The High Cost of Treating Job-Seekers Like Cattle - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2012/05/17/the-high-cost-of-treating-job-seekers-like-cattle/

<comment><USER2> Pretty recently I saw a job listing that looked pretty interesting, exactly along the lines of what I do.

When I saw they used Taleo.net, I thought two or three times if I wanted to apply at all. I've put a lot of work into formatting my resume in a way that's distinctive and helps people understand the value I bring.

Taleo just wipes that all out.

I feel the same way about it that Superman feels about Kryptonite. Add to that the real possibility that Taleo won't work with my web browser or I might lose 25 minutes of work because my session timed out (oddly, session timeouts don't happen to the kind of apps built by 'hacker news' people) -- in fact, I've seen Taleo and other online applications screw up enough that I'm amazed they haven't been sued.

I bit the bullet and applied. They liked what they saw enough that I got a call from them the next day. (A pleasant of surprise, since I've sent great applications into Taleo before that just disappeared)

The opportunity wasn't what I was looking for, but I'm sure that there are good applicants out there that don't want to deal with BS in the application process who just won't apply when they are treated like cattle.

<comment><USER3> I agree, and don't apply to places with taleo's application front end. I'd rather deal with a headhunter than put myself through that application, because at least with a headhunter I have the option of human communication.

<comment><USER2> i know many i.t. people hate recruiters, but when you're talking with recruiters you know they're serious about filling the job

<comment><USER4> Or they're just throwing up their hands, being completely lacking in imagination and/or basic knowledge about the particular labor market they're trying to hire in.

Which is another reason to avoid companies that use recruiters altogether.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Interview with Bill Gates - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2001697/Microsofts-Bill-Gates-A-rare-remarkable-interview-worlds-second-richest-man.html

<comment><USER2> This really is a candid interview of Bill. A good one to understand Bill informally. I really respect the guy.</comment>


A Node.js inspired API in Common Lisp - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sshirokov/hinge <comment><USER2> Came here to post this as a "Show HN:", glad to see someone else found it interesting enough to share.

</comment><comment><USER3> just found this today. looks interesting.</comment>


Should obese passengers pay more to fly? - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20161020-should-obese-passengers-pay-more <comment><AUTHOR> The problem is, how are they going to make the distinction between really obese people and people that are tall and pack some weight due to being this tall. Let's say they ask your weight alone, that wouldn't be enough in a scenario like this, so weight and height. Who's going to provide the statistics that tells them what is obese when getting these numbers? What if people refuse to give it to them? Are they going to refuse them the flight? Too many questions, too much red tape I'm thinking.

<comment><USER2> Sell it as a discount for passengers who are willing to stand, _luggage_in_hand_, on the scales to be weighed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If airlines choose to charge additional for passengers occupying a single seat based upon weight than they should have to publish the weight a standard ticket is based upon and also have to issue immediate partial refunds, not as vouchers, to passengers under that weight. I would love to save some money on my 60lb 9 year old who takes less fuel to transport.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would go the other direction: let's pack thin people two by seats We all pay the same, but with the higher density of well packed thin people, the airlines would double their profit.</comment>


What Spain gets right on Healthcare - <AUTHOR> http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/what-spain-gets-right-on-healthcare <comment><USER2> Typically I am rather skeptical when a solution that works in other countries is proposed for US. Scale matters and something that works nicely, for example, in Norway (population of 5e6) may lead to very bad results when the population is 320e6. But Spain is sufficiently big with population of 46e6 so some extrapolations are possible.

Also, as far as I know to get access to the government-run healthcare in Spain one still needs an insurance. But its cost is just about 100USD/month per adult even for foreigners that live in Spain on private money and anybody with work is covered through taxes.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Solutions can't simply be copied and pasted across countries with very different population sizes, political systems, cultures etc. But I think the author takes this into account and isn't advocating for outright "do what they do", but is instead saying that the focus could go on things like restructuring insurance itself.

Naturally, with this issue now tangling with race, poverty and individual state laws it's an uphill battle.</comment></comment>


For National Geographic, an Exploration of Race (and Commercial Opportunity) - <AUTHOR> https://undark.org/article/national-geographic-race-issue-genetic-testing/ <comment><AUTHOR> "The tension here goes far beyond the pages of the magazine and its marketing pitches, with deeper questions looming about how the era of personal genomics in general will shape national conversations about race. Will all of this sequencing help people come to understand race as a social construct, not a biological fact? Or will it enable new forms of scientific racism, as researchers, corporations, and governments deploy new ways to taxonomize human beings?"</comment>


Joel on Software: Birdcage liners - <AUTHOR> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2018/01/12/birdcage-liners/ <comment><USER2> > As software developers and designers, we have a responsibility to the world > to think these things through carefully and design software that makes the > world better

I've seen this opinion, especially in the post-2016 world. I'm not sure I agree completely. I think it totally misses the core issue, which is that somebody was incentivized to be paid to do this work. If you're an engineer at Facebook who thinks the News Feed algorithm is tearing people apart, quitting is not going to solve the problem. Facebook has an incentive to make the algorithm the way it is. Your refusal just leads to your replacement with someone who will do the work (and get paid well for it).

That's not to say that you don't have a moral responsibility to stop doing work that makes the world worse. But "all software engineers in the world should refuse to work on bad things" is hopelessly naive. If you want Facebook to stop showing people crappy news, find a way to stop Facebook from getting rewarded from it. Write laws. Raise awareness. Write a competitor that does better. But refrains like these, I worry, are just hoping that everyone will commit to doing the right thing 100% of the time. There are better solutions.

<comment><USER3> I think Joel misinterprets what happened in the first place:

It turns out that using ML to optimize for immediate engagement has two unintended side-effects: 1) it produces junkier content, 2) it decreases long- term retention. For obvious reasons, building a model to optimize for the long-term engagement is way harder and takes way more time.

While in the long run new model is more profitable (due to increased retention life-long engagement goes up), it decreases immediate engagement metrics. When this happens, major accounts start to call in and ask why now they are getting less for their dollar, thus this preemptive explanation by Mr Zuckerberg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> tl; dr:

1\. Joel Spolsky, co-founder of stack-overflow, and well-known software commentator disavows twitter/facebook.

2\. Theorizes that twitter's low-character limit leads to misunderstanding, which leads to conflict, which leads to drama, which is addictive to our "rubber-necker" tendencies. Cites personal experience and hashtag wars in a comedic example.

3\. Furthers that facebook's machine-learning is (advertantly?) accomplishing the same effect, by selecting for things that elicit a strong response (mistaken as "engagement").

4\. Proposes that facebook uses "intermittent reinforcement" to ration out its good content slowly, forcing users to spend excess time on the site to get to the small amounts of interesting material they enjoy.

5\. Proposes that these naive attention-optimizing algorithms can lead to much "shriller" political battles. Raises a moral obligation to engineers to acknowledge the large-scale social consequences of simple algorithms.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps an essay arguing that Twitter flamewars, "...emerged from the fact that we've taken a medium, text, which is already bad at conveying emotion and sentiment and high-bandwidth nuance, and [by limiting message length] made it even worse, and the net result is a lot of outrage and indignation" is not the best one to summarize with a tl;dr?

<comment><USER4> I don't see any merit to that other than as a cute irony.

Joel criticizes twitter's forced summarization because it leads to oversimplification and resentment. I don't think he's arguing that all forms of summary lead to oversimplification and resentment.

Think of it as bullet-point abstract to journal article.

<comment><USER5> It is fair to say that the irony was the reason I commented, rather than downvoting and moving on, but the point stands that summarizing a brief, non- technical article distorts the author's views (as Spolsky said, you lose nuance when summarizing _your own_ thoughts - how could it be otherwise when your thoughts are summarized by a stranger?) and leads to pointless, flame- bait-y semantic argments of the kind he complained about (cf: this post , and the 3 above it, and (god forbid) those below it).

And by the by, any time you find yourself using words like "all", "always" or "never" in describing someone else's position is a good time to pause and reflect on whether you're honoring the Principle of Charity, as paraphrased in the HN comment guidelines thusly:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone > says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.

The good faith interpretation of my post was that I was complaining about your summary, not about summaries generally and certainly not about summaries in wildly different contexts like journal abstracts.

However, just to reiterate: please understand that I'm not attacking you, or saying that you mis-characterized anyone's position on purpose, or out of malice or incompetence. The whole point of the essay we're discussing is that conveying a complex and nuanced position through a short block of text is _hard_ , and that when someone tries, a distorted view of the author's position is the _expected outcome_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Like Joel, I was close to quitting Facebook, largely because of politics. And for similar reasons, the political posts were making me unhappy. So, what I do now is hide pretty much all personal feeds, and subscribe to groups. Most of my groups are musical (bands, symphony, jazz center), a few are art studios, theaters, or museums. This way, I still get to know about most (but not all) of the events going on, without the politics. It's made Facebook a much better place for me, though at this point, I'm really just using it as an events aggregator.

For a while, I tried the "Show me less like this" response. I slowly came to realize that this button doesn't do a damn thing (actually, it's worse). Facebook didn't stop showing me this kind of news, at all. At the time, I figured "show me less" was like those crosswalk buttons that don't have any actual influence on the timing of lights, but deter jaywalking by providing an illusion of control to a pedestrian. I realize now that it's probably worse than that - "show me less like this" is probably the Facebook equivalent of asking a spammer to take you off the email list. All it does is tell them they have a live one.

</comment><comment><USER2> >happens to limit messages to 140 characters and that happens to create, unintentionally, a subtlety-free indignation machine, which is addictive as heck, so this is the one that survives and thrives and becomes a huge new engine of polarization and anger.

I am glad to see someone definitely smarter than me find this opinion too. As far as I can tell the only value in twitter is network effects and the total removal of nuance.

</comment><comment><USER7> > misattributing the kick from the caffeine to something they just read online > and now MUST share IMMEDIATELY with EVERYONE

I think this is why I continue reading a few dozen webcomics every day. Some of them are good, but oh boy is that caffeine kicking in.

</comment><comment><USER8> This may indirectly explain why instagram is more popular now.. less crap to filter. Facebook is effectively your own Faux news channel, instagram is just your friends/family photos.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. He states "I gave up on the feeds because they were making me angry."

I found that the things that were making me angry were the reposts of garbage by friends and family who don't apparently have an original thought. If someone posts a cogent comment that I disagree with, I'll be happy to discuss. I don't see that very often. I just blocked viewing for the people that posted that kind of crap. I do miss the occasional interesting thought that they post but I also don't see all of the garbage.

Yes, this puts me in the bubble of blocking the things I don't agree with, but very little of the stuff I disagree with is anything beyond an inflammatory repost.

<comment><USER8> I think for some people it is hard to write a post or comment, which is why they repost. It may be hard due to the difficulty in organizing your thoughts, writing, or by taking ownership of what is said vs just sharing someone else's opinion. I think also that when people start to write down greater than 140 characters that they discover the topic is more nuanced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > By the time you get off the plane in Africa you're on the international > pariah list and your @replies are full of people accusing you of throwing > puppies out of moving cars for profit.

Ok, Joel obviously isn't talking about puppies. What is he actually referring to? Anti-immigration comments? Casual suggestions the wage gap is a myth?

The overt message he's giving is "I am scared I might say the wrong thing and get hurt." But the subtext is: "I think the people currently being removed from their jobs deserve to stay in them."

But he doesn't have the guts to say which people deserve their jobs.

The result of that is he signals support for all of them, from Eich to Weinstein.

I feel like we need to be more surgical than that in 2018. Not just throw our voices in with movements that are too big to be bound by any kind of principle.

<comment><USER11> >What is he actually referring to?

I'm guessing this:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one- stupid-t...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet- ruined-justine-saccos-life.html)</comment></comment>


CSS3 Unleashed - Tips, Tricks and Techniques - <AUTHOR> http://www.w3avenue.com/2009/06/22/css3-unleashed-tips-tricks-and-techniques/

<comment><USER2> Contrary to what the headline might suggest, this is just a list of links to interesting articles.</comment>


Swift 2: SIMD - <AUTHOR> http://www.russbishop.net/swift-2-simd <comment><USER2> The chart in the results section is interesting. I don't remember reading Raymond Chen's post on branch prediction before, so thanks for that:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2014/06/13/10533...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2014/06/13/10533875.aspx)

I especially liked Raymond's comment: "Compiler optimizations may have been carefully selected for expository purposes." Counterintuitive, and interesting that the Swift program demonstrates the effect as clearly as the C program.

</comment><comment><USER3> _" The logic in the inner loop is a silly way to count whether something is below the boundary but it matches what we have to do on the SIMD side"_

That's something I wouldn't have done; it may be the sole reason the non-SIMD code has a branch in the inner loop.

The SIMD code would still be faster, of course.

It also is a bit unfortunate to have types:

       int4 : vector of 4 integers
       Int32: 32-bit integer

<comment><USER4> Author here; the non-vector loop still has a branch with a less than check if you do it the straightforward way.

The whole benchmark is artificial, hence my warning.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I do not see that when I use what I would think to be the straightforward way to count (using integers), though:

      var count = Int()
      for var i in array
      {
        i += negBoundary
        let delta = (i > 0.0) ? 1 : 0
        count += delta
      }

(timed using mach_absolute_time(), on my system, that code also seems about twice as fast as the SIMD code)

I did not check whether that trigraph gets compiled to a branch (I tried, but I had trouble reading the disassembly that otool gave me; I'm not used to x86, and I found the code surprisingly long)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Swift is really starting to show it's superiority to ObjC. I think we'll see a very significant inflection point in iOS development when Swift is open sourced.

<comment><USER6> Since this all relates to simd.h it seems like it's taking advantage of C APIs which are equally available to Obj-C coders.

Swift seems great, but I wouldn't expect any huge technical advantages over Obj-C until Apple stops caring about Obj-C (which I suspect huge chunks of Cocoa are written in for starters).

<comment><USER7> People are already blogging mostly in Swift rather than Objective C, which was created in the mid 1980's.

[http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html](http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html)

Apple is doing a good job of updating ObjC but Swift already has the momentum. Apple has made it clear that they want Swift:

[http://ericasadun.com/2015/04/14/swift-in-case-you-didnt- thi...](http://ericasadun.com/2015/04/14/swift-in-case-you-didnt-think-that- swift-was-the-future/)

You can choose to ignore their subtle messages (e.g. use Autolayout, Size Classes) but at some point in the not too distant future, you'll likely regret not starting with Swift earlier.

<comment><USER6> Oh, no argument there -- and I wouldn't call the messages subtle, either. That said, Apple would be insane to orphan its Obj-C codebase (but it may start deprecating...)

I was just pointing out that the original linked article isn't really about Swift, just an Apple framework that can be used with Swift.

<comment><USER4> Author here; that's not correct. Swift 2 introduced compiler support for the SIMD intrinsics that make this possible. It's listed directly as one of the new features of Swift 2.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the correction.

So -- going back to the original point -- in fact this was Swift _catching up_ with Obj-C, so it does pertain to Swift but is not evidence of Swift getting ahead of Obj-C.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember opening a bug report for this quite a few months back. No reply (nor marked as dupe), but glad to see it getting implemented.</comment>


Why Apple should buy Nintendo - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattsilverman.com/2013/02/6-reasons-apple-should-buy-nintendo.html

<comment><USER2> Terrible idea. Nowhere does this explain how Apple would profit from such an acquisition.

Apple doesn't know anything about games. They would have to rely on Nintendo to figure that out, but Nintendo is losing lots of money right now so Nintendo doesn't have the answers.

Looking at pure quantitative analysis, Nintendo in a very good quarter might make $4 billion in revenue (mind you that this is not all profits and they are currently not making this). Apple makes over $40 billion in revenue right now. Seems like a lot of risk for both purchase price and company absorption costs for so little impact on Apple's bottom line.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think Apple wants to get into the content biz — and owning a game company would do that. Unlike amazon they're pretty smart about not getting into content. Of course if Disney were to buy Nintendo that would be a brilliant idea...</comment>


Scientists find fossilised cosmic dust in white cliffs of Dover - <AUTHOR> http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_7-9-2017-10-59-59 <comment><USER2> That's pretty cool, but I confess I was hoping it was the secret to Eric Johnson's incredible tone.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUECcou-34A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUECcou-34A)</comment>


Women speak less when they're outnumbered - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120918121257.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29 <comment><USER2> Original Source:

<http://news.byu.edu/archive12-sep-women.aspx>

[https://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPa...](https://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8675859&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0003055412000329)

<http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003055412000329>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> TechCrunch "summarization" of the article [http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/18/study-want-more-female- lead...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/18/study-want-more-female-leadership- use-consensus-not-majority-rule/) "Study: Want More Female Leadership? Use Consensus, Not Majority Rule"</comment>


Google Fiber: All in on a Gig - <AUTHOR> https://fiber.google.com/blog/2019/all-in-on-a-gig/ <comment><USER2> "All in" as long as they don't micro-trench in an area with freeze/thaw cycles. Yes, I'm still salty they pulled out of Louisville KY.

At least they left $3MM to pave the roads they tore up. Get real points on that one.

</comment><comment><USER3> "All in" apparently means paring down the service options on a semi-abandoned, poorly-planned venture that baited and switched neighborhoods all over the country.

It's astonishing how deep Google's PR bullshit can be sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems like they realized Stadia isn't gonna work unless they build up the infrastructure they laid down and then forgot about.</comment>


FoundationDB community highlights, two weeks in - <AUTHOR> https://www.foundationdb.org/blog/foundationdb-community-highlights-two-weeks-in/ <comment><USER2> To add to the list in TFA, Rust bindings are here:

[https://github.com/bluejekyll/foundationdb- rs](https://github.com/bluejekyll/foundationdb-rs)

<comment><USER3> You beat me to it!

I think we're getting close to a 0.2 release. We have enough working for the class scheduling tutorial, so seems like a good next point release soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious how they plan to do continuous integration. The Apple hardware- only clause of the macOS SDK license agreement really crimps the options for CI, especially for open source projects with limited budget. Travis is a godsend, but there are startup latency and capacity issues there even in the paid tier. Apple has made major contributions to open source, as evidenced by FoundationDB here, LLVM, WebKit, and other projects. But they no longer make servers, and the fallback — Mac mini — is on life support, which puts projects and service providers who need to treat macOS as a first-class target in a real bind. Even something limited like the IE Edge and Visual Studio images Microsoft provides would be a huge boost.

<comment><AUTHOR> The only license you need to accept to use this software is Apache 2, so I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that there's an Apple hardware restriction.

<comment><USER4> The question is not about where FoundationDB can run in general. Sorry if that was unclear.

The question is about (public?) continuous integration testing for changes to FDB against macOS specifically, eg for pull-requests (for example, to allow contributors to make changes targeting other platforms without needing to own a mac for local tests).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, sorry, that's a good question.

The good news is that FDB has a fairly opaque platform abstraction, and deterministic simulation tests for everything above it, so the vast majority of continuous testing in terms of CPU cycles can be run on Linux.

The only thing that _really_ needs to run on a Mac are tests for changes to the build or packaging system, or to the MacOS implementation of the platform layer. My sense is those changes are pretty rare.

I don't know whether the FDB team has an official recommendation for MacOS CI. I'd recommend posting a question on the forums: [http://forums.foundationdb.org](http://forums.foundationdb.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd like to see the ANSI SQL layer open-sourced, and some benchmarks.

<comment><USER6> Last time I looked, the SQL layer was _really_ slow. I know they invested a ton of effort to improving it, but I don't think they ever really cracked the problem and I think you're likely better off with CockroachDB, as mentioned in another reply.

<comment><USER7> I've built a toy SQL database before that actually did a good job with query planning and used existing highly optimized storage engines (lucene or rocksdb).

It was slow AF, because the actual query execution has a ton of method dispatches, etc to e.g. check index conditions or assemble rows and it never quite gets fully JIT'd by the JVM.

Every reasonable SQL engine i'm aware of compiles queries to lower-level code. A cursory inspection of their code indicates they don't do this, so its not surprising its slow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's even been ported and packaged for FreeBSD: [https://www.freshports.org/databases/foundationdb/](https://www.freshports.org/databases/foundationdb/)

<comment><USER9> I've also created a package, as well as module support, for FoundationDB on NixOS:

      https://hydra.nixos.org/job/nixpkgs/trunk/foundationdb51.x86_64-linux

Hopefully it will be in a good place by the time NixOS 18.09 is out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hoping someone makes a Swift interface, given this is coming from Apple, one would hope there would be one.

<comment><USER11> It's a race between a Swift native client and Swift-Python interop :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am very curious on what Apple uses as the server OS in its datacenters. Do they use OSX or do they use Linux / FreeBSD?

<comment><USER13> A company of Apple size likely uses multiple OS', I wouldn't be surprised if they even run Windows servers somewhere.

Judging from their "DevOps" position requirements, their stack is similar to many others out there Chef, Ansible, Docker, Kubernetes, Java, Python (with accent on Python so maybe Salt Stack), Ruby, Go, Git, C++.

Given their extensive Hadoop infrastructure, likely CentOS or Debian flavor. Some job positions list "RHEL or derivative a plus".

<comment><USER14> > Ansible,... Python (with accent on Python so maybe Salt Stack)

I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to use ansible _and_ salt stack (both automation tolls written in python).

They strike me more as alternatives than being complimentary.

<comment><USER15> Apple is a big company. Different teams/divisions within the company might plausibly use both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Probably a silly question, but does someone running it in production already? I mean not Apple, but someone from community.

<comment><USER17> As the article states, Snowflake Data [1] and Wavefront [2] have been using it. SkuVault [3] is another company.

[https://www.snowflake.net/how-foundationdb-powers- snowflake-...](https://www.snowflake.net/how-foundationdb-powers-snowflake- metadata-forward/)

[https://www.wavefront.com/wavefront-foundationdb-open- source...](https://www.wavefront.com/wavefront-foundationdb-open-source- project/)

[https://abdullin.com/sku-vault/foundationdb- layers/](https://abdullin.com/sku-vault/foundationdb-layers/)

There are probably several other companies from the original releases that haven't posted anything publicly, but it'll be awhile before we get full deployments from the latest open-source versions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there any apache Spark foundationDB integration, like drivers?

<comment><USER19> You might be interested in TiDB's TiSpark which is all built on top of TiKV (equivalent to FoundationDB).

[https://github.com/pingcap/tispark](https://github.com/pingcap/tispark)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another highlight: FoundationDB is in nixpkgs unstable!

</comment><comment><USER21> Could somebody clarify the license? I was excited this was Open Source, but then some people say you are only allowed to run it on MacOS? How can that be?

Also, how does FoundationDB compare (in general, and in performance) to:

\- CockroachDB (competitor) [https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/2-dot-0-perf- strides/](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/2-dot-0-perf-strides/)

\- Redis (competitor) [https://redis.io/topics/benchmarks](https://redis.io/topics/benchmarks)

\- GUN (ours) [https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/100000-ops-sec-in- IE6-on-2...](https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/100000-ops-sec-in-IE6-on-2GB- Atom-CPU)

\- Fauna (competitor) [https://fauna.com/enterprise#Scalability](https://fauna.com/enterprise#Scalability)

\- VoltDB (competitor) [https://www.voltdb.com/blog/2017/10/02/comparing-fast- data-p...](https://www.voltdb.com/blog/2017/10/02/comparing-fast-data- performance-a-comparison-of-voltdb-and-cassandra-benchmarks/)

\- RocksDB (competitor) [https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki/performance- benchma...](https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki/performance-benchmarks)

Is the the big boom in FoundationDB just that it is "now Open Source", or that Apple vetted it (why didn't they keep it closed source?), or is there something distinctly unique about FoundationDB that it surpasses a bunch of other tried and true systems?

<comment><USER22> > Could somebody clarify the license? I was excited this was Open Source, but > then some people say you are only allowed to run it on MacOS? How can that > be?

there's nothing to clarify. there are people spewing nutty weirdness, and then there's [https://github.com/apple/foundationdb/blob/master/LICENSE](https://github.com/apple/foundationdb/blob/master/LICENSE)

if that somehow isn't convincing, they distribute linux binaries.

<comment><USER21> Thank you! This is legit, glad to see it is Apache2.

EDIT: Why on earth are people downvoting this comment, is Apache2 hated by most HNers?? It is one of the best licenses out there.

EDIT 2: RE: @sigstoat comment:

I read through the whole article and even checked out and read through JosephG's (ShareJS author) FDB repo before commenting, and had even read the other comments (which is where I saw the MacOS thing). Just to clear the air (thanks @sigstoat for suggesting an answer).

I followed FDB back when it was proprietary too, which is part of my curiosity if proprietary -> OSS receives a bigger reaction than companies like CockroachDB who have always been OSS. It has taken CockroachDB years to get to 13K stars, compare to FDB's 7K+ in just two weeks, I'm really interested in how/why behind these mechanics.

<comment><USER22> > Why on earth are people downvoting this comment

all of your comments appear to be getting downvotes, probably because they look suspiciously as though you haven't even spent 45 seconds on the website, despite being in the database space yourself.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Design Doc: PvP and the Wilds - <AUTHOR> https://blog.orbusvr.com/design-doc-pvp-and-the-wilds/ <comment><AUTHOR> I would have loved to give this a title that was less esoteric but HN mods tend to alter post titles to match the original so I decided to leave it.

Essentially it's a post about the social psychology and subtle mechanics of MMORPGs by the dev on an upcoming VR only title. Well worth a read.</comment>


Ask HN: Books on overcoming shyness - <AUTHOR>

Hey hackers,
tl;dr: do you know of some good "instruction manuals" to overcome shyness so I can network with hackers and find some friends?
I recently moved to Silicon Valley and I'd really like to find some friends. The problem is that I'm terribly shy and have always had a really hard time meeting people and making new friends, unless I'm forced to be with the same group of people for long periods of time. I'm working from home now so I can't meet new people at my workplace. I don't drink. I'm pretty quiet in general. I really need to fix this about myself because it's going to hold me back forever.
Do you know of books written for the nerdier crowd that give step-by-step guides on how to overcome my shyness? I want to know specifics on how to small talk, what to talk about when meeting new people, etc. I know the basics of what you're supposed to do and what you're supposed to talk about generally, but that doesn't help me because I tend to tense up and shut down in those situations. I need specific suggestions, like an instruction manual or a script, that I could memorize and follow over and over until I get to be more comfortable. Like the hacker's guide to being social.
I know that I won't become outgoing just by reading a book. But I do need some sort of help (and I think therapy is a little overkill). I'm already looking for hacker events I could attend in the area to get out of the house. For example, I'll be at the Hackers & Founders meetup in San Jose next Thursday. It would be nice to figure out how to talk to strangers by then, because the thought of it gives me sweaty palms already.
Thanks for your help!
EDIT: I've read Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people" and most of it I already knew or heard about. I also felt it was a bit outdated. Is there maybe something like that specifically for hackers? <comment><USER2> How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

When I read this book, the timing was perfect and I credit it with refocusing my mind when it comes to relationships. Critics usually say that it's all just common sense, and I would agree -- however, these critics miss the fact that common sense is rarely common practice.

I recall my first few interactions after reading the first half of the book, and the stuff works, plain and simple. I wanted to kick myself for being so oblivious.

It sounds like you are already aware of the importance of relationships, so I would say, give it a shot and don't get discouraged. With practice, it will become easier (almost second nature when you see how positive the results are). You can also find some great summaries of this book online. Due to an overwhelmingly positive experience with this book, I later searched for further reading on the topic and ended up with "Ethics for the New Millennium" by the Dalai Lama -- this book helped to bring into focus the underlying "truth" of "How to Win Friends & Influence People" and is a nice follow up... good luck!

[http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/win- friends.htm...](http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/win-friends.html) (Summary)

[http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence- People/dp/06...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence- People/dp/0671723650)

[http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-New-Millennium-Dalai- Lama/dp/15...](http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-New-Millennium-Dalai- Lama/dp/1573220256)

<comment><USER3> This is the only book I was going to recommend.

great summary.

<comment><USER4> Me too, came here to just to say this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1) Cranberry juice is an acceptable drink at a bar.

2) You must have some activity that people do in groups. Do you bike? Do you write code? Do you like to discuss books you've read?

3) If you can teach yourself to write tail-recursive code, an unnatural activity that gives you an end-result you want, you can teach yourself to be gregarious, an unnatural activity that gives you an end-result you want. Just practice! Start with events you don't care about, and keep practicing on more and more important events.

<comment><USER6> Ah, the venerable cranberry. Bounce berries. Alone, so bitter. Almost inedible. But with a bit of work.... When I was young we'd buy huge glass bottles of cranberry juice. Let it ferment. Good stuff. Frozen cranberry juice (alcoholic or not) makes for a nice snack, too.

Drinking cranberry juice at a bar has a nice side benefit: Whenever someone asks what you're drinking, you can play the vampire card. "The blood of my enemies." If you're exceedingly pale like myself, and can deliver a line, it can make skin crawl. (OK, so maybe that's not the idea... or the best approach.)

The advice is good, though - just because you don't or can't drink alcohol, does not mean you can't hang out in (most) bars. There are many regular things used to mix drinks they'll gladly sell you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > I don't drink.

I hope not to offend you, but, speaking as someone who used to be very shy, I'd suggest you give it another shot (unless you're very attached to not drinking). You say you tense up and shut down in social situation -- this goes away when you have a few drinks in you. That's mostly why people drink!

You don't have to make drinking the cornerstone of your life -- just look at alcohol as training wheels for socializing. There are lots of tech meetups that happens in bars -- give it a shot!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, thanks. I know, I probably wouldn't have this problem if I drank socially, but I really cannot stand the taste of alcohol. I used to drink here and there years ago, but the only drinks I liked were usually labelled "girls' drinks" and I was constantly made fun of. That probably didn't help my shyness either. But I appreciate your suggestion.

<comment><USER8> Saying you "cannot stand the taste of alcohol" is like saying you "cannot stand the smell of air."

Well, alcohol is flavourless on its own. Also, it will kill you if you drink it raw, so don't try that.

Just like air, context is everything. The air in a sewer is much worse than the air in a field, because of the odours that are mixed into it. Now, preference for drinks is 100% subjective, unlike preference for air, but the idea is the same. If you only tried beer, perhaps you'd prefer wine. Or vice- versa.

You just have to find your own drinks you like.

> The only drinks I liked were usually labelled "girls' drinks" and I was > constantly made fun of.

That's shameful (that you were made fun of). What, specifically, were the drinks you were made fun of for liking?

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess by "taste of alcohol" I mean the taste of beer, wine, champagne, tequila, vodka, and anything else non-mixed I can't think of right now. I pretty much tried them all in my pursuit to find something I can drink without feeling tortured. In this quest I found that I was ok with cocktails (Long Island Ice Tea was my drink of choice for a while), but those you can only get when you're out at a bar. What about parties where the drinks come straight out of bottles from the grocery store? This is where I discovered Smirnoff Ice, which to me just doesn't have that gross alcohol taste. But of course because of that it's not generally considered a "manly" drink, so my peers always pressured me to drink "non-girly" drinks instead by making fun of me. After a while I just got sick of it and decided not to drink at all anymore, because it just wasn't worth the constant teasing.

<comment><USER8> You tell your drinking pals that someone on the Internet told you that there is _no shame_ in drinking Smirnoff Ice.

Anyway, now it seems like I'm putting peer-pressure on you to start drinking again. That's even less cool than someone who laughs at a person's taste in drinks. I'll try to keep that in check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm also shy. I don't know of any instruction manuals, but I'll offer a tip. When you go to the next hacker meetup, sit down next to someone and _immediately_ introduce yourself. Maybe that's the end of the conversation, maybe it's just the beginning, but forcing yourself to verbalize with someone at the start of the event will make it easier from then on. It's also likely that the person you sit next to is just as shy as you and me.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great tip, thanks! I will try it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This might sound odd, but try reading _The Game_ by Neil Strauss: [http://www.amazon.com/Game-Penetrating-Secret-Society- Artist...](http://www.amazon.com/Game-Penetrating-Secret-Society- Artists/dp/0060554738?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957) . It's superficially about how to pick up women, but a lot of it is actually about how to understand social life, what incentives operate on people, and what kinds of things most "normal" (for lack of a better word) people like. Don't use "negs," don't get too wrapped up in his questionable tales of sexual bravado, but do consider what he writes about how to understand the world.

<comment><USER11> I just suggested the first exercise from there as something the OP might try out. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "How to Win Friends & Influence People"

[http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence- People/dp/06...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence- People/dp/0671723650?tag=duckduckgo-d-20)

I don't know if it's as "step-by-step" as you're looking for, but it's a classic and still quite popular -- I think it'll at least be a good starting point for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I've actually read that one about a year ago and it's on my bookshelf. I think it was pretty good, but I felt it was a little outdated and the suggestions were all things I already knew.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I strongly believe that the best path to changing yourself is experience (and screwing up), and that no book can help you be social, at least not at the speed you're looking for.

Get out there and try! You know that sinking feeling you get whenever you do something awkward? That's a feedback mechanism: don't do things that cause that. Eventually you'll find what works for you and feel comfortable introducing yourself to groups. Even then you'll occasionally have an awkward moment: that's ok! We're all nerds in our own ways, and we've all been there. Just keep moving past it and don't lose your stride (the exact same advice one would give to a dancer or musician for when they mess up).

Hackers and Founders is a great event for this: it's a really great bunch of people. Hunt down Jonathan, the organizer[1] when you get there and explain that you're new to the area and would love to chat with people interested in X, Y, or Z. He'll get you started :). It's much easier to connect with people who share similar interests. Even if you suck at it initially, practice will make you better.

Holding a drink that you can take a sip of is also a great way to avoid awkwardness. As lsb said, cranberry juice (or even water/soda) works just as well as booze.

[1] On the right: [http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/2/6/5/4/600_168...](http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/2/6/5/4/600_16869812.jpeg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the encouraging words and tips. I'll track down Jonathan on Thursday and see what happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Books are nothing compared to interfacing with people and mixing with the public to become comfortable in the setting of strangers.

You know what worked for me? Working at the front of a fast and busy cafe. Previously shy and introverted, now confident and outgoing with anyone I meet.

</comment><comment><USER15> Stop reading books and talk to people.

Make it a goal to speak to two people you've never interacted with before every day. At work, say one intelligent or funny thing at every meeting you attend.

Make small talk. Be nice to people. Don't "network". Compliment the person who serves you at a reataurant. Say hi to the mailman. There is no magic here, and no book has some secret that will somehow allow you to socialize without getting up and talking to people.

<comment><USER16> I don't think you understand the problem. I suffer from the same social problems that the OP does and if it were as simple as just saying something intelligent or funny, we would do it. But it's not that simple; you can't think of _anything_ to say.

Besides, have you ever heard someone try to be funny? It's not funny.

<comment><USER15> I felt just like the OP did when I was a child. I was teased and picked on pretty mercilessly growing up, and then we moved to a completely new and different area (ie NYC to a town of 3,000).

In the new town, I wasn't picked on, but was kind of ignored. I had a thick NYC accent and people had no idea what I was saying. I felt insecure and was always afraid to speak up... I'm terrible with remembering names, so that made it worse. Then in 7th grade, I literally woke up one morning and said to myself "This needs to stop." So I made it a point to engage with people, do things that were funny (of course as a 7th grader, "funny" is questionable in most cases!)

The whole point is not to actually be funny, it's to get some confidence. You "practice" on low-risk people like cashiers. if you get the girl at the gas station to smile, you brightened someone's day. If you sound like an idiot, you try again another time.

Later in high school, I took a drama elective where I learned to be comfortable speaking in a public setting. In college, I ended up in a retail commissioned sales job where I had to speak to a few hundred people a day.

I guess my theory is that you have to act. Don't deliberate in your head. Talk. The worst thing that can happen is you get rejected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As has already been stated, "How to win friends and influence people" is probably your best bet. However you'd be better off finding a way to practice your skills.

A couple things to realize: many people are lonely (like you), and like to discuss their interests. In high school I was lucky enough to discover how easy it is to break through this with a few events where no one knew more than a few people.

The habit I adopted in college, and wish would be easier to do in suburbia was going to dining halls alone, (and this does work elsewhere ... but have a book handy in case no one is interested) look for anyone who's eating alone and doesn't seem to be working or already engrossed in a book, and ask if they'd like company.

I've done it successfully the two times I've found myself with the time to do it after college, and numerous times during college. The same approach works in many large group social scenes.

Good luck. Oh, if you really want to improve things rapidly, ask if there is anyone on hackers news who is interested in helping you break through this for a free drink or meal. It might be easier if you know one or two people prior to the meetup, in order to help with introductions.

</comment><comment><USER18> Be genuinely interested in people. You can learn tricks to appear social, but it will be fake. If you find yourself in places where you find it hard to talk to people, you're probably not that interested in talking to them anyway. It's ok if you don't.

Seek out places and people which actually interest and excite you. You will know what to say (like you just did here).

"If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough. In the meantime, you're better off going out into the big, wide world, having some adventures and refilling your well. Trying to create when you don't feel like it is like making conversation for the sake of making conversation. It's not really connecting, it's just droning on like an old, drunken barfly."

[http://changethis.com/manifesto/6.HowToBeCreative/pdf/6.HowT...](http://changethis.com/manifesto/6.HowToBeCreative/pdf/6.HowToBeCreative.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> Show up to the improv lessons offered by BATS Improv (www.improv.org). They teach a bunch of classes in San Francisco and occasionally in Palo Alto as well. I did this and the lessons are awesome. You are constantly forced to say something - _anything_ \- on the spot.

Give up the idea of taking it step-by-step, being comfortable, or having instructions to follow. If you want to learn to talk to strangers, _just do it_. Say something or ask a question to the barista every time you order coffee. Plan on awkward moments aplenty. This can't be avoided; don't even try.

Also give up the idea that you need to fix yourself. You already have plenty to offer, as indeed _everyone_ does. As I was told once, "your attention is enough". Just pay attention to people and don't mentally check out when situations get confusing, ambiguous, or awkward.

Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times. :)

</comment><comment><USER20> > But I do need some sort of help (and I think therapy is a little overkill).

One on one therapy may be overkill, but don't rule out a coach or a group. Seriously - if this is something that you find you can't overcome from practice and a book, but want to, it makes sense to seek professional help in some form. For example, Los Altos has "The Shyness Clinic": <http://www.shyness.com/shyness-clinic.html>. I just found it in simple searching around - I'm not endorsing them in particular.

I'm a nerd too - and there's a ton of things that I couldn't just read and practice away. In fact, our intelligence often gets in the way of our progress - overthinking can do more harm than good on many social issues that plague us nerds. It's hard to stop overthinking by studying!

I've got a ton of friends who do group dance lessons to meet people and get out of the house.

General tips:

* Smile! It'll put others at ease and it'll put you at ease too.

* Leave when you're done - don't stay just because you feel bad you haven't spent n minutes there.

* Silence is OK - if someone talks to you, it's way better to take an extra 5 seconds (which will feel like an eternity!) and then start your reply than feeling like you need to respond the split second the other person finishes. It didn't feel natural at first, but when I listen to other people it happens all the time.

* Everyone loves to talk about themselves. Tell the person you're new to the area and ask them what their favorite drive, hike, day trip, restaurant, or hot new start up is. Ask them why. Ask them anything related. They'll think you're swell _and_ you didn't have to have any deep searching to answer their questions!

What brought you out to the Bay Area anyway? And what are your interests?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Matt! I did find the Shyness Clinic as well before I posted here, but the frugal person in me thought that maybe I can get over this without spending a ton of money. But in the end if nothing else helps I'll definitely consider it.

As to answer your questions, I moved here because my wife got a job and we've been wanting to move away from LA for a while. I've been really interested in how to run a startup recently and I'm currently trying my hands on one as well. So I'm looking to meet people who are technical and entrepreneurial, as that's how I would describe myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not exactly a book, but have you looked at <http://rejectiontherapy.com/> ?

I think it's better than a book. You don't fix your social issues by reading, you fix them by _doing_.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sure, there are workbooks you can buy if you don't have access to a psychologist or therapy group. The only catch is that there is nobody to push you to go through the exercises and you won't have the benefit of external feedback from a counselor or a peer group. You'll have to force yourself to do the exercises properly and it will take longer than if you had professional help.

Anyway, here's a few workbooks I found with minimal effort. Go over the reviews to decide which to try:

[http://www.amazon.com/Shyness-Social-Anxiety-Workbook- Step-/...](http://www.amazon.com/Shyness-Social-Anxiety-Workbook- Step-/dp/1572245530/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Social-Anxiety-Workbook- Cogni...](http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Social-Anxiety-Workbook-Cognitive- Behavioral/dp/0195336690/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Shyness-Social-Anxiety-Workbook- Techni...](http://www.amazon.com/Shyness-Social-Anxiety-Workbook- Techniques/dp/B002FL5I68/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Social-Anxiety-Shyness- Beha...](http://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Social-Anxiety-Shyness- Behavioral/dp/0465005454/)

I also posted this awhile ago: <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=2614140>

That is an example of a therapy group program.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll look into all of that. At this point I think I can do it myself because I'm pretty self-disciplined and once I set my mind to something I follow through. However if for some reason books aren't enough I will of course consider going to some sort of therapy group. Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The books suggested here have been pretty good, but books will only help you so much. Consider this suggestion: Talk to 5 new people every day. They can be anyone, on an elevator, a person walking by, a person in a queue just start a conversation about anything. You will be surprised by how easy it is to start a conversation. If you are petrified to start a conversation, rehearse the conversation beforehand. Let us know, how it goes.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sorry to be so blunt, but for someone who doesn't have any social skills, it's odd you would feel that Dale Carnegie's book is outdated. It doesn't seem like you are qualified to know what is outdated or not, given your lack of expertise.

I suggest you follow that book because it concentrates on the fundamentals. It's very important you internalize this.

When you go to the Hackers and Founders meetup, every 1 hr, walk up to someone and say "Hi, my name is gs7. So what brings you here?" It is awkward and embarrassing, but work through it. You'll get over it. At least it's friendly and people won't think you're a jerk. And then you can engage people on things that are interesting to both of you.

If you do this exactly 100 times over the course of several months, you'll find that it's not a problem anymore. All it takes is practice. You will fail miserably the first 40 times. The next 30 times, you'll do crappy, but you'll be doing better. The next 20 times, you'll be doing okay. And the last 10 times, you'll be good at it.

<comment><AUTHOR> By labeling his book outdated I actually meant the examples and situations he describes. The lessons learned and advice he gives are definitely timeless.

After reading everyone's suggestions here I realized that I'm not as socially inept as I thought. I do have the fundamentals down. I guess it's the lack of practice and not knowing how to keep a conversation going when you're not naturally interested in the other person that I'm having a difficult time with.

But I appreciate your suggestion on how to approach people at the Hackers & Founders meeting. I think this is what I need, tips on how to initiate a conversation while sounding natural. And LOTS of practice. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Try to think more about the person/people you are interacting with instead of yourself.

</comment><comment><USER25> I am in very much the same situation. Something thing I've found that really helps me is just reading about shy behavior. I find that identifying an issue is the first step to solving, and reading descriptions of shy behavior often help me better and more precisely identify what to fix. One book I found to be quite helpful in this regard was "The Introvert Advantage" by Marti Laney.

</comment><comment><USER26> Well my very simple solution was to look up shy people even with a different mindset. In fact, we share something. So far, it has been great and it works. It works really well. I used to have no friends at all. I started by meeting one and now we are meeting almost everyday. Now I have 4 friends and we are socializing with other peers.

Get to know people like you :)

</comment><comment><USER27> Look into Albert Ellis' ideas and derivative CBT treatments. Here is the story about Ellis' efforts to overcome his own social anxiety [http://approachanxiety.com/2008/05/i-gave-myself-a- brilliant...](http://approachanxiety.com/2008/05/i-gave-myself-a-brilliant- homework-assignment/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll check it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Excellent advice and book recommendations in this thread. Though I must admit that upon reading the title, I could only think of this:

[http://walkthrough.starmen.net/earthbound/image/screens/36/t...](http://walkthrough.starmen.net/earthbound/image/screens/36/tendachief.png)

</comment><comment><USER19> One book I like is Bolles' "What color is your parachute?" It is about job- searching, but the message of the book is: find things you like; be cheerful, polite, grateful always; remember that most people are usually happy to help; nobody owes you anything, and you don't owe anyone anything.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't know if books are the best way to go about this.

I overcame my shyness with improvisational acting. Consider taking a class. Social encounters become a lot less intimating once you realize you can get away with almost anything as long as you have a smile on your face.

</comment><comment><USER30> \- "How to Win Friends and Influence People" as other mentioned here

\- join a Toastmaster's club. practice your speaking and presentation skills.

\- meetup.com is a great way to meet people with common interests in your local area

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions. I'm seriously considering joining a toastmaster's club, I'm just worried that having to prepare speeches every week would be a ton of work that I don't have much time for. But if that's what it takes to get me over this I'll do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What helped me was creating good experiences in social settings. I am 200% more relaxed and social when I am a host, so you may try hosting friends and with a little wine play games (i.e, dictionary, etc.). Best wishes

</comment><comment><USER32> <http://www.succeedsocially.com/>

This guy has written a lot about this topic. I find his material very readable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent, thanks. I'll look into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I recommend Richard Feynman books.

also see this:<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2501560>

</comment><comment><USER34> Join a group that interests you on meetup.com. I did this a couple of years ago and it helped me out tremendously.

</comment><comment><USER35> Two words - salsa dancing

</comment><comment><USER36> I have found that doing a class in theatrical improv to be a fantastic exercise for removing social inhibition and gaining skills in group dynamics.</comment>


Selling SaaS?  The perfect book... - <AUTHOR> http://www.fernandopizarro.com/blueprints <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone - I'm the author of "Blueprints for a SaaS Sales Organization." Happy to take any questions on this lovely Sunday afternoon. The point of the book is that selling SaaS is different from selling anything else, and how you set up your teams needs to fit the model. The link above will take you to a free excerpt!!</comment>


Docker, Mesos, Marathon, and the End of Pets - <AUTHOR> http://blog.factual.com/docker-mesos-marathon-and-the-end-of-pets <comment><USER2> I think the main problem with all of these systems is that are just so damn complex.

Docker, its great if you have no state. But then if you have no state shit is easy. Mapping images to highspeed storage securely and reliably is genuinely hard. (unless you use NFSv4 and kerberos)

Mesos is just over kill for everything. How many people actually need shared image programs bigger than a 64 core machine with 512gigs of ram? (and now good are you at juggling NUMA or NUMA like interfaces)

I can't help thinking that what people would really like is just a nice easy to use distributed CPU scheduler. Fleet basically, just without the theology that comes with it.

Seriously, mainframes look super sexy right now. Easy resource management, highly scalable real UNIX. (no need to spin up/down, just spawn a new process)

<comment><USER3> Docker is great also to hide complexity during implementation. Discourse.org is doing a great work "enveloping" their complex rails app in containers to easy the install process. And is not stateless.

<comment><USER4> By shipping only in a Docker container you will limit the audience for your app. That is the reason we ship GitLab as Omnibus packages (deb/rpm).

<comment><USER5> While deb/rpm packages are better than a monolithic container, having used one of your rpms, I'd say they're only just barely better.

<comment><USER4> What didn't you like about the Omnibus rpms?

<comment><USER6> Omnibus packages are a horrible idea. They are security issues waiting to happen.

A great example is the Chef server rpm. It is a 500mb mini distribution in one package. It has copies of perl, python, Ruby, and Erlang in it. If any of these has a security vulnerability, I have to wait on the maintainer to release a new version, and hope it included the security fixes.

They also tend to include things like python header files for no reason. You wouldn't compile against an Omnibus package, but they are there anyway. Examples of this are Sumologic's and Datadog's agents.

<comment><USER4> We are aware that we'll have to patch any security issues and have done so reliably. I agree it is not ideal and we'll always be slower than the distribution packages. On the other hand the installation is much faster to perform (2 minutes instead of 10 pages of copy pasting) and we're able to ship with very secure settings for the integration points (sockets, etc.). But we recognize that some people will prefer native packages and are sponsoring work to make native Debian packages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The real problem is going from tutorial to something you would use in production. Throw in logging, security and service discovery and you can have a few engineers hacking away for months.

So I want to plug a project I've been contributing to: [https://github.com/CiscoCloud/microservices- infrastructure](https://github.com/CiscoCloud/microservices-infrastructure)

We're trying to make it super easy to deploy these tools. For example every time you launch a docker container, it will register with consul and be added to haproxy. The nice thing about using Mesos is we can support data like workloads Cassandra, HDFS, and Kafka on the same cluster your run Docker images on.

We use terraform to deploy to multiple clouds so you don't get locked in to something like cloudformation.

<comment><USER8> This is basically why Kubernetes exists: for all the plumbing, discovery, etc required on top of bare containers.

It still requires work to go from zero to production-quality stack, of course.

<comment><USER7> We like Kubernetes (and are looking to add it to our project), but our goal is to integrate building blocks that allows us to run many different types of workloads. Think of our project more like an Ubuntu for distributed systems.

Kubernetes may eventually spread out beyond Docker, but for today we need to support things like Kafka and Spark.

As others have noted, we've had things like CloudFoundry, OpenShift and Heroku, and these all-in-one frameworks tend not to extend outside their original domain.

<comment><USER9> You should look at Cloud Foundry again, particularly with the introduction of Lattice. It used to be tied to apps, now it basically thinks about tasks and processes in a completely generic way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Circle CI post [http://blog.circleci.com/its-the- future/](http://blog.circleci.com/its-the-future/) reads as a parody on this one.

<comment><USER10> Wow. That was hilarious! So much truth in that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is anyone running Marathon in production? _Real_ production. The kind where any downtime means lost money.

I see a lot of intro-level tutorials, but almost nothing on the more advanced side.

My (completely casual) experience with Marathon is pretty bad, with the main process crashing quite regularly even under no load, so I'm wondering if people who write about these systems have actually used them for non-trivial tasks. And for something as critical as Marathon, which is supposed to handle... well... all my services, I'd rather be sure that the system is rock solid.

(This is specifically about Marathon. Mesos itself has proven more reliable)

<comment><USER12> I've been running Marathon in production (real production) to power more than 100 applications for the past six months. I chose it because it seemed like the most stable thing at the time; however, quickly found it was not production ready. While many of the original issues I encountered in 0.7.x were resolved with the 0.8.x release, 0.8.x brought new issues such as stuck deployments, etc. Additionally, I have found the upgrade path to be obtrusive and frankly scary. I am actively moving away from Marathon because of these issues.

Marathon does not make using Docker or building microservices simple. There are many important pieces that Marathon does not provide. Sure your operations team can tie in Mesos-DNS / Bamboo / Consul / whatever else, but it's going to take time, requires a specialized team, and leaves you feeling nervous about what happens if everything crashes in the middle of the night. Even when tying in these third party tools, it is likely you will have to make significant code updates to utilize features such as service-discovery / SRV records. You will inevitably end up with a hobbled-together system that needs serious support from your operations team.

I am fairly frustrated as a whole with Mesosphere, and expected more from a company who raised so much capital.

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't expect Marathon to do service discovery for you, as I believe that is better left to something like Mesos-dns/Consul which marathon can supervise for you, and docker integration has been fairly simple.

In any case I found my marathon was not without issues, like failover causing every application to restart (I think this was fixed in 0.8.2), or the fact that marathon tends to use 2x as much RAM as Zookeeper or Mesos-Master (I run the 3 on the same node).

Have you seen the aurora apache project? It solves the same problems as marathon, and its creators claim it was built to handle stability. I originally chose marathon as JSON configuration over REST was easier to wrap my head around, but was this something you tried and how did it work for you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Factual have done what lots of people do, which is invent the first 20% of a PaaS.

PaaSes are awesome. They also, once you go past the basics, require enormous engineering effort. And that's the problem: engineering effort spent on curating your own homegrown PaaS is engineering effort not available for creating user value.

5 years ago rolling your own was a source of competitive advantage. Today you can get an installable PaaS (Cloud Foundry or OpenShift) off the shelf and run it. In 2 years Docker, Mesos and CoreOS will probably all have PaaSes of their own.

Interesting times.

<comment><USER14> I know two companies running running openshift on Mesos. The reason modern Paas aren't enough, is the factat some scale you're not just running web services. But also rather complex data pipelines involving distributed data systems like kafka, spark, cassandra, etc .. and a simple paas has issues handling those workloads. That's where Mesos shines. As for the user value, I consider having an uptime system, providing reliable and intelligent service based on data processing, by efficiently using your resources is has an important business value.

<comment><USER9> I find Mesos the most interesting because it's a kind of mirror image of Lattice[1], particularly Diego[2][2][3]. Both of them push intelligence out to the edges, but in different ways.

Diego pushes the scheduling problem out to the executors themselves through an auction mechanism. Mesos delegates it back to the requestors, as I understand it.

The way it was described to me by Onsi Fakhouri is that Diego is "demand- driven", and Mesos is "supply-driven". Diego grew from the lessons learnt on Cloud Foundry v2, so it favours fast placement of requests over perfect fit. But in the fact of the network fallacies, it probably turns out to be a good approach anyhow.

By way of warning, it has been a few months since I read the relevant papers and my memory is fuzzy.

Edit: and it looks as though the auction mechanism was moved away from. Hm.

[1] [http://lattice.cf/](http://lattice.cf/)

[2] [https://github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/diego-design- notes](https://github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/diego-design-notes)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OkmVTFhfLY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OkmVTFhfLY) (an excellent overview)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSxI9eonBVs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSxI9eonBVs) (an excellent update)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> To be honest, I still have yet to see one of these systems that beats simply using Bash. They're all trying to make a scripting problem into a configuration problem. That's sometimes a reasonable idea, when what you're doing is common enough that only a few things here and there need to diverge from the defaults. But _every_ image I've ever had to create contained far more edge cases than default cases, and half of those edge cases are things nobody thought of and therefore their system doesn't handle it. Rather than trying to fight with one of these systems to get them to do something I could easily do with a few Bash commands, I find it easier to just script the setup in Bash to begin with.

Obviously that doesn't work for Windows systems.

<comment><USER16> In that case you might want to look at ansible: it does exactly what such a system should (logs in with SSH and runs some scripts) but does in a smart way (eg. you can configure certain boxes to be web servers and have it run a script on all web server boxes). It does have some weird config format but it does also allow you to run scripts.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Quite curious about if whether we had more robust shell languages, like Inferno's es, which uses functional expressions, though it's some 20+ years old by now, if kept alive by some enthusiasts... would much of the rationale behind the more basic configuration management and provisioning go away?

The chief rationale for embarking on the CM route is idempotence. Though it seems to me having a basic, lexer-only language simply for chain loading commands to exec() without much of the state and environment baggage behind full command shells could work as an alternative. execline works like this: [http://skarnet.org/software/execline/](http://skarnet.org/software/execline/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is poetic:

      "Kubernetes has a Clintonesque inevitability to it"

:-P</comment>


Zhuangzi: bilingual edition - <AUTHOR> http://ctext.org/zhuangzi <comment><USER2> There's a certain poetic parsimony that gets lost in translation. The English translations always feel clunky, but I suppose spoken English is so far apart from classical, written Chinese.

Zhuangzhi begins so mythically and always makes me feel wondrously small.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for note taking? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> A square-ruled notebook, and a few pens of different colors. There is something really satisfying about writing in a physical notebook that note- taking apps have failed to capture for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have some kind of indexing system for it? How do you search through it?

<comment><USER2> It depends on what kind of notes I'm taking, but I'll often put page numbers on the pages when I first get a notebook. I'll devote the first page or two to a table of contents and use sticky notes to keep track of where I am in the book. I don't have a good system for searching between notebooks, but I keep the notebooks restricted to a topic. For example, I presently keep three notebooks: the first is my to-do list for my personal life (including my shopping list, etc.), the second is something similar for work (focusing on the current project I am working on), and the third is tied to a particular side project I am working on. I keep them in my backpack and have them marked so I can easily tell which is which.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My brain.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good luck with that

</comment></comment><comment> jim-jim-jim A pen.</comment>


Show HN: Find plant combinations for your yard - <AUTHOR> http://www.plantwithbloom.com/combination.html <comment><USER2> Wow, this scratches a very itchy itch.

I've been so reluctant to do any outdoor gardening for fear of planting the wrong kind of plant in the wrong place.

This answers all the questions that made me scared and the database has a lot of specifiers that will help a lot.

Thanks for showing this.</comment>


Ask HN: Rewrite outsourced code or refactor it? - <AUTHOR>

Alright, so I'm in a unique mess. Joined a startup, found out that their entire codebase was built by an outsourcing shop (who didn't care much for code quality) and am wondering how to proceed. The startup is about 1 year old. Their codebase is in PHP. There's no in-house team at the moment but we're working on that.
The app isn't super complex (yet) because they were waiting to add most of the complexity once they could get a proper dev team. The code is a mess though, here are some things:
- Inline SQL statements
- Inline PHP inside of on-page javascript
- Pages aren't even W3C validated (or even close!)
- No tests at all
- No data modeling whatsoever
- Tons of PHP related inconsistencies in the data int 0 is false - obviously.
- And much more!
Our choices are:
- Continue in PHP and try to refactor
- Switch to python with Django or something and do a full rewrite.
Underlying db is MySQL. Currently, I'm the only developer but we're looking for more. However, if we do decide to rewrite I'd look for the python variety - otherwise I'd go down the PHP road. (I'm comfortable in both, worked with both in production)
HN Gurus, what are your opinions on refactoring vs. rewriting such a code base ? Everywhere I look people say "Do not rewrite, you'll kill yourself" but almost every time the condition of the code doesn't seem quite like this.. at-least not in the way it's described. <comment><USER2> If the app isn't super complex yet, just sever the relationship with the outsourcing shop and rewrite it.

The "Do not rewrite, you'll kill yourself" advice only applies when the code has history. Legacy code has actual users that expect it to work a certain way, and has been tweaked over the years to cover cases that you aren't thinking about when you first start a project.

Your code isn't that. Your code is a prototype that you should feel fine about throwing away.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. Yeah we're severing the outsourcing relationship from this week onwards. The plan is to hire an in house dev team and I just want to make the right decision about the way forward.

I wouldn't say that the code is a prototype but it sure is an MVP. There are tons of issues with it and one thing about refactoring that scares me is that we may not necessarily hit all the buggy corners of it and may end up with some corrupt data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Rewrite it, I have been in situations like this before and I wonder why I did not rewrite it.</comment>


Why all the fuss with DSLs? Isn't it just "metalinguistic abstraction" as described in the SICP?  - <AUTHOR> http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-25.html#%_chap_4 The current "fashions" around DSLs I find a little annoying, it seems like the idea has been around and in use for some time, as this shows. Is there something new and profound? It seems that DSLs taken out of the context of lisp are much much less powerful.<p>Its a good technique, "language oriented programming" it may be marketed as in a parallel universe.
<comment><USER2> "Classic: a book which people praise and don't read."

<http://www.twainquotes.com/Classic.html>

In other words: Yes, in a world where every coder had an MIT degree, nobody would be especially impressed by DSLs.

Or maybe that wouldn't be enough. I've met several people who had SICP for their first-year programming class and did not like it at all.

<comment><USER3> Real man don't eat quiche.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aren't embedded languages (languages built "on lisp") superior to DSL's? Embedded languages can integrate with each other seamlessly if need be... and they can be manipulated in terms of the parent language.

<comment><USER5> Having access to the full power of the parent language can be a problem. This point is well articulated here: <http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/leastPower.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why does the fact it appears in SICP make it any less interesting? Also, how often do LISPers use Macros for actual metalinguistic abstraction, rather than as a tool for code generation?</comment>


Along For The Ride - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2013/08/27/along-for-the-ride

<comment><USER2> Agree with the problem, disagree with the solution.

Cut the animation times in half, and you're wasting only half the time. It will be too fast for some people, too slow for others.

Instead, avoid _blocking_ animations. Some animations are great as long as they don't prevent you from doing the next action.

Don't treat the user like an idiot. If they tap again before animation finishes, skip to end of animation and perform the action for that tap.

With iOS 6 folders, for example, I often tap a second time just a moment before the animation finishes, and my tap is ignored. It gets very frustrating when you're trying to be fast. Imagine a keyboard that would block your keypresses if you exceed 60 WPM.

<comment><USER3> The thing to remember is that a lot of times the animation is masking the actual load time of an app. The app is often represented as a screenshot until it completely unarchives itself into memory.

You reminded me of a feature I've been dying for though, semi-related: the ability to control tap-speed, similar to double-click speed on the desktop. I'd love to be able bring up the text selection menu more quickly.

Edit: To your main point about caching taps -- I feel like while in some case that would be straightforward to implement, it could get pretty hairy for most average users.

<comment><USER4> On an iPhone 5 the lag of an application being resumed is almost non-existent. Under iOS7 I too am constantly having to re-touch just because I hit the end of the animation rather than the app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Animations are hardly the worst thing about iOS7. After playing with betas for several weeks on an iPad 2, I, for one, have developed a cordial dislike for our iOS7 overlord. I've been trying to figure out why it feels so bad, and this is my pet theory:

In "Thinking, Fast and Slow", Daniel Kahneman talks of the two modes of thinking as System 1 (automatic, fast, involuntary cognitive processes like face/pattern recognition) and System 2 (conscious, attention-requiring processes like multiplication).

"System 1 runs automatically and System 2 is normally in a comfortable low- effort mode, in which only a fraction of its capacity is engaged. System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System 2: impressions, intuitions, intentions and feelings. If endorsed by System 2, impressions and intuitions turn into beliefs, and impulses turn into voluntary actions. When all goes smoothly, which is most of the time, System 2 adopts the suggestions of System 1 with little or no modification...

When System 1 runs into difficulty, it calls on System 2 to support more detailed and specific processing..."

A good principle of usability is to keep both systems humming in the manner described above, reducing "page faults" into System 2 to the minimum.

The realism and skeuomorphism of old Apple design (reaching godawfully kitschy heights in leather-stitching and reel-to-reel tape) with the 3-D buttons and shadows had this in their favour: they made it very easy for System 1 to parse the landscape. Navigating an Apple UI felt smooth and intuitive; never effortful.

But now, struggling through the anorexic fog of iOS7, I guess they've thrown the baby of usability out with the bathwater of realism. System 1 is often forced to fault into System 2 to make sense of patches of stark, undifferentiated space, a mess of thin fonts, single-pixel-wide, poor-contrast UI elements. The more attention you have to divert into basic navigation, the less you have to focus on the content. Most system apps (Notes, Mail, Calendar...) suffer from these issues. Plus the eye-wateringly terrible icons and saturated colors (seriously, who came up with the Safari and Game Center icons?) and poor readability of app names. Change the background image from the default of Dark Nebula to one with sand and the readability gets much worse. I waited to see if it was one of those things which you get used to, but no luck.

Not everything's bad: the layering effects, blur, control and notification panels sliding in from top and bottom are all great improvements from iOS6. But surely it's possible to create a UI which is navigable by System 1, which ruffles the minimum of aesthetic feathers with re kitschy realism? IMHO, Mountain Lion has done exactly that: Gradients, shadows and colors have acquired a quiet, subtle elegance which are a far cry from the days of lickable buttons.

</comment><comment><USER6> Another major thing they have to fix that I hope to God someone at Apple is thinking about are the 4 and 5 finger gestures in the OS on iPad. The 4-finger squeeze to get back to the springboard is a disaster since it just slows down the animation and you can see the horrible aliasing of the icons. The 4-finger swipe up no longer makes any sense either: it perviously slid up the screen to reveal the task tray, which is a logical direct manipulation, and now it jumps to the new task view. There is no longer a sense that your fingers are manipulating anything, it's a meaningless gesture slash macro holdover from iOS 6 that needs to be re-thought.

On my iPad mini there is also a noticable lag when you slide up the control panel and slide down the notification panel, particularly on the first swipe. And swiping down on the springboard to reveal search drops a few frames too so it's a jerky jump at the end of the animation. And god damn, I wish they would just make it so you can swipe the lock screen in either direction to unlock, the number of times I've swiped the wrong way (since there is no longer a button to slide) is crazy and pointless.

I guess I should file some radars or look these up :)

</comment><comment><USER7> >They've fixed most major complaints since the first beta, but there's a big one still left: The Springboard animations take far too long.

>It's pretty cool the first time we see all of the icons fly in.

>But do we really need to sit through that every time we unlock the phone or leave an app?

>These animations in iOS 7 feel like its designers are showing off their cool new abilities, and we're just along for the ride.

>After sitting through all of these, day after day, it's no longer impressive — it just feels needlessly, artificially slow.

(Summary from [http://textteaser.com/](http://textteaser.com/))

<comment><USER8> Wow, that really is the entire meat of the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a UI/UX pet peeve of mine. For things that people do _a lot_ in your software, I think that extended animations are counter productive, because users quickly get used to and irritated by them, since they get in the way of what they're trying to do.

Personally, I like to only use animations for things that don't happen very often at all, they help make those particular experiences more memorable.

<comment><USER10> Or, when you can use those animations to cover up a time-consuming but not resource heavy operation (waiting for network response, gathering entropy, loading from disk). But even then, the animation should try to explain why you're waiting, not just make you think "the programmer is just making me wait while they show off their stupid animation - again…" (A trick which Microsoft got _so_ wrong with their flying-folders and barber-pole progress bar animations…)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I completely agree, and I'd also like to add my frustration at the "space switching" animations in OS X. Spaces seem like a really great idea/productivity-paradigm, and I'd love to take advantage of them, were it not for the irritating ~1/2 second delay in switching. I'm so used to Cmd-Tab being instantaneous that this grates beyond acceptability.

While I'm here, I might as well call out my primary OS X UX bugbear (in the hopes that some wise soul has found a solution for it). If I hold Cmd, press Tab a couple of times, keep Cmd held down, and mouseover the icon box, the active icon "jumps" to the icon under the pointer. This can lead to the counter-intuitive experience of "Hold Cmd, press Tab, realise you want to stay on the same program, press shift-tab, release Cmd" NOT being a no-op. Equally, I'll sometimes start moving the mouse to the right position on the screen before, or while, pressing Cmd-Tab - if the mouse path intersects the icon box, I end up on the wrong program. Anyone know how to disable this?

<comment><USER12> > realise you want to stay on the same program

You can hit escape regardless of where you are in the switcher

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have the feeling this won't change. The fullscreen and space switch animation in OS X is still the same slow speed as ever and people have been complaining ever since the feature landed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was worried about this in the first seed, but they've gotten much faster -- no longer bothers me and I quite like the transitions. I've been living with iOS 7 on my phone for a while now, and have less critical feelings than Marco. Granted it's subjective, but overall it's been solid for me and whenever I interact with an iOS 6 device, the older OS feels ancient.

</comment><comment><USER14> There's a package that can accelerate all the iOS animations if you've jailbroken your phone. It's quite a nicer experience and for me another reminder of why it's important to have a libre phone in the future.

<comment><USER4> Hopefully there's an iOS7 Jailbreak to fix the icons and animations.

<comment><USER14> Reports claim it's buggy as anything, so I'm sure they'll have an easy time of finding an exploit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> iPhone 4 user here. I am repeatedly finding that the lag to view the multitasking leads to me double tapping the home button for a second time resulting in the assistive touch button appearing on the screen. Annoying.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here it is if people are looking for it: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlNmq3vrGwY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlNmq3vrGwY)

</comment><comment><USER17> I think the Animation timing has to do with the Apps being Ready. I.e While it is taking 0.5Sec of Animation switching, in that 0.5Sec it is trying to get the Apps Ready as if it was fully loaded. So user assume it really is Multi Task, When as a matter of fact it is resumed from a Pause State.

While this may not have worked, ( iPhone 5 still has a lag after the animation ), may be iPhone 5S could manage to do without the lag.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is the same thing that bugged me when using Windows instead of MacOS.

On MacOS menus appeared instantly and faded out when you've made a selection.

On Windows the menus faded in and disappeared instantly.

Didn't take me long to find the option to turn it off, but it was quite annoying.

<comment><USER19> I think some people find the issue exists on both OSes. In fact The Verge did a report on this and found that going to classic mode on Windows removes all the unnecessary animations the best (paraphrased).

<comment><USER20> Also works on Win8 and Metro apps. Disabling animations removes the fly-in and makes the system feel snappier. I doubt it makes much difference, but it's nice to have the option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd cut it by 30% at the very least. The animation time has been my largest complaint since beta 1

</comment><comment><USER22> Personally my biggest peeve with iOS 7 is its status bar overlapping the main screen/view instead of pushing it down 20px.

It has created a lot of work for me to put things back where they belong.</comment>