The best interface is no interface - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/17/8103593/golden-krishna-best-interface-is-no-interface-excerpt

<comment><USER2> "No interface" actually means "no mobile phone interface". Let's not kid ourselves... interface is still important.

Take the author's critical example of a smartphone app to unlock your car. Yes, that's terrible. Now, let's look at the actual interface - the key. I've owned two Subarus now. I loved the keyless entry device on my 1999 Outback. I feel the keyless entry on my 2010 Forester was a step backwards. I accidentally trigger it when I don't want to. It's unreliable, often taking several presses to work. It adds an extra button I've never used that is redundant functionality.

How about another interface? We recently got a new turkey baster, made by Good Grips. It has a built-in rest. Turkey basters get greasy-dirty, and you keep using them off and on for hours. The rest keeps it from getting grease all over your counter. That's a great user interface!

The problem isn't "no interface". The problem is "there's an app for that". Not everything falls under smartphone convenience. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a UI.

<comment><USER3> i've also owned two keyless cars back to back with slightly different interfaces (two different german manufacturers, in my case) and here are my thoughts, mostly i completely agree with you:

1\. touch-handle to unlock is awesome and useful 2\. touch-handle to lock is worse than useless. keep this on the fob and on the interior. nobody reaches for the exterior handle when they're walking away from the car. 3\. the touch shouldn't be too sensitive, and should only be on the inside of the door handle (or under the door handle, whatever the layout is) - my 4\. there should be a delay of about 500ms i.e. touch it for half a second before it unlocks. 5\. no button, like you mentioned

<comment><USER4> Mobile OS designs have little or no contextual awareness or proximity sensitivity, and GPS is too inaccurate to solve that problem.

It wouldn't be rocket science to add a layer that worked out whether you were walking towards or away from some specific hardware reference transceiver, checked some credentials, and responded with some action.

So - car "keys", hotel room "keys", house "keys", house lights, virtual boarding passes and other travel tickets, etc.

Watch is supposed to do some of this but the UIKit in iOS wasn't really designed for this kind of interaction. So the 'wave your watch around to unlock your room' idea still isn't as streamlined as it could be. NFC/RFID may not be the right technology for this.

It's a good bet that Apple and Google have either worked this out already or will work it out very soon. Disney already have.

It's true that current app UIs are non-ideal. But apps are a transitional solution, and I don't expect them to be around in their current form for more than another few years at most.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The example he gave regarding opening a car door is not fair. The alternative is a car key. Let me give you a step by step example of what it's like to open the car door with a car key.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

.... 5 hours later

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Walk around with a key in my pocket.

Pull out key.

Open car door.

\---

Yeah, give me the app that opens up my car door any day of the week, or a retina scanner on my car's lock.

<comment><USER6> Remember this is someone for whom opening a frequently used app is a multi step, disorienting process. Your instructions are nowhere near clear enough. I'd propose to add:

Recursively search through jailer style fractal key ring for car key

Find key and hold it between thumb and forefinger

Manoeuvre hand so as to separate car key from others

Insert into hole

Rotate

...etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The best interface is indeed no interface and it's the end goal of a long design and product process.

There's probably some Maslow's hierarchy for design that looks like (designer friends - please let me what wheel I'm reinventing please):

1\. The system has to be told exactly how to perform a task. 2\. The system has reasonable defaults on how to do it. You push execute. 3\. The system knows what you want and just does it.

The car key app requiring 13 steps means we're still in phase 1. The fact that it works at all is forward progress because before you couldn't do it at all! (One might argue that it's right now not useful and I would probably agree with that.[0][1])

The next step forward is probably to geofence your car and when you're near, a push notification asks you if you'd like to open your car door.

Finally, we get to the two step walk to door, open door.

We've got a long way to go and I applaud Mr. Krishna for pushing us further along. It does seem therefore that we should encourage app designers to continue to make apps with clunky interfaces so that we can begin the journey towards the goal - no interface at all.

I'd actually love to hear examples of systems that leapfrog from nonexistence to it's final evolution without intermediate steps. That would be really fascinating.

[0] Unrelated - rented a car once with remote keyless entry and keyless start - it is indeed a magical experience when the key never has to leave your pocket.

[1] Having gone through winter on the East Coast recently, I do think phone remote start might singlehandedly make the app worth it.

<comment><USER8> I would not trust 3 even if we reach the point where we are making Jeeves level AI assistants. And 2 better damn well have a easy way to get to 1, just in case those defaults don't fit the situation (and by Murphy you can be sure they will not).

<comment><USER9> Consider a door with a handicap button. The interface is: press button, door opens. Now consider a door with a motion sensor, the new interface is: walk towards door, door opens.

This is basically an example of eliminating an interface. You rarely think about these interfaces because they just do the right thing. Many very simple operations have interfaces, and you can sometimes streamline or remove those interfaces using simple mechanisms.

<comment><USER8> Adn then the sensor fails or similar, and we need some other way to open and close. Never mind some way to prop it open in case something larger needs to go through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised nobody has mentioned "The Design of Everyday Things"[1], talking about human interaction design. It makes the same points, a few decades earlier so there're no references to mobile apps, but the distilled take away are the same ones:

* Be obvious

* Avoid extraneous "ornaments" in the interaction

* Understand what your user needs

Of course those three bullet points do not make the book (either of them, I assume) justice, but you might want to read Donald A. Norman's book first. Another book you might be interested in is Don't Make me Think[2], which _is_ specifically related to software UI design.

I agree with the point that using smartphones for everything is a step back. Having touchscreens in cars is also a step back. We went from having controls that could manipulated without taking the eyes on the road to fancy futuristic UIs that require either for you to be parked, to have a companion or do something potentially dangerous.</rant>

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald- Norman/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald- Norman/dp/0465067107/)

[2]: [http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think- Usability/dp/032134...](http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think- Usability/dp/0321344758/)

<comment> semi-extrinsic I'm all for bashing touchscreens in cars (and in general), but I've never seen a new car that doesn't have the "multifunction steering wheel" where you can control almost everything (usually not the ventilation though) without taking your hands off the wheel. They require a few hours of getting used to each layout, but past that, they're great interfaces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just came in to say, Golden gave this talk at our conference last fall, and it was very well received. You can watch it here if you like:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0AdsVReXi8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0AdsVReXi8)

</comment><comment><USER12> A better rant on the same theme is at [http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...](http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/)

Sliding pictures under glass is not the future of interfaces.

</comment><comment><USER13> For me, I don't think anything can replace the physical sensation of putting a key in a lock and turning it. That is, the interface feels very "real" and solid. There's something very satisfying about that.

Likewise, as I've gotten into the habit of giving the handle a strong pull after locking to make sure it's locked, I don't think a proximity system would work so well for me.

<comment><USER14> My 3 year old Mazda uses a key fob. As long as the key is on my person, the doors will unlock and the car will turn on without me needing to press any buttons on the keys themselves nor do I have to turn my key in the steering column. I have had to use rentals from time to time and the entire act of pulling my key from my picked is so inconvenient and annoying (I know, I know, FWP.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand the rant. So BMW's smartphone app is flawed. Meanwhile my 2005 Prius has keyless entry that simply works and last a several years per battery change. It's single purpose and only works when very close to the car.

80% of the author's frustration could be resolved with a lockscreen widget that launches the app into the appropriate action, preferably authenticated with fingerprint/TouchID/passcode.

Then it becomes a) pull out phone, b) unsleep display c) use lock screen widget d) authenticate using passcode/TouchID.

<comment><USER16> >Then it becomes a) pull out phone, b) unsleep display c) use lock screen widget d) authenticate using passcode/TouchID.

What if I want another widget on my screen ? Do I put it there too ? Where do I stop ?

And in any case, it is still longer than just a) pulling a handle.

The whole point of the rant is that interfaces shouldn't be something we have to go through: they should be transparent. In the case he presented (Siemens'), there is no interface.

We have built a culture of "there's an app for that" where 99% of these apps are absolute, total crap. You don't need Tapatalk's app to browse forums, you don't need an app to turn on your lights, etc. An unbelievable amount of apps are actually slower at doing something than they were supposed to solve.

<comment><USER17> Eventually I guess it would just probe around for some bluetooth device and show the car key app when connected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Two related discussions / articles that come to mind:

Disney's Magicband ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9177105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9177105))

A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3212949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3212949))

</comment><comment><USER19> The best Verge is no Verge.

<comment><USER20> They wrote some article about Eric Schmit being a sexist asshole the other day (maybe yesterday) and low and behold the senior editor was talking trash to people in the comments section. It was a flimsy terrible article that I honestly felt contributed nothing to tech journalism on one side, or diversity and women's inclusion on the other. It was almost as if they wrote it to pick a bone with their readers and then battle it out over the blowback. Sometimes I honestly cannot stand that website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This made me think me think of all the applications for smartphones beyond, well, apps. It is after all a computer in your pocket. There are options with a contextual interface, like RFC and IF (formerly known as IFTTT). The BMW example could hypothetically support an RFC tag by your door that you've pre- configured to trigger the BMW unlock API call.

There's also an advantage to not having to carry around a key, replacing it with a digital trigger that lives on your smartphone. One less thing to carry around, and that goes even for the app.

</comment><comment><USER22> I absolutely don't want my phone to be the only key. It's bad enough that I lose Uber when the phone battery runs out. Don't take my car too!!

As for the UI, Apple Pay does this right.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm being pedantic, but "No interface" implies that there is no interaction between user and device which would make the device useless. The interface is the point of communication between user and device. Every device needs an interface. I think a better term would be "No Input".

The author mentions a weather app and an app that shows basic stock market data as examples, but it's unclear to me how those problems could be solved with "No interface".

<comment><USER24> It's not even "no input". Your approach to the car is the input, it's "no extraneous action to provide input". You're using as the input normal user activity that precedes a necessary response.

Sorry too if that's too pedantic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Google had something great in Android 4 with the Lock Screen Widgets. I had my SONOS and TV Controls on the lockscreen and could glace on a rain radar app without unlocking the tablet. Honestly I'm not sure if I would have placed a car unlock app there, but on the other hand losing a key is just as likely.

With Android 5 this useful functionality just disappeared.

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't want to have to use an app to unlock the car but I don't want to have to carry bulky keys around either.

I want to walk up to the car. The car recognizes me because I'm carrying my phone (or watch) When I pull on the door handle it unlocks because of the proximity of the phone.

This is similar to how my car and keyfob work now but I want to carry one less item.

</comment><comment><USER27> Was Golden Krishna paid to write this article, or did The Verge receive any compensation?

I ask because this is more or less an advert for his book. The introduction is presented in the third person to introduce the excerpt, and the closing is a pitch on why you should buy the book.

</comment><comment><USER28> "This article brought to you by the upcoming Apple Watch - open the car door by tapping your the watch on your wrist"

</comment><comment><USER20> If you have not read Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things I highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER29> The big design challenge is eliminating car door locks.

</comment><comment><USER30> Articles like this are so aggravating to read[1]. I want to skim and get to the point where they actually start to discuss the actual idea, so that I can determine if it's worth it to me to read it. But they want to build up to it as if I'm reading some god damn novel.

Also, the author addresses his readers as if we're some kind of touch-screen natives who uses our phones and other touch-screen devices to accomplish everything in our lives, and we could never conceive of anything else[2]. Am I the only one who was _never_ enamoured with actually using smart phones? They are a pain to write messages on, they are a slightly less of a pain to browse with, and they are passable to good for everything else.

And the fact that it takes many steps to do something with your phone is supposed to be surprising? It's practically inevitable: one entry point (swipe to unlock etc.) to do all your tasks, equipped with a 5" screen. Good luck.

Thankfully, it turns out that the author's point was more novel than something silly like "What if we didn't use smart phone interfaces, but some other interface instead? WOW...". I hadn't considered a solution like Siemens'. I don't know if it is preferable to my key that already has a remote attached, but it's very interesting.

[1] Yes, I know it's a chapter from his book. But it's published as an article so I will judge it as such.

[2] "Don't let your emotions blind you" \- How about "don't talk down to me"?

★★★

Side note: He has a point about 'everything has to be an app', though. I'm supposed to be using some form of identification, and they used to send out a _piece of paper_ and a little "this is valid for this time period" thing to attach to your card. Now, they have phased that out for an app. An app. To replace a piece of paper and a card. No, I don't think it even replaces the card since you use it to access certain places.

<comment><USER31> >Am I the only one who was never enamoured with actually using smart phones? They are a pain to write messages on, they are a slightly less of a pain to browse with, and they are passable to good for everything else.

You're not the only one, in fact I don't even think they any good at browsing. The whole touch screen interface is pretty much flawed for anything where you not limited to a few large button. It simply doesn't make sense that you covering information with our fingers. Discoverability is often pretty bad, mostly I suspect it's because of limited screen space, there simply isn't room for information, navigation and my fingers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The best ____is no __ __.

</comment><comment><USER33> The best picture is no picture</comment>


Second Ashley Madison Dump Includes Source Code, CEO Emails - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hackers-dump-more-ashley-madison-data

<comment><USER2> The CTO actually spoke? He wasn't hiding under the table or calling from a remote cave ? :-)

Bravery! (probably ;-))</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with bugs in software you sell? - <AUTHOR> Legally, how do you deal with bugs that soon or later will appear in your product that you sell to clients and/or is commissioned by them?
Is there some way to tell the client,the software will have bug but still convincing them to buy your software?
I know that there exists various license that states that your software is "AS IS", how can I improve this legally and commercially when selling the product? <comment><USER2> Useful bit from BSD license:

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.</comment>


This is what happens when a website gets compromised - <AUTHOR> https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/05/31/stanford-uni-site-infested-with-hacking-tools-and-phish-for-months.html <comment><USER2> I've known about webshells and their insidiousness for a while now, but haven't seen a real in-the-wild example before. The level of professionalism and sophistication in monetization techniques is really quite interesting (assuming you're not the victim).

<comment><USER3> The thing is, if you've been exposed to running web hosting servers - I see the sort of thing detailed in this blog multiple times a day.

The thing I don't see however, is a fully updated Wordpress instance compromised (assuming there are no plugin issues). It's a shame the article seems to attribute the root cause to "hacking tools" which presumably only got there after a deeper incident.</comment></comment>


Photonic Chips on Silicon will change everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25924/?a=f

<comment><USER2> Ah, the usual gigabit / gibabyte confusion!

Your mission is to decide which is what.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my Startup - KaBadge.com - Achievements and Badges - <AUTHOR> http://www.KaBadge.com

<comment><AUTHOR> My goal is to create a service that allows users to carry their good reputation from service to service. The idea is to collect the achievements you have earned from many sites and make them accessible via a single API. These badges or achievements could come from many types of sites and service. Some example might be Stackoverflow.com, Plurk.com and Kongregate.com which already award their users achievements. I'm hoping that sites will want to partner and award badges since they can get some visibility with links on the profile pages of users.

The system is based on the email addresses you used with the services you use. You can claim multiple addresses and manage them as a single profile. Another important feature is that the service does not require user registration to benefit from it. For example, StackOverflow.com might decide that you earned the 'Teacher' badge. They would make a call to our API and say "give email@example.com the Teacher badge". Even if we didn't have that email is our system yet, we would record the action and the owner of that email can claim their badges later. Now when you sign up or use other sites they could place badge requirements upon registration or when trying to access special features. Perhaps all new users must have at least 3 StackoverFlow badges and 2 Twitter badges. Maybe a game forum requires that you have X WoW achievement to post comments. In a way, it becomes a sort of CreditScore for your contributions to other sites.

Also, since blog comment integration seemed like the perfect way to share your profile's URL, the system works similar to Gravatar. By MD5 hashing an email, you are able to link to someone's profile without exposing the email address associated with the page. So when you leave a comment on a blog, the blog engine can hash the email and link to your profile. Now we can all see how awesome you are on the internet.

As you can tell, this isn't complete. I finished enough to get the idea across and get some feedback. I would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions. I wrote and designed this all myself and I could also use some suggestions on how to take things to the next step. Does it sound like an idea that really needs my full attention and possible VC funding since I depend on partnerships? Is this something you would use? Can other sites and services be bothered to publish this sort of data?

This is my example profile: [http://www.kabadge.com/User/Profile/11d39fe94051978a44ce887a...](http://www.kabadge.com/User/Profile/11d39fe94051978a44ce887a4f1a2a0b)

<comment><USER2> ok, interesting idea and nice site but where's the business case? i.e., "show me the money!"

<comment><USER3> At scale, this site/idea could theoretically "own" the reputation market. There's definite value in that.

<comment><USER4> There may or may not be (monetary) value in that. That's why the business model is necessary. Popularity does not necessarily equal financial success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's an interesting idea but there are a couple of things you should think through before taking it too much further. I don't think depending on partnerships is necessarily horrible, but what I'm trying to determine is what the benefit for the partner is. In the Stack Overflow example, Stack Overflow has to create the logic of when to award the badge, create the badge asset (e.g. what it looks like), and call your service at the appropriate time. So far they've done all the work for your benefit. What do they get in return? This is the kind of thing you might want to think about otherwise it's just a glorified/unified badge gallery, which won't be terribly interesting to many people.

I also think your example of other services limiting behavior depending on badges gained on other sites to be unlikely. From the consumer's perspective, a reputation system has a lot of value in context, but that's very different than saying that my reputation on one site has value on another. From the partner's perspective, I find it unlikely that I would build a site that depends on my audience's behavior on someone else's site.

I don't think these things are deal breakers, you just have to target it a little more precisely. Nice work so far.

<comment><USER6> Integrate this with a selection of a few dozen no-programming-required badge templates and a badge/achievement designer, though, and you could have something.

Example: there should be a quick fire-and-forget Javascript method to increment a per-user arbitrarily named variable that _you_ keep track of, and then when you exceed some threshold of that, you get a badge. That allows you to use one system to support everything from "Slay 100,000 orcs" to "Print out 75 bingo cards", with negligible work from your API consumers. The fact that it is negligible work creates value whereas your base offering (show that you've slain 100,000 orcs on your teaching bingo site profile! Booyah!) does not.

Other easy things to measure are stickiness (time since registration), collecting all of a set of API calls, etc (For example, in the hosted badge designer, you could say "A Dragonslayer is anyone who submits any [dropdown: two] of the following events: killed-red-dragon, kill-blue-dragon, and kill- green-dragon. Then customer site only has to fire killed-#{monster.name} as appropriate, and boom, dragonslayers.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I must admit, this type of thing as you and dflock have described has always been in the back of my mind. I kept tell the thoughts to go away because thats a pretty big undertaking. Fortunately, I actually have experience building customer facing rule engines.

This is dangerously tempting to work on. Should I go for it? Perhaps I would need to provide both methods of awarding badges. I dont see StackOverflow.com wanting to re-implement their badge system rules in the KaBadge system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you want to be the gravatar of badges, you need to make it just as quick and easy to implement.

To that end, you should have your partnering system working as soon as possible. Ideally, it should be as easy as clicking "become a partner" and copy + pasting some simple parametric URLs into your app (or something of that nature). Show someone how easy they can implement badges in less than 5 minutes.

I also agree with one of the other posts here, you should take reputation system management workload off the shoulders of your partners. Right now someone else does all the work and you get the benefit. It would be nice to be able to ping your system every time a user does one action towards the goal of some given goal.

Starts to sound a lot like conversions and goals in Google Analytics, doesn't it?

</comment><comment><USER8> The main page you've linked to tells me almost nothing about the service you're offering. From the first page I should be able to answer the following questions:

\- What's an achievement? What's a badge?

\- How do I earn them? If I want to go off and earn something _right now_ how do I do that?

\- Why do I care? What's in it for me?

It's difficult to review something when I have no idea _what_ it is.

(Edit: formatting)

</comment><comment><USER3> My first thought was "Xbox Achievements for the Internet". This may be a good 1-sentence elevator pitch for certain audiences.

Definitely think working with the partner sites to make the end-user experience as transparent as possible is the way to go. Also want to make it very easy for partners to hook in to your system (e.g., simple API calls around their existing login/event logging process).

This may sound silly, but you want better icons/eye candy for your badges. They should be things you want to collect.

</comment><comment><USER9> Related: BravoNation <http://bravo.yahoo.com/> \-- an experimental site launched by a very small team at Yahoo! in 2007. I wrote about it on Waxy, describing it as "a web-native equivalent of XBox Live's achievement system, abstracted to work with any online community." <http://waxy.org/2007/12/exclusive_yahoo/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, I never heard about this project. It seems like its a Peer2Peer award system, is that right? I considered creating a sort of peer kudos/badge feature as well but there are a lot of issues to overcome with that. Basically the same problems Twitter has. How do I stop people from giving the "free diet pills award!" :) Thoughts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like there are still some growing pains with this site. I received a few errors just trying to explore the site. Also, I agree that even though this is a great idea, I think it is going to be difficult being first in this market.

<comment><USER11> For example: The "About" link on the home page didn't work, so I went to <http://www.kabadge.com/about> and got an error.

I like your idea though. Keep going.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the fantastic feedback everyone! I was hoping to respond and discuss things as comments were left but it was busy day. I hope to address some of the suggestions directly tonight.

</comment><comment><USER12> You want to somehow make it more compelling for the sites whose badges you are using. I think you should brainstorm a bit more on that sales pitch.

</comment><comment><USER13> _View which badges you have already earned._

Very clever. Almost irresistable.

Of course, once you get to the next page and see that you haven't already earned anything, "curious" is replaced by "disappointed".

</comment><comment><USER14> i could see this becoming useful if you did ALL the work for the users. get their email & facebook connect, and then scrape their browser history for visited links and find them there.

<comment><USER15> Or you could operate more like the credit bureaus do for banks by selling your service directly to websites instead of end users. You connect in the back end with all the sites, they send you users information, and then you parse it all into one solidified reputation.

Doing something like this, you could act as a sort of social network background check, as users would not even need to opt-in to your service, they would automatically be signed up when they join the various sites.

<comment><USER7> That's a pretty cool idea. A web-of-trust problem would have to be solved: the various systems that connect to the system would need to trust each other's internal reputation systems. You'd have to prevent people from inflating their total reputation by using a single site with an easy-to-game reputation system. Some interesting challenges in there :)</comment></comment></comment>


Unmissing Persons: A Detective Story - <AUTHOR> http://blog.echonest.com/post/27624270104/unmissing-persons

<comment><USER2> I can imagine someone doing this so as to be able to listen to beatles songs on Grooveshark. Upload them, remember the fake name you used, and then you can listen to those tracks wherever you are.

Perhaps being overly paranoid, but "Weissbuch" sounds like a fake name to me - would that be the German for "white album"?</comment>


Mixtapes go social with the brilliant app ‘Everyone’s Mixtape’ - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/12/21/mixtapes-go-social-with-the-brilliant-app-everyones-mixtape/?utm_source=HackerNews&utm_medium=share%2Bbutton&utm_content=Mixtapes%20go%20social%20with%20the%20brilliant%20app%20%26%238216%3BEveryone%26%238217%3Bs%20Mixtape%26%238217%3B&utm_campaign=social%2Bmedia <comment><USER2> I've been thinking of just an app like this but for soundcloud.com.

Btw. Trying to log in with google open ID then selecting 'No Thanks' on the OpenID screen logs you in as 'vynsynt'. I assume that's a demo account? If not it looks like a security issue ...</comment>


10 Examples of Well-Designed Search UIs - <AUTHOR> https://blog.swiftype.com/2017/12/13/10-examples-well-designed-search-uis/ <comment><USER2> They all look identical with autocomplete - is that all it takes to make a good search UI? The mouse is used in every single demo, which seems unnecessary to me. It's cool, but this is clearly just a product plug.</comment>


Is popular music becoming sadder? - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/06/is-popular-music-becoming-sadder.html

<comment><USER2> I've tried repeatedly to compose songs in Major rather than minor, as I usually do, but I keep ending up with a fucking Pachelbel's Canon chord progression :| It just sucks you in like a whirlpool you have to constantly swim away from.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nick Hornby wrote about the essentially sad nature of pop music in his novel "High Fidelity" (1995):

"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

The movie was good, the book is amazing.

Teenage tragedy songs from the 50s or 60s are quite depressing (though the scenarios are pretty maudlin): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_tragedy_song>

</comment><comment><USER4> What happens if you look at even earlier music?

<comment><USER5> As sad as it gets, from the 17th century: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMoRPxLdSQ0></comment></comment>


Impress.js - <AUTHOR> http://bartaz.github.io/impress.js/#/bored

<comment><USER2> Previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6532542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6532542)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3476403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3476403)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3519238](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3519238)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4981416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4981416)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3414012](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3414012)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4926839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4926839)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3424199](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3424199)

(edit: fixed "Perviously")

<comment><USER3> I know! I feel like I see a post on this thing once a month!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't get me wrong, this looks incredible and works great, but can someone answer this question for me... "Why?" What's the point of this much 'flashiness' in a slide-based presentation? I feel like this would be more effort than it's worth. If you use something like Keynote on your Mac, you can make some pretty incredible and well done slideshows. I think this could be awesome and useful for some things (non slideshow related), but I think it's a bit 'too much' for a slide-based presentation.

Sometimes when I see all of these fancy JS plugins I feel like people need to be reminded " _just because you CAN, doesn 't mean you SHOULD._" But again, this is well done and the author did a fantastic job coding this. I'm not trying to say anything bad on the quality of this, just the practical use.

<comment><USER5> A good reason for using a non-linear tool such as this, is that you're able to layout your points (slides) on an infinite canvas, and make use of that specific layout to better explain how each point fits into the whole structure.

For example, I've used impress.js to fan out from a central idea along different lines of work, each line being punctuated with different slides. The cool thing is, you can make a virtual overview slide that shows the whole clickable canvas.

I've also used the layout to embed images resulting from intermediate algorithm stages directly inside those stages in the diagram.

Besides that, and the flashiness which is definitely nice to have, your presentations are in an open format that's not locked to a specific vendor. (this is coming from someone with more than 10 years of academic presentations in powerpoint, which I now have trouble re-using due to almost 100% Linux everywhere. LibreOffice Impress 4.1 can display them, but much is lost in the conversion :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a big fan of Prezi, and think that impress.js is pretty sweet, but I have to admit, every time I try to dive in and use either tool to build a presentation, I realize how much planning is required to execute one effectively.

I'm still a huge fan of reveal.js[1] and love the fact that I can get a rich presentation, with all the functionality I need in an easy-to-use, extensible framework. Ever since discovering it, I haven't been able to present well with anything else...

[1] [http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/](http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/)

<comment><USER7> Agreed. Agreed so much that we built a presentation plugin with an HTML5 Canvas editor on the backend of WordPress to power presentations built with deck.js.

Oh and we also automatically create an embed and provide a modal for notes for supporting materials.

Presentation javascript frameworks are awesome (I have a list of like 50), but building in them is not for the feignt of heart.

[https://seoslides.com](https://seoslides.com) if you are interested or [http://wordpress.org/plugins/seoslides/](http://wordpress.org/plugins/seoslides/) for the wordpress repository

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here is an incomplete prototype I developed of a UI to build impress.js presentations [http://stepludesigner.azurewebsites.net/designer/index/1](http://stepludesigner.azurewebsites.net/designer/index/1)

(make sure to add a few slides and go to the "Presentation Designer" tab)

</comment><comment><USER9> If you're interested in building a single-page website or app with similar layouting and transitions I recommend the much more flexible, cross-browser friendly jmpress.js[1] jQuery port.

[1] [http://jmpressjs.github.io/jmpress.js/](http://jmpressjs.github.io/jmpress.js/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Neat!

I think this would be a great way to present a poster online, actually...

This varies wildly by discipline, but at least in my specific field, a lot of the "meat" (and almost all of the discussion) at scientific conferences is in the poster sessions. Talks are 12 minutes long, with essentially no time for questions afterwards (it's usually skipped to make up for other people's talks running long). Talks are more prestigious, but new results are usually presented as posters to allow for more feedback.

Putting up a .pdf of a 72"x42" poster after the conference is actually fairly terrible way to share the work.

Something like this to step through specific sections while showing the overall flow of the printed poster would be very effective.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is it natural to be frustrated at how hard it is to leave the page, mid- presentation?

<comment><USER12> That's the major problem with these presentations, IMO.

It'd be best not to make each slide a separate item on my browser's back/forward navgation, especially when there's built-in functionality to move about the presentation otherwise. It breaks usability and frustrates users!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you like Impress.js, Hovercraft might be of interest.

[https://github.com/regebro/hovercraft](https://github.com/regebro/hovercraft)

</comment><comment><USER14> It was posted here before, what change in the last 12 Month?

</comment><comment><USER15> If you want more of the same: [http://pineapple.io/tags/presentations](http://pineapple.io/tags/presentations)

</comment><comment><USER16> A link to the Git repo:

[https://github.com/bartaz/impress.js](https://github.com/bartaz/impress.js)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is rather old

</comment><comment><USER18> Looks good, and nice features. What I was missing most in the presentation was the ability to use mouse wheel

</comment><comment><USER19> suffers from the same problem as Prezi; makes some people in the audience dizzy.

I did use Prezi for a talk at the start of my PhD - I'm now back on beamer, and not only because I can get equations to render more easily.

</comment><comment><USER20> It looks nice, but not being able to use my mouse to navigate is kind of annoying.

</comment><comment><USER21> For fun, try to use your mouse's scrollwheel on the page :)

</comment><comment><USER22> I think this looks great, nice work.

</comment><comment><USER23> wow I'm impressed :) Very good JavaScript Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER24> these slideshows are new <marquee><blink>

</comment><comment><USER25> I must say I'm impressed ! This is so great. Awesome work. And I'm totally gonna try this in my next talk. Till then i wanna ask that is there any way we guys make this more awesome by adding some effects and colors. Or possibly make an online editor, which will help common people to make such presentations ?</comment>