous group of 1024 bits isn't an obvious speedup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For the folks that care about power consumption, there is already DDR3L and DDR3U today that use lower voltages than standard DDR3. Intel's Ivy Bridge chipsets can support DDR3 and DDR3L and I'm using the latter in my laptop.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wasn't HP working on memresistors that were going to be way faster than traditional memory, but they've pushed it back a year or two so their partners could adjust their biz models? Were they waiting for DDR4 maybe?

<comment> Tuna-Fish Memristors are aiming for flash initially, not DRAM. They probably don't have the write endurance to deal with DRAM-like loads. Also, DDR4 is an interface spec that has very little to do with the actual RAM.

<comment><USER9> Yep, it was my understanding that they would use memristors in flash first, then SSDs, then RAM over the course of a few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This will be a huge boon to virtualization and machines with high multitasking workloads (refilling the caches quickly).

Cache locality and streaming reads and writes are still as important as ever.

</comment><comment><USER11> Not until 2014 :(</comment>


A company plants a Christmas tree for every pageview they get - <AUTHOR> http://nortal.com/christmas/en/ <comment><USER2> I hope they end up planting millions of christmas trees.</comment>


Uber drivers to receive AMBER alerts for missing children across the U.S - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/14/uber-drivers-to-receive-amber-alerts-for-missing-children-across-the-u-s/ <comment><AUTHOR> With so many Uber drivers on the road, it's definitely a good thing. However the fear is that an Uber driver who has an iPhone and uses Facebook might get three alerts. If every app on a person's phone would start raising amber alerts, people might start disabling these alerts.

Hopefully there will be a way in future to consolidate these alerts so that people are not over whelmed.</comment>


Show HN: Uncoverly - The best stuff on Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.uncoverly.com/

<comment><USER2> What's the definition of "the best stuff"? Collaborative filtering with user click data? Just curious.</comment>


Stories about Stayups - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/stories-about-stayups-3490731661d1 <comment><USER2> Now I've got something to listen to in the car for the next couple months! (There are like 6 or 7 pages worth of episode links)</comment>