text
stringlengths 44
950k
| meta
dict |
|---|---|
Intel Acquires Artificial Intelligence Chipmaker Habana Labs - rrss
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191216005167/en/Intel-Acquires-Artificial-Intelligence-Chipmaker-Habana-Labs
======
rrss
Dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21803574](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21803574).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
College Students Can Now Rent Textbooks Electronically From Amazon - tathagatadg
http://mashable.com/2011/07/18/amazon-textbook-kindle/
======
keiferski
Speaking as a student, I'm still confused as to why we need the textbook
industry _at all_ for certain subjects. Is it really necessary to make an
annual book for subjects that don't change significantly from year to year?
I've personally seen new editions feature nothing but shuffling of the
contents. They've even started selling "loose-leaf" editions, meaning that
it's just a collection of binder-punched pages. Why? No new textbooks = no
used textbooks = no competition from third party vendors selling used
textbooks. No one wants to buy a bunch of pages in a binder.
Seems to me that an open-source textbook should be written once and updated
incrementally as needed. Up-to-date information could be available online for
those with slightly dated textbooks. Of course, the universities, McGraw Hill,
Chegg, Amazon, and numberless other interests wouldn't gain much from this
situation.
~~~
reemrevnivek
Speaking as a student, I'm confused as to why you think your predecessors will
give you their textbooks in good condition, or even at all!
Some students mark up their textbooks. Others (like me) have a lot of books
that will be valuable long after I graduate.
The problem isn't that we don't need new textbooks every year, it's that we
don't need new editions every 3 years with updated numbers for the homework
problems and a new picture on the front. That system invalidates used books
that are in perfectly good shape, and should be abolished by professors who
will stand up to the bookstore and let them know that they don't want the new
edition.
~~~
burgerbrain
As a former student, I don't think I've _ever_ acquired a single textbook that
_wasn't_ used. The vast majority of them were in flawless condition, the
others just had some highlighting that I found actually quite nice.
------
sorbus
As a college student, I see a few problems with switching purely to electronic
textbooks. 1) I would have to verify in every class that it's okay to be using
a laptop or tablet - that's been the case in most of the classes I've had, so
it's unlikely to be a huge problem, but still. 2) It is extremely unlikely
that a laptop or tablet would be permitted in open-book tests (which, while
uncommon, do occasionally show up, and are invariably more difficult than
close-book tests). I would have to rent a textbook during the test, or arrange
to borrow one from another student taking the same class at a different time.
3) Physical textbooks are really, really good at random-access. This has often
been very useful when looking for constants without losing track of the pages
equations are on. While electronic textbooks do let you skip randomly between
pages, it would end up being a mixture of memorizing page numbers and looking
at the table of contents.
EDIT: removed issue four, because I completely missed that this is an addition
to the current kindle system. (Text was "4) Renting. There doesn't seem to be
an option to buy the electronic copy and have it forever. I might be unusual
in that I'm keeping several of my textbooks that are either directly related
to my major or very good, but still.")
On the other hand, there are some classes where I've hardly used the required
textbooks, or where I know I'm not going to need to review them, so electronic
textbooks could be useful for those. The problem is knowing in advance which
classes are which.
(I just checked how much my textbooks for the next semester will cost. Around
$700, used. Ouch.)
~~~
jamesbritt
_I just checked how much my textbooks for the next semester will cost. Around
$700, used. Ouch_
No kidding!
Years back, in college, I hunted around and bought a copy of the textbook
required for a course on discreet math. It was small and very expensive. Later
I learned that some enterprising students had gotten a copy from the school
library and, at $0.10/page, photocopied it (or at least the parts needed) and
saved an ass-load of money.
I have no idea if an open-book test would allow for bringing in a stack of
photocopied pages, but ...
~~~
ivan_ah
A friend of mine once brought a photocopied version of a 500p book to the open
book final exam. The prof was the author of the book and went up to the
student during the final exam.
"You photocopied my book???", and the student was "Yes, that is exactly what I
did." Then they had a bit of skirmish.
In the end, the prof backed off -- and that is a good thing. He made us buy
his 100$ book and, essentially, do proofreading for him. He was also a
visiting prof, so none of this 100$ was going to be recoverable next year...
------
acabal
Nice idea, but the problem for me would be the screen. I used to spend hours
staring at my textbook back in the day. Hours spent staring at a backlit
screen like a laptop would give me a headache (and does today, when I spend
hours programming). But the e-ink offerings aren't there yet in terms of
usability for textbooks. They're great for novels, where progress is linear,
and bookmarks are search are rarely needed. But for a textbook, where I'm
often flipping to the index, back and forth between subsequent pages rapidly,
need color diagrams or big tables and diagrams (600x800 is often not enough
room for a large table or diagram), or flipping to one of the hundreds of
bookmarks that I've color-coded, e-ink and specifically the Kindle UI just
can't do it. Tablet-type hardware might have a better chance, but at the cost
of the backlight.
So if I was back in college, even though today I do all of my pleasure reading
on a Nook Simple Touch, I would still buy paper textbooks.
~~~
kellishaver
My problem is the exact opposite. I can't see to read _unless_ I'm looking at
a back-lit screen. For this reason, all of my books for the past year and a
half have been ebooks, read on an iPad.
I'm not sure what I would have done in college had I had the problems reading
then that I do now. At the time, my only option would have been a book on
tape, which is an absolute nightmare for random access and complex subjects,
or braille, which I don't know (though, admittedly, should probably learn).
Not that any of that is to discount what you're saying at all. I guess more
than anything i just wanted to share my experience. I can certainly see the
appeal of having a physical book over a digital copy, and that may well be the
preferred choice for the average person, but for a certain demographic, just
having the option of a digital version can be an almost life-changing
experience.
I remember the first night I got my iPad, after a year of not being able to
read a book unless I was tied to my computer/desk. I sat comfortably on the
couch and read a novel. I cried, I was so happy.
------
greenyoda
An even better idea that's starting to gather momentum is free, open source
textbooks:
<http://creativecommons.org/tag/open-source-textbook>
The textbook industry definitely deserves to be put out of business for their
sleazy practices, like publishing new editions of basic textbooks every couple
of years so that students can't resell the old ones. (Are there really new
developments in basic calculus every couple of years?)
------
joe_bleau
As a leach, I don't like it. This could be the beginning of the end of cheap
obsolete used textbooks. For years I've enjoyed going through bookstores,
especially in college towns, just to pick up interesting looking textbooks
dirt cheap.
~~~
neovive
One has to wonder how much longer the typical bookstore (in it's current form
factor) will be around. The large book retailers are already retrenching, but
hopefully a market still exists for the small, independent, bookstores that
add so much character to Main Street.
------
jamesshamenski
This is a really strong back-to-school campaign. I can see this really
improving the sale of Kindles and igniting Amazon's Q3 results. Under ideal
scenarios, this could save a college student hundreds of dollars each
semester.
------
tnip
I think it's a great idea, but at the same time, I'm wary to start jumping on
eTextbook renting simply because of my tech ADD - and because it's easier to
use a regular textbook. Sure, your textbook might be heavy, but you don't need
to be connected to a power source/be dependent upon an electronic device for
your materials.
~~~
farnsworth
I had to charge my Kindle one night every couple weeks with heavy usage. It
was never a problem at all.
------
scrrr
I'm not very sympathetic towards the rental of DRM-locked text books. It just
seems wrong. Yes, I understand it takes money and effort to write and compile
a book, but since currently the prices of ebooks are way too high (after all
print, shipping and retail are mostly left out) I feel that the publishing
industry is moving towards what the music industry is today.
Everyone that has specialized knowledge, enthusiasts, professionals,
professors etc. should write their own books and articles and sell them
cheaply or give them out for free. Cut out the middle-man that is a publishing
company. They are no, longer, needed. They just aren't.
------
alexmr
This seems like a great program. One friction point for e-textbooks seemed to
be the inability to sell them back at the end of the semester like normal
books. The reduced cost of a rental should help assuage that.
------
candre717
Chegg, for many students, is still a better option. Great customer service.
Simple Process. Wide-spread adoption and availability of titles. Granted, I'm
a chegg user, but Amazon surely has a run for its money.
------
maguay
If they can undercut CourseSmart's prices, this would be huge. I just paid
CourseSmart over $100 for a semester virtual rental of a textbook, and that's
way too expensive for an eBook. I don't mind paying for quality content, and
purchase apps and eBooks. But $100, and I don't even own the book, when the
paper copy costs only 20% more and you could keep it forever or resell it?
That doesn't make sense.
------
0wnr
I expect we will also be seeing more cloud-based ebooks in the future, such as
those the bottom of the article indicates McGraw Hill has introduced. The same
way that gaming companies increasingly push a subscription-based service over
a singular single-player experience, a continual subscription to a cloud-based
ebook service would help avoid the inevitable mass piracy of the materials.
------
kennethologist
I think this is brilliant! I wonder how many textbooks are available.
Something like this can really displace chegg.com, bookrenter et. al.
------
derrida
STARTUP GODS: Deliver a solution that will smash the evil exploitative
textbook industry, whilst rewarding the authors and teachers.
------
derrida
Protip: Buy from India. It's illegal, but you get a paper copy of a textbook
at about 10% of the price.
------
shriphani
Thank you so much. Now, if only people begin releasing .mobi versions of their
books along with .pdfs
------
Evgeny
I don't own a Kindle yet.
But this may be the last straw that will drive me to buy one.
------
Apocryphon
Would this work on Kindle 3, or is Kindle DX the best for viewing such
textbooks?
------
desigooner
This is a good sign of Amazon gearing up the Kindle store before the release
of their rumored tablet lineup.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Cloud grants $9M in credits for the operation of the Kubernetes project - rch
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/google-cloud-grants-9m-in-credits-for-the-operation-of-the-kubernetes-project
======
didip
A million comments is a strange metric, maybe a million commits?
~~~
forgot-my-pw
There's only 69,000 commits in the main repo. About 68,000 message threads, so
a million messages is likely.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Azure Data Studio: An Open-Source GUI Editor for Postgres - craigkerstiens
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-data-studio-an-open-source-gui-editor-for-postgres/
======
garyclarke27
Wow, well done Microsoft, I am looking forward to trying this out. PgAdmin is
an embarrassment to the incredible Postgres community - it’s SQL editor is
virtually useless, so slow and buggy. Probably because PSQL is the favoured
option for most of the contributors, I’m not a huge fan of command line
editing, I much prefer tools like Sublime Text, so I use Sublime Text 3 for
SQL editing and it’s wonderful - blazing speed, rock solid, quite happy to
display a few million rows, such queries would have no chance in Pgadmin. Also
has a pg specific syntax highlighting plugin.
~~~
pjmlp
When the new version of PgAdmin came out, I kept using the previous native
version, much better than their UI reboot.
~~~
emptyfile
Pgadmin 4 is just an absolutely shocking piece of software.
~~~
phoe-krk
Shocking, as in? Could you elaborate?
~~~
pjmlp
They moved from an UI written in C++ to a Python process that launches a Web
based UI.
~~~
mrighele
I wouldn't mind a web based UI if it didn't mean less functionality, more
bugs, and a worse user experience.
------
lol768
For anyone else who's curious: yes, it's an Electron app (source at:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/azuredatastudio](https://github.com/Microsoft/azuredatastudio)).
Think I'll stick to DataGrip personally, though I'd be interested to see some
performance benchmarks to disprove my own comprehension of the quality of apps
built primarily in HTML/JS/Electron.
~~~
userbinator
...and yes, it phones home:
[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-
studio/usage...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-studio/usage-
data-collection)
~~~
fxfan
God forbid they learn which features people use more and maybe improve them?
Surely you don't use gmail or any other webmail or a web service?
~~~
bitwize
The Daily Telegraph once put heat monitors under everyone's desk. There was an
outcry among the employees about this, and the explanation from the Telegraph
was it was part of their HVAC system, and allowed the air conditioner and
heater to smartly determine which parts of the building needed more heating
and cooling due to more human activity going on in those parts.
Under the most charitable interpretation of the above, the Telegraph meant
what it said, and only ever intended to use the data thus collected to
optimize HVAC output to only those areas with enough human activity to warrant
it.
But, you see, once they _had_ the data about who was at their desk and who
wasn't, it behooves them to _act_ on it.
~~~
fxfan
Except the privacy policy clearly states what Microsoft users this data for.
You can go around flailing your hands in constant paranoia or you can actually
give an evidence of wrongdoing and sue the shit out of them.
But why wait for evidence when posting "Micro$oft is evil" is more fun?
~~~
codetrotter
> But why wait for evidence when posting "Micro$oft is evil" is more fun?
But that’s not at all what they said. The argument they used applies to anyone
collecting data. Just like in the example they used.
And while you are right about the privacy policy stating what the data is used
for, what is there to prevent companies from changing their privacy policy at
any point in time? And if they change it, are they required to inform you that
the privacy policy has changed?
~~~
eitland
> And while you are right about the privacy policy stating what the data is
> used for, what is there to prevent companies from changing their privacy
> policy at any point in time? And if they change it, are they required to
> inform you that the privacy policy has changed?
For Europeans there is the GDPR.
This is also one of the things that AFAIK should be covered by the GDPR
(contrary to the cookie banners with opt out that I personally expect will get
their punishments soon.)
------
anewhnaccount2
From the license, this is "shared source" not OSI open source:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/azuredatastudio/blob/master/LIC...](https://github.com/Microsoft/azuredatastudio/blob/master/LICENSE.txt)
~~~
kevcunnane
The PostgreSQL extension is fully MIT licensed:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/azuredatastudio-
postgresql/blob...](https://github.com/Microsoft/azuredatastudio-
postgresql/blob/master/LICENSE) and
[https://github.com/Microsoft/pgtoolsservice/blob/master/Lice...](https://github.com/Microsoft/pgtoolsservice/blob/master/License.txt)
for the backing service.
------
jsmeaton
It looks like the VSCode extension version is missing the connection and
object explorer that the standalone app contains. That's unfortunate.
A few other issues:
Creating a connection from the command palette can not use a non-default port.
You'll need to edit the settings file by hand to change that.
Currently no support for SSH tunnels (unless you launch a tunnel yourself from
a terminal). I've opened a GitHub issue for that support.
When running a query it keeps asking me for a username for the connection,
even though the username is configured in the connection profile.
I currently use datagrip, but I'd much prefer to stay within the vscode
interface rather than switching between the two, as I'm much more familiar
with the vscode keyboard shortcuts and command palette. It's never really
obvious which connection a datagrip "console" is attached to.
~~~
nitinreddy88
I appreciate your efforts to put down missing functionality. Products evolve
over time, cant expect everything in first cut and compare it with product
which is staying for quite sometime
~~~
h1d
I don't really see how people are supposed to connect to databases without SSH
tunnel support. Are you supposed to be connecting to your development
localhost database or be inside corporate network where direct connection to
the database is allowed?
~~~
tatersolid
Most people use a VPN of some sort when connecting to remote databases
Our DB servers don’t have any ports listening on the internet, not even SSH.
TLS can be enforced for DB connections (both pg and mssql support this), but
that’s still prone to credential stuffing and the client _machine_ isn’t
usually authenticated. Lots of regulations generally require some extra
security layer protecting connections to the DB.
------
craigkerstiens
New to the Microsoft team I got an early look at this and was super excited.
Personally I'm biased towards psql [1], but admittedly there are many that
prefer a GUI interface [2] when working with their database. Postgres is a
great and powerful database, but as a community we're behind in this aspect.
While I don't think we need a million editors for a database that there isn't
a clear winner when it comes to Postgres makes this a welcome addition and I'm
excited to see how it helps make Postgres more approachable for others.
1\. [http://www.craigkerstiens.com/2013/02/13/How-I-Work-With-
Pos...](http://www.craigkerstiens.com/2013/02/13/How-I-Work-With-Postgres/)
2\. [https://www.softwareandbooz.com/postgresql-for-a-sql-
server-...](https://www.softwareandbooz.com/postgresql-for-a-sql-server-dba-a-
series/)
~~~
j88439h84
[https://github.com/dbcli/pgcli](https://github.com/dbcli/pgcli) is my
favorite terminal client for postgres. It has smart completion, syntax
highlighting, and more.
------
nindalf
Quick summary of the thread for those joining us
* This looks like a neat tool. Will check this out and compare it to DataGrip, Dbeaver etc.
* It's electron. This is terrible.
* There's analytics code in there. This is terrible.
~~~
switch007
Azure Data Studio also stores your credentials in plaintext if you tick
'Remember' (on Linux at least – it does not use the system keychains)
~~~
SamuelAdams
Please report an issue here:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/azuredatastudio/issues](https://github.com/Microsoft/azuredatastudio/issues)
~~~
switch007
There is one already — as a feature request to implement keychains.
------
radiKal07
This looks nice but as I expected it's built with Electron. I personally use
[https://tableplus.io/](https://tableplus.io/) . It's native and has great UI
and features.
~~~
sydd
For me DataGrip. How do these 2 compare to it?
~~~
philliphaydon
Table plus appears to me MAC only. A shame. But I’m happy with datagrip.
~~~
bbernoulli
It is on windows too:
[https://tableplus.io/windows](https://tableplus.io/windows)
~~~
philliphaydon
Oh cool. I couldn’t find that link on my phone and all I saw was OS X download
and screen shots so I assumed OS X only. I’ll give it a go tomorrow. Thanks.
------
mark_l_watson
I like that you can use it in its own app and also as a plugin for VSCode.
Microsoft really turned it around by supporting developers, IMO.
~~~
pjmlp
They never stopped supporting developers on Windows.
~~~
mark_l_watson
You are of course right. I was talking from my perspective. I don’t use
Windows but I think Office 365 is the best deal ever, and I appreciate general
tools like VSCode, keeping github on track and not changing things, etc.
------
fredley
I use Azure Data Studio for SQL Server already and it's fantastic. Super
lightweight, fast, and a really well-thought-through interface. It's honestly
the SQL administration app that I prefer out of all that I've used, free or
otherwise, and I'm very happy MS are taking it to more backends.
------
some-one-too
I've never seen on HN anyone ever mentioned "SQL Workbench/J": works across
many database systems, code completion, import/export, scripting, console
mode, the list just goes on and on...
www.sql-workbench.eu
~~~
mmsimanga
I am a big fan of SQL Workbench/J. I have mentioned it in a few threads[0][1]
on SQL tools but have also been surprised it isn't more popular.
[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18934949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18934949)
[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18934436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18934436)
------
yellowapple
I've been using ADS for a couple months now at work (since we've switched to a
new warehouse management system that uses SQL Server for its database) and
it's been pretty great as a cross-platform replacement for SSMS. The built-in
support for CSV and JSON dumps has been incredibly handy, too. It's both among
the few Electron (I think?) apps I like and among the few Microsoft products I
like.
Being able to use the same tool for Postgres would be awesome (we use both
Postgres and Redshift here, too); I've long felt that SQL Server's a god-awful
DB with awesome tooling while PostgreSQL's an awesome DB with god-awful
tooling, and now I'm looking forward to finally getting the best of both
worlds.
I wonder if it's possible to create extensions for arbitrary ODBC and/or JDBC
connections? If so, then that'd be yet another thing I could manipulate with
ADS (our ERP exposes its database via a presumably-proprietary DB protocol for
which they provide their own ODBC and JDBC connectors). It'd be awesome to
have a properly-good one-stop shop for all my SQL-finagling needs.
Now if only I could integrate all this with Emacs somehow...
EDIT: alas, it does not seem to want to install correctly on Slackware,
whether via ADS' extensions manager or by manually downloading/installing the
VSIX package. Seems to hang on "Starting pgsql service", and any attempt to
actually do anything throws a giant "Provider doesn't exist. id: PGSQL" error
(and attempting to run queries anyway just throws "Error: No Handler
Registered").
------
envoked
I’ve been using Postico
([https://eggerapps.at/postico](https://eggerapps.at/postico)) on OSX for the
last few years and been enjoying it: clean look, ability to edit and explore
schemas, ability to export results to a variety of formats (JSON, CSV, etc.),
and good cadence with releases.
The main thing it can’t do well is export/import large databases but that’s
what ‘pg_dump’ and friends are for.
------
bmaupin
The title was a bit misleading for me, giving me the impression that Azure
Data Studio is a new tool specifically for Postgres. The reality seems to be
that Azure Data Studio is an existing tool which already supports MS SQL
databases, and preview support for Postgres has been added. Which makes more
sense to me than Microsoft creating a new tool just for Postgres.
------
marcus_holmes
Looked really interesting. I'm working on a SQL-intensive project using
Postgres at the moment, and a better way of editing the numerous scripts would
be great.
Downloaded it, got it connected to my localhost Postgres server. Opened a
script file, nice syntax highlighting, yay :)
Syntax error at or near "drop". Oh dear. Ah well, back to Code and psql it
is...
------
symlinkk
Why does it have "Azure" in its name? Whoever is in charge of naming things at
Microsoft is doing a poor job.
~~~
michaelmarkell
For consistent branding around all tools and technologies that could feasibly
be used to build applications on top of Azure
~~~
PudgePacket
That's not a super strong argument.. Visual Studio -> Azure Code Studio,
TypeScript -> AzureScript, Windows -> Azuredows.. (Only a little tongue in
cheek )
------
sixhobbits
This looks really nice, but it's functionality is similar enough to Google
Data Studio (also connects to data sources) but different enough (an editor
instead of a dashboard) that it's going to cause confusion.
------
xfalcox
Really like it so far.
I was a heavy pgAdmin3 user at $lastjob and the fact that clicking some
elements would freeze it wasn't great. This looks to cache all details on
connection.
The data view doesn't really work with very long text fields, maybe allowing
users to edit those in a panel or modal could help UX.
Also, it doesn't really handles schemas, just prepend those to the table name,
instead of treating it like a "folder". Schemas have permissions so we need to
"see" those.
With the great hole that pgAdmin4 left, and with DataGrip being more on the
heavy side, I think this app can grab a good share of users.
Good work!
------
paulmendoza
My database server has 200+ databases and I had to stop using Datagrip because
it would freezea the time. Super excited to check this out.
~~~
philliphaydon
Turn off auto sync then. Sync only the portion of the tree you want synced.
------
drewda
I've recently been having good luck with this VS Code extension that adds a
Postgres tab for exploring schemas and running queries:
[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ckolkman...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ckolkman.vscode-
postgres)
------
minhajuddin
For vim users, there is an awesome plugin to talk to postgres and a ton of
other databases called dbext.vim [https://github.com/vim-
scripts/dbext.vim](https://github.com/vim-scripts/dbext.vim) Setting it up
takes a little effort though.
------
pella
I hope someday they will support PostGIS geometry viewer - like:
[http://www.bostongis.com/blog/index.php?/archives/272-pgAdmi...](http://www.bostongis.com/blog/index.php?/archives/272-pgAdmin4-now-
offers-PostGIS-geometry-viewer.html)
------
kumarvvr
Does this work on local postgres servers??
~~~
obenn
Yes.
“The Postgres server can be hosted on-premises, in a virtual machine (VM), or
from the managed service of any cloud provider.”
------
aeroaks
I thought DBeaver is also there!
------
t0astbread
Can this do PL/pgSQL?
~~~
rachelagy
Yes, you can create functions with plpgsql as the language.
------
based2
Does a datpac already exist?
Data-tier Application Component Packages
------
fxfan
Does it have the excellent perf analysis that sql server express's client
comes with?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Speaking as a Performing Art - divia
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/06/speaking_as_a_p.html
======
SwellJoe
Say what you will about Guy, he's a hell of a speaker. His "Art of the Start"
video should be required viewing for everyone everywhere with even a passing
interest in startups or public speaking. It's very compelling stuff.
~~~
jward
I picked up his book, Art of the Start, a few weeks ago and was somewhat
disappointed. I love Guy, except that Garage invested in Gator/Claira, and
read his blog and watch his speeches. After that there really was nothing new
in the book.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
JS.Class - A Ruby Inspired JS Framework - jagtesh
http://jsclass.jcoglan.com/
======
papertiger
Looks nice, but I'm not sure why JavaScript needs to be like Ruby.
~~~
richcollins
Lack of classes is one reason to prefer JavaScript to Ruby. People always feel
the need to add complexity where it isn't needed.
~~~
jrockway
Yes, the lack of the class abstraction does add complexity to your code.
That's why frameworks like this exist.
~~~
richcollins
I was making the opposite assertion. How are classes simpler than prototypes?
If you want to add behavior to the proto and the clone, you just add a method
to the proto. If you want to add behavior to a class and its instances, you
have to do a fair bit more.
~~~
jrockway
Prototypes offer no contract, so it's up to the consumer to ensure that the
object received is acceptable. Classes offer a contract, so if an object is an
instance, it's guaranteed to work (Liskov, etc.).
Basically, the idea of OOP is information hiding and polymorphism, and
prototype-based objects throw both of these concepts away. The result is more
complicated code in general.
~~~
richcollins
Ruby Classes don't provide a contract either. You can add and remove methods
to your heart's desire.
_information hiding is the principle of segregation of design decisions in a
computer program that are most likely to change, thus protecting other parts
of the program from extensive modification if the design decision is changed_
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_hiding>
How are prototypes inferior to classes with respect to information hiding?
They provide the ability to easily change the implementation while maintaining
the interface.
How do prototypes inhibit polymorphism? All of the prototype languages that I
know of (Javascript, Io, Self, Lua ...) make it easy to take advantage of
polymorphism.
------
sshumaker
I implemented something like this for my last project, but I think you can
make JS class creation far more ruby-like (and flexible, for that matter), by
not passing an explicit hash to your class creation function, but instead
building the class in a callback:
// code start
var Event = Class.define(function()
{
this.speak = function()
{
console.log("HI");
}
// since you can just write code in here
// metaprogramming is easy:
["attack", "defend"].each(function(name) {
this[name] = function() {console.log(name);}
}.bind(this));
// or build reusable metaprogramming facilities
// and use them here
this.$setters(["x", "y", "z"]);
this.$memoize("expensiveFunc", function() {
// blah
});
this.$inherited = function(derivedClass) { ... }
});
Basically, the class define method would create a special 'class-creation'
object, and would invoke the user provided function with the class creation
object as the this pointer. After the callback finished, I would use the
class-creation object to build the actual class.
Being actual able to write code inside your class definition is a much more
flexible way to define your objects - and it's also how Ruby does it.
------
cloudhead
Thanks, but no thanks. Prototypal inheritance is JavaScript's strength.
~~~
sreque
You can do prototype-style inheritance in ruby, but no one does it. In fact,
most new languages that come out express no interest in this style. It makes
me wonder why the Javascript people are so convinced that why they have is
that good.
~~~
invisible
I don't know - I love PHP classes but I'd love to see PHP with prototype-style
inheritance (if PHP had classes for strings, etc. in respect to basic variable
types). I think the "everything is an object" route is great and coupling that
with prototypes exemplifies that decision's greatness.
However, I really do think that JavaScript needs all of the great things ECMA
5 displays first and foremost (such as strict mode,
getters/setters/enumerable/configurable/writable for property descriptors).
John Resig does an excellent job of summing up ECMA 5 pragmatically (it truly
must be great to work on JavaScript stuff as a day job):
<http://ejohn.org/blog/ecmascript-5-objects-and-properties/>
------
raganwald
_Just like in Ruby, classes and modules are open for modification at any time,
so you can add and change methods in existing classes._
Brings to mind the expression "A bug-for-bug port of the existing system."
------
jrockway
I think Joose is a more featureful variant of this idea:
<http://code.google.com/p/joose-js/>
------
JimBastard
Coffeescript
~~~
jagtesh
Rocks. I love JS for what it is, even though I would equally love for
CoffeeScript to be mainstream and natively supported across all browsers :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scripting languages slip in popularity - MilnerRoute
https://www.infoworld.com/article/3237085/javascript/scripting-languages-slip-in-popularity.html
======
karmakaze
7. Visual Basic .Net, at 2.909 percent
...
9. Delphi/Object Pascal, at 1.744 percent
10. assembly language, at 1.722 percent
I'm astonished that these three are still in the top ten. Any ideas who or
what types of applications actively use these?
~~~
flukus
Assembly is kind of the base line for anything performance sensitive, I doubt
most people using it are working with assembly full time, kind of like how all
web/full stack devs use javascript.
VB.net is basically all LOB style applications, it will be in small business,
it will be in the enterprise space, etc. I doubt there are many starting new
work in VB instead of c# but that still leaves tonnes of legacy stuff. As with
assembly, a lot of full time c# devs would be maintaining VB from time to
time.
What I always find fascinating is the disconnect between what's popular on
places like HN and the real world.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Should people be off on Fridays? - sheri
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21242782
======
m3uh
There is an ongoing debate in France about children's school weeks between a
4-day week (full days) and a 5-day week (either a day off in the middle of the
week, or only mornings on Wednesdays and Saturdays). I invite you to look for
different opinions on this debate if you're interested in this article's
subject. I understand children pace is barely comparable with grown-ups',
however the arguments would be similar. Question is, when are our so-called
modern societies going to achieve the transition between human-based and
robot-based mass production, leaving people freed from Maslow's hierarchy of
needs' lower levels, and (therefore?) from the tyranny of performing something
all day long without any benefit for the mind...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Experimental Drug Promises to Kill the Flu Virus in a Day - mkempe
https://www.wsj.com/articles/experimental-drug-promises-to-kill-the-flu-virus-in-a-day-1518264004
======
djsumdog
Hopefully this is better than Tamiflu.
Years ago I was prescribed Tamiflu and man was it weird. Some of my flu
symptoms were greatly reduced, yes, but my brain felt like it was always on
edge. For people who have done hallucinogens, it was like that edge of being
about ready to trip, but never actually seeing visuals. It was not fun. I had
trouble sleeping and just wanted the medication to be over with.
I looked it up later and discovered it had some interesting brain interactions
and side-effects in line with what I experienced.
I'm up to date on my shots, but avoid the flu vaccine because ever time I've
tried it, it makes my arm hurt (if that's the injection point) for about 3
days. I thought I'd get a tolerance eventually, but never did. It's not as bad
as getting the flu, but it's still annoying enough I still avoid it.
~~~
inferiorhuman
> It's not as bad as getting the flu
Arm soreness is nowhere near as bad as getting the flu, not even the same
ballpark. I get my jab annually and in exchange for those few days of soreness
I can't remember the last time I had the flu. No idea what the Tamiflu side
effects are like, they sound nasty -- unfortunately I've never had opportunity
to take it.
~~~
cm2012
As someone who hates needles, I would gladly have the flu 10 times a year than
get one shot! But I work from home so I rarely get it or have the chance to be
contagious.
~~~
S_A_P
I had the flu a few times as a kid. I didn’t ever think it was that bad. I had
the flu 2 years ago and I wasn’t right for a month. As you get older you
immune system weakens and 3-5 days of 102-103 fever is enough to make you
think you’re dying.
~~~
bitL
Maybe it was some stronger mutation? I had flu 2 years ago as well and it
knocked me down for a month and then took another 5 months to recover fully,
i.e. it kicked me back fitness-wise almost half a year. Still having some
minor sleep issues since.
------
ggm
Tamiflu had a brief but exciting effect on the apparently otherwise stable
price of star anise. I kept the box I'd been issued during the h1n1 hong kong
scare ( I travel in Asia for work) well past its lifetime. Now it looks like a
feeble nineteen fifties failed anti radiation pill, something which might work
but nobody knows
------
Animats
Shionogi has an impressive set of drugs coming along.[1]
[1]
[http://www.shionogi.co.jp/en/company/pmrltj0000000u4v-att/e_...](http://www.shionogi.co.jp/en/company/pmrltj0000000u4v-att/e_kaihatsu.pdf)
~~~
ekianjo
Not really. Looking at their list:
* Japan Phase III: 4 only. Know that these are totally on a different level as Global Phase III's, since you would require a bunch of additional studies with global clinical trials to secure a FDA approval or EU approval abroad. That's very costly and they don't follow the pattern of other companies that conduct Japan Phase III at the same time as global trials.
* They have mostly a lot of Phase I and II compounds, which have a low success rate anyway - Maybe one out of 10 will make it.
* the indications they target are not "white space" there's already a lot of competition out there, so this is going to make for small revenues for most of them if they ever come out.
* You can see that most of the drugs in development do not come from in-house efforts. Shire/Lilly/Roche, basically they rely a lot on their ability to partner with other companies because their own portfolio is really weak.
* They are very well known in Japan to be hungry to partner with other companies since they have no blockbuster in sight internally. That's why you find them co-promoting many competitors' drugs with their reps. They are doing that recently with a ADHD drug from Shire (Intuniv) but that's just one example, there are many others (Cymbalta with Lilly, etc...)
------
lwhalen
I've said it before and I'll say it again: GODS I love living in the future! I
don't even care that I don't have a jetpack.
------
otakucode
I don't feel like circumventing the WSJ paywall, so I haven't read the
article. But, I do know a bit about the flu virus. I'm annoyed they refer to
'killing' the virus since the virus isn't alive and its activity is not the
primary destructive issue. Over-reaction of our immune system is the vast
majority of what makes people feel sick and kills them. Cytokine storms cause
"flu like symptoms" and it's why so many diseases begin with them. It's not
cell damage caused by cells invaded with flu virus exploding into a spray of
new viral particles. That does little on its own.
For years, though, people have been working on a vaccine or similar which can
cause the immune system to target the virus itself rather than its 'shell'
which evolves quickly and plays little role in its harm (although it may play
a role in its infectivity since we see different levels of spread of different
strains who differ almost entirely in the structure of their capsid). That
doesn't sound like a 'pill that will kill the flu in a day' though. The only
thing I can imagine is that such a pill would be a immunosuppressant that
prevents the cytokine storm that makes you feel sick while (I would hope)
preserving enough immune function to actually eliminate the viral particles?
------
mkstowegnv
Better non-paywalled article covering a larger set of new drugs
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/flu-
relie...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/flu-relief-is-
coming-as-successors-to-aging-tamiflu-near-market)
------
Arbiter41
extreme misuse and the virus will likely adapt around the drug.
~~~
jimnotgym
Is this even true? I know bacteria adapt to resist anti-biotics, but this is
not the same thing at all.
IIUC this would be more like humans developing resistance to cyanide.
~~~
yeukhon
Yes it is true. Influenza and HIV viruses’ mutate very quickly such that one
year’s vaccine may not work next year, hence why health professionals advocate
flu shot every year. Most vaccinations will last for life time though. CDC and
WHO analyze virus samples each year to determine virus mutation and antiviral
resistance.
Though it is cruical to note that although vaccine is effective, immunity may
not developed for a small percentage of population. But please don’t risk your
life - I highly suggest go for vaccination. Hong Kong has the worst outbreak
this year as the public has low awareness of flu shot, forcing primary school
students and below to go on holiday early. Hong Kong’s neighbor, Macu, with
high population density, has the highest vaccination participation - has much
fewer cases.
Lastly, please make sure you are getting quardrivalent flu vaccine (aka four-
flu shot) which covers all four types of flu; some years ago flu vaccines only
cover three types (it was a “gambling game”). In the US you shouldn’t have to
worry, but double check; outside of the Us please triple check...
[https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/viruses/change.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/viruses/change.htm)
~~~
otakucode
The capsid that covers the harmful part of the flu virus mutates and is why
immunity does not transfer from year to year or strain to strain. The capsid
is only the outermost part of the viral particle, however. Anything which
targets the inner part would be far more effective. Researchers have been
working on getting to that part and are finally starting to get close. HIV is
a whole different ball of wax from flu, though, and I wouldn't discuss them in
the same way.
~~~
yeukhon
I agree HIV is a whole different ball game, but I thought it was a good
(common) analogy. But you are right.
------
_0ffh
I have a feeling that some people make it sound as if a flu was the end of the
world. (Get the shot! Triple check it's a four flu shot! Never go without!)
I never vaccinate and sometimes I get a flu. That means I'm mildly
uncomfortable for a few days, and that's it.
For an otherwise healthy person, the benefit of a flu shot is about as high as
the risks. Unless you're unhealthy, or in some other special risk group, flu
shots are not necessary. The risk of contracting a super-evil new mega-deadly
version of the flu is practically negligible, unless you live in a special
risk area.
~~~
mikeash
If you’re “mildly uncomfortable for a few days” then you don’t have the flu.
And by not vaccinating, you’re putting others at risk who could die from it.
~~~
wruza
Adults of my local area never vaccinate from flu. Asian flu breakthrough
killed few people last decade, but it had no treatment anyway. Seems that that
“risk” statement contradicts with reality at least in one region. Not saying
it is wrong in general, but something to think of.
~~~
mikeash
What region is this where only a few people died from the flu in a decade? The
annual death toll in the US is tens of thousands, so I have a hard time
believing this.
~~~
wruza
I’ll reply in detail later this day, but shallow research says that I must be
wrong. In short, 40% of Tatarstan adults are vaccinated (surprisingly; in
“private companies” we never ever speak about that, nor do it). Death count is
still unclear though, stats hard to find.
------
carc1n0gen
Anicdote: in my teens I worked on a turkey egg production farm. Due to this it
was mandatory for me to get a flu shot. Every single time I had one, I would
vomit a few hours later and have other flu symptoms for a day or two.
Ever since leaving that job I haven't had the shot, and I've never had any flu
like illness
My dad hasn't had the shot in my life time yet. I don't know if he ever had it
before I was old enough to remember. He's now 52 and I can only recall two
times he ever had the flu
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: SpreadServe: QuantLib Calcs, Quandl Data, Serverized XLS with XLL and RTD - osullivj
http://54.148.111.119:8888/ycb_quandl_pub.xls/Bootstrapping
======
osullivj
Designed for automated operation of pricing, risk and financial modelling
spreadsheets on a server. Supports XLLs, RTD & VBA. WebSocket & RDB
integrations so you can take those spreadsheets off trader desktops and share
one centralized golden copy of trader developed numerical logic with all
users, with no custom coding. The link shows SpreadServe running on an AWS
host. Sign up for the beta at spreadserve.com if you want to play with your
own copy.
------
mcqb
In order to feed the generated prices into our trading systems - what API's do
you provide and what format would the data be sent in (JSON, XML etc)?
~~~
osullivj
Currently SpreadServe has two interfaces for building integrations with other
systems: a Python API, and a socket server implemented with Tornado and the
Python API. SpreadServe's internal message format is JSON, so to push market
data into a pricing spreadsheet you'd code a socket client in Java, C# etc,
and send JSON messages. Our RDBMS connector uses this approach, and is coded
in Java. If you can code in Python then the Python API exposes more
implementation options. We're planning C & Java APIs that will enable
integration modules in those languages can avoid talking to the socket server.
------
magmasystems
I have users who are running into problems with slow performance and crashes
when doing larges recalcs with 32-bit Excel on their desktops. Can SpreadServe
help?
~~~
osullivj
Yes: enterprise server class monitoring and logging mean you have a much
better chance of nailing the root cause with detailed logging and crash dumps.
The scriptability of the SpreadServe environment gives you a better change of
reproducing issues. However, SpreadServe can't control the internal
implementation details of the 3rd party XLLs it loads. It does provide
detailed logging on the behaviour of those XLLs though.
------
mikes25
Can the user upload a spreadsheet and run it? Or is the setup/bootstrap more
complicated? Is there any custom coding required to get it working?
~~~
osullivj
No custom coding required. Server side config is needed to setup any XLL the
spreadsheet uses; drop the .xll on the server localFS, and add one line of
plain text to a config file. Then, if a user is permissioned, they can upload
on the repository page, click the 'Run' button next to the SpreadServeEngine
on the dashboard page, then load the new sheet.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hacking PR: Trying to build a buzz on a $0 budget - dickersonjames
http://blog.leapfor.it/post/20122299171
======
dickersonjames
Hey all, just wanted to share some learnings. What's worked for you and what
hasn't?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Mailroof.com – Map-based CRM in your email - mailroof
http://www.mailroof.com
======
mailroof
Hi Guys I'm Brian founder of Mailroof- A Gmail plugin that analyses your email
and provides you with a visual representation of your customers. Know who
didn't get back to you, who you haven't kept in touch with and follow up with
them automatically using MailRoof's customizable templates.
I'm still developing the product, we have some bugs but the basic version of
the product is available on our site as a free beta. I would love to know what
you guys think about the product.
I made a quick video about the product as well
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99Fz_7WMTzo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99Fz_7WMTzo)
. Thanks
~~~
alooPotato
Cool product!
I'm curious if you considered using inboxsdk.com for the Gmail extension you
wrote. I'm one of the founders of Streak and we released the SDK specifically
to make these kinds of apps way easier to build. Would love any technical
feedback on why you chose not to use it (if you've heard of it).
~~~
mailroof
No way! I wish I saw this before! Could have saved so much time instead of
burning my eye-balls on DOM hacking.
One question for you. Did you use guys Google OAuth API for user
authentication? I'm using it but have found it starts going crazy with
multiple sign-ins (usually 4+ sign-ins).
~~~
alooPotato
Our server connects to the Gmail API on our backend. Using the SDK will let
you add your UI to the top section of gmail (like your app does) but also get
the currently signed in user. You'll still need to implement your own oauth
flow. Alternatively, if you are targeting chrome only, you can use chromes
users api to make authenticated requests directly to the gmail API with no
backend needed.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Should you accept a pull request from a very bad person? - libovness
https://whoo.ps/2018/11/19/should-you-accept-a-pull-request-from-a-very-bad-person-part-i
======
sundbry
In the end, I don't think you actually answered your original question?
I'd say do what you will, and if you reject their code, they'll probably be
fine living on in a fork of your project. Personally, I wouldn't mind using
code from someone I disagreed with, because in the end, our common interest in
a piece of software might be one thing that brings two opposing parties
together, rather than divides them apart.
------
caymanjim
From Part II of this:
> What to do with a contributor to your open-source project who turns out to
> be a very bad person—is worth contrasting with what would unfold were you
> his manager at a firm: You'd fire the person.
You'd better be damn careful about that. It's illegal in New York, for
example, to fire someone for their (legal) associations outside of work, when
not representing the company. If they say something objectionable to a
coworker, you're probably fine. But you can't fire someone for being a member
of an objectionable group or taking part in a protest or anything remotely
like that unless they somehow represent the company while engaging in the
objectionable activity.
------
HaoZeke
Click bait
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
World's Smallest Website - shadeless
http://guimp.com
======
cauterize
In an age of ever-increasing landing page images, never-ending scrolling, this
was a treat to navigate.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
My rant on C++'s operator new (2006) - dth
http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/c++-new.html
======
astrange
> Though malloc is defined as part of the C language, it can be implemented as
> an ordinary library function requiring no special support from the compiler.
This is actually not true, but happens by accident in most C implementations
since they're being nice to you.
C gives some functions like malloc() and pthread_mutex_lock() magic
properties, but you can't write your own function from scratch that has those.
As long as you don't try to optimize all that hard, or don't let the compiler
try to inline your malloc, it won't go /that/ badly, but…
~~~
dth
Ha, interesting. Can you elaborate on what these "magic properties" of
malloc() and pthread_mutex_lock() are? I'm curious.
------
throwawayaway
Like trying to shoehorn object orientation into C, often the cure is much
worse than the disease - a truism which seems to apply here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The reason it's called a “patch” in software - ilamont
https://twitter.com/Bill_Gross/status/957191578849873920/photo/1
======
eesmith
I wonder if it comes from older use in a related field.
More specifically, I know that "patch" was used for punched cards in general,
not just software. My reference is from "Punched Cards -- their Applications
to Science and Industry", p49, at
[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015015125910;vi...](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015015125910;view=1up;seq=65)
:
> Wrong [information] coding may be corrected by pasting a small linen "patch"
> over the slotted portion between two holes.
However, that reference is 10 years after the Mark 1, so it's possible that
that terminology may have come from computers first. Unlikely, I think.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How does Twitter threading work? - mooreds
http://scripting.com/2020/02/22/033212.html?title=howDoesTwitterThreadingWork
======
thosakwe
One way could be to have an additional "thread_id" in your database that just
points to the root of the given thread. Boom, problem (naively) solved.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Proposal: A built-in Go error check function, try - stablemap
https://github.com/golang/proposal/blob/master/design/32437-try-builtin.md
======
lunixbochs
I implemented try() in Go five years ago with an AST preprocessor and used it
in real projects, it was pretty nice:
[https://github.com/lunixbochs/og](https://github.com/lunixbochs/og)
Here are some examples of me using it in error-check-heavy functions:
[https://github.com/lunixbochs/poxd/blob/master/tls.go#L13](https://github.com/lunixbochs/poxd/blob/master/tls.go#L13)
~~~
X6S1x6Okd1st
I wrote something similar but of lower quality about 5 years ago as well
------
kstenerud
If it were a keyword rather than a pseudo-function, I would support its
addition. Psuedo-functions should not be allowed into the language, as they
tend to have side effects that you wouldn't expect from a function call (such
as returning from caller to grandparent).
Some keyword that implies "return if error" so that you could then do:
try v1, v2, v3 := someFunction()
You could even make it a little bit smart, taking advantage of the return
types of the function to automatically fill in named return values:
func MyFunc(param int) (result int, err error) {
result = 0
if param > 0 {
result = param + 10
} else {
try p1, p2 := GetInternalValues(param)
result = p1 * p2
}
return result, err
}
where "try p1, p2 := GetInternalValues(param)" is syntactic sugar for (in this
case):
var p1, p2 int
p1, p2, err = GetInternalValues(param)
if err != nil {
return result, err
}
~~~
013a
Given that putting 'try' before the variable definitions would probably
interfere with the 'var' keyword, it makes a bit more sense to me that it
should be put after the assignment operator (something like var try v1 =
Thing() is probably lexable consistently, but it would be confusing to
remember if it goes var try v1 or try var v1, unless it supported both which
seems ish)
v1 := try someFunction()
I like that, primarily because it has echos of how the go keyword already
operates. But the important thing is that it should be disallowed anywhere
that isn't directly next to an assignment, which might be difficult. Like
// compiler error
fmt.Printf(try someFunction())
Not sure how easily that can be enforced without affecting the lexability of
the grammar or compilation speed, but in a way, it should be thought of as a
tokenized part of the _assignment_ , not the RH-expression, such that the
assignment tokens become
=
:=
= try
:= try
------
umurgdk
I am strongly against this. `try` seems exactly like a function yet it is not
acting like a function at all. People wouldn't expecting calling a function
may return from the caller. And there is a reason why golang doesn't have
macros. With macros all kind of craziness would be possible, and would really
difficult to read different kind of projects' code.
~~~
gnud
Agreed - I thought this looked pretty reasonable, if a bit parenthesis-heavy,
until I saw this example:
func printSum(a, b string) error {
fmt.Println(
"result:",
try(strconv.Atoi(a)) + try(strconv.Atoi(b)),
)
return nil
}
When you nest the calls to try inside another method call, like this, the
control flow really becomes obscured.
------
abvdasker
This is interesting, but I think it doesn't necessarily fit the language well.
1\. Go has very few keywords relative to other newish languages like Swift and
Kotlin. Introducing a new one should only be done if the benefits are
undeniable.
2\. It causes an early return without any use of the "return" keyword, which
feels pretty weird.
3\. It's a bit weird that err will be magically defined in a defer function if
the surrounding function includes a "try". Does err have to be declared
earlier in the function? If yes, it's strange that it seemingly never gets
assigned. If there are multiple variables of type error in the function which
one gets assigned the result of "try"?
4\. Probably most importantly it doesn't feel very explicit. In some languages
this may not be a problem, but Go is designed to be very explicit and this
seems a bit incongruous with the rest the language's style.
Maybe I'm just not understanding the proposal. I do like how concise this is.
It's nicely backwards compatible and allows existing error handling to stay
the same.
~~~
ngrilly
1\. As explained in the proposal, try is not a keyword, but a built-in
function.
2\. Returning if there is an error is the whole point of this proposal.
3\. I don't understand your point. Could you provide an example?
4\. try is explicit. There is no implicit behavior or stack unwinding.
~~~
uryga
it uses the same syntax as functions, but it doesn't behave like a function –
functions generally can't manipulate control flow like that. so calling it a
function is weird because it's closer to a language construct like `await`
~~~
ngrilly
We already have one built-in function that alters the control flow: panic. But
I agree it's a bit weird.
~~~
uryga
tbh i don't know Go too well. as i understand it, `panic` can indeed hijack
the control flow, i.e. stop it. but any function¹ can do that: just do `while
1 {}`! control flow won't return to the caller either way. so it's not that
weird after all
Ruby blocks can do non-local control flow, i.e. return from their surrounding
function, but that's what makes them _distinct_ from functions.
\---
¹ in a turing-complete language
(i'm a Haskell enthusiast, so please excuse the nitpicking :)
~~~
ngrilly
A panic can be recovered with recover(), and thus the program can continue.
While a function that does an infinite loop will halt the program and nothing
else.
------
pcwalton
It's the try! macro from Rust! Obviously I'm a big fan of this style of error
handling, and I'm happy to see it proposed for Go.
~~~
amluto
Except it’s missing the part where sum types are used, resulting in oddities
about the non-error part of the return value when the error part is set.
~~~
pcwalton
I mean, sure, but it's the best they can do while remaining compatible with
all the Go code out there.
------
alexhutcheson
It looks like it’s basically a less hacky version of what the RETURN_IF_ERROR
and ASSIGN_OR_RETURN macros[1] do in C++.
From experience, those work pretty well. That approach eliminates a lot of the
boilerplate bookkeeping code, while still making it explicitly obvious to the
reader that a given function call can fail.
This seems nice, and I would definitely use it.
[1]
[https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/blob/master/src/...](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/blob/master/src/google/protobuf/stubs/status_macros.h)
------
codr7
I get that the error is still propagated "manually" behind the scene; but how
is this different from exceptions in practice once you use try everywhere
(except where you forgot and the error is dropped silently)?
Here is my proposal: add restarts [0] as a complement to manual propagation.
[0]
[https://github.com/codr7/g-fu/blob/master/v1/doc/typical_res...](https://github.com/codr7/g-fu/blob/master/v1/doc/typical_restarts.md)
~~~
arcticbull
Exceptions are the opposite of a goto statement, basically a 'comes-from'
statement. They violate the principal of least surprise in every way possible
-- you may have no idea what type is being sent your way, where from or what
to meaningfully do about it as a result. They often result in memory leaks in
languages like C++ due to lack of destructor invocation.
try() errors can only propagate to the caller. As such, stack unwinding is
clear, no memory issues arise, performance is good and locality of error is
preserved. Surprise is minimized.
While it may look similar, it's pretty markedly different in important ways.
~~~
jacques_chester
> _you may have no idea what type is being sent your way, where from or what
> to meaningfully do about it as a result._
How is this different from (a) errors bubbling up with a pile of concatenated
strings as the only type information or (b) errors _not_ bubbling up because
someone decided _they_ would never make a mistake?
The whole value of exceptions, to me, is consistency. The error is guaranteed
to propagate in a consistent way up the stack. Static type analysis has a
fighting chance of predicting what could _ever_ propagate up the stack,
whether checked or unchecked.
Trying to work out out what `err` might be in various situations is an
exercise in forensic grepping. Trying to react intelligently and reliably to
different types of error is an exercise in hoping nobody changes the error
string.
~~~
codr7
There's no need to unwind the stack to get what you want.
Restarts [0] evaluate the error handler in the throwing scope/environment and
the only way out of there is invoking a predefined restart or aborting the
program.
[0]
[https://github.com/codr7/g-fu/blob/master/v1/doc/typical_res...](https://github.com/codr7/g-fu/blob/master/v1/doc/typical_restarts.md)
~~~
jacques_chester
I'm aware of, but have never used, the CL conditions/restarts mechanism. It
seems amazing but I wonder if it would manage to seem foreign to everyone in
one of these discussions.
------
hliyan
So basically they're proposing:
f, err := os.Open(filename)
if err != nil {
return …, err // zero values for other results, if any
}
can be simplified to
f := try(os.Open(filename))
This makes a lot of sense, but I'm of two minds. On one hand, it makes things
much cleaner. On the other hand, it _might_ be a first step onto a slippery
slope that ends with exceptions.
A lot of others chiming in with different ideas on the original ticket:
[https://github.com/golang/go/issues/32437](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/32437)
~~~
jerf
After chewing on this for a while, I've come to the conclusion that the thing
exceptions does wrong (or if that is too controversial, substitute "most
dangerously") is that it disconnects handling the error from the scope that
generated it. It's the way exceptions so easily fly up the stack into code
that can't understand them because it is too distant in context that is the
problem. Neither this proposal, nor any other I saw, would change that. I
wouldn't even call this "a step in the direction of exceptions"; it's a
neutral move. Everything is still occurring within the same scope, it's just
getting spelled differently.
Interestingly, this means that while pervasive use of "if err != nil { return
err }" is technically very similar to exceptions when used everywhere, it can
still have a different semantic meaning to a human reading the source.
~~~
captncraig
Every time I switch back to exception languages, I get this tendency to
"assume everything succeeds all the time, and handle it at the very top level
in case any part of it fails". I do not think about what can go wrong at each
level nearly as much as I do when I am required to use `if err != nil` soup.
~~~
nprateem
Exactly. And in most cases I don't care. Can't open that file? That's a fatal
error. Can't connect to the DB? That's a fatal error. Some file system
operation failed? That's a fatal error.
In the majority of applications it's normally pretty obvious which errors
you're likely to care about (the user already exists, etc.) vs the rest that
you just handle at the top level. The trouble with go's error handling is it
makes you care about everything, which is just a waste of time and effort
because the majority of errors will be fatal anyway.
~~~
dickeytk
I completely agree. I love that go is _able_ to treat errors just like return
values but most of the time I don't need to work with them like that. I want
to assume the happy path and not have all the `if err != nil` noise.
------
bsaul
I used to be a bit skeptical on the slow pace at which go decided to add new
feature, and the insane care they took to have orthogonal features, but after
seing the recent swift language evolution ( with google team pulling it toward
dynamic features, and now apple adding weird and clumsy DSL support) i must
say i’m now completely supporting their choice. taking a year before settling
on a less ambitious but more orthogonal and minimalist feature is a sign of
wisdom.
it is amazing the speed at which a language can go from something elegant to a
mess.
------
cpuguy83
Error handling is, to me, the most important thing when writing any code.
Promoting "if err != nil { return }" even more by giving it a keyword seems
like a dangerous road to walk down.
Are we proposing solutions to make developers not have to type "if err != nil"
or are we looking at how we can help developers handle errors better and be
more productive?
I honestly don't have anything to offer as far as ideas for changes to the
language, but I really hope we think through the long-term ramifications of
these changes.
~~~
jchw
I think the way Go error handling works is fantastic, and one of the few
problems it has is repetition. There’s C++ macros for various environments
that let you do the assign-or-propagate-error stuff with a bit less
repetition, but I dislike them because they feel opaque; people don’t often
feel the potential consequences and just use it as a way to not think about
error handling. With Go, the error handling behavior is so obvious and in your
face that it’s painful. (This doesn’t stop bad error handling hygiene, but it
has definitely helped me.)
Sadly, there’s no obvious dumb way to reduce that repetition. I would not mind
a language mechanism similar to defer, like the handle/check proposal for
example.
The most obvious issue I take with try is that it looks like a function call
but is much more magical :( and also, I dislike named returns.
~~~
marcus_holmes
I've spent the last year working on a Go system, writing Go every day.
After a couple of months, I just stopped seeing/worrying about "if err != nil
{". It has become punctuation, the Go equivalent of semicolons;
I don't even use snippets; I manually type that every time. Which is good,
because it does make me think about whether this function call can error, and
what I should do about it if it does. 90% of the time it's ("just pass it
up"), 5% of the time it's ("nothing, I don't actually care if this routine
fails") but 5% of the time it's ("right, yes, this needs to be dealt with
here").
When reading code, I just skip over it if it doesn't do anything interesting.
I understand that in English reading, we don't notice "they said"; our brains
just skip over it, and you can use "said" to open every quote and it won't
feel repetitive. That's how I've got with "if err != nil {"
so... I'm against this "try" stuff, because it feels like it's been proposed
by people who haven't worked with the language too much. I'm not against
making it more friendly for new people to learn, but this doesn't feel like
that. This just feels like "ugh, really? I have to handle _all_ the
errors?!"...which is not a reason to change it.
~~~
pjmlp
I used to write code like that during the 80 and 90's, until settling down in
languages with first class support for exceptions.
So yeah, I did it for around 20 years, and don't miss it.
~~~
jchw
I don’t like exceptions at all. They do not make it obvious what is going on,
I never am completely sure if I’m handling them right. When I want to throw an
exception I’m often unsure which would be right, and sometimes your API can
have multiple reasons to throw the same exception.
Go error handling is not like that. But I can sure as hell say fairly that Go
error handling is likely also not similar to what you did for 20 years in the
80s and 90s either. Rob Pike and friends surely knew a lot about what
programming was like at that time. I, being relatively a youngster, don’t
first hand, but I can tell you my experiences with C++, PHP, Python have not
been nearly as good as Go with error handling.
For one thing, C++ has no rigid standard for how to handle errors. Some people
use exceptions, some used error methods on classes (including the standard
library,) some used special integer or enumeration values (...including the
standard library,) and some had libraries and frameworks have their own magic
error handling mechanisms. This cognitive overhead was horrible. C wasn’t much
better; atoi is a case study in why error handling in C sucks. Libraries that
tried to standardize it, like SDL, were bearable if it was all you used, but
it probably wasn’t, and some APIs, like Win32, made it even worse. (And I
suppose it is worth at least mentioning setjmp/longjmp error handling. I don’t
think it’s necessary to comment on why it’s not good.)
Python exception handling is admittedly better, but its not really wonderful.
Exception handling code in Python is prone to breakage that is first detected
at runtime. If a function implementation changes, and the set of exceptions it
might throw changes, that’s an invisible API change that may cause an
unhandled exception in production. Not so great. Also, on a vaguely related
note, you can’t really do error values using multiple returns like in Go,
because Python doesn’t support multiple returns, only tuples, and refactoring
between returning values and tuples is likely to run into accidental runtime
errors (though you can paper over this issue a bit with type checking.)
PHP error handling sucks, I will withhold from elaborating.
All of the exception handling mechanisms suffer from one problem I really
don’t like: it’s another nearly invisible part of the API. It makes the wrong
thing (not handling errors) easy, and the right things (handling the
appropriate errors correctly) hard. Your dependencies have to care about your
call tree, and if it changes in refactoring it’s anyones bet what kinds of
exceptions your function might throw. You could catch all exceptions, but
because language errors like syntax errors (JavaScript) and index out of range
and property name errors (Python) can also be exceptions, you rarely want to
catch _all_ exceptions. Not to mention, your call itself would be caught, so
any exceptions caused by anything else in the try block would also be
conflated.
Go does some things that are mostly not new, but haven’t all been packaged
together this way before exactly:
\- Custom errors via implicit interfaces, allowing easy, arbitrary data to be
passed through errors while maintaining full control of error messages
\- Deep separation of programming errors and operational errors tend to be
passed as error values. Programming errors, like indices being out of bound or
misusing an API, typically results in a panic, whereas operational errors.
Very seldom do you actually care _what_ the error is, but when you do you can
inspect the error as any other value, because it is just any other value.
\- Ecosystem-wide standards for how to pass errors. It’s almost 100% universal
that errors are passed at the end of the return list. This makes it easy to
parse for humans and easy to lint for machines. Linters can warn you about
unused error values, and if a function suddenly has an error return it’s an
API break, forcing you to fix existing code to properly handle errors.
\- Good library support for error types, including fmt.Errorf for one-off
errors that don’t need special handling, and (third party) a myriad of error
wrapping/helper libraries. They’re not needed at all, but can be quite handy.
It works a lot better imo. You have more ceremony but less guessing. You can
read a function and see almost every edge case, and when all of the functions
perform good error hygiene you no longer need to guess about what refactoring
your code will do.
I’ll take my repetition.
~~~
pjmlp
Yeah, until one realizes that most Go error handling is a mix of
\- Parsing error results inside strings
\- if .... else boilerplate
\- Underscore everywhere to silence them
\- Abuse from panic, aka exceptions in disguise
If you want error handling without exception's guesswork, there are checked
exceptions (used for the first time in CLU 1975), and result types (used for
the first in ML in 1973)
Both without the ceremony that Go shares with Algol derived languages before
exceptions were a thing.
Rob Pike and friends surely do know a lot about what programming was like at
that time, but they are also very opinionated on what they impose on others.
Just because they have a very good career, it doesn't make them always right.
I tend to think for myself and not from opinions of others.
~~~
marcus_holmes
You've read a lot of very bad Go code then, that doesn't follow any of the
established practices for it.
Your list there is almost a primer of "what not to do in Go", and is certainly
not representative of the Go code in e.g. the standard library.
I sense some frustration about the language... what happened to make you so
anti-Go?
~~~
pjmlp
You mean like this standard library code?
[https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/go2draf...](https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/go2draft-
error-inspection.md)
> I sense some frustration about the language... what happened to make you so
> anti-Go?
Go is C with GC and bounds checking, aka Limbo reborn with some Oberon-2
influence.
Already much better for our IT safety than sticking with C, still I kind of
expected Google capable of producing Swift, Rust or TypeScript level of
language design, given their pile of PhDs.
~~~
marcus_holmes
that's not standard library code? that's a link to one of the few thousand
proposals for changing Go error handling... I'm not sure what you're trying to
say here...
I think keeping Go this simple was an extremely hard thing to do for the
designers. I don't know what the intentions were for Swift or Rust, but the Go
team were always pretty straightforward that what they wanted was a safer C to
write servers in. I think we all agree that they achieved that.
------
stepforward
If there are multiples `try` inside a single function, and we are debugging
and want to know which call raises error, how can we do that?
Should `try` wraps the error and adds something more useful for debugging
purpose? (the line number probably?)
~~~
ithkuil
Yeah, that was my first thought as well. I'm using the juju/errors library
"return errors.Trace(err)", which annotates the error with the line number of
the return.
That wouldn't work in a deferred function. Perhaps the compiler could make
that possible somehow although I suspect that might conflict with the stated
goal of improving the efficiency of defer due to "try" encouraging more people
to use it.
~~~
akavel
A deferred function is called _at the line where return would happen_ , so you
can still access stack trace information required for errors.Trace(err) from
inside a deferred function. You just need to go "one frame higher". (See the
stack trace printed in:
[https://play.golang.org/p/Bpqdm8oWBF3](https://play.golang.org/p/Bpqdm8oWBF3)).
As a result, I believe juju/errors could then be extended with a new function,
to be used like this:
func foobar(...) (..., err error) {
defer errors.Tracify(&err)
...
}
where:
package juju/errors
func Tracify(err *error) {
if *err != nil {
*err = TraceFromDefer(*err)
}
}
------
dickeytk
is it just me or does the word "try" seem to imply the opposite here? To me
saying "try" is like saying "attempt to run this" like we have in a try/catch
block. I feel like something like "expect" would more directly explain what
this does.
Great functionality though. I'd be very happy to see this included no matter
what it's named.
EDIT: This is answered in the FAQ section after I read further. Apparently
it's because "try" is already a keyword. I still don't like it, but I get it.
~~~
frou_dh
See also the "continue" statement in C/Go/etc for something that does the
opposite of what the word suggests.
------
jopsen
I suspect the downside is that it'll promote blind propagation of errors.
In rust that's fine because the type system will document what error types can
be returned.
In golang, it important that every error type that can be returned is manually
documented. Otherwise, it's better to just panic, since nobody can handle
unknown errors anyways..
Or am I missing something?
~~~
xvector
Not really. You can just check if “err != nil” and switch control flow on
this.
~~~
jopsen
I always worry about state and side effects after handling an error like
that..
------
marcrosoft
Please for the love of god no.
Go is awesome for its simplicity. Errors should not be abstracted out of
handling convenience. Errors are just values either eliminate the need for the
error or handle it like you would any other value.
Stop trying to make go work like every other language.
~~~
axaxs
Agreed. This is the hill I'll die on. Boring error handling is what I
specifically love about Go...
~~~
mwaitjmp
Out of interest, how about the proposed check and handle changes proprosed for
v2?
Details here: [https://dev.to/deanveloper/go-2-draft-error-
handling-3loo](https://dev.to/deanveloper/go-2-draft-error-handling-3loo)
~~~
axaxs
Still not a fan. These seem like schemes for people who are annoyed by errors,
and just throw them over the wall... similar to say putting an entire python
block in a try/except.
With any sufficiently large application you start to realize how awful that
is, especially when something fails and the only log is 'EOF'.
I've learned to treat errors as first class citizens, because they are. I
always add an annotation and stack entry via wrappers before returning them.
Unless I'm missing something, that seems all but impossible with these
schemes.
------
leni536
Interestingly enough C++ has a recent proposal that converges to a similar
design from the other direction (i.e. exceptions).
[http://www.open-
std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2018/p070...](http://www.open-
std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2018/p0709r2.pdf)
It's still a lot more implicit than go's design, as it's meant to be
compatible with regular exceptions.
------
Insanity
I love Go, but error handling can become cumbersome. Though, I also think a
lot of that feeling is because at the codebase I'm working on we return too
many errors in a strange way.
We're returning pointers almost everywhere along with an error, even simple
methods that could do fine without. But the n you feel obligated to check them
instead of ignore them, just in case someone does change the implementation of
the simple function.
I feel like in some of the projects I wrote for myself, I use a lot less error
handling and then I don't mind the 'if err != nil' approach anymore.
I'm sure this `try` keyword will help deal with the pain from the codebase I'm
working on, though it doesn't adress the root of our problem :(
To give an idea, in a function that does 5 other function calls, I need to
check error returns 5 times. Every. Single. Line. That can't be the norm,
right? :P
~~~
kkarakk
Your second line is the answer - Go is opinionated, Go expects you to do
things in a certain way(a way that follows standard specs in most cases). If
you start bydoing a workaround in your architecture, you will similarly have
to start doing workarounds in your Go code and it becomes SUPER messy super
quickly.Google can afford to follow standard specs slavishly because giant
company with tons of money. Maybe you can't...
It's one of the pitfalls of using an opinionated language. I don't think
introducing something like this will work because it is also a hack that will
propagate other hacks in your code. Just return errors in a more standard
way(or stop using Golang)
------
cientifico
The interesting part for me about the current form is that it makes me think
what should be the state on the rest of the ecosystem in case an error
happens. That extra lines, as for experience, pays off quite fast.
This form puts to the background that though, and I fear I feel tempted to put
try everywhere.
~~~
grey-area
Don't do that then. This is just another tool in the toolbox, you don't have
to use it at all. I think I'd use it in about half the cases where I return an
error, in cases where I simply want to handle it one level up without further
annotation.
~~~
politician
Go is a managed language, and that management extends to how you are allowed
to write the code. There aren't simply tools in the toolbox, fmt and lint
_enforce_ programming styles.
In this community, it's accepted that if you didn't run `go fmt` on your code
before committing that someone else will do it for you. If you don't fix all
of the linter errors, you can expect contributions to be rejected.
If try is adopted, we can expect to see the linter pushing its usage
aggressively. The OP will be pressured to use it, and ultimately has no say in
whether they use it less than the linter demands and social expectations for
idiomatic usage compels.
~~~
grey-area
I see no reason for the linter to recommend it unless you are using if err !=
nil {return err} - if you are, it is functionally the same, therefore no
change and it would be recommended, which is fine IMO.
I don't really see the danger here - if you want to annotate errors properly,
do so, if you want to respond in place (with a retry for example), do so, if
you don't do either and just return the error (which is sometimes fine) yes
the linter would recommend the shorter version.
Where's the problem?
------
airencracken
Not a fan. I don't mind the boilerplate to be honest.
------
icholy
I think check/handle is much better than this.
~~~
grose
Same. I don't like how this requires you to use named parameters and defer to
add context to errors. It's way too easy to shadow err and I can see this
causing a lot of pain in the future.
------
pjmlp
Well, yet another magic function.
~~~
frou_dh
It seems so ad hoc. It's not really design when one just papers over a very
specific shortcoming.
~~~
boomlinde
I agree that overloading the semantics of function calls is ugly, but to play
the devil's advocate, does it have to be "design" in that sense if it truly
does address the shortcoming in a practically sufficient manner?
Aside from not appealing at all to my sense of esthetics, I have no qualms
about this because it does address a problem that a lot of people have
complained about in a way that I could get the idea within a couple of minutes
of reading the proposal. That said, a keyword might have been nicer.
~~~
frou_dh
I suppose the difference between a "quick fix" in a language and in a
codebase, is that the former will be crystalized forever.
Language designers seem to like to bang the drum about the ethos of
"Orthogonal Features". I know Go's have, in presentations. But that seems to
be cast off when the going gets tough. See also "Contracts" in Go generics,
which is mostly the same thing as the existing Interfaces feature, but working
around the fact that interfaces didn't have a good story for symbolic
operators. Orthogonal? Smorthogonal!
------
jy3
Looks a lot like the already proposed check/handle keywords that was met with
a lot of push back from the Go community:
[https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/go2draf...](https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/go2draft-
error-handling.md)
Doesn't look like the proposal adds anything new.
~~~
ngrilly
This new proposal is explicitly a simplification of the previous check/handle
proposal. And for the record, there was a lot push back, but also a lot of
support for the check/handle proposal. Language design is an iterative
process.
------
tapirl
A little similar to this one,
[https://gist.github.com/yaxinlx/1e013fec0e3c2469f97074dbf5d2...](https://gist.github.com/yaxinlx/1e013fec0e3c2469f97074dbf5d2e2c0),
but with more considerations for details.
------
gregwebs
I hope the custom handler part is reconsidered. It is fine to 4 panic if the
handler is nil or it returns nil.
------
ajcodez
It’s contrary to Go core values of simplicity and avoiding slow patterns
(using defer statements for error handling). It seems like a net loss and I
would expect the proposal to be rejected.
------
panpanna
Why not simply using a "?" the way kotlin and rust do?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Problems with Hacker News Site lately? - flylib
Site over the last few days has gone very slow for me and when I ever click on links for comments or next page it downloads some random file named "item" or "x" in the background and I can never get to the next page, I'm confused why this is, anyone else experiencing this?
======
flylib
I have narrowed it down to the IP address, the site works fine on the same
computer/browser on any other IP address then when I use my home IP address,
the site doesn't or barely works on any browser on my computer and doesn't
work on my iphone connected to the IP, turn off the wifi and use my LTE and
site works fine, some type of Wierd IP problem? The only site I'm experiencing
problems with on my IP is this one, haven't ran into any other problems, I'm
clueless on what the issue is, maybe restart the router?
------
krapp
I would say it's maybe possibly an issue with incorrect headers being returned
to whatever browser you're using, but that's only because that's how i've
screwed up projects in the past (by ending up returning "application/octet-
stream" or something that doesn't get rendered inline.)
------
ScottWhigham
I had it time out once for me over the past few days - got a cloudflare error
back. But overall performance has been excellent for me, especially relative
to earlier this year/last year.
------
ansible
No problems here. Mostly browsing from an Android tablet.
Sounds like your browser is messed up, or your computer is infected.
------
krrishd
'Item' and 'x' are routes on HN, so it looks like your browser is interpreting
them as files instead
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Quake (the videogame) changed my life forever. - aw3c2
http://derelict-compendium.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-quake-and-my-wife-changed-my-life.html
======
gmurphy
Quake is also responsible for changing my life: after years of muddling around
in BASIC and LOGO I started writing mods in QuakeC, which required me to write
code, design a website, design and build models, and test and test and
continually tweak and iterate on the experience. For the first time I was
writing large code and doing serious graphics work, and I loved it deeply.
It lead me towards building websites and writing about games, and out of the
Quake community I met people who ran Unreal websites - they gave me a copy of
their CMS, and I ended up learning PHP/MySQL from it and building and
designing bigger and better websites.
I dropped out of my Mechatronics/CS degree to pursue programming for a living
- which lead to my first exposure to the then-revolting idea that programming
and design were different disciplines. I spent years bouncing back and forth
between the two, never quite fitting in, but learning a ridiculous amount
along the way.
Now I'm at Google, technically employed as a software engineer but leading the
design of a large product. I probably would have ended up somewhere in the
software industry anyway, but I believe that I'm in this exact position, the
best job I could possibly imagine, because of a chain of coincidences that
were kicked off by Quake and its modding tools.
------
ambiate
The quake community and game changed my life. Of course, when I started, it
was mplayer. I had just traded my Playstation 1 for a 486DX, a huge mistake in
everyone's eyes. I used my rich friend's grandmother's AOL login to get
online. (This continued for 3-4 years, my mother still wonders what the "weird
noise" was on the phone lines past midnight).
The broken physics and quirks of Team Fortress in QuakeWorld is what really
caught my eye. I was hooked like a fiend. I was recruited by many guilds and
known for my 9600BP lagging , teleporting and fragging! Not to mention my 1MB
cirrus logic integrated video card, it chugged along at ~12FPS in 320x200(?).
I got interested in manipulating Quake. Living in MS, there were no mentors
for learning to program or script. I went in blind and came out with a few
mods.
Years later, I ported team fortress with quakeworld physics into Enemy
Territory, (Feb/Mar 2004?), but never found anyone interested in doing the
sound or graphics.
Obviously, my original endeavor into quakeC led to a whole new world of coding
and languages!
At this point, I had a few life changes. I made a handful of lifetime friends
from IRC and my old clans.
Now, looking back, it was Quake and my natural ability to tinker that led to
my pursuit of a degree in computer science/bioinformatics. I am currently in
my junior year.
I emailed John Carmack a few times asking for legal advice regarding using
shareware Quake 1 models in a development version of my port of QuakeWorld to
ET. He gave me good advice and has been a great influence.
Oh, and trying to figure out how to make VIS run faster on a BSP map was the
end of me. VIS took forever, and I mean forever, to run on my 100mhz computer.
------
emp_
IMO, his wife changed his life. Having dreams / passions is very common,
having the push to pursuit them, very rare.
~~~
kanamekun
The author definitely agrees!
<< At the end of all this, it wasn't just Quake that really changed my life,
my wife did. Quake gave me a direction to point in, and my wife picked me up
and pushed me forward when I thought the road was closed to me. >>
------
Tycho
I like how he didn't even get started till he was about 24 and had no head
start from previous work. It seems rare to read a success story that doesn't
involve people getting obsessed with an activity in their mid-teens (often
building on a good academic performance in maths or something like that).
------
harryh
I wouldn't say it changed my life, but the first pretty serious piece of
software I ever wrote was a game loader for Doom/Doom II/Heretic/Hexen. You
could select which game you wanted to play, and which WADs you wanted and if
the WADs were originally created for a different game it would run them
through a conversion script for the game you wanted.
Later on I added support for DeHackEd so you could modify the exe to change
things like weapon speed power. Pretty sure I had support for setting up
multiplayer games as well.
It was all written in Turbo Pascal and had a really nice GUI where I
programmed all the primitives (radio boxes/check boxes/scroll
boxes/buttons/etc) myself from scratch.
I really really wish I still had source code to the thing, but I lost it years
ago. I was really proud of it.
------
ronnier
Quake also changed my life. I bought my first computer to play Quake which got
me into scripting and making video game websites. That got me interested in
programming and lead me to getting a masters in CS and programming jobs while
in school. Now I'm at Amazon thanks to John Carmack!
~~~
akshaykarthik
My first foray into programming was actually a yearning to figure out someone
else's aimbot for Quake.
------
angrycoder
Quake changed a lot of people's live. I don't think there is a single game out
there that created jobs for so many people as Quake, the two most largest
examples being Valve and Gamespy. Quake also pretty much single handedly got
the the 3d video card revolution started.
~~~
wlievens
Not to mention inspiring thousands to take up a carreer in various fields
tangentially related to game development.
It's a bit like the Apollo project :)
------
rgbrgb
Pretty inspiring story but this really made me laugh:
"The kind of stuff that most people think is really cool now, but would
immediately relegate you to punching bag status, and honestly not very cool
with the chicks back then."
I think you probably just started spending a larger proportion of your time
with people who share your interests. Fantasy novels are still not cool in
high school. :)
------
Maxious
<http://gamessavedmylife.com/> is a growing collection of stories about how
playing games has helped people emotionally, often in ways their creators
probably didn't envision.
But of course, games and game modding has had a profound impact on a lot of
technical folk. Many late nights bending BSP trees to my will in Valve
Worldcraft ;)
------
gavanwoolery
I started out with tools like Deluxe Paint and Animation and QBASIC. I learned
3D modeling long before I touched a level editor, using tools like POVRAY and
some crappy Windows 3.1 3D rendering/modeling package. I think the first level
editor I used was Ken Silverman's for Duke Nukem 3D. But if I had to point out
a game that really changed my life, it was Ultima 7 - it inspired me to learn
art, programming, design, etc. It was so far ahead of its time and even was
more interactive than many games are today. It was the closest thing to a
"sandbox" game at that point in time, I think.
------
skrebbel
Awesome wife. I'd say love, even more than Quake, changed the OP's life.
Great story.
------
pnathan
I bought my first computer to play games. I thought I could do better, so I
started modding games (X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter). I got tired of fighting other
people's game ideas and wanted to make my own. And the path to that lay
through a BSCS. Then I realized that there were more interesting and
fulfilling aspects to programming besides games.
But my story isn't as awesome as the author of the article's.
------
tintin
A rotating clown's head changed my life. I think it was 20 years ago. I would
love to see that animation again. I think it was a FLIC file. The beauty of
the lighting started the (3D) programmer / designer in me.
~~~
DanBC
Clown.zip listed here?
(<http://cd.textfiles.com/powerpakgold/FILES_RA/FILES.2>) and downloady here?
(<http://cd.textfiles.com/powerpakgold/ANIMAT/>)
~~~
tintin
Wow, that's it! I've been searching for this. Thank you.
Amazing that a simple 256 color animation from 1989 can change your life ;)
------
i_c_b
Just have to chime in with one more "Quake changed my life", though perhaps
even more so than most - loving Doom to death, I was _utterly_ obsessed with
Quake modding and map making. Then I sensibly dropped out of college in 1997
and went to Raven Software to work as a programmer, where I got to work with
the Quake engine while its paint was still wet, and even more so with Quake 2
while it was being developed. The amount of brilliant co-workers I had who
came up through the mod community at that point is actually pretty
astonishing, in hindsight.
Thanks id.
------
davidhollander
> _I think it was either Qed, or Qoole..._
Ah, Qoole was the first level editor I ever tried. What I vividly remember
about Quake 1 though was all the mods! I spent hours tying up the phone on a
14.4K modem hunting for new stuff to try.
Grappling hooks, bots, friendly attack dogs, Quake Rally which converted it
into a racing game, Air Quake which added pilotable helicopters and tanks... I
didn't get into coding until UnrealScript, but Quake 1 definitely got me into
the internet.
------
simonw
For me it was Team Fortress Classic. I was in between A-Levels and University,
not entirely sure what I wanted to do with myself and working a boring job in
Office World (UK equivalent of Office Depot) - but in the evenings I was
running a TFC clan, then later running a TFC news website. I ended up being
hired by an online gaming dotcom which is where I realised that web
development was what I wanted to do.
------
zerohp
Quake reignited my passion for computers after I spent several years off
focusing on automobile related hobbies.
I had been exposed to Linux before but Quake was what caused me to run it on
the desktop at first. The networking stack was significantly better than on
Windows. It also caused me to learn scripting in a unix environment to parse
logs on the server we placed at my brother's office.
------
pornel
My story is similar. QuakeC was the first "C-family" language I've learned :)
I've been creating new weapons and battle modes on Amiga (in a tiny, tiny
window) and playing those on PCs at school.
I've learned a lot about game physics, geometry and program design.
Kudos for making Quake programming approachable, portable and so much fun.
------
staunch
Count me as another. Quake was a huge part of why I loved computers. I also
created and published a number of maps and seriously considered trying to
become a pro level designer. Linux and web progrmming eventually became more
interesting but that inspiration was critical.
------
joeyespo
Those who are against gaming are the ones who really need to read posts like
this. Mario Bros for NES changed my life forever and it's wonderful reading
about how others are affected. Even more interesting is how age is completely
irrelevant to these experiences.
------
TeMPOraL
Computer games are what dragged me into programming in the first place. Later,
Quake II source code, Unreal Tournament headers for native development and
UnrealScript taught me lots of valuable lessons about game code design and
programming in general.
------
yesimahuman
I believe Quake had a big impact on the growth of my technical ability at a
young age. Tweaking config files, creating maps, setting up game servers,
messing with skins and mods. I cherish those days.
------
robryan
Similar story in a way, games like ff7,8 and 9 got me into RPG game making,
which then got me involved in community websites which then lead to me
learning PHP to help improve these websites.
------
mambodog
LEAK LEAK LEAK
Oh how I hated you.
------
BasDirks
In quite a different way Quake(3) shaped my life (being the engine for Call of
Duty 4). I got paid to travel around Europe playing it for money.
------
aw3c2
I (submitter) am not the author.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Slow ideas (2013) - cromano
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/slow-ideas
======
wetha
> Some people criticized anesthesia as a “needless luxury”; clergymen deplored
> its use to reduce pain during childbirth as a frustration of the Almighty’s
> designs.
It’s become fashionable to take potshots at Christianity, justified or
otherwise.
From a post on internationalskeptics.com[1]
> British science historian Colin A. Russell, in "The Conflict of Science and
> Religion" (published in The History of Science and Religion in the Western
> Tradition: An Encyclopedia), refers to "the alleged opposition to James
> Young Simpson (1811-70) for his introduction of chloroform anesthesia in
> midwifery": Quote: Despite repeated claims of clerical harassment, the
> evidence is almost nonexistent. Insofar as there was any conflict, it was
> between the London and Edinburgh medical establishments or between
> obstetricians and surgeons. The origins of that myth may be located in an
> inadequately documented footnote in White[.]”
[1]
[http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t...](http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39392)
~~~
rainbowmverse
>> _It’s become fashionable to take potshots at Christianity, justified or
otherwise._
Taking potshots at powerful ideologies, especially those with domineering
factions, has always been in fashion.
------
pagutierrezn
Diffusion of Innovations is an established corpus of knowledge. Including, of
course, common causes of variation in speeds of adoption.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations)
------
dang
Discussed in 2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10175493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10175493).
------
tiisetso
Inspired by the recent Freakonomics podcast interview with the author Dr Atul
Gawande? I recommend listening to it as well if you're interested in an
opinion about modern healthcare delivery systems.
[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/atul-
gawande/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/atul-gawande/)
------
igornadj
Great article. Goes into how to effectively influence people to change.
The biggest takeaway for me is that people who are reluctant to change are
going to be more so if they see you as someone trying to find mistakes in what
they do. Instead they should see you as a friend.
Very eye-opening, and refreshing reminder that soft skills matter.
------
TeMPOraL
> _Morton would not divulge the composition of the gas, which he called
> Letheon, because he had applied for a patent. But Bigelow reported that he
> smelled ether in it (ether was used as an ingredient in certain medical
> preparations), and that seems to have been enough. The idea spread like a
> contagion, travelling through letters, meetings, and periodicals._
Interesting. I wonder what would have happened if Bigelow didn't say a thing.
The way this is put, it looks like yet another case where disregarding
"intellectual property" is a net positive for the world.
------
qwerty456127
I just wonder how many decades are going to pass before one of those new super
batteries, caries vaccines / tooth regeneration techniques or cancer cures
invented every year is going to be made available to the people.
BTW did you know that umifenovir (arbidol) has recently been found[1] to be
~100% effective against flaviviruses (that cause e.g. tick-borne encephalitis,
dengue fever etc.)? But I doubt American doctors are going to start
prescribing it any soon if ever.
[1] [http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ct24/domaci/2457559-nadejny-
cesk...](http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ct24/domaci/2457559-nadejny-cesky-objev-
latka-ktera-se-v-rusku-a-cine-pouziva-na-chripku-likviduje-i)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Storied Myth – Children's storytelling that combines digital and physical - jitnut
https://www.storiedmyth.com/
======
kleer001
Interesting? Seems like something is missing, but I can't put my finger on it.
Something deeper than design alone seems a little uncanny-valley. Maybe that's
it, just straight creepy. But then again I'm not on the look out for
edutainment for kids. Maybe it's perfectly good for what it's trying to do.
Anyone with developmental or educational experience?
Also, who is this for? Parents, teachers, administrators?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hawkins: Virtual Goods Market To Hit $100 Billion This Decade - seregine
http://www.edge-online.com/news/hawkins-virtual-goods-market-to-hit-100-billion-this-decade
======
anigbrowl
I am both fascinated and confused by the virtual goods market. I got heavily
into Eve Online for a while, where considerable argument goes on about whether
purchase of goods with real money (via fungible time credits) undermines or
complements the skill element of what is basically a resource management game.
Many other purchases on social rather than highly competitive game platforms,
like Second Life and its derivatives, seem to be pure status displays. I know
there's a real-world precedent for such in things like Potlatch and other
religious ceremonies involving material sacrifice, but I am not sure whether
this behavior is adaptive in either economic or social terms. It's been the
subject of considerable speculation among academic economists and
sociologists, albeit without any firm conclusions that I'm aware of.
$100 billion...wow.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google is acquiring Kaggle - Perados
https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/07/google-is-acquiring-data-science-community-kaggle/
======
kornish
This is obviously a talent acquisition in more ways than one (the Kaggle team,
but also their ability to source machine learning talent). I wonder to what
degree it's also a Tensorflow promotion move? It seems like Google is very
interested in growing a community around it.
For example: some friends who run a seed-stage biotech deep learning startup
were offered a considerable discount by the Google Cloud folks. Their ask?
That the company switch to Google Cloud, rewrite some proprietary software in
Tensorflow, and heavily publicize both moves.
I wonder if we'll see Kaggle gain a specific bent towards that ecosystem.
~~~
alex_dev
Last I heard was Kaggle runs atop Azure and is heavily a C# shop. It'll be
interesting to see the transition to Google Cloud if that's the case.
~~~
ofek
I can confirm that Kaggle runs on Azure because I block all Microsoft IPs (to
avoid the ninja Windows 10 upgrade) and must disable the blocker in order to
go on the site.
~~~
ifdefdebug
> to avoid the ninja Windows 10 upgrade
What ninja upgrade? You always had to opt-in. Yes, they were really pushing
the offer annoyingly hard, but I had no problems whatsoever to keep one of my
machines on Windows 7.
Anyway, you can stop doing so now, the time for a free upgrade is over.
~~~
Strom
This is incorrect. There was an opt-out phase where the Windows 10 install
started automatically in the middle of work. I've experienced this myself,
there's a moment where Windows 7 just shuts down and starts installing Windows
10 and I had to wait 30 minutes until I could press "I disagree" to the EULA
and then it would start rolling back the Windows 10 it just installed.
------
jboggan
I have a soft spot in my heart for Kaggle. I was motivated to get into the
software industry 5 years ago when they ran their first Facebook hiring
challenge. How else to break into an industry I had no degree in?
I didn't do so well in the competition but it got me coding every day and it
gave me enough to talk about that I figured I could sell all my things and
ride a motorcycle to California and start knocking on doors. It worked, after
a fashion.
I also have a soft spot in my heart for Kaggle because I interviewed there
during my first month in San Francisco and it was absolutely the worst
interview of my life.
~~~
xaa
I can relate to the "bittersweet Kaggle memories" phenomenon.
I participated in their first-ever competition, which I thought I would have a
good shot at because Kaggle was brand-new (thus not much competition), and
because it was in my wheelhouse, a biological application of ML. And at that
time, c. 2010, ML was not all that well-known.
I did OK (placed somewhere in the top-middle IIRC) but it was quite humbling.
Now it's not really worth doing except for fun or to be recruited by someone
because the competition is so fierce and there are people with a lot of time
to devote to it. The difference between 1st and 25th place is often measured
in the 3rd decimal place of performance, making success kind of random. But
the postmortems by winners are always good to see some real-world best-
practices and different workflows.
As for the business model, I'm pretty ambivalent about it. My wife is a
graphic designer, and in that field, "compete to see who has the best design"
is a somewhat common thing. But it's scummy and designers hate it because it's
a way to basically get free work out of lots of people and it erodes salaries
in the industry.
Work should probably _not_ be gamified, especially when the gamification takes
the form of "you only get paid if you win". And "hey, you might get recruited
if you do well without winning" is not a lot of consolation. It's pretty
exploitative for anyone not A) doing it purely for fun/learning or B) willing
and able to assume the risk of making their money from competitions. (Just to
be clear, I've never done Kaggle except for fun, but I know others do it for
serious career purposes or money, as those are obviously express intentions of
the site)
~~~
tomaskafka
> Work should probably not be gamified, especially when the gamification takes
> the form of "you only get paid if you win"
Wanna join a startup? Huge equity! :)
~~~
xaa
Good point. I work in the "relatively safe" area of academic research, but the
point still holds.
Even more broadly, your thought has made me wax a little philosophical about
capitalism: we believe that 1) everyone should work, 2) I only want winners to
work with/for me, and 3) not everyone can be a winner. I guess you can't have
all three, but we sure try.
If you put it in that light, maybe Kaggle isn't so bad. But OTOH, we do make
the distinction between employees and entrepreneurs for a reason.
------
conjectures
Kaggle is a great idea, but it's steadily getting more annoying to use.
1) Cruft on all landing pages and having to click through to get to the comps
page which _is_ the site.
2) Annoying focus on exploratory notebooks. Inevitably they aren't powerful
enough and people link through to external sites.
3) _Forcing_ the use of 3rd party compute platforms to enter comps. Half the
fun for me is messing around with my own ideas and this just gets in the way.
These should be optional rather than required.
4) Poor incentives. Many of the comps have tiny prizes for the value of work
that gets done. They're also concentrated way too much at the top. Unless
there's something I want to try out, the expected value of participating is
way too low to do it just for the giggles.
~~~
carlmcqueen
I do analytics for a huge corporation and have been quite happy however some
of my peers who are unhappy with the pay here participate in Kaggle for the
opportunity to do well and get a better (higher paying) job.
Some of the inherent value of the work for the small prize pool is more the
opportunity of doing well and being recognized for that work.
Data Science, or trendy statistics, is inherently fun which is also what makes
kaggle fun. Discovery in data will always be popular among people who love to
solve problems.
To your other points, I don't disagree with you-- all the steps just to
participate are becoming more work than its worth, at least for me. I do a lot
of the same problems asked in kaggle naturally at work.
~~~
gedrap
>>> participate in Kaggle for the opportunity to do well and get a better
(higher paying) job
Obviously it's anecdotal data at best, but still curious, what are the
results? Because it sounds very similar to the frequently given advice for
software engineers 'push code to github to land a great job'.
~~~
jonathankoren
I've hired many people, and I don't know anyone that's ever looked at either
kaggle, or stack overflow, or github commits for anything. I've seen them on
resumes before, but only from very junior people, and typically from people
outside of the US.
Quite frankly it's a rather bullshit signal, since it's presence only tells
you that the person spends all their free time on the computer. Maybe the know
something, but a traditional interview will tell you that and more.
~~~
rocho
I disagree. From junior people, it shows that they can actually do something
in practice, and it's not all theory that they don't know how to apply.
A person just outside of university does not have heaps of past jobs to show.
So they should just leave it blank and describe their hobbies?!
~~~
jonathankoren
No one cares about hobbies, and Kaggle is a hobby.
An NCG should write more about class projects. Everyone has class projects.
If an NCG wants to put it down, fine. But don't color me impressed. Why should
I select someone that spends their evenings alone tweaking out an extra 0.001%
on a AUC curve, when I could conceivably get a more rounded individual with
better team skills?
------
marcelsalathe
[https://www.crowdAI.org](https://www.crowdAI.org) is an open source
alternative. Disclaimer, my research group at EPFL started the platform,
because we think there should be a community-based open source version that is
open to anyone. Always looking for contributors!
Edit (1): Github
[https://github.com/crowdAI/crowdai](https://github.com/crowdAI/crowdai) Edit
(2): We're currently re-designing the whole site to look & feel better.
~~~
wapz
I just looked at the site and it sounds real exciting (but way too difficult
for me). Can I ask how you guys are funded? I saw that there is a ~$2000
payout for the winner of the most recent challenge.
~~~
marcelsalathe
The platform itself is funded by institutional research funding we get at
EPFL. For some of the monetary prizes, these typically come from the
corresponding projects.
------
iamseiko
That's disappointing. Google will probably keep the service alive for
recruiting and the consumer base, while most of it's technologies will
probably be shut off. Being owned by Google might also mean that some
companies might not want to post challenges on Kaggle anymore, like Facebook
or Microsoft.
~~~
inlined
I really don't understand this assumption that all acquisitions are going to
lead to disaster. I work in the Firebase team at Google and couldn't be
happier that they've joined (it's what got me to return to Google). Google
doubled down on the product and it's grown in ways that Firebase could never
have achieved on its own. All while integrating into the broader ecosystem of
Cloud.
Firebase then acquired DivShot and people cried doom. Yes DivShot was shut
down--after completely rearchitecting Firebase's CLI and Hosting to have
DivShot's open source web hosting framework with the features of both product
lines. The CEO of DivShot now runs Firebase Hosting's product line and has
massive resources at his disposal to push his (great) agenda of simple and
speedy static web services.
------
codesternews
This is worst news I read today. Kaggle independently serve more purpose to
community than a baby of some large giants. I love kaggle and I am very
disappointed that google acquire everything we love.
------
soheil
I'm a little sad about this, what will Google do with this? Are they going to
drain its soul? I think at a minimum the people behind Kaggle won't feel the
same urge to keep building , maintaining and growing it the same way as
before, specially as the $$$ flows in their pockets. It will probably change
direction by people at Google in control and I'm not sure if that's a good
thing since they didn't just built something like this on their own or a
better version of it if they were really good at doing stuff like this
themselves.
~~~
ehsankia
They just officially announced it at NEXT. It was presented by Fei Fei Li, who
is known for the ImageNet project, which one one of the first big open
datasets that really helped advance this field.
The way she presented the news is that they will aim to advance that vision,
but we'll have to wait an see how their vision pans out.
------
jph00
Why does the article say that Ben Hamner was involved in the founding in 2010?
He joined years later. Some basic fact checking would be nice, even in tech
articles...
(Ben has been a great contributor, mind you.)
~~~
redcalx
Yeh as I recall Jeremy Howard was chief boffin at the start, and left some
time later to start his own biomedical data analysis company (also in SF).
~~~
kornish
Funny thing: the comment you're replying to was posted by Jeremy Howard.
Pardon if I'm missing some tongue-in-cheekiness.
~~~
redcalx
heh. I was unaware :)
------
throw_away_777
Congrats to the Kaggle team! One great thing about Kaggle was that the team
listened and sought out feedback from users (even if they didn't always follow
the feedback). I hope that doesn't change with the acquisition.
~~~
nojvek
It's amazing how focused Google is on AI compared to the other giants. I think
it's a great investment on Google's part and congrats to Kaggle.
I hope the mission of the site doesn't change. I think Facebook did a great
job with whatsapp and instagram. I expect the same with Kaggle.
------
chis
DrivenData.org is a solid competitor without much publicity. Maybe they'll
take over some of the traffic if Kaggle changes for the worse.
------
dthal
Well, supposing this is correct...Congratulations to Anthony and the rest of
the Kaggle team! Those guys do a great job. Hopefully they get rewarded for
it.
------
macca321
Congrats to Jeff and the rest of the team. I'd be interested to hear how much
.NET survives the transition!
------
nstart
This could well end up being a fantastic move for Google to also acquire
customers in its platform. If Kaggle moved large pieces of its competition to
be automatically hosted on GCE it might be a good win for Google. So like
Kaggle's "kernels", GCE machine learning tools would become an extension
that's usable with it in a really simple way. Not entirely sure what that
might look like, but it feels like this kind of integration would be the best
for both parties.
------
alantrrs
Since we're sharing alternatives:
[https://empiricalci.com](https://empiricalci.com) is a dashboard to keep
track of your experiments & compare them on public benchmarks.
------
luckystartup
> Kaggle, which has about half a million data scientists on its platform, ...
Are there really that many data scientists? I thought it was a niche
specialty. Is there enough work for that many people?
~~~
rcar
Think they maybe put a 0 in the wrong spot. Kaggle's leaderboard only shows
~50k: [https://www.kaggle.com/rankings](https://www.kaggle.com/rankings)
------
outericky
Best of luck to the Kaggle team. We attended a data scientist conference they
presented at in 2012 which led to our YC application, and formation for
SimpleLegal. Hats off...
------
qkhhly
Google probably want to use Kaggle as Google cloud entry point for the data
scientist community. Kaggle has a lot of student and entry level data
scientist. Getting those users to start to use Google cloud could potentially
drive the growth of lots of potential customers.
~~~
leblancfg
I think you hit the nail straight on the head. Sure, Tensorflow will also
probably get pushed in the form of tutorials, etc. but I certainly think it's
rather related to bring a way to popularize GCS.
------
Nydhal
I'm not sure if this is good or bad news. I wonder what google motives are and
how they will influence kaggle if this becomes reality.
~~~
seangrogg
As with many of Google's hires chances are they see it less about acquiring a
"product" and more about getting access to what that product produces - an
extremely large number of leads in a high-demand space that they're currently
trying to ramp up themselves.
~~~
leblancfg
Interesting, though, as they never needed to own that platform to mine it for
hiring leads.
------
deepnotderp
Only Google can spend this much on what's ultimately a recruiting project.
~~~
soheil
They have 500,000 developers, do the math at 30% commission for each assuming
a $180k salary that's $50k even if they hire 0.1% of them that adds up to $50k
* 500 = 25m they probably paid a few times more than that but not a few
hundred times, which therefore makes this a pretty sweet deal for Google
assuming the community keeps growing.
~~~
gpawl
do you have buy kaggle to hire kaggle members?
~~~
soheil
Well I'm not sure if they expose their members' contact info or if it'd be
easy for Google to advertise on their site as effectively.
------
jader201
Official announcements:
Google: [https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/03/welcome-
Kaggle-...](https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/03/welcome-Kaggle-to-
Google-Cloud.html) (HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822635](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822635))
Kaggle: [http://blog.kaggle.com/2017/03/08/kaggle-joins-google-
cloud/](http://blog.kaggle.com/2017/03/08/kaggle-joins-google-cloud/) (HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822727))
------
alxvio
Just announced at Google Next '17\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_K1YoMHpbk&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_K1YoMHpbk&feature=youtu.be)
------
rochak
Good luck to Kaggle's employees. They have done a phenomenal job.
------
EternalData
I think having a dataset on who is really interested in machine learning and
applying it in practice can only help Google. Plus, if they kind of lurk on
the side, you don't get enough of the Google brand overwhelming Kaggle so that
it disrupts the community, but in the back of the minds of people going into
competitions and who are in the know, it might help incentivize people who
think "Hey, Google is really interested in this".
------
sullyj3
How could a company called "Google" _not_ acquire a company called "Kaggle"?
This makes me giggle.
------
gumboshoes
The Kragle has been sold?!
[http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/evil/images/c/c0/Kragle....](http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/evil/images/c/c0/Kragle.jpg/revision/latest/scale-
to-width-down/250?cb=20150810035915)
------
ebbv
Guess that means Kaggle users can expect it to be shut down in the next five
years.
~~~
sireat
Sadly I think 5 years to sunset is an optimistic estimate.
------
huula
Don't know why. Just don't think this is going to happen.
------
pizza
Deep Mind keeps acquiring appendages
------
moizsajid
Really excited about this acquisition! Might open new avenues for the data
science community.
------
nafizh
This must imply Kaggle has some internal software that Google want?
~~~
deepnotderp
Nah, they just want a good recruiting station.
------
tzs
I wonder if that's the only one they want, or if they are also going to try to
get other relics such the Knife of Exact Zero, the Fleece-Crested Scepter of
Que-Teep, or the Orb of Ti-Teleest?
------
inopinatus
Hopefully there will be no uncertainties in the acquisition. If not they can
form a team to fix them. But I'm joking around: this is a Google-Kaggle niggle
gaggle giggle.
------
maverick_iceman
Anyone knows what was the price?
------
danaliv
Whoever named this company has literally never spoken to a woman.
~~~
ScottBurson
I think the name is a little odd too. Does anyone know how they came up with
it?
~~~
Danylon
> I didn’t have any money when I started the company to purchase a domain name
> so I built an algorithm that iterated phonetic domain names and printed out
> a list of what was available. My wife and I went through the list and
> “Kaggle” was the one we picked. It’s algorithmically generated.
> It’s a terrible name because most Americans pronounce it “kagel” [rhymes
> with “bagel”] which sounds like the pelvic floor exercises. Australians
> pronounce it “kaggel” [rhymes with “haggle”].
\-- Anthony Goldbloom, [http://www.intelfreepress.com/news/a-marketplace-for-
data-sc...](http://www.intelfreepress.com/news/a-marketplace-for-data-
scientists/5256/)
~~~
jacques_chester
As an Australian living in the US, it never occurred to me that it would be
called anything but the latter.
~~~
cr0sh
As a self-described redneck in Arizona - the latter seems most appropriate.
Why anyone would pronounce it to rhyme with "bagel" makes no sense to me (same
as pronouncing "gif" with a soft "G"); IIRC (and I am no linguist), in english
there's a rule about how something is pronounced based on surrounding letters
- and I think that double consonant vs singular consonant preceded by a vowel
is one of those rules.
I'm sure there are exceptions, after all (it's english...) - but I have a
feeling that if you looked at such words you would find the general pattern to
fit.
Again - I am willing to admit that I really don't know what I am talking
about; I'm not a linguist, I'm not an expert in english. I'm just some guy who
last studied english in high school years ago...
~~~
ScottBurson
I feel the same way about "GIF". Alas, the inventor of the GIF format insists
on the soft "G" [0].
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Pronunciation_of_GIF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Pronunciation_of_GIF)
------
joelthelion
Yuck.
------
mostafab
good news, I did not like the whole Kaggle concept anyway: thousands of people
over-engineering solutions for one problem, paid peanuts, while there are more
rewarding problems than talent available. It was a huge waste of scarce
brainpower. I am launching my Kaggle alternative, landing page here:
[http://startcrowd.club/](http://startcrowd.club/) Thanks Google for
eliminating my competitor.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Email Invoicing for Side Job - deevus
I have been providing occasional computer services (malware cleanup, harddrive recovery etc) as a hobby. I was wondering if anyone in a similar position can recommend a cheap (possibly free) email invoicing software that I could use to provide to my clients? I don't really need anything else as the work is so infrequent.
======
lettergram
This was posted on HN a few months ago:
[https://www.invoiceninja.com/](https://www.invoiceninja.com/)
I convinced a few people to use it and everyone loves it.
~~~
deevus
I'll test this one out. Thanks!
------
pjbrunet
The Square app has easy email invoicing and you get the money in 48hrs.
Freshbooks-Paypal combo is good too. Or just send the invoice as an email (no
need for a spreadsheet) and ask for a check in the email--doesn't have to be
complicated.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Die analysis of the 8087 math coprocessor's fast bit shifter - matt_d
http://www.righto.com/2020/05/die-analysis-of-8087-math-coprocessors.html
======
Gracana
> So far, the bit and byte shifters only shift bits in one direction. However,
> bits need to be shifted in both directions. One of the key innovations of
> the 8087's shifter is its bidirectional design: data can be passed through
> the shifter in reverse to shift bits the opposite direction. This is
> possible because the shifter is constructed with pass transistors, not logic
> gates.
That's really cool. I've never really looked at ASIC design so that wasn't
something I had considered before. I have a left-shift unit design that uses
74F logic, and to get it to do right shifts I would have to reverse the input
and output, which is the typical trick to use when you have to use logic
gates.
[http://www.pnnk.org/img/lshift_schematic.pdf](http://www.pnnk.org/img/lshift_schematic.pdf)
[http://www.pnnk.org/img/lshift_board.png](http://www.pnnk.org/img/lshift_board.png)
~~~
beefok
I have always been fascinated by a paper on barrel shifters myself. I think
you would enjoy this as well:
[https://www.princeton.edu/~rblee/ELE572Papers/Fall04Readings...](https://www.princeton.edu/~rblee/ELE572Papers/Fall04Readings/Shifter_Schulte.pdf)
In particular, logarithmic barrel shifters are amazingly simple to implement
better than a massive multiplexer for each shift step.
Edit: oops, after further investigation it looks like you may be doing this in
your design?
~~~
Gracana
Oh, nice paper! I had been looking at this one, also by Matthew Pillmeier:
[https://preserve.lehigh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1714...](https://preserve.lehigh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1714&context=etd)
I have a verilog module that implements the "Mux-Based Data Reversal" design
with overflow output. Yosys/nextpnr synthesize it with a 102MHz timing
estimate on the lattice ice40hx8k.
As for the 74F design, yeah, it uses the logarithmic approach. It still has
massive multiplexers, but there's only 5 stages for a full 32 bit shift, plus
the extra gates to handle the carry bit.
~~~
exmadscientist
For what it's worth, you might want to consider other logic families than F.
It's no longer the fastest and can be less well-behaved and more power-hungry
than others. As well as getting harder and harder to find and more and more
expensive.
In terms of speed, you'll find that LVC at 3.3V is likely to outperform F at
5V, and AUC at 3.3V will definitely outperform everything short of ECL -- the
catch there is that AUC is technically not specified for 3.3V operation. To
stay at 5V, LVC is a good choice if available in the functions you need (LVC
is maddeningly inconsistent in that some parts run at 3.6V max and others at
5V max), or look around at the various high-speed families otherwise. The big
bus drivers in ABT are great if they're available.
~~~
Gracana
> LVC is a good choice if available in the functions you need
LVC is awesome, but that's the problem I've run into. Even with 74F there are
a lot of functions missing, but the options are better.
------
rwallace
Interesting article! One thing I'm curious about: I can see what the bit
shifter was for, but the article also mentions a separate byte shifter. What
was that for?
~~~
nullc
It's for shifting by more than 7 bits. The shift is split mod 8 bits into a
bit and byte portion to reduce the geometric complexity of the circuit (and
perhaps help it meet timing).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Red Language - BenCan
======
ColanR
Here's a link to the site: [https://www.red-lang.org/](https://www.red-
lang.org/)
------
BenCan
So, as good as Red is, and I do accept that it is a brilliant piece of work.
Where is it in the market ? What is the sell ? Is this just an exercise to
keep a few in pay ? Nobody pays for programming languages any more ....
~~~
greggirwin
I'm part of Team Red, though I only speak for myself here.
TL;DR -- Tools and infrastructure
It's true that people don't pay for languages, but did they ever? Mostly,
people have paid for tools. Tools that help them solve problems. In the early
days, nobody paid for _any_ software. Then there was a period where MS,
Borland, Zortech, and others sold boxed compilers for C/C++, Pascal, Basic,
and even Prolog (Borland Turbo Prolog, yep). Later Visual Basic and a raft of
RAD tools, many of which had languages in them. And Hypercard had its day.
Now you don't pay for languages, very clearly, but did you ever, really? Yes,
in smaller numbers. For example, people paid for MSBASIC/PDS, QuickBasic,
TrueBASIC, GFABasic, XBasic, PowerBasic, or Visual Basic, because each had
features they needed. But they didn't need, or pay for BASIC. They paid
because the tool was effective and fit their needs.
Red is _not_ just an exercise, but building a language is hard, slow,
deliberate work, especially when you do it from the ground up. That's why
other langs don't do it that way. They compile to another language, now often
transpiling, to leverage the existing infrastructure. This can be a big win,
but you also get all the baggage of the old system, which is a cost.
Did JetBrains create Kotlin, hoping to cash in on the language itself? I don't
have inside info, but I don't think so. Smart people they are. They sell
tools, and being able to provide the first and best tool(s) for a new lang is
a huge opportunity. Not to mention having all the experts in the language, for
consulting and contract work day one. Everybody else has to play catch-up.
Do you see where I'm headed?
Those are just a couple ways you can be a commercial success by building a
language. And that's a necessity. To win, we have to survive.
But that's not what motivates our programmer hearts. Fighting software
complexity, showing people there's a better way, making the world a better
place by improving how software is built, at all levels; that is what drives
us. Software development, if not broken, is at least very, very bent.
Why are there so many Low Code tools out there? Is mobile dev as easy as it
could be? Are we there yet? How far have we progressed, in how software is
built, since 1970? Do _you_ have all the tools you wish you had in your
language of choice? Why not? Why does it take 7 languages and 20 supporting
tools and frameworks, all with different syntax, models, and runtime needs to
build a simple web app today? Why does "Javascript Fatigue" exist as a term?
Is containerization a solution, or simply a band-aid over cancer? Left-pad
anyone?
You ask "Where's the market?" Well, it's everywhere, and Red can do everything
(or will, before too long ;^). So we have to narrow it down. We hate doing
that for the language, because it gives people a keyhole view of what Red can
do. That's where specific products and tools come in. They, like dialects are
to the base language, have a sharp focus.
There are massive opportunities to be had. And not just by us. Does Brendan
Eich get JS royalties? Does Douglas Crockford get JSON kickbacks? Did they
change the world, and have a lot of people made a lot of money because those
technologies exist? You bet they have. But think even bigger, if you can,
because what if you _could_ be compensated for creating great tech that others
leverage? And if you think Red won't win because it's Lisp+Forth+Logo, has
free ranging evaluation, or other things a dev can pick syntax nits about,
that's fine too. JS has flaws, but look at all the dialects that transpile to
it. Those are just DSLs, if you think about it, constrained versions. And what
is Red better at than any other language?
Thanks for listening.
~~~
BenCan
Thank you for the reply - And yes Red is good even brilliant , but it seems
like you are stalling .... when your done your pay (the few) stops.
------
BenCan
A keen amateur programmer
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Third of British population login to Facebook every day (4/5 mobile users) - inthewind
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/14/facebook-users-smartphone-tablet
======
whatyousay
Does that mean third of British population is sad? Well a report says so:
[http://www.technostall.com/facebook-makes-you-sad-
report/](http://www.technostall.com/facebook-makes-you-sad-report/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why are the Beatles albums cheaper on Amazon than on iTunes? - AndrewDucker
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/2238833.html
======
KC8ZKF
"iTunes LP" includes extras, and always cost more on the iTunes store. I don't
know why standard versions are not available.
------
thasmin
The short answer is almost certainly that the record label has placed
significant restrictions on the price.
It's not just Beatles albums. Lots of albums are cheaper to buy used on Amazon
than MP3s on Amazon. It's an imperfect marketplace. A few record labels
control the supply of MP3s and Amazon places little control on used album
sales. Also, MP3s are a better product for people who want MP3s. They have
instant delivery, no need to rip the CD, and physical storage requirements.
The advantages of a CD are resale value and collectability and better archival
capability, but I don't think most people care to store FLACs.
------
Quarrelsome
Probably because the old boy distribution networks still hold power and can
get discounts even though they make no sense (physical distribution costs).
When Statcraft II was released it was at least £10 20 euro or $20 dollars MORE
EXPENSIVE to download then it was to buy retail.
------
piers
Not the most helpful answer in the world, but I've generally found Amazon to
be cheaper than iTunes, so I don't think that this is really anything new.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
‘Harry Potter’ Series to Be Sold as E-Books - mikecane
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/06/23/world/europe/AP-EU-Britain-Potter.html?pagewanted=print
======
mikecane
Given that these have been available illegitimately in e within hours after
publication, in multiple languages, worldwide, their sales will be very
interesting to see and provide ammo for one or the other side of the piracy
debate.
------
pwg
Alternate link, in case you hit the NYTimes paywall:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13889578>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Self-taught bloke cracks crypto conundrum supposed uncrackable until 2034 (2019) - vo2maxer
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/30/cryptography_conundrum_cracked/
======
krackers
>But he underestimated the progression of hardware, as the problem has been
solved earlier than expected.
>He used a bog standard PC with an Intel Core i7-6700 processor
So it was mainly just raw hardware and patience rather than any novel math
technique? The title is slightly misleading then.
~~~
heavenlyblue
But the bloke is self-taught. He’s an autodidact.
------
jdsully
Pretty neat. I wonder what’s in the time capsule. Also good on him for keeping
the program running for 3 years straight.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Homelabos, a “Free Private Self-Hosted App Store” - loughnane
https://homelabos.com/
======
rvz
Sigh. I wonder if this looks like a good solution to use for private on-site
infrastructure deployment, but its so reassuring that the author is giving a
testimonial of their own product! /s No thanks.
Going on-site is the way forward from the AWS, GCP, Azure cloud hype-cycle but
this one is definitely not ready for this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change - ingve
https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/
======
warent
I've experienced a form of hostility in StackOverflow just recently--as in a
couple of days ago. On a whim, I visited the website and answered a couple
questions, something I'd never done before. I realized it was actually a lot
of fun, so I started rapidly answering the all JavaScript questions I could as
they were asked.
Suddenly a "higher ranking" individual started leaving comments on my answers
that I needed to stop answering certain questions, and only address "well
asked" questions. After reading the guidelines, I noted that neither I or the
asker had broken any rules, so I commented that I felt I was being treated
unfairly, and I asked where I could discuss further since the comments on my
questions seemed inappropriate.
Suddenly another, even higher scoring person, deleted all the comments and
locked my answer, noting that the discussion had stopped being productive.
After that, my answers were left alone with no more meta criticism.
In my limited experience, it's a bizarre community.
~~~
wwweston
> Suddenly a "higher ranking" individual started leaving comments on my
> answers that I needed to stop answering certain questions, and only address
> "well asked" questions.
I love Stack Overflow, and it's sure a valuable if imperfect resource, but
this is something that drives me bonkers about it.
If the question is intelligible enough to receive an answer, and if your
answer is potentially helpful to the asker, then it's well-asked as far as I
can tell, and the scoring system can take care of its relative utility.
The additional level of moderation doesn't seem to have added much value over
my time participating. The closest thing I can think of as nice is combining
duplicates, though moderators often seem to miss subtle differences between
questions and in some cases information gets lost in the end. Generally, the
moderation focus often seems legalistic or driven by artificial incentives
rather than primarily focused on improving the breadth, depth, and quality of
the site as a technical resource.
Honestly, I'm pretty sure that a significant portion of the hostility people
experience is coming from moderation actions.
I might hope the SO team has the intention of going to town on that problem in
general, but I don't see it specifically mentioned in today's discussion. I'm
sure that if they took it deeply seriously and engaged with enough specific
situations where it's been a problem, they could find ways to do better.
I think today's announcement is a really good indication, though, that they're
listening to people who are having problems with their SO experience, not just
to people who'd congratulate them for their (deserved!) accomplishments and
for whom everything is more or less fine.
~~~
wheelie_boy
I think the core problem is that they've focused too much on being like
wikipedia (a single authoritative, comprehensive answer to each important
question), and not enough on helping people to learn. Over time a site will
grow a culture, and experts on the site will outweigh and overrule experts on
the subject matter. In this case, we're also seeing answerers' needs outweigh
askers'.
If you could only meet the needs of one constituency, I'd say they made the
right choice to favor expert answerers, but I think there are other solutions.
Specifically, if I was trying to fix this I'd set up a two-tier system for
questions and answers. There are lots of people who would be happy to answer
questions, even if the question is a dupe, and even if it's not framed very
well. Give people points for answering these in a kind way, and moderate
around that.
For questions that are sufficiently well-asked, and not duplicates, elevate
them to a wikipedia-like status: allow them to be indexed by search engines,
make them easier to see by the expert answerers that dislike sifting through
novice questions, and moderate them for quality. Give points for people that
review and elevate high-quality, non-duplicate questions, or that edit
questions to become high-quality.
If there are very different personas that you're trying to appease, sometimes
a multi-tier system is appropriate.
~~~
warty
There's nuance here. There are plenty of cases where individuals ask XY
questions, meaning they've gone down a strange route to solve X and now need
help solving Y, and it's always been debated within the community on whether
you should solve X or oftentimes go to great lengths to solve Y. I've seen
many questions where a solution to X is answered and heavily downvoted. I'm
not sure how you resolve that.
Question: How do I #include a 500MB text file in my C++ code as a string? My
compiler explodes when I do this!
Me: Don't do this, your compiler isn't designed for this! Consider loading the
text from a file instead!
Comment: -1 Dude this isn't helpful. What if it's code golf and you need to
include a 500MB text file!? You never know. Get over yourself.
Stuff like this has happened to me so many times.
~~~
bad_user
Your kind of answer is precisely why I find SO useless.
When a user asks a question on X, it would be better to first assume that he
knows what he’s freaking doing.
E.g. yes there might be valid reasons for inserting 500 MB as a string, and
myself as another user desperately searching for an answer to it, I get pretty
annoyed when I see answers for a Y instead.
SO contributors should answer the freaking question first. Can it be done and
how. Otherwise the answer is of no use to people having the same question but
for a different problem. Not to mention that I’ve seen questions closed as
duplicates.
This is why I rarely go to SO for answers. I don’t want an opinionated forum,
I want a mailing list where people assume you’re a grownup that really wants a
solution to the question and not something else.
~~~
sosborn
The people that really need to know how to insert a 500mb string will actually
explain why they need to do so (beyond the typical “it doesn’t work”).
The ones that can’t explain why are almost always unaware of the actual
problem they need to solve.
~~~
bad_user
That's a pretty big assumption on your part. Unless you're going to cite some
SO stats or a study on it, I'm going to assume that you're wrong.
Also good questions shouldn't need explanations for the reason you're trying
to do something. It's not like I'm going to explain my business requirements
on a public forum to complete strangers.
And I'm going to mention this again — if the purpose of SO is to provide a
_searchable database_ of questions and answers, then the answer has to match
the question, not a supposed use case that the user may or may not have,
because that answer is then useless to others.
Of course you can include 500 MB in a separate file and read that. It's
totally uninteresting and now that SO question, along with its non-answer is
showing up in search results, having precedence over others. Which is a pity,
because I thought SO is a place where you can ask questions on obscure
features of the tools we're using.
~~~
warty
> Which is a pity, because I thought SO is a place where you can ask questions
> on obscure features of the tools we're using.
You can, as long as you're clear on why you need these obscure features. So
there's nuance... if someone asks "hi, I want to call `add` like `add(10, 20,
30)` and it's not working" and the answer is "Use `10 + 20 + 30` instead!",
they're answering the intent of the question. They've totally not answered the
original question (I want to call add) but OP is probably misguided.
It'd totally be fair to say "Oh, declare a function with 3 params and return
the sum, or even make a function with variable arguments, then enumerate over
each of them, summing into an accumulator. You can also do this as a
functional reduction. In fact, you can use the mapreduce framework to do this,
and here's how to create an adder circuit" \- Every tidbit of the above is
just... overkill.
I totally empathize with you - it sucks to google "how to do X given good
reasons Y Z" only to find a question "how to do X given terrible reasons A B"
that's answered by "don't do X"! I think the way that's respectful of others'
time is to ask another question and clarify why you truly need X.
If you've taught a multidisciplinary class, you'll have faced people who truly
are confused - EE students who want to understand, for example, "how do I
declare a 20 bit integer in C for this program that's running on Windows?"...
~~~
galangalalgol
This removes a great deal of utility from the site. The majority of value in
the site is not answering one individuals question at a time. Every single
time I ask the search engine a programming question SO pops up as the first
result. Most of the time that link has the answer I need, but every single
time the conversation has violated some inane rule and has been shut down.
Every single time. The rules are wrong, it is that simple.
~~~
mistermann
> Most of the time that link has the answer I need, but every single time the
> conversation has violated some inane rule and has been shut down. Every
> single time. The rules are wrong, it is that simple.
Not 100% for me, but easily 30%. And you can almost taste the authoritarian
arrogance dripping from the moderators words. I was disappointed this
incredibly negative aspect of the site wasn't even mentioned in the post.
------
CM30
> Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place
True. There's definitely an elitist undertone at Stack Overflow, and the
voting system has a huge effect on that...
> especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized
> groups.
But this isn't true. No one knows anything about a user on Stack Overflow
unless they explicitly announce it, and generally my perception seems to be a
disdain towards newer members in general, not ones from any particular group.
Trying to make this about minorities feels like a desperate attempt to fit in
with the 'social justice' sphere, and to virtue signal to people on sites like
Twitter.
Still, the rest of the article seems fairly sane, and I guess this point
stands out above all:
> Let’s reject the false dichotomy between quality and kindness
Because at the end of the day, we need to kill the 'brilliant jerk' archtype
already. No, most intelligent people are not Dr House or Rick from Rick and
Morty, and we shouldn't make the assumption that a community has to tolerate
that sort of behaviour in order for it to be good. Moderate the community
well, stop tolerating jerks because they're 'smart' and fix your voting
systems, and Stack Overflow can easily become a great community to be part of
again.
~~~
javadocmd
> But this isn't true...
You completely missed this point. To quote the article:
> Many people, especially those in marginalized groups do feel less welcome.
> We know because they tell us.
Hanlon doesn't claim to know _why_ the marginalized groups feel unwelcome. He
doesn't even claim that the root cause is a bias of action -- conscious or
subconscious -- on the part of SO's users or staff. What he said was these
groups report at a higher than average rate the feeling of being unwelcome.
That is a simple fact, and can only be dismissed at the cost of saying those
people's opinions are not worth addressing. Acknowledging it, saying "maybe if
we get creative we can improve it", is not virtue signaling, it's the most
fundamental requirement to:
> shift from “don’t be an asshole” to “be welcoming.”
~~~
ItsMe000001
> > _Many people, especially those in marginalized groups do feel less
> welcome. We know because they tell us._
This particular argument is really bad IMHO. OP has a point - nobody knows who
you are. That means if some people feel they are treated worse it is due to
their own perception. After all, objectively they are not treated worse then
everybody else. Which to me sounds more like a bias in their perception. They
may have that perception for a reason, but that does not seem to me to be
something attributable to SO.
~~~
jsmeaton
People are not claiming they are being treated worse than less marginalised
people. They’re claiming they themselves do not feel welcome. It’s definitely
all about perception, but that doesn’t mean it’s invalid.
------
legostormtroopr
What the StackOverflow company fails to get is that their product is assholes
and industrial level asshole production.
Every question is moderated by volunteers, who have curated every high value
question there. From an askers perspective, sure you may have asked 1 slightly
off-topic question, but for a reviewer, that’s the 30th off-topic question
today - and SO gamifies reviewing so you are encouraged to do so.
I used to be on StackOverflow and had high enough rep to access nearly all of
the moderation tools. The quantity of garbage that gets submitted daily is
astounding. And when your contribution to the community of high quality
content is keep quality up you get tired of saying “hey can you please add
more code” for the 100th time and just hit dupe. Because if the asker isn’t
trying, why should you?
Ultimately, this leads every reviewer to become an asshole, because to keep up
with the quantity of rash coming in you need to be.
~~~
singularity2001
Good explanation, but what's the purpose of deleting duplicates and "off-
topic" questions other than saving some SO storage space?
Edit: IMO closing duplicates makes sense, IFF users are asked 'does the linked
duplicate answer you question' and confirm. Deleting only makes sense in case
of exact duplicates, otherwise they might be useful variants worth linking.
~~~
Izkata
Closing duplicates has multiple uses:
* Directs the asker to a place where their question has already been answered.
* Trains the user to search for an answer instead of blindly asking.
* Gets new answerers to put their answers all in one place so it's easier for others to find later.
* Not deleting it acts as a signpost for people searching on more variations of the same question.
Closing off-topic questions should be obvious: Prevent scope creep and limit
the "broken windows" effect.
------
TravelTechGuy
It's funny reading this article after seeing one of my questions from 2011
edited today, to remove the word "Thanks!" from the bottom.
I've been on SO since 2009. I can confirm the community is getting harsher,
less patient, and more exact. HOWEVER, I can see the other side. I see tons of
questions that are not fit to be on the site: one-liners, opinions, "help me
with my homework", and utter spam. Not to mention people who clearly did not
search the site, or even Google (many of Google's results come from SO), and
ask a simple question asked a thousand times before. Bad questions and answers
will stay online indefinitely, coming up in your future Google searches.
There has to be a balance. Comments should be less hostile, but posters should
vet their questions before asking.
Perhaps the suggested structured form is the right way to go. If people will
take some time to document their effort, and code, they'll gain appreciation
for the time spent by someone reading their question and providing an answer.
PS: +1 on using Zuckerbot in an article not about Facebook :)
~~~
pishpash
Ratings already take care of curating. Why do you need assholes to curate?
~~~
Ajedi32
Same reason why HN has both up/down votes, and actual moderators.
~~~
singularity2001
And the reason is ... ?
What's wrong with comments just being grayed out, collapsed and moved to the
bottom if they are downvoted for being (too) stupid / trolling / fascist etc?
Moderators could just have more voting power.
~~~
singularity2001
OK reading the Medium post [0] I see that toxic comments were the starting
points here, not the rampant practice of closing questions for dubious
reasons.
[0] [https://medium.com/@Aprilw/suffering-on-stack-
overflow-c4641...](https://medium.com/@Aprilw/suffering-on-stack-
overflow-c46414a34a52)
~~~
shagie
I believe that these comments exist when the other tools of moderation of that
content have run out and the individuals are using the social moderation tools
of comments (that are nearly unlimited) to do that moderation. I further
believe that this rudeness could be reduced by improving the encoded
moderation tools (votes, close, delete) so that such questionsget up front
mentoring or guidance on how to search for the material before they are
posted.
It should also be noted that the author of the post has a consulting service
for improving diversity in the workplace (second paragraph) - there is a
promotional aspect to this post. Stack Overflow, as a very central and large
place that people perceive as being jerks is an easy and large target to push
against.
It is _also_ interesting that while this is being held up as an example (from
the post):
> I used vivid imagery, sure, but you’ll notice that in all my criticism of
> Stack Overflow, I avoid name-calling, personal attacks, and profanity. For
> the record, I do not endorse any criticism of Stack Overflow that resorts to
> these tactics, though I do feel compassion for the pain that leads to this
> kind of response.
that posts on HN (
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16936221](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16936221)
) are _not_ being held up to the same standard of avoiding name calling,
personal attacks and profanity.
------
protonimitate
Glad to see an active approach is being taken. SO is a great resource and
contains some of the best information on the web IRT programming.
If there was only one thing I could change it would be this: If someone marks
a question as duplicate, and closes, make them provide a link to the
'original' question and a brief summary as to why it is a duplicate.
Closing something as duplicate and then forcing the user who submitted the
question to do more digging comes off as hostile, lazy, and even
condescending. Sometimes the original question is lazy and un-researched, but
in most cases it is hard to find the right search term for the problem you
have.
~~~
juliangoldsmith
StackOverflow is good if you come there via a search.
Otherwise, in my experience, it is utterly worthless for getting actual
answers.
For instance, I've asked a total of 4 questions on the DBA Stack Exchange.
Almost all of them were specific but easily generalized, weren't answered
anywhere else. Three of them would have been easily answered by someone with
good knowledge of the relevant products. (The other was only answered by
significant trial and error.) On three of them, I was the only person to
answer. Each of those took hours of research. On the fourth, someone else
answered, but didn't appear to actually understand the question.
On StackOverflow itself, I've asked a single question. A moderator told me to
do what I explicitly stated in the question I didn't want to do, and closed it
as a duplicate.
The bounties are equally useless: earlier today I sacrificed 90% of my DBA
reputation to get around 6 more views on my question. I'm pretty sure most of
the views I got are from me refreshing the question.
~~~
ctack
Agreed. Great if your question has already been answered, but it's less than
useless if you have a question - it's actually counter productive and a waste
of time. I'd given up on questions until seeing this post featured today, so I
decided to ask my 3rd question in 7 years (SO). It was down voted within 5
minutes and no idea why. I'll just roll my own solution based on my own
suggestion.
~~~
ruirr
Have you wondered why there are questions being upvoted just for a minute?
------
ggregoire
I've been an active user for 7 years… and I lived my very first case of
moderator abuse last week.
A moderator closed a 1.5 year old question[1] with 20 upvotes, 25 stars, 9000
views and an answer at 28 upvotes without any vote or consultation, because it
was too broad for him. StackOverflow has all the tools to allow the users to
moderate the platform by themselves, kinda democratically. From my experience,
it works and the decisions are most of the time justified. Then it's mind
blowing that someone can skip all the closing process/votes and close a well-
rated question with a useful answer in his sole opinion.
And there is no way to report/flag/discuss a moderator actions on Stack
Overflow. You can at least do that on Wikipedia.
[1]: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41250087/how-to-
deploy-a...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41250087/how-to-deploy-a-
react-nodejs-express-application-to-aws)
Edit: the question has received 5 votes to reopen, thanks HN!
~~~
cpburns2009
This will be the downfall of Stack Overflow eventually. The rules for question
and answers try to be objective and specific, but they end up being too strict
and are making the site less useful over time.
What they should do is allow broad, general, subjective questions. That would
allow for answers with general guidance instead of directly answering a broad
question. It would also allow a clueless person to get some direction. When
you're working with an unfamiliar technology, you frequently don't even know
what to ask.
BTW: You can ask a question about it on meta, but based on your question I
think the "too broad" closure is technically correct based upon the rules and
how they're enforced.
~~~
Rotareti
> This will be the downfall of Stack Overflow eventually. The rules for
> question and answers try to be objective and specific, but they end up being
> too strict and are making the site less useful over time.
I never really understood what their issue is with broad questions. There are
so many question from the early years of SO which became popular healthy Q&A
despite being "broad" and they are now too popular to get closed by some
trigger happy mod. Some of these questions wouldn't survive a minute if they
were asked today. The typical mod on SO shoots a question dead as soon as s/he
has the slightest suspicion. I guess the site would be better off with (a lot)
less mods.
------
wwweston
For everybody who's questioning the premise that there is some kind of special
hostility to newbies, women, PoCs and others, consider this:
* How would you know whether there's a difference between the experience of these groups and the baseline level of friction lots of people outside those groups experience?
* For the sake of argument, assume for a moment that there _is_ no difference, and what those who feel singled out are experiencing is the baseline friction that they've mistakenly correlated with some aspect of their identity. Then the only way to address the issue is to address that baseline. If StackOverflow does this, it will mean the experience improves _for everyone_.
(If there _is_ a difference, then the experience improves for everyone and the
world is a bit fairer.)
* Is there anything in the specific list of areas SO has identified for improvement that really seems like a _bad_ idea?
\- Let’s shift from “don’t be an asshole” to “be welcoming.” ... “I wasn’t
just tolerated; I was made to feel like the community was actually better
because I was there.”
\- let’s start by working with the community and our community managers to
start flagging and deleting unkind comments now.
\- Let’s make it easier for new users to succeed.
\- Let’s stop judging users for not knowing things.
\- Let’s reject the false dichotomy between quality and kindness.
~~~
commandlinefan
It just seems strange to say that a universal hostility is somehow worse on,
say, women, than it is on everybody, given that they're admitting it's
universal.
~~~
wwweston
FWIW, it's possible both for hostility to be universal and for it to be harder
on some subgroup if either (a) that subgroup tends to be socialized in such a
way that they're less equipped to deal with/push back on hostility or (b) that
subgroup tends to be more agreeable or threatened by hostility by natural
temperament.
But overall... it doesn't matter much to me. Reducing universal hostility
seems like a positive goal no matter what. Even reducing localized hostility
that I'm not subject to means that the potential pool of contributors who
might be able to help me or others with problems on SO is larger.
------
lukev
> Feelings have no “technically correct.” They’re just what the feeler is
> telling you. When someone tells you how they feel, you can pack up your
> magnifying glass and clue kit, cuz that’s the answer. You’re done.
This is such an important point and missed so often by technical types.
Impressed to hear it stated so clearly here.
~~~
dfundako
SO could make a site with all the same content, downvotes disabled, comments
disabled, and all flags disabled. You would also get random upvotes to
reinforce that your question was good. That would make everyone feel safe and
appreciated since they are unable to see any negative comments towards them
and their question.
~~~
s73v3r_
I think the problem is that too many people think that "giving feedback" and
"being honest" require being mean. They don't.
~~~
dfundako
There are also lots of people who equate receiving negative, honest feedback
with being attacked.
------
Someone1234
> We set them up for failure, and our power users have been asking us to help
> them for ages.
Your Power Users are the ones making SO toxic. They don't need better tools,
they need to have their privileges pulled until they learn to use them
responsibly.
The whole "SO is an encyclopedia not a help site" thing started this, and it
encouraged a lot of "content curators" to the site, who view their role as
squishing every question unless it meets their personal editorial standard
(Wikipedia has this too but IS an encyclopedia!).
This post feels hollow. It is nice they're taking blame, but SO is still
rotten at the core, the site needs something akin to a constitution setting
out what the purpose of the site is. Everything else should flow down from the
site's core purpose, not up from rules and "more <3!!!"
Is SO a "help site for newbies" or a "encyclopedia of programming knowledge?"
~~~
deviationblue
The problem is that there is already such a wealth of information that exists
on SO, that some of the beginner questions I had starting out never needed
posting. So I can imagine a similar scenario for someone else, and hope that
they do a little searching around before posting.
Sometimes you need to use 2 or 3 tangentially related posts together to see
the bigger picture of how the question you were going to ask relates to the
problem you wanted to solve. I mean, learning has always been that kind of
tortuous process.
Maybe there needs to be a separate place on the site that's primarily help for
newbies.
------
mmd45
My issue with the site is the opposite.
Asking a specific nuanced question results in a response of a) tell me what
you are really trying to accomplish and i'll answer that question or b) don't
do what you are doing.
Don't presume I don't know what I'm doing or know the right question to ask.
This happens so often and is such a time waster I hesitate to use the site.
Their culture even invites it by giving it a fancy name of the "xy problem".
Please provide a way to flag a question as "Don't respond with an XY question"
or alternatively "I know what I am doing and still have a question".
~~~
the8472
> Please provide a way to flag a question
You can do those with prose. Explain that you know what you're doing. Give an
underlying reason that shows that your X is an X.
Answerers can only act on a) the information you provide b) heuristics they
have based on seeing many other questions. If you do not provide a) then
they'll have to fall back on b)
~~~
mmd45
that invites a debate about the premise. i shouldn't need to justify my
constraints. i should be able to pose a problem and STATE the constraints. if
you don't believe that my constraints are real then you can feel free to not
answer my question but the SO regulars always feel the need to interact even
when they have nothing to add.
~~~
zbentley
> i shouldn't need to justify my constraints.
If you're asking people for free help and to spend their time understanding
how their _relevant_ but not _identical_ experiences may adapt to your
different-but-related problem, then yeah, you might.
If someone, even someone I respect, know personally, and work alongside, comes
up to me and says "I need to install a nearly-20-year-old version of MySQL
next to a modern software stack; help!" [0], I'm going to ask "why?" and maybe
"are you sure there's no other way to approach your goal?" first. Not
presumptuously or because I'm sure I know better, but because a) the answer
will help me better understand the problem and goal, and b) because sometimes
extremely competent, rational people really _do_ overlook the obvious
solutions, sometimes for days/weeks spent beating their head against the wrong
problem.
Sometimes the justification is as simple as "it's a business constraint
imposed from above". Sometimes it's a more complex story. Either way, wanting
to know that isn't asking too much.
[0]:
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47350382](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47350382)
------
bitL
"Alright, I am a white male. I started programming when I was 10, winning
programming competitions as a kid, after years of hard work, sleepless nights
and study, heavily postponed pleasure and significant relationships, watched
with disbelief what other teenagers do instead of working on their future, I
am now suddenly privileged and biased, because I try to answer Stack
Overflow/Reddit/etc. questions straight to the point, and somebody instead
expects that I will provide them with complete answers including encouragement
for free, instead of them working hard on acquiring the necessary skills. Then
I get blamed that somebody felt bad about themselves, and suddenly I am the
problem."
Now why would anyone with this profile want to contribute to Stack Overflow
ever again? What's the point? They should just shut up, keep their knowledge
to themselves and instead offer $2000/month training courses to those "less
privileged". Instead of getting beaten for their generosity and wasting time
answering badly formulated questions.
Specifically the solutions talked about will bring massive toxicity to the
platform.
------
metalliqaz
From the linked article:
> Too many people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place,
> especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized
> groups
Breaking that down...
"...people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place..."
This is obvious just by looking at the discussions that happen here, or, even
by observing the SO-related memes that bubble up to the top of Reddit
programming subs. I have commented on it myself.
"...especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in
marginalized groups."
lol what?
Like most programmers, I use SO practically every day. I don't post much
because that's usually a waste of time, but I land on SO from searching for
errors all the time. I cannot recall ever, even once, seeing someone's race,
sex, or orientation being mocked or even mentioned. As far as I can tell most
users don't have full names or photos on their profiles. So it isn't even
possible to know such things unless it was volunteered, and that never happens
when asking questions about APIs and whatnot.
So what in the heck are they even talking about? I'm glad the issue is getting
attention, but justifying like this strikes me as pointless virtue signaling.
Perhaps they are trying to stem criticism from their power users who like SO
the way it is.
~~~
fidels
I don't think what they mean is that when a minority goes to SO and they get a
condescending response it's _because_ of their race/ethnicity/gender.
What they mean is that, since minorities might have insecurities about their
ability to code because there are not that many people who look like them in
the industry, when they receive a condescending response their insecurities
aggravate. Therefore, SO can be consider more hostile for minorities.
~~~
mistersquid
Yours is a beautifully written and well-considered reply.
As someone who has had both academic and career success (and failures), I know
I am capable as a developer and able to contribute meaningfully to technical
discussions.
As a person of color, however, I have also experienced harassment by police,
suspicious looks from shop owners, and outright hostility from drunken young
men.
So, whenever I encounter what appears to be irrational anger or inexplicable
disrespect, I cannot help but wonder and worry that I'm being poorly treated
because of my race, even when I suspect that's not the case. The person who
treats me poorly need not necessarily be discriminating against me because of
my race, but I can never know and, of course, unless someone is calling me
racial epithets such poorly behaved people are unlikely to admit bias.
It's sort of like being bullied in elementary school, and then high school,
and then college, and then as a working adult. You never outgrow the bullying.
Indeed, the bullying seems to get worse as one matures and loses the youthful
physical characteristics which people often read as non-threatening.
So regardless of intention (and sometimes because of it), feeling
discriminated against can be partly the result of lifelong experience and is
probably fairly characterized as a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
EDIT: remove two instances of repeated "as"; add "often"; remove comma; change
pronoun.
~~~
manigandham
How does that work if the usernames are anonymous? Saying you feel targeted
does not mean you are being targeted.
~~~
saint_fiasco
I think what they mean is that because of their experiences they have less
_tolerance_ for hostility than you do.
Most of the time people are verbally hostile towards you nothing terrible ends
up happening so you eventually learn to ignore minor hostility. However if you
had the sort of bad experiences minorities have, you would learn to be wary of
minor hostility, as it is often the precursor to major hostility or even
physical harm.
You know how evolutionary psychologists often attribute human stupidity to
adaptations that made sense in prehistoric times? Like your instincts tell you
sugar is good for you because it used to be found mostly on fruit and
nutritious berries, but nowadays the instinct leads you to eat junk food. In
the modern world sugar has nothing to do with high food quality (just the
opposite) but the instinct remains.
For minorities, their instinct to recoil at minor hostility is like that,
except that instead of an ancient adaptation to deal with the life at the
Savannah, it is the habit that helped you keep your sanity this very morning
at the office when your asshole coworker yelled at you. In Stack Overflow
nobody is going to yell at you or punch you or try to get you fired, but the
instinct remains.
~~~
manigandham
If _you_ have less tolerance, how is that anyone else's problem?
Some people are also more prone to sunburn than others, but we don't say the
sun needs to be less bright. You are in control of your own feelings. Yes,
StackOverflow should generally have better language and reworked rules around
content, voting and moderation, but that has nothing to do with how
susceptible you are to comments on the internet.
Also why is it that minorities always comes down to not being male or white
when half the planet is female and most of the planet is not white? Do we not
have any other dimensions? It's a rather meaningless definition when used in
context of a globally accessible site with anonymous user accounts where the
audience already has a major commonality (interest in software development)
that is far more inclusive than any irrelevant physical trait.
~~~
saint_fiasco
If some people are more prone to sunburn than others then you shouldn't have a
developers' technical conference outdoors in the summer on a tropical area.
It may not be your problem or your responsibility to prevent other people's
sunburns (they can buy their own sunscreen, right?) but I hope you realize
that ignoring their preferences is shitty behaviour that will give you(r
website) a bad reputation.
And it's not like protecting your conference from sunlight will benefit only
the albinos. Sunburn resistance is not the same as immunity, so everyone
benefits at least a little. Same with SO, even people with thick skin will
benefit at least a little from a less toxic environment.
~~~
the8472
_> even people with thick skin will benefit at least a little from a less
toxic environment._
That argument is not entirely solid. After all the toxic environment is also
the same environment that provides those answers. So if those two were
positively correlated then decreasing toxicity could also drive down the
answer quality. A cartoony scenario would be a stack overflow where everyone
is busy assuring everyone else that their questions are good, non-stupid
questions and they should be praised for asking them and wasting a lot of time
on those instead of answering questions.
Of course we're unlikely to be at a global optimum here, so things can
certainly be improved. You should just be more careful about analyzing those
tradeoffs.
------
StaticRedux
I always thought Stack Overflow/Exchange should have a way to filter questions
from users with less than a certain amount of karma and any of those
questions/ansers/comments should not be able to be down voted or closed as
duplicate or low quality or off-topic (the most annoying close reason).
Anybody that gets annoyed by those questions can opt to not see them and focus
on higher quality. Anyone that wants to help newbies can. Those people can
also be marked as unfriendly or hostile and won't be able to answer newbie
questions if they get a certain number of reports.
This seems like it would solve two problems: oft-repeated low quality
questions annoying users who want more complex help, and encouraging newbies
bc they won't be afraid of retribution.
~~~
herogreen
Interesting idea, but what if not enough people are going to the "low quality
corner" ? Also it would be nice to know the current percentage of questions
closed because they were classified as duplicate because these would still
have to be closed (unless you want the database to explode).
------
minimaxir
As relevant context, the impetus for this post was likely this Medium article
+ initial tweet, which received replies from SO leadership:
[https://medium.com/@Aprilw/suffering-on-stack-
overflow-c4641...](https://medium.com/@Aprilw/suffering-on-stack-
overflow-c46414a34a52)
As an aside, if anyone has a good heuristic to identify bad behavior on Stack
Overflow, I'd be interested in looking into it since SO data is public.
(please do not suggest "build an AI to identify toxic comments")
~~~
nanis
Here's something she complains about (she posted a screenshot of a comment):
"If the error says line 49, it tells you exactly where the problem lies. If
you post 7 lines of code here, we clearly cannot tell you what the problem is
in line 49." [1]
I see nothing wrong with that.
As luck would have it, today some random stranger recognized me from my
Stackoverflow profile at a Panera and asked me to help him debug his Django
app. It was straightforward to fix because the error message described the
problem exactly, but, for whatever reason, it wasn't apparent to him. I
pointed this out, explained the problem, and showed him how to look for
additional information based on the error message. Maybe this sounds softer in
person, but there is nothing wrong with reminding people to pay attention to
error messages, and the importance of giving people adequate amounts of
information when you ask for their help.
Now, as a person who's answered many a question on Stackoverflow, I've had
people threatening physical harm to me and my loved ones, as well as setting
up Twitter accounts to harass me. To their credit, Stackoverflow admins always
take swift action when actual harassment occurs. However, Twitter and Facebook
seemed rather uninterested.
[1]:
[https://twitter.com/aprilwensel/status/974859164747931650](https://twitter.com/aprilwensel/status/974859164747931650)
~~~
jsmeaton
Here’s a slightly different response that is hopefully more welcoming.
“The error message says the problem is on line 49 but you haven’t shown that
line in your example code. Can you please show the code referred to on line 49
and the surrounding code for context?”
I think power users on SO are frustrated by newer users not learning the rules
and not helping themselves. But if you respond with kindness you’re teaching
somebody (and that’s what answerers are there to do!) how to better contribute
in future.
~~~
bitL
Make a Deep Learning bot inserting whatever ornamentation of sentences you
like. You can choose multiple styles and personalize for whatever makes you
feel good. Why require one single standard from everyone? The answer that was
"offensive" was just a standard dry answer like you hear at any top university
everywhere; I found "(brutal) exercise is left to the reader" way more
offensive.
~~~
jsmeaton
No one claimed the answer was offensive. It's unnecessarily condescending
though. If you, as a senior developer, spoke to a junior developer on their
first day at a new job in the same way, they'd be very unlikely to come to you
for help in the future.
Learning how to interpret error messages and extract the important information
is a __skill __. What may seem obvious to you may not be obvious to someone
with barely any experience.
> was just a standard dry answer like you hear at any top university
> everywhere
Which makes it OK? If university lecturers are speaking to new students
__trying to learn __in this way, they shouldn 't be teaching new students.
~~~
bitL
I had gazillion encounters when senior engineers/managers were unbelievably
condescending, especially when they saw a capable competitor in you. The
keyword is resilience, are you going to gain this virtue, or are you going to
complain everywhere and cry on all available shoulders, and then once you get
what you wanted, start backstabbing anyone that helped you to keep them down
and forget about what put you there? I was one of those "useful idiots" that
was helping to my utmost capacity others, wasting time I could have spent
working on bigger projects helping humanity. Every single case when those
people got what they wanted stopped recognizing me and called me only when
they needed something. I am no longer than person.
If you really want something, work on it to the full extent of your own
capabilities, get ready to be beaten from left and right and figure out how to
move forward. Don't expect help from around you. When somebody shows
generosity to you, treat it as a wonderful bonus you try to return somehow
someday, not a requirement.
~~~
jsmeaton
> If you really want something, work on it to the full extent of your own
> capabilities, get ready to be beaten from left and right and figure out how
> to move forward. Don't expect help from around you.
This should not be an expectation of the world, and I'm sorry you've had the
experiences you've had to see it as such. This is exactly what people are
complaining about when they say tech is hostile. It's not just hostile to
minorities, it can be hostile to everybody.
We can choose to do unto others, or we can choose to break that cycle and be
more welcoming. If you're unable to do this on stackoverflow, then may I
suggest you don't participate.
~~~
bitL
Frankly, resilience is necessity. The better you are, the more you are
eclipsing the others, the stronger averse reaction you get everywhere. People
could be your best friends until you escape their crab bucket, then you are
suddenly a well-known enemy and rumors start spreading. I am no longer going
out of my way to help those people; I believe they deserve where they are as
they chose to stay in the bucket of their own loathing. But I am not going to
be nasty to them at all. Their kids still have potential, so those are treated
without indifference.
------
koala_man
I think there's a strong selection bias that makes newbie questions generally
sub-par.
If you know enough to do research and make MCVEs, you'll likely rubber duck
your way into a solution instead of posting a clear and well formulated
question.
This is why you get a pile of "Unable to checksum downloaded file" type
questions with a 30 line code dump and vague "doesn't work" comment:
All the users who instead narrowed it down to their `if (sum="foo")` or `if [[
$sum=="foo" ]]` or whatever pitfall their language has will already have
googled "how do I compare two strings" and discarded their draft.
I don't have a good solution, but I'm happy about the article's "new
“beginner” ask page that breaks the question box into multiple fields". It'll
help ensure all questions have actual/expected results, and the code section
will hopefully clear a path for applying static analysis.
------
bcoughlan
I got downvoted to oblivion the first few times I asked questions on Stack
Overflow. It made me review the FAQ and rules and do my utmost to make it easy
for the people donating their time and expertise to help me.
You know what I do when someone is mean to me on the internet? I roll my eyes,
have a chuckle and get on with my day.
Stack Overflow has a huge problem in the last couple of years with the amount
of unhelpful comment spam by karma junkies who know very little about the
problem area. There is a problem of declining quality in answers, as answerers
have abandoned the site because of frustrations with the low quality of
questions.
SO was never designed for beginners. It was designed so that a good question
can produce canonical, definitive answers that benefit thousands. Total
beginners benefit more from a back-and-forth style to grasp concepts as
traditional forums or chat communities cater for.
If they blame their declining utility on the conduct of the users waiting for
the admins to do something about the ongoing Eternal September it will be
their downfall.
Thankfully I am past the generation that has embraced the idea that having
your ego bruised is the worst thing that can happen to you, so I'll just roll
my eyes and move on.
------
telltruth
There is a time that arrives for many companies where they stop being from
cool, fast, creative, whimsical to... well, just collection of business suits.
So first consider the fact that this is written by Jay Hanlon, EVP of Culture
and Experience. When you see titles like this for individuals working in full
time position at about the highest level of executive staff, you know what I
was talking about. To confirm my fear, I looked up if this EVP guy actually
has account on Stackoverflow. All I can find is jhanlon with no real profile,
no contributions and no real activity. So we indeed have a suit who has no
first hand experience with the product, it’s culture or experience. In typical
fashion of suits, this guy also stays on the safe side of “be kind” without
ever diving in to details, pro and cons, data or real remedies.
If Joel is still running this thing he needs to wake up.
~~~
wool_gather
This, so much. Jay Hanlon is the single worst thing that has happened to Stack
Overflow, hands down. His relentless focus on inclusion is all form and no
function: making things _seem_ nicer, without addressing the actual painpoints
experienced by all users, new or veteran. Those painpoints engender
frustration and lead to the hostility that comes from both sides. For all his
insistence on the primacy of people's feedback, he completely ignores and
dismisses the concerns of existing, engaged users.
Whatever gains have come from the the means he has chosen come at the very
real cost of the expertise that makes the site useful.
Eight, even six, years ago, when you clicked that link from Google to Stack,
you got your answer, first time. Now you're lucky if you can find it among the
broken code masquerading as a task-oriented question and copy-pasted answers
that reply.
------
tqi
"...serves a valuable purpose by keeping signal high, but also suggests that
we just might be Zuckerbots who aren’t even trying very hard to pass as actual
humans"
A snarky dig at someone in a post about how SO wants to be less mean and
snarky is an interesting editorial choice.
~~~
wool_gather
Yes, this VP's disdain for Stack's core users is long-running, deep-seated,
and intensely hypocritical.
------
gavanwoolery
I think "being nice on the internet" is typically a learned skill,
unfortunately. That said, sometimes comments that appear scathing are actually
warranted criticism - perpetuating "bad" knowledge can be very harmful to the
person using it and to those that use their products or code.
~~~
dang
> I think "being nice on the internet" is typically a learned skill
That's really true, not repeated enough, and much deeper than it appears.
------
ryeguy_24
"You're driving our car wrong."
This blog post is all about how the users need to alter the way they use the
product. I've always been a firm believer than software should be intuitive
and should influence the users to use the software in the way the developers
want. If you want users to act more kindly and welcoming, incentivize that
behavior.
Some ideas for SO:
\- Create new reputational incentives for kindness
\- Offer the kindest users a vacation and write an article about them from
time to time calling them out for acts of kindness
\- Allow newbies to report unkind behavior which would hurt reputation of the
offender
\- Create workflow to assist the elite users in dealing with frustrating
questions/answers/comments (a button to say, "It would help us if you
clarified the question" would help eliminate a comment that says "You don't
make sense idiot")
~~~
wvenable
That's interesting since Joel himself made the point about how software design
influences community in 2003:
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/03/03/building-
communiti...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/03/03/building-communities-
with-software/)
------
bitL
Note to myself: Stack Overflow is done. When political overtone and insane
mods dominate a platform, it's over. The amount of non-sensical bans/closings
of sensible questions or answers etc. recently is getting out of hand; now
using "privileged", "bias" etc. rhetorics from official top management means C
players made it to the top, as that's the only way they can compete, by making
everybody around feel guilty.
If you complain about hostile environment in computing, go work in finance or
retail for a few years.
------
d--b
It's easy to say that SO is a hostile place when you get downvoted or closed
for asking what seems like a perfectly fine question. This happened to me a
couple of times and is pretty infuriating.
But it is also annoying to try and give back to the community and find newbies
who are at times extremely rude and ask "do you haz teh codez" questions.
That's why this issue is so difficult to tackle. As an answerer, I downvote
questions that are not well formed because I do not want other answerers to
lose their time looking at that question.
I personally believe SO lacks "triage" for incoming questions. Not every c#
answerer should read every c# question. A new question may be marked as "for
triage" (maybe this step could be skipped for users with some reputation),
then reviewed as such by some community members. Badly formed questions would
go into a bin for helping the user differently than a normal question. other
questions could be sent directly to super user, code review or computer
science or what not...
------
benjojo12
Personally, My primary frustration with Stack(Exchange|Overflow) sites is that
I _can_ help people there, but I would need to confirm with them with a
comment... and I can't because I don't have the points (???) to comment ,but I
can answer.
I end up closing the tab, If the site won't give me the basic tools to help
someone, then what is the point of letting me sign up.
~~~
ygra
Them accepting your answer is your confirmation. Just answer and they usually
will tell you whether it's correct or helpful. Comments should not be
necessary in many cases.
~~~
ceejayoz
I think "confirmation" here means "additional information that confirms my
theory so I can write it up".
------
nagVenkat
Some personal thoughts:
I got downvoted for answering some simple questions at stackoverflow.com for
encouraging low quality questions. This was discussed in the article.
I can see why some people can get hostile as some questions are framed as
please solve this for me. Usually people ask the posters to tell them what
they had done but the tone of that request can be harsh.
I think the elitism is most prevalent in stackoverlow. The other stack
websites seem less hostile.
~~~
Pamar
About your last comment: I respectfully disagree. I dabble in a handful of
other stack sites, but the only one I have some real experience with (apart
from SO itself) is the one devoted to tabletop roleplay gaming.
(I have a score of ~3500 on SO and ~2800 on RPG - i.e. respectively top 7% and
top 13% just to give you an idea).
On the RPG site, especially in the last couple of years at least, there seems
to be a certain fanatism among moderators in sticking to the most literal
interpretation of the "rules" (e.g.: if a question is about "what system you
would use simulate movie X?" it is strictly _verboten_ to answer unless you
describe having extensive experience with the system you suggest).
Rules and "quality" are fine, except that while I can understand that SO is
used almost exclusively for job-related questions, so the quality of a
question can potentially cost you much... I doubt that anyone will have their
career ruined if they pick the wrong edition of D&D to replay Game of Thrones
or - perish the though - miss some important errata on elvish footgear when
creating their next character.
(I also dabble in a few more, like japanese language and martial arts but they
are either less strict in general, better mannered or maybe there is so little
traffic that moderators have no reason to obsess about "quality").
------
greenhouse_gas
It's for several reasons (and why I personally find reddit (of all places!) a
much more welcoming and useful community):
1\. Points. They're very visible, giving you power. If you want power, you
mine for points, and once you earn them, well you worked for your power, you
_use_ your power. You are _expected_ by the powers-that-be to close questions
for being bad, or for being duplicates, or whatever. In contrast, reddit
doesn't focus on points. You focus on the name/flair. So the focus is hanging
around and answering questions - in other words, it's more of a community than
a way to show off your knowledge.
2\. The communities are kept separate. For example, /r/Rust has a different
community culture than, say, /r/golang. So they have different mods with
different policies.
3\. The lack of community moderation means that I don't have to be scared that
5 guys out of 5000 decide that my question "wasn't good enough" or
"subjective", closing it. And yes, there are hard-code reddit communities.
/r/askhistorians put's history.stackexchange.com to shame in rigor. To write
an answer there, you're writing a term paper based of primary sources. So how
do they do it? They have a team of moderators. Really, stackoverflow could be
broken up into rust.stackoverflow.com and go.stackoverflow.com and
python.stackoverflow.com, where each community elects[1] their knowledgeable
moderators who know their community and respects them.
3\. Unlike reddit, they're not trying to _solve_ _my_ _problem_. They're
trying to be a large database of answers[2]. A wikipedia of programming or
something (which is why duplicates are not just pointed out, but actively
closed, and why "open ended discussion questions" are closed). The problem is
that I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in getting my question
answered. Now if you don't want to answer my question, that's fine. But it's
up to the asker.
[1]. Another point - community elections means that there's politics involved.
reddit allows one to easily fork a community, so if a significant group of
users don't get along with /r/linux, they can fork and make /r/linuxos or
something.
~~~
porker
Points are damaging, especially the way they've done them on StackOverflow.
It's fine for anyone who got in on it in the early days, or cares about
collecting them. But to make a better community the points need to decay
(exponential decay preferably) so there isn't such a power imbalance.
This would incentivize everyone to gain points by being helpful, rather than
enjoying being an 'authority'.
~~~
greenhouse_gas
The problem with points is that they become _the_ way to gauge your
reputation. In contrast, in fora like HN or reddit (where points are, well,
pointless) the _username_ is the way to gauge your reputation.
So I don't care how many points you have in HN, but people will notice if you
comment a lot and have deep knowledge.
------
PhasmaFelis
The weird thing about SO is that it's not for answering questions asked by
users. It's for pre-emptively answering questions that people might search for
later.
I know that sounds like a meaningless distinction, but questions can be (and
often are) closed for being _too specific._ Like, "this question is well-
researched and well-presented, but you're not allowed to ask it here because
it's unlikely to come up for anyone else."
That's such a bafflingly bizarre attitude that I really don't know what else
to say.
~~~
Pulcinella
Yes there definitely seems to be a very bizarre criteria for questions that I
have never been able to parse. I often see questions closed as duplicates of
another, when they are definitely not. As you said, I have come across exact
questions that I have had, but they were closed three years ago as being too
specific. Questions will be marked closed as being “too opinion based” when
it’s a question like “why are singletons considered something that should be
avoided? Can someone provide me an example of a situation in which using one
would be bad?”
I feel like the main goal of SO is to close questions without answering them
unless someone sneaks in a good answer before it’s closed.
------
alkonaut
I think the whole moderation thing is completely opaque. Last time I discussed
this, and suggested some changes involving various "queues" and "waiting
areas" for review etc - it turned out most of this _already exists_. There is
a whole secret machinery behind the facade that somehow is hidden from users.
I have been a user for years and never seen that. As far as I can _see_ there
are votes, close votes, and then questions just disappear.
When I see a poorly worded question, I might comment with some suggestions for
improving the question, then immediately start writing an answer. Before I'm
done with the answer, it doesn't matter whether the asker had improved his
question. It's probably already closed. That is to me one of the biggest
issues, The "race" nature of Stackoverflow. Did you find an easily answerable
but unanswered question? Don't write a good answer, write a quick one. Then
maybe improve it. If your answer is the top one, you'll get upvotes forever.
If it's the best one but stuck at the bottom - no upvotes. Same with
questions. If your question was poor for 5 minutes, but is later fixed? Sorry.
Closed. I just I don't get why the system wants to encourage someone to write
the same question again, rather than improving one?
Worse, it seems moderators fall in this trap: it seems to be a rush to find
things to moderate. They have so successfully gamified the notion of
moderation and cleanup that it's now also a race. A suggestion: if there is
any kind of point system, statistics, badges or _anything like that_ \- hide
it from the mods themselves. It just shouldn't be gamified.
~~~
marzell
One of the biggest problems, if not the biggest, for people in tech
(especially new CS students, etc) is knowing how to ask the right questions.
There's several 'layers' of tech-speak that people learn (or not) to adopt,
and many ways of asking essentially the same question.
These practices of gatekeeping, being opaque, and failing to practice patience
and interactive dialogue on SO are extremely frustrating, and cause the system
to fail to support some of the people that most stand to benefit from the
community. It creates an attitude of elitism, and while I see how these
attitudes can be self-serving for the karma elites, and help create a
perception of the community being concise and clean. But it leaves many people
falling through the cracks, and when questions aren't answered within 3-5
replies, the threads are often locked, deleted, and otherwise 'swept under the
carpet'.
For this reason, I don't contribute to SO at all anymore. If it comes up as a
result in a Google search when I need help with something, I'll use the info
made available, but otherwise I'm intentionally just a leech because I don't
feel it's worth navigating all the negative aspects in order to contribute.
Edit: I do hope that the changes and attitude they've outlined in the OP blog
post do help resolve a lot of what I've just described, and I do intend to re-
evaluate my opinion after enough time has passed for real changes to manifest.
------
stillsut
Give me a 'noob' view of answers: Disregard (or even reverse) super-user
downvotes on answers, and never delete anything other than spam.
Motivating example: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5664741/watching-
variabl...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5664741/watching-variables-
contents-in-eclipse-ide). My first time trying to develop an android app in
Eclipse, I had no idea a GUI-based app like Android could print to console,
and assumed console and gui are mutually exclusive. I was trying to debug a
large existing codebase in a very rudimentary way. In this question you'll see
an answer that didn't really help me at +94 and the answer that _did_ help me
at -1.
Five years later, sure, that -1 answer is self evident. But at the time, that
was the key to get me started on altering the codebase to my particular ends.
It's like a recommendation algo on Netflix: don't tell me what the most
sophisticated film critic thought was the best movie if all I do is watch
Pixar films; tell me what the best film was according to other Pixar movie
enthusiasts was.
------
qwerty456127
I can hardly imagine how can StackOverflow be specifically hostile to women or
racial minorities. I have never witnessed anybody being rude to another person
for just their gender or skin colour there. Do anybody even care about who the
author of a question or an answer is? A question is either interesting or
nonsensical or normal, an answer is either useful or not. I don't think many
people care to explore the author profile to write a gender/racially-specific
answer/comment, also nobody is forced to disclose their race, sex or real name
on StackOverflow AFAIK.
At the same time all the "question quality" stuff seems a purist loon crazy
well beyond reason. There are many highly-upvoted and much-bookmarked
questions that are reasonable and interesting and have useful, highly-upvoted
answers but get closed and deleted for stupid reasons so only high-rank users
can see them.
As for me I use to upvote (and hurry to answer if I can) reasonable and valid
questions that others vote to close out of pure protest.
------
Slippery_John
It's hard. I used to answer regularly, but it's draining to have to sort
through a flood of bad questions. Rather than turning into a jerk, I just gave
up answering. I feel like the cross-section of people with lots of domain
knowledge and people who have the personality to let them gracefully triage
questions for extended periods is tiny.
------
ajkjk
Ugh. I find the use of `<3` in sentences so incredibly off-putting and fake,
even in an otherwise well-intentioned point. I imagine that it's not just me.
It's gross and corporate when Github does it in their "hosted with <3 at
Github..." as well.
------
Chyzwar
In my opinion SO is not very useful. The longer I code less likely I search
SO. I prefer to read docs, search on issue tracker or just read the source
code.
I think SO is mostly for "noobs", people that are asking how to add two
numbers or use jQuery plugin. For me, it would be more useful if answers
describe alternatives, big O and more context. Most answers just suggest
copying few lines of code. Even for juniors, it is not good and just slows
down growth.
------
mbfg
I'm curious, how do you know a persons ethnic group or sexual orientation, or
other categorizing group on stack overflow, unless you the person wants that
information out there? I can certainly understand some responses and/or
behavior are troublesome, but i don't get the tie in between the bad answers
tied to certain groups. Their certainly can be a superiority complex problem,
but it seems to be more around people's sense of their mastery of a language,
or technology, or coding style or whatever. I certainly haven't traveled to
all corners of stackoverflow but have contributed a good bit, and yes, my java
is better then your java (or whatever) is present, but is it really tied to
people's identities?
------
kabacha
As a pretty big contributor to stackoverflow I feel that this is getting blown
out of proportion.
I'll usually go extra mile to help someone out but I like my time and the
platform to be respected. I often feel that people either expect for their
minds to be read or are just bad at explaining there problem. I don't think SO
community has to carry the burden of teaching people how to request help - I
think it's a skill you earn by trying and failing. Sure your question got
closed and someone pointed you to "how to ask a question" FAQ - just reformat
your thoughts try again! It hurts nobody.
A lot of other issues like racism, sexism are pretty much unheard of so to me
it seems like this article is very much just to pander some recent threads.
~~~
jgtrosh
I pretty much agree with the sentiment, but it seems to me that what you're
condoning (i.e. showing what was done wrong and then the culprit will try
again and improve) is problematic for many newbies. Think of the many students
in math class who fear the idea of being told they're wrong more than the
actual problem. I enjoy building a work environment where I can be expected to
be corrected and I can safely correct people, but that is not a given in a
public forum. I think the answer is to enable newbies to partake in a try-
fail-try cycle but in a much more forgiving/inviting environment. The
difficulty is in improving/designing that without sacrificing the overall
quality of the forum.
------
commandlinefan
More than once, I've googled a question, had the top hit be SO, clicked
through it to see my exact question asked... with the top answer "haven't you
ever heard of Google, n00b?"
~~~
herogreen
I would be genuinely interested in seeing such a question.
That could be a problem due to the search engines giving to much credits to SO
whatever the content of the post (It is astonishing to see that if you post a
question or an answer it pops up on the first page of Google within 2 minutes
!).
------
j45
StackOverflow initially was very, extremely warm and welcoming. It's mission
to replace the dodgy EE was noble.
Through natural daily interaction with the site (more than HN), built up a
karma at 5K+. Why I found myself using it less?
The community aspect remained undefined and once the post police got a hold of
the site, they interpreted the site to be only a technical reference, where
technical discussion is allowed, instead of also a reference for soft skills
and decision making that also were very popular.
Although asking such a question today will get the post closed, some of the
insightful questions about how to approach software architecture, or a
specific problem, continue to ironically generate me karma there.
------
ewar-woowar
First time I asked question on SO I got a very curt response "this isn't a
code writing service" and pretty much told to gtfo, but my question was very
much asking for advice about _how to proceed as a beginner_ and I was clear
about that. I was explicit in framing a coding a problem and asking for
direction, not a solution to my homework.
Maybe it was the wrong site for that, but the elitist response, I think the
question even got deleted by a mod along with the scathing comment, made me
leave and only use SO as a reading resource. Never contributed and probably
never will even though 8ish years later I have learned enough to be able to
contribute.
------
6t6t6t6
> Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place
Agree
> especially newer coders
Totally agree
> women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups.
What the actual F __*?
~~~
askvictor
see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16935488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16935488)
------
JorgeGT
A site whose founder banned greetings isn't very welcoming, go figure.
[https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/93989](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/93989)
~~~
herogreen
There are no greetings either on HN (just noting).
~~~
mike00632
Hi!
------
crispinb
When I was active on SO I did often see unwelcoming behaviour. Closing
questions as being dupes or offtopic, with no explanatory comments, was the
most common thing. Infuriating too (and not only to new users) was the
proliferation of bad edits, clearly undertaken by clueless people to try and
amass points.
More of an irritant to me was the generally noisy and poor-quality content. I
will only follow links to SO now in areas where I know enough to be able to
filter for quality myself (usually it's wanting). From my perspective, the
gamification schtick is a failure.
------
DougBTX
Random idea: replace the terminology of "duplicate" questions with "similar"
questions. Add a mechanism where, if an answer could apply to two very similar
questions, show the answer in both places. Rather than closing a question as a
"duplicate", add UI to group "similar" questions, eg, rather than filtering
out "duplicate" questions from search results, instead show "similar"
questions as groups, with the "best" questions and answers shown first in that
group.
The "best" way of asking a question may well not be as it was written the
"first" time.
Or phrasing another way, remove the "older is better" bias.
Another example: currently, a new user, unfamiliar with the site, comes along,
asks a basic question that has been asked a hundred times, and they ignore the
"related questions" prompts. The community reacts by down-voting and closing
their question, pointing to a better question. How about instead of "related
questions", the question was immediately responded to with "related answers"
instead? Rather than being snubbed for asking a simple question, new users
would be encouraged by getting a quick response. As the questions would be
grouped and the answers shared, low quality questions just wouldn't get much
upvote attention, and could likely would get filtered out of searches and
lists of "hot" questions, as they wouldn't be the best in a similar group of
questions.
~~~
wool_gather
> Random idea: replace the terminology of "duplicate" questions with "similar"
> questions.
This is not at all a bad thought, and it's a perfect example of something that
Stack (company) could have tried to actually address complaints rather than
just papering over them and telling users they're too mean. Addressing the
actual UX issues would do far more to improve interactions than just policing
language.
Unfortunately, we've gone around the sun many times with plenty of smart
proposals like this simply being ignored by the company.
------
bigger_cheese
I attempted to use Stack Overflow about a week ago. In regards to a Javascript
problem I was having. I do not know this language very well (at all) When it
comes to JS I am deinately a newbie.
I kept on getting "undefined object" when I was trying use return value from
an (external) library function. I could see in web browser debugger there was
data but it wouldn't let me return. All the top results in google involving
the libraries name + undefined object were from Stack Overflow and they did a
decent job of explaining why I was experiencing the issue (in my case I was
trying to mix synchronous and Asynchronous code). However pretty much all the
suggested solutions were misleading - they all talked about using something
called a callback.
I found a blog post buried among the other google results that had better
solution - to use something called a "Promise". After doing some more googling
I found out the Promise syntax is very recent (added in 2017) and the answers
I was looking at from Stack Overflow were all from 2011-ish so rather
frustratingly Stack Overflow was full of outdated information. The old topics
were locked and I could not edit them so no way of helping other new users
like myself who might be running into same issue - especially given these
answers appear so high in google it was a frustrating experience.
~~~
jacobush
True but you could add your own answer.
------
suavesav
>> (It serves a valuable purpose by keeping signal high, but also suggests
that we just might be Zuckerbots who aren’t even trying very hard to pass as
actual humans)
Why randomly attack Zuck? That is such an unnecessary meanness in an article
about being nice to people :(
------
throwaway613834
> I’d encourage you to take these implicit bias tests, specifically the Race
> IAT and the Gender-Career IAT. If you’re like me, they’re going to hurt.
Hurt, and possibly needlessly so. I would also encourage reading about the
flaws of said tests: [https://qz.com/1144504/the-world-is-relying-on-a-flawed-
psyc...](https://qz.com/1144504/the-world-is-relying-on-a-flawed-
psychological-test-to-fight-racism/)
------
GenericsMotors
A good rule of thumb for asking questions on StackOverflow is to only do it as
a last resort.
And then, put effort into your question:
\- explain clearly what you've tried, and how it didn't work
\- link to other resources that appear on the surface to be the answer, but
really aren't because of x, y, and z reasons.
\- provide code! don't just dump a metric tone of it in the answer though,
provide only what is necessary to demonstrate the problem. if for some reason
you can't provide the actual code for IP reasons, try to reproduce the problem
separately with a very minimal example. for larger code samples, linking to
Github gists or repos is a good idea.
I've asked very few questions over the years, and one of the main reasons is
because I ended up finding the solution myself; the steps above force you to
review your own work thoroughly, and lay out the problem clearly, so you might
catch a mistake that wasn't obvious after cursing at your screen the first
time around.
For those questions that I have asked, I've never been downvoted or had the
question closed; at most no replies but that was it. If readers see you put in
effort to ask a question, then they are also more inclined to put in effort to
help.
~~~
LandR
Exactly this. I've had a couple of issues I've wanted to go to stack overflow
with but in the process of clearly elucidating my problem, I've ended up
solving it / realising what my issue was.
Too many low effort questions make SO a pretty useless place nowadays IMO.
------
ivanhoe
It's hard to make a balance between "anybody can ask anything" and "usable for
professionals to quickly find the best solution". In my (many) years online
I've seen a number of great dev forums becoming popular and then quickly
becoming overwhelmed with newbie chit-chat and same questions asked over and
over. And I don't mean there's anything wrong with it, it's a natural progress
of things, there's always many more beginners at any given time so they
overrun the space and that causes the level of discussions to water down. Of
course beginners deserve their space as much as anyone else, if not more, but
problem is that interests of those two groups don't overlap much, you just
can't a balanced mix of newbie and advanced topics that both side will
appreciate equally, it never works. I think it's the best (only?) solution to
draw a clear line, make SO Start and SO Pro, and then relax the rules on the
Start side, and make them more strict on the side meant for experienced users.
And of course, don't tolerate assholes on either side. Just my $0.02.
------
Rainymood
The problem, and I'm personally guilty of this as well, is that sometimes you
have a small quick problem and you're stuck. You quickly whip up some text and
post it to stackoverflow. Then you get aweful reactions because you didn't put
enough effort in your question and SO isn't going to make your homework. The
point is that a lot of people have quick and dirty questions and don't need a
full answer of half a page. All they need is a push in the right direction but
SO is exactly __not __what that is about. SO is a site for detailed questions
with detailed and high-quality answers. The point is that there are a lot of
"low-hanging" fruit questions and SO is the best place to go, alhtough it is
not meant for that.
There should be like a StackOverflow for "bad" questions. If someone asks "How
do I append to a list in python?" it wouldn't be closed but someone could just
comment "read the # _$#_ manual (link to docs here)".
~~~
thinkingemote
I find IRC to be best for quick and dirty questions. But there's still
etiquette and finding the right room
------
dionian
has anyone here ever seen women or people of color treated poorly on SO? I
haven't but maybe I'm not paying enough attention
~~~
bdcravens
I have not, but I _think_ the point they're trying to make (but don't really
agree with) is that of cultural norms, or more specifically, the cultural norm
of overly-assertive, insensitive nerds (most of which who are younger white
males), so that it's an unwelcoming environment to outsiders.
~~~
commandlinefan
But most actual programmers are Indian, not young white males...
~~~
bdcravens
Probably true, but even shifting the demographic mix (with a large % of
interactions on SO still being white male) is male Indian culture and
communication style inclusive towards females and other groups? I may be off-
base, but my experience is that Indian males are very point-blank and strongly
assertive in their communication style, so the underlying assertion about
inclusiveness would still ring true I think.
------
waydowntogo
I tried answer questions the best way I could and I had nice respond from
asker mostly like it
BUT
there was almost everytime some smartass (with higher points than me and voted
down my answer) who had some problem with that - bad words or word-order (i'm
not kinding); too short answer etc.
So I left.
I wanted share my knowlidge but they didn't wanted them. Now admins/owners are
crying. Just epic!
~~~
ruirr
As a non-English living in a country where English is not even an official
language, I strive to write good quality answers, either technically or in
grammar. A good answer takes an investment of time to write. If someone is not
willing to take some time to correct the English and research an answer, it is
natural low-quality answers are not welcomed. It takes less work answering
them ourselves than improving bad answers. Furthermore, what the owners are
asking is that 90% of the users take care of the 10% that generates noise for
free, and are telling the majority of the user base there are others that are
more important than them.
~~~
forapurpose
To reduce redundancy:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16947508](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16947508)
------
deft
Will this stop the closure of questions that are legitimate and haven't been
answered? Whoever is moderating and deciding which questions deserve
legitimate answers is the problem. Everyone is snarky and bossy and can't just
answer the damn question asked. I've noticed this on pretty much every
developer help site, instead of answering what I asked they try giving
advice... I know my issues better than they do, and the implementation details
shouldn't matter. In some cases it's obvious someone is doing something wrong
(let's say rewriting built-in string functions) but those cases are rare.
This article addresses NONE of the complaints I've seen against SO. You're
basically saying "we will be nicer and more inclusive!" Who told you that was
the problem, because it isn't. The problem is the mods/power users/unwritten
rules.
------
Randgalt
I've always felt the problem was the moderators have too much control. A bad
or dictatorial moderator can ruin an SO board. Hanlon seems to imply moderator
changes but doesn't say anything specifically. So, I'm dubious until this is
directly addressed.
------
politician
There seems to be a recent tendency where web-based business that wish to make
changes to their platforms cite lack of inclusiveness for the main reason for
the change.
SO is a trash fire. For everyone, not "women", not "people of color", not
"people without color", not "groups". Everyone.
It's an openly hostile place where mods close questions unrelated to their
expertise based on the whims of those in private chat rooms while belittling
the questioner with those "your question was closed because X" explainer
boxes.
It would be refreshing if they just said something like "We've realized that
SO is a hostile place, and it's not better if you just happen to be a white
man."
If you read their change list, nothing there has anything to do with
"identity". It's just a list of very small tweaks.
~~~
weberc2
I agree that SO has an arrogance problem and the diversity appeal is
pandering, but the "trash fire" characterization is too hyperbolic. The site
is still immensely useful if suboptimal.
~~~
Karunamon
SO is a trash fire that has some really great content down in the basement,
[beware of leopard metaphor elided]. But the problem is the people on the
ground floor that the average new user will run into are, to put not too fine
a point on it, a buncha jerks.
Great place for finding answers to older common questions, really awful place
for asking new ones.
~~~
Someone1234
> Great place for finding answers to older common questions, really awful
> place for asking new ones.
It might just be me, but I've found it substantially harder to find good Q/As
on SO for newer topics and frameworks. You ask about a technology which
existed in 2014 and there are high quality detailed posts all about it, with
different viewpoints, upsides/downsides, etc. But you do the same with a
technology popularized in 2017 (and I'm talking highly popular stuff) and yet
slim pickings from SO.
~~~
politician
I've seen that too, and strongly suspect that's because everyone that tries to
post is beaten down by overzealous mods - so no one tries anymore. I don't.
You have to perfectly craft questions to sneak past the fast-close and you-
should-do-X karma farming traps. It's not worth the time trying to predict how
today's trolls will close your question.
------
corobo
Change closed due to being offtopic
Honestly I just want them to noindex the questions that are closed so that
they stop turning up in Google searches
~~~
ldiracdelta
I still find great results from questions that the Most Holy Keepers Of
Stackoverflow Purity deem "off topic".
~~~
corobo
Oh yeah I more mean the ones where someone doesn't manage to sneak in an
answer before the question police get there
~~~
Ajedi32
Those get automatically deleted after a few months.
[https://stackoverflow.com/help/roomba](https://stackoverflow.com/help/roomba)
~~~
corobo
That works for site maintenance and garbage collection but it doesn't stop
them appearing in search results which is where my problem lies
If I see a StackOverflow result in my search I'd wager there's a more than 50%
chance it's a closed question without an answer. Sometimes I'll grant if it
was marked dupe I may end up finding the answer, but honestly the only visits
I really remember are those that are marked dupe and link to something
sounding similar but completely unrelated
------
WA
I hate if I help people, provide the correct answer but they never accept it.
SO should encourage people to accept the correct answer somehow. Maybe force
them to review answers to their questions before posting new questions.
~~~
Ajedi32
It's already incentivised: accepting an answer gives you +2 reputation.
------
talltimtom
Interesting that they are not doing the extremely simple technical change that
would help out with a lot of the unwelcome signaling: removing negative
scores. There is absolutely no value in a post being -10, it just tells the
poster that 10 unkind people disliked the individual for not knowing the
answer to his own question. Just let new questions sit at 0 if no one upvotes.
New inexperienced users should not feel like they are being put on display for
stupidity when they ask questions for fear of it being a duplicate something
trivial or what else.
------
citilife
> Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place,
> especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized
> groups.
First part sure, last part.. No one knows who you are on Stack Overflow unless
you make it known, so no. I don't think marginalized groups are treated any
different, although perhaps they may take more offense. Now, if you said
something like: Vim is the best. Perhaps that could be a marginalized group,
but in reality, I don't think that's what was being discussed.
------
Kagerjay
I have 400ish reputation on stackoverflow
Everytime I ask a question I automatically expect it to be downvoted to hell,
get marked as duplicate, "dont post your homework", etc. Doesn't really matter
how well I try to phrase the question either. You can't please everyone and
some of the mods go on powertrips
I treat SO simply as a potential place to get feedback and search for answers
to issues I am facing. It sometimes comes at a cost of salty responses,
downvotes and hostility but the pros outweigh the cons.
------
bambax
> _only to be told that on Stack Overflow, “please” and “thank you” are
> considered noise_
I don't know if this is still in place but it should be stopped. Saying thanks
to someone who helps you is the most natural thing in the world, it's
something normal humans do.
If you forbid it, then you become an unnatural place, a weird place that feels
weird and uncomfortable.
You also become a kind of cult, where insiders know and accept how to behave
weirdly. And cults are very unwelcoming to newcomers (kind of their point,
actually).
------
stankypickle
This is just all sorts of ass backward rhetoric that misses the point of Stack
Overflow. People don't go to SO expecting emotional support. They expect
answers to their questions.
------
wiseleo
I answered more than 7000 questions on Quora with a heavily enforced Be Nice
Be Respectful policy. My monthly pageview count is hovering around 200,000 and
I have a lot of followers in addition to the Top Writer title. These questions
often started vague and incoherent because the asker did not know the
vernacular for that problem domain. It is very frustrating to be unable to
express the question in a way an expert can understand. As an expert, I wrote
an initial answer and asked the poster to clarify the question. Once we
clarified the question, I would re-write the question and incorporate some of
the comments into my answer. Other experts can then answer the improved
question without spending mental energy on parsing its meaning.
Quora has a feature to comment on questions and not just answers, but it has
been well-hidden on the mobile device despite my many pleas to make it more
visible so we can improve the question before writing an answer.
Have you ever tried to describe an automotive noise in sufficient detail with
enough precision so a mechanic can diagnose the problem? They can communicate
with each other easily, but most people don't have that knowledge. That's how
it is for non-expert programmers attempting to ask a question on SO. So, they
ask it on Quora instead. :)
------
asdsa5325
I've never seen minorities being mistreated on stack overflow. Does anyone
have any examples?
~~~
throwawayrt
It was few years ago, I asked a question and posted the code that I had
written on a dynamic programming question. I used to keep a public profile had
around 2k or so.
Dude(with a higher score than I had), left a comment. "You should consider
another profession, you don't have aptitude for programming".
~~~
mikewhy
That just sounds like somebody being a jerk, but I don't see anything about
minorities or calling out PoC in there.
------
mike00632
There seems to be a clear solution: sandbox all questions. Allow 'dumb' users
to ask 'redundant' questions and be answered by helpful people who 'encourage
such behavior'. Then let the zealous content curators search for sufficiently
original or 'valuable' content to add to the archive. Also, if they're going
to blame bad questions on bad searches then perhaps they should rework their
search algorithm.
------
nottorp
I stopped even attempting to answer questions on SO (most of the time i wasn't
succeeding because it seems to be full of full time reputation builders that
copy/paste examples as soon as a question is asked) when I noticed that "teach
the man how to fish" answers are discouraged, called "too generic" and other
crap. Only ready to copy/paste answers that just give the man a fish seem to
be encouraged.
------
dig247
IMO I don't think SO can bounce back in any real way. Years ago I even
attempted to engage on Stack Exchange and it was the same uppity BS in a
garden/home improvement setting.
We are all often times simply trying to learn and share. There is no one
single, authoritative source. Millions of people have probably felt the same
way after posting or researching an answer. It is really sad. It could have
been great.
HN can get a little tight at times but all in all it is 100x better in terms
of takeaway for the user.
I guess my only gripe with HN is it has a touch of that "uppity, d*ck,
unwelcoming vibe" due to calculation of points. I feel like if an individual
has honestly tried to engage/add value and posts/comments 45 times and has a
score of 12 they will give up with a bad taste in their mouth. Not everyone
fairs well with that kind of thing. It is hard to navigate the world let alone
coming into a space like this and getting crushed by a bunch of anonymous
handles.
All in all it has a similar impact on a user/readers reaction to their early
engagement with the community.
Obviously some of us have thicker skin and some truly believe they are
snowflakes...Can't win 'em all.
------
jinushaun
Can’t answer the question of gender and color since I’ve never experienced
those kinds of problems on SO, but the site policies are definitely
unwelcoming. The barrier to entry to ask and answer questions is really high.
You have to earn it by voting on existing answers. I see good questions and
good answers shut down all the time. I kind of wonder what the quality bar is
for these moderators.
------
q12we34rt5
Allow me to translate the article: All you assholes that have been blessing
our site with your free content and gotten us at number 1, 2, and 3 position
on the first page of Google in every country and made us untold millions of
dollars, guess what? We don't you no more. You aren't cool and trendy and you
won't get us any likes on TwitFace so shove off. We have a new demographic.
------
VikingCoder
From an old Reddit post of mine:
Your reply has been Cursed to Hades for not being stack overflowy enough, even
though it was the accepted answer, and has received hundreds of votes. Also
the whole question has been Excommunicated for not being mumblemumblemumble
enough. Even though it was the highest voted question of all time, with
thousands of responses from beloved members of the community. You both should
feel ashamed of yourselves.
-by Vlad The Impaler, Feb 2 '14 at 20:41
[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2c59xe/what_i_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2c59xe/what_i_learned_from_answering_questions_for_30/cjc8pr9/)
I love that they wanted to be an answers site. I hate that they forgot
sometimes the answers people desperately need are, "What do you think is the
right way to do this?" Or, "What's your favorite solution to this problem?" It
could have been another Stack Exchange site, sure. But they just didn't do it.
And they should have.
------
Gene5ive
The support department for the software company I work for basically gave up
having a dedicated team to answer SO questions because the endless bad
attitudes we encountered made it not worth it anymore. Support means
encouragement and we didn't want to encourage people to interact with us on SO
if it meant bringing potential customers into a hostile environment.
------
simonblack
The only time I use Stack Overflow these days is when Google takes me directly
to a single question and answer.
Way back when SO was new, I actually had quite a few karma points from my
answers. I stopped going there/using it/answering questions when I was being
denigrated for doing so by some elitist dickheads. I continue to deliberately
stay away.
------
swyx
I like the idea of a Beginner box. Github is doing the same with issue
templates. I would suggest going one step further - give a “question quality”
score made up by some algorithm that SO controls. could be machine learned,
could just be a bunch of rules like a Linkedin Profile score. Gamify asking
great questions, not just answering.
~~~
wool_gather
> give a “question quality” score made up by some algorithm that SO controls
This exists, and in some cases the evaluation results in some JIT help for the
poster. In other cases, it puts the post into a "Help and Improvement" queue
where more experienced users are waiting to suggest (or directly make)
improvements.
~~~
swyx
ok well double down on it. put a big honking number and an incomplete pie
chart that yells at you for not achieving a 100% score on your question.
subtlety is wasted on this stuff.
~~~
wool_gather
Works for me!
------
saltyoutburst
This is a very long-standing problem that Stack Overflow has had so it's good
to see them taking it seriously (regardless of whatever the underlying
motivations may be).
How long-standing you may ask? Here's my answer from _2010_ to
[https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/481/whats-the-
singl...](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/481/whats-the-single-
biggest-barrier-to-entry-on-stack-overflow/50282#50282)
_I feel sorry for the poor n00bs who come here thinking it 's awesome, ask a
seemingly innocent question, and then get shouted/voted down for asking a dupe
and not searching properly before they asked. And yes, I said 'shouted down',
because despite what a lot of experienced users many think, that's what it'd
feel like for a new user who's unfamiliar with the S/OFU culture._
------
tradedash
>We trained users to tell other users what they’re doing wrong, but we didn’t
provide new folks with the necessary guidance to do it right.
What makes you believe that YOU know how it should be done? I am not saying
that people shouldn't be nice but over and over and over we see these tech
companies embark on social justice missions to set guidelines that end up
backfiring because they underestimate the complexity of the range of possible
human behavior.
At best, rules generally dont get enforced equally and at worst they become a
disaster that affects the inner workings of what made the site worth visiting
in the first place.
And this right here tells me what to expect will happen in the future
> the nice thing about problems that relate to how people feel is that finding
> the truth is easy. Feelings have no “technically correct.”
I love stack overflow and would hate to see it devolve into something that
deviates from what it truly is about: code.
------
FuNe
So -basically- SO says that a lot of its contributors behave like bullies but,
being unable to actually yell at them (because SO needs them) tries to fuzzy
out/alleviate the issue by taking the blame for them. I don't see any way that
can work out. For what is worth I can testify my own little experience from
that pit. * Contributors who downvote other answers without any
excuse/explanation/commend (I guess it makes their own answer seem better). *
A tiny minority of users ever upvoting (that's a largely thankless community).
* Moderators that are being extra harsh with language usage (I'd say most of
SO users are not native English speakers but this does not stop some native
ones considering themselves somehow superior). *Extended usage of points,
badges and several other facebooky notifications to tap into your dopamine
receptors.
------
bsder
For me, the bigger problem with Stack Overflow is simply that it is not aging
well.
There are a _LOT_ of answers that have huge numbers of upvotes that are simply
_wrong_ \--mostly because things change and evolve.
SO is good for something which just came out in the last 6 months--anything
older than 3 years needs to be treated with extreme skepticism.
------
flas9sd
I'm sure if the aggregation of all gathered points in user-profiles will be
abandoned or "toned down", some of the powerplay will cede, because it will be
about good answers only and helping each other out, not personalities. I
benefit from that community alot, thank you to everybody who is contributing.
------
Lazare
I think they've identified a major problem with the site, and I wish them luck
changing it.
I was a very early user of Stack Overflow, and racked up a bunch of karma long
ago, but I fairly quickly felt pushed out. I felt that the site became less
useful as a place for me to get answers, and I felt that it became _much_ less
welcoming as a place for me to answer questions. Much of that revolved around
the increasingly militant gatekeeping and arcane rules the community adopted.
Nowadays, I mostly run across Stack Overflow when someone links a fascinating
question thread which will - _invariably_ \- be locked for being the "wrong"
kind of content. (Because of course it is.)
It is a bizarre, broken community, and one I don't think is meeting its
original goals. (And I say that as someone who had what was, back in the day,
a pretty high score.)
------
beevai142
The problem with stackoverflow is that answering questions sucks in the long
term, for most people. It's basically an user support job, and if you are not
suited for that sort of job eventually you start to lose patience with fools,
of which there is no shortage on the internet.
------
kichuku
I really appreciate the SO team in bringing this up and considering this as a
priority issue. Many people have been the "third group" as mentioned by
"sigstoat" above, just because of the hostility.
>there's also the third, silent, probably much larger group, who neither asks
questions nor answers them.
>it seems as though the single authoritative, comprehensive answers is what
helps those people the most.
I hope something good comes out of this effort from the SO team.
However, I just hope that this effort to be lenient though doesn't lead this
site from being a fairly reliable site for learning purpose, to becoming
"Quora 2.0". i.e far too many duplicates and far too many low-quality
questions, that it actually drives away the current expert crowd away from the
site.
------
duxup
As a noob learning programming one of the issues I see isn't as much hostility
as it is the people who seem to vote the most already know the answers.
This creates a bit of an issue at times where folks who know the answer and
appreciate an elegant solution provide an answer that while 100% correct...
also doesn't tell me much about WHY it is correct. I'm sure it is obvious to
the voters, less so to me, and a lot of the "it worked" responses from the
people asking make me think they just cut and pasted and I'm not sure learned
either.
Having said that there are great people who provide multiple answers in their
response with some detail. I don't expect a novel, but I do really appreciate
those responses.
------
ftarlao
Giving more constructive comments/directions to newbies is important but I
think that an high threshold for questions is still mandatory in SO.
Majority of people are lazy and don't like to think deeply or search first
and.. it is normal for this lazy people to protest; rewards and punishments
are needed for a society to work.
About the discrimination part, I have never seen "not respectful posts" for
women or people of color... imho this is a no-problem for SO and I think that
it is dangerous to create a discrimination case when there is none. Because in
this way, you are creating artificial discrimination and real distance between
people.
------
monksy
I actually wrote about this in 2012. It's still one of the most popular
articles that I've written today:
[http://theexceptioncatcher.com/blog/2012/09/stackoverflow-
is...](http://theexceptioncatcher.com/blog/2012/09/stackoverflow-is-a-
difficult-community-to-participate-in/#.UEu2l1DNwcU.hackernews)
Their issues aren't due to particular identity politics. It's been this way
for a while.
Original HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4494016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4494016)
------
voidr
SO is a website where people ask technical questions and get technical
answers, by default nothing about a users identity is exposed.
This posts just looks like a a poor attempt at jumping on the whole "helping
the marginalized" bandwagon without actually helping or doing any research.
> Let’s do something about comments. Condescension and sarcasm have been
> reluctantly tolerated in comments for too long. We’ll research possible
> feature changes, but let’s start by working with the community and our
> community managers to start flagging and deleting unkind comments now.
I'm sure there will be no backlash from what used to be their core user base.
------
PeterStuer
Isn't this the natural evolution of long running public discussion sites? In
the end, the 'Netiquette Nazi's' [1] take over. Because some might be willing
to push back on them, but eventually, the proverbial 'never wrestle a pig, you
both get dirty but the pig loves it' will assign victory by attrition.
[1]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20080701090858/http://redwing.hut...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080701090858/http://redwing.hutman.net:80/~mreed/warriorshtm/netiquettenazi.htm)
------
Antonella247
Hey everyone! Ive read a lot about users complaining about the cultural change
in Stack Overflow. Maybe you're even also annoyed by that change? Help me find
the causes for this change as part of my Master Thesis by sharing your opinion
on this matter. Lets work to together on this to keep the unique community
spirit of SO alive!:) I would appreciate your help!
[https://erasmusuniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9YvdQ...](https://erasmusuniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9YvdQcryXcdIXkN)
------
thom
It's very difficult to be optimised for people Googling in their hour of
desperation, while also being a community between the rest of the time. I have
to admit that I'm somewhat hypocritical, in that I get angry when I see
Wikipedia-style policing of content, but I also appreciate when I land on a
well-edited, general-case answer to a problem that I'm having.
I don't think I've generally ever been disappointed with the Google-optimised
workflow, but I've never cared much about scoring points on the site itself,
and I only very rarely have to ask a question.
------
cmcginty
I think it would help if they placed more limits on how much one person can
interact with the site at a time. If you are someone that sits on SO for 8
hours a day every day, then there is a high correlation you become one of the
people that starts driving new/casual users away.
I can imagine other improvements but all would hurt the site popularity in the
short-term. Enough that I doubt SO would ever implement them. This is probably
at the core of why the reputation for SO continues to worsen over time.
Hopefully they can turn it around since the core features of the site are
invaluable.
------
Insanity
It's one of the main reasons I stopped answering questions on SO. I got about
4.1k 'rep'/'points' or whatever they call it, mostly just from old answers
getting upvoted.
I tend to visit SO when google brings me there, but personally I prefer
looking in the docs or asking in IRC (though it depends on the channel),
rather than deal with asking a question on SO again.
An interesting thing is that this does not seem to be network-wide, there are
parts of the stackexchange network that seem much friendlier and more
welcoming to new users.
------
talltimtom
A side note to the article. We really have come full circle back to the mid
90’ies. What’s that LEGO unicorn doing in the middle of the article? I might
as well have been a flame gif. It’s just a random “I thought this was cool so
I put it right smack in the middle of everything”. Naturally it is much more
calculated today and ofcause it is aimed specifically at popular memes... buck
back in the day flame gifs where popular, and one day we too will grow tired
of unicorn-everything and doge memes. Some faster than others.
------
joeax
Stack Overflow needs to be broken up into smaller, baby SO mini-sites (Bell
telecom style) focused on separate lagnuages or stacks, like one for Node, one
for .NET/C#, one for databases, etc. It seems they are headed this way for
some disciplines like game dev and Unix/Linux, but they need to take it
further and shut down the main SO site and migrate questions to these smaller
sites. The site as it exists today is just one big monolithic mess with too
many busybodies making it awkward for everyone else.
------
biocomputation
Super useful community in some ways. Like many others in this thread, I was
more or less scared off by super users. I know quite a lot about GLSL, shader
programming, and GPU tech, but my experience was similar to what others
describe. I answered questions that were 'poorly asked' or 'not constructive'
and found that threads were locked pretty quick.
But on the other hand, there's a ton of great stuff, and a lot of users have
invested serious time providing extremely helpful answers.
It's a really bizarre place.
------
nojvek
To add a comment you need points, to get points you need to answer questions.
Answering questions is a really really challenging thing to do because for all
sorts of things you'd get kicked out. Not only that, but I went into negative
because someone didn't like my answer about Typescript.
That was it, I just use stackoverflow when google shows me a result. I won't
contribute to it, because its ridiculously difficult unless you make it your
mission to get over the hostility from elite users.
~~~
svick
> Answering questions is a really really challenging thing to do because for
> all sorts of things you'd get kicked out.
You're not going to get kicked out if you honestly try to answer questions.
------
sharpercoder
One thing with reputation systems which is not accounted for I feel in many
websites, is that higher reputation must translate to higher responsibility.
It's nothing other then the good ol' "With power comes responsibility"
adagium, also known reversed as "Power always corrupts".
In my humble opinion, there should be __also __a system that ensures increased
power is applied correctly. SO does not have this, and that 's a major
problem.
------
interfixus
When I end up on StackOverflow, it's almost always from something I searched
on DDG. I haven't compiled a statistic, but it seems like most of the actually
useful answers I find there belong to questions marked as _not a good fit_ or
whatever took some snarky moderator's fancy that day. So all too often, even
if get my question answered, I leave the place with a net negative impression.
And don't come back except if directed by DDG.
------
IanSanders
Minorities part is nonsense in my opinion; apart from that I can see both
sides of the problem.
It is definitely an issue the way community treats new users. My guess is that
when going through review queues, one gets into that mode.
On the other hand, it would kill the website if it was drowned with low
quality duplicate questions and vague questions with no details - which are
asked and closed constantly. (Just look at what superuser has become)
------
tomkinson
Most accurate statement ever. 65% MOD problem, 10% newbs, 10% bad programmers
that think they know and their way is the only way, and 15% policy. IMHO
------
Keyframe
One (maybe interesting) approach would be to reset points and power every so
often. Once or twice a year? For past achievements have them as a badge inside
a profile of a user, not visible on the comments/answers section. That way,
users would have to keep working at maintaining their power status. Not like
it's now, grind to the status and act like a roman senator.
------
edpichler
This phenomenon (hostility for newcomers and down voting good and polite
comments) also happens here on Hacker News.
We (the human being) that must be fixed.
------
hd4
Reading an ever-increasing number of similar articles I begin to wonder if we
have a tech-industry-version of the Overton Window...
------
z-tech
I think part of the problem is reputation points. People are so competitive
for no reason about having the best answer that they're fine writing nasty
notes about the next person's comment. I'm almost wary when I see an applicant
with high SO reputation. It's like, you probably had to walk over a lot of
people to get this.
------
justinzollars
I've noticed this for years. As an early member of Stackoverflow with many
internet points I've abused my privilege to reopen "bad questions". As someone
who started his career in technology as a community college chemistry
instructor, I've never been a fan of shutting people down when they ask a
question.
------
coinerone
And He said: "There can only be ONE Question and ONE Answer in this World of
Code!" \- Stackoverflow Answer LVL 5000+
BTW: I have registered at least 3 Accounts to ask silly programming Questions
when i was beginner and Stackoverflow managed to kick me in the motivations
everytime i was stuck at something.
------
merinowool
For me Stackoverflow long time ago has stopped being a place to get answers.
I'd rather explore problem on my own using books, documentations rather than
search on Stackoverflow or ask there. Low content quality and hostility of the
users is what drowned this what used to be useful site.
------
epigramx
The simple reality is that most moderators on the internet are 18-24 year-olds
that are still too much into a teenage ego trip. More mature people are often
more busy with work or they just don't give a fuck.
That's why the only fora that are fun are either vote-based or almost entirely
unmoderated.
------
lanbanger
I recently had one of my questions that "Closed - opinion based" _six years_
after I asked it, and received several useful answers.
I consider StackOverflow read-only these days, it's years since I've bothered
to ask anything, and I definitely don't bother to answer anything.
------
twblalock
They can start by accepting that a lot of the good answers on the site are
outdated and aren't applicable to current versions of the language or software
they pertain to. Stop flagging questions as duplicates when the question they
are supposedly a duplicate of is 6 years old.
------
sli
A lot of people are not getting the diversity angle, so I want to call
attention to a comment in this thread explaining it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16935683](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16935683)
------
zxia31
SO's culture is one of the most toxic among all communities. People hesitate
to ask and hesitate to answer. Announcement like this is more like a "will
fix" comment. The key to solve it is to change the mechanism of some SO's
rating and comment.
------
taw-an
I'll believe they changed when I see it. Pretty sure it's not going to any
time soon.
------
KnightOfWords
I see it as a systematic problem: When everyone's a moderator there is a trend
towards the strictest interpretation of the rules. If five moderators take a
look at a post the first four may see nothing wrong with it, but the fifth may
still flag it.
------
hguhghuff
So much could be fixed simply by removing downvoting, which is no different to
a virtual slap in the face or shout of abuse.
SO already has a variety of mechanisms for identifying issues with questions,
why does it also allow people to yell random abuse without explanation via
downvotes?
The most disheartening, but completely expected, result of posting a question
is that it will be very rapidly downvoted...not welcoming at all. AND
_everyone_ gets this face slap upon posting a question, but I can see how
minorities might feel that are being singled out by the sites typical negative
response to pretty much all questions.
Sadly, even here on HN you can almost feel the joyful glee with which people
can anonymously knock something down with downvotes and no need to explain.
Downvotes on SO should either be removed entirely, or it should cost 2 SO
points to make 1 downvote.
Downvotes are nothing but pure negative, so hey, wanna remove some of the
negative from SO? It’s obvious what to do.
~~~
ldiracdelta
Sneering comments from neckbeards are worse than downvotes to me. Some days
are just Monday and you're not on your game, but that doesn't stop the
neckbeards from trying to light you on fire, despite the fact that you spent
30 minutes massaging the question or half a day agonizing about asking the
question. You know the neckbeards are lurking in their basements.
~~~
grzm
> _" Sneering comments from neckbeards"_
Condescension, like any other dismissal, can be rough and is definitely
detrimental to communication. That said, I encourage you to be the change you
want to see. Name calling as you've done here, and snark, as you've done
elsewhere in this thread, similarly degrade conversation and communication.
~~~
ldiracdelta
I'm not directing this at anyone in particular and so I will use "bad", yet
colorful, words for people behaving bad. No one is going to read these
comments and think they are the neckbeards, but most people who have
participated in Stack Overflow have interacted with a preening, sneering
neckbeard and neckbeards are indeed a problem on Stack Overflow.
~~~
_kst_
Speaking as someone who happens to have a full beard, I find your use of the
slur "neckbeard" insulting. Find another way to say whatever you meant.
------
k__
They have the Wikipedia delete-nazi problem.
First they wanted all content, then they started to go for quality, whatever
that means.
But the culture they built doesn't change as fast as the shareholders like,
often it never changes and they lose users to a new service.
------
jpalomaki
Should they limit the amount of ”moderation” like activities one person can
perform? It’s probably not good for the community if there are users who are
mainly contributing by performing housekeeping tasks.
~~~
legostormtroopr
They do. You only get a certain number of review or close actions per day.
------
lza
I enjoy reading the problems and solutions but every time I am trying to
answer a question I get the "You don't have enough karma" lol. I just smile
and move on :)
------
Zamicol
I've had very negative experiences on Stack Overflow, especially when the
"answers" are blatantly wrong. There's little one can do to correct it.
------
tziki
This is definitely not exclusive to stackoverflow. Math.stackexchange has the
same problem, and from what I've heard, so do many other sites of the same
format.
------
Lapsa
oh. hoped for something substantial, worthwhile. Jon Skeet attending pride
parades unfortunately isn't that. early StackOverflow model was way better
(the one w/ code golfing, silly joke questions and whatnot). it was like one
ring to rule them all - THE resource for programmers, flooded with brilliant
minds. now it's just a boring directory of some answers full with zealots.
continuously degrading in quality.
------
cpeterso
GitHub solved their "thank you"/"me too" comment problem elegantly with the
heart and thumbs-up emoji reactions for comments.
------
kizer
As long as they get rid of “marked as not a real question”. Completely
meaningless and the first instance of “hostility” that comes to my mind.
------
janitor61
Even if it's a hostile environment, I do have to give credit to Stack Overflow
for killing expertsexchange... that site was a plague
------
chx
And this doesn't talk about how smaller StackExchange communities become a
toxic fiefdom of their moderators.
------
ryanpcmcquen
Stack Overflow is a reflection of most internet communities, which show that
many people are assholes.
------
singularity2001
If SO is listening, do one thing: Stop closing questions! It is incredibly
frustrating.
------
hyperpallium
Unfortunately, you can't legislate kindness.
The best you can do is _harness_ jerks - that's what capitalism does; that's
what stackoverflow does.
The problem is high-karma jerks, because "maybe they are right to be a jerk
about your helpfulness" and you can't do anything about them anyway.
Traditional clubs/organisations like Rotary International, masons,
toastmasters, churches or even AA might have more insight on making an
organization welcoming, yet preserving rules.
I would love it if copy and forms could have at least some impact, so looking
forward to see how this goes.
------
amelius
Perhaps they can learn from Wikipedia?
~~~
singularity2001
As someone said Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, Stack Overflow is that AND a
forum, so needs other tools.
------
mesozoic
"especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized
groups."
I can see how you can tell someone is a newer coder on the internet by their
questions. But how can anyone possibly tell if someone is in a "marginalized"
group unless they go about broadcasting seemingly because you want to claim
some greater virtue.
The internet was created by misfits (today called "marginalized" I guess)
where everyone was accepted based on their ideas and no one knew if you were a
man, woman, dog, or dolphin? It seems that it became popular and the real
world just brought it's problems with it.
on_the_internet_no_one_knows_you_are_a_dog.png
PS If you're wondering if the implicit bias test is real. It isn't. It is fake
science. [https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-false-science-of-
implicit-b...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-false-science-of-implicit-
bias-1507590908)
------
ggg9990
Websites that build knowledge-based status hierarchies naturally end up being
dominated by insecure know-it-alls.
------
sureaboutthis
I thoroughly disagree that SO is hostile to "everyone". I've been there for
nearly nine years and find that the only people who complain about such
things, as listed here, are those who never took "The Tour" and aren't aware
of the rules for asking and answering questions as out lined in the Help
Center.
I rarely ask questions anymore but, when I did, they have never been downvoted
or questioned because ... I follow the rules ... but too many people come
their and treat it like a forum (it's not) or like (shudder) reddit. That's
when they get themselves into trouble.
I'm a high rep user and visit every day. I don't answer many questions anymore
because, nowadays, they are mostly about canned software (CMS, frameworks,
etc.) and not real programming. So I help clean things up and I'm one of those
guys who lets you know when you've violated the rules. "Can someone give me
teh codez?" is my favorite. Believe it or not, it gets asked every day and I
help close at least three every day.
And I get irritated.
~~~
nottorp
The fact that SO isn't a forum any more is a problem because it has stopped
encouraging learning. If you can't discuss the problem, all you'll get is
canned answers for copy/paste monkeys. And then you'll wonder why you can't
hire a competent programmer any more...
~~~
sureaboutthis
SO has NEVER been a forum. That's where most people are confused. It has NEVER
been a platform for open discussion.
~~~
nottorp
Perhaps, but it was more useful when they didn't enforce that.
My recent experience with SO is: i reach it via googling a problem or feature,
I find a question describing my problem that is closed because of being a
duplicate of...
... except the other question isn't a duplicate in subtle ways and has nothing
to do with my problem.
I've also seen moderators encouraging people to post answers as code ready to
copy paste instead of answers helping the recipient to learn something.
How is that useful?
~~~
wool_gather
> moderators encouraging people to post answers as code ready to copy paste
> instead of answers helping the recipient to learn something.
Yeah, this is a slow-motion disaster that's been going on for a while now. I
don't know why so many people have gotten it into their heads that a bespoke
code snippet is unconditionally the right way to answer a Stack question.
Explanations are so much more valuable in the long term.
------
poster123
"Too many people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place,
especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized
groups."
Must everything be about race or sex? Yeah, I am a little annoyed that so many
of my questions get shot down on Stack Overflow, but other members cannot
infer my sex or race from my SO handle. I am a guy from a racial group not
under-represented in tech.
------
rhapsodic
> It was hard to accept some of the (valid) criticism,
> especially the idea that women and people of color felt
> particularly unwelcome.
The article fails to offer any examples women or POC were treated more
shabbily because of their gender or color. Does anyone know where this is
coming from?
~~~
vkou
It's not that they are getting worse treatment, it's that that the impact of
the same treatment on them is worse.
~~~
rhapsodic
_> It's not that they are getting worse treatment, it's that that the impact
of the same treatment on them is worse. _
How so? Does the article say?
------
s2g
I had hopes based on the title, but...
> Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place,
> especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized
> groups.
Maybe that's a problem. I don't know.
I'd rather see them address the problem of rampant question closures for
dubious reasons and people who like to treat questions like a damn medium
post.
edit:
Okay so reading further that is what it's about.
What the hell does it have to do with minorities and women?
oh they told them they feel less welcome. Did they say why, cause I don't see
it here.
This just feels like dressing up a very real, very broad problem as an issue
for women and people of color so they can get extra bonus points by focusing
on it.
~~~
abakus
I second that. They are avoiding the real problem by pretending to fight for
social justices.
~~~
s2g
I think they see the problem, they are just dressing it up.
It's a tough problem, since community moderation of this sort seems to almost
inevitably lead to some individuals who take it on themselves to obsessively
shape the site to their own warped vision. Wikipedia has the same issue.
Reddit avoids it by fracturing into small communities, and poor modding leads
to death (or alt-right infiltration, ugh).
If they want to say it is worse for women and minorities, which could be
entirely true, then my worry is they just try to bring those groups up to the
often shitty baseline where perfectly reasonable seeming questions get closed
meanwhile others have people rushing to provide a lousy answer so they can
later expand it into overwrought 1000 word answers.
------
cup-of-tea
Looks like another community is about to get ruined in the name of social
justice.
------
jaghaj662
>Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place,
especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized
groups.
Women consider SO an elitist place? People of colour? What colour? Black?
White? Marginalised groups? Which groups are those? Are people in SO hostile
to Palestinians? Amputees? Such an accusation, where's the data to back it?
I'm white and male and completely normal and let me tell you: everybody in SO
behaves like a stuck-up twat to me. This has nothing to do with "diversity".
Too many people are there sitting in a throne of points and medals and
rubbish, closing comments and questions and editing whatever they see fit.
The truth of the matter is that you've had a code on conduct for a long time
and everybody ignored it so this post is not going to change that. Why don't
you just change the braindead voting system?
~~~
wvenable
I don't disagree with the article in general but I was surprised by the women
and people of color comments -- how does anyone know someone's gender or race
on SO?
Of all the sites on the Internet, SO seems to be particularly well suited to
the anonymity of posters -- even more so than HN because HN is more free form
and conversational.
~~~
DanBC
> how does anyone know someone's gender or race on SO?
SO allows people to use an avatar image. I think for some time they were using
images from Gravatar. So people were putting images of themselves in posts; or
they didn't realise their gravatar image would be used.
------
homero
I didn't feel welcome the few times I tried answering questions
~~~
ceejayoz
I'm kinda baffled by this complaint. [edit: OP has _completely_ changed their
post.]
I'd think most new SO users are looking for help or a solution to a problem.
Why was not being able to vote yet so upsetting you abandoned the resource?
~~~
homero
I tried being part of the community
~~~
ceejayoz
A user with zero rep can both ask and answer questions.
Letting them vote seems like it'd quickly result in voting rings via a bunch
of zero rep bot accounts.
------
viggity
Stack Overflow is naturally full of nerds. Nerds are pedants by nature. Are
some answers bereft of friendliness? Of course. Are some answers rude and/or
insulting? Sure, there are millions of them, its bound to happen. But how in
the hell that specifically impacts women or poc more than a random white male
is frankly beyond me.
I will say that being curt in some contexts has its advantages for the
community. Linus is kind of notorious for being a bit ruthless in responding
to various requests/suggestions. You have to be to some regard in order to set
a high bar and drive success. I've been on SO since the very beginning and
have had my own feathers a bit ruffled by responses I got when I was being
sloppy. It drives quality. After a minor rebuke or two, I really try to put as
much thought and effort into my questions as possible. I'm asking a group of
strangers to solve my problem, I have certain responsibility to make it as
easy on them as possible.
TL;DR - This exists but effects everybody not just women or poc. It could be
more polite, but a bit of harshness drives quality.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why won't IV answers questions about its relationship with Lodsys? - grellas
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/27/intellectual-ventures-myrhvold-patent-lodsys
======
moonlighter
"we want to build a portfolio just like those companies have, with licensing
approaches broadly like they have ... I want to achieve what IBM has achieved
[getting $1bn per year from licensing patents]."
The difference between IV, Lodsys and IBM is that IBM isn't a patent troll and
doesn't threaten small businesses with ludicrous IP lawsuits. If anything,
they've _donated_ patents in the past to open source projects to strengthen
those against IP lawsuits.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Waterproof Quadcopter Is Also a Submarine - jonbaer
http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/drones/a18419/waterproof-drone-transforms-from-quadcopter-to-submarine/
======
vlehto
I think this has biggest advantage in military submarine communications.
You launch a drone underwater. Drone flies off, sends radio message, records
another from headquarters. Then flies to preprogrammed place. Then dives to
another preprogrammed place and is recovered by sub.
This would me major improvement over communication buoys. Currently when buoy
is transmitting, you can guess that the sub is 0,5km away in the general
direction of movement of the buoy.
~~~
Retric
Subs are not really weight limited, so you could have a 20+ mile long cable
attached to a buoy giving 2 way communication. Which creates ~1200+ square
mile search area assuming you can't just follow the cable.
~~~
dkbrk
But they are volume limited, though I believe they generally store the towed
array sonar in the ballast tanks, so the same thing could be done.
More serious problems are the time it would take to extend and retract the
buoy, speed limitations while the buoy is being deployed, and noise mitgation
on the buoy and cable.
Right now, submarines carry disposable communication buoys that can be
deployed from depth and sent a pre-recorded message via satellite. Submarines
can be alerted to a pending message while at depth through Extremely-Low-
Frequency radio communication that can penetrate water, at which point the
submarine can move to periscope depth and communicate via satellite without
actually surfacing.
------
PhantomGremlin
Neat stuff. Still needs tethering, which makes sense while it's being
developed.
However, reality is no match for imagination. When I was a kid the TV show
_Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea_ was popular. One of the absolute coolest
things was the Flying Sub[1][2]:
36 foot wide and long, flying submersible,
aptly called the "Flying Sub"
...
It was deployed through bomb-bay like doors.
As it broke the surface, its engines could
generate enough thrust for the vehicle to
take off and fly at supersonic speeds.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USOS_Seaview#Refit_and_the_Fly...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USOS_Seaview#Refit_and_the_Flying_Sub)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHNNXVZ1mYg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHNNXVZ1mYg)
~~~
anonymfus
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_the_World_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_the_World_\(novel\))
------
richerlariviere
This is cool but the autonomy problem remains. Most (aerial) drones can't fly
more than 15 minutes. I am curious about the power used underwater to move it.
~~~
jessriedel
The ~15 minute lifetime comes from needing to continuously tread air to stay
aloft. (You can use up the battery faster by going fast, but there is a max
time to just hover.) In contrast, a water-density vehicle could float around
and leisurely collect data for almost unlimited amounts of time so long as it
doesn't need to get anywhere quickly. (Currents will complicate this.)
------
heydenberk
Reminds me of one of my all-time favorite Wikipedia articles:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradeoffs_for_locomotion_in_ai...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradeoffs_for_locomotion_in_air_and_water)
------
Shivetya
If the public can come up with them surely there are some cool military
versions already out there. While it is interesting what was shown in the
video it clearly is not designed for two mediums. If anything you would add
features like putting the motors on gimbals and feathering of the motors not
used. You should not need to tilt the whole thing to change directions
underwater, surely a better solution exist
~~~
cpkpad
This isn't the public. This is military-funded research at Rutgers. The
military generally doesn't have a reason to fund things it has (although DARPA
might just not know about classified technologies developed by different
branches). But in most cases, the military funds things in academia, a
fraction of which become militarized later.
------
aluhut
Now we "just" need proper batteries...
------
danepowell
Sounds great, if you stop reading before the second-to-last sentence:
"Because radio transmission through water is difficult, the craft must be
tethered at this time to provide continuous communications."
~~~
mark_l_watson
Artificial intelligence will help with that. For high value activities like
detecting underwater mines and collecting data for underwater oil spills,
etc., there should be enough funding to make these autonomous.
~~~
cushychicken
That's not the fundamental problem if you want a real-time communication link
for something like, say, an inspection or a search and rescue operation -
transmitting radio through water is. Water is a pretty bad medium for
transmitting RF energy.
------
Sanddancer
Looks neat, but underwater, it seems more than a big awkward in maneuvering.
Makes me curious if a tiltrotor design would be better here in terms of
efficiency and speed.
------
Patronus_Charm
The possibilities here are quite diverse.
------
ck2
They say underseas drones are the future.
Sadly (horrifyingly?) they are also going to be used for nuclear weapons.
~~~
deugtniet
Horrifyingly, drones are already being used as nuclear weapons. The Russians
recently 'leaked' a new torpedo design with all the characteristics of a
drone, being able to find its way through thousands of miles of ocean, finding
a target and if this target is acceptable destroying a whole harbor zone.
Doomsday drones --or machines if you will-- are likely already in place and
able to decide to blow up the world in an instant. I don't like thinking about
the capability of these superpower nations.
~~~
jacquesm
> Doomsday drones --or machines if you will-- are likely already in place and
> able to decide to blow up the world in an instant.
What do you base that on?
~~~
deugtniet
No facts, only that it's relatively easy to implement such a system. Add to
this the fear that the other party may have implemented a doomsday device, and
it becomes easy to rationalize the need for such a device.
I would even argue the operators in nuclear bunkers are already part of a
doomsday device if they have orders to automatically launch an attack if their
country has been struck by nuclear weapons.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Uncovering depression's web in the brain - clumsysmurf
http://newatlas.com/depressions-brain-web-decoded/46005/
======
0xcde4c3db
I think this finding is being overblown in some places, but it does seem to
get at part of depressive experience that few people want to acknowledge. You
can do everything right, have something good happen as a result of your
efforts, recognize your role in the good thing happening, and still _feel_
deeply disappointed. The major psychological models of depression pretty much
assume that this kind of backward response can't happen, which can lead to
borderline gaslighting about how you're "really" evaluating things.
~~~
throw20160915
When this happens, is this a reasonable sign that the depression is clinical?
My understanding of clinical is that it's chemical.
~~~
adrusi
"Clinical depression" refers to Major Depressive Disorder, which is the name
given to the common set of psychiatric dysfunctions that have persistent
depression as their primary symptom. That is, "Clinical depression" refers to
an entire disorder (a set of symptoms grouped together in the literature)
rather than as an individual symptom. This is to distingish it from
"depression" used as the name of a symptom or other disorders, like bipolar.
"Clinical" depression is not depression that is caused by chemistry rather
than psychology. We have no idea whose depression is caused by what, really,
and chemistry/psychology probably isn't a meaningful distinction to make in
this context.
------
phkahler
It bothers me that they claim to witness "circuits" connecting different areas
of the brain. AFAIK they just use FMRI or similar to see which regions are
active and make correlations, which is quite different that watching an actual
circuit or "neural pathway" firing in real time.
------
dilemma
Materialistic science is the #1 obstacle to understanding the nature of
depression. Depression is a reaction to an unhealthy environment, but science
pathologizes the individual biology.
~~~
saulrh
Isn't a good chunk of depression genetic? That is, sure, it's a reaction to an
unhealthy environment, but you have to have the predisposition that makes you
respond with depression, otherwise you just deal with it?
~~~
cpncrunch
It's just another factor. Some people are just more predisposed to depression.
However I imagine that it's possible for everyone to get depression with the
right circumstances.
------
smegel
> it is increasingly becoming clear that many forms of the condition are
> caused by either chemical imbalances, brain abnormalities or connections
> between neurons in the brain
Ka-ching!
A drug company CEO just bought another yacht.
I wonder if the people here who support the pathologising of unhappiness
support the mass drugging of school children afflicted by "ADHD". Look at how
France deals with such issues and you see there are other ways.
Pills for the brain, mass incarceration, gun culture and junk food - things
America fails at and leaves the rest of the world shaking its head in
amazement.
~~~
WalterSear
I'm glad that you haven't had much experience with clinical depression.
------
joewee
Ad free source:
[http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/news/depression146s_...](http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/news/depression146s_physical_source/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple keeps rejecting App Store apps with random words that are “private” - 0x0
https://twitter.com/jakemarsh/status/776205831922528256
======
0x0
See also:
[https://twitter.com/steipete/status/777939367482580992](https://twitter.com/steipete/status/777939367482580992)
Developers write classes that happen to contain methods or properties like
"zip", "granted", "titleForSection" and Apple outright bans the app because
somewhere, some internal apple class happen to have a method with the same
name.
There is no definite list of banned words anywhere, so developers have to
refactor their apps and resubmit and cross their fingers that Apple never used
any of their method or property names in secret classes.
~~~
detaro
So basically, they ask you to submit obfuscated code?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Task-focused programming with Mylar - Tichy
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-mylar1/
======
Tichy
I have only just started using it, but it looks very promising. From what I
understand so far: you activate tasks and from then on Mylar remembers what
files you touched while working on that task. This enables you to quickly
filter for files relevant to the task. With Java it even works on Source Code
basis (what methods are relevant to the task) - planned for other languages
besides Java, too. When submitting to subversion, you can also bundle all the
filters for a task. Mylar also records the time you spent on the activated
task.
Pretty neat, I think.
------
gibsonf1
It looks very impressive, but for me a bit scary. They use some of the exact
same concepts we are using for our startup for business in general: Focus on
the context around exactly what your are doing. What I didn't notice was
whether or not they had built in a system to automatically prioritize tasks
for the user based on creating customer value. Without that, it will get
overwhelming with a growing number of tasks like any generic task management
system does.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Analyzing DNS Logs Using Splunk - packetwerks
http://www.stratumsecurity.com/2012/07/03/splunk-security/
======
theend118
An organization's ability to respond to incidents must include tools like
this!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
JavaScript: You Shouldn't Use Moment.js - piotrekfracek
https://inventi.studio/en/blog/why-you-shouldnt-use-moment-js?src=hackernews
======
piotrekfracek
Did you know that moment(new Date(ISO8601_DATE_HERE) is 7 times faster than
just moment(ISO8601_DATE_HERE)?
We wrote an article about Moment.js quirks and compared it to the other
available libraries.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft Issues Windows 10 Upgrade Warning - ulysses
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2019/02/02/microsoft-windows-10-upgrade-problem-price-cost
======
jepler
is it DNS flag day? [https://dnsflagday.net/](https://dnsflagday.net/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon possibly working on new stand-alone messaging app called Anytime - doener
http://www.aftvnews.com/amazon-possibly-working-on-new-stand-alone-messaging-app-called-anytime/
======
ice109
why in the world is everyone so keen on entering the messaging app space? what
the hell is the value for all of these companies? is conversation data that
useful for training deep nets or something?
~~~
hooluupig
If you take a look at what wechat has done in china,you will get the
answer.More and more people there are shopping,making payments via wechat pay
instead of alipay,watching news through wechat news instead of other news
sites,searching keywords through wechat search instead of baidu and doing
almost everything in wechat.WeChat is a growing threat to other IT companies
in china.In fact,alibaba has already tried several times to make a successful
messaging platform but fails repeatedly(just like Google's messaging mess). If
facebook move in WeChat's direction,it will be a huge threat to amazon.Please
excuse for my bad English as i am not a native speaker.
~~~
astebbin
Can Facebook and other US tech companies move in WeChat's direction
successfully, in the West? Why did WeChat take off as such an everything-
application in China? Do the same necessary motivations and trends exist
elsewhere?
I'd speculate not, at least not in the US. Here, more people have different
types of computers (laptops, desktops, tablets, phones, set-top boxes) which
are all united mainly by Web browsers / technologies. The Web is naturally -
or at least, has been historically - more open and less conducive to walled
gardens. Consequently, I think US consumers are used to the experience of
getting news from (for example) the Washington Post, shopping on Amazon, and
checking email on GMail, while navigating between these sites without too much
hassle. This experience has largely been replicated on mobile devices, at
least for me, despite the best efforts of Facebook and others to keep me
locked in their app outside of mobile Chrome and Safari.
Since the Chinese government won't allow strong foreign competitors to
penetrate their domestic market, I have to assume that Facebook, Google, and
so forth are targeting other countries with these all-in-one messaging apps.
Perhaps India would most resemble China's mobile-dominated market?
------
zanny
"Everything you've wanted in a messaging app"
Matrix support and total federation integration.
~~~
tomjen3
Everything I wanted is one messaging app where everybody is on, where no data
or meta data can ever be shared and which is run by human rights activists.
This, I guess, ain't it.
------
satysin
I just want a widely used messaging platform that isn't owned by Facebook
(Messenger and WhatsApp).
Sadly Microsoft and Google seem incapable of doing it.
------
seibelj
But everyone I know just switched over to Google Allo! We all have to switch
again? /s
------
skibob1027
I think viewing this a just another instant messaging walled garden is short
sighted. This appears to be the digital portion of Amazon's attempt to
displace and disrupt the US mail system. Messaging/voice/video provide a
secure digital communications backbone to every Amazon account, much like
iMessage does for Apple IDs.
As Amazon operationalizes its own physical delivery network (planes, trucks,
drones), the USPS is going to be demolished and postal rates will rise
dramatically. Amazon accounts link every user one or more physical addresses.
Anytime will also link those users to a secure digital "address" appropriate
for delivery of sensitive information like financial and medical records.
With this hub in place, Amazon can act as a clearinghouse to functionally
displace the physical mail system in the US and throughout the world. Most of
what arrives in your mailbox would be more efficiently and securely delivered
electronically, but to date there has been no centralized platform to
digitally mail items so every bank/medical practice/company has had to create
its own internal secure messaging system or rely on email.
Amazon Anywhere can act as the pre-scaled missing link to solve his problem
while creating additional benefits to Amazon by functionally requiring anyone
without an Amazon account to get one to receive secure communications in the
future. It doesn't necessarily have to succeed as an IM or video call platform
in order to fulfill this role.
------
eswat
Wish we would get out of this red ocean of competing messaging platforms and
head towards something more open, like XMPP (at least Slack works dandy with
that) or even how email and the internet in general works.
I have five messaging applications on my phone already and there is nothing
critical on these platforms that couldn’t be handled by a single, polyglot
client.
~~~
_pmf_
That's what Matrix tried to solve.
Yeah, it went exactly as everyone expected.
------
adamnemecek
Amazon should stick to what they are good at and stop releasing these also-ran
products.
~~~
gtCameron
What they are good at is trying a shit ton of ideas and then optimizing and
doubling down on the winners. If they just "stuck to what they are good at"
they would still be a small online bookstore.
~~~
dman
The issue is that they are slipping on things they used to be good at. They
are a lousy bookstore now and even the general retail experience has seriously
regressed.
~~~
iamdave
Legitimately curious, but what about them is objectively "lousy"? ANECDOTE
ALERT: I love how easy it is to buy a book from them, my new James Baldwin
novel went from "read a review on another site, found it on amazon, ordered"
in about 3 minutes, and the book itself arrived a day and a half later.
~~~
dman
Carmack has a good recent example so I will defer to him for an example -
[https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/886229891720630272](https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/886229891720630272)
I would expect a store of Amazons scale to do a far better job of categorising
and searching information than what they offer right now. Also discovery of
new books is very suboptimal in my opinion.
~~~
riffraff
What results do you get for that search? The first and most are actually about
video codecs for me. Then you have the weird erotic fiction, but restricting
the search to "video engineering" is 2 clicks away on my phone, 1 on desktop.
------
mxuribe
This is annoying for all the reasons typically cited...but what if amazon (or
someone big like amazon) actually dove full-head into leveraging/supporting
the matrix protocol as the foundation of their messaging product/service? And
before anyone replies with "but then amazon wouldn't get their intended walled
garden/controlled silo"...i beg you to ponder the notion that amazon has AWS -
basically servers/services for hire - but that didn't stop microsoft, google,
etc. from starting competing (similar) services. Imagine a future where amazon
creates "chat as a service" based on matrix. Sure some firms/individuals won't
need more than their own self-hosted instance...but enterprises - already
experienced with aws - can add on pro hosted chat (a la matrix protocol).
Amazon could even contribute to the mattrix project, even if only to feel like
they're helping to steer the software updates to benefit their company.
Overall everyone wins:
* Amazon doesn't need to develop a new chat system from scratch.
* They can make plenty of money hosting matrix instance servers for private individuals and more importantly enterprises (read: cha-ching!).
* By contributing to matrix project, amazon can "feel good" about to contributing to open source.
* Amazon gets free on-boarding of potential new customers. Use-case: small business sets up their own matrix instance...eventually outgrows that, then turns to AWS, and voila, they migrate their instance to the official/supported AWS matrix instances.
* If matrix - like email - were to eventually become a more widespread de facto messaging/chat protocl, AWS would be leagues ahead of other competitors.
* There is also incentive for the competion (microsoft, google), if Amazon starts this, because like AWS, the others would compete with their own chat/messaging platforms, but enterprise customers would have an easier migration curve - because all chat/messaging would be based on matrix...not unlike email platform migrations today.
Maybe my thoughts above are pipe dreaMS...but beyond the feel good aspects, i
firmly believe there are possibilities for businesses to make good amounts of
money in this space...and all due to a very good default protocol.
------
hydandata
Every sufficiently proficient programmer will eventually write their own text
editor, Every sufficiently large enterprise will eventually write its own
messaging app.
------
cptskippy
It annoys me that everyone wants you to play inside their walled garden. It's
especially annoying with all of these smart speakers that function perfectly
fine as Bluetooth speakerphones.
I would much rather they augment my existing phone service.
~~~
mc32
There was a time aol, yahoo and msn were made to play nice and interop, will
that soon be the case with these new messaging platforms?
~~~
Jtsummers
As I recall, that was a very brief period and then they all went their own
ways again with an arms race to prevent people from connecting to their
networks without the official clients.
Google used XMPP initially with Google Talk, but then turned off federation
(was it ever on? I recall it was, but that was a long time ago).
We've had greater than a decade now of poor interop between messaging
platforms. This is unlikely to change as long as these platforms are owned by
people with a vested interest in controlling the experience (tying it to their
hardware or other services or ad networks, primarily).
~~~
dboreham
Federation did work. I had it configured on our server.
------
libeclipse
Anyone wanna take the bet that this will follow the same path their phone did?
------
hashkb
When will it be available? Anytime soon?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Software Transactional Memory in Clojure - llambda
http://java.ociweb.com/mark/stm/article.html#Overview
======
kristianp
Are there any benchmarks for parallel algorithms done with/without STM? What
is the performance hit?
------
nandemo
If you want to learn about STM, I recommend Simon Peyton-Jones' _Beautiful
Concurrency_ , which is a chapter of the _Beautiful Code_ book:
<http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/74063/beautiful.pdf>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Redesigning the MailChimp App - garno
http://blog.mailchimp.com/redesigning-the-mailchimp-app/
======
ams6110
_We trimmed a lot of code during the pre-design and redesign processes. We
hopped on the CSS treadmill and managed to cut about 120kb_
CSS is not my main area of competency... but to _cut_ 120kb strikes me as a
LOT? I don't think I've ever worked with a CSS file anywhere close to that
size (I realize it might not have all been in one file, but still). Am I off-
base here?
~~~
hkuo
Link to their css file:
<http://us2.admin.mailchimp.com/release/5.5.1/css/screen.css>
Minified. About 215k. Taking a glance, it looks about as clean as it can get,
and any more optimization would probably make it much less flexible.
It does appear to have an exorbitant usage of !important, but I won't judge
since I don't know any of the ins and outs of what their team has to deal
with.
~~~
riledhel
_[...] I won't judge since I don't know any of the ins and outs of what their
team has to deal with._ Great comment, sometimes people forget this when
reading/editing other people's code.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's your favourite ebook reader on desktop? - xstartup
======
kirankn
FBReader on all platforms for me
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Free drag and drop email templates builder - antonreshetov
https://mysigmail.com/card/
======
antonreshetov
Hi folks! MySigMail Card developer there
MySigMail Card is a free drag & drop builder helps you create email templates
intuitively and very quickly. No need to register or create an account.
Features:
\- 50+ pre-designed components in categories: Menu, Header, Content, Feature,
Call to action, E-Commerce, Footer \- Content editing in components \-
Uploading external images \- Live preview \- Project management \- Support
email clients: the templates have been tested to render across major email
clients, with support on popular web, desktop and mobile platform \- Export
the ready-made, compatible with any ESP, email template
Stack:
\- Vue \- Vuex \- IndexedDB
It's free!
I'd be happy to get any feedback
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What advice do you have for your younger you? - thescribbblr
======
mister_hn
Buy bitcoin in 2010, ask for more money to employers
------
downerending
Don't get married. And certainly not before your 50s.
~~~
jolmg
Why 50s? I can understand the benefits of not marrying in one's 20s for
example, but not marrying until one's 50s?
~~~
downerending
In your 50s, you're (with luck) wiser and have more experience. You've had a
chance to see what happens with the marriages of a lot of people around you,
and just how miserable a bad marriage can be. And also just how financially
and emotionally devastating a bad divorce can be.
Things are very different from the 1930s or 1960s, and in general it's hard to
see marriage as a good deal for most these days.
------
hellojebus
Buy Bitcoin in 2011
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How I Taught A Web Designer to Sell $10k+ Projects - sharkweek
http://www.ugurus.com/blog/how-i-taught-a-web-designer-to-sell-10k-projects
======
plinkplonk
Isn't this a rather blatant sales pitch... err 'inbound marketing'.. for the
author's "Online Business Ecosystem paradigm"? (I didn't make that up. It is
in the article)
Random Anecdotes. Check. Softsell, some obvious truisms . Check. Throw in a
reference to Apple marketing the IPod and tie it into whatever the point being
made is. Check.
Why does this marketroid article get so much love on HN?
~~~
brentweaver
I write about my experience without thinking of my products. My editorial team
will typically go back through and add relevant links. Of course I think my
products are relevant as that is what pays for me to give away a bunch of free
advice and blog about my past experiences growing my web agency. But just to
make sure you know, I don't have a product called "Online Business Ecosystem
paradigm".
------
EGreg
I like this a lot. However I would add one more powerful thing. Take the
existing technology you have (open source, in-house, etc.) and make a mobile
prototype for them in one of the meetings. As you talk, you can whip out your
phone and say you've been throwing some things together.
That'll put you ahead of everyone else who has done nothing but talk and it
will let the customer start seeing what the vision could look like ... and
start CRITICISIZING and RECOMMENDING things. And that's the point at which
they are emotionally invested in YOUR service, because they are now thinking
about what to change in your mockups and how to use your prototypes.
------
gesman
Talking business vision over the coffee (or lunch) with the prospect could be
intellectually stimulating, but to begin with you'll have to start with the
person who has $10k+ burning the hole in their pocket.
Otherwise by delaying the money talk you'll be facing the frequent "Oh, I
thought it won't cost that much. Let me think about that".
~~~
JacobJans
If they're thinking about how much it will cost, you haven't done your job,
and you shouldn't be charging them $10k+.
In fact, they should be thinking about how much money they will lose out on if
they don't hire you.
Your mission, as a provider of services, should be to increase the wealth of
your customers. This means that you need to find a way to make them more than
$10k.
If your services won't be creating more revenue than you are charging, then
you probably shouldn't be doing business.
This also means that the more value you are able to provide, the more you are
able to charge.
What's $10k when you're building a business for your client that will generate
$10k many times over?
And yes, you should be building your client's business. NOT their website.
If they're thinking about how much a website will cost, you've completely
failed in selling them a vision.
If they're thinking about how your partnership will grow their business in a
whole new way, then you are on the right track. And they won't be thinking
"how much will this cost?" They'll be thinking "wow, I'm excited to earn this
much money."
~~~
gesman
I actually like your reply.
I'd add that the mindset as well as experience of a service provider should
contain a clear path for client to make more than the cost of the service.
And that includes the understanding that some clients are not willing to make
money, even if they have valuable business to offer. That happens more often
than not and such clients needs to be filtered out early.
------
tonymarks
This really reminded me of an older post, "Never say wordpress when selling a
web design project". And, that's because it's the same author:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5570679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5570679)
~~~
brentweaver
Nice observation :)
------
swah
These days I find myself afraid that Facebook is going to eat everything and
there will be no jobs outside Facebook. Its so easy to setup a Facebook page
instead of a website, and it normally has the up-to-date information that
people are looking for ("What band is playing on this bar tonight?")
Some of those are also already selling through Facebook and just let their
websites die...
------
davidhariri
"When Apple sold the original iPod, they weren't selling an MP3 player (those
were already on the market), they were selling 5,000 songs in your pocket. The
simple shift in value statements changed the game. The net result was that
Apple's product not only cost a lot more, but it became one of the first
devices to be sold worldwide with universal love."
Uh, I feel like there was a lot more to this than mentioned
~~~
drzaiusapelord
Agreed. I hate "business speak" statements like this that just float on
marketing terms.
From a consumer and tech perspective the first ipod was a godsend in the days
of shitty AA-powered mp3 players with difficult controls, tiny screens, and
usually with no library management software. I had a nomad that took 4 AA
batteries and ate them like you wouldn't believe. So the cost of buying
rechargables and chargers was passed on to me.
No, it didn't launch with universal love. The original was interesting, but it
wasn't until later versions when they had USB support, itunes on Windows, and
better price points that it really broke through.
------
zepolen
I could never trust a person who tried to sell me a 'vision' for money.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Tips for a student going to Europe? - speek
A few friends and I (three of us total) were planning on going to go to Europe over the summer this year. We want to go to Sweden, England, France, and The Netherlands.<p>We're all in college and pretty much broke.<p>We want to spend a week in each country (probably Stockholm, London, Paris, and Amsterdam respectively), but we're not sure how we'll be able to afford the trip.<p>We don't exactly want to backpack across Europe and stay in hostels, so any suggestions for other stuff would be nice.<p>Also, stuff to do that's not touristy in those countries would be nice as well.<p>Thanks for the input and Happy New Year!
======
mechanical_fish
_We don't exactly want to backpack across Europe and stay in hostels_
Why on earth not? That's half the fun! I was relatively shy and antisocial on
my European tour and I _still_ have two or three hostel stories to tell.
And if you want to find a critical mass of people who know how to tour Europe
on the cheap, why are you avoiding hostels? Were you planning to look for
fellow bums in the lobbies of three-star hotels?
Having said that: There are relatively cheap pension rooms / B&B rooms /
_zimmer_ around, and you can leverage the economy of scale of having three
people that are willing to share a room. There are also persistent rumors that
many European countries have awesome campgrounds. Though you might have to
haul sleeping bags around.
I toured Europe by following the general advice in Rick Steves' general-advice
book. His reader demographic probably skews a bit more "middle-aged NPR
listener" than "college student" (advertising via PBS specials will probably
tend to lead to that), and sometimes he comes across as a bit of a nerd, but
then again so do I. His advice was pretty solid. If you don't like meeting
fellow tourists who are clutching a copy of his book, don't go to the specific
hotels and restaurants that he recommends. (This apparently also goes for all
the places mentioned in, e.g., the _Lonely Planet_ guides. Guidebooks are
excellent guides to finding your fellow tourists.)
~~~
mechanical_fish
Oops, forgot the most important advice: Keep most of your money, your
credit/ATM cards, and your passport on your body, out of sight and in a
difficult-to-access spot -- get a money belt of some type. Pack very little,
and don't pack anything you're not willing to lose. I've had stuff stolen on
two out of four European tourist trips, but the _second_ time all I did was
laugh and go shopping.
------
mixmax
If you drop by Copenhagen I'll probably be able to fix you up with a place to
live for a week while you're here. I live on a boat in a Copenhagen Marina,
and I'm sure I'll be able to loan a boat or something for a week.
Copenhagen is great in the summer - the beer is cold and the chicks are
beautiful.
My mail is in my profile :-)
------
conorh
For free accommodation I recommend couchsurfing.org. It might be a little
tricky with 3 travelers, generally people have couches for 1 or 2 people, but
all of those cities will have lots of couches available. I have hosted lots of
couchsurfers (highly recommend this if you can do it) and I've couchsurfed in
other countries, never had a bad experience. When you are staying with someone
living and working in a city you will have a much different experience than if
you are staying at a hostel or hotel.
------
davidw
No Italy?! Why those countries? Not that they're bad, just that they're also
fairly expensive (although if the pound keeps crashing, maybe England will
finally be cheap) in a continent that, at least at the moment, is already
expensive for Americans. Cheaper countries: Portugal, Spain, Greece, lots of
places in "Eastern Europe". Italy's not cheap, but it is, of course, the most
amazingly beautiful country anywhere even if it's not really run very well:-)
I can't offer to put up people, necessarily, but I'm always willing to take
some time to show people around Padova, my home away from home in Italy, where
hopefully we will be returning soon.
Hostels aren't bad, actually, and you don't have too many other options for
'cheap'. Just try and figure out which ones are good, and which ones to avoid.
~~~
hbien
I just spent a little over a month in Europe and half of the time was spent in
Italy. It was awesome.
For the OP:
Some cities were of course more expensive than others. If you stay at cheap
hostels, take the metros and walk instead of taxis, and eat out at cheap
"bars" or take out it's affordable.
A lot of the sights you want to see are free also, like Piazzas and fountains.
So just grab a slice of pizza or gelato and enjoy the views.
------
parenthesis
In the UK, instead of London, you might like to consider going to Manchester
or Edinburgh instead. Both much nicer cities than London (IMHO).
------
bdfh42
You can get a Europe wide rail card for a remarkably low cost - and rail
travel in Europe is (largely) fast and comfortable. There are also low cost
airline options (check out Ryan Air and FlyBe on-line) although sometimes they
use airports a little outside major cities.
Hotel prices in Amsterdam are not too bad, Paris more expensive and London and
Stockholm might well boggle your mind - still good quality, centrally located,
comfortable hostels do exist and are well worth checking out.
------
speek
Also, How much money do you think I should set aside for this trip?
------
ahoyhere
My advice would be to skip Stockholm and go to Berlin or Vienna.
Having been to several Scandinavian countries, I can assure you they are the
most boring and American-like places you can go in Europe[1], owing to the
relative newness of their cities and also mind-bogglingly expensive. Even for
Europe. We're talking $10-13 US for a beer.
Berlin is dirt cheap, even with the exchange rate, and full of interesting and
exciting culture and things to do and (as far as these things go) a very
friendly citizenry who speak great English. Its ultimate personality is the
personality of a fanastically diverse mutt of a place, and yet it all works.
It feels amazingly alive.
Vienna, by contrast, is more expensive than Berlin but cheaper than visiting
NYC. It is less exciting than Berlin, being more homogeneous and sedate, but
still has its own incredibly distinct personality and gobs of awesome stuff to
see and do.
[1] yes, even more so than London, call it the tyranny of small differences
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal - Esifer
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
======
edent
The original article - [http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-
huntin...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-
data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html) Distraction free reading and without all
the annoying cruft of Quartz.
Fascinating use of "Big Data" to cut through the bullshit. Wonder if it will
change anything. I suspect the "tough" interview plays well into a company's
PR.
~~~
donohoe
We built Quartz to be as distraction free as possible - mind telling me what
the "cruft" is?
~~~
engtech
1\. when I go to this link: [http://qz.com/96206/google-admits-those-infamous-
brainteaser...](http://qz.com/96206/google-admits-those-infamous-brainteasers-
were-completely-useless-for-hiring/)
It shows several stories at once, not just the google brainteasers stories.
2\. In general, people would rather read the real article instead of a summary
of the article. When someone submits a summary of an article to a site like HN
or reddit, it is usually flagged as blog-spam because we'd rather read/support
the original content than a summary with questionable value.
3\. For long form articles, nothing beats reading the print-preview page to
get rid of all the sidebars, comments, ads. Look at the print preview page: it
is not possible to get less distraction free than that. Any other format has
more distractions.
Even aside from that, the New York Times has some of the best information
architecture in the business. These are the guys who did NYTProf. Their web
team is awesome.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-
hunting-b...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-
data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0&pagewanted=print)
4\. Some visual issues I had with quartz:
4.1: No left/right whitespace around images.
4.2: I see a vertical scroll bar in the middle of my screen on Firefox.
4.3 The black header bar which is fixed and stays on the screen all the time
even though it conveys no useful information to me.
4.4: A bunch of text blurbs on the left side of the screen that convey no
useful information to me.
You say you're trying to be as distraction free as possible, but that's not
actually true because it isn't possible to have your business model and be as
distraction free as possible. The print preview page is as distraction free as
possible.
~~~
donohoe
1. ... It shows several stories at once, not just the google brainteasers stories.
It shows one article initially. It will load the next one as you scroll down
and approach the end. This is not counted as a Page View unless you actually
continue down into it - you'll notice the URL change at that point)
2. In general, people would rather read the real article
instead of a summary of the article.
I would argue that this is a "real article". The NYT piece were 8 questions
and answers. This article is based on just one of those questions - and
expands on it. I'm not an editor/write so I'll avoid going deeper but thats my
take-away.
3. For long form articles, nothing beats reading the print-preview page...
Tru dat.
Even aside from that, the New York Times has some of the best
information architecture in the business. These are the guys
who did NYTProf. Their web team is awesome.
I used to work there :)
4. Some visual issues I had with quartz:
4.1: No left/right whitespace around images.
The Featured Image (between Headlines and Text) is meant to be full-width to a
max. Inline images should have left/right whitespace
4.2: I see a vertical scroll bar in the middle of my screen on Firefox.
Can you email me a screenshot (email in profile)? There are a few Firefox
specific bugs we're working on this week. This may be one of them.
4.3 The black header bar which is fixed and stays on the screen
all the time even though it conveys no useful information to me.
True. Intentional. It can be expanded which reveals the large site map. There
are big pros and cons to hiding it. Its an on-going conversation.
However we used to have it disappear altogether and people complained about
that too....
4.4: A bunch of text blurbs on the left side of the screen
that convey no useful information to me.
Its a list of Headlines - thats all that is meant to be conveyed.
You say you're trying to be as distraction free as possible,
but that's not actually true because it isn't possible to
have your business model and be as distraction free as possible.
The print preview page is as distraction free as possible.
I'm confused. That doesn't make much sense to me. Yes, I am saying that we
intend to be "distraction free as possible" \- I'm not sure that I have to add
a big asterisk * that covers "within the confines of an ad based business
model" any more than I should also add "within the confines of a browser
running a web site thats not a book" \- I'm not trying to be snarky, just hard
know what to make of what you said exactly..
Also - take a look at the ads... do we have them all over the place? Nope - we
have them at the end of an Article - not in-between, not embedded, not inline.
Thats important.
We are not perfect, but we aspire to continuously improve. Focus is on the
user and the reading experience but with recognition that we have to pay the
bills for 20 or so editors and journalists across five (maybe more?)
countries. (I'm not counting devs, sales, hr etc in that)
~~~
chinpokomon
The pages also won't show in my favorite Android HN client:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksof...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksoftware.hackernews).
I always have to open in a browser.
------
Jabbles
I don't understand people's problem with estimating. It's a useful skill.
Perhaps it would be better if the questions actually related to technology,
rather than golf balls - but the principle is the same.
For instance - "how many hard drives does Gmail need?" requires a rough guess
of how many users Gmail has (if you're interviewing at Google, you should know
it's 1e8-1e9). How much space each one takes (probably nowhere near a gigabyte
on average - let's say 1e8 bytes). And that the current capacity of hard
drives is (1e12 bytes).
Then you can say that they probably need 1e5 hard drives, link it to
redundancy, availability, deduplication, backups etc. You can comment that
it's feasible to build a datacenter with that many hard drives.
No one cares that the actual number is 12,722 - but you've demonstrated a
broad set of knowledge about the current state of technology. Saying "dunno -
a billion?" is not going to get you anywhere, and with good reason.
The Monopoly question is crap, though.
I'd like to know how useful [http://google-tale.blogspot.com/2008/07/google-
billboard-puz...](http://google-tale.blogspot.com/2008/07/google-billboard-
puzzle.html) was.
~~~
rorrr2
The problem is, the interviewers often judge how accurate your estimation is,
and not the fact that you know (the highly flawed) Drake Equation.
These estimates are completely useless in real life, because in real life
nobody guesses how many drives you need for GMail, or how many gas stations
there are in LA.
~~~
ig1
I'm not sure where you've worked, but doing resource estimation for projects
has been pretty important for most greenfield projects I've worked on.
It's also good for sanity testing, it's a useful skill to be able to spot that
something is out by an order of magnitude as it can allow you to catch
problems early on.
~~~
rorrr2
Data-backed estimation is completely different from random guesses you will
make during an interview.
Not only that, even if your guesses are decent, multiplying them can drive you
orders of magnitude in the wrong direction.
~~~
ig1
The underlying data might be different but the process is the same, you need
to figure out what are the contributing factors, how they relate and establish
an upper and lower bounds for the values you're assuming.
Once you have data you can make corrections to those bounds, but other than
that the process is the same.
It's a skill that a lot of first time startup founders lack. They have no-idea
how to estimate the market size for their startup, you need to understand the
process of how to build an estimation model.
~~~
Ziomislaw
Process is not the same, in one case you have real data, in the other one you
pull the data out of your arse.
~~~
ig1
It sounds like you build estimation models by looking at the data you have and
combining it together to try and figure out your goal.
The disadvantage with that approach you often end up missing factors (because
you don't have the data to hand) and end up with a suboptimal model.
In the same way that a lot of startups end up analyzing user behaviour by page
analytics rather than user analytics simply because Google gives them page
analytics.
It's a good idea to know how to do both top-down and bottom-up estimation
models, as best practice is to make estimations using several different models
and compare the results.
------
moron4hire
It's a crutch. Nobody knows how to interview. Interviewing properly is a lot
of work. There are two people who can do interviews--people who have knowledge
of the job and people who have time to interview--and they are so infrequently
the same people. These sorts of things were appealing because they were easy,
a way to not spend a lot of time on interviewing, or a way to not need a lot
of knowledge about the job.
And these things are important, because job candidates are not people, they
are OEM replacement parts being order from Pep Boys. Call up the recruiter and
requisition a J6-252: Programmer, seasoned 5 years, with degree from MIT. Oh,
those ones are too expensive. Guess I'll take the knock-off version, but I
refuse to pay full price!
Hopefully, because it's Google saying it, everyone will cargo-cult on this
bandwagon too.
------
tokenadult
From the original New York Times article that Quartz has linkspammed here: "On
the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How
many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in
Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve
primarily to make the interviewer feel smart."
Long before this was reported in the New York Times, this was the finding of
research in industrial and organizational psychology. A valid hiring procedure
is a procedure that actually finds better workers than some different
procedure, not a hiring procedure that some interviewer can make up a
rationale for because it seems logical to the interviewer. We have been
discussing home-brew trick interview questions here on Hacker News for more
than a year now.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4879803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4879803)
Brain-teaser or life-of-the-mind interview questions do nothing but stroke the
ego of the interviewer, without doing anything to identify job applicants who
will do a good job. The FAQ on company hiring procedures at the Hacker News
discussion linked here provides many more details about this.
~~~
donohoe
From the original New York Times article that Quartz has linkspammed
No, this is Linkspan:
Link spam is defined as links between pages that are present for
reasons other than merit.[9] Link spam takes advantage of
link-based ranking algorithms, which gives websites higher
rankings the more other highly ranked websites link to it.
These techniques also aim at influencing other link-based
ranking techniques such as the HITS algorithm.
Source:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkspam#Link_spam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkspam#Link_spam)
Lets be clear, there is link-spam and then there is writing an original piece
based on information from elsewhere.
The NYT article is about 8 questions and answers from a HR person at Google.
The "puzzle" aspect is 1 of those 8 questions.
From that Quartz references that, links directly to the piece and then expands
upon it and links out to other relevant and related information.
~~~
jbapple
I think you should have made it clear in this comment that you work for
Quartz.
~~~
donohoe
I take it for granted so I forget - but I think its spelt out very very
clearly in my profile so I don't have to put an * every time I comment.
~~~
jbapple
What percentage of readers of your comment do you think click through to your
profile?
Of the comments you read, what percentage do you view the profile of the
author of?
~~~
donohoe
I take your point. I click through to most people - but I do not think that is
the norm.
------
Udo
There are questions that are actually fun and I can sort of see them starting
a conversation with the right kind of interviewer that tells both parties a
lot about who they're dealing with. From the article:
> How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
Basic economics estimating - probably not that useful and a bit dull, but hey
why not. At least the problem has several angles to it that might be fun to
explore.
> Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco
That's a nice one. Kind of open-ended, a lot of things to consider, a lot of
ideas to be had.
> How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?
Why? What happens to the interview after you counted them (possibly on a
whiteboard)? It's a dead end and the question is dull.
> A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
Now this has the potential to be great or absolutely horrible, depending on
the intent behind the question and the nature of the interviewer. If it's
taken as a "fill in the blanks" kind of challenge it would be a fun way to
explore the candidate's imagination. But I'm guessing it's not. It's probably
one of those "clever" questions that have only one "right" answer that makes
no real sense except creating a few moments of uncomfortable silence.
> You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so
> as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender.
> The blades will< start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?
Again, this could be a fun physics and chemistry question and I see a couple
of possible solutions that might or might not work out - might be fun
exploring them. But again, it _sounds_ more like a trick question with one
standardized answer. Bad.
The problem with trick questions and standardized answers is that the nature
of the question makes the candidate uneasy and even if they eventually figure
it out, nobody will have learned anything during the process. It's more like a
hazing, not a hiring interview.
~~~
fduran
> A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
horrible question, it took me a few seconds to figure out they are talking
about the game Monopoly.
~~~
yen223
Not sure what the point of this question is. It seems all it does is to test
whether the candidate has heard of Monopoly.
~~~
jimmaswell
I'm familiar with Monopoly and I didn't think of Monopoly when I read the
question.
------
raldi
I've never seen any citation that Google _ever_ used these kinds of question.
Especially the idiotic one about pushing a car to a hotel. I think it was just
an urban legend and a good piece of linkbait.
There must be thousands of people on HN who interviewed at Google over the
years. Did anyone ever get a question like this?
~~~
drgath
From the article
> "On the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of
> time"
That implies Google has some data to back it up, whether they themselves
previously asked those types of questions, or they derived it from some other
means. Either way, they aren't doing themselves any favors to dispel that
urban legend. Most reading that will just assume they used to ask
brainteasers, but no longer.
~~~
gwern
Yes, it's a rather strange objection to make... How could Google possibly use
data on its employees to disprove that brainteasers work - if they weren't
using brainteasers at some point?
------
litewulf
When I interviewed at Google 5 years ago they weren't using those
brainteasers.
There are many posts online about the actual, CS-y questions that you can
expect in a Google interview, I had just assumed that the mentions of
brainteasers were merely urban legend.
~~~
inopinatus
I've interviewed at Google. Years, years ago. I didn't get the job. Similarly,
no brainteasers, but something worse: they made me write syntactically correct
code on a whiteboard. I have never written code without using a keyboard;
turns out, I just didn't have the neural pathways for anything else. My brain
kinda seized up. I specifically recall failing to recognise the fibonacci
sequence (especially horrifying given that I read mathematics at Edinburgh).
Things went downhill from there.
Ever since, whenever I've interviewed someone, I ask them to demonstrate their
strengths to me first.
~~~
eternauta3k
What do you mean by "read mathematics at Edinburgh"?
~~~
lmm
It's standard (or slightly pretentious) British English; I guess the US
equivalent would be "majored in math at Edinburgh" (which would be equally
incomprehensible to a Brit)
~~~
richbradshaw
It's not really pretentious – it kinda depends on what university you went to.
I typically say 'studied', but my friends who went to other unis say 'read'. I
would take 'read' as a pretentious term.
~~~
shawabawa3
> It's not really pretentious
> I would take 'read' as a pretentious term.
I'm confused...
~~~
dasil003
I think he meant "wouldn't". It's not pretentious per se, it just would be
interpreted that way to an American because we wouldn't use that phrasing,
therefore we can only imagine it being spoken in an upper-class English
accent, pinky fully extended.
~~~
inopinatus
Quite so. Having been raised by the BBC World Service I actually do have a
somewhat received pronunciation, albeit gently deflected by many years abroad.
The disposition of my pinky, however, shall remain a mystery.
~~~
dasil003
If only it were tea time in Australia. Blast, foiled again.
------
bane
I was contacted by a Google recruiter a few months ago, I had no intention of
changing my day job at the time, but for shits and grins I went through a
couple phone interviews. The position they were hiring for wasn't an area I
have any experience in (the recruiter had made a mismatch), but I thought the
questions were reasonable for somebody who works in that field and were kind
of fun. They were quizzy, but could be practical. It was a management position
so there weren't any coding questions, but things like basic cost estimating
that sort of thing.
I had fun and wouldn't mind it again, it didn't feel like a bunch of stupid
random brain teasers like I've experienced before (how many t-shirts would it
take to make sea worthy sail? why are manholes round?) etc.
~~~
mikestew
"It was a management position so there weren't any coding questions"
Interesting; when I interviewed for a management position (test manager) it
was nothing _but_ coding questions, including the infamous "reverse a string"
question. ("Would like that optimized for space or speed? In-place, or do I
get a buffer? Can you tell I've heard this a zillion times before?") I can
understand wanting a test manager to be more than an empty suit, but _yoiks_.
~~~
bane
There's different kinds of management positions other than software
development management. HN is notorious for forgetting that.
------
freework
This topic/discussion reminds me of a movie I saw recently It was called "That
guy...who was in that thing". It is a documentary about working actors. Not
Big time superstars like Tom Cruise, but the small time 'character' actors.
Anyways, there was one part in the movie where they start talking about
auditions. All four or five of the actors they were interviewing for the movie
unanimously spoke badly about the typical audition process. Some quotes taken
from memory:
"I love acting, but I hate auditioning"
"You've seen my demo reel, you've seen me when I was on Star Trek, you know I
can act, then why not just give me the part? Why make me go through this
tedious audition process"
"90% of acting is reacting. You can't fully demonstrate your full acting
abilities when you're standing in front of a panel of producers 'acting' out a
scene that consists of 5 lines of dialog"
What the actors were saying about how they hate the audition process reminded
me a lot of my frustrations surrounding hiring during tech interviews. Making
an engineer do puzzles like FizzBuzz is a lot like making an actor act out a
20 second scene without any time to prepare or a proper "scene partner" to act
alongside of.
I wish I could like to a youtube of the movie, but I can't find one. Its on
netflix though.
~~~
tbrownaw
_Making an engineer do puzzles like FizzBuzz is a lot like making an actor act
out a 20 second scene without any time to prepare or a proper "scene partner"
to act alongside of._
FizzBuzz is self-contained tho, so maybe a better comparison would be to
asking for a dramatic poetry reading?
------
sergiosgc
They aren't using the brain teasers right. The Idea is not to create a barrier
to entry, nor is it to stress the candidate. The objective of the brain teaser
is having the candidates think slow enough that the interviewer can observe
how he approaches a problem.
It's hard, when using problems that are common, to really understand how the
candidates gets to the answer. Often, he's building on pre solved sub problems
he encountered on his professional life, so the resolution process didn't even
occur at the interview.
I personally don't use brain teasers, because they stress out valid candidates
who do not work well under pressure. However, I think teasers, when properly
used, are valid tools in an interviewers toolbox.
~~~
dasil003
Totally agree with this. The essential skill of a software engineer regardless
of position is to be able to approach any problem no matter how unfamiliar or
intractable and formulate a means of attacking it and verifying the solution.
The right type of brainteaser can be a great way to demonstrate this provided:
A) The interviewee hasn't heard it before B) It's meaty and not relying on
some flash of insight (the manhole cover question is absolute garbage) C) you
are able to capture the thought process in sufficient detail, either through
verbally talking it out or writing down or whatever.
This has the potential to reveal a certain high level problem solving ability
which the lack thereof will not necessarily be revealed by more concrete
"write pseudocode for X" type of interview questions. What I mean by that is
that there is a continuum of skills ranging from rote copying of solutions all
the way through synthesizing solutions to business problems and designing
architectures to fulfill a malleable list of requirements. A mediocre engineer
can inch their way up the continuum through raw pattern matching ability
(which humans excel at) without ever attaining mastery of the high level
abstraction that are driving the implementation detail. Such engineers can
appear tremendously productive at the ground level, but they are dangerous for
an technical organization to have many of them because they tend not to see
where technical debt is piling up and can often paint themselves into corners
because they're not considering the bigger picture. Knowing someone has strong
reasoning skills from very high level human tasks down is a good hedge against
this.
------
nchlswu
I took an i/o psychology course during school and a chunk of it dealt with
interviewing and finding best candidates (from an employer stand point and
equity standpoint), as lots of people who took the course tend to pursue
education with the idea of obtaining an HR-related certificate.
The comment about brainteasers vs structured rubrics is sort of surprising to
me, given Google's reputation for quantitative data. Speaking from a very high
level, structure was really what was emphasized for interviews. It's
interesting how culture can get in the way of proven 'fact,' and I love that
Google is using their own (much larger data sets) to make these improvements
and in/validate other research
------
jmillikin
How to drive clicks in four steps:
1\. Invent a bunch of silly riddles that a non-technical reader might accept
as tech interview questions.
2\. Pull a major tech company out of a hat (today it's Google), and claim with
no evidence that their interviews are based around silly riddles. The article
will be cited for years as proof that people working at $COMPANY are weird and
obtuse.
3\. Wait a couple years. Ignore all evidence that $COMPANY does not use silly
riddles in interviews.
4\. Once traffic on the original article dies down, write another article
claiming $COMPANY has "admitted" silly riddles aren't useful for interviews.
~~~
pathy
I see you didn't read the article. The basis for the article is a NYT
interview with a SVP at Google, claiming that the brainteasers are not useful
(among other things). Surely that is good source? I haven't got a clue if
Google actually used these kinds of questions but the interview sure seem to
suggest it.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-
hunting-b...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-
data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)
That said, the riddles listed are of course a bit clickbaity but they did not
conjure the story out of thin air.
~~~
jmillikin
The same list of riddle questions has been circulating for at least twenty
years. Before Google existed, it was credited to Microsoft. I know they've
been explicitly banned at Google for many years, and have seen no evidence
that they were ever in common use at either company.
------
ShabbyDoo
A problem I see with many of these sorts of questions is that they often
require the candidate to have some supposedly common knowledge which is not
required for the job itself. Cryptic word games surely are much more difficult
for a non-native speaker of the language in use. Questions related to facts
about cities probably require local geographic knowledge. Surely the
evacuation plan for SF must consider the capacity of various bridges? Someone
who has lived in northern CA for most of his life would have a much easier
time thinking through the logistics of moving people off a peninsula. And, of
course, there's the Monopoly question (which I had to Google).
I like estimation questions in general for many of the reasons other
commenters have cited. However, I wish those using them would consider the
knowledge implicitly required of a candidate.
------
cousin_it
> _Years ago, we did a study to determine whether anyone at Google is
> particularly good at hiring. We looked at tens of thousands of interviews,
> and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candidate,
> and how that person ultimately performed in their job. We found zero
> relationship._
Can we see the study?
Also note that performance on the job is a noisy measurement, because people
who get to work on impactful projects (through luck or people skills) get
rated higher than others. I wouldn't be surprised if interview scores were a
better measurement of "true" skills.
~~~
jasonwocky
> _I wouldn 't be surprised if interview scores were a better measurement of
> "true" skills._
Possibly, but in a sense "true" skills don't really matter. What matters to
Google, ultimately, is Google's opinion of the worker. It's almost certainly
skewed / flawed / distorted in some way from the individual's true skills, and
that's unfortunate but mostly a fact of life.
------
lobotryas
Sounds great, although like with any retraction I doubt this will be enough to
stop the spread of interview puzzles. Even I'm guilty of asking my share
before I realized that the only thing that matters about the candidate is
whether they can sit down and start writing code (and the quality of said
code).
~~~
objclxt
Google still ask puzzles: they just don't ask _brainteasers_.
For example, _write a program to find every possible word in a given Boggle
board_ is a puzzle, but one you're going to solve by coding...rather than "how
many piano tuners are there in New York", which is a rather different matter.
I've interviewed on-site with Google several times, and always found the CS
puzzles to be challenging but fair.
~~~
drgath
> Google still ask puzzles: they just don't ask brainteasers.
Isn't the only difference between "brainteasers", "puzzles", and real
engineering challenges, just the usefulness of the result?
I get what you are saying though. Asking someone challenges rooted in
technology seems so much more useful and natural than something involving ping
pong balls and Lake Michigan.
------
darrellsilver
The best book on hiring, no doubt, is Who: [http://www.amazon.com/Who-The-A-
Method-Hiring/dp/0345504194](http://www.amazon.com/Who-The-A-Method-
Hiring/dp/0345504194)
We used it to build our hiring process for
[http://www.thinkful.com/](http://www.thinkful.com/) and it consistently
proves valuable.
We also use it to help our students prepare for job interviews.
~~~
dpritchett
I'm seriously put off by any talk of topgrading and 'a/b/c player' ranking.
Have you gathered much data on the success of this book's approach in your
firm? I'd love to hear a positive take on it.
~~~
freework
Agreed. I think anyone can be an "A" player under the right conditions. Under
different conditions, the same person can be a "D" player. I know I've had
jobs were I was the wonderboy who was regarded as an A player all around. I've
had other jobs where I was the black sheep "F" player who gets fired after one
week of employment.
~~~
dfriedmn
First commenter's co-founder here: Sure, you definitely need to screen for
culture fit. There are great people who would be bad fits here. That said, we
want people who have succeed in most positions they've had in the past. If
there are two people who have had 4 jobs in their career, you're way more
likely to pick the better if you favor the one who outperformed in 3 of those
4 jobs rather than 1 of the 4. When you combine that with looking closely at
their experience as it fits with the role, and their fit with the culture,
then you have a complete screening process.
------
mgkimsal
"How many gas stations in Raleigh?"
I had a couple questions like this at a couple of interviews more than a few
years back now. In both cases, I sat for a minute, and asked a few questions
back, like "do you mean the city limits of Raleigh, or the metro area?", "how
do you define gas station - do we include public-only, or private fueling
places?", etc. Part of this was buying some time, because the question caught
me off guard, but I think my questions back caught him off guard a bit too.
That interviewer told me I was the only person who asked clarifying questions
before blurting out an answer or walk through. Another one was "take this
marker and design a house on the whiteboard for me". So I took the marker and
asked questions like "how many people will live here, do you want one or two
story, do you need a garage/shed/basement, etc?" And again, was told I was the
only person who'd asked questions before starting to draw.
I don't think the intention behind those brain teasers was necessarily to
determine how you react to those sorts of problems, but it may have been a
useful determining factor for some interviewers nonetheless.
~~~
jacques_chester
> _That interviewer told me I was the only person who asked clarifying
> questions before blurting out an answer or walk through._
I once got negative feedback from an interviewer: I'd asked too many questions
about the questions.
~~~
dennisgorelik
That probably means you two should not work together.
~~~
jacques_chester
Definitely. We both dodged bullets.
------
troni
Every time I click any link on HN that points to qz.com I get QZ without any
reference to the article in question. Currently it points to "Why Tesla wants
to get into the battery-swapping business that’s failing for everyone else"...
in Chrome. Firefox seems to work. Terrible website.
------
troymc
These sorts of questions didn't start with Google. They're known as Fermi
Problems for a reason: they're named after Enrico Fermi, the physicist.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem)
Knowing how to quickly estimate something _is_ useful.
I imagine that Larry Page does a few quick estimates every day. How many Loon
balloons would it take to bring Internet to 90% of Africa?
But not everybody at Google has a job like Larry Page. It's gotten to be a big
company full of accountants, HR people, and other jobs that don't require much
thinking in unfamiliar territory.
In other words, guesstimation is a useful skill, but not for every Google
employee, so it's not going to show up as useful on average.
------
tonylemesmer
Some of the more flippant sounding ones could be useless but I thought the
idea of the simpler ones (how many golf balls etc.) is to get a feeling for
how people's minds work and whether they can make sensible best guesses in the
abscence of concrete facts and make judgements based on those guesses. Weed
out the ones who have no appreciation for how the volume of a golf ball
relates to the size of a bus.
Good logical thinking shown here could indicate an ability to rapidly
prototype systems without getting hung up on too fine detail.
~~~
bengillies
On the other hand, demonstrating evidence for being able to rapidly prototype
systems without getting hung up on too fine detail also indicates an ability
to rapidly prototype systems without getting hung up on too fine detail. And
it does it much more directly (i.e. there is an obvious link rather than a
tenuous at best one) and with much less stress, awkwardness and mind games.
~~~
tonylemesmer
fair point :) I guess I work in an industry (design engineering) where my
interviews have only ever consisted of a "nice chat"
------
rekatz
I think you'll find this response by @gayle to be spot on. SORRY, FOLKS:
GOOGLE HASN’T CHANGED THEIR INTERVIEW QUESTIONS BY GAYLE MCDOWELL, EX-GOOGLE
ENGINEER & HIRING COMMITTEE MEMBER
[http://blog.geekli.st/post/53477786490/sorry-folks-google-
ha...](http://blog.geekli.st/post/53477786490/sorry-folks-google-hasnt-
changed-their-interview)
------
echion
Insofar as this interview speaks to the relevance of brainteasers to actual
software development / engineering, it fails to provide a meaningful topic of
conversation. It surprises me that nobody's pointed out that at best the
conclusions are relevant to engineering "leadership" performance, rather than
-- as I expected for "Google" and "head-hunting" \-- coding performance. Sure,
people skills and team skill are important, but if you're going to get good at
selecting for leadership and ignore selecting for productivity, to the extent
they're not related you're not going to be very good at creating and
maintaining software. Although software isn't 100% of Google's success and
coding productivity isn't 100% of software success, it's pretty important.
------
cwesdioner
Why are they talking about "Big Data" rather than just "data"? I doubt the
data sets they used were so large that they could not be easily analysed on a
cheap laptop using normal statistical packages.
When trying to work out what best predicts job performance, the quality of
your data is by far the most important thing to focus on. I would very much
like to know more about the details of their internal studies. There are a lot
of difficult problems in trying to use statistics to improve interview
processes. One of the big problems is that you will always have a truncated
sample of only those people who were selected: you would then expect the
importance of certain variables, such as GPA or test scores, to be lowered
because those who scored lower on such metrics will have had compensating
characteristics...
------
contingencies
_Google reputation in shreds; funds transparent PR stunt_
~~~
fatjokes
Huh? Google's reputation in shreds? How so? If you're referring to NSA issue,
that's the American government's reputation you're talking about. Google (and
almost every other big tech company) was simply compelled to follow the law.
------
fnordfnordfnord
If you're a hiring manager who uses these things, you should know that I (try)
to train/prepare my students to answer them. I do think there is some utility
in watching how people approach an unconventional problem, but don't be too
impressed with people that can solve them easily, compared to those who don't
do well the first time they see them. I see a huge improvement in the quality
of answers of most students, once students know it is a gag and once they've
been shown how to estimate things. Most students are constrained by having
been in a learning environment that provides them with well-defined boundaries
within which to form their answers. IMO failing to perform well with these
problems is not always a failing of the student as much as it is their
educators.
------
chevas
The article also mentions:
"It’s also giving much less weight to college grade point averages and SAT
scores"
In 2004 I interviewed for a Creative Maximizer position. I received a glowing
review from my brother who was a Googler. I studied all the ins-and-outs of
adwords back then and the British interviewer confirmed: "You did very good on
the assessment" (which was working through real ads that needs to be
maximized). My opinionated experience has been that in these kinds of
situations, Brits embellish less than Americans.
However, she told me that my college GPA was "a major question mark" because
it was 2.99 and Google only hires people with 3.0 and above (I didn't know
what I wanted to do in college). Looking back I'm glad I was never hired, but
that burned me bad for a while.
------
drawkbox
The only true way to tell if an interviewee will be a good employee is actual
work/product output with the right amount of responsibility. Product focused
people not just coders looking to code lots of tricks to compete.
Contract to hire is one way, another is what they have done previously as a
good predictor. It is a risk for sure but that really is the only true way in
the end.
Plenty can be gained from just letting the interviewee talk and maybe looking
at some of their code they have done previously while they talk about it.
Whiteboard coding should not apply as it is completely out of element for many
coders.
The type of person they are can't really be detected correctly until they are
in the team and delivering because everyone is selling themselves on an
interview.
------
31reasons
I think companies would be better off hiring people not based on their IQ or
skill level but by hiring people who love what they do, have done side
projects and achieve flow in their work. People who achieve flow in their work
will work harder and are more creative than others because they enjoy the
process of solving problems. So the interview process should be to identify
how often the given candidate achieve Flow (as defined by mihaly
csikszentmihalyi)
[http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.htm...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html)
------
alok-g
>> After two or three years, your ability to perform at Google is completely
unrelated to how you performed when you were in school, because the skills you
required in college are very different. You’re also fundamentally a different
person. You learn and grow, you think about things differently.
While the analysis is correcting some beliefs about interviewing techniques,
do I sense them draw a conclusion again not supported by data? How did they
conclude the lack of correlation is "because" the skills required are
different and people think differently a few years out from college.
------
ArekDymalski
This is great news both for Google and the candidates. Of course as long as
the behavioral indicators for the competencies will be defined right -
according to actual goals and tasks on the job.
------
mossplix
So how useless exactly were they? As long as you are looking for a "right"
answer not a correct one, they are a very good metric for testing problem
solving skills.
~~~
rjd
I got off to a real bad footing in a job interview using a questions like that
once. With a guy looking for a 'right' answer, and it didn't go down well when
I challenged his assumption.
He asked how many plumbers worked in the city, to which I replied you could
check the industry registry for qualified plumbers, you can probably filter
them out by city. There was silence then I had the question clarified to how
many 'plumbing businesses' where there not individual plumbers.
To which I replied you could get the company registrar office but it was
impossible to calculate as so many plumbers work full time while also holding
businesses of there own as free agents. A very unimpressed look came across
the guys face and I was told there is a very simple way to find out and asked
to try again.
I sat in silence for a 30 seconds or so trying to think of something that
would be more thorough than the registry offices, I think offered a few
alternatives like tax department records, government statistics office. All
things I could think of that would keep fine grained data. But I could see the
guy growing impatient with me so I stared at him and asked him what a better
metric was than what I had offered.
After a few moments I was told the correct answer was to check the phone book,
any practicing plumber business would be listed.
Startled but what seemed like a completely faulty answer I pointed out what
seemed obvious to me... not every business needs to have a public listing...
some deal directly as sub contractors ... some could be umbrella companies for
subbies ... again some are free agents... some might use unlisted
cellphones... not everyone is a legal company, not all plumbers where
qualified. It was a terrible way to get a dataset you could rely on.
Angry swept across the guys face and I was told sternly I was wrong the data
was perfectly suitable, onto the next question... which was all down hill from
there as he didn't want to hear my answers, didn't challenge me back, just rip
through the rest.
To this day I laugh when ever I think back to that interview. It was probably
the most uncomfortable interview I've ever been in.
~~~
DanBC
So, is Google admitting the questions are hopeless, or are they saying that
their interviewer's reactions to the answers to those questions are hopeless?
Because fixing interviews is harder than just working out hwat questions to
ask.
~~~
rjd
I dunno about google, but my experience was more copy cat behavior by someone
that didn't get the purpose of it I think... maybe I was to blame as well as I
pushed back expecting to be challenged more.. not just told I was wrong.
It ended up worse then useless for both of us involved.
~~~
coopdog
Dodged a bullet, anyone can see your answers were at least a good as the phone
book one. Nothing worse than a managers who relies on authority to backup
their flawed decisions just to spare their own ego. Sounds like a toxic org
culture
------
ryguytilidie
This always seemed so overhyped to me. I did hundreds of interviews at Google
and I never once asked anyone a question anything like the ones described. It
was generally stuff like "oh hey, you're going to do deep work on our unix
systems? What is the difference between kill and kill -15?" We also didn't
care about GPA. This all seems like super old information if it was ever true
at all.
~~~
iyulaev
_What is the difference between kill and kill -15?_
Well, for one, the second isn't syntactically correct.
I can't decide what's worse, brainteasers or brainless trivia questions.
~~~
spudlyo
Pedantic nonsense. Most of the time when you're using kill you're going be
using the bash shell built-in, where it _is_ syntactically correct.
_kill [-s sigspec | -n signum | -sigspec] [pid | jobspec] ..._
Even so, with /bin/kill -sigspec is still valid and common usage, even if it
is not documented in the manpage.
------
uxwtf
"Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco" Why not Mountain View? At least,
it would be useful for Google... if the big one comes
~~~
brazzy
How's an evacuation plan going to help you with an earthquake?
~~~
6d0debc071
Escaping after the services are all shot to hell?
------
theboss
I'm still a student and like to interview at a lot of places, shop around, and
keep practicing my interviewing skills.
I STILL go to interviews where I am ONLY asked these kinds of questions...It's
embarrassing. If you ask me these questions for a 2 hour long interview then
I'm not going to work for you...it's that simple
------
X4
Why so serious? Isn't hiring about maxing out the potential of a company?
Anyone can help maximing it out. I know for myself that having 'clue' reduces
self-esteem. Which can be balanced by having the right co-workers. End result:
Maxing out the potential.
A(Technical intelligence) + B(Social Intelligence) = (Innovative potential)
~~~
X4
Why does Google want the PERFECT candidate, isn't anything less better? Aren't
they ok, with 90% of the human population?
------
return0
So a lot of "difficult" manager decisions can be equally well solved by the
toss of dice.
------
hernan604
Those type of questions are plain stupid. Wont take anywhere and wont solve
any problems.
------
voltagex_
I had to go look up what quotidian meant - it means everyday.
------
victorlin
Well, at least, they know how stupid it is now.
------
edwardliu
Oh really? what a surprise.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mediasoup – WebRTC video conferencing - simonpure
https://github.com/versatica/mediasoup
======
goroutine
How does mediasoup compare Pion project in terms advantages, performance and
effort to build a simple conference app? Why I choose one over the other?
------
throwawaybbqed
I've looked at WebRTC a few times, and every time I've been overwhelmed by the
complexity of the protocol. I understand video streaming is hampered by codec
patents, etc. but in 2020, the situation seems to be getting better with open
source codecs unencumbered of patents (VP8,VP9, AV1, etc.) Why is the best we
have still WebRTC? Seems it could be simplified as a protocol .. is this
inherently hard or just a result of being designed in a committee?
~~~
algesten
It's way too complicated. I suspect it's some design by committee with large
backer interests interfering.
WebRTC is a collection of underlying protocols, SDP, STUN, DTLS, RTP, SCTP. A
superficial glance it seems to make sense, each of these RFCs provide some
aspect needed in WebRTC.
However. These standards are from a naive happy time when the internet was
open and routable, which means it's only some subset of said standards needed.
The main WebRTC RFC fails at pinning down which, so it's down to the
implementations to find some happy subset that works.
Trying to implement it is so frustrating. At every corner you follow links to
some underlying RFC, start reading and coding only to realize "is this even
used?!"
SDP is maybe the single worst thing in this mess. It's a terrible flat file
description of structured data organized differently depending on "plan-b" or
"unified". It would be super easy to convey what SDP tries to convey in any
purpose built format.
On a conceptual level there are too many abstractions in the API. MediaStream
and RTPTransceiver are my two pet peeves. MediaStream is maybe nice in client
code to group some tracks together into a player, but the abstraction should
stay on that level. RTPTransceiver is just beyond me. Why do I want it? How
does this help?
~~~
Sean-Der
It looks like RIPT[0] is people's answer to WebRTC's complexity.
I personally like WebRTC. Maybe just Stockholm syndrome though :) I see
everyone saying QUIC is the answer, but all the complexity scares me. I
imagine in 5 years everyone will miss how WebRTC is built with small building
blocks.
WebRTC also bridges with a lot existing telephony stuff, which is nice! Since
it talks RTP/SRTP I see a lot of people wiring it up to their older systems
which is kind of cool!
[0] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-rosenbergjennings-
dispatch...](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-rosenbergjennings-dispatch-
ript-00)
------
webel0
Can someone explain how mediasoup differs from the RTCPeerConnection object
(and related events) discussed in this Mozilla webrtc tutorial [0]? Given that
it uses c++ I figure that mediasoup is more than just a wrapper around this?
Any usability or reliability benefits of either?
[0] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/WebRTC_API/...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/WebRTC_API/Signaling_and_video_calling)
~~~
ibc
mediasoup (server side, so the Node + C++ component you mean) does not
implement "RTCPeerConnection". That's just needed for browsers. In mediasoup
we don't use SDP but specific RTP parameters as defined here:
[https://mediasoup.org/documentation/v3/mediasoup/rtp-
paramet...](https://mediasoup.org/documentation/v3/mediasoup/rtp-parameters-
and-capabilities/)
If you want to know why we don't use SDP (as communication means between
client and server) here a good reading: [https://webrtchacks.com/webrtc-sdp-
inaki-baz-castillo/](https://webrtchacks.com/webrtc-sdp-inaki-baz-castillo/)
~~~
webel0
Ah, okay, whenever I think webrtc I assume p2p with no server but I am now
actually reading into what SFU is, etc. Makes sense. Thanks for pointer to
these resources.
------
monkeydust
What kind of hardware would I need to setup this to run a private video chat
server for say 10 users?
~~~
Recursing
What advantages would this offer over jitsi meet?
~~~
kabes
Jitsi meet is a conferencing app. You likely mean jitsi videobridge. That's
the SFU part and comparable to mediasoup.
Mediasoup has a bit more modern codebase and offers a rather low-level
framework to build your own SFU. Whereas Jitsi videobridge is more of a ready-
to-go SFU, but less flexible.
Mediasoup has very good node bindings, which may or may not be an advantage to
you.
They offer similar (good) performance, although Mediasoup has a slight edge
here. They're both very actively being kept up to date with the latest
standards (in contrast with Kurento which is now as good as dead after Twilio
bought the team). This is very important since both the spec and browser
implementations are a fast moving target.
Disadvantage of mediasoup is that it is mainly maintained by just 1 or 2
persons and not yet used as much as Jitsi, so it's a bit of a gamble to start
building your product on top of that.
~~~
ibc
Yep, two active developers but being just a set of libraries it's good enough.
We also get nice contributions (C++ fixes and optimizations) via PR in GitHub.
And we use mediasoup in different commercial products.
------
andrethegiant
You can use WebRTC for emitting raw data p2p, not just audio/video streams,
right? Or would websockets be preferred if you wanted to, say, broadcast JSON
objects to whoever was listening?
~~~
ibc
Yes, you can use WebRTC DataChannels for sending custom text/binary data on
top of a ICE+DTLS connection. BTW mediasoup supports DataChannels.
Any question or comment about mediasoup?
~~~
andrethegiant
What advantages does sending data over WebRTC have over sending data over
websockets?
~~~
ibc
DataChannels are transmitted over the same UDP/ICE "connection" that is used
to transmit audio and video packets. So if you plan to send real-time data
(for example: real-time subtitles, metadata related to the current video
position, etc) by sending such a data over DataChannel it will reach the
remote without delay over the audio/video. If you use WebSocket to transmit
the data, there may desynchronization between audio/video and data because
they use a different network path.
------
telesilla
The demo is nice and clean. How does this compare to Kurento, or Janus?
Edit : I see Kurento is now assumed dead thanks to Twilio buying them, and I
understand Janus doesn't provide any client libraries.
~~~
micaelgallego
Kurento is not dead. New releases are published from time to time. And its
companion project OpenVidu provides a lot of features. Mediasoup and Janus are
also really good projects.
Disclaimer: I'm OpenVidu project lead.
~~~
stragies
Is there a specific reason hindering you from publishing a Debian package, or
becoming/appointing a Debian packager, so that your product is available to
anyone restricted to official package Debian sources?
~~~
navanchauhan
Anyone can be a Debian package manager and publish their package in their PPA
repository, mediasoup is a Node.js library, think of it as another NPM
dependency for your project
------
tomasyany
Has anybody compared MediaSoup with Kurento?
[https://www.kurento.org/](https://www.kurento.org/)
~~~
kabes
The team behind kurento got hired by twilio some years ago. Now it's basically
dead with some very minimal maintenance being done.
~~~
tomasyany
I was asking about differences in the features they support, and results in
real life experiences.
Also, I don't agree with Kurento being dead (off topic, but hey). It is still
being maintained and works perfectly well for modern applications.
------
Snelius
It's a best we have as wrtc SFU today. Thank you guys.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
EU Copyright (ACTA2) directive passes – 348 votes to 274 - milo_im
https://twitter.com/MehreenKhn/status/1110509604176384000
======
phoe-krk
Already discussed at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19490869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19490869)
------
scotty79
I would really like to see now all of the major companies block Europe.
Youtube, twitter, facebook, google. Just a total immediate blackout. I'm an
European with self defeating tendencies.
~~~
flexie
Let them block the European market for a few hours or days and nothing will
happen, except that they lose advertisement revenue. Let them block for
months, and European competitors will emerge.
But why on Earth would they do that? And why should they?
~~~
scotty79
I think if you blocked Facebook, you'd have million people in Brussels
tommorow making democracy very personal.
------
amyjess
This makes me feel much better about the Brexit situation in the UK. A hard
Brexit with no deal is now the best option.
~~~
grenoire
I'm not sure if the British internet is any better...
[https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/13/17349910/uk-newsstands-
po...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/13/17349910/uk-newsstands-porn-pass-
age-verification-digital-economy-act-2017)
------
philpem
26 March 2019, the Day the Internet Died.
~~~
milo_im
I hope you aren't right ...
~~~
philpem
So do I.
------
mreyman
Suing 10year old kinds singing songs on Youtube in 3, 2, 1...
------
tomtompl
Hope Brexit comes quickly
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Xilinx rolls out easier-to-use free FPGA programming tools - gballan
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/01/xilinx_vitis_fpga_launch/
======
mips_avatar
I remember reading Bunny Huang's book "hacking the xbox" and feeling so
empowered to build projects with FGPAs. So I took two semesters of Verilog in
University. However I have never been able to translate that knowledge into
anything remotely useful.
------
rowanG077
TBH proprietary tooling this is just not the way to go. The FPGA space needs
solution which works across FPGAs of different vendors.
Besides there are way better alternatives to VHDL and Verilog that I feel High
level synthesis is kind of dead.
~~~
madez
Which better alternatives to VHDL and Verilog do you mean?
~~~
rowanG077
Clash mainly. I have also heard amazing things about bluespec but I have never
used it myself.
~~~
darsnack
I just took a look at clash. HDL describes state in a very real way. Trying to
represent stateful hardware using a functional language is just too
complicated. I hate these toy examples of “look how easy an FIR filter is.” An
FIR filter isn’t hard to write in Verilog to begin with. The real headache of
Verilog is generate statements and multidimensional array indexing. And both
of those problems are readily solved by System Verilog, System C, or any of
the myriad of Verilog generators.
~~~
rowanG077
Your comment about clash and functional languages not handling state correctly
are shortsighted. I have implemented real systems using Clash. The usability
is simply leaps and bounds ahead of stuff like System Verilog and System C.
The real headache of Verilog and the like is that it has little ability to
abstract making you think that the real problem is stuff like multidimensional
array indexing.
I'm not sure what you expect on a front page of a technology they have to show
really simple toy examples and can't really dive in deeper. It's a front
page... You can find myriad of more involved stuff if you would have googled
for 5 seconds. For instance this [https://clash-lang.org/blog/0001-matrix-
multiplication/](https://clash-lang.org/blog/0001-matrix-multiplication/).
~~~
darsnack
Just to be clear, I’m not trying to put down Clash. I disagree with your
statement about it being an alternative to Verilog or VHDL. It’s like saying
Java is dead because Scala exists.
~~~
rowanG077
Java and Scala are at about the same level of what you can do with both. Clash
isn't really at the same level as VHDL or Verilog. You are right that it still
compiles down to VHDL or Verilog but that doesn't mean anything. Haskell also
compiles down to machine code. Does that mean you might as well write machine
code? Of course not.
What's your point that there are other languages that compile down to Verilog?
I have tried some of them and most of them try to shoehorn a software language
into digital design which doesn't fit.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Valid bank details in any currency with bankdeets - 321k
https://github.com/321k/bankdeets
======
SmokeyFlake
Can i style the form?
~~~
321k
Coming with the next update!
------
SmokeyFlake
Great stuff.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Explorers find disease-cursed City of the Monkey God - earthly10x
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/world/explorers+find+disease+cursed+city+monkey+nearly+lose+their+faces/12690846/story.html
======
marchenko
Now this is how you write a headline. A bit more on the disease here:
[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151019-leishmania...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151019-leishmaniasis-
lost-city-Honduras-Mosquitia-parasitic-disease/) I'm actually a bit surprised
that they did not suspect leishmaniasis earlier; it's not an unusual
affliction for Mesosamerican deep jungle regions.
~~~
sebcat
I read:
"Preston told CBS News that months after leaving the jungle, he noticed a bug
bite that simply wouldn’t go away. And so did half his team members.
Eventually, the National Institutes of Health diagnosed them with
Leishmaniasis — a rare parasitic disease — and the team was forced to undergo
treatment"
So I looked at wikipedia, and the article [1] there says:
"About 12 million people are currently infected in some 98 countries. About 2
million new cases and between 20 and 50 thousand deaths occur each year. About
200 million people in Asia, Africa, South and Central America, and southern
Europe live in areas where the disease is common."
Not unusual indeed.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leishmaniasis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leishmaniasis)
~~~
paulddraper
To quote your link
> Leishmaniasis is mostly a disease of the developing world, and is _rarely
> known_ in the developed world outside a small number of cases
So, not rare for where they visited, but rare for where they live (and where
the diagnosis happened).
------
yomly
An aside, but reading the accounts of the medical treatment the explorers had
to endure after is a reminder of how ineffective modern medicine is, or at
least how much further we have yet to go:
They literally were taking poison and hoping that they would outlive the
parasite under those conditions. In the case where a parasite might be hiding
anywhere in your body this is probably still the only thing you can really
hope to do, but it feels like trying to burn down your house to get rid of a
rat infestation.
~~~
projektfu
The more something is like ourselves, the harder it is to attack it with
chemicals. Our cells are very similar in nature to a lot of protozoan
parasites, so the drugs that may treat them are pretty toxic to ourselves.
Bacteria and fungi are much less like our cells, and they have a lot of unique
features such as peptidoglycan or ergosterol in the cell wall, therefore they
can be attacked with chemicals that are less toxic. Animals, such as insects
and nematodes, that have diverged significantly away from our common origin,
have evolved new features that we do not share, and we can attack those. Some
organisms of interest to (veterinary) medicine, such as _Leishmania_ and
_Pythium_ , are very difficult to treat.
~~~
valarauca1
This is also why Cancer is very difficult to treat. Because it is your cells.
Chemo is poison that effects cancer cells slightly more severely then healthy
cells.
------
camperman
In case anyone wondered (because the article only mentions it obliquely) the
city is in Honduras.
------
johnhenry
It's worth noting that the full headline reads: "Explorers find disease-cursed
City of the Monkey God and nearly lose their faces to flesh-eating parasite"
------
omgam
As a layman, I'm not clear on why we don't treat such sites like alien worlds
and come prepared with environmental suits for the jungle, special habitats
and vehicles, etc.
The article says the explorers don't believe it's practical to make the
journey - but aren't they operating from a paradigm which is on a continuum
from weekend camping trips? It seems past time to treat Earth's inhospitable
zones with an eye towards the difficulties and solutions of space exploration.
~~~
MaulingMonkey
> As a layman, I'm not clear on why we don't treat such sites like alien
> worlds and come prepared with environmental suits for the jungle, special
> habitats and vehicles, etc.
"Budget."
(or, at least, this is what I imagine the answer is.)
> It seems past time to treat Earth's inhospitable zones with an eye towards
> the difficulties and solutions of space exploration.
Apollo had some major issues with moon dust and such - maintaining a sterile
environment is a different, if overlapping skillset with maintaining an
environment within a vacuum.
That said, there's all the NBC preparedness of the military, and e.g. the
medical response to outbreaks and quarantines - even if "don't enter the
quarantined area" is rule 1.
But hey, maybe Robots could be an option at some point. Still - do you fund
the expedition that requires expensive, custom, bespoke explorer-bots (because
there hasn't been much of a market for those for mass production to drive down
costs or standardize things) or do you fund the expedition where you can send
a few students for school credit?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Building a higher-level query API: the right way to use Django's ORM - j4mie
http://dabapps.com/blog/higher-level-query-api-django-orm/
======
Aramgutang
The main point raised by the article is spot-on, and I'm ashamed to say that I
had never recognised it as an issue before reading it. It applies even more
strongly for more complex lookups (possibly involving Q objects), which I've
always felt would find a better home in models.py than in views.py. And I too
cringe every time I come across the django.db.models.manager source code.
Some thoughts:
The approach goes slightly against the commandment of "there should just be
one way of doing it". It's probably best to apply it sparingly, only where
there are very clear readability and/or DRYness improvements to be had.
The `PassThroughManager.for_queryset_class(TodoQuerySet)()` bit is a bit
intimidating, especially to someone not familiar with django-model-utils. I'd
probably take the time to write a `manager_with_queryset(queryset,
manager=models.Manager)` function to make things more readable.
When you're trying to convince someone that the way they currently code isn't
optimal, it really helps if the code you use to illustrate the current way
looks like something your reader is likely to write. The strangely formatted
filter chain at the start is thus really off-putting. Instead of adding three
disclaimers asking the reader not to focus on the implementation details, why
not just write it the way most people would:
todos = Todo.objects.filter(
owner=request.user,
is_done=False,
priority=1,
)
No need to make the current way of doing things seem unnecessarily convoluted,
the point you're making still stands. Though I'll admit that when you're
forced to throw an .exclude() into the chain, it starts looking a lot like
your example.
~~~
randlet
Agreed. I found the contrived chained filters at the beginning of the article
off putting but the rest of the article was quite interesting.
~~~
richardlblair
I completely agree, but I think this was author's way of demonstrating how
ugly a call to the ORM can get. With his very simple to-do list app I think
this was the easiest way for him to do that.
In real life you would obviously have all your filter in one call (most of the
time), then perhaps .values call with an .annotation call in there too.
------
mitechie
I can't agree more. Always wrap your ORM with your own logic that makes sense
to you and your application. You'll find code reuse will go way up,
readability will go way up, testing is easier. You can actually test the model
without bootstrapping the whole app. I've been preaching this in my SqlAlchemy
talks and tutorials for years.
~~~
mgw
For our project I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Could you maybe
elaborate on how you did this with SqlAlchemy and how you write your tests
against the new model? Do you now of any more in-depth articles on the
subject?
This really seems to hit a sweet spot of moving business logic into the model
and I would love to use this in some form.
------
jpwagner
Wait, what's wrong with:
class Todo(models.Model):
content = models.CharField(max_length=100)
# other fields go here..
@classmethod
def incomplete(cls):
return cls.objects.filter(is_done=False)
@classmethod
def high_priority(cls):
return cls.objects.filter(priority=1)
~~~
lojack
There's a couple reasons that's not ideal.
The big one is that you'd lose filter chaining. With your example you couldn't
do
Todo.objects.high_priority().incomplete()
The other issue is a semantic one. In your example you could do:
Todo.objects.all()[0].incomplete()
which will return a QuerySet of _all_ incomplete Todo items. This, at least to
me, doesn't make sense.
The last reason is that by using a Manager you are encapsulating this filter
data. If you later decide that you want to create a new model with similar
types of filters, then you'd have to rewrite these methods. With a Manager,
both models can simply use the same manager.
~~~
jpwagner
No, I believe you've read the code above incorrectly. This would be, for
example:
Todo.high_priority().all()
and would allow, for example:
Todo.high_priority().filter(id__gte=1)
I haven't tested chaining these, but this might work:
Todo.high_priority().incomplete().filter(id__gte=1)
~~~
j4mie
Your last example wouldn't work. Todo.high_priority() returns a plain
QuerySet, which won't have your "incomplete" method (as that's defined on the
Model class in your example).
------
caioariede
For simple approaches you can also bitwise through Q objects:
>>> from todo.models import Todo
>>>
>>> Todo.objects.incomplete()
[<Todo: 2>, <Todo: 3>, <Todo: 4>]
>>>
>>> Todo.objects.high_priority()
[<Todo: 1>, <Todo: 2>]
>>>
>>> Todo.objects.incomplete() & Todo.objects.high_priority()
[<Todo: 2>]
------
zacharyvoase
> Personally, I'm not completely convinced by the decorator-based idea. It
> obscures the details slightly, and feels a little "hacky".
The purpose of the decorator is, indeed, to obscure the implementation details
in favour of more semantic code. But then again we're using an ORM which makes
heavy use of metaprogramming to obscure the details of the database layer from
us; I don't see how this is a bad thing.
~~~
j4mie
Yep, and my criticism of your suggested approach wasn't intended to be
particularly strong by any means. I could definitely be sold on the idea. It
just felt like a workaround to a problem that could probably be solved in a
nicer way.
I think my main objection is that these query methods _should_ conceptually be
on the QuerySet, and so defining them on the Manager (the "wrong place") and
magically copying them to the QuerySet (the "right place") feels somehow worse
than the opposite.
I appreciate that you raised the discussion on the mailing list, as it
highlights the fact that this is a common problem in big Django codebases.
Even pulling something like PassThroughManager into core might work (perhaps
with a nicer "manager_with_queryset" API, as suggested by Aramgutang).
~~~
zacharyvoase
But my problem is that most people wouldn't even think of subclassing
QuerySet.
When we write methods that operate on collections of things, we typically use
@classmethod. Without @classmethod, we'd have to write a custom metaclass (and
instruct our class to use that) if we wanted even a single class method on a
class. Multiple inheritance would break (or at least be difficult to reason
about) when classes defined class methods, because there would have to be both
an instance method resolution order and a class MRO. Fortunately Python's
built-in `type` provides the descriptor protocol, which allows us to have
class methods and instance methods and properties and all these other nice
things without having to metaprogram or hack the interpreter.
All I'm asking for is a similar (if less ornate) interface for Django models,
wherein the methods that operate on collections of things can be defined
alongside the methods that operate on individual things, without requiring a
knowledge of Manager/QuerySet internals.
~~~
simonw
A few years ago I was experimenting with exactly this problem, and I came up
with an API that worked using an inner class on the model. I can't find the
code now, but from memory it looked something like this:
class BlogEntry(models.Model, MagicManagerMixin):
title = models.CharField(max_length = 128)
is_published = models.BooleanField(default = False)
class QuerySet(models.QuerySet):
def published(self):
return self.filter(is_published = True)
entries = BlogEntry.objects.published()
Where MagicManagerMixin was some scary code that made sure the objects Manager
would use the queryset subclass.
------
pandyashreyas1
Momentarily arguments sounds right(perhaps because it's intellectually
appetizing) but I think we are forgetting basic philosophy of every layered
architecture that "lower layer provides generic api to its higher layer"
allowing higher layer to customize its every possible needs using this api.
Django ORM does exactly same thing.
author seemed to be concerned about these issues:
1\. embedding businnes logic in views:
making query isn't business logic, business logic is in your database
constraints or sometimes if db constraints are not enough then by overriding
save() and validate(). queries belong in views because all we are suppossed to
do in views is mearly fetch data from a data structure(already modeled
according to biz. logic) and representing it as we see fit(thus the name
views). theoretically this representations(views) could be of infinite types
and changes over time so queries would change for every representation and
over time but we can't go about implementing all possibilities in models. And
this is what's antipattern because we are talking abaout putting views in
models(partially though).
2\. code reusability:
agreed, some queries could be repeted many a times and if complicated enough
may clutter the code. I recommend putting querries into functions and put the
functions in views or any similar aproach(I will think of one or you figure
out one and share) but they just dont belong in models. although I believe
full reusabilty can be achieved but in some cases if we can't- well we are
choosing 'division of functionality' over 'reusability'.
and most important of all if django's documentaion does not suggest inherting
for eg. queryset class then we shouldn't (even if you yourself coded the
django framework) because these implementation details are supposed to be
concealed and hence they are free to change it in future versions making our
code 'upgrade-ugly'(if that's the right term)
------
tocomment
I see what he's trying to do but this just seems like a ton of extra
"boilerplate" code when you're trying to make an app.
I'd rather spend extra time tracking down where I've used the is_done field if
I later change it to a status, than spend all this time writing a manager for
every query I do. Unit tests help with catching it if you've missed somewhere.
On the other hand, if you have an extremely complicated query, then this might
make sense. Maybe he chose that example for illustrative purposes but it's not
really the kind of thing he's recommending you use this for?
~~~
jonknee
It's not much overhead and considering the savings in views the LOC will
probably be equal or less. It doesn't make sense for every model or attribute,
but if you find yourself doing the same types of queries multiple times, this
can be a big savings.
------
DodgyEggplant
Correct. Another benefit: easier to implement cache between the view and the
DB down the road.
------
marcofucci
I'm a freelancer and I've been using this approach since ever. I wish more
developers did too because it's really frustrating when they don't and you
need to maintain their code.
------
JoshMock
Lately I've been re-discovering the value of the ORM and putting as much
business logic on your models as possible. This, after spending way too long
writing out lots of query logic in views instead. It's amazing how you can
many times reduce complexity from 10-20 lines to 2-3 lines, and gain
reusability, just by putting business logic where it belonged in the first
place.
~~~
pestaa
> putting business logic where it belonged in the first place
I've been thinking a lot about where to put business logic, and I think the
models are the closest, but not the best place for them.
A significant portion of this logic for me affects more than one model, and
while you could solve this by using public interfaces, you still need to put
in _any_ of the models, which seems like a suboptimal approach.
The ORM is already responsible for several layers, and custom business logic
is not relevant there imho.
Still puzzled how to organize my code. MVC has started to fall apart for me.
Just my two cents.
------
ecesena
A bit OT. In Yii framework (php) these are called "scopes" and there is a nice
abstraction to define non-parametric scopes via arrays.
[http://www.yiiframework.com/doc/guide/1.1/en/database.ar#nam...](http://www.yiiframework.com/doc/guide/1.1/en/database.ar#named-
scopes)
------
richardlblair
This article is great and provides some awesome insight from someone who
clearly has been down this road before. It couldn't have come at a better time
for me. I was just about to implement my own manager today, but I'll take this
much cleaner approach.
Thanks!
------
2mur
Spot on. Never (okay very rarely) do business logic in your views. Just don't.
Model methods for row-level logic, managers for table-level logic. It's easier
to test, it's easier to abstract and it's easier to change your views later.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are some developer tools worth paying for? - shubhamjain
Have you or your company purchased any developer tool(s) that immensely helped in your work?
======
codesci
Immensely helped is a high bar, but what comes to mind is JRebel that I found
improved productivity and paid for itself quickly.
------
leeoniya
Affinity Designer, Sublime Text, Aba Search/Replace & Power Grep, Beyond
Compare
------
smt88
Anything JetBrains makes
------
GrumpyNl
start with phpStorm
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The UK now has the highest health worker deaths in Europe - open-source-ux
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/05/04/britain-on-track-for-highest-health-worker-deaths-in-europe/
======
tomtompl
so, clapping not working?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ASK NH: how to build GUI in python. - orky7
i want to know how to build GUI in python, i have came across lots of thing but which one will be relatively easy to learn..
======
NewHighScore
Maybe this will help: <http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=python+gui>
I have heard that this book is good, but I haven't read it yet.
[http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-GUI-Programming-Python-
ebook/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-GUI-Programming-Python-
ebook/dp/B000XPNUKO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=books&qid=1295189013&sr=8-2)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Archive.org: Play Castle Wolfenstein in your browser - VonGuard
https://archive.org/stream/Castle_Wolfenstein_1981_Muse/Castle_Wolfenstein_1981_Muse.do?module=apple2c&scale=2
======
liebfraumilch
docs:
[http://www.oldskool.org/pc/BCW/BeyondCastleWolfenstein.txt](http://www.oldskool.org/pc/BCW/BeyondCastleWolfenstein.txt)
------
sikhnerd
This is cool, too bad it crashes so much. Once this is better I think there is
a lot of cool software they can put up.
------
Pinatubo
Am I the only one that can't find the keyboard commands?
~~~
InclinedPlane
See my other comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6671909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6671909)
------
D9u
The key bindings for movement are:
Left = a
Right = d
Up = w
Down = x
Stop = s
I've been unable to figure out how to fire weapon.
The Enter key gives ammo summary.
~~~
InclinedPlane
The controls are based around using dual joysticks. With a keyboard there are
8 directions of motion centered around the S key, and 8 directions of pointing
your gun centered around the L key. Pressing L fires the gun.
Check out the docs that liebfraumilch linked to in another reply:
[http://www.oldskool.org/pc/BCW/BeyondCastleWolfenstein.txt](http://www.oldskool.org/pc/BCW/BeyondCastleWolfenstein.txt)
~~~
sehugg
For some reason the ; key doesn't work to point the gun right.
Also you gotta have sound -- the whole point of Wolfenstein is the screaming
in German. You'd think after 15 years web standards would ... never mind.
~~~
D9u
20 years ago I was playing Castle Wolfenstein 3D on a 486 DX2 66, and the game
was not like this one at all.
Back then the thought of playing over a wide area network was unthinkable, now
it's expected... Amazing how far things _have_ come since then.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Packt Publishing ebooks free today with DOTDEBOOKFREE promo code - eik3_de
http://www.packtpub.com/<p>no credit card required, mailinator emails happily accepted :><p><pre><code> DOTDEBOOKFREE</code></pre>
======
ErolStaveley
Today, one of our discount codes escaped into the wild! If you were lucky
enough to download a free ebook today we hope you enjoy it - we'd also like to
thank the HN community in particular for highlighting some legitimate issues
on our end. We'll definitely be looking into addressing these. However,
nothing that good can last for ever, and the discount code itself should no
longer be active.
We're happy to talk to any of our authors about the impact this might have had
on individual titles on a case by case basis - you should always feel free to
get in touch with your primary editorial contact even after publication
(alternatively, you can email me directly regarding this particular discount
at erols@packtpub.com). We're here to help and support you not only through
the publication process, but also beyond.
We apologize for any inconvenience caused to customers who tried using a code
that we emailed out directly. Please contact us at customercare@packtpub.com
if you have experienced any problems as a result.
------
gionn
For lazy, to ease copy-paste:
DOTDEBOOKFREE
:>
------
prattbhatt
Is it still working for anyone? I see "Sorry, that promotion code is no longer
valid".
~~~
hmhrex
Me too... That really sucks.
------
eik3_de
Any recommendations for well-written books?
~~~
hackerboos
[http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st?keywords=packt+publishing&...](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st?keywords=packt+publishing&qid=1393411249&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Apackt+publishing&sort=reviewrank_authority)
I got "Building Machine Learning Systems with Python".
~~~
JPKab
Great book. I'm one of the suckers who paid for it months ago.
------
nekgrim
Can I create a 'real' account and centralize all my ebooks, or do I need to
create one account per ebook?
~~~
eik3_de
one discout per account
~~~
nekgrim
Thanks
------
angry_octet
It's a pity they don't have akamai/cloudfront or something, it seems they are
getting crushed.
So whomever is running 27 simultaneous downloads, please stop. You'll never
read all those books.
~~~
wut42
You're right, I'll never read them. However I'm collecting a shitload of pdfs,
I convert them to HTML, put them in an ElasticSearch database, so I can search
their content when I need it.
It's more like a complementary documentation database.
~~~
arafalov
Sounds like too many steps. Why not use ePub directly. It's just a Zip with
funny HTML inside. Index that and you may even get page numbers. Contact me if
interested in collaborating (it's one of my todo projects).
------
Pitarou
"Down for maintenance."
I guess it's the Hacker News effect.
~~~
eik3_de
the Varnish "Guru Meditation"[1] page never fails to give me a little smile,
reducing the anger about unavailable pages
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_Meditation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_Meditation)
~~~
Pitarou
I wondered about that. I thought "Guru Meditation" was an AmigaOS only thing.
------
rashthedude
Adding the promo code in the Checkout section doesn't trigger or reset the
price and it's still asking me to continue checking out using either credit or
paypal. What am I doing wrong here?
~~~
endijs
Try to add only one book. That way it works for me.
------
thehodge
the search functionality on the site is really inaccurate, I searched for ruby
and the first book recommended is Raspberry Pi Media Centre, nothing on the
first two pages had ruby in the title.
~~~
arafalov
Yeah, I find it funny given that they published like 10 books on Solr and
Elastic Search combined. I guess they don't have time to eat their own
dogfood. The problem with breadth publishing approach!
------
imwhimsical
Hi, How does this work? I added a few ebooks to my cart and tried to use the
promo code, but it still doesn't show any change.
__EDIT __— Worked like a charm. Thanks much!
~~~
eik3_de
add one to cart, apply promo, enter bogus data, checkout. repeat.
~~~
kelmop
script anyone?! :D
~~~
herokusaki
Why not torrent them instead? I mean it: I assume that collecting bogus data
doesn't do them any good and torrenting would save the publisher some server
load. A script that buys every book, on the other hand, doesn't even
contribute to popularity statistics.
~~~
muyuu
I'm just going to go ahead and get just 1 the legit way. However I wish they
made some sort of volume discount that wouldn't mean paying £300+ for a 10-15
book collection.
Honestly most of these books are on topics that would make them obsolete quite
soon. The real practical use for these is as references across several topics.
I understand it's hard to monetise that kind of thing though.
------
smoyer
It looks like you can get a second e-book for free if you allow them to send
seven days worth of daily deals (I unsubscribed from everything before
noticing the message).
~~~
slimbods
Not sure if they've just changed it, but the offer for the mailing list is now
50% off your next book. Or is that a different offer?
------
u02sgb
Worked for me too, don't even need Mailinator (as you don't need to pickup the
email). Address with randomly chosen Post (zip) code.
------
cotsog
Clickable: [http://www.packtpub.com](http://www.packtpub.com)
------
daw___
No email confirmation and plain text captcha. They got to be kidding.
~~~
eik3_de
they don't even check if the email _looks_ right. abc@abc.invalid works..
------
bcraun
Sadly, the code is, evidently, no longer valid.
------
veerbahadur
It really worked
~~~
rashthedude
at what point do I see the deductio? I have entered the promo code, checked
out and hesitant now to enter my credit details.
~~~
morituri
If you do it right (i.e, just have one book in the cart), the button should
say Check Out For Free
~~~
rashthedude
oh ok, so it's restricted to only 1 book?
~~~
morituri
One free ebook per account, apparently
------
hmhrex
DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE...
great.
------
pranavkpr
Damn, now getting a status 503.
------
obiobi
aaaand.. the site is down for maintenance.
got a few books though.
------
TeamMCS
Cheers mate. great stuff
------
djeps
Now promo code invalid
------
joniels
Thanks!
------
inkongruent
thx
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unfollowing - nicksergeant
https://unfollowing.net/
======
tectonic
I wouldn't use this without knowing what it's going to do.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Macromedia Flash – A New Hope for Web Applications (2002) [pdf] - MrBra
http://www.uie.com/publications/whitepapers/FlashApplications.pdf
======
ThePhysicist
I still remember playing with one of the first versions of Macromedia Flash as
an intern at an IT company during high school. The "hot thing" back then that
people mostly used Flash for was to realize cool "intro" sequences for their
website. As an example, here's the intro that I made for my company (courtesy
of the Wayback machine):
[https://web.archive.org/web/20030605160730/http://kimweb.de/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20030605160730/http://kimweb.de/flashframe.htm)
Everything in Flash was pretty limited back then, for example Actionscript
didn't even have sine and cosine functions! I remember that for another
project of mine I ended up re-implementing these functions using a Taylor
series approximation, which was pretty wild but worked.
Today it seems that Flash gets a lot of hate and ridicule by the IT community,
but honestly back in 2001 it was a huge deal and allowed you to do thing on
the Web that were completely impossible using HTML/CSS (Java applets were an
alternative but much clunkier and harder to create). One example of this was a
small thing that I built which would allow you to specify some text as a
parameter and then would let this text "fly in" using user-defined animation
sequences. For example, you could have the letters "fly in" from above or
perform some wave-like dance. Creating these animations could be done by
defining a sub-tween (I might misremember the name for this) for each letter,
which would take the letter value and position and perform the rendering,
which was quite flexible and allowed for object-oriented use of animation
sequences. So, even back then Flash was a pretty decent and versatile tool and
probably had a large influence on later technologies like HTML5.
~~~
kaoD
To be fair those things you couldn't do in the web, like intros and text fly-
ins, were really obnoxious. That's what got Flash a lot of hate (and rightly
so).
What made Flash great were games, video, real-time communication (e.g. web
chats) and cartoons. Flash was great as its own medium, even if embedded in
the web (not _replacing_ it).
Shoehorning Flash into the web medium was a mistake, just as obnoxious as now
is hijacking the scroll or adding thousands of fade-ins in HTML5 (which
fortunately as a fad seems to be dying).
~~~
fenomas
People forget though, web designers didn't start using Flash to replace the
web for kicks - HTML sucked pretty hard as a visual medium in those days. Just
getting a page to lay out similarly across NS/IE/mac/PC was a serious
challenge, let alone getting the text to show up at the same size or in the
same font, or scripts to run the same way, or having any kind of
interactivity.
Obviously HTML has always been the best medium for marked-up text, but for
pages whose value came from interactivity or design, Flash was simply a better
medium for a long time - its entire heyday plus 1-2 years beyond, IMO.
~~~
arbitrage
> Just getting a page to lay out similarly across NS/IE/mac/PC was a serious
> challenge, let alone getting the text to show up at the same size or in the
> same font, or scripts to run the same way, or having any kind of
> interactivity.
Hardly the fault of HTML, a layout markup language. Put the blame where it's
due, on a non-cooperative, or rather openly combative, market place.
~~~
fenomas
> Put the blame..
I was just trying to deflect the blame from Flash. ;)
But yeah, HTML's woes were due to browsers not cooperating, but then until
their lunch was getting eaten I don't suppose they had any incentive to. To
me, the Story of the Open Web is one that validates both standardization and
proprietary innovation, in that sense.
------
michaelolenick
I was in the middle of this way back when. Software I created (well, I
prototyped and hired somebody else to create), won the very first Macromedia
Rich Internet Application. It created name badges from a Flash app.
For those who don't remember -- and judging by the comments I think that'd be
many -- there was no AJAX back then, and when I first saw AJAX I remember
thinking that's the end of Flash.
It wasn't a love of Flash technology but a love of stateless UI that inspired
our line of thinking. Stateless UI was possible with Java, and I first wrote
the program that went on to win the award in Java, but Java looked even
clunkier than Flash and ran worse. Flash looked nice, ran well, and was easy
to install and maintain (back then it was already installed and enabled in all
browsers).
Now I have lots of grey in my beard and have been working mainly on mobile
tech lately. But those days -- not long before this PDF came out -- were great
fun. We knew the web had to evolve and saw this type of user experience, if
not this specific implementation, as the future. Today, that's AJAX and mobile
apps. But Flash was a necessary stepping stone.
------
superasn
A lot of people hate anything Flash but Adobe Flex was a really great tool to
create web apps at one time (before the spark components). It introduced a lot
of cool things for making web apps like two way data-bindings, asynchronous
requests, event listeners at core of everything, MXML components with
repeaters, etc - many of these things that AngularJS does now with Javascript.
If their browser plugin wasn't so buggy and non-standard it could have been a
really good alternative.
------
leejoramo
If Flash had been open source early on it might have succeeded and become a
core web technology. Microsoft, Apple and Google would have been in charge
making the runtime secure and high performing.
Macromedia/Adobe would have continued to be in the position of providing the
leading development tools.
The web would be very different. I actually think that we are lucky this did
not happen. I find our current web technologies to be a much better solution
over all.
~~~
factotvm
> I find our current web technologies to be a much better solution over all.
Really? It what sense? I just now see TypeScript coming close to parity with
what ActionScript provided several years ago--and the tooling is nowhere near
there (though I have not used Visual Studio). I feel like our current web
technologies are more the VHS to Flash's Betamax.
------
planetjones
I think the article completely missed the trend towards mobile devices. Also
it fails to take into account the propietary nature of Flash and the fact it's
look and feel doesn't fit the 'web experience' (users like to copy and paste
text, etc. and don't want the UX to be different on each site). Oh dear. Looks
like UIE are still in business though - you can't predict every trend.
I remember an investment bank in London building their whole trading platform
in Adobe Flex. They really thought this was the future and spent literally
millions on it. I am not sure what's happening now, but good luck resourcing
and maintaining that project. I imagine someone has just asked for a whole lot
of cash to rewrite in HTML5, because you know standards, multi-device
compatibility, etc. are important!
~~~
jaimex2
What are you on about, HTML5? This was written in 2002, when a Nokia 3210 was
bleeding edge, AJAX wasn't a thing and everything was written in PHP and JAVA
Applets.
~~~
planetjones
The second paragraph wasn't dated - that was about 2009 when my friend was
trying to encourage me to apply to join this fledgling Flex team - so even
after 2002 people were still following the Flash / Flex mantra.
~~~
bshimmin
I'd say that in 2008-2009, Flex, for that sort of application, wasn't
necessarily a bad bet. Most people date Flash's demise to the start of the
mainstream smartphone movement, but the first iPhone was only released in
mid-2007 - obviously it had no Flash support, but it notably didn't have a lot
of other things too (like copy and paste!), so it wasn't immediately obvious
that it would never get Flash; and the Android devices that followed the
iPhone _did_ support Flash (it was even touted as a differentiator from iOS
devices), albeit poorly.
Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash" piece was published in 2010 and that probably
did hammer a few nails in the Flash coffin, at least in terms of public
awareness. I think if you were betting big - millions of pounds big - in
mid-2010 on Flash, you could be accused of making a silly mistake. Before
that, I think it's more forgivable.
Flex was always bunk, if you ask me, but it did some of the same things that
people like about Angular, with the addition of a bunch of (fairly poor) UI
components. In theory you could build business-oriented / data-driven
applications with it quite easily, so finance was very much its intended
audience.
~~~
robmcm
There is a tendency to group all flash content together, if you break it out
into say: Websites (typically micro sights) Banner adverts Creative websites
Games Video players Audio players Applications Desktop AIR applications Mobile
AIR applications Web site components
Each use case has a date when they became a bad bet, some never were. Even
today web components (shims/polly fills) are written in flash and are
acceptable.
------
thetannedman
When I first started tinkering with algorithmic art, Java applets and Director
was fast and spiffy but not many people installed the runtime and Shockwave.
DHTML was a headache due to browser compatibility. C/C++ with OpenGL were
blazing fast but had no web presence (and was really really hard to learn at
the time). Flash had the least amount of barriers to get me going and
publishing.
I rode the flash train for a while and have since moved on. The awesome thing
about flash was knowing that the stuff I learned is completely applicable to
any programming language I chose to focus on.
------
byron_fast
Sigh. Look how sideways technology moves.
------
werber
I got a little distracted and transported back to early 2000's and felt a
strong urge to switch to this magic technology. So glad it happened, so glad
it's gone.
------
sirwitti
I totally like the fact that this is published as Pdf :)
------
thinkindie
UIE website dates back to 2002 too
------
milkers
Hope is like a bread for the poor.
~~~
buraksarica
off-topic, There is a word-by-word translation of this phrase in Turkish.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mitt Romney's Tax Plan is Still A Mathematical Failure - mattobrien
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/mitt-romneys-tax-plan-is-still-a-mathematical-failure/255952/
======
bstewartnyc
Math seems to work out real well for me...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SATA controller corrupts data, writes secondary GPT in the center of the drive - mrb
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=ru&sl=ru&tl=en&prev=_dd&u=http://avryabov.livejournal.com/5056.html
======
andor
I recently discovered that my Sharkoon USB to SATA dock (old version, USB2)
corrupts data. It happens under both Linux and Windows and seems to only
depend on the disk used. All the newer HDDs I tried are affected. For all test
files larger than 256 MiB (or less, don't remember exactly) the checksums were
off.
Disk corruption can be hard to detect under Linux because of the disk cache.
Remember to drop it before testing backups.
~~~
voltagex_
You wouldn't happen to know which USB to SATA controller it is, would you?
(device ID under Linux might help)
Sharkoon isn't the only one that uses those controllers (Astone might also)
and I keep some of them around for testing purposes.
~~~
rwg
Before I figured out it was garbage, I bought one of the USB<->SATA+IDE dongle
things I used at ex-work for use at home:
USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge:
Product ID: 0x2338
Vendor ID: 0x152d (JMicron Technology Corp.)
Version: 1.00
Serial Number: 152D203380B6
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: JMicron
Location ID: 0x24112000 / 6
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 2
~~~
wtallis
JMicron. Figures. You ought to put one of their SSDs in one of those adapters
and have a completely broken storage system.
------
kogir
Things like this are why I like filesystems that can reliably detect
corruption, like ZFS.
~~~
wayne_h
I don't see how zfs can detect the problem any sooner than any other
filesystem.
If the problem is caused by the controller wrapping at 2tb then I wouldn't
expect zfs to figure it out until later when it tries to read files back and
finds damage.
Lets say zfs writes a file at 2tb but due to wrapping its actually written to
0 tb. Then zfs reads the file at 2tb to verify that is good. But the file
appears to be fine because its really reading it again at 0tb. At some point
zfs will detect a problem but I don't see how it can catch the problem
instantly.
~~~
DiabloD3
The difference is, zfs can detect it. The only other fs in production use that
can is Oracle's zfs clone named btrfs.
~~~
wayne_h
Oh, I see what your are saying ... that zfs can detect corrupted files, true.
Whats likely to happen in this case is this: The first blocks of the disk
contain the superblock, labels-descriptors and other filesystem metadata. Most
of which will be sitting in cache. The damaged overwritten area at 0mb won't
be noticed for some time - like next time the volume is mounted. The
filesystem will eventually notice the damage and go into some recovery mode or
halt to protect itself. Zfs has lots of redundancy so the beginning volume
labels could be rebuilt.
One benefit of zfs will be that you can tell which recovered files are good or
bad.
------
jwatte
If only firmware development legally required developers with a national basic
skills exam, all our problems would be solved!
(Actually, the real problem is the race to the bottom because most buyers buy
on price alone.)
------
wayne_h
I am currently working on a data recovery caused by 2tb limited bridge
controller.
Customer had an external usb/firewire box with a 3tb drive. At 2tb the writes
'wrapped' back to block 0. Its a mac filesystem. Everything worked great until
he wrote past 2tb. At that point it overwrote the beginning of the mac volume.
The next time he connected the drive the mac thought that it was a new raw
drive and told him that he needed to initialize the drive.
This is the second time he did this - the first time he didn't reinitialize it
and we got it all back.
Unfortunately this time they initialized the drive. This zeroed out all the
metadata, catalogs, maps etc - much bigger mess.
So some bridge controllers cannot handle drives larger than 2tb. 2tb is the
last sector that you can address with a 4 byte disk address. So for sectors
0-0xffffffff .....works fine. The next sector is 0x100000000 - 5 bytes, it
only sees the lower 4 bytes 0x00000000 and starts overwriting the beginning of
the drive.
NTFS filesystems are more recoverable in this situation because their master
file table starts 6 million sectors out on the drive so you would have to
write alot more data before you start losing all your filenames and folder
structures and pointers to the data.
------
voltagex_
Is it just me, or is firmware quality getting worse these days?
~~~
sliverstorm
Firmware is getting more sophisticated and expansive, so it wouldn't surprise
me. Bug-rate-per-LoC seems to stay pretty stable.
~~~
makomk
Yeah, in the old days this was all done in hardware and you got hardware bugs
like the infamous ones in the CMD640 IDE controller. (I think Apple had their
fair share of data corruption bugs in that era too, actually.)
~~~
yuhong
On CMD640/RZ1000, if OS/2 2.x actually replaced DOS/Windows instead of turning
into an entire fiasco, these hardware would not likely have shipped with the
problems.
------
mehrdada
Sounds like an integer overflow bug in the drive controller firmware.
------
bifrost
huh, interesting. Is this a HW or SW problem? 3TB drives are a bit of a sticky
issue with older controllers so I wouldn't be surprised if this was the issue
or not.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CSS Mint – A Lightweight and Simple to Use UI Kit - amdsouza92
http://arunmichaeldsouza.github.io/CSS-Mint/
======
styfle
Is there a demo page where we can try it?
~~~
amdsouza92
You can try it out on Codepen or JSFiddle, just include CSS Mint via CDN -
[https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/css-mint/1.4.3/css-
mint.min.css](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/css-mint/1.4.3/css-mint.min.css) and
follow the examples.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I Replaced My MacBook Pro with a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB for a Day - geerlingguy
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/i-replaced-my-macbook-pro-raspberry-pi-4-8gb-day
======
cannam
Although not wrong, and full of interesting details, this is a really puzzling
article. It feels a little like writing about how you couldn't get your
toaster to boil noodles. (Though not as unsafe.)
I use Linux as my main desktop and have always found it very pleasant, but if
my main thing was video editing, I wouldn't try to do it with Linux on ARM64
and then grumble when it turned out not to work very well.
(Of course what makes the article worth reading is the fact that its author
has tried just that, and reported on it. It's an interesting report! It's
simply odd that the article seems so disappointed, since surely few readers
would have expected any other result.)
~~~
cztomsik
In my experience, linux is (unfortunately) only good for running server apps.
Ubuntu is good but it's still like 20ys in the past when compared to macos
(and that's including how macos gets worse with every new release). There are
so many things wrong or half-finished, inconsistent (3 ways to copy/paste, no
native GUI fw/toolkit, vsync/video/browser tearing), I'm afraid to install
updates because sometimes it won't boot up and I'll need to figure out what
went wrong this time (instead of doing what I wanted). Linux ppl like to say
it's because of HW but no, it's because they don't care or they have different
goals but then I don't understand why the same people often don't understand
why linux is not more widespread.
If you want to get job done, get a mac, it's still the best choice
(unfortunately, I don't like it but it's the least evil - W7 was good too but
W10 spy/adware is ew)
~~~
sys_64738
Take Linux Mint Cinnamon for a spin. I think it'll change your perspective for
Linux on the desktop. Browsers like Vivaldi make a consistent experience
across all three OS platforms.
~~~
tuatoru
I use Mint; have done for ... eight? years after I got fed up with incessantly
gardening Arch. (Too high maintenance to be my friend, I decided after 6
years.)
Recently I had to start using windows 10. On Microsoft's own hardware. Oy vey.
I doubt that someone who likes Mac OS will like Mint, but it's definitely a
better Windows than Windows. Comfortable rather than stylish, but without
jarring jumps to 30 year old UI styles at random times, or six different ways
to not quite do what you want. Or the surveillance.
If you don't like Mint, then try MX Linux or Manjaro.
~~~
cztomsik
Mint was one of the best distros, I've tried.
------
SloopJon
I'm not sure what the author's background is, but if he did all of this in one
day as a Mac-using Linux newbie, I'm actually pretty impressed. There are
references to previous posts about the Pi, but it's not clear whether he's
used Linux as a desktop O/S before.
I'm using Ubuntu on a 4 GB Pi for some Docker experiments, because I couldn't
get ARM64 images to work on Raspbian. Is Raspbian the best distribution for
the desktop, or is there something better for a 4 or 8 GB Pi?
~~~
mikepurvis
He's not all a newbie; among other things he maintains some well regarded
Ansible roles for things like deploying Jenkins.
~~~
geerlingguy
I’ve been using Linux on the server side exclusively for years and twice
before tried to switch to Ubuntu and Fedora (two separate times during Apple’s
butterfly-switch years).
So I do have some background but not a PhD in Linux in the Desktop.
What I’ve found is that if you’re mostly dealing with programming, dev work,
and maybe some more specialized graphics work (not just twiddling with artwork
and media using the computer as an artistic tool), almost any Linux desktop
may be entirely adequate.
But if you do like (somewhat more) consistent UIs and a deep catalog (more
than 2 in every category) of _very good_ apps, your much better off in
Mac/Windows :(
I’d like that to change but just like Fusion energy my excitement will not
make it happen any sooner than 20 years from now. (I could’ve said that same
thing the first time I tried Red Hat for my workstation (against Windows 3.1)
in like 1996...).
~~~
heavyset_go
> _But if you do like (somewhat more) consistent UIs and a deep catalog (more
> than 2 in every category) of very good apps, your much better off in Mac
> /Windows :(_
The flip side of this is that the skills and apps you learn in the open source
ecosystem have staying power.
I spent a lot of time learning to use old Photoshop versions pretty well, but
these days I don't have a subscription with Adobe, so those skills have been
lost to its walled garden.
However, I also spent a lot of time using GIMP during that period, and I can
still leverage that knowledge 15 years later for free.
~~~
cawlin
I doubt up to date GIMP has many more features than Photoshop CS2 which was a
pay once license :)
~~~
heavyset_go
I doubt it either, and I don't have CS2, unfortunately. However, GIMP gets the
job done for my purposes, and I'm not limited to an old binary version that
relies on components that will become increasingly deprecated with time.
edit: Ha, Adobe still has the download link for free Photoshop CS2 live.
Apparently it works in Wine, too.
For anyone who is wondering, Photoshop CS2 works well on Wine stable on Linux.
I'm going to be honest, CS2 and GIMP are pretty similar feature wise.
~~~
toyg
_> Photoshop CS2 works well on Wine stable on Linux_
But won't work on ARM, so it wouldn't work on Raspberry Pi 4. If Apple starts
a wave with its much-suggested move to ARM, CS2 will not survive but GIMP
likely will.
~~~
heavyset_go
Definitely agree. It also crashes on a HiDPI screen, can't handle SVG or WebP
and modern GIMP has more features.
------
vr46
Funnily enough, to avoid all the cables and mess, I simply plug my Pi 4/8Gb
straight into my iPad, then VNC or SSH into it, and instantly have a
development environment. I would have to use some kind of hub to charge the
iPad at the same time and plug an external monitor in, but the iPad Pro plus
Smart Keyboard plus a Pi works brilliantly. (Where's my cheque, Tim?)
~~~
jdminhbg
Can you expand on that? How do you plug your Pi into the iPad, just a simple
USB cable? Do you use an app for VNC/SSH?
~~~
vr46
Yup, I had to go through a couple of USB-C cables before I found a working
combo (See Pi 4 USB-C woes elsewhere, since fixed) but that was it. I use
Blink for SSH/Mosh and VNC Viewer - Remote Desktop.
I also used this link to help me get set up:
[https://www.hardill.me.uk/wordpress/2019/11/02/pi4-usb-c-
gad...](https://www.hardill.me.uk/wordpress/2019/11/02/pi4-usb-c-gadget/)
~~~
jdminhbg
Awesome, thanks for the pointers.
------
andolanra
I'm not sure why the conclusion is, "Linux on the Desktop isn't possible,"
when the big blocker the author had was pretty consistently finding and
installing software compatible with a small ARM64 machine. (That's not to say
it's not a valid conclusion to draw in general: just that it's a bit of a non-
sequitur for this article.)
~~~
geerlingguy
I didn’t say that. I said the fabled “year of the Linux desktop” is a long
ways off, in terms of being a potential option for the vast audience of users
who currently own a Mac or Windows computer.
~~~
wazoox
But the vast audience wouldn't use such an ARM64 machine for that and won't
have these problems. The audio problems for instance that you encountered with
all applications are obviously related to the hardware, not Linux. Even on my
weird desktop running slackware I run Zoom, Jit.si, Cheese, Skype, etc without
any problem.
It's precisely the other way around, I've seen several articles recently about
the fact that Linux adoption on the desktop has soared rapidly, and you see
Lenovo and Dell supporting Linux on a large number of machines nowadays.
The only thing you showed is that there is no desktop-grade ARM64 Linux
machine available.
~~~
IshKebab
> The audio problems for instance that you encountered with all applications
> are obviously related to the hardware, not Linux.
When people say "Linux on the desktop" they mean "Linux on _most common
desktop hardware_ ". They don't mean "Linux but only on one carefully tested
machine".
A Logitech C920 especially is very common and uses standard USB audio, so it
_should_ work. The fact that it doesn't could feasibly be a firmware bug that
happens to work on Windows for some reason, but given how janky Linux audio is
in general, I think it is almost certainly a bug in Linux (or PulseAudio or
whatever if you're going to get nitpicky).
~~~
geerlingguy
The problem I had was “it works sometimes, and in some ways, but not other
times”.
And as a developer, inconsistent behavior in any system means chaos and
something I can’t depend on to get my work done.
This is not a problem exclusive to Linux on the Pi. While much less of an
issue, I have had strange driver problems when I tried working from both
Ubuntu and Fedora on my Dell XPS 13.
On the Mac, or on Windows on the PC, at least the random weird behaviors (like
random crash if I open this, change that, open this, and then use two
different audio interfaces) are consistent, so I can usually adapt my workflow
to avoid them.
~~~
alxlu
Out of curiosity, what driver problems did you run into? I switched my primary
laptop to an XPS 13 a few months ago after almost exclusively using MacBook
Pros for over a decade and I haven’t run into a single driver issue. Even the
usual suspend issues I seem to have with almost every single Linux desktop I
build didn’t show up.
If anything, I feel like I ran into less issues overall on the XPS 13 than I
did in macOS once I had everything set up properly. That being said I suspect
part of it is due to having a very minimal setup. I have no DE, no DM, a
lightweight WM (dwm), etc. so there are fewer moving parts that can cause a
crash (in addition to a much more responsive feeling UI on cheaper/slower
hardware).
------
AdmiralAsshat
Shocker: A $75 multi-purpose device could not adequately replace his dedicated
$1500 device.
I don't know what this was intended to prove, exactly?
~~~
avip
(̶4̶5̶$̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶l̶u̶d̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶i̶p̶p̶i̶n̶g̶)̶
Edit: wrong price quoted for the 2GB model.
~~~
penagwin
That's the 2GB model
------
trynewideas
While I get that he wants things to Just Work for things the Pi's not designed
to do, that's not the goal or design of the Pi in any sense whatsoever. The
hypothesis that a Pi would be feasible for his workflow was set up to fail
before he started doing anything.
------
ViViDboarder
A Linux desktop is far less “painful” when it’s on an equivalently powered
device as you are used to. I wouldn’t plug a monitor into an iPhone and claim
Apple desktops are painful.
The real takeaway to me is “ARM desktops are a few years away”.
~~~
rcarmo
Actually, you'd probably find the iPhone outperforms your current laptop
(Assuming average 2y-old laptop). It just doesn't have the same UX, or the
ability to run desktop apps.
~~~
ValentineC
I think they're suitable for different tasks.
I prefer an iPhone myself for consuming the web and social media, but I
wouldn't use it for development work, or running anything computationally-
intensive.
------
Havoc
Title seems a little cringey.
The 8GB model isn't going to perform much better on these tasks that the 4GB
on that has been available forever and the $75 device is not a suitable
replacement for a $1,299 device.
I do use Jeff's work to determine what SD card to buy...but the above has
rattled my confidence a bit.
~~~
Avicebron
The title is classic click bait, looks like he's good at it since right below
it he has a youtube video of the project. It's probably a hustle for some
views/ad revenue and not meant to be a serious project where he legitimately
thinks he's building a mac in his room.
~~~
sukilot
At a penny for a thousand views, that doesn't seem a smart play.
~~~
Avicebron
I don't know his CPM, but a quick google search reveals the average (2018) CPM
to be $2.80. I agree not a lot, but hey, worth the passive income probably.
~~~
geerlingguy
It’s part of a bit of a wide reaching effort to make it possible for me to get
all my income from open source work and free ventures. I’m about 25% of the
way there.
And quick note on YouTube CPMs, they vary a lot by genre. Some of the more
popular genres are on the lower end of that spectrum (afaict, based on limited
testing).
It’s tough because I have a chronic illness and also support a family of five
(SAHM, but it seems all parents have been stay at home lately).
But as cringey as many in the HN audience may find it, marketing is actually
vital to any endeavors success.
I try to make it so my work is better than the title suggests, but don’t
always succeed.
I literally unplugged my MBP and replaced it with a Pi 4 for a day, but that
is apparently not literal enough to justify the title ;-)
~~~
Avicebron
Hey man, all the support to your family. I know the bait works and I respect
the hustle.
I won't criticize you for doing something that works and I like your goal,
I've been wanting to be 100% passive income open source for a long time.
------
eeZah7Ux
And yet many years ago I was using Debian on a laptop with 32MB of RAM. I was
using the "Awesome" lightweight desktop and spending 99% of the time in the
terminal.
SSH to work on remote servers, Vim for development, git, IRC, text email, man
and less for documentation (installed locally), rsync. Occasional browsing
with Dillo.
Believe me or not, I miss the productivity of not being forced to use tons of
stuff in browser.
~~~
teleforce
This. I'm not sure how many more years people will eventually realize that web
is originally invented for sharing documents over the decentralized internet
and not really suited for other type of applications. The proliferation of
app-over-web is really pushing it including the online web based video editing
[1]. Off course the online companies are loving the status quo since they can
sell us advertisements and perhaps our data as well in exchange for online
free software, or the dreaded "pay-forever" subscription based software.
I agree it's really convenient to go gung-ho all-web but how long can you
survive by continuously eating fast food diets?
With cheap off-the-shelf multi-core CPU (latest 64 cores/128 threads),
terabytes SSD, and terabytes RAM (including the new Optane non volatile
memory) the modern laptop/PC is even more powerful than twenty years ago
supercomputer [2]. I hope that native applications will make a comeback with
the increasing popularity of the compiled programming languages. The internet
and cloud are only being used for synchronizing and versioning the
application's data over multiple devices rather then online data processing
due to inherent limitations of remote bandwidth and latency that's not suited
for majority of desktop applications.
[1][https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/best-video-
editors/](https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/best-video-editors/)
[2][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Origin_2000](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Origin_2000)
------
sitkack
Most of this has to do with Linux and not the Pi itself. I use a mac and a
linux system side by side, desktop linux is still a tire fire. This is coming
from a person who used to run a FreeBSD laptop in the early 2000s.
~~~
proverbialbunny
Maybe it depends on what software you're using?
I use both OSX (MBP) and Linux Mint as my desktop. Everything I use works on
both. Both are stable and solid and work perfectly. I'm on a 4k60 monitor.
The only thing I had to do is have my graphics card do vsync on Linux.
Software vsync on Linux is horrible. GPU vsync has Linux runs smooth as butter
the same as smooth as OSX. I also had to manually increase my dpi and font
sizes to match my monitor.
~~~
sitkack
Do you have unified keyboard navigation inside of text editors across all
linux applications?
Can you reliably cut and paste between all applications?
Can you open the menu items with the keyboard?
It could be the applications, but I find to get the smooth OSX experience I
need to tweak every single application's preferences, many of which do not
have have the required level of control, then I need to resort to xmodmap,
etc, this is the path to ruin, rather than modify my system I have to modify
myself which hurts but I am ultimately more flexible than software.
I have come to the realization that the desktop OS you run doesn't matter, use
what works for you. I would absolutely love to run Libre software for
everything, but it isn't possible.
Maybe someone will create a window manager that also does live binary patching
and instrumentation, I am convinced that this is the only way, but by the time
that comes, everything will run in the browser anyway.
~~~
proverbialbunny
>Do you have unified keyboard navigation inside of text editors across all
linux applications?
yes
>Can you reliably cut and paste between all applications?
Of course.
>Can you open the menu items with the keyboard?
What, why?
The great thing about OSX is keybinds are standard between programs, so you
for all intents and purposes only need to learn one set of keybinds. Other OS'
are not as uniform but uniform enough to not cause problems too.
>I would absolutely love to run Libre software for everything, but it isn't
possible.
I have it and use it. I don't see the problem.
------
rvz
Well, I guess running all those favourite Electron apps simultaneously on the
Pi wouldn't be a wise thing to do since it would still grind to a slow and
painful halt.
I would just spare the Raspberry Pi from this Electron app stress testing
torture as it evidently cannot handle many of them running at the same time.
------
KingMachiavelli
Many of the issues and personal choices made where due to the jump between a
non-linux OS to a Linux OS.
Even though the 'default' desktop environment is light weight, a tiling WM
just as i3 or dwm would run perfectly on the Pi. Light weight application
alternatives such as qutebrowser (instead of Chrome) and Spacemacs (instead of
VSCode) would also make using a Pi a lot easier.
The lack of 4k@60Hz is pretty annoying altough it actually might not be
noticable with a tiling WM due to the lack of animations.
~~~
groby_b
Given that Macs (at least the good old trashcan) also can't do 4k@60Hz over
HDMI, that was the one comparison that struck me as somewhat unfair.
~~~
zdw
Not sure why you're being downvoted - the 2013 Mac Pro has an HDMI 1.4 port:
[https://support.apple.com/kb/SP697?locale=en_US](https://support.apple.com/kb/SP697?locale=en_US)
Which is only good for a 30Hz refresh rate at UHD 3840x2160 resolutions:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Version_1.4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Version_1.4)
You could use adapters on the Thunderbolt ports to get 4k60 support on that
hardware.
~~~
groby_b
Yep. And I'm using those Tunderbolt ports for my daily work, but . (And, you
know, it's nice that you can drive a large amount of screens with the ports,
but I was specifically referring to the HDMI implementation)
And digging into the specs of the RBpi4, it seems the HDMI port actually
_does_ support 4kp60, which makes this whole thing even funnier :)
------
deathhand
This is immensely interesting to me. This is a developer who is familiar with
linux servers and infrastructure but in unaware of all the linux desktop
oddities that come with it.
~~~
avip
I'm "familiar with linux servers and infrastructure" and would have little
idea how to setup linux as my working env for things like editing video. Seems
completely orthogonal.
~~~
deathhand
You are familiar with libraries and dependencies then. You know that its a
very complicated mess of spaghetti. You also know that video editing is a very
high use of a computer. Even for profit companies like Adobe has trouble with
current hardware[1]
I get you wanted to write a blog article. Content creation is cool. I don't
think you get where computers and technology has come from and necessary where
its going. That Raspberry PI would be great for programming GPIO pins to
literally do anything for you. This is my favorite explanation of
technology[2] and honestly amazed that any of it works.
[1]- [https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/cc-2020-super-
la...](https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/cc-2020-super-
laggy/td-p/10720042?page=1) [2]- [http://bretthard.in/post/dizzying-but-
invisible-depth](http://bretthard.in/post/dizzying-but-invisible-depth)
------
mark_l_watson
When I first bought a RPi, I used it exclusively for writing and coding for
several days. Worked OK, so I was surprised about the whining in the article.
~~~
somehnguy
There is a big difference between working OK and working in a pleasant to use
manner.
Every time I've ever tried to use Linux as my daily driver it has worked OK.
But it has never been pleasant to use and as such I never stick with it for
too long.
~~~
mark_l_watson
I usually use a MacBook but I also use a beefed up System76 laptop with a good
GPU, i7, and double the memory. Things like large Haskell builds, anything
using TensorFlow, etc. runs so much faster than my MacBook there is no
comparison.
Everyone gets to choose their own setup, but to be honest, if I didn't like my
Apple Mac+Watch+iPhone+iPad interop so much, I would always use the much
faster Linux system. At my old job, I had the fastest current MacBook Pro
configuration and it was much slower than my System76 rig.
~~~
geerlingguy
If I could customize my Mac like I could with a PC build (mmm more cores in a
Threadripper without a $10K Mac Pro minimum...), I would definitely not be
using a laptop today :(
------
MintelIE
I've been using a Pi 4 4GB as a desktop for a couple months now. Considering
that my other main computer is an ancient Thinkpad, I don't feel hampered by
the speed. I used a Pi 3B for a desktop replacement for a while and while it
was fine with my typical use (emacs+mostly command line) "modern" browsing was
uncomfortably slow. It was perfectly capable of video playback in standard
formats but there are problem sites using codecs which are not supported by
the media decoder in the Pi. The situation with the Pi 4 is quite similar but
it's just about fast enough for Youtube now.
Most any school or office could switch to the Pi 4 seamlessly these days for
sure though.
------
ArtWomb
Related: Building a Raspberry Pi Cluster
[https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/build-a-raspberry-
pi-...](https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/build-a-raspberry-pi-cluster-
computer)
And: Raspberry Pi Vulkan Driver Makes Progress But Long Road Remains
[https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberry-
Pi...](https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberry-Pi-Vulkan-
Summer-2020)
I had no idea til this week the RP4-B had dual 4k hdmi output. And I love the
idea of a cluster for testing microservices. But regarding graphics
performance I think I would opt for NVidia's Jetson Nano.
------
julianeon
If you have a teeny-tiny amount of money - like, $75, the cost of a Pi - and
you want to get the best work computer/laptop and developer experience you
can, for your buck - you'd be dumb to buy a Pi.
Instead, get a used laptop - say, a Thinkpad. Install Linux on it.
There you go: the best computer you can get, performance-wise, for $75.
------
varjag
Coming up next: AtTiny13 vs Dell PowerEdge.
------
sloshnmosh
It became “The year of the Linux desktop” for me when Windows10 came out.
I now use Linux for most everything.
I also have 2 MacBook Pros and a MacBook Air but I quickly get frustrated when
trying to do anything worthwhile on them and go back to my ancient business
class Dell running Linux. YMMV
~~~
rnotaro
You see, outside of programming, Windows 10 became my main OS when it
released.
Vista / 7 / 8 / 8.5 were really shitty in my opinon but Windows 10 "saved"
Microsoft for me.
I have an Edu/Business license and I absolutely love it. Group policies
allowed me to avoid all the "auto-updates while doing work" from the start. I
never had any issues with Windows 10.
------
Apofis
This is more of a comparison between MacOS and Linux than a Macbook and a Pi.
------
kvothe_
Next article: I replaced my car with Raspberry Pi... didn't work out.
hmmmmmmm.
------
abnry
On Ubuntu with an Intel processor I have been very happy with the app
ecosystem. I suspect if the Raspberry p Pi had an AMD or Intel chip it'd be
less painful.
~~~
lioeters
Your comment made me curious why ARM architecture was chosen for the Raspberry
Pi. The following from Wikipedia explained it:
> Processors that have a RISC architecture typically require fewer transistors
> than those with a complex instruction set computing (CISC) architecture
> (such as the x86 processors found in most personal computers), which
> improves cost, power consumption, and heat dissipation.
> These characteristics are desirable for light, portable, battery-powered
> devices — including smartphones, laptops and tablet computers, and other
> embedded systems — but are also useful for servers and desktops to some
> degree. For supercomputers, which consume large amounts of electricity, ARM
> is also a power-efficient solution.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture)
Power efficiency seems to be one of the big reasons why Macs will have ARM
processors.
> Current ARM processors are also often more power-efficient, which helps with
> battery life. Switching to ARM is expected to let Apple reduce its processor
> costs by 40 to 60 percent.
[https://www.bloomberg.com./news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-
ai...](https://www.bloomberg.com./news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-aims-to-sell-
macs-with-its-own-chips-starting-in-2021)
~~~
hajile
It was a lot more basic than that. They already had contacts at Broadcom. When
a client orders N chips, you make some percentage more just in case something
happens with binning. Their deal to buy those excess chips got them a
sweetheart deal they couldn't have gotten without ordering millions of units
(they also couldn't have gotten it without contacts though).
Now they're big enough to make their own orders and even their own chip
designs and it's inertia because changing requires a lot of money for new
firmware and software changes. Changing would increase device cost for at
least a could of cycles.
On the x86 front, they're simply never going to get that good of a deal with
AMD or Intel.
------
jankotek
I would strugle the same way on macbook, never used this platform. Pi4 is
fairly nice desktop. I use it as a backup workstation while traveling.
------
war1025
Does anyone know how a Pi4 with 8gb ram would hold up compared to a six year
old mid-lower tier laptop?
It's something I've been curious about for a while and really just waiting for
the point where a RaspberryPi-type device is adequate for Facebook /
Hackernews / Youtube, which is essentially what I use a laptop for at home.
~~~
icecreammatt
I just got an 8GB one and it works well enough for YouTube and light browsing
but I couldn’t use it as a dedicated machine. Certainly is more snappy than
the older ones I have. Just visiting the YouTube home page seems to really be
pushing it though.
~~~
war1025
What I am hearing from this is that there are good odds the Pi5 will be a
suitable light-duty desktop replacement.
~~~
icecreammatt
Pretty much, I think it just needs a slightly faster CPU to handle loading
JavaScript heavy pages.
~~~
Narishma
By then the Javascript-heavy pages will probably be even heavier. You'll then
be waiting for the Raspberry Pi 6 to run them.
------
adamredwoods
I remember when people were trying to do day-to-day work on their smartphones,
then the iPad came out and they started to work on those, which eventually led
to the iPad Pro and Microsoft Surface Pro and now fully capable of doing day-
to-day work on it.
Keeping pushing the boundaries!
~~~
adarioble
With the slight difference that any of these boundaries pushers (never did)
cost $75. Not now not then.
------
Andys
Tangentially, I permanently replaced my Raspberry Pi with an x86 Upboard and
it is just so much nicer to use and not really that expensive, though there
are some high end models
[https://up-shop.org/](https://up-shop.org/)
------
ex3ndr
I didn't get what's wrong with H.264 since it present in every pi even on pi
zero.
~~~
geerlingguy
If you don’t add the right options to FFmpeg it can’t take advantage of the
CPU acceleration, I believe.
------
wltprgm
Since people are so disappointed with ARM64 video/audio
viewing/recording/editing applications, they should write their own and
contribute to Linux ARM64 and stop complaining
RISC V on FPGA sucks, I wouldn't use it either
------
ngcc_hk
The other article on Apple switch to arm might help. Those software on mac are
on arm. You have now some video editing software on ipad that works well. The
question is which is the next winter, AppleArm or ...
------
mickw
If the author did all of this in one day as a OSX/Linux novice, hat's off!
Took me a good bit of playing around to get fluid using Linux for the first
time
------
wysewun
I admire how knowledgeable Jeff is in different subject matters. Jeff is a
major contributor in the ansible community and very helpful to everyone.
------
fortran77
Hey Jeff! I've been using your VirtualBox Centos builds/images for years. It's
nice to see the face behind the Box.
------
osdoorp
I Replaced My MacBook Pro with a Cat for a Day
~~~
sloshnmosh
I tried that too but my cat had trouble interfacing with the mouse.
(Sorry)
------
hidiegomariani
The only purpose I could see raspberry pi in, is as a development env where
you can ssh into and do work as a pure Linux kernel.
If I was to use an arm desktop full time it would be microsoft surface pro x
(although with its quirks) having much more support and apps
Also Apple is planning to move MacBook line to arm although time will tell
whether that will work out or not. In the meanwhile we might need to stick to
x86 architectures for a while
------
libx
I feel the same pain. Sound is a problem in my x86_64 Linux. One of the sound
cards doesn't work anymore, don't know what happened. But if I pass it through
to a Windows virtual machine with virt-manager, it works!
So many problems for the desktop, that come almost day in day out that I'm
considering trying Haiku OS for the desktop. Just need something that works.
~~~
salawat
I have the feeling that between graphics and sound processing there is just a
dearth of material about how the underlying mechanisms that drive that portion
of computing actually work. At least, I haven't really the magic words to
represent "For God sake, what do I have to line up to make this stiff work"
yet.
It's front and center of this decades computing goals for me. To that end,
I've been looking into things like how X actually works, actually making use
of graphics processing hardware, and the like. If anyone has some good
reading, I'd love to know.
------
rubatuga
The author is right, none of these problems exist on macOS, and if you want
the year of the Linux desktop to finally come, it will have to solve all of
the issues highlighted. The commenters aren't going to be there to defend the
true use-cases of "ARM Linux Desktop" to the end-user, so expect them to be
completely turned off by this experience.
~~~
wazoox
None of these problems exist on my XPS running Ubuntu, either. Of course when
going to a 75$ not-desktop-grade machine from a $1500 Mac you'll find some
compromises along the way. That comment doesn't make the slightest sense,
frankly.
------
pbreit
I thought this $120 tablet + keyboard looked interesting but wondering if 2GB
of RAM is going to cut it?
[https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetab-10-1-linux-
tablet-...](https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetab-10-1-linux-tablet-with-
detached-backlit-keyboard)
~~~
megameter
A fast SSD does wonders for making lower memory machines feel responsive. I do
useful work on a 4GB machine running Win10. There is lag when web browsing,
but it's easy to adjust to.
That said, it won't cut it if your applications actually do need more than 2GB
at a time. And the Pine device doesn't list support for SATA or M.2 either, so
you can't count on the SSD being a screamer.
------
skykooler
I'm amazed that, given how long video editors have been around, there isn't
something better than OpenShot or Kdenlive; I would have expected that someone
would be working on the video equivalent of Gimp/Audacity/etc.
~~~
tartoran
Did you try ShotCut?
------
kevinsimper
Don't the Raspberry Pi 4 support 4kp60?
~~~
Narishma
I think it does but only on 1 monitor.
~~~
geerlingguy
Correct, you need to toggle a setting in the boot config, and your HDMI cable
and monitor both have to support HDMI 2.0
------
sitzkrieg
great choice for those looking to waste time
------
hofstee
I can't even get WiFi working on my Pi 4. I can only resolve IPv6, anything
IPv4 fails. I suspect it's a router issue but I have no control over that, so
I simply can't use the Pi.
------
adarioble
With Windows practically giving licenses away, Apple coming with MacOS, cheap
chromebooks coming with chromeOS, I really don’t get this “Linux on a desktop
move”, especially when it is $75 device + $250 of accessories.
That said I love Pi, have it for home automation and media server, amazing
piece of tech, NOT a desktop replacement and for the most part it’s not even
aiming at that.
~~~
0x0
Where can I get a free Windows license for my Macbook?
~~~
saagarjha
Anecdotally, I've found you don't really need one if you're fine with a nag in
the bottom right corner.
------
paines
Cool write up/experiment, and I can feel the pain with Linux and Sound issues.
A few days ago I had a job interview and they used MS Teams. At first I was
completly blown aways that there is a native linux app. For the first 5
minutes I tried to get sound input working but gave up. Luckily once you press
the invite link, you can also choose to join via browser, and then sound input
worked directly as expected.
------
dhosek
>But, sadly, I don't think this year is the 'Year of the Linux desktop'. In
general, I think 'Linux on the Desktop' for a mainstream audience is always
going to be 20 years away, just like nuclear fusion.
Yep. I know there are people who do Linux on the Desktop, but they're people
with a lot more tolerance for day-to-day pain than me. I had a job about a
decade ago where I had a linux desktop machine as my day-to-day working
environment and it was a miserable experience. There just doesn't seem to be
the will to make things otherwise.
~~~
Cerium
Things have changed a lot. Over the last year the company I work for has
transitioned a couple hundred developers from Windows desktops to Linux
desktops and it has been surprisingly smooth. Much better than an experiment I
ran myself a number of years prior.
~~~
adarioble
I have seen a fair amount of successful transitions. My company develops open
source software and our development team is on Linux/Mac. Works a treat.
Sales/Marketing/etc - Windows mostly with some more adventurous users using
Mac. Linux is still not there yet, for an end-user overall nice experience.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What is a non-developer to do? - stuck
Hi guys,<p>I’m 24, got a masters in business and I am totally clueless on what to do with my life. I would like to ask you for some advice because I have been reading HN every day for the past 6 months and saw some brilliant advice given on these boards.<p>I am from Europe and when I was 18 I chose to enter a business university because I liked to organize trips for my friends, had excellent grades at school and teachers and parents told me it’s the safest bet because a good income and future are guaranteed with this kind of degree.<p>6 years later, I have my degree, I have a job in a Spanish business consultancy but I feel pretty much useless; I spend my days preparing elaborate 300 slides power point presentations full of citations of market reports and always followed by some bs excel projections about future revenues and promises of a brighter tomorrow. The bosses love my work, the clients happily pay astronomical fees to listen to our "expert" advice, and I wonder how is it even possible to make so much money selling what we are selling, air.<p>During my business studies, startups were never mentioned, I grew up believing a good idea is what matters, and that either you have it, or you do not, and that lady luck was the one who distributes ideas to whoever she chooses. After stumbling upon HN and the plethora of other blogs and articles linked here I started to see how narrow my vision was and how much more there was to creating a business than writing your 100 page business plan.<p>So my question is, how can I get out of this vicious circle of unfulfilling work 9-20 (officially its 9-5 by I never get out of the office before 20) and do something that I care about?<p>I have been trained to be a good office boy so I can most likely get employed for the majority of big companies and start climbing the corporate ladder starting with €30k . It just that, working the 40 years of my life doing stuff that I do not care about just to earn a lot of cash does not particularly motivate me.<p>On the other hand there are startups, 100% dedication to your product, the whole team believing in what you are doing. Sounds like fun, but I realize that I am useless in an environment like that. With no tech expertise and 2 years business experience I do not see myself critically contributing to any serious startup.<p>I have tried finding a solution myself, I read countless posts on the quarter life crisis, vault and wetfeet industry reports, talked with my career manager, my friends, my parents - nothing really helped me. I do not know what kind of job I could do with my current skills that could make me wake up in the morning and feel motivated to go there.<p>Perhaps some of you have gone through the same path, perhaps you can see something I do not, but any word of advice would be appreciated!<p>Cheers from a sunny Spain!
======
raheemm
You must read sivers.org - Derek Sivers is a musician turned entrepreneur who
became a programmer too and he has great advice on many issues you speak of.
First, check out the following on finding your passion:
<http://sivers.org/passion>
Next read this article about taking that big step towards your dreams (its one
of my favorite): <http://sivers.org/loss>
If you find yourself wanting to get into the tech startup route but despair
about not being a programmer, the following is excellent advice on how to turn
your idea into a blueprint for a programmer and also (I think) great advice on
how to become a product guy: <http://sivers.org/how2hire>
~~~
stuck
Thanks a lot for the links! I did read some cool stuff from Sivers before but
I missed the articles you linked
------
webwright
Can you sell? A lot of people with business degrees can't or won't-- but some
can.
Non-geeks can be good at selling, designing, SEO, SEM, PR, finance,
copywriting etc.
I'd suggest taking two steps. 1) Try to move yourself nearby startups (if
that's really your thing). This can be in Spain-- just spend time at whatever
geeky meetups you can find and start batting around ideas. And 2) Start trying
to get smart about some of those non-geek skills that are valuable in a small
software company. Optional: 3) Learn to code. Most startup coding is just
about form fields and databases-- not algorithms.
~~~
stuck
Definitely great advice!
No I cannot sell, usually this is what partners do in my company. I only
interact with the clients after the initial sale was done. The closest I get
to selling is in drafting the request for proposal (a doc where you tell them
how you want to solve their problem/need) for the specific client.
~~~
webwright
Related question: WILL you sell or would you hate it? Sales is definitely a
skill, but a learnable one (especially if you have solid
biz/people/negotiation skills and a willingness to hear the word "No" a lot.
;-) )
~~~
stuck
Of course I am willing! As long as I believe in what I am selling I think it
would be a great challenge to get my point through
------
pdelgallego
The start-up scene in Spain is very small. I recommend you to read Loogic, a
blog about start ups in Spain.
If you dont like what you are doing, don't do it. Find something that
motivates you.
In my opinion you should learn at least some basics skills about planning in
technology/engineering. Learn what is the Waterfall model, what is Toyotism,
what is Agile software development, scrum, Kaban ... there are many things
that you can learn, but first things first. What are you interested in?
Anyway, my very best advice. Try to crash in a place where they really know
what they are doing. Try to work with great and smart people, even if you earn
less money. "Be the worts", that will make every day a challenge.
Will you consider relocate?
~~~
stuck
Thanks for the blog, will add it to my list of morning reading. I do read a
lot, I love it! Apart from web reading I also read books, non fiction mainly -
I recently read hackers&paints, 4 steps to epiphany, presentation zen, back of
a napkin...I love reading stuff that makes me better at work. What I do not
like is the lack of flexibility to try new stuff at work.
The interested part is what bothers me. I cannot seem to find an answer to
that even though I spent countless nights trying to figure it out. I like
reading, watching movies, going to the gym, dancing, skydiving....heck, I have
loads of interests! But hey, can you make a living out of reading books that
you like and dancing?
I moved away from my country of origin at 17, lived in 4 different countries
and I fluently speak 4 languages. Relocating is not a problem at all.
~~~
chopsueyar
You are a pretty smart guy.
It seems to me you would be happier with another job that allows you more
"free time" to find something pursuable (some idea) that you can get
passionate about.
You are working 11 hour days. I'm sure when you come home in the evening, you
really don't want to teach yourself to write code before you pass out, all the
while torturing your mind to find some passionate interest to pursue.
I recommend finding a job where you can have more free time, even with a
paycut.
PS: Since you are making a decent bit of money, and can speak 4 languages,
find a successfull website in one language/country, and you can create a
similair site in the same/other country using the other language. You can hire
contractors to build the necessary components, and should be able to do this
without quitting your job. You manage the content in the language of your
choice.
You also would have an edge in affiliate marketing for these other languages.
Can any other HN readers comment about their experiences with Google
AdSense/Affiliate Marketing in other (non-US) countries/languages? or US non-
english?
~~~
pdelgallego
That is a question that I ask me every week. Actually I ask myself two
questions?
\- How can I identify products that can be adapted to a different culture?
\- How can I replicate a successful business model in a different
environment/country?
I lived for a while in Miami, and I succeed a couple of times taking a project
that I like, I revamped it a little bit to target the US latino market. I am
trying to do the same thing in Denmark now, but I am failing all the time.
------
spencerfry
I wrote an article on this subject:
<http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do>
It was spawned from a HN post:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=779378>
~~~
ABrandt
Awesome, awesome stuff. Definitely the inspiration for my first blog post.
Coincidentally, I just wrote it yesterday :)
<http://austinbrandt.posterous.com/hustlin-aint-easy-part-1>
------
c1sc0
You havea couple of skills that are really useful for startups: you know how
to research a topic, you probably know how to schmooze with people, you know
how to put together a decent presentation & you know how to write well. Those
are all tasks that are terrible time-sinks for developers in a startup. My
tip:
Learn how to create a distraction-free environment for developers by taking
over all of these distracting tasks that nevertheless need to be done.
Hell, maybe there's even a business right there: become a VA for developers so
that they can focus on code. Expect to lower your rates though ;-)
~~~
maukdaddy
Are you hiring or know someone who is?! I appreciate your attitude, but it
seems startups give us more business-focused people the cold shoulder. Or
maybe I haven't found the right one ;)
~~~
petervandijck
Writing presentations and schmoozing are not hire-able skills for a startup.
However, if you can get startupX paying clients for their product, that is a
hireable skill.
~~~
c1sc0
If said schmoozing can get you press, investment or blogging attention then
I'd say that's valuable. But sure, paying customers are the best!
Edited to add: a traditional powerpoint presentation may not be valuable, but
if you can create a good video, slideshow or pdf and make it generate traffic
to your website, that's valuable.
------
AmitinLA
I come from a similar situation and faced similar challenges, especially after
trying to launch a web startup with no financing and no developers on board.
It failed. I'm determined to stay in tech, so here's some of my (occasionally
conflicting) thoughts.
1) You call yourself a business guy, but are you a product guy? If you're a
product guy -- if you can understand the soul of a product and how it
interacts with people -- that can be inherently valuable. In my experience,
most people I've met may be "tech" or "business", but they're not product
people.
2) Get an internship. Beg. Show up, prove why you're valuable, send
unsolicited resumes with advice and biz dev/product suggestions. Be humble,
but not too much. Work for free for a couple months, or at minimum wage or
whatever is legal. Just get your foot in the door.
3) Read. The Elements of User Experience (<http://amzn.to/aFNjSn>), The
Mythical Man Month (<http://amzn.to/cFLDlB>) -- these are just to get you
started. Learning to code a little bit will be good as well. The point is not
to become an expert developer, but to learn how developers think. Think of
your reading as travel literature and learn about different cultures.
4) Look for non-sexy opportunities. Twitter, FB, 4SQ, Zynga etc., get all the
hype, but there's tons of need for software development and product design in
what I call the "iceberg industries." The trucking industry brings in $250
billion dollars in revenue every year. That's almost twice the size of the
airline industry and yet a typical website of theirs looks like this:
<http://www.highwayfreight.com/index.php>
5) Think about CPG (even though it's not tech, it still can be a startup).
It's a risky, tough move and faces lots of market forces, but can be
incredibly lucrative. You could find a small local product that you believe
in, invest some cash to get equity, and try to make them big. As a consultant,
your skills may be valuable because the problems in these types of
entrepreneurial efforts are operational problems, not innovation problems.
6) Don't worry too much about the idea or where you're working right now: your
goal is to build professional and personal credibility. Give away your great
ideas. Most people who have them don't tend to have just one.
7) Don't worry about home runs. Most entrepreneurs I know have small lifestyle
businesses and love their companies no matter the size. It's kinda like having
a kid. S/he's probably not going to grow up to be president, but you're going
to love 'em anyway.
~~~
palish
It's interesting that you imply <http://www.highwayfreight.com/index.php> is
bad design, when you consider the design of the website you're typing into. :)
My point is, you have to find _actual_ opportunities. A shiny website may not
be one, but you might manage to convince yourself that you could convince
others to see that a new website is a necessity, or even very valuable.
~~~
AmitinLA
I should have been more clear. My point is not that it's a bad design per se;
as you point out HN isn't the best designed site in the world either. My point
is more that these industries are old, established industries that haven't yet
built up innovative approaches (whether from the consumer side or the business
side) to their business models.
I used trucking because I did some research on the industry and found that
they have a fair amount of logistical innovation but still have major
inefficiencies in the way that their customers book business. It's not the
perfect example. But I think my point stands.
~~~
palish
My point was that your fundamental assumption is wrong. HN has a _fantastic_
design. I believe the trucking site is just as effective.
~~~
AmitinLA
Interesting. I'm somewhat inclined to agree with you w/r/t HN, because the UX
of HN is great, though at this point we may be disagreeing definitionally over
"design."
As for the trucking website, I would completely disagree for the following
reasons:
1) You have to receive a quote over email. Why? Either their systems are built
that way, which is ridiculous, or they require a human to look up values and
quote a price, which at this point is also ridiculous.
2) The form design is terrible. Eye movement/focus is all over the place.
3) There's absolutely no reason to use this company vs. other companies based
on their home page. What's their selling point? They have the same boilerplate
as everyone else.
4) Amateur hour: They misformat their own phone number: "(256) 852-553 5."
That nav bar. That frequent shipper link.
~~~
palish
Ah. This is a pretty interesting discussion, I think, so let's try to figure
it out.
One of my points -- disregarding whether the concept of quoting a price is
good or not -- is that there isn't anything fundamentally wrong about this
form: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/random_pics/free_quote_form.png>
They provide a phone number, office hours, and a satisfaction assurance.
About whether manually quoting prices is a good idea or not... I think overall
it facilitates the sales process, not harms it. It's a fact of the industry,
for one. For two, communicating verbally is much more engaging than via the
internet. It _seems_ like you would attract more customers in this instance,
unless your company did something fundamentally differently from the
competition.
_) Amateur hour: They misformat their own phone number: "(256) 852-553 5."
That nav bar. That frequent shipper link._
But does that really _matter_? What matters is that they provide a specialized
service to move an item from point A to point B. Sure, an extra space is a
typo, but not a serious one.
I'm really not trying to be nitpicky. I'm trying to point out that people
often make fundamentally wrong assumptions. And that will have a direct
negative impact when deciding what to spend time on, which is one of the most
precious resources.
~~~
AmitinLA
_...there isn't anything fundamentally wrong about this form"_
I think the only way to definitively prove either of my points is with A/B
testing, etc. But one way I can try to make my argument is to look at forms
from other successful companies. Almost every single long web form I've seen
or filled out goes down where there is a clear sequential order. Think about
long forms on SurveyMonkey or the product selection form on any computer
manufacturing website. The main exceptions seem to be for very short forms (~4
fields).
_They provide a phone number, office hours, and a satisfaction assurance._
None of that is different from the competition.
_About whether manually quoting prices is a good idea or not... I think
overall it facilitates the sales process, not harms it. It's a fact of the
industry, for one._
There may very well be good, or more accurately, rational, reasons for
manually quoting prices but the ones that I can think of (there's human
judgement involved, etc.) are all business opportunities. From a
buyer/consumer perspective, this pricing uncertainty and lack of information
can be confusing and even bad. Imagine having to do this for airline prices,
etc. Even FedEx will quote you a price for a similar service (and they use
vertical forms: <http://at.fedex.com/QX58q>).
An aside: whenever I hear something along the lines of "a fact of the
industry" I usually smell money. That doesn't mean I know how to get it, but
it's somewhere out there.
_But does that really matter?_
Absolutely. This is not an industry where there are one or two or three
players. There are dozens of competitors and if I'm entrusting my business --
and goods worth thousands and thousands of dollars -- I'm going with the "most
professional" people. I may pay more for it, though I don't want to. I'm not
going to go with the firm that has so little attention to detail that they
can't correct typos on a website that has likely been around for years. The
fact that they didn't even notice bugs the crap out of me.
Here's a way to test this, if you'd be interested: Take screenshots of this
site and I'll pick another site that I think is better designed but that
offers the same services. We ask people to pick one based purely on sight.
Some third party has to be willing to set up the survey though and email it to
some of his or her friends to ensure impartial results.
_I'm really not trying to be nitpicky._
I don't think this is a bad thing. I think if you're really passionate about
this stuff you care about it to the core or it's not worth caring at all.
------
cjg
The Paul Graham article "How to Do What You Love" has some tips in it that you
might find useful.
<http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html>
------
OoTheNigerian
If you have the chance, try and attend a hack weekend like http//:launch48.com
. You will meet lots of people who are doing are interested in doing startups.
You will get a healthy overview of what it takes in one short weekend. 2\. Try
and get involved in a startup project even if it is for fun and I promise you
that it will jump start something in you.
With your skills (common sense) you could do learn HTML, UX and learn to
create mockups e.t.c.
The most important thing you can do now is to take action.
best of luck man
~~~
stuck
Thanks a lot for the advice, sounds like an interesting start
------
mattdeboard
Buenos dias! I'm a PR professional toiling in the American Midwest after
leaving the San Francisco Bay Area for family reasons. My plan, in another
couple of years, is to leave the job I'm working at now for the startup
industry.
I'm not a geek. I have dabbled some with Python, like reading the occasional
"hard" CS article linked from HN, love startup culture, love technology, etc.
I'm not a hacker though. Most my good friends are, however.
My plan, which could easily apply to you goes a little like this.
Work here in the midwest for another couple of years while the family
situation resolves itself. Do research on which of the big American tech hubs
(Austin, Boston, NYC, Silicon Valley, etc.) are looking the most active in
terms of hiring. Move to that place and start seeking a job -- as a PR
professional. Now, granted, by the time a startup is seeking a dedicated and
experienced PR professional, they're beyond the "five guys working to hack
together a product" stage. However, those are the kinds of people I want to
work with, not 50-year-olds grinding out their remaining work years sitting in
an office.
I cannot imagine working in a corporate environment for more than a couple
years. Even less can I imagine living in the stagnating midwest (not even
Chicago) for more than a couple years.
Develop a 3- or 5-year plan to get yourself out of the corporate doldrums. Be
willing to move to where the beating heart of tech entrepreneurship is in your
country/region. Gather as much experience as you can doing as many varied
tasks within your area of expertise as possible. Learn sales, learn marketing,
be active in social media, teach yourself some programming so you can at least
participate in conversations by asking intelligent questions.
Startups need more people than just hackers once they have a product on their
hands. No eres sin util in such an environment. Buena suerte!
------
freshfey
As other people already said, you're underselling yourself. You have great
skills and a great mind to even achieve more skills. If you're interested in
the tech/web space and really interested in the creating part, why not learn
programming? Yes, it takes time, yes it can be hard, but it can also be
fulfilling. I'm a business guy myself, although I study Electrical Engineering
and I'm currently trying to learn Ruby on Rails. Frameworks like Rails or
platforms like Titanium (www.appcelerator.com) make it easy for non-
programming people to learn the basics (be it Ruby, JS, HTML or CSS) and
actually create something. I did an online tutorial on JavaScript, after that
I dived into Titanium and tried to re-implement an example. After a few days
and some setbacks, my iPhone app was 90% done. As I said, if it's creating in
the tech world, you're interested in, don't worry be crappy and learn a lot
along the way! :) What do you have to lose?
------
maukdaddy
I'm sort of in your situation, although I do have some background in
programming from college years. I also did the consulting thing before getting
my MBA. That said, I'm looking for product management positions, and think
that they might be a good fit for you too.
In theory, product managers should be able to take care of all the business
matters to free the developers to concentrate on the code. Good product
managers would be capable of defining requirements, deciding which features
for which release, doing some level of marketing and analytics, etc. Your
business and consulting background would definitely be a good fit for these
kinds of activities.
tl;dr - look for product management positions.
~~~
stuck
I only have 2 years of work experience, I highly doubt I am qualified enough
to work as a product manager :)
------
jlindley
If your business experience is in talking with and listening to other people,
it is valuable. If you know about marketing or sales, it is valuable.
Instead of worrying about what to do, worry about how to meet people that are
also interested in building things. The rest follows from there.
If you've got friends to explore with, the question becomes "what do we do?"
instead of "what do I do?" and it's a more powerful mental place to start
from. Still scary but not such an overwhelming existential question.
Once you've got exposure to the world you want to be in, you'll find your
place. In the mean time, make sure you're saving money so you're capable of
doing something about the opportunity you find, once you find it.
------
bpourriahi
\- stop relying on advice given by anyone not where you want to be
\- the amount of revenue a business makes is based on the amount of value it
is able to generate for other people. focus yourself on generating value,
whether it is directly for consumers/businesses are a business, or as a proxy
working for a business and delivering value through the business.
A business cannot survive without generating value. Focus on the core of
business and work from there. Figure out ways you can most effectively deliver
value, then start from there.
------
terra_t
If you're in a place to make big $ w/o doing anything creative, you're in a
privileged position in life. Most people are making just a little $ w/o doing
anything creative or having any meaning in their life.
Doing anything that matters is a lot of work with just a slight sliver of
reward. If you're in a position to make it as a rent-seeker, I say milk it for
what it's worth.
~~~
stuck
Those are exactly my fathers words. I have definitely thought about this
option, my fear is that I will get to 35 without having done anything that I
care about in life.
~~~
terra_t
Well, I was being about 50% sarcastic there. Personally I've been forced into
entrepreneurship, somewhere around 37, because I realized my career wasn't
going to go anywhere (in terms of either doing work I could be proud of or
making $) unless I made some move.
At the age of 25, I just didn't have that sense of urgency.
------
AlexMuir
You're underselling yourself massively here. You are in the minority - you
can't move for tripping over developers. I can't get a decent
sales/marketing/ops guy for blood nor money. Find a startup that you believe
in and just approach the people behind it - send them a couple of ideas for
how you'd contribute and I'll bet they're interested.
------
sabj
The first step is knowing that you want to make a change, kudos on that! Great
questions and some good answers here, look forward to reading more. As someone
light on the programming side, always interested in responses on this kind of
question. Especially answers that go beyond, "hey, go learn to program more."
------
f1gm3nt
You really have a lot to contribute to a start up. I believe that each person
in a startup should bring skills to the table to help it grow. You being with
a business background could help create marketing plans, and secure funding
for the start up. There's sooo much you can do!
Hell, I would love to have you on my team =D
------
vital101
You need to find something that interests you and that you can care about.
When you do, find a company that does it and try to work for them. If there
isn't a company, make one. Obviously this is easier said than done, but it
always takes some extra effort to get out of a rut.
Best of luck!
------
wccrawford
"So my question is, how can I get out of this vicious circle of unfulfilling
work 9-20 (officially its 9-5 by I never get out of the office before 20) and
do something that I care about?"
Find something you care about. Start doing it.
Why do you have to make it harder than that?
~~~
stuck
Sounds easy. Finding something that you care about and that you can actually
contribute to is the hard part.
~~~
joshuakahn
It's deceptively simple; focus only on what's fun and interesting. No more
analysis needed.
------
iterationx
Leverage your current position to acquire new skills. Continue to acquire
skills until you feel moderately useful, then repost this question and list
the skills you have acquired, and the quality of advice will improve.
------
lzw
It sounds to me like you do not like doing work for others that doesn't fit a
personal passion. If this is the case then I think you will be able to solve
your problem by finding something you are passionate about, thinking of the
problems related to it, and coming up with a solution.
There are manta business ideas that do not require a room of engineers. I'm an
engineer and have many ideas, but the best method for finding the right one to
work on for me is to add artficial constraints.
Take your constraints and turn them into a filter for ideas.
One of the best ideas vie had in weeks turned out to be an online business
that requires only 2 pages on a website and an agreement. No real engineering
work and I could do it in a weekend.
But what is critical about that idea is that it addesses a problem in an area
that I'm passionate about in a very profitable and scalable way.
So, what are your constraints? \- you have a good job, no need to give that up
right now sovfind something you can do two days a week, at least until it gets
off the ground. \- you're not an engineer.... So either learn how to program-
which you can do if you want. You mitt never be as good as a natural, but
don't let that stop you. -- or find something that needs little engineering
thatbp you can either get a friend or outsource or stumble thru yourself. \-
you know a lot about business and your in Spain. What will the business
community need in spain in the next decade?
Or find some other passion -- running, whatever. The most economical unsound
hobbies still provide avenues for businesses even if it is making products to
help other hobbyists.
You have access to a lot of stats... Are there things there that people don't
generally know or realize? Trends to be exploited?
You are on the right track. Just dedicate yourself and look for the business
that fits your situation. What makes it a startup is the business being a
powder keg. But if you end up with a lifestyle business the first time out,
don't worry, you will learn so much doing it that you'll wonder why you paid
for and MBA!
You can always sell a lifestyle business to any umber of people whethe real
startup idea comes around... Or take your time and find a powder keg you can
light.
Either way, put your weekends into it, make it your passion, and quit your
regular job when you're earning more from the side job than the regular one.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Self-driving truck startup Ike raises $52M Series A - gtmtg
https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/05/self-driving-truck-startup-ike-raises-52-million/
======
daly
PlusAI ([https://plus.ai/en/](https://plus.ai/en/)) is way ahead of them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Salt: Combining ACID and BASE in a Distributed Database - mad44
http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2015/02/salt-combining-acid-and-base-in.html
======
DiabloD3
This is neat and all, but when can I get a database that does this?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
LibreOffice: How good are we compared to Microsoft Office? - mariuz
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:_LibreOffice_-_Microsoft_Office
======
im_down_w_otp
PowerPoint has perhaps the worst user interface I can imagine for creating
presentations. When I attempted to switch to Linux full-time I discovered that
LibreOffice Impress defied the extents of my imagination and was some how
much, much worse.
I gave up on my Linux transition due to two primary factors. 1) constant rough
edges and half-broken basic things like Windows losing focus after resizing
them. 2) lack of access to a presentation tool that wasn't an active assault
on my workflow & creative process.
The word processor and spreadsheet app worked well enough for me though, so
that's a plus.
------
ziszis
If you are competing with Microsoft Office network effects, "Compatibility
with Microsoft Office file formats" is the #1 feature. Everything else is a
distant #2.
By definition, Microsoft Office scores 100%. What % less than 100% would be
acceptable for Libre Office? If only 90% of the documents I produce render
correctly in Microsoft Office, do any of the other features matter? It would
be very interesting to have an objective test suite that calculates how close
Libre Office is.
The other path is Google Docs which solves scenarios that are underserved by
Microsoft. Like collaborative editing.
~~~
Crespyl
> By definition, Microsoft Office scores 100%
You might be surprised...
------
sccxy
Real fanboy comparison.
Cherry picked features and yellow/green coloring is mostly LibreOffice
friendly.
Real life comparison is much different
------
EarthIsHome
Interesting how LO can import MS Visio files (2000-2013) but MS Office cannot.
------
luchadorvader
One thing that irks me about libre office is its hacky VBA support. I would
think that they would try to support it where I could open an excel file and
have the VBA code run the same in both platforms. But a lot of the time it
crashes even with that VBA support tag at the top.
If they could provide full support for that I could see a lot of my customers
switching to Libre Office for their reports and business tools which in turn
would let me switch to it as well.
My dream spreadsheet software: Lightweight (remember this is a dream) Full
support for VBA Scripting alternative in Python SANE scripting API Open source
Cross platform Modern UI
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to Detect Snooping in iOS Apps? - lbj
I have the official Instagram app on my phone. Today I received a text message from a friend (SMS) wherein he suggested I joined a certain organization which isn't relevant for me at all. An hour later I open Instagram and see an add for this organization.<p>Seeing how Im not at all their target audience, it made me suspicious. I know full well that one example does not make a case, so Im wondering if there are any tools I can use to learn more about the inner processes in Instagram?<p>(did check app settings, it was mostly restricted except "Background App Refresh")
======
Nextgrid
There is no way Instagram has access to your texts on iOS.
What most likely happened is that the friend searched for this organization,
then looked at your Instagram profile and Facebook decided to take a gamble
and check if _you_ were also interested in it by showing you the ad and see if
you'd click on it or look at it a bit longer.
~~~
lbj
You're probably mostly right. I would just like to make absolutely sure.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What Are Some Companies That Foster Employee Happiness and Wellbeing? - mgmeyers
After recently leaving a toxic work environment and reading the news about experiments in 4 day work weeks and 6 hour work days, I got to wondering how many companies out there actively foster a culture of employee happiness and wellbeing. I'm less interested in ping-pong and free lunches, and more interested in things like:<p><pre><code> - Shorter work days / weeks
- Encouraged PTO
- Concern for work / life balance
- Openness to alternative working arrangements
- Mindfulness of personality traits such as introversion / extroversion
- Health / wellness and personal / professional development stipends
</code></pre>
I'm not necessarily looking for companies that tick all of these boxes, but instead looking to survey the landscape.<p>Also, what qualities are important to all of you in terms of being happy and healthy in your jobs?
======
KerryJones
I just started working for Patreon so it might be a bit early but I _love_ the
culture, and it has many of those traits. I have also studied building
cultures for my own previous startups before and they do a lot right.
\- Encouraged PTO (they suggest one week a quarter) \- A lot of quiet /
introversion rooms as well as space to be chatty \- Full normal health
benefits AND mental health benefits (emotional counseling) \- Mental health
days are totally accepted \- People WFH as they need (though encouraged to be
in the office) \- A large personal development stipend ($3K/yr)
\----------------
They also provide a lot of other aspects that I think play into the culture,
but really it's the people that make it for me. Everyone really cares about
the mission.
~~~
mgmeyers
That does sound pretty great. After your studies in culture building, what
sort of things do you look for in a company?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook is returning a 503 No Server Available right now - octagonal
http://facebook.com/
======
Ayaz
Thankfully, it is back up. I just couldn't for the life of me stand all the
silly, bloody tweets on Twitter trying very hard to be funny about the whole
ordeal.
------
octagonal
pi@pi ~ $ curl -I [http://facebook.com/](http://facebook.com/)
HTTP/1.1 503 No server is available for the request
Server: proxygen
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2014 07:54:55 GMT
Connection: close
Content-Length: 2131
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dirac 1.0 released (an advanced royalty-free video compression format from BBC) - nickb
http://diracvideo.org/node/18
======
wmf
A more accurate headline would be dirac-research codebase (which should only
be used by codec researchers, not users) 1.0 released.
The version that users should use (Schroedinger) hit 1.0 a while ago.
------
newt0311
How does this compression format compare against H.264 (ignoring licensing and
patent issues)?
~~~
ComputerGuru
_However, it promises significant savings in bandwidth and improvements in
quality over these codecs, by some claims even superior to those promised by
the latest generation of codecs such as H.264/MPEG-4 AVC or SMPTE's VC-1
(which is based on Microsoft's WMV 9)._
Taken from: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_>(codec)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear - jmngomes
http://www.hemingwayapp.com/
Great for testing your copy
======
jawns
You know what's fun? Pasting in text from Ernest Hemingway and seeing what he
did wrong.
But seriously, this is a nice, simple way to point out some general rules of
thumb for improving writing, although I would love for it to be less
proscriptive. Not every long sentence is a bad sentence, not every passive-
voice sentence is a bad sentence, and not every adverb is a bad adverb.
Oh, and by the way, the copy editor in me can't help but notice that an app
that's intended to help you improve your writing tells you to "Aim for 2 or
less" adverbs, rather than "Aim for 2 or fewer."
~~~
pmichaud
The thing about pedantic snark (less/fewer), is that it loses its teeth when
you're wrong.
Even if you go in for prescriptive grammar, less and fewer were never strictly
divided. The distinction actually came to us through one Mr. Baker's expressed
preference:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less#Historical_usage](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less#Historical_usage)
~~~
hluska
While I don't think the proposed edit would help, the commenter isn't actually
wrong - in modern usage, it is more correct to say "fewer corrections" than
"less corrections." Language doesn't form in a vacuum, nor is its growth
confined to dictionaries. Rather, language is a living, breathing thing and
grammar is closer to history than mechanics.
Consider the less v. fewer debate. Yes, several hundred years ago, it was just
fine to say "less corrections." However, for whatever reason, the upper crust
decided that "fewer corrections" both looked and sounded better. Consequently,
"less corrections" evolved to be less correct. My inner smartass wanted to say
"fewer correct", but that would be a silly joke.
It's like Russian. If you speak French, you can understand many Russian words.
This isn't because French and Russian are linguistic cousins. Rather, it's
because French was the language of nobility and words trickled down.
Or heck, we could talk about the word "you." You was originally formal,
whereas "thou" was more relaxed and informal. Yet, today, if I started a
comment on Hacker News with, "I fear thou are wrong", it would seem needlessly
formal.
To conclude this long mess (it was supposed to be four lines and turned into
paragraphs), language evolves constantly. Though certain distinctions didn't
exist in earlier English, they exist now. However, if you know much about the
history and formation of English, you should be less pedantic. It should also
make us much more tolerant of people for whom English isn't their native
language. We speak an intensely complex language with random rules that apply
in some cases and not others.
Thank heavens we don't have to compile our language before we speak it...:)
~~~
sqrt17
"more correct" is nonsense, since 'correct' is not a gradable adjective. "more
acceptable" would be correct.
Whether "less [count-noun]" is acceptable depends on granularity: "less than
two adverbs" is acceptable whenever it feels alright to you to just abstract
adverbs into a pure number. "less than two corrections" is not acceptable to
most people because corrections don't lend themselves to being abstracted into
a number.
Languages are not random. It's just that prescriptivist get hung up on random
subsets of language and pretend they've seen all of it.
~~~
hluska
Sorry, but I don't understand what you're trying to say.
If you're specifically talking about my use of "more correct", let me try
another example of why I think "more correct" is useful nonsense. I'm
Canadian. Therefore, I use spellings like "colour" and "honour".
However, if I'm writing something primarily targeted to Americans, I switch to
honor and color. It isn't that colour becomes incorrect when I write for an
American audience. To me, color is always wrong. But, if I want to influence
an American audience, color will be the correct spelling they're looking for.
When I'm obsessing over edits, especially when underlying rules are unclear
(or non-existent), shades of correctness are the best metric I can find. Do
you have another?
~~~
tptacek
Something is either correct or it isn't, is the point.
You might instead write "closer to correct", but, how clunky.
~~~
oconnor0
Einstein's theories about the universe are more correct than Newton's. Neither
are "correct".
~~~
steveeq1
Reminds me of an old quote by George E. P. Box - "All models are wrong, but
some are useful"
------
acqq
I believe the logic behind HemingwayApp is misguided:
Hemingway the writer actually wrote long sentences and they were actually
important in his writing.
Passive is also important in good writing.
You can't use machine metrics to force "good writing" you can only enforce
mediocrity and the following some random rules "because the rules have to be
followed."
Likewise, I as a writer of the software would absolutely hate to run some
program to tell me "this function has more than 10 lines" or whatever. If I
wrote 500 lines function it doesn't mean it shouldn't be that long: there are
examples where exactly such functions are still necessary and good. Such
automatic evaluations are for managers who probably don't understand what they
enforce. Pointy-haired bosses, if you will.
So I see HemingwayApp as the pointy-haired-editor app.
(Edit: Improving the text based on the human input, thanks Agathos!)
~~~
wmeredith
Hmmm... thanks for commenting, acqq, but four out of nine sentences in your
comment are hard to read. You also used four adverbs, try and aim for two or
less.
~~~
lutusp
> try and aim for two or less.
I hope this was meant as provocation. I'm guessing you actually meant, "Try to
aim for two or fewer," yes?
~~~
crntaylor
It was a reference to the Hemingway app. If you paste acqq's comment into
Hemingway, it suggests "Four adverbs used. Try to aim for two or less."
As humour goes, it's a few levels of indirection away from Seinfeld. But
you're on a forum full of people who spend all day thinking of abstractions
for their abstractions, so what do you expect?
~~~
lutusp
> If you paste acqq's comment into Hemingway, it suggests "Four adverbs used.
> Try to aim for two or less."
Okay, that made my day. :)
------
buzzcut
This is built on so many bad assumptions. At best the "rules" it's trying to
enforce are training-wheel rules, the sorts of rules given to novice writers
to help them avoid flabby, purple writing.
But the assumption that short sentences are better than long sentences, or
that simple sentences are better than complex sentences is just wrong. There
are all kinds of reasons why you might use one type of sentence over the other
or vary them for effect. You might be concerned about rhythm, or you might be
attempting to establish a certain tone, distance, closeness, formality, or
lack of.
We have this weird cultural obsession with the clarity, brevity, and
simpleness of writing. Jacques Barzun even wrote a writing manual called
Simple and Direct, as if these are the only virtues to be found in writing.
But I think you want as many tools as possible to achieve the effects you
want. There is a huge rich tradition here, that we've largely lost, a
tradition that teaches about hypotactic and paratactic sentences, that teaches
about periodic and loose sentences, that teaches how to make left and right
branching sentences, that teaches subordination, that teaches rhetorical
devices, and that advocates (at times) longer, more complex sentences for
richer and denser writing.
Thankfully there are a number of books out (some of them) recently that seem
to be fighting back against the austerity view of writing.
They include, if you're interested: \- Brooks Landon, Building Great Sentences
\- Stanley Fish, How to Write a Sentence \- Virginia Tufte, Artful Sentences,
Syntax as Style \- Richard Lanham, Analyzing Prose
I'd just add, there is nothing wrong with being simple and clear. There is
nothing wrong with cutting out needless or weak adverbs. But there is
something wrong with worshiping the austerity style as, at all times, the best
and the only way to go. There are lots and lots of reasons and occasions to
deviate from it, but the style orthodoxy these days is the one assumed by that
(admittedly cool) website.
~~~
bo1024
I thought it was ironic that the first two sentences were very well-written,
but highlighted. As if to show an example where the app would be useful. The
sentences are excellent and don't need changing.
------
jonnathanson
I'm going to love using this. I write for a living, so I write a maddening
volume of output per week. While I don't absolve myself of the need to edit
everything, I'm working against the law of large numbers. Some stupid errors,
or bad stylistic habits, are going to slip through the net every week.
I've been jonesing for a real-time style editor for years. Autocorrect is fine
and dandy (and often wrong, but that's another story). But most autocorrect
systems limit themselves to spelling and grammar. Hemingway selects for
readability. That's very cool and very useful.
That said, I'm probably not going to copy & paste everything I write into the
Hemingway editing environment. I'd _love_ plug-ins and APIs for Word, Google
Docs, etc. If you make these, I will use them, and I will bug the living shit
out of every writer I know to do the same.
~~~
sitkack
One my biggest problems is word repetition sentence to sentence. I have been
mulling an NLTK powered editor for quite awhile now and this PoC is exciting.
But I want to much more!
* Measure for consistent voicing
* Apply arbitrary-ish user supplied rules
* Analyze grammar in sentence structure
~~~
lutusp
> One my biggest problems is word repetition sentence to sentence.
It would be nice to have a tool that detects such things, but for the moment,
a detailed editing pass is a good idea. I always edit what I write, indeed
most of the time I'm writing and editing in parallel.
> But I want to much more!
I'm more than a little worried that, because of AI advances, automated methods
will finally (and undesirably) hide the "voice" of the text's originator.
~~~
sitkack
> I'm more than a little worried that, because of AI advances, automated
> methods will finally (and undesirably) hide the "voice" of the text's
> originator.
But for a lot of writing this is a good thing, having cohesive writing trumps
losing the voice. It isn't fiction that I think these tools will be useful or
desirable for, it is the mountains of technical writing we are drowning in.
More troubling is the use of automated writing tools for propaganda and
psyops.
~~~
jonnathanson
Agreed. We could point out that, for the last 30-odd years, Strunk and White's
"Elements of Style" has served as the homogenizing cudgel used to beat every
writer's voice into submission. But, by and large, the influence of EoS has
been a good thing. It's helped a lot more people than it's hurt.
Serious and professional writers generally write for two things: clarity and
insight. Stylistic preferences shouldn't stamp out a writer's ability to make
a good point. They should help him express that point more clearly. That's
usually to the writer's (and readers') advantage.
Writers who break the rules, and who know what they're doing, are fine. Most
rule-breakers don't know what they're doing, however. For every David Foster
Wallace, there are a thousand writers who aren't aware they're hard for most
people to read.
~~~
sitkack
Dude, you write good.
------
nswanberg
Paul Graham's writing seems simple and direct to me, so I wondered how the
website would treat one of his essays. Here are the suggestions from the third
paragraph of
[http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html):
"The most obvious difference between real essays and the things one has to
write in school is that real essays are not exclusively _(only)_ about English
literature. _(Sentence hard to read)_ Certainly _(Adverb)_ schools should
teach students how to write. But due to a series of historical accidents the
teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature.
And so all over the country students are writing not about how a baseball team
with a small budget might compete with the Yankees, or the role of color in
fashion, or what constitutes _(Forms, makes up)_ a good dessert, but about
symbolism in Dickens. _(Sentence very hard to read)_.
This is given a "readability" score of grade 14, which I suppose means it can
only be deciphered by college sophomores or above.
I wondered how it would read after being rewritten to achieve a perfect score
in the site, so I took a stab at it:
"In school students write essays about English literature. But real essays can
be about many more things. Schools should teach students how to write. But due
to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed
together with the study of literature. All over the country students are not
writing about how a baseball team with a small budget might compete with the
Yankees. They are not writing about the role of color in fashion. They are not
writing about what makes a good dessert. They are writing about symbolism in
Dickens."
The result brings me straight back to my days of taking standardized tests,
where the test had a snippet of some essay, and was followed by questions on
the topic. There was information in those snippets, but very little tone. It
could be a bad attempt at my part, but while the information remains in my
version, the tone is gone--I can no longer smell the air of Cambridge in that
writing.
~~~
JasonFruit
I don't think Hemingway could breathe at Cambridge.
~~~
nswanberg
The real Hemingway or the website? I was hoping someone would explore the idea
this tool could remove elitism, since I haven't made up my mind on that (I
think Paul's version is much more pleasant to read). I guess this is a start.
Thinking along those lines, has anyone put Jeff Atwood's writing into this
thing? He's an extremely effective communicator to large tech audiences, and
my guess is that he should have a more readable score on this thing than Paul
would.
~~~
pjmorris
Challenge accepted. I grabbed the text of 'Why Does Windows Have Terrible
Battery Life?'[1] and fed it to Hemingway. Grade 10 readability.
[1][http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/10/why-does-windows-
ha...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/10/why-does-windows-have-
terrible-battery-life.html)
------
normloman
Professional writer here.
Writing well takes years of practice. If you already write well, you won't
need this program. You'll know the rules and the right times to break them.
But if you can't put in the time and effort to become a great writer, just
using this program can improve your writing a lot.
~~~
krmmalik
Glad to see the opinion of an actual professional writer rather than just
someone with an opinion for the sake of it.
I'm trying very hard to improve my writing at the moment and reading Zinsser's
book. I understand what Zinsser is encouraging us all to do, but putting it in
practise is over 30 years of un-learning that I need to do so it's not easy.
I'm glad that you said the tool is useful because i was having doubts about it
after seeing the other comments. Im going to use it to assess my next blog
post and see how things pan out.
Thanks for the tip.
~~~
normloman
That's a classic book!
~~~
e12e
Easily the best book on writing I've read. Closely followed by some research
from the 60s on "process oriented writing" (I'm not sure if that's the
accepted English term -- the material I read was in Danish). They essentially
say the same thing: writing is re-writing -- and in that light, any tool that
encourages you to look at what you've written again, and rethink it one more
time, should help improve your writing.
[edit: Hemmingway himself has allegedly said "The first draft of anything is
shit." \-- but at least wikiquote has it as unsourced, so I'm not sure if the
attribution is correct -- even if the idea probably is]
------
pistle
For presenting utilize as a wasteful term, I want to tearfully hug everyone
involved in this.
Please kill 'utilize.' We should reach out to stakeholders and incentivize the
sunsetting of the leveraging of the word 'utilize' from all slide decks.
Slide decks - the (not) new version of the tri-fold foam presentation board.
It's the clear binder of our age.
~~~
diydsp
Utilize has a rightful place in the English language. [1][2]
Just because so many people misuse it, doesn't mean it should be ghettoized.
Remember a few days ago when an article suggested that we may be shaping our
lives according to the capability of machines and there were many naysayers?
People nixing a perfectly useful word because a machine can easily recognize
is a perfect example of us accomodating our ways to the capabilities of
machines.
[1] [http://grammarpartyblog.com/2012/01/17/use-versus-
utilize/](http://grammarpartyblog.com/2012/01/17/use-versus-utilize/) [2]
[http://writing.wikinut.com/Writing-Tip%3A-Use-and-Utilize-
ar...](http://writing.wikinut.com/Writing-Tip%3A-Use-and-Utilize-are-Not-the-
Same/1c4q0-bs/)
~~~
ivan_ah
> _Utilize has a rightful place in the English language. [1][2]_
Neither of the these articles make a very strong point. Just because the
Merriam-Webster felt this "use for unintended purpose" connotation doesn't
mean it's true. I'm still of the opinion that "utilize" is completely useless
---it is simply the French verb for "to use."
The use of "utilize" in English is a classic "wanting to be fancy by using the
French word" syndrome.
~~~
diydsp
While the second reference was for Merriam-Webster, the first was for Oxford.
So if you really want go against BOTH of those dictionaries AND
english.stackexchange [1], you'll be making yourself deliberately obtuse. You
might want to glance at the Cambridge American English Dictionary as well
[2][3].
Can you not loosen your grip on this opinion in the face of evidence? Is it
clear to you that people make dictionaries so that we can communicate more
efficiently, get more done, understand one another better and improve our
experience on this planet, not to be fancy? I'm telling you this because in my
dream, this is a website of people helping each other achieve the goals of
their lives and details like this may help you, too. I enjoy it when people
bring me fresh clarity. I'm not trying to beat you into a pulp until you agree
with me.
[1] [http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/19811/using-
utili...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/19811/using-utilize-
instead-of-use) [2] [http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-
english/...](http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-
english/utilize) [3] [http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-
english/...](http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-
english/use_1)
------
adam_b_long
Hey guys, my name is Adam Long and my brother and I created Hemingway a few
months ago!
Loving the comments here. As many of you pointed out, rules are meant to be
broken. Our goal was to fix a simple problem: when you're looking at your own
writing for too long, you start missing the simple, obvious errors.
You can follow me on Twitter @Adam_B_Long if you're interested in chatting
about Hemingway with me.
~~~
jimejim
Cool. I was in the early stages of doing a userscript for gmail to do
something like what you have here. All it does right now is filter out
specific words/phrases I know I use too much, but I found some scripts that
check for passive voice and "weasel words" that I want to incorporate.
This is definitely cool.
You may want to check this out, if you haven't seen it already:
[http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-
voi...](http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-voice-weasel-
words-duplicates/)
------
vkb
This is a very beautiful and logical interface, but it's the wrong approach,
because it's a very developer-centric approach to writing.
The problem with writing is you can't loop through it and find whether each
sentence passes or throws an exception. A written work needs to be evaluated
as a cohesive whole. That's what "bold and clear" writing means to me: a
written piece of work that stands on its own and says what it means.
Computers are not smart enough yet to understand why "Lolita, light of my
life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue
taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.
Lo. Lee. Ta." is a complete, perfect paragraph. It doesn't have a verb and it
looks like Lola is misspelled multiple times, so it doesn't pass the subset of
grammar rules set up in the backend. But the meaning, the essence of the
paragraph is clear.
Writing may someday be able to be governed by algorithms, but not yet. I ran
the second paragraph of David Copperfield through Hemingway [1], and it gave
me too many adverbs, a misspelling of the British neighbourhood, and the use
of passive voice. This is understandable, as Charles Dickens was a verbose
writer who got paid by the word. And yet, it doesn't detract from the fact
that he is one of the most-loved in the English cannon.
We can't measure good literature yet, because there is no straightforward
formula, and although this is an interesting attempt, it can't teach good
writing better than a human.
For a better, and still technical, approach to understanding how and why
sentences and paragraphs work with us or against us, it's better to read
Strunk and White, and even better to read "How Fiction Works" by James Wood.
If there is a way to incorporate at least those two books into conditional
statements, I would be excited to see it.
[1] [http://imgur.com/k9hsHfj](http://imgur.com/k9hsHfj)
~~~
ScottBurson
> one of the most-loved in the English cannon
You mean "canon" \-- the root of "canonical".
~~~
vkb
Yes, that would be it. Thank you.
------
Duhck
I love this, and I love your test for the desktop version.
One suggestion, make the price a slider from $0->$100 and instead of asking
"Would you pay $5 for a desktop version of Hemingway? It would add the ability
to save and open text files." ask "Please suggest a price for the desktop
version"
This will give you a better idea of the true value of the application to
people without being suggestive.
Awesome idea and implementation!
~~~
jaysonelliot
Also a big fan of the "desktop version" test, because it is triggered by the
action of a user trying to get the desktop version as opposed to thinking they
are about to answer a poll.
To that end, I wouldn't trust the data you would get if you asked people to
state what they would be willing to pay. Self-reported data out of context is
notoriously unreliable. Instead, really put it to the test. Tell people that
you'll develop a desktop version if enough pledges are received, and ask
people to make a binding pledge in advance. Give them a discount for jumping
in early, of course, but use the average pledge as a guideline for final
pricing.
If the median pledge amount is, say, $10, then you could probably assume that
people would be willing to pay $15 once the product was actually available for
download. (Those are made-up numbers, but you get the idea.)
------
munificent
I think people are reading a bit too much into the name, and into the feedback
the app gives. I don't think it's "get rid of all the pastels and your writing
will be like Heminway's", nor do I even think "get rid of _all_ the warnings"
is what it's trying to do.
It _is_ useful for a writer to throw some text at it and see what you can
learn. More feedback is almost always better for writers. The trick, is
always, is having the judgement to incorporate intelligently.
For example, I stumbled onto a book about procedural content generation in
games[1]. As a writer, game programmer, and dedicated fan of roguelikes, if
this book were any farther up my alley, it would be banging against the back
fence.
But, ugh, when I tried to read it, I just gave up after a few paragraphs. It's
not gibberish, but it's almost physically painful to wring the actual
information out of it.
And, indeed, when I throw some of those paragraphs at this app, I see:
Paragraphs: 1
Sentences: 31
Words: 833
Characters: 4196
11 of 31 sentences are hard to read.
11 of 31 sentences are very hard to read.
10 adverbs. Aim for 0 or less.
10 words or phrases can be simpler.
13 uses of passive voice. Aim for 6 or less.
If the authors took a bit of advice from this app, they'd end up with a better
book. That sounds like a win to me.
[1]: [http://pcgbook.com/](http://pcgbook.com/)
~~~
whatsreal
I would venture that the problem with pcgbook.com is not the quality of
writing, but the fact that most of the authors are not native english
speakers. They seem to be mostly Dutch or at least living in Copenhagen.
~~~
tormeh
Ahahaha! How many textbooks have you read? How many American ones? The
majority of them suck. Wikipedia can usually be counted upon to be clearer.
And the more academic the books are, the more they suck. Actually, I would
guess that how often the words "I", "you" and other personal pronouns
referring to the author and reader appear in a book would be a powerful
positive predictor of the book's quality.
Sure, being non-native doesn't help, but the world of academic writing has
far, FAR bigger problems than that.
------
agentultra
For the hackers, I use write-good-mode in emacs to catch passive voice (which
is based on some simple shell scripts[0]). I've heard good things about
diction-mode, grammar-mode and artbollocks-mode. And of course flyspell.
I find emacs very pleasing for writing text. I also use org-mode and it's
LaTeX exporter extensively for publishing.
Now if only it could integrate with text-fields in my browser...
[0] [http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-
voi...](http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-voice-weasel-
words-duplicates/)
~~~
Flenser
I use org-mode for a to-do list and reference/archive. How can it help with
publishing?
~~~
agentultra
I've been thinking about putting together a blog post explaining how I use it
for my book projects... however the short of it is: _org-export_.
I can map out my book chapters and sections in a typical tree. I use
:noexport: for sub-trees in which I keep notes and errata. Since I use LaTeX I
can give my documents some more direct formatting control using #+BEGIN_LATEX
blocks (which I have found useful for adding a title page, controlling flow
positioning of tables, etc). And I've written a little elisp to hook in some
functions which run the _texi2pdf_ program on my exported output
automatically.
The nice thing is that I don't have to worry about typesetting until much
later. I can just focus on the text, structure and flow. I can have my notes
inline. It's really quite a nice setup.
~~~
TeMPOraL
Please do write this post. There's not enough examples of working setups for
publishing with org mode; your experience will be helpful to many (myself
included).
------
lhnz
Well, this is great.
But it's missing something.
If I'm to learn how to write clearer, I will need to use this more often.
Could they create an API and a chrome addon?
Ubiquity is the killer feature of any communication tool.
~~~
myth_drannon
I suspect they are using
[https://languagetool.org/](https://languagetool.org/) as a back-end, at least
for some parts of the grading. LanguageTool has chrome addon and a public API.
------
splitbrain
The source of this would be useful to integrate such features in other apps
(like editors). An API might do as well at least for online tools like blogs.
As a standalone site it's too much hassle to integrate it into your daily
workflow I think.
~~~
natdempk
Making this an API that WordPress, Draft, Ghost, and other writing platforms
could pull in would be awesome. Maybe you could add plugin support or
something for people that want it integrated into their blog/cms?
------
jaimebuelta
I like the idea of the app, but I'm not totally sure this kind of "review"
will be very useful.
The problem is that, in some cases, you need complex sentences , passive voice
or adverbs. And that means that a perfectly fine article won't be pristine. I
had a similar problem when facing syntax correctors that show a lot of
warnings. Yes, they help you make less mistakes, but they also give falso
positives, which can be distracting. I want to clean up and get to zero
errors, after all.
So, this can reduce your writing to be "too conformant".
Man, writing is hard :_(
~~~
chadwickthebold
I thought the same thing on first glance. However, maybe the use case for this
is rather to filter entire blocks of solid color text. One complex (red)
sentence every now and then is perfectly fine, but I would rather see a whole
paragraph of them, say 4 or so in a row, as a problem.
~~~
jaimebuelta
I just cannot stand having "errors" highlighted in red, so my tendency will be
to feel bad for not correcting every one. It breaks my heart to see compiler
warnings, even if I know that those specific ones are ok... Maybe is just me,
but it will be conflicting for me, and potentially not useful...
------
aneisf
I'm reminded of a story[1] I heard on NPR the other day. Researchers have
drawn correlations between writing style and the eventual onset of
Alzheimer's. Apparently nuns who had a habit of writing verbose, idea-dense
sentences were less likely to develop Alzheimer's later on.
[1]:
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1272118...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127211884)
------
CalRobert
This saddens me. I appreciate clear writing as much as anyone, but are we not
denuding our language if we attempt to describe everything using short
sentences and a small lexicon? I hate reading James Fenimore Cooper as much as
the next person (including, notably, Twain), but surely there is a place for
complex ideas expressed with a rich vocabulary and nuanced structure.
~~~
CalRobert
And no adverbs?!???? That's just ludicrous. I modified an adjective with one
right there. I regret nothing!
~~~
anExcitedBeast
To be fair, "just" rarely adds any value.
"That's just ludicrous." vs "That's ludicrous."
Reads pretty much the same.
~~~
oneeyedpigeon
I can't work out whether or not you're being ironic, but by the same token,
"To be fair" and "pretty" are needless filler too. (In case it's not clear, I
disagree with your premise!)
------
k-mcgrady
I like this. I pasted in some text from a blog post I'm working on. All the
edits it suggested made the post much better. I was worried that through the
suggestions it might take the personality out of a persons writing, but
because not all the suggestions are explicit (e..g change this word to this
word) that might be avoided.
------
bergie
Awesome! I think it would be great if editors could help users to not only
format their contents, but also to write better.
Another idea in sort of similar direction is doing automated link suggestions:
[http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/automated-
linking/](http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/automated-linking/)
------
pathdependent
I like this app. However, most of my work Latex based. If you had something
like this for Sublime Text, I would buy it.
~~~
serverascode
I think I would too. I like the idea. Not sure about calling it Hemingway,
because I am a huge fan of the writer, but I would like to have something like
this available for Sublime.
It might have to deal with markdown.
~~~
SyneRyder
Another vote that I would like this within Sublime (although I'm not sure how
that would work), and would really like for the tool to be able to interpret
Markdown. Right now it gets confused by the markup for hyperlinks.
Looks like a great tool for me to take rambling blog drafts and trip them down
while editing/refining.
------
wpietri
Neat! I just pasted in a chapter from a book I may or may not be writing. It's
a useful experience. It definitely pointed out some things that could be
better.
However, it's wrong a lot of the time. I'd encourage you to add a little
explanatory note for people less confident in their writing. Something about
how no computer is a substitute, they should make the final decisions, etc.
It'd also be great to have a feature where I could bless particular sentences.
Good editors make useful suggestions, but they also know to let marginal
things go if the author disagrees.
Also, two minor bugs: any paragraph after multiple blank lines gets entirely
highlighted in red. And you shouldn't capture the control-tab keystroke and
convert it into a tab character. Every time I try to leave that window, I end
up mangling my text.
------
aresant
Several years ago at conversion voodoo we studied the impact on conversion of
writing at an 8th grade reading level which is about the average American.
It, of course, improved conversion and it turns out there is already quite a
bit of algorithmic work on the topic to help tune your ad copy.
So I am a believer in the hypothesis that simplicity and clarity, in marketing
anyways, is a worthwhile pursuit.
I am going to test this Hemingway along the same lines - take some longer form
copy, run it through and test output.
(1) [http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/04/increasing-
site...](http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/04/increasing-site-
conversion-by-writing-for-an-8th-grade-reading-level/)
------
Blahah
Neat. Along the same lines for emacs people, there's writemode-good
([https://github.com/bnbeckwith/writegood-
mode](https://github.com/bnbeckwith/writegood-mode)), and for Sublime Text
there's Writing Style
([https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/Writing%20Style](https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/Writing%20Style)).
Also, heads up that the site layout is not responsive: viewing at ~800px width
places buttons all over the left side of the screen in an ugly way.
------
kelmop
Nice! I love good quality code: [http://www.hemingwayapp.com/js/hemingway-
doubleup-obf.js](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/js/hemingway-doubleup-obf.js)
~~~
halfdan
I especially like how easy you can guess the non-obfuscated version:
[http://www.hemingwayapp.com/js/hemingway-
doubleup.js](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/js/hemingway-doubleup.js)
~~~
veb
"The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or
is temporarily unavailable." :-)
------
hluska
I like products like this, though English is a notorious pain in the ass to
try and write, so I thought I'd try it out.
In good news, this app does a good job of handling complex sequences. Consider
the sentence:
_The quick, brown fox ran out of the clump of trees, saw us, got scared, and
promptly ran back into hiding._
When I typed that, I expected it to turn red, but it didn't. Great job!
However, there is a problem with identifying adverbs. Consider the sentence,
"He is a burly man." In this case, though burly ends with -ly (like adverbs),
it is an adjective.
------
andralamoosia
This is an interesting idea, and kudos to the founders for the start, enmity
to passive voice notwithstanding. Good writing is hard. Things that help are
welcome. And good for them for trying. It does seem a bit rough, still, though
. . .
I wrote a book chapter recently -- as a last minute favor for a friend, and
gratis. I did my best to make the words sing -- the subject's a yawner for
most people, and I had to entertain myself while writing the thing. In
addition to sly references to whatever caught my fancy that day, I quite
deliberately used contractions all through. More music in 'em I reckoned and
they scanned better. Some genius editor sent a markup back all de-contracted
and I had to spend a day adding them back in. Cursing.
It is really, really hard to write well precisely because so much depends on
context. It's true in professional writing too -- you have to keep your
audience in mind. True that adjectives are less persuasive, usually, than
facts stated slyly, but see how those sibilants sounds aloud? Maybe it's my
taste and not yours, but maybe that's the point of a hemmingwayapp -- you
could always joyceify it or send it throughout iambify.com and set it to my
wild irish rose.
I'm sure Stanislaw Lem's great piece the Electronic Bard has been posted in
the past but for those who don't know it and want the last word on
wordsmithing machina, check it -- goo.gl/zZD0pX . Warning -- don't read this
while drinking anything or you will risk snorting soda pop out your nose.
------
captainchaos
This is really nice. I said I'd by $5 for a desktop version but I'd pay $10
for a Chrome extension that could work on selected text or (even better) the
Gmail compose text box.
------
RogerL
I think the concept people are reaching for is the idea of false positives and
negatives. Yes, if you have a bad sentence there is a good chance it will
highlight it. But, perhaps not (false positive). Similarly, it will flag many
perfectly fine sentences not pitched to 7 graders (false negatives).
Here is text I more or less randomly chose from MOMA's site. Almost all of it
is graded as "very hard to read".
Where is the cutting edge of the motion picture? Discover it first at MoMA.
Building upon the Museum's long tradition of exploring cinematic
experimentation, Modern Mondays is a showcase for innovation on screen. Engage
with contemporary filmmakers and moving image artists, and rediscover landmark
works that changed the way we experience film and media.
Any edit I make to that paragraph that makes the app happy seems to diminish
the text.
In contrast, my first paragraph is graded better than the MOMA text, yet I
think it is worse. The one thing it did complain about were the adverbs
'similarly' and 'perfectly'. The former is required to draw the comparison;
the second is perhaps redundant, but I am emphasizing to make a point -
redundancy is as much a tool in writing as it is a crutch or error.
I'm not saying the app is useless, just take the output with a huge grain of
salt. Heck, if I paste text from Hemingway it is a sea of red and yellow.
------
LCDninja
I bashed a little bit of prose into it for fun ;-)
\--- I've always been impressed by Hemingway's writing style. Those long,
rolling, complicated sentences transported me to a world where old men still
fish; children care about the elderly, and the justice of the universe stands
strong against agism. Every dog has his day.
I remember enjoying a long bath on a five-star hotel on the beach in LA, a
huge bath, replete with a copy of "The Old Man and the Sea" and a little
yellow rubber duck. It was then that I learned that my english teacher from
years gone by was wrong. Long complicated sentences have their place in the
literary world, it's just that they're not for everyone. Like this app.
Some people love Hemingway, and others don't. I happen to love the writer, but
an App that highlights beautifully complex sentences that require your full
attention to understand: I'm not so sure about. Somebody once said something
famous about judging, and that it's not the greatest thing to do. Nixon said
that it's better to stand firm on principle and bend like a reed when it comes
to matters of taste.
For me, Hemmingway is a matter of taste.
\----
This is how I scored in this fun game ;-)
2 of 12 sentences are hard to read. 1 of 12 sentences are very hard to read. 1
adverbs. Aim for 1 or fewer. 1 words or phrases can be simpler. 1 uses of
passive voice. Aim for 2 or fewer.
Interesting.
------
kablamo
Excellent app! This is the writing style my high school composition teacher
drilled into my head. Everything I write now is influenced by her.
I also try to write my code using this style. In fact, code and documentation
and email should be:
1\. As short as possible: Less words mean less stuff to maintain and
comprehend.
2\. Simple: The goal in business is to communicate well. Not to impress. And
if I haven't communicated clearly, maintaining that code is going to be hard
for the next person who has to read it.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
The slowest processor in the room is the wetware between our ears. Shorter,
simpler code is easier to write, read, understand, communicate, remember.
Halve the code, get a 32X improvement!
------
hafabnew
Neat!
From their JS:
readinglvl = getReadingLevel(paragraphs, sentences, words, chars);
[..]
function getReadingLevel (p, s, w, c) {
var r = Math.round((4.75 * (c / w)) + (0.5 * (w / s)) - 21.43);
return r;
}
So it's a slightly modified
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Readability_Index](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Readability_Index)
(uses 4.75 instead of 4.71 .
~~~
adam_b_long
That's right. We're using ARI, mainly because it's a much simpler algorithm
since it doesn't require identifying syllables. As you can see in the code, my
programming skills are pretty weak, so ARI was an easy choice. This was my
first non-trivial programming effort (I'm a marketer/product manager, not an
engineer).
~~~
hafabnew
Was not meaning my comment as a slight to you at all, it's a very cool app
you've got here. Best of luck with it!
------
magicroundabout
It seems pretty useful as a tool for spotting the kind of linguistic howlers
that tumble out on first draft. I can see this sort of thing becoming more
valuable when more advanced Natural Language Programming APIs become
available. It would be cool to see an attempt to encode Orwell's rules from
Politics and the English language:
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used
to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can
think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
([https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm))
I find it quite surprising that detection of cliches and needless multiple-
negatives are not common features of word processing software.
~~~
dllthomas
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992)
------
yock
I love it.
One thing though, I don't want another text editor. This is a feature, not an
app, and I want this to integrate into my existing workflow. I don't know if
that is a web service for integration with popular editors, integration with
things like Editorially, or something else, but I really don't want to open
yet another app to edit things.
------
Tycho
Hemingway's writing is incredible, IMO. And the theoretical reasons he had for
writing in that style are very convincing.
However it leaves one massive problem. If this is the 'one true way' or
writing fiction, so to speak, then nobody else can really embrace it because
they'll be dismissed as Hemingway wannabes.
------
philmcc
My advice: on the "would you pay $5 for a desktop version", after the yes,
offer to save their email for when it's ready. I probably (adverb) would've
given it to you.
I'm not sure that I'll remember to _come back_ and look for it.
------
valvoja
I like the app and I think the easy to remember name suits it well, even if
Hemingway might turn in his grave. It's a promising start, but I'm not sure if
I'd continue to use it unless I could start tracking improvements in my
writing.
I would love to see a bit more of the hard data behind the rankings. For
example, I just tested a blog article I wrote 5 minutes ago against an article
written by a proper journo on PandoDaily and I scored higher. Does that make
me a better writer? I hope not.
In all seriousness, the idea has a lot of potential and you could certainly
find a few nice ways to compare yourself different writing styles of famous
authors Hemingway or someone else.
------
Mz
I have a question about the app itself:
I grew up in a bilingual home. My mom is a German immigrant who spoke no
English when she met my American father. So in spite of having a good
education and getting high praise for the content I produce, I find that I
often write in "Germish." I need help with spelling, punctuation and grammar.
The technical aspect of my writing is shockingly only fair to middlin' at
best, sigh.
Spelling help is not hard to find but punctuation and grammar help is hard to
find. So how helpful is it with that stuff? Because it looks like it focuses
on tone or something, not basic grammar per se?
Thanks.
------
Trindaz
This might help bloggers write copy, but it's definitely not good for writers.
The first paragraph of Chapter 1 of Robert Hughes' Shock of the New has these
stats according to Hemingway:
5 of 12 sentences are hard to read. 2 of 12 sentences are very hard to read. 2
adverbs (he should be aiming for "0 or less"). 0 words or phrases could be
simpler*
*this "could be simpler" feature might be a bit ambitious. If you're confident in telling me that the entire text is essentially too complicated, it seems contradictory that at the same time none of it could be made more simple.
------
DanielBMarkham
Thanks for posting this! I've been struggling to write my first novel, and I'm
interested to see how I score with this.
Of course, when you're writing, many times you break the rules. At times
grammatically incorrect dialog, for instance, scans better. You might leave a
subject off a sentence, make the reader hunt around for it. You might make
some sentences difficult in order to contrast them with freely-flowing
sentences in the space afterwards. You might create long, difficult-to-read
sentences punctuated with short declarative ones.
Wonder how this tool is going to know any of that?
~~~
adam_b_long
You're right that short, declarative sentences aren't always better. But, our
goal in building this tool was to just provide a few simple algorithms for
catching things that you might miss after staring at a piece of writing for
too long.
------
Camillo
I thought it was a problem that 50%* of college freshmen read below a 10th
grade level, but apparently the problem was with college graduates writing
above it.
(*: number made up because I can't be bothered to look it up.)
------
RyanMcGreal
Fixed:
Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear.
Hemingway highlights long, complex sentences and common errors. If you see a
yellow highlight, shorten the sentence or split it. If you see a red
highlight, your sentence is so complicated that your readers will get lost
trying to follow its meandering logic. Try editing this sentence to remove the
red.
Adverbs are blue. Get rid of them and pick verbs with force instead.
You can use a shorter word in place of a purple one. Mouse over it for hints.
Phrases in green show passive voice.
Paste in something you're working on and edit away. Or, click the Write button
to compose something new.
------
kriro
I wonder if you could get a negative score by pasting some translated Kant :P
Pretty cool, might use it as a quick checkup tool, would pay the 5$. Any word
on what happens to the pasted text? I can't find any terms of use.
Could be really useful if you could change the rating rules. I'd like to adapt
it to academic texts for example. There's some use beyond style as well since
you could automatically check for superlatives (or adjectives in general) and
the like that are generally not wanted and some other typical constructs that
should be avoided.
------
aymeric
This is great.
I struggle with correcting my use of passive voice and I wish there were
suggestions.
For example, how would you rephrase this? "put some headphones on to reduce
the odds of being interrupted by someone."
~~~
penguindev
Wear headphones so you aren't interrupted. Wear headphones to reduce
interruptions.
IANAEM (not an english major)
Actually, is your original even that bad? I though passive would be
"Interruptions are reduced by you wearing headphones."
------
csense
I hated Hemingway in high school. His writing style is really mediocre. When
reading A Farewell to Arms, if it wasn't for the fact that it was a
professionally published and bound book, I would have thought it was an
amateur attempt at fiction writing from one of my high school classmates --
and one of the weaker writers at that.
I couldn't stomach his writing style for an entire novel, so I ended up not
finishing the book.
I would like to see someone make a similar website to guide you toward writing
in the style of Charles Dickens.
------
happy4crazy
If you'd like to read a deep investigation into writing styles, let me suggest
Clear and Simple as the Truth[0]. Steven Pinker discusses the book in a fun
talk on communicating science[1].
[0] [http://classicprose.com/](http://classicprose.com/) [1]
[http://video.mit.edu/watch/communicating-science-and-
technol...](http://video.mit.edu/watch/communicating-science-and-technology-
in-the-21st-century-steven-pinker-12644/)
------
Wistar
I like and use Writer's Diet which seems quite similar and has been around for
a few years.
[http://writersdiet.com/WT.php](http://writersdiet.com/WT.php)
------
dllthomas
In addition to the unfair maligning of the passive, I note that the following
(simplified from a line in
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922))
is not marked as passive despite being so:
_" This example will go unidentified as passive if you trust bad grammar-
checking programs."_
The problem is never the passive _per se_ \- it's unclear writing, period.
Sometimes that involves passive voice.
------
davidw
I tried it out on a few articles from PG and the Economist. It turns out
complex sentences are common in their writing. I don't mind, or should I say
that it is not minded?
------
Houshalter
Pasting "best" HN comments in I get:
Grade 10, Grade 6, Grade 11, Grade 14, Grade 14,
And copy and pasting the whole page gets me Grade 9 (and some serious bugs
([http://i.imgur.com/U6sK1mM.png?1](http://i.imgur.com/U6sK1mM.png?1)) which I
think may have crashed my browser.)
"New" HN comments:
Grade 12, Grade 7, Grade 7, Grade 5, Grade 7,
And the whole page is Grade 8
My own comments apparently have a lot of unreadable sentences but they aren't
that bad. (this comment is Grade 3! Yay.)
------
rnprdk
A fun contrast to this would be kottke.org's "Growing Sentences with David
Foster Wallace" from a while back: [http://kottke.org/09/03/growing-sentences-
with-david-foster-...](http://kottke.org/09/03/growing-sentences-with-david-
foster-wallace)
Also: I haven't read a whole lot of Hemingway, but when I did read him, I
always thought he was much more versatile a writer than made out to be.
~~~
lutusp
> I haven't read a whole lot of Hemingway, but when I did read him, I always
> thought he was much more versatile a writer than made out to be.
Remember that Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and many other
writers began as newspaper reporters, where over time they learned to express
complex stories with the fewest words.
------
OoTheNigerian
Brilliant!
I am wondering if it may be better and/or more profitable to license the
Hemingway algorithm to be used in the dozens of writing applications via a
Chrome/browser app initially I would suppose (starting with Google Docs up to
Poetica, Penflip, Draft etc.)
The value proposition I assume is the suggestions and recommendation. Focusing
on that instead of customer acquisition/user interface design for another
writing app may be more rewarding.
Great job all the same.
------
fegu
I am impressed with the result of this. I spent some time on the source code
(after deobfuscating it). The analysis done on the text is quite simple and
fairly limited. Kudos on the convincing result nonetheless.
Just a small note: looking at the source code almost made me look over my
shoulder, there is about 30 different situations being reported to Google
Analytics as events. The makers of this _really_ knows how you are using their
product.
------
dasmithii
This could be the future of stylistic education in literature. If a tool
existed to generate rules for this editor to follow, aspiring students could
practice the writing styles of famous authors.
Of course, serious writers shouldn't model themselves after others. More
specific areas would be the focus. Narrower subjects like technical writing
might be promising, since they aren't particularly dependent on individuality
in style.
------
pvsnp
It would be awesome if a "weasel words" highlighter or filter were to be added
too. I have found that just removing some of these words from writing tends to
have significant improvement in the clarity of writing.
[http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-
voi...](http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-voice-weasel-
words-duplicates/)
------
cell303
This is great for writing scientific articles, manuals, tutorials, text books
and the like. I'll start using it right now :)
However, as far as literature is concerned, I'd not be using it. The title is
misleading in that respect. Something along the lines "simple", "clean",
"focused" writing would be better.
BTW: I have to paste some page-sized sentences from Thomas Pynchon in there.
------
jhonovich
I found this quite useful. I could see myself using it regularly as a Chrome
extension similarly to how I use grammarly lite currently.
------
dataking
Very cool! I wish it would come with an API to integrate into text editors
(Sublime Text, Emacs, Vim, etc.)
Shameless plug: Some time ago I authored a Sublime Text (2/3) plug-in that
highlights use of passive voice and "weazel words" (i.e., words to use
sparingly and words). To install from Package Control, just search for
"Writing Style" :)
------
cjg
I think very few people would actually like using a desktop version, because
it breaks your workflow.
Anyone who is prepared to hand over money for something like this ideally
wants it integrated into their current writing environment, be that Word,
LibreOffice, Scrivener, Dark Room or whatever.
Plugins are the way to commercialise this (if that's at all possible).
------
moron4hire
There is nothing wrong with the passive voice.
~~~
normloman
It's not technically wrong, no. Nobody will accuse you of having bad grammar.
But every good writing style manual warns against using it. Because the active
voice is clear, bold, and more concise. There are only a few situations where
writers should prefer the passive voice.
~~~
rnprdk
Many "good writing style manual[s]" are kind of full of it.
An interesting bit from the wiki(1) on passive voice: "For example, despite
Orwell's advice to avoid the passive, his Politics and the English Language
(1946) employs passive voice for about 20 percent of its constructions."
As with anything, it's important to be aware of what you're doing. But back
when I tutored people in writing, hard-and-fast rules like this resulted in
awkward, contorted writing by scared students. For example, I once knew a very
smart person who avoided predicate adjectives at all costs. I don't really
blame him for confusing passive voice and predicate adjective. I even found
cases where the Hemingway app confused the two. But it was too bad that he had
been so thoroughly brainwashed against the passive. Though I kind of admired
how he managed to avoid, for years of his life, what I think is an
indispensable construction.
1
-[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_passive_voice#Advice_in...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_passive_voice#Advice_in_favor_of_the_passive_voice)
~~~
normloman
I haven't had the experience of tutoring anyone in writing, but I'd like to.
And I agree, that you can't place too much importance in style manuals ...
they can give contradictory or just plain stupid advice. But good style
manuals do more than set rules - they explain why the rules are there, and
even highlight exceptions where breaking the rule is appropriate. They are
indispensable for improvising your writing, provided you don't treat them like
rulebooks. Read a few, then form your own opinion.
Now, unlike a style manual, Hemingway doesn't explain the reasoning behind
rules, or permit breaking the rules in the right context. It's limiting, and
won't produce beautiful writing. But I suspect it will have use for non-
writers. I'm talking about people who write imcomprehensibly, and don't have
any incentive to master the art of writing. Doctors, lawyers, and business
executives come to mind. In my experience, people in these careers write like
shit and don't have time to improve their writing. By adhering to these rules,
they can improve their writing significantly without much effort. The result
will still be somewhat awkward and contorted, but far less than what they
would write otherwise (marketspeak / legalese).
------
imranq
This is great, I can definitely see myself using this for long texts. What
about having modes for different historical authors: Austin, Dostoevsky,
Woolf. Who said that Hemingway was the golden standard?
Although I have to admit Hemingway's famous short short story (though possibly
not his) gives me chills
"for sale, baby shoes, never worn"
~~~
gruseom
That wasn't Hemingway. The first recognizable version was by William R. Kane.
Never heard of William R. Kane? Me neither; hence the Hemingway. Quotes always
bond to the nearest plausible famous person.
[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/28/baby-
shoes/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/28/baby-shoes/)
------
taternuts
This seems pretty cool - though the display could use some work (I don't know
if this is just me, on Chrome). It's overlapping in a lot of places, the
buttons seem a bit wonky, and the spacing is weird
([http://i.imgur.com/bNqI9MD.png](http://i.imgur.com/bNqI9MD.png))
------
cdonnellytx
Interestingly it marks the infamous Zero Wing intro as grade 3 or 4, but
considers the "correct" translation to be Grade 6 and complains about the "all
of" they use.
[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zero_Wing](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zero_Wing)
EDIT: Forgot HN isn't Markdown.
------
mbillie1
"Why do we drive on the parkway, but fetishize an impossible and ridiculous
masculinity on the Hemingway?"
------
MichaelTieso
Ohhh. Well done! Already sending this to a bunch of writers in my group. This
would be killer as a WordPress plugin.
------
vipworld
Top scores in readability with these dramatic, bold, and above all, clear
adjustments:
"Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear.
Hemingway shits on your long sentences. Fuck complexity.
Smack an adverb with blue. Get rid of them and pick verbs with force instead.
You can insert a shorter word in place of a purple one. Mouse over it for
hints.
The passive voice sucks."
------
boh
What is the benefit of using this? Is it to write well? According to this
system Marcel Proust, Edith Wharton and George Eliot are terrible writers. Is
it because they didn't write proper blog posts or tweets? "Bold and Clear"
doesn't mean good or intelligent.
------
aytekin
One of the best product names I have seen in a long time!
\- People who are interested in being a (good) writer get excited when they
hear the name. The name suggests they might write well like Hemingway.
\- The name is already familiar and impossible to forget.
\- It creates a lot of controversy and discussion as seen in this thread!
------
kyleburton
This is very cool.
I'd pay $ (5ish) for a couple of other ways to use this:
* a bookmarklet that allowed me to select text on my blog or on one of my github pages and analyze it * emacs integration * a command line tool that worked like ispell/aspell to help analyze things I've already written
~~~
unhammer
grep this HN page for emacs and shell, lots of suggestions
------
egh
All you need to know about this idiocy is that it rates actual writer's work
(including Hemingway) as bad:
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10416](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10416)
Don't use this. Just don't.
------
kolo32
Try to paste the Gettysburg Address.
"Four score and seven years ago..." \- the sentence is very hard to read.
"all men are created equal" and "we are engaged in a great civil war" \-
passive voice.
And so on...
The moral is that you should not trust an automatic tool to judge your writing
style.
------
the_unknown
This is quite the fun tool. I know web apps are all the rage but really would
love to see this implemented as an MS Word plugin - I'd be far more likely to
use it on an ongoing basis if it were integrated directly into my editor of
choice.
------
im3w1l
I made a small greasemonkey script for google drive integration :). It adds a
button to the documents toolbar.
[http://pastebin.com/cw1hHcC5](http://pastebin.com/cw1hHcC5)
------
piyush_soni
That's good and helpful, but I don't know why it would suggest me to replace
"All of" to "All" in this simple sentence below: "All of you please stand up.
"
Any answers by English experts?
~~~
ScottBurson
I agree, that's a strange suggestion.
Clearly this program cannot be trusted absolutely.
------
colig
I like it. Is the grade level calculated with Fleisch-Kincaid?
$5 is a reasonable price (to me) for a minimal text editor with this feature,
though I would prefer something meatier and more expensive along the likes of
Scrivener.
~~~
adam_b_long
We use the Automated Readability Index:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Readability_Index](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Readability_Index)
------
enemtin
Dear whoever made Hemingway: Can you please make a Wordpress plugin?
I would love you forever.
Yours in gratitude,
------
gtirloni
Looks interesting. As an wannabe writer, I was checking the AP Stylebook but
the price is prohibitive right now.
[http://www.apstylebook.com/](http://www.apstylebook.com/)
------
NeoWang
Interesting, I opened Chrome Dev Tools and start violating some rules, but see
no network traffic to the server. Is this purely implemented with js? With
dictionaries loaded initially?
------
gaussdiditfirst
Great idea, I can think of many ways this sort of app could be extended to
improve sentence structure via a number of other heuristics you might find
mentioned in a grammar book.
------
sehugg
Forgive me if I'm being dense, but are there any feature differences from the
grammar checkers available in word processors since the 90s? (besides being on
the web, I mean)
------
imdsm
Found a bug: type in
"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
and watch the highlighting break.
~~~
DanBC
Please edit this to include a line break, or include 4 spaces at the front of
the line.
You've fucked page layout for mobile users.
------
im3w1l
Bug report: If I mark the text in the textbox and drag and drop it in the box,
the dragged text is displayed on top of the text already there. It looks very
bad.
------
heraclitus23
Any famous writer's style should stand for a "filter" that anyone can apply to
a text. I'm waiting for the Instagram for text editors.
------
gregf
I would love to have something like this as a vim plugin.
------
ARothfusz
Seems like a good tool to help with documentation, where long complex
sentences can lead readers astray, and passive voice hides important
information.
------
YPetrov
It'd be interesting to paste a typical cover letter in the app and see how
much crap one has to write nowadays to get to the interview stage. :)
------
hoggle
I often really like long sentences, also when reading. This constant trend
towards conformance is one of the more annoying trends of our times.
------
throwaway344
I feel this would be more interesting as a bookmarkelet to parse web pages.
Like the Simple English Wikipedia but everywhere on every page.
------
tlack
What a great and simple idea. Make it an API, please, and don't forget the
history function so I can see how text evolves over time.
------
sanj
I wonder if this could help with comments:
[http://xkcd.com/481/](http://xkcd.com/481/)
~~~
usrusr
Isn't [http://xkcd.com/1133/](http://xkcd.com/1133/) a lot more relevant to
hemingwayapp?
------
km3k
I'd love to see this as a firefox extension.
------
christiangenco
I'm in love with this. I wish it was a plugin for Ghost[1].
1\. [https://ghost.org/](https://ghost.org/)
------
BHSPitMonkey
You should add a warning class for possible misspellings, too. It would be
nice to not need to use a separate spell checker.
------
rodolphoarruda
I'm using this tool to review the English versions of my resumés. It's been a
very interesting experience so far.
------
melipone
It does not work for technical papers but if I am struggling with forming a
sentence, I'll certainly keep it in mind.
------
higherpurpose
Can we see this as a Wordpress plugin, too? Or a Chrome extension for
Wordpress (the way Grammar.ly works for example).
------
adregan
Who will make the Faulkner? It highlights your sentence red if it doesn't go
for at least a page and a half.
------
baddox
The funny thing is, I found the yellow and red sentences in their description
to be sufficiently bold and clear.
------
fnordfnordfnord
This should be a plugin that replaces the standard spelling/grammar checker in
word processing software.
------
bhartzer
Wow, this is great. I now have a tool to put all my writing through before I
finish an article. Very cool.
------
wsinks
Another question - do we know who made this app? I'm curious as to the
security of their servers.
------
nomadcoop
I would love an API to this so I can integrate it into Storytella, the writing
app I'm working on.
------
preemrust
Nicely done. It would be nice if they can licence the idea to the makers of
other simple writing apps.
------
awkwit
I'm running all my blog posts through this now just to find any low hanging
fruit improvements.
------
mjhea0
love this. contact me if you're interested in adding this to a markdown app.
:)
michael [at] mherman [dot] org
------
mmaunder
YES!!!! As someone who loves writing but wasn't an english major, this
rocks!!! Thank you.
------
auganov
Love the concept. I'd pay monthly if it did more complex analysis. But not at
this stage.
------
rbonvall
Apparently the sentence "my telly is red" has an adverb and uses passive voice
:P
------
moondowner
If you make a desktop version (that works offline as well), I'm totally buying
it.
------
seancoleman
I'm tempted to reply to long, low signal/noise ratio emails with this.
------
bobzimuta
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7224386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7224386)
I'd like to propose the bobzimuta constant: The first 40% of any HN comments
on a page can be skipped since they will likely only be pedantic circle-
jerking.
------
mpeg
I'd definitely pay for a Chrome addon or desktop version of this.
------
ahussain
I pasted in some David Foster Wallace text and it exploded.
------
beloch
I'd love this as a plugin for emacs or notepad++.
------
stevewilhelm
Would pay $5 for a Sublime Text Plug-in version.
------
LeicaLatte
I will make a chuck palahniuk app someday.
------
zsiciarz
I wish for a H.P. Lovecraft app like that.
------
randomflavor
Can I plug this into gmail?
------
maknz
Public API, please!
------
Kumquat
Please make one for ee cummings now.
~~~
normloman
one for make ee cummings, now please
~~~
datashaman
use d punc tu a tion
f a i l
------
FeinKrepp
Melikes
------
BenjaminN
Love this!
------
glibgil
When I edit, your app should give me a unique url that is chained to the
original. I can't send someone a link to what I have edited. How did I do?
Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear.
Hemingway highlights long, complex sentences and common errors. If you see a
yellow highlight, shorten the sentence or split it. If you see a red
highlight, your sentence is dense and complicated. Your readers will get lost
trying to follow its meandering, splitting logic. Try editing that sentence to
remove the red.
Adverbs show in helpful blue. Get rid of them and pick verbs with force
instead.
You can use a shorter word in place of a purple one. Mouse over it for hints.
Phrases marked in green show a passive voice.
Paste in something you're working on and edit away. Or, click the Write button
to compose something new.
------
cwaniak
Now what you need to do is to automate this process. User pastes the text and
there is a magic auto-fix button that will shorten the sentences, make
everything more readable, etc. And then charge per 24hrs the button is
enabled.
------
squirejons
The coder opened his IDE. The IDE was on the screen of his monitor. The IDE
was colorful in the dimly lit room. The coder opened his can of Red Bull. He
drank once from it and put it down. Then he placed his fingers on the keyboard
and began coding. It was PHP code, and it was good. He typed into the night
and early morning. He got up and went to bed. He felt good. He did not think
about the woman that night because he was tired. That was good, too.
------
Fasebook
Yes, I would $20+ dollars for a desktop version, that didn't suck at what this
is supposed to be doing.
------
I_am_Doge
wow
so app
such writing
better than mcirosoft word
~~~
taternuts
HN is the last place that needs novelty accounts
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to find developers with NO SKILLs to work for me? - xstartup
I had built 3 startups (3-4M annual revenue before I sold them) and do not have formal education. I developed them on my own, did all marketings, sales, customer service. Later, I hired a few friends and friends of friends and trained them in my style of customer service and marketing then finally sold off the startup. I've never worked as a professional programmer and learned to build everything from the internet. I am easily able to train people in sales and customer service but training someone with no technical education into development is impossible. I was stupid enough to actually try this on some friends who were unemployed and failed. Now, the trouble is that I've no developer friends and the new startup which I want to do requires 2-3 developers to build a prototype. But I don't see why will anyone work for a less skilled person like me? Sure, I can afford to pay them 1.5-2x of what they are currently get paid. But there will be no promotion (what role will I promote them to?), no colleagues to help them out. No limitation on the scope of work. I think people work for more than just money, sure I can provide money and challenging work. Most devs I talked on upwork are not brave enough to build an app from ground-up They don't even show much interest. They want me to break it down into tasks and then they'll implement it. So, what will make you work for a no name, new company as a developer where the founder is not exceptionally talented or very technically competent and no scope for promotion either?
======
kevlanglois
You don't need to be a technical genius to start learning about the software
development lifecycle. Any professional programmers you speak to will require
some sort of business requirements. It is your responsibility, as the business
owner, to outline the who/what/when/where of each feature (and leave the 'how'
to the experts).
You also need to understand the impact of no defined scope. Typical business
plans or MVP requirements will absolutely define a scope. This scope of work
should match your best guess for a minimum viable product - based on your
market research. This allows you to remain on budget and measure your success.
With a solid business plan, a set of strategic business requirements, a well
defined scope, and 2x salary - you will have no problem finding talented
developers.
------
smithmayowa
It depends mostly on what kind of idea you want to execute on as this will
determine the kind of programmers you will need, really low level software
requires someone with much more theoretical knowledge and this kind of people
are rare in between, and coupled with your lack of tech know how they might
most likely not want to work with you. But if it is a basic web app you should
find talent interested in working with you.
I will advice you to try to place a lot more emphasis on your earlier success
bootstrapping and selling a SaaS company as this can motivate people to want
to work for you. Because take it from me you have done and accomplished what a
lot of people can not and that is very impressive.
If you are interested I would like to work for you, but I don't know how well
that will pan out as I don't know the area of specialty your startup is
focusing on and if i am even 'Not Skilled' enough to work with you in those
specialties, but at least I will like to get in touch with you if only in some
sort of mentorship/advisory role, because building a successful Saas business
has sort of always been my dream.
my email is smithmayowa20 at gmail.com I am an African developer in between.
------
rorykoehler
>They want me to break it down into tasks and then they'll implement it.
You'd be crazy to do it any other way.
------
crossbow
I am interested in helping you. Do you have contact information?
------
duked
do you have an email where I can reach out ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Launch HN: Epihub (YC S20) – Shopify for teaching online - urs
Hey HN! I’m Uday, and I co-founded Epihub [0] with Kwasi and Michael (<a href="https://epihub.com" rel="nofollow">https://epihub.com</a>). Epihub is Shopify for teaching online. Our software lets you schedule, meet, and bill clients from your own website.<p>A few years ago, we started building a product called Epigrammar, which was a collaborative document annotation tool that let teachers rapidly give feedback to their students by identifying trends in their feedback. Kwasi and I really wanted to see if we could scale the tutoring experience to an entire classroom, since my co-founder Mike was teaching Classics at a private school in Connecticut while running a non-profit tutoring program in Latin/Greek for public school students in New York. Mike would try out our products that we had built over the weekend during the week (sometimes to success), but oftentimes, things were not actually helping him teach. That’s when we'd go back to the drawing board. We spent a few years experimenting with different ideas in edtech trying to scale tutoring, as we obsessed over Bloom’s 2 sigma problem [1] including Superhuman for grading and even a test generator that could build assessments based on “backward-design [2]. We all lived together in Manhattan, built stuff, and would send it out to Mike to see what worked and what didn't.<p>This spring, however, as COVID-19 shut down local businesses across the city (we still live in New York), we realized that there were much bigger problems facing tutoring, coaching, and training businesses like Mike's: bringing the actual business online.<p>Whether you want to start up a coding bootcamp or run a tutoring business, you need a handful of products that are (ideally) white-labeled: a website builder, a way to process application forms, a CRM, a system to book appointments, a ticketing system for virtual classes, virtual classrooms, invoicing, and paystub tracking. When we spoke with tutors, coaches, and trainers, it was clear that there was a similar problem facing many different but similar businesses. How do you handle appointments? How do you handle virtual classes? How do you manage your team’s schedules?<p>We spent our summer trying to build everything end-to-end, and finally, we’re excited to share that product with you today. Epihub lets you build a website (or embeds into your existing website) and also comes with a full system to schedule, meet, and bill clients in one place (you can change all the buttons, images, and language within your account to reflect your business so you can rename your employees to instructors or your currency to Solari).<p>Similarly, you’re working online with individuals or groups, you can start teaching anyone on username.epihub.com and easily grow your entire team by adding additional seats for new instructors to manage their schedules and paystubs. So far, we’ve been working with tutors, coaches, trainers, but we have seen a bunch of interesting use-cases as well (including someone who wants to set up Epihub for virtual wine tasting and tours).<p>The stack actually borrows a lot from our original product: it’s an Elixir/Phoenix application with a React frontend. We have a Zoom and Google Calendar integration, so you’ll also see appointments and requests in your calendar, as each hub comes with yoursubdomain.epihub.com/reserve to handle bookings from prospective clients. It's like a Calendly built to scale your team’s operations by syncing up invoicing, paystubs, and virtual classrooms. (Recently, we’ve been contemplating Liquid templating, and we’re considering building a Wordpress plugin. If anyone has worked with Liquid, Kwasi and I would love to chat.)<p>If there’s anyone running a coaching, tutoring, or training business, or coding bootcamp, we'd love to hear how we could support your team. You can also book a personal onboarding with Mike over Zoom (<a href="https://vip.epihub.com/reserve" rel="nofollow">https://vip.epihub.com/reserve</a>).<p>Finally, I’ve been a member of HN for as long as I can remember. I’ve had my share of unfinished projects, and things I’ve been a bit nervous to launch here. I didn’t think I ever would launch anything, so this is pretty exciting. I’ll be online all day with my co-founders to chat about Epihub, tutoring, backward design, or Elixir in no specific order!<p>[0]: <a href="https://epihub.com" rel="nofollow">https://epihub.com</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_design" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_design</a>
======
nanna
A very exciting project and, as a somewhat alienated university instructor
I'll be spending time thinking about it's possible uses for me. A couple
comments though.
1\. 'Sell your class on Zoom' is a total turn-off for me. As is 'Schedule.
Meet. Bill.' As a teacher I do not 'sell' education - I'm not a Sophist ;) - I
teach, and for that I would ideally like to get paid, but this is not a
conventional commodity-based transaction and so the language of sales is
jarring. Partly this is semantic, 'sell' may work for wine tasting instructors
but not for humanities tutors. But also partly the issue is that I may not
want to sell my teaching. Perhaps I am gaining experience, and want to set up
a model class, to build experience and confidence?
2\. I don't understand why Zoom needs to be so tightly integrated. This isn't
just a classic HN comment about Zoom, it's the fact that there's already an
excellent learning environment called BigBlueButton out there and it's Jitsi
based. Have you considered integrating that?
------
untilHellbanned
Great idea. Not crazy about the name though because it doesn’t evoke anything.
I would consider changing.
Why not go all the way with the Shopify analogy and call it Teachify?
~~~
mmackay
μὴ φρόντιζε (don't worry): we have a reason! I used to teach Greek and Latin,
and our very first product, Epigrammar, took its inspiration from Classical
antiquity: the English word “epigram” comes from “ἐπί” (epi) and “γράφειν”
(graphein) meaning “to write upon” (historically, epigrams were written upon
household items such as broken pottery or sea shells). With Epigrammar, we
wanted to digitize the ancient way of writing upon things, so instructors
could give their best feedback once and repurpose it everywhere. Now, with
Epihub, we're still focused on helping instructors (fun fact: Aristotle was a
tutor to Alexander the Great), but at the same time, we also want to help
people build hubs for knowledge (ergo, Epi-hub).
~~~
minxomat
Epihub sounds more like a map of epipen sale points or something like that.
Definitely 0 association with teaching.
~~~
bilbopotter
Yep Epipens was where I went too
------
grahamburger
I have been using clarity.fm, they offer a subset of these features. Overall I
really like Clarity, primarily because the product is very simple and doesn't
try to do too much.
I have two problems with Clarity though, and I'll be trying out epihub for
these reasons. The first is that the conference bridge that Clarity provides
is just a voice bridge, which I actually really like for simplicity's sake,
but it's POTS only and sometimes international callers have a hard time
connecting or have audio problems. The billing is based on the length of the
conference call, so it's not super easy to back out to a Zoom call. Second,
Clarity doesn't really support anything like a 'class', only one-on-one
sessions, and I'd like to start doing classes.
Looking forward to giving epihub a shot!
------
tylerscott
As a former provider on Helpouts
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Helpouts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Helpouts))
who was sad to see it go, I am excited to see more products like this. Good
luck!
~~~
urs
I’m always amazed by the sheer number of products Google has built and sunset.
I didn’t actually know about this, but it sent me down a rabbit hole. What
kind of work was most popular on Helpouts?
~~~
tylerscott
Oh yeah, the graveyard behind Google is massive. haha
Honestly, I can't recall much outside my area of expertise. There were quite
a few fitness folks on there, though.
I wound up doing maybe a dozen or so "Helpouts" and it was a good experience.
I still have my hoodie!
------
puranjay
How many all-nighters did you guys pull to launch at this time?
In all seriousness, the product looks great and I wish you the best.
~~~
urs
This made me laugh so thank you, but in all seriousness, we started by working
through the lifecycle of a customer from the top and push it to the end. The
first part being, how do you meet and qualify a new client, to the last part
where you're handling paystubs and invoicing clients.
There are a ton of things I wish we handled better, particularly on-boarding
where although it's self-serve, it needs work, but we did figure it's better
to launch and learn from more users before building more software.
The second thing was we used the product itself to onboard
(vip.epihub.com/reserve), and again once we were users, we kept pushing until
it worked well enough for us to train people on how to use our product.
------
eydis
Congrats on all your hard work, this looks great. I just signed up and am
clicking my way through it, to understand how it works.
One question, regarding subscription. I only see a premium plan, for
£15.00/mo. Are there different levels of subscription? I only ask because I am
thinking of teaching Icelandic online, well, I do teach Icelandic online but
currently only to one student and am feeling a bit overwhelmed by how to
upscale, made the website, created YouTube content, but, not sure what to do
next and whether I'll manage to spread the word enough to justify committing
to a monthly cost or whether to give it up and just keep to that one student.
------
hevelvarik
This is exciting. Are you planning or do you already provide a mechanism for
discovery? Meaning a means to browse the available service providers along
with reviews or the like?
I’ve read that Shopify is doing something similar now, and while for them this
comes rather late in their product life cycle, for your product I’d think it
more important and thus worthy of earlier consideration.
------
BRSChess
This is awesome for scheduling all my chess training classes and very useful.
When are you guys rolling out a mobile app? Very cool
------
implfuture
Awesome demo video, really excited to see where this goes! Are there any use
cases that people complain zoom is insufficient for?
~~~
urs
Great question. We built the product originally to help us bring a tutoring
business online as in-person instruction was impossible.
Again, these were businesses built around live instruction so the only option
was video. Zoom was the one place where we opted for an integration as there’s
simply no way we could build better video than Zoom given a limited (or
unlimited) time frame.
We actually built tooling inside to pick locations for your classes and
appointments, but so far they have rarely been used.
Next we had a bunch of tools from our first product in Epihub, but something
we learned from talking to teachers and having built tools for instructors was
that you really didn’t need too much. Teachers know how to teach so the best
tooling isn’t something overly prescriptive, but something in a virtual
classroom isomorphic to a real classroom like a virtual whiteboard.
Again, we’re really new, so we’re still learning.
------
rexreed
I'm wondering if this will be useful for an online conference we're putting
together where we need to schedule 1:1s with presenters for expert sessions.
How customizable is the text that appears (Students, Tutorials, etc. ) that
wouldn't be appropriate in a conference setting?
~~~
urs
I think it could work, we haven’t tried it for a conference, but email me
directly (first name at company name.com) so we can make sure you’re setup
right.
To answer your question, not only is every single string of text customizable,
but so is every icon. So you can rebrand and redesign it however you please
and the interface will update.
------
adampate
Really cool product! Refereed my family of teachers -- excited to hear more
about their experiences.
------
trailrunner46
Congrats on the launch. As a fellow elixir enthusiast I wanted to say nice
work integrating the client side and pulling this together, you are doing a
ton of stuff all at once. I don’t have a use case right now but still will
poke around to see what you have built!
~~~
urs
Thank you, to be honest Abinsthe and Apollo go together incredibly well.
I think coming from Rails and switching out controllers for resolvers made
adjusting to building SPAs far easier. I still think building routing on the
client side feels strange, but it’s way easier when GraphQL just gives you one
endpoint to hit and with Apollo you just query exactly what you need.
~~~
trailrunner46
Yes, Abinsthe is quite incredible! I have used it with react and vue and had
some success. However lately whenever liveview is the right fit I find myself
fist pumping all over the place. Something magically about writing most of
your code in elixir and only sprinkling JS when needed. Your site is very ui
heavy so I imagine it needs to have a lot of js strictly client side so a SPA
makes sense (I just find the mental overhead of having to deal with a js
framework front end and a elixir backend tricky).
~~~
urs
Yeah the original application borrowed heavily from our first product which
predates LiveView so we stuck with what we knew. Our first product actually
predates contexts and schemas in Phoenix. We started working on it around the
time Phoenix was deprecating models from 1.2 to 1.3.
LiveView is incredible, but I haven’t used it enough to know the shortcomings.
From the outside looking in, it does seem nice to work with a view that’s
already nicely coupled with the app.
~~~
trailrunner46
Makes total sense, I only used LiveView for a new project that I started
within the last year, I can imagine it being tough to only use a little bit in
an existing app, especially if its SPA hitting an api. Cool to see you evolved
as Phoenix evolved.
------
PanosJee
Congrats for the launch! Sounds quite similar to Learnworlds. What are the
main differences?
~~~
urs
Thanks for the question. So a pretty big difference from the outset is the
type of customer we focus on (again, correct me if Learnworlds is different).
Where Learnworlds is focused on creators who want to build courses that are
asynchronous. We are focusing on live instruction particularly with businesses
that have already been handling live instruction so teams of tutors, trainers,
teachers, and coaches.
In many ways Learnworlds is quite similar to Kajabi, Teachable, and a whole
host of other great tools for building online courses.
In our case, we started with thinking about existing businesses where a
primary concern is team management as the instruction is live. Coordinating
live instruction already requires a pretty different software stack from an
online course.
In a coaching business of twenty tutors, you have to manage twenty instructor
schedules against schedules for your students, figure who is owed what, who
you have to bill, and provide space for live online instruction.
The last few months, particularly in New York, have made this coordination
problem far worse as these businesses look to move online while trying to keep
their branding and identity front-and-center.
—
Now a number of our users have already asked to be able to sell online
courses/materials, and we have been experimenting with blending asynchronous
online courses with live instruction, so it’s on the roadmap. Right now,
however, our focus is uniquely bringing existing businesses with live
instruction online.
------
abhishektwr
Very timely. Just signed up.
~~~
urs
Awesome! Feel free to reach out directly or sign up above with Mike and we'll
be happy to onboard you personally.
------
atonse
Good luck! The product looks great and I'll spread the word around. (From a
fellow founder that's using Elixir/Phoenix in our stack, but for COVID-
response related stuff.)
------
chopraaa
Would've been super useful if you mentioned what countries you currently
support. I went to sign up and closed the tab feeling disappointed.
~~~
urs
Yeah we're currently limited by Stripe Express, but we'll probably look to
expand relatively soon. We've been looking at RazorPay for India or even
enabling Stripe Standard accounts across the board. Any particular countries
you're looking for?
~~~
sah2ed
> _Any particular countries you 're looking for?_
The COVID-19 situation will probably persist for a while so why not enable
billing for as many territories as possible?
I haven’t used them but I think a service like Paddle might be a decent
compromise for handling billing in countries not yet supported by Stripe.
[https://paddle.com/](https://paddle.com/)
------
mxstbr
Congratulations on the launch Uday and team!!
------
wondergirl
Amazing stuff here.. when do you launch India? And would you be launching
regional language capabilities?
------
hankh18
Exciting new pivot! Glad to see y'all are doing well, and congrats on getting
in to YC! -Hank (from Elab)
~~~
koppong
Thanks for the kind words, Hank; it's great to hear from you!
-Kwasi
------
tarun_anand
This sounds like Classplus in India. Is there a reverse concept arbitrage
going on here?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SHA-3 Finalists Announced - snth
http://jonkatz.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/sha-3-finalists-announced/
======
tptacek
Well, CubeHash didn't pass, keeping Daniel J. Bernstein (mostly) out of the
running for SHA-3. Oh well. Meanwhile:
* BLAKE combines DJB's ChaCha stream cipher core with Eli Biham's HAIFA framework; HAIFA, like Merkle Damgard (MD), isn't a hash function but rather a scheme for turning things like the core of another cipher into a hash function; HAIFA is a response to MD that (among other things) eliminates length-extension attacks. I hope BLAKE wins.
* Grøstl (meaning "hash", in the "corned beef" sense) is a hash that borrows heavily from the internal components of AES, and includes among its contributors one of Vincent Rijmen's (of AES nee' Rijndael fame) gra students.
* JH is a Singaporean design similar to Grøstl in the sense of borrowing AES machinery, and is optimized for hardware.
* Keccak is a hash built on "sponge model", which (like HAIFA) is an alternative to the classical MD construction, and was co-designed by Joan Daemen (also of Rijndael fame). Keccak looks like the most interesting design in the contest.
* Skein is Furgusen and Schneier's design, based on their Threefish block cipher function (which they designed for the hash). Threefish is said to be similar to DJB's Salsa20 stream cipher; the Skein hash combines it with "UBI", a custom version of the Matyas-Meyer-Oseas compression function (which is _extremely_ simple; just Wikipedia it). Skein appears to have more real cryptanalysis results against it than the others, and maybe a little less theory and a little more practicality.
Colin will I'm sure chime in with more math details, which go right over my
head.
SHA256 is widely considered sound as it stands today. The big problem with it
is that it's bulky and slow. So the first thing you'd hope to get from SHA3 is
speed.
SHA256 is a classical Merkle-Damgard design. The MD construction is widely
considered outmoded. So the other thing you expect to get from SHA3 is a
cipher that uses a different fundamental construction for taking a block
function and turning it into a hash.
A nice side effect of getting rid of MD is that you no longer have length-
extension attacks. It's shocking when this sinks in, but the output of (say)
SHA1 is simply the internal state of the SHA1 hash at the point where the
input starts. The SHA1 design starts with a series of 32 bit registers and
grinds plaintext through them; a SHA1 hash is simply the resulting 32 bit
registers, catted together. What this means is that attacks can feed _more_
plaintext to through SHA1, without knowing what the original plaintext was,
simply by using the output of a SHA1 hash as the initial values of the SHA1
registers. Bad! This, by the way, is the reason you use HMAC-SHA1 and _never_
SHA1 to authenticate messages.
I hope BLAKE wins, but if it doesn't, I hope Keccak wins, because its design
seems to be the furthest from what we have today (HAIFA seems like a direct
evolution of MD, and Matyas-Meyer-Oseas basically seems like calling CBC-MAC a
hash function). But I am not the least bit qualified to hold this opinion! I
just break shit.
Interesting how likely it is that either Vincent Rijmen or Joan Daemen (or
both) will have their fingerprints on _both_ AES and SHA3.
~~~
djcapelis
So I haven't been keeping track of the SHA-3 competition as well as I have
been. Do you (or anyone else who happens to wander by on HN) happen to know if
all of these finalists are using non-MD constructions that are resistant to
length extension nonsense? Is there a possibility among these choices that
NIST could still possibly pick a SHA-3 vulnerable to length extension?
~~~
tptacek
Resistance to length-extension attacks is one of NIST's requirements for the
competition; a hash that had that vulnerability would have been disqualified.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How far along does your idea have to be to apply for YC? - lix2333
I didn't find a definitive answer on the FAQ pages of YC. I think I have a great idea and I'm working on the business plan and such, but I don't have a usable product or even the beginnings of one at the moment. Is it too early for to apply to YC and similar programs if you only have a detailed idea/plan and a bit of the grunt work done?
======
davidbalbert
I don't think it's too early to apply for YC. We hadn't built anything when we
applied (although we had spent a few weeks brainstorming ideas). We built our
prototype between when we were accepted for interviews and when we actually
interviewed. Even if you don't apply, filling out the YC application is a
great way to think clearly about your idea.
YC accepts good people who's ideas they don't like and then try to convince
you to do something else. We fell into this category. I wouldn't spend too
much time writing a business plan though. Start building things and
experimenting.
------
ig1
I think a bigger problem for you is the use of "I", YC is very much focused on
the team. If you've got a good team with a track record from working together
you've got a chance to get in pre-product.
If you're a sole founder you pretty much have to show that you're capable of
building a company on your own which essentially requires product and
traction.
------
donskif
Thanks for asking this question. I was wondering this as well. It's good to
hear that very early stage ideas are not shunned altogether, even though we
are at a disadvantage to other candidates.
I'm currently following David's advice; questioning my idea using YC
application as a reference and starting to get a prototype together.
------
SatvikBeri
Considering that YC encourages people to apply even if they don't have an
idea, and pg has stated in these forums that they accept founders who don't
have ideas, you're probably fine.
------
thar2012
I am looking for partner to apply for YC. I am a techie with 8 yrs of
experience in developing software products. if interested, shoot me an email.
~~~
lix2333
You don't have your email listed.
~~~
thar2012
saathi@gmail.com
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Review my web app Availablefordating.com - bond
The idea is to find a partner only when he or she is available for dating.<p>Basically you post when you're available for dating at a particular day so that others can see your profile and contact you. If you aren't available for dating then you won't be on the search results and won't receive messages from other users.<p>Any feedback or suggestion on how to improve the site would be appreciated.
Thanks!<p>http://availablefordating.com
======
pedalpete
you've got a good domain, and it speaks directly to your description of being
available at a certain day/time.
Why isn't that description on your website anywhere?
Particularly in the very popular dating space, you need to set youself apart.
you say 'no frills dating' which has absolutely no meaning.
If I've got what you are doing correctly you are doing a 'who else has a free
night and wants to go on a date'? that has value. But you have to tell people.
From a design perspective, your orange highlighted items look like links, but
they are just highlights, so I'd look into fixing that, and I think you should
move the sign-up to another page to give yourself more room to explain why
your site is better than the rest.
Also, the problem (if I understand it right) is that most dating sites when
they are just starting out don't have enough people on them, so I think you
need to make sure you have people looking for dates, or good ways to invite
people. You need to make it look like the site has activity and that people
are getting dates or looking at the available slots.
Also, that image of the perv grabbing that girl is really bad. I've always
been surprised that dating sites use real people in the image rather than a
silhouette where the person viewing the page can kinda see themselves in it.
Just my cents.
~~~
bond
Thanks for your feedback!
"Why isn't that description on your website anywhere?" Will try to add a
description.
"you say 'no frills dating' which has absolutely no meaning." Will
Reword/remove the "No frills dating". Need to come up with a good line.
"If I've got what you are doing correctly you are doing a 'who else has a free
night and wants to go on a date'? that has value. But you have to tell
people." Yes, it's basically that. Have a free night/day and put yourself
available or look for others available at that time frame.
As for the site activity i'm finding this the hard part to fill in. Still
haven't found a way to grab people's attention...
I think that most people want to relate with the ones in the images so dating
sites tend to use real people...
Thanks again for your feedback.
------
secret
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think the tag line "no frills dating" will
appeal to women. I get what you're going for, but I would try to reword that.
I would also suggest to try a different design for the page as it looks like a
template for a dating affiliate site, not an original project.
~~~
bond
I see what you mean with women... Will reword that so it can relate trust to
women. As for the template, i tried to design something that was proven to
work. Maybe that wasn't a good idea... Thanks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What was the last hard/time consuming thing you did? - lumannnn
Hey there! :)<p>I'm currently looking for a side project and was wondering what was the last hard thing you had to solve or did consume a lot more time than you expected?<p>Doesn't really matter too much what it was. I'm open for almost anything tech related. Setting up monitoring, analytics? Getting data from one point to another? Making sense of that data? Integrating or using service XYZ? Communicating with other teams? Communicating with customers?<p>I hope you get the idea :)<p>Thanks for your input in advance!
======
DebasishPanda
I have been trying to read a book [jQuery] but its been very difficult for me.
By the time I finish client work it is already mid-night & I'm left with very
less motivation, but still reading a page here n there I have managed to cover
upto 25% of the 444 pages so far.
I'll read a page now, thanks for the reminder :)
~~~
chatmasta
Why are you reading a 444 page book on jQuery in 2017?
~~~
DebasishPanda
Because I use jQuery for my work & I want to get better at it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
LSAT: Authentication and Payments for the Lightning-Native Web - roasbeef
https://lightning.engineering/posts/2020-03-30-lsat/
======
s0up1
Uooolets hi!!!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In the eye of the storm: Typhoons in Hong Kong - Mz
http://multimedia.scmp.com/typhoons/
======
ksec
Scrolling doesn't work in Firefox.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What you think about encrypting users data at the database level? - acutesoftware
I believe the average tech savvy user would <i>like</i> to know their data was encrypted or at least secure when on hosted on the cloud, and while it is trivial to encrypt, it also appears to be pointless because if anyone had access to the database they would also have access to the application, and therefore the key so could just "print" the data at the right point to get the users data.<p>The reason for encryption would be a great selling point - users are getting more and more distrustful against all the big providers around advertising and mining their data, and it would be great to able to prove to them that 'this web service CANT sell your data'.<p>I will be going live with a Task/Note taking website soon (clearly there not enough of them) and it will be a paid service, so want to make sure they know the data is truly private.
======
smt88
You could offer a zero-knowledge product: only the user can decrypt the data.
~~~
acutesoftware
I want to do this for some sets of data, but the problem is how to make it
easy for the users to manage their encryption key - It can't be saved to the
database, or the whole thing is pointless.
I've considered: 1\. having an input form for them to enter the key when they
access sensitive data (but then they have to copy paste that from somewhere
else or remember it - not very convenient)
2\. A local client program that does the encryption, then saves the data to
the web.
The more I think about it, I suspect the people who _want_ encryption are not
going to be my customers anyway (why would they encrypt and then upload to a
cloud service?)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
3.8M-year-old skull of an early ape-like human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia - iamben
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49486980
======
dalbasal
>The reason for this likely elevated status is because we can now say that
anamensis and afarensis actually overlapped in time.
This seems to be the rule, rather than the other exception, at least in human
evolution. Erectus overlapped with more modern archaics, for example. Habilis
overlapped with afarensis.
A lot of these are more about the semantics than the substance. Words like
"species" get tricky, when you're dealing with chronspecies, introgression and
such.
In any case, our evolution since speciating from chimps is extremely bushy.
There are lots of species, and several families. The process involved lots of
innovation/speciation and extinctions. Ie, The australopithecine family that
this species may have founded produced many species, including at least two
that formed their own families with multiple species of their own
(paranthropous & homo).
I think this is characteristic of fast evolutionary processes.
~~~
olooney
My impression is that we just don't have enough _data_ to draw an accurate
timeline, much less a tree, and are an order of magnitude away from being able
to study second-order phenomenon like introgression. I think fewer than 10,000
early hominid individuals have been found, most with very partial skeletons.
And they aren't distributed uniformly across time and space; you might find a
dozen in one cave, then nothing for thousands of years, or nothing on an
entire continent.
"You could fit it all into the back of a pickup truck if you didn't mind how
much you jumbled everything up." \- Ian Tattersall
[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6578939-since-the-dawn-
of-t...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6578939-since-the-dawn-of-time-
several-billion-human-or-humanlike)
It also seems like every time they find a new fossil, they change their mind
about how everything fits together. I am not an expert in this field, but if I
had a small dataset and I fit a very complex model to it with literally
hundreds of free parameters and I found that the model completely changed
every time I added a few new data points and re-fit, then I would conclude I
was dealing with a high-variance model that was overfitting the data and
either use a simpler model or wait until I had collected much more data before
trying to fit such a complex model.
~~~
not_a_cop75
Is it wrong to believe at this point that instead of macro evolution, we could
be looking at several differing extinction points?
~~~
BurningFrog
I think the point is that we know so little that we might look at a huge
number of wildly different scenarios.
So... keep digging!
~~~
subsaharancoder
Or..that we need more faith to believe in evolution than to believe in
creation
~~~
bigbluedots
Maybe, but creation has zero evidence in its favor
------
TBurette
Regarding the multiple human ancestors aspect, here is an diagram of human
species or groups if you want to avoid the "what is a species discussion" :
[https://imgur.com/a/AfrYjqF](https://imgur.com/a/AfrYjqF) It is from a recent
symposium [1] on human evolution The vertical axis is the age. The horizontal
axis represent the geographical spread and the color represents the continent.
We can see multiples things:
\- Disregard the 2010, it is indeed up-to-date. These past few years new bars
have been added regularly.
\- A single homo species is a new development and is an exception and not the
rule
\- Not only did different species live at the same time they sometimes lived
in the same places
\- There is no edges between the groups to represent ancestors as a simple
"single ancestor" link is not easy to establish.
[1] [https://www.college-de-france.fr/media/jean-jacques-
hublin/U...](https://www.college-de-france.fr/media/jean-jacques-
hublin/UPL4439769573810557760_Jean_Jacques_HUBLIN___colloque_juin_2019.pdf)
~~~
mirimir
Wow, that is an amazing chart!
------
vanderZwan
The impression I got from a recent PBS Eons video on the non-existing missing
link[0] is that interbreeding happened all the time and that a very realistic
possibility for the answer is _" most, possibly all of them"_.
[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwW40Dj5Sro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwW40Dj5Sro)
~~~
dalbasal
At >4mybp, this species may have been genetically close enough to interbreed
with chimp ancestors. If it overlapped with afarensis and other
australopithecines, hybridisation almost certainly would have been possible.
These guys were as closely related (at least in the earliest periods) to
eachother as we were to Neanderthals, denisovans and the other undiscovered
species who we know our ancestors mixed with.
Homo habilis started its career as an australapithicine, and could probably
reproduce with "non-homo" species.
A lot of the classification only makes sense after the fact. If habilis hadn't
produced the homo genus, it would just be an australapithicine, and we
wouldn't consider it separate from them.
~~~
Robotbeat
To what extent does number of chromosomes matter, here? I'm still confused
about how species with different number of chromosomes can successfully
interbreed without major problems in their offspring and thus I am still
confused about the process of how a species can change its number of
chromosomes (since the genetic problems that might occur with such
crossbreeding would not likely be terribly helpful in survival). Is there any
really good explanation for this that someone can point me to?
~~~
dalbasal
Having a different number of chromosomes is a hurdle, but not an absolute
barrier to offspring reproductive viability. It's not necessarily an issue for
animal health.
Horses & donkeys have a different number of chromosomes. They're also
separated by an estimated 4m years of evolution, which is around the rule of
thumb limit for large mammal hybridization so it makes sense that they're
borderline hybridizable. They have shorter generations than us apes.
Anyway, mules are healthy. No survival issues. They _are_ mostly infertile,
but not 100% of the time.
------
throw0101a
How do {archaeologists?, paleoanthropologists?} even know where to look for
these things?
"There's a whole bunch of land, let's dig... [throws dart at map] here."
~~~
GuiA
The corollary of this is pretty awe inspiring - we find only a fraction of a
percent of the fossil record that exists, and the fossil record that exists is
only a fraction of a percent of everything that happened, all the species that
existed, etc.
The fact that we can still derive meaningful knowledge out of that compounded
fraction of fraction of a percent is amazing; and the quantity of mind blowing
things that happened that we will never get to know because they weren't
"recorded" is humbling.
~~~
aptwebapps
It also seems to imply that as discoveries on the surface dry up, we could
make many more with deeper excavations.
------
vfc1
Why does it have to be only one ancestor ape, and not several that evolved
human-like features simultaneously in the same environment?
We have Neanderthal DNA, that we inherited through interbreeding.
Why can't both we and the Neanderthals be descendent from a varied group of
very similar apes that interbred as well? Isn't this the most likely scenario?
Sometimes I think scientists fall for the same simplistic patterns of thinking
that the men on the street fall for every day.
Like, there is only one solution, there is only one cause, there is only one
reason, when in fact reality is much more complex than that.
~~~
CathedralBorrow
HN is such an amazing community. Where else could you find commenters that
know better than the scientists authoring the Nature article in question, and
can then identify exactly why their own thinking is so much deeper than of
most other people?
~~~
bnegreve
> Where else could you find commenters that know better than the scientists
> authoring the Nature article in question,
They don't _know_ better, they try to _understand_ better. Why not?
~~~
coldtea
Does the comment strike you as "understanding" or even "trying to understand"?
It paints a blanket picture, with no qualifications (read a few articles at
best), and belittles what the scientists in general "do".
~~~
Scriptor
Also the point the commenter thinks they're original in making is the main
point of the actual article.
------
dahves
Prof Haile-Selassie? Is Haile-Selassie a common last name or has he anything
to do with the other Haile Selassie?
~~~
sampleinajar
The naming conventions in Ethiopia are different than the western world. My
Ethiopian friend explained it to me that the first name is their name, second
is father's name, third grandfather's. I'm not sure about the hyphen though.
See also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_conventions_in_Ethiopia...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_conventions_in_Ethiopia_and_Eritrea)
------
ojosilva
> The truth is far more complex and far more interesting. It tells a story of
> evolution "trying out" different "prototype" human ancestors in different
> places until some of them were resilient and clever enough to withstand the
> pressures wrought by changes in climate, habitat and food scarcity - and
> evolve into us.
To me this is the gist of the article as well of the stream of recent
discoveries and papers released. It's also a pattern that permeates computer
science nowadays, applying to different realms, from system design to DevOps
to team collaboration.
------
EL_Loco
Is there any type of ultrasound-like equipment used by archaeologists that
scans below ground and allows some crude-resolution view of whats below?
~~~
ryanmarsh
Yes, but it's "crude", and therefore not very high resolution. I've never seen
anything high enough resolution to discover bone fragments. The same
technology is used for oil and gas exploration.
See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-
penetrating_radar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-penetrating_radar)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_seismology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_seismology)
[https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/energy-and-
environment/tool...](https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/energy-and-
environment/tools-and-processes/exploration-technology/discovering-hidden-
hydrocarbons-using-seismic-imaging-technology-to-map-formations)
[https://www.pgs.com/imaging/](https://www.pgs.com/imaging/)
------
kavalg
I wonder if it is possible to extract some DNA from the artifact and use it
for cloning?
~~~
yaa_minu
I don't think it's possible unless the fossil is well-preserved in a way that
some cells retain intact genetic materials[1].
[1] -
[https://youtu.be/cQR5P_C2ElE?t=2373](https://youtu.be/cQR5P_C2ElE?t=2373)
------
proc0
Interesting to see the intermediate nose shape as it evolved from ape to
human.
------
Yajirobe
How did they determine its age?
~~~
linnaeus
> A fossil hominin cranium was discovered in mid-Pliocene deltaic strata in
> the Godaya Valley of the northwestern Woranso-Mille study area in Ethiopia.
> Here we show that analyses of chemically correlated volcanic layers and the
> palaeomagnetic stratigraphy, combined with Bayesian modelling of dated
> tuffs, yield an age range of 3.804 ± 0.013 to 3.777 ± 0.014 million years
> old (mean ± 1σ) for the deltaic strata and the fossils that they contain.
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1514-7](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1514-7)
~~~
Yajirobe
ELI5
~~~
polymatter
They found the bone in the rock. Scientists look at the rock and can tell the
rocks age. They assume that the bone is about the same age as the rock it was
found inside.
~~~
Yajirobe
And how did they determine the age of the rock?
~~~
ralphhughes
There are many methods of determining rock age. A common one is finding
signature fossils that are known to only exist between certain ages. Putting
the rock in a machine to record its magnetic field and correlating this with
pole reversals on earth. Using isotope ratios (not just radiocarbon dating),
chemical composition, identifying how the sediment was laid down by rivers or
the sea etc.
------
eurasiantiger
Nature be damned, this has hoax written all over it.
------
paraschopra
The concept of species is a construct of language.
~~~
_fizz_buzz_
Members of the same species can procreate fertile offspring. In some edge
cases this definition becomes a little fuzzy, but it is clearly more than just
a linguistic construct. A mouse and an elephant won't be able to procreate
even if the word "species" didn't exist.
~~~
rjf72
It's true the same species implies fertile offspring, but it does not go the
other way as you seem to be implying. In other words fertile offspring does
not imply same species. For some examples, chihuahuas and wolves can produce
fertile offspring, as can lions/tigers, killer whales/dolphins, and many more
peculiar pairings.
It's quite difficult to pin down a precise definition for species. Even
genetic definitions don't work so well. Depending on how it is measured chimps
hit around 99% genetic similarity with humans. Nature isn't so kind as to
provide clean and concrete delineations for us, at least not that we're
currently capable of measuring.
------
cro0o
Sure, this isn’t a popular opinion around here but I find all of these
theories such nonsense. Creationism, to me, is a lot kore logical than a
random big bang - fast fwd apes / fast fwd humans. So many random events with
hardly any logic attached to it. Humans have grown to be so full of
themselves, especially in this tech age, where a lot of us find it hard to
believe there’s a more intelligent being out there that could have placed us
here in the first place. Human arrogance is destroying us from the inside.
------
kwonkicker
What bugs me is the concept of "one point origin". Are we even exploring
different angles? Also, how a 4m year old bone is so prestine? African
ancestory hoaxes are so common that i just read such news for the sake of it.
Doesnt chamge anything even if it were true. But i like the idea that we are
sobriety special, even tho the opposite is also just as amazing.
------
TravisCooper
Evolution is simply not sufficient. Dr. David Gelertner, a CS professor from
Yale, penned an essay in May that lays out the high level argument against
Darwin/Evolution, including references to background material.
[https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/giving-up-
darwin/](https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/giving-up-darwin/)
~~~
the_af
Ugh, no. Intelligent Design strikes again I see. Almost everything in that
article is wrong (and also, the same tired pseudoscientific arguments),
starting from the fact he claims "Darwinism" is a "credo". Also, Stephen Meyer
is not brilliant and he is a quack.
Also, a Computer Science professor has no business arguing about evolution. Or
rather, his opinion is as informed as yours or mine, i.e. not very.
~~~
barking
Sometimes it's no harm to have eyes from outside a discipline have a look at
things.
~~~
the_af
But this guy mostly took a look at things from widely discredited and
dishonest Intelligent Design and Creationist sources (every single person he
mentions in his article). ID organizations like the Discovery Institute (of
which he quotes people related to) is known to be fundamentally dishonest in
trying to hide religious beliefs and pass them as science.
So it's fundamentally dishonest. If this CS professor said "I'm a conservative
religious guy [as is the case], I fundamentally believe in Creationism and
mainstream science gets in the way of my beliefs" it'd be one thing. We could
safely disregard his beliefs in evolution while acknowledging he was honest
about choosing his religious beliefs over current science.
It should be noted that another lie of Intelligent Design is that it
constantly re-invents itself as the "new thing" but it's as old as the science
of evolution. It's essentially Creationism wrapped in new language, but even
in this guise it's pretty old. It has been discredited again, and again, and
again.
For someone "outside a discipline" to be worth paying attention to, he/she
must:
\- Accurately describe the current state of the art in said discipline, and
explain why they chose to pursue a line of thought at odds with it.
\- Take pains not to misrepresent the field they are talking about, and
accurately address current beliefs and not outdated views. They must not
engage in demolishing strawmen.
\- Explain how their current expertise relate to the field they are talking
about.
\- Be honest about their intentions. If it's about religion, they should say
so upfront, so people interested about science can decide whether they find
religious arguments relevant.
\- Be honest about how they represent the fringe views purportedly backing
their own opinion. For example, he claims "Stephen Meyer demolished
Darwinism", but Meyer did nothing of the sort -- he is widely thought of as a
fringe creationist quack, with no scientific reputation at all within the
field of biology. He could instead have argued "Stephen Meyer, contrary to
mainstream scientific thought, argues that [something]" instead of saying he
"demolished" something (which a cursory search would reveal he didn't). This
is a huge red flag.
~~~
lurquer
Let me get this straight... a noteworthy CS professor points out some obvious
and undeniable flaws in the current theory or protein 'evolution.' He also
points out that is difficult to get serious researchers to grapple with this
issue because Darwinism has turned into a dogma where people are viciously
attacked if they point out some fundamental flaws with the idea.
Your response:
"Almost everything in that article is wrong "
"pseudoscientific arguments"
"Stephen Meyer is not brilliant and he is a quack"
" Computer Science professor has no business arguing about evolution"
"widely discredited and dishonest "
"known to be fundamentally dishonest"
"So it's fundamentally dishonest."
"another lie"
"fringe views"
"fringe creationist quack"
In short, you've proved his point. Your comments -- in any other area of
discussion on HN -- would probably get you flagged.
~~~
the_af
> _a noteworthy CS professor points out some obvious and undeniable flaws in
> the current theory or protein 'evolution.' He also points out that is
> difficult to get serious researchers to grapple with this issue because
> Darwinism has turned into a dogma where people are viciously attacked if
> they point out some fundamental flaws with the idea._
All of this is wrong.
A noteworthy CS professor has zero relevance in a discussion about evolution
or biology, particularly when he quotes people who aren't notable in the
relevant field and tries to "demolish" strawmen. The word "demolish" is itself
a huge red flag.
The sources he quoted are creationist crackpots linked to the Discovery
Institute, a notoriously dishonest organization who disguises religion as
science.
It is a mistake for the scientific community to engage with crackpots.
> _Your comments -- in any other area of discussion on HN -- would probably
> get you flagged._
No, calling crackpots crackpots -- the mainstream consensus -- won't get me
flagged. A big indicator of quackery is a persecution complex ("everyone is
against me because of dogma", "they want to suppress dissenting views"). I
think it's even in Carl Sagan's baloney detection kit. Sometimes people will
call someone a crackpot because they've heard their arguments again and again,
debunked them, and still that person insists, with a heavy dose of "the world
is conspiring against me". It's ok to call that person a crackpot.
One last thing: in the US the term "Darwinism" (which the article uses) is
almost always used by Creationists, and in a pejorative way. From Wikipedia
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwinism#Other_uses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwinism#Other_uses)):
_" The term Darwinism is often used in the United States by promoters of
creationism, notably by leading members of the intelligent design movement, as
an epithet to attack evolution as though it were an ideology (an "ism") of
philosophical naturalism, or atheism. For example, UC Berkeley law professor
and author Phillip E. Johnson makes this accusation of atheism with reference
to Charles Hodge's book What Is Darwinism? (1874). However, unlike Johnson,
Hodge confined the term to exclude those like American botanist Asa Gray who
combined Christian faith with support for Darwin's natural selection theory,
before answering the question posed in the book's title by concluding: "It is
Atheism." Creationists use the term Darwinism, often pejoratively, to imply
that the theory has been held as true only by Darwin and a core group of his
followers, whom they cast as dogmatic and inflexible in their belief."_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
No healthy level of alcohol consumption, says major study - mdturnerphys
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/aug/23/no-healthy-level-of-alcohol-consumption-says-major-study
======
skeezus
I guess I'll be waiting for the next major study.
~~~
lowry
While sipping Schnapps.
------
RickJWagner
Yeah, I think there's value in this. I stopped drinking about 15 years ago,
it's been very beneficial.
------
justboxing
Previous Discussion =>
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17832654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17832654)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Our Favorite Typefaces of 2012 - shawndumas
http://typographica.org/features/our-favorite-typefaces-of-2012/
======
mnicole
Some nice type here, some not-so-nice. This site does a better job showcasing
some of them than their respective Foundries/gallery pages do (Signalist,
Xtreem), which is always something to consider when looking at typefaces.
<http://fontsinuse.com/> used to be a good resource to see different typefaces
in the wild, but now it's pretty watered down with crap. You might still be
able to find some gems there though.
Can't stress enough how fantastic the MyFonts email newsletters
(<http://www.myfonts.com/newsletters/>) are if you enjoy being up to speed or
collecting inspiration for later use. The FontShop ones
(<http://www.fontshop.com/blog/newsletters/>) are also pretty good.
~~~
stewf
Hi mnicole, I’m the proprietor of Typographica and Fonts In Use. Glad you
like(d) them. On FIU quality: one person’s crap is another’s treasure, so we
don’t limit what can be contributed as long as type is clearly present. But if
you want to filter your experience to just the best (as selected us) you can
click on Blog Only or Staff Picks Only nav at the top right.
~~~
mnicole
Hi Stewf, thanks! That definitely wasn't a dig at your curation/aesthetic -
just a reality of the site becoming popular. Didn't even notice the filters
you pointed out, so those will definitely help!
------
pkorzeniewski
One thing I dislike about the custom CSS fonts is that they usually look
really rough. For example the Typographica header - in my taste, no matter how
beautiful the font is, the rough rendering kills the visual appeal and a
common, but smoothly rendered font looks way batter [1]
[1] <http://i.imgur.com/U5UObQh.png>
~~~
wittyphrasehere
Retina displays.
I know they're not common yet, but they will be someday. Designers often use
the latest (Apple) hardware, so what looks good on their screens may not look
good for everyone else. In some ways I see this as a positive—it helps push
the industry forward—like PC game developers who require the latest $800 video
cards for the best experience.
~~~
aw3c2
Retina is just a marketing term by Apple. They are actually displays with a
high DPI. You could call them high DPI displays or high resolution (kinda
misleading) displays instead.
~~~
wittyphrasehere
Yes, HiDPI, whatever you want to call it, doesn't change my point.
Also, Kleenex is a brand name but if I ask for a kleenex people know what I
mean.
------
josephlord
I was looking for a font for a children's literacy app last week and it was
amazingly hard to find one where it was nice and clear with the letters in
shapes recognizable to normal handwriting. 'a' without the extended line
across the top, 't' with the curve at the bottom and 'g' in plain form without
a loopy squiggle were quite hard to find together in a non-italic form. In the
end the font I found was Andika [1] which is available under the Open Font
License (although I'm not that keen on the 'a' and might attempt to tweak it
if I get chance).
Does anybody know of a site that lets you search for fonts by the shapes of
particular letters?
[1]
[http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&...](http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=andika&_sc=1)
~~~
Samuel_Michon
If you can draw a few characters or if you can find a specimen, you can take a
photo of it and run it through WhatTheFont [1].
In the case of your last search, you would've taken a photo of a single-storey
'a', and then WhatTheFont would've provided you with several geometric sans-
serifs to choose from. If you're still looking for a nice free font with a
single storey 'a', try Aaargh. [2]
You can also use Identifont to search for fonts with a single storey 'a':
[http://www.identifont.com/identify?12+%20+2F+8E+6X4+53K+8B+6...](http://www.identifont.com/identify?12+%20+2F+8E+6X4+53K+8B+6X8+79+1KI+1QY+7G+9Z)
[1] <http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/>
[2] <http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Aaargh>
~~~
3JPLW
AG Schoolbook Two BQ?[1] Found by simply looking for fonts similar to Futura.
[1]
[http://www.identifont.com/list?3+futura+16+M2+1+3R8+2+4B7+2+...](http://www.identifont.com/list?3+futura+16+M2+1+3R8+2+4B7+2+HD7+2+1N2+2+284+2+621+2+HVQ+2+2BI+2+9WW+2+2444+2+2ZCX+3+2TA+3+N6+3+L0+3+FY+3+HG6+3+2WM+3+FRF+3+OFY+3+29Z0+3+FRN+3+GB0+3+SC+3+2CV+3+688+3+2GRR+3+2DUQ+3+FRB+3+N10+3)
------
mnazim
A website about typography and the text on the top black strip is too small to
be readable.
~~~
stewf
Hi mnazim, I run Typographica.org. I’d love to know what OS and display you’re
using so I can get a sense of what you’re seeing.
~~~
alex_doom
Well the font size is set to 10px, even with my great eyesight it's annoyingly
small.
~~~
snogglethorpe
The problem seems to be that the text is both very small _and_ uses very low-
contrast colors (dark brown on black or something?). The almost per-word
variation in text color for emphasis also seems to make the text harder to
read (given that it's already hovering on the edge of readability).
Given that the text in that bar is mostly noise text, it's not all that
important, but it'd be nice if the more useful search box stood out a bit
more...
[FF 19.0.2, on Debian]
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unknown meteorite found in Swedish quarry - bootload
http://phys.org/news/2016-06-unknown-alien-swedish-quarry.html
======
eCa
The coin used for size reference is the (rather large) Swedish _femkrona_. It
is 28.5 mm, or 1.12 inches, in diameter.
~~~
wingerlang
I haven't really thought about this before, but that coin might be the biggest
coin I know of. And the 10 krona is the smallest one compared to its value
(smallest coin, highest value within the Swedish coins) that I know of anyway.
~~~
ralfd
The old 5 Deutsche Mark coin (I wonder if I have one somewhere hidden in a
shelf?) is larger with 29,00 mm.
The 5 Euro coin (a collectors item and only legal tender in Germany) is
smaller with 27,25 mm.
~~~
tossaway1
The JFK US half dollar is 30.61 mm. There's apparently also an Eisenhower
silver dollar in circulation at >38mm but I don't think I've ever seen one.
------
ams6110
They mentioned a cooincidence with an explosion of ocean invertebrate life. I
wonder why. Are they suggesting there's a connection?
~~~
saiya-jin
there might be, or not. on this scale, +- 1 million years is nothing. but if
meteorite shower was intense, it could have affected atmosphere, which in
cascading effect could have altered conditions in oceans to be more favorable
for marine life.
or about billion or so other possibilities.
------
tephra
I thought I recognized that rock!
Fun fact everyone studying earth science/geology at Uppsala University have
been to this quarry during their bachelor studies, at least when I studied
there (I've been there twice).
Time to double check all the rock I brought from there ;)
------
bogomipz
Did they form a consensus on this?
------
davesque
Sounds like the beginning of a sci-fi horror movie :).
~~~
__abc
I hope.
A weird part of me wants to live through some massive sic-fi event like that.
Probably the same sick part of me that wants to see Trump win simply to watch
the fallout.
~~~
mahranch
> wants to see Trump win simply to watch the fallout.
I have those same strange morbid feelings but not about Trump. Because I know
the damage would be too severe. It's like saying there's a sick part of me
that wants to play russian roulette. There's morbid and then there's knowing
that the damage will be so massive that you already know the final outcome.
Nothing mysterious about that.
The GOP has been preaching hatred, fear and bigotry for the last 2-3 decades
so someone like Trump was inevitable. The only good thing to come out of all
this is that you know damn well the GOP leadership is sitting in a room
somewhere, trying to figure out how to do a 180 and move back towards the
center. Because if they don't, they lost the moderate and independent vote
forever. Hell, I can see moderate republicans (like Kasich, etc) becoming
democrats if things don't change or get worse. Trump is the worst thing to
happen to the Republican party and I couldn't be happier.
~~~
deciplex
That Kasich is considered a "moderate" in the context of the contemporary GOP
sorta illustrates your point.
~~~
mahranch
Eh, he has acted like a moderate on a few key issues; like not denying federal
funds to expand medicaid as his peers in most red states did. He's also
expected to sign the medical marijuana bill making its way through Ohio's
congress. His behavior is most definitely not typical of your standard GOP
congressman/governor.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Hunt for the First Arcade Game Easter Egg - mml
http://kotaku.com/the-hunt-for-the-first-arcade-game-easter-egg-1793593889
======
_-_T_-_
Interesting story; great research; so much repost
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=arcade%20easter%20egg&sort=byD...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=arcade%20easter%20egg&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Registry Notebook - universal gift registry app built on App Engine - engblaze
I'm a long time reader, first time submitter. I've been teaching myself about web development and have been using a gift registry app (for weddings, baby showers, etc.) as my tutorial of sorts. Long story short, I'm thinking about releasing it into the wild, and would love some feedback before I do:<p>www.registrynotebook.com<p>It's still very much beta with more features to come, but any comments on UI, UX, or general app/site practices are most welcome. I've also gotten pretty deep into the intricacies of App Engine, so I may be able to share some useful knowledge if anyone is interested.<p>Right now, it relies on Google accounts for authentication. Not ideal, but GAE makes it difficult to do auth and sessions if you go any other route. On the todo list to change that.<p>I'm also debating various business models. Gift registries are a crowded market. Most registry sites are free to use and rely on affiliate links for revenue. However, a lot of services are implemented pretty poorly, so there may be opportunity to compete independently of price. What do you think?<p>Thanks!
======
trb
Whom are you targeting? I have never heard of a gift registry, so unless you
are targeting only people that already know the term, try to describe the
general purpose of your app. Copyblogger is a nice resource on how to write
marketing texts and headlines:
<http://www.copyblogger.com>
For example, your headline (Welcome to..) is basically meaningless. Instead,
try to describe your service in it. AirBnBs headline says "Find a place to
stay". Maybe yours could say something like "Manage your gift-getting"?
(Wikipedias description of a gift registry).
Also, read up on typography, a few small changes can have a great effect:
<http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/typography/>
<http://www.alistapart.com/topics/topic/typography/>
For example, your headline (Welcome to..) doesn't differentiate itself from
the text and therefore doesn't grab the viewers attention. Try to squint your
eyes and move back from the screen, you can't see if it's a headline or a part
of the text. Try making the font larger and bolder.
I wish you good luck on your endeavor.
~~~
engblaze
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback trb. The site is targeting a fairly
specific market... basically, people who are planning events that normally
have gift-giving associated with them. Weddings, baby showers, engagement
parties, and the like. It's common practice to make a gift list somewhere so
that people know what you want. I could probably do a better job of
immediately communicating that on the site.
I'm most definitely not a designer by trade, so the typography tips are much
appreciated.
~~~
trb
Ah, that was what my assumption. In that case, you are likely targeting
everyone, so you should make it very clear what the benefit of your service
is. Be very blunt, maybe something like "Manage your gift-getting for any
occasion".
------
engblaze
Clickable link: <http://www.registrynotebook.com>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Content is dead - vkb
http://veekaybee.github.io/content-is-dead/
======
danso
I know these anti-ad posts are a dime a dozen here, but this is one of the
more self-entitled pieces of dreck in the genre. She spends the first part of
her essay slagging on WIRED ( _" Wired has dabbled in and eventually succumbed
to the technology it once skewered and analyzed. Its latest efforts inevitably
include pandering to the Instagram crowd."_), implying that she's too good for
their lowbrow content, and then the rest of it is about how dare they have the
temerity to make her resort to using cURL to read their content. Or is this
post supposed to be a sly retelling of the joke in Annie Hall? [1]
What's so difficult about just opening an incognito window and suffering the
couple of seconds it takes for a computer halfway across the world to deliver
you content while you sit at your desk? The WIRED thing annoys me too but when
they've got a good story, I'm willing to give them the adnetwork revenue.
Forbes, on the other hand...that whole thing with their infected ad network,
I've just stopped going to Forbes articles, period, even when they're posted
here. It's been a long time since I can remember Forbes exclusively breaking a
story...most of the time, it seems their articles are from their "contributor"
network just blogspamming someone else's story.
[1]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075686/quotes?item=qt0373261](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075686/quotes?item=qt0373261)
~~~
vkb
> What's so difficult about just opening an incognito window and suffering the
> couple of seconds it takes for a computer halfway across the world to
> deliver you content while you sit at your desk?
The whole point of the post was that I'm doing something inordinately
ridiculous to access a little bit of good content. Scraping and incognito
browsing are both anti-patterns that are symptoms of a sick media industry. A
media that is sick cannot provide us with good news and content that we can
use to further our critical thinking, and we should be worried and thinking
about how we can possibly solve this problem instead of trying to bypass it.
~~~
danso
> _Scraping and incognito browsing are both anti-patterns that are symptoms of
> a sick media industry._
No, the cause (and, well, symptoms, too) is lack of revenue, something which
was set in motion long before ad networks came into play and were the devil
that many publishers felt they had to sign with.
It's worth noting that in the early years, publications just threw up their
content for free and went within the flow [1]. Within the industry today, it's
(pointlessly) debated whether that was the right thing to do [2], as now
everyone comes to expect the content to be free (nevermind the problem of
other sites just copying-and-pasting entire articles).
Either way, readers weren't offering to pay up back in the heyday when news
outlets had plenty of money to do indepth journalism and offer it for free.
Now news outlets have neither but they continue to offer their content for
free. And apparently, those years of free, good content wasn't enough to
convince consumers, years later, that it'd be nice to get financial support
(via subscription). And so now the mechanism that many of them resort to to
capture revenue -- third party ad networks -- is odious to people like
you...and I sympathize...so you should do what you would be doing if those
places threw up a hard paywall that requires a subscription: don't read their
content.
Instead, you go out of your way to take their content for free. Then you
complain that the content is shit, and finally, you complain that publishers
should be making it easier for you to take their shit. OK, sure, whatever. But
at least recognize that there are business mechanisms more complicated than
"stupid publishing company is using stupid ad network to get money"
[1] [http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/01/20-years-ago-today-
nytimes-...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/01/20-years-ago-today-nytimes-com-
debuted-on-line-on-the-web/)
[2] [https://gigaom.com/2012/02/06/debunking-the-original-sin-
of-...](https://gigaom.com/2012/02/06/debunking-the-original-sin-of-online-
newspapers/)
------
Animats
We'll know that ad supported content is dead when AOL, or "Aol.", or whatever,
and Demand Media, go bust. They will not be missed.
Micropayments are going nowhere. As I've pointed out before, the enthusiasm
for micropayments comes from people who want to collect them. There's very
little consumer demand for the ability to send somebody a dime.
Subscriptions work only for very high quality content. The Economist, yes;
Wired, no. Newspapers with big reporting staffs, yes; pundits, no.
The trend we're seeing in advertising is that only Google and Facebook really
matter to advertisers. The third-party ad industry is mostly bottom feeders,
and it's getting worse. (See earlier article today about Forbes distributing
malware.)
~~~
virmundi
Just a small point about micropayments. The current system is not micro. Micro
is hundredths of a cent or less. At that price point it might be possible to
use them. Sadly not even bitcoin (afaik) can handle such transactions.
Transaction costs are too high under every system. Even IBM's research- a few
years ago, bottomed out at 25 cents.
~~~
pcmaffey
Seems awkward (and pricey, as mentioned) to handle an actual transaction each
time. Why not just have a browser extension that aggregates and bills monthly?
Like the opposite of an ad-blocker, an ad-unlocker.
This has probably been discussed somewhere...
~~~
leereeves
How would you do that without needing a way to deal with many of the same
issues: to authorize every pageview, track account balances, deal with fraud,
and correct errors?
You definitely couldn't afford to interact with the financial system (ACH,
credit cards, or even Bitcoin) for every pageview, but you'd have the same
challenges to solve.
~~~
pcmaffey
It's all done client side? Except auth.
~~~
leereeves
The client can't be trusted.
~~~
pcmaffey
Not 100%. But what about 80%? Even 50%? Is it still worth it for publishers?
The greatest cost of digital fraud in a case like this would be perceptual...
given the current paradigm.
~~~
leereeves
The cost of fraud would be roughly the same as browsing with an adblocker now.
But probably the hardest part of creating any system like this is getting
everyone on board at once. There's a big incentive not to join the system.
(People who don't want to or can't be bothered to join will visit your site
instead.)
~~~
narrowrail
I think it would be quite straight forward to develop an extension that does
client-side analytics of your browsing history, just to show you which sites
you visit and how much time you spend per url/ TLD. It would be on your honor
to choose to give 'patronage' and the code is auditable as a browser
extension.
~~~
leereeves
If it's "on your honor", why not just ask for donations?
~~~
basch
frictionless. if i had an extension that let me put an amount into it at the
begining, and then let me divide up who i thought was worthy of my pledge at
the end of the month... no need to find tip jars and make a bunch of payments
------
kukx
Let's be honest, why they shouldn't block adblock? The ads bring them money.
And they need money to survive and, if they lucky, develop. The writers have
families or plan to have ones, they need to be rewarded for their work. It may
be their main or only source of income. Now, if they also provide a valuable
information for you, I think that trying to trick them into giving it for free
(ad free) is wrong. I think and it may controversial here, but every valuable
site that lives on ads should block adblock. And don't get me wrong, I
actually use adblock myself, but I'm more than happy to add exceptions for the
sites I need or value.
~~~
intrasight
Just remember that "adblock" doesn't block ads - it blocks ad networks. If
publications ran their own ads (like they do in print) the ads would likely
a)be of much higher quality, and b) not be blocked by "adblock"
~~~
misterbwong
Adblock can (and does) block ads that are not a part of an ad network.
If you're thinking making publishers handle ads will bring them back to the
"good ol' days" of static print ads, you're mistaken. The only reason we
haven't had these types of ads in the past is because the medium (print)
didn't support it.
1\. Most times, bad ads aren't written by the publishers at all-they are
written by the advertiser. The flashing/movie/360/ugly ads are shown because
they convert at a higher rate than "nice" ads.
2\. Forcing publishers to run the ads would be even WORSE for for privacy
since they would be considered "first-party" and have access to much more
information.
3\. Print publications that currently run ads don't even control 100% of the
ad content. The only ones they control are the ones that look like text.
Everything else is supplied by the advertiser.
~~~
anexprogrammer
1\. The ad network permits the bad ad, regardless of who writes them. If the
ad network didn't drop 400 domains worth of 3rd party cookies, with tracking,
and give me such shite as autoplaying video, maximise on rollover and the
like, I'd whitelist them. Or more likely never have blocked them in the first
place.
2\. They'd not be able to follow me around the net though, repeatedly showing
me some car ad I accidentally clicked because it maximised on me.
3\. Every print display ad I've ever run (quite a few) has been proofed by the
publication prior to run. I'm not Pepsi so perhaps different rules apply?
------
zem
the possibly naive pr{e,o}mise of the early web was that it would be a place
for people who created content for the joy of creating it to share said
content with people who would discover the delights of gatekeeper-free media
consumption. "premium" content, that people were trying to make a living from
selling, could go behind a paywall or into subscriber-only emails, the way
books and magazines worked pre-web.
sadly, the implicit contract was broken on both sides. people didn't want to
pay for content, but they also wanted to consume (pirated) premium stuff,
rather than commons material, so there was never a concerted push to have
better discovery mechanisms atop the freely-provided web. likewise, producers
wanted to impose user-hostile measures like drm and geographic segmentation on
a medium that was not conducive to them, making piracy the more attractive
option even if you didn't care about free-as-in-beer.
professional producers had to go free because it was not a case of paid
professional content competing with free amateur content; it was a case of
paid professional content competing with free pirated professional content.
that also sucked a lot of the oxygen out of the amateur ecosystem; who wants
to dig through the virtual slushpile when you can get pre-curated professional
material for free?
i'm sad about the whole thing because i was really looking forward to seeing
if the creative commons would compete on its own merits as a mass
entertainment option. once the reward of putting something up is not people
reading and appreciating it, but money from ad clicks, though, the producer's
incentives are suddenly misaligned with the consumer's, and we end up with the
web of today :(
~~~
saumil13
@zwm so i partially agree with you. there are few other reasons why both the
content and ad industry is in a funk.
Married to Business model not their consumer: most of the content producer
(music, video, tv, books, news etc) were trying to hold out with their old
business model (think: buying album only or newspaper subscriptions). As new
platforms emerged consumption patterns changed yet the model did not changed.
In a leaked email by Jobs to Murdoch regarding e-books publishing, Jobs
clearly warned that if books were not made available at price points, delivery
methods and platforms to today's consumer behavior, we shouldn't be surprised
to see a Napster moment in publishing industry. Those who have held stedfast
in their old ways have suffered. Only now we can see some revival of music
thru subscription via Apple Music and Spotify--but it took years and a lot of
failed startups to get here.
Ads: Head in the sand moment: Having worked in this industry i see a few
common occurrences: 1_ ad agencies have made it a point not to learn about
emerging tech, actively invest in them or be the agent of innovation. Just
like content industry they are happy to pick u 15% of cut from the buyer and
the seller of ads, just b/c they can 2_ over last 20 years there is a steady
increase in marketing budgets as a % of revenue by everyone in some cases up
to 20%. Obviously CEOs will expect the CMOs to be accountable and present a
ROI model vs the traditional 'sunk marketing costs'. Thats where data came
into play. However, in actuality data is really being applied with very little
thought.
Combination of laziness and apathy are some of the reasons for shitty ads.
What i find it intriguing if the quality of ad content is good and delivered
in a meaningful ways then people wouldn't mind it (eg: Super Bowl ads).
But then again it takes a lot effort and thinking. I'm however, hopeful.
~~~
zem
agreed. another problem with the ad industry is that it has almost universally
succumbed to the lure of tracking. tracking and targeting ads has a very high
return on investment, but i have to wonder if it will ultimately be a case of
killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.
------
takno
This +1000. The guardian, a paper I used to buy regularly, has transformed
itself comprehensively into a hell of lazy ill informed clickbait,
uncritically repeating unsupported conclusions from nonsense science and
refusing to differentiate their serious analysis from crappy user generated
content. Now I can't even bring myself to pay the 3 quid a month subscription
even though the crossword alone would probably be worth that.
~~~
ebola1717
I saw a talk by a product manager at the Guardian, and as I understand it,
that transformation was a reaction to declining print sales, shaky ad revenue,
the rise of Facebook & Google, the success of sites like Buzzfeed & Vox, etc.
They've been losing money for a long time and have been slashing costs as much
as they can, but that doesn't make a business sustainable.
Nowadays, most people will get to a news article from a friend sharing it on
facebook, or from reddit or hacker news, etc, not the Guardian homepage, and
that means clickbait pays the bills.
~~~
nuttinwrong
I say let them crash. Let them ALL crash. We don't need no stinking news!
~~~
xemoka
Certainly if that's what they call news and that's how they want to deliver
it.
------
m52go
I agree with the author concerning content and ads, but find it ironic that
the article's title is so click-baity and misleading (considering she never
implies content is actually dying, just that its business model is).
------
pier25
We need a Netflix for content. You pay a (reasonable) monthly subscription and
they pay each content provider depending on number of views.
~~~
qrv3w
[https://blendle.com/](https://blendle.com/) is attempting just this. They
have a beta service available now, and its rather nice. You pay a few cents
per article and you can easily get refunds if you don't like the article or if
it isn't what you expected.
~~~
ebola1717
I think the pay-per-article model is still worse than a single flat fee.
Because there's a marginal cost per article, each time you have an article
link you have to ask yourself "do i definitely want to read this?" Even if
there are refunds and stuff, this has a psychological cost. It makes sharing
content harder too. It also might be weird to say even more directly that
"this article produced exactly X dollars of profit," or "this journalist's
articles produce X dollars of profit on average."
Also, one of the best things about the Internet & the ad model is that it made
content available to everyone. Someone from a relatively poor background, or
someone who's just strapped for cash at a certain time, will still have equal
access to information.
------
golergka
So, the author didn't even think to question her assumption that she is
entitles to get the content for free, without paying dorectly or through being
subjected to ads?
------
Swizec
> today can’t epxect to put out mostly junk filler
I wonder if that's a litmus test to see if people finish reading. Great
article, perfect sentiment, last paragraph has the only typo in the entire
thing.
And I totally agree. There are _shitloads_ of people on the internet making
money from content. Hell, I make some sometimes. If you build a real audience,
listen to them, then solve _their_ problems. Then content isn't dead.
If you're trying to be mass media that appeals to everybody and nobody at the
same time. Then content is dead.
I mean, shit, look at someone like GaryVee or Casey Neistat, or even Kim
Kardashian. They all make shitloads of money from content.
And if you're looking for examples closer to HN home. Look at Amy Hoy, Brennan
Dunn, or even Ramit Sethi. They might not make tens of millions, but they def
print millions of dollars with their content businesses.
~~~
return0
There is a typo in the first line as well.
~~~
vkb
Fixed, thanks.
------
klint
(Disclosure: I write full-time for Wired, but I'll try to leave my feeling
about our content aside here)
Even if you pay for a subscription to The Economist, you're still going to see
ads, both on their website and in their apps. Even though I'm a subscriber and
logged in, Ublock Origin is showing over 100 blocked requests on an article I
just pulled up there, some of them coming from the same third party ad
networks everyone else uses. And my $1 a week subscription only buys me access
to three articles a week.
So while, as the OP points out, The Economist's Tom Standage [1] believes that
ad revenue isn't a futureproof business model, they still appear to be heavily
reliant on it.
I don't know anything about the Economist's overhead, but the reason
subscribers are still subjected to ads is very likely that subscription fees
come nowhere near covering their costs. The truism in newspaper publishing is
that subscriptions don't even cover the cost of printing and delivering the
paper to a subscriber.
Subscription-only business models have historically been tough.
A lot of people ask "why can't all advertising be like The Deck," but the
trouble there is that The Deck probably doesn't bring in enough revenue for
publishers to operate a large newsroom [2]
Personally (not speaking for my employers) I like Brave browser's idea, but
they're already facing legal threats. And while they're promising publishers
70 percent of their ad revenue, but even if that's a larger percentage I don't
know if that will work out to more than publishers get through the third party
networks they use now.
[1] [http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/04/the-economists-tom-
standage...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/04/the-economists-tom-standage-on-
digital-strategy-and-the-limits-of-a-model-based-on-advertising/)
[2] [https://www.quora.com/How-much-do-content-producers-who-
are-...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-do-content-producers-who-are-apart-of-
The-Deck-ad-network-make-monthly)
~~~
vkb
Thanks for reading. The Economist ads are a great point that I didn't address,
and makes me even more worried for the high-quality news and content industry
than I initially noted.
------
misterbwong
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Adblock is going to cause ads to
become MORE invasive, not less. Native ads, native content, and other
"partnerships" are going to drive revenue-all of which are much worse that
what we have now, privacy-wise. Adblock is only fueling an arms race between
consumer and publisher.
In the future, we might see a viable micropayment solution but there are some
fundamental problems with this approach.
~~~
nuttinwrong
I disagree. Sure, we'll see promoted content as norm, but those wise enough
will shy away from those sources entirely.
------
darpa_escapee
I can't remember the last time I read an article and thought it was worth
paying for.
Even a fraction of a penny. That's the sad truth.
------
Cozumel
Why not just open firebug and delete the ad overlay? The author is either
trying to 'show off' or is just genuinely oblivious that there's a much easier
way.
I'm not against ads per se, I have quite a few sites 'white listed' but when
they beg for ads like Wired, then it's an automatic nope!
------
ebbv
Wired has always been garbage. You're just getting old enough to realize it.
There's always going to be garbage content sources that are more popular than
the quality content sources. If you appreciate quality content, your duty is
not to bitch about the garbage content but to support quality content.
------
kirykl
Comparing the Economist to an iPhone to Android switch article is not a fair
comparison.
The Wired iPhone2Android article is and was never designed to be content. You
shouldn't expect it to be either honestly.
Apple has great content on the subject for free [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT201196](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201196)
The 3rd party link bloat however is spot on
~~~
takno
And yet that was the article the author valued enough to bother fighting
through the adwall for. Everything else on wired was _really_ bad
------
foltz
A couple days ago I ran into Wired's ad-blocker blocker so I just clicked my
Instapaper toolbar button. Worked like a charm. I wonder if or how often Wired
makes an effort to block Instapaper.
~~~
Nadya
This might come in handy for you then. An anti-anti-adblocker.
[https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer](https://github.com/reek/anti-
adblock-killer)
------
wmccullough
Content is not dead. Our current content delivery mechanisms have failed.
------
skybrian
The trick is to open the link in incognito mode.
------
karatekidd32v
Long live content.
------
draw_down
There are a number of tools built to extract the content from those kinds of
pages, did the author try any or just start YOLOing Python scripts?
~~~
dimgl
I don't think that's the point of the article though. The author is
criticizing the rise of bloated webpages with very little good content.
~~~
tragic
Or not so much that, but the practice of putting terrible content up and
funding it by selling someone else's soul to the advertising apparatus. And
then demanding that _you_ give up that soul, in order to fund "high quality
content".
------
beeboop
I look forward to the day when media outlets start dying due to lack of ad
revenue. 99% of news content is rehashing of existing content done by someone
else. Remove the noise and the few real contributors will be easily recognized
and supported. Also helps lessen organizational bias when content creators are
less beholden to the whims of their billionaire employers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NuGet for C++ now available - pjmlp
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2013/04/26/nuget-for-c.aspx
======
aespinoza
This is very exciting for several reasons, but mainly because this brings C++
(on windows at least) closer to modern languages.
With C++11 and the tooling being improved, like NuGet in this case, make me
want to start coding in C++ again.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What Silicon Valley Refuses to Learn from Steve Jobs - taylodl
http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/13/what-silicon-valley-refuses-to-learn-from-steve-jobs/
======
taylodl
Technology is necessary but not sufficient for building great products and
services. What the article didn't mention is people are looking for ways to
simplify their lives and manage complexity. They desire simple tools allowing
them to easily achieve those aims.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Len Sassaman has passed away - ColinWright
I'm hearing rumors/reports that Len Sassaman has passed away. If anyone has news then I'd appreciate more concrete details.<p>Thanks.
======
maradydd
I'm his wife. Sadly, the reports are true; I've been visiting family in the
States and I got the call from the Leuven police department a couple of hours
ago.
He was the most brilliant man I ever met, and I still can't believe this is
happening.
~~~
d0ne
A brilliant mind has been lost today. However, his brilliant ideals shall live
on. My sincerest condolences.
------
pablos08
<https://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=500467612>
I met Len in 1999, he was a kid. A cocky kid who thought he knew everything
and I wasn't impressed. I think we were arguing about K of N keysplitting.
Rodney Thayer said "Yeah, he's like we were at that age." Rodney was gracious
and patient, accepting and loving towards Len and I felt obliged to follow his
lead. This is a highly improbable description of Rodney, but it was the truth.
I became friends with Len and we were coconspirator cypherpunks at a time when
that was a wild frontier. We were reimagining our world, riddled with
cryptosystems that would mathematically enforce the freedoms that we
treasured. Anonymous remailers to preserve speech without fear of retribution;
onion routers to ensure nobody could censor the internet; digital cash to
enable a radically free economy. We have schemes to decentralize & distribute
everything. We imagine complex and esoteric threats to problems we might
someday have - we architect futuristic protocols to insulate against those
threats. All this is a highly academic geek utopia exercise. I tend to keep it
that way, but Len wanted to get his hands dirty. There were times when Len got
visits from various Federal agencies over remailer abuse. At first Len would
get scared and I'd get him out of the house which he assumed was bugged, and
drive around for a while. Especially in those early years, Len was trying to
impress us. We invited him to join The Shmoo Group, where I'm a fringe
radical, and Len became the lunatic fringe. I'm sure we helped temper his
apocalyptic tendencies and at times he even bordered on diplomatic. But it
isn't in our nature to acknowledge prowess directly. You only know a hacker
respects you if he's willing to waste his time shooting holes in your ideas. I
have thousands of messages to and from Len spanning the last decade, and I
doubt a single one of them offers any direct praise.
Len got his hands dirty. He committed himself to building the stuff we
imagined. I play it safe and remain blameless, but I get to stay balanced
because courageous guys like Len fulfill the extremes.
Len, you are, in fact, an inspiration to those of us who inspired you. You
made something great of your life. You left a lot behind for us. Thanks for
letting me be a part of it all.
Cypherpunks write code.
~~~
ephermata
Thank you for posting this. Puts into words what I and I expect others are
feeling. Sad to think he is gone.
------
dfc
I met Len at PET in Toronto. Despite the fact that I was unable to add
anything but stupid questions to the conversations Len let me tag along with
him for a while. He would take the time to explain things to me that were
patently obvious to everyone else taking part in the discussions. I was
clearly out of my league but for some reason Len let me listen and
occasionally take part in conversations that I only dreamed about.
My thoughts go out to his friends and family. It is a testament to Len's
character that the loss of a person who I spent no more than eight hours could
have such a profound impact on me.
~~~
MajorVariola
Never met him, but was on the cp list and recognized his name and that he had
contributed greatly. I've lost a friend to depression and I have it too; meds
can help clamp the extreme lows.
------
ColinWright
His home page is here: <https://securehomes.esat.kuleuven.be/~lsassama/>
WikiPedia page: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Sassaman>
Reported by Rob Bird (@conduit242) and Bram Cohen (@bramcohen)
* <https://twitter.com/conduit242>
* <https://twitter.com/bramcohen>
------
dweekly
It was a suicide. :(
<https://twitter.com/#!/maradydd/status/87586809818775552>
Len was brilliant, the inventor of mixmaster, cocreator of CodeCon, and a
wonderful human being. The world just lost a great mind and a great man.
------
kanzure
When I met Len at Open Science Summit 2010, I was struck by how friendly Len
was. He was the genuine article. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that,
had I asked him for a kidney or his liver, he would have said yes. That's just
who he was.
While most of us know of Len because of his security work, I first met him
through the do-it-yourself biohacking community. He gave a great talk at Open
Science Summit on this topic. I was in the audience at the time, and figured
I'd type a transcript. I apologize for typos, but QWERTY can only be pushed so
hard. He was talking about the involvement of the FBI with DIYbio, conveying
his unfortunate experiences in the past with law enforcement and what he hopes
will become of these trends.
[http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/open-science-
summit-2010/l...](http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/open-science-
summit-2010/len/)
_We're going to run into similar problems here where your local sheriff, your
backwoods outpost for FBI agents who are not qualified to be doing their jobs,
to the nosy neighbor who files a report that has the men in biohazard suits
coming through your windows and raiding your art projects with glowing
bacteria. Education and outreach to the legislature and the law enforcenment
is critical if we want to be viewed not as advisories, the bad guys, and not
be viewed as a threat. If you've ever had to be on the wrong side of the
table, an unfortunate situation, say, the FBI, as I have, you'll realize that
at that point, it's too late to try to convince a law enforcement officer that
you're the good guy- you're the suspect._
...
_This is our heritage, this research, these ideas that we have, that is
leading to knowledge that no human in history has had the opportunity to have
before. This is what we're going to be handing down to future generations. We
need to make sure we are not backed into a corner where we are not able to
distribute this research to others, and that this isn't locked up in IP vaults
with lawyers standing guard. And finally, there will be accidents and
problems. We need to mitigate these risks._
------
lemmata
His wife's Twitter account (@maradydd) appears to corroborate this. A tragic
loss, especially considering his age (I don't know, but I'd estimate ~35). At
that age, it would almost have to be an accident or suicide, and I'm fervently
hoping that it was an accident.
~~~
maradydd
Unfortunately no; it was unambiguously suicide.
Depression is a horrible, horrible thing, both for those who experience it and
the people who love them. Len was a brilliant, sensitive, loving man with the
rotten luck to be too tormented by his own brain chemistry to realise how much
he was valued by so many people, no matter how often we told him.
He was 31.
~~~
chuckmcknight
I am so saddened by your loss. Depression has taken so many people from all of
us and shows no sign of being solved. My hope is that he's at peace and that
you are able to find the inner strength to continue living, as difficult as
that will be. Please know that you're in our thoughts and hearts as you go
through this awful time.
------
nonaht_leyte
Len, you will be missed.
CP's may write code, but you were among the true believers who would run that
code as well. I hope that you are somewhere at peace, writing happy code, and
in charge of turning away hopeful former fedz arriving at the Pearly Gates.
Your legacy will live on in polynomial time.
//Nonaht Leyte
------
robertguerra
I had the pleasure of meeting Len in the early 2000's through my involvement
with the cyberpunk and privacy community. I always respected his advice and
saw him as trusted collegue.
My sincere thoughts and prayers are with you in this time of loss. Please do
let me know if you both had a charity and/or organization you supported.
Hugs from Washington
Robert Guerra Managing director, Privaterra
------
blinkingled
@maradydd - Deepest condolences.
It is extremely sad to lose a brilliant young guy to depression. Oh the
vagaries of life.
------
glamrock
Len is such a wonderful person, it's really hard to put into words how much he
meant in my life.
He was so incredibly encouraging of taking big leaps and always striving to do
courageous things, even if it meant taking on risk. You could always count on
him for a _totally_ unvarnished opinion of your code or project, which is both
rare and incredibly cherished.
It was amazing to work on a project for two weeks and have him tell you in two
minutes what was wrong with it, why, and a better way to do it. For a plebe
like me, it meant the world for him to actually take the time and explain
things to me.
On top of everything else, he really made a difference at a time when I was
struggling with depression.
It just seems like there are not enough words to truly talk about the impact
his life had on the world. His legacy is just tremendous.
------
nostarch
My jaw dropped when I read this. I always looked forward to Len's surprise
appearances. He was, without a doubt, one of my favorite people.
I will really miss him.
My thoughts are with you, Meredith.
\-- Bill Pollock
------
fyrfitrmedic
My most heartfelt condolences to Meredith et. al. I crossed paths with Len
only briefly during his days at Netaxs; he was without a doubt one of the most
brilliant people I've ever encountered and one of those I most enjoyed
conversing with.
It's been years; when I got work from a colleague from the Netaxs days, I was
an am still stunned.
------
nanazom
Meredith, I am so sorry. A gentle man. I was there for the wonderful on-stage
proposal at CodeCon. I didn't realize he was so young. He will be missed for
many years by many people. \--Nana
------
SandySandfort
I am so sorry. Yes, Len was brilliant, but he was also a truly good human
being. I don't think he had a mean bone in his body and he was always pleasant
and of good humor. What a loss.
------
glob
I remember Len barking at a squirrel on a tree during one of Cypherpunk
gatherings at Stanford campus in early 2000s.
It was one of more coherent threads at those meetings.
~~~
billstewart
That's also one of my first memories of Len - mostly he chased it around the
tree and then it got really fed up and started yelling at him.
------
agl
Oh man. That's a sad, sad, loss if true.
------
corelanc0d3r
that's horrible news, really really sad - our deepest and sincere condolences
corelanc0d3r
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you deal with IP (when you don't believe in it)? - jgmmo
Howdy folks,
I've recently found myself in a position where I am developing a SAS offering, and the company I work for wants to investigate IP options.<p>I don't believe in IP. I think the whole idea is silly. If I could I would prefer to GPL everything I write. I don't think anyone can own ideas, and I definitely don't think someone can have a government monopoly on implementing certain ideas.<p>How do you guys deal with this? Does anyone else feel personally that they don't think IP is a legitimate idea - but they are compelled to file patents and such regardless? Do you pitch your company on going open-source? Or try to sell the company on just keeping the goodies as 'trade secrets'?<p>What say you, hackers of the world?
======
enkiv2
I also don't believe in IP, but my career is literally in IP (I work with
patents, within the IP division of a large company). IP is a game -- it has a
set of rules that people play by -- and my job is to work with the rules as
they are implemented, not to worry about whether or not the rules are good
rules (or whether or not they accurately reflect some aspect of reality).
Refusing to work with IP because you don't believe in it is like refusing to
play WoW because you don't believe in wizards.
Now, if you have a philosophical objection to IP, that's a different issue.
You need to determine for yourself what your philosophical objection is worth
in monetary terms. Will this company be able to pay you enough to make you
temporarily set aside your moral standing (or, alternately, will the release
of this software produce more good in the world than its licensing produced
bad in the world)? If the answer is no, then leave.
The answer, unless you are already wealthy, is probably yes -- few people are
willing to starve to death for their position on the morality of IP, and if
you quit your job and refuse to work for any company that uses or produces
proprietary products, you will probably run out of money and starve to death
on the street before you find a new job that fits your criteria.
~~~
jgmmo
Thanks for the comment. I appreciate it.
------
paulhauggis
"Howdy folks, I've recently found myself in a position where I am developing a
SAS offering, and the company I work for wants to investigate IP options."
I'm just curious, do you want to stay employed at your current job? If you
open-sourced your SASS offering and 10 competitors popped up in the next few
months and you were fired (because your company went out of business), would
you be okay with this?
Not open-sourcing your software gives you what little competitive advantage
you have in this world. Especially against large corporations. It's becoming
easier and easier to start a software company these days, and large companies
have more money and man-power than you.
If you are trying to make a profit, why would you just hand over all of your
ideas and software to a competitor? It really doesn't make any sense to me.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
So much of success doesn't depend on the code or the idea. Its product-market
fit, time to market and such things. As engineers we wish that clever code or
a good idea were all it took. So often they don't really matter at all.
~~~
jgmmo
So is this an argument that potentially being at the 'right-place right-time'
is all that's needed, not necessarily the IP?
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sure. And its a crap shoot even then. Multiple startups are essentially based
on the same observation, with more or less equivalent solutions. Then its ALL
about marketing.
------
new299
You have a number of options:
1\. Quit
2\. Do an excellent job, and try and present an unbiased case.
3\. Try and present as negative case as possible for IP, and as positive a
case for not protecting the company IP.
4\. Don't do it and hope they forget.
I doubt they will listen. Limiting your options to quiting or hoping they'll
forget. Personally, I'd probably say you don't think that the code can
effective be protected by patents but you're not an expert and they may want
to find an outside consultant.
Then find a new job that better aligns with your interests.
~~~
jgmmo
I hear ya.
"I'd probably say you don't think that the code can effective be protected by
patents but you're not an expert and they may want to find an outside
consultant." \- good advice.
------
joezydeco
If it's not your name on the door, do you really have a final say in what the
answer to this question is?
Problem is, now that your company is aware of what you're working on you just
can't leave and start your writing your own GPL code on the same idea. Since
your employer values all internally developed IP they will most likely come
after you for the "theft" of that IP.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Do 20 pages of a book gives you 90% of its words? - kiechu
https://blog.vocapouch.com/do-20-pages-of-a-book-gives-you-90-of-its-words-795a405afe70
======
imron
Although it sounds high, recognising 90% of words makes for a pretty horrible
reading experience.
That's 1 word in 10 that you don't know (1-2 words per sentence), or assuming
as you did in that post a page length of 300 words, then it's 30 new words a
page.
I actually recently wrote an article discussing the same phenomenon in Chinese
[0]
Where to get a reasonable level of new characters (e.g. no more than 1 a page)
you'd need to know 99.8% of the text on any page.
And the level of recognition required to be able to recognise and learn new
words completely from context is about 98%. [1]
0: [https://www.chinesethehardway.com/article/hsk-6-gets-you-
hal...](https://www.chinesethehardway.com/article/hsk-6-gets-you-halfway/)
1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbYMZZISPrU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbYMZZISPrU)
~~~
jaclaz
I know nothing of Chinese, but in western languages, like English, a number of
words may be "unique" when counted by a simple algorithm, (even if - as the
author did - words were reduced to their "basic form" thus deduplicating a lot
of slightly different forms) but often you can get the meaning of the word by
the context and by similarities with other knwown words, so the 90% percentage
while actually meaning that you don't know 1 word every 10, does not directly
mean that you cannot understand 1 word every 10 or that your reading
experience is so horrible.
Every reader attempting to learn a new language goes through that odd phase
where he/she can manage to understand the overall meaning of a sentence even
if there is one or two "holes" in it, and actually it is part of the learning
process.
~~~
imron
Although you might be able to pick up the meaning or get the gist of the
occasional word at 1 in 10, the video I linked to in [1] above makes a
convincing case that the rate at which unknown words stop being a hindrance to
understanding and can be picked up from context is around 98%
~~~
jaclaz
Most probably that 98% is an extremely accurate number, along the metrics of
the professor, and I was not commenting on that video (that I didn't watch), I
was only relating what in my experience happens, in my experience it isn't so
horrible and I am still within that experience with more than one language
where I scarcely reach 70 or (maybe) 80%.
------
pealco
This doesn't really address your teacher's claim about having to look words
up, though. What you want to look at is the distribution of low frequency
words across the book. What do the plots look like when you remove proper
nouns, functional words (e.g., "the", "and", prepositions) and, say, the top
1000 most frequent words in English?
~~~
anon1094
Would be very interesting to see this applied to blogs in different categories
to rapidly learn languages through reading based on the words that you
currently know and the most frequent words in that language. So it would
always present you with the article that suits your level and you would have
the benefit of learning the most new words.
~~~
_asummers
Also would be interesting to see it applied to newspapers, with obvious slices
like particular author, section (sports v world news etc) distribution year to
year, and which paper. TV news broadcasting could also be interesting to
compare by the same dimensions, though the conversational style in some
interview shows would possibly make this less telling. .
------
twoodfin
FWIW, _Ulysses_ isn't particularly incomprehensible. To the extent that it's
difficult to read, it's much more the shifting narrative perspective, widely
ranging references, and stream-of-consciousness rather than the vocabulary.
Take this typical section from the "Lotus Eaters" chapter, wherein Mr. Bloom
is contemplating the origins of the wares in a tea shop:
_So warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over again: choice blend,
made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the
garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery
meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese
lobbing around in the sun, in dolce far niente. Not doing a hand 's turn all
day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the
climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness. The air feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse
in Botanic gardens. Sensitive plants. Waterlilies. Petals too tired to.
Sleeping sickness in the air._
Hard to be too confused by the imagery and mood in this passage.
Now, _Finnegans Wake_...
~~~
kiechu
I will run Finnegans Wake in a moment and I will get back with a response. I
must find it in a text format.
~~~
kawera
Have you tried non-fiction books?
~~~
kiechu
What do you have in mind?
~~~
samstave
The Bible.
(Just kidding)
What about having this read a tweet history, say that of a POTUS?
~~~
kiechu
From what I see, POTUS is circling in basic 1000 words.
~~~
kiechu
According to bill you posted:
Number of Pages: 217 Number of Total Words: 65396 Number of Unique Words: 3106
You will know 90% of words after 28 pages which are 12.90% of the book. At
that page, you will know 36.77% of unique words.
The graph is less regular but it has more or less same shape. I will not
publish this part because it is not a book.
------
kabdib
My mom, an english teacher, once went through my library of science fiction
and analyzed it for reading level. I had the usual collection: Lots of
Heinlein, Asimov, Niven, Andre Norton, etc.
Her assessment: Most of the material was about 8th grade level, based on word
count.
From time to time I re-read one of those books, and run across pages where she
had penciled-in notations and underlined words.
------
loeg
> we turned words to their basic forms (went to go, cars to car, jumps to jump
> etc.)
FYI, this is called stemming.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stemming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stemming)
~~~
elchief
or contextually, lemmatization
~~~
gattilorenz
That's correct, it's lemmatization. Stemming does not reduce "went" to "go"
------
dri_ft
For the record, Ulysses is at least a full order of magnitude more
comprehensible than Joyce's next book, Finnegans' Wake.
I'd also expect it to give a skewed response on a test of this kind because it
is composed of a number of different sections, which vary considerably in
their style. But maybe that's the point of including it.
~~~
kiechu
Here are Finnegans Wake graphs. It is indeed even more complicated.
[https://github.com/vocapouch/vocapouch-
research/blob/master/...](https://github.com/vocapouch/vocapouch-
research/blob/master/..). Number of Pages: 729 Number of Total Words: 218793
Number of Unique Words: 50872 You will know 90% of words after 387 pages which
are 53.09% of the book. At that page, you will know 60.64% of unique words.
------
prashnts
I think their teacher was referring to Zipfian Distribution[0]. I've seen this
distribution hold on Wikipedia corpus, as well. Of course it's empirical.
[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law)
------
jaclaz
A nice, interesting idea, and experiment, thanks.
Not so casually the blue lines remind me of the one in the graph for the
birthday problem:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem)
------
bryanrasmussen
The use of Eve's diary doesn't make any sense here, of course the distribution
of words in a short story are going to be longer than in a book.
Ulysses is fair, but I would expect it and works of a similar caliber to be
outliers.
~~~
kiechu
It is Myth Buster's kind of science. The goal was to see how it works with
short and long books and with one with reputation being easy and a hard read.
It would be interesting to see it on larger population, with more of statistic
involved.
------
kazinator
As little as one character of almost any document will usually give you 100%
of the binary symbols 0 and 1. Usually, the first character will do this,
after which the rest of it is just mindless repetition.
------
nl
This is good, interesting work. I wonder what the difference between stemming
and lemmatization shows?
Edit: I see you are doing lemmatization now. Did you try just stemming?
------
Finch2192
This doesn't seem all that groundbreaking, it's just an instance of Zipf's law
in action, is it not?
~~~
kiechu
Yes, that's Zipf's law applied. I doubt that many language learners knew about
this law. I think it is still worth pointing out, that when you go through the
beginning of the book, reading will become rapidly easier.
~~~
twoodfin
It'd be an interesting exercise in Modernist writing to try producing a book
that violates Zipf's law, say by hashing all but the most common few hundred
words into chapter buckets.
------
ihaveajob
I bet this is not true for the Encyclopedia Britannica, by design.
------
js8
I think this is a very useful idea - it could be used to "rate" the books for
English learners to see how difficult they are.
------
al452
"incomprehensibility"
~~~
kiechu
Fixed. Thank you!
------
zeep
90% of the words is not 90% of the meaning... but I get your point.
------
flavio81
Yes, if the book is 22 pages long!
------
oconnor0
Not if it's a dictionary!
~~~
kiechu
Or a phone book.
------
rfrank
I wonder how Pale Fire by Nabokov would look after this sort of analysis. For
the unfamiliar, per wikipedia, "Starting with the table of contents, Pale Fire
looks like the publication of a 999-line poem in four cantos ("Pale Fire") by
the fictional John Shade with a Foreword, extensive Commentary, and Index by
his self-appointed editor, Charles Kinbote. Kinbote's Commentary takes the
form of notes to various numbered lines of the poem. Here and in the rest of
his critical apparatus, Kinbote explicates the poem surprisingly little.
Focusing instead on his own concerns, he divulges what proves to be the plot
piece by piece, some of which can be connected by following the many cross-
references. Espen Aarseth noted that Pale Fire "can be read either
unicursally, straight through, or multicursally, jumping between the comments
and the poem."[4] Thus although the narration is non-linear and
multidimensional, the reader can still choose to read the novel in a linear
manner without risking misinterpretation."
~~~
s_kilk
Huh, sounds a little like House Of Leaves, which has a similarly weird
structure.
I'll have to check out Pale Fire.
~~~
rfrank
Ah nice, I need to do the same with House of Leaves, I'm a big fan of stories
with unconventional structuring. Sometimes a Great Notion by Kesey is my
favorite; it's told from multiple first-person perspectives that shift pretty
rapidly, where the shifts are indicated by having a particular speakers' text
italicized, in parenthesis, with no formatting applied, etc. It's pretty neat.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN - aalbertson
AWS Services experiencing issues? Has anyone else noticed issues with AWS this morning? We can't login to the console and other features.
======
ekm2
Would you mind writing the question in the title(on the same line as the 'ASK
HN' tag)?It becomes more visible to HNer's
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Upmock is dead, long live Upmock (My OS web design tool) - daleharvey
http://arandomurl.com/2012/10/15/upmock-is-dead.html
======
sifu_
maybe OT but my current workflow for doing mockups is by using jade + mixins
for bootstrap + <http://tin.cr/>
for me its faster to use vim to bring some bootstrap components on the screen
(in that stage i don't care about the structure of my HTML), apply classes to
make them postition: relative and use the chrome developer tools to move them
around, apply colors, ... and through the magic of tincr it gets persisted
into an css file.
so i use the best of both worlds, graphical tools for stuff that is hard to do
with code, and a texteditor for stuff that is faster to do by some lines of
code.
bonus point: even if i throw the mockup away i still can reuse some html/css
snippets when i start with the real implementation.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
India's SMS GupShup Has 3x The Usage Of Twitter And No Downtime - pbnaidu
http://anand.typepad.com/datawocky/2008/06/indias-sms-gupshup-has-3x-the-usage-of-twitter-and-no-downtime.html
======
einarvollset
Such an utter lack of understanding of Twitter's service model I've rarely
seen. Message delivery was never Twitter's problem; dealing with persistance
(I want my messages when I'm good and ready thanks, not when the system wants
to push them to me - READ: LIKE SMS MULTICAST!) is. Christ.
Downvote me all you like, but I'm embarrassed this story made 21 points.
~~~
tx
Such an utter lack of understanding of SMS messaging I've rarely seen. Twitter
is a joke compared to what it takes to do SMS properly. Not only SMS needs to
be persistent, but they also need to be stored and accurately retreived for up
to 5 years, which is a goverment regulation in most countries. Moreover,
delivery rate needs to be 100%, period. SMS is not a time waster, even
pacemakers send SMS messages from inside of human bodies when their batteries
need to be replaced. You can't afford to drop those.
I know that the "culture" of Silicon Valley is not to criticize, so let me put
it this way: HIRE CAREFULLY for your startup, especially when it comes to
engineering. Even if you're solving a trivial issue.
~~~
einarvollset
Don't get me wrong, I don't think SMS on a truly large scale is trivial. I do,
however, think SMS messaging is fundamentally different to what Twitter is
doing. The former is unicast: I send you a message. It needs to be stored
somewhere (your SMS inbox). Twitter is multicast: I send a message, everyone
who subscribe to me needs to get that message.
Now, misunderstand me correctly; I don't think this is anything new. My former
boss built tools (over 20 years ago) that ran such systems as the NYSE, Swiss
Air-traffic control, etc that did fault-tolerant multicast. And the uptime
there was somewhat better than Twitter.
What led me to post the original comment was this: They are not solving the
same problem, but if they were their architecture would be just as flawed as
Twitter's.
------
avner
It works..because the Indian cellphone companies don't cheat you into paying a
fee for RECEIVING sms or calls.
~~~
plinkplonk
you have to pay for receiving calls/sms in the USA? wow !!!
Fwiw, here in India, in the initial days of cell phone adoption, some phone
cell service providers tried providing plans with "receiving charges", but no
one used those plans so they (mostly) faded away.
I assumed something like that happened in the United States as well.
Another interesting phenomenon here is that (most) cell phones are not locked
to a particular vendor. The cell phone manufacturers (Nokia , Samsung et al)
compete (fiercely) on phones (almost every week a new phone launches) and the
service providers (Airtel, Vodaphone et al) compete on service (bazillion
plans with different mixes of features. You can shift a plan to another one i
a few hours by sending a free sms to the service provider)
You get a sim card from the carrier you subscribe to and buy a phone from
wherever you want, insert the card and you are good to go. You can change or
upgrade the phone and/or service provider independently of each other.
~~~
dcurtis
What you are describing is the power of the open market; it's what happens
when you don't have an oligopoly like we have here in the US.
------
abijlani
I think this post made by the Twitter team pretty much sums up their woes.
([http://dev.twitter.com/2008/05/twittering-about-
architecture...](http://dev.twitter.com/2008/05/twittering-about-
architecture.html))
"Twitter is, fundamentally, a messaging system. Twitter was not architected as
a messaging system, however. For expediency's sake, Twitter was built with
technologies and practices that are more appropriate to a content management
system."
------
st3fan
"""It appears that the biggest difference between Twitter and GupShup is
3-tier versus 2-tier. RoR is fantastic for turning out applications quickly,
but the way Rails works, the out-of-the-box approach leads to a two-tier
architecture (webserver talking directly to database). We all learned back in
the 90's that this is an unscalable model, yet it is the model for most Rails
applications."""
I remember having a discussion with DHH about RoR on IRC a long time ago.
Probably somwhere in 2004 when RoR was still very young and not so much known.
Coming from a Java/Spring/J2EE background I asked him about abstracting
database access in a third tier. He said he had never heard of that and did
not know and understand why people were doing that.
~~~
lpgauth
"He said he had never heard of that and did not know and understand why people
were doing that."
Could you explain the advantage of having a middle man between the server and
db? Does the middle man caches the requests? From what I can read up it seems
too be just a logical layer that executes the request depending on some
rules...
~~~
gaius
Let's say you have a 10,000 logged-in users on your website, of which 1000 are
concurrently active. That's very difficult to do with a RDBMS, because (most)
RDBMSs do a lot of work to start a session, and maintain an awful lot of
session state (for example, Oracle pre-allocates a chunk of memory private to
each session to do sorting in).
So you put something in the middle, that multiplexes those sessions down into
say 100 session on the database, checking connections in and out of a pool as
necessary, queueing requests asynchronously if there are no free connections
in the pool. You avoid the expensive creation/destruction of database
sessions, as you start the sessions when the middle tier starts and keep them,
and you keep the session state the database has to maintain at an optimal
level. Cleverer architectures add effectively another layer between the middle
tier and the database to cache query results (because you the developer can
_know_ what data you can cache like that, but the database can only make a
best guess).
In "sharding" I suppose the middle tier also has to do some logic to figure
out which "shard" to direct the query to. Note that _this logic must be done_
, whether you do it yourself in your code, or you let Oracle do it for you in
the query optimizer, picking the right partition(s) to actually execute the
SQL on.
~~~
st3fan
This is not what is usually meant by a third tier. Personally I take database
connection pooling for granted.
What I mean when I talk about a 'data-tier' is the code that deals with
accessing data _without knowing in whatever datastore it is contained_.
If you properly hide for example Twitter#getRecentMessagesForUserById(userId)
behind a (Java) interface then you can easily change from an implementation
where you do direct database calls to a sharded solution or a cached solution.
Other tiers that use this API will simply work because the interface has not
changed. One day your app could be talking directly to a single MySQL database
and the other day your app could be talking to a 60 node PostgreSQL cluster.
It would never know since the details are hidden.
This is totally against what you see in every Rails book or example app where
the first thing that is done is direct ActiveRecord queries.
Yes it is more work, but it pays off in the long term. It also greatly reduces
local hacks for caching. All that is done in the right place. And
automatically for all users of that tier.
S.
~~~
melvinram
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what your saying but I'd like to point out that I
can go from MySQL to PostgreSQL in a matter of minutes.
Specifically, I would need to change my database.yml file with my new database
info and run a migration.
Did I miss something?
~~~
gaius
A slight tangent, but I _never_ understood the philosophy of being database-
agnostic. Every database has its own set of features and does things in a
certain way. For example, in some databases cursor operations are expensive
and temporary tables are the way to go. In some, the opposite. Remaining
neutral means using only the most basic SQL and _still_ you might not get the
expected performance...
------
axod
I wonder if those techcrunch Twitter stats are up to date or accurate. 3
million messages a day is really nothing in terms of scaling issues. 34
messages a second.
Although it also depends how many destinations each of those messages has.
~~~
ojbyrne
Sure, if messages were evenly distributed over the day. I think it's the
bursty nature of the traffic that causes the scaling issues. A better estimate
would probably assume that half that daily traffic is within 1 hour - i.e. 1.5
million/(60*60) = 417 messages/second.
------
KirinDave
Why do people think Twitter's problems are due to a lack of good technical
design?
Twitter's real problem is that they've had a pittance of hardware until very
recently. It's not my place to go into why this is (and I'm sure the version
of the story I know is a bit biased by the teller), but suffice it to say that
a lot of Twitter's problems were, until recently, more business-oriented that
technology oriented.
------
ismail
@tx claiming that SMS has persistence is wrong, once the SMS is delivered to
the customer, and the buffer fills up on the SMSC oldest messages are cleared,
a record is written to a file which is then transfered to some other server
(That deals with the persistence) so SMS as it stands now is not persistent,
since one App handles the messaging and another handles the persistence.
------
ashleyw
You've gotta remember, Twitter is in a very sticky situation at the moment!
One one hand, they know their architecture isn't perfect and will be
rebuilding it to cope with more users.
But on the other hand - they are a small team which is trying to keep it up in
its current state, and cant just decide to close Twitter for a few
weeks/months while they work on the new architecture, people will defiantly
move to another service, and Twitter is dead.
------
gaius
I laugh when people talk about "sharding". In what way is storing your users
in different databases by username any better than calling your disk drives by
letter? The major database vendors all tried shared-nothing, and most have
rejected it in favour of single images (using partitioning to arrange the data
in a form suitable for parallel queries)
~~~
st3fan
"""In what way is storing your users in different databases by username any
better than calling your disk drives by letter?"""
Probably the fact that those drives are local while sharded databases are
physically seperate (clusters) of independent machines?
Some apps totally suck at this model. Others are perfectly suited. I doubt
Twitter needs complex joins, so it should be easy to partition their data.
S.
------
noor420
Man Indians are getting better at Web Apps too. Good read.
~~~
babul
They spent a lot of time building them for others (outsourcing) and now are
builing it for themselves (entreprenuering/producing).
The same model as the far east with cheap manufacturing of electronics goods
in the previous decades. After a while of outsourced cheap
production/manufacturing, these players learnt about the markets/products and
how to actually design and build themselves and now many of them are major
manufacturers and producers in thier own right.
~~~
babul
Plus web apps will soon be big business in India as it allows them to compete
in international markets with stronger currencies (i.e. USD/GBP is greater
then Indian Rupee) without the associated export/manufacturing costs, and the
benefit of their own homes/area/country.
Hence instead of working for $10k~20k (USD) on average in a
multinational/call-centre, they will form tech/consulting startups. This is
already been demonstrated in the macro-scale with names like
InfoSys/TCS/MindTree/HCL and now will happen in the micro-scale too,
especially after media coverage of people like the Scrabulous founders etc
(who many media sources claim earn about $20k~$30k a month in just facebook
advertising).
Only a matter of time till we see a web superhit from India, imho.
------
xlnt
Twitter has a better name.
~~~
raghus
GupShup is slang in Hindi for chit-chat or gossip
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.