Declarative Programming: Is It a Real Thing? (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.toptal.com/software/declarative-programming <comment><USER3> Instead of talking about declarative programming we should talk about denotational programming - writing programs that map to a consistent mental model.

The fact that something is declarative doesn't mean that it's understandable. Webpack for instance is a piece of technology I consistently struggle to understand and predict the behaviour of, even though it's declarative. (Not intended to shit on webpack's developers / maintainers in anyway.)

</comment><comment><USER4> "Declarative" programming has become something of a buzzword. This is unfortunate because it prevents finer distinctions between domain specific language techniques.

I think it achieved its buzzword status because it for a long time was something people clearly _recognized_ but couldn't define. Fortunately, Neel Krishnaswami wrote a very cogent post putting his finger on the nerve.

[https://semantic-domain.blogspot.com/2013/07/what- declarativ...](https://semantic-domain.blogspot.com/2013/07/what-declarative- languages-are.html)

With this definition we can see that (a) the author misses the boat on "declarative" in a concrete way and instead lands on something much closer to DSLs in general and (b) then only uses a narrow set of DSLs to provoke criticism and thus presents a very weak argument.

The powerful core of his argument—the "unfolding" principle—is not something I can claim to understand fully from this article, but it suggests something worrying: that every DSL must transparently resemble its interpretation. This makes it easy for a user of the DSL to recognize how it will be interpreted and thus achieve ease of understanding... but it gets dangerously close to banning abstraction all together!

In my opinion, the true measure of a DSL is the consistency and diversity of _semantic interpretations_ (or "models") that are valid for the DSL and consistent with one another. This measure seems to establish the resilience and leverage a given DSL's topic might have.

Consider how SQL can describe set operations, an abstract search process, a logical predicate, and also a concrete set of searches achieved across physical data stores.

Anyway, to answer the question in the title—something the article neglects to do—I'd strongly suggest that "yes" declarative programming is a real thing, "yes" DSLs are real too, and "no" they do not automatically fall to the problems one can potentially extrapolate from by getting frustrated at templating solutions.

<comment><USER5> I cannot quite decipher Neel's interpretation. The math syntax on his site isn't rendering. Can you provide a simple explanation? This is interesting.

<comment><USER4> Let me first transcript his math. He's giving a judgement for regex semantics `s matches r`.

        - [for all r] <empty> matches r [unconditionally]

        - [for all c] c matches c

        - [for all w, r1, r2]
          IF w matches r1 AND w matches r2
          THEN w matches (r1 \/ r2)

        - (no rule for "w matches bottom")

        - [for all w, r1, r2]
          IF there exists w1, w2 such that w = w1 . w2
          AND w1 matches r1 AND w2 matches r2
          THEN w matches r1 . r2

        - [for all w, r]
          IF there exists w1, w2 such that w = w1 . w2
          AND w1 matches r AND w2 matches r*
          THEN w matches r*

So he notes that in the semantics of regex we have non-trivial "there exists" quantification expressing the "search" over possible breaks in the target string.

This need for an existential to give semantics to a language is his focus. Perhaps the most obvious example then is Hilbert's epsilon, such as what appears in TLA+

(section 6.6) [http://lamport.azurewebsites.net/tla/xmxx00-02-09.pdf](http://lamport.azurewebsites.net/tla/xmxx00-02-09.pdf)

This is called CHOOSE in TLA+ and it's a constructive existential quantifier in that

        a / b === CHOOSE c in REAL : a = b * c

results in evaluating a / b to "some" real value c such that the multiplicative condition holds (or some arbitrary value if no such value exists, fwiw).

This shows up in SQL as being essentially exactly what SELECT is doing: `SELECT * FROM Table WHERE Cond` is

        CHOOSE row in Table : Cond(row)

except now CHOOSE returns all matching values as opposed to just "some" matching value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not this again. Haskell, Prolog, CSS, SQL are classic examples of declarative programming, but really, what isn't? Everything except machine code is to a certain extent declarative.

Obviously, even the C compiler is free to optimize and rewrite your code to a large extent. Maybe it will put everything in registers! Maybe it will shuffle variables out of memory! Maybe it will skip entire instructions, or unroll loops! Maybe it will completely eliminate code that it believes to be dead! Maybe it will use SIMD instructions to do four multiplications at once! Will it will pad your structs, or change byte order? Will it use 16, 32, or 64 bits for you integers? There's no way to know! Even if you figure it out for your own machine today, the code you write today may be compiled to target a different architecture in the future. Obviously, then, C is a declarative language because the programmer only provided a high-level outline of what he or she wanted and let the compiler figure out the details.

Even at run time, we find that many system calls are declarative for all intents and purposes. What happens when you call malloc()? Well, you tell it what you want, and a memory manager decides how to give it to you using a variety of memory management strategies: maybe they call mmap() or VirtualAlloc() or some other syscall, or maybe they just give you a pointer into a region of memory they allocated earlier and have been hanging onto.

Is even machine code fully imperative? Maybe once upon a time it was, but now with all these caches and pipelines and branch prediction, it seems like even the hardware is making decisions on our behalf about how to "best" run a program.

The way I see it, we can either acknowledge that these computer thingies are in fact to a large extend "doing what we mean" rather than following our explicit instructions and accept the corollary that we are never _quite_ fully in control, or we can all go back to writing assembly for the 6502.

<comment><USER7> Laynes Law:

Every debate is over the definition of a word.

Or every debate eventually degenerates into debating the definition of a word.

Or once a debate degenerates into debating the definition of a word, the debate is debatably over.

<comment><USER8> What do you mean by 'over'?

<comment><USER7> "Pointless to continue", I would assume. I've been in looong debates that end up being tied to the meaning of a word. Our worldviews often shape the way we use and apply language. For example, how one defines "type" may ultimately pivot on how a given person processes categories in their own mind. I've probably spent a novel's worth of text in online debates about "type".

<comment><USER9> I believe he was being facetious to cement the point.

<comment><USER7> Okay, thanks. I missed that one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a side note, everyone here likely knows the most successful declarative language, SQL.

It's domain-specific, but within its domain, it works quite well.

<comment><USER11> Is SQL a declarative language? It requires predicates for everything. Even declaring a schema requires a predicate, which doesn't seem any different than function arguments to me. "select" abstracting the underlying DB engine's "control flow" doesn't seem characteristically declarative. It seems like the same type of standard library that any imperative language would offer for convenience.

Edit: Apparently functional programming is declarative.

<comment><USER12> If it's not, then nothing is.

<comment><USER11> Apparently functional programming is considered a form of declarative programming. That doesn't make much sense to me, but I guess relative to writing assembly or C it is declarative. The distinction seems arbitrary, because even C and assembly contain abstractions for more complex operations taking place in the OS and in the hardware.

<comment><USER13> A cliche example is "squares of values".

imperative code would be something like:

      fn squares(array A)
        array B;
        for (idx, x) in A {
          B[idx] = x * x
        }
        return B;
      }

(or "B.add" or some other mutating action). whereas 'declarative' code 'declares' what it wants:

      fn squares(array A) {
        return A.map { |x| x * x }
      }

I think "declarative" is used more in terms of "declare the result you want, not how you'll get it". It's easier to focus on what the output of the program is with declarative code.

Higher-level abstractions are _probably_ necessary, but I don't think it's fundamental to how I'd use the term. :-) Although I wouldn't be surprised to see a variety of ways people use the term.

<comment><USER14> Is that example code elixir?

<comment><USER13> It's not anything in particular.

Rosetta Code has "apply a callback to an array" example with Elixir. [https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Apply_a_callback_to_an_array#El...](https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Apply_a_callback_to_an_array#Elixir)

      Enum.map([1, 2, 3], fn(n) -> n * 2 end)
      Enum.map [1, 2, 3], &(&1 * 2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> An interesting observation in the article is the data structures DSL that the author goes into quite a bit of detail, which is essentially what most Clojure/Lisp developers also talk about.

Basically the author points out a lot of benefits of using the native serialisable data structures of the language itself to model the domain, instead of creating a separate representation which has to be parsed, optimised, evaluated, etc. Lisp users just take the same idea one step further by having the "host" language also be represented using the same data structures, instead of just the DSL's.

As Alan Perlis said, "It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than 10 functions on 10 data structures."

</comment><comment><USER7> Re: _Arguably the most successful declarative programming tool is the relational database (RDB)._

I used to use database systems that were mostly imperative. While they do put more onus on the app developer to manage "machine efficiency", such queries were easier to build and study (debug) incrementally, including the machine run-time profile.

Imperative gives you a better chance at fractal divide-and-conquer of tasks and sub-tasks that can be tested and analyzed as independent units. SQL has made that relatively difficult. Views and the newer WITH clause help, but they are still not fractally dissectable within themselves.

There are pro's and con's to each, but I'd like to see the world forked around 1982 into SQL-World and Imperative-DB-World and see which actually does better.

The theoretical benefits of declarative queries being more machine optimize- able is exaggerated when put to practice. If it were true, we wouldn't need DBA's to rewrite slow SQL. Imperative can also be machine optimized.

Declarative can be quite useful for GUI's but only if "events" or equivalent can imperatively tweak the results along the way "between" steps. Declarative may do 80% of the work, but certain operations will need custom tweaking, usually with imperative code.

Optional events added to declarative systems to adjust stuff along the way is a good mix of imperative and declarative: yin and yang: declarative for the common "grunt work" patterns and attribute management, and imperative for custom adjustments. (If the system is designed to integrate them well.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Well, since the author asks so nicely, let me answer. I do not consider that code to be elegant.

Just count how many possible errors you can make on a simple templating DSL, and then count how many errors you can make on that dsDSL one. One is clearly better than the other.

I would say that all the problems enumerated there come from a bad selection of DSLs to study. It's perfectly understandable that the author chooses templating languages, and I don't know of any better templating DSL to put there, but that only evidences that we lack an actually good templating DSL (outside of the scope of Tex). That just shows that text templating is hard, not that DSLs are inherently problematic.

For evidence that the problem is not with the concept of DSLs itself, just try to write the same article using SQL as an example. You can't.

</comment><comment><USER17> The author sort of hits on the complexity of writing an external DSL. Even good DSL's like SQL have complicated implementations and are usually treated as a black box. Users don't learn them by reading the source code or stepping through an example in a debugger.

This means you need to treat your fellow developers as end users rather than co-maintainers. You need a good spec, plenty of examples, and probably language-specific debugging tools, which have to be taught as well.

No wonder people look for lighter approaches like macros or internal DSL's (which are often just libraries with funny calling syntax). Reusing existing language tools is often the way to go.

</comment><comment><USER12> When I think of a declarative DSL, I think of something like cloudformation or HTML. The main advantage of a declarative language is that you can describe a desired end state without being overly concerned about the implementation details of arriving there.

I think the sorts of dsl's that he's complaining about are more hybrid approaches and not fully declarative. I think Chef is an example of a DSL that does that right, in that if you have the right plugins and helpers you can do it fully declaratively, but it's fairly trivial to add in blocks of fully imperative code or define new blocks.

</comment><comment><USER18> In a very twisted sense even C could be described as a declarative language. C code describes the observable effects under the abstract machine model, and the compiler tries its best to generate machine code that matches those effects. But more importantly the compiler is completely free to ignore the exact "imperatives" that the programmer provides, as long as the defined outcome is the same.

</comment><comment><USER19> The article makes a valid argument against bad DSLs. But the dsDSL is also declarative so it's not really an argument against declarative programming. Similarly using a native data structure for a SQL query doesn't make the query any less declarative (and can have a lot of advantages).

The dsDSL is actually pretty close to how React or some functional languages work with HTML.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Is SQL declarative?" [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2003...](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/200319/is- sql-declarative)

<comment><USER7> Re: _" Shouldn't an SQL engine not care about if you used IN, EXISTS, or JOIN if it is truly declarative shouldn't it just give you the correct answer in reasonable time if possible by any of the three methods?"_

I don't see this as evidence SQL is not declarative. Declarative doesn't mean there must be only one way to do (request) something, and it doesn't mean the optimizer is required to be well-written in practice. Maybe in some RDBMS it does process all 3 fast. That's not a characteristic of SQL the language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Red language is, to an extent, a declarative programming language - <USER2> for the UI.

</comment><comment><USER22> CSS seems to be a real thing ...

</comment><comment><USER23> I am not a huge fan of the declarative model for much of the same reasons I am not a fan of OOP. Both concepts are full of convention and ritual to decorate code in a way that is easy to understand in isolation and convenient to put together. That sounds great except rarely does anything actually work in isolation and the word _complex_ literally means _put together_.

Personally I am a big fan of functional imperative. Write instructions to solve the problem as directly as possible with the fewest decisions/statements as possible. Isolate the solution into a function that is referenced when needed. Opposite of complex.

<comment><USER24> I think you're confusing things. (Pure) functional programming is a form of declarative programming. The most important feature of declarative programming is the elimination of side effects and the idea of referential transparency. It has nothing to do with OOP.

<comment><USER23> > I think you're confusing things. (Pure) functional programming is a form of > declarative programming.

I disagree. See [https://www.red-lang.org/p/about.html](https://www.red- lang.org/p/about.html) as an example of a language that is purely imperative functional.

<comment><USER24> Imperative and functional are opposites. There is no such thing as a purely functional imperative language.

<comment><USER25> imperative programming is control flow centric. do this, do that, do this other ten times.

functional programming is about referential transparency - the value of an expression is determined entirely by its arguments and not some hidden state.

so you certainly can have imperative functional programming which is both recipe-like and referentally transparent.

declarative programming is the antipode of imperative programming. yes, its referentally transparent, but it also attempts to describe the nature of the solution, rather than the (imperative) process to get there. i dont know that there is a declarative variant that makes sense without transparency...because if there is hidden state and we have no handle on order of evaluation, its kind of a lost cause.

<comment><USER26> The usual definitions of imperative vs functional are that imperative is built from Hoare triples and functional is built from lambda calculus. By those definitions, you cannot have a functional, imperative language.

<comment><USER23> When used properly the nested scope provided by lambda calculus allows shared variables accessible from outside a local function thereby accounting for the precondition of Hoare's triples without it being locally present or passed in. This is enough to satisfy both the functional nature of portablity/isolation and the imperative model by Hoare's logic.

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

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

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_(computer_science)#Lexic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_\(computer_science\)#Lexical_scoping)

<comment><USER26> > When used properly the nested scope provided by lambda calculus allows > shared variables accessible from outside a local function thereby accounting > for the precondition of Hoare's triples without it being locally present or > passed in.

Yes, you can express any Turing complete system in terms of any other Turing complete system.

> This is enough to satisfy both the functional nature of portablity/isolation > and the imperative model by Hoare's logic.

I think you're missing the point. It's not about portability or isolation. It's about the mathematical system you use as the foundation of your semantics. Yes, you can implement a lambda calculus in turns of Hoare triples and you can implement Hoare triples in terms of lambda calculus. Or in terms of unification over Horn clauses or combinatory logic.

What makes a language functional is that its semantics are defined as an extension of the lambda calculus. What makes a language logical is that its semantics are defined as an extension of unification over Horn clauses. All the benefits people suggest to using one style or another are theorems, not definitions.

<comment><USER23> > It's about the mathematical system you use as the foundation of your > semantics.

I think you are conflating lexical scope with functional programming. Lexical scope applies even without functions, but functional programming requires functions. The difference between a scoped block and function is that functions have identity and the scoped block does not even though both benefit fully from lexical scope.

What makes a language functional is whether components are composable via function. That could mean several different things, such as: lexical scope, first class citizens, recursion by reference, callbacks, and so forth. A simple way to thinking about it is things are well separated, sometimes atomically and sometimes in a taxonomical fashion, but that separation has identity. That is very different than an OOP model where things are extended and put together and that togetherness or extension has no identity.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Email isn't Dying - <AUTHOR> http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2009/10/7-points-on-end-of-email-era.html

<comment><USER2> I'm a senior in college right now. Over the past four years it seems email has become more popular in my cohort.

When I first started college, a lot of social communication was through IM and Facebook. That's what was used for setting up group outings or dinners or what not.

Now, sending group emails has replaced that. Twitter has emerged as a place for idle chatter. And Facebook is now mostly a rolodex or a place to keep in touch with acquaintances and people I talk to less often.

But email is the backstop. Every other service feeds my email account, and my email account is where I talk to my most regular contacts.

<comment><USER3> Just wait until you get into the business world. Before I went pro, I was all IM all the time (I'm old so FB/TW wasn't around)

Email is till considered _leeding edge_ for a lot of traditional business, with the phone being the preferred comm tool still.

I really wish email was better, threaded, open .. you name it but it just isn't happening.

I'm shocked (and pleased) when a client messages me on FB or through TW. Although it always leads to a phone call or email (not to mention face-to-face meeting) when we "get down to it".

<comment><USER2> What I was trying to say is that over the past four years email has replaced IM, Facebook and Twitter as the "leading edge" for my social interactions now, even though I'm not in the business world. They were popular, but they're now mostly on the periphery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> E-mail is broken in many ways (not just SPAM and overfilled inboxes) but I think there is not yet anything better. Facebook, twitter, social nets are still in the process to become effective ways of communication. Google Wave seems promising, not as the "the new e-mail" (I think that is just hype) but as a collaborative way of working. IMHO e-mail will be replaced for such a type of tool (similar to Wave) where you will have elements of e-mail, IM, tweets and social networks.

<comment><USER5> What is so broken about email? (apart from spam)

<comment><USER4> The way that we use it today for example. Many people have inbox full of emails that probably they would not read or attend properly. This is behavioural, not a technical issue but it is an example of why we need other collaborative models. There is a good article about it in the IEEE magazine. In the technical and security side, quite a lot of traffic between SMTP servers is in clear text. Identity is very easy to spoof. And so on ... But as I said, there isn't anything better yet.

<comment><USER5> an inbox full of emails that you do not read is a behavorial problem. Not one of email. No amount of twitter, facebook or "email 2.0" is going to fix that.

Even though the traffic between SMTP servers is in plaintext, encrypting that traffic does not solve the underlying problem. Trust on the Internet is a very very hard problem that is not going to be solved any time soon.

<comment><USER6> Trust on the Internet has a solution. SSL with proper CAs. Then the problem atleast shifts from Internet to real world.

<comment><USER4> The problem today are the cost of the infrastructure to support CAs (this may be a minor problem) and usability (I think this is the most difficult to address). I cannot imagine many of my FB friends using PGP (or GnuPG), public and private keys.

<comment><USER6> They wouldn't need to. In simple cases like facebook, they would use some CA signed certificate (which basically says that they are who they claim to be) to sign in to facebook via ssl/https (this could be easily automatized in browser).

<comment><USER4> Yes but then you need a certificate to store (your private key). If you are in the same computer it is not a problem, if you move to another one, then you need to take the certificate with you. I think the problem is not as easy if you want proper security mechanisms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Twitter is both orthogonal and parallel to email, nice!

<comment><USER8> Isn't that possible considering planes in more than two dimensions?

<comment><USER9> Not unless either Twitter or email equals zero.

(Unless you take "orthogonal" and "parallel" to mean "there's a vector in one and a vector in the other that are orthogonal/parallel".)

<comment><USER10> If I remember correctly, two lines being both parallel and orthogonal is quite possible in Hyperbolic (Non-Euclidean) Geometry.

<comment><USER11> Parallel lines of longitude converge orthogonally at poles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's more to it than preference, fad and fashion. Tools get replaced when a better one comes along that transmits messages that exist near the same point in { Fidelity, Latency } space. Telephone calls are pretty high fidelity, zero latency (if they're answered). Snail mail is for high fidelity, high-latency messages (like phone bills). Nobody would snail-mail a lunch invitation any more - too high a latency. And so on. Twitter is lower latency than IM; IM is lower than email. They vary in fidelity (Twitter's 120-char limit). There remain room for a whole menagerie of tools in between, above and below. And these will be eclipsed when higher-fidelity replacements get invented. Btw somebody explain to me why its ok to automatically switch a phone call (low- latency, high-fidelity) to voice mail (abysmal latency, half-duplex crap fidelity)? This really bugs me. I don't set up voice mail because its absolutely the wrong choice - send me an email if you can't get me on the phone, or an IM or pretty much ANYTHING but voice mail.

</comment><comment><USER13> I agree email serves a very important purpose. It's the open standard way of receiving messages between computers. We'll always need a way for people to send each other messages using their computers with an open standard.

Email, or whatever its purposes is, will not go away, but it can be improved and adapted to modern needs.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ultimately Email is a _standard_ communication form.

As popular as Facebook and Twitter (et al) are they are technically proprietary.

Email isn't dying simply because there is, as yet, no successor.

<comment><USER6> XMPP is open protocol, and has lots of (FOSS) implementations. It could probably be easily extended to do anything email does, and do it better.

And it has yet to take over the world

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The important thing about all these different services is how you decide to include people. It's more of a real organic social network where some casual friends might be Facebook worthy but have no reason to ever e-mail me personally. Others might not be personal contacts but are interesting enough to warrant a Twitter follow. Some business contacts are people I wouldn't mind IM-ing me outside of work -- others goto a separate IM account I only login to during business hours. Some people have full access.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't know very many people who still use email for _personal_ communication. It's all Twitter, Facebook, Skype, or just IM. Even my parents seem to able to navigate Facebook just fine but have considerably more trouble with their email client.

While I still use email just as much for business communication, I hardly use it at all for just talking to friends and family.

<comment><USER17> The problem with using data like this is that it's completely anecdotal and self-selecting.

When I was in college I could have made the claim that AOL Instant Messenger would become the 'one true' messenger because everyone I knew was on it... while in the rest of the world people were mostly using things like ICQ and/or MSN Messenger.

Just because the world around you looks one way doesn't mean it's the same everywhere. Just because a large number of people use and interact with Twitter doesn't mean that _everyone_ does or that _everyone_ even knows what it is for that matter.

<comment><USER16> "The problem with using data like this is that it's completely anecdotal and self-selecting."

That was the idea. I'm not Wolfram Alpha, I'm a human having a conversation. I didn't make any predictions about the future, I'm just expressing my own personal take on the situation. I'm sure I'm going to get down-modded to hell for this especially since you've been up-modded pretty high for contributing basically nothing.

"Just because the world around you looks one way doesn't mean it's the same everywhere."

The ironic part about your AOL/ICQ/MSN example is that, like Facebook, there are network effects. I used ICQ pretty much right up until nobody else did. People are communicating by Facebook so much that even though I don't use it much, if I want to be in the loop that is where I need to go. There are 250 million people communicating on Facebook -- clearly there's a lot less _need_ to communicate by email.

My own personal experience is that for the average user trying to communicate for non-business means, they get a far better experience from other tools than from email.

Now, of course, this all just my personal option. If you want some actual data, you won't find it on hacker news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> the biggest reason i believe email is not going anywhere is because it is entrenched in corporate life. enterprise moves slowly and to move from email to another system would take longer than it took them to embrace email in the first place (i.e. decades).

</comment><comment><USER5> People living in the US really should realise that there is a world outside of the US. Facebook may be the way of communication for american youths, but it is not that entrenched in other countries.

<comment><USER19> How do the "youths" in other countries communicate, besides SMS?

<comment><USER5> MSN is widely popular here.

And there are lots more social networks besides Facebook. For example, in the Netherlands there's hyves.nl and I'm sure the same is true for other countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The same reason traditional post isn't dead. I still might use IM/facebook for most personal communications but that doesn't mean I stop checking my email address or post box.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think that emails use just needs to be adjusted taking hints from tools like twitter and facebook make it short and to the point.

<comment><USER22> Terseness can be good sometimes; I have a tendency to write really long emails, even when doing relatively trivial tasks like customer support or dealing with a salestard. The sales people are all, as the kids would say, "Tl;dr" then they present me their standard product. Irritating, as that behavior is trivially replaced by a perl script.

On the other hand, conveying actual information is also good sometimes. If someone asks me a sytem administration question and I have a few minutes, they usually get a pretty useful answer. I know several system problems at prgmr.com were solved by a customer because when s/he complained, I gave a full description of the actual problem and the customer was able to help me solve it.

So yeah, it depends on what you are doing, and the literacy level (and interest) of the recipient. Email can be short, when appropriate, and learning how to be to the point is a very good skill, but email can also be long and detailed when you need that.

<comment><USER21> Totally agree. Maybe more of the problem is writing skill of the users today need to be improved. I am always getting long winded emails that could have be easily said in a short one or two line email and a well phrased subject line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> someone had to say it.. The future doesn't replace the past. The future complements the past

<comment><USER24> Tell that to the silent movie stars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Died to what?

IM? IM is dying on its own. Whatever Facebook this week? Spare me. Wave? It's too hard. Twitter? How would I fit _information_ in 140 chars and why?

Email has no successor technology.

<comment><USER26> Neither IM nor Facebook is dying. Email's not dying either, but your countersuggestions are absurd.

<comment><USER25> Didn't say Facebook is dying.

Traditional IM is suffering, IMO: Twitter, Social networks and Skype ate its users. And, paradoxically, even Email.

Maybe it's just me who use them less and less? No idea.

<comment><USER26> Huh! If you don't count Skype as IM then I agree with you. That's my primary IM at the moment. But isn't that IM?

<comment><USER25> I always thought it's more of a phone thingy?

<comment><USER26> Well, it handles text/audio/video chats. But text chatting is still a big part of it: Right now I'm using it for group work, because it has a great filesharing system. It's very flexible, but I think it still counts under the instant messaging umbrella.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't even think that article needs any response. It's pretty naive.

That said, it's a fact that the current generation of teenagers generally don't send personal email and view it as something their parents and teachers use.

<comment><USER28> As a member of the current generation, I know that I don't often send personal emails. And yes, it's something my parents and teachers use.

But I definitely use it to talk to members of the older generation. And anything that's less than personal, in fact. Any sort of business arrangements, anything that's supposed to look professional.

In fact, the lack of time constraints on email make it far superior to most newer technologies for anything that requires some thought. Email gives you a chance to (re)consider your argument, idea, or response. And to spellcheck.

(Irony: Firefox spellchecker picked up "spellcheck" as incorrect. More irony: "spellchecker" is fine.)

<comment><USER29> I've found that as I started corresponding more in the "real world," email took hold as the most important tool I have. When I was a student, less so, because all I used it for was holding passwords, subscribing to a list or two, and occasionally communicating with a teacher. All my friends were always nearby so it wasn't a major issue to just hang out all the time.

But since then, everyone I know has moved somewhere else. If you want to seek out a deep long-term conversation and you can't get in physical proximity to do so, email does that quite well.

I think mailing lists are a powerful tool as well - they should probably be used more. I hate using Facebook, even though it's valuable as a Rolodex replacement.

<comment><USER14> > as I started corresponding more in the "real world," email took hold as the > most important tool I have.

Same.

The one major benefit (I found) of email is that the other person has no way of finding out when / if your online.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chronic adversity dampens dopamine production - <AUTHOR> https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/49f3ac1d/chronic-adversity-dampens-dopamine-production <comment><USER3> Interesting finding, but the headline doesn't quite match the study. They didn't find that chronic adversity dampens dopamine production in general, nor did they find that the stressed individuals had less dopamine than their unstressed peers per se. They only discovered that dopamine production differed between the two groups in response to a specific stressful task.

In other words, the chronically stressed individuals had a different response to stress, which involved less dopamine production than that of their less stressed peers. It's not clear how much of this is actually a negative adaption, as opposed to just being a different way of responding.

It's also important to consider the context provided by the researchers in the article:

      "This study can't prove that chronic psychosocial stress
      causes mental illness or substance abuse later in life by
      lowering dopamine levels," Dr Bloomfield cautions. "But we
      have provided a plausible mechanism for how chronic stress
      may increase the risk of mental illnesses by altering the
      brain's dopamine system."

With studies like this, it's important to avoid the knee-jerk reaction that you might need "more dopamine". More is not always better, and we have decades of research demonstrating that dopaminergic drugs are not great antidepressants. When considering your own treatment programs, it's important to focus on evidence-based medicine and proven, sustainable treatments and therapies.

<comment><USER4> Measuring dopamine is a bit like measuring a person's heart rate. It could indicate fear, or it could indicate sexual arousal, too much coffee, or some other medical condition. People like to say things like "seratonin is the drug that makes you happy," or "oxytocin is the drug that makes you feel love," or "dopamine is the brain's reward mechanism," but those statements are simplified to the point of being wrong.

This study is still pretty cool though, because it does point us in a general direction. It can help explain why some mental illnesses like schizophrenia have strong genetic components, yet also environmental factors like childhood abuse. As you said, the reduced dopamine could be a good thing. But maybe in a genetic minority it creates a neuro-chemical downward spiral. Maybe we could prevent the development of schizophrenia by prescribing medication following trauma. Who knows. It opens a lot of doors.

<comment><USER5> Meds and, you know, talking to them for longer, more often, at earlier stages.

<comment><USER6> Sure. But the issue that needs to be solved with talking therapies is, how do you scale them? Talking to a psychologist starts at $200/hr and the farther you go down the ladder in terms of qualifications the lower the success rate of the therapy.

Not everyone can afford this, whereas pills can actually be covered by insurance.

<comment><USER7> In time of depression I often recommend to start drinking. But if anyone comes up with a better drug, it would be completely irresponsible to deny them this opportunity.

<comment><USER6> I actually think we do a great disservice to people who are dealing with trauma by using alcohol because we stigmatize it instead of treating it like what it is: self-medication.

It is just another thing a lot of people do to cope with stress, pain, unhappiness etc.

In some ways it's effective, unfortunately it can also come with a lot of nasty side effects like hangovers, damaged relationships, etc.

When you view alcohol as a medication you can then compare it to other medications. The pharmaceutical antidepressants, anxiolytics etc. are far from perfect, but they almost universally have less dangerous side effects than heavy alcohol usage. If someone's using alcohol to cope there's nothing intrinsically immoral or shameful about that, but if the side effects are manifesting there's probably a better medication out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The College Board recently added an "adversity score" to the SAT that "will reportedly reflect students' family income, environment and educational differences" and hence help level the playing field. Maybe all of that could be replaced by a measure of dopamine production. Rather than measuring external correlates of adversity it could be an objective measure of the actual internal experience.

I wonder how people would game that in order to increase their chances of admission.

The concept of intersectionality seems to be an attempt to measure chronic adversity using oppressed identities as a proxy. It could theoretically be replaced by a more direct, objective measure like this.

<comment><USER9> I am not a fan of the adversity score. There are a lot of things kids go through that don't make it down on paper: abuse/bullying, non-parental involvement or incompetent parents, living barely out of poverty, etc. You don't have to be a lesbian African American living in the projects to have a shit life.

<comment><USER10> Would it surprise you to know that, looking back at my own life, my being a gay black male had a lot to do with being subject to the things "that don't make it on paper?" It's not too hard to imagine that I was bullied or put down for not fitting the ideal straight male parameters, but the lack of parental involvement is a fun one, which has been experienced by many seemingly stable middle-class black families. The story is thus: academically high-achieving black Boomers/Xers must take out loans to fund their education, without the benefit of access to familial wealth or well-paying work during college (re: hiring discrimination in the 70s, 80s, and 90s). This delays their entry into the housing market until, say, the early-mid 2000s. Additionally, their career advancement is stymied by the various forces that tend to hit black workers harder - being the first to get laid off and last to be hired during and after recessions; having more difficulty finding employers and mentors interested in their growth; wage discrimination curtailing opportunity that may require investment, like professional certifications or moving to a better job; having to take less ideal, more stressful positions in order to prove worth within an organization - meaning that there is less cash outside of the real estate investment to cushion a fall.

I suspect that all this had something to do with how little support I was able to get from them when I was applying for colleges in 2007. The stresses they were experiencing - stresses which were, in their intensity, in that moment in history, largely the domain of people of color - had material effects on my ability to make my case to America's higher education system. They had too much on their plate to help me, and no one knew anything was the matter because we were a middle class family headed by parents with professional or advanced degrees. None of the colleges knew that I was dealing with that - <USER2> my sexuality, and the divorce, and depression, and body dysphoria - as I groped my way blindly through the process, alone, high SAT score and decent GPA from a STEM magnet program in hand.

My final choice and subsequent experience were resultingly lackluster, in hindsight, and if someone involved in the process had known, maybe I could have made better decisions. All this is, is acknowledging the subtractive and deleterious effects some circumstances can have on this most important of tasks, and taking action; in America, the simple experiencing of racial animus is one of those circumstances, no matter how much portions of the country harrumph about level playing fields and the past being the past. Here, friends: look up, and see how the light of 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago glints off the present.

<comment><USER9> I hate that you had to deal with those types of trials, and really wish things had been a lot smoother for you.

But, I'm not exactly sure what your point is.

<comment><USER10> Marginalized identity is directly related to the kinds of hardships that parent claimed were not directly associated with marginalized identity (see the first sentence). You generally have to go pretty far up the income/class scale to find black lesbian who's better off than a given poor white man.

To put it a way most guys here will understand: how much more money does a 5'4" man have to make to get the same social and professional consideration as a 6'2" man? Identity is not destiny, but at the same time, you'd be forgiven for getting that impression from a glance at American society.

<comment><USER9> > You generally have to go pretty far up the income/class scale to find black > lesbian who's better off than a given poor white man.

In certain countries, I'm sure this is the case. In western countries I don't think so.

<comment><USER10> It is very much so, especially in Western countries, where members of the black diaspora tend to be found and are able to express LGBT identity without fear of facing full and immediate ostracization (though violence is still a risk). If you consider, for example, suicide risk a crude measure for (lack of) life satisfaction, being LGBT reverses the black-white disparity (wherein white people are more likely to commit suicide, considering the general population).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> On the subject of dopamine, we've all heard new colloquialisms that speak of dopamine hits from webpages updating, notifications of likes. But has anyone done research into it? To formulate some sort of biochemical model of internet addiction?

<comment><USER3> The colloquial use of "dopamine" is more metaphorical than scientific. Your brain and body use dopamine in many different pathways for many different reasons. For example, the tremors in Parkinson's disease are related to the degradation of certain movement-related dopaminergic pathways in your brain.

When most people self-diagnose as "low dopamine" or refer to addictive behaviors as a "dopamine hit", they're not exactly referring to hard science. Yes, dopamine is involved in motivational reward and anticipatory behavior and dopamine is also key to the rewarding aspects of certain drugs, but the reward system is much more complicated than a single chemical messenger. For example, the opioid system plays an important role in reward as well.

In terms of treating addiction disorders, understanding the fine details of neurotransmitters and reward pathways in the brain isn't as relevant to therapy as you might hope. The high level concepts and therapeutic methods for changing people's behavior don't really depend on understanding how dopamine or serotonin operate in the brain.

For example, with internet addiction it's important to enable people to understand why they are spending so much time on the internet. You need to give them the tools to recognize their behavior, perform some introspection, and intentionally take action to make different choices about how they spend their time. Relating this back to dopamine or reward systems is only really useful as a tool to make these mental models stick with the patients. If they feel a sense of understanding, they're more likely to feel a sense of control over their actions, and in turn more likely to take action to change that behavior.

<comment><USER12> Agree completely.

We already know what happens when you don't have enough dopamine (Parkinson's disease - dopamine analogues are used to treat it) and too much dopamine (schizophrenia - dopamine blockers are used to treat it). Saying more is better is a major over simplification.

Dopamine is involved in a number of different neural structures that all have different effects. Not to mention there are several dopamine receptors subtypes that all have different actions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can attest to this. ADHD (low dopamine) caused by chronic stress. On Adderall XR 10mg to counteract it.

Symptoms that suck which adderall doesn't fix is OCD (brain looping on stuff), amphetamine caused anxiety (rarely but it sucks), and depression.

Steam room at my gym and hard exercise helps a lot. Need 8 hours of sleep. Intermittent fasting in the AM. Caffeine is a hard dial to set right.

<comment><USER14> Are you saying that chronic stress causes ADHD?

<comment><USER15> I should hope not. Chronic stress and PTSD do have shared symptoms with ADHD, but do not cause it. ADHD is genetic and neurodevelopmental in origin. Functioning and symptoms do vary with stress though.

Of interest though is that the causality does run the other direction, with those who have ADHD at a higher risk of incidence for psychosocial trauma and development of PTSD subsequent to traumatic events.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Prolonged stress exposure dampens response to stress?

</comment><comment><USER17> "The researchers found that other physiological responses to stress were also dampened in this group. For example, their blood pressure and cortisol levels did not increase as much as in the low-adversity group in response to stress."

Focusing on dopamine to try to predict negative outcomes seems weird here. Sounds like a just as viable title could be "people who have been through real adversity don't get stressed in trivial situations where someone calls them names"

</comment><comment><USER18> Farewell but I can cope in other ways like: smoking. Point invalid

</comment><comment><USER19> "Chronic adversity" is how I would describe a couple of the workplaces I've been in

</comment><comment><USER20> It's always interesting when things are upvoted to the front page but no comments. It makes to you think that this kind of article is resonating with people who are fearful of commenting because the conclusions would contradict a really powerful dogma in the community.

<comment><USER21> No, it makes YOU think this, because you have some fairly evident set of biases around dogma in the community.

I find THAT more interesting than why an article could get upvotes but the discussion might be delayed.

We all have biases. For example, when I read people who talk a lot about being fearful of contradicting community dogma, I tend to anticipate that they will be... Men who lean towards conspiracy theories involving women, minorities, and "the left" being in control of society and forming "witch hunts" and "mob justice," not to mention "cancelling people for wrongthink."

Of course, that has absolutely no bearing on who you may be and what you may believe. Recognizing my biases is the first step towards banishing them.

<comment><USER20> I'm getting known as having biases, that's important to think about (that's what I interpret what you are saying). I'm a fan of your writing on Twitter and will definitely consider all you said here. For the record, I think my biases lean the exact opposite of what you say you would assume they are.

<comment><USER22> It's interesting to me because I also thought the exact opposite in terms of biases when I reacted to the parent's comment on your post.

I believe you were speaking to the dogma of the privileged SV coder elite, which you were fearful of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> all I am hearing about this week is dopamine. We did brain scan A on population B (kids on screens, alcoholics, schizophrenics, ADHDs, you name it) and saw their DOPAMINE WENT TO C!! It just seems quite odd that we can reduce the well-being of the human spirit to just one single neurotransmitter. This week I'm feeling like "we did an fMRI / PET scan on population X" is like the new phrenology since I don't get the impression the structure of the brain is so well understood that these scans point to some irrefutable facts about the subjects being scanned.

<comment><USER24> Absolutely, not only a single neurotransmitter but can have completely different effects in different regions of the brain and most articles are extremely reductive.

This study in particular though is very well done, just publishing striatal dopamine and hopefully we'll see more studies like this in the future to piece it together.</comment></comment>


How to Lose a Third of a Million Dollars Without Trying - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/page-count/how-to-lose-a-third-of-a-million-dollars-without-really-trying-d3c343675aca <comment><USER2> A short and easy to read book teaches lessons somehow relevant to the situation, especially chapter 3 "do not make assumptions".

The book is "the four agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz.

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr: An author (and, not an especially good one) is willfully irresponsible in spending her large publishing advance, and blames absolutely everyone except herself.

<comment><USER4> Blames everyone but herself? The subtitle of this article is _"As a young writer, my naiveté about the publishing process nearly led me to financial ruin. Here's how to avoid my mistakes."_

Other quotes from the article:

 _"I'd somehow missed several critical aspects of the business, and that was on me (to some extent)"_

 _"My publisher didn't tell me I had to get that website. And no one said I should be buying fancy cocktails. That was all my choice"_

 _"Despite making some poor choices"_

 _"Let's take a pause. What could I have done differently [list of 6 things she could have done differently] But I didn't do any of those things."_

 _"All I could think was that I had wasted the one opportunity the universe had given me to write my way out"_</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you make friends / potential startup partners? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious about how other geeky people here make new friends IRL. I'm approaching 40 and I've realized that many other people have families and kids and thus seem to have little time/interest in making new friends to hang out with or create a new interesting startup with. Do you prefer to stay home, read HN and other news or do you call someone and say "let's have a beer" or do you go to meetups and exchange contact details? Or do you do something completely different?<p>I'm primarily asking for input from people who are not students but who work and don't have a family. <comment><USER2> Honestly, it's hard as hell for adults to make new friends. It's hard as hell for most adults to even maintain the friendships they have, what with moving around and more formalized obligations like family.

In practice, you make them at work - and that's it, because that's the only place where you end up spending enough time with others to actually form meaningful social bonds. I've also made friends when I've been thrown into an atypical experience with a bunch of other people simultaneously - an incubator in South America, a long boat trip to somewhere remote. But just going about your normal life - eh, it hardly ever happens. Even when you put work into it by inviting people out to do something fun, most adults are busy enough that you just can't see them often enough for a real friendship to develop.

If you find a decent solution, come back and tell me what it is.

</comment><comment><USER3> If HN is where you spend time because it intersects nicely with your actual interests, this is where you have the best hope of making decent personal connections based on shared interests. The question then becomes "How do I take those relationships to the next level? How do I move it into meatspace or remote collaboration or what have you?" That's a totally different question.

If you aren't participating much, I suggest you up your participation so folks with similar interests can get a clue what your interests are. Put some kind of contact info in your currently blank profile, such as an email address or twitter account or however you prefer to connect with people.

Maybe put your location in your profile as well and start looking at how meetups happen and what you might do to foster more HN connectivity in your own life.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am not your target demographic, but I think this can apply to people with families as well. When you get to a certain point, you are usually alienated from friends who don't have kids, possibly from the ones who do as well, and so it can be difficult to meet new people and build the types of relationships that lead to serendipitous moments.

I am mid-30s, a relatively new parent, and wondering how to meet new people who maybe have the same set of goals or priorities either in their careers or personal lives. It's not easy.

<comment><USER5> What are you looking for?

Why don't you just post on your neighborhood Craigslist activities asking for what you are looking for, whether family playdates or other couples with similar interests?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Depends on where you are living. I am in PA right now and it is really, really hard. When I was in Miami I was always meeting new people in startup, tech, martech etc.</comment>


26 US Navy Ship Naming Controversies - <AUTHOR> http://news.usni.org/2013/04/23/twenty-six-us-navy-ship-naming-controversies

<comment><USER2> My father was a missile fire control officer aboard the USS Providence, but that one was a surface vessel during Vietnam.

It must have taken a bad hit during the war, because one day while driving across the Benecia Bridge in the east San Francisco Bay Area, Dad spotted her in the mothball fleet.

He brought our car to a complete stop then sat quietly staring at her for some time, to remember and to reflect.

He later worked as a civil service EE at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo. He said something once about submarines being named for carnivorous fish but maybe that was a recent convention.</comment>


Ask HN: Is bank account to bank account transfer possible? - <AUTHOR> Is it possible to transfer amount from a person's bank account to another account (owned by different person) if the person has provided consent for the transfer and also his/her account details? What are the options to provide direct transfer, if possible? What are the alternatives  without charges? <comment><USER2> It depends on the country.

In Australia, it's quite common to give people your bank account number so that they can deposit money to it. Most commercial payments (company to company) work like that.

Previously if this was bank-to-bank it would clear over night, but now real- time (clearing within a minute) is available some of the time for some bank pairs: [https://www.commbank.com.au/corporate/real- time.html](https://www.commbank.com.au/corporate/real-time.html)

<comment><USER3> OP seems to be asking about whether it's possible, as a 3rd party, to transfer money from person A's account to person B's (with A's consent).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If in the US, this is possible and depending on the bank there is no fee. You will need: 'Account ownership' is it yours or someone else, 'Account type' personal/business & checking/savings, 'Account use' paying / transfers, 'Account number', and 'Routing number'.

<comment><USER4> The company [https://www.zellepay.com/](https://www.zellepay.com/) does just this, but I have never used it personally.</comment></comment>


Stratis – easy to use local storage management for Linux - <AUTHOR> https://stratis-storage.github.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also available as a COPR repo for Fedora 29: [https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/grover/stratis/](https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/grover/stratis/)</comment>


Does Windows defragment your SSD? (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheRealAndCompleteStoryDoesWindowsDefragmentYourSSD.aspx

<comment><USER2> How can the author be a "former professor"? Academic misconduct?

<comment><USER3> Lots of professors leave academia to pursue other careers. It frequently happens when they're denied tenure, which has nothing to do with misconduct (there are a lot of junior faculty competing for a small number of tenure slots). In a field like CS, professors can get much higher salaries working outside of academia, so many are tempted to leave.

<comment><USER2> Professor is a title for life. You don't lose the title just because you leave academia.</comment></comment></comment>


Microbial Fuel Cells: Potty of gold. - <AUTHOR> http://itotd.com/articles/510/microbial-fuel-cells/

<comment><USER2> > ...it takes almost as much energy to produce the hydrogen in the first place > as the hydrogen will later provide when used as fuel.

Sweet! I'm totally building a perpetual motion device based on electrolysis of water.

Edit: On a serious note, this article is crap science reporting. Hydrogen is not an energy source, it's an energy storage mechanism. There is no freely available hydrogen, we need to produce it using existing energy sources such as hydrocarbons or solar or wind power. Not only that, it's not even a _great_ storage mechanism. Somewhere around 50% of the energy put into the electrolysis process is wasted.</comment>


MBA students go for Google - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/27/news/companies/mba_survey.fortune/

<comment><USER2> Am I missing something? Who's dragging down the male and female expectations?

"Five years after graduation, [MBA grads] expect to be bringing in $180,031 annually vs. $169,849 the previous year. Male graduates expect to be raking in even more, $206,000 vs. women's expectations of $190,382 five years down the line."</comment>


Tweet-a-Program - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/wolframtap/ <comment><USER2> As a pico8 user myself, I love the the tweetcarts:

[https://twitter.com/hashtag/tweetcart?src=hashtag_click](https://twitter.com/hashtag/tweetcart?src=hashtag_click)

Some amazing stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> A similar idea for JS canvas 'art' \- [https://www.dwitter.net/](https://www.dwitter.net/)

</comment><comment><USER4> A thread from 2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8337805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8337805)

</comment><comment><USER5> I designed and built a language (and interpreter) for something just like this many years ago. You'd tweet a program at it and it would render and tweet back the output.

[https://github.com/mattbasta/graphicsbc](https://github.com/mattbasta/graphicsbc)

It was originally written in Python but ported to JavaScript for performance later on (though the bot was never ported)

</comment><comment><USER6> For anyone else wondering [https://twitter.com/pythontap](https://twitter.com/pythontap) was created in 2014, apparently for the same purpose, but there was no follow through.

As an impromptu meeting point, I suggest [https://twitter.com/hashtag/pythontap](https://twitter.com/hashtag/pythontap)

</comment><comment><USER7> You know, I used Wolfram Mathematia for many years in college and even a little beyond, and I just learned today that the language is called Wolfram and the enviroment is Mathmatica.

Huh.

<comment><USER8> That's a relatively recent change. When I first learned MMA around 1995, it was just Mathematica. It was still just Mathematica 10 years later. Then in the last decade they decided to give the language a name independent of Mathematica: I assume with the rollout of their other services/tools beyond the desktop client that use the same language.

<comment><USER7> Cool. I haven't followed the language in the last 5 years or so, so that makes me feel better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It could have just been "pick a computable algorithm that our framework's UI can render".

Until I don't see a meaningful program, which answers to a few use cases of a user, I wouldn't take that serious.

Edit: And the abuse of a framework is also something misleading, it is like saying "make an OS in a tweet" and then tweeting: "git clone linux.git && make all && kexec kernel"

<comment><USER10> This comment doesn't feel useful. Do you only want to see bytes I can pop in the bootsector?

<comment><USER9> Maybe you should define what a program is, which is something over an OS, below a plug-in to a framework and interfaces with a user in order to provide a value or interface.

Edit: If my comment is unuseful, how useful is a non standalone program which represents a graph of random values for no purpose at all?</comment></comment></comment>


Blockchain in Ticketing - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@andreazanda/blockchain-ticketing-a-disruptive-0-commission-ecosystem-e7cf45f38ec7 <comment><USER2> Any competitor around?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, mainly focusing on big concerts/ sport events. There is an analysis in the middle of the article</comment></comment>


The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Influenza <comment><USER2> I read this book a couple of years ago and thought it was very good. Not only does it cover the history of the 1918 flu pandemic, but also the development of modern, science-based medicine, which came into being during that time period.</comment>


Whois over SMS, for those late night product sessions at the bar. - <AUTHOR> http://whoisms.net

<comment><AUTHOR> The simplest script combining Twilio and Domai.nr, but it has already proven super useful to me. I love the idea of being able to install an app by emailing someone a vcard.</comment>


Recruiters are desperate and have no shame - <AUTHOR>

OMG, these people have no shame at all... Got a call from some unknown number:
Lady: Is this AdDuplex? Me: Yes L: Can you give me Paulius' (my employee) phone number? Me: What is this about? L: Well, he helped me with my university assignment some time ago and blah blah... Me: OK, I'll pass him the phone right now
Turned out this was a recruiter and she tried to offer my employee a job and, apparently, I was their connector. O_o
Seriously, WTF!? <comment><USER2> I used to work for a large investment bank and we would get random calls from people claiming to be from HR. They will ask for specific information that is obviously confidential.

If someone claims to known someone but asks you for their contact info, you should be suspicious. My response to these ppl: why dont u look him/her up on fb/linkedin.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hah..A certain recruiter send everyone in my team a fedex envelope with a recruitment letter hand signed (sent to the company mailing address). I got the darn thing twice (followed by usual Linkedin spam by the same recruiter).

</comment><comment><USER4> Now you know, always ask for name and confirm with the target person before passing the phone.

</comment><comment><USER5> Short term people shine in a field with low accountability, use and recommend only the honest recruiters.

<comment><USER6> Have a look at www.hiringbounty.com < time for a change to the recruitment model?</comment></comment>


Looking for Javascript work experience in Sydney - <AUTHOR>

HN'ers,
I am from Sydney, Australia and looking for work experience in Javascript.
What I can bring:
1. A lot of enthusiasm. 2. HTML, CSS. 3. Photoshop & other Adobe software (I am not an expert but I can design somewhat). 4. Previous work: http://design99.com.au
I am ready to invest 5 days a week into this learning, and I am not looking for a salary. Just looking for someone who can really mentor me. <comment><USER2> You should edit your subject line to make it clearer what you're asking for - and what you're offering. It's unusual enough that someone may take you up on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Subject changed, thanks for the input. I know it's not going to be easy to find work experience like this, but my hopes are up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You're probably better off asking around at local startup events.</comment>


The Passion of Parenting - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/opinion/blow-the-passion-of-parenting.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Single dad with three kids, with a set of twins no less. There's a place in heaven for him.</comment>


Release yourself to the church, to the state, to Apple Corporation. Or Flow. - <AUTHOR> http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/06/release-yourself-to-the-church-to-the-state-to-apple-corporation-or-flow/

<comment><USER2> "In communist Russia, the ego goals might be to work in the factory in service to the state. Unfortunately, this is a really shitty goal because it does not provide opportunity for happiness."

I stopped reading here - it is a stupid generalization and a misunderstanding of the Flow concept, of people in totalitarian regimes and of people in general.

People living in communist Russia were not as naive to have as a personal goal "service of the state", just as an employee in corporate America today doesn't necessarily think of "maximizing shareholder value" the whole day (or whatever is on the bullshit bingo du jour).

In fact, the idea of Csikszentmihalyi's flow is that resourceful people can create/find meaningful activities pretty much regardless of the external environment (above some threshold) which leads to a feeling of happiness.

From what I've heared and read, communist factories were often the hotbeds of creative "hacking": given the nonsensical and weakly enforced rules, people used whatever tools and material they had available to tinker and hack together household items for their own use.

<comment><AUTHOR> >I stopped reading here - it is a stupid generalization and a misunderstanding of the Flow concept

Got that bit from Mihaly himself, though it's possible I took it out of context. I don't have my copy of the book with me right now but when I get home I will give you some precise quotes. The idea is that intentions and behavior are definitely shaped by the state.

>In fact, the idea of Csikszentmihalyi's flow is that resourceful people can create/find meaningful activities pretty much regardless of the external environment (above some threshold) which leads to a feeling of happiness.

Yes, and if you'd bother to read the article, you'd see that it mentioned this.

<comment><USER2> "Got that bit from Mihaly himself, though it's possible I took it out of context."

I'm curious also about the context, I'd be ready to argue against M.Cs. himself, if he really claimed that, but it would be strange, because one of his main points is that better societal conditions, higher standard of living, etc. don't make people that much happier overall, in fact you start the article with this yourself.

"Yes, and if you'd bother to read the article, you'd see that it mentioned this."

Sorry - didn't mean to sound negative. Yes, you give the example of the guy addicted to programming, unable to move on to what he would want to do instead. Incidentally a similar effect might be at work in totalitarian regimes: people are addicted to the little games they have to play to get by and are not motivated to change the system. Something like a Stockholm syndrome on a larger scale. Just speculating here :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Zack, don't take this wrong way, because you seemed pretty chill when we met at the meetup a while back, but this post is not even remotely close to any sort of coherent thought. It's unsubstantiated speculation, bad writing, and worse yet it's linkbait. There's a line between informal flare and lunatic raving, and its drawn somewhere in the vicinity of writing in all caps. This isn't what people come to HN for, and I'm genuinely confused as to how it ended up at #1. Sorry.

<comment><USER4> I quite enjoyed it. Maybe it's not HN material but it was a pleasant read and spoke well to people who struggle to figure out what happiness is. Most people at HN would probably agree that enjoyment would come from creating something. I, being newer here, took longer to figure this out. I realize that for a long while I was taking the wrong cues from society on how to draw enjoyment and this article sums up a lot of what my struggle was with and drew the same conclusions.

<comment><USER5> I also found this article to very relevant to modern life here in America. As a young adult I am questioning things like this everyday and I am going to read flow now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The Apple marketing machine created a tribe, giving to the rise of superfans whose identity/self-image hinges on being one of the first to own a new product. I don't know if it's Apple you should really blame, though. You should blame our culture for allowing the media to manipulate us, brainwashing us, shaping the behavior to work jobs we hate so we can buy things so we can be happy. Media conditioning plays on our innate drives, associating positive possibilities (sex, social acceptance/popularity) with consumer products."

The media isn't some conspiratorial, Big Brother type industry out to make us all unhappy. The image the media provides is simply the one we most readily accept. The enemy is not the media, the enemy is us.

<comment><USER7> The enemy is always us.

But that's not the point, the point is that we are susceptible to manipulation, and the media is doing it actively to shape us all into self- destructive consumers.

<comment><USER6> Again, who is the media? The media is us. They're not a race of aliens hell bent on making humanity care about Kim Kardashian. They're people just like you and me, who have a financial incentive to expose the stories you and I want to hear/read.

The media doesn't shape us, we shape the media with our attention. CNN doesn't derail their entire programming for a week every time a cute little white girl gets abducted because they have some sort of agenda. They do it because if they don't MSNBC will and we'll all watch that channel instead.

That's why I don't watch cable news. I'm more of an Economist kind of guy which is also media, though diametrically opposed to much of the media in philosphy.

Which is yet another reason the original argument is silly. All viewpoints do exist in the media. The media collectively IS doing it's job of putting out a wide variety of information and letting us choose, with our attention, which we want to see. Sadly more people choose Fox News than the Economist. This isn't the media's fault, it's ours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thoroughly enjoyed the article and actually went to see if I could pick up a copy of Flow. However when I got to Amazon and saw that the Kindle edition (that I wanted) was $2 more than the print edition my experiences clashed with my ego and I went to a torrent site.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have read Flow twice in the last few years and while I considered it an important work that has shaped my perspective of personal psychology immensely I never understood Flow on a logical level. For me the 'idea' of flow made sense, but I wasn't able to follow the cause-and-effect that made it work.

In other words I accepted the correctness of Flow at a faith-based level rather than at an logic-based level.

In these two sentences, Flow now 'clicks' for me at that logical level: "So complete absorption leads to flow, that great feeling, because all your resources are dedicated to it: the task is precisely challenging enough to engage all of your resources, and nothing more. Since all of your resources are engaged in the task at hand, you no longer feel self-conscious because there's no "bit" available to mull over your ego or self-image."

This post is not perfect and does contain a bit of speculative wandering, as others have pointed out, but for finally making the circuits of my brain comprehend Flow at a deeper level.. Thank You!

Don't stop writing.

</comment><comment><USER10> Or, alternatively, folks just like the damn phone?

These discussions almost always begin with a (unsubstantiated) assumption that material things are bad. That wanting material wealth is bad. It's the same sort of argument used against hedonists. That satisfaction is only temporary (which I would agree with), and therefore the pursuit of temporary satisfaction is futile and eventually leaves you unfulfilled (which I don't agree with). After all, the true hedonists I've known in my life rank as some of the happiest folks I've met.

My point is simple. There are a lot of ways to be happy and a lot of ways to be miserable. Standing in line for an iPhone may be one way that folks enjoy life. They just really like the phone.

*note: I did not wait in line for an iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER11> Last Sunday, I took the ferry with two buddies, to Sandy Hook. It is a 30-40 minute trip from the Wall Street pier and then you're on the beach.

Lying in the sun, having drinks, and occasionally venturing into the cold Atlantic (I grew up spening my summers on beaches against he Indian Ocean), for an entire day, was incredibly rejuvenating.

I wasn't thinking about tomorrow or yesterday. Lying on the beach (don't forget sunscreen) has one of the most relaxing effects, and the best is it lasts for one or two days afterwards.

So my suggestion would be, at least now that we have hot weather, go to the beach every weekend and soak up the sun, have a beer/vodka or two, and chill.

</comment><comment><USER12> When I read the title for this, I was thinking that is was going to be talking about how iDevices free up time for getting bogged down in technical details - so you can create more, so you can get into the state of flow. But it wasn't about that. I'm rereading it again. It's good to get your ideas on paper.

</comment><comment><USER13> If nothing else, this is the most creative waste of three pages in an attempt to bash Apple that I've seen lately.

And it's very little else. The whole section on "flow" reads like an excuse- digression to distract from the real goal of the post.

<comment><USER5> It wasn't bashing Apple products. There is nothing wrong with them. It was bashing peoples obsession with material goods and attempting to draw meaning from them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I'm trying to avoid bashing anything, and instead trying to articulate my perspective on how things work.

Incidentally, I am writing this on a MacBook and have mostly great things to say about my experiences with Apple (except that they were too aggressive in trying to charge me $100+ for a new battery adapter when the cord of my old one started to wear).

<comment><USER5> I am also using a Macbook Pro and I have an iPhone. I am more than happy with both of them. There is just no way I would ever consider waiting in line for a day for the iPhone 4. My 3gs can last until I can get conveniently get one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> TL;DR version: The wrong self-expectations create disappointment and lead the weak to substance or self-help book abuse.

Edited: Or to buying an iPhone.</comment>


Facebook Dreams of Terabit Ethernet - <AUTHOR> http://www.hpcwire.com/blogs/Facebook-Dreams-of-Terabit-Ethernet-83504497.html

<comment><USER2> they only now realize this? haha</comment>


Ask HN: Have you ever pulled a plug on sideproject before release, why? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Many times. For one building stuff is fun, running it often is not and while you are building it you get a much better picture of what it will take to run something once it is finished (aka: think before you leap).

Other reasons are that I realized something had already been done but much better even though my initial research didn't turn it up and finally because I could not get something to work at a level high enough to be exposed for public consumption.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, several times. Sometimes opportunities feel like liabilities.</comment>


Facebook 'Fact Checker' Worked at Wuhan Biolab; While 'Debunking' Articles - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/SharylAttkisson/status/1250608005332307970?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1250608005332307970&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fhealth%2Fconflict-interest-facebook-fact-checker-worked-wuhan-biolab-ruled-out-virus-leak-while <comment><USER2> Be that as it may...

There's still no evidence whatsoever for the theory that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the BSL-4 in Wuhan. On the other hand, we know that there are people in the countryside in Yunnan province contracting SARS-like coronaviruses all the time.[1]

The chance that the pandemic originated the regular old way that every other pandemic originates - by jumping from an animal to a human in nature - is much higher than the chance that it escaped from a carefully controlled lab setting.

The idea of a lab escape is being promulgated for political reasons, not because there's any evidence for it.

1\. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/)</comment>


Ask HN: Any predictions on the impact of the 'Y38' bug (32bit EPOCH time issue)? - <AUTHOR> We're around half way point between Y2K and the Jan. 19 2038 Unix EPOCH 32bit issue. Any predictions on whether it will have any impact at all? <comment><USER2> Y38 is really a non-issue. It only involves using more than 32 bits in the epoch-counter. (Strictly speaking, merely moving from 32 bits to 33 bits would take us to 2106 or thereabouts.)

The easiest way to fix this for millions of years would be to switch from using a 32-bit counter to using a 64-bit counter.

You can be sure than entities requiring to use dates later than 2038 today (banks, insurance companies, etc, etc.) are doing this already, others who don't need to do that yet probably won't bother doing that until they actually need to.

Very little programming work is required. In many cases, it requires little more than recompiling after updating a few definitions.</comment>


German government answers questions about contracts to build monitoring software - <AUTHOR> http://annalist.noblogs.org/post/2012/10/03/german-police-monitors-skype-googlemail-and-facebook-chat/

<comment><USER2> Linkbait? Nothing really new here, they 'released' their trojan a while ago, it's been found 'in the wild', the CCC disassembled it. They found MAJOR problems within it, e.g. crypto was a joke. They actually released their own control tool for it [1](GERMAN). Then they found the 'update' capability which basically allowed a loyal servant (or an attacker) to upload and execute whatever they choose to do so.

What drives me mad is ALL OF THIS was paid by federal taxes (not so sure about the 'Billion Euros', but most likely a lot) and all they got was something close to NetBus/SubSeven/Back Orifice (last one developed in 1998!!!). Digitask (a complete joke) is still employed by us and sadly (or maybe luckily) there has been happening not much since then on that front. Politicians keep blaming somebody else and apparently NOBODY outside Digitask has EVER had the chance to analyze the original source code of it (which is in itself a complete hoax). Best of it all, apparently, this entire 'program' has so far not yielded a SINGLE success story.

[1] <http://ccc.de/de/updates/2011/staatstrojaner>

<comment><USER3> As noblogs.org is completely no-profit, and anonymous as much as possible, and does not contain ads, linkbait is not an option :)

Of course, this isn't anything new for _some audience_ , but I think that is an indipendent media blog, so the story can still fit its audience.

<comment><USER4> The post isn't mainly about the trojan but about what else the government admits doing. Yes, it's no secret that Skype, Facebook, Gmail are monitored, but who knew for sure and how much money is spent on that? If you take it for granted that surveillance can happen everywhere all the time: no news. If you're interested in the details: I'd say that wasn't public before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bad title. Should be "In Germany, police has to inform public how and when they monitor online communications."

(Apart from that this is not really news, I could have told you month ago if you asked me ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> bad title:

\- monitoring implies that they are doing it constantly, but they are only allowed to do it for evidence on suspicion

\- providers of telecommunication stuff (telephone, email, etc.) have to provide possibilites for the government to get IP addresses, places, logins and more

</comment><comment><USER7> Regarding Skype, it is important to notice that the German authorities apparently use trojans to intercept Skype conversations. I am surprised that Skype in spite of its HQ in Europe apparently still doesn't offer direct access for authorities.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure it offers direct access to NSA now that's owned by a US company, though. Also, to the police:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/skype- makes-c...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/skype-makes-chats- and-user-data-more-available-to-police/2012/07/25/gJQAobI39W_story.html)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tell us your best registered domain names that no one knows about - <AUTHOR> http://friendsdomains.com <comment><USER2> Neat - but I didn't expect it to tweet my entry. I really wish you had mentioned that. Out of nowhere it looks like I'm spamming my friends with some domain I own.

<comment><USER3> Appreciate it. I'll avoid the site. This is one reason I seldom log in with Twitter/Facebook.

I just don't trust apps, and this is a good reason not to. Even if they authors try to make it "Not Spammy" I don't trust their implementation, and the incentives are in the wrong place.

Thanks but no Thanks.

<comment><USER4> We really did try to make it not-spammy. You have an option to tweet when you list a domain name that you own. Or you can comment on other people's domains using twitter. Also we're expecting most of our traffic to come from twitter, so they will know exactly what's getting tweeted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was going to post a domain, but when it made me authorize with Twitter, I stopped.

I don't understand why you need identity for this project and why that identity is limited to Twitter. I think participation would increase if anonymous entries were allowed.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea really is to allow you sharing your stories with people you can have access to. I think the fun part of it is to see who owns what. And Twitter allows you to eventually get in touch with the person if you have any interest in the domain name or just want to randomly comment on it.

<comment><USER6> Ges, people don't need you to do that. They can just tweet 'anyone interested in buying hotdomain.com from me?' What you're doing here is trying to insert yourself as a domain marketing service, and while your intentions are surely decent your presentation comes off as crooked.

<comment><USER4> We are not a domain marketing service. We are a social game that lets people get a little more insight into their friends and colleagues from the internet community by seeing which domains they've registered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting read. The Load More button fails on Chrome/Mac: it shows the entries I've already read, can scroll down for more but then it just keeps repeating itself.

<comment><USER8> Same on iPad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Think of it like "texts from last night" for domain names. Our friends have great domain names like beerify.me, nerdharder.net, and unfriend.ly. We let you share the projects you were passionate about to get a domain for, but didn't end up doing anything with. This way you can at least get credit for being clever, and maybe even find a collaborator.

<comment><USER9> Congrats on getting on the front page of HN -Ray

<comment><USER4> Thanks Ray!!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Site completely fails to load without Javascript, and only does a half-assed job of loading with JS enabled. No graceful degradation at all.

<comment><USER11> I'm curious, do you browse exclusively with JS disabled (if so, why)?

Or did you just try it for testing purposes?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I browse the web without JS and whitelist sites I use frequently. I wouldn't have commented if your site loaded fine with JS turned on, but even allowing local JS it still renders really badly (Chrome/ OS X). From error messages it looks like your scripts really don't like it if they can't load resources from Facebook and Twitter.

And Twitter/Facebook (especially Facebook) are the _reason_ I browse the web without JS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes that's a product choice we made. All the UI is designed around javascript, all the nav is done through ajax.

<comment><USER10> That's not a product choice, that's a mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> posted a domain but i don't see it in the list? :(

edit: the timestamp on my entry on <http://friendsdomains.com/istanb4u> says '3 hours ago' but i just posted it...double sad face

<comment><USER13> same thing happened to me when I posted my second domain: <http://friendsdomains.com/bearwithclaws>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> JS giving me unresponsive script error in FF.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'll post mine here : publesh.com, priceround.com, 3lawyers.com, and today readso.com.

Edit: Also if you really do some digging you can find 5 letter domains that are great for branding.

</comment><comment><USER16> I enjoyed reading the entries. When I keep choosing "Load More" I eventually get nothing but repeats. I can scroll up and see the same entries.

</comment><comment><USER17> I use to have something up but have taken it down.. need to get it up with a tumble blog or something but womencantdrive.com

Not the best just the funniest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hilarious!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I used to own gotacrush.com, before I sold it. Bought it for a couple hundred. Not sure if that was a bargain.

</comment><comment><USER19> Chrome is the new IE. Cannot use this site on Firefox 13 and and IE (expected).

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't have a twitter account. Any other way to signup?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not for now unfortunately, we are still experimenting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Blatant link bait or am I missing something?</comment>


Can nuclear war be morally justified? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200804-can-nuclear-war-ever-be-morally-justified <comment><USER2> I would make a huge difference between "nuclear war" and using a nuclear weapon.

Nuclear war is often understood (at least I think) as a total annihilation of all parties through extensive use of nuclear weapons. This is the boogeyman of the nuclear dissuasion strategy and not meant to happen.

On the other hand, the use of nuclear weapons as they were used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not very different from the use of conventional weapons as they were used at the time: Whole cities were obliterated through carpet bombing with comparable damage. A nuclear bomb was 'just' more efficient.

In my opinion the moral dilemma was not the use of a nuclear weapon but rather the total destruction of a city, and that choice had been made before nuclear weapons were used (see Dresden, Tokyo). This might not have been considered at the beginning of the war, but with time and the toll on people and society the limits of what was previously acceptable or not start to fade. I think in 1945 the mindset of people was "do whatever it takes."

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see how nuclear war is fundamentally different from conventional war in this respect.

The real difference is between _counterforce targeting_ vs. _countervalue targeting_. Counterforce strike is strike against enemy forces. Countervalue strike is strike against enemy's cities and civilian population with nuclear weapons.</comment>


PSF Now Accepting Applications for Google Summer of Code Projects - <AUTHOR> http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2011/03/now-accepting-applications-for-google.html <comment><USER2> As a former Summer of Code Student, I advice every student to look into GSoC and try to apply. It's one the best 'competition' out there.</comment>


How I built a co-founder list of over 50 developers in a small period of time - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuteable.com/blog

<comment><USER2> Great blog post!</comment>


Why so few paid Android apps? Blame Google Checkout - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2009/12/25/android-apps-google/

<comment><USER2> This is a ridiculous article. It's the same as saying that the airline industry is having a the rough time it currently has because people have to provide their bank account details when they book a flight as opposed to adding the booking fee to the ISP bill. On the Android Market, of course, you only have to provide your card details the first time you purchase something. I can't possibly believe that having to provide some means of payment deters any serious customer (that is, someone who's prepared to pay).

I'm an Android fan. I'd like to see Android getting better so criticism is more than welcome but how about focusing on the real weaknesses (there are a lot of them) as opposed to FUD and utter nonsense?

<comment><USER3> > I can't possibly believe that having to provide some means of payment deters > any serious customer (that is, someone who's prepared to pay).

The phenomenon of users giving up somewhere after cilcking "buy" is called "cart abandonment". Rates of 50-70% are common.

<http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007156>

I think you are under the impression that consumers make irrevocable buying decisions after careful consideration, and then see the process through to the end. That isn't even true of major purchases like cars or homes, let alone lifestyle purchases like smartphone apps. _Anything_ can deter that sort of purchase, even the inconvenience of getting up to find the credit card.

The step of entering payment instrument information is one of the big pain points. A lot of people have already gone through that wih Amazon and iTunes, not so much for Google Checkout. There could be a plausible case that Google can leapfrog the competition by using ISP billing.

<comment><USER4> Purchasing an app on an Android phone is a distinctly different experience than purchasing your typical shopping cart product online. "Cart abandonment" is just not a significant factor in the Marketplace.

You enter your card ONCE, and from that moment forward, the process of buying an app is nearly identical with the iPhone (UI aside).</comment></comment></comment>


A Massive Chart of Every Superhero's Powers Ever - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/design/2013/06/superpowers/

<comment><USER2> My favorite:

Open-Window Man

Power: Open Any Window

<comment><USER3> In the weirder corners of superherodom there are people like Arm Fall Off Boy, who can detach his arms and use them as clubs. But my favorite among the weirder superheroes is Dogwelder, who fights crime by welding dead dogs to criminals. From what I've heard he was created by Steve Dillon when Garth Ennis dared him to invent a superhero name dumber than "Green Lantern".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The chart seems to vacillate from most important power to signature power depending upon the hero.

eg. Captain America is under "Super Strength" when his signature ability is "Discs Throwing Mastery" of his shield while Wolverine is under his signature ability "Claws" while his most important ability is "Super Healing".

Still a glorious chart.

<comment><USER5> There are all kinds of problems along these lines. It seems as if someone can be only listed once on the chart regardless of the sum of their abilities.

Batman would be listed on almost all of the Mastery category. He certainly would be on almost all the of Martial Arts category. As well as many of the other categories since Batman is often stated as one of the most dangerous characters in the DC Universe due to his abilities and drive despite no super powers.

Sandman doesn't turn into sand, he is sand. He should be under Shape-Shifting just as Clayface is.

Restructure Reality doesn't have the Beyonder.

There's probably more but that's what I saw on first glance. Something like this would be much better if it could be expanded but I would think the list would be incredibly huge.

Fun to look through regardless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I see Emma Frost twice (top-left turn to diamond, and just below the center at reading & influencing thoughts)... are there more than one? (I don't know a lot about comics)

Also, can't seem to find my boy Emplate.

edit: didnt mean to come off as critical. this chart is flippin cool.

<comment><USER5> I only know of the one, but as always happens, there have been versions of the character for story lines outside the normal chain of events in the major books. The character started out as a telepath and later gained the diamond form somehow. They could also add her under Sexual Temptation as that's the way she's almost always presented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is Deadpool on here? Is awareness of the 4th wall listed as a super power?

<comment><USER5> That's a hard one.

Deadpool's breaking of the 4th wall typically makes him to be considered insane by the other characters. But other Marvel characters have broken the 4th wall to their advantage so it stands to reason it could be listed as an ability of some sort.

I believe there are examples on the DC side as well. I've always felt that the Joker understood he was a comic book character so that it doesn't matter what he does as none of it is real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is "Box" the one from Logan's Run? Or is there a different one?

(Weapons-Based | Powered Prostheses | Physically Bonded Robot)

<comment><USER3> Box is a character from Alpha Flight: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_%28comics%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_%28comics%29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> tentacle arms has doctor octopus but not omega red

</comment><comment><USER10> Screw comics -- I want this guy to do my market research!!

<comment><USER5> Why?

The analysis you would get would amount to Microsoft only produces Windows, Apple only produces iPhones, Samsung only produces phones, Sony only produces the PS3, etc.

<comment><USER10> It's not like the chart is organized by whether the character belongs to Marvel or DC Comics - that's not what I meant.

Maybe I should have said "product research". Something like the detailed graphic linked would be useful to have as an overview of the competitive landscape, organized into a useful taxonomy.

<comment><USER5> That's not what I meant. It's not organized by Marvel or DC at all. What I was referring to was that, for the most part, the chart only focuses on one particular ability of each character regardless of whether a character has more than one ability.

In some cases the choices are quite strange. It would be as if someone said the iPhone is awesome solely because it has volume buttons.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Freewrite: Your distraction-free writing tool - <AUTHOR> https://getfreewrite.com/ <comment><USER2> I can't find the links right now, but is this the same typewriter that was ripped quite badly in the media some months ago (I believe it was on kickstarter, or similar)?</comment>