Making a Multiplayer 3rd-Person Shooter in HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://playcanvas.com/a-multiplayer-3rd-person-shooter-in-html5/ <comment><USER2> Note that this is very much a tech demo. For those complaining about the qualities as a game, please read the article - this was a fortnight's work for _two_ guys!

Very impressive. WebGL still has more than a few kinks to be worked out with GPU drivers and browser support, but it's increasingly looking to be the future. C'mon Apple, turn it on in IOS Safari! (It's in there, but hidden behind a developer option)

</comment><comment><USER3> Took something like four minutes to load on a 20mbps connection. Is this normal, or is your site just being hammered? Definitely the longest load I've ever seen for a browser game.

Not sure if it's a mouse lock bug but even when fullscreened with mouse lock on, the input is super glitchy - it seems to randomly ignore my inputs sometimes until I move out of some sort of mouse 'dead zone', and my freedom of movement is pretty limited and there's some weird acceleration.

Camera glitches around like mad when I move too, but I assume that's because the animations aren't being blended.

Text in the score HUD gets highlighted when you move the mouse with the mouse button down, which is kinda weird.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, we're getting a bit of a battering at the moment. It doesn't usually take that long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Impressive, _but_ :

1\. Needs jump. [0]

2\. In firefox 14 on Ubuntu it's a bit shaky.

3\. There is no three, damn fine work. Good job. [1]

[0]: [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2012/03/borderlands-gun- coll...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2012/03/borderlands-gun-collectors- club.html) (Scroll down to the heading: "Disallowing jumping is what Stupid Designers do")

[1]: Okay, so there are some minor things like the inverted mouse scroll, unoptimized spawns, and idling players, but it really is a cool demo.

<comment><USER6> It's a completely flat tech demo. I don't really think that it needs jump.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> worked great in FF 14.0.1! No lag, game loaded in under 30 seconds, with instant reaction to controls. Mouse movements are reversed for up and down. Running into a dummy causes them to move forward and along whatever wall they may hit.

</comment><comment><USER8> Works good in Chrome, on OSX 10.8 with early 2008 MBP. It does not work - "crashes" with Safari on same machine. (Probably not crashed, but no updates were happening)

Pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty cool. Especially since it's 2 weeks' worth of work by 2 guys. Definitely will be following these guys and their progress...

</comment><comment><USER10> Was hoping I could try it out behind the corporate firewall seeing as it's in the browser... Guess not...

What port(s) does websockets run on anyways?

<comment><USER4> Doh, that's my fault, We're connecting to the game server on port 8000. Should be using 80.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> loading takes very long - i like the idea of a loading bar going in both directions...

The game is smooth but without mouselock totally unplayable

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks very impressive!

Mouse movement doesn't work in fullscreen mode though, only outside of fullscreen. Tested on Firefox nightly (17).

</comment><comment><USER13> Graphics smooth on Chrome/Mac/GTX260. Inverted mouse control is really annoying. Have seen some warping.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is nice.

It's nearly smooth on my shitty Intel IGP under Chrome.

Still, what's the matter with reversed mouse direction?

</comment><comment><USER15> The framerate was horrible on my quite new iMac

<comment><USER4> Hi, can I ask which browser you are using?

<comment><USER16> The framerate is terrible for me too (looks ~5 FPS), newish MacBook Pro.

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011)

      Processor  2 GHz Intel Core i7
      Memory  8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
      Graphics  AMD Radeon HD 6490M 256 MB
      Software  OS X 10.8 (12A269)

      Darwin Kernel Version 12.0.0: Sun Jun 24 23:00:16 PDT 2012; root:xnu-2050.7.9~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

In both:

      Google Chrome Version 21.0.1180.77 beta
      Mozilla Firefox 14.0.1

Edits: updated formatting and newlines. I don't see an option to enable high performance graphics in Mountain Lion, but I tried disabling auto-switching of graphics and it has the same issue.

<comment><USER4> Hmm, that seems unusual. I'm running a Late 2008 MBP and I get between 20-40FPS in Chrome and similar in FF. Though my machine has 512MB GPU RAM, so it's possible that you are running out of space for textures. There's still work to do there. :-)

Another thing that might cause problems is the the Energy Saver preferences. You need to ensure that the graphics option is set to Higher Performance. (At least in 10.7 you do)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If this is a glimpse of the future - I am happy to stay in the present. I think that it is ridiculous that people are exited or even impressed by something that has been possible of 8 years via flash or silverlight (now JavaFX 2.0).

OHHHH NOOOOOOO a PLUGIN to the browser???? this HTML5 thing is sooo much better because it does not require a plugin. OK better? in what way?

Now instead of having to update that plugin every 2-3 months, you will now be updating your entire browser every 2-3 months and will be benefiting from slower moving, less innovative standards based technology.

Open standards are the communism of the web. They promise to put everyone on a level playing field, but do nothing except hold innovation back. They take the entrepreneurs out of the tech innovation space and force everyone to simply try to hack their 'standard' to try to make possible (or palatable) what can already be done in another technology like Flash, Silverlight or JavaFX 2.0.</comment>


Share: The Icon No One Agrees On - <AUTHOR> https://bold.pixelapse.com/minming/share-the-icon-no-one-agrees-on <comment><USER2> The problem that comes before this one is whether _share_ is a well-understood action.

If I "share" via e-mail, then I _transmit_ a document to others. After this, each recipient has a separate copy which, thereafter, is completely out of my control.

If I "share" via social network, then I _upload_ a document. This makes a single copy, accessible to previously chosen people. It is (depending on the social network) somewhat under my control. Others can comment on it.

If I "share" via something like Dropbox, then I make the document _accessible_ to others. No copy is made. If I share via URL, then I give read access. If I make a shared folder, then I give both read and write access.

Now, we techies know these are different things. Our mental model of non- technical users' thinking might suggest that, _to them_ , these are all the same kind of action.

But are they?

Does an average non-technical user think of folder sharing, Facebook posts, and e-mail messages as the same category of action? I'm not sure he does.

<comment><USER3> Non-technical users have always understood the concepts of: publish (or broadcast), share (or collaborate), and give (or send).

The computer world is the one that limited these concepts.

Before web: you can only copy and give.

After web: you can give, or publish.

After cloud: you can give, publish, and share.

I think these concepts should be as well differentiated in the digital world as they are in the physical.

<comment><USER4> Isn't it all copying on the web/cloud? Your file isn't lost on your end when you give/publish/share/etc.

<comment><USER3> Yes a core feature of digital technology is copying it underlies everything. It takes extra effort to 'simulate' not copying i.e. collaboration, and that's why shared document collaboration like google docs etc. has really only showed up recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is particularly interesting article because they have the answer to the question on the bottom of the page: [http://i.imgur.com/0NdMB4S.png](http://i.imgur.com/0NdMB4S.png)

The share icons are Facebook, Twitter and Google+ logos. The share icon that nobody agrees to is actually just the icon that is going to reveal the interface of the actual share icons.

I think that users don't want to share, they want to post on facebook, tweet or do the thing that people on google+ do(sorry, never used it) because the context of the thing that you are going to share is often appropriate to one of these and the reflex of the user is something like "I should post this on facebook so that my friends see it" or like "I should tweet this so that my audience sees it".

You can't find the logo for the share icon because the action is fundamentally something else. I don't know, maybe the button that will open the interface for the sharing buttons should just represent the logos of the services available.

<comment><USER6> I agree, my Facebook, Twitter, and email audiences are all different groups of people. When I see something I want to show people, I think "I should put this on Facebook" or "I should Tweet this".

Actually, I never use "share" buttons, I just go onto the service I want to use and link to it manually. I guess I don't share often enough, and I want total control over the message I post.

<comment><USER7> You rare. A lot of my friends don't use links really on iOS. They use the supplied actions, or it doesn't happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apple gets this spot on by having an icon represent the action actually being performed, i.e., sending some information somewhere. That could be to yourself (a bookmark) to another person, a group of people, or the public at large. It doesn't really matter.

Many of the others are trying to represent the abstract concept of "sharing", which doesn't fit the use case at all. That's why those icons don't make any sense. Others are representing specific technical concepts like graphs that again, only make sense for certain specific uses and aren't especially intuitive.

In many ways, it makes sense to outsource this kind of design to someone that doesn't speak any English and run the brief through a translator. That way you're forced to explain the _concept_ that the icon needs to represent, instead of having the icon represent the English word that happens to be (perhaps wrongly) attached to the concept.

Distilling the concept down to an arrow pointing outwards to represent sending something is the kind of minimalist, universally intuitive design that Apple are often brilliant at. Approaching the design task like an engineering task is likely to lead to this as the optimal solution. I find it endlessly interesting that good designers tend to do this intuitively, in spite of not thinking anything like Engineers, whereas Engineers tend to do the opposite if forced to do design.

<comment><USER9> Apple's sign looks very much like an exit sign to me:

[http://www.designofsignage.com/application/symbol/railway/la...](http://www.designofsignage.com/application/symbol/railway/largesymbols/exit.html)

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=exit%20Pictog...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=exit%20Pictogram&tbs=imgo:1)

<comment><USER10> Yeah, it reminds me mostly of the MediaWiki outgoing link icon, which is used as an "exit sign".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems like "just pick something arbitrary and everyone agree on it" is a better solution than "find a small simple icon that effectively evokes 'share' to a brand new user." In other words, this is confusing not because the icons don't represent sharing well enough, but because they're different on every platform. There are lots of things on computers that aren't immediately obvious, but once you learn the convention, you don't forget it. I don't care which one we use, but we need to be consistent. (Ok, not the milkshake.)

<comment><USER12> _Ok, not the milkshake._

There is no doubt in my mind, that the milkshake is the best possible icon for sharing. The only thing that could conceivably be better would be a _Lady-and- the-Tramp_ -style single-strand spaghetti dinner, but that might be hard to draw.

<comment><USER13> Except for the couple billion people who sadly don't know what a milkshake is.

<comment><USER14> They'll get by, just like hundreds of million who don't know what a floppy disk is

<comment><USER12> It seems floppy disks will soon become, if they aren't already, a much more outdated concept than milkshakes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Rather than "Share", read the action as "Send to".

This clarifies the author's preference for icons with the arrows, fits with the usual mix of upload/post-to-social-app/open-in-other-app actions, and removes the motivation for the somewhat out-of-place milkshake icon.

(You can keep the 'share' label for marketing purposes if you want...)

<comment><USER16> Exactly. Apple does not refer to this icon as the 'share' icon in official documentation. It is actually the 'action' button[1]. As in, I have some data in this app, and I want to do something with it outside of this app. Hence, the symbol of an arrow moving outside of something.

Many of the possible actions resulting from tapping that icon (on iOS) may be unrelated social sharing (e.g., copy, save to photo library, assign to contact, etc.).

[1]: UIBarButtonSystemItemAction; [https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/uikit/...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/uikit/reference/UIBarButtonItem_Class/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/doc/c_ref/UIBarButtonSystemItem)

<comment><USER17> The google 'share' icon is the same. On Android it means 'do an action with' since all it does is activate the intents menu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Upload and Share tend to be the same thing for most users. You want _this_ on _that_. I don't think it's coincidence that the share icon looks like an upload icon in iOS7.

<comment><USER19> This is the correct behaviour. The exact same sign is used on exit doors of buses. [http://ak6.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/3922265/preview/sto...](http://ak6.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/3922265/preview/stock- footage-airport-directions-sign-taxi-bus-parking-exit.jpg)

The same thing happen with information, it goes from one place to another. The fact that this action takes many forms doesn't really matter.

<comment><USER20> That bus icon means exit. I've seen similar icons in apps that mean logout, i.e. leave the app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think the Android icons are fine. The old one is a bit easier to understand due to the explicit arrow direction, but the new one is implicitly directed correctly for people who are trained to read left to right. It's abstract and consequently vague, but I don't think that's a big problem: I expect there to be a share functionality, and in that context the icon is easy enough to understand.

The new Apple icon is less abstract, but it does seem to scream upload/send to server, which is also a function I might expect in similar situations as a share function; I think the old one is better because it points to the side signifying communication towards a peer.

The Windows 8 one is fine, easily understandable in context for the same reasons as the new Android one, but it lacks any semblance of directionality. It's a bit hilarious that it's almost identical to the Ubuntu icon.

The other two are terrible and I probably wouldn't expect them to signify sharing even in a context where I'd expect the functionality.

Edit: Of course I am an Android user so this may just be (confirmation?) bias at work. :)

<comment><USER22> > _the new one is implicitly directed correctly for people who are trained to > read left to right. It 's abstract and consequently vague, but I don't think > that's a big problem: I expect there to be a share functionality, and in > that context the icon is easy enough to understand._

I disagree. I think you're just rationalizing your own knowledge of what this means. And I say that because, as someone who's never used Android, I have literally never seen that icon before. And if I had seen it in a context other than a blog post about share icons, I would have had _no idea whatsoever_ what it meant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've never used a "share" button if I could avoid it and so haven't thought about what the icon should look like. The concept probably doesn't have a good icon because the concept itself is one born out of laziness and ineptitude on the part of users.

If I want to share something on Twitter I'll use Twitter. If I want to share something on Google+ I'll use Google+. Why should I be expected to try interacting with those services through Javascript or any other third party application that needs to authenticate?

I just have a bookmark. Google+, bam. Twitter, bam.

My phone uploads all photos to Google+ whenever it finds Wifi and if I want to share a photo it's because I'm using Google+ at that moment. I don't need to share photos from anywhere, at most I generally need to export photos.

But the share button has become to ubiquitous that now it seems to have taken the place of export in iPhoto, as an example. I need to navigate menus to find the export option.

I don't need functionality spelled out for me while I'm using a computer like it was something designed by Fisher Price. If I want to send an email I'll start composing an email. If I want to share something on Google+ I'll go use that application.

iPhoto doesn't have an upload to Google+ option, in the case that I'm trying to manage photos from my digital camera. Which brings up another problem, which is that Facebook and Apple are in each other's pockets. Once these share buttons are ubiquitous then companies when they feel like it omit options.

<comment><USER24> Maybe on a PC, let's say I read some artcile through HN on my phone and want to share it, then a sharing icon can come in handy (because copying and pasting on smartphones is a bit more tedious than just clicking an icon and choosing a service).

<comment><USER23> But wouldn't something like a share button in that case be something better suited to the browser rather than links on whatever page you are visiting, at the very least? And even then it should be for whatever service I actually use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is there a meaningful difference between share and upload any more? "I have something on my device, I want to put it somewhere else" is how that icon is used in iOS and OSX, and for almost all of my use cases, that seems to be correct.

<comment><USER26> Well, for me at least the difference is that uploading implies a single destination (I know this doesn't always hold, but conceptually I think it does. Otherwise there are multiple distinct uploads)

And sharing implies multiple agents, be them on a single or multiple destinations. I know my definition doesn't seem clearcut, but I think the implication is that you could share by means of uploading or you could share without uploading anything (excepting maybe "uploading" the link to someone else), but you can also upload without sharing anything (i.e. I upload to my private server) and that's why I consider them different concepts.

<comment><USER27> I think your over thinking it from the normal users point of view. I want to press the button to give this thing on my phone to other(s). How that happens isn't really my concern (link, full file, etc.).

<comment><USER26> You are probably right. Point taken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_icon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_icon)

The Android share icon has been around since (at least?) 2006 and was used a lot on websites, particularly Wordpress-based sites.

It was initially open source but then sold Share This and trademarked. Most services use the icon shape without ST's green button background.

<comment><USER29> I think you've touched on one big source of this problem, which is that many of these icons have been trademarked and saddled with all manner of usage restrictions and licenses.

As an entrepreneur or designer, am I going to waste who knows how much time interpreting the usage guidelines from Share This, or devote valuable space on my site to giving the Open Share people an attribution?

No. I'm going to spend 5 minutes designing something that won't cause future legal threats or trouble at acquisition time.

We need something with an MIT-like license on it.

<comment><USER28> It had an open source license... then it didn't.

As entrepreneur and designer, I go with the most common icon I find in Google images... which this happens to be.

Keep in mind, the trademark includes the green button background. That's significantly different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think the milkshake is a step in the right direction. Many other popular icons (envelope for e-mail, key for authentication, gear for changing inner working aka settings) borrow from a non-digital analogy, and I think that's what the author was trying to represent with the milkshake. The milkshake unfortunately does not quite meet the analogy. When you share content, you are not sharing something that is limited physically (like a toy, food, or drink). Rather you are spreading the word about a piece of information. Two more accurate representation that I can think of would be one person whispering into another's ear (for DM), or a person on a podium like he/she is giving a speech (for broadcast).

<comment><USER31> How about a megaphone icon?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> As an Apple user, everytime I see Android's share button I think of the Steam icon ([https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steam_logo.svg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steam_logo.svg)).

<comment><USER33> I don't think that has anything to do with you using Apple devices. Probably has to do with you using Steam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I vote for a megaphone of some type

<comment><USER35> [http://fortawesome.github.io/Font- Awesome/icon/bullhorn/](http://fortawesome.github.io/Font- Awesome/icon/bullhorn/)

<comment><USER36> Good icon, other than it looks like an axe at smaller sizes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm just thinking out loud here, but after reading the Milkshake concept, I thought that maybe the problem is in the word "share" as the driving concept and not the icon per se.

In terms of the milkshake, that's the perfect icon. You actually share something when you stop having "a whole" and now you have "a part" but then someone else has "a part" as well. That's what I've seen parent teach their kids over and over again. Sharing the ball: _we_ both use it, share your candy _we_ both enjoy it, even if it means I'll have less.

With electronic articles and other media that gets shared, you actually share nothing in that sense, you just let someone know about it, whilst still keeping the whole yourself.

I know that semantically you can also "share information", and you lose nothing by doing it. But my point is that maybe most people associate sharing with "losing a bit to give to someone else" instead of just "letting know".

I am thinking hard and haven't come up with a better word, I admit it, but maybe there is actually a better word for describing that "electronic share" action?

The bullhorn looks promising, but like someone said, it looks like an axe is too small. And also someone else said it would have to be different enough from a volume icon.

Maybe two hands apart, one with a piece of "the whole" and the other hand with the other piece?

In that regard I liked the Android icon a lot, even though it's a bit too abstract. But it conveys the idea that you just multiplied the information, without losing anything yourself. Maybe a diagram of an "information bus" could work? like a straight horizontal line with a perpendicular line protuding from it, indicating that you keep going but still produced a new path/road/source?

Edit: added clarification

<comment><USER37> > With electronic articles and other media that gets shared, you actually > share nothing in that sense, you just let someone know about it, whilst > still keeping the whole yourself.

What about thinking of it as you both "sharing time/attention" on the target object?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm perfectly ok with the Android icon, which looks different from just about everything else and is easy to remember once learned. The Apple icon looks too generic, and there are already way too many icons that look document-ish. The Windows icon looks too much like Ubuntu to me, and it additionally isn't intuitive that a circular icon means sharing. The Dropbox & Google Apps icons are great, but are also large and wouldn't necessarily be easy to distill down into a square, single color representation.

By far my biggest pet peeve re:action icons these days are the Android copy/paste icons. Here's a screenshot I found: [http://i.stack.imgur.com/87bDm.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/87bDm.png) (pardon the annotations -- I found it in a Stackexchange thread).

I challenge anyone to tell me what each one does (without testing first).

<comment><USER31> >The Windows icon looks too much like Ubuntu to me

The definition of "Ubuntu" (from wikipedia):

"...is often used in a more philosophical sense to mean 'the belief in a universal bond of sharing'..."

Also, I love the circular sharing icon if you see it as an overhead view of 3 people holding hands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think this one is easy. We take the RSS icon and use it for sharing instead. Such a waste to have such a good icon only be used for such a specific data stream.

</comment><comment><USER40> Just yesterday, while developing a Cordova hybrid app intended to target iOS, Android & Windows Phone 8, this very notion became unsettlingly apparent for me. BTW, [http://icons8.com](http://icons8.com) is a great place to do icon recon.

Personally, I like the iOS 6 icon over the iOS 7 version. They're almost the same, except the new one places too much emphasis on "up." For example, when using the Meme Producer app and you want to save the picture to your photo library, the app uses the iOS 7 "action" icon but it feels awkward to then immediately go to the "download" icon to actually save. [http://i.imgur.com/YtVd5WZ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/YtVd5WZ.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER41> I'd think an arrow to the world would be the right icon, at least if you're doing a "publicize". I think grouping email in with other forms of broadcasting is part of the problem. I'd like to see two icons - one for "broadcast" which would be arrow-to-world (for FB/Twitter/Instagram/etc), and one for "send to a person" which would be an email-like letter icon, (for direct-messaging, emails, SMS, etc). While it may be similar to us developers, to a user the idea of "share" vs "send" is semantically different. "send" operations have recipients. "share" operations do not.

</comment><comment><USER42> The Windows 8 one is frighteningly similar to the Ubuntu logo.

<comment><USER43> For those wondering, The Ubuntu logo: [http://i.imgur.com/eBSHg1U.png](http://i.imgur.com/eBSHg1U.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The author seems to contradict himself in the conclusion: while earlier he states that the Android share icon is also used by ShareThis, and that variations on it comprise the majority of search results for the term "share icon", he then concludes by saying that the Apple/iOS icon is "suitable to use in a general site/app", while the Android icon is "suitable to use in an Android app".

I think the author's own greater familiarity with one icon (by virtue of being an OSX/iOS user) has led him to make an overreaching conclusion about the wider population.

</comment><comment><USER45> The open hand is more like serve or broadcast than share.

The outgoing or upload are nouns that don't mean share either.

The Google Android - three dots approach seems to be the simplest, most logical, where one becomes two (or more).

</comment><comment><USER46> The solution clearly is to spin a SAS (share icon as a service) startup: offer a single endpoint URL that returns one image of the requested size.

It will be a random share icon.

until we can measure how many times each user clicks on individual icons, and optimize in the future to use that previously used icon for that user. After some data collection period the user will be served the icon he identifies more readily.

Some heuristics can be added initially, like showing the android icon if the user agent is android for 90% instead of random.

Will be taking round A tomorrow by noon. thank you.

</comment><comment><USER47> When you're holding a mobile device, an up arrow is away from you and towards others. Sharing essentially becomes sending. I think iOS 7's representation is the most literal.

</comment><comment><USER48> Translating 'share' into chinese yields this nice character: 共

It's unique and memorable after you learn it. Not like the million other arrows we have in icons.

<comment><USER49> Sharing is called 分享 on the Taiwanese Facebook (and in my dictionary).

I think I've only seen 共 in compounds for things that are already shared, communal or co-existant, and notably as an abbreviation for communism. 中共 = 中國共產黨 = Chinese communist party. Not really a positive connotation. :)

(Disclaimer: Not a native speaker)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> What do people think of an "Outgoing Speech Bubble" icon? Here's a quick mockup I just did:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/r9f0w2tsrbc3c55/arrowbubble.png](https://www.dropbox.com/s/r9f0w2tsrbc3c55/arrowbubble.png)

and at 32px wide:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/qe6t169zgobdwih/arrowbubble- small....](https://www.dropbox.com/s/qe6t169zgobdwih/arrowbubble-small.png)

</comment><comment><USER51> As a reluctant social media user, I think a can of SPAM would be perfect.

<comment><USER52> You can share content via email too. It's not just for new social media sites.

(I'm actually not sure if this makes your SPAM analogy more or less appropriate.)

<comment><USER53> what I don't like about the explosion of share menus us that email has been subordinated to the share menu. I may be a constituency of one, but email is the only way I share. So instead of tapping or clicking "email", I have to tap "share" then email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> What is amazing to me is that when I ctrf-f for 'publish' on this page I get not a single hit (in tfa or these comments).

A huge part of what 'sharing' is today is actually publishing albeit to a controlled group of people. Often on social sites sharing is in fact publishing in the classic sense since many posts are public.

I wonder whether this is a branding thing. 'Sharing' seems to be a more intimate and special or exclusive one-one activity (think secrets), while 'publishing' seems to be a far more public one-many activity. Strange then that so many companies try to use 'share' to cover many to one. I guess you can 'share' a story around a campfire, but again, you probably know everyone you are sharing with.

Given the association of sharing with familiarity I think it is quite devious of companies to use such a term to describe an activity which is actually publishing.

</comment><comment><USER55> This article reminds me of conversations that we had at Vimeo when redesigning our video player.

Our previous share icon was two arrows facing diagonally in opposite directions. The main problem with that was that it was very close to our "embed" icon. We knew we wanted to change it, but we didn't know what icon to use.

We had a bunch of mockups that included some of the icons found in this article.

Ultimately, we ended up deciding on a paper airplane. It definitely is familiar to people in terms of sending email, but we also thought it was a playful and fun way to indicate sharing. Really it was the only icon that we all liked.

It might not be immediately clear at first, but hopefully after using it you get the hang of it.

You can check it out here: [https://vimeo.com/76979871](https://vimeo.com/76979871)

And yes, I am the one in the opening shot of the video who throws the airplane :)

<comment><USER56> I don't think I've used it, but it would have never occurred to me that the paper plane icon did anything other than send an email. Of course I'm one of those weirdos that just copies a URL when I want to share something.

<comment><USER57> It's interesting that email send is your take away from that because Android's send icon[1] is also a paper airplane (or at least that's how I interpret the icon.)

[1] [http://i.stack.imgur.com/Jg4vi.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Jg4vi.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Incidentally, early prerelease versions of Windows 8 used the "Open Share" icon: [http://www.neowin.net/images/uploaded/195351i26jesbggjt18g0i...](http://www.neowin.net/images/uploaded/195351i26jesbggjt18g0i.jpg) ; wonder why they changed it.

<comment><USER59> Probably Microsoft's traditional "submarine patent fears" excuse for NIH.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I like this article, and I tend to agree with its conclusions about which ones are most common on most platforms, but isn't this at best heuristics and at worst wrong assumptions?

Like, I would use these as my heuristic guidelines if I was on the job and constraints dictate that I can't spend time on researching icons. But I wouldn't write a blog post authoritatively telling people that one icon is more recognized that the other without having some kind of research to back it up.

Then again, the author does say at one point that their research is extremely informal, so maybe I'm just projecting my feelings about the cowboy nature of the UX profession right now. But I still feel like they could do more to qualify that these just appear to be their best guesses about how people interpret the share icon.

</comment><comment><USER52> The author seems to be quite fond of Apple's iOS6-era Share icon. It would be interesting to ask somebody who isn't familiar with Apple's products what that icon means. I've always found it a bit confusing.

In general, this kind of thing would actually be a interesting research project.

</comment><comment><USER61> The writer misses the fact that Apple has a more general and consistent concept of "sharing" (and has had consistently for nearly a decade -- before iOS and before the iOS sharing icon) than the others.

Share -- exemplified by iPhoto -- means share _by_ _any_ _means_ (e.g. email, youtube, twitter, facebook, burning a DVD). Thus, Apple's icon makes perfect sense -- more sense than the Y -- based on this. You might be sharing with one specific person, or everyone. The point is that you're sending stuff OUT.

Most of the others treat sharing as something special that is "distribute by any method except the other things we have icons for".

</comment><comment><USER62> That's very interesting indeed.

In the old days Microsoft was creating an icon and everybody used that, otherwise people would not understand what a given button is doing. Web and mobile devices with multiple os changed all that.

Another thing is how much iconized guis are. In theory it would be enough to create an icon with "Share" written on it. Nobody even tries that now, not even icon + text.

This is also a beautiful example of how much text/speech is sometimes more powerfull then picture. It seems that not always "picture is worth a thousand words".

</comment><comment> nezza-_- It would be interesting to ask people if they recognise what the "Milkshake- icon" represents.. I don't think "A drink with two straws" would've been my first guess.

</comment><comment><USER59> [http://i.imgur.com/80fMIju.png](http://i.imgur.com/80fMIju.png) \- here's a quick mockup I made in Inkscape of the best icon I know for "share". It's two people handing something off to each other.

When I was a kid, this is what I thought the old "Find" binoculars icon from Microsoft Word / Netscape was. It seems to me that an icon that brings this association _inadvertently_ is better than a contrived abstract symbol that requires _explanation_.

</comment><comment><USER63> The larger question: All platforms seem to eventually converge on icons to some extent. What I see here is that the concept of sharing is new, and I don't think that's limited to computer uses. We live in a very competitive world where we consume, buy, compete. Sure we share things, but we discriminate in the physical world. I think the notion of sharing non discriminately with ALL our connections is fundamentally new and this is contributing to the lack of a standard symbol.

</comment><comment><USER64> Haha, I'm glad I'm not the only one who cringes at the sight of the iOS Safari share icon. My brain starts panicking a little while trying to decipher its meaning.

</comment><comment><USER65> While the milkshake icon is in part for humor, it doesn't represent the same concept that the other icons represent. The acts of 'sharing' a piece of music and 'sharing' a milkshake are different. When people share a milkshake, the implication is that they're both there drinking it. Sharing a milkshake like you'd share an article would be to give the milkshake to someone else. You wouldn't even need two straws.

</comment><comment><USER66> Me likes iOS. It seems to be the easiest for me to understand.

</comment><comment><USER67> The milkshake idea was in my head before I even got to the section where the writer mentioned it, so it's at least got some sort of universality (for an American).

It also makes sense to me because I most frequently want to share specific things with specific people rather than everyone.

I wonder if there might be two different share icons - one to share with someone specific, and one to share with the world at large.

</comment><comment><USER68> _> Overall, the idea of this design is not immediately intuitive and the association of sharing with this symbol is purely because users have learned what it means over time._

I honestly believe that this is the case for all the icons. As an Android user and developer, I wouldn't associate the box with the up arrow with a "share" action, much less the Windows 8 circle thing.

</comment><comment><USER69> I always thought a megaphone pointed at a rendition of the world would be a great sharing icon. But its too complex to render easily.

</comment><comment><USER70> Can't believe nobody has thought of a syringe with a needle as a metaphor for sharing. </sarcasm>

Ok, ok, how about wrapped candy?

</comment><comment><USER71> It is quite telling that the article itself, towards the very bottom, prompts to share with facebook, twitter and google+ buttons -- but no share icon of any sort.

For good reasons, too: when you want to share something, you invariably want to do so in a specific manner, meaning email, FB, twitter, HN, etc., rather than plain "share".

</comment><comment><USER72> There is a cultural component here as well. How do you create an icon that represents _sharing_ across many cultures and many countries? I am thinking of things like Facebook and mobile devices.

For instance, while the milkshake icon is an interesting new approach, I wonder how much sense it makes in many cultures and countries.

</comment><comment><USER73> There is no doubt in my mind that the "milkshake" one is the most sticky, and once it caught on people would definitely remember it, which is really what you need to make an icon become universal. Getting it to catch on in the first place ... that's probably not going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER74> Not a fan of icons with a grid or connected dots. To me that means "viral." Usually I don't care whether the video goes viral, I just want my friends to see it, a one-to-many connection. How about a megaphone?

</comment><comment><USER75> For me 'sharing' is about communicating, about passing on a message. A speech bubble is the best representation in my mind... but that is already used for comments.

</comment><comment><USER76> The first time I saw the iOS "uploader" icon on my iPad, I thought for certain that it was for Up navigation in the app. There's nothing intuitive about it.

</comment><comment><USER77> I really prefer the "many people" icon, and disagree that it should only mean collaboration. I think it has the least abstract form and most intuitive meaning.

</comment><comment><USER78> The Windows share button and the Ubuntu logo aren't abstract as the article claims. It's a top view of three people standing in a circle and holding hands.

</comment><comment><USER79> I feel like if somebody did what Apple did for the cloud icon (i.e., came up with a canonical geometric representation[1]) to the 'Graph Diagram'[2] mentioned in the article, then you'd find that everyone would just wind up using that.

[1] [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThereIsOnlyOneCloudIconInTheEn...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThereIsOnlyOneCloudIconInTheEntireUniverse.aspx)

[2] [https://bold.pixelapse.com/minming/share-the-icon-no-one- agr...](https://bold.pixelapse.com/minming/share-the-icon-no-one-agrees- on#h1-9)

<comment><USER80> As noted in your first link, the concept of a circle based cloud was around in the 70s on BBC, if not other places too. I drew one for my consulting firm in 2006, before Mobile Me adopted one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> I like the Y-shaped old Android logo, but for some reason I feel that it looks upside-down. Could be one dot on top, with 2-3 arrows pointing downwards.

Fascinating article!

</comment><comment><USER82> May I suggest an octopus, stretching its arms out, the tips curling around hapless victims? Something resembling the NROL-39 logo [1] would do fine.

I tend to stay away from any 'Share', 'Mail', 'Like' and related buttons. If I want to share something, I'll use my own server so that only those who I intend to share with are party to the conversation.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches#mediaviewe...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches#mediaviewer/File:Nrol-39.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER83> I've always thought a megaphone would make for a good share symbol. It makes much more sense (in my head) than most of these in the link.

</comment><comment><USER84> The "share-icon war". The new browser-war that will haunt us for years. We'll be cross-device share icon compatibility experts.

</comment><comment><USER85> a small take on the subject [http://imgur.com/a/rXXro#0](http://imgur.com/a/rXXro#0)

</comment><comment><USER86> Is this really a problem? It doesn't even seem like there is less consensus on Share icons than for other common icons.

</comment><comment><USER87> The box with arrow icon originated as an "action" icon -- like, "take some action on this item".

</comment><comment><USER88> Those "graph diagram" ones look like the Spathi Eluder to me. Not quite the image that you want to invoke.

</comment><comment><USER89> I like the hand icon, the milkshake might work but make the milk transparent with a line for the top of it

</comment><comment><USER90> If any Apple designer reading this, please propose on replacing the share icon with a milkshake!

It's just perfect!

</comment><comment><USER91> on a tangent - when the hell did "zoom" and "search" icons become identical.

i find it confusing.

<comment><USER92> It is a tangent, but here's a well-researched answer on UX Stack Exchange: [http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/23645/8944](http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/23645/8944)

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> The open hand must actually have been a representation of _Serving_ files, i.e. like a server.

</comment><comment><USER94> I thought this was going to be about how I don't agree the icon should exist at all.

</comment><comment><USER95> A milkshake icon is certainly easier to draw than a Daniel Day-Lewis icon.

</comment><comment><USER96> Maybe it's the word "share" that needs changing instead.

</comment><comment><USER97> I think the icon most appropriate might be a fax machine

</comment><comment><USER98> What would be the best SHARE representation in Emoji???

</comment><comment><USER99> No reason the icon can't be animated.

</comment><comment><USER100> iOS7 one definitely conveys uploading. The Windows 8 one is just stupid.

</comment><comment> whoa-duder Words, why not use words?

<comment><USER101> Not an expert, but reasons I've discovered over my career: 1\. Because words take up a significant amount of space. On mobile, icons improve the experience. 2\. Words in other languages can destroy layouts, meaning customizing style for each language. For instance, potato in english is pomme de terre(apple of the earth) in Canadian French. Some other languages I've worked with are much worse. English can be very terse it turns out. 3\. Drop down menus require more clicks than a toolbar. Word toolbars without images either read like a sentence and are confusing, or they are well padded and then will take even more space. 4\. Pictures can be more accessible to many people (if done correctly) 5\. Our brains react to icon faster than to words. We actually store words and icons differently as well. 6\. Reading is hard, and expends more energy. Really. It has to do with the above.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do developer salaries differ across European countries? - <AUTHOR> I am a mobile dev with about 3 years of experience exploring potential opportunities abroad in Europe.
It would be helpful to know, how salaries differ across the various countries.
How much do developers typically make in the different countries?
How does that differ for Junior vs Senior developers?
What countries are known for having larger tech scenes?
What countries are in need of more developers from abroad?
How does the standard of living effect salaries?
How does the quality of life compare to a developer in the US?
I would love to hear about your personal experiences working abroad.
Anecdotes welcome, data too <comment><USER2> I don't know all the answers to this, but I did publish an infographic recently about salaries of software developers' in Europe.

[http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/european- software...](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/european-software- developers-salary-infographic/)</comment>


Spotify's U.S. Landing Page - <AUTHOR> http://www.spotify.com/uk/coming-to-the-us/

<comment><USER3> Spotify feels like driving around in a stolen car and leaving £10 a month in the glovebox.

I'm a European Spotify subscriber, and I'd be hard pushed to go back to purchasing albums again. Access really does trump 'ownership', and it would take Apple introducing a similar subscription service for me to go back to iTunes now.

But I wonder how Spotify can scale and actively support musicians. It might sound strange, but -- even as a paid subscriber -- I feel guilty when I use Spotify. I can't help feeling that musicians get an even rougher deal when I listen to their music over Spotify than when I buy tracks from iTunes or directly from their websites.

There is something unsettling about having instant access to a huge array of songs and only paying £9.99 a month for the service. It is so different to the traditional model that it almost feels like stealing. It's a feeling I don't get listening to the radio; with the radio, you're a passenger hitching a lift. With Spotify, you're in control. And somehow it feels wrong. Like joyriding[1], It's hard to shake the feeling that there will be consequences.

I'm sure that won't dent your enjoyment of the service if you're in the US, but I thought it worth sharing the viewpoint.

[1]: So I'm told.

<comment><USER4> It seems that we're quickly heading toward a point where all music becomes essentially free [1], and serves only as PR for boosting ticket sales. Keep in mind that, currently, most musicians can be broken into two groups:

1\. Superstars that make so much money that they won't be missing your Spotify dollars.

2\. Most other musicians, who don't really make that much off album sales compared to ticket sales (unless they sell physical CDs at their concerts, in which case, maybe).

I'm curious if there are any indie musicians out there with a different opinion, though.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2008/11/08/360-music-deals-become- mand...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/11/08/360-music-deals-become-mandatory-as- labels-prepare-for-free-music/)

<comment><USER5> My take as a former professional classical musician is to say that your idea of PR boosting ticket sales is not valid for (at least most) classical music. That's not to say you're incorrect, just to add a different (hopefully slightly interesting) perspective from another genre with a very different audience.

One reason for this is that classical music is focussed much more on the music than the musician, when compared to "popular music" (what's the best term for non-classical music that doesn't sound patronising?). Sure, Yo-Yo Ma or the London Philharmonic can attract people based on who they are, but even then a lot of decisions to see them or buy their recordings will be based on what they are playing. If you're a Katy Perry fan, chances are slim that you really want to see her live, look up a concert, then say "ah, but I'm not a fan of those songs, I'll give it a miss".

Another reason is probably range of repertoire - again this comes down to caring more about the music, not having the piece tied directly to the person/group who always performs it. If you love Francois Couperin's music, you're going to find it a lot easier to buy recordings than find performances. I suppose the same is true for indie performers, but I think a classical listener is more likely to find a wider range of classical music that's hard to see live than the equivilent situation for indie music.

Probably plenty more reasons too, but not too much off the top of my head. Oh, and demand I guess. A classical music concert will typically either perform once, or perform a short run, or perform a few times in different cities (or countries). That's the case even for the very biggest performers. A big pop performer, on the other hand, can do a much longer tour, and can sell far more tickets for each.

As to recordings, I think classical recordings have a longer shelf life - sure, some people still buy music from the 80s, or whenever, but much less than around when it was released. Whereas classical music, all the music is so dated (not in a negative way, just literally) that who cares if it was recorded a month ago or thirty years ago, if it was originally written centuries ago. On top of that, I suspect classical music listeners are less likely to pirate music. Possibly that's a generic snobbish view, but I think it's accurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been a spotify subscriber for two years now, and it's more less the only player I use for music on my PC, mobile and ipad.

Together with the related artists feature of Spotify, Spotify social(sharing playlists etc.) and scrobbling to Last.fm, I've discovered lots of new music I enjoy. It really is fantastic. The client is also pretty quick and fairly sparesome on resource usage.

It's a bit annoying when music surreptitiously disappear from their library -- in that case you have to use local files.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know this is exciting to people who have been envious of UK Spotify, but we've had Rdio for like a year now, right? Rdio is pretty excellent.

<comment><USER8> I think it's going to depend on the selection for me.

Also, I have to say I really hate Rdio's queueing model. They make it really tough to just navigate the queue and add and remove various songs from different artists. For example, I find it really annoying when they add an entire album to my queue when I just pressed the play button on one song.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whats the difference between Spotify and Rhapsody? I've been a subscriber to Rhapsody for years and it's been a terrific experience.

</comment><comment><USER10> Grooveshark already does everything listed. And it's been available in the USA for years. The only problem is their iPhone app has been continuously rejected by Apple so they've been forced to publish for iOS on Cydia's store for jailbroken apps. That and licensing/litigation issues with some large recording companies. They have deals with a few and have been through court with others.

<comment><USER11> I have no idea why it doesn't get more attention. Inferior marketing department, I suppose.

<comment><USER12> I don't think Grooveshark is a very good product, but I'm not crazy about Spotify either. Last time I used Spotify (about a year ago) they didn't even have the ability save albums to a collection or library. You could only create playlists which turned into terrible UI once you had more than a few. Not having a web interface is also a major minus in my book.

<comment><USER13> The thing with Spotify is the 'adding albums to your collection' model isn't one they're keen to promote. The idea is really (as far as I can tell - <USER2> I've been a full-price paying user for a long while now) that you have this HUGE collection of music always available, and if you want to listen to an album - you search, then there's playlist support as well.

You can ofc save albums as a playlist on their own - and this is quite well supported, but personally, after the first 10 albums I'd saved there, I have never found it to be very useful.

<comment><USER12> Sure, every subscription music service has search. It's essential, but navigating their entire library and navigating just stuff I like is not the same. Some times I just want to browse my favorite artists. I can't do this effectively on Spotify. The user experience here is bad. I don't think I'm the only person who wants to "favorite" albums.

<comment><USER14> All saved music lists in Spotify has clickable Album, Artist and Track links so in effect you can easily make "Album" lists. I have done that for ages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Spotify has completely replaced iPod on my iOS devices and iTunes on my MacBook. Coming from Europe, I'm using Spotify in the States for over a month now so I guess that once you get a (paid) subscription it works everywhere in the world (it has no streaming restrictions). So all you need to do to try it out is create an account through a proxy/VPN and you're all set!

<comment><USER16> I've been paying for Spotify in the UK and been using the desktop client without any tricks in the US since moving here. The big problem is that the Spotify iPhone app isn't available in the US app store. Is there anyway around this?

<comment><USER17> Switch to (and pay in) the UK store, links at the bottom of the itunes store home page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you are interested in how Spotify works and how they use Python you should check out this talk from EuroPython: Spotify and Python: love at first sight [http://ep2011.europython.eu/conference/talks/spotify-and- pyt...](http://ep2011.europython.eu/conference/talks/spotify-and-python-love- first-sight)

</comment><comment><USER19> Earlier this year, Spotify put more restrictions on the services they offer to their non-paying users: [http://www.spotify.com/blog/archives/2011/04/14/upcoming- cha...](http://www.spotify.com/blog/archives/2011/04/14/upcoming-changes-to- spotify-free-open/) . For example, there is no more unlimited listening: each track can now be listened to only five times for free.

It might be that this tightening of free content was only a preparation for the U.S launch, i.e. the record labels would not let Spotify in to the U.S. market without Spotify changing its services to something more restricted.

<comment><USER20> I believe Spotify paid the labels for each and every track played. So their burn rate was something like £20million per year. They needed to convert free users to paying users.

Personally I'm incredibly happy with Spotify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A few of us at our office have had beta access for a few weeks, everyone with it (for some reason I got left off the invite list :/) likes it, but the one person I know who also has an rdio account prefers rdio.

</comment><comment><USER22> Spotify is an awesome service. Now we need Netflix to come to Europe.

</comment><comment><USER23> is canada still shunned? or will it launch here with the US launch?

<comment><USER24> I'm wondering the same thing... No word in the news about Canada

<comment><USER25> This will likely never happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A couple of questions to Spotify users:

What advantages does Spotify have over Rdio? Can Spotify be used as a streaming service and a digital locker for tracks they don't have?

<comment><USER27> Im not sure since I've never used Rdio. But here is what I love about spotify (I am a premium subscriber for a laughable fee of £10 per month for all the ad-free music I want).

\- The collection is enormous, and newly released albums become available pretty quickly. There are of course artists who are not available but there is so much out there its insane.

\- The speed. Since its pretty much legalized P2P, I never need to wait for a song (well maybe sometimes there is latency but its rare).

\- Its mobile, across international borders. I live in the UK and travel a lot. I can still access the service from anywhere.

And also, yes I can index my local catalogue (but the local tracks are not available on other machines/devices).

<comment><USER28> The most important: Audio quality. If you have a paid Spotify subscription, you get 320kbps ogg streams (when they're available).

<comment><USER27> Almost forgot about that - my speakers don't do the service justice :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps their partnership with Facebook will be discussed again at Facebook's event today.

<comment><USER29> That's my prediction. I have a hard time believing it's a coincidence, but I could be wrong of course

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I feel like Spotify has been "coming soon" for the last 3-4 years. Lets go all ready! :)

</comment><comment><USER31> I get the Zuckerberg quote, but Demi Moore endorsing the product can't be relevant to anyone who might request an invite to a just launching music service.

<comment><USER32> You recognized the name, so that counts for something.</comment></comment>


Automation Should Be Like Iron Man, Not Ultron - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2841313 <comment><USER2> I remember around 2010 people adviced the same principle but with different words. At this time Go was still a game that couldn't be beaten by AI alone, so it was taken as example. And people found that if you let a person play, he can only achieve that much, mostly disappointing compared to perfection (with some exceptions), if you write an AI it won't be able to solve all the problems themselves. But if you combine them, using a human player that gets calculation backup by AI, that draws diagrams ( heat maps in case of Go), that gathers data, this is what enables the human to perform on professional level (about 3dan pro if I remember correctly) despite being a total beginner (15 kyu on Kiseido Go Server).

I completely agree with that and believe that the profesional and scientific world is actually also developing in that direction.

<comment><USER3> In 1968 Douglas Engelbart used the wonderfully space aged term "brain amplification" in his mother of all demos.

In practice, i'm not sure how it actually works. Systems work can be automated away. And it becomes brittle. Something like emacs or vim absolutely feel like iron man armor. I can't really see what vim for systems work would look like.

My vague thoughts are, maybe build systems that give lots of information about what's happening right now, and how it's different than the past. Lots of commands for introspection. some commands for intervention. At scale, picking a specific machine to remove from load balancing pool or restart or destroy and reallocate at a keystroke might be handy.

It's an interesting perspective, but the difference seems subtle in most practical contexts.

<comment><USER4> Here's one example from my experience:

There are many MySQL tools which are able to automate the process of failing over between a master and a slave. Github initially chose a solution which would trigger this failover automatically, when a master was unresponsive for a particular amount of time. One bad query came in, and the tool did it's job by failing over from the master to the slave. Here's the problem - the query was automatically retried against the slave, causing it to fail over back to the master. Repeatedly.

The solution? Page when MySQL became unresponsive, let a human initiate the failover, and let the tools handle the failover itself (which is a very complex dance to perform manually). I think they eventually moved to a model where it would fail over once per few hours, and alert if the condition occurred again.

<comment><USER5> The same questions a human will ask can be encoded into your admin automation. It is only as powerful or accurate as the process allows.

If you don't already have a procedural flowchart build one. Have the human document the questions asked and answers followed.

<comment><USER4> Only if you can foresee the problems and solutions to encode into the system. If you miss one, the system will fall down or make the wrong decision.

<comment><USER6> That's a problem of historical data. What are you really doing when something "seems unusual"?

<comment><USER7> You're using your best judgment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of arguments in David Mindell's book, "Our Robots, Our Selves", particularly what he calls "the myth of full autonomy":

""" The final myth is the myth of full autonomy. Engineers and roboticists tend to believe that technology is inevitably evolving toward machines that act completely on their own, and that full autonomy is somehow the highest expression of robotic technology. It isn't. Full autonomy is a great problem to work on in the laboratory. But solving the problem in an abstracted world, difficult as it may be, is not as challenging, nor as worthwhile, as autonomy in real human environments. Every robot has to work within some human setting to be useful and valuable. """ \- [http://www.davidmindell.com/qa/](http://www.davidmindell.com/qa/)

As a case study, Mindell talks about commercial airline pilots and the use of auto-land vs. heads up displays. (HUDs keep pilots' skills fresh and keep them engaged and informed during landings.)

I like that the article suggests a _technique_ for building systems, where Mindell's book isn't really useful in that way.

</comment><comment><USER9> By a strange coincidence I just happened to be reading [http://www.vpri.org/pdf/sci_amer_article.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/sci_amer_article.pdf) when I spotted this thread on another tab. I found it after reading this quote from "A small matter of programming":

 _Kay 's colleagues have created a simulation construction kit for children so they can build their own simulations. The construction kit lets children write simple scripts that model animal behavior. Using the kit they can change parameters to see how changing conditions affect the animal. With the kit, the children have tools that give them tremendous scope for intellectual exploration and personal empowerment. Kay reported that the children have, with much enthusiasm, simulated an unusual animal, the clown fish, "producing simulations that reflect how the fish acts when it gets hungry, seeks food, acclimates to an anemone, and escapes from predators."_

[http://www.amazon.com/Small-Matter-Programming- Perspectives-...](http://www.amazon.com/Small-Matter-Programming-Perspectives- Computing/dp/0262140535)

</comment><comment><USER10> aka intelligence amplification, not artificial intelligence (automation).

"how people's behavior will change as a result of automation [with examples of learning]" is learning-focussed - a similar focus to experimental MVPs that teach you technology and market needs.

Literal, linear amplification is easy, but amplifying intricate tasks, reducing work while retaining control is difficult. You need to understand them to some extent, which requires the data of experience. There's no simple formula to "automate" this...

Abstractions like libraries, modules and data types are one way. Going to fundamentals, number is a great abstraction: automating addition and multiplication doesn't lose important control. But if you create a bad abstraction, you'll have to change the interface semantics, which may easily have far-reaching effects.

It's incredil;y, almost impossibly hard to come up with great amplifications - even Euclid didn't come up with a positional number notation.

Instead of perfection, we should try for some improvement. And this article's suggestion of how behaviour will change - especially learning - seems a good start.

</comment><comment><USER11> I write automation tools for a living. The problem with this approach is that it's no different from full automation. Things would collapse if the automation fails just like it would with full automation.

In this case after management realized the increased efficiency and changes your 20 people systems management team into a 10 people systems management team. Or they put new tasks on you to justify the size of your team.

Then your amplification automation breaks ... and your productivity drops by 80%-90%. And suddenly your team cannot handle even running at 10% capacity. Calling everyone in and working 16 hours straight you get this "heroically" to 50%, but the automation fail still breaks the business.

</comment><comment><USER12> Gosh I've worked this way for years, but never seen it articulated so well. We used it for content moderation. Let the algorithm comb through thousands of messages looking for patterns and then present prospects to humans for final judgment. Great article.

</comment><comment><USER13> Add visibility and transparency to complex automatic systems. A good monitoring system to reflect the internal state, and interfaces that can be simply understood between small components that have a specific task. Then the automation becomes less magical, and the knowledge of how it works can be passed on by teaching the meaning of each state variable in the monitoring system

</comment><comment><USER14> I think Iron Man vs Ultron is a false dichotomy. Both are appropriate in certain use-cases. And often Iron Man is a stepping stone on the path to Ultron. Driver assistance vs self driving cars is a perfect example.

The idea that fully automated systems are by their nature "impossible to debug" is just false, demonstrably. Fully automated systems don't need to be a ball of mud. Not participating in the processes may make it harder for a user to know what might have gone wrong, but this is a natural trade-off and is often one which should be made.

Better advice would be that systems shouldn't be fully automated until they're very robust. The author actually covers this. It's unfortunate the title and main point of the article seems like it's saying "nothing should be 100% automated". There is a place for J.A.R.V.I.S., after all.

<comment><USER15> > Driver assistance vs self driving cars is a perfect example

Not entirely. Drivers overriding automated systems introduce more errors than human alone or computer alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Another leftover process was building new clusters or machines. It happened > infrequently enough that it was not worthwhile to fully automate. However, > we found we could Tom Sawyer the automation into building the cluster for us > if we created the right metadata to make it think that all the machines had > just returned from repairs. Soon the cluster was built for us.

What does "Tom Sawyering" mean? This is the first time I've seen it used as a verb.

<comment><USER17> Tom Sawyer tricked his friends into painting a fence for him by making it sound like it was fun. And these guys simillarly tricked their process to set up new machines by making them appear like machines coming from repair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good code comments can help this. But as we all know the more you work on code the more useless comment blocks you're left with until in the end the comments are meaningless and redundant in your sphagettic coded mess.

Solution: Descriptive Variable Names. You'll always have variables, they're a foundation of any code base, and by naming them well they flow through the code describing what's happenening with 0 extra work needed.

With good variable names you can then pepper the code with good meaningful one line comments when needed.

<comment><USER19> I strongly agree that naming variable is an effort worth the benefits, but naming stuff correctly is not 0 extra work. As a matter of fact, judging by how many people give crap names to their stuff, I'd it's one of the most difficult task of designing something.

Finding a name that is both descriptive enough and not overly specific, that describes the 'what', not the 'how', doesn't conflict with other concepts and is not a 20 words Java style keyboard breaker, requires quite a lot of effort.

<comment><USER20> I swear I have to start coding with a thesaurus. I mean even basic variable names are sometimes hard to find words for. Say I define a list i aggregate output into which is returned at the end of the function. Do I call it output, output_list, result, result_list, result_l, r_list, o_l, output_l, o_list, aggregate, return_value, file_list, path_list, directory_list, dir_list, dir_l....

There's so many possibilities, some of the utterly rank, some of them decent, and a fair amount of good descriptors, but which one is best?

And that's just the naming of one variable. Then there's function names, module names, package names.

Is there some guides on this or something?

<comment><USER21> > output_list, result, result_list, result_l, r_list, o_l, output_l, o_list, > aggregate, return_value, file_list, path_list, directory_list, dir_list, > dir_l....

You're making it too hard, use normal whole words, call it "result" and be done with it; it's a temporary local variable, its name simply isn't that important. Class and method names are far more important because they have much larger scope.

Here's the trick to naming things well, name them and move on and then when you have to come back later-which you always do-guess what the name is; if you named it well, you guessed right. If you guessed wrong, rename it to match what you guessed it would be. Over time your naming will get better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For those who don't want to read all 15 pages, this can be summed up as "automate using the Unix philosophy." If you are not familiar with the Unix philosophy, here you go: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy)

Allow me to answer the original question in a simpler way.

 _Q: Dear Peter: A few years ago we automated a major process in our system administration team. Now the system is impossible to debug. Nobody remembers the old manual process and the automation is beyond what any of us can understand. We feel like we 've painted ourselves into a corner. Is all operations automation doomed to be this way?_

A: So you wanted to go to the moon, and you hired a blind retiring man to build a rocket ship with no blueprints using parts from a junkyard.

Don't do that. Instead, build lots of stairs. Lots and lots of stairs.

Operations automation is different than typical software engineering because it isn't a finished product. You could kind of compare it to a constantly evolving organism. It needs constant care and attention and special handling, or it _will_ get sick and fall over. This is due to non-indempotent operations, entropy, and changing requirements.

An operations automation tool is never really complete. Probably modified over time by multiple people, most of whom no longer work at your company, and the changes were never documented, and probably were mostly made up of edge-case exceptions to allow some team to get something done for a weekend deadline. And now you need to change or debug it without breaking anything.

When you write automation tools or processes, they need to be so dead freaking simple that just looking at the source code explains everything about it. It needs to be incredibly simple to tie together with other tools, so when it becomes too horrible to maintain any longer, it can be rewritten in a weekend. And it needs to be fault-tolerant, in the sense that it can fail and continue working anyway.

If you have to write a last-minute exception to fix something that will only last a week, you can literally fork the original automation task and make a new one called "THIS-IS-A-TEMP-HACK-fork-of-automation-task.pl", just to make sure nobody confuses it with the normal, not-hacked-up task.

\--

I once had to overhaul an old Ops tool that would simply generate a config file used to control the kickstart, post-install setup, and configuration management of thousands of servers. It was a 5,000 line Perl program with no subroutines. I re-wrote it in Perl in a modular fashion, using advanced OO techniques and all the fancyness I could cram into it to cover every corner case of how it would be used in the future.

Then I rewrote it as lots of tiny shell scripts. Guess which one ended up working out better?

At the end of the day, all you need is to use the _simplest_ and _most direct_ method to automate little things, and use the same approach for everything you touch. It will grow and change over time, but as long as you are _consistent_ with making small, S I M P L E, modular things that do two things well (the original task, and compatibility with other programs), you should be fine.

Oh - and if a given automated task takes longer than 20 seconds to explain to someone, it's too fucking complicated.

</comment><comment><USER23> I am guaranteed to be in a minority here and everywhere else -- I think free will should be opt in.

The progress of humanity has been underscored by the goal of freeing up physical and mental effort, and we have never hesitated on relieving ourselves of the former so why stop at the latter?

</comment><comment><USER24> Won't you then have the issue of your ironman making ultron?

<comment><USER25> No, since Ultron was made by Hank Pym.

<comment><USER24> Actually Ultron is made by Hank Pym and Iron Man, As a prison guard. But Hank is the project leaderish

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> ... says the human. ;)

</comment><comment><USER27> Ironman? Really? Should technology be accessible only by billionaires and used primarily to maintain their status as final arbiter of its use? Should governments, representatives of people, constantly have to beg/borrow/steel technology from these billionaires whenever they want to actually get something done?

Ironman isn't how technology should be managed. In modern times he is the embodiment of closed-source IP law channeling profits to the already vastly wealthy.

<comment><USER12> I think maybe you are latching onto the wrong part of the analogy.

<comment><USER27> Give me a minute. I'm working on Ultron as a metaphor for the f/oss movement disrupting the status quo.

<comment><USER12> OK, if you can pull that off, I'll give you a pass.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tesla details how it'll charge new owners to use Superchargers - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/12/tesla-details-how-itll-charge-new-owners-to-use-superchargers/ <comment><USER2> The analogy has been made "You wouldn't leave your car at a gas pump". But Tesla charging is different, a gas car takes ~4m to fill, not long enough for you to do much else. A Tesla on a road trip takes 20-40 minutes to charge. So long you aren't going to stand there, but not long enough to a sit down meal or walk the half mile from the hotel with the charger to a fast food restaurant and eat, visit a gift shop, etc... To name some examples of what we did on a recent road trip.

With the Tesla, a road trip is a different cadence from gas, where many peoples tendency seems to just get on with it and minimize these fueling interruptions. With the Tesla, we would talk to locals, visit the train museum, go to gift shops, I'd drop them off at historic districts and go charge.

It didn't feel like we were waiting for the car to charge, but that was because we were doing other things. If I now have to go back and move the car because the stalls are 50% full, that changes the road trip a lot.

Something not common knowledge: Superchargers operate in pairs. If there are 4 stalls, only 2 of them at a time will operate at full speed. If you are charging on stall 1A and someone pulls into 1B, they get a much slower charge rate until 1A completes charging.

So a 50% full supercharger is actually "full", but the remaining stalls can be parked at and will start charging full rate as things finish.

Because of this, I was kind of expecting the idle fee to be when the stalls were all full. If there are no stalls left, you are making someone potentially wait while your car sits there idle.

The longer term plan is they hope to make the cars move themselves when charging is done. That would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm glad the superchargers will no longer be free for new Tesla owners. I wish they would charge existing Tesla owners for the power as well.

I went to charge my Model X at the Whole Foods in Menlo Park on Friday night, because mine was broken. I waited for over 40 minutes for other people using the chargers to leave.

I'd much rather pay a market rate for the power from Tesla and have the units open when I need them, than take the chance of waiting for hours because people are clogging the spots to get free power.

<comment><USER4> Correct me if I'm mistaken, but even if it becomes a paid service, you might still have to wait for other paying customers to leave? Unless right now there is a problem of people taking their sweet (inconsiderate) time in the parking spot since they are not getting charged?

If that is the case, some HN posters had an interesting theory: once some customers start paying, they might feel entitled to stay at a charging station even longer (which would not fix your issue of waiting forever to access it).

Hope your charger gets fixed soon!

<comment><USER5> > Unless right now there is a problem of people taking their sweet > (inconsiderate) time in the parking spot since they are not getting charged?

Per r/teslamotors that seems to be the bigger issue. Once a vehicle is charged people don't move it promptly because they have no incentive to do so.

<comment><USER6> Isn't that the case at a gas station too?

<comment><USER7> As another commenter pointed out, gas fuel times are so short that you typically don't wander off far. Additionally, there are some safety concerns around leaving the fuel hose attached when you're not there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm kind of surprised that they're so adamant that the pricing should be hWk based. It seems to me that time-based pricing would have made sense - Superchargers are a limited resource, so a time-based approach would have encouraged people to only charge for as long as they needed it. Above 80% a Tesla charges much slower, so it uses much less electricity, but it still takes up a stall.

It would have also dovetailed nicely with the per-minute fee they will be charging Tesla owners for leaving their vehicles plugged in after they're done charging at busy Superchargers.

<comment><USER9> They should stop fighting market mechanisms and do dynamic pricing. It's _obviously_ the way it should be done. Price should change upon the cost of the underlying electricity and there should be surge pricing once queues form to discourage overcharging during peak usage.

Elon is normally so smart I don't understand why he's fighting the math based approach here.

<comment><USER10> People like predictable pricing. You sign a lease rather than renting month to month so your housing can't double in price just because. If it can cost between $0.50 and $500 to "fill up" your Tesla, that would SUBSTANTIALLY alter the way owning a Tesla is perceived.

<comment><USER9> People also like being able to get an uber when they really need one instead of relying on cabs that never show up on Friday nights. The cost of electricity to _completely_ fill up a Telsa is between $5 and $20 depending on time of day and where exactly you are in North America. With 1-3x surge pricing call it $5 to $60. If you're filling up half a tank (say from 25% to 75%, the fast charging window) that's going to cost you $2.50 to $30, and usually around $10. This isn't even worth thinking about it for current Tesla owners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've always wondered if Tesla tracks the use of the Superchargers to the vehicle mileage. As an example, if I setup a bunch of bit-coin miners in the trunk, tapped into the vehicle battery and continually visited a supercharger to power the rig would Tesla know something was up?

<comment><USER12> You would be tying up a $100,000 depreciating asset to mine bitcoin for a few weeks or months until you are discovered. You could make more money by not buying the car.

<comment><USER13> But if you were buying the car anyway...

<comment><USER14> You'd still be paying for the mining rig, and you won make your investment back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Tesla Blog Post: [https://www.tesla.com/blog/building-supercharger-network- fut...](https://www.tesla.com/blog/building-supercharger-network-future)

<comment><USER16> What was the deal before this? Just free electricity?

This seems like a pretty fair and obvious way to move forward: the electricity isn't free, and it doesn't seem like they are attempting to turn a profit off of the electricity cost like a Gas station does. It curtails the externalities of Uber/Taxis freeloading off of infrastructure that has ongoing costs to maintain but provides a good value for buyers for a few longer distance trips.

<comment><USER17> (The other reply answering this seems to have been deleted)

It used to be unlimited supercharging. The assumption was that people would primarily charge at home, and use the supercharger only for long distance travelling.

It seems that in practice far too many people were using the supercharger as the only place to charge their vehicle, with a fair number of people using it for commercial purposes.

The Tesla Taxis at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam were apparently all using the supercharger facility, rather than setting up their own charging infrastructure.

Also, it wasn't, technically, 'free' \- a supercharger fee was charged either on purchase of the car or afterwards.

<comment><USER18> > Also, it wasn't, technically, 'free' \- a supercharger fee was charged > either on purchase of the car or afterwards.

Not in the US, all Tesla vehicles ordered before January 15th of 2017 came with free supercharger access.

<comment><USER19> > came with free supercharger access.

By no means 'free': there was a $2000 Supercharger access fee included in the purchase price of the S85, or $2500 to enable it after purchase for the S60.

Not available for the S40 variant which wasn't permitted to use the Superchargers.

<comment><USER18> I am not seeing it. Buying a new S today [https://www.tesla.com/models/design](https://www.tesla.com/models/design) offers the following premium options: autopilot - $5k, full self driving - $3k, premium package - $3.5k, smart air suspension - $2.5k, subzero - $1k, hi- fi sound - $2.5k, rear-facing seats - $4k, high-amperage onboard charger - $1.5k.

Everything else is included in the price of the vehicle and is standard [https://www.tesla.com/models](https://www.tesla.com/models)

Under specs they list

* Access to Tesla's expanding Supercharger network

* Mobile connector with 110 volt, 240 volt, and J1772 adapters

* 17" capacitive touchscreen

* Onboard maps and navigation with free updates for 7 years

* Automatic keyless entry

* ...

<comment><USER20> Even if it's included standard, it's still priced in though, right? Same reason "Buy three tires; get the fourth free" isn't really free.

<comment><USER18> I guess we'll find out in 3 days after the Great Supercharger Unbundling occurs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Still waiting to hear on how they're going to solve charging for those of us without garages. They're not going to want all of us to do all our charging at the stations...

<comment><USER22> Street parking may be a problem until they have plugs on things like meters.

In some places it's already common to have plugs close to parking, it's for a block-heater used on extreme winter days. Adapting these for electric cars is probably not hard.

<comment><USER23> Maybe replace some of the meters on the streets with paid chargers (meter + charger fee going to municipality).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anyone knows what it is that makes the short Paris - Rome trip (1,400 km) cost $64, whereas the New York - LA (4,500 km) costs only $120?

Is it because of taxes, or is electricity just more expensive in France/Italy even without taxes? Or is Tesla just charging Europeans more?

<comment><USER25> Energy is very cheap in the US. See [0] for some 2011 comparisons.

[0]: [https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average- elect...](https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-electricity- prices-kwh.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> What I am worried about is, all the work done to make affordable electric car will go in vain if gas prices reduce due to the adoption of electric vehicle and hence ultimately no effect on co2 emission.

<comment><USER22> Electric vehicles will ultimately become more convenient and will win on that basis alone. Electric car designs can be more flexible, and performance will continue to increase above and beyond the already _ludicrous_ levels in some Tesla models.

When you think about gasoline engines they're terribly inconvenient. They need a lot of maintenance. They have tons of finicky moving parts. They need gasoline, which is only sold at select retailers, and the price of gasoline changes constantly, often spiking higher without warning.

It's only because this enormous infrastructure has built up around gasoline- powered cars that any of that is bearable. Can you imagine gasoline-powered cars trying to make inroads in a world that was historically all-electric? It'd be absurd. Somehow electric cars are gaining market share even when going against tradition, so it seems inevitable they'll hit some tipping point and gasoline will be considered the exotic, difficult to obtain fuel.

When people can charge their car overnight for free with a wind-turbine, or on the weekend with a solar roof they'll have little reason to prefer gasoline powered cars.

<comment><USER27> There's loads of people who live in places which conceivably won't have the ability to charge electric cars, ever. Terraced houses in the UK - you have to park on the street, and the spaces are not marked - sometimes you can fit 30 cars on one side, sometimes 40, depending on how and what people park. Sometimes you park in front of your own front door, sometimes you have to park in a parallel street because maybe the neighbour has visitors and there's no more room. How do we solve that? Have 40 charging points on each side of every residential street in the UK? Not only would that be ugly as a sin, but also hideously expensive.

<comment><USER28> How about driving to the nearest charging station?

<comment><USER29> This ties into charge/range anxiety, with short-range cars that journey might itself eat into the day's driving and we all like a full phone...

One 250-mile cars are commonplace, it'll go away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "or whether or not yours is the only Tesla at the charging station"

Why? To discourage using nearly-filled Supercharging stations? It does seem pretty unfair.</comment>


The 158 Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/2016-presidential-election-super-pac-donors.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> This is bullsh __t. How about teachers ' unions, the worst poison in U.S. education, contribute millions and millions of dollars to the democrats every year.

Sure, it's not a "family". But teachers' unions collect money from public teachers, who get paid by tax payers. How can they contribute to political party?

When will leftists start to talk about this?

[http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=l1300](http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=l1300)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG8w9PcA- ig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG8w9PcA-ig)

<comment><USER3> $20 million is a lot of money. There are 3.1 million teachers in the US [1], so about $7 a piece go toward lobbying per year.

David Koch alone in this election cycle, " ... hopes to spend up to $300 million on candidates and another $600 million on efforts to reduce regulations and reform the criminal justice system." [2]

So I mean ...

[1] [http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372](http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372)

[2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2015/09/30/the- bigg...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2015/09/30/the-biggest-most- influential-political-donors-on-the-2015-forbes-400/)</comment></comment>


Wikipedia Moves to CloudFlare - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/krmaher/status/1170425781178310656 <comment><USER2> I really hope cloudflare doesn't go the way of a Google.

At one point they were benevolent dictators, and we the subjects enjoy being oppressed.

Now with the virtual signaling, rotted business ethics, 0 support available, and tone deaf corporate decisions, we put them into a place of power only to have it used against us.

<comment><USER3> It's always possible but for now Cloudflare is a joy to work with and their engineering is top notch. If it wasn't for their corp HQ being in the most crazy expensive city in the US that is the place I'd like to work. Check out their GitHub repos sometime, there are some real gems in there.

<comment><USER4> They have a large engineering office in Austin, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is interesting. I was wondering yesterday why Wikipedia does not use CloudFlare or some other CDN, but then I thought that cost would be enormous. It also crossed my mind that CF could sponsor the service, but then again - even they may not afford paying for the traffic for one of the world's most popular websites.

I am curious how this will unfold. Thank you Mr Prince and CloudFlare for your support. I am keeping my fingers crossed so this cooperation, in whatever form, is successful.

</comment><comment><USER6> And another one bites the dust, increasing the monoculture of the web. Let's also not forget Firefox is going to enable DoH by default too, sending all our DNS queries to CloudFlare.

I don't know, I just think people should be much more concerned about this.

</comment><comment><USER7> > helping us roll onto a new service offering of theirs that was barely yet in > the wild

So something more than DDOS protection and CDN?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm guessing it's Magic Transit, since thats CloudFlare's latest thing, some other tweets suggested the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> CF cannot handle extremely large attacks either; what makes this a more suitable solution than what they're currently using?

Edit: and before anyone downvotes me, understand that I am asking an earnest question. I don't know what Wikimedia currently uses to protect their infrastructure, and how it compares to Cloudflare.</comment>


US police kill more in days than other countries do in years (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries <comment><USER2> Although it's pretty clear that the us has a problem that other countries don't, whenever I see asymmetric comparisons like these I get suspicious of sensationalism. Why not a Per capita , number of shootings year by year, and if you need a headline, "US has 10-100x more police shootings than the these countries"?

<comment><USER3> ..exactly, if that's the author's title, there's an agenda.</comment></comment>


What happened to dinosaurs - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?q=what+happened+to+dinosaurs

<comment><USER2> It's from dozens of Christian sites and forum posts linking to that page and because the search query matches the URL and page title exactly.

Google ranks the URL words too high it looks like.

Why is this BBC page not in the top 10 results? Is it solely because of the page URL? It has more backlinks and a more trusted domain. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dino_prog...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dino_prog_summary.shtml)

This says that the original page has over 17 million backlinks, but that can't be correct: [https://ahrefs.com/site- explorer/overview/subdomains?target=...](https://ahrefs.com/site- explorer/overview/subdomains?target=https%3A%2F%2Fanswersingenesis.org%2Fdinosaurs%2Fwhen- did-dinosaurs-live%2Fwhat-really-happened-to-the-dinosaurs%2F)

And it participates in social media a lot: [http://www.reddit.com/domain/answersingenesis.org](http://www.reddit.com/domain/answersingenesis.org)

Should Google decrease the "worth" of that domain? If there is content that has a high SEO rating but is factually incorrect, does that deserve to be lower on the search results listing?

Should Google display different cards based on the user? Someone which Google determines is highly religious verses not religious would get different cards?

Update: Oh no, something needs to be done, this site is disgusting: [https://answersingenesis.org/evidence-against- evolution/bill...](https://answersingenesis.org/evidence-against- evolution/billions-of-people-in-thousands-of-years/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Google cards are getting interesting. Is this the new target for SEOers to aim for, to get their site feature as one of the cards?

<comment><USER2> I still don't know exactly what swiping a card on Google Now means.

Sometimes I want to swipe a card because I've already read that article, sometimes I want to swipe it because I have no interest in seeing that article/specific webpage.

We need filters for Google Now, excluding some sites, having favorite sites. I'd love to get ycombinator news through Google Now and have it learn which stories interest me the most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A more interesting search (in terms of the card) is "What happened to the dinosaurs"...</comment>