skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>>You are just saying that because I can't show proof that electric cars have worked in a country on a large scale we can't build electric cars.

You are suggesting a bit larger problem than electric cars, it is more like nuclear driven cars that would literally explode with Megatons if any of them crashed...

(No, that is not an exaggeration, considering the repeated number of mass murders/starvations of at least millions wherever these experiments have been done -- China, Soviet, North Korea, Kampuchea, etc.)

>I showed you one alternative, Parecon,

I asked specifically for: "You can't list an example that has worked for a big population in an industrialized world -- and given them an open society."

Your answer was not relevant. but you knew that -- there is just no example -- and you lack the integrity to admit that.

>You are afraid of anything that might mean a change.

First you are upset by my lack of humanity in not wanting to change the world economy -- and then you call me coward for not wanting to do experiments that traditionally kills tens of millions of people.

Not coherent. But you knew that.

BTW, your extraordinary claims lack references (e.g. "capitalism is only good for a small percentage of a population" is not how Eastern Europe tells it!).

But then, you prefer news stories to Wikipedia with its references -- so there might not be enough TV programs on the net...?

Never mind, since you couldn't answer a single of my points regarding hunger above -- and lacked the integrity to admit it -- I only skimmed this.

The only question is if you're trolling or fanatic. In either case, you're a waste of time.
You're missing the OP's point, which (not to put words in the OP's mouth) is:

1 - A design does not exist in a vacuum. It is there to do something (in this case, sell shoes). It is impossible to separate good design from its contextual purpose - and in this case he is suggesting that you are (apparently) unqualified to fairly judge Zappos' design, not being from a sales background and all. Assuming you don't have sales experience, I would be inclined to agree.

2 - Zappos' purpose is to make money selling shoes. Would your UI push more sales? If so, then there's cause to look at your design. If your UI will decrease sales, then why in the flipping world would anyone consider your design? There is also no such thing as "no difference" - all UI changes, however minor, impact conversion and sales.

Personally I object to the presumptuous and condescending tone that this redesign is done in - you're assuming that Zappos is staffed by a team of idiots who couldn't care less about clean web UI. I don't work for Zappos, but given their success (and their site) I highly doubt this is the case. Making something web-2.0 does not automatically make it better.

I also happen to agree with OP that the testimonials are annoying and interrupt flow - customers are here to look at the store's offerings, not hear testimonials. Put it somewhere less intrusive. If I walk into a restaurant, I'd expect to hear about the menu - not what their ratings is on Yelp. The testimonial is also so often abused by nefarious ne'er-do-goods that its mere presence raises suspicion in users.

Your search box also removes functionality by completely tossing out search parameters - which IMHO demonstrates your lack of consideration for the specifics business requirements of the company (something many UX people do but will never own up to). The "search by" feature I would gather is very important to shoe buyers.

This post is already getting long, but I need to hit another point: you started your entire post with a very confrontational "why is your website a confusing mess"?

And then you fail to make any meaningful changes to the UI. The tab-based navigation is identical save for some padding and sizing changes. The product selection columns are identical. The search box is identical save for your decision to remove search features. The general layout is identical, in fact, save for your decision to add in the testimonials - how does this reduce confusion, exactly?

If you're going to make loud, bold-letter claims about the confusion inherent in a design, at least make the effort to change the design, as opposed to give it a slick font-and-button-texture makeover?
What's ugly about Amazon? It's a crowded design, but I never had any issue with it.
Hey man,

I am all about design - but "design" is practical functionality not just theoretical ideas about layout and consistency. The best design for Zappos is the one that generates the most sales - not the one that makes designers happy.

Zappos can surely be improved, like any website, but it is not with gradient images, testimonials and other aesthetic improvements (see comments below for more of the same).
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Dear Sir, you suck...... I amz betters. btw, can I has job?

sigh

I swear there are more of these every day and his complaints are pretty pedantic. The site is okay as is.
Ask HN: User Testing Tool
Hello,

I am looking for a website that allows you to conduct user testing on your own website. Essentially get raw data on what a user does when you tell him to reach goal X. Video of the user activity would be great. Does this exist?

Thanks,

Jonathan
It would take some time. But like with every learning activity the more time you spend on it the faster it goes.

In this case you're training a piece of software by showing it your responses to the input it presents you with. Over time it can get smarter.

By correlating the activity of several users it might get smarter faster than if it just had you to observe.
Also: what do you want to do, found something by yourself or support (and exploit to a degree) the people who found something?
Huh? http://cld.ly/xc57d0
Er... It is FLOSS. The name isn't. You don't have to use it, you don't have to call it by name. You can call it 'Dave' and it's no different.
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I would bet money that if Zappos implemented this design and measured customer satisfaction on the web site in addition to perceived brand value, both would improve.

Clean is always going to help. You have businesses who will be successful no matter what, because for some reason or another they nailed another part of their business model (such as distribution). But to defend a bad design is a cop out, I'll bet that with all things equal, the better designed web site (both usability and aesthetics) will always win.
I like you and wholeheartedly agree with your reasoning, but in this context your comment is really a 'question' -- it's basically a concern troll.
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Software Quality and Value - A mathematical examination
Yes, I do have some experience in the area. I was a core Squid developer for several years, and my previous startup was a proxy caching appliance vendor. I have been aware of Varnish for years, and have experimented with it several times over those years.

Varnish has narrowed the feature gap quite a bit over the years, but it's still not particularly narrow, and Squid hasn't been standing still.

I will admit that I have never deployed Varnish in production, while my experience with Squid spans thousands of servers, so I know a lot more about Squid than Varnish. And, it's been three years since I worked in the field at all. Both products have evolved quite a bit in that time (including a major rewrite in C++ for Squid).

Nonetheless, after a quick perusal of the docs for Varnish, I can say that for pretty much everything Varnish can do, Squid generally has three or four different tactics built in for approaching the same problem. Caching policies, ACLs, source selection (whether load balancing, hash-based source selection, etc.), logging, authentication, encryption (Squid supports SSL on either side, Varnish doesn't support SSL in any form, as far as I know), other protocols (I once deployed Squid for a top three computer manufacturer across several worldwide offices to allow their customers to access formerly FTP only support resources via HTTP; not possible with Varnish), etc.

Actually a luxury sedan vs. a Ferrari isn't really appropriate...Squid is more of a Winnebago filled with goodies, while Varnish is a stripped down (but very, very fast) race car. Both have their place. If all you need is what Varnish can do, then you should use Varnish. My metaphors were not indignant, they were intended to be illustrative of the difference in design goals of the two projects. One seeks to solve a wide variety of web caching and website acceleration problems with excellent platform compatibility, good performance, good security, good reliability, and reasonable configuration. The other seeks to solve a very small set of website acceleration problems with excellent performance; performance is, and always has been, the primary motivation driving Varnish, and it is very successful by that metric.

My point was not to criticize Varnish, but to point out that it is a solution to a very specific set of problems, and that in my seven years of working in the website acceleration industry, I rarely came upon a deployment that would have been well-served by those particular features; if I had, I very likely would have deployed Varnish instead of Squid. I am agnostic when it comes to Open Source software, as long as the quality is high, and in this case quality is high for both projects. But most of the time, the customer needed several of those other features of Squid, and performance was only third or fourth on the priority list.
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"You can't just say "Amazon is ugly and it works.""

And I'm not. I'm saying "Amazon is ugly and it works. We have teams of Web-2.0 guys doing redesigns on every facet of the site day-in-day-out, testing with live customers constantly, and this is still currently the best design - and we are still iterating."

A bit of a mouthful, though.

"I'm sure they could measurably prove that customer satisfaction on the web site and perceived brand value would both increase."

That's just it though. Where I work, we have proven numerically that this is a false assumption. "I'm sure they could prove" is a far cry from "We have proven". This is a problem that is prevalent throughout the UX community I think - a dogmatic worship of several principles without ever sanity-testing your assumptions with large-scale metrics, instead focusing on ephemeral and unreliable things like anecdotal user stories.

"It looks like it works better" and "it works better" are entirely two different beasts. One thing you can say off-hand, the other requires backup.

For what it's worth, I was on your side at one time. I hated "dirty" 90s-looking websites like eBay, Amazon, et al, and I loved the new-age Web-2.0-y stuff.

Then I got this job and got a sneak peek into what the user data actually says. Some things defy common logic - or at the very least, user experience design common logic.
Actually, it's a bit of both.
He sometimes writes some very "hackish" yet astute code, but his APIs are always cristal clear (and fun to use).
I don't see the conspiracy either. They could have sold those patents privately, not with a bid.

What I think happened is that Microsoft wanted some quick money out of patents they aren't using anyway (we are in an economic crisis after all), and so they organized a bid failing to invite OIN ... and maybe they did that such that OIN doesn't get them (the patents being acquired by a patent troll being the ideal scenario).

But that's not an "evil conspiracy". And I'm getting pretty tired of Groklaw and FSF crying wolf every time MS farts.

As they say, your real enemies are the ones you hate. You want to change the status quo? Competition and collaboration are the best tools you have. Not FUD.
>>I don't care what Wikipedia says, the UN says "starving" and the press is reporting "starving". Any jerk can edit Wikipedia.

By the way, Wikipedia quotes the UN report -- and shows you to lie or be a fanatic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undernourishment#cite_note-51

From key finding #1 in the report:
"FAO’s most recent estimates put the number of hungry people at 923 million in 2007"

(Note, not starving.)

In sum, you didn't answer a single one of my points -- and didn't have a fact correct.

I sincerely hope you're a troll and not this dishonest.
The practical problem with eval() is that people overuse it. This led me to once find a wonderful little code fragment written by a codeveloper that, when boiled down, was:

eval(":" + symbol.to_s)

which converted a symbol to a ... symbol.
Conflict Materials in Electronics
No, we're talking about a person joining a company that has produced insecure software and whether or not that would 'rub off'.

That's a weird way of looking at it. As though people working for microsoft are automatically associated with making insecure software.

The people that make wordpress that are responsible for the security - or lack there off - have some egg on their faces, but the person whose company just got acquired obviously does not.

For one the acquisition is after this particular bug was found, secondly he is not working on that part of the wordpress code but on the text polishing feature.

Major difference.

To suggest it would 'rub off' is to lump all the wordpress employees onto one heap and assign blame/attach stigma for the acts or negligence of the wordpress security team.

And that is where it should rub off on.

The 'on me' bit makes it pretty clear this is a personal issue and not about people not using the software produced by the company.

As in "even after you leave that company you will still carry the stigma of having worked for a company that produced insecure software".
This is way stupider than cases like CentOS vs. Prominent North American Linux Vendor

Here what will happen is that end-users will just have no idea that their whitebox hosted site runs on Drupal internally. Yes, you enjoin asshats from promoting themselves as you, but it's still a net negative.
Here's the policy with non-screwed-up formatting: http://drupal.com/trademark . Here's the bit that made me go WTF:

Examples of "fostering the Drupal software":

- a course entitled "How to use Drupal in your business"
organized by a local non-profit organization;
- an open access monthly journal called "Drupal Coding magazine";
- an open source Apache plugin "JIT Compiler for Drupal"...

Examples which do not qualify as "fostering the Drupal software":

- creating a Drupal fork "ImprovedDrupal";
- publishing a website "drupalhallofshame.com" with
pictures of infamous Drupal contributors.

Here's another fun quote:

"Exclusively" means that any direct profits generated
by using the Drupal trademark, must also be exclusively
used to foster the Drupal software.

And this part is just hilariously delusional:

The use of the Drupal trademark as part of the name of
a function, procedure, variable name or similar source
code component is also considered "nominative fair use"
for which no license is required.

Examples:

- a procedure called drupal_add_link();
- a constant called DRUPAL_AUTHENTICATED_RID;
- a variable named $drupal_tag;
- a set of source code files called drupal.module and drupal.js.
Yeah, apparently the emulator was totally sandboxed, which kinda makes my entire argument moot.
I find that programming in R is much nicer. I find that the language is more powerful and supports closures which is something I've always missed in Matlab. Extending R in C is also quite easy.

Its probably worth pointing out though that R is primarily for statistics. It walks all over Matlab in this domain (because most statistics researchers use R). However, for machine learning, signal analysis, system identification and working with ODEs I wouldn't be surprised if Matlab is easier and better supported.
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I've seen this contribute to severely damaging a GPL'd web application community in a slightly different sphere. They sent threatening letters to anyone hosting, supporting, reselling etc. the software claiming you couldn't use their name. They sold licences to allow you to do so.

I'm fairly certain it wasn't even legal since the whole point of trademarks is to prevent confusion. Claiming to repair Volkswagens doesn't mean you're claiming to be Volkswagen.

I can't tell if this is making exactly the same mistake, certainly the examples given elsewhere in this thread by cousin_it seem to be conspicuously missing any activity that makes money, even a training course, using the name Drupal. I see an update to that post which includes language suggesting you can make money from Drupal, but unless you then invest all that money back into Drupal, you can't use the name. Very short sighted.
I for one really dislike this form of publishing the content. It is like the professional websites made with flash, take long time to load and you are not able to use find the information you want to.
A lot of the advertiser in Norway use the same format to show their paper advertising online => one never bother to read it.
Here is my response to this nonsense:

http://freedrupal5hosting.com/content/welcome

That's 1500 drupal sites less as of the 1st of Jan. 2010.

I don't really want to inconvenience the people that have built their site using our service but as of yesterday no more new signups and end of the year it's curtains.

There is no way in hell that we can even begin to comply with this trademark policy without destroying what we've built up to date, so we might as well close shop.

For me the sticking point is not so much that these restrictions exist but the fact that they are enacted retro-actively.

We've done our bit to promote drupal, helped solve some issues, spent time and money on developing a hosting solution around drupal that is 100% automated but I'm more than willing to toss in the towel at this point.
> Arbitrage traders automatically eliminate the market inefficiencies which they exploit.

True enough, although, having worked in a stat arb hedge fund for four years, let me assure you that the process is far from automatic ;)

> In theory, all purely financial operations, such as hedge funds, do the same

Aren't banks "financial operations"? Is franchise business not a "financial operation"? There are many other reasons, but I disagree, even in theory, with the idea that all financial operations eliminate market inefficiencies, aside from the en-passant contribution to overall liquidity.

> This is not true for patents, because patents are a government granted monopoly.

This strikes me as a non sequitur. Just because patents are a government-mandated monopoly doesn't mean there can't be an arbitrageable market in them. After all, all property is in some sense government-mandated. And the fact that patents are limited period presents no major difficulties -- I need only point out that a large segment of the London property market is for leasehold, which is in effect a owner-given (ultimately backed up by the force of the state, of course!), time-limited monopoly on the use of the house.

Of course, there's not going to be an arbitrageable market in the sense you're speaking of anyway, for an entirely different reason: bonds and, and to a much lesser extent, stocks, are easily comparable, whereas this is not the case in patents. If you think that Greece is a lot more credit-worthy than the rest of the market thinks it is, you can go long Greek 10 years, go short the bund, and with virtually zero outlay you have the ability to profit from any mispricing of "country risk". There's simply no analogue the "go long A, short B" in the domain of patents.

I think the comment you replied to erred in characterizing the activity of of a patent fund as "exploiting ineffciencies". It really is more akin to Warren Buffett-style long-term investing. While it's certainly true that Berkshires' activities reduce market inefficiencies, it's safe to say that that's not what's at the forefront of Buffett's mind when he invests.

There are valid reasons to be opposed to the patent system in its current form. I don't think the absence of Gordon Geko-style arbitrageurs from patent market is one of them, though ;)
Log Files Do Not Improve Security
They got money for thin air. Microsoft is simply better at doing business than anyone else. Stop the silly envy.
I don't find these so funny, because it's obvious to me that there is no single paradigm that fits all disciplines. Architects are not like software developers, operating systems are not like airlines, etc'...
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Interesting article if you're working on reputation algorithms for your community. Makes me think of the eBay FAIL because the way they have (or had, I don't use eBay anymore) their system setup, which meant that if you left a legitimate negative rating you invited a retaliatory negative rating. Thus, "everybody" gave each other positive ratings. Thus, the ratings are worth less.
I've only just heard of AST but from what I've read they buy patents, make sure their members have appropriate licences, and then sell them on.

If they sell them to patent trolls, which I don't know if they do but seems quite likely, then their members are protected, but no-one else is.

OIN appear to hold onto the patents for defensive use, but also taking them out of play for trolls.

On the other hand, the head of AST seems to also run a business based on providing information to fight back against patent trolls (PatentFreedom) so it would be a bit of a poacher/gamekeeper move for them to sell to trolls, particularly after they called out IntellectualVentures for doing the same.

But maybe patent freedom (for those who can afford it) is their real business plan. I'm not saying that's "evil" but it doesn't do anything to protect anyone who's not playing the game in the same way patent reform would, and at the same time reduces the need for patent reform amongst the biggest companies.
Exactly. Hieroglyphics went out of fashion a couple thousand years ago, didn't they?
Interesting article if you're working on reputation algorithms for your community. Makes me think of the eBay FAIL because the way they have (or had, I don't use eBay anymore) their system setup, which meant that if you left a legitimate negative rating you invited a retaliatory negative rating. Thus, "everybody" gave each other positive ratings. Thus, the ratings are worth less.
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I can't see this policy helping Drupal at all. If Dries is actually planning to enforce this, I suspect there will be a lot of fallout in the community.
Windows 7's Home group requires IPv6 to work, I believe.
But there are no descriptions, and the images are only partially above the fold.

As others have pointed out, there's no good reason for the testimonial banner--why does Zappos need to toot its own horn?
If you had a year of free time to develop your own application...
You seem to miss the point I think.

Andrew is a web UI designer and a very talented one at that.

It's easy to see that he was focusing on user experience from a design point of view. He also did not come along saying "this design will sell more".

I hope you can see my point.