Books on Critical Thinking - <AUTHOR> https://fivebooks.com/best-books/critical-thinking-nigel-warburton/ <comment><USER2> I find it more productive to study logic instead. I have a hard time seeing the difference between logic and critical thinking. If you think I'm wrong, just take a look at a bunch of kinds of logic[1] and tell me if critical thinking is not subsumed into at least one of them.

I put my money on inductive logic[2].

For beginners, I recommend the wonderful _Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments_ [3].

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

[2] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic- inductive/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-inductive/)

[3] [https://bookofbadarguments.com/](https://bookofbadarguments.com/)

<comment><USER3> 'Logic' as a topic generally centers around processes of formal reasoning whereas critical thinking usually also discusses human cognitive biases which is not something usually covered in discussions of formal reasoning. This is important because nobody engages is formal logic all (or even most) of the time. That would be very inefficient and probably impossible. Developing the _habit_ (which is what discussions of critical thinking often center around) of thinking critically, rather than simply understanding the process of formal reasoning is essential.

<comment><USER2> When I say people should study logic, I don't mean necessarily its formal presentation. If you're not a mathematician, a philosopher or a computer scientist, informal logic is more than enough (and a bit of rhetoric certainly won't hurt). Besides, you can understand a lot even if you skip the formal bits, and there are good non-formal texts on many logic topics. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy[1] is definitely more approachable than the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy[2] in that regard.

I'd also like to point out that the book[3] I recommended for beginners in the comment above is entirely informal.

[1] [https://www.iep.utm.edu/](https://www.iep.utm.edu/)

[2] [https://plato.stanford.edu/](https://plato.stanford.edu/)

[3] [https://bookofbadarguments.com/](https://bookofbadarguments.com/)

<comment><USER3> "When I say people should study logic, I don't mean necessarily its formal presentation."

If that's the case, you probably shouldn't have linked to that Wikipedia article because it's mostly about formal logic systems. Regardless, I'd usually classify studying informal fallacies more under critical thinking than logic strictly speaking. There's an entirely different set of formal logical fallacies that apply to formal logic.

<comment><USER2> I did link to a book on informal fallacies. And I do not agree with your classification. It's narrow and doesn't reflect the history of the field. Logic is a tool for mathematicians, philosophers, and computer scientists. Like any versatile tool, it can be adapted for different — but related — tasks.

On the topic: [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic- informal/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-informal/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unfortunately "The Art of Critical Thinking" is completely plagiarized:

[https://fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm](https://fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm)

<comment><USER5> Pretty damning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is unfortunate that Thinking Fast and Slow has received some negative feedback over the years, mostly due to questionable sources and conclusions.

[https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith- und...](https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-underpowered- studies-nobel-prize-winner-admits-mistakes/)

<comment><USER7> Why is it unfortunate?

<comment><USER8> I am guessing he means it is unfortunate because it was considered a good book for critical thinking but over time people have come to realize a lot of its studies, reasoning, and arguments are flawed - but many people have already read the book without knowing that.

I've never read the book, so I don't have an opinion on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A week or two ago, in a post about books on leadership, someone posted about the US Army's ADRP 6-22 Army Leadership handbook, which I started reading. [https://www.benning.army.mil/mssp/PDF/adrp6_22_new.pdf](https://www.benning.army.mil/mssp/PDF/adrp6_22_new.pdf)

Apparently, they keep track of terminology they deprecate in former revisions of the handbook. "Critical Thinking" being one of them as it is "No longer a formally defined term." (Page vi)

So, what does "Critical Thinking" mean to you?

</comment><comment><USER10> For those coming here interested in learning about formal/mathematical logic, see "Teach Yourself Logic: A Study Guide" (previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18757972](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18757972))

</comment><comment><USER11> Skeptics Guide to the Universe [https://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Guide- Universe-Really-Increa...](https://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Guide-Universe- Really-Increasingly/dp/1538760533)

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know of any particular critical thinking genre books, that somehow focus more on the particulars of _language usage_? Something that gets into things like the shortcomings of language in properly describing the complexity of reality, as well as detecting usage (both intentional and unintentional) that would indicate potential underlying rhetorical manipulation (intentional), or fallacious thinking (unintentional)?

<comment><USER2> This may be an example of the equivocation fallacy[1].

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

<comment><USER12> That would be one example of a fallacy.....I guess maybe what I'm trying to get at is more so something that addresses the more common (frequency of occurrence) examples of ~"imperfect communication" (fallacies &/or rhetorical techniques, intentional or not), that can be most commonly observed in modern day media, both traditional (news) and social (forums, facebook/twitter, etc).

<comment><USER2> I think you're describing a very broad scope of phenomenons. Maybe this will become clearer if you either narrow it a bit or divide them into different, more precise, cases.

<comment><USER12> Oh, very much so, the entire spectrum, but sorted by most commonly used/abused. How might one accomplish such a feat would be tough, but even something reasonable accurate with examples of usage would be interesting to read.

<comment><USER2> These might help:

[https://www.iep.utm.edu/lang-phi/](https://www.iep.utm.edu/lang-phi/) [https://www.iep.utm.edu/austin/#SH2b](https://www.iep.utm.edu/austin/#SH2b) [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/speech- acts/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/speech-acts/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's with fivebooks? This is the 4th link from that domain in the last 24h.

<comment><USER14> It's all spam. The book links are local but redirect to Amazon Affiliate links (and lack the required disclosure).

<comment><USER15> I'm not affiliated with that website, but it's worth noting that the footer of every page has this disclosure notice: "Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have read the art of thinking clearly, but was quite unimpressed.</comment>


Ask HN: Startup 3D printer or China for manufacturing? - <AUTHOR> I need to produce PVC like pipes with some holes and engravings. 17-40 inch long. I need to make 300 of these.
Acrylic will be the material.
Should we invest in 3D printer or go china for producing this for startup?
Later, we'll need 5000-6000 of these every month.
Or should we be investing in some different kind of manufacturing? <comment><USER2> Well for our start-up, we 3D printed the prototypes then sent the CAD files to plastic mould manufacturer in China.

3D printing is expensive if your object is large. Old school manufacturing is a way to go for now.

That way we got lots of units built in bulk.</comment>


12 year old Dmitri  Gaskin gives a Google Talk on JQuery [YouTube Video]  - <AUTHOR> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-978395286272895697

<comment><USER2> I'm so happy I didn't have a computer when I was 12. When you are young, there are so much more interesing things than computers to explore!

<comment><USER3> What are you talking about? THERE IS NOTHING MORE INTERESTING THAN COMPUTERS TO EXPLORE!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a comment on flickr[1] put it:

 _The 12 year old in the front is teaching the 30 yr olds in the room how to use the programming tool created by the guy in the flannel_

[1] <http://flickr.com/photos/mahalie/2312434677/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Speaker Description (from YouTube)

Dmitri Gaskin drinks code with his cereal for breakfast every morning. He's a jQuery whiz and a Drupal know-it-all. He contributes patches for both Open Source projects. In the Drupal world, he maintains many modules, is on the security team, and is involved in the upcoming Summer of Code as a mentor and administrator. Dmitri has given many talks on Drupal and jQuery, in such places as Logitech, Drupalcon and live on a radio show out of L.A. When Dmitri isn't coding, a very rare occurrence, he is playing and composing contemporary music. And attending classes in the 6th grade. (He's only 12.)

<comment><USER5> I would have been hooked to video games or PC games at that age. Though I have a excuse I saw computer only when I joined the college. yeh lame excuse :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Impressive kid. I wish I was that smart when I was 12.

<comment><USER7> Whenever I see a story like this I wish the United States would provide students a far more flexible and natural learning curriculum. For example, the "mathematics" course trek in the US school system alone is one of the most dreadful:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=130499>

The problem lies in several issues. As one of "those kids" that started college at 11, one issue I have recognized to be by far the strongest is the self-perpetuation of incompetence: high school teachers are usually direly incapable of providing students with the actual modern perspective on the subject they are teaching! Qualification wise, I could have been teaching high school classes three years ago, and I knew a lot of education majors back in my undergraduate days. Usually, it's the people that aren't smart enough to pursue the subject that they simply make do with teaching it instead. Most of the brighter math and physics majors I knew went on to graduate school or a scientific profession; the others usually minored in education. Perhaps it is an unfair generalization, but it does seem to be true from my experiences. Of course, you can all draw the implications that would have on the K-12 education system. To illustrate with a final example, some of the math major / education minor people told me "I hate proofs"! I thought I would cry.

I didn't mean to make this my life's story, but in any case, perhaps it could be argued the current quagmire that is our method of ensuring child "development" is in some way good, simply due to its inherent selectivity. Perhaps the innovative and intelligent and resourceful will escape the K-12 system much like Dmitri did. It's largely luck, though, as it heavily depends on their environment (parents, town, etc.). I considered undergrad to be like my high school. Although I skipped the latter, undergrad was fairly similar in structure (homework, participation, tests, etc.), except that the classes were taught by people who actually knew what they were talking about.

On a final note, what Dmitri or I or the 12-year-old Asian kids (sorry for the stereotype) "do" is not being "super intelligent." It's merely being lucky or fortuitous enough to see the light in a (imho) broken system. Really, when you think of it, nearly everything in an undergraduate curriculum is quite simple if you just read the damn textbooks and do your homework, and in the case of people like Dmitri, be a hacker and play around. In a perfect education schema, every kid would be like that. Every kid would be creative; not shackled and restrained.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've got chance to meet Dmitri at the Drupal meetings in the bay area. He's a good and smart kid.

</comment><comment><USER9> Railbait.</comment>


Restaurant lets patrons reserve a specific table - <AUTHOR> http://springwise.com/food_beverage/restaurant_lets_patrons_reserv/

<comment><USER2> It doesn't look like anything more than a gimmick. Restaurants usually allow reservations of a specific table; I know of one restaurant that asks you where you want to be seated when you call, and their best table 'the window seats' is a small 2 person table in a little alcove and the only table in the place that is actually next to a window and they only book it if someone specifically asks. I believe the restaurant can do that because it's considerably upscale and actually only does 2 reservations a night, but we worked it out that it doesn't cost much more to go there at $100 a meal per person (unlimited soup/salad, feta cheese, and they have the best steak I've ever had), over any chain restaurant where you can end up paying near $20 for an appetizer, $30 for a main dish and $20 for a dessert and nothing's of comparable size.</comment>


Office politics at the local coffee shops - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/jobs/news/articles/2009/01/22/office_politics_alive_and_well/?page=full <comment><USER2> About one in ten of my tech-industry friends (and because I edited Valleywag.com for a year I made a lot of them -- more enemies, but that's another story) have at some point told me they wanted a longterm cafe, something like a cozy shared office.

That's coworking: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coworking>

San Francisco coworking spaces include Citizen Space in SOMA near South Park: <http://citizenspace.us/>

And the Hat Factory in Potrero: <http://hatfactory.net/>

But these places have their limitations, and everyone thinks they can do one better. In fact, Digg founder Kevin Rose likes to say that when he cashes out, he'll start a teashop, but he once fantasized to me about starting a tech artists collective. I even encouraged him to try it, but I have a feeling it'll never happen.

Because to be honest, running a co-working space for people too cheap to find their own offices, going full-service without the high margins of a high- volume walk-in cafe, dealing with customers with serious entitlement issues, is not nearly as fun as all the other businesses a talented tech professional could start in SF or Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER3> If working space is not going to make money, but is useful to you, perhaps you should consider some type of co-operative arrangement.

If it were structured as a joint ownership, and all customers had to be members, you might also avoid certain licensing requirements aimed at a place open to the public. Think along the lines of the Gentlemen's Clubs of Victorian London, or a Freemason's lodge.

If I were to join, I'd like for a back room or upstairs attic or something to be designated the "Diogenes Club" were no talking or phone usage was allowed.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I the only one that finds it prohibitively difficult to focus on programming at a coffee shop?

</comment><comment><USER5> And on the other hand, when I pay £5 for half an hour on your wi-fi, can you please grant me an aura that protects me from the dirty looks only a laptop and an empty coffee cup can bring?

<comment><USER6> Maybe a system of colour-coded hats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like there's a market for a place full of private cozy nooks where $20 buys a bottomless cup of coffee, an all day wifi pass and a plug at every table.

<comment><USER8> $20 can't cover the cost of that in many markets (NYC/Bay Area/Boston/etc.) The rent on my tiny studio apartment in Manhattan was $45 a day.

<comment><USER7> So all you'd need is 3 regular patrons to make a profit.

If they're gonna sit in there anyway, buy one cup and generate animosity, you may as well turn it into a good thing instead. The goodwill created by offering such an environment may attract many customers that do not loiter as well as food and other sales for those that do.

<comment><USER9> Having shopped around for businesses like coffee shops and having considered opening a (hacker friendly) coffee shop in Los Angeles, I can't decide if even $20/person is enough for bottomless coffee, a sofa/desk, free wifi and power for a coffee shop given size, employees, rent, bills, cost of goods, limited space..even parking spaces.

There is no denying good wifi access (fast and preferably "free") and comfortable surroundings brings more customers. But I've seen one business for sale that was always packed full of customers but never really turned a profit..everyone bought like $2-3 worth of coffee and snacks and then sat down at one of the roughly thirty desks with their laptops for a couple hours at the minimum, never again getting up to buy something else. Customers that just wanted to have a seat to wait or sit for a few minutes never got a chance anywhere: all the desks/chairs, sofas, bar stools and all the patio seats outside were always occupied. It was truly bizarre...a haven for anyone wanting to use their laptop outside, but completely awful for all other customers.

There must also be something said about how a busy cafe can bring in more customers, but those customers will typically be turned off by the inability to find any seating that isn't the floor if they wanted to eat(rather, drink)-in.

That being said, I've visited theOffice once down in Santa Monica near me, which is a nice little place for working. I think a day pass there was $40, which at that point I think is overpriced (see below)..but they have memberships that make it as cheap as a few bucks a day to get free beverages and wifi and power and a place to chill quietly. No noises of grinding and banging and customers walking in and out and names being yelled out. I also know of blankspaces which provides more amenities (i.e. conference rooms), but they are just as expensive.

I must mention my reasoning for the $20-not-enough/$40-too-much: coffee shops are usually located where space is at a premium. Workspaces like theOffice and others can be located, frankly, anywhere where there is commercial real estate. They don't need to be located at a prime area of a mall or at a busy intersection, they can be hidden in a little side street office building where rent is typically cheaper. That alone is probably enough to make a huge difference in cost and services that can be provided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "It's enough of a phenomenon that there are bloggers who've blogged about laptop etiquette."

This is a joke, right?

<comment><USER11> [http://www.google.com/search?q=coffeeshop+laptop+etiquette&#...</a>

<comment><USER10> 94k hits, seems to be about what any 3 random words will bring up, for example: <http://www.google.com/search?q=kangaroo+fries+blue>

<comment><USER12> You could have saved time by clicking on the first link from the previous query, realizing that, literally speaking, it is not a joke.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tired of thieves, Portland woman lets the world watch her Obama sign - <AUTHOR> http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/09/tired_of_thieves_portland_woma.html "Here's the story. We got an Obama sign a few months ago and it was stolen off our lawn within five days. Just yesterday we got another one (after searching for some time) and put it up on the lawn again. This morning it was gone, so we decided we'd make our own homemade sign and set up a camera to catch the thief in the act." <comment><USER2> She's really behind the paradigmatic curve, here. First of all, this is Web .05-level technology (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_room_coffee_pot>). Second, it's clear that the crowdsourced participatory community has downvoted her content multiple times -- and they've expressed this webocracy-enable opinion even though she didn't bother to include a simple AJAX-based method for removing her sign. Rather than accept this and move on, she's trying to trap and shame downvoters in order to keep promoting her repost of a repost (the content of which has been hosted at numerous other occasions, already).

</comment><comment><USER3> This could actually work as a startup idea. You setup a ustream webcam, and for $99/month the startup will have some low wage worker monitoring your feeds and in case of burglary or fire they can call police. Or better yet crowd source it and have people monitor the feed to earn "bounty" for catching a particular event. i.e. $1000 bounty if you catch some burglars in action.

<comment><USER4> I like your general idea. But its effectiveness would sharply decrease as customers began to outnumber people actually willing to sit there. Not to mention, it might not be effective from the get-go.

After all, the chance of a burglary happening is rather slim, and sitting there without being paid by the hour is sort of drab/not likely. I know I wouldn't do it.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps the idea could be adapted, though. How about throwing in a motion detector so that we only draw our human watchers' attention to the motion of things which look like human-sized objects?

You'd need, of course, to throw in some kind of key system (RFID?) so that it's turned off whenever the rightful owners are at home, and throw in some kind of penalty (after several warnings ) to make sure people didn't leave their house guests sitting around setting off false alarms, but some form of this could make a very cost-effective alternative to more elaborate security camera systems.

I'd pay twenty bucks a month for the peace of mind of knowing that nobody is breaking into my house, and that it isn't on fire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> well, if a woman, a webcam, and an election are involved, it MUST be hacker news. upvoted.

</comment><comment><USER5> If there's any relevant point to be made here, it's that apparently some people really don't have anything better to do than watch a yard sign.

I wonder if there's some way to harvest these attentive-moron-hours for some more useful purpose.

<comment><USER7> I'd say Mechanical Turk, but this might actually be too pointless for a Turk task.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used to work on automated surveillance. I can't wait until someone puts these services in the cloud to everyone will have access to the tools the feds are making. It actually doesn't make any sense that someone would be watching such a boring feed to catch the person in the act.

You need an intelligent DVR to find when the scene changes in a certain area, or an active system to detect if the sign has be taken. A pixel diff isn't enough considering wind, lighting changes, etc.

<comment><USER9> A friend of mine did this for his BSc graduation project, on a Mac, and it's not that hard.

<comment><USER8> Actually, it's really hard to make it ultra reliable. 30 frames per second, 82K seconds a day, possibly hundreds of cameras...10^8 frames daily. False alarm rate of 0.01% makes for thousands of interruptions.

That's the difference between a school project and a system you can sell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Look the person put masking tape on the window to block out the neighbor's house across the street.

If I were a sign thief and I saw this I would just stand out of frame and nab the thing with a lasso

<comment><USER5> Just wear a damn balaclava. It's not like the police are going to bother to investigate a yard sign theft, even if they have access to the footage, so stealing the sign provides an opportunity to (a) put one over on a bunch of obsessive weirdoes and (b) be briefly, locally famous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> One thing learned - Obama on a webcam is not sexy

</comment><comment><USER12> Because of the title I thought it was and obvious flag (what does it have to do with HN??!). After reading the article I think I was wrong. It's not very hackey, but at least it's tech news, and of a very extravagant kind.</comment>


Q&A: Foul-Mouthed Blogger Ted Dziuba Tells Why Most Startups Fail  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/news/2007/10/dzubia_qa <comment><USER3> It's strange they're surprised he's only 23. It doesn't surprise me. The facile "you suck" is the hallmark of the Beavis and Butthead 15 year olds on Digg.

<comment><USER4> Have you read any of the uncov reviews? Most of the sites they are making fun of deserve the abuse, IMO.

I think the wide-eyed optimism of most Web 2.0 coverage justifies at least _one_ more critical perspective.

<comment><USER5> You can be critical in an intelligent way, or you can simply avoid talking about things that you don't like. No need to fling mud at them.

<comment><USER4> I think uncov is critical in a reasonably intelligent way -- albeit they use humor, rather than sombre critical analysis. The things that uncov typically makes fun of startups for -- being derivative, lacking interesting technology, not providing value to users, not having a workable business model, etc. -- are substantive criticisms.

<comment><USER6> sounds like a maddox wannabe imo

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "All these companies will keep getting bought up, but the acquirers are not going to see great returns."

This struck me as the thing we don't talk about here--not unlike certain topics you don't talk about with old German people. Is there data on how much revenue startups bring to companies that buy them?

Another way to approach this issue: if startups are capable of revenues that justify the enormous amounts that BigCos are paying for them these days, why is there such focus on having an exit? If startups are so much better at solving problems than BigCos, why can't they solve the problem of pulling in revenue better, too? This is not meant to refute the antecedent. It's an actual question that I'd be glad to hear someone answer.

Some startups do end up with healthy revenue, but you'll notice that their expected source of revenue was obvious from the start. Not so with most YC startups.

<comment><USER8> Risk mitigation. Most large tech companies don't purchase startups for the revenue they bring in. They purchase them because they are _deathly_ afraid that some startup will become the next big thing that renders their revenue stream obsolete. It's happened often enough that big companies have reason to be concerned: think of how the computer world would look different if IBM had bought Microsoft instead of licensing their software, or if Yahoo had bought Google when it was an early-stage startup.

If you look at the > $1B acquisitions, almost all (except Skype) have been for companies that fundamentally threaten a large company's business model. If Google hadn't bought YouTube, Viacom's lawsuit against it might have set a precedent that literally puts Google out of business. If EBay hadn't bought PayPal, it would've opened the door to a payment service that wasn't controlled by Ebay yet was frequented by all of EBay's customers; it's not a huge leap for Paypal to start offering its own listings then.

Startup founders have the opposite risk profile: their wealth is all tied up in one company, so if they _don't_ take over the big company's market, they get nothing. Most founders would rather take their $40M payout and diversify.

So basically it comes down to risk aversion. Say that a startup has a 1% chance of displacing the big company (worth $100B for the sake of argumentation), and a 99% chance of eventually failing. For a big company, 1% is far too large a chance of losing everything, particularly when they have the cash & stock to avert the possibility entirely. For a founder, $1B is a helluva lot of money, and far better than a 1% chance at being the richest man in the world yet a 99% chance of nothing.

There's also a moral hazard issue, in that the people actually responsible for footing the bill are stockholders, yet the company executives have a far stronger incentive to not look bad by botching an acquisition than to save $1B. Many money managers _hate_ acquisitions, because it's by far the favorite way to destroy shareholder value. But few CEOs will be replaced for making too many acquisitions, while it's almost guaranteed that they will be replaced if they _fail_ to make the acquisition that becomes a major competitor.

A pithy way to put it might be "Big companies are driven by fear, yet startups are driven by greed." That gives both of them incentives to agree on an acquisition price higher than fair market value.

<comment><USER7> Let's assume you're right. Then essentially, startups are primarily making money by exploiting the irrationality and inefficiency of modern corporate decision making? That's not very nice. I wouldn't call it stealing, but it's a far cry from PG's squeaky-clean ideal of "creating wealth".

But I don't think you're exactly right, either (though most of your points are well taken). First of all, >$B acquisitions account for a small percentage of all acquisitions, and using them as a model isn't instructive. Do you think Google was afraid that Zenter would displace it?

Second of all, when assessing the average startup's risk profile, success shouldn't be defined as displacing the BigCo. It should be defined as making some money (say, a few million). If there is a 99% chance that nobody will want to pay for it, are you really making something people want?

<comment><USER8> > Do you think Google was afraid that Zenter would displace it?

No, but I think Google was afraid that it would displace Presently, its presentation software. Since Google wants to play in the "online office software" market, they're afraid of someone else becoming a market leader in one of the sub-markets for that and fragmenting that market before they can dominate it. They also bought one of Zenter's competitors.

> If there is a 99% chance that nobody will want to pay for it, are you really > making something people want?

It's not enough _just_ to make something people want. You have to make it better than everyone else.

This is implicit in startup advice, but it applies here because we're talking about mature markets. With startups, it's assumed that you're not going to build something someone else is already doing better, because then you're not really making something people want (they want your competitors instead). And you don't generally worry about someone coming along with a better product later, because if you have a head-start and work your ass off, they'll want to buy you rather than spend the time, money, and risk of developing it themself. However, if you then spurn their acquisition offer, they have no choice but to try and beat you, and there's a good chance that they will, because they have more resources. You've still made something people want, but then you force BigCo to waste money duplicating it (and possibly duplicating it better) instead of buying you.

<comment><USER7> So basically, the reason not to try to go for revenue is that BigCo will crush you, unless they buy you. But will they every time? In Zenter's case, it was inevitable that it would come to that. But are BigCos after every market that exists? Does Google care if $1M can be made a year from something that has nothing to do with any of their products? Duplicating your technology is worth it if a lot of money is at stake, by BigCo's definition of "a lot". But if there isn't?

I don't think you will deny that, in theory, there are markets such that if you want to capture them, it's better to go for revenue than for exit. The question that interests me, what percentage of all markets do they comprise[1]? Everyone seems to completely ignore them in favor of the Zenter way, as per pg's advice. Are they insignificant, or underestimated?

[1]Of course, there will be no precise percentage figure, unless someone can come up with a list of all the things that people want. pg's next essay, maybe?

<comment><USER8> Oh, I think the _majority_ of markets are ones where it's better to go for revenue rather than exit. By a large margin. After all, most of the country is not Silicon Valley, and most industries outside of tech (and to a lesser extent biotech) do not support acquisitions the way tech does.

Actually, I think that even if you're going for an exit, it's better to go for revenue - at least enough to support yourself profitably. You're in a much better negotiating position if you don't _need_ to be acquired.

But I assumed that if you're here, you're interested in the normal tech- startup lifecycle. Come out with an innovative product, grow very fast, disrupt some markets, and then get bought. Because that's what PG has experience in, that's what his friends do, and that's what most of the sites featured here do. If you're in a brick & mortar business, you're much better off talking to local entrepreneurs than reading here.

Just make sure that you know which strategy you're pursuing (revenue-based growth vs. quick acquisition), and that _everything_ you do - market, team, capital structure, business model, positioning, technology platform, engineering process - supports it. Some tech entrepreneurs think that they'll do a technology business that's based upon slow revenue-based growth - <USER2> worked for 2 years at one. However, there's a very real risk of having the market pass you by, and being marginalized in a tiny corner where you're essentially relegated to consulting. If you're going to grow slowly, you need to pick your market niches carefully, you need a robust software engineering process, and you can't afford to enter a market with lock-in.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I see where I went wrong now. I was talking about tech startups, but it didn't occur to me that a company whose market is off BigCo's radar is by definition not a startup.

You know, I've learned something today. Thanks for this conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Uncov seems like a risky idea for a group who are about to launch a startup themselves. Sure it gets them press, but they also inherit ill will and an audience looking to call them on it when their product doesn't live up to their rhetoric.

<comment><USER10> You talk as if uncov is some kind of calculated move to get them press for persai. This kind of thinking pretty much forgets the fact that people usually start sites like uncov as a hobby, or as they would put it, "for the lulz." They probably had no idea they'd be even as popular as they are now. The amount of attention it's getting now only suggests that maybe they have a pretty good point.

<comment><USER9> I definitely didn't mean to suggest that I think they did Uncov in a calculated move for press. I don't doubt that it arose organically as you suggest. I just think it goes to show that doing something like Uncov can be short sighted.

I'm not really sure that attention is a good indicator of having a good point. Bill O'Reilly gets a lot of attention. It's not necessarily because he is making good points.

<comment><USER10> Maybe not in your opinion, but certainly in somebody's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "If the business is every widget under the sun conglomerated into this giant application, there's no real technology there. There's no noteworthy computer- science problem being solved."

try to solve computer-science problems is a reason why startups fail. it doesn't matter if there's no "real" technnology - the thing could be built in lego bricks as long as it solves a USER pain it's irrelvant.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "TD: We want to build machine programs that can learn things from information that's out there on the web. In the first application we'll come out with, you tell us things that you're interested in, and we'll continuously go out and find stuff on the internet that's related to that. There's a positive feedback loop where you tell us what you like and don't, so the machine gets progressively better in learning what you like."

That's extremely ambitious. I've seen so many implementations of what he's talking about and the results have always been abysmal. Biggest problem for these systems is that you need a lot (and I mean a LOT) of training data to start making predictions/recommendations that make any sense.

Their scope also seems way too broad.

<comment><USER12> nickb -- I have no idea if they know what they're doing, but I believe they've got the kind of large datasets you're talking about. On their <a href="<http://blog.persai.com/>">[http://blog.persai.com/](http://blog.persai.com/); blog they describe their collection of several hundred thousand RSS feed. I'm curious to see what they come up with.

<comment><AUTHOR> artlung, you need ranked data, not just raw feeds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And digg is some sort of super incredible technology? what about facebook in the beginning when "under the surface [there was not much] noteworthy going on." This guy is a loser, although any press is good press I guess.

</comment><comment><USER5> /me points to the Teddy Roosevelt quote again:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66782>

</comment><comment><USER14> the funny thing here is that ted is the prototypical candidate for ycombinator:

\- technical skill: math degree, radrails \- belief in tech meritocracy \- ambition to solve a hard problem

thats why ted's criticisms hurt so bad -- he is slamming his peers. at least give uncov some credit for both brains and balls. life without these guys would be more status quo, which is not what any of us want.

<comment><USER3> We don't consider only technical ability. Character and judgement also count.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Under the surface, there's nothing noteworthy going on."

So what? It's about time for some of these bloggers to stop dealing with details and start focusing on issues.

The promise of a good web app is not how pretty it is on the surface or how much technology is under the hood, but the value it provides solving someone's problem.

(By the way, his filthy language scores 0 points with serious business people. If I want to listen to know-it-alls spewing forth f-words, I'd just go to any <local bar>.)

<comment><USER16> Fixed: "The promise of a speech is not how clean the language is on the surface or how much thought is under the hood, but the value it provides solving someone's problem."

Seriously, people who swear still have good ideas. Filtering them out before you can critically evaluate them is the mark of an idealist unsuited to the pragmatism of real business.

<comment><USER15> "Filtering them out before you can critically evaluate them is the mark of an idealist unsuited to the pragmatism of real business."

On what planet?

Toilet mouth is the quickest way to demonstrate that you are not to be taken seriously in business. No need to filter. Just move along and talk with a professional, not an idiot.

<comment><USER17> What about wearing white-collared shirts and neckties? Beards? Comfortable shoes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's like he's thinking the same thoughts I have, except he's not afraid to be mean about it. O.o

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd defend you Ted, but I'm too busy laughing.

[http://terrychay.com/blog/article/ycombinator-xobni- party.sh...](http://terrychay.com/blog/article/ycombinator-xobni-party.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER20> he talks too much shitting other companies when instead he should concentrate on his startup...

by the way his idea is already implemented by others: www.feeds2.com

"All these companies will keep getting bought up, but the acquirers are not going to see great returns."

gettting acquired without the potential of revenue? show us these dump acquirers, others would be interested too!

he sais he likes companies like Joost, that have real technology behind them. Yeah, it also has 100 employees.

<comment><USER21> I'm sure he is concentrating on his startup. What's wrong if he took a short break to write Uncov article?

So what if his idea has already implemented? Google's idea had been implemented by others as well. Just that Google does it better. It's possible that his startup might do it better.

I kind of agree with you that he has no solid data on these "dumb buyers" but I think the word "acquired" should be swapped with "invested". There are a lot of web 2.0 companies that don't have strong revenue but got a lot of money via investment. Let me ask you back, can you give example of web 2.0 companies with strong revenue record?

The best deal I've seen so far was Flickr's 30-40 million dollars. The rest seem to be over valued.

What's wrong with Joost and 100 employees? If Joost really needs 100 employees, be it. They have a solid product compare to most of YCombinator companies out there.

By the way, out of 50 YComb companies out there, I only use Reddit.

<comment><USER20> I like Joost. You got that one wrong.

It's natural investments may turn out wrong. Especially when expectations are larger than the potential, which is what happens..

He can do whatever he wants with his free time. I don't care. But telling everyone that is pointless if you don't solve a computer science problem, he is really illusionating himself. And raising his recomendation engine as the ultimate computer science problem is really ridicilus.

I will put it this way:

It was said during the International Symposium in Computer Architecture this year, although, i'd be mistaken who said it. I think it was put something like this to the crowd:

"We asked teenagers to tell us what is the most significant discovery. Their answer? YouTube That's what happened, we've gone so far with technology that we neglected what is important to the people."

<comment><USER21> I'm sure there are other advances in technology that is very useful to others but overlooked by American teenagers.

If what's important is to fulfill teenagers' fantasy, all of us should build more social network a'la MySpace, Xanga and create cyberworld a'la ClubPenguin, BarbieWorlds, CyWorlds instead of helping the Health industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm fond of the quote "If you're bored, it's your fault."

I think it must apply triple to someone working at Google. I'm guessing he was eased out for surfing /b/ too much.</comment>


Asana files to go public via direct listing - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/03/asana-files-to-go-public-says-it-will-do-so-via-a-trendy-direct-listing/ <comment><USER3> I previously worked at Asana (and own shares), and am glad they're going the direct listing route. It's good to normalize the practice of cutting out middlemen in the IPO.

<comment> core-questions Yes. Far too many financial instruments seem to be explicitly designed to enable the already-moneyed to skim a cut off of every single operation; and while you could have made the argument decades ago that it was a somewhat laborious process, I don't really buy that anymore. Transparency and automation may yet help rid us of rent-seeking behaviour.

<comment><USER4> How do you automate the investment banks' most important function: underwriting the share issue so the company gets a guaranteed minimum share price?

Or the road show for that matter? Does the CEO of Asana have pension funds, mutual funds, PE, HFs, etc in their contacts list? Would they be able to negotiate a better price than the banks that already have a working relationship with these entities?

<comment><USER3> >Does the CEO of Asana have pension funds, mutual funds, PE, HFs, etc in their contacts list?

He might actually, what with his time at Facebook.

But the point of a direct listing is that you aren't negotiating a price - <USER2> put the company on the stock market, and let the markets do the negotiating for you.

<comment><USER4> If employees are partially compensated in options, it makes sense to negotiate a price that's at or above the strike price so that some of their options can be cashed out at the time of going public.

If Asana is profitable and their valuations check out, that would be a scenario where maybe the banks aren't needed. But if they're not, leaving it up the market to decide can be dangerous.

<comment><USER3> There are plenty of comparables in the public markets of similar companies (SaaS companies with high growth rates at the expense of profitability), including Smartsheet in particular being in practically the same market. It's pretty easy to estimate the range of valuations at which Asana would trade, and ensure that is well above the employee strike price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've tried using Asana for several months, and I don't really understand how it's better than any other competing product out there? The web UI is slow and it's definitely not cheap. Is there anything about it that's "10x"?

<comment><USER6> I had a similar experience and genuinely wondered why it was even used by anyone at all.

<comment><USER7> Same. It was incredibly slow and loved to eat most of a GB of memory if I left its tab open. I once had it pop up a "would you recommend this product to others?" form that managed to introduce ~3 seconds of input latency on each keystroke for its text feedback area. Which, as you'll recall, is a basic HTML element you shouldn't need Javascript intercepting input to in the first place without one hell of a good reason. I was... not kind.

IIRC they had a blog post up about their brilliant NIH Javascript UI framework and if you are familiar with that kind of thing you could read between the lines and generate some good guesses about what was wrong with it.

Not that Jira is a ton better, especially with each heavier-and-worse-than- the-last redesign. Friggin' "web apps".

[EDIT] and for all that the workflow wasn't any better than anything else as far as I could tell. Our PMs who lived in it loved the draggy-droppy interface and hotkey-heavy workflow, but again, everyone (of their competitors) has that too. To me it always felt like working on someone else's messy desktop shared over VNC. I was afraid to touch anything for fear of accidentally performing some kind of write operation without noticing, and fucking things up.

<comment><USER8> It used to be faster. They've put themselves in a position where users are ready to bail after any major price increase.

<comment><USER7> I stopped using it about two years ago and started... oh, four or so years before that. If it's even slower now than it was then, _whoa_. It was already probably the generally worst-performing "web app" I knew of at the time, which is saying something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Congrats to the team - I've been an Asana user since day 1 when it looked like a glorified spreadsheet and was essentially a nice wrapper around Facebook Tasks (FB's internal task management tool.)

Ultimately I think they have the right ideas and long-run roadmap, but will have a lot of challenges executing in such a crowded space. Excited to see what they do next!

<comment><USER10> We used asana for a while. I love the clean UI, and we thought the calendar view was really helpful/good, etc.

The one thing we really missed though, was just first class support for being able to keep break down tasks into smaller ones through many levels. We've been trying out [https://subtask.co](https://subtask.co) for that, and finding it to be pretty good. It has its own shortcomings too, but seems to be an interesting new contender in this crowded space.

<comment><USER11> It might be a newer feature, but Asana does support arbitrary levels of subtasks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have tried to use Asana for personal use cases multiple times over the years and it just feels "slow". Unfortunately, wunderlist is going away and I will need to keep hunting for a good alternative.

<comment><USER13> Try RememberTheMilk. I've been using it for years and highly recommend it.

The killer feature IMHO are the smartlists that you define by logical arguments, eg. "tag:home AND priority:1 AND dueBefore:tomorrow" creates a list of tasks that autoupdates as soon as something changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While I personally find Asana clunky and slow (I've used many tools for project management: Notion and Jira are by far what I personally enjoy the most, followed by Airtable at a distant 3rd), Sam Altman's perspective on Asana are interesting to look at for a more positive outlook on the company: [https://blog.samaltman.com/asana](https://blog.samaltman.com/asana)

</comment><comment><USER15> Good for them.

I have mixed feeling about their platform. I do like the core functionality and the mobile app is decent.

However their paid "support" and "training" is an absolute joke. It was so bad that I haven't used them since I left the organization I had used them for. It's one area I would recommend investment.

</comment><comment><USER16> Didn't see anything there in the article about the financials, is that because they filed "Confidentiality"?

</comment><comment><USER17> "Asana files to go public"

At first I thought this was a security breach, like an open s3 bucket or the like

</comment><comment><USER18> So hold up, is this just project management software being listed on the stock exchange? Or are they offering like a suite of tools like Atlassian?

<comment><USER19> Historically small technology companies would IPO. Dell went public and was worth only $85 million in 1988. The last 10-15 years is an abnormality where tech companies wait a long time to IPO.

Slack is just team communication software, trading with a $12 billion market cap.

Shopify is just a modern remake of Viaweb handling site building and shopping carts, trading for $56 billion.

Snap is just a chat app trading with a $26 billion market cap.

Twitter is just a micro blogging service trading with a $26 billion market cap.

Zoom Video is just a video conferencing software company trading for $20 billion.

And so on. It's obviously a very good time for Asana to go public.

<comment><USER20> Shopify being valued at $56 billion is insane. That is about 40 times their SALES in a mature market.

With others at least you can imagine some paradigm shift, same as with Tesla.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What does filing "Confidentially" mean? How are buyers supposed to see what they're buying?

<comment><USER22> They will still eventually need to disclose, a confidential filing allows them to work with the SEC on details before releasing public info. [https://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio/public-offerings- how-c...](https://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio/public-offerings-how- confidential-ipos-are-changing-the-market.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> btw this would be a good ballpark to estimate if Basecamp went public, what their financials would look like ? if we assume Basecamp to have 2x - 5x the revenue of Asana

</comment><comment><USER24> Honestly, I bet the employees would much rather it just got acquired. Many companies should do an internal poll, I bet more than 50% want acquisition.

<comment><USER25> It's possible the direct listing is because an acquisition at a premium didn't occur and shareholders are anxious for liquidity.

<comment><USER24> Hopefully that's not the case, but it certainly appears so.</comment></comment></comment>


My Experiment: A Stanford CS Student Trying to Recruit for Startups - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/design-startups/de5c73174a4e

<comment> FELICIA-JOY Chris, love that you are putting energy and effort into promoting your philosophy. I am not an engineer, nor do I live in the bay area, so I am not a good fit for your offer. Sending good vibes and supportive energy your way, though!

-Felicia Joy</comment>


Uploaded Ring footage reportedly provides location to the square inch - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/ring-used-parties-swag-to-build-700-police-partnerships-report-finds/ <comment><USER2> This article seems to describe that Gizmodo wrote an article - that should be the submission instead (if it hasn't been already)</comment>


HN:If you could go to any conference/class/training... - <AUTHOR>

My boss just stopped by and said, "Hey, we're in kind of a lull, so find some relevant training or soemthing you want to do and send me a link. Think big."
What would you guys go to or do? We do a lot of .NET development (mostly ASP.NET, some C# desktop stuff), and some front-end AJAX work with ExtJS. I'm not just looking for ideas for myself, though, so post whatever. :)
I went to VSLive last spring as my first conference, and wasn't totally impressed with the amount I learned. Yeah, you get out what you put in, but the 3 days full of 2 hour lectures format didn't seem to be the best way to learn.
Anyway, I'll shut up now. Have you guys had any great experiences with conferences or classes? <comment><USER2> Grab a conference where you can get in additional networking as well as learn about these types as well, or at least how they impact. Go to a conference like the Web 2.0 Expo (<http://en.oreilly.com/webexny2008/public/content/home>) or the New Media Expo (<http://www.newmediaexpo.com/>) so you can gain a better understanding of your industry and gain contacts in that industry. You'll also meet some of the greats in the industry.

Conferences aren't all that much for direct learning, but more for ideas and people. Do a class if you want to learn a new language.

All depends on your job responsibilities and what you want for your future.

(And yeah, I'll be at New Media in August)

</comment><comment><USER3> OOPSLA. I'm hooked after listening to the podcasts of the 2007 keynotes (<http://www.oopsla.org/oopsla2007/index.php?page=podcasts/>). I want to associate with people who think about software in that way.

(incidentally, it has very little to do with OO, but it keeps the name because OOPSLA has become a strong brand.)</comment>


How Mavericks ruined Apple Mail for Gmail users - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2013/10/23/how-mavericks-ruined-apple-mail-for-gmail-users/ <comment><USER2> I highly, HIGHLY recommend Airmail[0] as basically the best gmail, perhaps general email client for Mavericks.

It is incredibly actively developed (betas are free, stable on MAS), immensely feature rich, has out of the box excellent gmail-specific integration, and even great Mavericks support including in-line notification bubble replying as of today.

I have no affiliation with the app at all, but I too was incredibly dismayed by how awful Gmail + Mail.app works these days.

[0]: [http://airmailapp.com](http://airmailapp.com)

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Airmail is my favorite email client too. Just to set expectations, it does crash daily on me. That being said, it is still the best option out there.

<comment><USER4> It's a sad state of affairs when the best option is one that crashes daily.

<comment><USER5> I've been using it for many months, heavily, and I think it's crashed once...and that was while using one of the beta builds.

Experiences clearly vary. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only problematic part for me has been that the setting "Store draft messages on the server" reverted back to being on. When enabled, it ends up generating hundreds of autosave messages and repeatedly trashing them.

But Mail.app seems to be working exactly as it used to otherwise. I use an IMAP connection to Gmail, with a full local archive and over 54k messages. Maybe I just haven't run into the problems yet? I don't use smart mailboxes; perhaps that's where all the trouble is.

<comment><USER7> I've been using Mail.app with Gmail since DP1 with four separate accounts and your experiences are exactly the same as mine: business as usual except for the hundreds of draft messages being generated due to "Store draft messages on the server" being re-checked.

I do, however, use smart mailboxes: they have no effect on the functioning of Gmail. They shouldn't, either: they're not much more than local saved searches.

I suspect this might be a case of correlation rather than causation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is really problematic, since I been using Gmail + Apple Mail for basically...ever. I guess it's time to stop putting off moving to a more full featured client.

Speaking of which, any recommendations for clients that feature a Mailbox- esque "remind" or "save for later" option? It looks like, of those linked in the story, only Mail Pilot offers one. However, their desktop client isn't yet available. Stock web-based Gmail is no good, since I have a ton of different addresses I use on the regular (no, they can't be unified, they're for different organizations), and the logging in/out is a huge pain. Plus I desperately need notifications, or I'll be even less organized with email than I already am.

<comment><USER9> The most full featured Gmail client is the website.

<comment><USER8> Right -- but, like I said, I use multiple accounts that can't be unified into one account, and the logging in/out to access them is a mess.

<comment><USER10> [http://mailplaneapp.com/index.html](http://mailplaneapp.com/index.html) \- multiple accounts are a breeze.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was having this exact issue. While fiddling with something else, I happened to have mail.app open on one of those empty smart folders in the background, and did this from the terminal:

        sudo mdutil -i on /

Now mind you, it was _already_ enabled. I had previously tried forcing reindex (-E) but that did nothing. No clue why setting 'enable' _again_ made any kind of difference, but suddenly my smart folders sprang to life. I will keep an eye on it, and see if it keeps working properly.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm having no problems with Gmail on Apple's Mail on Mavericks... perhaps I'm just not a big enough e-mail user? I only have about 10000 messages on that account.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am not experiencing this issue. However I did get whacked when upgrading my iPhone which then decided to use GMails unread count to determine what I had not read. That was very frustrating, I went from a dozen or so unread on my phone to thousands. The easy solution was to flag it all read at Gmail and my phone calmed down.

I am going to assume that is why I am not being hit with this issue he mentions. Both my mail accounts on my iMac are just fine. Still never understood Apple's fascination with requiring three keys just to mark a message as read.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's an interesting question to me: has anyone, instead of switching away from Mail.app to use Gmail, tried switching to purely using an Apple (iCloud) mail account to get Apple's "intended" Mail.app experience? How is it, relative to, say, the Gmail-launched-from-the-Chrome-app-launcher experience?

<comment><USER15> You don't need to use iCloud mail to get Apple's "intended" experience. You can use any email that follows the IMAP standard. Fastmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. Gmail has a custom, non-standard IMAP implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Works well with Gmail for me. I suspect there is more to the problem than a simple broad incompatibility.

</comment><comment><USER17> There's always the option of switching to Fastmail. If you're using Apple Mail instead of Gmail's web client, as I was, it was because Apple Mail caught up by growing an "archive" button and Gmail regressed. This made Gmail the more replaceable part, to me.

</comment><comment><USER18> Reduce high cpu utilization from Mail: Spotlight -> Disable Mail & Messages [http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/290194-apple-mail- hig...](http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/290194-apple-mail-high-cpu- usage/)

<comment><USER19> Not having email indexed for searching isn't a good solution, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Apart from Thunderbird and mutt - what good email clients are around for OSX that support PGP?

<comment><USER21> Postbox lists a plugin for "Enigmail," described as "Send and receive signed and encrypted messages using OpenPGP provided by GnuPG."

I (obviously!) don't use Enigmail, but I've been a happy Postbox user for years. It also works fairly easily with S/MIME, which is what I've used for signing and encryption in the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Actually, I had an issue with Mail when I first started.

In years past, after an OS X upgrade, Mail.app would show a "Upgrade Mail" prompt before using. Now it appears that instead, it's happily showing a blank set of emails while it slowly (5 minutes-ish for me) converts to the new version.

This is, of course, confusing to the user because it doesn't show ANY indication that it's converting to a new version.

So likely, it's still converting the emails. That's why CPU spikes when you first load too; it's not Spotlight but the conversion process (and Spotlight is reading them while converting).

<comment> X-Istence Actually the new Mail upon first startup did say it was upgrading the mail database and everything else associated with it ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Do any of the mail clients implement Gmail's new Promos/Updates tabs? I'm looking for a happier medium between hiding those messages yet them still being quite accessible.

</comment><comment><USER24> Has something changed with gmail imap recently? I use Apple Mail every few days mostly just to keep a backup of my several gmail accounts. After reading this I remembered I hadn't done this in a few days so I opened Apple Mail on my Macbook (not upgraded to Mavericks yet) and got password prompts for each account. None of the passwords I entered was accepted. I can log in through the web just fine.

</comment><comment><USER25> What a non-issue. If "you're a huge Gmail user on the Mac" then just use the web interface. The only place where the web interface isn't the prime way to interact with gmail is on the phone and google have an app for that.

If you really must use a thick client to use gmail, Thunderbird installs and runs just fine on the mac.

<comment><USER6> Replace "huge Gmail user" with "huge email user that happens to use Gmail servers as the host" and you can begin to see the trouble. _It shouldn 't matter which IMAP client you use._ If there's trouble in communication between Mail.app and Gmail's IMAP servers, then one of the two parties messed up. If there's a regression in Apple's Mail.app, it is a big deal if you have an established workflow with any piece of software. Likewise if Google is making it harder to use your IMAP client of choice, it's a big deal. Users have established patterns and they're hard to break. Hell, just re-syncing my whole email archive into another client would take days (Google throttles batch downloads aggressively, and I don't always have internet connectivity when I need access to my email archive). Nevermind learning a new user interface.

When software regresses, users will complain.

<comment><USER25> I still don't see the trouble. I use imap for work email, because our corporate web mail looks like yahoo circa 2004, but gmail I use chrome, a far better user experience.

<comment><USER26> With Gmail, you're limited to seeing mail from one account at a time. With Mail, it coalesces email from all my accounts into one list.

<comment><USER25> not at all. gmail can pull from many imap or pop sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't get it - what's the actual complaint? In my experience, Mail works fine with Gmail - multiple accounts and quite a bit of volume. The web interface seriously pisses me off.

<comment><USER28> This article talks about the problem(s) in greater detail: [http://tidbits.com/article/14219](http://tidbits.com/article/14219)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've been using GMail with Mail for a while. Works fine for me. Upgrading to Mavericks changed absolutely nothing.</comment>


Grassbian: AWS GreenGrass on the Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://read.iopipe.com/grassbian-aws-greengrass-on-the-raspberry-pi-d311484e4557 <comment><USER2> I'm excited because this makes it so much easier to get started with Greengrass. Java, NodeJS, and Python with a full IoT service behind it... and compatible with AWS Lambda. Seems likely they'll add Go soon too.</comment>


A Mother's Journey Through the Unnerving Universe of 'Unboxing' Videos - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/magazine/a-mothers-journey-through-the-unnerving-universe-of-unboxing-videos.html <comment><USER2> Here's a video that I think has a similar appeal:[http://wimp.com/cinderblocks/](http://wimp.com/cinderblocks/) \- it's just a guy laying cinder blocks, zero consumerism. But relaxing.

My daughter is about to enter Montessori, and one of the techniques they like is to simply demonstrate to a child - not much narration, no shortcuts or summarizing, just demonstration. And I realized how little I do this, even though I describe things to my daughter constantly.

So maybe these videos are filling that gap. The commercialism might be a supply-side phenomena, since that's where the ad dollars are.

<comment><USER3> I dunno I think that one is different -- it's nice to watch someone who is good at what they do.

But that's not what unboxing videos are. I've never found one to be enjoyable. I just stumbled across some when trying to search for reviews of products and they can't hold my attention.

<comment><USER2> When I imagine a toddler watching these videos I think of this - for a toddler these unboxings are the work of people with manual skills they still aspire to.

<comment><USER4> Since society is happily live-testing (90M instance) videos on toddlers, it could be extended to formal A/B experiments distributed on YouTube. Create variations of this popular video, changing one variable at a time - shapes, colors, voice, manual dexterity. Compare toddler learning with computer vision algos for training robots on manual movement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I suspect some of the popularity of unboxing videos can be attributed to the ASMR[0] community.

[0]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_res...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_response)

<comment><USER6> Could someone ELI5 this "ASMR community" thing for me? I don't understand anything from reading that Wikipedia article :(.

<comment><USER7> There's several similar, but distinct, and highly personal phenomenon around sensory input: Cold chills, ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) and Frisson being the most common.

Cold chills (often called "goose bumps" "goose pimples" "goose skin" "chicken skin") is the most common. _Most_ people experience it from time to time. Like during a scary movie. It feels vaguely pleasant but unusual and is triggered by an emotional perception - like the anticipation of something scary. It's rarely accompanied by a strong emotional reflex in response.

The other two, ASMR and Frisson, are more rare. _Most_ people don't experience these and even fewer experience both. For example, I can Frisson, but I can't ASMR. The numbers for each are something like 3-10% of the population. But it's only recently started to get attention and research.

ASMR is a pleasurable feeling due to a person specific stimulus. It can the sound of whispering, or box flaps rubbing on each other. Usually gentle sounds in certain categories. There are non-audio versions of it as well. _something_ about the stimulus triggers an deep pleasurable feeling in most people who can ASMR. It's probably a little like getting a little endorphine boost or taking a little pleasure drug. It's usually accompanied by "cold chill" like physical reactions but also an internal mental/emotional reaction as well (typically pleasant). People who can ASMR describe an ASMR reaction as being distinct from a cold chill.

Recently the internet has allowed people who can ASMR to share triggers and discuss the phenomenon. I don't know much more about it than any other non- ASMR but I come across it every once in a while while investigating Frisson as the two phenomenon are often confused.

Here's an entire reddit dedicated capturing and sharing ASMR triggers.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/asmr](http://www.reddit.com/r/asmr)

Note that this doesn't mean any person who can ASMR can come here and use any trigger. The triggers are highly specific to the individual.

Frisson is a similar phenomenon and a bit better studied. I can talk more about this one since I can Frisson. Frisson is tied very specifically to musical perception, but _can_ occur outside of music as well.

While the general population might be 3-10% Frisson-able, musicians tend to be much higher. It's similar to ASMR in the sense that a "trigger" kicks off an extremely pleasurable emotional and physical response. For different people who can Frisson, it's usually extremely specific passages in certain songs (or even certain performances of a song).

And yes, there are communities who share their frisson triggers You'll often see a link to a song and a description of the specific passage or time index when the sharer typically frissons. [http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson](http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson)

A frisson is like a very intense cold-chill, usually in the upper body. I get it very strongly along the sides of my upper spine between my shoulder blades. If cold chills can be ranked from 1-10 on an intensity scale, the typical frisson would be like a 20 to a 50.

But there's a deep emotional reaction too. I can't speak for all frissoners, but for me it's a transcendent all consuming emotion, like all of my emotions are triggered at once and amplified out of my own control. It feels like you are right in the middle of the most terrible, most beautiful experience a human can have. Like all of your closest loved ones died and were suddenly found alive at the same time.

The same passage can induce a frisson over and over again for a while. But a bit like a drug, you can "get used to" a passage till you've lost the ability to frisson to it. So frissoners are often on the lookout for new triggers.

Not suprisingly, it's linked to rises in dopamine levels and can be addictive in all the ways dopamine addiction works -- including the withdrawal crankiness. It's rare enough that I've never met another person face-to-face who I was aware was a fellow frissoner. Most non-frissoners just think it's "extreme enjoyment of music" but it's quite distinct and different. I never even knew what it was called until I was almost 30 and decided to investigate it a bit.

I discovered it when I was maybe 4 or 5, I found a passage on a tape and my mother found me playing that passage over and over again on the home stereo while hysterically laughing and crying my eyes out. For a long time my mother thought something was wrong with me or that I was unusually sensitive to music. I was actually so embarrassed by it that I hid it from everybody for a very long time.

But growing up I played some tapes to absolute death trying to get my "fix". Later I started to learn that if I over frissoned to the same musical passage it would eventually lose the effect. So I learned to ration it out and collected a sizable library of tapes I could cycle through. I started to mentally categorize music by how much of a frisson it could create. I started to use frisson to deal with stress and anxiety. It had all the hallmarks of a drug addiction I guess except I only had to find a supply of music and not street drugs.

Happy to answer any questions anybody might have.

<comment><USER6> Wow, I haven't heard about Frission before! Thank you for long and detailed explanation. I guess I can relate only to Cold Chills. I tried to listen to some ASMR triggers, and I got the same physical reaction and feelings of discomfort I get from fingernails scratching on a blackboard or hearing someone clean their teeth.

<comment><USER8> >I tried to listen to some ASMR triggers, and I got the same physical reaction and feelings of discomfort I get from fingernails scratching on a blackboard or hearing someone clean their teeth.

Glad to hear I'm not alone. My wife and I listened to the This American Life program on ASMR and I couldn't even stand the few short snippets in the program. The whispery sound of quiet talking where you can hear the speaker's tongue flapping around in their mouth makes me want to pull my teeth out with pliers.

<comment><USER6> So maybe we should find (or found) some kind of Negative Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response society? ;).

<comment><USER8> Heh. Seriously though, it does feel like I have anti-ASMR. I swear, every single thing that is supposedly happy-making for ASMR folks is "please pull my teeth out with pliers" level bad to me. It's like the same neurological response, only wired to my revulsion center. Perversely though, I kind of enjoy the sensation of scratching a chalkboard with my fingernails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It strikes me that with "surprise eggs" in particular, the "feeling of unboxing" is actually the entire traditional value proposition of the product. Seeing the contents of all the eggs removed and displayed entirely short- circuits the need to actually pay $1.99 to do that yourself.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't say I know much about the range of subgenres that exist withing the unboxing universe, but at least in tech unboxing videos, I've always assumed that the primary appeal was the first-impressions review that comes with the unboxing. After a user takes their new thinkpad out of the box, they might remark about how great the travel is on the keyboard, or about its weigh or build-sturdiness. They're the next best thing to trying a product in person (and real reviews are harder to come by than dime-a-dozen unboxings).

Maybe I'm totally misjudging and the primary attraction that they instill the same reaction as getting a shiny new gadget does.

<comment><USER11> Some things are attractively packaged. So seeing someone show off that packaging can be quite nice in itself.

Sometimes unboxing can give you valuable and otherwise hard to find information, e.g. how big the transformer is and how it looks. That stuff is typically nowhere to be found, not on the website of whoever made the thing (even if you search for the manual) and often not in reviews (at least if the transformer isn't extremely enormous or extremely ugly or otherwise noteworthy).

First impressions tend to be pretty useless in my opinion since it's not very thought out and all very subjective. Maybe sometimes something useful is said, but it's mostly useless.

It's also good for getting a non-product-photo look at the product. For some things there just aren't any video reviews and photos often just don't cut it. It's always good to get more than one look at a product.

<comment><USER12> I just did an unboxing video (of the Bitbox [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDuMKHX91Mk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDuMKHX91Mk)) and part of my motivation had to do with the packaging.

Not the Bitbox's packaging, but the postal wrapper which came from France. As an American, I've felt a small bit of fear as I've watched our financial resources diminish. When I saw the multi-colored postal package, with its delicate rose-colored gradient, I had the distinct cognition "Hey, there's a country and a people unafraid to spend some resources on making their postal packages look good."

We should get our national shit together.

<comment><USER13> See the recent redesign for USPS

[http://grand- army.com/work/projects/project.php?project=usps...](http://grand- army.com/work/projects/project.php?project=usps_retail)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Phenomena like this make me increasingly unsure that I understand anything about the existence or desires of the average American.

<comment><USER15> > of the average American.

of the average Toddler.

I'm sure some adults watch it to, but it's aimed at very young kids.

<comment><USER16> Look for oscilloscope unboxing videos. I've watched a few and haven't pulled the trigger yet. (edit: trigger is a bad pun wrt oscopes, sorry)

I bought a camping tent after watching about 10 unboxing videos. I got a table saw about a year ago the same way, watch a couple videos first.

I am well aware probably 1/2 the video are astroturf. If I tune out the speech the video speaks for itself. Oh, OK, with my own eyes I see thats how you adjust the height of the blade. I like/dislike that particular saw's blade lifting design.

The problem is narrow focus by marketing making at least some purchasers prefer homemade commercials over their hyper focused "professional" commercials which unfortunately suck. Lets say someone is trying to sell a "pro-grade" digital multimeter and I'm trying to buy one. Unfortunately the market "user interface" will be a little too "stylized" and probably rely on sexual objectification of women and business cliche speak.

Some beautiful very young woman who has no idea what the product does reads a script explaining "Our ISO9000 manufactured meter will synergistically energize your resources to proactively meet their key performance indicators". Unfortunately as a mere user of the device instead of being a CEO, that kind of marketing is useless to me as a purchaser, I have no idea how painful the device makes it to switch between ammeter and voltmeter probe wiring topology and how useful is the continuity feature anyway? The official PR materials suck so much I'll just watch an unboxing video. That may be the only way I'll be permitted to get a straight answer WRT the connectors being too tight to easily swap.

I have plenty of experience where the quality of PR has little correlation with the quality of the product, so I'm not overly concerned. I can see why pro content creators are terrified. This is equivalent to when print journalists first noticed some people prefer bloggers to their "professional" productions, following which about 50% of them lost their professional jobs.

From my kids, they like to study stuff they like. In the unlikely event we ever get a Wii-U my son is already an expert on how to connect it to the TV and configure it. I admit I've been window shopping new oscilloscopes, including ones I'll never be able to afford... The article makes fun of a $2 plastic egg, but I don't waste money on that for my kids on a regular basis, so I can see the kid appeal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of happy kitchen #4 ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8gJOCwBuFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8gJOCwBuFc) , 15 mil views), somehow both relaxing and terrifying.

<comment><USER18> This is incredible. The most viewed video of 'RRcherrypie Group' has 80m views. I wonder how these videos spread - are people sharing this like crazy? The comments are a mix of "so cute", "i don't get why i keep watching these", and "where can i buy this??"

It's like the unboxing video in the original article, except given an additional play-cooking element and taken to an extreme of meticulousness.

See all the videos here (the Mentos + Cola one is quite unexpected):

[https://www.youtube.com/user/RRcherrypie/videos?flow=grid&vi...](https://www.youtube.com/user/RRcherrypie/videos?flow=grid&view=0&sort=p)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I asked about this a while ago on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7751806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7751806)

Our son always seems to end up on such videos and can watch them for as long as possible. Really freaky.

Seems the people behind it are taking a nice cheque home each month.

</comment><comment><USER4> Would be interesting to know from Google's analytics how many views are unique vs. repeat.

The super-engaged toddlers are remniscent of those in the "Smile Time" episode of Whedon's Angel.

<comment><USER20> Good point, a lot of views could be coming from a few obsessive compulsive repeat-viewers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Surely this is more to do with 'getting views' than anything else. To imply that there is a deeper motivation like ASMR etc might be taking it a little too far for the majority of cases.

My guess would be it is just a very easy, non-thinking way of creating content and gaining attention.

</comment><comment><USER22> In the article he lists some kinds of fetish youtube videos like zit-popping and clean-corn-shuck. One that he didn't mention that I partake in is Earwax Removal -- videos of someone with impacted cerumen getting it removed by a metal rod usually by a nurse.

</comment><comment><USER22> My daughter loves these 'opening toys' videos -- especially the ones from this woman. I'm very amused to find an article about this sensation, and my wife will be as well. We've been curious about it for a while.

</comment><comment><USER23> This strikes me as a toddler-specific Ashens (sans dry/sarcastic humour and the iconic couch of course). I watch Ashens regularly, so in a sense I can see the appeal. Yet this woman's content still baffles me.

</comment><comment><USER24> This phenomenon is similar to how people enjoy watching others play video games.

Your brain can't entirely distinguish between watching a video game on a screen and actually controlling the action.

<comment><USER14> > This phenomenon is similar to how people enjoy watching others play video > games.

Agreed, in that I can't understand why somebody would be interested in either.

<comment><USER16> Several responses have focused on rail games where you watch a predetermined story unfold.

I learned how to make an automatic egg/chicken factory in minecraft from watching a video. I'd never have imagined something so crazy without seeing it live in 3-D first. You do what with wooden signs, and then pour flowing water on them, and then throw chickens on it? Madness! Yet it works!

I imagine this has a lot to do with 3-d and open world type games where having an experienced field guide walk you thru a real world-ish experience helps.

(edited to add, I live in a geographic area where many people make a living as hunting and fishing guides; the "experienced field guide" phrase for video games is very intentional, I suspect in the next decade or so of video gaming, there will be people making a modest living off literally being field guides for video gamers... just kinda escorting noobs and showing them the ropes, maybe not a lot of money but more than they'd get off the mechanical turk)

<comment><USER25> I watch a few different YouTube videos for different reasons.

XisumaVoid [1] does nice, clear, tutorials of a bunch of different stuff.

Etho [2] also does some tutorials, but he embeds them into his "Let's Play" series. He's also part of a server and I enjoyed the derping around they did.

BDoubleO and GuudeBoulderFist (as OOG [3]) had some funny videos of them playing a challenge map while drunk.

Yogscast [4] had one series that appealed to me at a particular time of my life when I just needed disposable nonsense.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/user/xisumavoid](https://www.youtube.com/user/xisumavoid)

[2] [http://www.youtube.com/user/EthosLab](http://www.youtube.com/user/EthosLab)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXpOn5V_NWw&list=PL57E50DFE2...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXpOn5V_NWw&list=PL57E50DFE29CD4465) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOKorN4Dg64&list=PL535DD4748...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOKorN4Dg64&list=PL535DD4748A99318D)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF60520313D07F366](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF60520313D07F366)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> That headline sounds the output of a Markov generator raised on hand-wringing clickbait newsfeeds.

</comment><comment><USER27> Tldr: watching a video of taking a product out of its packaging gives people the vicarious feeling of newness and ownership without actually buying the product. This is popular it seems, and largest effect is in toddlers.

It's just another trigger the modern world has uncovered in our ape brains. The thrill of unwrapping a banana or mango writ large. It probably won't hurt your kids but if they are watching videos unsupervised and you "come across" them watching that's probably a bigger flag to you.</comment>


IQ decline and Piaget: Does the rot start at the top? - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289617302787 <comment><USER2> Interesting.

>Piagetian gains at the bottom of the curve should not be dismissed as simply a phenomenon that offsets losses at the top. Consider the British results for Equilibrium and Pendulum. The decimation of top scorers means that by the age of 12 to 14, fewer British schoolchildren attain the level of formal operations. This means that fewer could think in terms of abstractions (without concrete examples), which limits their capacity for deductive logic and systematic planning. However, the fact that these losses are made up by gains over the rest of the "curve" means that far more of them are at the concrete generalization level. They are better at on the spot thinking (e.g. in playing demanding computer games). Their understanding of the physical world is limited to simple causation between two variables, but they can draw inferences from observations to make generalizations.

[...]

>The Piagetian results are particularly ominous. Looming over all is their message that the pool of those who reach the top level of cognitive performance is being decimated: fewer and fewer people attain the formal level at which they can think in terms of abstractions and develop their capacity for deductive logic and systematic planning. They also reveal that something is actually targeting that level with special effect, rather than simply reducing its numbers in accord with losses over the curve as a whole. We have given our reason as to why the Piagetian tests are sensitive to this phenomenon in a way that conventional tests are not.</comment>


Introducing Apple Watch [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/live/2014-sept-event/videos/e71af271_d18c_4d78_918d_d008fc4d702d/tour/reveal/watch-reveal-cc-us-20140909_r848-9dwc.mov

<comment><USER2> I am liking the idea of using the crown to help navigate around the interface. Glad they thought about it a lot more vs just compressing the phone down into a smaller UI (similar to the small iPod was).

Also, how smoothly did those icons on the home screen move around? For some reason I found that really impressive, now to find out what the battery life is like (nice use of MagSafe as well for charging, IMO)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This seems like a very fine piece of tecnology, at least as disruptive as the original iPhone. I'm impressed despite not owning any Apple products. The main thread on the launch is dominated by the streaming/website acccess problems, so perhaps we could ignore those and discuss the product itself here.

Starting at $350, it will sell like hot cakes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Video can not be viewed.

<comment><AUTHOR> It works fine for me (in Chrome, on Windows).</comment></comment>


If the Google Phone really exists, it's a mistake - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/if-a-google-phone-actually-exists-its-a-mistake-2009-11

<comment><USER2> Nokia has invested too much into Symbian and Maemo and Qt to switch to Android, IMHO. They seem set on pushing Maemo as the system of choice and Qt as the framework of choice. They've put a lot of resources into Qt and seem intent on enticing developers to use it.

<comment><USER3> Surely Nokia understands the concept of a sunk cost.</comment></comment>