Show HN: My weekend project on the Mac App Store - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/speaker/id443829929?mt=12&ls=1

<comment><AUTHOR> I made this after a night of writing music with perl scripts using the "say" command in OSX's terminal. The review process was surprisingly short, I submitted on Sunday!

Design is by my girlfriend, Monica Kogler (<http://campsh.com/monica#>) with some of the robots by my sister, Emi Sugihara (<http://baggubag.com/>).

<comment><USER2> Any thoughts / recommendations on pushing small projects to app store?

I have a few I was debating pushing but I don't know if the time/learning cost is worth it for fun projects vs a download link on a webpage

<comment><USER3> I tried to push up one of my apps. It passes all validation and stuff and then uploads to Apple. Then Apple sends me an email telling me it was signed wrong. I follow instructions, repeat.

They're OK at support, giving me a lot of stuff to do building screenshots and junk, but it's slowed me down quite a bit. I'd still like to get my app up, though. It's very useful to me. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> What's the app? Got a link?

<comment><USER3> Well, no. I should try to actually get it up there, though. My current userbase likes it, but it'd be fun to see what the store would do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The screenshot is nice, and I'm sure the program will make for some girlfriend-teasing fun. But that's not why I'm buying it. You, sir, are getting my $2.99 specifically for the Alvin Lucier quote.

That, and the more I think about it, the more I'm looking forward to testing out some of Steve Reich's vocal phases with this thing. But yes, Lucier is a hero.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks mister, thanks, thanks. If you do any reich-esque recordings I'd LOVE to hear them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope the private speech synth API on the iOS gets made public. I'm using it in my thesis project, but it would be great for apps.

Learn how to use it here: [http://arstechnica.com/apple/guides/2010/02/iphone- voiceserv...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/guides/2010/02/iphone- voiceservices-looking-under-the-hood.ars)

</comment><comment><USER6> Fun little program, dude! Unfortunately I think supporting proprietary software is immoral and impedes the democratising force of computer technology.

Naaaw just kidding bro- fun creative project from a guy I know has great intentions.

But also I'll sabotage you until it's open sourced. Yes that's a threat.

<comment><AUTHOR> The code minus design is all here: <https://github.com/ptrsghr/SayBeat>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would this app be worth $2.99 if it was written for Linux or PC? Reason for asking, I can't compile and test software on Mac but have a lot of apps personal use type stuff. Being without a job selling this type of thing would make for great supplemental income. Any tips?

<comment><AUTHOR> Where would you sell it? Personally, without some kind of app store, I probably wouldn't have bothered with redoing the design and making an icon and all that.

If there's some kind of app store or if you're willing to build your own storefront, I say go for it (but what do I know?). If you don't have a job anyway, what do you have to lose?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "terminal-core" lol. now thats how you write a great copy. that just makes me envious. good work

</comment><comment><USER9> Playing around with phrases that have overlapping wavelengths is great in this thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! Phasing to the max!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'll post back tomorrow with 1st day sales numbers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sold 15 which was surprisingly enough to get us to the top 10 in Music (#10).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Android version when?

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably after the iOS version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> ya cool funfunfun

<comment><USER12> agreed!</comment></comment>


BART director Tom Radulovich explains Bay Area transportation failings - <AUTHOR> http://sf.streetsblog.org/2016/11/17/exit-interview-director-tom-radulovich-reflects-on-20-years-with-bart/ <comment><AUTHOR> Some very interesting quotes in here....

"We have, for example, the physical connection between Caltrain and BART at Millbrae, but we haven't coordinated schedules, so sometimes there's a long wait. And we don't hold trains if a train is late, so we don't guarantee the meet.... BART and Caltrain just don't talk to each other and haven't since the divorce."</comment>


Wikipedia needs an IDE, not a WYSIWYG editor - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MrJamesFisher/wikipedia-needs-an-ide-not-a-wysiwyg-editor-7acd85b582c8 <comment><USER2> "Users apparently dislike this workflow so much that they don't bother contributing at all: significantly less people are editing Wikipedia than did a few years ago."

To be fair, I think this exaggerates the role of the editing UI -- if the editing UI was that bad, then people wouldn't have contributed in the first place. The more common narrative for reduced participation is the growth of cultural issues which make it less rewarding to participate (e.g. [http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the- dec...](http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of- wikipedia/) ).

(Edit: Not trying to be negative -- the suggestions in the article sound cool anyway.)

<comment> bjelkeman-again As you say, dealing with the UI is fine. Dealing with the bureaucrats isn't. Having your account banned and your new article marked for spam by a very abrasive person, when trying to add legitimate content, rather than being supported through the maze of rules, as happened to a colleague the other day. That is a problem which stops meaningful content being added.

<comment><USER3> Editing is smallest issue with Wikipedia.

For anybody who does an occasional 5-10 edits per year. The admins leave no moment unused to point out that you're doing something wrong (most likely based on Guideline CA 13, where CA stands for cryptic abbreviation₁) and in a lot of cases you're left to the god will of a single person.

The whole appeal system needs to be streamlined, it can't be that there a multiple entry point's for a deleted article, solely because it was deleted for different reasons.

It's the bureaucrats that drive people away, compared to Wikipedia the German tax forms/appeals are outright user friendly by now.

₁ I see no good reasons why abbreviations should not be expanded by default in discussion pages, makes it look way less intimidating to the casual user.

[For Wiki-Admin Eyes Only] If there any admins reading here: can someone please undelete GitLab? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_undelet...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_undeletion#GitLab)

<comment><USER4> I put up another GitLab article for you - the previous was deleted for lack of links indication notability. I linked a couple of TheNextWeb articles that will hopefully do. It's kind of hard work this stuff finding references and the like. (I'm not an admin, just an occasional contributor).

Thinking about those kind of issues I think they could improve the friendliness of the process by sending helpful / apologetic emails along the lines of "Dear Mr X, Sorry we had to take down your article because we need ... blah blah... If you can find the references just click this and do this. Best, Wikipedia team." Rather than the current situation where the article just disappears and there are somewhat cryptic comments under the talk tab. I don't think it would be terribly hard to implement.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your efforts (though you might have violated some policy, don't ask me), I (User:Diskurs), I already added external sources for review here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mark_Arsten#GitLab_....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mark_Arsten#GitLab_.5BRequest_for_Undeletion.5D)

feel free to add them.

I don't understand were wikipedia's fixation (other than the name and origin) comes from to handle everything as a wiki page, were any kind of ticketing system might be way more transparent.

<comment><USER4> I stuck in the Chicago Trib reference.

>I don't understand were wikipedia's fixation (other than the name and origin) comes from to handle everything as a wiki page

I think that's where a lot of problems come from and I think it's a tech issue that they built a wiki system and used it for everything and it's hard to change now it's ingrained. My guess with your appeal and the links is no one looked at it because it's not like an email system where someone gets it in their inbox, it's more that some one has to check on that page and maybe Bob thinks Joe is doing it or visa versa, perhaps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I sympathize with the sentiment expressed by the OP here, but his conclusions -- especially that the VisualEditor project is not worth undertaking -- are, I believe, very much off base.

The Wikimedia Foundation did a great deal of research, including professional usability testing, and reached the (I believe fairly self-evident!) conclusion that a visual editing environment was sorely needed. You can go look up videos of regular people attempting to contribute to Wikipedia if you don't believe me[1].

The difficulty of the task, the particularities of hardcore Wikipedia editors, and the importance of preserving the record that Wikipedia's edits represent makes the project have a very real amount of essential complexity. If you think this is easy then you have not done much work with complex rich text editing on the web[2]. People in this thread suggesting Wikipedia use an off- the-shelf OSS rich text editor don't understand the requirements of the problem.

The team at the Wikimedia Foundation has done an exceptional job given the task at hand, especially given their relatively small amount of funding (relative to other sites Wikipedia's size). The reasons the VisualEditor isn't enabled by default have to do with getting from a 97% solution to a 99.9% solution[3], and based on the work I've seen out of the Wikimedia engineering team, I'm sure they will get there.

1\. [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_feel_stupid_v2.o...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_feel_stupid_v2.ogv) and [http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability_and_Experience...](http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability_and_Experience_Study)

1\. Or really any kind of rich text editing.

2\. In terms of never, ever causing a problem with the underlying wikitext.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Users apparently dislike this workflow so much that they don't bother contributing at all: significantly less people are editing Wikipedia than did a few years ago."

Oh, the arbitrary causation!

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I also don't get it, a few years ago it was the same method of editing so why would they leave _now_?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So he goes from:

" Thing is, editors hated its bugginess so much that the roll-out was reverted shortly afterwards."

to:

" Their solution to this was a WYSIWYG editor, which failed for the basic reason that it denies the fact that Wikipedia is a program. "

Something tells me he might be making it up as he goes along! I wonder how successful Microsoft Word would have been with markdown editor.

<comment><USER9> Reminds me of when Word came out and had various WYSIWIG bugs so many stayed with WordPerfect for reveal codes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This isn't really feasible, as Mediawiki's markup is far too hard to parse[0]. You can't just write an IDE for wikitext in a nice language, you'd need to instrument Mediawiki itself somehow to give fine grained information.

[0] [http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/adcs2010/proceedings/pdf/paper%204...](http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/adcs2010/proceedings/pdf/paper%204.pdf)

<comment><USER11> Nothing beats being told that what you just did is in fact not feasible ;) Check out this page:

[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid)

This is the bidirectional conversion engine between wikitext and HTML+RDFa that powers VisualEditor and several other tools. It tracks source range to DOM structure correspondence as proposed in the post. At this point, the IDE is basically a user interface and performance problem. The conversion is readily available through a REST interface, but on the largest articles parsing from modified wikitext to HTML can take around 10 seconds. Most of that time is spent in the expansion of the myriad of citation templates that we like people to add. It is possible to speed this up to something more usable for an IDE, but it's not trivial.

You might also be interested in this blog post about some of the challenges we encountered while building Parsoid: [http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/04/parsoid-how- wikipedia-c...](http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/04/parsoid-how-wikipedia- catches-up-with-the-web/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello! OP here. I'm totally ignorant of Parsoid but I respectfully suggest that bidirectional lossless conversion is not possible in general.

First, it relies on the function Wikitext->HTML being injective. But isn't it trivial to create two different Wikitexts that compile to the same HTML? Whitespace is just the start of this story.

Second, apparently the template language is Turing-complete. Let's say I write a prime sieve in order to generate a page that lists the first 100 prime numbers. What would it then mean to edit "31" to change it to "30"?

(With apologies for not yet having read the things you kindly linked to.)

<comment><USER12> > First, it relies on the function Wikitext->HTML being injective. But isn't > it trivial to create two different Wikitexts that compile to the same HTML? > Whitespace is just the start of this story.

Yes, and Parsoid works around this by preserving some metadata about wikitext in HTML (such as information about whitespace around syntax elements) and, since this preservation isn't perfect, only reserializing HTML→wikitext where the content was changed during editing.

> Second, apparently the template language is Turing-complete. Let's say I > write a prime sieve in order to generate a page that lists the first 100 > prime numbers. What would it then mean to edit "31" to change it to "30"?

Assuming we're talking about VisualEditor, you currently just can't do that (you can only delete the entire template inclusion and replace it with normal text, or edit template parameters).

(As a nitpick, wikitext is not Turing-complete (there is no loop or recursion construct, recursion is explicitly checked for and causes an error), you can only write complicated algorithms by manually unrolling enough loops. However, for some time now you can also write templates in Lua, which is a proper Turing-complete programming language, see <[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Scribunto>.](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Scribunto>.))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> An IDE looks like a solution for developers by developers. I'm not sure it will appeal to most people. I consider the Visual Editor to be a good solution for non-techie newcomers. They are more used to visually similar tools.

</comment><comment><USER14> Take a look at the Wikidata project - it's designed for editing structured data.

Unfortunately I wouldn't say it is very easy to use - the Wikipedia editor is much easier. It's also completely unclear which parts of Wikidata data are used in Wikipedia, and where.

That means the Wikidata data is usually much worse than the Wikipedia data, even if it theoretically easier for machines to use.

<comment><USER15> At the moment Wikidata isn't used/usable in Wikipedia at all, apart from coordinating the site links across languages.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that the editor of Wikidata isn't easy to use, I think its interface is pretty straightforward.

<comment><USER12> You can embed statements from a Wikidata item in the corresponding article on Wikipedia using the {{#property:…}} parser function. This is largely unused on the English Wikipedia, but some language versions already use this for their infoboxes – for example the infobox on this page is partially generated from Wikidata: [https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankara](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankara)

<comment><USER14> Do you know why the English Wikipedia doesn't use it? It is simply because the English Wikipedia information is generally better than the corresponding Wikidata information?

<comment><USER12> I believe it's simply because no one has yet put in the effort necessary to start using it. It might be a conscious decision, but if it was discussed anywhere, I completely missed that.

(English Wikipedians in general are very "territorial" in my experience, so to speak, and rarely appreciate efforts that put some piece of "their" articles beyond their "jurisdiction", like Wikidata does. Editors from other language versions are a lot more welcoming.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Visual Editor was rolled out in 2013. Thing is, editors hated its bugginess > so much that the roll-out was reverted shortly afterwards. (…) Why did the > Visual Editor fail? Because it tries to deny the basic fact that Wikipedia > is a program, not a word document.

Eh, I can't really agree with this. VisualEditor rollout was indeed premature (critical features like template editing were developed literally days before it), but a year has passed and it's gone a long way since then. Haters still hate it, but personally I find it more pleasant to use than wikitext for many tasks.

This was a really interesting read, though. I still this there's value in the WYSIWYG paradigm, even if we have to fall back to "IDE mode" for infoboxes and such (right now if you double-click a template, you're shown a key-value table to fill in; there's no live preview…). After all, most of the content of Wikipedia _is_ text with some light formatting.

</comment><comment><USER16> _I must say that Wikipedia community has become very effective at giving partisan editors tools to target undesirable editors - a Byzantine collection of policies which admins overzealously enforce without a second thought, and without thinking of a big picture. Admins in fact are incentivized not to involve themselves, which basically gives the enforcement gun to POV-pushers which are intimately acquainted with all the glorious details of the relevant wikilese. I urge admins to think outside the policy-enforcing request- observing mode._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ivan_%C5%A0tambuk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ivan_%C5%A0tambuk)

</comment><comment><USER17> > This tension is irresolvable: the terms "WYSIWYG" and "abstraction" are > literally antonyms.

Except they aren't. WYSIWYG is an abstraction over the code layer that works in the terms of "bold", "italics" and "underline".

</comment><comment><USER18> > The one unconventional suggestion is the idea of a correspondence between > the characters of the source text and the HTML text.

Did you get a chance to check out fellow HN homepage link Paperman [1][2]? It offers exactly what you propose: Double-clicking on the results frame highlights the relevant line in the source, and vice versa. This could easily be adapted to match your suggestion.

[1] [http://paperman.patricklorio.com/](http://paperman.patricklorio.com/) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8507310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8507310)

</comment><comment><USER19> They should implement an editor like [http://medium.com](http://medium.com) or [http://slimwiki.com](http://slimwiki.com)

<comment><USER20> I would vote for something like StackEdit beta [1]. It is really nice in the way it keeps the syntax (markdown) in a WYSIWYG-style editor.

[1] [http://stackedit-beta.herokuapp.com/](http://stackedit- beta.herokuapp.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would echo the suspicion that the problems here are cultural and not technical, however, I think the solution is kind of technical.

Basically, in future why assume we have one definitive repository of objective fact? The notion is ridiculous. What I believe will happen is a git-ification of Wikipedia, so you can fork the whole thing, run your own when you disagree with the direction, and pull in changes from those you trust. If you're going to attempt to fix this class of problems this is the only way forward.

<comment><USER22> People want to force their version of truth into Wikipedia. They dont care that their version of truth is already available on some other website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> mediawiki-mode in emacs seems like a good solution, and emacs has proven to be a good enough IDE for other programming languages.

<comment><USER24> Interesting, I didn't know about mediawiki-mode. Something like that does sound like the right way to go for a certain class of "power users" who want an IDE: build on top of an existing IDE, with interaction to Wikipedia itself done via the MediaWiki API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> They should also have mechanisms in place to stop events like these from happening:

[http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/09/06/wikistorming- colleges...](http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/09/06/wikistorming-colleges- offer-credit-to-corrupt-wikipedia/)

</comment><comment><USER26> My understanding is they don't want more idiots editing, it's a 'feature' that it's tricky to edit.

I also considered the decline is that it's kinda 'complete' it's not like the old days where it was easy to contribute something important and meaningful.

</comment><comment> Dorian-Marie Talk is still cheap. I think a prototype would be far more convincing than a blog post.

</comment><comment><USER27> If that blog was a wiki, we could correct the typos.

</comment><comment><USER28> gwern had a thing or two to say about wikipedia. As I remember, he said its biggest issues were cultural and that technology issues were a red herring. I'm interested if he has anything to add.

[0] [http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism](http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism)

</comment><comment><USER29> I love the subtle inclusion of the Operation Northwoods page as an example.

</comment><comment><USER30> Don't you mean CMS?

</comment><comment><USER31> Maybe something like an enhanced LaTeX.</comment>


Ask HN: What software is used at SpaceX and NASA for PM? - <AUTHOR> Anyone know what software is used to manage the full lifecycle of building a rocket project wise? I looked through NASA's software catalog - and didn't see anything applicable. I can't believe they'd use MS Project. <comment><USER2> It looks like SpaceX uses jira: [http://www.spacex.com/careers/position/202828](http://www.spacex.com/careers/position/202828)

Not sure about NASA though.</comment>


New Konsole Website - <AUTHOR> https://carlschwan.eu/kde/webdev/2019/06/23/new-konsole-website.html <comment><USER2> This is really beautiful. Maybe it should even show more of Konsole's exciting features (all the small gems that make it the most powerful virtual terminal for the "Linux desktop").

Thanks to all people who put their time in the KDE website project and Konsole itself!</comment>


Show HN: Searchly – Search smartly on mobile - <AUTHOR> http://micronest.com/searchly <comment><AUTHOR> I have implemented this with the aim of providing a "search assistant" type feature which would highlight the (socially) "most liked" links as well as a summarized info (which will get very useful over time) as more and more users use it.

The mobile users would no more be required to dig out the information through the search results or inadvertently click the ads that fill the mobile screen.

<comment><AUTHOR> please checkout the web link that has a video of the app as well.</comment></comment>


Internet is becoming unreadable because of a trend towards lighter thinner fonts - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/10/23/internet-is-becoming-unreadable-because-of-a-trend-towards-light/ <comment><USER2> Extensive discussion a few days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12743628](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12743628)

</comment><comment><USER3> Chrome windows is notoriously bad at rendering select 300 weight fonts. It's almost as if I can conclude the website was made on MAC when I see one.

The low contrast bit is senseless.</comment>


Ruby author 'Matz' does television ad for his Mormon faith - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkh0gPf4Noc

<comment><USER2> Interesting. From Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_chastity#Homosexuality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_chastity#Homosexuality)

 _the church actively opposes the extension of the traditional definition of marriage to also include same-sex couples_

Will he be hounded out now, like Brendan Eich?

<comment><USER3> There's no evidence Matz has supported a campaign to revoke same-sex marriage rights. Holding an opinion is fine. Trying to get everyone else to live by your opinion is a trickier and rather public matter.

(For example, I detest smoking, but no smoker can be pissed at me for that because I have no desire to curb smokers' rights. Likewise, folks who are against same-sex marriage can just avoid getting married to someone of the same sex if they want to avoid getting hassle for being intolerant.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quite interesting how these commercials have no real content about Mormonism, just uplifting music and passionate people. I guess they really got their 1920s marketing down..

<comment><AUTHOR> There principle intent is to remove preconceived notions about who is mormon and what kind of backgrounds and interests they have. There are plenty of sources offered for those interested in our beliefs.

<comment><USER4> Preconceived notions aside, I just read the wikipedia on Joseph Smith and cannot help but laugh at how ridiculously obvious his misdirection is..

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith)

Jesus Christ's crucifixion is history. Joseph Smith's golden plates? Cookery. Missouri is the new Zion, the new Jerusalem? Cookery.

<comment><AUTHOR> Superficial glances certainly make it easy to laugh and dismiss. But any sustained scrutiny actually makes it less funny and far more formidable than you'd imagine.

You can laugh at the concept of the plates, when he announced them that's what many did. But then there was the inconvenient fact that the young man then, in a period of less than 90 days, produced a book of over 500 pages with a multitude of books each with it's own internal consistency as well as overarching consistency through the whole book, then there's the fact that, through that book, a global faith was formed that just passed 15 million adherents world wide. How do you explain the book? And is that explanation a more valid explanation than the one given by Joseph?

<comment><USER4> I don't have an explanation but I am certainly more interested in the mystery with the claims you've laid out.

<comment><AUTHOR> "He convinced a small number of people at the beginning, the witnesses -- not all of them, but he did. This man had an incredible memory. He made it up and dictated it nonstop. It's very long, the Book of Mormon. I mean, it's an incredible feat of the mind. Even if it is all made up, to do something like that is really extraordinary. And how literate was he? He knew the Bible very well, because it comes out in the language of the King James Bible, which I was raised on. But to be able to carry this through to its logical end, that's amazing. Really, it is. I mean, if it's a work of fiction, nobody has ever done anything like this before. And I think it is fiction, but he really carried it through, and my respect for him is unbounded."

<comment><USER4> Interesting take. Thank you for sharing your perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> also a t420 user, last line with the traditional style keyboard.</comment>


Francisco Macías Nguema - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Mac%C3%ADas_Nguema <comment><AUTHOR> Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The first president of Equatorial Guinea, Macías Nguema won his election post in a free and fair election. It all went to hell after that.

He replaced the Constitution with a new document that gave him absolute power.

He also changed the national motto to, "There is no other God than Macías Nguema."

During Christmas in 1975, he ordered about 150 of his opponents killed. Soldiers dressed up in Santa Claus costumes murdered them by shooting at the football stadium.

He assigned himself the title, "Grand Master of Education, Science, and Culture." By the end of his rule, nearly all of the country's educated class was either executed or forced into exile.</comment>


Douglas Hofstadter has a new book - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465018475/ <comment><USER2> Great news! Even when it's overwrought and opinionated, Hofstadter's writing is never boring, _Le Ton Beau de Marot_ is, I think, one of the best books on translation. There isn't too much (English) information on Emmanuel Sander (other than his homepage: [http://paragraphe.crac.free.fr/articles.php?lng=en&pg=79](http://paragraphe.crac.free.fr/articles.php?lng=en&pg=79), Google seriously needs a semantic clustering algorithm for results, btw, had to laboriously sift through results for Emmanuel Sanders).

Looking at the excerpt at Amazon, I learned that (i) Hofstadter married again (see them dancing here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeB-wu7aV0w>) recently, which is totally irrelevant to the book, but was interesting to me since I was much moved from his heartfelt sorrow after his wife's death so eloquently expressed in _Le Ton beau_ and (ii) there's a figure of speech called _zeugma_ that I've never heard before (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeugma>), mentioned on pg. 5.

<comment><USER3> "I am a Strange Loop" had quite a bit of fixation on his wife's death as well, I'm glad to hear he has re-married.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A great read by Hofstadter on Analogy as the Core of Cognition is here: [http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy.h...](http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy.html)

I'm a big fan of Hofstadter and his emphasis on analogy. George Lakoff has and others from cognative semantics provide strongly supporting views from linguistics.

And in Machine Learning, Deep Learning is now providing new support for these views on analogy. This isn't immediately obvious until realizing that analogy is not necessarily an active process more likely a passive result of how thoughts and memories are encoded and stored. I'm curious as to whether Hofstadter will address this in this book - I would imagine so as he was long ago excited by earlier similar ML approaches (Sparse Distributed Memory).

</comment><comment><USER5> Hm, so back in 2000 I met a girl at Stanford whose senior thesis was based on the idea that _metaphor_ is the core of all thought.

I remember giving the counterexample of a mathematical formula. In what way is e^i*pi = -1 a metaphor for anything? What role does analogy play in this idea?

Looking back, I am open to the fact that mathematicians use analogy to come up with their ideas (but perhaps not metaphor, which seems essentially literary) Mathematics is funny because it is presented in "reverse", i.e. not the way it was derived.

Anyway I will have to read it, although I am slightly skeptical of ideas that try to explain "everything". In retrospect Taleb's Antifragile had some of that flavor, although I thought it was very good.

EDIT: I think it's probably accurate to say that the brain is fundamentally an association machine. Analogies are a form of association, but not all associations are analogies. This very post is a great example of an association (not an analogy), because when I read "analogy is the core of all thought" it made me think of the disputed "metaphor is the core of all thought" idea I heard a long time ago.

<comment><USER6>
      > In what way is e^i*pi = -1 a metaphor for anything?

Its a metaphor for taking the unit length vector [1,0] represented by the complex number 1+0i and rotating it 180 degrees to -1+0i...

      > Mathematics is funny because it is presented in
      > "reverse", i.e. not the way it was derived.

Its usually presented in both ways in most curricula, sometimes depending on where you read about it or who teaches/tells you about it. Most mathematical books include historical contexts and non-formal accounts of the way results were derived, specially for classic and old results such as Euler's Formula. In most modern topics sometimes the historical context for a theorem is not easy to understand (i.e. discrete signal processing or optimal control) and is only briefly mentioned.

<comment><USER5> I appreciate what you're saying, but see my response below about semantics.

If you are calling it a metaphor, then aren't you calling ALL equations metaphors? That is doing violence to the meaning of the word "metaphor".

There is for sure a "relation" (or association) between the symbols e^i*pi = -1 and the picture of a unit vector on a complex plane. But that relation is not a metaphor.

<comment><USER7> You can prove that equality using pure analysis, or pure geometry, using appropriate definitions. The metaphor is the intuition that the two proofs are equivalent in an abstract sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> July 1994: Amazon.com sells first book, "Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought" -- at [http://phx.corporate- ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=iro...](http://phx.corporate- ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-corporateTimeline)

That's pretty cool right there.

<comment><USER9> I don't mean this in a rude way; I'm just confused: How is your comment at all relevant to this submission?

Also, why are the dates all out of order?

<comment><USER10> The first book sold was written by the same author the submission is about.

The Wikipedia entry on the professor also mentions this fact from the Amazon history ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter#In_popular_c...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter#In_popular_culture)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The idea that analogy underpins all thought is also argued by Ian McGilchrist in his book Master and His Emissary, which I'd highly recommend to people interested in the sort of epic philosophical undertaking GEB was: [http://www.iainmcgilchrist.com/The_Master_and_his_Emissary_b...](http://www.iainmcgilchrist.com/The_Master_and_his_Emissary_by_McGilchrist.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER12> I agree with the premise that analogy is the core of all thinking, but the idea isn't new, at the very least I can trace it back to Julian Jaynes' 1976 book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" and it's highly probable other's have thought this through even before then.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like he's getting back to his research; which is good, since maybe it won't be as maudlin and self-indulgent as _I Am A Strange Loop_ was.

<comment><USER14> I wasn't a fan of 'Strange Loop' either. I'll be buying this one though.

<comment><USER15> Glad to hear I wasn't the only one disappointed by it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How interesting - I've been leaving GEB on the coffee table in hopes that I might pick it up and start it again (made it halfway about 10 years ago) but now I wonder whether I ought to pick this up. Thanks for letting us know.

<comment><USER17> GEB is the most popular book nobody has read.

<comment><USER18> I think it just doesn't work for everyone. While many people seem to love it, I failed to read it, twice. I think I got his point about self-reference and conciousness in the introduction, but from then on I found it so mind- numbingly boring I just couldn't continue reading past a couple of chapters. To me it seemed like he was going round and round re-explaining the same points over and over. In fact I thought reading GEB must be a hazing exercise for geeks. But then, since lots of people do seem to enjoy it, I guess it might just be one of those love-it-or-hate-it things.

<comment><USER19> Agreed. It seems disjoint and mostly hot air recycled over and over. Its not just you: there are a lot of us. My copy has done the rounds in the office and the conclusion is the same universally.

If the content was concise or written in the style of say Persig, Neal Stevenson or Ray Bradbury, I could stomach it.

Then again even worse is Ray Kurzweil who manages to do a GEB with far less content and that content is dubious and contrived rubbish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wrote to DH around 2000 after a discussion I had with a friend about Wittgenstein and GEB. It was a pretty callow email, but he was kind enough to send a thoughtful reply.

He said he didn't know much about Wittg., but didn't like his vagueness, which I found interesting from someone who was into Zen.

<comment><USER20> I'd suggest that the difference is that Zen (at least in some schools) is after a meta-cognitive _experience_ (by definition inexpressible in concrete terms) which transcends (even short circuits) cognition - whereas the aim of Western philosophy (at least in some schools) is a _description_ of experience in concrete terms accessible to the intellect.

I oversimplify, of course. But the extent to which Hofstadter is "into" Zen is open to question. (I don't remember much Zen in GEB.)

<comment><USER15> Precisely. Wittgenstein was (in approach at least) a reaction against Western philosophy, and his "vagueness" was a consequence of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> An interesting subject. Elon Musk has been saying that it's important to reason from first principles and not by analogy. A lot of reasoning in startup world seems to be by analogy - the epitome being "AirBnB for Cars" type of elevator pitches.

<comment><USER22> I was just watching a talk by him where he clearly says that it's impossible to do this all the time, that you would go insane without using analogical thinking all day. But that it's a useful exercise when you are trying to sit down and find an innovative solution to a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> >Analogy is the core of all thinking.

Explains why great pitches are stories.</comment>


Microsoft kills Money: More evidence of the end of shrinkwrap software. - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2009/06/11/microsoft-kills-off-money-whats-next/

<comment><USER2> Well, they still have MS Accounting 2009 (see: <http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/accounting/default.aspx> ) which is essentially MS Money for Small & Medium Size Businesses.</comment>


Search Engine for Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.shodanhq.com <comment><USER2> In case you were wondering about the name, SHODAN was the evil computer from the classic computer games System Shock and System Shock 2. (Apparently the name stood for "Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network," a delightful string of marketing jargon!)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHODAN>

<comment><USER3> I just have to include the iconic SHODAN quote:

"Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"

I wonder if the creators of the search engine are aware that a.) SHODAN wasn't the hacker. b.) SHODAN tried repeatedly to kill the hacker. And c.) the situation didn't turn out particularly well for SHODAN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes on all counts, but SHODAN is remembered as the iconic character of the hacker-themed game.

PS: And 'shodan' also means 'to search for something' in Hindi.

<comment><USER3> Oh cool! I didn't know that. Learn something new every day.

Hmm, . . . , that's very interesting. I wonder if the etymology of SHODAN is from the Hindi shodan? Maybe it's just a coincidence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting, literally for "hackers" in the bad sense of the term. I cannot see how this is useful in a normal day to day fashion other than to find computers/routers that are compromisable. Maybe there is another utility for this? The only one I can imagine right now is to see trends on what is out there in terms of webservers and the versions on them for research papers and the like.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point comes up a lot that this tool could be misused by script kiddies, so I thought I'd address some of those concerns:

\- Search results are limited to 50 hosts (if you're logged in, 10 hosts if you're not). This makes it impractical to use for building a botnet or any kind of large-scale operation.

\- I take steps to limit anonymous access (ex. Tor not allowed)

\- 'net' and 'country' filter require you to be logged in; makes anonymous systematic scraping much harder

\- Users detected of scraping get banned (zero tolerance)

The bottom line: this is a tool for penetration testing and market research, not for script kiddies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tried the country search, but the country part was ignored:

 _'country' filter ignored. Please login to use the 'country' filtering option._

</comment><comment><USER6> Random observation: only 3 hits for .coms running yaws in the U.S. Odd...?

<http://www.shodanhq.com/?q=yaws+.com+country:US>

</comment><comment><USER7> If you're looking for aggregate statistics, etc, Netcraft has been doing this for a while:

<http://www.netcraft.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Hope you're not scanning IP ranges: I believe it's illegal in most countries.

<comment><AUTHOR> It isn't in the US, see 'Moulton v. VC3'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Now you don't even need to scan ip ranges to find a target!</comment>


7 startup savings tips - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/7-startup-savings-tips

<comment><USER2> These are all so marginal. 5% is never going to add up to much on a small scale.

<comment><USER3> right - $1000 in flights every other month, returning $50 isn't much? that's a mobile bill for the month

<comment><USER2> Right. And that isn't even in the top 10 list of expenses. There is little reason not to save that $50 though. Then again, I would say not having a red- eye is worth a few hundred dollars.

But I don't know much about all this yet.</comment></comment></comment>


Finding the unjustly homeless(Part 2) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/architecting-a-life/ae059ddffd2e

<comment><USER2> Teaching a homeless person to code ... hmm, interesting ... wait, what? JavaScript is your choice for a tutorial language?</comment>


The Epicenter of the Housing Bust Is Booming Again. (That's a Warning Sign.) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/12/business/las-vegas-housing-crisis.html <comment><USER2> organizations with easy access to money corner the market on housing</comment>


The old new method of self-improvement, daily small steps. - <AUTHOR> http://www.hipsteps.com/blog/the-hip-steps-method.html

<comment><USER2> Your terms of service, not so much.</comment>


Big Pharma is using faux generics to keep drug prices high, critics say - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/big-pharma-is-using-faux-generics-to-keep-drug-prices-high-critics-say/ <comment><USER2> > ...EpiPen's original cost of around $50 per injector in 2007. That year, > Mylan bought the rights to EpiPen and then raised the price more than 400% > in the years that followed. The authorized generic is essentially triple the > price of what two injectors used to cost.

This is outrageous. Nothing new, I know, but every time I read about this I'm outraged. I trully think there should be a law on maximum margins at least for life saving drugs, or some kind of regulations preventing this phenomenon.

<comment><USER3> Or maybe we should REMOVE the laws that give companies a monopoly on producing drugs?

<comment><USER4> But it's a tricky thing because we don't wanna remove the incentive to invent new drugs.

<comment><USER5> >But it's a tricky thing because we don't wanna remove the incentive to invent new drugs.

What incentive is there to produce new drugs when they are making plenty of money gouging people on price with the old drugs?

<comment><USER6> Right?

Along the same lines, why invent a cure, when you could instead invent a lifelong treatment?

<comment><USER7> This sentiment drifts dangerously close to a conspiracy theory.

The existence of the vaccine industry demonstrates there is a market for a cure. As do immunotherapies. Where cures are possible, they are commercialized.

<comment><USER8> No, it flat out is a conspiracy theory and it's false. It's embarrassing that it's here and that you're downvoted.

<comment><USER9> Honestly can you explain to me, as an outsider, why _this_ particular theory is a conspiracy and "embarrassing" to even consider, compared to all the other ridiculous shit going around healthcare in the US?

It wouldn't surprise me one tiny bit, given the US' track record with letting corporations do whatever the hell they want to, to people.

I'm not saying it's true, but you can't simply dismiss a theory about the corporate world screwing over the American people with a simple "no way that's too ridiculous to ever happen", any more. Especially if it's directly in line with what the free market would demand, as well as it not happening being contingent on a corporation being "nice" from the good of its "heart".

Please tell me instead that it's false because there is regulation in place, or there is some strong market force making them take the other route.

Because your implied argument would be "that is inhumane and corporations wouldn't do that"\--now THAT is embarrassing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just kind put together why this isn't free market.

There's no incentive for anyone to push back on price. There's plenty of money to be made doctors make the same either way. People don't notice because they just want the best healthcare available regardless of cost. Pharmacy make more money with gouging. Drug companies do. Insurance companies make more with higher prices. Companies just pay what they have to show it as a benefit.

Who in the entire system looks out for costs?

<comment><USER11> One thing that's always bothered me is that companies can make a ton of medications, such as those that treat depression and anxiety, that are incredibly difficult to get off of once you start with the medication. None of these companies are required to make any lower doses to help people "taper off" what's supposed to be a temporary medication. Most of the time your only option is to quit "cold turkey" which is straight up awful with brain zaps, nausea, trouble focusing, and often a complete spike in your previous symptoms from 0 to 100. Oftentimes quitting this way can make you feel like you _need_ the drug to survive.

I get it is not profitable to make doses that are only used temporarily when people quit your product, but this is definitely harmful to the consumer.

I was stuck with one and I tried everything to find a lower dose. I had tried quitting cold turkey 3 separate times and I ended up a sobbing mess each time. Given that was just not working, I tried different pharmacies, I talked to them about liquid suspension ($200+ not covered) and more. I was fed up. Eventually, against the advice of my doctors, I just started cutting my pills into 1/4s and taking a 1/4 less every 2-4 weeks until I was off it. Doing it this way was utterly painless and I was able to continue working throughout. After that I didn't need it anymore. But this is a terrible practice, and won't work with all drugs -- especially delayed ones.

This is why I think so many people are on these types of drugs. They are amazing short term and can help people work through some really difficult issues to get to a better place mentally -- but not everyone needs them long term. However when faced with the withdrawal symptoms, many people start to think they can't survive without it.

Im not claiming some conspiracy, but the current strategy isn't the best for patients, that's for sure.

<comment><USER12> > companies are required to make any lower doses to help people "taper off"

pharmacists are trained, allowed and encouraged to prepare different doses of drugs when needed for the specific needs of their individual patients. Not sure why you expect pharma companies to take on their role here.

<comment><USER11> Evidentially these often aren't covered under insurance plans. Maybe the med I was on was just particularly difficult, but it was going to cost me quite a bit of money to do the liquid suspension.

I don't expect pharma companies to take any role, as I understand their position. I was hoping that I had made that clear. I simply believe it as a current short fall of the system.

I don't attribute any blame, it's just something that could possibly be improved. Honestly, the change would likely have to be more on an insurance / governmental level. It shouldn't be an ordeal to get a lower dose -- it should be just as easy and cost-effective as the original medication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _critics say_

Uh, so does the DOJ: [https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/mylan-agrees- pay-465-mill...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/mylan-agrees- pay-465-million-resolve-false-claims-act-liability)

</comment><comment><USER14> Something about this article doesn't add up. According to the article:

      1. Brands charge a premium of 10x-20x compared to generics.
      2. Brands are offering non-brand versions at about 50% of branded price.
      3. Brands pay 50% kickbacks to middle men (so cut =  revenue neutral).
      4. Offering the cheaper version kills real generic competition.

How can 4 be true when brands haven't done anything to their net margin and the generics are still a factor cheaper than the non-branded "brand" version?

It just sounds like a bit of trickery to shut the politicians up more than something designed to hurt their competitors.

<comment><USER15> I think the point is that they use an in-house generic, priced at their normal revenue, to get a 180d monopoly and establish a second brand. This is all on top of their existing monopoly from the original patent.

<comment><USER16> That's quite scummy, but presumably the examples in the article have already lost their competitive edge? The EpiPen authorized generic was launched roughly 3 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So the manufacturer is getting paid the same amount, these "authorized generics" are just screwing over the PBMs?

Or is the "negotiated" price of the brand name basically equal to the list price of the first-party generic?

I am missing some piece to arrive at "this is not taking money out of the system".

I can see how the pharma company perhaps could make out the same in the end... but is the consumer actually paying less?

One very interesting thing is that my insurance company has _not_ tried to switch my kids' Humalog for the equivalent sold as "Lispro" which was very curious to me, implying it doesn't save _them_ any money. I'm long past the out-of-pocket maximum anyway, so I pay $0 at this point in any case.

<comment><USER18> The authorized generics are just screwing over the PBMs who are state mandated, do nothing, middle men with profits equal to the manufacturers.

Regarding you anecdote. One potential reason is that the ACA limits the profit margin of insurance to 20% percent of medical spending. This incentivises them to maximize healthcare costs. Switching to Lispro would hurt their bottom line instead of increase it.

[https://www.healthinsurance.org/obamacare/billions-in-aca- re...](https://www.healthinsurance.org/obamacare/billions-in-aca-rebates- show-80-20-rules-impact/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if the Government could slowly phase in the import of certain drugs from a country like Canada like Insulin, etc. This would allow a new industry to sprout up in Canada without harming their existing pharmaceutical distribution and supply.

Eventually when everyone can order their medication online with next day shipping the Pharmaceutical Mafia in the USA will need to compete. Otherwise, I don't believe the Government regardless of party will change things since there are billions involved in lobbying.

</comment><comment><USER20> Highly recommend the book, "An American Sickness," for reading about tactics like the one described in the article that Big Pharma and other players (e.g. insurers) in the healthcare ecosystem use to extract money out of said ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER21> Any reason to buy branded when generics are available? So far my takeaway was the difference goes to marketing budgets resulting in more prime time ads.

<comment><USER22> Branded medicines are more effective and result in fewer reported side effects, despite being pharmacologically identical.

Many citations available, eg [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23115341/?i=2&from=/26...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23115341/?i=2&from=/26462056/related)

<comment><USER21> _All tablets were placebos._

Isn't this basically measuring placebo effect?</comment></comment></comment>


Basic Income – Part Five: How UBI Will Disrupt Poverty - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nataliedenning/basic-income-part-five-how-ubi-will-disrupt-poverty-811757741b36 <comment><USER2> Until you fix addiction, UBI makes no sense. Why give people more money to spiral out of control faster.

-giving drug addicts money will literally kill them.

[https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the- epidemic/](https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/)

<comment><USER3> UBI also is the quintessential unraveling of the social safety net, instead of health care, we'll just give you a stipend in the mail and hopefully its sufficient.

Addicts of all types, whether it be to drugs, gambling, a pyramid scheme or schemes, or any number of other things have to make the choice to change. All anyone besides themselves can do is encourage change. A dear friend of mine is in for $1k a month with a "MLM", and just started to have a come to jesus that he has thrown away upwards of $35k on Wake Up Now, Avon, etc. Its the same as another friend of mine who is hooked on smoking (despite it killing his father not 5 years ago), similar mental barriers/processes.

<comment><USER2> I don't real equate smoking the same as gambling or hard drugs. Yes, they aren't good and you can lose a lot/all but they are a few $100s a month habits. Hard drug/gambling addictions will take all your money.

If don't believe me ask your self would you loan a smoker 10k?(probably depends on there credit/employement) how about a gambling/mlm addict? how about a heroin addict?

<comment><USER3> Generally you'll get the same results, given the same conditions wrt employment. I've employed heroin addicts before, and its the same trust but verify type deal as a smoker or a gambler. Similar to a gambler, don't expect to be able to get ahold of them outside business hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I live in Australia where you can be on social security for life and for some it takes away the will to try, despite being quite a miserable amount.

I really don't see UBI as being an answer unless it is associated with some form of individual social responsibility.

<comment><USER5> I don't know about Australia, but in most European countries I know, it is quiet easy to lose social security. Things like going back to school, taking on part time or freelance work, trying to start a company, traveling abroad for too long, working for charity etc. can all lead you losing your social security. It also requires you to invest a fair amount of time jumping trough seemingly administrative pointless hoops, where any misstep can again lead to you losing money. So the problem is not so much that it takes away the will to try as it actively discourages the will to try. Since UBI would be unconditional and you cannot lose it shouldn't have any of those perverse incentive problems.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Disclosure: I'm married to the author.</comment>


The Weird and Wonderful CIC (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://hackmii.com/2010/01/the-weird-and-wonderful-cic/ <comment><USER2> Love HackMii.com. Their wii "jailbreak" really enhanced my enjoyment of the system back in the day. Many thanks to the authors</comment>


Ask HN: What's the deal with Steve Ballmer? - <AUTHOR>

I guess I'm the last person to see all the Steve Ballmer videos on YouTube. I don't have a specific question I'm just at a loss as to why a person, especially the CEO of Microsoft, would act like that in public... repeatedly..<p>So, what's his deal? <comment><USER2> He has a lot of passion and it shows. Also, he is awesome sales man to enterprises. Personally I like guys like him.

You put 5 geeks in a room and one guy like him to motivate and keep them happy once a week and rest of the week doing sales. Great combo :)

<comment><USER3> He's certainly "passionate".

<http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/23386/>

<comment><USER4> It says right below the video that it's a comedy sketch.

" _his video is a teaser for our new comedy screenplay about what it means to be a little guy in the land of giants. This is our Christmas gift to the working class._ "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He's a sales guy who's trying to pretend that's he a part of the in-crowd of programmers

<comment><USER6> But even sales guys normally do not behave that way.

<comment><USER7> Sales managers do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fun fact: He and Jim Cramer (Mad Money) were freshman year roommates at Harvard. And they both throw chairs.

</comment><comment><USER9> Stimulants?

</comment><comment><USER10> His entire career he's been riding the success that has been Microsoft. I doubt he has ever needed to actually develop real talent or skills. Gates had enough for the both of them. There has been almost no selective pressure, refining his leadership or strategy instincts.

</comment><comment><USER11> No publicity is worse than bad publicity, or so they say in the Microsoft world.</comment>


Questioning the Longstanding Plan to Merge the Dead Sea and the Red Sea - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/10/mergers--acquisitions/the-dead-sea-lives?utm_source=tss&utm_medium=desktop&utm_campaign=linkfrom

<comment><USER2> Aside from the project being super expensive, I think this would be a good idea. I don't know why conservationists are so stingy sometimes. If they really cared they'd stop the siphoning from the dead sea.

Adding a hydro electric option on top of it all could increase electricity stability in the region. For the longevity of the people there I think it would be a good move.

<comment><USER3> Don't ask for much, do you? As it happens they quite agree:

"I think that the best way to conserve the Dead Sea would be to reintroduce the natural flow from the Jordan River and decrease the pumping of water from the lake to the factories,"

<comment><USER4> The problem is that doesn't work the water section in the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan gives the Jordanians quite a bit of water rights, and they've been pumping more and more from it especially since they are not getting as much water from Syria as they used too these days. On top of that Jordan has been pumping quite a bit of water from the Dead Sea it self for commercial uses mostly to be dried not even 100 meters away in salt farms which is excessively wasteful. Israel has stopped pumping from Jordan river 35 years ago, and it has also mostly stopped pumping from the Sea of Galilee. Israel for quite a few years now has moved to desalination which currently provides about 40% (and on track to reach the 70-80% goal in the next 10-15 years) of it's drinking water needs, the rest pumped from natural underground reservoirs and man made reservoirs basins or reclaimed water. The new plan as it seems is actually to abandon the "peace canal" and to pump desalinated water into the dead sea from the med as it's much closer to it than the red sea, which although not as flashy and hip will be some what at least cost effective.</comment></comment></comment>


Samsung Galaxy S10 Features Cryptocurrency Storage - <AUTHOR> https://mybitcoinnews.co/cryptocurrency-news/confirmed-samsung-galaxy-s10-comes-with-cryptocurrency-key-storage/ <comment><USER2> the news is a hoax. "It should be glaringly obvious why they are specifically not calling it a cryptocurrency wallet, and why they attempted to quiet rumours of such claims back in December. Security: Galaxy S10 is built with defense-grade Samsung Knox, as well as a secure storage backed by hardware, which houses your private keys for blockchain-enabled mobile services.

Samsung Knox is not a cryptocurrency wallet. Don't spend your hard earned money for this feature. Personally, I think the wireless charging of other Qi devices would prove more useful than "Samsung Knox"."

<comment><USER3> Cryptocurrency wallets are simple pieces of software. Housing the keys is the hardest part - what's on top of that is just a bit of code to derive addresses from that key, query for balances on a blockchain node, send/receive calls etc. If that part won't be added by Samsung themselves it'll certainly aid in development of full crypto wallet apps.

<comment><USER2> you surly never tried to write your own mobile wallet. Try to make it for grin/zcash, with "what's on top of that is just a bit of code" lol

<comment><USER3> I didn't say that code couldn't be copied from existing projects on GitHub

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Samsung Knox was released in 2013. It is simply Samsung's branding of a small set of standard technologies, like ARM TrustZone, which also powers Apple's Secure Enclave and other similar technologies.

It is present in all Samsung Android and Tizen devices, and does not have any cryptocurrency features. It does, however, have secure key management, and is capable of securely storing a private key for a wallet. This is not a unique or new capability.</comment>


Why Doesn't Anyone Pay Attention Anymore? - <AUTHOR> http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/why-doesnt-anyone-pay-attention-anymore

<comment><USER2> Why don't website operators think more of design? You need binocular vision to read this article.</comment>


Ask HN: a private Coursera, for training partners or employees? - <AUTHOR>

What I'm looking for is something that is like Coursera, but can be used in-house to develop and deliver training for employees, partners, and customers -- specifically, in IT.
If you've got any leads, please post them in the comments.
And Coursera, if you're reading this: please consider opening up your platform to business. Top universities are great; closed platforms, not so much. I think there's a significant market opportunity for improving non-academic training. <comment><USER2> My megacorp uses Saba (<http://www.saba.com/>) for in-house training. It's dependent on Flash, but what corporate image doesn't have Flash?

I'm not sure how it compares to Coursera, but you can have required training (ethics, compliance, etc), and training certificate programs with multiple classes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've got a private-training-platform site coming out soon. What are you looking for?</comment>


Open Game Art - <AUTHOR> http://opengameart.org/ <comment><USER2> Love it. There's a growing trend of open design. Another example is [http://www.logodust.com](http://www.logodust.com) where we open source logo designs

<comment><USER3> I really like logo dust, thanks for the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like that one of the search parameters is "license", so you can look for stuff that's permissive enough for your project.

<comment><USER5> The bottom comment on a previous discussion is someone pointing out that sometimes unlicensed game asset rips get on the site (And getting downvoted for it because they couldn't have an example)

Anecdotal evidence, but I saw an asset I recognized from a AAA game on there years ago. I'd be a little careful using the more obscure assets for a commercial project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the website a lot, although I see two small issues with it:

1) sometimes things that are packs are uploaded as separate assets, so you can have few pages of art dump from some open source game project

2) some low-effort assets should be removed or put into some kind of staging area. By low effort I mean people using the MS Paint spray to paint some white dots on black background and call it "starry background", or some basic Perlin noise with colours pushed as "some colorful abstract background, maybe someone will find this useful".

</comment><comment><USER7> previous thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7890901](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7890901)

</comment><comment><USER8> I was wrongly expecting something about video game as art.

To me it is really strange that video game as a new medium for art has not taken more traction yet. Every ingredient seems to be there for the recipe: novelty of the medium, specific set of constraints that need to be overcome, ability for a single person to create their vision, etc.

I know some of them are already, e.g. Machinarium, but is still marginal it's it not?

<comment><USER9> All new artforms are derided as not being "true" art by the establishment, who are invested in the status quo. Even contemporary art, intended to expand our ideas about art, is often only accepted under certain existing categories; performance art, mixed media, others.

Once could hypothesise that when non-gamers think of games, they think of the most popular games, which means the most commercially viable. I would equate it to thinking of advertising illustration or graphic design when talking about "visual art".

Of course, people often think games should be fun in some way, so the kookier games that are artistic expressions might not become popular, because people don't want to experience those works.

Some examples of games I consider arty:

\- Moirai [0]

\- Sisters of the Amniotic Lens [1]

\- Gone home [2]

\- The Stanley Parable [3]

[0] [http://store.steampowered.com/app/496920/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/496920/)

[1] [http://store.steampowered.com/app/287140/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/287140/)

[2] [http://store.steampowered.com/app/232430/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/232430/)

[3] [http://store.steampowered.com/app/221910/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/221910/)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for these suggestion, I'll check them out. There is also an interesting trend with pico8 "pixel games", for me some of them have a "thing", a bit like chiptune music.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've used this site in many personal projects. Very nice and easy to find what you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER11> The problem is with open art is, that it is never unique, as in easy adaptable to a unique colourscheme and look. And it always has this patchy look. If this models, textures where curated to fit into colour schemes and looks, that could be used, that would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER12> The UI is so similar to the ones we had in early 2000s in Game Dev communities. So many memories!

</comment><comment><USER13> great site with a decent repository of assets. Some are from the 2012 Liberate Pixel Cup, which I participated in when learning python. I wish they would do another cup.</comment>


Show HN: Rocket Press - <AUTHOR> http://rocket-press.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm launching my very first startup, Rocket Press today.

The idea is pretty simple: We focus on providing optimized hosting for WordPress. This means we use Memcached, we tweak MySQL and we use object caching for php.

My big focus is on making people that are passionate about their websites and blogs happy. WordPress is so popular, it's really amazing that there's not a lot of hosts dedicating themselves or at least having a real strategy around the product. You can get hosting at GoDaddy or Dreamhost for cheap, but you're paying for disk space and bandwidth, that's it.

We provide a completely set up and optimized experience out of the gate. We're also very involved with WordPress day to day, so our support is personal and tailored to the software.

I have plans for Rocket Press in the future that involve creating a custom framework for rapid customization of your site/blog using drag and drop components right in the WordPress admin screen. This will be a value-added feature on top of the already great hosting.

Thanks HN!</comment>


Not Up for Debate: The Science Behind Vaccination - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/18/upshot/not-up-for-debate-the-science-behind-vaccination.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=sectionfront <comment><AUTHOR> Laypeople don't argue using their "common sense" with engineers about whether bridge trusses ought to be larger or smaller. It's always been crazy to me that laypeople argue with scientists and physicians about things like vaccines.</comment>


Show HN: HtmlPy – HTML5-CSS3-JavaScript Based GUI Library in Python - <AUTHOR> http://amol-mandhane.github.io/htmlPy/ <comment><USER2> It looks like a lot of work and thought went into this library. I'd love to give it a shot except that I have no idea what the output might look like.

<comment><AUTHOR> Output is pretty much same as HTML rendered by chrome. htmlPy just renders it in a standalone application instead of browser window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to dig into this, but for all I know, it could produce horrible GUIs.

Why isn't there even a single screenshot of a GUI made with this library?

<comment><AUTHOR> The HTML-CSS-JS pages rendered by QtWebkit differ only slightly from those rendered by Firefox/Chrome. So the GUIs will be as good as the CSS/JS behind it.

I'll upload a few screenshots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When i saw the example code, the first thing that is see is the use of globals:

      from main import app
      app.html

This is a reason i would never use a library like this. Flask has the same issue with globals. I think is a common problem that python developers have, because its so easy to create global singleton modules with state.

</comment><comment><USER5> > htmlPy is a wrapper around PySide's QtWebKit library...

Based on my experience using Qt (via PyQt) this is kind of puzzling, and the very limited doc doesn't do much to unpuzzle me.

QtWebKit is basically a rendering engine wrapped as a Qt widget[0]. Where an entire app is based on a Qt main window, it can display HTML-encoded or Javascript-encoded content in a QWebView widget.

QtWebKit also offers the "WebKit bridge"[1] which "extends WebKit's JavaScript environment to access native objects represented as QObjects" and this permits creation of a "thin client" in which "the entire UI is driven by HTML, JavaScript and CSS." This sounds like what HtmlPy may be doing: using QtWebKit to make a "thin client", basically a minimal web browser window, in which the client code can use Javascript and HTML to display stuff.

If that's the case, a couple of points follow.

First, in that design, the only UI elements that will have the native OS's look and feel will be the outermost bits of the window. All widgets inside will have the look'n'feel designed by the app using CSS. Which may or may not be an issue.

More important, QtWebKit is deprecated and support for it ended with Qt5.4 [2]. Maintenance on QtWebKit has been slow to nonexistent since 2014 and my personal experience with it was that it had many bugs and frequently crashed my app displaying very ordinary web pages.

The replacement for QtWebKit is QtWebEngine [3][4] which is based on the Chromium web engine. Although QtWebEngine has several annoying omissions of QtWebKit features, it is in my experience much more reliable, and has on-going support.

However, I do not think there is as yet any equivalent in QtWebEngine to the "WebKit Bridge" mentioned above. The WebKit-to-WebEngine porting page[5] doesn't mention it, but does mention restrictions on Javascript execution compared to WebKit. So if indeed HtmlPy is depending on QtWebKit's "bridge", it is on a dead-end track for Qt support.

[0] [http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebkit- index.html](http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebkit-index.html)

[1] [http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebkit- bridge.html](http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebkit-bridge.html)

[2] [http://www.qt.io/qt5-4/](http://www.qt.io/qt5-4/)

[3] [http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebengine- index.html](http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebengine-index.html)

[4] [http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebenginewidgets- index.html](http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebenginewidgets-index.html)

[5] [http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebenginewidgets- qtwebkitportingguid...](http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebenginewidgets- qtwebkitportingguide.html)

<comment><USER6> _Where an entire app is based on a Qt main window, it can display HTML-encoded or Javascript-encoded content in a QWebView widget._

So it's another one of these "web everything" things... which in my experience seems more like "how to make your app consume 100x more memory and disk space that it should". What is with this aversion to native UIs that I've been seeing more of recently (and the tendency to invent controls that don't work anywhere near as well as the native ones)?

In regards to that, this also tends to encourage some very convoluted schemes like creating a local web server to serve the page for the GUI:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8640520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8640520)

<comment><USER7> People are attracted to these solutions because they can build cross platform GUIs. Native UIs are great, no one is averse to them, people just don't want to write and maintain several different versions of the same thing in different languages.

<comment><USER5> The irony is, Qt _IS_ a cross-platform GUI, where you build your UI once and it looks like Windows on Windows, Mac OS on Mac OS, and the look of whatever window manager on Linux.

<comment><USER6> _The irony is, Qt _IS_ a cross-platform GUI, where you build your UI once and it looks like Windows on Windows, Mac OS on Mac OS, and the look of whatever window manager on Linux._

Looks like, yes. Behaves like, not really (at least on Windows.) The few Qt apps I have certainly do not feel as responsive as the native ones, despite (mostly) looking that way, so it is rather awkward. They're noticeably laggier even in simple operations like displaying a menu, or responding to window resizing/moving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone explain why this is useful over standard HTML/CSS or Bootstrap? Feels like I'm missing the point...

<comment><USER9> It is somewhat comparable to Atoms Electron if you are familiar with that, but instead of having node.js backend this one has pyside backend.</comment></comment>


Suppressing the reasoning part of the brain stimulates creativity - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/07/thinking-caps-on-electrical-currents-boost-creative-problem-solving-study-finds <comment><USER2> You can get a bit of this by consciously separating solutions from fully understanding the problem. Once you've started developing solutions, you become attached to them, you start reasoning using those solutions and their properties and tradeoffs as anchors, and it's harder to abandon them.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/ka/hold_off_on_proposing_solutions/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/ka/hold_off_on_proposing_solutions/)</comment>


Subnormal Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.sun.com/d/entry/subnormal_numbers <comment><USER2> Apparently subnormal is the new name for denormal numbers: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denormal_number></comment>


Wikipedia visual editor - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/31/translate-ui-wikipedias-visual-editor/

<comment><USER2> It's a very good start. The main things that are still really lacking I think are "References" and "Transclusions". Even the word "transclusions" needs to be expelled from the interface. Nobody knows what that means, guys. Just call it "templates".

<comment><USER3> It is a very good start, and it's good that it's a clearly labelled 'beta' option. It -might- eventually make doing cites easier (especially ones that involve minor changes in existing cites), but already anyone who comes along and sees something wrong can fix typos, clumsy phrases, even repair some vandalism. It enables tens of thousands of reader eyes to do that. Major plus.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, and even for experienced editors, it's an easier tool to use for typo and grammar correction, since you can see the error in the same visual context as you first spotted it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Editor is not sandboxed in cross domain iframe environment.

Homakov go!

<comment><USER5> I don't understand. Can you link me to a thing that will teach me to understand, please?

<comment><USER6> Use the search box at the bottom of the page on HN, or hit hnsearch.com, search for "Homakov" (click the radio button to limit to stories), and if that's not enough, add in key words from the parent post (iframe, domain, cross-domain, sandbox, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I suspect that removing having the ability to learn Wikipedia's markup language as a filter for contributors will decrease the average quality of edits. If you're incapable of learning simple patterns or closing parentheses, maybe the quality of your thinking and judgement is not that high. If so, I don't really want to read your ideas or opinions.

<comment><USER8> And I suspect you're wrong. I didn't find Wikipedia's markup language difficult, but I did find it needlessly cumbersome, plus it makes proofreading more difficult. Do you have any evidence for judging the quality of authorship by the standards of typesetters?

<comment><USER7> Just compare the average Tumblr blog to, say one produced with Jekyll, document produced with Latex vs. Word, etc.

Relatedly, making things too "easy to use" often obscures what's actually happening underneath and makes them harder to understand for certain classes of user (i.e. those that want to understand what they're actually doing).

<comment><USER9> Just create a reputation system for edits. For every edit, ask it to be given a type (typo, additional info, factual correction, etc) and a quality score. Wight the value of a rating using the rating of ther rater. People who make good contributions will rise to the top. Those who make poor contributions will fall to the bottom

There are better solutions than making something needlessly complex.

<comment><USER8> Quite. I don't think that making it hard automatically makes it better, any more than I think that using vi will make you a better programmer than using [insert your favorite GUI editor here].

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I noticed this the other day. It's pretty exciting!</comment>


Japan invents invisibility cloak? - <AUTHOR> http://www.tokyotimes.co.jp/2012/japan-invents-invisibility-cloak/

<comment><USER2> Not quite what I was hoping for in invisibility, but augmented reality FTW!</comment>


DropLost. Find all of your dead Dropbox public account links on the web - <AUTHOR> http://droplost.com/ <comment><USER2> You Sir, just made my day a lot less work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! Exactly what I needed.</comment>


Open webOS up and running on the Nexus 7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.webosnation.com/webos-ports-gets-open-webos-and-running-google-nexus-7-video# <comment><USER2> I still enjoy using WebOS more than iOS. The card system is a joy to use. Palm created a great OS but handled hardware and marketing with almost criminal negligence. Hp did the same.

If I could get the top five apps in every category and decent hardware I would switch back to WebOS.

<comment><USER3> I agree on the marketing, but disagree strongly with your statement that they mishandled the hardware. I've got nearly a half-dozen WebOS devices kicking around (Pre 1-3, Pixi, Veer) that I would prefer to use over my Galaxy Nexus if they had Android on it. I would say that the hardware was actually the _best_ part of the WebOS ecosystem.

<comment><USER2> I will clarify that I liked the Pre but the hardware always came out 6 months too late.

The Touchpad was decent hardware but it was up against the iPad 2. The 16gig version was $499 yet the camera function didn't even work correctly when it was released! It should have been released at $399 at the most. Who at HP made this decision? Did they really think they could justify $499 for hardware that had fewer apps and 1 camera instead of 2 and was thicker than the iPad2?!

<comment><USER4> For what it's worth, there is an active community developing Android for HP Touchpad. The Touchpad had decent hardware to begin with and can be overclocked and more. I have a 32gb Touchpad running Jelly Bean and it's as smooth as butter, and the latest netflix app plays great, skype, etc all work fine in Android.

If you have a Touchpad check out the XDA Developers forum here: <http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1247>

[edited to add link]

<comment><USER5> Like many HPers I got a Touchpad in the fire sale and haven't converted it to Android yet because I heard the camera wasn't working. Apparently that's fixed now and Netflix works too? Might be time for me to convert.

<comment><USER6> Camera works in CM9 and CM10. I still use 9 because I'm not desperate for Android 4.1 (already have 4.2 on my Gnexus and Nexus 7).

The other place to look for Android on the Touchpad is rootzwiki (<http://rootzwiki.com/forum/217-hp-touchpad/>). Either forum will get you what you need most likely though, but I'm an admin on rootzwiki for what it's worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone who just compiled his own Android build and deployed on his tablet, there's something refreshing and enlightening about working with unlocked hardware and open-source software which you never get to experience on the iStack.

I'm not going to try open webOS but I can see why these people are doing what they do :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice technological demo, but honestly I think that webOS is dead. Unless some major phone/tablet maker was to adopt it and put the marketing $$ behind to adopt it I don't see it going anywhere except as a technological demo. There was some good idea in webOS but Palm was never able to build any strong traction around it, and HP... We know what happen there.

<comment><USER9> Well, you probably shouldn't base your livelihood on consumer access to WebOS, but if that is the case then you should have changed business plans a while ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone else think that Mozilla should fork open WebOS?

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice to see the most modern mobile OS (they did html and js apps way before anyone) still around. I might get a nexus 7 again to try this out.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure I'd say that HTML+JS as a development platform is more or less "modern" than native code. It has strengths, and weaknesses, but isn't really a better or more refined method, just a different one.

<comment><USER11> Fair. On webOS iirc, HTML+JS is pretty much native, save for calls to the subsystem, not much unlike "native" code on other mobile platforms.

With my use of "modern" I mean, how HTML + JS apps/OS have become increasingly on the radar as a complete way of being.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Succeed as a Consultant - <AUTHOR> http://unixwiz.net/techtips/be-consultant.html <comment><USER2> _Consulting maxim: You must give the customer The Warm Fuzzy Feeling (tm)._ _Consulting maxim: You are primarily in the customer service business, not the technical business._

Here's the most counter-intuitive part of it -- or at least it took me the longest to figure out. The "aha" moment came after two or three years of full time consulting.

So, you're missing the final deadline on the project. You're missing it bad, your customer needs it done like a week ago. No matter how hard you try, you'll need another week or two to complete the project.

Now, your options are:

1) get a metric ton of coffee, disconnect the phone, lock the door, go completely into death march crunch mode, work till you start seeing things and hearing voices from sleep deprivation, and deliver the product in 5 days, or

2) visit your customer every day in person, looking normal, spend 2 hours with them discussing what is done, what problems slow you down, what will be done next, etc, and deliver the product in 10 days, probably cutting features like there is no tomorrow.

Now, if I am the customer in this scenario, I totally prefer (1) -- especially since I need it a week ago. The thing is, some of my customers look _much_ happier if they get (2). In fact, they are nervous, unhappy and angry when they get (1), and they look calm, satisfied and friendly when they get (2).

<comment><USER3> How do you find most of your customers? What are your thoughts on the author's point that writing technical articles is one of the best methods?

<comment><USER2> I find my customers through the people I know personally, mostly. The relationships are mostly long term, so I don't need many.

I never wrote technical articles, so no opinion on that; should work pretty well, theoretically. I do have a blog, though; it's rarely about anything work-related (mostly arm-chair microeconomics and libertarian studies these days). Even while being an off-topic, the blog still helps me to meet interesting people, and some of them become my customers later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >When I go into the bank and find a long line to reach a teller, it's of course frustrating. Mentally, I start a timer in my head, and the longer the timer goes the worse of an experience it is. What stops the timer? Leaving the bank?

>No. — It's "reaching the teller".

This is the hardest customer service lesson to learn for many, many technical people, including myself and many of the people I've hired.

the thing is, for me, that clock stops when I leave the bank. I don't see how waiting for the teller is any better than waiting in line.

But it's very clear to me that Steve's article is correct for most people. The thing is, if a task is going to take from 2-48 hours, and you email them and say "I got your order, you will be up in two to 48 hours" and you convince them it's not an autoresponder, for some reason, they will be quite a bit happier than if you write the exact text on the order page, or send them an autoresponse with the same text.

I don't know /why/ this is... I mean, it's not that way for me. But it is, and it's been hard for me and my people to learn and implement this. But we need to do it if we want to branch out into the higher margin, higher support markets.

<comment><USER5> I find it very interesting that user interfaces work the same way. If I click on something and it doesn't do _anything_ , it is much more frustrating than if it immediately presents me with an hourglass or beachball for a few seconds.

<comment><USER6> Not doing anything makes people feel a lot more like there is an error. At least with an hourglass the program/website has acknowledged the click enough to display an image. Many people probably don't realise though a loading spinner is usually very loosely connected to whether the thing they have clicked on is actually doing anything or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When people say consulting, they seem to mostly be referring to web development it seems. I'm more of a software guy. With web development I'm guessing that finding customers is a bit easier because people tend to know that they need a new website and go looking for someone to build it.

Software is usually solving a more difficult to define problem and the customer might not even realise they need a software solution or what it should look like.

Does anyone have any experiences and advice for how they find customers for work other than web dev?

</comment><comment><USER7> There's another good guide here by HN user jacquesm: <http://jacquesmattheij.com/be-consultant>

</comment><comment><USER8> This was posted a year ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=411994>

<comment><USER9> Yes, that's fine as a few members recently asked how to be a consultant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I found this article very interesting.

I reminded me of Gerald Weinbergs three rules of consulting: 1) Its always a people problem 2) Its always a people problem 3) you get paid by the hour and not by the result

His point is that it is often hard to fix a problem quickly because the 'problem' is often a side effect of a bigger 'people problem'.

</comment><comment><USER11> Some very good points FTA:

1: _Provide time-billing transparency_ 2: _Give away some free time, but make it visible_

#2 was a very obvious point, but one that I hadn't really thought about until reading it. Qualifying the value you're providing can definitely improve the relationship you have with your customer.

<comment><USER12> I recently started consulting for us govt. Such an odd world. Things like #2 are illegal.

<comment><USER13> That's interesting; I had no idea. How do they manage to make that illegal?

<comment><USER14> It's often illegal for government employees or agencies to accept certain kinds of 'gifts'. It definitely depends on how strictly they follow the rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How to succeed as a _lawyer_?</comment>