Sign Up Forms Must Die - <AUTHOR> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/signupforms

<comment><USER2> How would you make this site have a gentler slope? Let the user post a comment and then say "Thanks for the comment, now you just need an account to publish this. Enter your username/password."?

Some of the sites that do "gradual engagement" piss me off when they let me believe I'm about to do something and then surprise me with a sign up form. It strikes me as tricky and I very frequently walk away.

I certainly believe it's smart to let users do as much as possible without requiring them to sign up. I think the idea of signing up is pretty ingrained in people though. If you make it dead simple (like this site or reddit) it's not much of a barrier and it keeps things straightforward.

<comment><USER3> <http://jottit.com> has a nearly frictionless scheme.

<comment><USER4> I am looking at their front page and I have no idea what they expect me to type in a very large unlabeled text entry field.

And if I click on Create, it say "see, that was easy". It certainly was, but what was IT exactly ? :)

<comment><USER5> I have to agree with huhtenberg, I never heard about Jottit and I went there to check it out but a big blank field with a "create a site" button tells me nothing. Honestly, that is a lot missing in there...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Upon arriving at [Google Video], they found a link to share their video and what happened next? They got the form in Figure 13.1."

"It's only when you want to publish or share your movie that Jumpcut asks for your name and email so you and others can access the movie you just made."

I -hate- the web experience this article describes. If you're going to make me sign up to use your service, tell me. Don't string me along and waste my time.

The point the author seems to be making: let people know what they're getting before you make them sign up. Well, I think Google Video does a pretty good job at that. And I can -view- any video I want to without signing up. Is that "gradual engagement"? If so, why is it being criticized? If not, how is it different?

In fact, the more I think about this, the more the practice counters the principle. The principle seems to be (and ought to be), "Let your potential customers know what they're getting right away." Google Video does that. And if I ever want to go 'deeper' (from watching videos to posting them, or collecting them), I know right away that I need to sign up.

On the other hand, to _view_ the video I've spent the last however long _making_ on JumpCut, I get SURPRISED by a registration form. Plus, why would I need to register to -see- a video. I can understand needing to register to post or save a video, but to see it? I'd argue, then, that Google Video actually does a -better- job delaying the registration component than any of these examples.

And they're up-front about it from the start.

<comment><USER7> Google Video is not a good counter example to Jumpcut. I think Google Video works perfectly. The point of Google Video is to view videos, which it allows you to do without an account. To share a video you need to have an account, same as in Jumpcut. (Typically you have to make users create an account to post content otherwise a never ending stream of spam is likely to follow, degrading the quality of the service for legitimate users)

For Jumpcut, the real value in letting the user upload and edit a video is to get a feel for the video editing functionality without having to sign up, (since the video editing is really their selling point). If the user likes what they've created they can sign up to post it. This is key. Let the user try out the idea of your site without signing up. You can then require them to signup if they like it and want to keep their work.

Recently there was another post where somebody had a startup that had some cool way to learn a foreign language <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144998>

I wanted to check it out but had to sign up to really see how it all worked. So I left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The irony is you have to sign up to leave a comment on that article.

<comment><USER9> Except commenting isn't the primary purpose of the article. It would be ironic if you had to fill out a sign up form just to read it.

But I'm sure you were just poking fun, so poke away, haha.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you really want to get rid of sign up forms, having a large scale trusted and secure central repository for unique IDs/logins and 'commonly requested' information would eliminate the need for many sign up forms. The majority of web based applications, services, etc. ask you for the same information repeatedly without any actual need or use for the information as a value add in the functionality of the application. Why is that? Why hasn't this been done/worked in the past?

<comment><USER5> Sounds like you are describing OpenID. Once i thought about a little software that would work like a real world id. Every time a web service ask you for personal info you would just click on a icon and show them your id (that means that the software would pass all the details to the service). Would that work? It sounds a lot like google checkout...

<comment><USER10> Yes, something similar to OpenID and Googlecheckout. The problem would be that the Yahoo!'s, Microsoft's, and AOL's of the world would not allow Google to centrally manage all user IDs and registration information on the web (or they would not be willing participants in the centralization of the information to another for profit company).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My current project involves interacting with a chat bot. We could require users to sign up on a form and make sure we have a boatload of data from them upfront before opening up the service to them.

Instead what we do is tell them to add a bot to their buddy list and send it a greeting. In doing this, they've already engaged in the service, and we have created an entry in our users database based on their buddy name and chat network. They can then decide whether supply additional information.

There are lots of ways to lower the barrier to entry if you're willing to change the way you think about online services.

<comment><USER12> The issue isn't necessarily collecting "boatloads of data"; rather, the problem is making sure I have a way to contact this person who is potentially interested in my product. For you, this is conveniently solved through their screen name and network. However, how would you go about contacting someone who stumbles upon your website (without explicitly asking them for contact info)?

Another issue is accountability. If someone is abusing my service, I want to be able to ban them from ruining things for everyone else. If you look at sign up forms in terms of security, the psychological acceptability of filling out a form and providing an e-mail address is actually quite high compared to more robust ways of verifying identity (driver's license, social security number, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If the gradual engagement includes a reasonably complex operation, like writing an article and then creating an account to post it, does this obviate the need for a CAPTCHA?

I'm curious, because I hate CAPTCHAs, but only slightly less than I hate being used as a splog.

I think it might, so I'm feeling happy.

<comment><USER6> Why would that remove the need for a CAPTCHA? Normal procedure: Register -> write spam. This method: write spam -> register.

<comment><USER13> Hrm. Fair enough. I was assuming the "write" step would include something atypical enough to screw up a program that just looks for "blogs" to "comment on." But, that might not be the case for everyone (or even for me).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How does gradual engagement work precisely? If this is based entirely on cookies, which seems to be the only possibility, then: what if I started the process, posted something - my video, a blog post, etc - then got my cookies deleted? Or moved to another computer?

<comment><USER15> It would depend on your product. I think the key UI principle to remember is that if user work is not saved, make it obvious that this is the case. They way they can decide when they want to keep their data enough to save it.

If the data is impersonal enough you can add a "Whoops, lost you work? Click here to see recent orphans" link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Use OpenID, perhaps? Add a ClickPass widget?

<comment><USER17> OpenID currently only speeds up the registration process, not replace it

<comment><USER18> But, how much "extra" information is really required for these services? Do they really need me to fill out my address or some other thing? Can't they just link my openid to a username of my choosing?

If that's the case, it speeds up the registration process by a lot, and _nearly_ replaces it. (not quite since I'd need a username)

<comment><USER10> Open ID would be a good solution if it was adopted on a wider scale and was more on it's way to becoming a trusted standard.

I think many sites require extranenous registration information just because other sites request the same information. It also gives them the option of analysis at a later date.

Some companies may actually use the information they collect for data mining or to resell. Even though this can sometimes have evil purposes, sometimes it can be beneficial for a company to say Paul Graham really likes chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and its his birthday, but for most places collecting this information is of little use. It's just annoying for the user, as the many replies to this news posting can attest to.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building a mobile app in 2020? Here's what to look at - <AUTHOR> Looking back at the past year from a technology perspective, all we can say is that 2020 should be at least as ground-breaking as 2019. But with a lot of technology trends & buzz words being promoted around, which one will you actually trust to lead the strategic direction of your next mobile app? <comment><USER2> Meh, we tried to build an offline first mobile app with react native. Unfortunately, by the time our prototype was done we had to update react native 3-4 times and had major breaking changes with external libraries / plugins we used.

At the end, we decided we didn't need to be cross-platform and went iOS Swift UI native.

So much better!

I'm not sure how RN is today, but 6 months ago it was a clusterfuck of constant breaking changes with every minor version update. It just wasn't worth the headache of spending days to update and fix everything while still developing an application and trying to stay up to date. Not to mention you were at the mercy of 3rd party library's and their maintainers any time you want to update your version. It's a dependency nightmare for an app with a little bit of complexity..

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't really matter. You can always refactor later.

I'm still using Cordova. There are reasons to use Cordova. We'll phase it out for native later. Not Flutter or React Native, but actual native.

There has never really been a "best" technology. Some are faster. Some are safer. Some are cheaper. Some have nice curves early on and mess you up later on. Some are awesome for CRUD, not so great when your app relies on modifying camera or microphone data, or needs to be running in the background.

</comment><comment><USER4> Been using React Native + Expo, and it impressed me. I think React Native would be around for a couple of years, some huge companies as Shopify[0] are now adopting it.

[0] [https://engineering.shopify.com/blogs/engineering/react- nati...](https://engineering.shopify.com/blogs/engineering/react-native- future-mobile-shopify)

</comment><comment><USER5> native, all the way. launch on one platform. get traction? fine, scale to multiple platforms and at that time evaluate whether you should move to a cross platform framework (i.e. react)

</comment><comment><USER6> For the last 3 yrs, I have used javascript. Ionic (angular/typescript) and if I need native functionality I'll jump down with Cordova plugins.</comment>


Infiniverse - <AUTHOR> http://play.infiniverse-game.com/

<comment><USER2> Ok from the info in this thread and my own gameplay I've made this short guide:

Press [F1] to see the explanation of the controls in game. Most controls have an "energy cost". Energy is required to do anything.

[Arrow keys] to move, hold [Shift] to move several tiles at a time. Press [Enter] to descend in to the local area you are on (if possible). [Backspace] to go back out. The furthest you can "zoom out" is the super-galactic view (where you can clearly see the spiral shape), the closest is the planetary view (where you see 'o' for rocks).

You can press [Tab] to "scan" for objects. This is most useful in a planetary system, as it will show you where planets and space stations are. It is also useful for the super-solar view, where it will tell you the closest npc ships are. You can press [S] to toggle scan mode, but that isn't actually useful.

You can launch [M]issiles after scanning in a view. This lets you combat npc ships. You'll need a few to take them down.

With the [E]nergy Converter you can convert certain resources directly into energy. With the Mass [F]abricator you can create certain tools from energy.

You can [D]eploy a navbeacon, which basically creates a checkpoint you can teleport to. Press [G] and select a navbeacon to teleport to it.

For controls with a "Choose BLAH" you can press the control again and it will close the menu.

Interaction with space stations is: you step on the + or -, press [Space Bar] to do the corresponding trade (+ is buy, - is sell). I haven't found a way to interact with merchant ships yet (other than to blow them up).

The idea of the game is to explore the universe and get resources. On certain planets when you descend low enough you'll find resources which you can step on and press [Space Bar] to pick up. They go into your cargo, and you can sell it or convert it to energy. There are upgrades you can get for your ship to help your journey. I believe the point of the game is to explore, but there are currently not many incentives to continue exploring. There are rumors that you can win if you find a certain artifact. But good luck, there's billions of stars.

<comment><USER3> > I believe the point of the game is to explore,

I guess the goal of the game is to reach the X at the center of the galaxy, which requires enormous amounts of energy.

(If you can't find the X, it's because you're not at the highest level, press backspace until you see it)

<comment><USER4> This is correct. Spoiler: [https://i.imgur.com/evnckgy.png](https://i.imgur.com/evnckgy.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A tutorial would be great. Played three times and was destroyed in a matter of seconds without any idea of what I did wrong.

<comment><USER6> I agree.

I think if you're by a red thing, go away from it until its little red arrows disappear. You can shoot missiles at it by pressing Tab to scan then M to arm the missiles...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool. I'm a big fan of rogue-likes, and have been thinking about something very similar to this for awhile (I guess I'll have to change my plans).

For those that missed it, there is a downloadable version as well: [http://www.infiniverse-game.com/](http://www.infiniverse-game.com/) (Interesting side note, the downloadable version was written in FreeBASIC.

</comment><comment><USER8> A minor problem, in IE pressing F1 sends me to [http://windows.microsoft.com/es-ar/internet- explorer/interne...](http://windows.microsoft.com/es-ar/internet- explorer/internet-explorer-help?ocid=ie11_win7_F1)

<comment><USER9> I would recommend not using IE.

<comment><USER10> Well, sure... but it happens in Chrome as well, at least on my H.P.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really neat game, and I actually appreciate it when a JS game doesn't obfuscate it's code, partially for learning and partially for cheating. :D

</comment><comment><USER12> I can't comment on the game because I won't have time to test it on my computer today (a summer Sunday is a little peculiar) but I recommend providing a tablet interface: the map at the top and buttons below it. There is plenty of space for them (pun intended). Check that they are arranged well in both 4:3 and 16:9 screens.

</comment><comment><USER13> Reminiscent of one of my favorite games of all time: Starflight. I played it on a Sega Genesis when I was about 14 or 15. I had a huge collection of handwritten notes by the time I was done.

I think this is a great start.

</comment><comment><USER14> Any guides? Where do I get hydrogen from?

<comment><USER15> I found hydrogen on gas giants. I found Radioactives on Terrestial planets on Mountains, but each of those only gives 2K energy so they're not all that much better than Hydrogen. Still looking for antimatter.

<comment><USER16> Antimatter is also only found on gas giants, it's just less common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anything to do other than shoot missiles, run away from hostile missiles, and search planets for resources?

<comment><USER18> Trade, get resources, upgrade, fight bigger enemies. Then try to find the artefact, which I guess is on some random planet in the galaxy, so will take a communal effort (or, more specifically, fluke), since there appears to be millions of stars.

There are some goods you can find to buy with your initial money, though many (from what I've found) are too expensive.

<comment><USER15> How does one interact with merchants?

<comment><USER19> I don't think you can -- trade happens at Space Stations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Like a minimalist mixture of the old DOS games Star Flight and Star Fleet. Brought back some nostalgia.

</comment><comment><USER21> Reminds me a lot of Star Control 2, which had the added Melee mode for battles.

<comment><USER2> With the procedurally generated content, this game is a little bit more generic. It really misses on all the interesting story from SC2. But it's a good start, and if only they can figure out dynamic history generation...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Perhaps a bug, but I found you can sell a seemingly unlimited amount of biomass.

<comment><USER22> A particularly profitable bug when one happens to visit those space stations that _also_ sell antimatter. Deploy a navbeacon in the area, and unless I'm missing something (only played about twenty minutes so far, reader beware), the risk of depleting all one's energy should then be zero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Brought back memories of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(text_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_\(text_game\))

</comment><comment><USER6> Ah, got it: on Mac, press delete to go back up after descending.

</comment><comment><USER24> This makes me think of [http://www.asciisector.net/](http://www.asciisector.net/)

But it is very cool to see an online version.

</comment><comment><USER25> dear lord someone provide just a tiny bit of instructions...

<comment><USER26> <F1> is your friend ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Cool, reminds me of EGATrek an old dos space sim based on the Star Trek text game. Was really into it as a kid. Thanks for this and the nostalgia.

</comment><comment><USER28> This has potential. How do you buy from merchants?

</comment><comment><USER29> How do I search the planet?

<comment><USER15> You don't. Just land somewhere and wander around. You'll see Metals / Radioactives sitting on the surface. Move over and press space to pick up.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A fun side project, GetFrankd - <AUTHOR> http://getfrankd.com

<comment><AUTHOR> A couple of friends and I decided to build it over the past couple of weeks, working on it off and on during nights and weekends. It was primarily to go through the process of setting something like this up and to play around with the idea of backward innovation, using facebook images in a facemash environment.

Would love to hear thoughts on concept/implementation/design in general as well as any ideas people might have to get users to keep coming back rather than using it as a one-off site!</comment>


On teaching mathematics by V.I. Arnold (1997) - <AUTHOR> https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html <comment><USER2> "Mathematics is a part of physics."

Try telling that to a statistician, or a computer scientist, or an economist, or....

I think it's worth noting that category theory, which was initially derided as abstract nonsense even by other mathematicians, is now a central field of study in math and is also becoming a major part of theoretical physics. If we only studied things that are immediately applicable to some particular science, we would not be able to advance the sciences as quickly as we can now.

I'm not that wild about the Bourbaki style of exposition, which does emphasize rigor over intuition, but I think that there is a lot of value in having students go through that phase. Terry Tao has a good explanation of why at [https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/theres-more- to-...](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/theres-more-to- mathematics-than-rigour-and-proofs/), and I'd encourage anyone interested in the topic to read it.

<comment><USER3> What Arnold is saying is that mathematics is part of the natural world, with immutable truths that can be discovered.

He is saying that the science of mathematics is part of the natural sciences. There's no reason for a statistician, or a computer scientist, or an economist to agree with that -- these fields depend on the natural truths discovered by mathematical science just as surely a biologists depends on the natural truths discovered by chemists.

<comment><USER4> Hasn't it been proven that there must be areas of math that can never be connected to other areas of math? Saying it's part of science, or the natural world, seems like saying all math is part of one great whole. That's something that's been passé since 1931 or so, I thought.

<comment><USER5> I don't know the answer to your question but want to state the a differing point of view in the same vein which is how I understood it as the contrast might be something I learn from.

There can never be practically useless mathematics. Someone will always find a practical use in the physical world for any new mathematics that is developed. The story I heard illustrating this was that in the shadow of WW1 various mathematicians who lived through that horror became (understandably) pacifists (Hardy?) and decided they wanted to make sure their work would never be useful in weaponry and so devoted themselves to the utterly useless number theory. Sadly for them in a world of crypto number theory has a major use and that is military.

<comment><USER4> This is a layman's view, but I thought Gödel's incompleteness theorem means there must be in principle mathematics that can never be connected to other parts of mathematics. And if something is part of the universe, it must be connected to something we can perceive, so I conclude that not all math can be connected to that which concerns something real.

In other words, even though math that was thought to be useless has repeatedly been applied to physics, I think the claim that it is "always" applicable is too strong and in fact proven false in principle.

<comment><USER2> That's not what GIT says. See [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel- incompleteness/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-incompleteness/) for a description of what it does say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can ecpecially relate to the part where intuitively obvious things were probably invented for intuitively obvious reasons, then the derivation was thrown away and the thing was described axiomatically like the blind man describes an elephant.

The non-explanation of the determinant in my linear algebra textbook was especially infuriating: "There is this thing, right? We will later see its uses. It happens to have the following properties: ..., If you swap two columns its sign changes, ..."

<comment><USER7> The important thing is that a _reasonable_ derivation is presented. It need not be historically accurate.

For instance, if I was teaching category theory to CS students, I would try to motivate it with topology.

Similarly, if I were teaching group theory, I would not try motivating it with solving polynomial equations.

<comment><USER8> > _Similarly, if I were teaching group theory, I would not try motivating it > with solving polynomial equations._

Why not? That's a fine (and historically important) reason to study group theory, and everyone who goes through high school is fairly deeply familiar with polynomial equations.

While we are discussing Arnold, you might like this book created out of Arnold's lectures to some bright high school students in the 60s, [https://www.mathcamp.org/2015/abel/abel.pdf](https://www.mathcamp.org/2015/abel/abel.pdf)

<comment><USER7> >Everyone who goes through high school is fairly deeply familiar with polynomial equations.

A high schooler is not nearly familiar enough with polynomials to understand the group theory component of Galois Theory. The central observation of Galois theory is that, in certain circumstances, it is possible to permute values without affecting the correctness of any polynomial (with coefficients in a certain field).

For example, suppose you have two unknown values, A and B, and knew that the following polynomial equations held:

        A + B = 0
        AB = 1
        A^2 = -1
        B^2 = -1

There are two possibilities: A=i and B=-i or A=-i and B=i.

Further, no matter what polynomials (with rational coefficients) I give you, it is impossible to distinguish these two possibilities. The group in this case is all the possible ways of permuting A and B which do not effect any polynomials (with rational coefficients). There is a lot of work involved in actually developing the theory I summarized above.

EDIT:

Perhaps more damning for using this approach to teaching group theory is that it is, in general, difficult to actually compute what the Galois group is for a given polynomial.

<comment><USER9> > _There is a lot of work involved in actually developing the theory I > summarized above._

Still, Galois had it licked by age 20, and was able to write it down the night before engaging in a deadly duel that took his life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This has hit the front page at least 3 times in the last year. Why?

</comment><comment><USER11> He lost me at the beginning. Paraphrasing Wolfgang Pauli, "That is not only not right; it is not even wrong." Certainly much of math was born from science. But the notion of pure mathematics goes back to antiquity.

<comment><USER12> I would advise you to go and read his statement in full. His point is quite valid, even if some of the phrasing is not well-perceived.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the response. I took your advice and was glad I did. After reading the entire piece, I agree with your statement.

<comment><USER12> Thank you for following through!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:  How did you quit smoking? - <AUTHOR> I know this is a little off the topic of how to make a great start-up but I figure it's on-topic for mutual support and for an issue that prbly effects many of us stressed out types.  How did you quit smoking and is it a complete fantasy to imagine getting it down to like, 7 or fewer per week when starting from an accidental habit (roughly half-pack / day, in my case). <comment><USER3> I read a famous quit-smoking book on the advice of my (still smoking) brother. I was dubious of the thing, feeling all superior and thinking that I was too smart to be changed by a small cheap book. I was wrong. i finished to book and quit, just like that, went cold turkey. no craving, no withdrawal feeling, nothing. I even did what you should never do which is to smoke just-the-one to see, didn't fall back. It amazes me that I never ever think about smoking. I just have these meta thoughts sometimes when I smell cigarettes about how I should feel something about it but don't.

It's a truly amazing book that read in a few hours and simply states very simple facts about smoking, the kind that you know but refuse to know. It force you to reconsider your smoking. That cigarette in the morning feels good? (no it doesn't) The one after lunch? (neither)... Step by step you naturally come to realize that every justification for smoking, all the fear of withdrawal, all the drama around smoking has no foundation.

You can just quit. Don't mess around with excuses, just quit. Next time you want to smoke just think "Not worth it" and forget it. But read the book.

EDIT: Allen Carr <https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Allen_Carr>

<comment><USER4> I can't recommend the Allen Carr strongly enough. It simply changed my mindset on smoking and quitting in such a fundamental way that I couldn't help feeling great about stubbing out my last smoke and actively looked forward to some withdrawal pangs.

You don't use any nicotine replacement (gum, e-cigs, patches...) and it's not stressful like the willpower method (I tried a plethora of different ways to quit in the past) and the process is quite quick. I procrastinated on reading the book (looking back I was afraid) but eventually decided to bite the bullet and book myself in for a 5hour group clinic session.

The session took place in December 2008. I walked in at 9am afraid, skeptical and wondering whether I was really in the right frame of mind to quit. I extinguished my last cigarette at 2pm that day and have felt great about it since. I know I sound like an evangelist but this is one product I'll shout about. Colour me a fanboy.

Ping me if you would like more details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I quit it was cold turkey, I'd keep saying to myself, 'You only _think_ you want a cigarette' to stay reminded that really I don't. Plus, a couple years earlier I watched my father die of lung cancer, although he never smoked- so as bad as that was, it helped to an extent. I assure you, it's NOT how you want to go.

<comment><USER6> I quit many times in many ways, each time because I wanted to stop smoking. It was only when I didn't want to smoke that it actually stuck. Maybe that's too zen-like, but that's my story.

Unless one is a chipper (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipper_(tobacco)>), it's an all or nothing thing. Just let go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have quit three times now for more than a year each time. I have a really addictive personality so it is all or nothing with me. When I start back up I am quickly back to a pack a day in no time. I have quit twice with patches and most recently with a prescription drug called Champix or Chantix. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varenicline>) They all work, the key is once I have quit, I can't have just one cigarette, or else I am back (all or nothing).

Just pick a method and don't let you talk yourself into having just one. After I turned 22 I realized it was about time for longterm damage to start and it wasn't socially cool anymore at that age.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER8> I was a 3+ pack/day smoker for many years. Quit cold-turkey 27 years ago. I had tried Shick (electric shock aversion therapy), some sort of injection, you name it. Just quitting finally worked. Many days of being non-functional, but I've never gone back.

</comment><comment><USER9> I smoked for nearly 25 years, mostly at a pack a day or more. Several winters ago, I ran out of money except for rent and food, and had no other reason to leave the house besides cigarettes and exercise. Depression prevented the latter, and I told myself that I wasn't up for talking to strangers for the former.

As my supply dwindled, I rolled the butts into second generation cigarettes. And then those into third generation. Finally I ended with a fourth generation cigarette, the nastiest thing I've ever smoked - and it took me days to finish it.

That cigarette, plus overwhelming amotivation to leave home, was my cold turkey route to quitting successfully after hundreds of tries with other methods.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been a smoker for 10+ years and quit cold turkey.

I actually tried chantix first and took it for a week and started getting depressed which lead to suicidal thoughts. I should have looked up the side effects first (duh! i know). Anyway after that crazy little mind f __*, i just told myself that im going to quit cold turkey. Quitting cold turkey is rough, it sucks, its not easy but you gotta go through it. There are no shortcuts, no easy way out and no excuses. Just realize that once you truly commit, it gets easier as time passes. Its hard to believe that it gets easier when you're going through it but its true. For me (as well as other HNers), being stubborn I think was a key factor in getting over it.

Things that helped me cope: \- Drink juice, real 100% not from concentrate pineapple juice helped me "cleanse my palette". \- Stop over eating / eating greasy foods. It was a HUGE trigger for my smoking craving. Find your triggers and try to avoid them. One thing that really sucked was I had to stop attending my daily starbux sessions. Change is sometimes good. =) \- Be in the right mind set. It helps if there is someone to support you. There are support groups and sites out there. Let your pride/ego go and ask for help. At least you can be somewhat anonymous online. \- I hear running/ working out helps but I'm not much of a workout guy. Yoga and breathing exercises do help. Look up "breathing Yoga" to learn some techniques.

Again, there are a lot of resources out there to help. I hope that you got some good insight in this thread. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER11> After trying to quit several times, I never got to a point where the cravings were manageable. It seemed I would have to learn to live with the cravings, so two years ago I attempted cold-turkey and made it two months while wanting a cigarette most of the time.

Then a great thing happened; I started to think about it less and less. After 4 months I almost never thought about it, and cravings were very rare. The two or three cigarettes I've tried since quitting tasted just awful and made me nauseated.

Good luck.

<comment><USER12> > After trying to quit several times

I think that's an important point. Even if you don't quit this time, you have to keep trying.

I tried to quit at least six or seven times before finally succeeding eight years ago. The last time, I used nicotine gum for about a week. Before that, I had quit for up to a month, more than once, with help from either the patch or gum. All my relapses came during social situations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> YMMV:

I was up to a pack a day when I quit. I begun by realizing my habits. About once an hour I'd get up and go outside for a smoke.

When I decided to quit (the first time) all I did was delay to my next "appointment". In other words - get to work at 7am, 8am comes around and you want to go smoke. At this point I would squirm, fidget and think about the smoke, but not actually do it until 9am. Continue this process through out the day. I also kept my associative smokes (getting in the car, finishing a beer, having a coffee etc) in tact at this point. These served as a familiar refuge from the shock I was going through during the day.

I did this for a week or two (until it became easy), then applied the same process (recursion!) to my current habits.

Somewhere along the line, when I felt comfortable I took out some of the associatives (only have a smoke when I drive to work, not coming home).

I kept repeating this until I was down to 2 - 3 a day, then one day (without prior planing) said I was going to make it the whole day. I don't think it worked, but I kept trying every once in a while.

The first time I used this process I quit for a few months. The second (and current time) has been about 8. I still want to smoke from time to time.

Once again - YMMV but I didn't really WANT to quit. I liked smoking, but my unparalleled stubbornness helped me get through.

</comment><comment><USER14> I had an A5 piece of cardboard on my bookshelf in full view and every Monday I'd put another mark on it with a felt tip in groups of 5 like |||| + \

The idea was to have four rows of 13 notches for the 52 weeks of the year.

After about 6-7months I didn't need it anymore, but I still keep it to this day as a memento. It really helped to look up at it every time I had a craving and think 'look how far you have come'

It will be four years in October since I stopped smoking. I smoked for half of my life from 13-26

</comment><comment><USER15> Every time someone would tell me that they used to smoke or that they'd quit, I'd ask them how they managed it. Over time some started smoking again, some didn't, and a pattern emerged.

The critical factors I identified were a public commitment to stop smoking and a definite future date to quit.

Having the date set in advance, a few months away, gives you time to mentally prepare yourself, gets you used to the idea of becoming a non-smoker, and adds a very helpful fallback of "I really want to smoke, but I'm not going to throw away all those months of effort".

Making a public commitment (i.e. telling everyone who'll listen that you'll be quitting on [date]) makes your quitting date a bit more important, meaningful and harder to change your mind about as it approaches. It also increases the cost of recidivism: you'd have to admit you failed.

My doctor was one of the people I told about my intention to quit. He offered to prescribe a course of Zyban and I believe it made a huge difference. Just make sure you find out how long you're supposed to take the Zyban before quitting, and start taking it sufficiently in advance of quitting day.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER16> It was cold turkey for me too. I didn't have any money left and no tobacco in the house. So I just stopped. I used to smoke quite a lot; usually hand-rolled cigarettes (non-filter) and about 35-40 a day. (Had been smoking for about 2 1/2 years up until then) It was rough the first couple of days, but it got better pretty quick. I tried to distract myself, with some video games, worked out pretty well, played for hours straight.

But I haven't had much problems quitting any habbits thus far. Overall I get hooked quite fast, but if I try to ignore and overcome the need for e.g. playing Quake Live( or something like that) I seem to don't care anymore after 2-3 days. (until I play again)

I still want to smoke from time to time, because I really liked it, but the desire usually vanishes 10min later.

</comment><comment><USER17> Buy gum instead, and chew. Seriously. I won't say I quit smoking completely, because I have a cigar on holidays or during celebration, but I haven't bought a pack of cigarettes in years. When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, It really made me think, so I went cold turkey and I chewed dentyne ice peppermint gum whenever I wanted a cigarette. Eventually the store bought cigarettes really became gross to me, and the only tobacco I have now is cured tobacco from a smoke shop, sheisha, or a good cigar. Other then that, my daily routine absolutely rarely includes smoking. You don't need a cigarette when you drive. You don't need a cigarette when you drink. You don't need a cigarette to walk to the car. You don't need a cigarette.

</comment><comment><USER18> I quit cold turkey last year. August 28th it will be one year exactly. I have been smoking off and on since High school. All off times were accomplished just by not smoking. Every time I have started back up It was not a big deal. I guess this time it is different, I came to the conclusion that smoking does nothing for you, it spends your money, that is all. I replace smoking with cycling, nothing too major but definitely something positive. As for your goal of getting to X perday, bad idea, you always fail, I always failed, every smoker I know fails at that goal. If you are going to quit, then quit. Wht is stopping you from quitting completely?

</comment><comment><USER19> For me it's not so much a physical addiction as it is a habit. I'm a web developer and I feel like I have to smoke to think through a problem or for an excuse to step away from the keyboard for a few minutes. I need to find an alternative.

</comment><comment><USER20> Been off cigarettes for a few years now, and never want to start up again, specially with the super high prices we pay in Australia now, a pack of 20's are almost $15 AUD.

I quit by using patches for 3-4 days to get over the worst of the withdrawals, then went turkey, it's rough, but you just have to suck it up, try to exercise a lot, tell all your friends your quiting so they will hassle you if you fall off the wagon, think of the money your saving and try to stay positive, the first week is brutal.

</comment><comment><USER21> i smoke about 1-2 cigarettes a day. Sometimes it rises to about half a pack if im in a social setting. Since im a nerd, thats rare(maybe once a week). Every time I've smoked more than a pack a day, heavy drinking was involved.

Maybe im one of the lucky ones, I'm not as addicted to smoking as i am to caffeine, I can go for days or weeks and not bother to buy a pack(unless i know that there will be heavy drinking tonight), but if i miss one daily cup, well i believe most HN-ers know whats it like to have your whole sleeping schedule messed up for days.

Smoking i actually enjoy, i enjoy good coffee too, but im more worried about the withdraw, i was never worried about nicotine withdraw, so i don't conciser it a real addiction, not like coffee at least. Im not in a rush to quit, but i am careful, i don't want a second habit to turn into a hard addiction.

Or maybe it has and im just rationalizing my addiction. A tip if you really want to quit: don't rationalize, there is no rational reason to smoke, i smoke because i enjoy it, and the joy is just a chemical reaction in my brain. Don't rationalize, there is no rational reason. Just quit and be done with it. Don't think too much. Best way to kill an addiction is to starve it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm really appreciating all the reports.

One of the folks in my dental office suggested (a) use mouthwash and, ideally, dental floss after each lapse; (b) make a chart and track your progress - <USER2> a game of it. That kind of jives with the patches, lozenges, etc. and adds some twists.

Seems stupid, doesn't it? Don't want to smoke? Well, then don't! But... some know... it's easy to make a long series of "Ok, just one more."

<comment><USER3> I don't agree with the "make a game of it" approach. It sets you for failure as it keeps the smoking in your thoughts constantly. It also makes a lot of drama about something that is really very easy, want to stop smoking? just never light that next cigarette, never. Forget that next cigarette, forget smoking, forget all the reasons that makes you think you have to smoke and forget all the drama about quitting. What ever the situation the next cigarette will make it worse. (see my other comment too)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I switched to an e-cigarette All the sensation of smoking without the carcinogens and smell. More info here:

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

And here's where I order my gear from:

<http://www.puresmoker.com/>

</comment><comment><USER23> I smoked 1 pack a day for about 6 years. I used the Alan Carr book and just quit one day. For me, the most important part of the book was being informed that I didn't just have a bad habit, I was a drug addict. I don't like the idea of being addicted to something.

</comment><comment><USER24> i "accidentally" quit.. had no intention of quitting permanently but i was working two jobs at the time.. i measured how much time i was losing to smoking.. 5 min/stick.. that it'd be good if i was being paid for _that_ time instead; like another hour or so a day.

i used nicotine gum to avoid the trip outside to smoke.. at least i could get my nicotine fix while still in front of the PC.. was like this for months then transitioned to ordinary gum.. that's the time when my will was really put to the test.

worked for me.. never smoked another cigarette since i went down this road.. nicotine-independent now for two years.

btw.. i've been a heavy smoker (1.5-2 packs/day) for 22 years straight, before this.

</comment><comment><USER25> I used nicotene lozenges with great success. However, it was a bitch to quit the lozenges because I stayed on them for way too long.

In the end, I wished I had just gone cold turkey. Quitting was totally worth it though (pack a day habit).

</comment><comment><USER26> I did a pack a day for about 2.5-3 years. It's kind of funny, actually; I worked out and ran very strenuously during that same period of time, in stark contradiction with my smoking. :)

I tried quitting cold turkey several times, and it just didn't work. But I am not nearly as disciplined and goal-focused as I think many HNers are. So, I'll describe what I see as a "realistic" path for quitting that incorporates the common fallabilities of stimulant-prone, somewhat indolent nerds with plenty of bad habits, rather than idealistic supermen full of improbable willpower and an obsessive interest in veganism, yoga, body purification, etc.

To start with, meditate on the fact that 99% of the cigarettes you smoke are really "maintenance" cigarettes; there is no buzz, there is no genuinely pleasurable "high." You had that when you first started smoking, and that's why you kept smoking, but that feeling long went away. The only time you're going to get a buzz anymore - if you're lucky - is with your first cigarette in the morning. The rest of the time, you only think you're getting "higher"; in fact, your nicotine levels have just dropped, and all you're doing is replacing them back to "normal" level in order to avoid the irritability of withdrawal. Focus intensely on the pointlessness of this for a while, and decide you should quit if for no other reason than that alone.

I don't think I could've done it without the nicotine gum. The gum really helped. The delivery format was key; I tried patches first, but they neither provide that feeling that something is going on orally that smokers want, nor deliver nicotine fast enough in sufficient volumes. When you chew gum, it hits you 30 seconds in, so you satisfy the craving _now_, not in 45 minutes.

Like many technocratic novelty seekers, I tried the e-cigarettes, which were neat but proved to be a basically useless gimmick that didn't solve the problem to my satisfaction. They also broke too fast to function as a viable replacement; these products are of very terrible quality. The other thing about e-cigarettes is that there's nothing to stop you from puffing on them all day inside, which is exactly what I did. That sort of misses the point, and has plenty of unpleasant side effects. Besides, I'm sceptical that breathing in whatever is in them, however allegedly carcinogen-free and undeniably tar-free it is, is an asset to one's health.

I did continue chewing the (4 mg) gum for a lot longer than their 12-week instruction book suggests (probably about 9 months), but eventually got off of it too. I don't think it's because the gum is really particularly addictive; I'm just very easily given to form new consumption habits. It's really is a lot easier than quitting cigarettes because it doesn't have quite the same cognitive feedback, even if it is nicotine, although you do need to have a firm commitment to quitting it as well, and keep in the forefront of your mind that it is a transition tool.

Also, 4 mg gum is designed for people who do 25+ cigarettes a day, while the 2 mg version is for people who do a pack or less. Because I did slightly less than a pack a day, the 4 mg version was actually a pretty high - and sometimes overwhelming - dose. It dehydrated me and irritated my bowels. This turned out to actually be a good thing because it provides negative feedback that incentivises quitting the gum.

As I said, the gum is not nearly as addictive as some say it is, at least, not if you really hit it hard. It's too much of a "good" thing. Call it a little nicotine aversion therapy. I suppose this is an unusual approach and may be not for everyone, since the idea is to ween yourself off nicotine by cutting back. I kind of did the opposite and lost my taste for nicotine by blasting myself with it in this manner. I don't know that this is the best approach in general, especially if you don't tolerate the side effects of gum overuse well, but since your question is about how _I_ quit smoking, I tell you what worked for me.

The strongest pressure for me turned out to be social; even with the gum, the other thing that probably made the single biggest difference was going hermit for about ~2 months and not really seeing most of my close friends, almost all of whom smoke -- some only "socially", but nevertheless, the point is that smoking is what we'd do when we hung out. Smoking with them was just force of habit at that point, not really nicotine cravings per se. It has an intensely psychological dynamic.

I won't say I haven't had a single cigarette during this intervening time. Of course I've had some while out drinking with friends. But it's been more than a year since I properly quit and find that I am now at the point where cigarettes slightly disgust me (in a non-inebriated context) and under no circumstances do I find myself wanting to continue smoking on my own after I get back home. I don't even know why I do it once in a while with them; it's stupid. It's definitely not because I any longer derive any sort of perceptible satisfaction in breathing in smoke, especially since it irritates your respiratory tract a lot more if you only do it very sporadically. It's social inertia, I suppose - maybe a little bit of that feeling of solidarity that all smokers commune in now that it's been relegated to the margins as a seedy, non-mainstream habit. I'm not mentioning it to discourage you, but only in keeping with my claim to provide a "realistic" assessment above. All other things being equal, cultivating non-smoking friends makes things easier, but one doesn't generally choose one's friends that way.

An important thing to remember is that the rituals, habits and experiences associated with a smoke break should probably be preserved, just without the smoking. If you give up those too, you will find yourself unnecessarily miserable and feeling like you gave up far more than you have to. There is a strong point of view out there that you should jettison habits associated with smoking because they act as "triggers" and impede positive reinforcement, but personally, this was not my experience. It's far more important to find new ways and angles from which to enjoy the same stuff you used to do with a cigarette without a cigarette (which, after all, is probably a huge range of stuff) than to try to bend and contort your lifestyle and behaviour in improbable, contrived ways!

So, if you liked to drink and smoke, keep drinking, just don't smoke. If you liked to take a break with a cigarette and a cup of coffee several times a day, keep taking a break with the coffee. If you like going downstairs on smoke breaks with your coworkers because of the feeling of taking a break, keep doing that, but without the smoking, though be weary of the danger of putting yourself in situations where everyone else is smoking and you're not; if you can find some other way to take a "break" from work, I would.

In general, the theme here is that you should basically continue the habits you had in connection with smoking, whether they're good or "bad" habits, because otherwise you'll crave those experiences too, and it'll make things that much worse. It is likely to seriously jeopardise the sustainability of your quitting project.

Invent new habits, and new rituals that you can do without smoking, too. While I was on the gum, I invented a new way of taking a "break" and checking out of the drudgery of the universe; instead of going out on the balcony and surveying the world, cigarette in hand, I'd pop in a piece of gum and play BZflag for a half hour. It seems kind of trivial, is certainly not productive, and, well, nobody said the gum is really good for me either, but it was soon a ritual I looked forward to in place of a smoke break. It's those kinds of little reinforcement modifications that make all the difference. They new kinds of rituals furnish new qualia to associate with them, and new junctures in the passing of time to look forward to.

I still sit outside on my balcony and code, just with a cup of coffee or tea more commonly in hand now, not with cigarettes. However, I got a new, much improved outdoor table set, so in this tiny but nevertheless important way, I feel like I've moved on to a newer, better era in my life; it's a little treat for not smoking outside anymore. You need those treats.

Notably, nicotine impedes absorbtion of caffeine, meaning you need more caffeine to get the same effect as a nonsmoker. Giving it up has made me appreciate my coffee a lot more.

Also, periodically reading through <http://www.whyquit.com> and looking at all those charts that tell you what happens 1, 2, 12, 24, 72 hours, X days, X years, after you quit is also a great inspiration to keep at it.

One last thing worth mentioning, in which I will take a page from whyquit.com's sanctimonious narrative, is that you should not, under any circumstances, fall into the trap of believing that you're going to quit by simply cutting down. For most people, including myself, attempts to quit by going down to "only 3 a day" or some similarly inane idea will result in complete futility. You're not doing yourself any favours at all with that approach because by taking that route, you're saddling yourself with all the misery of magnified withdrawal because you're smoking less, while not doing anything that's going to make that withdrawal go away. In this suggestion - however well-intentioned - lies madness and oblivion. Don't do it.

</comment><comment><USER27> I saw three great-aunts and one grandfather die before I was over 18 from cigarettes and related effects, so I never dreamed of starting.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well, after carefully planning to "ramp down" over the next week or so, I woke up this morning, thought "screw that", and quit cold.

</comment><comment><USER28> went overboard, was doing 3 packs in 2 days, quit cold turkey, and have been reading reddit (and now hacker news) every day since.

</comment><comment><USER29> I smoked a pack a day for about 5 years. Tomorrow is my last day of using the Nicoderm patch. I've been using it for 10 weeks and I used their 3-step program. It was rough because the patch kicks your ass physically, but it's been well worth it. My chest doesn't hurt anymore and I can breathe easy. I suggest using the patch.

</comment><comment><USER30> Get really drunk and smoke something like 3 packs of cigs in one night. Even the smell of a cigarette will make you want to vomit for most of the initial withdrawal period.</comment>


Generate randomized 8-bit and 16-bit sounds - <AUTHOR> http://www.superflashbros.net/as3sfxr/

<comment><USER2> Nice job using flash player. What about the people that view site that don't choose to download and install non-free proprietary software?</comment>


Britain Failed Hong Kong - <AUTHOR> https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/12/britain-failed-hong-kong/ <comment><USER2> Handing over a territory and it's citizens without a referendum seems like a mistake.

The whole Hong Kong scenario always seemed weird, utterly reminiscent of backroom negotiations and colonialism.

<comment><USER3> Forced opium trade, war, forcibly seizing foreign territory do seem like mistakes.

HK's retrocession to China was the right thing to do.

Unfortunately it seems that it is very hard for Britain to get over its lost Empire. They should really move on.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, the past is riddled with bad things, but you'll be judged for how you move forward, not for what you inherited..

Maybe, it should go to China, but why not have a referendum, it's cheaper than war -- and it makes a stronger argument too :)

<comment><USER3> It is a rethoric and disingenuous argument to call for a referendum. See Crimea.

The problem is states competing against each other and they know that HK is a way to create trouble for China.

<comment><USER2> A referendum today is too late..

But if the UK had called one, it might have been different.

We've successful solved territorial disputed with referendums in Europe. We just rarely talk about it, because there was no war to talk about :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At the time of the handover the world was in a unipolar moment. People though that we were converging on an "end of history" where every state was inevably moving towards democracy. The relative importance of the Chinese economy in world was a tiny fraction of where it is today. It was a mainstream opinion in Western circles that Hong Kong would "take over" Beijing rather than vice versa.

How things change.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why should Hong Kong be any different?

<comment><USER6> Different from what?

<comment><USER7> Our other ex-colonies, I presume</comment></comment></comment>


Refusal to treat AIDS and HIV positive patients (1987) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1246493/?page=1 <comment><USER2> It's hard to believe how badly AIDS victims were treated back in the day. Ignored by your government and demonized by society. The whole article is about trying to rationalize denying medical care to subjects of "voluntary sexual perversion or mainline drug abuse". I'm glad that the gay rights movement in the US has helped since then.

I listened to a really good interview with a survivor where he talked about seeing his friends and loved ones dying left and right. There was even a time when morgues would refuse to accept their bodies since it was all a "gay problem" that they didn't want to take a risk on. There are apparently morgues which that group of people exclusively use now because they were the ones to treat their friends like human beings during the AIDS crisis.

It got so bad that at one point people dying of AIDS at home (because hospitals didn't want to deal with you) would ask their friends to dump their corpse on the white house lawn when they passed. They did this to protest the despicable treatment of gay people and AIDS victims by the Reagan administration. I would recommend everyone sit down and learn about this period of time. It was really eye opening to me how one group of people can be treated as less than human by almost every aspect of society. It's really not something they talk about in public school.

Edit: Here's the link to the interview I was talking about: [https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/shame-on- you/e/66787240](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/shame-on-you/e/66787240)</comment>


Trump admin to extend and expand immigration restrictions - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/trump-immigration-workers-coronavirus/2020/06/22/3b969e88-b489-11ea-9b0f-c797548c1154_story.html <comment><USER2> The pandemic is also used as a reason to stop consular services around the world, in effect stopping any new visa applications even for non-immigrant visas not mentioned in this article.

</comment><comment><USER3> The freeze is pretty wide ranging and will apply to:

\- H1-B - Specialty occupations

\- H4 - Immediate family members of the H-1B visa holders

\- L - Intracompany transferees from oversees

\- J - Work-and study-based exchange

\- H2-B - Temporary non-agricultural workers

</comment><comment><USER4> How likely is this to continue applying beyond the year's end?

<comment><USER5> If Trump is reelected, it's a certainty.

<comment><USER6> yikes</comment></comment></comment>


Lower Pricing for Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2009/08/lower-pricing-for-amazon-ec2-reserved-instances.html <comment><USER2> As a basis of comparison:

For $40/mo, you can get a 1.7GB server from EC2 with one year commitment or $31/mo with a 3 year commitment.

With the Rackspace Cloud (formerly Mosso), you can get a 1GB server for $44/mo or a 2GB server for $88/mo.

Likewise, a 7.5GB EC2 instance is now $161/mo with one year commitment and $125/mo with 3 year commitment.

Rackspace charges $350/mo at their 8GB level.

15GB EC2 - $322/mo 1-year; $250/mo 3-year. 15.5GB Rackspace - $700/mo.

So, that's a substantial savings over the provider most like EC2 - bandwidth a la carte, SLA, hourly pricing - if you're able to commit.

 _The sad part of this is that it only applies to newly purchased EC2 reserved instances._ If you bought a reserved instance yesterday, you're in at the old pricing. And that's kind of crappy of Amazon. That's my hesitance in locking in for a 3-year term. As technology progresses, you're locked in. Granted, the rates are wonderful, but it would be nice if Amazon promised that we wouldn't get passed by on changes like this.

<comment><USER3> > If you bought a reserved instance yesterday, you're in at the old pricing. > And that's kind of crappy of Amazon

You're not thinking it through. Suppose the cost of the machine declines over time as a series over 5 months: 9,8,7,6,5. They could charge you those numbers each month, or they could charge you $7 each months on upfront commitment. Either way they recoup the cost and you are paying the same.

However, with monthly plan you have try to predict hardware price declines in your business plan and you bear the consequences of getting it wrong. With commitment plan, you can lock in the expected savings immediately and put it into your business plan. If Amazon gets it wrong they eat the cost, if they get it right they win.

This is a classical risk swap, and it allows you to focus on your business, not tracking the changing environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Gaaaa! And so soon after I just purchased a 3 year lease on my server.

But even at the old rates, it's such a good deal, I'm really not that upset about it :)</comment>


The Y Combinator, or How to Succeed at Recursion Without Really Recursing - <AUTHOR> http://mvanier.livejournal.com/2897.html

<comment><USER2> Math envy.

Why do hackers focus on it so much? It has only very remote relevance to normal programming.

The beautiful idea I see behind the Y combinator is that of formalism. Once you describe something in mathematical terms, magic can happen. But this would be much better illustrated by a good introduction to analysis or algebra. Even number theory has some cool results, and it's easier to grasp.

In my second course at university, the teacher proved by contradiction that 1 >= 0:

       Assume 1 is negative, 1 < 0
       Multiply both sides by 1, so that 1*1 > 0*1 (multiplication by a negative flips the inequality)
       1 being an identity, this implies 1 > 0, contradiction

That was one of the few Wow moments I had in my education. Short and to the point.

(that proof above is not really satisfactory, especially without the context and the axioms, but it served its purpose well five years ago)

<comment><USER3> 1\. Conceptual elegance. It seems to me that recursion and the complexity that emerges from uses it fascinates many people. GEB comes to mind.

2\. Directly dealing with these mathematical formalisms (the Y combinator, SKI combinators (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus>), etc.) can become really important in programs such as interpreters.

<comment><USER2> 1\. I was writing and rewriting a rebuttal, but you're right... There is something cool about achieving self-reference without a name.

2\. Really? If you feel like elaborating / providing link, I'd appreciate.

<comment><USER3> For example, recently I wrote a simple interpreter for a stack-based / postfix language kind of like Forth and Joy (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_programming_language>) because I'm trying to get my mind around that language family* . It's still very basic and doesn't have much more built into it than the core Lisp PG discusses in The Roots of Lisp does (<http://paulgraham.com/rootsoflisp.html>), but I really noticed how the specific interplay of those sorts of forms end up setting much of the subsequent language. Lambda calculus, at least the passing acquaintance I have with it, has given me a conceptual vocabulary with which to think about evaluation, scoping, and which aspects of a language are redundant, can themselves be used to derive others, etc. I guess #2 could have been better said, "Understanding these mathematical formalisms ... can be really helpful when ...".

As a more concrete example, I originally had words (functions, so to speak) defined Forth-style, e.g.

      : avg + 2 / ;

Which roughly means, "start recording (:) for a function called 'avg' in which we pop two numbers from the stack, add them, and push the result (+), then push the number 2, pop the two numbers on the stack and divide them (so sum/2), then stop recording (;)". Then, I realized that once I added sytax to the lexer for lists ("blocks") which are pushed onto the stack as one unit, I could instead use a list of symbols like quoted code, and instead define same by

      [+ 2 /] "avg" def

which pretty literally means, "pop a function name off the stack, pop a block of code off the stack, and associate them in the local environment.". It no longer needs to include any state in the interpreter for whether it was in recording or executing mode, keep track of some words (e.g. ";") which must interrupt recording mode, etc. (Adding code-as-data really adds to a language's capacity for abstraction.) Similarly, "[+ 2 /] do" works for an anonymous function of sorts. Much of the rest of the language is contained by how some of the core idioms for things like evaluation and definitions work, and formalisms like the lambda calculus and combinatory logic seem to be frameworks for studying those processes explicitly.

By the way, if you'd like to write a quick interpreter as a learning experience, Forth has my recommendation. It's small and (aggressively) simple, but still supports an impressive amount of abstraction. The parser for it is even simpler than for a Lisp, and that's really saying something. (Here is a nice example of one written in heavily documented i386 assembly: <http://www.annexia.org/_file/jonesforth.s.txt> )

Second, OCaml seems to be particularly well-suited for writing interpreters (and compilers, I'm sure), though in this case it was _serious_ overkill.

* I'm kind of whining here, but AFAICT it isn't possible to install a working version of Factor (<http://factorcode.org/>) on OpenBSD (or, probably, any Unix) without downgrading to a version of the OS using the same dynamic libraries, installing their binary version, and then progressively updating both in tandem until it's running with current libraries. Maybe I just don't have enough experience bootstrapping new language environments, but that was a disappointment -- it looks like a cool language.

(Also, 1 isn't really an argument so much as an observation.)

<comment><USER2> Thanks a lot.

<comment><USER3> One more --

Also see chapter 22 in Shriram Krishanamurthi's _Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation_. ([http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Books/ProgLangs/200...](http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Books/ProgLangs/2007-04-26/))

The goal of the chapter is essentially, "Now that we've built our own small programming language on top of Scheme, how can we reduce the number of Scheme elements that it relies on directly?" Among other things, he shows how to use the Y combinator to allow recursive function definitions without having to use Scheme's define.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Recursing" and "recurse" aren't words. Recursion comes from the word recur. A function recurs, not recurses. Got taught that during the infamous CS1321 Scheme course at Georgia Tech in 2001.

<comment><USER5> They are now. Words become a part of the language because enough people use them.

<comment><USER6> "English is what English-speaking people speak"

<comment><USER3> Nicely played. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> God, if I see another code example using Factorial I am going to hurl.

<comment><USER3> What are some other simple examples of recursion, though?

Quicksort would be pretty good for this, but the straightforward recursive version has several edge cases that lead to bad performance.

Getting the length of a linked list is probably a better example:

      (* ocaml *)
      let rec length l = match l with
         | []   -> 0
         | h::t -> 1 + length t

      ; scheme
      (define (length l)
         (if (null? l)
             0
             (+ 1 (len (cdr l))))

Neither of these is tail-recursive, of course, but that's another post entirely.

Any other ideas?

<comment><USER6> Does performance matter when seeking "simple" examples?

I vote for quicksort - not because it's quick, but because its implementation has the same form as its proof. It's simple if you use the Erlang-style version.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Motivation Anyone? - <AUTHOR>

Motivation's really important, isn't it? How do you get inspired/motivated? I didn't think I needed much, but recently I'm beginning to think otherwise.
 Frankly I've become less and less motivated through high school, my grades are slowly slipping. I think this isn't as much a personal problem as a generic one, most of the people in my school seem to be the same way. I had no problems till the 10th grade, then it just came about, I'm now in my senior year. I'm still interested in coding, and I've released an iphone app, but I just can't sit and hack anymore!
  Perhaps it's due to a need for a social life or some other unimportant thing like that, I've become very frayed by all this, any advice? <comment><USER2> One of the biggest challenges with our school system is that while you're immersed in it, it becomes difficult to imagine anything outside of that experience. You can't get a "big picture" view of your life and how your unique talents and interests can fit into the bigger world -- high school is your world.

You will eventually graduate and move on, and realize that most of the stuff that you did in high school was really not all that significant, in the big picture. Your lack of motivation is probably because you're starting to realize this as your time in school is almost finished and you (and your peers) begin to ask questions like "What comes next?" and "Why can't I get there already?"

Luckily the answers to these questions don't really matter all that much either. People take all kinds of paths through life, and there is no right next step, or important thing to work on. You can be forgiven for thinking this way, because school trains you to think this way by putting you into grades and preparing a curriculum that advances you forward towards an arbitrary finish line "graduation".

So what should you do? Do whatever interests you, as this is where your motivation will come from. If you're not motivated to code, don't code. Take a part time job, or exercise, or socialize, or take up a new hobby, or volunteer. All of these things will make you a better person (and a better coder). You'll meet people who are not coders, and it might remind you why you like programming so much - or you might find something that you like better.

However, be careful with the "Do whatever interests you" philosophy. You probably do have some standards that you want to hold yourself to, and you want to keep improving yourself, and you want to be a mostly free person (have money). So you probably shouldn't just sit around and smoke pot and play playstation because it interests you.

I believe that "adulthood" begins when a person consciously decides to do things because they are difficult to do and no longer decides to do things because they are easy to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with most of what you're saying, I've definitely become disillusioned by the system of high school. I definitely want to go to college, because there's a lot of interesting stuff that I want to learn, for which I need good grades.

I'm sure I can procure them if I study enough, but if I go by the "whatever interests you" philosophy, I think I'd hardly study. I would do lots of productive work, but it wouldn't be of any use to me right away. I think the promise of rewards in the future aren't powerful enough to make me do stuff that's considered necessary.

So, I suppose I'm on the lookout for something that can provide me with more, lets say, experience, problem is I can't take up a part-time job yet, I'm still not old enough! As for socializing, I live in a very secluded friends circle, people whom I value, but people who are very, well...rare. Any ideas as to where people who are genuinely interesting (preferably either hackers like on HN, or people into sciences) reside? Also, I think this is what I need to ask, do you have any particularly interesting things that I can do, that would perhaps help me in college?

<comment><USER2> > _Any ideas as to where people who are genuinely interesting (preferably > either hackers like on HN, or people into sciences) reside?_

Genuinely interesting people are everywhere..

> _Also, I think this is what I need to ask, do you have any particularly > interesting things that I can do, that would perhaps help me in college?_

Learn to play an instrument, like guitar, or drums, or learn to DJ. It teaches your mind to work in more creative ways. And it will open doors to you that will let you meet genuinely interesting people. It will help you meet women too, if you're into that sort of thing.

I'm being totally serious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I dropped out of high school when I faced a slump like that. 10 years later, I'm still stymied by my lack of diploma. I've found ways around it, and I still get hired. However, from my experience, you must finish high school. I also had problems in grade 10, puberty combined with drugs and a general discontent at what I saw on the news led to a "tune in, turn on, drop out". I don't recommend this path. You have a long life ahead of you and the improvements you make in your life now will be worth much more years down the road.

There are a few things I do these days to increase my will-power. Working out at gym does wonders for my endorphins and dopamine, the neuro transmitters that get shit done. reddit.com/r/fitness has a great FAQ on how to get started with that. Eating healthy, and ensuring you get all the nutrients your body needs to grow and adapt. Eat lots of eggs, fish, fish oil, anything with choline in it. Get lots of good sleep (which should not be hard). You need more sleep at that age, 10 hours is good.

The key thing is to notice the disconnect between mind and body, and work on improving your body mechanics so that it is aligned with your minds purpose. A particular problem I struggled with for most of my post teenage years was what I would call "neophilia" an obsession with something new. I moved from thing to thing never being satisfied. Satisfaction from hard work has to be imprinted through experience. The sense of accomplishment you get from achieving your goals (you have some right?) is something you want to nurture.

</comment><comment><USER4> Go and give money to a couple homeless people (choose wisely). This will help you in several ways. It's good karma, it gives you a sense of purpose and it will remind you of how lucky you are to have food and shelter. ;)

After that, you should go to a coffee shop and work or do some planning if you need to. You're so lucky you can code. I'm barely learning html and css. _sigh_

</comment><comment><USER5> It sounds like you have a very unhealthy attitude toward interpersonal relationships. I'd suggest you dwell on the issue some more and embrace any changes that may be happening.

When I was in high school, I started paying more attention to others around that time to the detriment of some of my own interests. It's not the end of the world so long as you never forget who you are.

</comment><comment><USER6> Your first burnout <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_(psychology)> . Time to take a vacation, let loose and release whatever is stressing you out. Go meet interesting people and connect.

</comment><comment><USER7> By being around truly inspired/motivated people (peers especially). The attitude is contagious.

</comment><comment><USER8> You're not in the real world yet, and coding an iphone app for fun and you're whining about being burned out? C'mon.</comment>


Ask HN: scan Macbook / OS X machine for malware - <AUTHOR>

My debit card number was recently stolen and I recently got a couple of times a warning from Google while using the web from home saying that there was "Unusual traffic from your computer network". I checked the router, but I don't see anyone connected other than me (I currently have no way to log the network traffic on the router). It might be just me being paranoid, but I would like to check my computer for malware, etc.
What software do you use to check your computer for malware / keyloggers / virus on OS X? Also, any security best practices that you follow on OS X?
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> A few more details:

I don't have any cracked software installed. I also keep browser extensions to a minimum: AdBlock, EFF extensions, Mozilla approved extensions and that's pretty much it.

I installed Little Snitch again and I don't see anything unusual in the network activity.

My security settings only allow "Mac App Store and identified developers" applications to run.

My router is an Airport Express. I will reset it, change the username and password, but there's not much I can do with it.

Many years ago when I used Windows I had a few antivirus and other software that I relied on to check my computer for virus, malware etc. I was wondering if there's anything similar that you trust for OS X.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a couple of blanket rules for security.

1\. Don't install software unless it is open source, or has enough external recommendations for you to trust it.

2\. Never, ever, run any pirated software on your computer as it is usually impossible to tell if they are not backdoored.

3\. Delete emails with strange links or attachments.

I have tried out Little Snitch before (an OS X firewall). It probably is a good idea if you are getting unusual traffic on your network.

<comment><USER4> Under OSX, following the rules you stated (open source and/or legal software that comes with a license):

        * ClamXav - <USER2>
        * Littlesnitch
        * SpamSieve (Mail App spam filter)
        * Use local installation on Unbound on foreign WiFi networks

Enable the default firewall is a good call also :-). I'd say enable 'encryption' but, IMHO it's better to have a something like Prey running if you laptop costs more than the data within. Otherwise, sure go with encryption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Time machine backup then reinstall OSX. Then be wary about what applications and utilities you reinstall.

I would wipe the router and reinstall that just in case.

<comment><USER6> It's possible that the backup could carry over malware depending on the type of malware.

<comment><USER7> Possible, but unlikely.

Has any such malware been seen in the wild (by creditable sources) as oppose to just proof of concept?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you have a spare computer/laptop, then you can watch the traffic on your connection between laptop and router (wireshark or any other tool that can listen to traffic in promiscuous mode). You can probably try it on your laptop as well though sophisticated malware/virus is theoretically able to "hide" it from you. Hopefully, traffic analysis can help you to identify the problem.

</comment><comment><USER9> When you say you're getting a warning from Google, do you mean Google Search?

If so, I've encountered a number of mundane things that produce a warning and require a captcha to continue. For instance, if I fire off a bunch of queries using the "site:" modifier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, Google Search. I think I'm just being paranoid. This happened to me before, but given that someone just got my credit card number and I have no idea how, I was afraid that my computer was infected with some sort of malware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Have a look at [http://fixmestick.com](http://fixmestick.com). It's a USB key that runs 3 different antiviruses. They just released their Mac version that was crowdfunded on Kickstarter.

</comment><comment><USER11> > I recently got a couple of times a warning from Google while using the web > from home saying that there was "Unusual traffic from your computer network"

How/when is warning being communicated to you?

<comment><AUTHOR> It happened to me while I was on my home network a google search from Firefox. Google redirected me to a page with the message "Unusual traffic from your computer network" and asked me solve a captcha. I tried to search again (without solving the captcha) and the warning went away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/](http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/) is free and open source.

<comment><USER4> The OSX spin-off is called ClamXav[1]. It's really good, I'm very happy with it.

[1] [http://www.clamxav.com/](http://www.clamxav.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm trying this out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://www.avast.com/en-us/free-antivirus-mac](http://www.avast.com/en- us/free-antivirus-mac)

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't get it to work in Mavericks for some reason. I get a 7005 error. The Avast forums were hacked and are down, so it's hard to understand what this means. I haven't contacted support yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I haven't used it, but people rave about Little Snitch. I assume it's only a partial solution to your problem.</comment>


Entire cities could fit inside the moon's monstrous lava tubes - <AUTHOR> https://www.livescience.com/lava-tubes-mars-and-moon-habitable.html <comment><USER2> Spoiler alert: apparently they already do [https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Our- Spaceship-Moon-Coverup/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Our-Spaceship- Moon-Coverup/dp/1545394946)</comment>


Log4r for Ruby on Rails: Scalable and Robust Logging for Web Applications - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mmlac.com/log4r-for-rails/

<comment><USER2> This is really cool. Rails is currently looking for feature recommendations for 4.1. You (or author) might want to share this with them. I can see it being a pretty popular idea.

[https://twitter.com/rails/status/366620806064783361](https://twitter.com/rails/status/366620806064783361)

<comment><USER3> It would be a good idea to get some more robust logging into Rails 4.1. Rails has grown up, and so have many of the applications using it. Rails logging starts to brake down when you need to track down the specific server and PID that is associated with an error. If you use a log aggregator, without information on PID and server, log messages interleave, and become hard to visually associate when you have 100 rails processes distributed across 10 servers.

<comment><USER2> Which is where Scout, Honey Badger and New Relic come in. But, I agree, a more robust version for development environments would be nice.

<comment><USER4> stuff you need to pay for? There is surely a case for including some production logging in rails as default?

<comment><AUTHOR> I would argue that the standard rails logs are perfectly fine for local development and debugging. NewRelic even ships a local version that allows to track down performance issues.

This works great for one or two requests triggered by the developer, but fails when thousands of requests bombard a live application split over a multiple servers with multiple rails instances running on each.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Log4r[1] is nice, but last I checked it isn't as well maintained or feature rich as the Logging[2] gem. [1] [https://rubygems.org/gems/log4r](https://rubygems.org/gems/log4r) [2] [https://rubygems.org/gems/logging](https://rubygems.org/gems/logging)

<comment><USER6> Yes, I think the Logging gem gives you a lot out of the box (like email notifications), and feels really easy to work with. It also plays nicely with gems like lograge[1] - which condenses your log lines very nicely whilst still keeping most important info.

[1][https://github.com/roidrage/lograge](https://github.com/roidrage/lograge)

<comment><AUTHOR> Lograge's functionality imho can be replaced by Log4r's formatters and the notification code in the initializer.

<comment><USER6> Log4r does feel very robust and customizable, but also feels much more verbose and heavy.

You get pretty much all of that and with less verbose configuration with the Logging gem + lograge, yet they are still relatively easy to tweak. The email notification of the Logging/Logging-rails gem in particular is really great, and you can even define message thresholds (not more than one email per minute, only if X number of errors etc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish we could move away from unclear log levels and sprintf argument mashing. Log4r is complete but it's design is inherited from a static world.

Something simple like console.log() makes it easy for the developer to add more context to the line because he doesn't have to think how he will represent the data or choose a log level.

I've been working on a similar solution in the ruby world. It's nearly stable API-wise and already running in production: [https://github.com/zimbatm/lines- ruby](https://github.com/zimbatm/lines-ruby)

<comment><USER8> I'm a big fan of heroku's scrolls gem[1], it uses a key=value format and is intended to be streamed straight into stdout. We're using it with splunk storm[2] which automatically parses logs in the key=value format and from there you can slice/dice the logs using their query language and graphing. This makes it super easy to spot patterns in the logs where there might be an issue.

[1] [https://github.com/asenchi/scrolls](https://github.com/asenchi/scrolls) [2] [https://www.splunkstorm.com/](https://www.splunkstorm.com/)

<comment><USER9> You would really dig l2met.[1] It is a system that creates metrics from k=v log data. [https://github.com/ryandotsmith/l2met](https://github.com/ryandotsmith/l2met)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Rails does need a better logger by default, and your idea is really good but I am just not prepared to push this much configuration into my apps. We're talking about a yml config file, 14-odd lines in application.rb and an additional 67-line logger initializer.

Given the choice between crappy, non-automatable but still searchable default logs with zero configuration, or this operationally superior solution that requires over 100 lines of code/config I will take the former any time. Also, no way I am introducing a global log check time variable. Is it just me that finds this way too messy? I'd rather push for a Heroku/Scrolls-style logger by default in Rails.

<comment><USER11> Especially because `Time.now - SOME_TIME` is actually a relatively expensive operation. IIRC, it is faster to have SOME_TIME converted to an int once and to do Time.now.to_i.. or if your timing needs are less precise (such as in this case) you can get an even bigger speedup using a tiny cext: [https://github.com/aaronblohowiak/fasttime](https://github.com/aaronblohowiak/fasttime) shameless plug)

However, I ultimately disagree that the filesystem is where you want to store the log level setting but I understand that this is just an example for the blog post :D

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great point about the time, thank you for the feedback!

About storing logs in the fs: I was thinking about i.e. the database but then how do I solve cases like "this one server acts up, can I get the verbose logs from there but not from my other servers?"

How would you store the loglevels?</comment></comment></comment>


7-inch iPad, CDMA iPhone, and new Apple TV rumored for launch in early 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://www.edibleapple.com/report-7-inch-ipad-cdma-iphone-and-new-apple-tv-on-the-horizon-for-early-2011/

<comment><USER2> If you think a Verizon iPhone has any chance of being introduced at CES rather than an Apple event, you're nuts.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, does that mean we'll now be looking at another 5 to 7 months of articles like this ?</comment>


Don't just hate, write bug reports - <AUTHOR> http://bitboxer.de/2010/06/12/dont-just-hate-write-bug-reports/

<comment><USER2> My problem: submitting bug reports is sometimes _hard_.

Every so often, I come across a bug with one of the apps I use on my Ubuntu machine - be it Chrome, Firefox, Amarok, or something else. I go through the process of figuring out _exactly_ what triggers the bug, and sometimes even try out gdb on the app to see what's going on... then I go to the bug reporting page, realize I need to make some Launchpad account or some hassle like that, and decide that I'm too lazy to report it. (And every piece of software uses a separate bug tracker, so you need a separate account for each bug that you want to report!)

Not very accessible to the casual user...

(At least, this has been my experience.)

<comment><USER3> I have also experienced several times that developers have been quite hostile towards bug reports. Even bug reports that I, as a developer, would be quite happy to receive myself. That kind of attitude means you are less inclined to try and help out again, and will most likely dump the product first chance you get.

<comment><USER4> Three of the last four bug reports that I've written have been totally ignored. Two were on a google group, so it's possible (but unlikely) that they just drifted off the front page before anyone qualified saw them. The other is just sitting in the issue tracker getting no attention.

I spent a good chunk of time in each case trying to figure out what was causing the problem, and I'm definitely less inclined to go back to those projects now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Twitter is not exactly a forum for well-considered insightful comments. A "fail" twitter is not that significant - more on the order of a wtf exclamation, which I emit many times when trying any new program.

That said, as a guy that likes to get bug reports (better than NOT getting them and really failing), it helps to have ANY details, not "it doesn't work" but "on the Score page, hitting Profile does nothing" kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is why I only write open-source apps -- then I can reply "but it didn't annoy you enough to send me a patch? #fail".

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, but this is not a good attitude. Be friendly to the people who use your software. Not all of them are able to write a patch for a bug.

Boths sides should be respectful and nice to each other.

Saying: write a patch would translate to "go fuck yourselfs" for most of the users.

<comment><USER6> _Not all of them are able to write a patch for a bug._

Then what use are they to me? "Hi, I took your stuff for free, but I hate it, and I have no ability to improve it." OK, you mean nothing to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you don't want to have users, why open source it in the first place? Just keep it on your hard disk and stop disappointing guys who think you give a fuck about people that want to use your stuff.

<comment><USER6> No.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I certainly hope this wasn't the author's software that was being tweeted about. Because if so, this is about the worst possible way to handle it. In fact, this is a really good opportunity to make things _better_.

If I ever make an angry tweet about something, mediocre companies ignore me or never find it. _Good_ companies will say "We're sorry you're having problems. What can we do to help?" I'm probably happier with those companies than if I hadn't tweeted about them angrily. What does it look like when a customer (who may genuinely have a valid complaint that won't fit in 140 characters) is obviously angry and the person who publishes the software's only response is an angry blog post? And no, issues involving Michael Arrington don't count. That's a special case. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Whenever someone tweets about my apps, I reply them on twitter. Boths sides need to respect each other and listen to each other. Even the "XXX is fuck" will be answered by me. But why don't post something more constructive? Something that explains what went wrong. That's my main issue here.

<comment><USER7> Because they're frustrated and venting. Just like you were doing when you wrote this post. Don't take it personally. That only makes the situation worse. :-)

<comment><USER8> How do you avoid taking it personally? I have a really hard time with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's just not going to work in competitive environments with no immidiate benifit for the user.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great point. I think I, myself am guilty of mentioning some #fail in my twitter feed which was probably better served as a bug report.

But when you write something in your twitter feed then it's usually not something you want to follow through on and if you actually _do_ want a solution, I think most people would actually go the extra mile and ask at a forum or file a bug report.</comment>