Ask HN: Can someone refer me to a designer that doesn't suck? - <AUTHOR> I used to be a freelance web developer. (Before you ask: vim, Rails, MacBook Pro, and BSD servers - OpenBSD to store private data, and FreeBSD to scale; everything else is for failures)
The biggest pain about this, clients aside, is having to deal with the designers. I understand that they use a different part of the brain than I do, but some things are simply ridiculous.
From my experience in dealing with them, designers can either produce incredible work but be extremely difficult to work with, or produce eye pollution and be great to work with.
Does anyone know of a designer that produces good work without making you want to kill yourself? If you're a designer looking for work, send your portfolio to nick[at]whitepaperclip[dot]com
[edit] Web work; I don't want HTML/CSS coded.
My email is nick[at]whitepaperclip[dot]com <comment><USER2> You sound like a programmer that is "difficult."

It also sounds like you're the type of programmer that doesn't treat designers with any respect, so they likely reciprocate -- the type that doesn't like to collaborate, but just boss people around (it's more than apparent from your post that you sneeringly look down upon the design profession). In short, you come across like a huge jerk and I can't imagine what it must be like to work with you.

Let me see, according to you, designers that are "great to work with" (the ones that just shut-up and do whatever you tell them) produce "eye pollution". The ones that are "difficult" (have opinions and give input whether you want to hear it or not) end up producing "incredible work", but you just hate working with them.

Ever consider that the problem might be you?

<comment><AUTHOR> No! I realize that I sounded like a bit of a dick in my post, but that's just how I write. Let me elaborate.

I've contracted a designer before (an HNer, mind you) that literally told me that he was working on the design for about 3 weeks, without showing me any form of progress whatsoever. On the last day we were working together, he said, "I've been busy, and I haven't had time to work on it. Find another designer." He had been jerking me around the entire time without doing an hour of the work, and later admit it.

This has happened on more than one occasion. He had a brilliant portfolio.

The ones that are difficult aren't difficult because they give me opinions; in fact, that's what helps to make a great designer. I like creative people that come up with their own ideas.

<comment><USER2> Draw a triangle.

On each corner, write:

> Quality Work > Timely Delivery > Economical Price

You're ONLY ever allowed to choose TWO.

> If you want quality work produced in a timely fashion, then expect to pay > top-dollar.

> If you want work turned around fast and don't have any money to spend, > expect the quality to be crap.

> If you want quality work and don't have a big budget, expect it to be > attended to whenever the the service provider has some free time.

It is a maxim of business that you will never escape.

This is true of any profession, and is especially true of both programmers and designers alike.

If you are paying proper compensation, you should never have a problem getting quality work, by a designer that makes delivery of your goods a priority. Perhaps you found a bad apple, and that is unfortunate. If so, then the market should weed them out in time. But you say the designer did great work, and it sounds like they had plenty of good-paying projects elsewhere and you simply got back-burnered (and they were not candid with you, as they should have been). I've seen it happen a dozen times is every line of work.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>----

I forgive you for how you came across in your initial post. I'm also told that I'm a friendly fellow who sometimes comes across as... blunt, in writing.

<comment><USER3> I had the same kind of experiences as the OP. Part of what I found frustrating is that they don't respect the "2 out of 3" rule (which is mostly for engineers btw). What the designer in OP's case showed was an astounding lack of respect and common sense. I doubt compensation was a factor.

Some time ago I tried to find a copywriter to help me with a marketing campain. I talked with two people, and both were very interested, actually enthusiastic when I told them the concept. Both said (which made me protest and feel rather unconfortable) that they don't want to discuss compensation in the beginning, part because they want to give the project a shot anyways just to see what it looks like, and part because they don't know the amount of work beforehand.

After a week one of them didn't answer my phone calls, and the other sent a couple of texts completely off-topic, and obviously not very worked. I ended up writing the texts myself.

The moral of the story is that it's not a money problem. But that a percentage of "artistic types", in both mine and OP's experience, tend to show less professionalism then desired.

<comment><USER4> Your copywriters gave you a strong signal as to their professionalism when they did not want to discuss compensation up front. In the future, you should now know that anyone who does not discuss the business contract before rendering any services is either: 1) very inexperienced but may still work out or 2) not someone you'd ever want to work with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can name a couple. Both from Norway, both a joy to work with.

Ole Martin Kristiansen: <http://piraja.no>

Does outstanding work, plain and simple. I'm a Django developer, and I've worked with him on a couple of projects. Without prior knowledge to the way Django templates work, he was able to pick up very fast. Has good knowledge of Wordpress. (Full disclosure: I developed the system behind that site)

Simon Bognø: <http://simonsays.no>

As you can see on his site, I've already made a public recommendation. :-) Fantastic fellow, also does tremendous work. Has good knowledge of Wordpress, and was able to get an understanding of Django's templates quickly.

I don't really do a lot in the Rails space, so I can't tell you if they're a great fit there… But all in all I'd say they're great designers, and more important, great people to work with.

Edit:

Oh, and Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain of <http://31three.com> markets himself as a person who provides "Creative services for the design-challenged developer". Never talked to the guy, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> HIRED!

(Well, that was easy. I wish I could up-vote this 100 times.)

<comment><USER6> If you don't mind sharing, which of the three designers mentioned did you hire and why?

<comment><USER7> (I realise I'm not Zarathu!)

I preferred the third one because their website was more usable -- all work was on one page and all I had to do was scroll down. Unlike the others where I had to click specific projects then view pictures 1, 2, 3, 4... real turn-off when I'm trying to easily compare all three together.

The third also looks like there has been a real effort and focus on usable websites without a disregard for looks which is essentially what I would be looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll mention some names in a moment. First, I want to offer an anecdote about the extent to which brains can be wired differently.

For awhile I was in a business partnership where I wrote code and I worked with a designer. One day a friend told us that she had started a new yoga studio and she wanted to show us her new business card, which was done in the shape of a bookmark - long and narrow. At the top was a photo, at the bottom was a quote from Hinduism. The quote was about acceptance and suffering.

The next day myself and my partner were at restaurant. The service was terrible. I jokingly repeated the quote about acceptance and suffering. My partner gave me a blank look.

"I'm quoting from that business card that we saw yesterday," I said.

"What quote?" she asked.

"The text at the bottom."

"I don't remember it."

"It was under the photo."

She then began describing the photo. She remembered in astonishing detail - camera angle, lighting, pose, shadows. I hardly remembered it at all.

It struck me that I had a good memory for text, whereas my partner had a good visual memory. And I've noticed that is fairly common division among programmers and designers.

The point of this story is that programmers and designers have brains that are wired in very different ways. I assume some of that difference in wiring is essential for any of us to be good at what we do.

Having said all that, I'd say the best designer I've worked with, and who is currently open to accepting free-lance work, is Darren Hoyt: <http://www.darrenhoyt.com/>

<comment><USER9> Darren has a great last name, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I do freelance graphic design while not working on my startup. I don't have an online portfolio because I don't really need one. I worked for FreshBooks (<http://www.freshbooks.com>) up until a month ago. You can also take a look at my startup Guestlist (<http://www.guestlistapp.com>)

I specialize in interface design for web applications.

My standard rate is $75/hour.

<comment><USER11> A humble question form design-challenged developer: at $75/hr how long would it take to design a prototype of a site similar to the Guestlist of yours (i.e. what's the total price usually)?

<comment><USER10> It would cost around $8-12k for a decent sized website. Our website is pretty small and had the benefit of carrying over a lot of assets from the application itself so 3-4k? I am actually working on evolving the site because I am not happy with where it is right now.

Of course design needs time to bake in the oven. You can't grind out a website every two weeks. I normally design a page and then forget about it for at least a day so I can get a fresh look at it. Sometimes you stumble upon the right design the first time, sometimes you need to go through dozens of ideas. It's all very unpredictable.

For the application itself that is a different story. It is a tremendous amount of work designing a app from the ground up so we are talking 80-100k at least. (I did all the HTML + CSS as well) Took me about a year worth of weekends to get it where it is right now. Being a co-founder I also got to make a lot of decisions without any input so it makes things move a lot faster.

<comment><USER12> Wow, I like your app a lot. Its beautiful and the idea is very good.

I am co-founding a startup and much of the design work will be done by me. Would you be willing to share any tips? What I would really like to know is how are those 160 hours spent? (160hours*$75=$12000)

The software life cycle is well documented in a number of methodologies: XP, iterative, water fall etc. But when it comes to the design phase of a web app I feel left in the dark.

What I am wondering is what techniques are you using during those 160 hours, in what order and what percentage is spent on each?

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

For example: (a quick guess) it would be something like this:

\- gather requirements - 10 hours

\- draw mock ups on paper - 20 hours

\- draw prototypes in illustrator - 20 hours

\- make designs in illustrator - 50 hours

\- review with customer (self)- 10 hours

\- iterate on designs in illustrator - 50 hours

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Do you have any tricks of the trade ([http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/how_to/tricks_of_the_...](http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/how_to/tricks_of_the_trade.php))?

<comment><USER10> At Guestlist we believe in short iteration and customer feedback. The best advice I can give you is to ignore the waterfall method of design that would have you believe you need to "gather requirements, sketch, create wireframe, etc." in order to be successful. There is value to such a method (if only to create a paper trail that you can use to sell your design) when you are working for clients, but when you are a co-founder the absolute best way to go about is to simple do it.

Start with a specific section of your app and create a mockup in Photoshop. Work on it until you are happy and then implement it. Don't do 10 different variations. Don't worry if you don't know how everything is going to fit together. Just get it working so you can move onto a different page.

The first designs we implemented at Guestlist were pretty terrible in retrospect. It had a lot of fatal logic flaws. We had no idea what our initial feature set would be. We knew we needed a public event pages so we started there. However, as we added more and more pages we realized our first couple of pages where shit so went back and iterated over them. Given enough time and iterations things will start taking shape. Just take a look at the very first mockup I did: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/410315/event.jpg> It looks nothing like what we currently have. For reference here is the current public page: <http://guestlistapp.com/events/7311>

Now, it may seem like you could follow the 37Signals route and simply skip the Photoshop step altogether and get to using it faster. _Don't do this._ You cannot be creative with CSS. The Photoshop stage gives you a chance to do crazy things and not think with boxes.

This can also be applied to websites. The current Guestlist website is very weak in my opinion. It was created over a weekend. There is a much improved version in the pipeline. Not a radically different site, but an evolution that iterates over the weak areas.

The key is to never stop iterating. Never lock down the design. Never let somebody tell you you can't do something because it's inconsistent with the rest of the site. Just change the rest of the site too! Design must evolve constantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting that this was not mentioned yet: <http://haystack.com/>

<comment><USER14> It crossed my mind, but it really doesn't answer the OP's specific need for a recommendation of someone he can happily work with.

I've heard it said that Haystack really just shows you the middle quartiles of designers. The top quartile don't need to list themselves; the bottom quartile don't have an exciting enough portfolio to do so. I dunno, maybe there are some great designers on there, but having some form of testimonials is sorely lacking.

<comment><USER15> Shouldn't there be four quartiles?

And I don't agree with your view, Haystack has some outstanding designers and agency. Only problem is it costs $99 a month to have a big listing, which is too expensive for most freelancers.

I would also suggest asking designers at <http://themeforest.net/> if they do freelance work. Template designers must deal with design and code as well as customer support. So they're typically easy to work with and not overly concerned about "art".

<comment><USER14> Yes, Haystack encompasses quartiles 2 and 3, quartile 1 being unable to afford and quartile 4 not needing to list. Anyway, I was just summarising a view I've heard more than once of late; not being in the market for a designer, it's not actually my personal view. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _OpenBSD to store private data, and FreeBSD to scale; everything else is for failures_

Considering that attitude of closeminded zealotism, _you_ are probably the problem.

The title of this post screams 'most designers suck'. You seem like the kind of guy that gives others the feeling that he expect them to be mindreaders and that scorns those that don't grasp what he means fast enough. That doesn't work with most of the lesser gods, who are nonetheless still way above average. It makes them feel bad about themselves and about you.

I get the exact same impression as Chris_G: there is a communication problem that _you_ can solve. According to kyro, you are wonderful to work with. Let me say this: I've got a colleague that I love to work with. I'll be indebted forever to him, for making me a much better software engineer than I would ever have been without someone like him to teach me. Nevertheless, he has a corrosive personality. It is only because I acknowledge his superiority and have come to understand that he doesn't mean it in a bad way, that I can get along with him. However, most people will not get to that conclusion, either because they have less much interaction with him or because he simply isn't superior to them _in their field_. With them, he doesn't communicate in a constructive fashion. If you criticise something, it doesn't matter whether you are right: it matters whether you can convince the other party; whether you can explain that you are right, without making them feel wrong.

<comment><USER17> In other words, if you come on HN spouting bullshit about what OS you host on while asking for help finding a designer, you're probably doing it wrong.

<comment><USER18> I would not narrow it down to HN... This is not a localized problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hi Nick, a programmer I work with fwd'd your post to me, so I guess I'm not a jerk to work with. I do know what you mean. Some people just suck. I tend to love programmers I work with. I think they're magicians, but I think I am sometimes, too. I really enjoy the collaboration with programmers.

There are designers who focus on _design_ and don't realize that communication skills are the most vital design skill one can possess. It's important because if someone is agitated it is usually a result of misunderstanding, because it's work not personal, and true understanding is the only way to produce effective work. I find it very frustrating communicating with project managers and I'd like to get inside their heads so I could grasp why they won't allow things that will produce effective work. I'm sure it's something about my communication. This is something I hope to improve on. What are they thinking?!

I will drop you an email, even though you've found someone. You never know... :) Jen

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd highly, highly, highly recommend: Kim Knight of <http://www.kimknightstudios.com/>. She does regular work for heavies like IBM, Chase, etc., but is affordable and incredibly professional.

</comment><comment><USER21> I can't recommend Domo highly enough: <http://www.okdomo.com/>. Great to work with, incredible design, fairly priced, and they can work with Rails/Django templates easy enough.

</comment><comment><USER22> There is a cool site, "CollabFinder" just for this purpose. <http://collabfinder.com>. Like all social sites, it will get better the more of us that use it :D

</comment><comment><USER23> Zarathu I just want to let you know I agree with your post 100%. I am the owner of a web development and internet marketing company, and I have had the exact same experiences.

I believe it is because the great designers don't approach their work as a job, but as art. Once that is their mindset, it is nearly impossible to offer any criticism. By labelling themselves an 'artist', they make themselves immune to any commentary, and in fact any criticism you offer just feeds their deluded view of themselves as a persecuted genius.

</comment><comment><USER24> Posted 14 minutes ago, replied to 6 minutes ago and hired 4 minutes ago. No time for contemplation?

<comment><AUTHOR> It was said in jest. Price is obviously a factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I might as well plug my own site: <http://www.sachagreif.com/>

I've done my share of back-end and front-end developement (php, coldfusion, and of course html, css, jquery, etc.) before focusing on design, so I generally work well with programmers.

I consider myself fairly easy to work with, although to be fair I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I hate being "remote-controled" by a client (like all designers).

I've done a lot of UI work lately but I can do regular websites too.

</comment><comment><USER25> The best way to judge whether a designer is suited to your project is to have a look through their portfolio. Design work can be very much in the eye of the beholder, so you need to find someone who has a style you like.

Unfortunately, this won't tell you what they're like to work with so maybe ask for a reference. Setting a series of project deadlines / goals upfront should also help.

It can also be tricky to work on a brief over email if you've not met the client in person. I find it's always a good idea to speak to any remote clients on the telephone as that gives them the opportunity to talk you through their ideas and brief. A proper conversation can bring up questions and ideas that wouldn't necessarily come up in an email exchange.

In the past, I've found it hard to find good developers. If you're not a developer, it's difficult to tell whether someone is good just by looking at the sites they've worked on. I've come across several developers who talked a good game but couldn't deliver before now. The agency I used to work at for example, hired a few developers who weren't up to the job. At least with design work, you can judge the visual aspects.

Links to my portfolio and company sites are in my profile if you're interested in working with me.

</comment><comment><USER26> I work with two designers currently, both are great guys and do quality work. The first is Brandon Silverstein, who is also a developer and owner of Impulse Development (the company I work for). Most of the designs at <http://impulsedevelopment.com> are his work. The other is Armando Alvarez with Viva Creative Group (<http://vivacreativegroup.com>). Mando did the designs that are not Brandon's work that appear on the Impulse site. Impulse shares an office with Viva Creative Group, so I've gotten to know Mando fairly well.

I'm not sure what Brandon charges for just designs, but basic websites generally start at $3k. I believe Mando is typically more expensive, but he also has more experience with branding and advertising, if that's what you need.

</comment><comment><USER27> She's very good and very easy to work with: <http://negarina.com/>

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm a fan of <http://www.monfx.com/> \-- Monjurul did the design for <http://www.feedbackarmy.com> and later <http://www.afterthedeadline.com>

</comment><comment><USER29> <http://www.artificestudios.com/>

I've been friends with Antonio for years, and can attest to the quality and professionalism he puts into his work.

</comment><comment><USER30> <http://www.taliacohen.com>

She is a member of our tribe and used to working with 2 uber open source computer scientist geeks that we are at (rmdstudio.com). She is actually dating a young oxford post doctorate mathematician.

But she doesn't work for people, she only works with them. So instead of asking her to send in a portfolio, perhaps you could contact her and let her know that you need some design help.

</comment><comment> jim-greer Jason Santa Maria did a great job for the inital design of Kongregate, and Happy Cog did very nice HTML/CSS. Jason was with Happy Cog then, is solo now. I'd recommend both of them.

<http://jasonsantamaria.com/>

<http://www.happycog.com/design/kongregate/>

</comment><comment><USER31> Big fan of his work: <http://radnauseam.com/>

He put together the redesign of ErrorHelp for us (and the new Disqus and Etherpad, too, I believe).

Also, we've been having decent luck at 99designs, where we're trying a contest right now for TinyArrows: <http://ta.gd/99>

<comment><USER32> be careful of spec work (in the end nobody wins).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I want to recommend Mike Rohde. You might have seen his work with the various "sketchnotes" posts around here. He's a great guy: <http://www.rohdesign.com/weblog/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER34> <http://www.amzeddesigns.com/>

</comment><comment><USER35> This guys an awesome designer and does far better than just not sucking :) <http://nateuridesigns.com>

Good hunting.

</comment><comment><USER36> more-than-us.com is great, primarily because of their devotion to detail and satisfying the demands of the development process.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'd recommend <http://www.pro-photography.net/>

</comment><comment><USER38> Visit a CSS showcase site such as cssremix.com and get in contact with some of the designers from there.

</comment><comment><USER32> <http://anthonydimitre.com/> is my current fav.

</comment><comment><USER39> You can try <http://www.taurusarts.com/>

</comment><comment><USER40> It sounds like the problem you are having is a pretty classic one. There are a lot of great designers out there, ones that we may respect and admire, but they don't know the first thing about the business of doing design work.

When looking for a designer, pay close attention to not just their blog design, but to the names on their portfolio. Who have they worked for and how they solved design problems for them matters just as much as the quality of their work.

A "good designer" should know how to work with you, to reflect your vision and walk you through (hopefully) an iterative process of design. They should communicate their approach pretty early on, telling you how they plan to solve your design/user interaction problems and let you know exactly what to expect.

And for the record:

Any design project should start with Information Architecture (IA), usually meaning sitemaps and wireframes and hopefully a prototype of some kind. You may not think you need it, but this is a crucial first step to "design." It allows the designer to reflect your features in a lightweight deliverable, making sure you are both on the same page. One they can quickly iterate on to flesh out the user interactions.

(Any client that comes to me with wireframes already done, usually costs more not less, as we still need to go through the process in order for me to get up to speed. If they are already done it means a lot of design decisions have already been made without me and they will be very hard to undo for the sake of the users best interests. A seasoned designer comes with a lot of experience and best practices, which can help considerably on any project.)

IA should be the bulk of a design engagement and will entail a lot of back and forth with you, and should start right after a brief getting to know the project period, typically called "Discovery." If that doesn't happen consider it a red flag. Scheduling can be a problem at times, but the schedule should be understood on both ends at the beginning.

After IA comes Design, which is typically done in Photoshop, which is great for creating designs, but major changes can eat up a lot of time (and money). It is crucial that the layout, navigation and interactions are all agreed to (and don't change) before design begins.

If you are skinning a web app and doing design in parallel, then you need a good CSS designer, and Photoshop can be skipped, but that is an entirely different type of design project. You can use a junior level resource here, but it could take more time and iterations than a traditional design process. For this type of project I might recommend a designer that has a good rep for creating skins and themes.

A good designer will limit the number of "comps" or unique designs you do as well as the "rounds of revision" per each design in the estimate and contract. I never recommend that you ask a designer to do more than one comp, it only multiplies that cost and the client gets little extra in the end because of it. (It's like telling the designer that you know more about design then they do and they often produce one good design and two shitty ones because of it. Any client asking for multiple comps is a red flag to me that approval is going to be a pain in the ass, and they often get charged accordingly.) Instead look for lots of rounds of revision so you can work iteratively to get that just right design.

That all being said, understand that design is very subjective. A good designer knows this and has an approach to figuring out how to create the right design for you and more importantly your users. You should get a sense of this right away, if not, then ask them how they plan to create it. Be honest with them about your tastes, your internal stakeholders and most importantly listen to your designer and their experiences. And for god's sake treat them as an equal partner and not as a slacker art school student.

The design of your product will be one of the most important decisions you make. It will establish the first and often only impression of your product that your end users will make. I've seen it a hundred times over a bad initial design can be a very costly mistake, costing a lot more to undo. It establishes trust and understanding of how your product will work. And remember that design isn't a perfect process, but a good designer should get you a hell of lot closer to your goal.

You'll notice that I haven't really answered your question. It sounds like you need to think a bit more about what type of designer you need and what they need to do for you before moving forward. Once you figure that out, getting a designer to suit your needs becomes a lot easier.

I have a few related articles I wrote about the business of web design ages ago, but should still be relevant, that should hopefully help understand the business of designers a bit more:

<http://flingmedia.com/articles/pricing-a-project/> <http://flingmedia.com/articles/the-agency-model-is-dead/>

Good luck.

-Brian

</comment><comment><USER41> Since nobody has mention it yet, one could always submit a project as a design competition at 99designs.com. Though, at design school, we were advised never to enter competitions as it undermines the design process and devalues the designer ... a view I tend to agree with.</comment>


Bitmessage – An Encrypted Communications Platform Based On Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/03/09/setting-up-and-using-bitmessage-an-encrypted-communications-platform-based-on-bitcoin/

<comment><USER2> Have the blatant security problems been ironed out?

[http://bitslog.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/bitmessage- completel...](http://bitslog.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/bitmessage-completely- broken-crypto/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe these issues were addressed with the release of version 0.2 a few weeks back. The link to the Reddit post on it is below

[http://www.reddit.com/r/bitmessage/comments/17muuv/bitmessag...](http://www.reddit.com/r/bitmessage/comments/17muuv/bitmessage_v02_now_with_elliptic_curve/)

The updated version 2 is not backwards compatible with the version one because of the problems mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just imagined the size of transactions database after 2-3 years of wide adoption.

<comment><USER4> That was my first thought too. Setting up a Bitcoin client currently requires the download of around 7GB of historical data, as I recall.

The four-minute proof of work also worries me: do I have to toast my laptop for four minutes every time I want to send a message? That's going to be bad for battery life.</comment></comment>


Linux distributors ponder a systemd change - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/690151/3e74273f5d9263b6/ <comment><USER2> The originals were already discussed on Hacker News:

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11782364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11782364)

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11797075](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11797075)

Here's another less well known settings change that breaks a lot of back end systems and middlewares:

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11675129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11675129)</comment>


Steve Jobs: "Technology Alone Is Not Enough" (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/steve-jobs-technology-alone-is-not-enough <comment><USER2> > "It is in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough — it's technology > married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the > results that make our heart sing."

> ..What set all of Jobs's companies apart, from Pixar to NeXT to Apple, was, > indeed, an insistence that computer scientists must work together with > artists and designers — that the best ideas emerge from the intersection of > technology and the humanities.

> "One of the greatest achievements at Pixar was that we brought these two > cultures together and got them working side by side."

[https://outline.com/Zm2ZbZ](https://outline.com/Zm2ZbZ)</comment>


Mathics - A free, light-weight alternative to Mathematica - <AUTHOR> http://www.mathics.org/index.html <comment><USER2> As others have pointed out, Mathics is missing features relative to Mathematica, so it is an alternative provided you can work within Mathics' subset of features. So if you are doing anything but tinkering it is still best to buy Mathematica.

But Mathics is great for exploring the concepts in the Mathematica programming language, a language that does not get the attention it deserves. If you are not familiar with Mathematica as a language and and are curious, see this comparison of Mathematica with other programming languages such as C, APL, and Lisp, from the first edition of the Mathematica book: <http://reference.wolfram.com/legacy/v1/contents/4.2.html> (this fourth section was dropped from the second edition and beyond).

<comment><USER3> Last time I checked Wolfram wasnt even hiring. . . . . . . Why bother learning Mathematica or writing your own free version i mean seriously? There are perfectly good Javascript libraries for doing whatever "math" stuff you feel like burying your nose in and another thing. . . . It's actually impossible to write a computer program that will prove anything significant. Turing figured that out like 80 years ago, get a clue morans

<comment><USER4> I would suggest not to choose languages based off of who's hiring.. that being said.. Wolfram is always hiring..

Mathematica's language / environment is very effective at rapid prototyping math, computation, and physics applications... Thats why people use it.

<comment><USER5> He's a troll rapidly on his way to a hellbanning, don't waste your breath.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This topic already mentioned on HN before <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4066826>

And an interesting point is that, the core developer of Mathics is also a Kernel Developer at Wolfram Research. Jan Pöschko's website <http://www.poeschko.com/>

How could he build a free product compete with his company's product?

<comment><USER7> Jan Pöschko's website (it's at <http://www.poeschko.com/>) explains how he squares working on Mathics and Mathematica.

<comment><USER8> It says he no longer works on Mathics since being hired by Wolfram. Alas often a way to try to weakene open source competition...

<comment><USER7> Yes, my post was a slightly cheeky way of pointing out that the answer is in the page linked to by the very post that poses the question :)

As for weakening free competition, that's plausible, though I think it more likely that the chap was hired on the basis of his work than as a strategic move. Mathematica seems pretty entrenched and comprehensive (though I do admit that it's not something I've used a great deal), and probably as impervious to attack from open source equivalents as is Excel.

(While MS seems currently troubled, and I bet they're finding it harder and harder to persuade people to upgrade to Office each year, Excel's position looks pretty unassailable.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why use the Mathematica syntax, and not a better one? It's rather annoying syntax, Matlab and Maple are much better for this. Mathematicians don't use square brackets for functions, most programming languages don't either, but Mathematica, a mathematics language ffs, does. And sin and cos with capitals, meh.

<comment><USER10> Any mathematician will agree: mathematics is invariant under change of notation.

<comment><USER11> But sometimes the right notation can make things simpler and easier to understand. (e.g. Einsteins Four-Vectors)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am an avid Mathematica user. Not because I need to evaluate that much math, but because I really like its wysiwyg notebook structure for note-taking. It's great for keeping up with lectures and including decent looking equations and tables when they come up (which is fairly often in technical classes). The export to latex is a nice added bonus.

As far as I know, there aren't great alternatives to the Mathematica front end - I'd love to be proven wrong, through.

<comment><USER13> The ipython notebook is rapidly moving in that direction. See <http://nbviewer.ipython.org/> for some examples. It can even embed R, ruby, bash, and Perl code.

<comment><USER14> Personally I'm looking forward to start playing with this: [http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/RLink/guide/RLink.h...](http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/RLink/guide/RLink.html)

<comment><USER15> If you do, make sure to read this discussion: [http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/16657/special...](http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/16657/special- mathematica-cell-to-work-with-r-code)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bessel functions aren't supported (and even Excel supports them!)

Try

        BesselJ[1,2]//N

On mathematica I get

        $ /Applications/Mathematica.app/Contents/MacOS/MathKernel
        Mathematica 8.0 for Mac OS X x86 (64-bit)
        Copyright 1988-2010 Wolfram Research, Inc.

        In[1]:= BesselJ[1,2]//N

        Out[1]= 0.576725

In excel, `BESSELJ(2,1)` is the same to 5 significant figures.

<comment><USER17> "Developers Wanted" is on the first page. Being on open source project, you'll probably see a lot of organic growth and people scratching their own itches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's also free alternative to Matlab, the GNU Octave <http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/>

<comment> muuh-gnu Maxima [1] is both a predecessor and alternative to both Mathematica and Maple.

It is an descendant of DOE Macsyma, which ran only on expensive Lisp machines, and porting it to PCs was slow enough to give Mathematica and Maple a headstart.

It is kind of a shame that all the math and physics departments all over the world keep using closed source black box solvers instead of working on improving free and inspectable alternatives like Maxima, Octave, Sage, etc.

[1] <http://maxima.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER19> > It is kind of a shame that all the math and physics departments all over the > world keep using closed source black box solvers

They use them because they're more comprehensive, and scientists want to spend their time doing science, not improving free software.

Also, in the case of Mathematica, the interface and feature set are far beyond what any other tool offers (and can be expected to offer, given the track- record of free software).

<comment> muuh-gnu > scientists want to spend their time doing science, not improving free > software.

Wasnt the whole point of science to build their own chain of verifiable tools to rely on, instead of having to trust secret, unverified commercial black boxes?

<comment><USER20> Eh. Is Richard M. Stallman teaching philosophy of science now or something?

Arguably, the rough idea is to discover and prove interesting or useful facts.

<comment><USER21> Yes, but discovering and proving interesting or useful facts requires some degree of transparency and replication. It's at least _better_ , when possible, for a scientist to use apparatus whose functioning they can inspect, and that includes any major software components.

That's a bit different from Stallman's focus. Stallman is mainly interested in the freedom of users to modify the software they use (and share those modifications). But for scientific software the real issue is whether scientists can look at how it works. It would be fine for it to be under a "look but don't redistribute" proprietary license.

<comment><USER22> Other things being equal, it really would be better to use a more transparent apparatus.

But other things aren't equal, and the productivity difference is order(s) of magniture more important than the transparency of an apparatus that has been successfully used by many others and is believed to give correct results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How is it different from SAGE[1] and Maxima[2]?

[1] <http://www.sagemath.org/> [2] <http://maxima.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER24> It uses mathematica's syntax.

<comment> muuh-gnu This is a rather superficial reason to start such a project.

Mathematica is non popular because of its syntax, it is popular because of its extensive library, graphics capabilities and documentation.

If you want to make free software packages more competitive compared to mathematica, the best way would be to work on extending their libraries, documentation and graphical capabilities, not increase the fragmentation by starting yet another package from scratch doing the same thing just using a slightly different syntax.

For all intents and purposes, from an user's point of view, this project is as a waste of time as writing yet another scheme interpreter.

<comment><USER25> Mathematica is powerful because of its syntax. <http://www.paulgraham.com/power.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Years ago, I wrote a very rudimentary tutorial on Mathematica to get undergrad chemistry students started on it. <http://www.cem.msu.edu/~cem883/mathematica- instr.html>

The good thing is that mathics make very nice plots (at least for simple functions I tested). The bad news is that it stumbled on a simple NIntegrate.(*) It certainly has potential though...

[ Edit: Hmm looks like Integrate[] does what NIntegrate in my example was supposed to do. I take the "bad news" back.]

</comment><comment><USER27> <http://mathematica.stackexchange.com> is a good place to look if you need mathematica-related help

</comment><comment><USER28> Guys, also don't forget: what we currently see is a snapshot in time. Right now Mathics offers the features X and Y and lacks Z. But this may change over the next years.

</comment><comment><USER29> As several posters said, nothing will beat matlab with its long list of tool boxes. It would be nice if there is more open source work in building more tool boxes for Octave(octave is open source compatible to matlab).

</comment><comment><USER30> Looks, very nice. I tried some basic Mathematica functions (D[], Plot[], ...) and at least that subset all worked as expected.

I couldn't find a full table of compatibility with Mathematica though, anyone know where one is?

<comment><USER31> Really nice, but it supports only the very basics e.g Plot[x^2, {x, -1, 1}, AxesLabel -> {x, y}, PlotStyle -> Dashed, Filling -> Bottom] ignores all options And D can't compute JacobiP derivative even with Simplify[ D[JacobiP[n, a, b, x], x] == 1/2 (1 + a + b + n) JacobiP[-1 + n, 1 + a, 1 + b, x]]

It's startling how much work goes into something like Mathematica, too bad it's not open source, and have to be redone:(

<comment><USER32> Closed source paid the salaries of the people who put that startling amount of work in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Heres a little incompatibility. The following code is valid Mathematica code, but the on-line parser rejects it

Integrate[Exp[-(x/2)^2],{x,-Infinity,+Infinity}]

<comment><USER16> This works in both places (just remove the `+`):

        Integrate[Exp[-(x/2)^2],{x,-Infinity,Infinity}]

Both give 2 Sqrt[Pi]

<comment><USER33> Thats the point :-) In Mathematica the `+` is supported

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm using SAGE right now for calculus. The point is to have the computer do the tedious work. But until I learn python, I end up spending my time fidgeting around with the syntax instead of actually learning calculus. I'm all for programing integrated with academia...but we need better software (like Mathics!)

</comment><comment><USER35> What's missing for IE9/10 support?</comment>


Underpaid Grunts Perform Maintenance at Fukushima Daiichi - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704461304576216652933702880.html

<comment><AUTHOR> > ¥200,000 ($2,470) a month

This is a bit of a false comparison, because 200,000 yen has about the same buying power here as 2000 USD does in America -- maybe a bit less. These guys really are underpaid.

I scoffed at the story from the Chernobyl worker on AOL news, but seeing this makes me wonder; why are these workers cloistered away from everyone else? Why aren't they being compensated for the hazard? Why isn't anyone telling them what radiation levels are?</comment>


The SSD Endurance Experiment: Testing data retention at 300TB - <AUTHOR> http://techreport.com/review/25681/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-testing-data-retention-at-300tb <comment><AUTHOR> "The data we've collected suggests that modern SSDs can easily survive many years of typical desktop use. Even TLC-based offerings should have more than enough endurance to handle what the vast majority of consumers will throw at them."

That settles it for me</comment>


Tesla Gigafactory Two Planned for Europe - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2016/11/08/tesla-location-gigafactory-2-europe-2017-both-batteries-and-cars/ <comment><USER2> A factory of this magnitude would be a huge boon for a smaller country in Central Europe, the likes of Czech Republic, Slovakia, or Hungary. They're still reasonably close to big markets, and they currently host significant automobile production capabilities [1][2], but with cheaper labor than in the western part of the continent.

Further, competition between them in attracting such plant will likely lead to generous government incentives.

[1] [http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/tree_map/export/show/al...](http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/tree_map/export/show/all/8703/2014/) [2] [http://www.oica.net/category/production- statistics/](http://www.oica.net/category/production-statistics/)</comment>


Few Hours left for DroidCon Registration 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://droidcon.in/2012/

<comment><USER2> The registration link is <http://droidcon.doattend.com/> and it's only the end of the heavily discounted super early geek offer.</comment>


A New Approach to GraphQL API Management - <AUTHOR> https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2019/02/graphql-api-management/ <comment><USER2> Very cool. We're facing this common problem where endpoint consumers go query- happy with GraphQL seeing as it is so easy to pull a large amount of data (or trigger a large number of operations).

It is currently very unclear how much load is being caused by the "convenience" of data-based queries. Having the ability to articulate and limit these expensive operations via policy would be incredibly helpful in not only shaping internal behaviour but also in exposing services to broader audiences.

Curious what others in the community have done to hack something similar in place?

<comment><USER3> There are a few libraries that calculate complexity or cost of a GraphQL query, e.g., [1][2]. We think that differences of our approach are that we extract more diverse characteristics, allowing for a wider array of management policies, and that we explicitly decouple management from the backend implementation. In consequence, our approach works irrespective of the programming language used for the GraphQL backend, prevents malicious requests from even hitting the backend, reduces backend load, and lifts developers from having to integrate cost / complexity calculations themselves.

[1] [https://github.com/pa-bru/graphql-cost-analysis](https://github.com/pa- bru/graphql-cost-analysis) [2] [https://github.com/slicknode/graphql-query- complexity](https://github.com/slicknode/graphql-query-complexity)</comment></comment>


AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 1920X Unboxing - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/11689/amd-threadripper-unboxing <comment><USER2> A lot of companies could learn something about packaging from this. Expensive items should come in expensive boxes. Apple has known this for a long time. Cheap packaging leaves the impression that the item within is cheap, which, in turn, leads to dissatisfaction with the purchase. Good packaging has such high return for a relatively small investment.

Edit: Let me clarify that I don't think this is a logical practice, just that from a business perspective it makes sense.

Edit: I am told this packaging is limited to the review chips. I stand by what I said though.

<comment><USER3> I would feel pretty let down if this thing showed up in what looks like a totally pointless Pelican case. Plastic waste is a huge problem. This type of behavior is not part of the solution.

<comment><USER4> I doubt it'll ship to the public in this sort of case. Seems like priming for the reviewer.

<comment><USER5> The two small boxes containing one CPU each instead of the large case seem to be the actual retail packaging though. Or so Tom's Hardware's unboxing says.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please add "Unboxing" to the title. This isn't the full AnandTech review.

</comment><comment><USER7> The real intrigue for me is the 1900X which is 8-core similar to 1800X, 1700X and 1700. I understand the 1900X will use the ThreadRipper MoBo, giving it access to 60 pci-express lanes. What could be the best use of this say compared to the X370 Mobo and its 16-something pci-express lanes ?

<comment><USER8> Enthusiasts will build systems with 3 x GPUS (16 PCIe 3.0 lanes each) + 2 x M.2 (4x PCIe each) = 56 PCIe lanes, just for peripherals. Workstations might use one or more 10GbE (4x PCIe each) and even 40Gb/s infiniband devices (8x or more PCIe.)

Not hard to use these up when you're going big.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Weekend Project - Finding Random Imgur Links with JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://image-roulette.com/

<comment><USER2> I got a sneak preview, so I'll just say what I've already said.

There needs to be a way to save interesting ones for other people to look through, vote on, and comment on. Here, for example, are some of the more interesting ones that I saw (some are NSFW, very much so, others are just nice, or funny, or weird):

<http://i.imgur.com/yxmdh.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/5XySW.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/g1ZA3.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/lxSBk.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/3xUME.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/4QrxH.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/FmOHk.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/5bGfT.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/PJZDZ.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/gy3c2.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/XUGRv.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/WFVny.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/1LKtd.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/kcuG9.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/NpJ1r.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/px1Wd.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/w3xsD.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/2Kftd.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/XfkhI.jpg>

Also it is on 4chan at <http://boards.4chan.org/g/res/22241838> and you can just see people crying out for a way to keep track of the interesting ones.

<comment><USER3> Why would you post these links of NSFW images here?

<comment><USER2> I was just giving a sample of the kinds of images that people might like to share and comment on.

Most weren't NSFW, the ones that were were not extreme, and I felt that the disclaimer was enough.

<comment><USER4> You should probably remove those NSFW ones. They don't add to the comment and could get someone fired since the NSFW warning is not prominent, and the images are not "girl in bikini" but full on nudes.

<comment><USER2> You are only able to edit a post for a limited time, and I'm long past the point of being able to edit that post.

As for the images, I kept a little file of interesting ones, and didn't want to go back and check them all to remember which were NSFW. So I simply put in the disclaimer and pasted.

That said, I felt that they _did_ add to the comment. They give an idea of the variety of different things that could show up in a discussion, and indicate that you would need to separate them out by category.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was a fun little project that started from a co-worker wanting to see random imgur files. I've just started playing with jQuery and JavaScript and this is the result so far.

Imgur uses 5 chars alphanumerical ids as the image names, and doesn't care if you use .jpg, .png, etc, etc. So I wrote a small backend that generates and spits out an array of keys to check. The JavaScript hides the image tag, and sets it, another function verifies that it's a real image (imgur sends 200s, and an image that tells you an image doesn't exist, so I check that the height and width match). If it does, then display the image, if not, try the next. When the array is about to run out, I fill it again. I also keep a small cache of the keys that it determined weren't valid (based on jQuery passing back to me the list of failed keys) to try to up the odds of getting an image quicker.

An unmini'ed version of the JavaScript is at <http://image- roulette.com/static/js/image-roulette.js>

Any feedback would be awesome =)

</comment><comment><USER5> I did a similar experiment a couple of months back to find random pastebins and jsfiddles, but both gave 404s whenever I tried, so I abandoned it.

If anyone's interested: <http://jsfiddle.net/C6M8h/1> <http://jsfiddle.net/C6M8h/3>

<comment><USER4> You could just scrape stackoverflow? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title of imgur posts are sometimes an important lead-in for the content, so you might want to include those.

</comment><comment><USER7> Are you just composing random strings and checking if an image exists at the URL?

<comment><USER2> The code composes random strings, and checks whether the returned image is the size of imgur's 404. So real images of that exact shape and size will also be skipped.</comment></comment>


xkcd: Real Programmers  - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/378/ <comment><USER2> I set the universal constants at the start such that the universe evolves to contain this comment right here.... and I invented the Mac... and Paul Graham.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sadly, so true. This goes with operating systems as well.

<comment><USER4> Emacs subsumes them?

<comment><USER5> yes :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sigh, welcome to reddit

<comment><USER7> I upmodded you, but I also upmodded this comic. Obviously if the front page of news.yc was riddled with comics and other image links, that would be lame, but on the other hand, this xkcd was inspired, and I'm really glad I saw it (which is my litmus test for upvoting posts).

Yeah yeah. I should probably just add xkcd to my RSS feed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> for as xenophobic as rms is, emacs is one hell of a kinky slut.</comment>


Brilliant Online Tools to Help You Build an Android and iOS App for Your Website - <AUTHOR> http://devstand.com/2012/02/10/mobile-app-website/ We live in a World powered by mobile devices and as a webmaster is vital to provide best user experience to your visitors. One of the first steps is to create a mobile application which can aggregate and promote your website content. These apps help you build a professional Android or iOS app in no time. <comment><USER2> Why does every website need an app?</comment>


Americans Love Ordering Pizza on Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-15/facebook-amazon-become-weapons-in-restaurant-ordering-arms-race <comment><USER2> Sorry for the tangent but...

About a year ago I started making my own pizza instead of ordering it in. Not only do a save a lot of money but it is a higher quality product.

It takes about a half hour of prep so I only do it on weekends. I found a quick crust recipe that doesn't require waiting for hours for the dough to rise [1]. The ingredients are just bread flour, yeast, water, salt, olive oil, and sugar.

The toppings and sauce are the most expensive parts. Though I'm sure if I made the sauce from scratch I could shave a dollar but probably not worth the effort.

Tip: buying a jar of yeast is MUCH cheaper than the pre-measured packets that only make one pizza. Those are a rip off. A jar is almost the same price and makes 15 pizzas instead of 1.

[1] [http://allrecipes.com/recipe/20171/quick-and-easy-pizza- crus...](http://allrecipes.com/recipe/20171/quick-and-easy-pizza-crust/)

<comment><USER3> > It takes about a half hour of prep so I only do it on weekends.

> Not only do a save a lot of money

So, it's not cheaper.

<comment><USER4> Outside of work there aren't many things I do that are "worth the money". Is it worth the money to bake pizza? Not if you compare the cost of a chain pizza vs what I make on average when I'm working.

I do so many things at home that are not "worth my time", but if I could trade doing them for more hours sitting at my desk would I do it? No! I spend enough time working. Some people enjoy cooking, gardening, yard work, etc. There are days that pulling weeds is a nice break from sitting at a desk. I'd never want to work every waking hour at my job so someone can cook, clean and take care of my house for me. Some things I do - are they worth the money? Not a chance. Worth my time? That all depends on how you'd rather spend your time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The company began accepting orders on Facebook in June, and the feature was an instant hit: Hundreds of orders flowed in during the first few hours. In all forms, digital orders now make up over 60 percent of Papa John's sales."

So what percent are from facebook? Online orders are 60%, but what percent are from FB? I doubt there are that many.

My closest pizza place wasn't Papa John's, but I ordered online 100% of the time - but I'd never do it through FB.

<comment><USER5> Is it a national chain? Or does your local independent pizza joint have online

<comment><USER4> I've since moved, so I don't have any chains near me, but it was Domino's. I never had a mistake and except for one time, it was always ready on time. I'd go pick it up based on when they told me it would be done - just walk in and walk out with pizza.

My local pizza place in the same area (better, pizza, but twice the price) could lookup my last order by phone number - that saved time and mistakes. It was nice, but would have been better if it tied into caller ID. Some employees acted like it was a burden to have me tell them a phone # and hit the reorder button - but it was so much faster and error free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm somewhat surprised that national pizza chains in the US haven't done more with their existing driver networks and delivery tech.

Edit: A little more detail...

For their current use of the networks, the apps aren't at all competitive with Uber Eats, Doordash, etc. See [http://blog.pizzahut.com/featured/track-your- pizza-with-our-...](http://blog.pizzahut.com/featured/track-your-pizza-with- our-delivery-tracker/) , for example. It tracks only 3 states. The UI also doesn't do a good job of highlighting state changes...the current state is just a slightly larger circle, of the same color, and no "ping" when it changes.

Then, it seems like they could leverage their networks to do something beyond just delivering their own products. I get that there are potential issues with that, but it's surprising that we've not seen at least some local trial run of that.

<comment><USER7> > For their current use of the networks, the apps aren't at all competitive > with Uber Eats, Doordash, etc, for example. It tracks only 3 states. The UI > also doesn't do a good job of highlighting state changes...the current state > is just a slightly larger circle, of the same color, and no "ping" when it > changes.

I guess I'm getting old or something, because I don't understand why you would need anything more detailed than "order received", "order on it's way", and maybe "order delivered" (although you should assumably be aware of this event without an app or website informing you).

If you have the time to watch second-by-second updates of where your food delivery is, why didn't you just go save the $5 delivery fee + tip and pick it up yourself? When I order delivery, it's because I'm doing something that needs my attention and I don't have time to cook or pickup...

<comment><USER6> I did mention more beyond the 3 states. The missing ping is an issue, for example..say you're in the backyard. And the subtle visual treatment of "current state".

Also, the additional info has been occasionally useful to me. Like when a driver gets obviously lost. Or _" Oh, the food is cold because this place is just too far away from me for reasonable delivery"_

<comment><USER8> > Or "Oh, the food is cold because this place is just too far away from me for > reasonable delivery"

I live in the mountains but GPS knows where I am; drivers (parcels/food/etc) can choose upfront if 'this place is just too far away', not after they did the drive.

<comment><USER6> Uber eats has this problem. Many restaurants are too far away, but they will deliver anyway. The food quality suffers.

With the map, I know why. So, for example, I don't short tip the driver. Unfortunately, with Uber Eats, I don't see the problem until after I pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When looking into the decline of automats (Amazon's recent announcement is automat like), one was the fact that vending machines did not have a bill acceptors. Inflation meant more coins was a hassle...

Now, paying by human exchange is being trumped by the finger only</comment>


How Amazon convinced people to welcome 'listening devices' into their homes - <AUTHOR> https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-amazon-convinced-millions-of-people-to-welcome-listening-devices-into-their-homes/ <comment><USER2> Well that didn't answer the question at all :(

<comment><USER3> It's an advert to watch the program.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Spans 1.0, a Pythonic library for working with intervals - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/runfalk/spans <comment><AUTHOR> Four years ago I open sourced version 0.1 of this project. Previously is was part of my company's workshift management system. Over the years I've slowly improved it and added functionality to simplify common use cases.

Happy to answer any questions!</comment>