Ask HN: How do you deal with overblown self-assessment of team members? - <AUTHOR> The management wants to have a "profile" of every developer, listing all the skills and the level of expertise.
I tend to downgrade my skills because i compare myself to some really good developers and use their expertise/skills as a reference. And i am not the guy to list "RISC Assembly" just because i played around with it for 2 hours.
However, some of my team members wrote in their profile stuff like "JavaScript +++++" and "Unix ++++" (+ = basic knowledge, +++++ = professional level).
Of course, this is very distorted, since they just scratch the surface of jQuery ($.ajax and other basic stuff; we are not talking about vanilla JS and its architectural features) and their Unix Skills consist of opening a terminal in Ubuntu Linux and doing "mkdir bla" and "rm -rf bla".
The thing is: I dont want to complain to the management because it might look unprofessional, and i dont want act like a smart-ass within my team and tell these people to downgrade themselves.
Is there a sensitive way to approach this issue?
P.S. I have no clue how these profiles are going to be used by the management. <comment><USER2> Sounds like the Dunning-Kruger effect hard at work. People get a good solid grasp of the basics and think they're experts because they don't know enough about the subject to realize that the basics aren't the whole domain.

Try exposing them to a few advanced topics in whatever they're overreaching on (like higher order functions for JS or named pipes in Unix). May not work, but you might get lucky and knock a few of them over the learning plateau and back on course to become real experts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Create or find a _simple_ 20 question multiple choice test for each skill. It will be a very flawed system, but at least it will mostly weed out the bullshit. This has the virtue of being pretty objective.

..or get a new job, this company might not be great :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds suspiciously like my last company.

The advice I received from my boss was to be honest, but not compare myself to the top 1% of my peers outside the company. Compare yourself to your peers inside the company. If Bob is Javascript +5, then where are you in relation to Bob?

On the other hand, these sorts of things are often used to define your corporate "professional development goals" for the year. So, you probably want to leave yourself some room for growth.

</comment><comment><USER5> But the problem is you think you are shit hot and they suck. They may think they are shit hot and think you suck.

I would probably just get on with my job and keep my mouth shut.

</comment><comment><USER6> Honestly this sounds like the beginning of a terrible corporate culture for engineers Just put whatever you need to on that report to survive

</comment><comment><USER7> I think it's time you go find yourself another place to work. People like these will only hinder your growth. Find some place that have people smarter than you so you can learn from them. Don't forget to mention how you feel about this in your exit interview. So they too can grow.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have never, ever, ever found or observed such management-initiated profile collections to serve any useful -- or any observable -- purpose. [P.S. Let me qualify that. No useful or observable purpose with respect to their stated intent or my own assignments and workflow. Hidden "Management" purposes may be another matter.]

Given it's probably a required exercise, I'd probably fill it out in a manner favorable to myself without being outrageous. Then forget about it and get on with my life.

Except, I agree with some others here. It may be a sign that you want to at least keep an eye out for a better culture to move to.

Also, I guess, beware of this being the start for an outsourcing exercise. Such... "asset inventories" can be the beginning stage of a larger, "hidden" Management project.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this the same company Dilbert works in? In all seriousness. Don't lie. Focus on pushing your skills, so when the time comes to show them off you can do it. The impostors will end up looking like bums next to you.</comment>


Joint NSA/GCHQ unit hacked SIM card maker, stole just about EVERYONE's keys - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/19/nsa_and_gchq_hacked_worlds_largest_sim_card_company_to_steal_keys_to_kingdom/

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised they had to hack it, I would have expected every Government to mandate a copy of these keys long ago in a more "direct" manner.

<comment><USER3> Easier to commit the crime and subsequently ask forgiveness from overseers, than to ask permission publicly.

<comment><USER2> Government have plenty of way of doing covert thing perfectly legally and covertly, after all, they are writing the rules.</comment></comment></comment>


A Pottery Barn rule for scientific journals - <AUTHOR> https://hardsci.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/a-pottery-barn-rule-for-scientific-journals/ <comment><USER2> Great, take your own advice and point out that the "Pottery Barn rule" is misleading. They don't have such a rule and in most states it would be illegal to enforce if they did.

You are promulgating misleading information with your click bait title. "Take my advice, I'm not using it!"

Or is the point that journals should mislead readers about their policies on misleading readers? I'm so confused!

<comment><USER3> Sanjay was very clear that the "Pottery Barn Rule" is convenient and commonly understood shorthand for "You break it, you buy it" even though it isn't actually based on a policy of the store. So what? How possibly does using this coined term invalidate the rest of his good argument? It is a fantastic idea.

<comment><USER2> Where does he say this? I read the post again and did not see it. As far as why it deflates the thrust of the post, I like to think I was excruciatingly explicit.

<comment><USER3> You're right, he didn't say it in the article. He may have said as much in reddit comments, though. I'm not sure. However, his first mention did link to Pottery Barn Rule @ Wkikpedia ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottery_Barn_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottery_Barn_rule)) which says why the term shouldn't be taken literally true in the 2nd paragraph.

<comment><USER2> Right, when a simple footnote in the piece would have clarified the matter rather than derailing the whole piece.

If only there were some way to rectify such things on the Internet, where words are not physically committed to paper. We might call it "editing". It need not even require a professional editor. Some people might even do it in trivial forms such as message board comments.

Do you see where I am going here? For less effort than you and I and the author expended discussing the flaw, it could have been corrected _in situ_ and the piece itself can become stronger. This is why good writers revise so often. It is astonishingly rare for the first version of a piece to communicate exactly what you intend to exactly whom you intended, and even then it may turn out that your opinions have evolved or your audience has broadened or shifted.

It is more efficient to incorporate constructive criticism than to rebut it, in some situations. Given the mutability of words on the Internet, the only two real explanations are "I meant to do that" or "I don't care enough to edit it".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Uber escapes criminal charges for 2018 self-driving death in Arizona - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/03/arizona-prosecutor-wont-charge-uber-for-2018-self-driving-death/ <comment><USER2> >"After a very thorough review of all evidence presented, this office has determined that there is no basis for criminal liability for the Uber corporation,"

This is disgusting. Reckless behavior by a corporation directly led to the death of an individual, with video evidence, and yet society gets no justice.

I am concerned to continue to live in this abhorrent country. There is no justice for anything anymore. What the hell do we do?

<comment><USER3> I get that you are emotional but that is a baseless statement. It sounds like your opinion is formed by headlines, which are intended to evoke an emotional response. Please go educate yourself.

<comment><USER2> That's a pretty baseless and assumption filled statement itself!. I've followed this since the original accident.

If you have a reason to believe that what Uber did was not reckless manslaughter, then discuss that

<comment><USER3> Ok, the driver is still being held responsible, which is correct. Sure the braking system failed but the driver was supposed to be there to correct the situation. This the right decision. If the car was fully autonomous then i would agree with you.

<comment><USER2> The braking system did not fail, both volvo's stock braking system, and Uber's own system were turn off. Uber's self driving software tried to command a braking maneuver over 1.5 seconds before impact, but did not have the authority to do so, as Uber engineers had turned off the functionality due to annoying (or possibly unsafe) false alarms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A disabled braking system, and drivers who had grown so complacent they were watching "The Voice" instead of paying attention. Seems questionable.</comment>


Microsemi Licenses Crossbar ReRAM Non-Volatile Memory - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12758/microsemi-licenses-crossbar-reram-nonvolatile-memory <comment><USER2> For those who are confused: "1x nm" means a number between 10 and 19nm, not "one times a variable nanometers".

I was confused for a bit.

<comment><USER3> Hah, yeah that wasn't a substitution I'd seen before. They really should have just called out Fin-FET process compatibility since all of those are below 20nm.

<comment><USER4> 1x, 1y, and 1z nomenclature is standard in the memory industry, where the foundries are less keen on giving out hard numbers about their manufacturing processes than the logic fabs are.

FinFETs don't have anything to do with ReRAM (or MRAM), since the memory is a back-end construction. When designing the memory, you don't have to care about whether the underlying transistors are planar or FinFET, you just need to know whether the memory can scale down to the same pitch. There will be 12nm planar FD-SOI chips taping out next year at GloFo, so 1x nm for a logic process doesn't imply FinFETs, and FinFETs aren't all smaller than 20nm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> To be clear these (Resistive RAM and Magnetic RAM) are really competitors to Flash (EPROM) rather than DRAM or 3D XPoint from Intel. Their main advantages are process simplification (Flash requires a LOT of extra layers) and cost rather than speed. In the industry people are very careful with new Non- volatile memories, because the failures may have long (delayed) failure modes that cause horrible problems and liability.

I'm fairly positive on these two choices (Re&M-RAM) mostly because people have learned to be fairly sceptical and require a lot of testing and they are porting to mulitiple Fabs. Even with the license it will be at least 12 months before there could be customer samples from the first licensee, Microsemi.

<comment><USER4> MRAM has so far been primarily a competitor to SRAM and NOR flash, but definitely not to NAND flash. ReRAM as an embedded memory will be competing in a similar space, but as a discrete memory will probably be most comparable to 3D XPoint.

<comment><USER5> I assume MRAM and FRAM refer to the same thing? If so Texas Instruments have some pretty cool (I think) microcontrollers using FRAM allowing for a user defined spit between volatile and non vatime memory, the MSP430FRxx series, I don't think they have it in any ARM parts though.

<comment><USER4> No, FRAM is quite different from MRAM. A FRAM cell has a single ferroelectric element that is read destructively (just like magnetic core memory). A MRAM cell has a pair of magnetic elements and resistance through one of them varies depending on whether the magnetization is aligned with the other element. That resistance is measured non-destructively.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Single Sign-On (SSO) for OpenFaaS with Okta and OpenID Connect - <AUTHOR> https://www.openfaas.com/blog/openfaas-oidc-okta/ <comment><AUTHOR> I would be very keen to get feedback on how users of OpenFaaS would expect authz to work, and what kind of use-cases they have including whether authentication alone is of benefit to them. My details are in the email.</comment>


Show HN: Recreating the "This Also" Loader in SVG - <AUTHOR> http://varun.ca/chillwave/ <comment><USER2> This is just for sport, right? Otherwise, just rendering a sine wave with Canvas would be a heckuvalot easier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. That said placing an SVG in markup gives you a lot more flexibility.

<comment><USER3> Why? Placing a canvas markup is pretty much the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unfortunately this breaks in Safari, the 'dot' is not connected to the wave.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out. Added a fix for Safari.</comment></comment>


Why does society value growth above all else? - <AUTHOR> http://stephenwalters.posterous.com/what-i-thought-about-a-book-small-is-beautifu/ <comment><USER2> Because a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I'm not particularly driven to accumulate wealth, but if my income doesn't keep pace with inflation my purchasing power will diminish, and if I don't save then I have no hedge against the possibility of unemployment or inability to work.

now, you might argue that things don't grow forever in nature, and you'd be right. But the natural world is not just about beautiful vistas and flowers every spring. From bacteria to blue whales, competition in nature is intense and unforgiving, and even dominant populations are subject to occasional catastrophic busts. Left to itself (as in a few unusual environmental oases) a population will expand to use all the available resources, even if the individual members of the population are limited by growth. Organisms generally grow to the extent that they have a good chance of reproduction. they will evolve through successive generations in whatever direction maximizes reproductive fitness.

Schumacher was an interesting theorist, but (like many other idealists) his vision of an ideal world depends on mutual abandonment of competition. I'm a big fan of mutuality, but there are limits to its scalability.</comment>


Aviary Debuts HTML5 Photo Editor - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/11/23/html5-image-editor-aviary/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29 <comment><USER2> Cute enough, but "surprisingly powerful" is excessive hype. The functionality here is pretty basic: Photoshop 1.0 (20 years ago) blows it out of the water. Also, the "Instant" button at the bottom just generates JavaScript errors and fails for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, but you have to start from somewhere. Personally I found DeviantArt Muro more impressive.

<comment><USER2> Sure, everything has to start somewhere. Much more impressive canvas-based image editors have been linked here before though, and the mashable copy is awful: "While simple in nature, the app is really powerful. [...] Super simple, super effective. The fact that developers can take advantage of this portable toolset on their own sites is super cool. Even better, the functionality of this product is totally top-notch."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Now with less Mashable: [http://www.aviary.com/blog/posts/aviary-launches- html5-photo...](http://www.aviary.com/blog/posts/aviary-launches-html5-photo- editor)

Direct link to the editor: <http://www.aviary.com/html5>

</comment><comment><USER4> Instant recursion. [http://featherfiles.aviary.com/2010-11-24/3b89a543083a47cbbc...](http://featherfiles.aviary.com/2010-11-24/3b89a543083a47cbbc0eb7e5e52d646f.png)</comment>


NYPD has at least five undercover 'Cop Cabs' - <AUTHOR> https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/mar/28/nypd-taxicabs/ <comment><USER2> I live in a small resort town where the population in the off season is less than 1000 and during the peak season on major holiday weekends can swell close in the hundreds of thousands. A few years ago the local police department did this. They didn't use it for enforcing traffic laws or surveillance. Instead they operated as a normal cab, picking up fares, and would eavesdrop on people's conversations in the cab and use the intel they gathered to make arrests. In terms of arrests it did lead to some major drug arrests, but I think the entire program was marred in controversy that they stopped.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mind sharing what town that is?

<comment><USER2> Ocean City, Maryland

Here is one of the stories about the program: [http://oceancitymd.gov/oc/ocean-city-police-undercover- offic...](http://oceancitymd.gov/oc/ocean-city-police-undercover-officer- poses-as-cab-driver-nearly-two-year-investigation-leads-to-34-indictments/)

<comment><USER3> I desperately want someone to parody the montage sequence from _The Departed_ showing Matt Damon double-agenting his way through police academy and Leonardo DiCaprio double-agenting his way through mafia initiation, except this time showing a cop double-agenting as a cab driver ... talking about stuff passengers don't want to hear, receiving calls constantly on a hands-free device, intentionally taking the long way if the customer looks like a tourist... with some sick Dropkick Murphys in the background.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I saw one in NYC back in 2011 get a guy for what I think ended up being a stolen car. The cab started to go, then suddenly reversed and went around a median, coming head to head with a car. They then put guns to the driver and ordered him out. Only pic I could find of it: [http://imgur.com/ObrYLBv](http://imgur.com/ObrYLBv)

<comment><USER4> and in this case there were 2 plainclothes officers in the cab and the light wasn't on so I don't think they take fares.

FWIW Law and Order also had a scene with an undercover cab back in the Orbach days, so previous to 2005. This has been around for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They definitely exist, I've seen two. Once buzzing someone to pull over, and another at a stoplight, they have visible grille lights.</comment>


Basic Docker Container Linking with Node, Redis and RethinkDB - <AUTHOR> http://blog.spoxr.com/basic-docker-container-links/ <comment> jon-wood Unfortunately in my experience unless your building a local development environment, in which everything can be started and stopped at once, and it all runs on the same machine, container linking is effectively useless.

I think Docker Swarm has fixing this on the roadmap, but for now I think Kubernetes is the only thing to take into account the fact you'll probably want to have more than one node in a Docket cluster.

<comment><USER2> Cloud Foundry has an incubator project -- Lattice -- for this purpose as well[0].

It's an extraction and repackaging of next-gen Cloud Foundry components.

[0] [https://github.com/cloudfoundry- incubator/lattice](https://github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/lattice)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice!

I have a similar blog post/slides > [http://mherman.org/blog/2015/03/06/node- with-docker-continuo...](http://mherman.org/blog/2015/03/06/node-with-docker- continuous-integration-and-delivery/)

You should look at Docker Compose (formerly Fig) for container linking. Much easier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! This is exactly what I'm looking for.

<comment><USER3> Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks interesting, but I don't really know anything about Docker except the elevator pitch so I don't understand what's achieved here.

Can some explain what is container linking?

<comment><USER5> Ports inside a container aren't exposed publicly unless explicitly done.

Container linking lets containers connect to each other without exposing ports via docker.

The "linking" is exposed to the container via an /etc/hosts entry, so e.g. --link test-db:db adds "a.b.c.d db" to /etc/hosts which can be used by anything that needs it.

As mentioned by jon-wood, the simple linking approach only works with containers on the same machine unfortunately.

<comment><USER6> The concepts of Linking are being revisited via the network revamp proposal with the help of Network Plugins : [https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/9983](https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/9983). With the plugins providing State Distribution and Service Discovery the containers can be effectively linked across multi-host network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have you managed to get this setup to continue working after one of the containers restarts? That is a problem with container linking I have yet to find an answer for.

<comment><USER6> Some of the container restart issues related to Links were resolved in 1.4+ & 1.5 releases. Please refer to the thread [https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/6350](https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/6350).

Also, the network model is being revamped via [https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/9983](https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/9983) to provide a more flexible plugins based Networking system which can also provide multi-host solution that is more powerful than the existing single- host multi-container linking system.</comment></comment>


A closer look at frame times: why FPS can mislead - <AUTHOR> https://www.4alltech.com/2020/05/a-closer-look-at-frame-times-why-fps.html <comment><USER2> It's hard to write a unity game where there aren't large frame time spikes periodically. This is even in scenes where there is almost no code running, just from turning the camera too quickly. In unreal, I haven't encountered the same issue. So, for some scenes, the frame time averages might make unity look pretty good, but then it just has a these massive drops (sometimes over a half second), again, with almost no scripting running.

Maybe I am just being petty. I am mostly just mad about unity revoking asset store usage rights post-purchase as a cash grab (before feb your freelancers could use your assets - now you need to buy them additional licenses for each)

<comment><USER3> Is it GC pauses?

I know .NET's GC is supposed to be pretty good, but Unity is still using the Mono implementation, right?

I can barely stand C++, but I'll put up with it to avoid long GC pauses or dynamic typing. (JS)

<comment> vertex-four Unreal's C++ code (specifically, anything deriving from UObject) is garbage collected as well.

<comment><USER4> Really? Why is that in the times of smart pointers? You can just malloc a pointer and it gets cleaned up automatically by unity if it's no longer used?

<comment> vertex-four Because you want garbage collection to happen at specific, well-defined times (i.e. in the slack between frames), in a separate thread - not in the middle of rendering a frame on the main thread when you happen to drop something out of scope.

<comment><USER4> Still I can't imagine GC is the best solution for this. You can easily make a memory allocation strategy that hands out shared_pointers or something like it that get cleaned up at will defined times instead of when it goes out of scope for a user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is something we deal with in game development regularly, tracking spikes as fixing them.

I'm not sure how much sense it makes to measure them in the context of video card reviews as the article alludes to.

In my experience frame time spikes are more often a result of software rather than hardware. It would make more sense in the context of game reviews I think.

</comment><comment><USER6> I feel like Bloodborne is what put "frame time" on the map for a lot of gamers. Game is usually pretty good about maintaining an average 30 fps at 1080p, especially on the pro with boost mode, but has very bad frame timing that boost mode does nothing to fix. It also never go a Pro patch, unfortunately.

<comment><USER7> In my opinion gaming on 30 FPS is extremely horrible. Especially with shooters. This has in part to do with the 33.3 ms response delay that you can get between moving the mouse and the change being processed and shown on the screen. When compared to the reaction speed of ~200 ms, you add a 15% delay. Compare that to 144fps (6,94ms frametime) you loose only 3,5% which makes the perception much smoother

<comment> wing-_-nuts I understand PC players get a better gaming experience, but looking at the average specs of someone on /r/nvidia, my god do they pay a premium for it.

I'm ok with 30 fps outside of VR, as long as it's stable and everyone's on an even playing field (i.e. same hardware).

The next gen consoles will target native 4k60hz, which is nice. Consoles are fantastic value for money, and you're guaranteed to be able to run the newest games even at the end of a console's release cycle, which can be 8-10 years.

<comment><USER8> Next-gen onsoles definitely aren't targeting 4k60 as a standard. A few big launch ones are coming in at 4k30. Really unfortunate but not surprising considering the limitations of the hardware. A DLSS-like solution would've worked wonders on the consoles.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the status of WebSockets? - <AUTHOR>

After WebSockets were sadly pulled from Firefox 4 and Chrome due to a security hole, I had hoped that a new version would follow quickly and restore faith. Yet it seems to have fallen from the news cycle? This strikes me as a problem, if you're keen on widespread sockets acceptance in browsers.<p>Is WebSockets DOA? What's the path forwards? <comment><USER2> They're being fixed. It'll probably take a while. Best bet right now is to develop against <http://socket.io/>. I'm pretty sure that will be updated when a secure websockets protocol is implemented. Also, for now, you can use a fallback of flash sockets which in my testing perform nearly as well (all the other fallbacks perform pretty poorly if you care about latency at all)

</comment><comment><USER3> After a protracted debate, the security issues were fixed and the new version is being implemented and tested now.

<http://tools.ietf.org/wg/hybi/></comment>


Yuzu-Emu/Yuzu: Nintendo Switch Emulator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yuzu-emu/yuzu <comment><USER2> > yuzu only emulates a subset of Switch hardware and therefore is generally > only useful for running/debugging homebrew applications. At this time, yuzu > cannot play a majority of commercial games without major problems. yuzu can > boot some commercial Switch games to varying degrees of success, but your > experience may vary between games and for different combinations of host > hardware.

still impressive, just thought you might want to quickly find the current state</comment>


Github, Webhooks, Octopress, and Python - <AUTHOR> http://luketurner.org/blog/2013/08/20/github-webhooks-octopress-python/

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I have another active HN account, but I don't want it associated with my name.

If you have any questions or suggestions, let me know. I'm pretty new to this whole "blogging" thing.</comment>


OpenPGP in Rust: The Sequoia Project - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/830902/b751810a99460a39/ <comment><USER2> ...I really don't want to sound entitled, but while you're at it, could you please only keep the old CLI for compatibility purposes and come up with something that can actually be used? GPG's command line is second only to the one of openssl. And maybe git. It would really help adoption if usability was improved. Having an API instead of just CLI might also help (doesn't Enigmail just run the binary?)

<comment><USER3> Second to openssl? I would rank gpg as the worst by a considerable margin.

Although, come to think of it, tex and its relatives (pdflatex, etc) have really quite terrible command line interfaces.

<comment><USER4> ffmpeg is pretty nasty as well, and I don't have much fondness for ImageMagick's command line either.

<comment><USER5> At least ffmpeg makes it easy to do the very easiest thing. I don't have to look up this one:

        ffmpeg -i input.file output.file

Now, usually I want to do something more complicated, so I end up having to look it up, but it's hardly the ffmpeg folks' fault that audio and video encoding is such an ungodly mess of different containers and encodings; while it could be better, I think most of its complexity is inherent to the problems it's trying to solve. I do think there's an argument that it tries to do too much, and the complexity could be mitigated if it were split into several smaller tools and a wrapper for the most common commands, like apt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All of my friends who work in crypto loathe PGP. None of them mention the implementation as their __primary __area of concern. Some of them mention the implementation as an unsurprising sequela to the kitchen sink of "capabilities" PGP attempts to cover. It has, by design, a nearly fractal surface area for users to compromise their security and for developers to make subtle implementation errors.

<comment><USER7> If you want to do store and forward messaging on a federated network then PGP is pretty much it.

So if all those cryptographers don't like it then they should design something better. It is unlikely they will be able to come up with something simpler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Alternatively: [https://github.com/str4d/rage](https://github.com/str4d/rage)

<comment><USER7> Kind of lacks any sort of OpenPGP compatibility...

<comment><USER9> Thats the point. PGP isn't a good standard.

<comment><USER7> Age/Rage is not a standard at all. It is just a program. It definitely has nothing to do with a project intended to implement a particular standard. It is a non-sequitor here.

<comment><USER10> PGP is a giant blob of byzantine implementation details and layers of accrued crust that people call a standard by convention and out of inertia.

<comment><USER11> Being a giant blob of byzantine implementation details and layers of accrued crust doesn't take away from PGP being a standard. Take a look at BMP or Postscript/PDF or even Email and tell me they're not the same.

Parent's point still stands: PGP _is_ a standard (with widespread adoption, mind you) whereas Age is not. Whether it is a good standard or not depends on how you're using it.

<comment><USER10> The parent's point was that age is 'just a program' and thus not a standard, with no mention of adoption. But PGP is arguably less of a standard than age, by that metric. As to adoption, PGP has very little adoption for actually securing anything (rather than performative use) and for those uses it's trivially replaceable because it's not actually good at them - that's pretty much the motivation behind things like 'age'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >Conceptually, Sequoia takes an identity-based approach to its public keyrings, where the keyring is designed to be "more like a per-domain address book than a PGP keyring."

I think this is the future for encrypted messaging of all types. Ultimately the user needs some sort of conceptual model that will allow them to do reasonable things. Making the identity a thing in and of itself removes a lot of unneeded conceptual overhead.

That is as opposed to the current practice of simply ignoring the identity issue and leaving the whole thing as a responsibility that the user has no idea of how to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why? PGP needs to be deprecated in favor of things like AGE and Magic Wormhole.

[https://github.com/FiloSottile/age](https://github.com/FiloSottile/age)

<comment><USER12> If PGP is actually a bad standard from the crypto point of view I can only wonder why people downvote this and insist on supporting garbage and even rewriting it in Rust. But I'm not educated in these matters, so: what's exactly the problem with PGP/Seqouia and why age/rage are better? Can all PGP usecases be covered by age?

<comment><USER13> age only covers authenticated encryption. minisign/signify covers the signing part.

Everything else is either not used in practice or needs to be shifted to a dedicated protocol.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ahh the unending saga of people too lazy to read some GPG man pages and proposing unfitting replacements.

Long live GPG!</comment>


Vintager, gives spirit to ordinary dull photos - <AUTHOR> http://vintager.photo <comment><AUTHOR> Exeone has announced the first free effect based photo editor for Windows that can successfully substitute popular mobile Instagram-a-like apps. The software contains over 30 good looking effects and with one simple click it can transform an ordinary dull photo into a fancy looking one. Simple and intuitive use doesn't require any advanced design and computer skills, but powerful enough to replace a use of expensive software for the majority of users.

Software performances are quite respectable, it contains a set of high- resolution layers and export photo can be in original size, which is an advantage over other especially mobile apps, and represent good benefit for photographers and graphic designers who require photos in large resolution.

A group of professional designers and photographers have created a set of effects, layers and editing features in order to help enthusiasts get unique looking photos.

Vintager is available for download on the following site: [http://vintager.photo/](http://vintager.photo/) Software promotion video can be found here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjJcFarqdh4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjJcFarqdh4)

<comment><USER2> I couldn't find the link to the video in the page, where is it?

For this kind of apps, the first and only thing I want to see are screenshots and examples. Something similar to the video at 30 or 40 seconds. Take a photograph and apply a few of the filters and show the results as images in the page.

WTF is "Contribute"??!!?!??!!!!?!?!?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a promotion video where you can find more about features, effects, image results etc: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjJcFarqdh4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjJcFarqdh4)

Gallery and video are on the Exeone site, not yet transferred to Vintager.Photo, sorry for inconvenience.

<comment><USER2> I saw this video that you linked in HN. I think you should add it to your page too.

I found these screenshots: [http://www.exeone.com/vintager- gallery](http://www.exeone.com/vintager-gallery) .

I still would like to see more/bigger examples. Something like [http://alvinalexander.com/design/gimp-catalog-filters- effect...](http://alvinalexander.com/design/gimp-catalog-filters-effects- examples-cheat-sheet) (130 is too much, pick the best 10 or 20 of your effects) (I'm totally unrelated to this site, it's the second link in [https://www.google.com/?q=gimp+filters+examples+galery](https://www.google.com/?q=gimp+filters+examples+galery) )

Don't worry about the inconvenience. Here is usual to try to give feedback. Most users go to the site and if they don't find what they want, they just go away. Here we try to provide some advice (sometimes it's good advice, sometimes it's bad advice). I hope these comments help you. Welcome to HN!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for a tips. Strong photo gallery is something that is essential and that we need to put on site asap. Together with videos of how to use video and features.

Large size photos so that visitor can get a good insight what software offers.

Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


300 miles of secret UK cycle paths have been discovered [audio] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p052zgp6 <comment><USER3> Here's a text-based article, "How hundreds of miles of lost UK cycleways from the 1930s have been rediscovered using Google Street View"

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4487592/Lost-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4487592/Lost- UK-cycleways-Google-Street-View.html)

<comment><USER4> The Daily Mail providing better information than the BBC, I never would've guess it.

<comment><USER5> For all it's many faults their policy of long descriptive headlines followed by bullet point summaries is a model I wish all news sites followed!

Given their success I'm not sure why more don't.

<comment><USER6> And photos large enough to actually see. Very sad that the Daily Mail is leading the way here.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps real information is harder to source than fake info, and real news is too scant to benefit from that format. Also why papers bury the lead. (To make you read their hard work.) As an exercise go to the BBC and edit the first three articles you find into that format - you will see why they don't want to do it.

<comment><USER8> I.e. the interests of the readers are in conflict with interests of the paper.

Frankly, if they want to bury the lede to make me read their hard work, then I'll gladly _not_ read the article at all, unless forced to (rare these days).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ref: Kickstarter campaign mentioned at the end of the clip: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/carltonreid/lets- rescue...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/carltonreid/lets-rescue- britains-forgotten-1930s-protected-cyc)

</comment><comment><USER10> There must be quite a lot of data from cyclists carrying GPS devices that could establish, I imagine, a map of almost all cycle-able routes in the UK quite readily? Has anyone compiled this data or made an effort in that direction, fitbit _et al._?

<comment><USER11> Strava puts out a heatmap every year. It does include other outdoor activities like running though.

[http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#6/-120.90000/38.36000/blue/b...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#6/-120.90000/38.36000/blue/bike)

<comment><USER10> Wow, that's excellent - interesting to see some of the "running" routes that don't have any cycle-data (one near me is a golf course).

It would be nice to zoom in some more, but I think even at the max zoom level I could get to I can make out some homes of Strava users, which might - <USER2> example - make targetted burglary an issue. Some error data is clearly present too, like shadowing of roads where there are systematic errors.

Thanks for the link.

<comment><USER12> You can set a an area around your house to be excluded from your public data to avoid this. I hope that extends to heat maps too, I've never actually checked that.

<comment><USER13> I can confirm that it does. I live on a private drive, but set my exclusion zone to less than the distance to the public street, and I am the only regular Strava user in the neighborhood. The area near my house is black, and it lights up at approximately the spot I would expect!

I can see a number of my favorite routes highlighted, which is interesting! Also, up north in the national forest middle of nowhere, I can see my favorite logging road dimly glowing. I don't think anyone else uses it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Post-war austerity and 'modernization' also put paid to Britain's extensive pre-war rail network, which Britain is struggling to replace at great cost today.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts)

<comment><USER15> Double ironic that some of these disused railway lines - with fantastic rights of way directly from town centre to town centre - have been turned into cycle tracks.

<comment><USER16> Where has this happened?

<comment><USER17> It has happened near where I live (South West UK). Here are two examples:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_and_Bath_Railway_Path](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_and_Bath_Railway_Path)

[http://www.sustrans.org.uk/ncn/map/route/colliers- way](http://www.sustrans.org.uk/ncn/map/route/colliers-way)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good find! 3 more days before the kickstarter ends and I just submitted my first pledge!! I truly believe in a more efficient (cheaper?) means of transportation. The more big city/country to expand cycling, the better.

</comment><comment><USER19> Might not be too realistic. This path [3] has to be buried under the A3.

[[https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1yoi- eZVATatYQfhMiK...](https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1yoi- eZVATatYQfhMiKh4PpaSQro&hl=en&ll=51.517286343207076%2C0.021517348491897792&z=19)]

<comment><USER20> Nice, the routes in Billingham are there. Even though they're a little worn, they are fairly well used

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How significant can these routes be given that they were lost?

<comment><USER17> As was mentioned in the audio clip, the usefulness of the routes depends on the surrounding cycle network. Since these cycle paths were built, the cycle network in the UK has grown, so some of the routes could prove more immediately useful now than they were in the 1930s.

To give you an idea of the scale of the current UK cycle network:

[http://www.sustrans.org.uk/ncn/map](http://www.sustrans.org.uk/ncn/map)

<comment><USER22> That's a misleading map. The majority of NCN routes are just ordinary roads. Just because somebody put a few signs up doesn't make them safer than other similar roads. They're often narrow, overgrown at the sides, and full of potholes. In most cases I'd rather cycle in urban areas. At least there the traffic is slower and more predictable. And the off-road routes are frequently impassible for all but mountain bikes because of mud.

<comment><USER23> Don't miss [http://cycle.travel/](http://cycle.travel/) which uses OpenStreetMap data to build bike friendly routes (accounting for surfaces and traffic and hills and so on).

Made by HN user Doctor_Fegg.

<comment><USER24> Or similar osm-based [http://www.bbbike.org/](http://www.bbbike.org/) with more international coverage

<comment><USER25> They do different things - bbbike is for route-planning within select cities, cycle.travel aims to do whole-country networks so you can ask for (say) NYC to SF and get a route back in seconds.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google+ Can Be A Social Network Or The Name Police – Not Both - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.gartner.com/bob-blakley/2011/09/01/google-can-be-a-social-network-or-the-name-police-not-both/

<comment><USER2> Google should relent on this issue. It's clear the policy is polarizing and even Google should have the good sense to react to customer feedback. It is not in Facebook's position to do what it wants because it can nor should Google be that kind of company.

This doesn't affect me. But I don't see the convincing argument against pseudonyms. Gmail has pseudonyms. Twitter has pseudonyms. Blogger has pseudonyms. Why can't Google+ have pseudonyms?

<comment><USER3> I agree. Not only can Google+ not get away with what FB can given their respective market positions, they could use it as a differentiating feature.

And not only that, but it seems like an obvious complement to the Circles feature, so you can present yourself differently to different Circles, even to the same person depending on which Circle you share to. And it could be a progressive enhancement, too, in that it could be completely invisible to people who aren't looking for the feature.

So many reasons to allow them, and so few good reasons not to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand the sudden outcry. I mean, Facebook has been doing this for years -- and enforcing it. The policy may or many not be common, but it's certainly nothing new.

<comment><USER5> Facebook doesn't have a multitude of apps and services that people have been using for years, under whatever names, and isn't ambushing people by offering a brand new 'service' that has a hidden requirement designed to compel people to out themselves across all of their work, family, and other social connections -- or else lose access to those other tools already invested with tons of time, data, and distinct networks (for distinct reasons).

It's entirely different (and there are boatloads of folks with unreal names on FB, for heaven's sake). I don't know what FB requires if you sign up for a new account today, but I do know that my FB account contains =zero= accurate info about me (besides my name). Across the Google suite it is a very, very, very different case.</comment></comment>


Domino's asks SCOTUS to shut down a lawsuit requiring its website be accessible - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/1/20750913/dominos-pizza-website-accessible-blind-supreme-court-lawsuit <comment><USER2> > In the document, Domino's lays out its argument, claiming the cost of > accessibility requirements may run into the millions, and the rules around > what is accessible and what is not have yet to be decided.

This is a dense argument. There are well-established web content accessibility guidelines, aptly named Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Android has accessibility features built-in, and I'd guess iOS does too, despite having never used it myself. Nothing about this is particularly costly. WCAG has been around for over a decade...so what is Domino's angle, really? For a company that seems to embrace tech, this makes no sense.

<comment><USER3> Having struggled with it, here's the most charitable reason I can give:

First, remember that the blind have always been able to order pizza by just calling in with a phone. Domino's is serving the blind in that sense.

The case here is about them being unwilling to provide an _online-only_ discount to the blind. So why are they paying so much to defend, specifically, a blind-inaccessible, online-only discount?

They offer an online discount, I think, because they get so much more valuable data from it. Like most websites, sadly, their site loads you down with a torrent of trackers.

What does that have to do with being accessible? Well, if the blind can easily navigate to the important parts of a site, so can their screen-reader ... and so can any program. Then, anyone, not just the blind, can bypass all the crap on their site when ordering, and even shut out the trackers.

Where's the flaw in my logic?

tl;dr: Anything that helps the blind navigate their site also helps you bypass tracking, and makes an online-only discount unprofitable.

<comment><USER4> > Where's the flaw in my logic?

They make a lot more money from selling pizza than from tracking you, and if someone who is blocking trackers can't reasonably order pizza, Dominos would be shooting themselves in the foot.

If their website doesn't work for <my browser configuration>, I'm not going to pick up a fucking phone. I'll just order from any other pizza place in my vicinity.

The likely reality is, they are lazy, and don't want to spend dev effort to be compliant.

<comment><USER5> The devs are lazy but the lawyers are hard working enough to bring a case to the supreme court? Surely the amount of effort to have a case there is less than the effort required to make the site meet some accessibility guidelines.

<comment><USER6> Domino's is a pizza company, not a tech company. I would be surprised if they have the resources or are willing to have developers go over the software with a fine toothed comb.

The devs may not be lazy but the company probably doesn't want to spend time and effort on this, or, gasp, hire more people.

<comment><USER7> Actually, Domino's has spent a massive amount on tech over the last 15 years. They pioneered online ordering at scale, real-time order tracking and the system that runs the store allows corporate to get metrics on everything from individual pizza production times to length of trip and travel time. They have a huge tech dept.

Source - former franchisee

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember doing a redesign of a major European government website where accessible was a priority. We worked together with Jaws (leading developer of Screen Readers. No affiliate) to find a way to determine if the user was using a screen reader. They made a few adjustments to their app in order for us to do that and we proceed with the plans of making a text only version of website when a screen reader was detected.

This was shot down by the government lawyers as this was against the "equal access rule". Redirecting users to a different version of the website was determined to be the equivalent as building a separate entrance to a government building optimized for wheal chairs users which is against the law. The law clearly states that all citizen must have same access to government facilities and that was determined to mean "the same entrance" and "same facilities within the building".

So an optimized, text only, edition of the website for screen readers was ruled out and screen reader users was left with a sub-optimal experience ... but hey they get to use the same URL as everyone else so there is nothing for them to complain about.

(This is 10 years ago. Dont know if things has changed since. I hope it have)

<comment><USER9> If you own an iPhone/iPad, much has changed. These devices include the best features for accessibility.

<comment><USER8> It is possible to make a website accessible using existing tools and guidelines but you can make a much better experience if you build a dedicated edition of your website to use by screen readers.

This would be the equivalent of publishing 2 versions of your iPhone app. One highly optimized for blind people and another version for everyone else.

Although the iPhone has great accessibility an separate optimized version of your app would provide an even better user experience but that we were not allowed to do.

The idea for the text only edition was an idea that was formed by a group of blind people and was the solution they said was the optimal solution for them

<comment><USER10> Your approach is an antipattern. It works great for five minutes after you launch. Then you need to maintain multiple versions of the site. And inevitably the two versions start to diverge. And guess which version will get short shrift? There's even a term for this. "Separate but equal". Said sarcastically. No offense, but I recommend you research this a bit more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wasn't it Domino's who claimed to be a "tech company which happened to sell pizza"? If so, that quote says they should know better IMO

</comment><comment><USER12> The fact that this case has gone to the supreme court shows how difficult it is for companies to understand that excluding a whole segment of the population should not be treated as a business advantage. I get it. It's expensive but there should be a compromise.

I've dealt with having to make a site accessible. There are a lot of mods that you need to make that are mostly not noticed by most users but are a bear to keep up to date with a constantly changing website and will add many hours of work to the website's upkeep. Also if you stick by the strict guidelines there are web technologies that can't be used - especially the newest tech. Long term it's easier to maintain 2 sites with different UIs but again that takes many hours of extra manpower.

I'm one that believes accessibility is a must but I also realize that most companies aren't willing to spend the extra money.

What's the fix? A compromise like having a very simple web site or it might be having an alternative system where accessibility means having someone help you with the site via phone. But fighting all the way to the supreem courts so you don't have to do any thing is not the answer.

</comment><comment><USER13> This would be a good project for the United States Digital Service. Define what reasonably accessible means and provide lists and freely available code that government agencies and and businesses can use to create accessible websites.

</comment><comment><USER14> Domino's position makes more sense if you take them at their word: the problem isn't technical, it's that there's no legal (rather than industry) standard for what makes a website accessible. Corporations don't like legal uncertainty, and what I suspect Domino's is after is for the Court or Congress to articulate a standard (or, more likely, point to an existing standard, giving it the force of law) so that all web sites have common and stable accessibilty guidelines.

<comment><USER15> Maybe, but then Domino's marketing people would surely have been all over making that clearly indicated "we're only fighting this to bring clarity because accessibility is so important to us" or somesuch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You ever think how this might apply to, ianno, startups?

Seems like all humans should be on Domino's side, at least all techies.

Edit: before the cacophany decends to tell me how easy accessibility is, let me preemptively highlight that opportunity cost is the fundamental unit of cost to a startup. And this is a ycombinator site. So everyone should already know this.

<comment><USER17> I think making all startup web applications more accessible would be a great improvement for everyone, _especially_ techies. A webpage that's accessible is also easier to script or remix.

Why would anyone oppose this? Is the only way to get your startup off the ground to walk over visually impaired people? Restaurants have razor thin margins too but I've never heard of any restaurant looking to save a buck by limiting wheelchair access.

<comment><USER18> Unfortunately looking to save a buck by limiting wheelchair access is frightfully common. That's why people have to get sued under the ADA.

The point of the ADA is to make violating it more expensive then complying with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > But these suits put their targets in an impossible situation. Unless this > Court steps in now, defendants must retool their websites to comply with > Title III without any guidance on what accessibility in the online > environment means for individuals with the variety of disabilities covered > by the ADA

I'm with Dominos. No reasonable person would expect a website to support people with disabilities; the web is still the totally unregulated wild west it was 20 years ago. Just because it would be nice to have a web that supports people with disabilities doesn't mean you can have the Supreme Court will the requisite regulation into existence, nor does the existence of some informal accessibility standards mean that they should be enforceable by law. It is the job of Congress to update the ADA into the 21st century, and until they do that, the court should not force businesses to comply with the yet-to-be- written regulations.

<comment><USER18> The ADA says that businesses have to be accessible. It isn't written with regards to any technology etc. So the Supreme Court can interpret the law as meaning that it covers the internet. Just like if I invent a novel poison and use it to kill someone it doesn't stop being murder because no one knew about that poison when the law against murder was being written.

There have been web accessibility guidelines since 1995 and WCAG 2.0 aka ISO/IEC 40500:2012 has been around since 2012. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation act incorporates those guidelines so if you are following those rules you should be safe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Recently discussed on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20491463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20491463)

</comment><comment><USER13> [https://www.section508.gov/create/web- content](https://www.section508.gov/create/web-content)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is crazy, you can already order a pizza by phone. Where does it end really.

<comment><USER21> But can you get the online exclusive deals over the phone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can imagine the Dominos screenreader experience would be quite trying for a low vision person because it would constantly, seemingly randomly ask "DO YOU WANT TO ADD MORE CHEESE?", or "WOULD YOU LIKE A CHEESY BREAD?"

<comment><USER23> I mean, it's super annoying for sighted people already, so it would just be on par with that experience.

<comment><USER22> I think it would actually be easier. They frequently present big modal popups about adding items, with tiny font in the bottom right saying 'no thanks'

<comment><USER23> Good point. Maybe I should try enabling VoiceOver next time I place an order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This should be a free speech issue. Domino's already lets you order by phone, and really it's possible to live a full life without their pizza. I haven't ordered from them in decades. There's no reason to compel them to make their platform accessible.

<comment><USER18> There is no free speech issue. These rules don't dictate meaningful content of their speech but just that the meaningful content is accessible by people with disabilities.

<comment><USER24> But that is a ridiculous standard to apply to nonessential broadcasted information.</comment></comment></comment>


Boris Johnson, U.K. Prime Minister, Has the Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/world/europe/boris-johnson-coronavirus.html <comment><USER2> Previously on HN:

twitter.com : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22701960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22701960) (51 points, 20 comments, flagged)

bbc.com : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22702083](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22702083) (20 points, 9 comments)

theguardian.com : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22702005](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22702005) (15 points, no comments)

</comment><comment><USER3> I see nothing constructive to debate here, so I'm flagging this.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> No paywall: [http://archive.is/nQWzh](http://archive.is/nQWzh)

<comment><USER4> We are providing free access to the most important news and useful guidance on the coronavirus outbreak to help readers understand the pandemic. Sign up with an email address to read all of the articles on this page.[1]

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/news- event/coronavirus](https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/coronavirus)

<comment><USER2> There are those of us who are unwilling to provide our email address to yet another website. There are sites and sources that I am happy to support, but I limit how far widely I spread my email details.

<comment><USER5> The term for this is _loginwall_ , not _pay_ wall.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Conway's Game of Life - <AUTHOR> http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

<comment><AUTHOR> You can "play" the game here: [http://xefer.com/gameoflife](http://xefer.com/gameoflife)</comment>


Losing the HP Way - <AUTHOR> http://www.cringely.com/2011/08/losing-the-hp-way/

<comment><USER2> I've seen HP lose its way from another perspective -- technical support -- over the last couple of decades. I am genuinely sad to say that I couldn't be happier that HP is getting out of the consumer market.

HP might not have been a printer company, but they built a strong reputation early on for workhorse printers, and the driver software wasn't usually too bad, either. My first job in the tech industry was in the data processing department of a good-sized East Bay school district. We must have printed tens of thousands of pages _per month_ on an HP LaserJet 4. Never had so much as a hiccup from it.

I knew less about their computers at the time, but if memory serves, they had a good reputation there, too.

But there was this sort of gradual degradation in every single one of their product lines. The best thing I can say about their chintzy-as-hell newer printers is that the printers themselves aren't quite as bad the software. The software is _terrible_ , and it gets worse every year, not better. In some cases, you can't install HP's driver software for two different-but-similar models of printer on the same computer; the software interferes with itself.

Their computers are a joke. We've found a lovely variety of manufacturing defects and design flaws. There's a guy on eBay doing a decent business manufacturing and selling aftermarket copper pads for graphics processors for HP laptops because their thermal pads are notorious for shrinking away from the aluminum heat sink. We've had several laptops that have seriously had _every single major component replaced_ \-- motherboard, screen, hard drive, memory -- and these aren't abused or old laptops.

And their support is just as bad. We, at one point, spent almost 40 hours in a single week on the phone with HP support for one client or another. 40 hours of lost productivity; 40 hours of cost for at least three parties; an entire work week, poof. I wish I could say the support was any good, but it wasn't.

We do our best to steer all of our clients away from HP. If they do genuinely get out of the consumer market, I can only hope that we'll see a net increase in worldwide productivity.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to be Hewlett or Packard and see that happen to the company I built.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Who would want to buy the HP PC division?"

Maybe a dominant tech giant seeking to control every level of its customers web-browsing experience:

Chrome Browser, ChromeOS, Chromebooks, Android OS, Motorola-Mobility acquisition...

<comment><USER4> That's an interesting idea, but I think HP's PC division is too much of a dog for Google. Maybe Microsoft; given Apple's rise, perhaps they'll claim they're the underdog to fend of antitrust accusations.</comment></comment>


How can you compete with Google? - <AUTHOR> http://jessenoller.com/2010/10/14/how-can-you-compete-with-google/ <comment><USER2> Whenever a large company does something, people always over-estimate how many people from that company did it. The organization as a whole doesn't train it's eye on each little problem, saturating it with thousands of engineers. Instead, a handful of engineers decide they want to do something, do it, and then eventually move on to other things.

You may not be able to compete with Google's infrastructure, but you can certainly compete on focus.

</comment><comment><USER3> IMO, the best way to compete with Google is to actually pay attention to your product. Outside a few core apps like search and Gmail, it astonishes me how little Google seems to care about their work once it's launched. They just sit there, accumulating dust for years until they get revamped or taken down. If you can launch a competitor that has frequent updates, builds a community, or really just conveys the idea that there's a man behind the curtain, I think you can do ok.

This doesn't help much with trivial webapps, and I'm not sure I feel good about other URL shorteners right now. But any product with some complexity will benefit from attention, and Google doesn't spare a lot of that for niche products.

Edit: word choice

<comment><USER4> It always irks me when people say that Search and Mail are the only successful products to come out of Google (I know that isn't what you said specifically, but it sparked the memory).

YouTube, Google Finance, Google Maps, Blogger, Google Docs, Google Groups, Google Reader, Google Talk, Google Voice, Google Calendar, Chrome, and the entire Android platform are all things that I use on nearly a daily basis. Most, if not all of those are the leading product in their field. Companies by the boatload switch to exclusive use of Google Apps for almost all of their needs, and there's a reason behind it.

That's not to say that they're flawless. Google Video was pretty terrible until they killed it for YouTube. Knol is a pretty big failure. They never really did anything with Picasa on the web side of things (I thoroughly enjoy the desktop app however). They really dropped the ball on Wave in terms of marketing and deployment. Wave in particular saddens me, because it could have so easily gone the other way and been an excellent successor to email. And I'm sure they have hundreds if not thousands of products that we never hear about and never will see the light of day.

But saying Google has only succeeded in Search and E-mail is just silly.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I'll agree that a lot of their products are fairly successful in terms of being widely-used. (Revenue? No way for me to know.) But how many of them are evolved or improved on a regular basis?

Reader has had some social enhancements, but I don't know if I've seen anything in the last year. Google Groups spent a long time sitting dormant after they bought DejaNews. Much of the Google Apps suite stays static for long periods of time. Chrome I'll give you, and I'm sure there are new features for some of the others that I haven't followed... but Google seems to be very good at creating apps which are just good enough that they don't need to do anything further with them. More power to them for that, I guess, but I do like to see products evolve.

<comment><USER5> Somewhat related from the article:

"It's easy for Google to build something fifty percent of the way and release it, therefore sucking the air out of the room. They don't even need to "finish" it – the very fact they've made it and put it everywhere is enough to make a market dry up and users to flock to it. It will have enough functionality – and just enough – to get the job done ("perfectly functional, albeit Spartan")."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The way to beat Google is to create a product with a superior user experience.

Two notable examples:

1\. Facebook beating Google's Orkut. 2\. Youtube beating Google Video.

In addition, the fact that some of Google's products launch with ugly or complex user interfaces creates a clear and present opportunity for startups with good design skills and a focus on usability.

For example, I created Trafficspaces simply because I felt Google Ad Manager and OpenX were both a royal pain in the ass to use.

<comment><USER7> I think I said that in the article :)

<comment><USER6> Consider it an extra validation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Everyone used to say this about Microsoft.

<comment><USER7> Yup. It's startling how many corollaries can be drawn. But I have to hand it to redmond: they had the better UI design, if not the better UX.

<comment><USER9> Wait, are you saying you think that Microsoft products have better UX than Google products?

I'd like to disagree there. My experience with MS products (Windows from 95 until 7, Office, IE) is that they get in your way a lot ("are you sure?" "are you sure?" "your computer is about to reboot", etc). They have lots of focus- stealing dialogs and constant interruptions.

Google (search, gmail, maps), on the other hand, tends to stay out of your way and be invisible while you're using their products. I'd consider their UX to be many times better than Microsoft's.

<comment><USER7> No, I meant in the past - when Microsoft was the top-dog and people were talking about them much in the same way as people (I) might be talking about google now. Windows had very valid reasons for becoming wildly popular - ignoring the more questionable practices of their management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can easily compete with Google on UI/UX. It's a company run by engineers, so traditionally they've been horrible in this respect, focusing mainly on the engineering behind the product rather than the eye-candy.

<comment><USER7> Less directed at you - but personally I've grown frustrated with the dismissiveness of the term "eye candy" - having a good design, and good UX is a good thing. Designing with the user in mind, and making tradeoffs in favor of the user is just good practice.

I've seen a lot of people use "eye candy" as a term that somehow excuses their crappy UI and UX, time and time again it comes up in discussions about open source and linux UIs. The users matter.</comment></comment>