Lessons from the failure of General Magic - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90208070/7-design-lessons-from-silicon-valleys-most-important-failure <comment><USER2> > and email addresses. All of these things were trying to make technology more > accessible to people

Uh nope. Nothing like that happened. SNDMSG allowed sending messages between users on the same computer. Then Ray Tomlinson added his file transfer code to SNDMSG and needed a symbol to separate user names from the host names, and he picked the @ Nowhere in there did anyone invent anything to make email addresses more accessible to people.

The only reason there were host names and not just numbers on the right hand side was because ARPAnet really has grown and just a few months before Tomlinson's invention names were added [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc226](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc226) (20 hosts! really, big network) but this, again, predates email addresses.

Another very early example of email in 1970 was integrated into the NLS (short for Online System) at the SRI ARC [https://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/papers/scanned- original/1...](https://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/papers/scanned- original/1986-augment-101931-Workstation-History-and-the-Augmented-Knowledge- Workshop.pdf) but this used usernames and not addresses "mail distribution was addressed by peoples Idents with no need to know or specify which host they used".

<comment><USER3> "Nowhere in there did anyone invent anything to make email addresses more accessible to people."

That's not what it says ... it says trying to make _technology_ more accessible to people. user@hostname email addresses, as opposed to the old UUCP bang paths, does indeed make technology more available to people. (FWIW, I worked on the ARPANET at UCLA and was there when the IMP arrived in 1969, so I do know a little something about this topic.)

<comment><USER2> Perhaps what the article tried to say then it's the Domain Naming System which tried to make technology more accessible to people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I worked for France Télécom on their General Magic project, circa 1996. My job was to work on the payment and e-commerce aspects of the platform, and I came to the conclusion it was bound to fail because it lacked any provisions for transactional integrity, and asked to be transferred to another project.

The Magic Cap UI, while cute, was hampered by the limitations of hardware back then, but the backend was the real killer. Their distributed-agent technology was half-baked, and despite AT&T Bell Labs's heroic efforts to make it work (including building an entire language, High Telescript, to make it usable), it failed anyway.

</comment><comment><USER5> The article misses General Magic's most successful alum, Pierre Omidyar, who founded EBay while working at GM.

<comment><USER6> Unless I missed it, they may have forgotten Andy Rubin as well. It's interesting how both Android and iPhone has connections to General Magic.

<comment><USER7> It wouldn't surprise me if there is a tendency for an inner gestation period whereby fundamental ideas prosper from exposure to additional experience before maturing. Perhaps largely subconsciously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Where do people still care about pushing the boundary, exploring new paradigms, and building shit? I'm so sick of hearing about this mythical "silicon valley of yore" where there was community, and fellowship, and a desire to improve humanity. I came here looking for that and all I see is rent-seeking mega corps bent on scaling their surveillance platforms. Is that dream still alive somewhere?

<comment><USER9> I work out of my garage in Sunnyvale, building a platform trying to make the web better. I eat lunch regularly with friends who do similar things, and I've been a part of several companies (via VC work) that have desired to improve humanity and are doing it.

There are people out there doing what you've described, but it doesn't (and never did) get headlines because most headlines are paid for.

<comment><USER10> Could you expand on the platform part please? I'm sure many people here would be interested and exposure on HN is free, so why not? ;)

<comment><USER9> Yes I can do that -- it's a platform for building software modules that can be added to any website or web app. Right now it does most of the popular build steps automatically (Babel, SCSS, Handlebars) so developers can just focus on actual code.

We have an open source library of ready-to-use modules that can be forked/tweaked or used as is.

It's called Anymod [https://anymod.com](https://anymod.com). Hoping we can become something useful for developers.

<comment><USER11> Your "how it works"[1] page makes it look a little like a cross between Codepen and Google Tag Manager. Is that a fair characterization of what Mods do? I like the 'shared library' idea, that's something GTM makes actively harder.

1: [https://anymod.com/how-it-works](https://anymod.com/how-it-works)

<comment><USER9> The editor is similar to CodePen, with the biggest difference being you can easily add what you've built to any website. I haven't ever used GTM but I think the "make changes without re-deploying" approach is conceptually similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My favourite quote from the piece: "If you have a bunch of self-motivated and smart people and you put them together they'll produce something incredible. But you can't minimize the importance of management.

It's a dirty word. It's prosaic. It's not vision. It's not dream. It's not technological excellence. But unfortunately, it makes all the difference." - Joanna Hoffman, Head of marketing at General Magic

Good management in technology environments is akin to tracks for a train/monorail.

Boring: yes, but they provide the 'connective tissue', the velocity and the direction for everyone in the organisation to leverage, the support infrastructure for everyone else to produce great 'stuff' (products, services, outcomes, whatever). They should also build upon years of experience and/or brilliant thinking - which is what tracks do!

Great tech management teams also help (all) staff understand why the tracks are there to begin with: to solve problems for users (relevant to the Andy Hertzfeld 'put the user first' and the Tony Fadell 'understand your audience' quotes).

And yeah, reframing rejections and criticisms (the Marc Porat quote) is great advise for any entrepreneur.

</comment><comment><USER12> I like embrace criticism part. It's so real. Sometimes while making a screen's layout I don't recognize bad decisions my colleagues see with first sight. It's amazing lol

<comment><USER13> That's why teamwork is so important in every step of the development process, every step needs a review. If someone is such a rockstar they don't to have their items reviewed, all the review will do is show their rockstarness to someone else.

<comment><USER14> Just make sure the reviewers are very good. I see a lot of team reviews by mediocre people that kill any kind of creativity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hagiography, meet Silicon Valley. "Would Android exist without General Magic? Absolutely not!" An overstatement which perfectly summarizes this film.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm planning a road bike tour of old silicon valley offices for next saturday, does anybody know where in Mountain View the offices of General Magic were located?

<comment><USER17> Looks like Mary Avenue in Sunnyvale. Just keep your wits about you — Sunnyvale isn't the greatest town for biking.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.a...](https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=124408)

<comment><USER16> Thanks!

<comment><USER17> No prob. Not sure the safest way to get there, but I'd probably start by taking Stevens Creek Bike Trail to Evelyn ave and then maybe heading up Mary (which is a pretty busy street, so maybe there's a better way.) Strava might be a good app to check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, this title would make a perfect fantasy book title.</comment>


Show HN: my weekend project, Vidless. "CloudApp" for video chat. - <AUTHOR> http://vidless.com I always find myself frustrated by how many steps I have to take to video chat with someone online.
There's always too much software to download and install, and too many accounts to remember. The high-end, high-price Cisco conferencing systems I've used are especially fragile.
So I built Vidless in a weekend for myself, and I hope you find it useful too. Just create a room and share the link, and you'll be chatting in seconds.
You can invite several people (I haven't really tested a max yet), and chats on Vidless are always private.
Enjoy! <comment><AUTHOR> I find myself pretty regularly frustrated by the number of steps it takes to video chat with someone.

Too much software to install, too many accounts to remember. The high-end Cisco hardware I've used is especially unpredictable.

So I spent a weekend and hacked together Vidless. Want to video chat with someone? Just create a room and shoot them the URL, and you'll be chatting in seconds.

I built Vidless for myself, but I hope you all find it useful, too. Enjoy!

<comment><USER2> Is this one-on-one or are more connections possible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My buddy and I had this exact same idea less than two weeks ago. Nice job on the implementation!</comment>


Show: I bootstrapped a worldwide hackathon in 3 months - <AUTHOR> http://pandacodium.ca/?hn=1

<comment><USER2> Are you going to post this daily until it takes place?</comment>


Ask HN: What sort of technology do you envision in 2050? - <AUTHOR> Assuming no global catastrophe takes place by then. <comment><AUTHOR> # Optimistic:

The primary computing devices are wearables; watches, AR+VR glasses, clothing with displays embedded throughout temperature-regulating fabric that can change its look just as we change the face of our smartwatch now.

People still apprehensive of invasive implants but they have begun making inroads.

Home appliances with no physical controls anymore but a universal software interface accessed wirelessly via your computing device.

Everything and everyone connected to the Internet, which is more decentralized and tasks like serving content or AI or search engines are distributed across the billions of personal devices.

Permanent human presence on the Moon. Manned trips to Mars occurred at least once.

Smart beds/sleeping pods that perform a full diagnosis and inject necessary nutrients after putting the occupant into a perfect chemically induced sleep, making you good to go for several days before needing sleep again.

Number of centenarians increasing throughought the world as technology brings us closer to medical immortality.

# Conservative/Pessimistic:

The primary method of computing remains entrenched in Windows, macOS, iOS and Android with a mix of keyboard, pointer and touch input.

The internet is heavily regulated and only accessible through a handful of megaportals: People can no longer buy universal "internet service" but individual access to Google, Facebook, or their equivalents, and pay for them separately.

I'd rather not think much further in that direction, to be honest. :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Improvements in AI, but no "general AI" or "human-equivalent AI", and no real clue on how to get there.

No singularity.

Human-equivalent or better speech recognition.

Display resolutions have stopped increasing, because they're as good as needed. (For example, audio topped out at 44.1 ksamples/second x 16 bits, stereo. That was enough for almost everyone, even though a few fanatics say they can hear the difference. Video will top out at something like 4000 x 6000 pixels, 48 bits/pixel, 60 frames/second.)

Self-driving cars may be so dominant that you will need a special license to disengage the autopilot.

DRM will be clearly recognized as a failed idea.

Privacy will be in your own home only, and not even there for your online actions.

Moore's Law will be stone-cold dead.

Solar energy will supply at least half of electrical load, at least in the US and Europe (maybe a quarter of world load).

In 2050, someone will resurrect this thread so that people can laugh at all our mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every company knows more about you than you will know about yourself. Every device and online service will have so many security holes that everyone, every organization, every government will be an open book. Nanodrones will target and execute people on a daily basis and everyone will own them - terrorists, freedom fighters, governments, corporation states, corporate cities, megacorporations. Victims will be selected by geographical area, ethnicity, skin color, sex and metadata. Corporations will also have their own military divisions.</comment>


Show HN: I asked an HN member for feedback and she blew my mind - <AUTHOR> A few days ago, I responded to a comment by bloggergirl offering to read anyone's web copy and help. I shot off an email hoping for a paragraph or two of feedback on my startup's copy.
Instead I received a professional, detailed deck of tons of invaluable well thought out feedback. It must have taken her an entire afternoon.
Here's a link to it: http://www.slideshare.net/shereefb/recommendations-for-bettermeans
To top it off, this isn't someone with a lot of free time on her hands, she's only days away from launching her own startup (page99test)
This community blows my mind! <comment><USER2> HN is rapidly changing in to some real-life version of pay-it-forward. I'm going to have to think hard on a way in which I can contribute to this phenomenon, I think that some amazing stuff may grow out of it.

<comment><USER3> As a programmer I've been trying to think of a way to do my own Offer HN or the like. The problem is that most programming projects are much broader in scope and there's a learning curve to learning my code for someone else who follows up. I'd be open to suggestions for how I could lend my programming knowledge to this phenomenon.

<comment><USER4> I'm thinking of offering to help someone create a weekend project, if they can design but not program or whatever. I've been looking for a small project to do (no longer than a weekend) to familiarise myself with AppEngine, but I don't know what sort of uptake this would have, in a community of programmers.

<comment><USER5> How about startupweekend.org? If you haven't heard of it, you are missing out big time. If they don't have it in your city, contact them and see about helping to get one there. BTW, I don't have anything to do with them other than having participated in one near me and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

<comment><USER4> That sounds good, thank you. I already have a startup, though, so I just wanted to do something quickly over the weekend. I'll give startup weekend a try, it sounds like a good place to meet people!

<comment><USER5> Glad you are open to the idea. Even if you already have a startup, here's a few reasons to do it anyway:

1\. SW attracts a lot of different types of people - BizDev/UIX- Designers/Coders/Legal/etc... You may help someone w/o the technical chops bring some traction to their vision/dream/idea.

2\. You WILL meet people that might be useful to you down the road. So great, you have the technical chops, but lack bizdev - well, you are in luck b/c you have met people who have that skill that might be able to help your dream come true.

3\. It's fun! It's intense, but very fun. Especially if you are a competitive individual.

4\. It's not a bad recruiting ground for tech talent. These people go to these events because they have passion. What more could you ask for?

When I went to it, I wasn't sure what to expect. A bunch of unemployed novice programmers? A pure networking event? I never, in my wildest expectations, expected to meet such quality people at the top of their respective games.

I've never been to events like this (hackathons/etc...) so maybe this is a common thread. For me, it was a great experience that I would repeat again - regardless of my current status.

Hope this helps someone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> SHEREEF, thank you! I really didn't expect you to say anything about this little PPT. Much appreciated. :) _blush_ Honestly, how nice of you!

I really hope your site does well because BETTERMEANS.COM is a super-smart idea. It was a total privilege to get involved with your website at all. I hope everyone checks it out.

BTW, I received an email from you and will get back to you pronto privately. In the meantime, much appreciated. And to everyone else who wrote to me re: help on copy, I'm happy to get back to you over the coming days: joanna AT page99test DOT com.

Go, Hacker News community!

<comment><AUTHOR> Least I could do Joanna.

btw, you should use your bloggergirl account, instead of a new one so folks start recognizing you in this community.

<comment><USER7> I forgot my password the other day (restarted computer and couldn't retrieve it), so I had to login as fireitup. Anyway, good call --- I didn't even think about my username when I commented.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Clickable link: [http://www.slideshare.net/shereefb/recommendations-for- bette...](http://www.slideshare.net/shereefb/recommendations-for-bettermeans)

Poster is not kidding about how complete and professional this slide deck is. I'm impressed!

<comment><USER9> I'm impressed too. What gets me most is the clarity of thought that's so evident in the analysis. Like a lot of things in life; seeing someone who truly has mastery over their craft makes difficult things look so easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, that's amazing.

bloggergirl, you need to write and sell an ebook on web copy. Marketed correctly (and I have no doubts that you'd be able to), you'd make tens of thousands of dollars at the least. I mean, a $20 or even $25 ebook on web copy that will increase my conversion rate? Incredible value prop. I'd buy it.

<comment><USER11> I would buy that book, too, but I would feel remiss if I didn't point out that she could charge at least high four figures for a week of consulting _and get it_. The deck she produced here is worth north of $2,000.

<comment><USER6> Hire me, then! LOL! :) ~joanna

<comment><USER11> Please check your email at your convenience.

<comment><USER12> Well played. One of my favorite things about HN is that people act on opportunities.

Sounds like a smart move for both of you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow, the amount of time and effort that she must have dedicated in completing her feedback is astounding.

The least we can do is bump up a post about her startup the day it launches.

Bloggergirl, get ready for the voluminous amount of web traffic on launch day!

<comment><USER2> Hm, you've just given me an idea: A HN based traffic exchange, where HN members with large websites would donate excess inventory to pull new starter- uppers off the ground.

Does that have merit?

<comment><USER14> I think this is the type of thing where formulating & formalizing is a mistake. It would be better if this sort of just culturally "evolved."

       eg.

jacquesm posts 'I'll promote one startup on launch day that helps another HNer in a meaningful way.'

bloggergirl offer help accepted by kabuks resulting in this post.

I wonder if HN isn't a little big for this though.

<comment><USER15> Just like attempting to formalize it may be a mistake, thinking HN might be too big is an equally limiting mistake. Ideally the pay-it-forward concept would encompass every individual globally and as such it has no upper limit.

When in doubt, just concentrate on what you can do :)

<comment><USER14> Maybe that should be maybe HN is too big considering that this isn't its main purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link to bloggergirl's startup: <http://page99test.com/>

<comment><USER16> I know it's standard internet stuff, but if I click on a big button saying "Start reading", I want to start reading. I do not want a big form asking me to register. If I like the service, yes, I will want to register, but give me a chance to form an opinion first.

<comment><USER17> Yes. There's a strategy of "gradual engagement": <http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1128> (HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1774007>) gives some specific ideas on implementing it - and some impressive results.

Basically, don't require more info from the user than you need right now. An example is you can read HN/reddit without an account - but if you want to vote/submit/comment, you need an account (and that's all: email etc is optional).

Although you might really want signups, and so it seems to makes sense to get them ASAP, the counter-productive result is that people don't go further. I didn't; the GP didn't - and that's even after the wonderful publicity here on HN. You've got to make it as _adoptable_ as possible.

<comment><USER11> My test with gradual engagement was an epic, epic failure for my business, for what it is worth. I got vanishingly few customers and they caused hugely disproportionate support issues. (Exacerbated by one poor implementation choice.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Bloggergirl's website is nicely designed and I like the idea as well. 3.1MB of background image is going to cause her grief in the long run though.

<comment><USER6> You're right about the page load times. We're working with our designer to get that down to something more manageable. In the meantime, sorry. :(

<comment><USER19> I would be happy to do that for you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Bloggergirl, you inspired me to create an account here! Love reading about people sharing their passion and helping others along the way.

I would also like to help review copy and provide feedback if anyone needs it.

I do brand management marketing at my day job and have a near-obsession with clear messaging. It's a shame if you have a great product/service but your customer doesn't understand the benefit.

<comment><USER21> Welcome to HN! It might be helpful to include an email address in your profile blurb :)

I launched a "toolbar" (it's actually a bookmarklet) two weeks ago and although anybody I show it to in person thinks it's great, everyone else just gets confused. I put a lot of work into it, an unhealthy amount really, and as a result have found its lack of adoption frustrating to the point of just giving up. I use this thing every day, to bookmark and to search, yet I cannot adequately explain it much less motivate people to understand what it does. It feels awful.

At any rate, the URL is <http://dashler.com/toolbar> if you want to take a look. I'm not even sure the idea is a good one, anymore. Of about 1000 visitors, only about 2 use it regularly. I'm ready to scrap the whole thing. I would very much appreciate any advice you could offer pass along. I'm looking to ditch the video and use a slideshow of screenshots, but I'm not even sure where to begin.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1783632>. Is the HN submission of it.

I'd be grateful for any advice! Thank you.

<comment><USER20> First of all, don't give up yet!

I was watching the video tutorial and it helped explain the concept. I think videos are overdone these days, but this is a case where a live demo helps clarify how much time you save by not typing or clicking on different browser pages to search.

I want to play with the site and features to fully understand the benefit of the bookmarklet before providing feedback.

In the meantime, here are a couple questions for you:

What made you create this bookmarklet?

What type of person would most benefit from this tool? (Target market)

When you explain the concept to people, at what point do they start getting confused? (Maybe you just need to improve a certain part of the message, not the whole thing.)

Where are these 1000 visitors from and why don't they use the tool? (You could be attracting the wrong people, or finding the right people but talking to them in the wrong way.)

Of the 2 people who use the tool regularly, what made them decide to use it and why do they like it? (Analyzing successes provides insight for what to continue/repeat in the future.)

Why do you think screenshots would be more effective than a video?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's going to be very interesting to see what happens when HN continue to grow. I don't know how big HN is right now, and I don't know where the breaking points for an online community are, but growth does mean change. I remember some years ago I'd go to slashdot to read the comments...

This is and has been a fantastic site (I'm personally fairly recently a registered user, before that I was just reading), and I hope it will continue to be. But I do also know that if it continues to grow, it will mean there will have to be changes (more people = more trolls, etc). Dealing with change is always hard, I hope the spirit of HN will remain.

EDIT: actually meant to be a follow-up to jacquesm's post. It appears I failed :-/

<comment><USER22> It's the curse of the Eternal September. The only forums I've seen that managed to grow large while still keeping the posts on topic are ones with strong moderation that don't hesitate to quickly ban trolls, rather than just relying on the community to downvote them.

<comment><USER23> As of last update, HN has 30 [1] moderators composed of YC alumni.

[1] <http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html> scroll to "Who are the editors?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a real bar-raiser in terms of community help. Seeing a submission to someone of this quality at no cost is inspiration to participate - to both keep the ball rolling, and also to compete for "coolest free help" spot number one.

Very positive outcome.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's posts like these that make me scratch my head when people say HN is going downhill.

</comment><comment><USER26> page99test.com is gorgeous; who designed it?

<comment><USER27> Was just reading about it here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1835288>

<comment><USER26> Ahhh; I see that client list and leap to the assumption: "hellaciously expensive".

<comment><USER28> I thought the same thing, but not having a lot of experience hiring designers, I am curious what type of numbers we are actually talking.

1-5k? 5-10k? More?

<comment><USER11> With MailChimp in your portfolio? Substantially north of $10k, just on design work (no CSS, no implementation), if I'm guessing right.

<comment><USER6> WorryFreeLabs was surprisingly affordable. My partner Lance and I 'bootstrapped' these design costs with our bonuses from our day jobs (and didn't exhaust our bonuses with it). Without question, I'd recommend WorryFreeLabs if you're looking for a group to take your idea and bring it to life in design. We're continuing to work with them as we build out page99test.com, and they're as fantastic as ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is why I love the age I live in, the internet & HN.

Someone takes the time to invest a few hours into helping a fellow entrepreneur with a particular strength they have.

Word gets out, and it turns out that the specific help they gave is directly related to the purpose of their recently launched startup.

This could be either a brilliant PR coup, or just genuine good-neighbourliness coming home to roost.

I love it when a plan comes together.

<comment><USER23> Why can't it be both?

<comment><USER29> Well...because it's not really 'genuine' if it was a PR stunt.

Or rather, the motives wouldn't have been 'pure', as in strictly from the point of view of, I-want-to-help-out-another-guy-type-of-pure.

<comment><USER6> Well, I had no idea Shereef would post this. But I'm very grateful. I think it's a very pay-it-forward sort of mentality that sits well with everyone in the HN community, everyone who believes information should be free and wants to see others with great ideas do really well. Honestly, if you check out BetterMeans.com, you'll want to help them out, too - without question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This sounds like a business idea: Let people upload an image, URL, or copy, and charge for reviewing: $n for a five minute lookover, $m for an hour. Editors reply with an updated draft and visual diff of changes.

<comment><USER31> A few days ago I ran into a similar service. It's free, though you have to review others sites: <http://feedbackroulette.com/>

<comment><USER30> Not quite what I mean, but that's ok :)

With Feedback Roulette, every submitter is also a reviewer. "Communal review."

With the paid editorial service, submitters only pay pre-authorized editors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Bloggergirl did a fantastic job on these slides. It is amazing that she took the time to go through the site in so much detail. Thanks for sharing the slides as this is good advice for anyone.

</comment><comment><USER33> I would pay for someone to review <http://readness.com> and produce slides with feedback on the messaging, how awesome.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think the review serves as a great guideline for all currently yet-to-launch sites and items to address/review for launch ones.

</comment><comment><USER35> I read it ! thank you for your efforts in helping the original posts ! says a lot about you.</comment>


Show HN: Crossnote – a note taking extension for VSCode - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/0xGG/vscode-crossnote <comment><USER2> For my classes I normally use Markdown with Markdown Math extension for a Latex-like math mode. Usually does the trick except for miscellaneous diagrams. Still looking for a good solution for that, but for the time being I use some alternative like Dia or Lucidchart and embed it as an image.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried mermaid? I guess it really depends on the editor and viewer you are using.

I've used this mostly with vscode and rendering from gitlab/hub, [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=bierner....](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=bierner.markdown- mermaid).

<comment><USER4> Sick. Thank you for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Love this! Similar to my project [https://mmap.it](https://mmap.it).

For me, the biggest issue with all of these note tools is accessibility. I want to be able to find the information I want with google like search, and no expensive context switching. With mmap, everything is operated by global shortcuts so you never leave your current window.

<comment><USER6> FYI: I'm getting "Version not found: latest" when I try the download link.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the heads up! Sorry about that, it should be working now. Let me know if you still have any issues

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I gotta ask: what does this do that Evernote or Standard Notes doesn't do (aside from live in VS Code)?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Open source. 2\. Pure markdown with extended syntaxes, supporting all kinds of diagrams (Mermaid, PlantUML, Vega, ECharts, etc) and LaTeX Math. You can also create slides (powered by Reveal.js) directly in Crossnote. 3\. Local widgets support. Such as abc music notation, OCR, Kanban (<\- syntax might change in the future), etc. More widgets are coming out in the future. 4\. Cloud widgets support. Cloud widgets are those communicate data with our cloud server. The first cloud widget I supported in Crossnote was the `/crossnote.comment` widget, which allows you to make comment directly inside your markdown note. 5\. You own your data. All your notes are stored locally (If you are using Crossnote PWA then all notes are stored in your browser). So it's easier to take control of your data. 6\. Coming out soon: P2P based real- time collaborative editing 7\. And many more ;)

That's all I can think about right now :) Thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Initially, the name made me think you do some kind of cross platform/instance syncing

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep I also made a web version

[http://github.com/0xGG/crossnote](http://github.com/0xGG/crossnote)

It's a progressive web application so it can work offline and play well on mobile devices. Besides, the PWA version supports running git commands right inside the browser with zero server dependencies (if CORS proxy doesn't count). So you can synchronize your notebooks with arbitrary git repositories anywhere anytime ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would tread carefully because last time I checked, VSCode was using +600MB _just for extensions_! I only used few extensions for Python and Haskell.

OS: Windows 10

</comment><comment><USER10> currently using stackedit.io for something like this. #tag integration on stackedit is non-existent though I use my own tags. also embedding images directly not possible without using url's. otherwise happy with it as it sync's to my google drive.

</comment><comment> c-smile What is the point in such functionality exactly in code editor, VSCode or whatever?

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice, I was thinking of doing something similar for Notepad++.

<comment><USER12> I already use notepad++ this way. Mostly, it is my scratch pad for stuff until I figure out what to do with it (save in Evernote, create an issue, send email or slack message, etc).

The killer feature that enables this is if you create a new document, it stays there (as "new2" or whatever) until you explicitly close that document. Closing notepad++, rebooting, etc doesn't matter - it's still there next time you open notepad++.

I've tried with vscode, but its behavior of closing everything if you open a folder just makes it not work for me, even though I often use it for coding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> VScode is getting slower taking lots of memory

<comment><USER14> Just set it up so it only activates extensions when entering a specific workspace. You can add the extensions names to settings.json in the .vscode (I believe) folder in the root of your project and they will enable/disable on load.

[https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/extension- gallery](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/extension-gallery)</comment></comment>


Website connecting Developers and Designers - <AUTHOR> http://builditwith.me/

<comment><USER2> App is very slow to load and I (like most people) don't have the patience to wait. Other than that, looks decent.You might want to look at the code again or the host server to fix the speed issue.

</comment><comment><USER3> Would be nice to add an option for both (for people who can design and code but may want to connect with others anyway).</comment>


Fitts' Law: A Usability Quiz - <AUTHOR> http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html

<comment><USER2> Putting the menus either at the top or the left (or right or bottom) of a browser window won't do a thing to address the issue here, unless the user always maximizes their browser to fill their screen. In that case, flush left or right would be good from a Fitts' point of view. But most users don't use their browser this way.

You could consider enlarging your links and/or buttons so the hit space is larger. You could add a buffer zone around the hit space so if the user gets 'close enough' then that is equivalent to hitting the target. Space your hit spaces far enough apart so that users don't hit incorrectly. Run usability tests and time your users on common tasks, then iterate your design.

An important aspect of Fitts' law is minimizing the amount of movement the user has to do to get to the place they need to go to complete the next action in their task flow. Therefore you can cluster similar actions together so that the user doesn't have to move around the screen a lot to accomplish a given task.

An interesting part of Bruce's post was his mention of circular menus. Fitts' law tells us they'd be easier to use than linear menus. But usability, like so much else in life, is not so cut and dry. I would predict that the increased cognitive load that the user experienced when they saw a circular list of options rather than a linear one would slow them down so much as to outweigh the benefits of not having to move as much to get to their desired action. All things equal, circular menus may be more efficient than linear ones. However unless the whole world changes to circular menus - or at least, one whole computer environment, applications and OS included - introducing this in your application would slow your users down.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another something to consider-- after your user has clicked a link, where will his/her mouse be on the page that loads next?

This comes into play particularly on sites that have a lot of repetitive actions-- e.g. hotornot. If I'm voting again and again, I want the vote buttons to stay in the same position for _every_ page load, so I don't have to hunt for it each time. That way I can click "no, no, no, yes, no" without any thought or mouse movement.

</comment><comment><USER3> wow. everyone should read this. i had one of those "holy crap i just learned something new and interesting" moments. what it has to say will probably surprise most of you.

my only question is, what's the best practice for designing websites using Fitt's Law?

We can't use the upper or lower screen edges because of the OS's menu bars and it seems like it would look odd to have the menu aligned flush with the left side of the screen...

Thoughts?

<comment><USER4> Urm-- lots of web sites have left aligned nav... lefthand nav was fairly dominant in the early web-- upper nav seems to be all the rage nowadays.

<comment><USER3> yeah, but how many are aligned flush with the side of the screen? it can't even be one pixel away for it to be super-usable.

<comment><USER5> And you have to set body {border: 0} or some such or they'll just click on the browser chrome. We had complaints from users when we broke this in our app :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts'_law>

Some great background here... apparently Fitts' Law is why Xerox introduced the mouse in the first place.</comment>


BlackBerry Announces $1B loss, 4500 layoffs and shifts away from consumer market - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/20/blackberry-bombs-announces-1b-loss-4500-layoffs-cutting-operating-costs-by-50-shifting-away-from-consumer-market/

<comment><USER2> If I understand correctly, this billion dollars is a writedown in inventory and not cash. It's for product that's only been in the channel for a few months. Good product like the Z10.

Why? This lowers the price of the corporation so it can be taken private. They are making BlackBerry as affordable as they can, as quickly as they can.

I have a Q10 and I love it. I had a Z10 and I wish I still had it. Great smartphones with the best OS I've ever used. And just recently they announced the "flagship" Z30 to get users excited: [http://www.techcentral.co.za/meet- blackberrys-new-flagship-t...](http://www.techcentral.co.za/meet-blackberrys- new-flagship-the-z30/43754/)

BlackBerry will be around for a long time, but they will be leaner, wiser and with a genuinely great product line for the future.

</comment><comment><USER3> The strategy of chasing price conscious consumers seems to have failed. Fairly recently, Blackberry was voted "coolest youth brand" in South Africa, while they flooded the market with poorly built, cheap Curves (I had a Curve, which took 10 minutes to boot). As bandwidth costs have come down, unlimited BIS has become less important. And people realise that having to give their phones in for fixing every six months is a poor deal.

I sometimes see the argument that a product being popular in the developing world is a ray of hope but Nokia's decline (despite dominating feature phone market with quality phones), along with Blackberry's decline is a signal that third world consumers are not a long-term cash cow.

<comment><USER4> One reason why Blackberry holds leadership positions in a few markets is they work directly with the government to ensure their products don't get hit by the same import tariffs their competitors do, giving them a very significant price advantage - for example, they started assembling BB's in Argentina a while back for this reason ([http://investba.com/2011/07/research-in-motion- blackberry-ar...](http://investba.com/2011/07/research-in-motion-blackberry- argentina/)).

In the last few years Apple has started to do the same: [http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/02/24/apple_begins_selli...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/02/24/apple_begins_selling_iphone_4_units_built_in_brazil))

<comment><USER5> Isn't the reason for this because Christina Kirchner's son owns one of the fab plants? And the tarrifs they impose on imports is prohibitive?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few questions come to mind: How much cash do they have in reserves? Can they survive till q1 2015 when they say costs will be slashed in half? Does the enterprise market still care for them enough? Could they survive as a platform and not a hardware maker (or which side of coin is more profitable for them?)

<comment><USER6> 1) about 2.6 billion

2) probably.

3) some segments do.

If they get small enough I suspect they'll be able to sustain operations. It will probably become quite a lucrative consulting niche.

<comment><USER5> But how small of a consulting biz? would this be something IBM then acquires?

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure about for them - I meant for third parties :) Pretty much any level of adoption in the enterprise will necessitate development of LOB apps. Some of those enterprises will do it in-house, but others will not. With BB10 being scarce in the consumer world, there will not be a ton of talent with experience in building for it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Faculty of 1000 - <AUTHOR> http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/the-faculty-of-1000/

<comment><USER2> The physics approach seems to be doing something pretty close, through the de- facto combination of traditional journals and arXiv. As the post says, the arXiv isn't itself peer reviewed, but many of the papers there are also published in journals, and the arXiv entry says that if so. The physics community has basically detached the peer-review and the access/archiving phases: the peer-review stays with journals, but the arXiv stores a PDF of the result. Some journals have even automated the pipeline; a number of physics journals will automatically upload an arXiv version of every published paper.</comment>


How I Wrote the Screenplay for "Arrival" and What I Learned Doing It - <AUTHOR> http://thetalkhouse.com/how-i-wrote-arrival/ <comment><USER2> This is a really great analysis of how hard it is to write a really good screenplay. As an occasional screenwriter myself, it's always frustrating when producers and directors repeatedly want to dumb down a script or "make it more exciting" to keep ADD audiences engaged. It's understandable, of course - traditional genre movies for the masses make more money, and entertainment is a business. But the fact that Eric Heisserer was able to keep everything in his screenplay at the intellectual and emotional level that he did really says something about the passion he had for the source material.

Also, the note about the limitations of screenwriting software is spot on. The fact that Final Draft costs $250 and can't even support image embedding is ridiculous.

<comment><USER3> From the outside, movie scripts just looks like mono-spaced text with dialogue indented.

Can you explain why one would need special software for this? What does Final Draft give the writer, that word or open office doesn't?

<comment><USER4> Roughly the same reason programmers tend to like IDEs. There are a lot of conventions around alignment, spacing, capitalization, and probably others that need to be respected in a screenplay. Specialized software makes it easier.

<comment><USER5> Keeps the format consistent, yes. Also, word completion for characters, scenes, and other conventions (INT./EXT., DAY/NIGHT/... for slugs). Also, probably the most important reason, it gives you consistent numbering and revision system. This is important when doing a production breakdown. think of it as a reporting tool. There's reporting as well. How many action there is vs dialogue, how many characters and which in a scene or script, which scenes, which props per scene (not every tool does that), etc. Some of these reports are done externally in apps like MMS6 or Gorilla.

You could, and people do, write screenplay in Word or whatever. Trouble arises later when you need to go through revisions and work with other people that work in those production-oriented apps. For that reason alone it's better to do it all in a specialised app.

<comment><USER6> Seems almost like you could use an IDE with a couple specialized plugins...

<comment><USER7> Yes, if for some perverse reason you wanted to adopt something that's designed for something else first and foremost (development in the case of an IDE), and are able to tolerate all the non-task-specific functionality that results from that.

Not to mention that lots of popular IDEs are written in unnecessarily wasteful/slow environments (Eclipse and Idea which use Java, etc).

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure why you seem to think script development is entirely distinct from software development. Perhaps you have some insight into this that I don't, but while there are some obvious differences, I'm willing to bet that a good IDE that's general purpose enough to work for both a lisp and static language and support refactoring and syntax highlighting and interface with external programs like source control would support quite a bit of what's needed already.

As for implementation language, I'm not sure java is significantly slower in the case of the project size we are talking about here.

<comment><USER4> I know scripts rely heavily on centering and right alignment. I'm guessing that's not the only way they depend on the assumption of being printed. There would be some impedance mismatch in using tools designd for plain text.

<comment><USER5> You could write in Fountain syntax [http://fountain.io/](http://fountain.io/) and have the presentation be printed as intended. I actually tried that once or twice (short commercial form) in Vim and I didn't have any issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised he didn't discuss his decision to turn it into a time-travel story. That's a major alteration to the plot and meaning of the story, and I'm curious when, why, and how that was made. Did he make it right from the start when he realized that he'd never be able to explain the stuff about the least- time principle and Sapir-Whorf and whatnot, or did he try and fail, or did someone else make him or what?

<comment><USER9> I never thought "Story of Your Life" was an alien contact story. Well, I mean, it is. I definitely did not see that as the point of the story, though, but rather as a tool to tell the actual story. In that light, the change to the alien contact plotline in the movie maybe isn't such a big deal. I was happy to see that they'd preserved what I thought was the essence of story.

<comment><USER10> Of course Story of Your Life is not an alien contact story. I think what gwern is saying is not that the film turned an alien contact story to a time travel story, but the film turned a story with no time travel to a story with time travel.

Story is very careful that it is just a very different (alien) perspective of mundane (no time travel) happenings. I haven't seen the film yet, but by all accounts it includes events requiring time travel (or retrocausation), which is definitely not the case in the story.

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't describe the movie as involving time travel, but you could make a case that it involves retrocausation. That's definitely different than the story, and I don't really regard it as an improvement. I thought the movie was pretty good anyway, and I think it would have been hard to make a more faithful adaptation of the story. I'm happy they did as good a job as they did.

<comment><USER11> I haven't read the story, but frankly for me (just watched the movie!) the time travel aspect was the weakest point. You could assume the 'non-linear language' just enhanced her predictive capability, but the scene with the Chinese breaks that possibility; and that ability seems way unbelievable anyway, even with science fiction suspension of disbelief. I'm not a fan of time travel/ftl in general with few exceptions.

I would be much happier if she just got incredibly smarter after the interactions. I can see so many plot possibilities arising from that.

(People start distrusting her; she starts feeling more intimate with the aliens then humans; etc)

It resembles many programmer's belief that there just may be a 'holy grail programming language', where translating abstract thoughts into working code gets much easier, and your thoughts themselves are shaped by the structure of this language.

It might be arguable that Turing-complete languages in general are the holy grail, allowing expression of any algorithm into code. But indeed our productivity has risen so much with modern languages compared to the very first Turing-complete languages that one does wonder how far from optimal- human-productivity our languages really are.

The same musings naturally apply for human language of course :)

<comment><USER12> You should read the story. All those other plot possibilities would be even more serious departures.

Also, the movie didn't bother to really explain this – though it made hints with the statement about how the heptapods see time, and Hannah's name being the same forwards as backwards, etc. – but there's no time-travel aspect _specifically because_ there's no influencing going on at all. She doesn't cause anything to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was a little disappointed that they left variational physics out of the movie (which meant that the physicist character was basically useless in the movie). I understand that that's a lot harder to make accessible than basic linguistics, but (spoilers) when they discovered that the aliens only knew time-independent variational physics, that was one of the biggest "whoa dude" moments in the book.

<comment><USER14> It was a little weird that a physicist spent the entire film doing linguistics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's remarkable how much better this movie was than the story it's based on [[http://robertomunizdias.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/11/Ted-C...](http://robertomunizdias.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/11/Ted-Chiang-Story-of-Your-Life.pdf)]. In particular, the story has the main characters encounter their alien interlocutors almost without anxiety, or fear.

The first half of the movie, on the other hand, conveys the feeling of dread wonderfully.

<comment><USER16> The story is vastly better than the movie. The movie makes no sense. She's shown being able to act in the present on future information. This rips the heart out of the story. First, she is now morally responsible for her daughter's death, which wasn't the case in the story. More importantly, the ability to act in the present on future information is basicly a superpower. She could take over the world, win every lottery and invest that money into finding a cure for her kid's disease. Instead she lives her life exactly as if she wasn't able to act in the present on future information. In the story she experienced all her life simultaneously. She was't able to affect the timeline. She experienced every moment of her life after she learned Hexapod B simultaneously, but could no more change her future than you can change your past.

<comment><USER17> I think this is something that really worked well in the movie, but takes a little more consideration after watching it because the movie doesn't really stop to explain this part:

Heptapod communication, and later on Louise, is performative. Imagine that you're playing a part in a live theater. You've read the script. You know what's going to happen next. You have lines to say, and you say them. You choose to participate in the performance.

It's a really interesting resolution to the argument between free will and determinism.

In this case, we can infer that, even though Louise knew everything that would happen, including her daughter's disease, she chose to play her role anyway. She understood that it was just a smaller part of a much larger, pre- determined script, and she was content to be an actor in it at all.

For another example of this being hinted at in the movie, Abbott knew exactly the fate that awaited him. He could have avoided it, but didn't. That was his role.

It's a metaphysical argument that's deeply unsatisfying to a lot of people. For a lot of folks, free will means being able to _force change_ as you see fit -- the Edge of Tomorrow position. But, for a minority of others, free will and determinism can coexist if you're willing to accept that just because things can be changed doesn't mean they should be. It's the ultimate form of stoicism.

(Also not addressed in the movie is the neat question of whether the heptapods' original decision to interact with humans for the sake of their own future is part of the script, or if it was an action they took outside of the script for their own sake.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Did I black out or did the circle signature not make it into the movie? I remember the line about dreams and not being fit, but I don't remember seeing that image.

<comment><USER19> It didn't make it in the movie. The scene stopped after Louise saying "That doesn't make me unfit for the job".

I actually think the circle signature shouldn't have been cut because without it, I felt that the entire scene fell a bit flat.

<comment><USER18> OK, good. I totally agree. That line would have made a lot more sense, and helped clarify that section of the movie a lot had they left the signature in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Stephen Wolfram worked on the language design (logograms) and wrote a lengthy post about it and making everything scientifically plausible - [http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/11/quick-how-might- the-a...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/11/quick-how-might-the-alien- spacecraft-work/)

</comment><comment><USER21> A side benefit of the movie was that it prompted me to read Ted Chiang's story again. The first time, I had skipped past the bit about Variational Calculus. Now, I'm intrigued by Fermat's Calculus of Variations. [http://www.askamathematician.com/2011/08/q-why-does-light- ch...](http://www.askamathematician.com/2011/08/q-why-does-light-choose-the- path-of-least-time/)

I wonder: given that a Photon travels at the speed of light, then everything happens instantaneously, from its point of view. So, is choosing the path that takes the shortest time like a standing wave?

<comment><USER13> > So, is choosing the path that takes the shortest time like a standing wave?

Note that photons don't take the shortest path; they take a variationally stationary path (not necessarily the shortest one). My suspicion is that this is because all the possible photon states are coherent along and immediately nearby that path, whereas if the path is not variationally stationary then it interferes with nearby paths. I've done very little variationally physics, however, so take this with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER21> > My suspicion is that this is because all the possible photon states are > coherent along and immediately nearby that path

Well, am new to the subject, so not sure what this means. Am curious if there is any relationship between Fermat's principle of least time ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat's_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat's_principle)) and Quantum FFTs ([https://www.quora.com/How-does-Shors-algorithm-work-in- layma...](https://www.quora.com/How-does-Shors-algorithm-work-in-laymans- terms))

<comment><USER13> My thought is that, on a variationally stationary path, all nearby paths are of the same length. So if you have a photon leaving a point along many possible paths, near the variationally stationary path the waveforms of the photon at each path will be lined up, interfering constructively. On the other hand, if the path is not variationally stationary, the waveform will drift out of phase on nearby paths (because they have different lengths) until the waves interfere with each other.

I don't know enough about quantum FFTs to know if there is an analogy. However, I'm taking Aaronson's class next semester so I'll be able to tell you in a few months ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like because it gives due credit to Chiang. Painfully modest though he may be, this enterprise sprang out of his imagination.

<comment><USER23> Unlike The Martian, in case of which one likely wouldn't even know about Andy Weir if one hadn't heard of the book before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I may get pounded for this, but I believe the implied request for image embedding in screenwriting software in this article is an example of a reasonable customer request that should not be implemented (or at least should not be implemented in the way the customer thinks they want).

Screenwriting software is ridiculously constrained. Margin sizes, line sizes, font sizes, font weights, everything, is ridiculously locked down. In the physical world, there were (are?) equally ridiculous constraints on things as minor as the binding of the scripts (which is to be done with brass "brads" [0]). It's absurd and absolutely intentional because it's what the real, ultimate customers of the screenwriting software want.

The real customers of the screenwriting software are the people who read and ultimately buy the scripts, and they want all these constraints in place. 99.99% of all screenplays never get bought, and 99.9999% of purchased screenplays never make it into theaters as a film [1]. In that sort of environment, the top goal of every screenplay buyer is to avoid wasting their time on screenplays that aren't worth reading.

If you send your genius script to people in Hollywood set in Helvetica or Gil Sans or whatever other font you favor, it will not get read. Period. That's an absolute deal killer for potential buyers. The reasons are a mix of process (constraining margins, font size, line spacing, font keening, etc. makes documents instantly comparable - look at the page count and you know the running time) and sociology (filmmaking is an incredibly complex and expensive multi-player art form with each project involving hundreds of people working together to build a product for millions or hundreds of millions of consumers, and the person considering buying your script wants to know do you understand how that works well enough for your idea to have a chance of surviving).

It's kind of like the way I put a footnote reference in my first paragraph starting with [0] instead of [1] or * the way the rest of the world would have if they wanted to put a footnote in plain text like this, it's an early visual cue that I might be a writer who gets how HN works. Ditto for the [1] footnote around the obviously made up, quantitatively inaccurate but qualitatively accurate stats on screenplays (the WGA does occasionally publish stats on the number of people who earn a "full time salary" writing screenplays and the numbers are amazingly depressingly small).

It doesn't matter how great your idea is, or how unique your personal creative vision is. If you put pictures in your screenplay, you are putting a giant HTML <blink> tag in your script that screams to every serious reader "My screenplay isn't worth your time to read, because I don't know what I'm doing." It's all well and good to be a special snowflake in your own mind, but if you want to be taken seriously in an incredibly sophisticated multi billion dollar industry where >99% of screenwriters never produce a script that gets produced, you distinguish yourself not by showing you know how to use blink tags but by showing you know how to grab people's hearts without them.

If you are a writer and you must have visuals, keep it to a single page, called a one sheet, with a single powerful evocative image on it to help the people you pitch to remember the concept for your story (and then try not to use or show it). Directors are buying your script, not your visuals.

When you're ready to produce and/or direct your own screenplay, then you can assemble your own visuals, but you still want to keep them out of the screenplay. Put them first in a mood board that conveys the feel of the story without the constraints of the script. Then put them in storyboards that convey the visual telling of the story at a high level (initially) to facilitate a deeper conversation with all the parties involved in the effort. Then produce a story reel, communicating the feel and pacing of the story. Or ditch them all and just make the film. The choice is yours if you are a producer/director but it's theirs if you are a writer. This is a big, complex, sophisticated industry you're working in. It's not always going to be optimized for you or your needs because it's optimized for the total needs of the set of all players in the industry.

All of which means please don't put images or blink tags in your screenplays and please don't put image embedding tools in your screenwriting software unless you want the people using your software to fail at their ultimate goal of having their screenplays made into actual films.

[0] [https://www.writersstore.com/screenplay- fasteners/](https://www.writersstore.com/screenplay-fasteners/)

[1] we'll come back to this in a moment

<comment><USER25> Impressive. You are technically correct, with respect to the current screenwriting requirements.

Unfortunately, you come across as highly antagonistic to a screenwriter (a) whose script was almost immediately made into a brilliant, popular film [73] and (b) whose story was foundationally about the way language affects our thinking.

Your main argument is that people's scripts will get rejected if they don't chain them into a box and use peculiar little brass fasteners to hold them together. This inclines me to believe that you've not yet actually seen "Arrival."

Sometimes I think a little change in the film industry would be productive, if it meant we'd get more movies like "Arrival," even if it means breaking rules, and fewer movies like "Captain America: Civil War," who follow the rules but composite dozens of mismatched absurdities and are basically mass-market children's cartoons.

[73] Common knowledge. By the way, championing your knowledge of "how HN works" WRT references just sounds self-congratulatory.

<comment><USER24> Thanks, I think, and I totally don't mean to come across as antagonistic towards the author - I loved his film, he faced huge challenges, and understood how to break the formatting norms slightly while staying within them to get a very exceptional project made. My concern was more that on a place like HN we'd have a dozen smart folks start googling screenwriting software, discover a few open source projects, and become convinced their path to success as app developers was to ship the first screenwriting software with image embedding support included. That seems like a great idea on the surface and it's only when you go deeper into the surrounding infrastructure that you discover why it might actually not be such a great idea as one edge case customer report might suggest.

The bit about the footnote styles was more to help HN readers who are not screenplay experts validate an example from their world where formatting styles communicate in-group vs out-group status, because as you point out "everyone" knows footnote counters start at 0 on HN.

<comment><USER25> Point about someone pursuing the project is fair. Worthwhile to note that discouraging people from doing things sometimes has the opposite effect :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I enjoyed Story Of Your Life, will have to watch Arrival when it makes it onto a streaming service.

<comment><USER27> I would recommend you watch it in a theater (if it's still showing where you live), if only for the spectacular soundtrack.

<comment><USER28> I enjoyed the movie even more than the original short story "Story Of Your Life". Which is very rare. "Arrival" is not perfect, but very good.

A very good intro is also [http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/11/quick-how- might-the-a...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/11/quick-how-might-the- alien-spacecraft-work/) by Stephen Wolfram who helped with some science parts on the movie.

My short review: [https://letterboxd.com/rurban/film/arrival-2016/1/](https://letterboxd.com/rurban/film/arrival-2016/1/)

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the link. Mentioned elsewhere that Wolfram's software was used live in filming to analyze the semagraphs. But, I missed the Wolfram blog post. Am going to see the movie again particularly for that sequence (plus the Jóhann Jóhannsson soundtrack floors me).

<comment><USER29> There was a HN discussion of that blog post, as well: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12940364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12940364)

Also I'll chime in about the soundtrack; I loved it. Lucky me Google Play Music has it - it says I've listened to it about 9-10 times through so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Great article on perverance and prototying, getting feedback and knowing how to challenge conventional processes.

</comment><comment><USER31> This was not a good movie or story, so I don't care.

<comment><USER32> You care enough to make a dismissive unsubstantive comment. Do you have specific critiques of the movie or story that might contribute to the discussion? I've heard a lot of positive comments. I'd like to hear a constructive dissenting view.

<comment><USER33> [Warning: Spoiler] The most direct criticism I have is that it's a slightly modified Contact with Interstellar's visual style and time-travel plot twist.

<comment><USER32> Thanks. Lots of stories are mash-ups or retellings. Sometimes a great production of a classic, well-known tale is a critical success. Is your criticism that it's not wholly original? Did you enjoy the film?

<comment><USER33> [Spoilers for Arrival, Contact, and Interstellar]

Forget aliens for a moment. Contact is a retelling of one of the oldest stories on record: the plight of the faithful. (Wo)man encounters awe-inspring supernatural force, tells the world but can't prove it, gets dismissed as a fraud/crazy, but goes on knowing in her heart that her experience was real. The rest is implementation details.

Putting a scientist in the role of prophet, and getting buy-in from science-y, atheist audiences by using aliens instead of God (you don't know that they're a God metaphor until you're on Jodie Foster's side), are precisely the kinds of intentional inversions that make adaptations of classic tales great. Present the message differently, using different tools, to appeal to different people in different ways.

In theater, Anais Mitchell's _Hadestown_ takes Orpehus and Eurydice, sets it in 20s Appalachia, and expands a story about a hero into a story about the industrialized world: Orpheus and Eruydice's light, playful hearts are nature and beauty and song, while Hades is heavy industry, the coal mines, the Man, the capitalist machine. Also gives it some awesome music.

Sarah Ruhl's feminist _Eurydice_ , from the same myth, subverts a story of a man's heroics in (trying to) rescue his damsel in distress, and transfers the agency to the damsel. These are both, in my mind, highly successful retellings.

Interstellar certainly has components that you'll find elsewhere - what story doesn't? - but none of them that I can place are a huge part of its identity. I wouldn't classify it as a retelling.

Arrival directly copies the setup of Contact: aliens make contact, we ingeniously decode their communication, the message is a blueprint/schematic for something that might be a weapon. Then it concatenates on the ending of Interstellar: time is non-linear, it can be transcended by the power of (love|language). It is neither faithful to nor a clever inversion of either story. It just takes half a plot from one movie, half a plot from another, and puts a different bridge in between them.

I had a good time in the theater, I'd probably see it again, I just don't have as much respect for the story as I did for either Contact or Interstellar individually. The linguistics were an _interesting_ value add, just not _that_ powerful.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why You Have to Wear a Seat Belt, but Can Drive a Motorcycle - <AUTHOR> http://mitchkirby.com/2015/05/11/seat-belts-motorcycle-red-states/ <comment><USER2> It's all about reasonable safety balanced with freedom. Wearing a seatbelt keeps people a lot safer and has a really low cost in terms of impinging on freedom.

There's no equivalent on a motorcycle that checks both those boxes other than the helmet laws we already have in many places.

There's no inconsistency here, it's the same philosophy but the outcomes are different because the situations are different.

<comment><USER3> >Wearing a seatbelt keeps people a lot safer and has a really low cost in terms of impinging on freedom.

I don't agree with that at all. There are too many opportunities for police to stop motorists, which they use to pivot and further impinge upon peoples' freedom. It is a common tactic for police to stop motorists for any of a number of reasons such as this reason as a tactic to initiate a search of their vehicle, and record the identities of driver and passengers. I am glad that cars are equipped with seat belts, and of course it is wise to use them; but I disagree that the state has much or any legitimacy in stopping a motorist who was causing no negative effect on other motorists simply because their seat belt was not visible. At its worst (and commonly) the seat belt requirement is abused by greedy entities to drum up extra revenue to which they would otherwise not be entitled.

<comment><USER2> I see what you are driving at and I agree, the laws do get abused.

I think though, you may be slightly misunderstanding my point: Wearing a seatbelt doesn't significantly reduce your freedom in any real way. It's not hard to comply with the law, it doesn't cost you time or money and it doesn't effect any of our other freedoms significantly.

To your point though: NOT wearing your belt is something that can land you in situations that put you at risk of abuse to your freedoms.

<comment><USER3> >Wearing a seatbelt doesn't significantly reduce your freedom in any real way.

I agree. I wear my seat belt. I think it is foolish not to do so. I also think it is a driver's right to decide that; and that a driver's failure to wear the seat belt does not harm others in any appreciable way. It's also not a requirement to fail to wear your seat belt in order for an officer to stop you, s/he only needs to fail to notice your seat belt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _can't we agree that the law should at least strive to be consistent with itself when possible?_

No, because putting consistency over correctness means instead of some right and some wrong, you've either got 100% right (not possible in our world) or 100% wrong.

Besides that, consider that a state's laws are supposed to be an expression of the values of their people, and it's entirely reasonable that a state might tax cigarettes and alcohol differently, or have different laws for cars and motorcycles. Depends on what the people want.

<comment><USER5> Inconsistency implies falsity

<comment><USER4> Humans are not logically consistent animals.

<comment><USER6> Some of us try to be.

<comment><USER7> You'd have to be omniscient first. Otherwise you may always be inconsistent when judged against context you're not aware of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's a lot of extremely biased assumptions going on here.

All of the numbers here are correlations only.

No definition is given for what "consistency" means. Taxing cigarettes but not alcohol because of health is not, in my opinion, even remotely inconsistent.

Lastly, the article starts out asking a number of interesting questions and answers none of them, including the one in the title.

If you go digging for statistical confirmation of your biases, you will find it.

</comment><comment><USER9> The argument that I've heard is that seat belts keep the driver in the seat, making it more likely that he or she will have some control of the vehicle after an abrupt maneuver, lowering the chances that the car just becomes an unguided missile, which is more likely to hit something or someone else without a driver.

Motorcycles don't really have the same issue, as they generally do a lot less damage than a car since they weigh only a fraction as much. So helmet laws are more a question of personal choice and how much influence the state government wants to have over those decisions.

<comment><USER10> _If_ that's the justification, then shouldn't the law only apply to the driver and not the passengers?

<comment><USER11> Here's an argument for that: Just like the car can become an unguided missile endangering others, an unseat-belted passenger can become an unguided missile endangering fellow passengers/driver.

<comment><USER3> Are we going to legislate that all of the potatoes in the back seat are secured against becoming missiles as well?

<comment><USER11> Hardly a worthy comparison. How about this comparison instead? If I were to transport my 25 lb kettle-bell, you can bet it will go in the trunk, legislation or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author here seems to be making the assumption that all these laws are considered purely from a 'public health/safety' standpoint, without ever being weighed against something else. If we wanted to evaluate laws purely under a 'health/safety' aspect we'd be scrutinizing the 2nd Amendment a lot more too, or even car ownership in general. Luckily legislatures weigh these things against other interests. People weigh gun ownership, motorcycles, and smoking against their public health, because despite the risks these activities are fun to do, make you feel good, etc.

Additionally, these issues aren't evaluated in isolation, there's lots of competing interests. Auto manufacturers and consumer interest groups have influence over seatbelt laws. For motorcycles there are ABATE groups in many states that tend to lobby against motorcycle helmet laws. How much influence these groups have may not necessarily be related to how safety conscious the state is in other areas.

</comment><comment><USER13> "its hard to argue that society as a whole bears a significant cost as a result of people not wearing seat belts. "

Its easy to argue. Society spends 10's of thousands of dollars trying to rescue and heal those that don't wear seat belts.

<comment><USER14> Also, if seatbelts weren't mandatory, it's conceivable that, in the event of a collision, you could be found liable for injuries that would have been prevented if the person wore a seatbelt. So yes, depending on the law, you could be personally affected by someone else's decision not to wear a seatbelt.

<comment><USER15> Victim-blaming is usually considered obnoxious. (It certainly is when newspapers opine that cyclists run over by automobiles should have been wearing helmets.) I wonder why that isn't the case here?

<comment><USER16> Probably because seat belts are ubiquitous and the cost of wearing one is practically nil. When the preventative measures are that easy, so is the jump to victim blaming. I'm not saying whether this is right one way or another, but that's certainly a difference I see between seat belts and many other preventative measures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Every time I see an article like this, it advances the "principle" that your own death has no effect on anybody else in the world.

Never have I seen this justified in any plausible sense.

<comment><USER18> Perhaps so, but to say that seat belt laws are to protect the society from those who don't wear seat belts is equally unjustified.

Not to mention they can, and do, find all kinds of other ways to kill themselves, both accidentally and intentionally--and almost none of those are regulated in a similar fashion.

<comment><USER19> There are innumerable and obvious societal impacts to your personal death/injury. From direct costs of EMS/Fire/medical care, to the minor economic disruption/traffic, to the esoteric person who kills themselves not wearing seat belt cut short their potential contribution to society.

<comment><USER18> Right, my point was that I don't believe that's really the impetus for the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _If the repercussions of not wearing seat belts only affect the decision > maker, its hard to argue that society as a whole bears a significant cost as > a result of people not wearing seat belts._

So... occupants of cars aren't mothers? Or fathers? Or run businesses? Or manage church bake sales? They aren't students with promising careers in medicine ahead of them? They aren't passionate lovers or mentors or good friends or musicians or even civil liberties lawyers?

When someone dies or is badly hurt, it doesn't affect just them. The author has a pretty disturbed view on human interaction to make this assertion in the first place. The argument that 'harm due to speed also hurt other people' and 'harm due to lack of seat belts only hurts the non-wearer' is specious.

</comment><comment><USER21> What states, outside of New Hampshire, don't require wearing a seat belt?

Live Free or Die, motherfucker :-)

<comment><USER14> > Live Free or Die

Or, as the evidence seems to show in this case, both.

<comment><USER22> I like the full quote better:

> Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.

Given that John Stark is the attributed author of the quote, I like to imagine that his sister might have added, "Valar morghulis".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am surprised that higher speed limits are so strongly correlated with higher mortality rates. I thought the trend was to increase speed limits, and I remember reading that at least for one of the states where they increased the speed limit, people were still pretty much driving at the same speed.

It seems that the general consensus is the speed limit should be at the 85th percentile to minimize accidents. However, this just considers minimizing accidents, and I suppose I can see how we can lower the number of accidents but also increase the mortality rate.

Also, I suppose it's not completely fair to compare different states, as what works in one might not work in another and vice versa.

<comment><USER24> > I am surprised that higher speed limits are so strongly correlated with > higher mortality rates.

This really shouldn't be surprising: higher speed limits correlate with higher average speeds, and while energy goes as the square of the velocity, mitigation efforts do not.

No matter how well you engineer crumple zones, improve traction, give automated braking responses... if you are going fast enough when you actually hit something, it's the kinetic energy that is going to kill you.

Bear in mind that mortality rates and incident rates don't really reflect the same things here.

<comment><USER19> It has a lot to do with reaction times as well. At higher speeds you've already run into the idiot swerving into your lane (or whatever) by the time your brain processes image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The big thing that a lot of these articles overlook, is that seatbelts keep the driver in front of the steering wheel and potentially in better control of a car during an accident -- whereas without one, it is possible to be thrown to a different part of the car, and it keep going in a random direction (thereby affecting others).

</comment><comment><USER26> What I find is that people tend to vastly underestimate the role that path dependence has on explaining history and then work to come up with just-so stories that explain the result, absent path dependency.

Nobody ever sat down and rationally assessed the relative risk of motorcycles vs seat belts and crafted a law to take the two into account. Instead, what happened was at one point in time, a group of people lobbied and succeeded in changing one status quo and at another point in time, some other group of people lobbied and failed to change another status quo.

</comment><comment><USER27> This submission raises an interesting question about HN submission policy with regard to titles.

The actual title of the article is "Drive In A Red State? You're More Likely To Die. Here's Why" (and there is an earlier submission using that title [1]).

However, it appears that the submitter may be the _author_ of the article.

Does the rule about not changing titles apply when it is the author of the article doing the submission?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9532196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9532196)

<comment><USER28> The HN guidelines ask a submitter _not_ to use the original title when it's linkbait, so the point seems moot in this case.

In general, though, we're a bit more tolerant of title alterations when the author of the article is the one posting it, because the concerns around editorializing are less pressing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seatbelt law without helmet law is a bit inconsistent as far as driver safety goes.

Banning motorcycle riding outright is a much more invasive law than requiring a seat belt. Costs vs benefits.

</comment><comment><USER30> Comparing wearing a seat belt to driving a motorcycle is not really a fair comparison. One is used for safety and the other is a transportation device. If the comparison is between cars and motorcycles then clearly cars are safer. If the comparison is between safety devices then seat belts are better than helmets if you are in a car but worse if you are on a motorcycle.

</comment><comment><USER31> You'll still have to wear seatbelts in a driverless car.

In fact it probably will refuse to go anywhere unless you do.

I think the seatbelt laws are to get federal funding, while motorcycles have little political persuasion.

<comment><USER32> Just curious, I know nothing about these things, how would it know what's a human and what's e.g. a dog? It couldn't even rely on the fact that there must be a human sitting in the driver's seat because the concept of the driver's seat is meaningless in a truly self-driving car.

<comment><USER33> FRS is always a possibility.

That being said - self-driving cars will likely allow manual overrides or require a driver in the case of a manual override for the same reason space shuttles have a cockpit and give astronauts the ability to manual override the controls. People will _want_ the ability to have control _just in case_.

If a system fails, or says it is failing, and you feel you know it will work or have an alternative that _might_ work. Having manual overrides as a fail safe for software failure can be life saving.

For example, what if your brake sensor malfunctions and your car ceases to be able to operate it's brakes? A manual pedal to brake the car could save your life. Although _arguably redundant_ it will likely remain as part of the car until enough time has passed that such fears are considered completely unfounded.

"There hasn't been a brake sensor failure in over 25 years." Such a statement could probably convince people a manual override brake system isn't needed and they can save money by ditching it.

<comment><USER18> Not to mention there will always be situations where you need to take control.

A flooded (but passable) road is an example that comes to mind--I don't envision us programming our way out of that one.

Surely there's dozens of similar examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What about public transport? We don't have seat belts, we can even travel _standing_ on a crowded bus. It doesn't seem to bother anyone apparently.

</comment><comment><USER35> Well, there is an _incredibly_ easy and obvious answer to this.

Mothers.

Mothers of dead children have been a _huge_ force is traffic policy in the US.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can't imagine how author pulls out of his ass the notion that speed limits are less impinging on liberty than seat belts.

I also find it hard to believe author is not being disingenuous stating "repercussions of not wearing seat belts only affect the decision maker".

The last couple paragraphs are opinions stated as facts and very much want the reader to agree with them I can't help but feel the whole article/data was just a means for author to push his opinion.</comment>


Coding explained in 25 profound comics - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@FreeCodeCamp/coding-explained-in-25-profound-comics-8847ea03819c

<comment><USER2> Numbers 9 and 14 are two of the funniest things I've seen in a while. I actually laughed out loud. At work. And then showed it to my team.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think #24 was my favorite.

</comment><comment><USER4> Those are pretty spot on.</comment>


Compojure 0.4.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/compojure/browse_thread/thread/6e826313a78d7728

<comment><USER2> This is a web framework in the style of web.py or Sinatra.

I was wondering if anyone had much experience building a significant web application with one of these frameworks? Are they sufficiently powerful to enable fast development? I worry that a simple system like this might lack some of the templating and and database layers I am used to in larger frameworks such as Rails and Django?

I suppose I might just be afraid to lose having the framework do most of the work for me. It has made development quite fast.

<comment><USER3> I think it's probably a matter of taste, and also the type of project (which surely are correlated). I prefer this sort of micro-framework because it gives me control. I like my software to consist of many independent pieces that _I_ can mix & match and then string together. The Rails approach is more the opposite, you've got the structure and fill in the gaps.

Admittedly, none of my web projects in recent years have been typical database-backed web apps. Clojure (and thus Compojure) is actually a fantastic candidate if you're keeping state in memory - STM is made for this.

On my infinite TODO list I've got an xLightweb back-end for Compojure. This would allow asynchronous I/O in the style of Node.js, something that's a bit tedious in pure Java (no closures), and Clojure has certain advantages over JavaScript/V8. I find asynchronous I/O hard to imagine in a Rails-style environment.

<comment><USER4> I'm also hoping for node.js-like development in Clojure, it seems like as a Lisp, that style of development is well suited for it. What would be great is for someone to use JNI with libevent to create a nice, fast event driven server for Clojure/Java.

Edit: I forget, does java.nio already use kqueue/epoll and friends? If so then Netty should do the trick as it uses java.nio.

<comment><USER3> There's an epoll-based implementation of the java.nio.channels.Selector so JNI should hopefully not be necessary.

I haven't tried netty yet, it seems a lot more heavyweight than xSocket/xLightweb? Or is my perception warped because it's hosted on jboss.org and the description uses "enterprise-friendly" language?

<comment><USER4> From everything I've read Netty looks like a champ compared to all other NIO servers. :-)

So, I'm quite excited to have found the answer to my question, _AND_ someone has already started a clojure/netty project:

<http://github.com/texodus/saturnine>

Check out these comparisons of Netty vs others:

<http://gleamynode.net/articles/2232/>

<http://amix.dk/blog/post/19456>

[http://www.znetdevelopment.com/blogs/2009/04/07/scalable- nio...](http://www.znetdevelopment.com/blogs/2009/04/07/scalable-nio-servers- part-1-performance/)

[http://www.znetdevelopment.com/blogs/2009/04/09/scalable- nio...](http://www.znetdevelopment.com/blogs/2009/04/09/scalable-nio-servers- part-2-memory/)

[http://www.znetdevelopment.com/blogs/2009/04/13/scalable- nio...](http://www.znetdevelopment.com/blogs/2009/04/13/scalable-nio-servers- part-3-features/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Predicting Antidepressant Response with EEG - <AUTHOR> http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2009/09/predicting-antidepressant-response-with.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Read to the end of the blog post for the sneaky trick in the research. As usual, Peter Norvig's article on scientific research

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

warns of issues like that to look out for.</comment>


$1B and Beyond - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/1-billion-beyond-jared-broad/ <comment><USER2> I'm Jared the founder of QuantConnect. Happy to answer any questions! We're really excited to be sharing this milestone and have some incredible projects in the works!</comment>


He Said, She Said: How Uber Relied on Data in an Assault Dispute - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/04/he-said-she-said-how-uber-relied-on-data-in-an-assault-dispute/389811/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> So.... did he miss the exit?</comment>


The Best "Thank You for Your Order" Email I Have Ever Received - <AUTHOR> http://couchraisin.com/post/2921948101/best-thank-you-for-your-order-email-ever I've received a whole lot of "receipt" emails, but this one changed my day. <comment><USER2> Although not a duplicate, this story/email was submitted just over a month ago. I'll repeat here what I said there:

        Personal opinion only, but ...

        I find this sort of thing annoying. It would be
        especially annoying if I bought more than one thing,
        unless they changed it every time. But that, in turn,
        would force me to read through the entire email every
        time just to make sure they really were just saying -
        it's shipped.

        In short, life's short, and I've got better things to
        do than read through an entire, cutesy email to make
        sure that it's saying what I think it's saying, and
        not saying anything unexpected.

        It's also lying. I bet they didn't do any of that.

        "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" expresses clearly the
        difference between "Funny Always", "Funny Once", and
        "Funny Never". For me, this is somewhere between the
        last two. I hope it doesn't catch on.

        </rant>

There's a lot more to the discussion from last time - you can read it here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2008639>

<comment><USER3> I halfway agree. It would depend on the company, for me.

If I ordered from a stuffy corporate mega-giant like Amazon, I'd be slightly annoyed. If I ordered from somewhere serious, like ordering $2k+ computer parts I'd think they were clowns and wonder if I made a mistake.

However, if I ordered from Woot.com, I'd know it was just their brand of humor and appreciate it.

CDBaby strikes me as the corporate type, so I'd be slightly annoyed, I think.

<comment><USER4> Haha, this is extremely funny, since that email was written by Derek Sivers; then owner of CD Baby, and an incredibly popular contributer around here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe it's dour Scot thing - but if I got an email like that I would think they were taking the p*ss.

<comment><USER6> Pass?

<comment><USER7> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_the_piss>

<comment><USER6> What I meant - with tongue firmly in cheek - was that the symbols P, asterisk, S, S symbolise the word 'piss' as surely as the word 'piss'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember getting this email when I bought a CD from them in 2007. I loved it, and thought the exact same thing as the author: "I'll do business with them again."

Four years have passed and I haven't bought a single thing from the company since then. I've just gotten what I needed elsewhere, either due to price or convenience. The email is nice, but it didn't really do much to make me always want to go to them first.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I skimmed the email. I found one of the lines interesting. I kept reading. It made me smile. Who would've thunk that so many people can get upset about a little fun in their inbox.

I opt-in on whimsical, fun email. "Order Shipped" => Boring.

</comment><comment><USER9> I probably don't fit the target demographic for this kind of email, but it seems to me that CDBaby is subtly mocking its customers.

I have no idea why they would do so, but hyperbole can cut both ways.

</comment><comment><USER10> All that fanfare and... they sent your package via USPS.

<comment><USER8> I actually prefer USPS when I get some stuff (smaller items, like CDs) shipped to my apartment - They can actually use the mailbox instead of leaving it outside of my door, where it can easily be swiped by someone else. For larger items, I just have them shipped to the office.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your abandoned code? - <AUTHOR> There are times that I have invested quite some time into a chunk of code and realize that sometimes its just better to abandon it entirely and try a different approach. This code often contains useful  techniques that don't always get carried over to the final release.
The thing that bothers me is that many times I suspect I wasn't too far off in solving the sticking point, and I sometimes find myself wondering if my initial approach wasn't the better one.
My current solution is to try to move all such code into a private repo for later review, but I don't always have the head-space to interrupt my work and manage that overhead.
What are your techniques or tools that you leverage in managing your abandoned code?
Do  you commit it somewhere for a later review by yourself or a team member? Do you just git stash and move on? <comment><USER2> I _never_ destroy the source code directory. I still have projects from 30-odd years ago that get looked at from time to time for some silly reason or other.

I move the project directory out of the main work area where current projects live to another area like 'obsolete' or perhaps 'non-current'. It still exists, but it isn't continually in your vision.

Disk space is cheap. Your time and angst are not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Reviewing old code brings back memories. I've got stacks of hard drives but not the time to organize them unfortunately, and not all of the code is pushed to a remote repo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Putting it in a "Gist" is pretty easy on github: [http://gist.github.com/](http://gist.github.com/) (note use "create secret gist" for code you wish to keep private)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice - I totally forgot about Gists. I've used them in the past but strayed when I found them lacking when it comes to keeping them organized. Your comment did make me go re-look at Gists though and reminded me about GistBox and other related services that fill in some of the gaps. I think for the time being though I'll just work off of a local repo and build out my Gist library that way.</comment></comment>


GPS Satellite Outage Information - <AUTHOR> http://adn.agi.com/SatelliteOutageCalendar/SOFCalendar.aspx

<comment><USER2> Fascinating. Can I assume GPS coverage has in fact become more robust over time as the number of healthy satellites has increased? Or is there a non- linear relationship between the # of birds and the likelihood of picking up a strong signal? (E.g., are they covering new territory rather than better covering existing territory?)

<comment><AUTHOR> The error graphs show gradual decrease from 2007 to 2011 - <http://adn.agi.com/GNSSWeb/PAFPSFViewer.aspx>

<comment><USER2> Thanks -- I had trouble producing a long-term graph on that page. Did you just load each year separately and eyeball it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Algeria Authorizes Shale Gas Exploitation - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/algeria-authorizes-shale-gas-exploitation-23820313

<comment><USER2> When will society start considering actions like this a form of state- sponsored (eco-)terrorism against foreign nations instead of looking at this as a positive money making venture?</comment>


Automatic - Your car and smartphone, connected (YC S11) - <AUTHOR> http://www.automatic.com

<comment><USER2> I'd always been jealous of a friend's realtime gas metering on his BMW (up until the time I had to bring him gas at the side of the highway.)

I was intrigued, I hit the buy button. We'll see how well it actually works. I'd been meaning to get a code reader anyway. ;)</comment>


SSHConfigFS: A small FUSE filesystem to dynamically build SSH client config - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/markhellewell/sshconfigfs

<comment><USER2> I like it. Inventive use of FUSE, but is there any reason it couldn't have been done with python and inotify?

<comment><AUTHOR> I looked at inotify and quickly realised it was Linux only, which for me isn't a good fit as I tend not to be on a Linux box when I'm using my ssh client.</comment></comment>