skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This stuff was bizarre to me:

> Design enhances value, it does not create it. Stop creating shitty startups that look amazing.

> It is to a massive degree much, much easier to spend a week pushing pixels to create something beautiful

> If there’s one thing you can rely on everyone having an opinion on, it’s how something should look.

(my emphasis)

The author's conniption would appear to be around graphic design. Graphic design is a subset of design, and covers nothing close to the full scope of what goes into the design of a new product. Design is about how things work and, often, what feelings they evoke in the process. How they look can be a part of that, but it needn't always be.

For example: how delightful is it to work with a great API? Something straightforward, well-documented, but nonetheless powerful? It's such a joy. But it requires effort: planning, understanding, experimentation, adjustment, refining, etc. In a word, design.

As a test, consider the following:

Is it first engine design or is it engine making? Airframe design or airframe building? Circuit design or circuit assembly? You can't make the engine until someone designs it first. How it looks doesn't much matter – how it works is non-negotiably essential.

Something that works well is said to be well-designed. Something that merely looks nice can be pretty – and terribly designed.

So a startup can't have something be both shitty and well-designed at the same time.

The notion that design is a differentiating characteristic for startups comes from the fact that many incumbent products simply do not work well. By designing a product that addresses a given workflow faster, with greater convenience, with greater fun, you're making something that works better.

We're past the point where you can build technology that fits requirements and stop there. Everyone else has done that already. Now success comes in making things that are satisfying, not obnoxious, that are easily learned, that make users excited to show their friends.

tl;dr: Someone doesn't grasp the difference between design and making nice graphics, throws a tantrum of a non-sequitur.
The most amazing thing (A reflection on the smartphone)
Precisely why I don't want it to be there, I don't really need access to the battery. For the SIM, a solution similar to the iPhone will ensure that the phone feels a lot more solid.

I guess you've tried putting back the back cover, each time a tab snapped into place, I winced, fearing I'll break one. I still have the first Nexus, it has its own issues, but it feels more 'solid'.
He was my favourite thinker and orator, I'm very sad to see him go.
In short, he didn't really mean that design is completely worthless

Seriously? Because the term horseshit sounds pretty worthless to me.
Absolutely. Lockheed's an enormous company, so generalizations are risky, but they sure do some low-quality engineering sometimes. Their Littoral Combat Ship program is a textbook example of a clusterfuck.
Hubble Captures Birth of a Star
"God is Not Great" is trending on Twitter right now... (Hilarious material too.) Too bad Hitchens missed it.
He's so incredibly succinct and persuasive in his points when it comes to religion and I always love to hear these debates.

His memoir 'Hitch-22' is well worth the read, especially now (the opening in particular).
It's a software-as-a-service called Limelight: https://www.limelightapp.com/

I think the people behind it hang out here on HN, I'm sure they'll chime in.
"Stop creating shitty startups that look amazing. A product or service that is indispensably useful yet looks like ass is infinitely more likely to be successful than a product that solves zero problems but looks like a work of art."

Why do you assume that focusing on design in a startup means that the startup will "solve zero problems"? Admittedly, I'm biased (my startup is in the current batch of The Designer Fund), but the fund is very focused not on "prettiness", but usability and interfaces that work and convert.

I think it's rather unfair that you look at the graphic which is celebrating companies with designers and then rant about design making shitty products. Design is CRUCIAL to a good product, because design isn't "prettiness", it's how people use it and how it works.

Which of those infographic cards would you call shitty? And why?
He was a straight up debater who could discuss ideas on their merits, and seemed to make up his own mind on issues. Gone too soon.
Updated:

Some final words on this. Some people have interpreted this as me not understanding the value of good design. I assure you I do from experience, tweet at me if you want specifics.

However - create value before exploring how design can enhance the experience. Solve a real customer problem. If you’re an early stage startup with no revenue, don’t even think about design! Think hard about what problem you can solve that a customer will give you $10 for and work your ass off at delivering that $10 of value as fast and as cheaply as possible. It doesn’t even matter if you’re not aiming to make a paid service. If people won’t give you money to solve their problems, it’s not a real fucking problem. It’s just another novelty echo-chamber startup that you might get a chance to flip to a bigger fish if you win the startup lottery. Don’t be an idiot and buy into that. Solve a problem, live forever. The idea that design is what early stage startups should be busying their time with is a notion I find utterly wrong.

http://yongfook.com/post/14295124427/design-is-horseshit
I don't think it proved the internet as a whole has ethics, but it roved you can find good pockets of it.
I am not terribly familiar with with this MG author but he comes across as a self-righteous egotistical bigot.

His quote:

"I don’t know about you, but when I read my favorite technology writers, I want an opinion. Is the iPhone 4S the best smartphone, or is it the Galaxy Nexus? I need to buy one, I can’t buy both. Topolsky never gives us that. Instead, he pussyfoots around it. One is great at some things, the other is great at others. Barf.

Fucking pick one. I bet that even now he won’t."

I must be getting old but I thought the job of a journalist/columnist was to give a fair unbiased assessment in their review. No MG, I don't need you to pick one over the other. I have a brain and can reach my own conclusion, thank you very much. I don't need you to tell me what to spend $200-$300 of my own hard-earned money.

He seems to forget his job (I assume he has a job). What we need from journalists/columnists is a balanced honest review with pros and cons, that's all.
What does BrowserID do that every existing OpenID provider cannot? The BrowserID FAQ says the architecture is "decentralized", but login relies on Mozilla's browserid.org server.
Some people wouldn't spend $1 to watch a movie or hear a song, but would spend 3 or 4 clicks to torrent it. (FWIW: I have not downloaded Louie CK's video, from him or a torrent site.)
The relationship between boredom and grit, or maybe an intermediate variable like finding what you love, is an interesting one to ponder.
I don't think the same thing can't happen here at all. I agree with you that if they really wanted to pursue that path, the human cost could be enormous. However, we're also saying that if you really wanted some weed, there remain many avenues available to you to acquire it, despite all that will.
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PHP application development is the call of the hour owing to the gamut of features it offers to the users. A large number of open source tools are available today for PHP development.
What a shame about Digg. I way preferred the community... I find the reddit crowd far too self-congratulatory. They really, REALLY screwed the pooch though.
I've been following your co-author's blog for a while now and it's great stuff. I'm sure the book is better. But yes, the price will keep me away for now...at least until I read the sample chapters ;).
One solution is for everyone to simply refuse to implement whatever stupid law is passed. Closes #666 (WONTFIX)
I think this makes a lot of sense. Like, if you work at a web design shop and your website doesn't look good, you're doing it wrong IMO.
Apple iOS 5.1 Beta 2 Firmware IPSW Retore File
Also, this is what Scott and Kris have apparently been up to (NSFW) http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/talent
It's San Francisco, so between the hills and the traffic, an average of 43 minutes for 5.7 miles (~8mph) doesn't sound unreasonable.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/16/christopher-hitc...

Hitchens gave short shrift to the "insulting" suggestion that cancer might persuade him to change his position where reason had not, arguing that to ditch principles "held for a lifetime, in the hope of gaining favour at the last minute" would be a "hucksterish choice", and urging those who had taken it upon themselves to pray for him not to "trouble deaf heaven with your bootless cries".
You are correct, it does seems like a minutiae indeed. I even took a video of it, just because the part peeled away (like you said). The problem is, once I saw that, I couldn't 'unsee' it. I started pressing the area of the backplate around the camera, and saw that it flexed quite a bit.

I don't change phones often, and I was looking forward to this one. But after I saw this, I decided that I'm going to check out the a Motorola with ICS...... if that doesn't happen by January end, I might jump ship to Windows Phone 7 with the Lumia.
The author makes some interesting points but should be more specific that he is referring to Aesthetic Design.

Design is everywhere not just in the shiny stuff. Design is a workflow, response, messaging, interaction... These are all areas of design you might not be able to see immediately but are often the key components of making a great product.

My guess is that every one of the companies he considers successful had good design baked into their products somewhere (even if they had terrible aesthetics).

To categorize all design in this way is very misleading to those starting a company.
Katrina Kaif Chikni Chameli Item Song in Agneepath Photos
After the super item song Sheila Ki Jawani, Bollywood's sizzling beauty Katrina Kaif is doing yet another item number 'Chikni Chameli' in the upcoming remake of Agneepath. In the Chikni chameli song Katrina has a small bottle of country liqour dangling on her slender waist. The song is choreographed by Ganesh Acharya. Item song 'Chikni Chameli' is the Hindi version of 'Kombadi Palali' from Marathi film 'Jatra' released in 2006. Katrina’s item song 'Chikni Chameli' has created a lot of curiosity in Bollwood industry. The movie Agneepath, directed by Karan Malhotra with stars Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra and Sanjay Dutt. Checkout first look of one of the most awaited Katrina Kaif's item number Chikni Chameli from Agneepath.
Actually, when I put "we need more male" into Google, the two cases it suggests are "we need more male teachers" and "we need more male nurses" which were the two cases that I had immediately thought of.
Party Animals Vol. 4 - DJ Kaustubh (2011): DJ Remixes
"We have had no hearings and no testimonies on the technical issues"

- Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, 20:15 (http://www.justin.tv/unearthed365/b/302702510?)
As the author mentions, if you run into a use-case where you need to store 100000 integers in memory, then you should use one of the many alternative structures available. Some of them were explicitly designed to store integers in an efficient manner. Arrays weren't designed to store integers efficiently or anything else for that matter. They were designed to be fast and easy to use.
As I said in the end, the title is poorly chosen and doesn't really correspond to the post. As I read it, the idea isn't that design is worthless but that to a startup having a product people use is infinitely more important. I bet he just used "horseshit" because it came up in an article about ios recently (and to get more views).
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The first time I read Christopher Hitchens was his takedown of Mother Teresa - "The Missionary Position". It was emblematic of his writing - shocking, irreverent, but beautifully written and argued. The most intellectually honest pundit I have ever read - even when I disagreed with him. Sad to see him go.
Grit, as described by Adam, is one of the most important attributes of a successful entrepreneur. Both my cofounder and I believe this strongly, and have discussed this since the early days of founding our company. We still believe it wholeheartedly today.
Wow, right after America gave up the ghost in Iraq too.

From http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2011/11/oser-dire.html:

" Why does it also not delight me that the extent of the allegations against him, at least on some showings, is “unwanted advances”? It might be argued, by the cynical or the naive, that all “advances” begin that way. True, a period of a matter of months is specified, but don’t I seem to recall, in President Obama’s jaunty account of his courtship, that it took him a certain amount of time to “wear down” his intended target? I dare say that many of us could say the same, while reminiscing among friends, and still hope to avoid getting too many sidelong looks. But in the present circumstances there seems to be a danger of a straight-out politicization of the sexual harassment issue, with many people deciding it in advance on the simple basis of campaign calculations, or—to put it more crudely—of whose ox is being gored. This appears to represent a general coarsening by silence, and yet another crude element in a depressing campaign. "

-Hitchens

I have always suspected that Christopher Hitchens is really a child of Indianapolis or Topeka who spent a year in London while an undergraduate at the North Dakota State Technical and Agricultural Community College or some such and returned with an accent and a ubiquitous unopened umbrella so thoroughly does his Englishness come off as an affect. And, to crib from our friends across the pond, he comes off as a real tosser. "I dare say"? It's as if, sensing his own impending demise, he's angling to be played by Maggie Smith in the biopic.

Any man willing to gratuitously fondle the mother tongue as Hitch does above is obviously going to be an apologist for molestation. If you're a liberal, then you'll find it particularly appalling that Hitch first made his conservative bones, you'll pardon the expression, not by cheering for the death of a million Iraqis, but by stroking feverishly over Monica and Kathleen Willey. This was evidence of Clinton's despicable character, whereas here we are in grave danger of "politicizing . . . the sexual harassment issue," as if chalking it up as an issue has not by fucking default cast it into the baleful form of politics.
A fitting exit on his part. Got them riled up one last time.

Update: #hitchslap seems to be doing well, also.
dammit. hitchens barely got his trousers off.
> "Red Hat has been a pain in the neck at times."

Still very much the case. Their ass-backwards networking setup scripts, as just one example.
"Red Book" of Topcoder algorithm contests.
Exalting designers as founders does not mean the designers are sitting in a throne ordering their minions to do the coding. I'd argue that any startup that has a "designer founder" today, that designer is getting their hands dirty with working with the code — perhaps not to the level of a true developer, but actually ideating and executing their vision. Why not encourage this? Does every startup need to just be a business/dev pair with a designer employee, or is it okay to someone who feels they're a designer first in the founder position?
IIRC, they did try to backpedal but by then they'd lost a fair chunk of their userbase, so they rolled out the new features again.
In the 1950s, mainframes became widespread. In the 1980s it was the turn of personal computers. And in the 2010s, mobile smartphones will be remembered as the 3rd wave of computing.

Interesting how the waves occured pretty much exactly 30 years apart.
Not unexpected, he's been ill for a while. I will miss his razor wit and intellect. The clarity of his thought, writing and speech was a breath of cool fresh air amidst the unfortunate smog that is modern media, especially television. Am currently reading Hitch-22, have already read "God is not Great" and would recommend it.
I'm not convinced that they want to backpedal at this point. They get the sponsored content and users that they wanted (or whatever it was the changes were that upset everyone). And frankly, the content is a lot better now than I ever remember it being.
Great to see HN getting more readers. But I'm scared for the future of commenting. More readers != more intelligent commenting.
As long as the content is good $24 is cheap for something I'd consider reading to expand my skill set.
Supercharge Your Day
Re: Sewell, wouldn't that make Java the inverse of a quine?
Well said. The misuse of the word design is ubiquitous.

I just looked at the Designer Fund thing for a second, but I noticed a headshot of Luke Wroblewski on there. He co-founded the IxDA, wrote the books Mobile First and Web Form Design (both awesome), and then was co-founder and chief product officer at Bagcheck (that got acquired by Twitter). He's creating value as far as I'm concerned.
A good landing page from VF is an excellent starter for those who are tiptoeing into Hitchens for the first time. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/christopher-hitchens
On the linked page it says:

"NOTE: You may choose to validate assertions on your own server. While a bit more complicated you can reduce your dependencies on others. Refer to the specification and the source for the reference validator."

So while it's easier to use their server, it appears it is entirely possible to implement without it. Perhaps in a few weeks, we will see some good implementations. As I understand, the main advantage over OpenID is that instead of needing a <username>@<someopenidprovider> login, people can simply use an email address as their login. If all email providers supported OpenID, there would be little difference, but that has not happened (yet).
That's how I read it--the HN comparison was just for vanity's sake.
Another way to see this: Firefox and Chrome together rule over IE.

Made me smile.
"If you rely too much on your design skills, you'll end up creating something like Gowalla" ...or you can build something like Kickstarter, which is a fantastic company, doing amazing things for others, and something that people want?

You can name plenty of companies with designer founders that haven't IPOed in the same breath that you name plenty of companies who had developer founders who haven't either. It's a bit unfair to say just because you rely on one aspect, you'll end up like a couple companies that have failed.
Great post. The only thing I disagree with is your distaste for the designer fund. I think helping designers build startups is a good thing. And it's also important to note the difference between visual design (UI) and UX. You can't create value without good UX. And good designers do both UI and UX. So design is important, the visual aspect not so much, before you have something ppl want
My favourite Hitchens moment:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BP51NnoVErA
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Your criticism seems to center around your dislike of him using "design" as a shorthand for "graphic design". But this is hardly unique to the author to say the least.

In any case, what you go to say hardly contradicts what the author is saying ... except if you redefine what he's saying as being about you think "design" ought mean instead of how he's clearly using it.
Christopher Hitchens on Free Speech [video]
that last sentence 100% misses my point.

you were right at the start: Engineering is also horseshit. You can have the most beautifully engineered solution to a problem that nobody has or is willing to pay to have solved, and you'll still have a bullshit startup. Marketing is also horseshit. You can have the most amazingly viral video for a product that nobody wants and you will still end up with 0 sales and long-term, 0 customers.

the point here is that there isn't a startup fund or growing sentiment that seems to champion engineering or blogging or X as a fundamental part of the startup equation. it's all just a toolbox. but strangely, there is one for design.

the real issue that early startups need to focus on is solving a problem and creating value. that's actually much, much harder than you think and it should be 100% of the focus in the early stages.

forget about engineering and design.
Actually he was initially a Marxist, then a Libertarian, and then a Marxist again. I tended to agree more with his Libertarian side but no matter what his point of view I always enjoyed reading his work and listening to him debate. He was one of a kind.
نتيجة الانتخابات المرحلة الثانية 2011-2012
He was a good writer, a smart guy and he liked Orwell, but the move to Vanity Fair seemed a change in direction that put some of his values in question. I'm not sure that his run at Mother Theresa was worthwhile, his run at Kissinger probably was and his support for the war in Iraq was ridiculous. And I never figured out who he was fooling by saying that he was the 'new Gore Vidal'. Maybe it was his publicist. Sad to hear of his passing, but he was, like, just a guy, you know?
used to digg a lot, not so in the last few years.
kevin rose is a joke, just get over with it and disappear.
That would mean admitting you were wrong. Better to blame it on others, blame it on bad technology, blame it on your programmers and blame it on your VP of Engineering. That is the way Kevin Rose chose to play it.

I think it is reasonable to say, with the benefit of hindsight, that Kevin Rose badly misplayed the situation.

Please read:

As Digg Struggles, VP Of Engineering Is Shown The Door
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/07/digg-struggles-vp-engineeri...

This manages to be defensive and offensive and stupidly self-centered:

Kevin Rose Responds To Digg Criticism On Diggnation, Mostly Tells Users To Chill
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/07/kevin-rose-responds-to-digg...

Kevin tried to place a lot of the blame on Cassandra, saying the technology was not read for prime time, but the community pushed back in a big way and insisted that Cassandra was not the problem with Digg. If Cassandra had been the real problem, then Digg would have given up on it, but they did not:

http://gigaom.com/2010/09/08/digg-not-likely-to-give-up-on-c...

http://www.quora.com/Is-Cassandra-to-blame-for-Digg-v4s-tech...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1669645
(shrug)

Words mean things.

If I cry out, at the top of my lungs, that "Pizza is fucking bullshit!", then go on to say that I hate how pizza kills people, tears countries apart, and delivers atrocities, people will narrow their eyes and say "Actually, I think you're thinking of war." And then they're going to be a little weirded out that I said something so simultaneously bizarre and incorrect just to get their attention.

The thing is, when someone says "design is a differentiator," they're not really talking about how it looks, either. Because appearance is very rarely a lasting means of differentiation.

My criticism is not that he's using the word wrong. It's that he's invested a lot of flaming in the process of misunderstanding people who aren't.
100% correct. I read this after posting a similar reply to another poster above:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3359676
I think what you're looking for is on the homepage if you scroll: http://designerfund.com/

Shows the overview, the mentors and people involved in the program, and at the bottom, what's involved in the fund.

Disclaimer: I'm in the current "batch" and have received a non-equity grant.
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‘For Dummies’ Publisher Sues BitTorrent Users to “Educate and Settle”