Consumption of a dark roast coffee blend reduces DNA damage in humans - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30448878 <comment><USER2> "Funding

This study has been supported by Tchibo GmbH, Hamburg, Germany."

Tchibo is a German chain of coffee retailers and cafés known for its range of non-coffee products that change weekly.

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

Number of locations 700 shops (Germany) 300 (rest of world)

They might want to make some in-store claims about Dark Roast...

<comment><USER3> I'm generally sceptical of all studies about coffee for this very reason. There's a lot of bullshit studies around food and supplements funded with people with strongly vested interests in selling more product. It's a real problem. For any given supplement, you can often find multiple studies supporting its use and multiple studies saying it's harmful.

When it comes to coffee specifically, if you listen to the studies about coffee, it's some panacea full of anti-oxidants. However, it's a stimulant, it increases cortisol (stress hormone). Stimulants generally makes the body prioritize immediate energy spending over regeneration/healing. There's been a study claiming that caffeine decreases neurogenesis, which should negatively impact both long-term memory and mood.

<comment><USER4> To some extent isn't that expected?

Let's face it - who would spend the money to fund a study on a substance that's been around for hundreds (thousands?) of years?

Probably if you're going to spend the money to investigate it, you expect some kind of return. So sadly, all these studies end up being funded by people with an interest in a positive outcome.

The bigger question to me is, does that immediately invalidate their results?

<comment><USER5> It depends on the ratio of studies funded vs studies published.

I wouldn't be surprised if around 90-95% of special interest funded studies that aim for a p value of <5% _aren 't published_.

<comment><USER6> > I wouldn't be surprised if around 90-95% of special interest funded studies > that aim for a p value of <5% aren't published.

This is true of the majority of publicly-funded research, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If we had even 1 honest meta-analysis for every 10 trials like this, well, we'd know more than we do now. Small trials with inconsistent/poor designs are the bane of medical science.

That said, I drink dark roast so this study must be true.

<comment><USER8> Here is nice meta study of coffee and cancer risk (dna damage and cancer are probably linked).

[https://www.nature.com/articles/srep33711](https://www.nature.com/articles/srep33711)

> coffee intake was associated with reduced risk of oral, pharynx, liver, > colon, prostate, endometrial cancer and melanoma and increased lung cancer > risk.

(Heh. Smokers drink nearly twice as much coffee as non-smokers. Smoking increases caffeine metabolism. I think this explains the lung cancer risk)

<comment><USER9> To your parenthetical comment: May be unrelated, but totally anecdotal, smokers tend to drink a very light roast that is easily drinkable like a folgers or maxwell house, maybe a coffee shop light roast, like a Dunkin. I don't think smokers are downing cups of Starbucks dark blend and if they are god help their stomachs.

<comment><USER10> Lighter roasts have more caffeine, because the roasting process damages the caffeine molecule.

<comment><USER11> I used to think the same, that roasting burns off the caffeine so lighter roast = more caffeine.

But when I looked for a source on that one day it seems like that's a myth. There can be differences based on whether you measure by weight vs volume but that's about it. [https://www.kickinghorsecoffee.com/en/blog/caffeine-myths- da...](https://www.kickinghorsecoffee.com/en/blog/caffeine-myths-dark-vs- light)

So now I just say I like light roasts because I like to taste the coffee and not the roast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I drink coffee nearly every day; I am reading this in a coffeeshop. But, p = 0.028? Come on. If you tested for a few dozen things, you would expect to find at least one that had a p-value like that. Was this pre-registered to look at only DNA damage, via this metric? Or did they look at 100 different things to find one with p=0.028?

Of course, if they pre-registered and their theory was that it would reduce DNA damage as measured in this way, that would be a bit different, but from this article it's hard to say.

Now, back to drinking my mocha latte.

<comment><USER13> It's a little annoying if they're cherry-picking but does it really impact the validity of the results? If anything, I'd think they'd have a greater incentive to skew results if they were specifically testing a theory about DNA damage.

<comment><USER14> "I want to prove that it's good for something, but I don't care what it's good for" is not really a good research question. Then you'll measure 100 things and only publish the one that makes your intervention look good and possibly ignore all the ones that make it look bad.

It's also rather useless if you don't at least have some idea of the mechanism. Coffee has lots of different parts, so what part of it is useful - is it the caffeine? The tannins? ...? And how does it have this effect? Is it even the coffee or just that the coffee group took 5 minutes of rest to drink their brew and that is really the effect?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really hate bad science, and this is an example.

Springer Science+Business Media (the publisher) does not transfer copyright of the paper from the author to the publisher like many other journals. This begs the question, why isn't this article open access? The primary author, Dorothea Schipp, is a statistics consultant in small town Germany [0] not associated with a University and the blood work was done in Slovakia. No PHDs or MDs among them. [1].

Digging deeper into their research method [2] the study looked at DNA breakage over a four month period in blood sampling for a coffee and non- coffee/caffeine group. I have a few questions about this, mainly around how effective the time period and method for determining total DNA stability. How many individual cell gnomes were measured in the before/after? What's the random variance for genome variability among cells in the same body? I suspect the variance is high enough to explain their unbelievably low p.

My guess is that the statistician is having fun with p-hacking [3] while collecting some funding from industry.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenthal- Bielatal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenthal-Bielatal)

[1][https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-018-1863-2](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-018-1863-2)

[2] [https://www.mdlinx.com/journal-summaries/coffee-comet- assay-...](https://www.mdlinx.com/journal-summaries/coffee-comet-assay-human- intervention-study/2018/11/20/7549520/)

[3] [http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/P-hacking](http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/P-hacking)

<comment> rv-de Also the study was ordered by Tchibo - a producer of dark roast coffee. What a coincidence. So naturally they didn't have an interest in finding that (assuming that the result is valid at all - which I doubt) tea with caffeine (or maybe just caffeine pills) has the same effect. Also why did they use a _blend_ on earth? This study doesn't make sense on so many levels. But nobody diggs into it so it's successfully feeding the nutrition misinformation circle jerk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Stopped drinking coffee months ago and I have never felt better. Anxiety is down. Sleeplessness is down. General mood is up. Best of all, I no longer get headaches due to Caffeine withdrawal.

<comment><USER17> When I'm not drinking coffee, I'm less forgetful and think more clearly. I'm less anxious and better in tune with my body. I also feel more myself.

But I love coffee and am usually consuming it. Thank you for sharing your experience. I'll need to try taking a break soon.

<comment><USER16> You're welcome!

The taste of coffee is pretty tough to resist, I'll admit!

They do make decaffeinated coffee, although I've never tried it myself.

<comment><USER18> I have switched to decaf espresso (for pretty much the same reasons as outlined above). It does not taste as good, but it is close enough - so it is a satisfactory substitute for regular espresso.

<comment><USER19> I've had some success by mixing in a minute amount of baking soda into the coffee immediately before brewing. Probably works best for French press. Literally the smallest amount I could get between my thumb and finger. Ie 1 mg might be more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quick googling indicates that tea has similar effect [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24585444](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24585444) (very small study but effect size is good), another study is [https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/138/8/1567S/4750818](https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/138/8/1567S/4750818)

What are the common ingredients in coffee and tea except caffeine?

EDIT:

It seems like black tea also, although I can't make sense of the biological jargon. [https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf010875c](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf010875c)

<comment><USER20> Why couldn't caffeine be the main mechanism-of-action?

It's a diuretic, so those treated with coffee likely drank more total liquids during the study, and perhaps flushed more older/damaged cell material.

<comment><USER21> Not a biologist or a doctor, but I'm pretty sure you don't pee out damaged cells.

<comment><USER20> I was referring to the products of cell degradation. Autophagy – destruction of cell components or full cells – is a constant, natural, necessary process. Its waste products have to go somewhere, and biomarkers related to autophagy, and all the other waste-eliminating functions of the kidneys and liver, can be detected by byproducts in urine.

It's also the case that full red and white blood cells, and epithelial cells, are found in urine, and at higher-than-trace levels in various disease states... but that may just be incidental to kidney/urinary tract functioning.

Still, more peeing from regular use of a diuretic like caffeine, and commensurate higher water intake, is going to mean more flushing of anything unwanted in your blood, like the broken DNA strands detected by this study.

Which raises my question: is there really less DNA damage, or has the detectable evidence of the damage just been swept out more rapidly?

<comment><USER21> My semi-educated guess would be that kidneys work best when the volumetric output is average. These are not 100% passive systems like coffee filters, they have some active filtering mechanisms. If you overwhelm them with fluid intake, I would suspect they start to underperform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> To what extent are "DNA strand breaks", as measured in a blood sample, correlated with other health outcomes?

Caffeine is a diuretic. The coffee group likely consumed more total liquids in the course of the treatment. So the mechanism might be simply more flushing of damaged cells – possibly beneficial, but not unique to coffee.

It's odd for the headline to highlight "dark roast" when lighter roasts weren't tested, for comparison.

<comment><USER12> Hypothesis: they tested both dark and light roasts, the light roast showed no effect or a bad one, hence this study. Just an hypothesis, I have no data to back that up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm surprised (horrified?) that a control group's DNA deteriorates significantly enough in such a short trial to use as a comparison. #entropy

<comment><USER23> The study is likely useless since eight weeks total does not constitute long- term effects. You'd need to do this with a larger sample size over years to get reliable data.

<comment><USER24> 8 weeks is not unusual for a study like this (randomized and controlled). Almost no study where researchers tell participants what to do will be longer. Epidemiological studies, of which there are many on coffee, do have more subjects over years, but rely on self-reported data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if they took fast vs slow metabolizers into account. It seems to be healthy only with the fast metabolizers gene:

[https://drwillcole.com/caffeine-one-thing-standing- optimal-h...](https://drwillcole.com/caffeine-one-thing-standing-optimal- health/)

If you're a slow caffeine metabolizer:

1\. Increased risk of high blood pressure (hypertension).

2\. Increased risk of heart attack.

3\. Higher chance of digestive disorders.

4\. More stress and measurable cortisol spikes.

If you're a fast metobolizer:

1\. Longer life.

2\. Faster metabolism.

3\. Better memory and mood.

4\. Lower cancer risk.

5\. Better blood sugar + insulin balance.

I'm most assuredly a slow metabolizer since caffeine makes me feel terrible.

<comment><USER26> I'm a bit confused by the linked article. The only link to a study I found was to [1] published _Advances in Psychiatric Treatment_. The other study quoted is for some specific effects the article mentions. Any idea where the link between CYP1A2 and caffein comes from?

[1] [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/advances-in- psychiat...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/advances-in-psychiatric- treatment/article/neuropsychiatric-effects-of- caffeine/7C884B2106D772F02DA114C1B75D4EBF)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hey guys Pub Med Labs developer here. Check out this very same fascinating article in the new Labs site and please give us your feedback! Much appreciated.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pubmed/30448878-consumptio...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pubmed/30448878-consumption- of-a-dark-roast-coffee-blend-reduces-dna-damage-in-humans-results- from-a-4-week-randomised-controlled-study/)

<comment><USER28> The increased white space and font size make it much easier to read. Responsive layout for mobile phones. Overall a much better experience. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Garbage!

Figure 2: The coffee-treated group is anomalously higher in the quantified metric BEFORE the treatment. This is entirely an artifact of stratifying the treatment vs. control group prior to wash-out. The only significant difference is between all groups and the PRE-treatment coffee group.

</comment><comment><USER30> While the research may be compromised by a conflict of interest, I still have a legit question.

Trader Joe's discontinued my favorite dark roast coffee (Fair Trade Organic Guatemalan) and nothing I've found has come close to the taste and cost.

[http://www.traderjoesreviews.com/product/trader-joes-fair- tr...](http://www.traderjoesreviews.com/product/trader-joes-fair-trade- organic-guatemalan-coffee-reviews/)

Does anyone have a suggestion for me that's ~$10-$12 per pound?

<comment><USER31> Have you tried Peet's Big Bang? It's medium roast but definitely has the flavor of darker roasts.

<comment><USER30> Haven't, no, but I'll swing by and see if I can try a cup. Thanks for the suggestion

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > consumed 500 ml of freshly brewed dark roast coffee blend per day,

half a liter per day of coffee is a lot! I wonder if they controlled for caffeine

some highlights from my reading:

\- 372mg caffeine per day

\- water-only group specifically avoided caffeine

\- coffee/caffeine group had to abstain from all caffeine for 4 weeks before study (baseline to 300+mg a day is a LOT for someone with no tolerance)

\- they base their claim of the 'darkness' of the roast mattering on other similar studies, with less pronounced results, that used lighter roasts.

"Among several previous studies of the effects of coffee consumption on DNA damage, only two were randomised controlled trials, with DNA breakage rather than oxidative modification of DNA bases analysed [23]. Bakuradze et al. [14] also studied the effects of coffee C21 consumption, after 4 weeks of intervention, and found a decrease of DNA strand breaks by 27% in comparison to the control group with water consumption (p<0.001). Misik et al. [22] studied a much shorter intervention period (5 days) and a different coffee type and used isolated lymphocytes. In comparison to C21, the coffee had an approximately twofold content of caffeoyl quinic acids and trigonelline and about half of N-methylpyridinium. Therefore, the coffee used by Misik et al. is a light/ medium roast type while we used here a dark roast blend. We assume that the different degree of roasting accounts for the different outcome observed. "

<comment><USER33> It's 2-3 typical cups of coffee... 2 in the morning and one later in the day. Now, if it's laced with a ton of sugar or "sugar free" sweetener that metabolizes like sugar, that's different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The first thing I notice is that both the first and last authors of this paper are industry-affiliated. Not to say there's anything inherently problematic with that, but at least raises an eyebrow about the motivation behind this study.

</comment><comment><USER35> Too bad dark roast coffee also triggers a bunch of digestive tract ailments. Other than stomach ulcer, hemorrhoids, and all the bowl irritations, dark roast coffee is just fine. Noooooooooooooooot.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm willing to bet there is another study that coffee causes some sort of cancer (last I saw it was linked with colon cancer). I'll still drink my coffee, and tea, and probably continue to consume nicotine in one of many forms.

Life is too short to worry about maybe, probably is something you should likely worry about - that why I stopped inhaling burning things to feed my nicotine addiction, while cancer isnt all that likely, COPD, heart failure, and others issues sure as hell are.

</comment><comment><USER37> Amongst other effects not stated in this study

</comment><comment><USER38> While I'm always happy to hear good news about coffee (although as an espresso aficionado, I'd be hard pressed to consume half a litre a day), given the obvious difference between coffee and water, I don't see how this can be a 'single-blind' study.

</comment><comment><USER39> Yeah, this is bullshit.

100 people were a part of this "controlled" study.

Please don't be one of those people that runs around telling people this. This is nothing more than biased surveying by a weak company in attempt to create self-promoting propaganda.

Thank you @1_over_n for doing the research

<comment><USER8> 100 people can be enough. Single number like N is not going to tell much.

People should learn the basics of statistics before they start to have opinions.

<comment><USER39> In what world would 100 people be enough to represent anything accurately enough to make a generalized claim like this? All I know from the article is that there were 50 women and 50 men involved. It says nothing of age, fitness, dietary regimen, etc. Based on the "statistics" provided, I could equally make the claim that "drinking a warm drink reduces DNA damage".

Also, please don't generalize "people" in your backhanded comment. I recommend that you study up on critical reasoning. Maybe then you would come to understanding that most "statistics" are unintentionally (or intentionally) biased, and are therefore bullshit, and not to be taken at face value.

<comment><USER8> I criticized your backhanded N = 100 comment because it's silly.

Your comment "In what world would 100 people be enough" shows your disbelief in basic statistics.

In typical well conducted study N=100 participants is close to the minimum sample size when the population is large.

No statistician says that N = 100 is not enough to represent things accurately without knowing other parameters and the design of the study. With large enough effect size N=1 is more than enough and. N = 1800 is enough even if the population size is infinite in the optimal case.

<comment><USER39> You've got me there. I believe most basic statistics are deterministically useless.

I asked 3 people if they agreed with me. 2/3 said yes. So I guess I'm right

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I grew skeptical the moment I read "single-blind" test. So, the researchers know which group is what and that could involuntarily lead them to pick for what they are leaning to find (given it is funded by a coffee company)

</comment><comment><USER41> Odd days: research shows coffee is good for you

Even days: research shows coffee is bad for you

<comment><USER42> It's both good and bad for you depending on which health indicators you look at. People tend to treat "Coffee prevents cancer" and "Coffee raises blood pressure" as if they contradicted each other but really they don't. The whole thing is very dose dependant too. Correlationally life expectancy maxes out at around 3 cups per day but I doubt that's the causal maximum.

<comment><USER43> I don't buy it. I love coffee and caffeine in general but it's just a stimulant.

I personally believe the net effect is to make your body work harder to get through the day.

I think it's bad unless you were funded by the coffee industry.

<comment><USER44> Even if being a stimulant were its only property, what makes it decidedly bad? Researchers understand it as a stimulant as it is, they're not evaluating its worth "despite" being a stimulant. If consumption in small doses poses a net harm for that reason, there ought to be stronger consensus, which is lacking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> As a stimulant coffee could be placing stress on the body leading cells with damaged DNA to act more aberrantly and subsequenttly rejected by the body.

</comment><comment><USER46> "The study comprised two periods of 4 weeks: a preconditioning period, with daily consumption of at least 500 ml water but no coffee, nor tea, nor any other caffeine-containing product. During the subsequent intervention period the coffee group consumed 500 ml of freshly brewed dark roast coffee blend per day, the control group consumed water instead."

Apparently, it's caffeine, or perhaps hot beverages (as it doesn't seem like the control drank their water heated).

The information that would help me is an answer to the question: Why?

</comment><comment><USER47> ... and increases problems with X,Y,Z I wouldn't be surprised to learn, before anyone thinks about taking this as health advice.

</comment><comment><USER48> Coffee remains one of the few things you can buy the best of, in the world, for less than $100usd and enjoy for several days.

[http://store.georgehowellcoffee.com/coffees/limited- roasts](http://store.georgehowellcoffee.com/coffees/limited-roasts)

Only grind what you are going to brew immediately. Use a conical Burr grinder. Technivorm coffee machine else bonavida.

</comment><comment><USER49> If this is true, my DNA is so healthy.

</comment><comment><USER50> What about [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-lawsuit- coffee...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-lawsuit- coffee/cancer-warnings-to-be-served-up-with-coffee-in-california- idUSKBN1I930H)

</comment><comment><USER51> All I can say... "Is Most Published Research Wrong?" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42QuXLucH3Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42QuXLucH3Q)

TL;DR: Likely yes. Spinning statistics is not that hard, even with the best of intentions.

</comment><comment><USER52> Can't see any evidence with "n=50"...

</comment><comment><USER53> I have a simple rule in my life: Anything that is addictive is harmful to us. Coffee falls in that bucket.

<comment><USER54> Watch out for carrots[1]. Lots of non-addictive things are also harmful, of course, but I suppose that doesn't by itself invalidate your principle. In the case of coffee and tea it seems possible that the benefits outweigh the harm.

1: [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3109/000486796090626...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3109/00048679609062670)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Good. I will continue drinking French Roast then.

</comment><comment><USER56> hhhhhhmmmmmmmm 4 weeks only?

</comment><comment><USER57> >Our results indicate that regular consumption of a dark roast coffee blend has a beneficial protective effect on human DNA integrity in both, men and women.

What they established was that drinking water damages DNA. When they drank coffee there wasn't as much damage. It's a stretch to say that coffee is providing a protective effect though.

Without denigrating anyone, it's a bad study.

What was the chemical breakdown of the water? Was it tap water? Distilled? Bottled? Spring? etc.

A better designed study would have groups drinking different kinds of water. Was the fact that the water was boiled (in the coffee) providing the protective effect? i.e removing toxins etc, did the kettle they use have a filter that processed the water, whereas the water was drunk straight from a tap etc.

Coffee is great though!

<comment><USER58> Coffee contains water. If water is harmful, coffee will be just as harmful _unless_ it has protective effects.

In any case, you can't say they "established that drinking water damages DNA" and then go on to argue that they should establish it with another study about water.

<comment><USER59> It's not clear to me that the control group drank 500ml of boiled water.

If they're drinking cold tap water, it could be that the act of boiling the water yields the desired effect. If they're drinking bottled water (and if the instructions said "drink 500ml of water", this would be my first inclination) then maybe the DNA damage is being caused by plastic that's leaching into the water as opposed to any preventative effect in coffee.

<comment><USER41> If it's the plastic, then we need follow up studies comparing people drinking coffee in plastic cup vs paper cups vs other non plastic non paper glassware!

<comment><USER23> I don't think it's the cup that leeches plastic, unless it contains BPA.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A browser extension that lets you click on imported modules on GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://fiatjaf.alhur.es/module-linker/#/javascript <comment><USER2> This is awesome! GitHub should totally add something like this.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks really cool, but why add a dot when you could just make the whole text the link?

<comment><AUTHOR> The whole text is the link, the dot is there just to remember you of the link and make it a little more fancy, also the color of the dot is a hint on the kind of the library (if it is an external package, a package from the stdlib of the language or a relative/local module). It is added using the :after CSS pseudo-class and is not a character, so it doesn't change the code line and doesn't add bloat to the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a great idea, I love it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.</comment></comment>


Why we're betting against real-time team messaging - <AUTHOR> https://blog.doist.com/why-were-betting-against-real-time-team-messaging-521804a3da09 <comment><USER2> The biggest drawback of a real time communication tool like Slack is the React v/s Respond conundrum.

Productive communication and teamwork requires that we respond, rather than react.

What happens specifically with tools like Slack which start off as demi- official tool and then transcend to official is that, one gets into the habit of reacting, instead of responding.

I have personally seen this "fastest finger first" played, almost always.

There has been tons of literature written on reacting v/s responding and I need not dwell into it.

Another aspect is that there is no exit, once Slack is the primary communication tool. One is forced to use it, otherwise you are like an outcast and people more often tend to take it as a signal that the person is on its way out and hence moved away from Slack.

Rest of the drawbacks is documented in the article.

<comment><USER3> I have never heard of react vs respond. I wonder if you could explain a bit of what it means?

<comment><USER2> Event: Your boss shares an article on @channel at Slack.

Reaction:: Since our boss has posted it and you don't want to be seemed a second rung player and the one who is NOT on her/his toes, you jump on the keyboard and first "Like/Thumbs Up" that post and then comment for the heck of it, something like "Wow", Amazing", "Insightful".

Then you look over your back ie, to see how many others have commented before you, and if you hardly see any, then you pat yourself on the back and consider the day to have been well spent.

Response:: You read the article once and decide whether it concerns you or to be discarded. If it concerns you, you read it once more, may be twice and take relevant notes. Then you decide, whether you should discuss this over an email to your boss, or a personal meeting would be more appropriate.

And thus, you draft an email or ask for 10 mins of private time with your boss.

<comment><USER4> This seems like the hallmark of a pre-dysfunctional workplace. None of the engineering managers I've worked with wouldn't expect their engineers to drop what they're doing and look at an article. All but one were too busy themselves to be doing that sort of thing. None would want to jeopardize their schedules by distracting their engineers. Most managers aren't trying to be friends with their engineers; they have their own friends.

Maybe this is common in startups or in teams where the manager expects to be friends with their engineers. I suppose I've been fortunate to never be put in the situation where chatting with the boss overrode doing solid work.

<comment><USER5> I cannot relate to the parent post at all. My boss shares content all the time on Slack. People rarely respond, nor is it expected, nor is the lack of expectation communicated, it's just implicit based on the culture. (i.e. "Check this out if you have time")

If my boss was sharing content and then my coworkers were "looking over their backs" to see who liked something first or liked something with enough enthusiasm, I feel like a lot of other things would also be wrong with that work environment to make people behave that way.

<comment><USER6> > "Check this out if you have time"

Our boss actually uses e-mail for this purpose, which I find much more appropriate because it matches the "if you have time" bit better than Slack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _A small, but impactful design choice we made in creating Twist was to leave out the online presence indicator._

I imagine you could address this in Slack by just having everyone set themselves to 'Away' by default.

One of the things that I've found useful in Slack is turning off the "Someone is typing" message (the option is in the Display Options). I used to wait for someone to post if I knew a message was coming. Now I can drop in and out of a channel more easily. Similarly, I've muted almost all the channels I'm in so now I only _need_ to check if someone notifies me.

The point I'm making is that Slack doesn't necessarily work the way you want right away, and that you might need address a few cultural problems with the way your team uses it. You need to think about how your team communicates, consider _why_ people do annoying things in it, and come up with solutions that work. At the most extreme that might be writing a competitor product but for most companies there just needs to be a little more tolerance of people not answering immediately and a little consideration that gifs can be unhelpful.

<comment><USER8> The online presence indicator is _one of the_ problems created by Slack. Using real-time chat is the actual problem, whether it's Slack or Hipchat, or anything alike. Real-time is great sometime, but I don't think you should use it all the time: \- Real-time chat happens quickly — one line at a time — discouraging full, thoughtful conversations. \- Topics are all jumbled together in a channel so it's nearly impossible to piece together the full conversation. \- Important team knowledge — like what decision did we make and why? — gets buried and lost within hours (even with powerful search). \- The real-time nature of communication excludes anyone who's not there in the moment it takes place. \- Constant notifications eat into your time and attention. \- Even if you've turned off notifications, the fear of missing out on something important keeps pulling you back into the app. \- It slowly creates a culture that prioritizes being available over doing good work.

<comment><USER7> _Real-time chat happens quickly — one line at a time — discouraging full, thoughtful conversations._

Slack supports shift+CRLF for line breaks, so users can write epic poems broken up in to hundreds of stanzas if they want to. Using Slack as a one- line-at-a-time chat service is a choice that a user makes. Slack itself doesn't enforce it.

 _Topics are all jumbled together in a channel so it's nearly impossible to piece together the full conversation._

Only if users interrupt the current conversation with something else. Again, this is a cultural choice that users make. It's not a Slack thing, or even a chat thing. Also, Slack does support threaded conversations (albeit with a pretty horrible UI).

 _Important team knowledge — like what decision did we make and why? — gets buried and lost within hours (even with powerful search)._

I totally agree. Slack is not the right place for documenting important stuff. Nor is a different chat app, or email. Important knowledge should be put in a knowledge management app (eg a repo wiki for code, or a Word doc for business related things).

<comment><USER9> It is true that Slack _allows_ multi-line posts and discrete conversations, but both go totally against the grain of the system design.

Expecting people to use Slack in a way it wasn't designed for can only result in failure or constant friction.

<comment><USER10> Not just the system design, but also the culture. I know a few people who post coherent, properly punctuated and capitalized sentences and paragraphs here on HN, but they write on Slack like this:

one line at a time

no caps or periods

stream of thought

enter each time

I posted a parody of this style a while back:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11239614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11239614)

<comment><USER4> Guilty at charged

^ as

<comment><USER10> its funny i found out something

i never new

* knew

^ is something else

* is to correct

and never use the edit button!

<comment><USER4> oops,

I meant *

thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I worked at a Slack shop for several years, and share the author's opinion.

I can't think of any five minute period during my entire tenure where the Slack tab didn't have a little red circle telling me that I absolutely needed to check it right this second. There was no way to filter notifications beyond "Everything", so that little bubble would go up every time anybody in the company pressed a key. And heaven forbid somebody typed "Good morning, @channel" (which happened 20 times per morning per timezone), because then you'd get the dreaded Red Exclamation Mark in the tab.

I can't fathom how anybody would have been able to work if they had gone as far as allowing notifications to be turned on and make noises at them every time Slack thought something Important Enough To Interrupt You had happened.

<comment><USER12> We've left the "social" era and have entered the era of interruptions. All the innovation this decade is in interruptions no longer human-interconnections.

My smart watch for example post dates the social era so it has only minimal social features, but its deep in the interruption zone and spams me mercilessly until I block apps and if I block enough apps I may as well have a cheap dumb watch.

Another way to look at it is we no longer have 100 people shallowly liking us, we now focus on 100 apps shallowly claiming our attention is vital because we are important and we must be interrupted now.

Some of this is probably cultural backlash against automation and bureaucracy and general economic decline. If more people than ever are in fact not useful or important at all, then a communication style focused primarily around telling people they're important, is going to be very popular.

Under that analysis Slack is a post-social communications media, and it constantly rewarding you with endless micro doses of "your attention is valuable" is not a bug, its the whole philosophy of its existence as an app. You can see why curmudgeons see Slack as something negative, like the intrusion of participation trophy culture, because thats pretty much what it is.

The purpose of Slack is to constantly interrupt you with a narrative that you're important. There are incidental side effects that make it semi-useful. Companies spend a lot of money on "make employees feel special" and Slack is merely a modern example of the genre.

This philosophical analysis of Slack is probably extendible past Slack into startups. Don't try to market something as interconnectedness, not in 2017. Try to sell something that symbolically, or whatever, tells people they're important.

<comment><USER13> > _My smart watch ... spams me mercilessly until I block apps and if I block > enough apps I may as well have a cheap dumb watch._

Definitely block the spammy apps. It makes a huge different to the smartwatch experience if it's only buzzing for things that really _are_ urgent. Once you tune the notifications, it's actually calming - not only because you're not being interrupted as often, but also because you're not constantly thinking "is there something that needs my attention". If there is, the watch will let you know.

<comment><USER14> To me, that doesn't make much sense; the whole point of a smartwatch seems to be making the reading of notifications more efficient and unobtrusive. If you disable all except the rare urgent ones, what's the point of the smartwatch?

<comment><USER15> Notifications are inherently intrusive. You have to pare it down to the set of notifications you care about most so that you aren't constantly interrupted. I made the mistake, recently, of letting the News app on iOS notify me, no sound but near constant visual noise when some big news item comes up. All _I_ care about is: chats and calls from girlfriend, family, friends (in that order), a couple chess games, calendar/todo notifications to keep me on schedule (particularly on busy days). Everything else, I can check at my leisure. If I had a smartwatch, it'd be convenient to have those on my wrist. But I certainly wouldn't want all those news notifications there, though I may still want them on my iPhone or iPad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like it. I've been thinking for a while that old-school forums are actually fundamentally superior to chatrooms for sharing important information and having in depth discussions.

In my opinion the chat model is simply bad for effectively distributing useful information because it disappears in the noise.

Perhaps what's needed is a combination of the forum-style threaded conversation model for information sharing and work conversations and a chat room which is explicitly for the water-cooler stuff, so that people don't have to be always-on (and constantly interrupted). It should be safe to turn off when you need to focus.

<comment><USER17> > old-school forums

Most open source projects still use mailing lists, which are even better than forums in that everyone can read and write emails in whatever client they prefer.

And yes, it's far better than chat for serious discussions, with a global group of people. You don't want to exclude the Americans from important decisions when everyone in Europe is awake and on the chat in the morning, and vice versa.

I think both systems have their places - if I have a quick question, chat is usually better. For longer more serious discussions, perhaps with code included, email wins.

<comment><USER18> Mailing lists are close to perfect; one missing feature from mailing list software is the ability to easily reach back in time to discover threads from before one joined a project.

For quick questions and discussions, irc is hard to beat.

<comment><USER19> Mailing lists are kind of terrible beyond a certain point of complexity. First, they lead to a lot of self-spamming, with internal conversations. Second, if you're not on the thread, you'll never see it. Email depends on enormous duplication of data.

And in practice, at large companies, forced expiration is used to control email storage space, in part because of the duplication.

So at very minimum, you want something threaded like email, but stored in a single location, so storage/duplication/deletion aren't problems, and indexed searching is available. This also allows things like tagging someone into a thread after it already started.

<comment><USER18> > Mailing lists are kind of terrible beyond a certain point of complexity. > First, they lead to a lot of self-spamming, with internal conversations.

This isn't a clear argument. What do you mean?

> So at very minimum, you want something threaded like email, but stored in a > single location, so storage/duplication/deletion aren't problems

Certainly, the distributed nature of email may pose problems for an organisation which stores emails for a number of its employees. Storage is cheap and backup processes de-duplicate data so using mailing lists shouldn't pose too much difficulty.

<comment><USER19> It means you'll be getting notifications in your inbox all day while the thread is running, whether you're interested or not. Which gets us in the habit of ignoring them.

The whole point of Doist is to get us away from the interrupt-driven behavior of constant notifications, and the instant gratification of response. Email lists do not solve this problem, unless you turn off your email client entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Curious question: Isn't this an already solved problem? I've been using plain old emails and quiet free of all the problems of real-time messaging.

"Thread-first communication" \- We have it. Email threads. I've been using Zoho Mail. It's one step ahead and has modern concepts like streams/commenting and sharing built around emails. Very useful.

"Truly transparent conversations" \- What this means is, the knowledge has to be highly searchable. Also, not all threads have to be public. With emails, you can either broadcast an email company wide or you can opt to pull in relevant users into a conversation. Makes a lot of sense to _not_ broadcast everything company-wide, isn't it? More importantly, emails are easily searchable. Once received, I'm confident that it's going to sit there in my inbox forever, without worrying if it's going to be deleted later by someone who has authority.

"Leaving out the online presence indicator" \- Exactly. Emails.

Maybe there's some more important key aspects that the product's covering up for me. As for me, I guess emails are simply good enough!

<comment><USER8> Emails are messy, siloed, opaque. Nobody in a team shares the same version of an email chain. No central source of truth means a high chance of not being on the same page. Emails have so many problems. Feel free to read through our comparison Twist vs Emails: [https://medium.com/@hfauq/email-or-twist-why- twist-is-better...](https://medium.com/@hfauq/email-or-twist-why-twist-is- better-dad08f39c646)

<comment><USER21> I just read your link on Medium. It presents good arguments in favor of Twist versus email. What about comparing Twist to something like Discourse or Usenet forums?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Congrats on finding a real problem and building something to solve it. You're about to fight an uphill battle.

Here's my feedback (from someone who currently leads the leads of 7 remote engineering teams):

• Not knowing if someone is available and if they will get back to you soon is very very bad for many conversations. For example, when you have a C-level asking for rapid turn around on something that needs to be done by someone multiple levels away from you.

• In remote teams, sometimes people disappear (e.g. car accident or civil unrest in a random country), and if you have no way to know, you'll eventually get fed up.

• The feeling of cohesiveness that comes from having realtime conversations, brainstorms and other collaboration is very important to managers (especially in remote teams) and convincing them that realtime talk is not a good default is going to be quite hard.

• As a result you will never be their default communication channel - at most you'll be the place they discuss bigger problems. But because you're not the default, you'll get destroyed by slack, who is the default. Most times people use the tool at hand that they are most familiar with, not the best tool for the job. I would encourage you to write a slack bot that reminds people to use you & helps them easily experience value from your product without you having to win the default spot.

• Finally, most people will have serious difficulty seeing the difference between your product and other product management tools that allow commenting in detail on issues being discussed.

</comment><comment><USER23> As an ex-IBMer with 10 years of dealing with Sametime, I find this discussion amusing. Just think of Slack but with 300,000+ in your team.

Sametime was a big part of IBM culture. IBMs work from home policy was tied up with it. At work means you are online and responsive to Sametime. A typical meeting involves people sitting in a conference room Sametiming comments to each other about the speaker.

One nice thing about Sametime is that you chat history is in XML files on your computer. This allows you to use grep to find past information.

IBM started to use Slack when I left. On the one hand this allows you to collaborate with people outside IBM, but downside is you need both tools running. Slack for the cool kids, Sametime for the old guys.

My new job is giving me a new experience- video conferences using Google Hangouts. Many times with googlers on the Google bus.

<comment><USER24> The last company I worked for had an IBM fanboy as CEO who wanted to do all internal communication with IBM tools. Domino, Notes, Sametime.

I think these were the worst tools I ever had to use in my whole career. Even after they rewrote the UI with Eclipse later.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, Notes is basically written in the Lotus 123 spreadsheet scripting language :-) Eclipse just made it worse. Obligatory [http://www.ihatelotusnotes.com/](http://www.ihatelotusnotes.com/)

The one positive comment I can make is that you did end up with a unified enterprise-wide set of collaboration tools.

Oh there was a new tool I hated before IBM decided to get on the git bandwagon: Rational Team Concert- project management and source control tied into one. Imagine having to start a giant 500 MB Java application to "git checkout". (In fact the project management part was OK, just using it for source control was horrible).

<comment><USER25> ClearCase I think (I have not used rational team concert) infinitely worse than RTC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One interesting challenge with this real-time vs. async communication challenge is that different job roles have different needs. At my company, most of our employees have been on the customer service side until recently, and Slack is great for them. Almost everything they need to talk about is urgent (even if it's not important) and temporary. They rarely have long- lasting high-level conversations.

Now we're starting to hire more developers and I'm realizing how disruptive it is for them to be pulled into Slack conversations all the time. So I've started using email more for communicating with the devs, and that seems to work reasonably well.

The questions I have are: (a) is it possible to have a single communication tool that handles both real-time and async properly and (b) does that even matter? Maybe email+Slack is a perfectly fine solution. Either way, it's obvious that only using Slack isn't a viable option.

<comment><USER27> I don't believe that one should try to create a single tool that covers both synchronous and asynchronous. Their UX is too different.

It seems to me a better idea to create an asynchronous deep collaboration tool and integrate it with synchronous tools like Slack.

The bigger question to me is what should an asynchronous deep collaboration tool do (if anything) beyond first-class threads.

In my mind the opportunity lies on three dimensions

1) Bringing updatable content and structure to threads. This makes threads vastly more useful for real collaboration (not just communication).

2) Making "catchup" much more efficient as this is the main problem with email.

If you think of one of the most successful asynchronous collaboration approaches, it's source control like git. The key thing that these tools to is make changes "diffable". That allows users to work at completely different points in time and still easily "catchup" with what's changed.

3) Allow regular users to easily convert unstructured one-off threads to semi- structured template threads. This naturally and gently moves teams to greater process-orientation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How is Twist (the product they announce in this post) much different from email? Besides not using open protocols? Don't get me wrong, it looks like a beautifully designed email client. There are some interesting features here but it seems like you could do this all using existing email features. Am I wrong?

The choice of asynchronhous vs. synchronous is a false dichotomy. Development teams I have been on use a combination of both since forever. Before Slack/Hipchat there was XMPP/Jabber before that was IRC. It must be business people binging on the glory of synchronous communication then having a hangover. In my experience this has never been an issue.

<comment><USER29> It keeps the idea of channels from Slack.

These channel designations are shared by everyone who uses Twist.

Email organization is different for each person.

<comment><USER30> Channels, like an email mailing list with a searchable archive?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There is a reason Jedi masters, powerful witches and wizards, ancient wise men and women, and so on tend to be found on isolated mountains, in remote caves, wandering in far away forests, and the like instead of living in the middle of the village with their doors open.

<comment><USER32> How are fictional characters and entities even remotely relevant to the article?

<comment><USER33> I think he's trying to imply that the stereotype exists for a reason, that deep thinking requires isolation from distraction.

For a more concrete example, you can look to what Richard Hamming had to say about the topic. He noticed a similar phenomenon at bell labs, where there was a difference big difference between people who worked with their doors open, and those who worked with them closed.

The door closed people were much more productive than the closed door people. Of course, he noticed there was a tradeoff there, and saw that the closed door people tended to not be as relevant years later as the open door people.

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I cant help but draw parallels between this and NNTP. This is essentially a really nice skin over newgroups, and thats not a bad thing at all. We have seen just how successful a modern UX can be on a old protocol with slack providing a UX to IRC. It is funny that we are slowly reworking the tools of the early computing community in slick modern ways.

It is also interesting that we as a community have completely sold out federated independent operators with a common standards defined protocol for soloed tooling.

<comment><USER35>
      I cant help but draw parallels between this
      and NNTP. This is essentially a really nice
      skin over newgroups, and thats not a bad
      thing at all.

The people in the D language community[0] came up with just such a thing. The source is on GitHub here[1].

0 - [http://forum.dlang.org/](http://forum.dlang.org/)

1 - [https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed](https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> So basically a forum? Knowledge Management is a broad topic and it's hilarious seeing the same solutions brought up again and again.

I have all this persistent information! New people need to get up to speed fast - where do I put it? Cue the Wiki fad.

I have to get things done and elicit quick feedback ASAP! Cue the Chat fad.

I want async communication so I'm not bogged down all the time! Email and Forums.

There's a time and place for all of these.

<comment><USER37> Yes this will forever be the case and engineers should get over the fact that solutions will forever rotate and be reintroduced. This is due to several possibilities: software ages, becomes unmaintained, company goes out of business, becomes too bloated, etc.

There are also trends and fads to consider, such as social media.

There is also human habits to consider. Not everyone knows about or is signed up for slack and uses it. They may eventually find out or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > But in reality, even I couldn't keep track of all the conversations that > were happening at the company.

Nor should you, really. Imagine trying to do that in an office-based organization! Slack, to me, is a bit like our digital office space.

You can also use highlight words to ensure you don't miss any discussion on topics you're particularly interested in. We have a guy who worked a lot with our billing, and he is magically always present whenever anyone says "refund".

</comment><comment><USER39> The problem with Slack and the like is that it's communication based, not work based.

The problem with Todoist and Wunderlist and the like is that it's work based, not communication based.

Slack is awesome at communicating. But it has no checklist, no todo, no collaboration tools that fulfill most needs. They're all half baked.

Wunderlist has checklists and todos and can be used to track collaboration efforts by linking Google Docs or Sheets to a task for example, but communication is still horrible. It's nowhere close to being a main communications channel.

So most end up using a combination of apps.

But this is also one of the greatest detriments to productivity. Having to juggle apps.

<comment><USER40> I was building an app that worked like this on top of Flowdock when I used to work for Rally. Fully integrated work management communication application. If you have a small collaborative team it was awesomely powerful we had used it on the team that built it for about 6 months before the project got cut.

If someone wants a tester or feedback on something they are building I'd love to help. I badly miss that thing :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Slack reminds me of my school years, I grew up as cell phones became commonplace.

We've always had chat software, but mostly we talked to each other during breaks or after school using our desktop computers.

Then cell phones became normal, and SMS was normal, later on, it was chat apps, social media. Things sped up by a factor of a billion.

All of the sudden we have entire conversations happening as the teacher is lecturing, people are making weekend plans, gossiping, bullying, relationships are forming and falling apart in minutes time.

Honestly, I can't even imagine what hell school must be now that everyone has social media and ephemeral messaging everywhere.

And I believe Slack did a little bit of this to the workplace, we've always had chat apps, but it was always a little bit to the side, but Slack integrated it with our work tools, now we have all these notifications from services bundled in the same software that offers you public channels, private channels, private groups and direct messaging, there is a whole new level of communication going on both on and off the record.

In some workplaces, I felt like it was school all over again.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, I cry for my young children. I have no idea how to prepare them for the hell that is the always connected life. I have no idea how to teach them, that most of it is noise, and that being purposely unavailable is essential for mental health, let alone productivity, even if it feels like you've missed vital social interactions while away.

Maybe it'll work itself out, and they'll naturally adapt. I just suspect it's totally antithetical to the human condition to constantly be available to respond to people, and psychologically we're not adapted to fight the urge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This makes a good point that Slack can sometimes just be a better hamster wheel for time wasting. I have seen it work well as an emergency channel, where dev's could quickly share info if a live app was having a problem. But at the same place, the most lively channel was an exchange of GIFs.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think that Slack (or any other IM client for work, really) is just a tool, not a solution. Meaning that it requires some organization and thought, rather than installing and hoping for the best. At least to some extent (i.e. have no idea about companies with hundreds of engineers online), it works. Equally important it is to acknowledge what is suitable for doing on IM and what is not.

If you want to discuss some large changes, sure, IM is a bad place. Conversation will probably get interrupted, derailed, etc. That's where, in my opinion, things like Google Docs or plain simple GH Issues shine. The format forces into better thought out, longer messages.

For other things, you need to organize the chat rooms. If you have 10+ people and 2 chat rooms (I think slack defaults to #general and #random) then yes, sounds bad. But instead having quite a few chat rooms with <10 people each might work out well. Even having multiple rooms with the same people can be good to separate different topics of conversation.

"Always on", I believe, comes not from the IM itself but from the culture of the company. I know places where everything is e-mail only and people constantly refresh it. Equally, IM is mostly ghost town outside working hours at other places. And Slack has decent notification settings to make sure that you don't go crazy.

So, IM has it's place and provides value if you are willing to make it work. It's just not a 'it just works' solution, which is hardly surprising.

</comment><comment><USER44> We have seen many of these challenges over the years and set out to build something to help manage your team's incoming requests — directly in Slack. We find it's most used for internal assistance (one team supporting many) or as a way for B2B companies to provide support to their top customers.

The goal is to help your team be available and responsive without compromising productivity. To achieve this, incoming requests to a particular team are collected in a "feed" channel. The notifications ping specific people on rotation or on a sequence (according to rules) until claimed, the conversations are explicitly resolved with a "closed" action. We provide assistance for things like inserting knowledge base and template responses, and tagging the conversation. Integrations via Zapier mean a conversation can easily turn into an Asana task, Github issue, etc.

If you're struggling to manage the chaos, give it a shot and see whether it helps.

[http://frame.ai/beta/](http://frame.ai/beta/)

</comment><comment><USER45> All you need is a little self discipline, not a special app. Turn off notifications, check your messages when you're taking a break, do not attempt to chat real time.

The only actually useful feature of this app seems to be that it's thread oriented, but you can mitigate that with enough irc (okay, Slack these days) channels as well.

<comment><USER6> Depends on how the team uses it. When I'm @-mentioned in Slack, it's usually because a system that I maintain is failing or doing weird things, and that's something that I should react to quickly. It's therefore not really an option to turn off notifications (not for @-mentions, at least).

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> TL;DR they made a modernised version of an nntp client and server ;-)

<comment><USER47> I mean, isn't Dropbox just prettier rsync?

<comment><USER48> And Slack is a modern version of IRC :)

It keep being surprised by how much a fresh coat of CSS and a mobile app can reinvigorate these old ideas. Who knew how important adding gifs and emoticons would be?

<comment><USER49> [https://grove.io/](https://grove.io/)

<comment><USER50> Oh interesting, wasn't aware that was a thing. Sad they didn't make it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This looks like a great tool, particularly the ground-up focus on threading and giving teams more options. As with its competitors, it can still easily become just another distraction when people use it wrong.

It's easy to see how you could design a "process" around using something like Slack to achieve the same experience and if you don't design a "process" for using Twist then it will suck just as much. We tried to heavily use channels in HipChat as a threading and noise-avoidance mechanism, it worked well but we often ended up with a lot of channels with the same people in; at which point discipline becomes stressed.

</comment><comment><USER52> Yup, this guy gets it. Slack and other real-time messaging apps should be treated as a phone call or a knock on the door; an intentional interruption for something important enough to warrant a real time conversation.

Everything else should be handled through email, to allow people to consider and tailor their responses, to allow others to be added to the conversation through a CC: of a single focused thread, and to provide a directly searchable historical record of conversations.

<comment><USER53> FTA:

> Threaded conversations have been at Twist's core from the beginning.

Maybe depending on the precise job at hand, but I believe everything else should be handled by a usenet server, or equivalent. Usenet revolves around the topics, not the messages.

I was using a local usenet server 19 years ago for holding online design discussions. I haven't found a better mechanism since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I don't think the fundamental problem is one of sync vs async communication. Of course synchronous communication is a flow killer, and of course having it as a team-wide or company-wide means of communication aggravates its problems. The async nature just makes it worse, as it has more bandwidth, and consumes more brain bandwidth as a result of more content than email and wider distribution than email.

The problem lies between unstructured and structured information. The problem is one of process vs flying by the seat of your pants. Ideally, you want processes for every repeatable action, and more flexible means of communication for new events that need to be handled quickly by those empowered to solve them.

However, every repeatable process starts as an one-off event: Customer requests for the same actions pile up until the moment you realize your app needs a new feature; Faults occur and get solved up until you realize you need to engineer a solution that prevents or automatically fixes them; Internal processes get lost and hang until you decide to redefine the internal workflow.

What is missing is a simple way of moving unstructured communication (sync and async), onto structured communication. Chats should end up as feature requests, bug reports, documentation or some other permanent medium that fits into the process.

If the unstructured->structured bridge is solved, you don't have to monitor chats (or mailing lists, or forums). If they result in something meaningful, they will appear in the structured, process-oriented flow. Monitor that, and get involved in chats where you are directly mentioned. (and skip all gif chats, really)

</comment><comment><USER55> Just went through Startup School that uses Mattermost, which seems to be a Slack clone (not sure since I never used Slack).

It didn't seem to work well. Since all members of all groups were from all over the world and rarely shared a timezone, no conversation could really take place in real time.

And since there are no threads or topics or anything, it's almost impossible to go back to something that was said a while ago.

I think a subreddit would have worked _much_ better.

<comment><USER56> Hi @bambax, Mattermost team here,

Appreciate your feedback. The Mattermost instance at Startup School does offer threads, if you either click the "Reply" arrow when you hover over a message or go to the "[...]" menu and select "Reply".

If it wasn't easy to discover, that's 100% our fault and we'll see what we can to do make it more prominent in the tutorial and in other ways.

Definitely agree threads are crucial to go back to topics in early discussions. We've had them since 2015 and for people using them, they become kind of indispensable.

Maybe give it a try? Would love to hear your thoughts in the Mattermost feedback channel.

<comment><USER55> Hi, thanks for reaching out.

Maybe I misspoke. Maybe I meant "tree view" and not "thread".

I was aware of the reply feature, and yes, if you read a reply and you click on the original title, you get to see all messages attached to this original message, in a window to the right, that you can navigate (more or less).

But AFAIK you can't reply to a reply (if you do, it's a reply to the original message); it's probably a feature (back in the days, the Joel on Software forums worked like that, and Joel Spolsky was actively defending this option in various posts).

But it makes it difficult or impossible to actively monitor different threads or topics. Threads are not collapsible. The UI actively favors the more recent messages, you have to actually click on "load more messages" to see earlier messages (and if you change channels and come back, the earlier messages are gone, you have to click again to see them).

Anyway, I don't mean to be negative on the product which is very well polished and works perfectly; it's just that the choices that it makes seem ill suited for a very international and asynchronous crowd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Apple took a step in the right direction with the do not disturb feature in the Notifications bar. When I don't want to be bothered, I turn it on, when I want to be chatty I turn it off. The next step should be apps that are aware of your do not disturb state and update your presence (as an option) when it's set. Then, I want a timer so I can get blasted with updates every 25 minutes like Pomodoro timer.

</comment><comment><USER58> I have often considered setting up a local Reddit instance for my company for these very reasons. Has anyone done this with success?

I also considered creating some biz comm software myself, but only jotted down some ideas[0]

0 - [https://bitbucket.org/snippets/cretz/Xopoj/retzle- conceptual](https://bitbucket.org/snippets/cretz/Xopoj/retzle-conceptual)

</comment><comment><USER59> Their "new" approach sounds suspiciously like a mailing list: asynchronous communication for a group that supports threads of communication.

<comment><USER34> I would liken it to a newsgroup more then a mailing list, but they are very similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Where I work we've started using private categories on a Discourse instance for conversations that are 'too big for Slack'. This works really well since Discourse has a selection of notification options (RSS feeds, email, Slack etc), keeps track of discussions well, has great search and has social features such as 'liking' posts. Bonus points for being open source.

<comment><USER61> I would agree. I tried Twist and it's a really usable app, lovely UI design as you'd expect from the Doist team. But for our 60+ product and engineering team, Discourse does a great job of handling asynchronous threaded discussion – and we can host it on AWS for $20/mo for unlimited users. I'm struggling to see the advantage (UI aside) of Twist at this stage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I like it. Basically the design choice was to focus on threads within channels, instead of simply channels. Slack has that thread feature but I never use it because it's hard to follow. I guess slack could copy them and have a "text mode" and a "thread mode", easily being able to switch between both, and then the threads will be much more useful.

</comment><comment><USER63> I am the poster of this (and as you can see, I am an old HN user -- almost ten years here!)

I'll be answering your questions. Thanks for the support!

<comment><USER63> Please also note that Twist will have a full and open API. You can see a draft here: [https://doist.github.io/Twist-API/](https://doist.github.io/Twist-API/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> From reading the top comments, an interesting conclusion is that messaging apps like Slack do not have drawbacks due to technical problems, but due to cultural problems.

These problems can be mitigated in a work environment where you can enforce cultural mores, but in a social environment (like within a group of friends or some other non-work related community) this becomes more challenging.

There is probably room in the market for a messaging app that prioritizes reaction communication and suggests that more thoughtful communication take place in a more permanent project management tool.

</comment><comment><USER65> Google Wave?

<comment><USER66> Came here to say this. Google wave was a pretty good attempt at fixing this. Maybe it was ahead of its time.

<comment><USER41> Maybe Google Wave was targeted at the wrong segment? I believe it was used as a general communications tool, not specifically for business.

<comment><USER66> hard to say - i was mostly using it to communicate with opensource developers on nhibernate (iirc, long time ago). I think you are right though, most of the features are things you'd use more for business. Also considering how widely google docs is used, it makes sense.

PS: I am a google employee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Really nice post. We've suffered similar challenges using slack with our remote team and switched to Basecamp, which has been much better.

What's your sense of how Twist and Basecamp compare?

<comment><USER63> Twist is just about communication. Basecamp has a bit of everything, but it isn't particularly good at any of the things.

We wanted to create a product that just does one thing really well (and that's team communication).

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> In the early naughties, my company used an ultra-powerful tool that allows real-time discussion, archives conversation, allows search, sharing gifs.... An NNTP server.

</comment><comment><USER69> This post reminds me of a similar one by the CEO of Basecamp giving his take on the problems with group chat and their solution to those problems.

[https://m.signalvnoise.com/is-group-chat-making-you- sweat-74...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/is-group-chat-making-you- sweat-744659addf7d)

> Group chat is like being in an all-day meeting with random participants and > no agenda.

</comment><comment><USER70> So you built Basecamp?

</comment><comment><USER71> I would say the amount / frequency of interaction depends on the team you work on.

If you work on larger features that require quiet time, then a real-time chatting app can be quite annoying. My team tends to release lots of small features very often, so fast communication is important.

</comment><comment><USER72> Here's how I prefer to use Slack:

1) Turn off notifications (except @mentions or DMs). 2) Code uninterrupted. 3) Check in when I'm taking a break. 4) Profit.

Our company culture is such that Slack is mostly for notifications from our toolset, so that probably helps. Also, we're small (< 20).

</comment><comment><USER73> pretty much our whole company uses irc for real-time communication, and I don't see that going away any time soon. it's lightweight and does what you need it to

</comment><comment><USER74> This reminds me very much of a classical forum. I wonder what the key differences to Discourse is and why they chose to built an entirely new project.

</comment><comment><USER75> > In theory, everyone on the team had access to all the communication that > happened in public channels. But in reality, even I couldn't keep track of > all the conversations that were happening at the company. Whoever happened > to be connected at the time could follow along and be involved in the > decision-making. Everyone else might not even be aware that the conversation > happened at all.

This sounds really creepy

</comment><comment><USER76> > Unlimited file storage for the team For 3.90/mo charged per annum? How do > you offer that?

</comment><comment><USER77> This is an example of why I flatly refused to install an IM client at a former employer who wanted IT staff connected and instantly available. (The issue was laid to rest in a conference call when a co-worker said "The nice thing about Dennis is that if he's at his desk, he answers the phone on the first ring. If he's not at his desk, you won't get hin in IM, either!" Bless him. He _got_ it.)

The sort of stuff I did was mostly not user facing, since I was admin for the nix boxes, and not usually supporting Windows on the desktop. The things I did tended to require peace, quiet, and extended concentration to make sure I understood the problem and had created a working solution that wouldn't blow up in someone's face.

The underlying problem is that computers are good at multi-tasking, and humans _aren 't_. When a computer is handling multiple concurrent tasks, and an interrupt comes in, it must save its place in what it's doing at the moment, handle the interrupt, then go back to the saved place and continue where it left off. It's stack processing, computers are designed to do it well, and are generally fast enough that the user thinks the computer is only doing the task she's working on. The overhead isn't apparent.

Humans _aren 't_ good at stack processing. I've seen papers from years back indicating the average developer can handle 5-7 parallel tracks at a time, and beyond that, things get lost. Stuff getting lost because the developer was trying to keep track of too many things were highly fertile sources of bugs.

And humans aren't anywhere near as fast as computers. Conceptually, you do the same thing as a computer - you are working on a task and get interrupted. You must save your place in what you're doing, handle the interruption, and resume where you left off. There is _significant_ overhead there, and if you get interrupted enough, you spend most of your time stack processing instead of actually working on tasks. You get the equivalent of old time mainframe "death by thrashing", where the mainframe was spending more time context switching than actually doing work.

Some of us are better at multi-tasking than others, but I think _all_ of us over-estimate how good we actually are. I've advised folks elsewhere to try an experiment - work on _one_ task at a time, and _continue till it 's completed_, instead of juggling multiple concurrent tasks. I'm willing to bet the amount of work you actually get _done_ will jump.

What confuses me is why the shop in the article thought that sort of real time communication was a good idea in the first place.

>Dennis

</comment><comment><USER78> I'd like to see:

a) Built in reminders (I don't want to sign up to todoist also)

b) Post formatting

c) Ability to mute threads

d) Polls?

</comment><comment><USER25> I like the service, but having a self-hosted option would be a big plus.

</comment><comment><USER79> so how is the end solution different/better than email?

<comment><USER80> Easier to give / remove participants and automatically give them access to previous messages in the thread, without having to quote all previous messages just to give some context.

<comment><USER81> I need to give this another look, but isn't that what a Google Group provides?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Reminds me of Gitter.

<comment><USER83> How so? Gitter is just like Slack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> I see Slack as being real time and asynchronous because the contents of your conversation remain resident in the chat and there is no expectation that you respond immediately.

<comment><USER85> I think in practice Slack becomes a far less effective tool the more asynchronous it becomes. If a room is even halfway active, a post from a few days ago is more or less lost to history and a conversation that takes place over a few days is almost impossible to follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> This is correct.</comment>


Ask HN: Turning off Google's "personalisation." - <AUTHOR> Google personalises for your IP and region, which is all fine and dandy until;
- your phone gets updated to speak in a different accent
- the number system changes to one you don't recognise
- local results are prioritised above the results you want
- the play store tries to restrict the apps you can download
Localisation started off as a helpful feature, but the problem is that I can't turn it off. There is no setting within Google products to turn it off - setting your search preferences to google.com/ncr does not work. The only way out is to manually go to google.com/ncr and search from there every time.
There is a similar case to be made for the individualised personalisation Google does for search results. It initially started off as a really great tool for a few queries, but it is now an obstacle in my workflow. And I can't turn it off. Google offers me no setting that I can change and pws=0 has stopped working. Initially it didn't work with Google Instant, but now it doesn't work with Instant turned off - at least as far as I can detect.
Is there some way for me to access "vanilla" Google? Or a better alternative?
I am willing to sacrifice their attempts to read my mind for quicker and more accurate search results. <comment><USER2> > the number system changes to one you don't recognise

Man, that one's aggravating. I didn't even think it would be considered weird to want my phone's UI to be in my own language, but for phone numbers to appear with formatting appropriate to the country they're for. Shoehorning every number in "contacts" into US-style 1-XXX-XXX-XXXX just because I report that I speak US english is a usability disaster.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can turn off, or at least adjust some, through your account dashboard.

If you are in Chrome and logged in to your Google, simply click on your account icon in the top right and click My Account. There is an array of settings if you start diving into it regarding your privacy settings and how Google uses your information to customize your experience. Not sure if you can turn it completely off, but you can at least limit it to some point.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't logged into Chrome, as I want to avoid giving Google even more information to "personalise" my search results with. Is this dashboard different from the default search settings page Google takes you to? If so, then is there any other way for me to access it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> DuckDuckGo is a great alternative</comment>


New gTLD investor Fred Kreuger: Dot Com Will Be Dead in 10 Years - <AUTHOR> http://domainshane.com/fred-krueger-dot-com-will-be-dead-in-10-years-one-side-of-over-invested-blindness/ <comment><USER2> If you follow this link, you will find a whole sub-culture whose existance must've been the driving motivation behind the invention of the flame thrower.

</comment><comment><USER3> In other news, the national association of realtors says that now is a good time to buy real estate.

</comment><comment><USER4> Dunno. I'm still waiting for .co to catch on. There's vine.co, at least.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm hoping .p2p or .bit or whatever will win out, as long as it means we'll all use a decentralized DNS system by then.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ah yes, and also Bitcoin will be the main currency in 10 years according to investors.</comment>


Schumer Bashes BitCoin, Wants to Shut Down Silk Road Drug Site - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2011/06/06/chuck-schumer-silk-road-bitcoin-drugs/

<comment><USER2> The most interesting thing about bitcoins is that when the cops come and seize your big pile of bitcoins, if it's on a truecrypted drive, and you don't give them the password, or they shoot you because you appeared armed with a USB drive, that just increases the value of the bitcoins in general and the cops can't use it to buy a new police helicopter. This is the most dangerous aspect of bitcoins by far. If properly protected, they cannot be confiscated.

<comment><USER3> How is this different than storing dollars in an offshore account?

<comment><USER4> It's much easier.

(That's what the government hates the most: things that make it easy to subvert it. If you can subvert the government in some super difficult manner that requires a lot of effort, they don't care so much. If you can type in your paypal id and have anonymous money... that's too easy, and it makes them mad.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's the whole point of bitcoins. Anonymous, hard-to-trace payments. You can't get that kind of "freedom" without also being really attractive for illegal uses.

Bitcoin is designed to be subversive, and subversive means illegal as far as the government is concerned.

This is the main/only reason I'm not making any long term investment in Bitcoin.

<comment><USER6> I think it is entirely possible Bitcoin will provoke the mother-of-all battles for control over communication networks and how people use them. The outlines are very clear: Bitcoin allows nearly complete escape from the current financial regulatory systems that control currency movements and taxation. Trying to prevent people from moving money from one country to another or using Bitcoins for buying drugs, weapons, whatever is impossible without a truly draconian censorship and control regime in which private citizens are more or less forbidden from using encrypted communications.

I see government control over money as basically an immovable object - I don't think so-called constitutional protections mean anything when it comes to governments doing what they feel is necessary to maintain control. Internet freedom and encryption are not as much of an irresistible force as net- romantics would like to think.

If anything can force governments into legislating backdoors into all encryption systems and creating a clearly established set of "choke points" for control of data flows, it is the possibility of Bitcoin and other crypto- currencies to render basic imperatives of the modern nation state impossible to enforce.

It is more or less infinitely depressing to me, because as much as I would like to believe that the "good guys" are going to win, I doubt it. People generally don't realize how much we are already living in a dystopian panopticon, and Bitcoin is one of the rays of light shining through the cracks in the prison walls.

What is even more depressing to me is my own cowardice. I am too scared of the US government to even try to resist in any way, no matter how trivial. I would like to participate in Bitcoin and other projects, but I don't want to end up in a federal prison for conspiracy to assist in money laundering and tax evasion, as I imagine that any participation in Bitcoin will be interpreted by government prosecutors of the near-future.

<comment><USER7> It seems like it would be a lot easier to just shut down the USD-BTC exchanges. If people can't get money in or out of the system they don't need to worry about what happens inside the system. (I'm ignoring mining, since there's a serious limit on how large that can get.)

<comment><USER8> And yet, just yesterday I met with someone and sold him bitcoins for cash. Anyone can be an exchange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like how senator's statement sounds more like a positive site review:

 _Even more amazing, said Schumer, is that users rate their delivery performance and the quality of the drug on the site._

</comment><comment><USER10> Drugs are a great market for bitcoin. If you're speculating against fiat currencies, you'll want to use a combination of gold, mining stocks, and bitcoins, but if you're just buying drugs on the Internet, and bitcoins are an option, I don't know why you'd use anything else.

</comment><comment><USER11> Chuck Schumer exemplifies the Nanny State: You aren't enlightened as we politicians are. Therefore, we will make the decisions regarding your health for you.

Democracy should exist to create/manage _public_ goods, not private ones. A drug or an electronic store of value that a group of adults voluntarily use isn't any of my business. _Everything_ is Schumer's business, apparently.

<comment><USER4> What if someone under 18 uses the site to buy some pot? He might share it with his friends and they would all find bad movies to be hilarious for a few hours! Then they would be really sleepy!

Much better if the kids go to a real movie theater and pay $20 to eat artificial popcorn covered with artificial butter and wash it down with artificial sugar water.

<comment><USER11> Well, then parents might actually have to "parent", and teach their children things like "responsibility" and "moderation" so that when they're older than 18, they won't be "a drain on society".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Silk Road, btw, has responded on the forums; I quoted them here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/hscno/bitcoin_is_an...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/hscno/bitcoin_is_an_online_form_of_money_laundering/c1xz3t4)

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes, we must get silkroad shut down. Kids will have to buy their drugs the old fashioned way (like mom & dad): on the bus, in a back alley, or from their senator, or somewhere equally perilous and sleazy. God forfend our little dumplings should be able to have their weed delivered safely by the fedex guy.

</comment><comment><USER14> Someone previously linked this on a discussion on copyright, and I think it's also relevant here:

<http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php>

All money is not created equal - there are host of laws related to taxation, tracking, and legality that apply to real-world currencies. Bitcoins are great because they have none of this baggage, but bitcoins are also a political non- starter for the same reason.

</comment><comment><USER15> Despite the snark in the thread title, Sen. Chuck Schumer draws a reasonable conclusion. Bitcoin, despite its various other uses, theoretically can be used for money laundering.

<comment><USER16> I think the odds are if Sen. Chuck Schumer can conceive that Bitcoins can be used for money laundering, other folks have thought of the exact same thing.

I.E. it _is_ already being actively used to launder money.

<comment><USER17> I get the impression that the supply and utility of Bitcoin are both still far too low to be used for serious money laundering.

Laundering isn't particularly difficult anyway. You're probably still just better off buying a bar and pouring vodka down the drain.

<comment><USER18> uhhh... check your math bro -- as of this moment there are 6,453,450 BTC in existence -- and you can buy them for $18.24 a piece leading to -- 117,710,928M USD -- sure it isn't a billion but it's more than enough to hustle a few hundred k through whenever you want

<comment><USER19> I am wrong, or the dollars should be already _laundered_ before they reach MtGox?

You have to transfer them from a bank account, right?

<comment><USER20> No, you could buy bitcoins with unlaundered dollars, even with a credit card, and then launder the bitcoins themselves so that when you spend them they can't be traced back to the account you bought them with.

<comment><USER17> You can do that but it would serve no purpose. If you bought $100k bitcoins on a credit card, now the IRS has a paper trail. They'll want to know where that $100k you paid the credit card bill came from.

Even if you got the money in without being traced and spent them that's not laundering, it's tax evasion.

<comment><USER20> Ah, I misunderstood what was being proposed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't see anything here about schumer 'bashing' bitcoin. What he says (in the source linked to by this article) is:

> "It's an online form of money laundering used to disguise the source of > money, and to disguise who's both selling and buying the drug"

From the article, it's not clear what the "it" refers to; while it's possible it refers to bitcoin in general, it sounds more to me like he's talking about the use of bitcoin on silkroad, in which case I believe his statement is completely factual.

There's really not much remarkable here about bitcoin other than its appearance in a statement by a prominent senator and mention in a mainstream news article. If you accept that the government should be able to regulate or outlaw the drug trade, there's nothing remarkable here at all. I recognize that there is a significant population here who might think that drug sales and use should not be regulated, but the majority of the American public does not agree with you.

<comment><USER22> >From the article, it's not clear what the "it" refers to; while it's possible it refers to bitcoin in general, it sounds more to me like he's talking about the use of bitcoin on silkroad

Knowing what Bitcoin is and what money laundering is is enough to tell you that he's talking about Bitcoin, not Silk Road.

Legit business can and often are used to launder money, but a drug market cannot.

<comment><USER21> I never said I thought "it" referred to silk road. "It" clearly refers to the use of bitcoin. What's unclear is whether "it" is "all uses of bitcoin" or "the use of bitcoin on silk road."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Bitcoin is ideal for the 3 P's: Porn, Poker, and Pharmaceuticals.

<comment><USER24> The 3P's have really been an early adopter of new technologies on the net before they became mainstream. It's a good sign for Bitcoin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Governments WILL kill BitCoin and any other attempts. They are already issuing their own.

Nowadays the whole point of sovereignity is that you can issue your fiat currency. Allowing and thus defacto accepting this currency would mean that sovereignity has been granted. And this will not happen.

</comment><comment><USER26> Not being too familiar with the Tor network, how hard will it be for the government to shut this site down?

I mean, it will have to be problematic if they can't even get an IP, right?

And they obviously can't get Bitcoins directly...

<comment><USER27> The goods have to be shipped from somewhere to somewhere. How hard would it be for the feds to find the origin of the packages?

<comment><USER26> Its tough separating the wheat from the chaff. Presumably, Silk Road merchants aren't the first to ship drugs: it's pretty tough to detect without slowing _everything_ down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Makes sense; Bitcoin is a monetary system outside of the control of a government. It's likely to be favored for transactions that are outside the control of a government. They're sure to not like this.

</comment><comment><USER29> I really think this is the beginning of the end for bitcoins. Once the government starts going after the endpoints you will start to see the price of bitcoins dropping as everyone tries to liquidate them. I was wondering when this was going to happen. Maybe the next design will improve on these flaws?

<comment><USER4> I don't think this will happen. My prediction is that the price of drugs in bitcoins will go up as the difficulty of converting bitcoins to dollars increases. But as long as it's easy to _buy_ bitcoins (which will be hard to regulate, just as it's hard to regulate the sale of illegal drugs), then there will be a market for people that have them.

<comment><USER30> Isn't the ability to _sell_ bitcoins also important?

Unless you think farmers in Colombia and electric companies in California are going to start accepting bitcoins directly?

<comment><USER4> Yes, but you don't need to sell _your_ BitCoins, the people you are buying goods from are the ones that do that. It's similar to how _you_ can't directly accept credit cards, but Amazon can, so they are still very useful.

When the governments decide to shut down Bitcoin, it will probably be in the "exchanging bitcoins for money" area, since that's relatively easy to regulate. But it's hard to convince Offshore Bank Of Unfriendly Country to not exchange Bitcoins for money in person, so big "dealers" will have no trouble making the trip and getting their cash. This will involve more effort, so prices for goods sold in Bitcoins will increase.

Similarly, if everyone could grow and sell their own pot, prices would come down. Make that illegal, and people want more money for their work. The same effect will occur if cashing out Bitcoins becomes difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> As a .onion site, the silk road is not subject to US jurisdiction. I understand that Sen. Chuckles want's it shut down, but it won't happen. The nature of the internet makes sites like this virtually impossible to stop.

</comment><comment><USER32> in order for bitcoins to be generally accepted by, e.g., a federal entity, they need to be taxable.

</comment><comment><USER18> think we need a prediction market to take pre-emptive action against federal intervention

<comment><USER33> There might not be a formal, publicly-accessible market, but two-party short- selling contracts could already be active. This is what an unregulated and anonymous currency feels like: you have no idea whether I have purchased half of the bitcoin market over the last few weeks just to unload all of it at once, in small chunks, before the market can adjust to the reduced value. In fact, you won't even know if that has already happened; you will just see a "market correction" when I sell.

<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_manipulation>

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Fuck him. Really, is the web black market that big of an issue? How about the fucking economy?

</comment><comment><USER35> HAHA this sucks for bitcoin, too bad this has been going on since the internet first started. In fact drug selling was one of the first activities on BBSs. Too bad for bitcoin, services like Pecunix have been harboring this kind of stuff for years.</comment>