Ask HN: What are the most innovative VC/Angel funds out there? - <AUTHOR>

I've been looking at several VC portfolio and public statements they give and something about them just strikes the wrong nerve with me.  I don't know how to explain it except with this analogy.
Before the iPhone came out, the world of cell phones was a mishmash disaster.  Once the iPhone came out, you could definitely see what a smartphone was suppose to be.  It was clear, Apple was a leader in this.  So, what did all the other phone manufacturers do during this time?  Ya....  Now imagine if Google didn't develop Android.  Now imagine the competition....
When I'm looking at the VC/Angel field today, I'm getting the same feeling I did during the iPhone reveal.  Some funds are like Apple but the vast majority seem to just want to copy however the top fund made it's money while faking it's investors like they are some major source of financial innovation.  Or worse, hide old worthless techniques as new "venture" funds.
I can think of the obvious lilke Ron Conway's and Sequoia Capital, but who else is out there? <comment><USER2> I agree with your sentiments, and have also been frustrated by this. I don't have answers but can only offer apologies and rationalizations:

1) I think the smart phone mismash disaster was largely because of carrier's keeping phones lock down. Carrier's wanted a cut of every transaction so kept locking out features that could jeopardize their place as a gatekeeper and toll collector. Apple--high on success of iPod--had enough mojo to get AT&T to play ball. After Apple broke the carrier lock down the other carriers had to follow suit.

2) Finance is as much sales and marketing as any other business (perhaps even more). VC's want to buy a company and sell it for a profit (hopefully quickly). Once they see ABC startup being sold for $100 million, they'll start looking for the copycat DEF startup to buy a piece at $10 million that they can flip for $20 million. VCs have to look at the technical risk as well as the financial risk and arguably the financial risk trumps all.

E.g. say you handle all the technical risks, come up with a great company/product, but the VC finds out there is no market for them to sell your company. The financial risk trumped the technical risk. What does the VC do now? Hold onto the company for a few years and running it as a cash flow positive business until the market turns? That's what I'd personally do, but I'm not a VC.... and VC's aren't in the conglomerate business (running cash flow positive companies like Berkshire Hathaway, Danaher, etc).

Finally, I am encouraged by some posts like this from dshen that takes a somewhat contrarian view of VC/Angel: [http://www.dshen.com/blogs/business/archives/the_case_for_ha...](http://www.dshen.com/blogs/business/archives/the_case_for_hardware_software_internet.shtml) Some of the VCs/Angles he cites might be good to look into.

</comment><comment><USER3> Part I

Congratulations: Don't feel like the Lone Ranger! In your feelings, suspicions, observations, analyses, and conclusions, you've got plenty of company!

It took me too long to accept that what you describe was the actual reality. Or, you ask for

"innovative VC/Angel funds"

as if we should of course assume that some exist!

For my role and position in this issue, and the 'side of the table I'm on', I'm an entrepreneur writing software for a startup. For this startup I'm the founder, 100% owner, CEO, CFO, Chief Scientist, CIO, biz dev lead, development manager, developer lead, QA tester, software architect, 'full stack' developer, server farm bridge manager, NOC manager, hardware manager, network manager, systems administrator, and janitor. How else?

To help my response to your question I will say a little more: What kind of software? A Web site. Who are my candidate users? Maybe 70% of everyone in the world with Internet access -- that is everyone on the Internet except total dead heads and small children. Porn? No, not at all; actually, nothing objectionable at all. Need? My view is that it's out there, big time, and now served at best poorly. My role? If I'm correct, then my work will serve the need by far the best in the world, with a 'technological' barrier to entry that should last plenty long enough to get barriers to entry from brand, network effects, virality, lock in, users knowing how to use my site, and some cases of continuing contact. Key? Sure, some crucial, core 'secret sauce' that is, really, some applied math with some original theorems and proofs with some advanced prerequisites.

So, I'm addressing what seems clearly to be a huge need and for my 'seriousness' and technological 'credibility' am standing on a strong, i.e., mathematical, foundation.

Status? I have all the crucial, core software ready for at least significant production, likely for much more, and now am doing just routine, and relatively simple, Web site development.

Obstacles? I selected Windows instead of Linux and, thus, had to get good with Visual Basic .NET, ADO.NET, ASP.NET, significant parts of the rest of .NET, and some obscure points of SQL Server administration, and this learning has been only routine but, still, has taken far, Far too long. Otherwise, no obstacles.

Financial status? For VCs and angels, at present my project and a dime wouldn't cover a ten cent cup of coffee.

Next steps? Finish the software, get some initial data, plug together a first server, say, an 8 core AMD processor on a $125 motherboard with 16 GB of ECC main memory and several 2 TB hard disks. Use the Microsoft BizSpark program to get needed copies of Windows Server and SQL Server. Get a static IP address, a domain name, and 15 Mbps upload bandwidth to the Internet. Get some ads from ad networks. Go live and get publicity, users, and ad revenue.

So, assume can get paid $1 per 1000 ads displayed, a Web page with 3 ads can be sent for 200,000 bits, and half fill the 15 Mbps upload bandwidth 24 x 7. Then revenue should be

1 * 3 * 15 * 10^6 * 3600 * 24 * 30 / ( 2 * 200,000 * 1000 ) = 291,600

dollars a month. Ah, grade school arithmetic!

As far as I can tell, equity investors will be interested in my work about the time -- and NOT before -- I have monthly revenue of $291,600 growing rapidly. Then they might want to invest a few million dollars for about 30% of my company. They would get 1-2 Board seats with power to set my compensation, replace me, and sell my company, and I would own 0.00% of my company and get back maybe 55% of my company after a 4 years vesting period if the Board didn't fire me first.

But with monthly revenue of $291,600, why, just why, would I need any equity investment at all? And more seriously, why, just why, would I accept such investment terms?

Basically the soonest equity investors would write a check is some months after I would no longer be interested in their check.

That's my company.

To generalize a little, this grade school arithmetic

1 * 3 * 15 * 10^6 * 3600 * 24 * 30 / ( 2 * 200,000 * 1000 ) = 291,600

is widely understood! So, from the first day I started on this project all the way through 'traction' significant and growing rapidly, I do and pay for everything.

Then, with $291,600 a month in revenue growing rapidly, and thus, qualify for equity funding, suddenly I need an equity investment?

Let's see: From the assumptions above we're talking a peak of

15 * 10^6 / ( 200,000 ) = 75

Web pages a second. An 8 core server for about $1000 might be able to do that, but even if not a week or so of an 8 core server being busy would generate enough revenue for some nice shelf units full of such servers that could deliver 75 pages a second. That is, the computers and bandwidth are cheap; given traction enough to keep a server busy, should have revenue enough to grow server capacity quickly; similarly for bandwidth; net, given the traction equity investors want, don't really need equity funding for computers and bandwidth.

The equity funders insist on all the development already being done, so can't get equity funding for that. What's left for the equity funding?

A lot of people can see this situation: Likely business is in line to see a lot of startups that don't take equity funding: If they get traction, they don't need equity funding. If they don't get traction, they can't get equity funding. Equity funding is beginning to look useless.

Now for more general remarks for this thread: As far as I can tell, for my work or essentially anything in 'information technology', the idea of

"innovative VC/Angel funds"

is nearly irrelevant. That is, as far as I can tell, one could count on one hand all the 'information technology' equity investors in the US who would be at all "innovative". That is, they just will not, Not, NOT look at anything technical. They just will NOT do it. Instead, their investment criteria boils down to one word: Traction. Being 'innovative' has nothing, nichts, nil, nada, zip, zilch, zero to do with their investing.

In more detail, for such equity investors 'traction' is numerical evidence that can be a surrogate for what a private equity investor would get from an audited financial statement. That is, the early stage information technology equity investors are thinking like accountants except are willing to use surrogate measures instead of just strict accounting measures. Then anything 'innovative' and a dime won't cover a 10 cent cup of coffee.

There is some evidence that biomedical venture capital can be more 'innovative', but I concentrate on 'information technology' and set aside biomedical, 'clean energy', materials science, etc.

Moreover I concentrate on just US early stage information technology equity investment.

<comment><USER3> Part II

So, what's going on here?

I start with five general points:

(1) Status of Venture Capital.

In a word, now and for the past 10 years or so, there is just one appropriate word for venture capital -- it sucks. To be more clear, the returns to the limited partners from the VC 'asset class' have been not just poor but commonly negative. It may be that there are fewer than 20 VC firms in the US that have a good track record for their limited partners.

From a graph posted some months ago by VC Mark Suster, over the past 10 years the number of venture partners has fallen from a few thousand to a few hundred, or some such. The VC layoff rate compares with the UAW Detroit layoff rate.

(2) What's Available in Practice.

It's easy to guess that, being on the VC side of the table, it's not easy to find really promising projects. That is, VCs that say that they need and want more and better proposals likely have a good point. For me, I'd rather be on my side of the table so that if I want a better project all I have to do is think of one; on the VC side of the table I'd have to wait for such a project from entrepreneurs -- bummer.

(3) What's Available in Principle

Still, whatever the daily reality is for VCs as they read their e-mail, in principle the entrepreneurs and their VCs should be printing money in huge piles.

Why? There is one, just one, key to printing money: Create economic value. For that key, there is one, just one, main approach: Increase economic productivity, that is, turn out more, much more, value per person-hour worked. For more productivity there is essentially just one good approach -- automate the work. For automation, there is now exactly one, unique in all of history, grand champion technique -- computing, especially aided by the Internet and readily available infrastructure software. So, find some much needed activity and automate it.

(4) What's Available with Some Effort.

Whatever work X the entrepreneurs and their VCs are doing, there's more, much more, that is clearly available, with a fantastic track record, far better than the VC track record, that clearly totally blows the doors off X.

We get the examples of how to do such powerful technology from the all-time, unique world-class, grand champion of everything technical, the US DoD who, thankfully for US national security, has been wildly successful for about 70 years now.

War story: Around 1940, the American Chemical Society, seeing war coming, sent a representative to the US War Department offering to be a liaison with the US community of chemistry. Soon he got back a letter of thanks but saying that the War Department already has a chemist. About five years later, there had been a, uh, change of attitude: Eisenhower said "Never again will US science be permitted to operate independent of the US military.". Vannevar Bush, James Conant, etc. arranged that US research universities would get "an offer they couldn't refuse": Take DoD money for research or cease to be a competitive research university. Result: Since then the top few dozen US research universities have gotten about 60% of their annual budgets from research grants and have dominated academic research in the world, and the US DoD is right there, sure they are not falling behind in fundamental research and getting a good stream of well selected and trained researchers.

Congress and the US DoD take research and technology very, very seriously.

So, comparing with entrepreneurs and their VCs, I will mention two differences:

(A) In the system set up by the DoD, given a problem, it is common to attack it by doing some original research, e.g., that can pass peer review. Often the work -- in physics, electronic engineering, mechanical engineering, chemistry -- has been highly mathematical.

This research, where to do it, how to do it, the standards, and the culture, are rooted in the best US research universities but also extend to many laboratories and companies working on US national security.

(B) Given some research, the results can quickly receive quite competent and serious evaluation, often from presentations just on paper. With that evaluation passed, the project can move quickly through prototype software, breadboard hardware, demonstration systems, fully militarized design and prototype development, full testing, and large scale production and deployment.

Given a good evaluation of the research, the rest has an excellent track record of success.

E.g,, at one time I was programming in the group that did the orbit determination for the Navy's version of GPS, and there I learned the story of how that system had been proposed to the Navy: Not much more than some physicists scratching on the back of an envelope. And the final system worked as planned, and a test receiver on the roof routinely 'navigated' its position to less than one foot. Yes, the later Air Force GPS is more accurate. But the Navy's system was just crucial for the US SSBN fleet and its missile targeting for years.

So, in strong contrast, for the VCs, for (A), they just will NOT take research seriously. They just will NOT do it.

Indeed, we might look at how the US research universities and the US DoD evaluate research and the qualifications they use: A researcher who publishes some good research can be invited to be a reviewer of a journal or of proposals for funded research. A good reviewer can be invited to be a journal editor. A good editor can be invited to be a journal editor in chief. Etc. Then that system just will not permit itself to be seen as unable to evaluate original research, no matter how advanced, no matter what the prerequisites, no matter how involved. Period. Write a paper with title "P = NP" and submit it to any of at least a dozen journals, and within a year will get back a letter with "The first serious error is at line n on page m" or "Your check for $1 million from Clay Mathematics is in the mail.".

Sure, the path to reviewing papers is usually a long and challenging Ph.D. followed by a few years of successful research. Editors in chief typically have plenty of gray hairs. This system for evaluating research is highly competent but challenging.

Then, for the VCs, in strong contrast, apparently one could count with shoes on all the VCs who could even direct a competent evaluation of some research; this is not a surprise since one could count with shoes on all the VCs with a relevant Ph.D. and a solid research record.

Next, for (B), funding based just on research just on paper, the VCs won't do it. At most all a proposal will get back are laughs. Send a VC a paper with some research, and the VC may break a leg slapping his thigh in wild laughter.

The US DoD has been funding projects based on research just on paper to knock balls out of the park and into orbit with high reliability from early in WWII to the present, and VCs won't even come to the ballpark.

So, net, we have to suspect that much more ROI would be available to the VCs "with some effort", that is, by taking research seriously.

(5) Fundamental Issue.

If we ask that each entrepreneur found "another Google" and be worth $200 billion, we start to have doubts. E.g., the whole US economic pie is not that big, and we wonder if computing, etc. is powerful enough to grow that pie that big soon.

So, without a big change in pie size, the number of $200 billion successes is small, only a few each decade.

I believe that by taking research seriously we can multiply this few by several quickly. So, a fundamental issue is that we are still limited to not very many $200 billion successes per decade.

But apparently for my claim of "multiply this few by several quickly", there is hardly a VC or limited partner in the country who would believe any such thing and fewer still, say, zero, who would bet more than 10 cents on it. They would be afraid they were just being swindled, and they don't want to be swindled out of even a 10 cent cup of coffee.

Again, VCs and their limited partners seem to be suck solidly in evaluating projects just by traditional financial accounting but using some surrogate measures. In particular, they look at 'traction' but will NOT look at research.

<comment><USER3> Part III

I move on to two more issues:

(1) The Hay Stack.

Apparently a venture firm can have a polished Web site put up for them, get some publicity by writing columns in the tech media, and then, presto, get in their e-mail a huge stream of contacts from entrepreneurs.

Maybe they will fairly quickly get 2000 such contacts a year.

So, such a VC gets a huge stack of hay in which they are looking for golden needles.

Here's my guess at where the VCs are making a huge mistake: They are trying to learn from the hay. They start to conclude that the hay is 'representative' of 'what is going on in information technology', read a few hundred such contacts, and conclude that they are developing "deep domain knowledge". They start to believe that the best possible investments are from the better looking stalks of hay.

A huge problem here is that they just have no other very good criteria. In strong contrast, the guys who did the physics for the Navy's version of GPS had physics going for them; they were correct, knew they were correct, knew just why they were correct, and could convince Navy technical problem sponsors that beyond any doubt they were correct, feasible, practical, realistic, etc. No important role for guessing or intuition. Not a lot of doubt. Not much risk. And whatever else was in whatever stack of hay was just irrelevant. And revolutionize military strategy.

As an explanation there is:

"It is still an unending source of surprise for me how a few scribbles on a blackboard or on a piece of paper can change the course of human affairs."

Stanislaw Ulam

VCs and their limited partners might want to start to listen up. Especially from Ulam: On its first try, his second contribution yielded the energy of 15 million tons of TNT. On its first try, his first contribution yielded about 15 thousand tons. Before that he had a nice result in probability the French probabilist Le Cam called 'tightness' with a nice presentation in Billingsley's 'Convergence of Probability Measures'.

(2) The Research

I can believe that the VCs don't receive many promising proposals based on research. One reason is that not many talented, well trained researchers cross over to become entrepreneurs. A second reason is, researchers who contact VCs get such a poor reception that researchers have been discouraged.

So, VCs don't see much promising research in their incoming e-mail.

We might also anticipate that a VC has described to their limited partners what projects they will fund, and research on paper is NOT included!

There have long been plenty of US DoD technical problem sponsors who were 'innovative' with astoundingly high batting averages. Somehow VCs seem to have ignored such work. Net, looking for an 'innovative' angel or VC looks like looking for hen's teeth.

Final remark: What to do about the situation? For me, as an entrepreneur, just be successful, thus, solve the problem for myself, and let others draw what they will from my example.

More generally, I don't know what VCs would say to what limited partners to make a significant difference, and then I don't know how they would get good projects based on research.

So for now for me, the flip side of the problem is an opportunity.

<comment><AUTHOR> "That is, as far as I can tell, one could count on one hand all the 'information technology' equity investors in the US who would be at all "innovative". "

What do you think some of those are? Yes, they are rare and getting funded by one probably has better odds than hitting the lotto but who are they?

<comment><USER3> The VC team with the best technical qualifications and about the best background in research relevant to 'information technology' is likely YC. Alas, maybe now they invest only via their two annual 'incubator classes'.

About the best I can suggest is to try some people who:

(1) have shown some strong interest in being thoughtful (and not wacko) and least independent and hopefully innovative and

(2) have been successful and, thus, have some confidence to go 'outside the lines' or the herd or whatever.

If they are VCs with money from limited partners, then likely they need already to have been quite successful to keep their limited partners from complaining about going 'outside the lines'.

If they are angel investors, then they need a good supply of their own money and a lot of experience and success in investing.

I would avoid any investor with a lot of definite opinions: A good investor needs to appreciate and accept that they can't know more than all the entrepreneurs and for a particular, good project can't know more about that project than that entrepreneur so just MUST shut the f^^k up, turn off the electronics, listen up, and think. It's the entrepreneur who is supposed to be cutting the new trail at the frontier and the investor who is supposed to be following along behind.

In particular I would set aside any investor with a long list of Dos and Don'ts on how to give a technical presentation. E.g., here we have a VC who majored in history, got an MBA, and joined a startup in marketing and then became a VC. And there we have an entrepreneur who got a technical Bachelor's, Master's, and Ph.D., taught undergraduate courses as a graduate student, gave a successful oral defense of his research, presented research at respected conferences, sat in classes for years listening to some of the brightest and most accomplished people ever to live, taught in classes for years, etc.

So, suddenly this VC tells this entrepreneur that they don't know how to present technical material and needs this new, chopped up, watered down, made up, deliberately brain-dead, novel format. Bummer.

As bad as that is, think ahead to the VC being on the Board and that entrepreneur presenting to the Board a new project, with some research content, for improving the 'secret sauce', the ad targeting, the data collection, the system security, performance, or reliability, etc. Before 90 seconds into the presentation, the VC is connected Zynga on his iPhone. Bummer.

So:

(1) VC Brad Feld may be willing and able to be innovative. He likes to say that he invests only in 'themes' or some such, but he may conclude that your project fits one of his themes and may bend a theme otherwise.

(2) Similarly for VC Fred Wilson.

(3) A-H has tried to be at least somewhat flexible in what they do. They've raised a lot of money and apparently recently reported gains from their first fund to their limited partners. So with happy limited partners and lots of 'dry powder', A-H may take a relatively serious look at your project.

(4) Try VC Fred Destin at Atlas -- hit him over the head with something to see if he is just asleep or really dead. If he wakes up, then there is a chance that he will at least start actually thinking. He's been successful in business but been a VC for only a short time and, thus, has a chance of being smart without falling in with the VC herd behavior.

(5) Try Andy Fillat at Leapfrog. He can pay attention and be both insightful and forthcoming.

(6) History suggests that angel Andy Bechtolsheim can quickly see a diamond in the rough and write a check.

(7) Of course the same for angel Ron Conway (who has a son at A-H).

(8) One of the brightest, best qualified, wealthy people in the country is James Simons. If you can get to him, do so. Maybe claim that you need some help with S. Chern's notes on differentiable manifolds or want to teach differential geometry to 10th graders!

Otherwise I would look for investors with rock solid technical backgrounds and accomplishments with solid experience in business with usually a Ph.D., at least in computer science, better still in theoretical parts of electronic engineering, still better in applied math. Might look for profs at Stanford, CMU, or MIT.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Tragedy of Aaron Swartz - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/03/11/130311fa_fact_macfarquhar?currentPage=all

<comment><USER2> This is really wrenching, and beautifully done.</comment>


Slack is down again - <AUTHOR> https://status.slack.com/ <comment><USER2> Not great, 2 days of issues now...</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to build a financial model? - <AUTHOR>

Dear HN community,
For my internship i need to dive into the topic of financial modelling for a technical start-up. I would be very thankful if you could share some best practices in getting the assumptions right and building a financial model generally. Anyone who is interested in some sort of chat on that topic is also very welcome, it would really help me out!
Thank you in advance! <comment><USER2> I've made half a dozen or so very detailed models for varying start-ups and therefore have gone through the process a quite a few times.

1) Please make sure you understand accounting/finance (Income, balance sheets, cash flow, inventory, etc).

2) Who is your target: this determines how detailed, modifiable, and annotated the model should be.

3) Don't worry about the assumptions at first, just get best guesses and build it. Then when done hunt through available financial models to find comparable values. (Have all assumptions on 1-2 pages/sheets and nothing else, I usually have 1 for revenue assumptions and 1 for cost assumptions)

4) Make sales targets/growth easy to modify (in a separate table/sheet) so a statistical analysis can be completed easily if needed or different revenue models can be tested.

5) After you've made the model check your calculations by hand and make sure the values make 'sense'.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://en.origoterra.com/2010/05/startup-financial-model- is-...](http://en.origoterra.com/2010/05/startup-financial-model-is-there-a- template/)

This may be a good starting point.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't recommend using this as a basis for building your model. Use it to assist you by all means but you'll learn a lot more by building your own, and it doesn't need to be anywhere near as complex as this one.

Always use relevant operational drivers for your business - this model is a very generic one that takes income by month as an input and then just grows it by arbitrary percentages after the first 3 months.

So e.g. for a web based business often key drivers will be traffic to your site, conversion rates, price of product (and percentage growth rates for these). Once you have these you can calculate revenues (which could then go into the spreadsheet linked to here if you really wanted to use it).

But it's this operational modelling that really is key to both helping you and any investors understand the economics of your business.

Make sure everything (revenues and costs) are broken down month by month for 3 years. Roll up to yearly totals on a summary sheet if you want.

You can build a decent model in two/three sheets. One for key assumptions/drivers + summary results, and one for an operational model and P+L. You could do cashflow on the 2nd sheet or separately on a 3rd.</comment></comment>


Gifs (in your terminal) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/levthedev/gif <comment><USER2> I've always thought it would be cool if I could have the option to run more rich apps in my terminal - ncurses and lynx come to mind as examples.

<comment><USER3> I wish more websites were readable with Lynx. A lot of sites use a ton of crazy JavaScript, CSS, and god knows what else. I always appreciate simplicity when I find it.</comment></comment>


10k+ API directory - <AUTHOR> http://publicapis.com/

<comment><USER2> Post and Discussion from earlier today.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6898015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6898015)

</comment><comment><USER3> Please add an API!

</comment><comment><USER4> Great but I think search options could be improved with some categorization, tagging etc.

<comment><USER5> There's nothing quite like seeing "10K+" results loaded into a single, infinite page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whoa, was not expecting to see my company on here. Nice! Where do they get their information?

[http://publicapis.com/api/iactionable- api](http://publicapis.com/api/iactionable-api)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been looking for a website that is exactly what this is. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, how did you create this list? manually? automatically?

<comment><USER9> Apparently it uses data from Mashape API Marketplace [https://www.mashape.com/](https://www.mashape.com/)

<comment><USER10> Completely agree with you..

There is nothing new in this website, it is fetching data from specified website.

<comment><USER11> It indicates it's made by the Mashape API Marketplace people. Not sure why the accusatory tone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 10k Item Infinite Scroll List. Best hope the API you want isn't number 8500 you will never find it.

They have this great thing called the alphabet, even if you aren't going to sort by what the API does you could sort by Name and have 37 lists. (AlphaNumeric+Symbol)

<comment><USER13> Imagine this solution applied to App Store or Google Play apps. I think it's best to just to what they do and offer category views, new/hot/featured, lists for certain use cases, etc.</comment></comment>


Guanxi - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi <comment><USER2> As someone who was born and raised in China I just like to remind people that the real meaning of "guanxi" is a function of location and time. i.e. the real meaning of "guanxi" is different from 20 yrs ago to present, and the word has different meaning from small cities to big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, also it doesn't mean exactly the same thing from, say, southern China to north east China.

In general in big cities "guanxi" plays a smaller role, while in small cities especially the underdeveloped ones it plays a bigger role, to the extent that even doing some fairly trivial business (or even things like getting a passport or going to hospital) needs you to have some "guanxi". By "needs one to have some 'guanxi'" I mean it's not impossible for one to do without "guanxi" but it's just way smoother and faster if you know someone who can help. That's also one of the reasons people prefer to live in big cities. It's just more fair for young people without acquaintances in every possible field. On the other hand, parents are more familiar with "guanxi".

The existence of "guanxi" also makes people doubt if they have failed to lubricate some "guanxi" if they got rejected or failed for something (e.g. U.S. visa, or a reasonable exam) even if there are other reasons more likely to cause it.

"guanxi" sometimes even helps one to pass the test for driver's license, oh a big facepalm to road security...

(What I said above is not to confuse you guys, the wikipedia page is still worth reading though.)

<comment><USER3> I guess people from ex-communist countries understand this phenomenon better, where almost everything is obtained as a favor from somebody in a privileged position, to whom you will have to return the favor.

It has a lot in common with corruption but in a communist state it is the norm. Because communism fails at selecting performance, nothing really works and the state institutions are the first affected, but it spreads eventually in the whole society. Thus, the only way to get something is as a favor from someone. You don't go to the institution but you go to someone who "works" there.

So another way to describe these guanxi is : networks of influence with favors as money.

<comment><USER4> > I guess people from ex-communist countries understand this phenomenon better

I'm always amused when people project a Western-centric viewpoint when talking about China. This has very little to do with Communism and everything to do with China's own history and cultural development.

Chinese culture has always placed a strong emphasis on interpersonal relationships because institutions besides the state have always been relatively weak, and the _agents of the state formed a close-knit, elite class that interacted with one another personally_.

For over two thousand years, the state bureaucracy has been the strongest institution in China at the local levels. Even during the Nationalist period and in pre-modern times, you'd better believe the average person would a good relationship with their local official if they wanted to get anything done effectively.

Controlling nepotism and corruption within the bureaucracy has been a perennial concern during every single dynasty of China, going all the way to the Qin dynasty in 200 B.C.

Also, you definitely need good interpersonal networks to do business effectively in Singapore, Hong Kong, or Taiwan, despite the fact that none of those polities have experienced direct Communist rule.

<comment><USER5> I was born in communist Romania, and what he said is spot on. We called it "relations" (not in a familial sense), and you literally used them to do everything, including getting a passport or going to the hospital. Even basic shopping was a function of "relations". For example as a kid I was surprised to find out that the bakery occasionally gave people half-breads (half a bread or a bread and a half and so on), because we always got as much as we needed, never portions. Because relations.

<comment><USER4> China isn't Romania though.

The Communists in China were actually markedly less corrupt than the Nationalist officials they replaced, and in fact the corruption of the Nationalist administration was one reason they lost the Civil War.

Remember that China was still basically a pre-industrial nation in 1949 -- it's hard to have impartial, clean institutions in a nation of China's size without modern communications and mass culture.

I'm pretty sure Romania was a more modern place than China was before WW2, so imposing a Communist system was a step backwards, but that doesn't generalize to China's experience.

<comment><USER6> Another guy grown in Soviet bloc here. All former Marxist cultures, no matter geography and prior history, share a substantial legacy in culture, behaviour and psychology. I would know how to get to the bottom of things in Cuba. Transplant a person from communist Albania into North Korea, and sans the linguistic and culinary* difference they'll find themselves at home.

So yes, Romanian experience is very relatable to this aspect of China.

[*] i.e. which unobtainable food items are coveted most.

<comment><USER7> i was told by a guy from ex-Czechoslovakia that he could tell a joke from his place to a person from China - it would still seem funny to both of them because of the shared cultural norms.

The funny thing is that all communist countries used to be very bureaucratic; however Max Weber says that there is a blessing in bureaucracy - it is supposed to be impersonal, so in theory it should be objective and be able to ignore personal biases/preferences, provided that you just stick to the procedures. Now Guanxi seems to take the better of that theory.

<comment><USER6> True. We even had a different concepts of travel. Trips to Socialist block friends were valuable; you'd have a chance to buy some _deficit_ things yet you knew it's not _really_ abroad. Tours to "Capitalist countries" (i.e. rest of the world, ranging from the USA to Bangladesh) however were like oral sex to a Catholic priest: rare chance to see sinister but attractive world, and raise your social status among the peers for rest of your life.

> Max Weber says that there is a blessing of bureaucracy - it is supposed to > be impersonal, so in theory it should be objective and just ignore personal > biases/preferences provided that you stick to the procedures.

Oddly enough it was bureaucracy that was cementing life order in socialist bloc in identical way, and Guanxi/personal corruption is a manifestation of it. This really stems as consequence of implementation of Marxist tenets and I maintain is deterministic and unavoidable. It seems many can't really comprehend how big a footprint Communist effort leaves after its gone. Historic and cultural continuity is typically destroyed or at least mauled. All ex-communist countries have shared experience in the same way all rape victims regardless background have it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Don Corleone: We have known each other many years, but this is the first time you 've come to me for counsel or for help. I can't remember the last time you invited me to your house for a cup of coffee, even though my wife is godmother to your only child. But let's be frank here. You never wanted my friendship. And you feared to be in my debt._

<comment><USER9> Genuine question: is that quote an example of this?

 _> Guanxi largely originates from the Chinese social philosophy of Confucianism, which stresses the importance of associating oneself with others in a hierarchical manner, in order to maintain social and economic order. Particularly, there is an emphasis on implicit mutual obligations, reciprocity, and trust, which are the foundations of guanxi and guanxi networks._

The "hierarchical" part seems to be crucially lacking in your example.

A good example imo of Guanxi networks in the West are College Alumni Networks, as well as the more recent but analogous Startup Accelerator Network. The "older/younger class" relationship makes these Hierarchical.

<comment><USER10> How is the hierarchial part lacking? Clearly the Godfather is in a higher position, as a result of simply having more associations and mutual favors than anyone else.

<comment><USER9> Hmm, the "non-official" nature of the power relationship lead me to think otherwise, but I now see your position. (I do still think that Guanxi manifests itself in more "officially connected" ways -- but maybe I just don't know the Mafia hierarchy well enough!)

Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For anyone confused and reading into it too much, it's really just a Chinese word for what is a universal behavior across all human societies.

When Elon buys SolarCity and the CEO is his cousin, that's guanxi.

When your boss gives a promotion to guy who plays golf with him, that's guanxi.

When you give your buddy a referral to a job because he helped you out with yours, that's guanxi.

It's a necessary social lubricant that also spawns nepotism, favoritism, cronyism, corruption, etc and can be found in every business large enough, especially the government.

And unlike what some posters seem to think, it's not a Chinese-only thing. It's a universal thing that has a Chinese word that nicely refers to it, and thus more recognized in Chinese society.

<comment><USER12> It's also a useful defensive mechanism for clandestine organizations, such as mafias (Sicilian), deep states, and intelligence networks. By only allowing 'family' into the organization you can weed out the risks of informants/law enforcement/rats which might compromise your organization. So the person won't be easily bought or turned. The level of trust is much higher than just a typical self-interest business relationship. Something that goes deeper that you can depend on in the face of adversity and risks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> To what others have said here I'd add that, in my observation, the prevalence of guanxi is connected to a lack of fair, functioning, transparent social systems. You often need connections to get things done, because the existing systems (legal, administrative, etc) simply don't function. This could be anything from getting your kid into school, to being seen by a (competent) doctor, to protecting your company from frivolous, malicious legal action.

I know plenty of Chinese people who are highly annoyed or disgusted by the necessity of cultivating guanxi, but know that they're not going to get what they're after otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER14> >In 2013, a CCP (Chinese Communist Party) official criticised the government officials for using public funds of over 10,000 yuan for banquets. This totals to approximately 48 billion dollars worth of banquets per year.

Is it just me, or has the yuan significantly appreciated in value...?

<comment><USER15> The meaning is throwing banquets that cost more than 10000 yuan (per banquet).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This word in Vietnamese is `Quan hệ`. It's very close to China social. `Quan hệ` is important but you do not need to make a friend or a real relationship. For me it's just a little affected or cursory inside my mind.

</comment><comment><USER17> Extreme lack of trust between all entities (individuals and institutions) is the fundamental reason for the extreme guanxi phenomena in China. Practicing guanxi is for __survival__ in China, not merely for getting a better deal, as is often the case in developed countries. This is the difference those who have lived long enough both in China and other developed western countries can appreciate deeply.

Chinese often try to sugarcoat guanxi. But to put it bluntly, it is for law/rule breaking or law/rule bending favors to acquaintances. Only because the Chinese have practiced it for millenniums as a daily surviving activities, just as eating and sleeping, the Chinese have forgotten that it's an ugly way of life. Guanxi in China is not a shameful matter _at all_, but a proud and face-boosting accomplishment which is often boasted in meetings and banquets, on social networks, and announced publicly and proudly to anybody as a show of strength.

So, the absolute necessity of guanxi, the enormous amount of utilities, the glories associated with it, most people not grown up in China/Taiwan would find it impossible to play at China's extreme level.

What's the secret source to crack guanxi in China? IMHO, it is this: always remind yourself __the lack of trust is at the core of the Chinese society__, and deduce from there. Law and law enforcement are not trustful, so you need to have friends in the government. Business contracts are not to be trusted at all, so constant monitoring and vigilance are absolute necessary during the entire business interaction with your Chinese partner, even though the contract signing ceremony was attended by high level governmental officials and announced on national newspapers! Doctors and nurses will probably give sloppy or delayed treatment because they are expecting money and gifts from you or your relatives before they treat you, if they are not in your guanxi network, so always work on your network to include someone in hospitals. Don't trust the law to punish the bad doctors for such cruelty, there is no such thing. You get the picture. Now anybody still say it's similar in developed western countries? :)

So how to go about build guanxi in China? If you have overcome the unbearable loath on the whole matter and said to yourself, I am gonna play it all the way to fucking make it in China. My advice is, do what the Chinese do. The No.1 approach used by Chinese to build guanxi is to __inject fixed|irremovable elements into your relationship with someone__ if you want to guanxi that person. Such fixed|irremovable elements include things such as born in the same province, graduated from same school, served in the same division in the army, have worked in the same company(maybe at different time), related to each other by blood no matter how distant that is, basically anything that will not change for the rest of your life, and preferably the elements happened in the past, not recently, as history and time add a little seriousness and trustworthiness to it. In contrast, fickle things in relationships (in the eyes of the Chinese) are things such as your abilities and accomplishments, your credentials, social status, the promises made, member of the same club at this moment (this helps a bit but needed further enhancement), etc. Fire up your imagination and creativity to find out the fixed elements in guanxi, promote it, enhance it, and build from there.

<comment><USER18> "the lack of trust is at the core of the Chinese society" you get it completely wrong. It is the opposite actually. People trust each others to "give back" and that's why guanxi are very effective. That's also why foreigners are not included in these circles: they have proven enough they can't be trusted.

The lack of trust is at the core of the State and the legislative system (cf Hobbes) which is distinctive of Western societies.

<comment><USER17> I think people don't trust each others to "give back", and that's the reason people rely on guanxi, instead of trusting normal social contract and normal civil relationship between strangers. They want to have extra fixed|irremovable elements embedded (such as born in the same county, having blood relationships, etc, etc.), so they can have a bit protection in social|business transactions, to accomplish anything in China's trust-less environment.

In the past Chinese have lived in small villages. Even though the land is vast, people rarely moved to other places due to lack of means and the atrocious government policies. So ordinary people dealt with relatives and village folks in their entire lives. Trust was based on the threat that you would be practically dead if you behaved badly and were shunned by the village.

Now coming into the 20th century, people started moving into cities to interact with strangers. It's a new and somewhat shocking experience, because most of them only knew the way of life which you just obey the orders from parents/senior family members, follow the old rituals. Unlike the western countries which went through centuries of Enlightenment, the new Chinese cities are almost void of social and civil code, void of sensible law and law enforcement. That's what China has been through in the last century. Quite a few, now escaped from the watchful eyes of folks back in the villages, use the newly gained freedom to conduct unlawful activities, from fabricating their credentials, to using dirty recycled oil to prepare food, all the way to bribing and accepting bribes to drive people away from their home in order to build a shopping mall. So imho ordinary Chinese do not trust each other that much. They seek insurance(strong guanxi is a form of it) in all daily interactions, and hope others would behave.

<comment><USER18> "For thousands of years Chinese have lived in small villages." that's not specific to China.

"instead of trusting normal social contract and normal civil relationship between strangers". What's "normal" to you? Western way of life?

"unlawful activities": because there's no such thing in the West? It is actually the opposite: Chinese people are less prone to do criminal activities, so much that I'd let my 10 yo daughter walk at night almost anywhere in China, while even a male adult wouldn't walk unaccompanied in many places in the West. I do not say that it is because of some special essence of Chinese people, to me it is simply because of a better education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> i grew up in dubai, which had the very similar concept of "wasta". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasta)

<comment><USER2> I found this paragraph in the Wikipedia page pretty amazing:

> Roughly equivalent words in other languages include sociolismo in Cuba; blat > in Russia; guanxi in Chinese and Vetternwirtschaft in German, protektzia in > Israeli slang, un pituto in Chilean Spanish, In Brazilian-Portuguese it is > referred to as "pistolão", "QI" (Quem Indica, or Who Indicates), or in the > slang "peixada", "Pidi Padu" in Malayalam, "arka" or "destek" in Turkish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Guanxi is a concept that most foreigners will never completely grok. It is not only about relationship. Most foreigners call it even the G-word when spoken about. It is different how we see relationships being maintained. There is a lot more play and rituals involved.

It differs how much it influences daily interactions, citywide or regionally. In Beijing it is noticeable in a lesser degree, but often is perceived by outsiders/foreigners as 'bribing' when a small present is involved.

Edit: I do not mean anything bad. I have lived in Beijing, China for many years (married to a Chinese). Just some foreigners have more difficulty to understand this (as the reasoning why they call it the G-word). I hate to call this a 'cultural difference', as I believe it is mostly related to misunderstanding. This is all due to a different upbring, in a different environment (and receiving a different sense of what is common). This can often lead to misunderstandings as people perceive the actions in the wrong way. It might help to have a look at Cultural Dimensions [[https://docs.com/gerard-braad/1061/cultural-dimensions- asia](https://docs.com/gerard-braad/1061/cultural-dimensions-asia)]. This explains some of the things involved. Just a translating it to 'relationship' does not mean it has the same meaning. Many words and concepts are different between cultures. TL;DR It is definitely not the negative words mentioned below. Just 'smoothing' a relationship which seems beneficial should not be seen as brown-nosing. Above; hyh1048576 explained it very well. People blame themselves if they got rejected for something... others might judge them as saying they haven't put enough 'effort' into it. When the relation seems beneficial, they will try to do something to 'smoothing' the relationship. But as mentioned, in Beijing this happens in a much lesser degree but not invisible.

<comment><USER21> I'm genuinely asking as a Chinese guy: How is it difficult to grok? There's nothing mystical about 'guanxi'. It is literally the Mandarin translation of "relationship", nothing more.

There's nothing uniquely Chinese about the notion that having strong relationships with the right people can make your life easier.

<comment><USER22> _There 's nothing uniquely Chinese about the notion that having strong relationships with the right people can make your life easier._

In Germany we have "Vitamin B", i.e. beneficial relationships. In America, on the other hand, they have this _strange_ concept of meritocracy.

<comment><USER23> > In Germany we have "Vitamin B", i.e. beneficial relationships. In America, > on the other hand, they have this strange concept of meritocracy.

American is the land of legal lobbying. I'd say this is pretty close to that concept too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would say this is actually not something very specific to China or East Asia. People actually act like this all around the world, this is especially true in the US, where connections and background are important for a variety of things (even more so than in China), quid pro quo is a commonality, and interest coalitions are unbreakable and control everything. This is just how the human society work more or less at the current moment.

</comment><comment><USER25> Simple questions:

1) How do you build guanxi?

2) How do you maintain guanxi?

3) How is guanxi lost after it's been gained?

4) Give me an example with two people where one has far more guanxi than another. How are they treated differently by the third party they have guanxi with? (No direct familial relation)

<comment><USER13> Guanxi is basically a kind of transactional friendship. You make guanxi the same way you make friends, by spending time with people, and going through things together. Some guanxi is built on real friendship (or on something like having gone to the same school together), in other cases it's pretty obvious to both parties that it's just a quid-pro-quo thing. In both cases, though, it sort of looks like a friendship from the outside.

Treating people to dinner and getting them drunk is a pretty common way of building guanxi. I've had people invite me to dinner and give me alcohol I don't want, hoping to then get something out of me later. The whole thing is terribly uncomfortable, largely because I simply don't like going to dinner with people I don't know well, and do not feel like I owe them anything afterwards (if anything, I'm annoyed that they've imposed on my time). Then they call up week or two later and say "hey, can you help me out with this thing", and then I have to decide what to do about that.

Like I said in my other comment, though, plenty of Chinese people don't like working this way either. My friends are real friends, and the people I usually work with are professionals, people who don't need to pretend that now we're blood brothers and we'll bend the rules to help each other. I've been in China for 15 years, and I've seen this kind of professionalism slowly supplanting the old system.

You lose guanxi by pissing off your "friends", or not returning favors. In my case, I can play the "I'm a weird foreigner and don't understand your rules" card, and I've only ever mildly annoyed a few people.

<comment><USER26> Yes, a lot of Chinese, especially those who have lived in the West for a time, are uncomfortable with the social expectations inherent in _guanxi_. My parents usually refuse to accept gifts or invitations to dinner from other Chinese that they don't know very well because they know this will usually be followed by a request for some rather annoying favor later.

This also leads to somewhat amusing cultural disconnects. For instance, I was once interviewing a Chinese student for an officer position in the student club of which I was already an officer. (This is at a US university and I'm Chinese American) He came to the interview and gave me a bottle of 7-up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here's an example of how it works in practice to create a very different environment for tech:

[https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297)

<comment><USER28> Gongkai means "open" or "public". Very different word from "guanxi".

<comment><USER27> I'm aware of that, just saying that guanxi is necessary for such ecosystems to succeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Guanxi is written as 関係, and in Japanese (読み方:かんけい) this means connection/relationship in a broad sense. I don't see anything special to this word or very specific to China at all.

<comment><USER29> _Kankei_ is used rather literally in Japanese for "connection", without the heavy overloading of the Chinese term:

"The build is broken, did your push break it?" " _Uun, kankei nai_ " = no, it's unrelated.

Which is not to say that Japan doesn't have its own complex web of social obligations and favors (giri, osewa, senpai/kohai etc), they just don't use the same word for it.

<comment><USER23> It can be used as ビジネス関係 too so I am not sure what your point is. 関係 has tons of implications in Japanese. The expression 関係がよい is also very common in Japanese.

<comment><USER29> Simply put, if you have _guanxi_ in China with somebody, you can call in a favour from then.

But if you have 関係 with somebody in Japan, then that simply means there's _some_ sort of relationship (vendor/customer, former schoolmates, whatever), not necessarily the kind that lets you call in favours.

<comment><USER30> > But if you have 関係 with somebody in Japan, then that simply means there's > some sort of relationship (vendor/customer, former schoolmates, whatever), > not necessarily the kind that lets you call in favours.

That's the same as Chinese, though. If you want to say two people you'd use guanxi ("关系不好" "guanxi bu hao" "have a bad relationship"). Even your above example is used in pretty much the same way guanxi is used. Here's an example from the Baidu entry on guanxi: "小王跟这件事没有关系" "Xiao Wang has no connection to that thing."

From what you write, it sounds like the Japanese use of the word is fairly similar to the Chinese use of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Interesting, I wasn't aware of this meaning - just the geographical region and the post-Imperial Guangxi Clique warlord organizations[1]

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

<comment><USER32> Guanxi (關係) and Guangxi (廣西) are not the same thing (nor are they related).

<comment><USER33> Mr. Burns: I wonder if this Homer Nixon [(meaning Homer Simpson)] is any relation [to President Richard Nixon]?

Smithers: Unlikely, sir. They spell and pronounce their names differently.

Mr. Burns: Bah! Schedule a game and I'll ask him myself.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: 13 or 15 inch macbook - <AUTHOR>

If you were going to buy a macbook pro today, would you get the 13 or 15 inch version and why? <comment><USER2> For web development / light photoshop, illustrator work the 13 (6 months old) has been working fine for me. I came from a 15 and I never left the house without my bag. With the 13 assuming a full charge, I just grab it and go. I gave my old (3 years) 15 to my wife and though she never takes it anywhere without a bag either, she's never complained about it's weight.

Not sure if the 13 can push a 4k monitor but I've had no problem connecting 2 additional non 4k monitors to it - 1 over the built in HDMI and 1 via the thunderbolt HDMI adaptor.

<comment><AUTHOR> how much ram do you have in your 13? I am curious as I may have to do some light photoshop work.

<comment><USER2> 8gb of ram and 128gb of SSD (basically a base 13 model) - both have been fine for light photoshop work (not that I ever do heavy photoshop work) but I have come close to running out of storage - dropbox and a time capsule close by help, but it's something to keep in mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am also planning on running linux off of virtualbox I know I wanted 16gb of ram, but I never gave drive space some thought. Would a 256gb ssd be enough?

<comment><USER3> 13 2015 model can drive 4k model just fine ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I and my girlfriend we have two mac book pro, her is a 13' and mine is 15. I always use her notebook when I'm the road and at home :) I use the 15' from time to time, when I do some coding and I need maybe a second screen and I just want to stay on bed

</comment><comment><USER5> i use 13.3' macbook pro and it's always enough for coding, reading and watching. i agree that it is still too heavy, in fact the air is more preferable than it.

</comment><comment><USER3> 15 if used on a desk with 4k monitor. 13 if i would not have a money and would want to carry it with me from time to time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why with a 4k monitor? My use case would be mostly development when I am on the go like at a coffee shop.

<comment><USER3> Because 15 is still too heavy and mostly likely will be used as a desktop replacement which you can transfer in a car and train and put it on a desk at some other place.

The 13 model is the one you carry in your backpack and use "anywhere".</comment></comment></comment>


"Big Government" isn't the problem – we should be talking about complexity - <AUTHOR> http://westleyargentum.github.io/blog/2014/12/15/complex-government/

<comment><USER2> It amazes me as a software engineer, that we build our economic system in such a tightly coupled and complex manner that as soon as anything bad happens anywhere in the world, it seems to affect everyone (just look at the oil price fall - you would think that is good for everyone - oil getting cheaper, but apparently not). It seems exactly the opposite of what we aim to achieve with good software, yet the people building it this way seem to encourage it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I loved this post. It truly is sad that entrenched powers are using complexity to keep the status quo.

I've always thought that governance and legislation had a lot of parallels with code. It truly is not the size of the codebase that is the problem, it's the complexity underlying it. We can understand a program if everything is laid out common-sensically.

Maybe it wouldn't be a stretch to say that it goes the same for government.

</comment><comment><USER4> Big Government is a _symptom_ of the problem: No Accountability.

Introduce accountability, and you'll see government shrink to a more reasonable and efficient size. You'll also see less complexity: when government employees and civil servants are held accountable for their actions, they will be a) more interested in clear job/task descriptions and b) less inclined to engage in the kind of self-serving obfuscation that takes place now.

Now whether or not this can be _accomplished_ is another question entirely...</comment>


Does working at home make you more productive? Yes (with data)! - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rescuetime.com/2009/11/18/does-working-from-home-make-you-more-productive-yes-with-data/

<comment><USER2> I have mostly worked from home for the last 12 years. There is a real trick to it: identify projects that are mostly self contained with well defined deliverables; avoid projects that require tight coupling with the activities of other workers.

The biggest drawback is missing the fun of 'white board time' but adequate time on the telephone (or Skype for video) helps.

The advantages mostly involve being able to schedule work time for when you are feeling (and being) most productive. The ability to take a break (even if it is only doing 20 minutes of yard work, running an errand, playing a musical instrument for a few minutes, talk with family and neighbors) is often just the thing to later help get into a good work flow.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry to state the obvious but the "data" doesn't prove anything.

Working at home might make the Rescue Time team more productive, but it definitely isn't true for me, and probably many others.

Come work at my house, guys ... my kids show you what distracting is all about

<comment><USER4> Ah, you have identified the problem.

I worked at home when my kids were born, and I solved the problem by having a separate office with a door. When the door is closed, I am "not home".

But then the trade off is when you do take breaks, you visit with them multiple times per day. Also, there were times that we would put a blanket on the floor in my office and the kids would nap there.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's one of the problems for me ... my home office doesn't have a door ... it's just a bonus room on the first floor. In fact, the doorway is so wide I can't even get a baby-gate in there to keep the little one from rifling through my books or camera gear

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've worked from home for a few years now and from a productivity standpoint its wonderful. For me at least, the ability to work from my desk, sitting in my chair, with my lightning, with only distractions that I create (such as music), all while avoiding any time-wasting commute is huge for my ability to focus and get stuff done.

Despite productivity benefits, the major drawback of working remotely is a lack of social interaction beyond telephone/e-mail/im, which can be very taxing emotionally because physical cues are hugely important to communication.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've worked from home for a year but now I'm back at an office again. Working from home seems very good for concentration, but I missed discussions with other people. It felt like after some time I would run out of energy to do it. This might be different if one was "doing his own thing" and be very motivated, but I think the ideal for me would be working from home (or somewhere else than the office, as I now have kids at home) for a couple of days a week, and then be at the office for the rest of the week.

I think to make telecommuting really work, one would need to get a good understanding of the intangibles involved. An antipattern of telecommuting would be spending more time in meetings during the days in the office, to "catch up", communicate or whatever. Rather, one would need to somehow make the people working from home feel like they are socially part of the working environment. Maybe having some kind of non-meeting social settings during office days would work. Perhaps a long lunch or dinner or something?

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish I was at home right now. Coworkers nearby keep having conversations about things that make me facepalm.

I would be working better if I didn't have talk of reality shows forced into my brain when I am trying to concentrate.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd love to try rescuetime, but their linux client was working last time I tried. Don't remember what the issue was exactly though.</comment>


DOT Announces Technology Partners for Remote ID Development - <AUTHOR> https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=24956 <comment><AUTHOR> Here is a good video summary: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT72rKqTSso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT72rKqTSso)

All of these partners have special interest in the airspace for themselves and there is almost zero hobbyist representation. I fully expect that what these "partners" help to come up with will not include home built RC at all.</comment>


Ask YC:  What revision control system are you using? - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to hear what you're using and why you like it.  I have a hunch that we're going to be using more distributed version control than your average group, just checking. So...
Git?  Bazaar?  Subversion?  TortiseSVN?  Mercurial?  CVS?  Perforce?  or "Revision control is for weak need mortals.  I etch code directly on silicons wafers like the hacker god that I am!"
Talk amongst yourselves. <comment><USER2> _"... Quite frankly, I think most open-source SCM's _still_ suck. I'm constantly amazed that anybody would touch SVN with a ten-foot pole. Talk about crap. And SVN is at least usable, unlike a lot of other projects. ..."_ [0]

git

small, fast, in active development and cross platform. Fast to install, less documentation. Originally I used cvs with a p-server which worked nicely allowing me to distribute dev & other files across other machines. But was a begger to install. Then I tried svn but never really liked a) lack of clients, confusing setup documentation.

Using Git now as I wanted a SCM for a new project and it was the fastest to install & use. Git also has the advantage of doing the same as svn but with less keystrokes. [1] Can also be used individually as a tool as well as a group. [2]

Having said that svn, cvs, rcs are still usable just not optimal for me.

[0] [http://marc.info/?l=git&m=116129092117475](http://marc.info/?l=git&m=116129092117475)

[1] [http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/tutorial.htm...](http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/tutorial.html)

[2] [http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/everyday.htm...](http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/everyday.html)

<comment><USER3> I watched some online videos on git and have now fallen in love, to the extent that love is possible between a man and an SCM.

The Linus Torvalds Google talk is great fun [0], but it may not actually convince you -- it'll just goad you. The Randall Schwartz talk [2] is more practical, and I recommend it. Finally, the Peepcode screencast [3] is worth the $9 -- it gives examples of git in action, and a handy cheat sheet. It's what finally pushed me over the edge into full-blown fanboy mode.

[0] <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2199332044603874737>

[1] <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3999952944619245780>

[2] <http://peepcode.com/products/git>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> svn

We're using it because it's free, suits our needs fine, and is pretty much the standard these days (especially for open source projects)

p.s. you know TortiseSVN is just a Windows client for Subversion, right?

<comment><USER5> Seconded. Mostly because I work with Tom, but I also use svn at work, because it really is the standard.

Distributed version control seems a bit like a fad to me. I admit it has some nice features, but I expect subversion to adapt the best that it doesn't already have (which isn't really all that much). They are already working on implementing local commits, which in my mind is the single biggest missing feature.

<comment><USER6> Right - version control doesn't strike me as a good place to play on the bleeding edge. I'll leave that to other people and spend time playing with something else experimental that won't lose a bunch of my critical data, or cause unexpected problems.

<comment><USER7> I agree completely - SVN is very standard, seems to be stable, and basically does everything most people will need. TortoiseSVN is a great client if you're using Windows.

<comment><USER8> The Linux kernel is fairly important and the kernel developers trust a "bleeding edge" VCS.

SVN is great for an individual or simple project, but sharing patches between branches is a nightmare.

<comment><USER6> It's more than fairly important, it's extremely important and big. That means that it's also a bit of an outlier in terms of lines of code, people involved, and so on, which is why Linus seems to have undertaken the painful project of making his own revision control thing.

I'll wait till he's shaken the bugs out until I give it a go, though, as being an early adopter gives me zero competitive advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Subversion. Also, I'm using Trac as a bug tracker and wiki. It comes with a nice Subversion viewer.

<comment><USER10> Exactly ethe same here. Trac is sweet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used Subversion for years, and as awesome as Subversion is, Subversion really sucks. I use darcs for my personal projects, but it occasionally chokes for various reasons and some serious bugs have gone unfixed for several years. I'm now looking at Git, which is distributed like darcs but won't ever have the same unfixed bugs problem: Git is developed by Linus Torvalds and hosts the Linux kernel.

</comment><comment><USER12> we have been using darcs for quite some time now. very happy with it thus far.

</comment><comment><USER13> I was a user of SVN (the reasons are in the first comments) but now switched to Git, distributed scm is really nice. I also like the branching features of Git. And it's very easy to clone a repository, start hacking and committing local then submitting a patch.

</comment><comment><USER14> I use svn and Mercurial. SVN for work (because the company uses it) and for my older projects, and Mercurial for my newer projects. I switched to Mercurial because it seemed like the best distributed system out there, and I like Python.

</comment><comment><USER15> RCS because I'm working solo and setup is instant (emacs: C-x v v). When I need more I'll probably take the path of least resistance and use subversion, even though Mercurial is reputed to be superior.

<comment><USER16> If you use a CVS version of Emacs (maybe even the recently-released one, I don't remember when Eric Raymond submitted it), Emacs now plays nice with all the newest VCs as well (well I get errors with git but, it's probably me. It's /supposed/ to work. I'm sure the others do).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been trying to decide between the distributed ones for months. I'm about to go with HG. Any dire warnings before I do?

BTW, how to pronounce it, HG, or Mercurial?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that Mercurial is the official name. "Hg" is the chemical symbol for mercury.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> darcs, it's distributed, doesn't require a server setup, lets me work without a network connection, and the cli is extremely user-friendly.

instead of committing files, darcs record lets me pick and choose what changes to include as part of a patch, resulting in cleaner patches which actually encompass a logical change to the code.

i've also heard many good things about git

</comment><comment><USER19> mercurial with roundup... though looking to change the bug-tracking that can have an easier/simpler integration with hg :D

even though it is still pre 1.0, a lot of fixes are going into it, (did i mention it is written in Python? not that it should matter).

</comment><comment><USER20> highlighter pens and a super special 'up to date' folder on my hard drive.

</comment><comment><USER21> i used to use svn at work, and lately i tried git for my own needs.

git seems a lot better but i did not try it extensively.

</comment><comment><USER10> Subversion is just plain awesome.

</comment><comment><USER22> bazaar is great. so is git. i like them both.</comment>


Superdesk – An End-To-End Platform for News - <AUTHOR> https://www.superdesk.org/ <comment><USER2> Developer working in large international media company here. Views not my employer's etc etc.

This looks fantastic.

It's never going to get anywhere.

Most (if not all) large newspaper CMSs are either a) large cumbersome things that have been in use for decades and are never going to be replaced because Stockholm Syndrome, or b) custom in-house-built and fit the particular editorial workflow of that organisation _perfectly_ because the developers have taken time to listen to the journalists and implemented exactly what was needed. I don't know of any news organisation that's successfully migrated from one third-party CMS to another.

<comment><USER3> Good point. I believe that SourceFabric's target audience is mostly in poorer countries and developing nations, where news organisations neither have the resources to build their own CMS, nor a more comprehensive workflow management system like this. They've been doing this for a good number of years, and I think are only daring this "big leap" after observing the needs of such organisations for quite a while.

<comment><USER4> For what it's worth, Superdesk is in newsrooms in Norway, the UK and Australia. Our plan, though, is to get the same tools into developing countries. We believe newsrooms are the same no matter where you go, Basel to Bamako.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I work for a moderately large regional newspaper, and I could see us implementing this. There's enough of a mindset shift underway here that something like Superdesk could gain traction.

</comment><comment><USER6> The Norwegian News agency NTB, think Reuters on shrinker-pills, has deployed it. Not bad.

</comment><comment><USER7> On the one hand, bravo! For much of my career I dreamed of something like this. On the other hand, I quit dreaming about it a few years back, when I realized that the future is not in a monolithic, do-everything platform -- a kind of uber-WordPress -- but in a constantly evolving bundle of small, sharp tools (the UNIX philosophy).

There are plenty of great tools out there for managing processes and workflows, for scheduling, for communicating, and so on. The way forward is to just grab the best of what's out there at any given moment for a specific need, and press that into service until something obviously better comes along.

But I look forward to playing around with this, and I wish them the best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER8> That site has a bug in it. When the width drops below 833 but above 798 the menu items shift downwards and hover over page elements.

I found this out because my browser window happened to be that size when I opened the page.

PS - Windows 7, Chrome 51, Windows DPI 125%, page zoom: 100%, Chrome's font size: Large.

<comment><USER9> I've reported that as a bug ticket. Well spotted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any demo installation of this for us to click through?

</comment><comment><USER11> Oops, thought these was a end-to-end encryption solution for news distribution.</comment>


Neuromyths: Debunking the misconceptions about our brains - <AUTHOR> https://nesslabs.com/neuromyths <comment><USER2> I thought the right brain / left brain one was true. This mentions studies showing that the whole brain is being used when engaged in creative activities. Are there studies showing the same for rational thinking, e.g. mathematics?

</comment><comment><USER3> Relying in science and data is great, but relying in science avoiding rational thinking is questionable.

About the IQ test, what would make the test "unlearnable" in the sense that one cant train to do the test and be better at it? Thus enhancing his IQ.

Do those studies experimented this : measuring individuals who made the test (same rules, different exercices) multiple time. If their IQ increases over repetition, it definitely means that IQ test measures _in some way_ the ability to do the test, which makes the IQ test narrow.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not the point made in the article though — the point is that IQ tests are predictive of many things, including longevity.

</comment></comment><comment> Pete-Codes Very cool read- I was sceptical of learning styles claims so glad I am now backed up by science!</comment>


Product Hunt: How Hidden Founders Learned Russian - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hiddenfounders.com/product-hunt-hidden-founders/ <comment><USER2> Somehow reminds me of this interview with Philip Rosedale ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg43s9yPsaI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg43s9yPsaI)) where he basically suggests to share your idea (even in early stages) with people around you. Because you might end up with a lot of positive insights & ways to make your idea more solid.

<comment><USER3> Smart people tend to prefer to listen to themselves and trust their gut, works fine in some cases but not when you're early stage. I think listening is a VERY HARD skill to acquire but once you have it things will magically start to make more sense.</comment></comment>


Teacher at my school defined entrepreneurs to be irrational and unreasonable... - <AUTHOR>

Other definitions includes passionate, confident, manipulative, charismatic... Do you think that definition works? Why would there even be a definition for the personalities of a entrepreneur?<p>Just to clarify, I'm not taking that 2nd year entrepreneurship course so the other contents might be really good... I just can't bear to think that students who sit in that class believe that they have to be a certain type to start their own business. <comment><USER2> While he's not _entirely_ incorrect as entrepreneurs do need to be somewhat irrational to carry their beliefs to fruition when nobody else sees what they do, why would you expect someone who has probably never worked outside the education system, and if tenured can't be fired for outright lying to students, to have a unbiased or rational opinion about something they know nothing about?

My recommendation is (a) CLEP out of the course if it's required, or (b) ignore the unsubstantiated bias (that's found in many schools these days) and try to find some nugget of truth in the drivel he's shovelling.

When you find a professor who has experience in their field, is open minded, and actually keeps up with the current thinking on their subject matter, it's a "fantasticalicious" experience to learn from them. Sadly, they are few and very far between.

If you're going to school to become an entrepreneur, I can say with substantial experience that you are wasting your time and money.

Entrepreneurialism is NOT something that can be learned in school. It must be learned in the trenches. In fact, I believe that post-secondary education is the antithesis of entrepreneurialism.

If you're going to school to learn Business Admin, goodonya. Stay on task.</comment>


Designing better data tables (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://uxdesign.cc/design-better-data-tables-4ecc99d23356 <comment><USER2> Regarding table columns sorting - are there anyone else who thinks that clicking on the same column the third time should remove the sort? For example:

      • First Click: Sort ASC

      • Second Click: Sort DESC

      • Third Click: Remove Column Sort

This allows me to go back to the initial state where the tables have been loaded. Currently, most data tables don't support "resetting" of column sorting and are implemented in this manner:

      • First Click: Sort ASC

      • Second Click: Sort DESC

      • Third Click: Sort ASC

<comment><USER3> Rows will always have an order, even if that order is the order they are indexed in the database, which for the purposes of a table is an implicit column. So "remove column sort" means revert to the default sort. In other words, there is no such thing as no sort: rows will always be sorted, you just choose by which column and the direction. Implicit sorts aren't a great idea, I think.

<comment><USER2> Thanks - you certainly made a good point. But there's one problem with enforcement of explicit sort and this the problem I constantly have with my projects.

By default, most tables that I have are sorted by "created_datetime" but this is the column that won't be shown to the end-user since most of the time it is redundant information for them. If we're implementing explicit sort, I need to add an additional column which would be useless to them.

Having the ability to easily reset back to default sort makes everything so much cleaner as an end-user (for me). I won't have to experience another "How the heck do I go back".

<comment><USER4> Depending on the dataset structure (as seen by app/db developer) there may be in fact two sorts: one that reorders rows in a set* and one that reorders rows in a table view (M and V from MVC, respectively). Your "go back" thing is then a conflict between the two.

It may be seen as overengineering for an itunes user, but a full implementation should provide a way to do both sorts and to cancel view-sort if no longer needed.

Also, sorts may be not just column-based. Shop cart may be sorted by product group without having such column even in dataset, like rows.sort("product.group.title") or alike. In UI it can be done as right- clicking on a column/cell and sort->[natural, id, title, group->[natural, id, title, ...], ...] menu hierarchy.

* algorithms may depend on this ordering, so a user takes care to not change it accidentally

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <BEGIN PSA> Please, please, please, do not use hover controls. They are useless for touch users as well as screen readers, and the discoverability is poor.

Modals are also really really hard to make accessible, and are often confusing. If you MUST use modals, please use a well-vetted library instead of rolling your own.

There's a lot of things that look really cool but make life difficult for people that aren't you. We appreciate your consideration when you build your UX. <END OF PSA>

<comment><USER6> Is there a reliable way to detect touch screens and screen readers?

This way, you can enable hover controls only if the user is not on a touch screen or a screen reader.

<comment><USER7> It's not really a clear distinction, though. I have a laptop that has a touchscreen, but also a regular touchpad and sometimes I use an actual mouse with it. Sometimes I touch the screen if it's easier even if I have a mouse connected. I also sometimes remote into it. Then there's my tablet: I can use a bluetooth mouse with that if I want. Or an external touchpad.

<comment><USER6> I imagine I'd err on the safe side. If the screen has touch functionality (includes laptops with touchscreen), then don't do actions on hover. Is there a way to reliably detect the existence of touch functionality through the browser?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it must be 20 years ago that browser makers talked about implementing features like table sorting into the browser. I am still waiting.

I think leaving this kind of functionality to web developers, leaving everyone to figure it out for themselves and also make it work on several platforms and browsers is just silly. I don't know why we do it this way.

<comment><USER9> HTML columns have no type, so, for example, sorting a date column would not give the expected order. HTML table cells admit arbitrary HTML, so there's no easy comparability, there. Sort orders even for understood data vary greatly; sometimes a lexicographical order is sufficient, sometimes you want special handling of numbers within text, sometimes you want a case-insensitive order. Locale of the data and the user can affect sorting greatly. And that's without even getting into editing, grouping and filtering.

Basically, it would be hugely complicated, require significant additions to the HTML of tables and would probably be no more successful than the built-in date-pickers of browsers, which always get replaced to get a nice look or behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A more than decade ago I was tasked to implement a table view in web application (it was time when jQuery was not yet popular, all the hype were DHTML and AJAX). The task was: "do something resembling windows file explorer".

When I gave the first version to our testers, each and every one of them came with non-overlapping set of features. Some of these features are listed in this article and even more.

If you look into details, you will be amazed how many features there are in such common and simply-looking interface element. It took me (and the testing team) more than a couple of weeks to "kind-a finish" this work.

<comment><USER11> > "If you look into details, you will be amazed how many features there are in > such common and simply-looking interface element."

Yes! Reminds me of this recent tweet by Ryan Florence (a renowned JS lib author) on spending 3 hours w/ a friend creating a chart -- ie, a spec -- for "just" a dropdown button:

[https://twitter.com/ryanflorence/status/1189728090575921152?...](https://twitter.com/ryanflorence/status/1189728090575921152?s=21)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I the only one who read the article and hoping to see an implementation =)? Any suggestions on any good open source data tables components you guys use?

The Adamn Lynch article that was on HN a few months ago was great, with code examples - [https://adamlynch.com/flexible-data-tables-with-css- grid](https://adamlynch.com/flexible-data-tables-with-css-grid)

<comment><USER13> As all the features were being listed, I scrolled with the exact same hope :-)

I have been using Sencha/ExtJS' grid for that purpose, which is very powerful and versatile, and recently I've been contemplating ag-grid, which seems very nice also.

<comment><USER14> We use Ag-grid at my company. It's probably the most fully-featured data grid I've ever worked with on the Web, but it definitely has some pain points. I think it basically supports almost everything mentioned in this article out of the box (except for modals etc., which shouldn't be part of the grid itself anyway...). They even recently added support for charting selected ranges of data from the table.

Be forewarned though: if you're trying to use this from React with dynamic data that can be modified on the client, you're probably not going to have fun. Ag-grid is a vanilla JS library with a very thin React wrapper written around it, so even though on the surface it looks like it fits into the React model, most complex things you'll want to do end up meaning you have to use the imperative table API. I can't speak to how it fits in with other frameworks out there, but I would imagine it's going to be a similar situation.

That being said, if you're just going to drop some data into the table that's read-only, i.e. just for analysis etc., I think it's pretty solid and hard to find something with anywhere near a comparable level of features.

<comment><USER13> Oh thank you for this explanation and warning, I am indeed contemplating using the React version of Ag-Grid (for the experimental rewrite of a relatively complex internal management app, written entirely in ExtJS 4, and I was wondering how well it would integrate into it (especially given that it has flavours for all the major frameworks, React being only one of them).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article is an excellent example of how something that seems easy and common-place ("show tabular data in a table") requires a lot of work to make it really good.

I'd say this is common to a lot of our work as developers. On the face of it a task seems easy - but it typically involves adding lot of fine detail to make it excellent.

<comment><USER16> > The article is an excellent example of how something that seems easy and > common-place ("show tabular data in a table") requires a lot of work to make > it really good.

One thing they don't mention, is exporting. Anytime you're dealing with tabular data, you really need an "export to excel" button. You'll never be able to do all the slicing, filtering, and sorting that excel can do. By all means, add it into your app and hopefully over time your users won't need it, but at the start, it's vital.

<comment><USER17> I wish apps allowing editing tables were oriented around a workflow where you export to Excel, edit it there, and reimport it back. Let's be honest, your web app's table is never going to be anywhere near as ergonomic and functional as Excel, so why not just leverage it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> LOL @ "Multi-modal". The whole point of "modal" is that it introduces a new [mode]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(user_interface)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_\(user_interface\))) in which the interactions that were possible a moment ago cease to be possible, until you've dealt with the modal and leave that mode, returning to your prior mode. "Multi-modal" is just "windows".

</comment><comment><USER19> I agree until the in-view presentation. When there are few rows, the inside modal or sliding panel will feel awkward. So basically [https://datatables.net/](https://datatables.net/) This jquery tool meets most of the requirements.

I recently had to implement a js/jquery web application & datatables is golden : so many features, so many possibilities. Used for so long by so many => so few bugs left.

</comment><comment><USER20> I keep this resource bookmarked. It lists a number of the most popular JS/HTML table/grid components many of which implement the UX guidelines in this article.

[https://jspreadsheets.com](https://jspreadsheets.com)

</comment><comment><USER21> I recently stumbled upon jExcel. I use it as an editable datatable that allows copy pasting to and from excel. That's what all my users end up doing anyway with any non trivial dataset, so might as wel make it look and behave as much as excel as possible

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a pretty good article that shows some good design ideas for data tables. That said, it is a puff piece for hiring at a company and not a recommendation for something to use.

There is exactly zero open source and/or free component data tables for React that do everything in this article.

Not only that, but many are so full of bugs or so difficult to implement that they might as well not exist at all.

Serious opportunity to create a top leading project that would have a huge impact on the usability of the web if everyone adopted it.

Edit: Yes, I'd contribute to working on a project like this under a permissive MIT license, but I don't want to do it alone.

<comment><USER23> I highly recommend ag-grid, it works well with React. The free version is MIT licensed, while the paid enterprise features are open source on Github, but not free to use.

[https://www.ag-grid.com/](https://www.ag-grid.com/)

<comment><USER22> Great recommendation. My only issue with this is that they don't have a super solid solution for Material Design based grids. Now I know that is more of a problem with MD (and they note that on their theme page), but omg... once again... it is like we are back at the drawing board again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Good searching and filtering should be on the first place. May be you don't need long tabular presentation at all because of this.

<comment><USER25> This. I've been preaching this for years now.

Paging is an anti pattern. You need good search and filters, not paging. With paging all you do is overload the user with information, forcing them to scan mountains of irrelevant data over and over again until they find what they were looking for.

If you need paging, your UX design is wrong.

<comment><USER26> That's a really good heuristic, but unfortunately, lots of users are still stuck in the "I need an exhaustive list of all of our data, ever"-mindset because that's what their manager mandates. Then they print it and put it in a drawer. _shrug_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A lot of these features are available in the Sencha ExtJs Grid (both for desktop apps and mobile).

Sencha ExtJs is a paid front-end JS framework, which I find extremely comprehensive. I have worked on this framework quite extensively and find these features missing even in most, if not all, modern JS frameworks.

Examples:

For Desktop: [https://examples.sencha.com/extjs/7.0.0/examples/kitchensink...](https://examples.sencha.com/extjs/7.0.0/examples/kitchensink/?classic#grids)

For Mobile: [https://examples.sencha.com/extjs/7.0.0/examples/kitchensink...](https://examples.sencha.com/extjs/7.0.0/examples/kitchensink/?modern#grids)

</comment><comment><USER28> What's wrong with the way this page loads images? On the first try I get nothing but grey rectangles, on refresh I get images, on another refresh I get blurred image placeholders.

Hmm:

        Loading failed for the <script> with source "https://cdn.optimizely.com/js/16180790160.js". design-better-data-tables-4ecc99d23356:8:1
        -+++++=        .+++++=
        .+@@@@@+       #@@@@*:
          .@@@@@=     *@@@@@
           @+@@@@-   =#@@@@@
           @ +@@@@: :% @@@@@
           @  *@@@@-%: @@@@@
           @   *@@@@-  @@@@@
          -@-   #@@+  :@@@@@:
        -#@@@#-  ##  =@@@@@@@=
        .......      .........
        main.fe894587.chunk.js:1:322280
        We're hiring! https://medium.com/jobs-at-medium/work-at-medium-959d1a85284e main.fe894587.chunk.js:1:322536
        onmozfullscreenchange is deprecated. media.html:11:9799
        onmozfullscreenerror is deprecated. media.html:11:9799
        Loading failed for the <script> with source "https://d1z2jf7jlzjs58.cloudfront.net/keys/medium.com/p.js". design-better-data-tables-4ecc99d23356:1:1
        Loading failed for the <script> with source "https://cdn.branch.io/branch-latest.min.js". design-better-data-tables-4ecc99d23356:1:1
        Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at https://collector-medium.lightstep.com/api/v0/reports. (Reason: CORS request did not succeed).

        This site appears to use a scroll-linked positioning effect. This may not work well with asynchronous panning; see https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Performance/ScrollLinkedEffects for further details and to join the discussion on     related tools and features! design-better-data-tables-4ecc99d23356
        Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at https://collector-medium.lightstep.com/api/v0/reports. (Reason: CORS request did not succeed).
        Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at https://collector-medium.lightstep.com/api/v0/reports. (Reason: CORS request did not succeed).

<comment><USER29> Turn off JS and you will get proper images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just yesterday I had to laugh in despair at how bad Google Cloud's UI is, including scrolling the headers instead of pinning to the top. What's much worse though is the perf, load times for simple pages are 10 seconds, my machine is pegged at 100% cpu, slogging through logs viewer like molasses. I just find it hard to believe it'd be so bad, on such a crucial product. This coming from a company that has dev rels advocating better perf (as they should!), but not applying it to one of their most important products.

</comment><comment><USER31> Is there a framework or package, that out of the box includes the majority of these table features?

<comment><USER32> There was, a simple, elegant, easy to use and modular framework called JQuery, and it had plenty of plugins for sortable tables.

Unfortunately, we're all too clever for that nowadays, so you'll probably have to download and compile half a terabyte of Rust from a proprietary package manager just to get something that only works in the nightly build of Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Funny, I've been referencing this article a lot lately, because I'm designing a fairly complex table in an app I'm building.

I wish there were more articles like this. The illustrations are great.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's ok and good until "Quick view". Click on the left of the screen, sheet slides out from the right, and you have to move the mouse all the way to the right to close it.

</comment><comment><USER35> To play with data: check Excel filters. It is really hard to beat.

</comment><comment><USER36> Am I the only person in the world who just can't stand fixed headers, be it a table header or a website top menu?

</comment><comment><USER37> Whats the best Js library for implementing functionalities listed in the article?</comment>