Looking after your wellbeing at DjangoCon Europe - <AUTHOR> http://2015.djangocon.eu/news/wellbeing/ <comment><USER2> What a great idea, and how very well done (the anonymous post-it note booking system). Kudos to the organisers for their prescience and understanding of their attendees, more of this please!

</comment><comment><USER3> Kudos to the DjangCon Europe organizers for setting this up. I was recently listening to a sermon on Abraham Lincoln (the U.S. President in office during the civil war) who suffered from such crippling depression during his life that there's no way he'd be electable today.

Such is the exposure to the details of a persons life in the 21st century, but I feel like that makes it even more important to publicly address mental health issues. Folks should not suffer alone, and should not be made to feel less capable or important because they struggle with mental health.

<comment><USER4> Winston Churchill suffered from depression he called his "black dog". He wrote to avoid it, and his prolific output, and indeed alcoholism, should be viewed through that prism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hooray for mental health awareness! I wonder if any of the big tech companies (Goog, FB, Appl) do anything like this, or more generally, do anything to help with employee mental health wellness.

<comment><USER6> One example could be Google. It has initiated and developed mindfulness based Search Inside Yourself program. [http://siyli.org/](http://siyli.org/)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for linking that. Do you know any more about it? I see a component of their curriculum is "Emotional Resilience", curious to see how much of the program is focused on that aspect as opposed to what signals I choose to broadcast to others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would love to see this at hackathons and conferences everywhere. So many people need help but are so ashamed to ask for it (particularly in our field) that you literally need to make talking to someone as convenient as getting a McDonald's hamburger to get them to seek help.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's so much an issue of shame always, but rather that often one of the symptoms of something like depression is lack of motivation to seek help.

This is the ultimate challenge with mental health - as you said, it has to be exceedingly convenient for someone in that situation to get help. Otherwise it's a perpetual feedback loop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "To complicate matters, most of the people in the industry are young men, a cohort not good at acknowledging their own problems, or understanding other people's."

Does this not seem like oversimplification and rampant stereotyping?

I am a "young man" (well, below 30 anyway, though in SV I'm probably a bit long in the tooth), and it hurts to be constantly and systematically belittled in this manner. I have problems, and other people in the industry do too. Singling out one particular gender and age group and making them the bad party doesn't help anyone.

A great related article: ([http://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2014/06/on- depres...](http://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2014/06/on-depression- privilege-and-online.html))

<comment><USER11> I read that sentence as 'there is a systemic problem in society that young men aren't allowed to be fragile, sad &c' and that with the overlap between men in tech and that problem, we have an opportunity to give you a nudge in the right direction, should you need it.

<comment><USER12> I read it as that too, and I applaud that sentiment, but I agree that the "or understanding other people's" seems a bit harsh in context.

I'd even agree that in my own early 20s I was quite bad at appreciating the perspectives and life experiences of people from different backgrounds, but it's not the best way to gain the trust of people who might benefit from the service!

I suppose they mentioned it to suggest that you may not feel comfortable opening up to your colleagues and/or social group, especially if they are young men who are traditionally expected to put on a front of everything being fine and may not be open to emotional/personal discussions, which is a valid concern; but it's a shame it sounds like it's questioning the empathy of many of its readers.

Forgot to say: this is a really nice idea, I hope it works well.

<comment><USER13> Just to clarify: in saying that as a cohort, young men are not good at acknowledging their own difficulties or understanding other people's we don't mean that they don't care, or wouldn't care if they understood.

It's certainly not blaming them, or making a moral judgement. It's absolutely nothing to do with being "emotionally stunted". The gap is one of understanding, and it's a cultural one.

Since young men make up most of this industry, this tends to make the industry as a whole bad at understanding and dealing with these kinds of problems, which in turn makes it harder for the individuals in it to understand better.

<comment><USER14> Men don't have a monopoly on "burnout, exhaustion, depression" so the negative blanket statements about men could be left out entirely.

<comment><USER13> The first part of that is true, but they are the ones who are least likely to seek help, and the most likely to be at DjangoCon. This is why we are addressing young men in particular.

<comment><USER10> I see what you mean; you were addressing the major target demographic.

I think the part about "not good at acknowledging their own problems, or understanding other people" could have possibly been phrased better (your "least likely to seek help" makes far more sense). However, given this broader background, I see that the intentions of this counseling are good.

Thanks a lot for making it happen!

<comment><USER15> I think we have to forgive Daniele for making a bull-headed statement, since he is probably not that socially sensitive by virtue of being a man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Such a fantastic idea. There really needs to be more awareness on Mental Health and this is a great step towards that.

</comment><comment><USER17> Go Daniele, such a great guy and a passionate organizer.

<comment><USER18> I only know Daniele from usenet a good few years ago now, but certainly "great" and "compassionate" are two words that would certainly be applicable to him. I had no idea he was involved with Django or its conferences, but it's no surprise to me that he's having a positive impact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> >Booking a slot will simply be a matter of taking a Post-It note with a time on it from the appointments board, anonymously and discreetly.

It will take less than an hour before some ass removes all the post-it notes. Sorry, but that system has too much fate in humans.

</comment><comment><USER20> correct the typo DjanoCon -> DjangoCon

</comment><comment><USER21> Burnout and exhaustion are a mental health issues?

I though they were more of a problem with prioritizing things in your life.

Edit: I have suffered from both of these things myself, and I never considered myself to have mental health problems. In my case it was (still is) a case of taking a step back and re-prioritizing things. Apparently I shouldn't tell myself that?

<comment><USER15> It's unclear whether you're asking a genuine question, or just using a rhetorical one to dismiss the idea altogether. I guess the lack of question mark on the second line points to it being the latter.

Consider that if you're already burned out - even if they "just" had to do with bad life prioritize - it's often not like you can just quit whatever you're doing and go on a retreat. You still have that 9-5 job, or whatever more heavy-weight responsibilities. Then it doesn't really matter what the original cause was - it's a mental health issue.

<comment><USER21> I would say it is a work life balance issue.

I am not saying its not a problem, but I am struggling to see it as a mental health issue.

The first hit I got on Google doesn't talk about exhaustion or burnout. It does mention depression, which I agree with.

[http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/an- introduct...](http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/an-introduction- to-mental-health/what-are-mental-health-problems/)

<comment><USER22> The first sentence: "Mental health problems range from the worries we all experience as part of everyday life to serious long-term conditions."

EDIT: [http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/mental- healt...](http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/mental-health- a-z/S/stress/)

> All sorts of situations can cause stress. The most common involve work, > money matters and relationships with partners, children or other family > members. Stress may be caused either by major upheavals and life events such > as divorce, unemployment, moving house and bereavement, or by a series of > minor irritations such as feeling undervalued at work or dealing with > difficult children. Sometimes there are no obvious causes.

> Stressful events that are outside the range of normal human experience, for > example being abused or tortured, may lead to post-traumatic stress disorder > (PTSD).

> Some stress can be positive. Research shows that a moderate level of stress > makes us perform better. It also makes us more alert and can help us perform > better in situations such as job interviews or public speaking. Stressful > situations can also be exhilarating and some people actually thrive on the > excitement that comes with dangerous sports or other high-risk activities.

> But stress is only healthy if it is short-lived. Excessive or prolonged > stress can lead to illness and physical and emotional exhaustion. Taken to > extremes, stress can be a killer.

<comment><USER19> Isn't that the main issue? We can easily dismiss depression because everybody feels sad sometimes, we can easily dismiss burn-out as you just don't feel motivated, etc.

<comment><USER22> Yes, sadness is a normal part of life and we don't want to treat sadness as a medical condition. Sometimes that sadness interferes with day to day life, and it doesn't seem to be going away. Most people who experience grief will work through it; the grief changes. So when these problems start interfering with day to day living is when people need help.

And for most people that's going to be small interventions - having a coffee with a friend who is talking to you for example. The interventions taper up as the severity of the illness increases. Talking therapies; medication; hospital in-patient stays; rarely, if someone is at risk of death or of harming other people they can be hospitalised against their will; even more rarely there's ECT.

We know that early intervention is important. And modern mental health services should be talking about "resilience" which increases someones ability to cope with daily life.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN : Is facebook down for you? Help understand which countries it is hitting - <AUTHOR>

From TC :
Update 2: Here's the statement from Facebook:
We're currently experiencing some site issues causing Facebook to be slow or unavailable for some users.  We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.
It appears that it is down to not only "some" users.
Is it down for you ?
It is down for me at this very moment, connecting from China using a VPN with server located in Los Angeles,USA <comment><USER2> It's down for me, on the East Coast of the US.

The message I'm currently getting, attempting to view photos, is "Service Unavailable - Zero size object

The server is temporarily unable to service your request. Please try again later. Reference #[REDACTED]"

I was able to access it briefly--enough to get from the homepage to my profile, then click "photos." But after that, it stopped working altogether for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Service Unavailable - DNS failure

The server is temporarily unable to service your request. Please try again later._

So, yes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please list your country as well.

<comment><USER3> Los Angeles, CA, USA

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ... but I can still harvest my cows ...

<comment><AUTHOR> what do you mean exactly ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is up sporadically for me, but some features are broken. I'm in Los Angeles, CA

<comment><AUTHOR> Here it just says : Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to www.facebook.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fine here - South Africa.

<comment><USER6> I lie - just got an error on refresh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes it is

</comment><comment><USER7> yep!

<comment><AUTHOR> From USA as well?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wondering if this is is hitting other countries as well. Please list the country you are connecting from.

</comment><comment><USER8> working fine here,

Ahmedabad india</comment>


Inside the Home of Instant Pot, a Kitchen Gadget Startup That Spawned a Religion - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/17/business/instant-pot.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Just realized, it is a dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15948338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15948338)</comment>


V8 Optimization Killers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/wiki/Optimization-killers <comment><USER2> Which of these (if any) are purely incidental to the current state of the V8 project, rather than being inherently insurmountable problems for JS optimization? In other words, if I memorize this particular list, what subset of my knowledge may become obsolete in a few months or years?

<comment><USER3> > if I memorize this particular list

Please don't memorize this list. It's just for one JS engine among several, all of which are changing rapidly. For example Apple just shipped FTL, an LLVM-based JIT for Safari (so any list for Safari would have just been largely obsoleted).

<comment><USER2> I actually don't want to memorize any list, unless it's a list of things that are inherently expensive/impossible to optimize in JS, in which case it's worthwhile. I just hate the idea of having to write all my code according to some list-of-the-week. What I want is a list that separates the always-know stuff from the engine-specific-tweaks or might-not-apply-next-year stuff.

<comment><USER2> Actually re-reading the article, I see this:

        Currently not optimizable:

        Generator functions
        Functions that contain a for-of statement
        Functions that contain a try-catch statement
        Functions that contain a try-finally statement
        Functions that contain a compound let assignment
        Functions that contain a compound const assignment
        Functions that contain object literals that contain __proto__, or get or set declarations.

        Likely never optimizable:

        Functions that contain a debugger statement
        Functions that call literally eval()
        Functions that contain a with statement

Which I now realize is sort of what I'm looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really great! Some notes that popped out for me are that to always cache the .length property for any array or arguments:

         function doesntLeakArguments() {
             var args = new Array(arguments.length);
             for(var i = 0; i < args.length; ++i) {
                 args[i] = arguments[i];
             }
             return args;
         }

becomes:

         function doesntLeakArguments() {
             var len  = arguments.length;
             var args = new Array(len);
             for(var i = 0; i < len; ++i) {
                 args[i] = arguments[i];
             }
             return args;
         }

And also, if you've got a switch statement with more than 128 cases, you've probably got bigger problems on your hands than v8 optimizations.

I see some things in here that I can start switching to immediately for some of my node modules.

<comment><USER5> Huge switches are common in the inner loop of emulators and interpreters. They tend to end up with a 256-case switch to handle the next byte in the instruction stream.

<comment><USER4> I understand that use case, but in my opinion it would be much cleaner (and speculating faster) to have an 256-slot array...and routing with _opcodes[byte.charCodeAt(0)]();_ or something similar.

<comment><USER6> Function calls are expensive if they are not optimized. However, the same is true for switch/case trees, and even for JIT'd code (dynamically created functions) ...

In the Javascript world, "Your Mileage May Vary" truly is a motto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if there is any way to check the optimization status in the browser? It would be awesome to have a chrome audit that parsed through all of the functions in a js file and told you the optimization status of each and why.

<comment><USER8> Not the friendliest program but [http://mrale.ph/irhydra/1/](http://mrale.ph/irhydra/1/) can display all sorts of intermediate representations spit out by v8

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My team's developers, who are in a Firefox-only setting (so no V8 to consider), use every optimization/squishing trick they can find on github - grunt, browserify, uglifyjs etc - thinking that the smaller the number of javascript resources and the smaller those files are the faster the pages will not just download but also render.

Is it probable that SpiderMonkey and other engines suffer from forms of this deoptimization hell when rendering? And would it be a safe guess that whatever mod_pagespeed does to a page's javascript resources is less likely to result in this hell than these other tools? Thanks.

<comment><USER6> The only size-related optimization that I can think of is that V8 doesn't inline functions (but does optimize them) when they are more than X characters long, comments included.

I'm not sure about SpiderMonkey, but they may very well use this kind of optimization too. However, I would guess that Uglifying files should not increase execution speed for any noticeable amount.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Which is better `undefinedVar === void 0` or `typeof undefinedVar === 'undefined'`?

here says: [http://www.2ality.com/2013/04/check- undefined.html](http://www.2ality.com/2013/04/check-undefined.html) void 0 is safe.

<comment><USER11> I think minifiers use the former because it's shorter, and thus requires less space.

<comment><USER12> the other benefit is that `void 0` cannot be overwritten in sloppy mode, whereas you can do something crazy like this:

        undefined = 'lol';

<comment><USER13> No you can't. You can do something like function(undefined) {}, but the global 'undefined' is non-writable and non-configurable.

<comment><USER14> That's an ES5 change. With ES3, you can overwrite NaN, Infinity, and undefined.

<comment><USER15> Only in strict mode I though no ?

<comment><USER14> Generally. Technically, it's a "breaking change".

As you can imagine, this didn't actually affect anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> An excellent overview! A bit worrying that using an object as a hash table and iterating over its keys using ForIn would prevent optimization - I had always thought that this was a common use case that would be well-supported by the optimizer! I suppose in that case, if you need fast reads of all keys and can afford slower writes, you could maintain an array of the keys at insertion time and just loop through that?

<comment><USER12> `for ... in` is a relatively slow construct anyway, the faster option (a lot more verbose) is:

        var keys = Object.keys(obj),
            length = keys.length,
            key, i;
        for (i = 0; i < length; i++) {
          key = keys[i];
        }

While this is not _exactly_ the same as for..in, it usually behaves how you'd expect and is significantly faster for a couple of reasons:

1\. In a for..in loop the engine must keep track of the keys already iterated over, whereas in the fast version we can simply increment a counter and do a fast array lookup.

2\. It's possible to add properties to the object that you're iterating within the body of the for..in statement, and these will be iterated too. Doing such a thing is obviously very rare but it's the kind of edge case the JS engine must keep track of.

<comment><USER17> Is a plain for loop with a counter significantly faster than a forEach? With Object.keys I've been enjoying the simplicity of statements like

      Object.keys(obj).forEach(function (key) {
        console.log(obj[key]);
      });

but does that hamstring my performance?

<comment><USER18> Your mileage will vary depending on the browser. If you really care (as in profiling identified this as a hotspot) you should measure the alternatives you're considering.

But note that in your specific case chances are the cost of a bunch of console.log() calls completely swamps the cost of either a for loop or a forEach call. console.log() has _incredibly_ complicated behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I created a jsperf to measure a hashtable-like object with for-in/Objekt.keys

The performance differs only with 50%, I expected more actually. Am I doing something wrong?

[http://jsperf.com/for-in-with-hashtable-like-object](http://jsperf.com/for- in-with-hashtable-like-object)

<comment><USER20> I guess it depends on what you're intent is;

[http://jsperf.com/for-in-with-hashtable-like-object/4](http://jsperf.com/for- in-with-hashtable-like-object/4)

<comment><USER19> The article states "Code compiled by the optimizing compiler can easily be, say, 100x faster than the code generated by the generic compiler"

So expected a quite more than a factor of 2 ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Instead of avoiding all those optimization killers, a much more higher impact approach is to fix this in the V8 project. You not only make your own code faster, you make thousands if not millions of pieces of code faster.

<comment><USER2> I was wondering this too. I expect/hope the answer would be "we're working on it" in most cases, but I worry it would be "it simply isn't possible" in some or most scenarios.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Useful stuff. Does anyone have similar information for other javascript engines?

</comment><comment><USER23> Title should probably be "V8 Optimization Killers".

<comment><USER24> I'm really sick of these recent JavaScript performance related posts that only talk about V8.

<comment><USER25> Just a cursory glance at browser stats seems to show chrome as the most popular which would make sense. I highly doubt anyone using internet explorer is coming to SO.

<comment><USER26> Chrome on iOS doesn't even use V8.

<comment><USER27> Chrome on iOS is Safari in a box.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


High CPU use by taskhost.exe when Windows 8.1 user name contains "user" - <AUTHOR> https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3053711 <comment><USER3> "Resolution:

To resolve the issue, do not create a user account contains the string "user" on the computer."

That's not really a resolution so much as a workaround.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, seriously. I love how their workaround is "don't do that," too.

<comment><USER5> It's actually, "do not ... have done that".

<comment><USER6> Go back in time and subtly influence your past behaviour to avoid having created an account where the username contains the word 'user'. Alternatively, upgrade to Windows 12.

<comment><USER7> Seriously. How should I have known not to name my Windows account trousersnake?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In other news, the printer won't print on Tuesdays (please print on Mondays instead):

[https://mdzlog.alcor.net/2009/08/15/bohrbugs-openoffice- org-...](https://mdzlog.alcor.net/2009/08/15/bohrbugs-openoffice-org-wont- print-on-tuesdays/)

<comment><USER9> Reminds me of y2k bugs where the clocked rolled over to 1900, and the days of the week no longer were correct.

Also the email bug some university had that they couldn't send emails further than 500 miles exactly.

<comment><USER10> 500 Miles story: [http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html](http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Patient: "It hurts when I touch my abdomen"

Doctor: "Solution: stop touching your abdomen"

<comment><USER12> Patient: "It hurts when I touch my abdomen"

Doctor: "Your index finger is broken."

<comment><USER13> \-- Oliver Sachs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My Indian cousin Useraji doesn't find this funny…

<comment><USER15> Or anyone named Kauser. Because screw them, that's why!

<comment><USER16> Some form devious _Kaspar Hauser Syndrome_ reinforcement at wirk here?

<comment><USER15> Yeah, better keep him confined to an old Windows NT box down in the data center.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> from the people who bought you "if you don't want your contacts to use your wifi for free, change your wifi station name to something with "_optout" in the name.

They're using pretty shit programmers these days I guess. Don't Apple and Google use pretty smart guys? How were they hoping to catch up with these muppets running the show?

<comment><USER18> > _Don 't Apple and Google use pretty smart guys? How were they hoping to > catch up with these muppets running the show?_

Oh don't worry. Google will definitely add another insult with Android. They outsource dealing the injury to OEMs. As for Apple, I expect the next devices to be able to only connect with Apple's Wi-Fi devices. AFAIR they already did that with Bluetooth file transfer.

<comment><USER19> How is it that bluetooth file transfer still comes up in conversations? Obviously I could bring up a personal anecdote about the fact that the last time I have seen anyone using bluetooth for transferring anything was probably in 2005, when I used a nokia 6310i to transfer some contacts. Nowadays if you are on android you touch the phones together and the file is sent by "magic"(since the user doesn't care if it's wi-fi direct or bluetooth), and if you are on iOS you send an email(and again - regular customer doesn't care _how_ the data gets to the other end). Is there really a group of customers who would like to have an explicit option for bluetooth transfer?

<comment><USER20> I use Bluetooth to transfer pictures between my wife's phone and mine. MMS resizes / compresses the picture, and I want the full version. And it's easier than setting up some sort of upload system for the few times I use it.

<comment><USER18> Indeed. Bluetooth transfer is the one thing you can count on working between any random two phones from this decade - be it yours and your wife's, or your and your couchsurfing host, or whoever. Or at least you _could_ count on it before people like Apple decided to fuck up the technology that worked for no real reason.

<comment><USER21> There's no rent to be extracted from things that just work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do Nvidia updates still make that UpdatusUser account? Oops.

<comment><USER22> Or all of the OEMs out there who do this out of habit...

I guess don't do upgrade-installs to 8.1 (though I haven't advocated doing those just about ever).

<comment><USER23> Why? I updated using the windows store from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 pretty much immediately on my Lenovo Ideapad y510p.

Also note to future me: no, these ideapad notebooks have nothing to do with thinkpads. Do not buy an ideapad.

<comment><USER22> I meant upgrade installs on OEMs.

Like specifically HP, because HP had a default account of 'HP User' for years.

<comment><USER23> Thankfully with Windows 10, it seems to be possible to reinstall fresh. Not sure if doing so will reinstall all the crapware though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'd love to see the source code of the bug.

<comment><USER25> I'd love to see the source code for windows...

<comment><USER26> Sign the NDA!

<comment><USER25> No thanks. I shouldn't have to sign an NDA just to see the source code of something running on hardware I own...

That's also why I run gnu/linux and only use windows when forced to (for work or gamedev).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just checked, one of the automatically present accounts on the Windows 8.1 machine I have access to is:

"HomeGroupUser$"

It seems to be mostly undocumented "feature," searching for something "official" I've just found this "errata":

[https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/kb/981068](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/981068)

"Creating or joining a HomeGroup creates the HomeGroupUser$ account and the HomeUsers group, and adds all local accounts to the group."

People have real problems with it:

[http://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/forum/windows_10-...](http://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/forum/windows_10-security/windows-10-start-up-user- account/e754a513-c303-44b2-b489-3f4436a5a2d8)

</comment><comment><USER28> This has to be trivially solvable in a backwards-compatible manner (at least if the library at fault is one of windows' own which they update with windows update). Win 8.1 is an OS they actively update.

So why isn't this just fixed in the next update?

It would be one thing if they had to research the problem, and presented a workaround in the meantime. But they appear to have found the cause! To me it seems it would take ten times longer to _find_ this bug, than to fix it. Once they spent the effort to find it, why not patch it?

<comment><USER29> This sounds like there's a functionality that depends on usernames having "user" in their name. Maybe there's no trivial way of distinguishing between what the system is looking for and a "legitimate" user and fixing that would require a change to the user accounts model.

I'm purely speculating here but I've seen my fair share of seemingly simple- to-fix bugs requiring huge changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I am not sure how I would even write this bug.

<comment><USER31> And this is exactly why humans write bugs. We are not very good at understanding systems of systems.

<comment><USER30> I didn't want to come across as arrogant, but the exercise of trying to understand what would drive us to a specific failure is always an interesting one. You must identify the patterns that are behind bugs that look stupid like this one.

Is the code making decisions based on the username instead of a specific attribute of the user structure? That's one recognizable anti-pattern. Is it trying to parse the user's home path and encountering what looks like a folder with a special name?

<comment><USER21> You don't have to be arrogant to feel superior to this bug. There's no way that this is some inadvertent emergent effect of complex mechanisms reacting to each other. Somebody wrote code that in some context searches username strings for the substring "user." Even worse, under many circumstances when it finds one, it just shits itself probably looking to check that user against something it can't find, then looks for again, but can't find, then looks for again...

The fact that it's obsessing you to figure out what kind of thought process could originate code that produces an interaction that expresses itself in this way IMO means that you'll probably never write code like this. Magic words, magic numbers...

<comment><USER32> All we know is that it triggers on the string "user"; could be that it CRCs to "00000000" or some other magic value, which _then_ actually triggers the bug - and that there are other strings that could do this. (Which doesn't make your explanation implausible - per Occam's razor, yours would require fewer extra entities, and thus _looks_ more likely - just that we don't know for sure)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The truly mind-blowing thing here is that it's "intermittent" ... so they only _sometimes_ check the username for "user" ??

<comment><USER34> Sounds like it's triggered by something else, such as the Windows equivalent of a cron job, but it runs much longer if you have a username with the substring "user".

<comment><USER27> Yes, the DLL mentioned is related to the built-in task called "Disk Footprint."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Maybe "user" in user name causes recursion. Perhaps the "recursion" isn't trivial to fix.

I hope that Microsoft doesn't use the same reasoning for security vulnerabilities.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is another example of a poorly written MS KnowledgeBase article. It's version 1.0, dated 2015-01-05. It apparently has not been touched in a year despite at least one glaring spelling mistake.

For those who want to know what's going on, see this report from the year before, complete with stack trace:

* [http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-...](http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-performance/taskhostexe-dfpcommondll-thread-high-cpu/c16ce12f-5bc4-4f59-9e08-7404c554a8e5)

</comment><comment><USER37> High CPU use when Windows is installed.

</comment><comment><USER38> Is it possible to rename an account previously named user ? my computer running Windows 8.1 came with such account name AS an administrator.

</comment><comment><USER39> On windows8.1 I found that a program with "update" in the name - <USER2> MyUpdate.exe was treated differently by the OS.

<comment><USER40> _How_ was it treated differently?

<comment><USER36> I'm guessing that this will turn out to be the well-known Installer Detection, around since the time of Windows NT 6.0.

* [https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/cc709628(v=ws.10...](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/cc709628\(v=ws.10\).aspx)

* [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/uac/2006/01/13/identificati...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/uac/2006/01/13/identification-of-administrative-applications/)

<comment><USER39> That looks like it! Wow, crazy. My application was updating some data but not installing an application.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I guess someone who implemented this passed a whiteboard interview...

<comment><USER42> You were probably being funny. However, if I take this comment seriously, I find it unfair. Large products these days have so many moving parts that it is not always easy to reason how one part of the product may cause mysterious, interesting and incorrect behaviour in another part of the product. I wouldn't be dismissive of the calibre of an engineer just because he or she introduced a silly looking bug. One really needs to understand the root cause of a bug before one can judge the skill of the engineer behind it.

However, the fact that they do not fix this bug and instead offers a workaround as a resolution might offer some clues about the quality of the code and architecture of the product or their priorities or both.

As part of my job, I have discovered several bugs in Microsoft products or APIs that were blocking projects I was working on. When I filed service requests (my then employer had a premier support account with Microsoft), very smart support engineers from Microsoft were assigned to my service requests. By the way, I am calling them smart because they understood the issue accurately and quickly; that in itself could be a lot of trouble while dealing with support engineers of some companies.

I remember two such service requests in particular.

1\. An incorrect implementation of WebDAV protocol related to WWW-Authenticate header and redirects. It was too long ago to remember the exact details but the issue was similar to but not exactly same as [https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/kb/922722](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/922722). We were trying to write some software that allows MOSS to be integrated with our SSO products. Since it was not the exact same issue as the one described in the KB article, the workaround provided in the KB article did not work for us. The response provided to me by Microsoft Premier Support was that the fix for the issue was considered multiple times in the past but due to the technical challenges involved, the changes were not approved internally in Microsoft.

2\. ReadEventLog ( [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/aa3...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/aa363674\(v=vs.85\).aspx) ) fails with error 87 under certain conditions when dwReadFlags has the EVENTLOG_SEEK_READ flag set. The resolution they provide at [https://support.microsoft.com/en- in/kb/177199](https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/kb/177199) is to use the EVENTLOG_SEQUENTIAL_READ flag instead. While that sounds acceptable in theory, when I actually tried it out, I found another bug there. When the event log file at the remote system is 2 MB or larger, ReadEventLog with EVENTLOG_SEQUENTIAL_READ flag did not honour the nNumberOfBytesToRead parameter at all. No matter how large a buffer we allocated to read events, due to this bug we would get exactly one event for every ReadEventLog call. When this issue does not occur, we can get hundreds or thousands of events in one call. But due to this bug, we get one event per call. These two bugs together caused such a major performance issue in our product that it made our product practically unusable in some scenarios. Once again, the Microsoft support engineer began working on the service request very swiftly. He wrote his own code and replicated the exact problematic behaviour we were facing. However, he could not offer a resolution; he said that the issue was present in a very complex part of the product and it was very unlikely that the product team would ever spend time on fixing this bug.

These responses led me to believe that there is a problem with the code quality and architecture of their products that makes bug fixing difficult for them. In my 10 years of career, I have never worked on a product where code complexity was cited as a reason for not fixing a genuine bug.

<comment><USER43> People have whole blogs dedicated to finding workarounds for quirks in Microsoft products. It's always an adventure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What might be the root cause?

<comment><USER45> My guess? Somewhere in the system there's some old tool that's passing user data as a text table. It has a header row. So the dev decided to throw out the row if it contained "user".

After filtering, the program can't find the user name. So it calls the function again.

This probably happened when they moved an old unix app to Windows.

<comment><USER46> This is a cool theory, but why would it call the function again? Shouldn't it just give up? It's not like it would get a different result next time.

<comment><USER47> You could image code like this:

      for (pos = 0; !found; pos++) {
        row = get_next_row();
        if (strstr(row, "user") {
          // this is obviously a header row
          continue
        }
        if (strstr(row, user_name)) {
          found = 1;
        }
      }

<comment><USER48>
        for (pos = 0; !found; pos++)

This is so cool, I have never thought about this in like a decade of programming. I mean using a bool variable within a for loop.

<comment><USER49> It doesn't apply to that sample code but maybe this is generally safer:

       for (pos = 0; !found || pos < limit; pos++)

but there is nothing wrong in using an iterator and break out of the loop, especially if the language or the library gives you iterators.

<comment><USER50> That should be logical AND, not logical OR, because if you go over the limit and the right side is False, the left side will always be True if the item is not found, and True || False is still True, and the loop continues infinitely.

When you are over the iteration limit you want to trigger True && False which is False to break out of the loop where the right side False is the condition when pos > limit

Btw this is covered in Code Complete Second Edition by Microsoft Press on page 378-380

<comment><USER49> You are right. I believed I didn't need a test for that. See what happens? :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Hopefully there aren't too many enterprises out there with [domain]\user[0-9]+ type definitions!

<comment><USER52> I doubt it. Given the symptoms of the issue, I'm sure IT departments would be on the phone with MS in a heart beat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Maybe this "feature" enables some kind of backdoor either within the task or corresponding library. It's strange that the task is functioning in a manner where the task is dependent upon a string (account) that contains the word "user."

</comment><comment><USER54> Master Fix could be : "Avoid using this Operating System."

<comment><USER55> Relevant: [http://superuser.com/questions/957907/unable-to-install- font...](http://superuser.com/questions/957907/unable-to-install-fonts-on- windows-10)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Most hilarious KB I read today.

<comment><USER57> That today frightens me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I actually got a couple Win81 VMs that have VMUser as a user and I never noticed any CPU usage issues.

But the non-solution is just pathetic response from MS - they used to talk in updates and fixits but with all the focus on Windows 10 now, they hardly seem to have a reason or incentive to care about older OSes.

<comment><USER59> >I actually got a couple Win81 VMs that have VMUser as a user and I never noticed any CPU usage issues.

Then I propose a new solution, just re-host your windows installation in a VM!

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Short of completely re-imaging the machine, you could delete the offending user profile and re-create it. As people have pointed out renaming a user leaves messy jumble of old and new, and may not solve the problem.

</comment><comment><USER61> Is this resolved or able to replicate on windows 10?

<comment><USER62> The article applies to just Windows 8.1, so it isn't a problem in Windows 10.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Oh strstr() - that witchery... your foul black magic craft has been poisoning people's minds for 40 years...

</comment><comment><USER64> Sort of like that hilarious systemd bug with parsing the 'debug' kernel argument.

<comment><USER65> That was no bug...

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Sucks to be in the Grundhauser clan right now.

</comment><comment><USER67> This is how it looks when in charge is a corporation which does not see any plausible reason for throwing resources at a given kind of problems. No mater that this is something that affects the paying customer in a very direct/personal way, no mater that this is just one symptom for possibly a wider range of buried issues. Imagine this report occurring in the community alternative ReactOS, and about the kind of attitude it would receive. ReactOS just released 0.4.1, BTW!</comment>


Ask HN: My Bedroom Is a Trigger for Binging Reddit/HN? - <AUTHOR> Hello. I am trying to reduce my reddit/hn binging. It's starting to affect my studies. But it's only when I am in my bedroom?
Now it gets better when I'm not in my bedroom, or my house. However it still takes over. For example: I go to the gym, come home, and change my clothes. There is a sudden urge to lay in bed and browse the internet. Sometimes it's not an urge for social media, but instead it's nostalgia for my ex.
I literally cannot use my desk in my bedroom for work, studying, etc. I want to change this so that I can actually get work done without having to go to a coffee shop everytime.
- I tried the Pomodoro method - I tried a siteblocking extension - After reading the NPR article on heroin addicts, I tried forcing myself to binge read only using my non-dominant hand.
Nothing seems to work for more than a few days. It's harder when I'm sleep deprived. Unfortunately, my schedule means that I don't always get a good nights sleep.
Are there any other suggestions? <comment><USER2> Strip the bed. Wash absolutely everything on it. Clean your bedroom to within an inch of its life.

I piddle pointlessly when tired. If my room isn't clean enough, I'm tired and can't focus.</comment>


Biot: Network-Aware Information Pipe for the Internet of Things - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/enbygg3/biot <comment><USER2> just out of curiosity, why did you choose to host this on bitbucket and not Github?</comment>


Handwriting vs. typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/16/cognitive-benefits-handwriting-decline-typing <comment><USER2> I'm constantly bewildered by this notion that writing by hand is slow and thus bad, and that typing is fast and consequently good.

In my daily routine work as a programmer I find most of my work consists of thinking rather than writing. Or to twist the words a little: I don't think my typing impairs my creative ability, because the hard part of my job is thinking out the right solution. If you can't hold that thought in your head without typing the solution into your program quick enough to run and test it, perhaps you're not seeing patterns clearly.

As I work I constantly scribble notes on paper as I find it helps me think. When debugging a concrete problem, I find myself jotting down elements of the stack trace on paper so I can more easily retrace my steps. Concurrently I write down interesting things I come across that needs checking which I can return to when I'm done with my current line of thought.

Yet I'm fully aware I'm moving against the tide. I occasionally write longer pieces by hand several times a week, such as theories and findings. This helps me internalise patterns, solutions, and conclusions to interesting problems. Occasionally there are patterns and I can correlate good solutions to a problem to one I've solved in the past. But foremost it helps me _think_ better about the types of problems I'm trying to solve.

Programming is a creative discipline and not always about reapplying the same old patterns others have used before you. It's about craftsmanship and about learning the trade; about recognising those patterns and seeing new opportunity.

More to the point, my limitation isn't the speed at which I type things into my computer. The limitation is my brain not thinking fast enough.

<comment><USER3> For me, it's not that handwriting is a bottleneck in getting my work done; it's that it's psychologically annoying.

For instance, I also get severely annoyed sitting at red lights or driving behind someone going 10 mph under the speed limit (I joke with people that the only thing that ever makes me angry is having a green light turn red right before I get to it). Is it really going to make that much of a difference in getting where I'm going? No, maybe 1-2 minutes top. But the mental anguish it causes is quite bothersome to me, and it's the same way with writing by hand.

<comment><USER4> I can hope you are merely invoking hyperbole. Otherwise... wow.

<comment><USER3> "I joke with people that..."

<comment><USER4> Fair enough. Even the speed of writing felt overstated to me. And going below the speed limit. I mean, sure there are some days someone going slow annoys me. There are some days I'm sure I'm that person. They are thankfully low on the realm of crap I notice, though.

For me, writing is a bit slower than typing. However, arranging thoughts on paper is faster than the same in a computer. Heaven help you if you want to write something that includes basic graphs or spacial information. And I'm not an artist.

<comment><USER5> I don't think the speed of writing is overstated. I am not a touch typist, and don't type fast (without typos), but it's __still__ faster and neater than writing by hand. Nearly every time I write something, I get part-way in, and think, "Man, this would be so much faster if I were typing ...", or "This would be easier to read if I could insert a few lines here".

I still like writing, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The most crucial distinction where paper wins is that writing is a _" nonlinear"_ process whereas typing with the tools we have today is "linear". You could use something like a mindmapping tool, but you're again constrained to a fairly rigid format rather than giving you the ease of switching. _Eg: you can write down a bunch of things and draw arrows between them. Or draw a graph /sketch. Or draw a link between the thing you had on the first line and something related that came up towards the end of the page, etc._ To me, that means that thinking on paper is much more free than typing, and one has available a space of a larger dimensionality, to represent one's ideas.

However fast one can type, the rigidity of typing is the biggest obstacle, imho. I do not think speed of typing-vs-writing ought to be a significant factor; I can think while I write, but not while I type (but that may be because I've written a lot, over decades, as a student growing up in India -- and nowhere near as much typing).

I've tried typing(laptop, phone, tablet), writing on a convertible tablet (Lenovo X230T and Xournal/linux) and paper is still the most usable, by far. Once I have something worked out on paper, I transfer the notes to the computer for storage -- either typed-up using markdown/Pandoc (since I use a lot of LaTeX math) or handwritten. Of late, I also occasionally use Google Keep for jotting down small things.

<comment><USER7> > _I can think while I write, but not while I type_ //

To me handwriting is more rigid in that one can't rearrange thoughts without drawing big arrows and having lots of crossings out. But then I only type and don't hand-write so perhaps I've lost track of what I'm missing out on.

Do you touch type? I don't by the strictest definition but I don't look at the keyboard and can have a conversation whilst typing - I'm not even sure any more if I can hand-write and think on an alternate topic, but I can type as I internally oralise thoughts without having to consider the physical movement. I'm sure this is true for most people who can type without looking.

Whenever I'm thinking about something with visual creative elements or anything with maths/equations then I'll use pencil and paper but as my working life has moved away from that, except in doing pure sketches without text, then it's quite rare for me to sit down with a pad.

I've just finished doing a python course and it's the first time I've listened to lectures and not used pad & pencil for note taking, instead just using PyCharm and a python console for "notes" and "doodles".

<comment><USER8> I did a survey of my classmates' study habits in medical school. Two of the habits most strongly associated with good performance were taking hand-written notes and reviewing them. The worst habit was typing in class. I heard Clay Shirky has even banned screens in his lectures because he found a "second hand smoking" effect: the person _next to_ the person with the laptop had poorer performance.

I think a major part of handwritten notes is that it does force you to select what you're actually going to write down, and that is an inherently synthetic activity. Synthetic activities lead to more effective memory formation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A quote from the article: "...a paper published in April in the journal Psychological Science... claim that note-taking with a pen, rather than a laptop, gives students a better grasp of the subject."

I find it odd that when some praise handwriting as a great mental tool, others obviously consider this as a some sort of ... ailment?

I assure you, handwriting is not a symptom of slow typing speed, and it does not need to be remedied by typing faster.

With Vim I can touch type quite fast enough. But the typing speed is useless unless I can understand what I am supposed to write.

Writing on paper improves my thinking to a point where I'm obviously partially incapacitated when implementing algorithms if I don't have a pen and paper at hand. And this is no exaggeration, I've tried in the past to go long periods without paper.

There is a threshold in algorithmic complexity after which I cannot hold all the variables in my head that I need to work out the solution.

The paper and pen feels like giving me 3x amount the working memory and increased reasoning skills.

Maybe the act of handwriting stimulates more areas of the brain, thus creating more associations along the way?

<comment><USER10> I type rather quickly (fast enough that I can type faster than I can compose), but still prefer pen and paper when reasoning.

It's because the pen and paper mixes diagramming, text, and non-linear note taking in a completely different way.

There's just no good typing analog to drawing a box around something, and then an arrow to another boxed item with some notes next to the line about the relationship. There's no good typing analog to writing notes off to the side, and then notes on those notes, and arrows between them. (There are okay mouse analogs, but constantly shifting my hands from keyboard to mouse is fairly annoying; much more so than just writing.)

It's not that I can get a computer to do those things with various editors, but rather, that typing in the instructions to do them is fundamentally mentally different than actually doing the motions of the boxes and arrows by hand. (My pet theory is that my brain is using information about the tactile movements to store relationship information in a way that it doesn't understand for digital documents, but I am not a psychologist.)

This difference has nothing to do with typing speed, but rather, the nature of the input device you're using.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Funny, just got an email from my 4y/o's montessori school explaining why they start with cursive!

"It is commonly asked why children learn cursive writing instead of print in Montessori classrooms. From a practical point of view, it is thought that very young children's scribbles and early drawings are flowing and circular, more like cursive writing; making it more natural to learn first. At the Casa level, children love to repeat things making it a good time to practice penmanship. Given the distinct shape of each cursive letter, there is less confusion and less tendency to reverse letters such as b, d, p, and q. In printing there can be a tendency to mix upper and lower case letters together (e.g. CaNada,) which does not usually happen with cursive letters. Cursive also seems to be a more efficient way of writing since the letters are joined together.

Another reason stems from the fact that in Montessori schools children write before they read. In traditional schools, children in the first years of school are learning to read and write simultaneously and can be confused if they are learning to write in cursive and read in print. In Montessori, when the child is three and four years old, he is learning how to 'write'. He learns the sounds the letters make, learns to recognize them and learns how to form them. Once he knows the sounds, he can put sounds together to write words with the Movable Alphabet (cut out cursive letters that can be moved about freely and combined to make words) and eventually, with pencil and paper. For children who come to school knowing the alphabet names associated to print letters, it helps that the cursive letters look different when they learn the sounds of the letters. As a further step, children learn to read. When this happens they read print letters. Once children know the cursive letters, they are usually able to easily recognize the printed letters. So, they have the advantage over children who have learned to recognize print first and do not necessarily recognize cursive letters."

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't stand writing. It's slow and it's messy, and I can't read a lot of other people's handwriting. I write about 30 words per minute and I type 167 wpm. Perhaps there are some cognitive benefits but I'm willing to give them up in exchange for the ease of getting my thoughts down quickly.

The only case that I still prefer handwriting is doing math. It's much easier for me to write out equations and "explore" things with pencil and paper over using a program. That said, I normally find that having something like Mathematica or a Julia notebook open in addition to pencil/paper is the best combination. One tool for drafting and thinking, and another tool for testing my ideas out.

<comment><USER12> What are you typing at 167 wpm? I played on typeracer.com and topped out around 130 wpm.

<comment><USER3> 10fastfingers.com. I was pretty proud of that run because I was 4/120,000 (I normally average about 142 wpm though). I think my Typeracer record is like 150-155 wpm but I don't play that as often.

<comment><USER13> Just now I tried typeracer, the best I could get was 61 wpm.

However I am very tired, lying on my back in bed with my legs cross and my laptop resting on my stomach, propped against one leg.

I do know for sure I can type a lot faster when I am just thinking about what to type, than when I am transcribing someone else's text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Handwriting is only good if you can actually read your own handwriting.

My handwriting is shit. Terrible. Infact it is so bad I almost failed school.

At the age of 5 I was told by various authority figures that I was thick because I couldn't write. I vividly remember being told that some people have dyslexia, and that why they can't write, however I'm just slow, and that I'll have to just try harder.

Fortunately my mother decided that this was bollocks and forced the school to actually try. All through first, middle and high school my handwriting held me back. It is exceeding tedious to have all the correct answers but not be able to express them in a written format, the only format that gets you marks. When I was choosing my GCSEs at the age of 14, I had to weight up my potential career choices for someone who appears illiterate, and had a very high chance of leaving school at 16 with no qualifications. (the standard thing to do in my situation is to only do maths, a single science and English).

Fortunately my school was progressive and decided to try giving me an apple eMate ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMate_300](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMate_300)). This literally changed my life.

It was the beginning of me realising that perhaps I wasn't a failure, and that I might be able to actually achieve something other than living in the family home.

I have a house, a wife, child and a first class degree. All of which would not have been possible without typing.

So the next time someone says that typing is inferior to hand writing, and that its very simple to write at the speed of thought, have some empathy for the legions of people that cannot write for shit.

<comment><USER15> Out of curiosity, why do you think your handwriting is so bad? Motor skills or something cognitive? E.g. can you draw, solder, sculpt?

Do you believe its a trade-off with a different type of skill that you have as a particular strength?

Mine tends to vary. Occasionally its beautiful, mostly its average and sometimes its scrawl no matter the effort. I'm not sure about the mechanism behind the difference.

<comment><USER14> My fine motor skills are "unrefined" shall we say. My drawing is equally rubbish, soldering is good though (surface mount and everything!)

the label that was finally attached was dysgraphia. However any skill that I learned after the age of about 16 is largely unaffected. I learnt drumming from 16, and fencing at 19, and there is no problem there, however tennis I fail horribly at, lacrosse I'm ok at.

I have a journal that I draw in, however its a real effort to write legibly. Its terribly frustrating to write long words so I sort of scribble the intermediate letters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > The group that learned to write letters by hand were better at recognising > them than the group that learned to type them on a computer.

I have noticed for the physical act of writing with a pen on paper concepts and diagrams helps me internalize and learn them more. There is some kind of an improved feedback mechanism of sorts. Than, say if I do it in an editor, mind mapping software, or some kind of diagram creating app.

When I program and design I always think with paper and pen (or whiteboard if in a group). A lot of it is not really "writing or typing" as in actaully writing code, but mostly it is scribbling blocks, arrows, labels. Maybe an API description.

For price + "user experience" ( here = responsiveness, latency ). Nothing compares to pen, paper or whiteboard and marker.

</comment><comment><USER17> I hate it that there's such a large dichotomy between typing and handwriting.

I hand-write stuff all the time. Not because I'm a doddering fossil or because I'm a luddite or anything like that...I find that hand-writing notes from class helps me remember them better, and hand-writing letters and cards gives a much more personal touch.

But then I have all these sheafs of dead trees that I have to deal with. I need to make sure I have my notebook if I think I'm going to take notes. And afterwards, if I think "I took a class...maybe three months ago? Four? How far back in this notebook was that? Is this even in the same notebook?" Nothing is searchable.

I've looked into Evernote, modnotebook, and a few other solutions (including a fancy smartpen-and-paper combo that's supposed to read and digitize my writing), none of which actually work for me. Sometimes it's just that my tiny, illegible scribblings are incomprehensible to OCR software, and sometimes it's that the "solution" involves changing my workflow in a way that makes it not work for me anymore.

Microsoft have tried to solve this problem a few times (Windows for Pen Computing, anybody? OneNote?). Others have taken a stab at it too. I'm not at all close to the right answer myself; I only know that everything I've seen so far has not been it.

I bet this is one of those problems that, if you could solve it in the right way, you would legitimately change the world.

<comment><USER18> One of the best things I did personally was to overhaul my shitty handwriting into something I'm actually happy with, and isn't just "how things panned out".

I'm saying this because doing such a thing, in your case, could very well turn out to work towards making your handwriting tech compatible as well, thus eliminating that hurdle. Win-win, really.

 _Edit: As a further advantage, I actively think of the way I write and incrementally improve upon certain letters for efficiency and legibility. Pardon me for tooting my horn so vigorously. XD_

<comment><USER19> Could you please post an example of your handwriting?

<comment><USER18> Sure, here's a small sample: [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19268997/20141218_013221...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19268997/20141218_013221.jpg)

<comment><USER17> I find all caps / block letters slower to write and harder to read. What made you decide to go with that approach?

<comment><USER18> I think the term is small caps. :) In either case, I went for it when I was 15-16, so it's more than half a lifetime ago. The underlying reason was simply that my handwriting was absolutely terrible, and if notes were left for too long, even I couldn't decipher them.

So... I saw a problem, and I fixed it. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I definitely think more freely with pen and paper than when I'm sitting at a keyboard. I have no idea if this is innate, or because I grew up in the 70's and 80's and learned to write by hand. I do feel fortunate to have learned to write by hand at an early age, but also to feel totally at home in front of a keyboard.

I'm just about to finish writing my first book, and it's been really interesting to see which mode I use the most. I'd love to be able to write my initial draft at the keyboard, because it would make my work a lot easier. But often times I need to put my computer aside, take a stack of blank paper, and write out my initial draft by hand. I kept a journal for many years, including the year I spent living on a bicycle. I slept in a tent every night, and wrote in a journal by headlamp or candlelight every night for a year. I don't know if that's what cemented my dependence on writing by hand to express my thoughts clearly, or if it's human nature to think more clearly when writing by hand.

The same holds true for revising and editing. I do my best revision work by printing out a copy of what I'm working on, and marking it up with a pen and then entering those revisions. I can't edit well working on a screen.

This article was really interesting to me because I have a son who'll be four soon. I'd been assuming that I need to write by hand because that's how I learned to put my thoughts into writing. This article makes me want to teach him handwriting so he'll be able to choose between the two modes as well.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a lefty who was forced to write with my right hand because of some superstitions, I won't look back. Never. I will always prefer the key before the pen.

Using a pen to write caused a trauma I tried to turn into something useful by learning to write with my left hand. It ended up nice. I have two different styles now but I'll never be as fast as with my right hand because there are not enough chances to train it in real life (and no, I'll never fill sheets of paper with pointless words just for the sake of it again!).

I think (and hope) we'll pass the point where we'll have to write at all and I see the touch screen example not really as a development. I haven't seen anybody use that feature. Most will just pop up the keyboard and type using their trained routine that is so much faster. And everybody can read it...The possibility to write on a touch pad is a salute to pen & paper. Signing is the only really advantage we get from it and that can be solved also. I think the future is in talk (how about eye tracking?) and further on in brain interfaces. Moving a pen will of course still be there then. Like people riding horses today. Maybe my semi-readable writing style will become art then...

</comment><comment><USER22> > Operating a keyboard is not the same at all: all you have to do is press the > right key.

Well, that's quite a biased notion. I could as well just say that operating a pen is just pressing it against the paper, while using a keyboard means a lot more: proper alignment of fingers on the home row, learning which finger should be used for which keys, etc.

<comment><USER23> True, but proper cursive writing requires much finer motor skills then hitting keys on your a typical keyboard.

Btw a couple of years ago I noticed I couldn't properly write cursive anymore. Quite a terrifying experience really, finding out a skill I pretty much mastered was now fading away. Due to the rise of the keyboard and a job which made me usually only write diagrams and capitals. So I devoted myself to learning it again and after a couple of weeks I was back at the same level I was in engineering school. Now I really don't care if a pen is mightier than a keyboard, or faster, or better in any way (if it even is). It's just that I consider it another skill, just like typing, or just woodworking, whatnot, and trying to master a skill is what some humans instinctively do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've got two points to consider with this:

1) On a proper keyboard, I'm faster typing than writing. But on a "soft" keyboard like a tablet/phone (which I'm more likely to have with me), I'm much slower. This is probably due to a combination of inherent response times in the screen, and some increased degree of lag between keystrokes to aid touch detection.

2) When writing, I can easily jot down things like rough graphs to accompany data. Or rough layouts of a webpage to accompany the copy. I can quickly circle a block of text and draw an arrow to another block with a note about why they are linked. Whilst typing is faster for block text, I have yet to find an app that can even come remotely close to the ease of pen and paper for these quick sketches.

EXTRA: Not to mention the ease with which you can pass a sheet of paper to a colleague for them to read, markup edits, etc...

EXTRA 2: Plus it all works during a power cut ;)

<comment><USER25> I actually research this kind of thing a lot, Pen and paper is surely great, and passing it physically, and being offline are certainly its benefits.

[https://collusionapp.com/](https://collusionapp.com/) tries to solve the quick sketches and the sharing, which is the winnable battle, the fact that pen and paper is tangible can be won with tablets, but my company tried that, we made a pen and I thought it was good, but it didn't really stick. That might have been for a variety of confusing reasons though.

One thing though is that we are definitely getting closer, and I can at least attest that both hand writing and typing have their place, and the digital and real life hand writing also have their own special places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I use handwriting a lot, on tablets.

Handwriting lets you express in an artistic way, in some ways it is like voice, as it let's you use nuances.

We use mindmaps a lot, and graphs and drawings, storyboards. They are very powerful tools for communicating with other humans.

Text alone is so rigid, rational, absent of emotions.

(normal)Keyboards are very slow, if what you want is velocity, learn stenography.

</comment><comment><USER27> Phasing out cursive in favor of typing reflects an unfortunate reality in which the ability to bang out TPS reports is more important than writing a nice card to Grandma. But while I spend most waking hours at the keyboard, any creative process that involves translating thoughts into symbols is unsatisfying to me if keyboard is my _only_ input device.

I am excited about the shift to mobile computing partly because it forces us to come up with input paradigms that are more appropriate to the digital medium. My pipe dream is for inking on phones and tables to become ubiquitous. Between Samsung and Microsoft hardware, we are slowly inching in that direction. Now if I could only get off my ass and port Xournal to Android (I find myself living in a bizarro world where I fire up Linux mostly to take handwritten notes.)

</comment><comment><USER28> What a false dichotomy. Nobody's saying we should stop teaching kids to write. We're just not teaching them cursive. If writing by hand helps kids learn to read, they will still receive these benefits as they learn to write in print.

Does anyone know of a school that doesn't teach print anymore?

<comment><USER29> Finland has chosen to not teach handwriting anymore, teaching typing instead. [http://thelearnersway.net/ideas/2014/12/12/handwriting-vs- ty...](http://thelearnersway.net/ideas/2014/12/12/handwriting-vs-typing- reflecting-on-finlands-changing-policy-on-cursive-writing)

It is not just cursive versus block letters (which is not very important) but really should handwriting still be taught.

<comment><USER28> But in the first line:

"Finland recently made the news for its decision to shift away from a focus on handwriting. Beginning in 2016 students will not be required to learn cursive handwriting and instead will be taught typing skills."

So again, this is a school system ditching cursive. Not handwriting.

I disagree that cursive vs block letters is not important. In the past schools have taught both. But as typing replaces writing for long texts, cursive has become obsolete. Yet I still find many uses for block lettering. Let's teach block, and ditch cursive for typing instruction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Typing just adds another level to writing. For me it's like a check function that spots flow inconsistencies or brings up better choices of words, whereas the handwriting feels "organic". There is a more archaic, immediate, sensual sensori-motor connection between the ideas and the output. That's the type of connection that cursive consolidates (which is why I think it's priceless to teach kids cursive vs. script). Having learned to type on a typewriter (!) I see a huge difference in the way ideas flow due to the way word-processors have evolved. Maybe speed has something to do with this but I'm not sure. Using both definitely enriches writing.

</comment><comment><USER31> This article is full of bogus arguments about the limitations and rigid nature of word processors. Nobody stops you from using Inkscape, iPython Notebooks, or some other app for your scripts and get creative with your notes.

Certainly handwriting notes helps memorization but so does any other active participation. Personally I found coding little models and simulations about the subject matter far superior to handwriting notes. Maybe latter is not always compatible with the pace of the curriculum but this may only suggest the curriculum is designed for students handwriting along.

</comment><comment><USER32> I personally find the act of handwriting something helps me recall it later. I barely even read-back my handwritten notes because they become irrelevant almost the moment I write them down.

<comment><USER13> When I was in school I found that I rarely read my notes after class, not even when studying for exams. However the act of writing notes helps me follow lectures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Haven't heard anyone mention taking notes on a voice recorder. I have never done it, but wonder if this is efficient or not.

As for pen vs keyboard, I'm definitely for the pen, specially when thinking. On a small page, I can start with words, switch to a diagram, putting few arrows here and there linking parts , put a formula easily, it's basically too hard to do that much on a computer (as quickly).

Although, after scribbling things, I usually put a clean version on file somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER34> One is not replaceable with the other. For typing out pure English text typing could be faster. However for writing equations even with the maddest LaTeX skills you are far behind from handwriting. Also it's quite impossible for me to replace pen and throwaway papers for thinking (I know, poor forests) with anything computer related. Even for consulting with my supervisor a blackboard and handwriting is essential.

</comment><comment><USER35> I learned cursive many years ago, and Handwriting was a reliable C- (or maybe D) for me during most of the primary grades. I can write a legible hand now, but find that I use cursive for Christmas cards and notes of condolence. I do take notes with pen and notebook, but generally not in cursive. If a genie showed up offering only one of clearer cursive or better typing, I'd choose the latter.

<comment><USER36> An alternative to genies: [http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com](http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> If you want to challenge yourself, I highly recommend learning visual note taking. The goal is not to do it at a level where you can show off - but to learn how to visually capture the themes and some details of what is being said.

[http://www.danroam.com/the-back-of-the-napkin/](http://www.danroam.com/the- back-of-the-napkin/)

</comment><comment><USER38> > "cursive" writing – in which the pen is not raised between each character – > has been dropped from the Common Core Curriculum Standards, shared by all > states. Since 2013 American children have been required to learn how to use > a keyboard and write in print.

I'm sorry. This is so ludicrous. If you can't write legibly unless you're using a computer, how can you be called literate?

And don't come back and say, "it's perfectly fine for them to use print." I attended public school myself, learned to write cursive in the 3rd grade, and never used it again. I thought my natural printing style was good enough, to the point where, to this day, I still sign my name in the jagged, chopped-up, pseudo-cursive printing style that I invented in 4th grade, and only I can read.

Now, I'm a person who loves to listen to classes and take notes with a pen. About 6 months ago, I looked at the piles of jumbled-up notebooks in my closet and was horrified at the chicken scratch on it. I could barely make sense of it. I might as well have not even been taking notes. So I decided to try cursive again. Now, I refuse to print anything unless I have to. Cursive is so much easier, so much faster, so much more legible, so much neater. I simply can't believe I didn't use it for 20 years of my life. People always tell me how good my handwriting is now.

Maybe some people came out of grade school with a neater printing style than I did, but I really, really doubt they can keep that neatness while writing as quickly as they WOULD be if they were using cursive. I would really like to know what the standards people were thinking when they made this decision.

<comment><USER39> > And don't come back and say, "it's perfectly fine for them to use print."

I'm going to do exactly that. You having garbage print handwriting and pretty cursive hardly means that everyone is the same way. With the lack of cursive practice that most people get, you're much more likely to find someone with legibile printed handwriting than legible cursive.

> If you can't write legibly unless you're using a computer, how can you be > called literate?

How can you even say this, and then go on to say "About 6 months ago, I looked at the piles of jumbled-up notebooks in my closet and was horrified at the chicken scratch on it. I could barely make sense of it. I might as well have not even been taking notes." ?

<comment><USER38> I can say that because I don't consider myself to have truly been literate until 6 months ago, when I started using cursive. If I had written a letter to someone the way I usually wrote, they wouldn't have been able to read it if they tried. And I considered my own writing back then to be pretty okay, because I made it all the way through high school and college with it. Why all my teachers allowed me to write like that is a mystery to me.

I'm able to say this stuff because I spent about 20 years of my life not using cursive at all, filling whole notebooks with print, then suddenly using it and filling notebooks with cursive. So the difference is very clear to me.

Edit: And plus, you missed the whole second part of my comment where I said that even if they can print neatly, they certainly can't do it quickly, so it's still not as good as cursive in that regard.

<comment><USER40> Your definition of literacy and the popular view are dissimilar. The common definition is just "the ability to read and write." Nothing more, nothing less.

I looked for a definition which contained the term "cursive" and was unable to find one.

<comment><USER38> That's true, and thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't saying that we should draft a law to redefine literacy. I was only trying to make a point, which was: if I can write, but no one can read what I write except for me, then have I really achieved the goals of learning how to write?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Some things I wish:

\- I could write on paper and have that sent to a document on the computer as if it was typed out. Something like those digital pens do, but actually ocr the text.

\- To learn Stenography ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb- dB6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb-dB6g))

<comment><USER42> I have a livescribe 3 which does what you ask -- OCRs the handwriting. It's OK. The pen firmware is fantastic but the live scribe client software is painful. I hear the pen firmware was done by someone else. I carry it with me always. Despite the OCR capability, its main value is that my paper notebook is backed up.

And yes, I find typing effortless (I rarely touch the mouse/touchpad) but still, using a pen to take down notes or for musing is a crucial skill I use every day, and could not substitute the keyboard for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Depends on the keyboard?

Screen-input devices like phones and tablets really are lousy keyboards. I get unbelievably better work done with my Note 3 and Shield Tablet then by poking away at a fussy keyboard.

But for sitting at my desk or on my laptop, the keyboard is far superior for most things. So it depends.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm kind of surprised that the popularity of tablets hasn't enabled a resurgence of calligraphy. I mean tablets are ideal for practicing calligraphy. You draw your shapes and if they aren't good, don't have rhythm and don't sing; erase and start over.

<comment><USER45> Except that on most tablets and with most "styli" your penmanship does not really work. Most calligraphy effects depend on two elements: how much pressure you apply, and how fast you move on paper (this is especially true for Eastern calligraphy, but I suppose it holds for western styles, too)... pressure requires an expensive stylus, and a tablet that can interact with it (usually by Bluetooth) so it requires quite an investment (a cheap fountain pen will cost you 1/20th of it probably, a good roller gel pen would cost even less).

About the speed, I suppose it's less of a problem than pressure, but low-cost tablets would probably struggle with that, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Yes, partly for this reason I switch to a mixture of voice, drawings and cursive for my personal diary. I also intend to use a variant of quickscript crossed with the phonetic alfabet and shorthand techniques for speed and semi- encryption (currently using the greek alphabet)

</comment><comment><USER47> What? Are you saying that writing by hand is not taught in US any more?

Are you telling me that American children are cut off from a most basic and easily affordable ability to express their thoughts where only things necessary are pen and paper?

Do I miss something?

</comment><comment><USER9> Related anecdote: Neil Gaiman writes his stories with a fountain pen (well, at least during the period 1994 - 2012):

[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18071830](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18071830)

<comment><USER48> He still does[1].

[1] [https://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/545236792908451840](https://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/545236792908451840)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> > In an editorial published on 4 September 2013, the Los Angeles Times hailed > a step forward. "States and schools shouldn't cling to cursive based on the > romantic idea that it's a tradition, an art form or a basic skill whose > disappearance would be a cultural tragedy. Of course, everyone needs to be > able to write without computers, but longhand printing generally works fine > […] Print is clearer and easier to read than script. For many, it's easier > to write and just about as fast."

Not all hand writing is meant to just express a point. Some hand writing is also—by itself—an art form. I can easily draw a parallel between penmanship skills and something such as creative writing. An easy to write, and fast way of writing is akin to "Jon kills Joe. Jon marries Susan. The end." Easily written, fast, to the point. And entirely worthless unless you only want to convey the absolute minimum. A fluid style in writing can display nuances, such as which side the gradient leans, what letters have a flourish, or how round the letters are (and which ones aren't).

As a programmer, I need to physically draw and write out how an application and its input/output will all come together. Even something stupid such as a simple box with multiple arrows coming in and out of it can have a big meaning. On paper, it looks like a few lines. But it represents what I actually am thinking about; and putting the pen to paper helps create an extension of my own thoughts, and allows me to move on in my head to further down the problem.

I have tried using text files to keep track of this information, but it can not contain the same meaning for me. Lines of text can change, and the visual representation is foreign, compared to something like my own hand writing and drawings. Even tablets aren't the same. The feeling of ink spilling out has an ephemeral high that is given, where a finger or touch-pen to a tablet just doesn't produce the same kind of feeling or relationship.

It may be an upbringing thing, though. I had been taught in a private school that pushed writing and penmanship from a young age. Any rough drafts had to be hand-written, and it wasn't until the final draft that we were allowed to type. Math problems as well had to be worked out by hand on paper, and calculators were not allowed until we reached pre-calc and geometry. I can see the point of view from someone coming up in a computer-only schooling, and how they might be more comfortable in using a keyboard to express their thoughts, though.

When learning a foreign language, I've found actually writing the words and characters out have a tremendous impact in helping me remember them later on. This is especially true for something like Japanese or Chinese, where I retrace which radical starts the character, and the order in which they go. For someone native to these languages, it may not be as big a deal due to the daily usage. However, it also seems some youths in Asia are forgetting the actual writing of some kanji/hanzi due the convenience of computers[1]. So now we can recognize a kanji and know its meaning, but knowing the kanji and being able to write it without aid may be more difficult.

[1] [http://www.tofugu.com/2010/08/27/kanji-amnesia-and-why- its-o...](http://www.tofugu.com/2010/08/27/kanji-amnesia-and-why-its-okay-to- forget-kanji/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I think it is. Scientists all carry around laboratory notebooks that they write in by hand.

While I can type faster than I can write, if I observe something that I want to record for later consideration, it's a lot quicker for me to whip out my notebook and a pen, than to whip out my computer, log in, launch a text editor then save my document.

<comment><USER50> Agreed. There's just something about the pen and paper right there, ready to go, always. Even on a phone, with the app open, you'll probably have to unlock the screen first, and tap or something to bring up the keyboard and start typing.

<comment><USER51> This assumes that you actually have a pen and paper with you at all times. I don't know about you, but there are a lot of times when I don't. Also, the amount of time it takes to unlock my phone's screen, open Evernote, and create a new note is actually less than that required to open my bag (if I have it with me), take out a notebook, open another compartment, take out a pen, close both compartments, open the notebook, uncap the pen, and start writing.

<comment><USER13> While I work as a programmer, my degree is in Physics.

I always have a notebook. I carry a small one in my back-left pocket, and take care always to have a pen.

I have a regular-sized notebook that I carry in my computer bag, that has graph paper rather than just lines for text, however as you say I don't have it with me.

With scientific notebooks, what's important is not to be neat, but to write it down so it's not forgotten.

At one time, for inventors, it was crucial to record the date upon which one invented something, however the US patent law was revised a few years ago so that we have "first to file" rather than "first to invent".

I even do stuff like take notes during TV commercials, if I see a product advertised that I might like to buy.

<comment><USER7> > _take notes during TV commercials, if I see a product advertised that I > might like to buy_ //

Perhaps I'm an aberration here but I've never seen a commercial and thought "oh, I'll buy that". I've often seen them and thought "that's cool" or even "I wonder how that works". It's clearly a conscious decision to consider buying things simply because they bought an ad slot in a show you watch, I find that quite strange.

[Senior Soft. Eng. in USA, guess you can afford anything that takes your fancy.]

Is it a common thing to do that with adverts?

On a side note you should still be recording when you "invented" something. If you were using it prior to the priority date of a patent application then you can't be prevented from continuing to use it; prior use is an absolute defence in patent infringement proceedings [ordinarily in patent law, you'd want to check this one in USC]. If you publicised it, even within a narrow definition of "public" then it can obviate the patent too; using a patent in public is sometimes enough for it to be considered citable against teh novelty of the later application.

<comment><USER13> I'm not going to write down notes about how I should take up smoking, if that's what you're asking, nor do I think I'll be lucky in love as a result of driving a fast, red car.

There are lots of ads for things I really do find useful. Consider the controversial superbowl ad for the machine that makes homemade carbonated soda. Sodastream? It's controversial because it's manufactured in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, however the factory employs many Palestinians.

I like to drink soda, so that's something I would conceivably buy based on the ad.

It wasn't just brand advertising, nor image advertising, but actually demonstrated how one actually uses the machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> On the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, years ago, they had a contest between a ham radio operator using Morse code and a 20-something texting to his friend. Morse code was faster.

Therefore, I propose we all exchange texting for Morse code.</comment>


React Mental Models: The True Face of JSX - <AUTHOR> https://learnreact.design/2020/04/20/react-mental-models-the-true-face-of-jsx <comment><USER2> I teach a React workshop and have a slide covering this topic (albeit much less eloquently). I find it really helps JSX feel less exotic.</comment>


Visual Website Optimizer featured in India's national newspaper - <AUTHOR> http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIKM/2011/05/06&ViewMode=GIF&PageLabel=17&EntityId=Ar01700&AppName=1

<comment><USER2> This is a very recent development among media housed in India; they have suddenly started realizing that people here are actually earning money by doing a "valid" business on Internet. You can also find lot of bloggers being covered by national newspapers very frequently. I say, this is a very good move because more than anything else it will help in reducing the tabooness of leaving a secure job for doing a startup.

</comment><comment><USER3> Congrats.

Times of India is world's largest circulating English newspaper [1], however "The Hindu" carries the banner of "India's national newspaper".

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_circulation#World_new...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_circulation#World_newspapers_with_the_largest_circulation)

<comment><USER4> Ah didn't know about it. That makes it even better! We got featured in world's largest circulating English newspaper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congrats.

I can't help to think that the discussion that was on here a while back have something to do with it all.

HN have turned into quite an impressive ecosystem (even if my assumptions about your success is wrong :) )

<comment><USER4> Thanks! I can't thank HN community enough for the guidance and support. I remember doing Ask HN about 1.5 years ago and got great feedback (especially from patio11, webwright and others). Now even though we're still bootstrapped; team has grown to 6 (earlier it was me alone). At the time of Ask HN there were 0 users, now we have paying customers including Microsoft, Groupon, Mitsubishi and other big brands. It's been an awesome ride! (Hint: May is also 1 year anniversary of our paid plans and we are planning something very special)

The best thing about our business is that we earn in USD but the expenses here (in India) are less by a factor or so. Hence even without raising VC funding we can afford to hire top talent, let them tackle challenging problems (servers doing 1.6 billion pageviews per month) and pay them really well (at par with Google, Yahoo, etc). Can't wait to see what's in store ahead...

<comment><USER6> Could you share what was the process like? TOI people contacted you or you contacted them? phone interview? email? Really interested in knowing this. Thanks.

[Edit] I myself was contacted by a national hindi newspaper, but it didn't work out.

<comment><USER4> Sure, a fellow entrepreneur (Pallav from FusionCharts -- awesome guy, has an interview on Mixergy) connected me to the journalist who had covered them. The journalist called and we then exchanged lot of mails and phone calls. Then he went radio silent and now out of nowhere, we got a story!

<comment><USER6> Great. Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congrats! Curious - what is your technology stack?

<comment><USER4> LAMP stack with nginx as load balancer and Varnish as cache layer. Redis as queue. And, of course, how can I forget most helpful memcache

<comment><USER4> And, oh btw our test designer and actual A/B test execution relies a lot on jQuery and JavaScript.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, 1 billion+ impressions are impressive. Would love to hear more about some of the technical challenges you face. Perhaps a blog post sometime on that? :)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I think a blog post would be interesting. We scaled from having 1 server to now application spread across 19 servers (most are Apache 2G RAM; 2 varnish caches 4G each; 1 load balancer 4G. We are going to add one more load balancer soon.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats paras, you are a big inspiration for every startup especially in India.

<comment><USER9> I second that :)

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Is Google Website Optimizer really 5 years old?

<comment><USER4> Yep, it was launched in 2006. Here is the launch announcement: [http://techcrunch.com/2006/10/18/google-launches-website- opt...](http://techcrunch.com/2006/10/18/google-launches-website-optimizer/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congrats! Way to go! You guys have a product with great potential.

I can say that seeing your current implementation.

</comment><comment><USER11> great job paras!</comment>


How to Switch from JQuery to Vanilla JavaScript with Bootstrap 5 - <AUTHOR> https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/bootstrap-5-vanilla-js-tutorial/ <comment><USER2> Is it worth switching from jquery with all the extra verbose code you must write for DOM manipulation?

<comment><USER3> Yes, absolutely.

First of all if you use querySelector or querySelectorAll for everything your code will likely be smaller without jQuery, but it will be just as slow.

If you access the DOM with string parsing your application can be anywhere from 1200-10000x faster. It will be more verbose, but certainly not as much as most people fear. If you are good with scope and abstractions you will solve for most of the verbose DOM interaction with reuse and custom abstractions.

So really dumping jQuery means choosing between smaller code or substantially faster code and both are a win.

<comment><USER2> Opinions vary on that one, does a footprint reduction by 90kb really matters in the day and age where megabytes of bloatware like angular, react, vue, etc. goes unchecked?

If adding 90kb helps me write `$(document.ready()` instead of `window.addEventListener(DOMContentLoaded)`, I'd rather add that because making code more intuitive and readable is what software engineering is about.

<comment><USER3> I prefer to assign events handler's directly to node event properties instead of addEventListener. The only advantage to addEventListener is that you can plug in a bunch of marketing spyware nonsense without worry that its going to clobber your event assignments.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IOS6: identifierForAdvertising silently removed from API? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everybody,
we've been preparing our SDKs and systems for iOS 6 in anticipation of the final new identifierForAdvertising to take over the advertising world and were completely surprised to see the interface silently removed from both the final specs and the xCode Beta Documentation. Can anyone confirm? What's going on here?
Best,
Dominik <comment><USER2> As iOS 6 has not been released yet, it's against the NDA to discuss it on an open forum such as this.

The dev forums are probably a better place for this question anyway, as there is a higher probability that somebody from Apple is reading and will respond.

If you don't hear anything back, reach out to the dev evangelists - emails are listed at the end of the slides of every WWDC presentation.</comment>