Don't Start With a Monolith - When your goal is microservices architecture - SaintCroix
https://martinfowler.com/articles/dont-start-monolith.html
======
SaintCroix
Yesterday's discussion for further context;

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14778685](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14778685)

------
GrumpyNl
Its all about architecture and requirements. A well designed monolith is way
easier to setup then microservices. Been there, done that several times.

------
Sorreah
"If you are actually able to build a well-structured monolith, you probably
don’t need microservices in the first place. Which is OK! I definitely agree
with Martin: You shouldn’t introduce the complexity of additional distribution
into your system if you don’t have a very good reason for doing so.

So what would be a good reason? There are many, but to me the most important
one is to allow for fast, independent delivery of individual parts within a
larger system. Microservices’ main benefit, in my view, is enabling parallel
development by establishing a hard-to-cross boundary between different parts
of your system. By doing this, you make it hard – or at least harder – to do
the wrong thing: Namely, connecting parts that shouldn’t be connected, and
coupling those that need to be connected too tightly. In theory, you don’t
need microservices for this if you simply have the discipline to follow clear
rules and establish clear boundaries within your monolithic application; in
practice, I’ve found this to be the case only very rarely.)"

In theory, you know before building a system whether you'll need the things
you deem important on deciding whether you're better off with microservices.

In practice you very rarely do.

So we're back at square one.


Show HN: Syncrypto - theapurvap
https://theapurvap.github.io/syncrypto/#/file_select
======
theapurvap
Syncrypto provides browser based AES-256-GCM encryption/decryption for your
files using the standard Web Crypto API, enabling you to share/store your
files on the internet without worrying! Checkout the help
([https://theapurvap.github.io/syncrypto/#/help](https://theapurvap.github.io/syncrypto/#/help))
page for more information.


Ask HN: Do you use oDesk/ elance / Fiverr? - gregmuender

We are trying to solve some pain points that exist with using these marketplaces. What can be fixed?<p>Contractor selection...are there too many choices?
Contractor accountability...do you worry about getting poor work?
Does it take too long to receive back finished work?
Is it too hard to post on multiple marketplaces?
======
canterburry
I have used Elance extensively over the last 5+ years for everything from Logo
design to web programming.

1\. Biggest challenge is finding contractors who are actually as good as their
portfolios. I am not sure if this is a case of portfolio fraud or simply not a
good enough interview process on my part, however, after working with some
providers, I just can't believe all those 5 star ratings are real.

2\. Too many contracts bid without actually reading or understanding the
requirements. The best people I have found actually addressed each requirement
point by point.

3\. Too many contractors provide too little value. I expect them to manage
everything they need to do on their side, and not just be the hands on the
keyboard. Too many times have I had to put THEIR test plan together because
they had no clue how to actually test their work.

My approach has simply been to hire lots over the years and then rehire people
proven to be good. It's a crap shoot initially though.

~~~
hackerboos
Number 2 is easily solved by burying an instruction in the spec.

Example - ask them to prepend the subject with a keyword or some other
information only calculable by reading the job description.

~~~
canterburry
That is exactly what I have been doing and it has worked up to a certain
point. Contractors have gotten used to this trick and now just look for that
one phrase and skip the rest.

I just wish it wasn't necessary.

------
glimcat
The fundamental error with trying to fix such marketplaces via another
marketplace is that contractors are typically far better off relying on repeat
business and some elementary lead prospecting, while project owners are better
off relying on networking and repeat business.

Your target market is thus (more or less) restricted to people who don't yet
meet that level of experience and professionalism. You get the contractors
that have no existing clients and no clue how to approach companies, and you
get the project owners who are out to get bargain-basement labor and firmly
believe they'll be the one poster who gets lucky and finds a contractor who
works on the internet yet is too inexperienced to realize what that means for
their billable rates.

This is still a potential market, but you've lost the more desirable end of
the pool before you even leave the gate. And even if that is the end of the
pool you want to provide value to - you can provide far more value by helping
them move upstream, rather than trying to stamp out another marketplace which
is a bad solution from its conception.

------
palakchokshi
I've used oDesk in the past and they have some really great tools to ensure
you can track what the contractors are doing when they bill you for hours.
e.g. They will take a screenshot at random times when the contractor says they
are working on your project so you can see that they were actually working on
your project and not just sitting around doing nothing.

The key to finding good contractors is to start out by breaking down your
project into smaller pieces and giving the contractor one small independent
piece to implement for a fixed price. If they deliver on time and quality work
commission them to finish your project on an hourly basis.

For javascript and android development I would recommend an excellent
developer that I've worked with before. Oscar De Dios Rodriguez

------
dinae
I'm a Fiverr and Elance veteran. There is a tremendous amount of choice,which
is daunting for sure. You can narrow the choices by setting standards. As a
newbie, simply filtering for top rated sellers or Level 2 narrows your
choices. And should make you feel a bit easier about accountability & quality
since these folks have proven themselves by Fiverr standards. You can control
when you get your work by looking at delivery or turnaround times. Add an
extra day just to be sure. I use multiple sites based on my need on each
project. I don't shop the same project to multiple sites that's
counterproductive. It's better to decide what you want to use each platform.
Have a look at Clarity, Elance and Fiverr; each has a slightly different
focus. I wrote a book for Fiverr buyers ( the first). You can get it at
[http://infoproductdoctor.com/Fiverr-
guide](http://infoproductdoctor.com/Fiverr-guide). It's free til 9/23

------
sixQuarks
I use elance/odesk extensively. My biggest pain point is trying to figure out
the real rates charged for work.

What would be perfect is to give each freelancer a 1-2 hour test that will be
shown on their profile. It will show what they are capable of within 1-2
hours. For example, a logo design. Each applicant does the same test.

------
garysvpa
You just need to check the following...

1.) reviews from previous employer

2.) previous work sample (related to what you need)

3.) completion rate (quality and accuracy)

Remember: Freelancer is paid only after you approve the work.


Microservices. The good, the bad and the ugly - EdwardDiego
http://devweek.com/blog/microservices-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly

======
kidmenot
Link broken for me. None of the articles in that blog seem to work, actually.

~~~
viktorbenei
It works for me (Chrome for Android) - though if you click on the X at top
right, near the regular "we use cookies" notification, it closes the post for
some reason


Show HN: GreatDJ – Create and save playlists that sync across devices - ruiramos
http://great.dj

======
ruiramos
Hi everyone, Wanted to show you a small side project I've been working on -
GreatDJ, where you can create and save Youtube playlists and optionally have
them sync across clients/devices. They main use case was to allow everyone at
a party to push songs into a common playlist (say, a computer that's connected
to the main speakers).

Lately I've been working on making that easier: if you have a computer on
'party mode' and use a phone on the same network to access the site, you'll be
automagically redirected to the same playlist so you can start pushing songs
straight away!

The whole thing is also open source:
[https://github.com/ruiramos/greatdj](https://github.com/ruiramos/greatdj)

Have fun, feedback would be amazing, thanks!

~~~
al_james
Congrats on shipping! I was at a party the other day and we needed a way to
all contribute to the same youtub playlist. Now we have a solution!


Tumblr: Hashing Your Way to Handling 23,000 Blog Requests per Second - aespinoza
http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/8/4/tumblr-hashing-your-way-to-handling-23000-blog-requests-per.html

======
sargun
So, it looks like they're using BGP to "program" the adjacent router a la
"SDN." I'm curious as to two things:

* Byzantine fault-tolerance: How does this system handle failures when a specific node fails in a way that it fails to withdraw its routes. When a node's haproxy fails, how is BIRD informed of its failure? What if the failure is in some way that internal fault detectors don't see the failure.

* How is the ECMP hashing problem handled? ECMP hashing on most gear is just a plain hash, that means when a route is withdrawn, the rest of the systems see their traffic rebalance. How does this not result in all connections being severed?

~~~
nbm
I'm not sure about how Tumblr might do it, but one can use a combination of
ECMP and ipvs (with a consistent hash) to do the lower-layer L4 load
balancing. This means that even if one of the L4 load balancers go down and
the connections originally going to that L4 load balancer by the switch/router
get moved to another one, the consistent hash to the L7 load balancer handling
the request means the connections will not be reset (except in some
interesting and less-frequent cases).

This two-stage process also allows for good health checking from the much-
simpler Linux ipvs L4 load balancer servers to the more-complicated L7 load
balancer servers.

This was described in this Velocity 2013 talk -
[http://velocityconf.com/velocity2013/public/schedule/detail/...](http://velocityconf.com/velocity2013/public/schedule/detail/28410)

~~~
sargun
Yeah, this is how Facebook does it, and how we did it at Microsoft / Yammer.

------
cagenut
Hi Michael, you wrote a whole post about varnish cache management without
mentioning hit-rates! How effective was all this? How many of that 23K req/s
did origin have to handle?

~~~
mschenck
The cache effectiveness of this is actually quite good, but I'm deliberately
being ambiguous about the ratio.

The reason for my ambiguity is that our cache-hit ratio is actually a result
of our application. This architectural design afforded us the ability to
maintain our (very high) cache-hit ratio, even when we outgrew the total slab
size of a single varnish node.

That ability to maintain the same cache-hit ratio, the motivation for this
effort, is the result of not needing to evict cached content prior to TTL.

So, if you have a low cache-hit ratio due to eviction (and you don't just have
excessive TTLs), then your cache pool is probably too small. If so, then you
might want to give this design a shot - it's an analog to using ketama for
growing memcache beyond a single node.

------
CoffeeDregs
Random note on on scale-out, caching, etc: check out CloudFront's "whole site
delivery". You can set min TTLs to zero on CloudFront, configure your cache
headers correctly and get many of the benefits outlined in the article. See:

       http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2012/05/cloudfront-dynamic-content-support.html

       http://blogs.gartner.com/lydia_leong/2012/05/14/amazon-cloudfront-gets-whole-site-delivery-and-acceleration/

WARNING: CloudFront will dutifully cache non-2xx responses, so you can get a
long-lived, but very fast, 500 response...

~~~
jgrahamc
Or you could not pay Amazon "per byte fees" and use CloudFlare and get the
same the type of functionality through out caching options and Page Rules.

------
bobjenk
If I was to use Varnish, would that make my need for Redis obsolete - should I
switch to a non-memory based key-value db and use Varnish on top of that?

My current stack: nginx/php-fpm/redis. Nginx and Redis serve me well, but php-
fpm makes my website rather slow with high volumes of traffic, so I believe
the solution for that would be Varnish(?).

~~~
codingjester
so @ tumblr, we're using varnish for a full page cache (we use it for parts of
the API as well for response caching), and invalidate when a blog updates (or
your page can just TTL out).

I definitely agree that I wouldn't use Redis (or memcache for that matter) for
storing entire pages and should be used for more of an object cache. Even
then, we use memcache for "simple" data structures and when we need more
complex data structures, will use Redis.

Redis is great if you need some kind of persistence as well (and it's fairly
tunable), where as memcache and varnish, are completely in memory (varnish 4.0
I believe is introducing persistence). So you kick the process, and that's all
she wrote for your cache until it gets warm again. (Which has its own
challenges).

Varnish also gives you a language called VCL to play around with to maximize
your caching strategies and optimize the way varnish should be storing things.
It's got an easy API to purge content, when you need to purge it and it should
support compression for your pages out of the box without too much tuning.

If you're having issues just speeding up static content, give varnish a whirl.
Spend some time with it, and you won't be disappointed.

I believe you can also look into using nginx as a caching alternative to cache
responses, but I don't have too much experience with that. I've heard it used
with some success though.

~~~
dallasmarlow
varnish has supported disk based caching for quite a long time, it's just that
all the instances at tumblr are configured to only use memory.

------
andremendes
>278 employees. That's a lot of people, I imagined they were way less.

~~~
billmalarky
Keep in mind that not all are engineers. They appear to do sales in house.

~~~
chojeen
Also, some Yahoo employees might have transferred over after the acquisition.

~~~
elliottcarlson
Not really - especially on the tech side.

------
maddalab
Apologies if this is not of interest.

If you found this interesting please checkout the jobs page [1] at Tumblr, we
are constantly looking for new folks. Specifically [2] for positions on the
teams that implemented everything described in the article.

[1] [https://www.tumblr.com/jobs](https://www.tumblr.com/jobs) [2]
[http://boards.greenhouse.io/tumblr/jobs/17886](http://boards.greenhouse.io/tumblr/jobs/17886)


10 marketing lessons for tech startups - quant
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/27/10-marketing-lessons-for-early-stage-tech-startups/

======
shanebooth
Great story. I liked the whole "to stealth" or "not to stealth" angle.


I Can't Figure Out What Facebook Is For - Flemlord
http://www.overcompensating.com/posts/20080903.html
======
known
Me too.


Show HN: Follow multiple live crypto charts on single screen - sercan
https://multiplecharts.com
======
sercan
I've built a simple tool to follow multiple coin charts on single screen. I'd
love to hear what fellow cryto traders think about it :)


Salesforce.com Announces Two $1 Million Winning Teams for Hackathon - jhchen
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/salesforce-com-announces-two-1-210000741.html
======
draz
Ha. Still sticking to their guns: "...while the Upshot mobile app used pre-
existing code, this did not violate the hackathon rules. Use of pre-existing
code was allowable as long as the code did not comprise the majority of the
app and did not violate any third party's rights." I think it does more damage
than good

~~~
puredemo
"The internal audit team's review determined that Upshot's mobile app was
created during the hackathon and met these criteria."

They just took an existing application made during a nine year tenure at
Salesforce, threw it into a generic responsive / mobile app framework during
the "hackathon" and made a cool mil..

It helps if Salesforce is already an investor in your product, of course.

And this doesn't address why most apps that were submitted weren't even ran.
It's not like 149 apps are all that hard to at least take a look at.

------
jere
First place:

>Upshot was created by Thom Kim, who left Salesforce after nine years in
Janauary, and Joseph Turian, with whom Kim had been friends since they
attended Harvard University together.

Oh that sounds fishy? As a concession, we'll just award _another million_ to
2nd place. Oh, who is second place?

>Fisher and Oliveros are employees working at Taptera, a San Francisco-based
startup that received $2 million in August of 2011 from Salesforce and other
investors in a Series A round of financing.

~~~
eli
_shrug_

This doesn't strike me as inherently scandalous.

~~~
jere
Scandalous, no. The part that bothers me is that an event, presumably designed
to introduce new developers to their platform, seems impossible to win unless
you're either a) directly associated with the company or b) make a living
developing for the company's platform already.

~~~
sbisker
Are you sure that was the design of this hackathon? I was more under the
impression it was to incentive their entire developer base, not simply to
encourage new adoption.

------
tenpoundhammer
This may be the largest back pedal in the history of backpedaling.

~~~
swang
Microsoft/XBox1 backpedal probably beats this one. SalesForce isn't giving up
much here. What's another million to a company they've already invested in?

~~~
tenpoundhammer
I don't know what this reference is about.

~~~
iLoch
Xbox One? Microsoft took a huge gamble in their decision to all but eliminate
discs from their consoles. They had planned that consumers would not be able
to resell their discs once purchased with the promise that your friends would
be able to play the games in your games library without owning the game
themselves (ie. they download the game from your games library) so long as you
weren't playing the game at the same time as them. People didn't like this
because 1.) They couldn't resell their games and 2.) It required that you
connect your Xbox to the internet once every 24 hours. For some reason a lot
of people felt like this would affect them (I don't know why.. I can't
remember the last time my internet was disconnected for 24 hours.) As a result
of all the negative feedback, Microsoft scrapped their whole DRM system in
favour of a more classic approach while Sony basked in the positive attention
despite bringing nothing new to the table.

------
priley
The issue is they specific said you can't start or use existing code before
the date (still there in the rules PDF). I know that many very talented teams
followed that rule even though theycould have used some of their older repos
and did something even more impressive than Upshot. Then they respond to a
forum question, weeks after the hackathon started, saying "yeah sure, just not
a significant amount". Most programmers were heads down in their code and
didn't check the forum. That's wrong and they did nothing to explain or
correct this.

------
yeukhon
> The internal audit team's review determined that Upshot's mobile app was
> created during the hackathon and met these criteria.

Let's be honest. Upshot is pretty solid before the hackathon. It was
functioning to some great degree. How many days did the event last? Three
days? A mobile app for this hackathon is small. What innovations / cool
business logic did they develop in the mobile app? I probably will see none.
Pretty UI... maybe that was the winning shot. I am sure.

The fact that Upshot guys haven't spoken is also ridiculous. Or have they?

~~~
colinloretz
I also competed. We had from when the hackathon was announced (October 25th)
to November 17th to build our submissions.

------
fizx
To me, the most interesting part of this is buried. Whereas previously only
the five finalists were showcased, now many (all?) of the losing entries are
now published.

[http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/submissions](http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/submissions)

~~~
colinloretz
They reached out to all the teams for their permission to publish their
submissions. Not all of the teams have agreed to do so yet.

------
pc86
More than anything, I’m bothered that the submitter has submitted multiple
articles[1] on the same subject. Is HN karma really this important to people?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6836581](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6836581)

~~~
Jemaclus
Well, this apparently bothers you, so it must be, right? :)

------
err4nt
Why give them the publicity?

------
swalsh
That healthcare app is actually pretty cool, how did that not win 1st place?


Show HN: One link between you and the internet - attendos
https://enter.bio
======
ColinWright
I don't understand what this is, or does, or could be. I can guess, but
there's no indication of what pain I'm currently experiencing that is taken
away by this.

It would be really nice to have a proper blog post that talks about what this
accomplishes for me, why I would want it. Don't focus on the marvellous things
you've done[0], describe for me how this will make my life better[1].

In the past when I've said that people haven't understood the differences
between [0] and [1]. When you do - if you do - it will help you see how to
connect better with people like me.

But it might be that I'm not your target audience.


Wired Science Blogs explains the physics behind cannonball flight - sathishmanohar
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/cannon-balls-size-matters/

======
paulor2
Beautiful text, this is how engineers should think. Make real assumptions
using all the knowledge they got.


Folha stops publishing content on Facebook [portuguese] - pablo-massa
https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2018/02/folha-deixa-de-publicar-conteudo-no-facebook.shtml
======
pablo-massa
Google translate to English:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww1.folha.uol.com.br%2Fpoder%2F2018%2F02%2Ffolha-
deixa-de-publicar-conteudo-no-facebook.shtml&edit-text=&act=url)


Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE - cleverjake
http://blog.reybango.com/2012/05/08/hey-paydirt-your-site-works-just-fine-in-ie

======
jayferd
If I, as a developer, decide my site supports a browser, I know I'm going to
have to spend some time doing QA on that browser. Standards are cool, but I've
run into enough FF and Chrome bugs that I always test.

That being said, the cost of testing in IE is waaay higher than the cost of
testing in FF and Chrome. Why? Because FF and Chrome are cross-platform, I and
my fellow developers can test on our OS of choice. With IE, a testing
environment costs my company about $300 per developer.

Not to mention that setting up a VM for testing is the opposite of
straightforward. After shaving a few yaks to convert the stupid VHD format to
something VirtualBox can understand, you need to hack your local network so
the VM can see its host.

Also, the developer tools are crappy. Has anyone worked on those in the last
10 years? I use Chrome for development not because of "web standards", but
because the debugging tools are _awesome_ (some people swear by Firebug, also,
YMMV).

So I guess the point "support" is a little more complicated than "look, it
works!".

~~~
ricardobeat
We just keep a couple spare, old win laptops around for testing on IE. They
have Win7 with IE9, plus VMs for <IE8, access over the local network. It's
easy to create a bookmarklet that sends URLs over to them so you don't have to
type.

Also, neither Chrome, Safari or Firefox behave exactly the same on
win/mac/linux. Delicate layouts and javascript-heavy apps still have to be
tested.

IE9 has a large share of the web, and is still growing. It's a perfectly ok
browser (except for lack of WebGL). Not supporting it or adding a "not
optimized for..." message reeks of "Optimized for 800x600" in the old days.
Users shouldn't have to pay the toll.

And please, if you are going to do this, do _not_ block browsers by UA. Show a
warning, whatever, but just don't lock them out. It's annoying.

~~~
talmand
Could you possibly share this bookmarklet?

~~~
ricardobeat
Using OpenKeyVal (<http://openkeyval.org/>), the bookmarklet looks like this:

        (function(){
            var data = { data: location.href }
            jQuery.post('http://api.openkeyval.org/myownkey', data)
        }())

And on each client you have a screen-sized iframe + an "update" button that
triggers:

        $.getJSON('http://api.openkeyval.org/myownkey', function(data){
            iframe.src = data
        })

You have to remember to use your local IP address, not localhost. I ended up
making a small nodejs server so we could use websockets and drop the update
button.

------
brlewis
This may be schadenfreude, but as someone who's been around the web a long
time, it really tickles me to see Microsoft have to fake their user agent
string to get around an arbitrary browser restriction. Other browsers used to
fake the IE user agent string. I suppose it's full circle since IE originally
had to pose as Netscape's browser (Mozilla compatible).

~~~
jpadvo
Same circumstance in both cases, though: _developers_, not browser vendors,
unnecessarily restricting functionality based on browser sniffing.

~~~
mistercow
No, MS doesn't get to dodge blame that easily. They blatantly used non-
standard features in their browser to stifle competition. Many developers were
complicit in this but that was according to Microsoft's design.

~~~
gaius
Non standard features like... XMLHttpRequest?

The entire AJAX industry, they invented. What were you saying again?

~~~
rpeden
Seems to me there has, for a long time, been a double standard when MS is
involved.

The response I often see is:

Something non-standard but cool in IE? "Screw MS, they're trying to embrace
and extend the web!"

Something non-standard but cool in another browser? "I don't understand why
people are complaining! Good ideas like these eventually become standards, and
this is how innovation happens!"

~~~
mistercow
There is no double standard. If any single browser had the marketshare that IE
had in its heyday, it would be irresponsible and anticompetitive for them to
implement nonstandard features. But marketshare is spread much more evenly
among the players today, so it's pretty much understood that a production site
cannot _rely_ on a browser-specific feature. Hell, most people don't even rely
on modern _standard_ features because they still want their stuff to work in
IE6. Comparing experimental features today with the IE-flavored-web of 2002 is
comparing apples to geese.

~~~
rpeden
Weren't <img>, <li>, <ul>, and <ol> experimental, non-standard features added
by Netscape? Due to Netscape's dominance, everyone ended up implementing them.

I'm not saying non-standard features are always a good idea...but is everyone
always waited around for standards bodies to come up with new things, we'd
never see any new features.

~~~
yuhong
Nope, <img> was invented with Mosaic, and <li>, <ul> and <ol> was in Mosaic
too.

~~~
masklinn
Which doesn't detract much from the point: it was a proprietary extension by a
specific browser, later adopted by all others.

~~~
mistercow
OK, NCSA was wrong to add those tags to Mosaic without going through standards
channels or making them "experimental" and accessible through explicitly
temporary syntax. However, I have not seen any evidence (much less the hard
_proof_ we have as Microsoft is concerned) that they added those tags with
anticompetitive _motivation_ , especially considering that Mosaic predated the
browser war.

------
tnorthcutt
_They were using many CSS3 features supported since IE9, like transforms &
border-radius, but just not adding the –ms vendor prefix entry_

 _They had the “-ms” prefix for CSS3 gradients which was added in IE10_

 _They added support for -khtml-box-shadow but not -ms-box-shadow???_

 _They didn’t support Opera either unfortunately_

All this crap recently about web standards and Opera adopting the webkit
prefix and how bad some people think that is for the web? Paydirt, and people
who think like them, are a huge part of the problem. Please don't do stuff
like this.

~~~
recoiledsnake
I use Opera as my main browser and I cringe when clicking on a link in HN
which supposedly shows off usage of cool new features in HTML/CSS/JS/WebGL
whatever. Then I hunt around the site which breaks on me with no message. Then
have to trawl through the HN comments to realize that it only works in Chrome
and no one bothers to put that in the headline or on the site. Note that this
happens to lots of Google cool features or easter eggs. Is this really taking
the web forward or setting it back to the "best works in IE" days (just
without that helpful message) ?

And now Opera is pissed at the usage of browser specific extensions and is
adding support for -moz and -webkit which is sure to further mess up things.

~~~
snowwrestler
Honest question, and I promise I'm not trying to be antagonistic: why do that
to yourself? Why not Chrome or Safari or even Firefox? Why keep using Opera at
all?

~~~
gebe
I am an Opera user as well but I really tried to do the Chrome switch when I
got a new laptop and decided on a fresh install of everything. I was thinking
that it might be time to begin a new chapter in my personal browser-history-
life and hop on the Chrome bandwagon. It didn't take more than a day or two
until I got drawn back to Opera though.

I know it's just mostly/only about "old habits die hard" but I just feel that
so much is amiss in Chrome. From small things like that I have to get an app
to get a dropdown address bar list (I mean really?) or the lack of intuitive
hotkeys (my favourite is Opera's ctrl + z for undoing a closed tab) to bigger
things like that I have to put up with Google's constant nagging about logging
in to this or that or the lack of features that Opera has out the box (like
Opera Turbo and such).

An old usage case before I got a no-limit data package plan was trying to save
bandwidth while tethering from my phone. In Opera I could first put on Opera
Turbo (like a proxy compressing service) and with another two clicks control
what elements I want shown. I could easily and intuitively turn off pictures
for example and only choose show those that I may want to look at. It was
great for surfing light!

I am no rockstar web developer nor am I interested in figuring out what
plugins/apps I need. I just want stuff to work, out of the box, while still
having access to some cool stuff. And for that Opera works wonders for me
(even though the support for it ain't that great ;) )!

~~~
noveltyaccount
Ctrl + Shift + T in Chrome to un-close a tab.

~~~
ajanuary
I think their point was that Ctrl+Z is more intuitive than Ctrl+Shift+T,
though I don't necessarily agree with that.

------
FuzzyDunlop
So, if Microsoft renamed IE10 to something entirely different, and packaged it
as a standalone browser, would a site like Paydirt support it then? It seems
to work fine, so why not?

This, and comments like _"The site happening to work"_ seem to have an
underlying prejudice about IE. "It was IE, so it _must_ be fucked some way or
another."

The old versions are, but try running the site on Chrome 1, or Firefox 3.6 (I
believe a lot of old Ubuntu LTS releases have that). They'll be exactly the
same.

This should not become a trend.

~~~
moron
> This, and comments like "The site happening to work" seem to have an
> underlying prejudice about IE. "It was IE, so it must be fucked some way or
> another."

If it's my comment you're referring to, I said it "happens" to work in IE
because if we are to believe the team, they didn't try to make it work in IE.
It just does, by coincidence, _for now_.

Support is a commitment, and committing to IE will mean work down the road
that these people have decided not to do, because it is not valuable to them.
This attitude of "Oh, it works in IE right now so they must just be pedantic
asses" is short-sighted.

~~~
mikeryan
_It just does, by coincidence, for now_

So you're saying its just a fluke that IE9+ supports the same standards as
Firefox and Chrome? Amazing luck that.

~~~
rhizome
Historically speaking, yes, but perhaps intentional in the present day. Who's
to say, and better yet, who's going to spend scarce developer resources on
proving it one way or the other? Unless you're doing corporate, that is.

~~~
qw
_who's going to spend scarce developer resources on proving it_

This was the argument many had a decade ago about IE6. Lots of people designed
for IE6 first and didn't spend time on alternative browsers. They were lucky
that IE6 continued to be popular for so many years, but in the end it has
caused a lot of problems. These days the markets move a lot quicker, so
failing to support IE9 today may prove an expensive decision in a year or two.

------
ilaksh
IE9 may have caught up on some things, but there are a lot of things it
doesn't do, that Safari/Chrome and Firefox (as well as Opera in most cases) do
do. So even if it might not be quite as hard now to get it to layout properly
(it still is not the same as Chrome/Safari/Firefox/Opera, really, things just
don't behave the same unless you train yourself to avoid things that IE9
doesn't like), there are lots of other reasons to avoid IE:

■ WebGL (3D) ■ WebSockets ■ HTML5 Forms (validation mechanism, CSS3 selectors)
■ FormData ■ HTML5 multifile-upload ■ HTML5 video (only with certain file
formats) ■ CSS3 Transitions (for animations) ■ CSS3 Text Shadow ■ CSS3
Gradients ■ CSS3 Border Image ■ CSS3 Flex box model ■ Application Cache
(offline) ■ Web Workers (threads in JavaScript) ■ Drag’n Drop from Desktop ■
SMIL Animations (SVG animations) ■ File API ■ JavaScript Strict Mode ■
ForeignObject (embed external content in SVG) ■ ClassList APIs ■ HTML5 History
API

Why are most of these features either already implemented in other browsers or
available in development versions, but completely missing from Internet
Explorer? Why haven't more of these features made it into the hands of Windows
users? Its not because Microsoft can't figure out how to implement or deploy
these features. Its because the web platform is fundamentally antagonistic to
Microsoft's business model with its dominant Windows monopoly on business
software, PC games and operating system deployment.

Those features which enhance the web browser to make it most competitive with
the desktop MUST not be deployed to Windows users any faster than absolutely
necessary. It is an absolute business imperative for Microsoft to drag its
feet and disrupt the web platform as much as it possibly can, because when all
web browsers have web workers, 3D WebGL, WebSockets, File API, Gradients, Drag
and Drop, HTML5 forms etc., it simply won't make business sense to write
applications specific to Microsoft's platform. Pretty soon after that happens,
it won't make sense to continue the Windows and Office licensing lock-in.

So the relationship between a web developer (who understands the nature of the
web platform) and Microsoft is fundamentally antagonistic.

~~~
mattmanser
Oh god, we might as well start asking why FF didn't support ellipse for what
seems like decades.

Everyone has different release schedules. IE is a lot more conservative
because they support enterprise who are mighty touchy.

Grow The Fuck Up Cry Baby. I'm all for IE6 and IE7 whining, they suck. I'm
even for IE8 and the entire stop at XP whining. Damn MS for that.

But you just sound like a total privileged prat who doesn't have a clue what's
going on when it comes to web standards. FF and Chrome have a lot more
latitude. If you want to know what happens when stuff starts moving too fast
keep an eye on the webkit mobile css support fiasco unfolding in front of us
right now. There is such a thing as moving too fast.

~~~
chris_wot
You're equating ellipses with things like websockets?

Can someone either downvoted or kill this? I've never seen such an abusive and
horrid comment on Hacker News!

~~~
chris_wot
Hey spqr, for the past 266 days you've been posting comments that virtually
nobody can see. I read dead comments - call me crazy.

Just thought you might want to know why nobody has been replying to you.

------
dpearson
The problem is, IE 9 and 10 are not everywhere. I know for certain that my
school (and, I'd be willing to wager, many businesses) only deploys IE 7 and
8. IE 6 still isn't dead, despite Microsoft publicly encouraging migration.
Until Microsoft gets IE 9 and 10 adoption up, supporting Internet Explorer is
tricky.

~~~
josefresco
The problem really is that they are lumping ALL IE users into one
"incompatible bucket" irregardless of the version and features supported.

There's no need to get religious here, just support the browsers that have the
features your web app needs.

~~~
politician
You're talking about feature testing and progressive enhancement. Adopting
that strategy doesn't mean that you no longer have to test every browser, it
just means that you don't support a common level of functionality across
browsers. Indeed, you'll still end up testing all the browsers all of the
time, just with different expectations.

These guys have been burned by IE to the point where they don't want to test
it period. Feature testing doesn't get them there, but blacklisting does.

~~~
eropple
> These guys have been burned by IE to the point where they don't want to test
> it period.

Alternate Character Interpretation: they want some hits from HN because "look
at us, we don't support IE!!!".

------
janlukacs
it's just a publicity stunt to get traffic to their site. since web devs
mostly hate IE it an easy way to get their attention...

~~~
gm
Well may have gotten traffic but did it get sales? Goodwill?

Attracting traffic because you are being a dick is not the same as attracting
traffic because you are making a world-changing awesome product.

------
sauravc
IE may be annoying, and I certainly sympathize with the Paydirt crew. But this
author makes a good point: "it’s exactly this type of behavior (writing for or
against specific browsers) that sets the Web back again."

Sometimes doing the right thing isn't the easiest path forward.

~~~
rhizome
The unspoken assertion in that point? The only basis for including "again" is
the past work of the IE team themselves.

~~~
sauravc
Yup. But two wrongs don't make a right.

------
rbanffy
I can see why someone would do it. If you are on Windows, you _can_ use other
browsers - every browser is available on Windows.

When I allow an IE user to use an application, I have to start testing on IE.
In order to do that I'll have to make Selenium do some extra runs (IE 7, 8, 9,
10, Metro mode) under a Windows VM. I also need at least one (Win 7) Windows
licenses (probably more, but I may be able to get away with permanently using
it in preview) and, worst of all, when it breaks, I'll have to get the
application fixed for, at least a couple versions of Firefox, Chrome and IE.
And that if it breaks during testing - if it breaks with a user I'll have to
start guessing what went wrong (if something did).

Nah... Windows users can use Safari, Chrome or Firefox.

edit: as pointed out by recoiledsnake, aaronbrethorst and Impossible Safari is
available for Windows.

~~~
darklajid
I'm a Firefox user, working exclusively on Windows (although a Linux nut by
night).

If a site blocks any browser by user-agent _and I find out about that_ (as a
user of FF that's not a regular case) that site is dead. I will create some
childish rhymes about the creator of that thing, I'm going to compare it to
acoustic couplers or pay phones and .. move on.

There are good reasons to avoid supporting every browser and the IE brand
_had_ (and has) problems.

But user agent sniffing? That results in one reaction only (again, of course,
limited to 'what I can notice'):

This business isn't able to provide a usable web presence. I'm going
elsewhere.

~~~
rbanffy
> This business isn't able to provide a usable web presence.

Define "usable". It's certainly usable if you are not on IE and, if the
resources they'd use to support IE in addition to others are diverted into new
and useful features, I'm happy.

Even if you use feature detection, you'll still have to test on IE (and, to do
it right, you'1l have to test on a matrix of 3 or 4 OSs (XP, Vista, 7, 8) and
4 browser versions (7, 8, 9 and 10). If IE breaks, you'll still have to fix it
in ways other browsers don't break. That costs money.

------
LocalPCGuy
IMO, I agree with those that say it is a publicity stunt. It costs very little
to support IE9+. Even IE8 doesn't take a ton of time to make it work, although
you do have to do something about the CSS3 styles (CSS3PIE, for example.) But
it is really dumb to make the choice to BLOCK a browser by user agent. How
about feature detection or if you must block by browser, at least do IE8 and
below.

Note, I am a front-end dev, and I know the pain of developing for IE6 and IE7.
But any front end dev with any professional skills can make a site that works
in IE8+ without resorting to ugly hacks (I don't call polyfills hacks.) And
IE9 supports a large percentage of the standards we use on a daily basis.

Sorry, dumb move by Paydirt, with no monetary payoff.

------
amishforkfight
Just a guess, but the inclusion of -ms prefixes indicate the use of a CSS
preprocessor and some off-the-shelf mixin libraries for all the fancy crap.

~~~
reybango
Possibly. Just seems odd that specific things are added but others aren't.

------
heelhook
tl;dr the site works with IE9 and IE10.

I find the style of writing of this post extremely obnoxious, was it really
necessary to say the exact same thing with slightly different order in the
words over and over? If your post is to be short because there's not a lot to
say, don't extend it unnecessarily, get to the point, move on.

~~~
davidjgraph
I thought that. Plus the commenter that tries to explain that Microsoft built
up a good deal of "trust debt" over the IE 6-8 period for those who had to
code through it, gets the same repeated in the comments.

It's all very well that it technically might work, but we're dealing with
humans here, humans that have been annoyed for a long time...

~~~
dmix
Microsofts trust debt will start repairing when noone uses IE7 anymore.

It's still at about 10% worldwide so many of use still have to fix mystery JS
bugs in IE7 and even still some CSS oddities in IE8.

~~~
Joeri
Not to mention the joy of "can't execute code from a freed script" in IE9
(code that works fine in every other browser, even IE6, magically broke in
IE9).

------
SchizoDuckie
In my opinion this is the beginning of the end for Microsoft. People are
shouting out that they're done with it, and Microsoft is trying the same trick
as before: Creating unneccesary lock-in where there is absolutely no use.

Why did the first beta of IE10 work on windows 7 and now you need to download
a 3.2 gb unfinished operating system? It's bullshit, It's insane, and once
again the developers are being assraped by Microsofts marketeers.

You can shout from the top of the highest building that you release a new
version every month, Microsoft, but you _way_ overplayed your hands. Now
there's 4 major versions to support, hundreds of bugs to test. Developer
environments to setup, weird registry hacks to do to get things working, and
NO FRICKING DEBUG TOOLS.

I'm one of the happy few people that are allowed to code for mostly webkit-
based devices, and even though there's loads of fragmentation there, it's no
were near as shitty as the experience i've had the past 8 years building IE
compatibility.

------
dutchbrit
Claiming they no longer support IE means they'll stop writing "hacks" for IE
from now (not as in last month) onwards.. But still, silly that they simply
block IE and don't just show an extra message saying use X for the "ultimate
experience". Maybe they should only block IE once they have an update that
really will interfere with IE users.

But on the other hand, that might piss of paying customers that actually use
IE and refuse/aren't allowed to use anything else..

------
JVIDEL
When I meet with investors all they talk about is traction and traffic.

If you have enough there are no more meeting, no calls, no demos.

You get funded, no questions asked.

IE is no longer 90% of the market, but it's still the biggest browser by
market share. There are many early adopters, but not anywhere as much as
regular users. Regular users make the bulk of any popular site/webapp's
traction, and most of them use IE, period.

A few years from now when IE becomes just another competitor and not the
market leader we wont need to develop for it, and that might actually make
more regular users move to FF or Chrome.

Meanwhile you have to support it, because IE development will never ever be as
difficult as getting enough traction.

------
HaloZero
Paydirt is within it's full rights not to support IE9 when it's customer base
doesn't really use it.

The problem is that the author notices most things work (border radius) but
doesn't realize that IE9 is missing stuff we expect modern browsers to be able
to support. Placeholder text and simple gradients are both not supported very
well and that takes time and effort to build into your product. It's not about
90%, it's about getting that last 10% to work just right so the experience is
clean and smooth for everyone involved.

IE10 might be another story, but last time I checked IE10 isn't out yet. But
it seems to me that Microsoft is always one step behind.

~~~
underwater
What kind of site needs gradient support to be usable? Placeholders are bad
for usability too; your shouldn't be relying on them.

------
tokenizer
Isn't IE usually the only browser worth creating seperate stylesheets not to
mention the browser who gives the most difficulty with your javascript?

If Microsoft truly cared about the web, they would adhere to strict standards
support and compliance, force updates for IE9 and below, and begin auto update
cycles for their browsers.

That may seem like a lot to ask, but it's the only things to me as a web
developer I can see that could remedy their horrible reputation in the browser
community. No one game app on their latest browser will change that.

------
pippy
Supporting IE has nothing to do with how well it renders a site.

Supporting IE carries massive baggage as you have to pin yourself to
Microsoft's erratic, tactic based release cycles and limiting yourself with
future features. Chrome and Firefox now how have rolling releases and are
closely tied with the developer community, so new features and rendering
uniformity is what you gain.

There's also the ethos you buy into by supporting IE: you're supporting a
closed source, proprietary internet.

~~~
PaulHoule
IE's moving to a similar "rapid release" schedule with other browsers.

Microsoft has played many sneaky pete tricks in the browser wars (such as
supporting a CSS standard that couldn't be correctly implemented in Netscape's
codebase) but you can't blame their release schedule entirely on that --
Windows users tend to be a conservative lot who are terrified that Microsoft
will push something that will break their cheap-ass intranet that's held
together with string and ear wax.

~~~
rhizome
_conservative lot who are terrified that Microsoft will push something that
will break their cheap-ass intranet_

Due to...everybody say it with me...lack of standards support.

~~~
bzbarsky
No, it's due to so many intranet applications being written as one-browser
hacks completely ignoring standards.

Mozilla has had similar issues with intranets (though not to as large an
extent, due to their smaller install base), and you can't exactly blame _that_
on lack of standards support. What you _can_ blame it on is things like people
writing intranet apps that depend on the user flipping some hidden pref in the
browser to relax a security policy and then breaking when that pref is later
removed, say.

------
drsim
I'm calling link-bait on the original Paydirt post.

Either that or Paydirt's prejudice against IE. But I believe they're smarter
than that.

------
andrew_wc_brown
In my current project, I've decided only to support the chrome browser and all
other user agents are redirected to a not supported page asking them to
install chrome.

I dont see the point in sacrificing my programmer happiness.

------
xxyyzz
The problem with IE is it's poor track record. We don't trust you to keep it
up.

Abandon the project and let people who care about beauty handle things,
google.

------
yuhong
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3942003>

------
tony_le_montana
In my experience, supporting IE9/10 is different from supporting IE6-8.
Supporting IE6&7 is real pain.

------
kadjar
Did anyone else notice that font smoothing was significantly better in the
Win7 screenshots than Win8?

------
Bxstraz
This is a great post and should be read by every Web Designer out there.

------
eagsalazar
Doesn't anyone realize they just wrote that article and disabled ie9 to
attract hipster freelance designers and developers? The whole thing is
basically a PR stunt since they realized 99% of their hits were from Mac
anyway. Especially having their article on Hacker News was just to get
attention from the large freelancer following on HN.

I'm _no_ fan of IE. However explicitly blocking IE9 is just idiotic for any
other reason. They could, at worst, just have a subtle notice letting people
know it is optimized for Chrome/FF and their mileage may otherwise vary.

However, for the reason of getting Mac using hipsters excited, it was pretty
brilliant.

(btw, I'm not a Mac or Windows user)

Disclaimers: (1) This is just a theory. (2) I actually like hipsters. I just
recognize they can sometimes be manipulated. Like everyone, they have their
buttons.

~~~
rickmb
From the way you throw the word "hipster" around like an epithet, I already
guessed you are not a Mac or Windows user...

Sorry, couldn't resist. My point is, making all those assumptions about people
and their motives is just as "idiotic" as blocking IE9 in the first place.

~~~
sliverstorm
The veracity of those assumptions has little to do with whether or not Paydirt
shared that thought process.

------
billpatrianakos
It's easy to say IE9+ works but in the real world people aren't upgrading
their version of IE like users of other browsers tend to do. While IE9 and
above are much better than their predecessors by a long shot they still
require you to jump through more hoops compared to any other browser. IE9
supports gradients but you have to feed it so,e conditional CSS for it to work
as expected.

Overall it's misleading to say "IE9 and above work just fine you elitist
hipsters" when we all know damn well there are still so many users on versions
of IE older than 9 because XP won't let you or simply because Mocrosoft has
traditionally not really encouraged or made it as easy to upgrade. To their
credit I'm glad they're running commercials for IE10 and for this case,
considering PayDirt's audience, it could be fair to criticize them for leaving
all IE users out because we can reasonably assume they're using the latest
greatest even if it is IE. But if you want to talk about IE being no problem
to support in general then it's disingenuous to only mention the two latest
versions because we know there are far too many users of the older ones to
ignore. Users of other browsers are upgrading regularly so it's trivial to
support old FF or Chrome (plus even FF's and Chromes's older versions support
a hell of a lot more than comparable older IE's).

You know why we love to hate IE even when it improves? Because it feels like
too little too late. Even the improvements are one step behind everyone else.

~~~
MicroAndMacro
Bill. Just wanted to let you know that Microsoft has been auto-updating all
users that have opted into MS updates on their Windows machines since January.
A majority of XP users should now be on IE8, all other Windows machines should
have IE9. [http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/microsoft-decides-
to-...](http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/microsoft-decides-to-
automatically-update-internet-explorer-for-everyone-20111215/)

------
moron
The site happening to work is not the same thing as support. Trust me.

~~~
chc
That is quite true, but ultimately irrelevant to the article's point, which is
that they are seemingly locking users out just for the heck of it.

~~~
moron
No, it's not irrelevant. Someday the site will change in a way such that it no
longer happens to work in IE. But since they don't support IE, it won't be a
bug.

Support is a commitment to people, not a mere technical hurdle.

~~~
chc
Maybe. I wouldn't really bet on the site becoming completely unusable in IE,
but I suppose it's a remote possibility. Let's be generous to your argument
and call it a 25% chance. At any rate, you're right that it would be
irresponsible to say they support IE if they aren't willing to fix it in such
a case.

But because there's a 25% chance that the site could break sometime in the
future, they go out of their way to _break it right now_? That's what they're
talking about, and it's orthogonal to the idea of choosing what configurations
to support.

At the company where I work, we don't support people trying to eat the
newspapers we put out, but we don't go out of our way to make the newspapers
poisonous either.

------
aneth
What does it mean to "not support" a browser?

Does it mean you know your site is broken in the browser? Does it mean you
block that browser? Does it mean you intentionally broke your site in that
browser?

None of the above. It means you don't want to waste your QA time testing and
fixing minor quirks in the browser and you don't want your users having a
degraded experience on that browser. To protect your users, you may or may not
provide a warning or block the browser entirely.

Products are in constant development, and every CSS change or javascript
feature has the potential to break a browser and require fixes. Just because
it works now, doesn't mean it always will.

It appears they successfully attempted to support IE, but decided it was not
worth continuing, perhaps because of some breakage OP did not discover. Should
they have stripped out any IE supporting code? That seems unnecessary.

~~~
OllieJones
There's lots of enterprisey stuff out there that only "supports" various
versions of IE, and bounces out other makes and models of browser. HN folks
may or may not see much of that, because that stuff is typically in various
corporate portal technology.

In health-care IT in particular, there's a popular radiology app that uses an
ActiveX control that is bug for bug compatible with IE6 and doesn't work on
IE7. That's an important reason for browser-upgrade inertia in that business.
Another reason is the risk of hassles. What hospitals use now sorta works. An
upgrade to IE7 might cause some patient-critical thing to break, and then all
hell would break loose and the IT folks would get sacked.

It may or may not be good startup marketing to slam IE. For those of us who
serve health-care and other institutional customers, it makes us green with
envy, no doubt.

But it is definitely good startup engineering, if you can get away with it, to
cut down the workload of qualifying various browsers by simply eliminating a
vendor from the test matrix.

I don't notice Microsoft offering any labor or money to help developers
qualify on their browser products, or to incent the big institutions (who
provide substantially all their revenue) to upgrade.

~~~
SapphireSun
Very true, but in some cases (such as mine) an individual working on an app
can slowly work towards cross browser compatibility every time they touch a
page. After a year, I'm almost there. :) There are several other apps... but
you do what you can.

------
lucian303
The author completely missed the point. It's about trust not technology.
That's why they're not supporting IE. Because of IE 6, 7, and 8.


Ask HN: AMZN is set to be larger than APPL soon. How did AMZN pull this off? - rblion
AMZN is currently at a $909 billion market cap. AAPL is around $960 billion. These numbers are insane to think about considering how close both companies were to 'being dead' at some point in their history.<p>I'm curious to hear your thoughts, insights, analysis on how you think Amazon went from being an afterthought to many in the industry to being a force on par with Apple and Google, maybe bigger in a few years.
======
TokyoKid
As discussed elsewhere, both companies enjoy large tax breaks that give them
huge advantages. However, I think only Amazon sells so many items online
without sales taxes across the US.

Apple still makes a good deal more revenue.

For quite some time, Amazon made almost no profit and just spent everything
they earned. I believe they recently started taking in more profit, and this
has probably excited the stock price a lot.

Amazon also seems to do things Apple isn't willing to. Amazon hosts the NSA's
data, while Apple fights for privacy. Amazon has notoriously poor working
conditions and unethical sources, while Apple leads in creating an ethical
supply chain, using green energy and making recyclable products.

Apple's strategy means they're virtually the only ones who can sell phones,
tablets and computers for a decent profit margin. Amazon's strategy shows
they're willing to be cut throat. Both are attractive to traders in about
equal measure, it seems.

~~~
rblion
Thanks, this is a very good summary and considers all factors.


Ask HN: Do you listen to country music? - 0xdeadbeefbabe

Does it help?
======
relaunched
I love country music. More so than other genres I've listened to, country
music has such a range. It can be upbeat and cheery, pump you up, change your
mood, sooth your soul, provide empathy, be simple & complex...It speaks to me,
no matter what mood I'm in or what's going on in my life. I'm sure others feel
the same way about whatever music they listen to, but for me, it's country.

If you listen to it long enough, someone has sung about whatever exact, or
almost exact, experience you have gone through. I like that.

------
mod
I like some country music, but don't listen to a lot of it.

I listen to stuff that might be mistaken for it, though! The Avett Brothers,
Nickel Creek, Trampled by Turtles.

Folk music, but people who think badly of country music usually don't like
banjos, either, and can't make the distinction in genre.

------
benologist
Help what?

------
partisan
No and Yes!

------
Red_
Yes and No!

------
brickcap
Yes I do and it helps me to relax :)

------
jonnynezbo
Sturgill Simpson and Chris Knight.


Robots Preparing To Defeat Humans in Soccer - ulvund
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV0WNO1c_4I

======
lizzy
Still a ways off getting there with humanoids! The small size league is one of
the most fun to watch. It moves very fast, the robots work properly in their
teams, and they even chip kick.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNXiSE7MoVU&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNXiSE7MoVU&feature=related)

I think a lot of people miss how cute the Sony AIBOs were though!


Are Atheists Genetic Mutants-A Product of Recent Evolution? - Melchizedek
http://www.unz.com/article/are-atheists-genetic-mutants-a-product-of-recent-evolution/
======
oldandtired
Since atheism has been around for at least 4000 years, I don't think they can
attribute it to "bad" genes. It is a choice by people to believe in a god or
gods or no gods.

The funny thing I find is that intelligence is not an indicator of whether one
believes in or does not believe in a god, or gods.

For example, there are those who were believers in Jesus Christ as God and
have come to the position that there is no god. These are at all levels of
intelligence. There are those who didn't believe in a god and now argue
strongly for Jesus Christ as God. Again these are at all levels of
intelligence.

There are those who fit in the autistic spectrum and sit on both sides.

Whether or not you are an atheist boils down to what you choose, it is not
your genetics or intelligence. Based on the evidence that is placed before me,
I have come strongly to believe that there is God, that He is Creator and that
He is Jesus Christ. How other people see and weigh that evidence will be up to
them and they have the choice to choose differently.

To say that atheists have "bad" genetics and that this is the reason for their
choice is not only bad science, it is bad for society and for allowing people
to choose. If such an idea was to gain any sort of traction, it would be very
bad.

------
raarts
I'm missing the evidence that shows that people with autism, schizophrenia,
homosexuality, sex-dysmorphia, left-handedness, asymmetrical bodies, high
intelligence, atheism are prone to having worse than average immune systems.

Also, where's the evidence that schizophrenia, homosexuality et al are on the
rise since the industrial revolution?

------
derReineke
Is this, like, a fundementalist Christian, click-bait, Facebook article?


Music Sounds Better When It's on Fire - tomkwok
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2awbKQ2DLRE

======
ASquare
Very cool! I expect to see this in clubs by year end :)


The three Google Graveyards documenting and tracking every Google's failure - stanislavb
https://www.saashub.com/google-graveyard-by-saashub-alternatives
======
stanislavb
Disclosure: I've built the Google Graveyard by SaaSHub.

Although, I'm biased and think that the above is the best out of the listed, I
still believe the rest have merits and are better in some directions.

Killed by Google: Simpler design, open source, good descriptions

The Google Cemetery: Nice design, well known.


Atlas Beta Program Launched - wooby
https://atlas-beta.heroku.com/users/new

======
bonaldi
I've been playing with this tonight. I had absolutely no problem paying for
the beta - I've paid Microsoft and Apple for betas and they need the cash a
lot less than these guys.

That said, I wouldn't quite recommend it if you're on the fence or just want a
quick intro to Cappuccino. It _is_ a beta -- there are a lot of polish issues
with the cocoa app, there are some bugs, and these are understandable. But the
biggest problem of all is the total dearth of documentation. There is a class
guide, there are some non-Atlas tutorials, and that's about it. So, for
instance, my app template comes up by default with a menubar, but there's no
obvious way I can see to remove or edit it. MainMenu.cib has no menu in it, so
I can't even see how to make connections to it and there's nothing to read to
find out.

It's definitely impressive -- that they've done this in JS and running in a
browser is a little marvel. However, I'm pretty used to Xcode and Interface
Builder, and in comparison it's really not there. Trying to work with multiple
embedded split-views really highlighted the differences: it's tricky enough in
IB, and proved almost impossible here. That they've achieved so much does mean
that you're into uncanny valley territory; if it looks like a cocoa app, I
want it to work like one too.

However, the things I _could_ figure out how to do, worked well. I defined
outlets and actions, hooked them up, and was basically thinking and coding
exactly as I would in Cocoa and Objective-C. Nifty.

It has got a fair way to go, but I think they well might get there. If you're
already working with Cappuccino and don't need documentation, it could well be
worth your time.

~~~
boucher
Thanks for the feedback. Accurate assessment. This is definitely still too
early to use for most people. We're not really trying to push the beta, we're
just looking for dedicated users to help give us great feedback.

~~~
eob
Congrats you guys on launching the beta. I've been following Cappuccino for a
while and, while I'm still on the fence about it as a developer, it is
certainly an impressive technical feat.

------
barrkel
Forgive my complete cluelessness, but what is "Atlas Beta"? I can't find any
simple explanation for what this actually is.

~~~
martey
This confused me as well. <http://280atlas.com/what.php> says:

 _Atlas is a development tool for building Cappuccino applications._

~~~
barrkel
Ah, and Cappuccino is apparently a clone of Apple's Cocoa in Javascript, using
a preprocessor for Javascript called Objective J.

~~~
ntoshev
This sounds like the same approach Microsoft ASP.NET has: try to fit web apps
in the desktop GUI event paradigm. Is this correct?

~~~
iamaleksey
Not exactly. Cappuchino tries to do it on the client side, while classical
ASP.NET does it on the server side. The former has its uses, the latter is a
terrible idea.

------
WesleyJohnson
I was really looking forward to signing up for the beta this evening, but
unfortunately I'm on Windows and the beta is currently Mac only.

I'm surprised that more people haven't heard of 280 North or Objective-J and
Cappuccino in general. I would consider myself moderately inclined when it
comes to technology and I had heard of Cappuccino close to a year ago. I
watched the demo of Atlas some weeks back and I was really impressed with what
they've accomplished.

I think they're doing the right thing by charging for the beta. It's a small
team of guys doing the development and I'm sure they could use the money. Not
to mention, if you're paying for a beta then you've likely been following the
development, have serious intent on using the technology long term and will
likely contribute more than a casual user would - which from what I gather is
exactly the target market they're after.

Looking forward to windows support in the coming month(s).

------
shib71
How is a signup form meant to be interesting? Perhaps I'm just out of the
loop, but the only thing I know about Atlas now is that it's associated with
Heroku and it will cost more than $20. That's not enough.

~~~
boucher
We're just hosted on heroku. If you'd like more info, there are a few videos
available on <http://280atlas.com>

Don't worry though, this is a beta, and it's meant for people who already know
what Atlas is and already want it.

~~~
shib71
Thanks. A blog post or something when you guys were ready would be great. But
this link is a bit premature and not very interesting.

------
icey
" _Membership does not include a copy of the final version of Atlas, but we'll
deduct the $20 from the final price._ "

Has there been any indication as to the neighborhood of the final price? I'd
hate to invest a bunch of time learning a new tool to find out that it's
priced outside of my budget when it releases.

~~~
boucher
We haven't set a final price yet. We're hoping to use our beta members as a
sounding board for determining the right price point.

It's worth noting that all of the stuff Atlas builds is still usable without
Atlas, though there will be no way to edit it without Atlas.

Of course, most of the editing technology is also open source, so building a
cib2nib (the reverse of our nib2cib) should be very possible, and give you
alternatives.

~~~
icey
I think it looks like a really cool product; I definitely want to use it. You
guys are making the right decision by charging for it for sure. My only
concern is that I don't know how 280 North views pricing, so it gives me a
little bit of pause.

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how it shapes up - good luck!

~~~
boucher
I can tell you that it will be a lot more than $20, and it will be less $1000.
Big range, I know.

~~~
cmelbye
What? Apple's development environment is essentially free (unless you count
the cost of the operating system, in which case it's still a lot less than
$1,000). Even if you compare this with the iPhone Developer program, it's
still way overpriced.

~~~
boucher
It's impossible for something that has no price to be overpriced. But thanks
for the feedback.


Create and delete branches - nicolasd
https://github.com/blog/1377-create-and-delete-branches
======
artursapek
Suddenly I can clearly see what must be one of Github's long-term goals: to
make git usable end-to-end in the browser, and in a way where that is
preferable for certain situations.

We're going to continue spending more and more of our computer time in the
browser. It's the universal platform.

~~~
Swizec
Git in the browser is _exactly_ what we need to bring git outside programming
circles.

What I've wanted for a while is a site where I could fork somebody's muffin
recipe, fix stuff and so on ... I've even considered building a site like
that, but how many people who cook are also handy enough with a console to
make that viable? My guess is not many.

~~~
artursapek
Hahah, recipes are actually a very interesting application. A program is much
like a recipe, after all. I could see a collaborative site where you build up
a personal cookbook by forking and trying out other peoples' stuff and
contributing your own modifications, etc.

~~~
MartinCron
If you think recipes are like code, you should look at knitting patterns
sometime. It looks like assembly code to me.

~~~
derleth
I have a grandmother who can debug knitting patterns.

The patterns in the books are, apparently, sometimes wrong somehow. She debugs
them when she knits.

I can only imagine _every_ competent knitter can, if only because those books
must sell to a huge number of them.

------
h2s
My gut reaction to this was negative. As much as I like GitHub, I sympathise a
lot with Linus Torvalds' concerns about the way it encourages low-quality pull
requests [1].

However, thinking back through my own experiences with the kind of minor pull
requests I've occasionally made to projects in the past, I can see this being
quite useful. Have you ever actually cloned a big repo like the kernel's? Even
the Node.js repo takes a fair old while. If you're just trying to submit a
correction for a minor typo or omission in the project's README, then this
feature lowers the barrier from minutes to seconds. Hopefully that will be a
net positive for the community.

[1]
[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56599...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-5659933)

~~~
avar
Why do you sympathize with his concerns? As valid as they are for the kernel
they aren't for most of the projects hosted on GitHub. Most people are happy
to get a pull request at all, and when they get one it's usually some trivial
fix they can merge automatically.

------
elliottcarlson
Slight self promotion; here is a CLI tool I made to help clear up local and
remote branches easily - in case it is still useful to people:

<https://github.com/elliottcarlson/git-delete-branch>

------
jonahkagan
I can't believe it. I was looking for this functionality just yesterday and
now here it is.

------
greghinch
Delete a branch in the UI, thank you!

------
purephase
The create is nice, but the delete is absolutely essential. Thanks for
implementing this.

------
davvid
Don't forget to run `git fetch --prune` after someone deletes a remote branch.

------
a1g
You guys are awesome! Thank you so much :)


Yahoo shareholders approve sale to Verizon - artsandsci
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/08/yahoo-shareholders-approve-sale-to-verizon/
======
techlekh
holy shit.... this was bound to happen

~~~
ganoushoreilly
Right! It's like, hey we have one buyer and one buyer only, should we approve
this or roll the dice?


The Ocean Cleanup Crowdfunding - Bolyuba
https://fund.theoceancleanup.com/

======
sebastianavina
so, this thing can survive a storm?

I picture the waves can be way more aggressive than the ones simulated in a
pool.


The London startup scene: Too much funding and boozing - bensummers
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/09/23/the-london-startup-scene-too-much-funding-boozing-and-not-enough-collaboration-and-execution/

======
cadr
I'm not familiar with the _startup_ scene in London, but the tech seen was
awesome. I met some great people (managed to hire some of them), had some
great conversations, and learned a ton.

There _was_ a lot of boozing, though. :)

~~~
notauser
I agree with you about the tech scene. For example DevTank (the tech
counterpart to DrinkTank) has been excellent so far. The London BarCamps are
also great, as are the Hack Days.

I also agree that the start up (and also the mobile) events aren't terribly
useful. They are more of a nice place to relax in the company of like-minded
individuals rather than places to generate business.

As for boozing... that's just London in the evening. Most people are bright
enough to stick to one or two drinks and you still see everyone in the office
at 7.30am the next morning.

By comparison I found events in New York to be a little free of personal
interaction. You turn up, spend 5 minutes talking to 5 people, listen to a
speaker, then go home. Great for collecting business cards, not so good for
establishing solid relationships. Perhaps someone can suggest better events
for me?

~~~
juliamae
agreed on the new york tech scene. all the events i've been to are very
networky and have little substance. i used to live in boston which had more
"techy" tech events. i would love to hear about better events in new york.

------
ig1
While some of his complaints are valid (for example the bar London Minibar
uses has terrible acoustics), there's a lot of value to be gained.

A lot of it is about serendipity, you don't go out looking for solutions, but
when you're there solutions have a way of finding you.

I think if you go there thinking "I want xyz" you might not get a lot out of
it. The author of the article says "do we really want to hear other startup’s
pitches?"

I'm always happy to hear other startup's pitches, indeed on a few occasions
I've met up with other HNers just to hear their pitches. I enjoy learning
about problems others are tackling and providing feedback where I can, and
hearing other people pitch helps me understand the weaknesses in my own
pitches.

If you go in with the attitude that you don't care about what anyone else is
doing then you're not going to make many friends. Networking isn't about how
many hands you shake, it's about making deeper mutually beneficial
connections, and to do that you have to have an interest in other people.
Without that it's not going to work.

------
rantfoil
That's why startup scenes are a bit of a mixed bag. You can meet really
awesome people who can help you a lot. But you can't let it get in the way of
building product.

------
maxawaytoolong
To be fair, there is plenty of this in SF and Silicon Valley. For example, any
time a "tech mixer" event is held at Myghty, it's almost identical to what the
article describes.

New York "tech" events are mostly like this, too.

------
binarymax
I've been to MiniBar a couple times, havent been since I moved out of London.
There was definitely a lot of boozing - but there was also a great vibe and
some great ideas.