The Value of Downvoting, or, How Hacker News Gets It Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/the-value-of-downvoting-or-how-hacker-news-gets-it-wrong/ <comment><USER2> The reason HN doesn't need downvotes is that HN, unlike Reddit, kills lame articles. On Reddit, users need downvotes as a way of saying an article is lame. Downvoting is the only way you can get a (nonspam) submission off the frontpage. But on HN you can flag it and if it's bad the editors will kill it.

We can thus safely assume a nonlame set of articles, and we also (so far at least) assume nonlame voters. And if you only have nonlame voters voting on nonlame articles, upvotes should be enough to pick the winners.

<comment><USER3> I don't think Hacker News' system kills lame articles. I have seen obvious troll blog posts and such reach the top of HN repeatedly.

The reason this happens is because of the following. Let us say that an ordinary story that is completely relevant to Reddit and is worth reading is upvoted by 50 people and downvoted by 10. This gets the story +40. Now, let us take a very controversial story, say, a blog post on how much git sucks that is obviously fishing for links. This story gets upvoted by many more people, say, 100 people... and downvoted by 300. It doesn't get near the front page.

Now, take the same on HN. The first story gets +50, the second gets +100, despite the majority of people believing it should not be on the front page.

This is not to say that the Reddit system is better, but rather that the HN system is not perfect.

<comment><USER2> Well, we kill everything the editors think is excessively lame. Downarrows would produce better results iff the userbase at large were better at deciding what was lame, which is probably not the case. Downvoting is often done reflexively, whereas killing something is a fairly momentous choice one thinks about first.

<comment><USER4> I think that HN does not really need down-voting for articles at all, but on the other hand, it needs some automated killing functionality.

EDIT: [About the editors, it takes an hour and sometimes more for a link to be killed, at least when I flag a link and I see it for hours - happened today. So maybe automation will help in any editors shortage]

For example, someone few days ago submitted your article "Why TV Lost", although it was already submitted, and we already discussed it! But he was able to do it, obviously because the submission detection script does not think that "www.domain.com" is the same as "domain.com", and treats them as different links.

Also if a link is submitted previously and it was dead because it's spam, then if a user tries to resubmits it again it should be killed automatically. Like Google homepage, myspace and all of these bla bla bla.

There are zillion techniques for preventing spam, and you know it better than me for sure. But there is a vision that you have about spam on this website, that I don't really understand yet.

<comment><USER5> >the submission detection script does not think that "www.domain.com" is the same as "domain.com", and treats them as different links.

Those two are not the same. Just like mail.google.com isn't the same as google.com.

<comment><USER4> But google.com is the same as www.google.com? and ycombinator.com is the same as www.ycombinator.com? Got what I mean!

I am talking about the "www" which is the acronym of "world wide web", and it's automatically assigned to any domain name, so usually domain.com and www.domain.com points to the same host, unles if the sysadmin changes it which rarely happens.

I am talking about the "www." and NOT any other subdomain that the sysadmin/webmaster can add/change or remove.

I am sorry if you misunderstand what I am talking about.

<comment><USER6> The www. subdomain is not necessary and you can have a different cname value there. It can point to another domain for instance.

<comment><USER4> Oh really? I am sorry because I did not know it before. Thanks for informing me, I really appreciate it. I am so glad that I am learning something new here everyday.

Thank you so much for your explanation, I really appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Slight hijack, but I last time I used it I thought Stack Overflow missed the value of simplicity.

On Stack Overflow, at its core, you have posts, and people reply to that post. That's fine. You can do that whether you're logged in or not (although you need an OpenID provider to sign up, which is a pain when it /could/ partner with a provider to seamlessly give you one on registering).

You can mod up and down the posts. And mod up and down the comments. But only if you have a certain amount of karma for each. But the selected answer by the author of the question is at the top, ignoring the karma completely.

You can have favourites. But only if you're logged in, despite the fact you can submit posts whether you are or aren't.

And then you have comments on each post. But you have to click to view the comments. And you can only add comments if you have a certain amount of karma. This kills a lot of conversation needlessly.

And you can edit other people's posts - if you have a certain amount of karma.

And you can flag posts, but only if you're logged in.

And then too often you view posts that make no sense until you see the context which is buried amongst the tags, rather than the site being naturally split into natural obvious 'sections' which will interest people who know about certain technologies.

It's all very confusing, and completely needless. Hide things or at least make it obvious what I can't use before clicking. Reduce the arbitrary karma limits to add more distinct classes so that the majority have equal abilities.

<comment><USER8> > It's all very confusing, and completely needless

Well, the funny thing is that the complexity is there for the some of the same reasons that HN explicitly doesn't document its behavior -- it's a small barrier. But these are much lower barriers than HN, as I'll describe below.

> Hide things or at least make it obvious what I can't use before clicking

Ah, but this is a problem -- we _tell_ you what you need to earn to do something when you click on it. So a) you have an idea that the feature exists, and b) you can do it at some point in the future.

> Reduce the arbitrary karma limits

Our limits are quite low, _far_ lower than HN. We require the equivalent of 2 karma on HN to upvote, and 10 to downvote. More here, just divide by 10 to get the HN equivalents -- <http://stackoverflow.com/faq>

<comment><USER7> Imagine you visit a website, where both links and non-links are shown by underlined black text. You quickly get confused by what you can and can't click on until you rollover them. I think we can both agree this is a bad thing, and that the correct fix for this is to make the links a different colour so it's obvious.

Imagine you're a new user visiting Stack Overflow, when things you both can and cannot use are shown in exactly the same way as a full user until you click on it and then it tells you that you need X karma to do something. I think this is a bad thing and that the correct fix is to either hide the things you can't do (because features I can't use don't really matter to me) or to make those things look different. This is where we differ, because you think it's not a bug, it's a feature, because it's a "small barrier" by confusing new users as to what they can do out of the box. I personally think that's /insane/, much like someone who decides to make all their links black as a "small barrier to new users".

I think you also misunderstood what I meant by "reduce the arbitrary karma limits". I don't necessarily mean "make them easier to attain" (although I'd argue reducing barriers to entry unless you have a good reason as it generally encourages new users), but rather "reduce how many of them there are". There are 10 different 'levels' of karma where features are unlocked to /users/. Why does a user need 15 to upvote but 100 to downvote? Why do you need 500 karma to retag questions but 750 to edit community Wiki posts? Most sites have a maximum of 3 levels of hierarchy (Admin, Moderator and User), your site has /at least/ 11. I guess with the badges system I should be happy that it doesn't use the same ridiculous system as Team Fortress 2.

And no, I wouldn't regard HN as good at usability either. Functional rather than ideal, even if it is trying to make creating a new poll difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The irony of it all is that is the first post that I really wish I could downvote.

C'mon! The guy doesn't know what he's talking about, yet he is quick to say that HN "gets it wrong". Others show him he doesn't know the rules and he replies that the rules should be more explicit, when the fact is this very idiosyncrasy is what helps HN not to grow too much: it takes someone who is really interested in participating in the community to stick around and learn how things work around here.

I'm flagging the link. I never liked Jeff's "from-the-hip" style of blogging, but now more and more of his articles is plain linkbait and a way to get attention to Stackoverflow.

(Btw, Jeff, the whole spiel of writing even when there's nothing to say is annoying and makes more noise than signal. Quantity does not always trump quality. Practice makes it perfect, yes, but all I can say is that you're getting really good at producing crap.)

To have a post on HN with such an inflammatory title and factually wrong claims is _downright offensive_. It's no different than me going to his office and screaming how stupid he is.

In fact, I'll cancel my rarely-used StackOverflow account.

<comment><USER8> 1) submitted links cannot be voted down. This is, in fact, correct.

2) comments can be voted down, but it's uncommon, and the UI is invisible (literally) to the point that a casual user wouldn't even see it happening on most posts (very few posts go negative). This is a good thing, but it's not at all clear to a new or unsophisticated user that the _possibility_ of being downvoted is on the table at all. Particularly given the front page which does not allow downvotes on submissions.

3) isn't your post the very sort of inflammatory stuff that you're claiming I write?

<comment><USER9> 1) You've written a critique about the whole HN voting system while being factually correct about only one subsystem - the design decision about submissions.

This is as silly (or arrogant, or plain stupid) as writing a critique of quantum physics just because you know how and when to use Schrödinger's equation.

2) It's not uncommon to downvote comments at all. Again, you are passing your perception as absolute truth. What you may see is few comments that have a negative score. _Few downvotes and few negative-score comments are two completely different beasts_ , and you're inferring wrong things with the information you have available.

3) <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inflammatory> : tending to excite anger, disorder, or tumult.

My comment was a response to your post. It comes off as angry, but it is a reaction to the sort of thing that _you_ write. The post has more than 100 comments, few of them actually accomplishing anything except discussing with you and pointing out why _you_ are wrong.

So, the answer to your question is _no_ ; it's your articles that provoke reactions in others and excite disorder. It's your article that is inflammatory, not my comment.

      - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As a side note about what you write... I get it, Jeff. You're the textbook example of an extroverted person: you need to externalize things to process information. To you, doing supports thinking. For introverts like me (and most of HN, by the way) it's thinking that supports doing.

There is no "right way" here, no "better side" to belong to. The problem lies in taking these opposites to radical extremes, and this is what is happening to you. While hardcore introverts end up suffering from analysis paralysis and never get anything done, you end up doing things carelessly and using "social brute-force": you say whatever comes to mind and expect people to throw you "warning messages" and point you to a better solution.

Your blogging style is the equivalent of the guy that trolls in IRC channels (<http://bash.org/?152037>) to see if he gets responses from the gurus. This is seriously irritating: not everyone wants to be your "idea compiler", and you consume much of other people's time and energy that could be better used elsewhere.

You may even think that you are being successful with your approach: each post you write will probably make your readership increase more than decrease. But if you believe that, you'd be again relying on the idea that Quantity always trumps Quality, and again you'll be wrong by missing the point about the purpose of something like Hacker News.

Quantity trumps Quality on SO - you are more interested in having hordes of beginner and intermediate techies to drive traffic than lots of experts that don't need to seek technical help as often - but HN is about _insightful_ news and comments, and for that you need the participation of above-average and like-minded people; it's all about quality, not quantity.

<comment><USER8> (in response the section below the line)

This is really a criticism of me, personally.

You don't like me. I don't have a problem with that at all.

The idea that everyone has to like everyone else is unrealistic and dishonest. If everyone likes you, you probably aren't doing anything very interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What would "it" be that HN is getting wrong? The point is to (a) have quality posts on the front page, and (b) encourage a community of people to congregate and share valuable advice/wisdom/information.

Design decisions are simply tools to accomplish these goals. Jeff says disallowing downvotes is "harmful to the community" and explains why he theorizes is the case, but why guess? We have HN, we can examine it and decide for ourselves if HN has been "harmed."

I am all for him beating his chest and extolling the virtues of his complicated system. But I do not see the merit of his comparison to HN: It strikes me as fairly run-of-the-mill Coding Horror-style link-baiting.

<comment><USER8> > We have HN, we can examine it and decide for ourselves if HN has been > "harmed."

When a clearly political post about the drug war stays on the front page for two days, that's harm in my book. I expect you will see more and more of this over time as the community grows.

Sorry you feel that way about the post, reg. Just meant to be a discussion, and I went out of my way to say positive thingsa about HN. It feels almost like a personal attack the way you stated it here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Downvoting loses more information than "no downvoting". Think about a submission with 110 upvotes and 100 downvotes, it is overall rating is 10. A submission with only 15 upvotes has a rating of 15. Surely a submission which attracts 210 user votes must be more valuable than the other one.

<comment><USER12> Downvotes and upvotes should both be shown for this reason as it calls to attention the divide in opinion.

<comment><USER11> But how about ordering? At the end of the day, these votes determine which submission makes it to the front page. Allowing down voting but sorting by upvotes might be one solution.

<comment><USER8> This is a good idea and conceptually similar to showing how many times something has been flagged as off topic.

Although I still maintain that upvote and "off-topic" are not symmetric actions.. but choosing between public visibility of data vs "cabal of secret editors" is a no-brainer IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Downvotes are problematic, because even the best people can't always be trusted to use them correctly. A downvote should be reserved for something offtopic, evil, mean, etc., but too often a downvote simply means "I disagree".

<comment><USER8> And yet we trust these very same people with upvotes?

I agree the potential for damage is much higher with downvotes, but there's an asymmetry there.

The trick is to make downvotes cost a little bit of karma, IMO. And while I'm on the topic, upvotes shouldn't be as free as they are, either.

<comment><USER14> What's the asymmetry? You're begging the question. Bad upvotes mean too many people see something. Bad downvotes mean not enough people see it. The latter is worse than the former. So only one of the features is supported. This is a simpler approach than turning karma into a currency to spend on suppressing things people disagree with.

Having said that, the 2-1 downvote scheme you proposed does put some of us within spitting distance of taking nickb down to zero, so I support it wholeheartedly.

<comment><USER8> > This is a simpler approach

Having a secret cabal of editors, whose behavior and rules are not documented, is simpler than spending karma to vote against things? Really?

<comment><USER14> Yes. A lot.

<comment><USER8> can you elaborate?

<comment><USER14> What's there to say? Submitters veer off topic. You hit the "flag" button. The story gets marked "dead". How is my life improved by the prospect of having more work to do to groom the site?

It's like people used to say about micropayments; all these little knobs exact a mental cost; I have to spend 5 cycles deciding what to do --- mod up? mod down? what are other people doing? do I need to care?

Seems to me like Hacker News is doing the Simplest Thing That Could Possibly work. A good thing.

<comment><USER8> The simplest thing is finding and blessing 30 people with the right to kill flagged entries? And trusting those 30 people to do the right thing?

Wouldn't it be simpler to automate the whole thing, and let the algorithm do the work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> First, I should apologize for my misunderstanding. I do feel like a doofus for not realizing that downvotes are possible on HN. But I swear I have never seen a single downvoted post any time I've visited! I am a very occasional HN user, mostly a lurker, and my karma is not even 2 digits. :)

In my defense:

1) There's definitely an element of "if the user can't find it, the feature doesn't exist" with downvoting here.

2) In practical terms, downvotes are so extraordinarily rare on HN that they almost don't exist.

Anyway, I'm encouraged that downvotes exist on HN, but the threshold could be considered so absurdly high that they're nerfed into oblivion.

<comment><USER15> I don't want to start a dogpile, since you already admittedly feel like a doofus, but what's up with writing an article about "what's wrong with Hacker News" when you clearly don't have enough experience with Hacker News to have a clue about what's right with it and what's wrong?

<comment><USER8> See my response to the first PG comment, along with related comments below. Downvotes do exist (mea culpa), but are so nerfed as to be effectively useless -- that's part of the reason I never saw them.

And they _don't_ exist for article submissions, which is problematic for all the same reasons I listed in the blog entry.

<comment><USER16> they are not "effectively useless", they just useless by you, a non participant / browser of the site.

<comment><USER8> Considering I hadn't seen a single negative voted comment in a few dozen visits to HN, I'd say they're at the very least underutilized. Although I did notice that a few people went out of their way to vote down stuff in this thread. Ironic? :)

<comment><USER17> I don't have any hard data, but I'd estimate (as a heavy user) that at least half the stories with comments have at least one that has been downvoted below 1... but piling on someone is rare, just because it's rare that someone says something that needs to be piled on.

As for your assertion that not disclosing the karma threshold for downvoting is 'bizarre', I'd argue it's useful not to provide an exact number. Enough video games have 'achievements' listed out for people to obtain... I'd rather have people participate honestly than just to gain more 'abilities'.

<comment><USER18> Usually racism, bigotry and basically any purely ignorant BS gets piled on. An unpopular comment usually only gets downvoted to between -1 and -5, however recently there has been a problem with (I'm assuming) new users downvoting anything they don't like, which thankfully seems to be going away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Do you need down voting when you have a team of 30 pre-screening? Their is a higher likelihood of foul play when one has the opportunity to down vote one's post relative to one's own or peer's posts. A simple bubble-up philosophy can work. It would also be interesting to see a separate section similar to the top post thread but only contains posts that have been recently down-voted, can potential have some interesting take-aways.

</comment><comment><USER20> What really annoys me is that pg took away the ability to downvote a comment after a day or two. Given I use RSS to visit news.yc every few days, that means I can't fully participate; I can upvote people's comments, but not downvote them.

And all because someone went around downvoting all the comments for a particular user they fell out with. It's a sledgehammer, pg! Come up with something better.

<comment><USER14> Comment votes are a tool for grooming the discussion. Discussion on most threads ends after a day or two. What's the value in downvoting a 3-day-old comment? Very few people are going to respond differently to the thread as a result.

If you want to participate, you should write comments, or, better yet, submissions of your own.

<comment><USER20> By your reasoning, you think it shouldn't be possible to upvote comments after a couple of days either then?

<comment><USER14> I don't think it should, no. There's a big halo effect to karma, and disabling upvotes for stale comments might mitigate it.

But it's not a big problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't care about downvotes. HN is just a great web site with great contents so that I hardly ever feel the need to downvote something.

</comment><comment><USER22> If Hacker News has got it wrong... I don't want to be right. IMHO HN is the most consistently readable, polite, and thought provoking news site on the net.

The only other site I can think of that's close to as consistently a high level of quality in the posts and comments is MetaFilter. And unfortunately there are very few technology discussions over there. :-(

</comment><comment><USER23> Up voting measures enthusiasm (and refuses any veto to the disapproving majority). Up/down voting measures peer acceptance.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why not just IGNORE instead of DOWNVOTE ?</comment>


Underscore is a keyword in Java 9, use this script to check your code (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.oracle.com/sundararajan/entry/underscore_is_a_keyword_in <comment><USER2> Wonder what they'll do with `_`?

At last year's JLS the keynote mentioned that reserving underscore did _not_ mean that Java is becoming Scala. And yet, what else are they going to with it other than to slowly integrate Scala idioms into the language?

If alternative JVM languages gain enough traction perhaps archaic boilerplate like having to define Java getters/setters, equals, hashCode and toString on data classes will replaced sooner than later with terse "modern" equivalents found in C#, Scala, etc.

<comment><USER3> The use of _ as a discardable placeholder has been present in many languages in the past, such as Haskell and Prolog. These aren't necessarily Scala-isms that Java is adopting; they have a much richer history.

<comment><USER4> The way Scala uses them is very different from Haskell or Prolog. They are used to create lambdas, not discardable placeholders. E.g. `List(1, 2, 3) map (_ + 1)`.

<comment><USER5> _ has a lot uses in Scala, one of them being to create lambdas, another as placeholders when pattern matching. for example val List(a, b, _, d) = List(1, 2, 3, 4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like it was done here: [https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8065599](https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8065599)

</comment><comment><USER7> Java 8 already warns about the use of _.

</comment><comment><USER8> Looking forward to have the same feature in JavaScript!

/sees the horror on the faces of all the lodash users/

Ok that was not a good idea

<comment><USER9> Interestingly, _ is already reserved in the node.js console, so you have to import lodash under a different name.

<comment><USER10> Seems to work fine for me.

        teo  ~  node -v
        v7.3.0
        teo  ~  node
        > _ = "hi"
        Expression assignment to _ now disabled.
        'hi'
        > _
        'hi'

<comment><USER9> That's a fluke ;)

        $ node
        > _ = "hi"
        'hi'
        > _
        'hi'
        > foo = "bar"
        'bar'
        > _
        'bar'

(See mattnewton's reply for explanation.)

<comment><USER10>
        > _ = "hi"
        Expression assignment to _ now disabled.
        'hi'
        > "bar"
        'bar'
        > _
        'hi'
        > foo = "bar"
        'bar'
        > _
        'hi'

<comment><USER9> Neat, looks like newer versions detect and correct for it. TIL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Please give us goto and const back!

</comment><comment><USER12> Will $_ still be valid? You could use that instead.

<comment><USER13> You have (almost) the full range of unicode at your disposal - have you considered that maybe މ is more meaningful variable name?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h That's a bit harder to type.

<comment><USER14> Not if you have a Thaana keyboard!

<comment><USER15> Mixing RTL and LTR is a nuisance, though; that's why ℵ is a good variable name and א is not.

<comment><USER14> "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds", said a well known and frequently quoted man[0].

I can't speak to the pros and cons of ℵ-vs-א, but in other geographies I have found mixing RTL and LTR to be a real PITA. Especially if one is touch-typing and not eyeballing the screen from time-to-time. Of course, before Unicode, we got to tell developers: "Just use ASCII for variable names. That's why God gave us 127 keys."

[0] Some call him arrogant. Others say that I intentionally truncated the quote for my own evil purposes. Who is to judge?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For a language I find as reasonably designed as Java, this is stupid.

Add a new key"word", don't deprecate a whole fucking character in a language that's been around for twenty years.

It pains me to consider the horrific amount of code this will break. The lifetimes of hours spent deleting _ that would have been writing whimsical poetry in a moonlit garden or curing cancer.

I'm not surprised I guess given that Java is "owned" by Oracle now. Hopefully they kill it off quickly so we can get the migrations to openjdk overwith.

<comment><USER6> Never seen single underscore as variable, field or method name and never seen any naming convention that allowed that (and I've read a lot of open source code too). Conclusion: it's a pain only for those who didn't care about readability of their code and it's definitely not the end of the world.

<comment><USER17> I've seen it popping up _a lot_ lately. It's used as an identifier for lambda functions, indicating "i must use a variable identifier here, but I don't use it"

someObject.doSomething(_ -> isDerp());

<comment><USER18> No it's not, it's illegal to use _ as a lambda parameter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So I've looked for an explanation beyond "it's done", but save your time, there is none.

This is Java, starting tomorrow it's a keyword because why not, but let's keep in type erasure or the software on our Java Ring (TM) breaks.</comment>


Frigid Offices Might Be Killing Women's Productivity - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/05/warm-offices-women-productivity/589966/ <comment><USER2> Actually what the proper article tells is that woman productivity increases with temperature, but that man productivity decreases (up to a point). [1]

But of course, that title wouldn't be "click-baity" enough in our present political climate.

[1] [https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216362)

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like this paper is blaming offices for cold temperatures. Is there any barrier to just wearing warmer clothes?

<comment><USER4> You can always put more clothes on. There rapidly comes a point where taking clothes off when it's too hot gets you in hot water with HR...</comment></comment>


The Future of Software System Correctness - <AUTHOR> http://blog.regehr.org/archives/340 <comment><USER2> I'm glad to see articles like this surface every once in a while but there are a few things I was surprised to find absent:

1\. Model checking

2\. Advanced type systems (dependent typing, etc)

3\. Haskell's Quickcheck</comment>


Ask HN: How do you onboard new developers? - <AUTHOR>

I've developed an onboarding strategy for new hires in other departments and have a rough outline of the plan for bringing a new developer up to speed culturally and logistically, but because the position is so unique and tied more to skills than attitude, how do you bring new developers up to speed on the product itself?
From what I've read elsewhere (there's not much), getting their environment set up and then asking them to dive in and change a minimal part of the code is... something, but it seems to skip over a big piece of the picture, namely, an overview of the product and its internal code base.
Any and all thoughts are appreciated! <comment><USER2> I just went through the process with a new hire that's pretty fresh out of school, so not much previous work experience.

The first thing we did was give him a big picture overview over lunch along with the other (non-technical) project members.

Later, I sat with him and did a one-on-one high level overview from an architectural/technical standpoint that included:

a) How we got to where we are,

b) Where we are now,

c) And where we want to go in the near future

Only after that did I sit down and begin pairing with him. Initially I pointed him to some of the specific projects he worked on and guided him through setting up things like dummy apps and running tests and then let him do a couple of things (like adding documentation or tests) on his own so he can explore the codebase.

Afterwards, we started pairing on smaller things like bug fixes where I took the lead and basically just talked about what I was doing.

After all that, I started assigning him some of these smaller projects on his own and just checked in now and again when he had a process question. From there, it the ramp up just kind of naturally happens on its own as the dev gets more and more engaged in the project.

</comment><comment><USER3> Talk to end user's if possible to understand how they view / use the software. A casual chat or explanation of a bug that irks them is handy.

Documentation around batch , down or up streams is important.

Tell them about any dodgy piece of glue code that the entire system relies on, can't be replaced (Because Dave left) and is to costly to refactor.

And as you mentioned, fixing a small-ish bug in the system. Introduces them to the code base, the release process and any red tape.

</comment><comment><USER4> We pair with them. Of course, we pair almost all of the time, so we more or less don't need an onboarding process.</comment>


Dagger-DI – lazy JavaScript dependency injection through decorators - al-king https://github.com/philip-bui/dagger/ <comment> al-king My friend Phil put this together for a React Native project, when he got fed up with the mess that standard Javascript module imports and direct dependencies created when introducing testing. It's been really pleasant to use, just a solid well-thought out library.</comment>


Someone took the Big Idea that I was passionate about. Now what? - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amie_Street <comment><USER2> You could probably still do it. These guys aren't so far along that they're unbeatable. Just look for a chink in their armor. What's missing or broken in the way they're doing it?

</comment><comment><USER3> Amie Street isn't perfect. It's a beautiful idea, but it didn't work for me the first couple of times I've visited (I use Linux, so I pretty much expect websites to not work, if they do anything fancy...I just move on). This post caused me to check it out again, and the player does work now. Hooray!

Executing better is still a possibility. Niche-focused versions would also be a possibility. Most of the top ten on the front page suck. I've been a happy subscriber for years with eMusic and it's focused on indie music (I guess Amie also has a focus on indie, since no one else is taking part in this model right now, though the number 1 song at Amie right now is atrocious "soul" pop).

</comment><comment><USER4> That's funny - I thought this was my blog post. I covered the same question a week ago -

<http://www.gobignetwork.com/wil/2007/5/18/someone-already-thought-of-my-idea- _-now-what/10156/view.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER5> Someone already thought of MP3 players before the iPod and search engines before Google. Someone else in the market should be encouraging, not discouraging.

If they are doing it REALLY REALLY well, you have lots of options (which are laid out pretty well on that gobignetwork post).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is no good reason to distribute digital media by physical means. Record labels are useless relics of an dying era.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you built a site similar to this, only didn't use a pop-up music player, I would probably use it.

<comment><USER7> Including demand based pricing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Demand-based pricing is a totally novel (and interesting) idea that is uniquely Amie St.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They're still small, right? Join 'em.

</comment><comment><USER9> Go get them.</comment>


Tell HN: DDG vs. Bing vs. Google – Testing Ads UI - <AUTHOR> Recent discussion about how every Google result now looks like an Ad: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823
I decided to compare Ads UIs between DDG, Bing and Google.
Setup: Chrome incognito, Mac Query: "slack" Results: https://imgur.com/a/oi6rEZy
Summary: - For all 3 of them, Ads look just like Search results - DDG and Google have slightly more noticeable Ad badge than Bing - All 3 of them had exactly one ad (from Slack) at the top - All 3 of them have slack.com as the top Search result
I repeated my test with a few other queries ("basecamp", "sonos", "credit karma", "robinhood") and the observations were generally the same: ads on top, indistinguishable from the Search results, followed by the expected result at the first position in Search results.
Disclaimer: Hold a lot of GOOG! <comment><USER2> For mobile comparison on query "ads": [https://postimg.cc/gallery/fn727k3k/](https://postimg.cc/gallery/fn727k3k/)

Interestingly, Bing highlights ads more on incognito on mobile. ;) I wonder why. I couldn't capture the screenshot because incognito.

Yandex didn't show ads or it mixed in the search results so much that I didn't even notice. I tried a bunch of keywords that should result in ads but nothing. What are they doing?

The search results are also not bad, for some types it is absolutely better than duck or google or bing.

I might switch to yandex as default honestly. I didn't the notice the drastic difference in search because all other major players have some similarity.

List to alternatives: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22140866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22140866)</comment>


Fund Raising Tips from The Youngest Person To Raise Venture Capital - <AUTHOR> http://blog.clarity.fm/fund-raising-tips-from-the-youngest-person-to-raise-venture-capital/

<comment><USER2> I am not sure what Kiip does but at first I thought it did the following (feel free to take the idea, if you make money, donate some to the free software community):

Combine the gratification from in-game achievements ("You sliced 5 bananas in a row") and "reward" the player with some advertisements (like coupons, "You are great, you know what else is great? $product"). I think this might lead to crazy click-through rates.

No idea if that is what it does, it does sound like it. But maybe not? I cannot code this. I don't believe in software patents or "intellectual property". The idea is nothing special. Have fun!

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the emphasis on creating your own serendipity is huge! Too many people just expect one thing to help them with funding, but it is multiple factors that add to it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Brian Wong is a huge inspiration for anyone hitting the startup scene young.

Great interview.</comment>


Ethereum Name Service – A Decentralized DNS - <AUTHOR> https://ens.domains/ <comment><USER2> _ENS is built on smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, meaning it doesn 't suffer from the insecurity of the DNS system. You can be confident names you enter work the way their owner intended._

Hahaa.. Because smart contracts _have no flaws_ and its not like the arbitrators don't have m-of-n override to force function things out.

Competing claims of security. DNSSEC exists.

If they are truly DOMAIN names, then there are scoping consequences which vest from the underlying concept of a domain, and what it means to be inside another domain. If they're just names on a chain, that don't have scope, thats different of course. I guess I'm just whining that DNS here means something, and its like the surplus -gate in bushgate back-applied to watergate-gate...</comment>


Tesla Model S – Cost of Ownership vs. Honda Odyssey - <AUTHOR> http://www.teslacost.com <comment><USER2> I'm pretty skeptical about resale value on the Model S at 5 or more years out just because their newer models will have major technical advances and the cost of a battery replacement. It's hard to speculate on that right now since the car is too new.

<comment><USER3> For some reason I can't quite put my finger on I have been viewing everything that comes out of Tesla with skepticism and distrust. I think it started with the attempt to confuse people with "creative" financing options.

I know it is a good company. I was waiting for them to revolutionize the SUV market with a true sports-utility electric vehicle. I would have been in line to buy one. Instead they are putting out a bullshit Gucci gull-wing contraption that is a total let-down. That's when I ceased to be interested in Tesla.

For a number of reasons we recently purchased a used two-year-old low-mileage BMW. For a little more money we got extended coverage that takes care of everything for seven years. We even covered the (expensive) tires.

We could have bought more than one fully-covered low-mileage certified-pre- owned BMW for the cost of a single Tesla.

My wife ran over something and punctured a tire a couple of months ago. Being a "run flat" tire, she drove to the nearest BMW dealer. They gave her a loaner car for the day and, for a $50 deductible, replaced the $500 tire and cleaned and washed her car.

So I read an article like this and my first reaction is: Who are they trying to fool?

<comment><USER4> > Instead they are putting out a bullshit Gucci gull-wing contraption that is > a total let-down.

What's a let-down about it? Legitimately curious.

<comment><USER5> Easy access to third row seating is a solved problem. But sliding doors aren't "cool". So they either get replaced with over-engineered contraptions like those silly gull wing doors, or even worse, they get replaced with standard doors that pretty much render the third row useless, like most SUV's do. (assuming child seats, which is the bulk of your 3 row market)

<comment><USER4> The original parent implied strongly that it wasn't just the falcon-wing doors (two-hinged; the e.g. delorean had only one hinge) that was a total let down. Made me think they were let down by capacity or clearance or torque or Other Criteria(tm) as well.

> or even worse, they get replaced with standard doors

But we're talking about the X here, which doesn't.

<comment><USER6> I think a big let-down is that there's still no pricing available for the car. I see estimates from third parties that it's expected to be 5-10% more than a comparable Model S but there's nothing official that I can find.

The doors seem silly. I drive an Odyssey and love sliding doors for the kids or the dog or when I have an armload of groceries. I've seen the sliding doors back up when they bump into something. I know they work. And they're reasonably fast, which is important when you live in Oregon with the rain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Repost from 18 hours ago ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7583256](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7583256))

<comment><USER8> I've buried this post as a dupe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just to throw some maintenance numbers out there since I happen to own a 2003 Odyssey with over 170k miles and I've kept track of the costs in a spreadsheet. So far I've spent just under $10k in maintenance.

The big annoying charge was ~ $4200 at 110k miles in 2010. The transmission failed, so this charge was for a Honda remanufactured transmission and PCM, plus the 105k maintenance (new timing belt).

The other significant charges are brakes and tires. It's almost $1k to replace the tires and brake rotors, which on this vehicle have been around every 50k miles.

SWAG at fuel costs: 170k / 20 mpg * $3 ~ $25k.

<comment><USER10> Isn't that early for the transmission to fail?

<comment><USER9> Yes, but not uncommon for that generation:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Odyssey_(North_America)#T...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Odyssey_\(North_America\)#Transmission_issues)

I probably won't purchase a Honda again.

<comment><USER11> Yikes. Do you think the 2014's are any better? I wonder if I can extend my warranty beyond 100K?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> First: "I'd only purchased 3 cars before in my life. A Toyota Camry, that I drove for 12 years. ... A Honda Odyssey, that we had owned for 6 years. And a Nissan Leaf, that we had owned for 3 years. "

Then: "The RAV4 EV, which we had just purchased, decimated the pack."

These two statements aren't compatible. Or somehow I am repeatedly misreading what he is saying.

</comment><comment><USER13> As much as I admire Elon and Tesla, Consumer Reports rated Audi clean diesel at a cheaper cost per mile than Tesla. So the comparison I'd really like to see is Tesla against the Audis.

<comment><USER13> My bad - I misremembered - this is the quote from CR: "When it comes to efficiency, the Tesla is a runaway. The A7 gets an impressive 28 mpg overall, but the Model S delivers the equivalent of 84 mpg. That translates into only 4.4 cents per mile for the Tesla (based on an electricity rate of 11 cents per kilowatt- hour) vs. 14.3 cents for the Audi (based on diesel costing $4.00 per gallon)."

As you were.

EDIT: Ok I now remember why I misremembered. The delta in operating cost is about 10 cents/mile. The delta in price is $18,755 (ignoring rebates, credits, etc.). So you would have to drive 187,550 miles for the Tesla to come out ahead. In other words, the TDI A7 is at a similar TCO to the Tesla, but with extended range and quick fueling.

<comment><USER14> And then you can look at something like the BMW 328d that is "only" $42k and gets 43mpg, or a VW Golf TDI (Disclaimer: I own one) for around $27k and 40-45mpg in the real world.

FWIW, my lifetime actual fuel costs have $0.110/mi over almost 40,000 miles, and that's based on basiclly worst possible variables... auto transmission instead of a stick, hot climate (lots of A/C usage, which is about a 2-5mpg ding), and lots of city driving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not including insurance was a mistake. The Honda Odyssey has some of the cheapest insurance of any car.

<comment><USER16> >> The Honda Odyssey has some of the cheapest insurance of any car.

That depends on where you live. I've been told that my insurance rates (clean record) are high for my 2005 Odyssey because of the area I live in (I live just outside of Toronto, Canada).

<comment><USER17> Right, but the Odyssey would be cheaper to insure in your area than a Tesla (theoretically).

Insurance costs are very localized, but for any 2 vehicles the coverage cost spread between them is probably comparable in any given region. EG: an Odyssey will always be cheaper to insure than a Model S in any specific region, BUT insuring an Odyssey in Toronto might be more expensive than insuring a Model S in Tulsa.

<comment><USER16> I wasn't disputing the Odyssey's insurance vs. a Tesla, but the claim that "The Honda Odyssey has some of the cheapest insurance of any car."

I pay more for insurance than some people I know who drive newer, more expensive cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In the long run EVs have the potential to be radically cheaper than gasoline cars: fewer moving parts, etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> \- How do you service your Tesla? Do you have to go to Tesla-authorized shop or can you do it in any workshop? How does it affect repair and maintenance costs if you have no alternatives?

\- What about the 'guaranteed' buyback option? I'd be afraid that a buyback will be the only option to sell your old Tesla, because they won't be re- sellable on a free market without a costly hw/sw upgrade that can be done ONLY by Tesla.

\- There's no way to reduce your costs by using third party replacement parts or batteries.

\- A single failure can ruin your ROI calculations because the repair costs are hard to predict.

\- The market for used Teslas is limited to areas where the charging network is available

<comment><USER20> > How do you service your Tesla? Do you have to go to Tesla-authorized shop or > can you do it in any workshop? How does it affect repair and maintenance > costs if you have no alternatives?

There's not much to service, and normally you should do it once a year. The mechanics currently don't have schematics for Model S so it probably feels better to have it fixed at the company. I would imagine that you could get brakes replaced at your local mechanic, but I can't think of anything else they could do with it.

For example Tesla doesn't even have ODB-II port for diagnostics (it was recently revealed that instead of CanBus they use Ethernet). Things like that make the car is very different and the mechanic might know less about the car than yourself.

<comment><USER21>
        It was recently revealed that instead of CanBus they use Ethernet

If you're referring to the thread on teslamotorsclub.com[1], they are not using Ethernet for any sort of communication aside from infotainment and there is definitely a CAN bus[2].

There's been speculation that UDP broadcasts from the CAN bus are carried over that network as well, but it's almost certainly used for displaying information and informing various non-essential systems.

[1]: [http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/28185-Successf...](http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/28185-Successful- connection-on-the-Model-S-internal-Ethernet-network)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7535589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7535589)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Am I missing something here? I tried to use his number to run a net present value assessment of a few example cars and came up with wildly different numbers of NPV. I think a Tesla is cool, but if you are trying to save money by buying a 93k Tesla rather than a 50k BMW, you might not be saving all you think you are (assuming a 3% depreciation factor for future money, I didn't see what he was using, looking only at the year 8 when the car is sold back):

Tesla S85:

[year one] 93,970+8222+1170

[Tax break] -(10000/1.03)

[resale] -(30,160/(1.03^8))

[electricity and maintenance] +(600/1.03)+(1900/1.03)+(600/1.03^2)+(650/1.03^3)+(650/1.03^4)+(1300/1.03^5)+(1300/1.03^6)+(1350/1.03^7)+(1350/1.03^8)

= -78383 NPV

BMW 382d (ICE with greatest depreciation / maintenance):

[Year one] 50000+4480+1200

[Resale] -(15000/(1.03^8))

[Gas and maintenance] +(1594/1.03)+(1631/1.03^2)+(1669/1.03^3)+(1706/1.03^4)+(2288/1.03^5)+(4327/1.03^6)+(2365/1.03^7)+(2404/1.03^8)

= -59385 NPV

Did I make a mistake here?

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm skeptical of his estimated electricity cost; as a Bay Area resident, $0.12/kwh seemed low, so at first I thought he might be in an area of the country with lower energy costs, but he states he's actually in Silicon Valley.

I'm not sure how his particular usage and rates compare, but the rates for my most recent PG&E bill are as follows:

$0.13627 for the first 487.20 kWh $0.15491 for the next 146.6 kWh $0.31949 for the next 340.9 kWh and then up.

In my area, according to my bill, average household usage (for the past month) is 400kWh, and 250kWh for "efficient homes." I'd imagine average use is higher in the summer months due to air conditioning, etc, and higher in the winter months due to heating and lighting.

So, right off the bat, $0.12/kWh is low, but perhaps rates were a bit lower when he did this analysis, or he lives in an area with cheaper rates? But let's assume that he's an efficient user of electricity, and uses 250 kWh/month for things aside from the car. He estimated 15k miles per year, at 3 miles/kWh, that's 416 kWh per month, which works out to roughlly $65.50/month, or $785/year, not $600.

If we instead assume he's an average user in a home that's not "efficient", it goes way up to roughly $92/month, or about $1100/year.

Obviously I don't know this person's exact rates for electricity, or his usage, and it may be the case that there are credits associated with having an electric car that can bring his average rates down or prevent him from going into the higher tiers (as he said, he could often charge for free at work), but regardless an estimate of $0.12/kWh seems strikingly low. I'm sure there are areas of the country where that's reasonable, or even high, but I don't think the Bay Area is one of them.

Of all the cost analyses of Tesla ownership that I've seen (admittedly few), I have yet to see one that attempts to take into account the higher marginal electricity cost associated with using significantly more electricity.

<comment><USER24> _I 'm skeptical of his estimated electricity cost; as a Bay Area resident, $0.12/kwh seemed low, so at first I thought he might be in an area of the country with lower energy costs, but he states he's actually in Silicon Valley._

Maybe he lives in Alameda?

<comment><USER23> Do you mean Alameda county, or actually on Alameda, the island? If the former, I live in Alameda county, so that wouldn't explain it. If Alameda the island, why would costs be lower there? (honest question)

<comment><USER24> City owns the local power company and gives lower rates to the citizens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why exclude all North American manufacturers? I was hoping the author would address the exclusion.

<comment><USER26> Well, generally the North American car manufacturers produce cars of much poorer quality compared to the Japanese, Korean, and European car makers.

<comment><USER27> I think this is a dated perception. JD Power shows a fair showing of American cars in its 2013 initial quality study:

[http://autos.jdpower.com/ratings/quality/cars.htm](http://autos.jdpower.com/ratings/quality/cars.htm)

<comment><USER28> I've always found JD Power to be a bit biased towards American made cars. Maybe because he worked for Ford and GM, I don't know, but even at their worst, they always seemed to be featured by them.

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure about the American bias, as I see tons of non-US cars in the sedans list, but their truck ratings are a travesty:

[http://autos.jdpower.com/ratings/quality/trucks.htm](http://autos.jdpower.com/ratings/quality/trucks.htm)

I have been utterly unimpressed with the Silverados and Avalanches. For that kind of money, I expect a lot more than fragile/cheap interiors (Silverado) and the crummy bed on the Avalanche.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm surprised a Prius V was not included in this matrix. It would seem to fit favorably within the range of features the OP was looking for, but also is efficient, low maintenance, and safe.

I love Tesla, but they are just not there yet on cost.

<comment><USER31> I'd second this, but as someone who loves hybrids/EVs, I am very disappointed that a minivan class hybrid doesn't exist in the US (it does in Japan: Toyota Estima Hybrid is apparently a hybrid Sienna). Was forced to buy a standard minivan (we chose Sienna) as the PriusV is too small for our needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I plugged some more realistic values into Tesla's TCO page and it still is way more expensive than what the 14 year old Toyota I drive :-)

      http://www.teslamotors.com/true-cost-of-ownership

</comment><comment><USER33> As a 2013 Model S owner, even I am skeptical of the OP's calculation. The big "what if", as mentioned by other posters, is the depreciation value of the vehicle. EV vehicles typically depreciate more quickly than ICE vehicles and we don't have enough trailing sales data to know appropriate numbers yet.

That being said, I love everything about Tesla and even if the car depreciates more quickly than a Mercedes or BMW, I'd still be happy with it.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've also been very interested in true ownership cost of cars, and what I noticed is that for new cars, cost of depreciation overshadows all other costs combined for the first 2~3 years, longer for luxury brands.

So there is no point calculating the TCO of new car over more than 3 years, because if you are OK driving an old car, it's always much cheaper to buy used.

</comment><comment><USER35> What's up with the font on this site? In Google Chrome on Windows 7 it's nearly unreadable. Most of the internal horizontal strokes are just missing from the letters.

<comment><USER36> I haven't used Windows for close to a year, but last time I used Chrome on Windows 7 the font rendering was horrible more often than not. Especially blogs, they often want to have their own look with some web font (which then tells google exactly who is visiting the site -- but whatever). They always rendered horrible and I complained about it to a few sites, which then changed it, but complaining to individuals doesn't scale of course.</comment></comment>


Sticking a Hand Through Time: Adventures on the call stack - <AUTHOR> http://web.engr.illinois.edu/~maplant2/unwind.html <comment><USER2> He calls it a C trick but the actual trick is implemented in asm. It _would_ be a cool trick if he did it purely in C. Especially today, "all the world's not x86".

(And I used to be a gcc maintainer for m68k and i860. I'm quite familiar with frame pointers and their non-use.)

Btw: you can do this trick without resorting to assembly - start by taking the address of a local variable.

<comment><AUTHOR> That depends entirely on the calling convention - potentially you can take two words down from the first argument, but that is no guarantee, and would not suffice for the didactic goals this article attempts to accomplish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Worth knowing that this also describes some of the mechanics of a relatively common C vulnerability, and a tactic used by some content protection schemes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Neat trick, but still an example of Greenspan's 10th ("Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.").

The Common Lisp condition system ([http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/beyond- exception-handling-co...](http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/beyond-exception- handling-conditions-and-restarts.html)) is worth understanding, even if you're developing in other languages. It's an elegant example of how to manipulate the call stack. Unfortunately, it's hard to implement in most other languages.

<comment><USER5> There is no special call stack manipulation in the CL condition system. It's built on top of dynamic scoping and normal catch/throw unwinds; see [http://www.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/MetaCircular.html](http://www.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/MetaCircular.html) for block/return-from on top of catch/throw.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, but the Common Lisp condition system exposes it and wraps it elegantly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of the good old days programming in TCL.

</comment><comment><USER7> What does the mentioned switch statement do?

<comment><USER8> My guess would be that it triggers a compiler error because of the missing braces {}. However, reading [http://en.cppreference.com/w/c/language/switch](http://en.cppreference.com/w/c/language/switch) and [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/66k51h7a.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/66k51h7a.aspx), I am starting to wonder about that. Both pages claim that _switch(expression)_ can be followed by any statement, not just compound ones.

That seems to make it legal C. It also would make

      switch(i) x += 1;

and possibly even

      switch(i) foo: x += 1;

valid (but nonsensical) C. Chances are that the standard contains special wording that prohibits the latter two, though. If not, this is useful to know for the obfuscated C contest (more so if you can jump to that label)

<comment><AUTHOR> It does not, GCC compiles the example perfectly fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> quite an insightful article. and, no, i _do_ now understand frame pointers. ;)</comment>


No, you can't lock a gadget to the top of the sidebar - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2010/07/21/10040699.aspx <comment><USER2> I don't see why the comments were so derogatory. This is a perfectly reasonable question _in an enterprise setting_. Heck, Internet Explorer offers something around 1300 different possible group policy settings for administrative control. Why wouldn't a Microsoft platform developer expect something similar from the Sidebar?

<comment><USER3> This is an ongoing theme of Raymond Chen's blog. He posts something (anything) about Windows, no matter how informative or unbiased, and there are at least a hundred comments describing how stupid Microsoft is.

In an enterprise setting, this would be fairly trivial to do, either through group policies (do not allow sidebar modifications), or sheer workarounds. He said there is not a _supported_ way, not that it was impossible.

Also, Raymond has posted similar topics to this before. Such as: why can't you make a topmost window over other topmost windows? A: It then becomes an arms race, and then _everybody_ wants a top-topmost window.

I would not expect this sort of inane behavior out of an API. A window is either forced to the top via API (or a gadget is at the top of a sidebar), or it's not. I don't expect special treatment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This week on, "The Customer Isn't Always Correct"...

</comment><comment><USER5> That's was a good UI decision. However, a bad decision was when they copied the iPhone UI for a Visual Studio add-on.

[http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/19/vs-2010-pr...](http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/19/vs-2010-productivity- power-tools-update-with-some-cool-new-features.aspx)

via @rsynnott

<comment><USER4> Haha, _what?!_ Why would you use big-ass on/off sliders instead of a check box in a _developer tool_?</comment></comment>


Iconoclast: a Gothic/Cyberpunk MUD RPG, Online Since 1996 - <AUTHOR> http://iconoclast.org/index.shtml <comment><USER2> I've been playing MUME, MultiUsers in Middle Earth [https://mume.org:4143/](https://mume.org:4143/) off and on since it came up in late 1991.

It's like playing PvE and PvP inside of Tolkien's books.

The quality of the text in the rooms and zones is extremely and consistently high, and the world is enormous.

As of right now, here's the world map:

[https://pastebin.com/L8Yn8EhD](https://pastebin.com/L8Yn8EhD)

The two G's on the left are the Grey Havens. The R is Rivendell, the double M in the center is Moria, and the E on the bottom is Edoras. The ? zones are under construction.

Each of these zones are large and complex on their own.

I usually play a Hobbit thief, and can fondly recall some of the times, many years ago, when I was out in the wild, doing my own thing, when a band of Orc players came by. This was usually a death sentence, but at times, if I was high enough level, I could hide and sneak my way out of there.

Or...when I was higher level, I'd find some Black Númenórean tracks. After a long and careful hunt, there he was, resting by himself in the woods, unaware of my presence. Moments later, I was going through his stuff, after a quick knife to the back.

Very heart-pounding times!

<comment><USER3> MUME was the MUD I played the most. On the plus side, I absolutely loved the world size, complexity and quality. On the negative side, the gameplay balance was horrible. And, since I was playing from South America, my ping didn't help either.

I tried some other MUDs later, but most of them have smaller worlds, not so intricate or well-described. I just couldn't get that same magic of exploring that I did from MUME.

I still visit ElvenRunes once or twice a year, to see how you guys are doing ;)

<comment><USER2> Good to see a fellow MUME player! (current or ex :)

> the gameplay balance was horrible.

I think I know what you're getting at, but it would depend on when you played the game.

What balance did you find horrible, and roughly what year was that finding?

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> I played roughly from 1999 until 2001. The biggest pain points for me were:

* The game wanted to motivate PVP, but it did so by punishing PVE players horribly: at higher levels, dying to a mob meant losing more than one whole level, which was hard to get back.

* If you played anything but a tank, ping mattered too damn much. I like scouts/thieves. My ping stank. My experience wasn't very happy ;)

* Mandos sleep. Need I say more? Whose idea was that? I'm lucky I never got it, but it's inexcusably bad game design.

* I understand that playing evil races is supposed to be inherently harder, but it was too damn hard. My favorite moments were when the "darkies" (I apologize, but that was the slang for evil races back then) would come raid Bree and Fornost. Yes, it was terrifying for us pukes, but I loved it.

I have contemplated going back many, many times, but the first pain point I mentioned always keeps me back. I just can't dedicate that much time to a game that rewards so little and punishes so much. But I miss it a lot, too :)

<comment><USER2> Well, Mandos sleep should have only come into play if you were killing other members of your 'side'. I spent a lot of time playing characters on both sides, killing and being killed in PvP, but always cross 'side', and Mandos sleep was never a thing.

Ping time is definitely important, but I had a lot of success playing on a 1200 and then a 2400 baud modem. Running PPP over that gave me some nasty latency spikes. You could not always play in the normal way, but the game was definitely fun and playable, in different ways. (:

Re: losing more than a whole level after dying: that and the other 'hard' things about the game really drew me in.

I crave games where there are real risks, something substantial to lose. For most free games, that is going to be mean time.

It's like the difference between playing laser tag and paintball wars. It usually _hurts_ to get lit up with paintballs. Thus, all of the players are far more focused and _invested_ in doing well.

Definitely consider going back. There aren't that many players on these days. When I checked the other day, there were only 30 or so.

So you can play with relative safety in vast chunks of the world, as either side.

<comment><USER3> > _Well, Mandos sleep should have only come into play if you were killing > other members of your 'side'. I spent a lot of time playing characters on > both sides, killing and being killed in PvP, but always cross 'side', and > Mandos sleep was never a thing._

I thought that was Valley of Morgul, not Mandos sleep? I could have sword Mandos sleep was something that could strike a high-level char not-quite-but- sort-of randomly, ostensibly to prevent spamdying. Sort of a "take some time to cool off, buddy" thing.

> _Re: losing more than a whole level after dying: that and the other 'hard' > things about the game really drew me in._

> _I crave games where there are real risks, something substantial to lose. > For most free games, that is going to be mean time._

I guess that's the key difference right there. I found the punishments excessive and, to make things worse, the ping was leading me straight into those punishment situations. I like having real risks, too -- that's why I think the latest changes in Conan Exiles are actually pretty good -- but I guess I disagree about how hard the punishment should be.

Ironically, I felt that way back when I had oodles and oodles of free time. Now that I'm married and have a kid, I have even less of that, so you can imagine that I'm quite leery of going back to a game that threatens to punish me by taking away huge amounts of something I have so little of ;)

At any rate, I might try it again. Few games have ever scratched that itch for me.

EDIT: To clarify, it's not the safety that I need in a game. One of the best moments I still remember was when I had to run away from a BN who surprised me while I was trying to do Malardil. Safety is overrated. Losing more than a full level because I'm running from a big bad PK player and I mobrip? That's depressing ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> munk-a Just a general note to all the former MUDers here, you folks are awesome. MUDs remain a wonderful community to join on the internet with a much higher proportion of friendly creative folk to interact with. This is a bit sappy but whether I played with you or not the time I've spent MUDing is time I'll always treasure.

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out [http://mudstats.com](http://mudstats.com) \- there are some that have been available since 1989!

<comment><USER5> Interesting site. I sorted by "Online Now" and the #1 is an Adult Furry MUCK and the next 2 most populated are also labeled "Adult."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The MUD I used to play ([http://realmsofchaos.com/](http://realmsofchaos.com/)) is still going thanks to an intrepid admin who has kept it online since 1994. It is unfortunately desolate now but it is nice to see a piece of gaming history alive and well. I occasionally log on to wander through some of my favorite areas.

I have very fond memories of RoC as it's where I learned to program and had my first taste of algorithm development.

<comment><USER7> In the rules

> 3) Personal grudges

> This is not real-life, and most people do not want it to be. Meaning: Do not > carry RL personal grudges into the game.

Loved that. Should be put at the entrance of all social media platforms.

<comment><USER8> > Should be put at the entrance of all social media platforms.

This might be not necessarily true - when one uses social media account with his personal, official name, contains content that prove it's identity then it is quite safe to assume that this social media account is just digital representation of this particular real life person. So in this case if someone has personal grudge against this person then why it shouldn't be propagated to online presence?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Plug for my favorite MUD, even if I haven't played in years: [https://www.aardwolf.com/](https://www.aardwolf.com/)

<comment><USER6> This was one of the most popular MUDs if I recall? The one I used to play definitely stole their website design.

</comment></comment><comment> munk-a MUDs are amazing, I have quite fond memories of [http://www.middle- earth.us/](http://www.middle-earth.us/) (Shadows of Isildur) which is a wonderful thing to get into if you have the time to do so.

Also, from a tech angle almost all of these are incredible horror shows of legacy code, if you've ever wanted to see 40+ year old code that was written in danish originally then take a look at one of the DikuMUD descendants.

<comment><USER10> Once I am done with the project I am currently working on for pay I am going to work a bit on a personal project, writing a small MUD. However I was planning on writing the client myself to offer, among other things, sound etc. as well as giving me endless future possibilities over having people connect over telnet. However, [http://www.middle- earth.us/?page_id=55](http://www.middle-earth.us/?page_id=55) says about that MUD:

> Connect to Middle-earth.us: 4500 with your favorite MUD client.

And this made me wonder. I thought classic MUDs were played over telnet with a regular telnet client, but apparently not. So, market research time. What sorts of MUD clients are people using?

<comment> munk-a Oh-ho-ho... and here you will enter into a holy war on the scale of VI vs. Emacs but with about 1k people in total that care about it. In my time I've used MushClient, SimpleMU and zMUD, all of which I can endorse (but MushClient was probably my favorite). I've also heard people rave about TinTin.

Most MUDs (including SoI) do fully support telnet, but get richer if you use a client that allows intelligent logging, macros, multi-channel support and better text highlighting. If you're curious there's a nice wiki page about the different clients available.

<comment><USER10> > Oh-ho-ho... and here you will enter into a holy war on the scale of VI vs. > Emacs but with about 1k people in total that care about it.

Ha ha, I see :)

> In my time I've used MushClient, SimpleMU and zMUD, all of which I can > endorse (but MushClient was probably my favorite). I've also heard people > rave about TinTin.

I will look into these ones then.

> If you're curious there's a nice wiki page about the different clients > available.

Is the wiki page you are referring to on Wikipedia or elsewhere?

/me googles

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD_client](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD_client) this one it?

<comment> munk-a That is it, yes!

FYI the settings differences between these are pretty simple so maybe play with a few (possibly starting with free ones) before settling in.

<comment><USER10> Will do. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was too young for the MUD heyday, but I've thoroughly enjoyed the community- led rebirth of EverQuest, an early 3D MMO that was heavily MUD-inspired. There's a free server run by an independent team which seeks to replicate the experience of the game as it existed in 1999. It's become quite popular, with a regular player count of 1000+:

[https://www.project1999.com](https://www.project1999.com)

<comment><USER12> Brad McQuaid who was the lead designer of EverQuest is at it again with a new MMO called Pantheon. Is development a strictly crowdfunded because he refuses to take on an investor probably based on his experience dealing with Sony.

Personally I don't have the time, energy or interest to play an MMO with the kind of time sinks that Everquest had and that Pantheon plans to repeat. But if it's an itch you want to scratch then look for that game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Odd coincidence, I read this HN thread and when I checked my email I had an update from Starmourn. A new scifi mud from Iron Realms that launched the end of 2018. I can't say much more about it though. When I signed up to the mailing list ~3 years ago I was maybe too optimistic about the amount of future free time I would have.

I do think that it's interesting that new commercial MUDs are launching. (Well one anyway.)

[https://www.starmourn.com/](https://www.starmourn.com/)

<comment><USER3> Hoo boy, Iron Realms. Achaea was my very first experience with pay-to-win multiplayer games. I don't know if the rest of them are any better, but I know that Iron Realms was the first game company that made me feel disgust as a player. In that sense, they were the precursor of EA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> www.sindome.org / moo.sindome.org 5555

Cyberpunk MUD. Been online since 1997. It has a web client which is great, but continue to support mud clients and simple telnet. No color, ansi, xterm256 all supported.

Has good accessibility options as well. Very friendly to visually imparied with special code for stripping out stuff like ascii art.

Roleplay enforced. Has a detailed timeline and wiki. 50-60 people online at anytime. Good and well trained staff.

</comment><comment><USER15> Since we're all linking the MUDs we're nostalgic about, I've always had a soft sport in my heart for the Unofficial Squaresoft MUD ([http://uossmud.sandwich.net/](http://uossmud.sandwich.net/)). It's a love letter to the worlds in classic square games with a class system inspired by FFT.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you like that, you'll love CyberSphere: [http://mudstats.com/World/Cybersphere](http://mudstats.com/World/Cybersphere)

</comment><comment><USER17> I basically learned to program for Wheel of Time-based MUDs... first on The True Source, then on The Weave, and then on As the Wheel Weaves.

It was amazing how much drama existed behind the scenes and how there would be a family tree of staff/codebases stemming from that drama and stolen code/areas. As the Wheel Weaves is apparently not running anymore, but a few years ago I found a split of a split that still has an in-game game that I wrote that people still apparently play and enjoy. It's really gratifying.

<comment><USER18> > It was amazing how much drama existed behind the scenes and how there would > be a family tree of staff/codebases stemming from that drama and stolen > code/areas.

It sounds like this stuff lives on in the likes of Space Station 13. IIRC at one point one team stole the compiled server code of of one of the other team's versions, decompiled it, and worked on it from there. One of the most popular versions has a client that forces users to watch an ad before playing and people are constantly trying to reverse engineer the API and build a replacement client. Some people have even made decently impressive attempts at making a 3d version of the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How would one get into one of these MUDs? I realize these are quite old, but I can't even find out how to load this up. Maybe I am missing the point here. That, or I need to install Java.

<comment><USER20> There are some projects like [https://writtenrealms.com](https://writtenrealms.com) that are trying to modernize the MUD and lower the barrier to entry, but they are still coming together and most of the ones with an established player base / full feature set are still the traditional telnet setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Doesn't seem to be online to me:

      $ telnet iconoclast.org 7777
      Trying 22.214.171.124...
      telnet: connect to address 188.8.131.52: Connection refused

</comment><comment><USER22> I used to play sdfMUD and was introduced to the rolling stones by reading the book in the chapel of Swanbrook left by an author who identified herself as Snowbird. I'll always remember it and always be grateful. The line was "Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind" and was apparently committed to that environment when I was single digits in age.

</comment><comment><USER23> Oh the MUDs! Props to Forest's edge and TempusMUD.

Text is the ultimate medium because it directly connects with our imagination. I remember jumping out of my chair after reading a line of text on my screen.

Recommend watching "Get lamp" documentary to fans of MUDs, text adventures and those born after:

[https://youtu.be/LRhbcDzbGSU](https://youtu.be/LRhbcDzbGSU)

</comment><comment><USER24> To this day, I still log on to Kingdoms of the Lost([http://kingdomsofthelost.blogspot.com/](http://kingdomsofthelost.blogspot.com/)). Not one of the oldies like some of the ones on the [http://mudstats.com](http://mudstats.com) list, but definitely a goldie.

</comment><comment><USER25> [http://www.medievia.com/](http://www.medievia.com/) was mine, and it's still chugging along since '92, I played all through high-school, but then WOW came along. Before I learned about the tintin mud client, I had actually memorized key strokes to get around the map, good times.

</comment><comment><USER26> Hmm. Based in the 22nd century. With this sort of viability I wonder if it'll survive until that point.

</comment><comment><USER27> Pouring one out for Grimne, my favourite MUD, which is unfortunately no longer up. It was an eerie feeling to log on there after a 15+ years pause, the server empty, all the good old NPCs waiting to be slayed. Like a strange fully functional yet abandoned interactive museum.

</comment><comment><USER28> I thought the name was an anargram to localhost, but it is easily contradicted with the absence of 'h'. Anyway, still a cool name though

</comment><comment><USER29> I wondered how long the old MUD was that i used to play in high school. Apparently, DartMUD has been online since 1991.

</comment><comment><USER30> lotgd.net - I don't play any more but if you haven't it's great fun. Lots of 90s nostalgia from LORD/Usurper/Exitilus in dial up BBSes

<comment><USER31> I used to occasionally hop on and try LOTGD until dying in the same session.

There was a similar non-terminal MUD-like game called Phantasia as well. Heavy LOTR themes, Java client, permadeath, players could ascend to become Steward, King, or even Valar with special abilities that affected other players. It was available way back on Netscape and is still scraping by.

[https://www.phantasia5.com/](https://www.phantasia5.com/)

Dragon Court was another MUD-like. Java with painted art graphics in the browser.</comment></comment>


Indoor farm could help bring fresh produce to food deserts - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/04/click-grow-smart-farm/

<comment><USER2> Why aren't picked vegetables used as a solution to food deserts? They can be very cheaply stored and are very nutritious. They don't expire easily and they maintain their appearance in months, not days.

That said, the technology in TA might be useful on ships or very remote locations. If can indeed manage to reduce water consumption it also might be very good for the environment.

<comment><USER3> I believe you mean "pickled".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the "waging war on drugs" America, isn't buying one of those a recipe for a no knock SWAT raid on suspicion of growing something inedible?

</comment><comment><USER5> Matt and his team at PodPonics have a similar idea, but with farms in a shipping container.</comment>


Dropbox: Startup Lessons Learned [ppt] - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lessons-learned-3836587 <comment><USER2> Greatest insight I got out of this: offering money as a referral commission might not be the most effective.

Here he offered additional storage which is (a) cheaper for dropbox to provide probably and (2) closer to what users actually want.

I'm anxious to try this out on UniversityTutor.com now. I have a referral program to try and get tutors to refer other tutors, and they get $3/month if their referred tutor upgrades. But not many tutors upgrade. I think I'll try out giving them free job requests for each referral instead, since the free tutor account is limited based on how many job requests they can get. Great insight on dropbox's part here...

<comment><USER3> I considered a $-based referral program, but it seems a bit shady to me in that it provides a motivation to refer that is independent of the quality of the product. A kind of moral hazard.

But if the referrer is a user themselves, and their reward is more use... then the motivation is aligned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My favorite part:

VC: "There are a million cloud storage signups!"

Drew: "Do you use any of them?"

VC: "No"

Drew: "..."

<comment><USER5> What if the VC replied "Yes"?

<comment><USER6> may he would have asked 'is it easily usable by your grand mother?'...answer would be a definite NO

<comment><USER7> And VC would have asked how big is the market for file sharing for grand mothers..

Just joking, but I find the parallel to usable by grand mothers quite amusing! A lot of products are usable, yet they aren't what grand mothers would use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My Favorite Quote: "Search is a way to harvest a market, not create it."

<comment><USER9> I believe it was "Search is a way to harvest demand, not create it", minor nitpicking but I picked up on it just the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Drew, could you share what books you found especially useful, please?

The slides mention Steve Blank, and allude to his "4 steps to the epiphany" and (maybe?) 37signals' "Getting Real".

<comment><USER10> And what do you expect the books to do for you?

<comment><USER3> You're asking me to justify reading books that are recommended by someone I admire? Seems like such a trollish request! But I've liked some of your comments, so I'll try to answer straightforwardly.

I often read books for information, ideas of how to approach problems, and also for inspiration/motivation/reassurance/encouragement. That's what I hope to get.

Now, Drew is a very clear thinker, eg in his YC application., but obviously reading books that he's found valuable is not going to suddenly make me as clear as him - but it might help [I actually deleted that from my original comment because it seemed sort of irrelevant to the question].

Now, for these specific books, I've liked Steve Blank's blog, but if Drew has followed or used that book somewhat, that would be a significant recommendation. I have some doubts, because it seems to be a fact-driven approach, and sometimes the facts can't be ascertained - eg customers can't want something they can't imagine; you have to build it first and show it. (eg The Innovator's Dilemma). Drew mentions this in _people weren't actively looking for what we were making_ and _'I didn't realize I needed this'_ (#27,28). I also think that being too focused on specific questions can close your mind off from serendipity. But that's just my opinion.

I have to say that what Drew has done is just so cool: a new technology-based product that is revolutionary. The slides also have some of that magical sheen of founder folklore. Although my last software business supports me financially, the technology wasn't revolutionary and it didn't start a revolution in usage. I hope my present one will be closer to it (that would be awesome!). I do have a bit of a "fan" attitude to Drew's success; perhaps that's why you're requesting justification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The use of a minimum viable product that wasn't actually the product (a video) was an awesome idea.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Product-market fit cures many sins of management." Great insight.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't get this. How is having 4M users an achievement or success? Isn't the real question how many of the users actually use the paid service? It's interesting how the presentation talks nothing about that unless of course I missed it :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I love this slide: Typical Dropbox User (Hears about Dropbox from a friend blog, etc. and tries it -> "I didn't realize I needed this" -> "it actually works" -> Unexpectedly happy ->tell friends)

</comment><comment><USER15> Here's Drew's original submission referenced in the presentation: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863>

<comment><USER16> Is the original screencast available anywhere? Would love to see that.

Dropbox has shown that if you build something that solves a big problem well, you can overcome even a seemingly high barrier to entry (installing client software).

<comment><USER17> <http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/2/screencast.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I assume they've done studies of the monthly subscriptions model versus buying more storage for a single sum? Because the latter option appeals to me a lot more.

I like their service a lot, especially since it works on Linux, Mac and Windows but the monthly subscriptions are too expensive.

</comment><comment><USER19> __really __interesting presentation !! Still, one question, even thought there are millions of users, does the majority of the profit is made from ads? And also, it must cost a lot to give a couple of gig freely to each new users..? How do you exactly make profit?

Thanks

<comment><USER4> I think they use Amazon S3, so their cost is 5 cents/GB of storage + bandwidth costs. I would assume more referrals = more conversions and any conversion should be very profitable.

<comment><USER20> I wonder if they will reach a tipping point where it will be cheaper for them to have their own distributed hosting setup. I think Ubuntu One is doing it right now (I haven't used it yet) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_One>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The impression I got (at the conference yesterday) is that the dropbox guys are extremely smart and hardworking, but there's a huge amount of luck involved in that the timing was just perfect.

One thing that I kept thinking throughout a lot of the presentations is that certain product/service offerings are almost inevitable. If it weren't DropBox (or Twitter or Facebook or Google or whatever) then it would have been someone else around the same time with something similar that fit the emergent needs of the market. The market, in a way, designs the products by choosing which of the thousands of new things succeed or fail.

<comment><USER22> But I don't think there was any luck at all in how good a product they made, and that was clearly the most important distinguishing factor.

<comment><USER21> High quality product. Good market fit. Smartly promoted. I am not arguing with any of that.

If they had made the same product four years earlier or four years later, I strongly doubt it would have been a success. Too early, the market won't "get" it. Too late, some other product would have owned the space.

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure I agree. Similar products (or similar-sounding, at least) had been around for years, so much so that Joel Spolsky wrote a post ripping the idea of file-synchronization apps as the biggest failed cliché around. The space was regarded as saturated. So Dropbox was a late entry, not a luckily timed one.

There's another (rather prominent) precedent, of course, for a startup entering a space that was widely believed to be saturated and taking it over on the basis of a simple product that just worked better. I hadn't thought of it before now, but Dropbox kind of reminds me of them in this respect.

<comment><USER21> That's my point. Similar products had been around for years, those products were launched before the market was ready for them.

<comment><USER22> Oh, I know it's your point; it's what I disagree with. If those products were anywhere near as good as Dropbox, Dropbox wouldn't have been able to take the market from them.

I guess our disagreement isn't really resolvable since both positions rely on a counterfactual: imagining what would have happened if their timing were different, which of course it wasn't.

<comment><USER21> This is odd, I'm _sure_ that there are solid examples of a perfectly good product or service failing because it was too ahead-of-its time, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment. Ugh.

Anyway, the point I was getting at is that timing does matter, and that DropBox was, in addition to being well-executed, was also well-timed. And that given enough time, eventually, someone else would have come along and executed well once the market was ready for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> @dhouston - Can you give us more insight as to why a) the affiliate program didn't work and b) the referral program worked / what you mean by "2 sided referral program"?

im assuming affiliate is where payment is in the form of $ and to non-users who promoted dropbox and referral is payment of more storage on dropbox (ie- 250 mb per referral more) to actual users. Do you think a mix of the two would have worked well ie- payment of actual $ instead of the 250mb, BUT to actual users.

<comment><USER2> I was curious about the 2 side referral too, I think what it means is both the referrer and new user get 250 MB's of additional storage.

<comment><USER24> If so that is a brilliant idea but it should absolutely be more prevalent of their homepage.

I specifically didn't use their service because I think that going out to tell people "you should use this service, it is great and free" and then profit from it wrong (I don't have a problem with money but I want to keep my money and friends separate).

<comment><USER20> The thing is most people would still recommend it even if there was no incentive (I know I would), it is indeed "great and free". Come to think of it, I didn't take advantage of the referral system yet and I have recommended it two at least a dozen people I know.

Also I think its a very silly reason not to use Dropbox.

<comment><USER24> True, I should have typed I didn't use their _referal_ system, I am indeed a happy dropbox user.

Sorry for the confusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there video or audio of the presentation? It's easier to grasp attitudes than just seeing the slides (good though they are).

<comment><USER16> <http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262672510>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I sure hope Drew is not on the Durant trajectory.

Great entrepreneurs like him should live on to grow up into great businessmen.

</comment><comment><USER25> does anyone have a link to the actual video of the presentations at the Startup Lessons Learned conference?

<comment><USER26> yep, it was on justin.tv:

<http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262672510>

<comment><USER25> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Any chance for a non-login download of this? I do not use Flash and thus have no chance of reading the slides.

</comment><comment><USER28> the powerpoint and the video aren't working. Anyone have an alternate host or cached version?

</comment><comment><USER29> PPT link?

<comment><AUTHOR> Drew tweeted a link to his actual ppt: <http://bit.ly/bVOSfw>

<comment><USER29> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Great product and great presentation? fffff life is not fair.

(would love to learn more about the details of the 2-sided incentive)

<comment><USER4> So sign up and see what the 2-sided incentive is... :)

<https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTU5ODg5ODI5>

<comment> X-Istence Well played, extremely well played!</comment></comment></comment>


OnePlus 2: Invite system opens, here's how you could secure your invite - <AUTHOR> http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/oneplus-2-invite-system-opens-heres-how-you-could-secure-your-invite-275445.html <comment><USER2> I'm a Windows phone fanboy, but the OnePlus One really made me want to try an for once android, sadly I had just bought a windows phone at the time, but this time I'm gonna get the OnePlus Two for sure, their phones look great and their pricing doesn't seem insane like many other phones be it android, windows phone or iphone.

Can't wait to get my hands on the OnePlus Two :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, me too.</comment></comment>


Pseudonymisation is helping firms comply with GDPR - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21740165-stripping-our-identifying-information-they-are-still-able-do <comment><USER2> is pseudonymisation really a new thing? We do this with prod data for our dev and staging database. a subset of a dump is processed and names, emails and other PIIs are replaced with random strings, etc.

Not only it makes the data handling safe and anonymised, you also avoid crazy stuff like mistakenly sending a batch email to prod users while you are testing stuff in dev/prod (been there, done that).

I found that clever when I first saw we were doing that, but it seemed simple enough that I just assumed every company did it.

<comment><USER3> It's not as simple as that. What's the k-anonymity on your datasets? I'd be mightily impressed if anyone at your company had ever calculated it, yet 'pseudonymisation' is meaningless without quantitative assessments of its results.

From what I've seen in research, when you get an 'anonymized' dataset from e.g. a government institute, hospital or school, someone will have replaced the names in the 'Name' column with 'Subject 1', 'Subject 2' and so on, and if you're lucky they'll have removed the DoB column. How many people are there in the average organization who are even qualified to have an opinion on whether a dataset is sufficiently anonymous for a certain purpose?

The first few years of GDPR lawsuits are going to be about obvious things, hopefully we'll get to see a few more interesting ones about stuff like this once that basic stuff is settled :)

<comment><USER4> And, if you are interested in ethics rather than loopholes, things like k-anonymity are not properties of datasets but of datasets with respect to an assumed corpus of other information. You have to consider how this new data could be integrated with other previous or future data releases and what level of anonymity remains after that integration.

Eventually, if you work this analysis through sincerely enough, you will probably abandon all hope of maintaining k-anonymity in real data management practices. Then, you face your real ethical decision as you either drastically restrict the data or turn to lawyers and loopholes to assuage your guilt as you continue with the naive levels of protection demanded by your application and organization...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it is worth noting that pseudonymization is not just this big loophole in the GDPR and pseudonomyzed data can still be considered personal data and fall under GDPRs jurisdiction.

Pseudonymisation != Anonymization. And as the article 29 working party has concluded [0] might sometimes not be sufficient to protect users privacy.

[0] [http://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/documentation/opinion...](http://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/documentation/opinion- recommendation/files/2014/wp216_en.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://archive.is/e40uP](http://archive.is/e40uP)

</comment><comment><USER7> _The result is a new set of data that contains no personal information, but retains the format and statistics of the original. The only way that each field in the new data set can be returned to its old state is by applying the key used to generate the hash_

 _these keys are held by the accounts teams. The development teams working on the pseudonymous data never see them_

Right ... but I would feel better if _I supply_ this hash/key back to them. I understand I can request erasure, but I would like the option to request "hashed" (or a user friendlier term) when I want to keep my data on their server, but I control it.

<comment><USER2> You supply this key? So you are implying that you store the key and the company doesn't have access to it, hence doesn't have access to your data? Then is there any reason for the company to store your data?

What if you loose the key? You can't restore your account? I'd be interested to know the % of users loosing their password and needing to use "forgot password" feature. How would that work with a key you own?</comment></comment>


Any reason Not to run Linux in a VM all the time? - <AUTHOR> http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/38379/5560

<comment><USER2> > My Linux distro is hosted in VirtualBox with Windows as host, and I quite > like it that way, snapshots are incredibly useful.

Take the plunge. Run a Linux host and Windows in a VM. That way you'll be ready for Microsoft's upcoming collapse. :)

I have Windows installed in a VirtualBox VM on this Linux machine, but as time passes I find fewer and fewer reasons to launch it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its slow?

<comment><AUTHOR> These days, it's not.

<comment><USER3> Its slower than the raw HW, so yes, that is slow.</comment></comment></comment>