What dinner time looks like across the USA - <AUTHOR> http://www.huckmagazine.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/lois-bielefeld-photography-weeknight-dinners-usa/ <comment><USER2> I'm disappointed that my demographic wasn't represented: standing at the kitchen sink, eating room temperature baked beans out of the can, then sticking my head under the faucet for a drink.

<comment><USER3> Do you use a spoon or just dump directly into mouth? Don't cut yourself licking the can. Also, could be on a sidewalk or squatter camp.

<comment><USER2> I use a fork, but I rinse it off and leave it on the edge of the sink to possibly be used later.

<comment><USER4> Your comment made me laugh. We've all been there. The worst I have ever seen is someone who ran out of paper plates and started using phone book pages.

<comment><USER3> I always forget to bring a fork for lunch, so does everyone else, hence plenty of plastic knives; I use them as chop sticks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Couples sitting at the table eating and looking at their cell phones are under-represented! Walk into any restaurant and there is plenty of that these days.

[https://d2v9y0dukr6mq2.cloudfront.net/video/thumbnail/DHmMj5...](https://d2v9y0dukr6mq2.cloudfront.net/video/thumbnail/DHmMj5B/young- couple-with-cellphones-eating-dinner-at-home_njwmwrml__S0000.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER6> Really interesting pictures, although I hope people realize that this was meant to capture interesting things and not really represent the average dinner time in the US. My two favorites are:

       "Tuesday: Alex, Sophia, Kathy, David, Claudia, Eva & Ana." [0]

       "Wednesday: Nathaniel." [1]

That is a huge table that family has, I mean that's really, really wide. And Nathaniel looks like he likes to party, which I respect.

[0] [http://huckcdn.lwlies.com/admin/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/1...](http://huckcdn.lwlies.com/admin/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/150526_karademas_fam_018.jpg)

[1] [http://huckcdn.lwlies.com/admin/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/1...](http://huckcdn.lwlies.com/admin/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/140402_nat_018.jpg)

<comment><USER7> > I hope people realize that this was meant to capture interesting things and > not really represent the average dinner time in the US

I'm not sure this is true. They may have not been meant to capture the typical American but I know many Americans represented in this group and I don't think it is atypical either.

Also, kudos to Nathaniel for using his dining table rather than giving into the temptation to plop down in-front of a TV since he is eating alone.

Although, all of these photos look staged. At the very least their postures were dictated by knowing they are being photographed.

If you go to the blog there are more photos [http://www.loisbielefeld.com/weeknight- dinners/](http://www.loisbielefeld.com/weeknight-dinners/)

Edit: looking at the other photos on the photographer's site, I think they were told not to smile. And I think the combination of lack of smiles + dark lighting contributes to the kind of depressing feel. Even for the other not- dinner-related photos on the site.

Edit 2: OMG the second photo on [http://www.loisbielefeld.com/conceal- carry/](http://www.loisbielefeld.com/conceal-carry/) is terrifying. Never ever point a gun in the direction of another person you don't plan to shoot, people!

<comment><USER6> > Never ever point a gun in the direction of another person you don't plan to > shoot, people!

With their fingers on/near the trigger, no less. Ugh.

<comment><USER8> I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but maybe they are unloaded?

<comment><USER6> I'm sure they probably are, but the first rule of gun safety is to always treat all guns like they're loaded and there's a bullet in the chamber. Proper trigger discipline is to have your trigger finger extended like you see in a number of the pictures.

<comment><USER7> This. Unless the barrel is stuck in the open position and you can see daylight through the other side, always assume the gun is loaded.

Even if you are 100% sure it is not loaded , we are creatures of habit. If you make a habit of putting your finger on the trigger of unloaded guns eventually you are going to do the same thing with a loaded one by accident.

If I'm handing someone a hand gun I always remove the magazine and pull back the barrel. Because even with the magazine out, there could be a chambered round.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "That being said, I was quite surprised to see a few families using paper > plates rather than dishes. I'm keenly aware of my culture's extreme > wastefulness and have tried to make efforts to reduce my footprint, which is > why I probably was more aware of it."

It's damn tempting to do it at least a couple days a week if you have kids. Stretches how long your kitchen stays clean-ish without a bunch of work, and is way cheaper than paying a human to come help. Especially effective if you couple it with frozen food that can be cooked in its own container, or a meal that can feed 4-5 but be cooked in one pot with no cutting boards or anything (so, something out of a box). That combo can buy you a day of zero-added-mess in the kitchen, which is _so_ nice when you've got kids and two working parents.

Actually, now that I'm writing it out like this, I'm thinking maybe we need to start doing this like Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I try to consider any possible way to solve household issues and not get stuck on particular solutions, think about our house as an environment to help us get stuff done, that kind of thing, but I think I've been neglecting the possibility of _generating slightly more trash_ as a way of achieving ends. Yet I've considered the far more expensive option of hiring help. Just a couple regular, planned days a week of basically not using the kitchen could give us a _perceived_ lower amount of work and an _actual_ time-the-kitchen-is-clean much greater than the 2/7 it implies. And it's cheaper and (way) more convenient than dining out. Hm....

<comment><USER10> I don't mean this in a bad way - do you not have a dishwasher? I've long stopped considering them luxuries. The amount of time saved on cleaning is enormous, especially since I cook every day, and I can't imagine cooking even half as much if I had to do the dishes by hand afterwards. The electricity cost is so small it's not worth worrying about, and water happens to be free where I live, but the time saving is the biggest plus.

<comment><USER9> Yeah. They still take ~50% of the effort of hand-washing before you can expect them to actually clean anything you put in them, in my experience—our current one, though only a year old, is _incredibly_ shitty and takes more like 75%. With a few kids you're running the dishwasher and putting away dishes like 4-5 times a week. Dropping that to 2-3 would be pretty nice.

Also dishwashers are _entirely_ useless for something like 1/4 of the items that are dirtied in meal prep + eating (and it's only that low because we have 3 kids, so the dishwashable-item count is higher than for, say, 2 people, while the non-dishwashable count is similar). There's more stuff you don't have to do with a frozen meal and paper plates.

Admittedly, this latter point is almost a non-issue if you _mise en place_ and Clean as you Go when cooking, but not every working couple gets home at the same time and sometimes the spouse who consistently and gleefully uses the above gets home too late to cook unless you want to push back the kids bedtimes (god no) and sometimes the spouse who gets home earlier just cannot be convinced to use the above by seemingly any means and gets really snippy when further efforts at convincing are made, no matter how gently. At least I'm quite sure that must be the case for someone. Ahem.

<comment><USER10> That has not been my experience with dishwashers at all. I've had 4 different ones so far and never had to do anything other than just swipe solid food off to the bin,never prewashed anything. Usually use the 65C programme on them and everything comes out super clean, there will be an odd thing that is not completely clean but I'm serious when I say that's probably one thing in 1/10 loads.

And what sort of things do you use for prep that can't go in the dishwasher? All knives, plastic chopping boards, bowls - all goes straight in the dishwasher. The only things I don't put in it are my frying pans since I have a nice Circulon set and I've already ruined one by putting it in a dishwasher.

<comment><USER9> > And what sort of things do you use for prep that can't go in the dishwasher? > All knives, plastic chopping boards, bowls - all goes straight in the > dishwasher. The only things I don't put in it are my frying pans since I > have a nice Circulon set and I've already ruined one by putting it in a > dishwasher.

Lots of utensils that are too tall to go in the silverware basket, but tend to fall down and block the arms if you put them on the regular tray section. Pots, pans, mixing bowls, cutting boards. They block too much water and if they're not clean enough to wipe clean with water and a towel in ~10 seconds the dishwasher's not gonna do anything for them anyway.

We've owned... oh, 5, maybe 6 dishwashers? All but 2 of them new. None of them have _not_ left several dishes dirty enough in every load that you had to leave them in to run again, or hand wash them after the machine had already "washed" them. None have been any good at all for things that are _really_ dirty and couldn't be hand-cleaned very quickly. If I lived alone I would 100% for sure not bother with one at all. Easily the most frustrating/useless appliance in my house.

[EDIT] there's also the problem that anything sitting dirty in a not-yet-full dishwasher can't be used... unless you take it out and hand wash it. Not a problem for plates and stuff, but a _real_ problem for prep-related items.

<comment><USER10> I'd love to know the reason why our experiences are so vastly different. Either our cooking styles are very different, or US dishwashers are more inefficient or I don't know what else. But there must be a reason.

<comment><USER11> I was wondering the same. I have a very similar experience to yours (3 dishwashers in France, all of them Bosh or Siemens) and this is one of these wonderful inventions which change life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting pictures, but they seem designed to convey "disappointment"

I'd be disappointed too with most of the food, not to mention the anti-social eating arrangements, in many of the pictures.

My personal take-away (ahem) - gay couples (or maybe just friends/family/room- mates) appear to have better dinners. Or better presentation, though in that case I'm not sure whose.

</comment><comment><USER13> That's a lot of screens at dinner time... either TV or computer screens. That's kind of sad. There are lots of reasons (and science) for why you shouldn't have screens while eating.

<comment><USER14> I'll bite: what scientific reasons are there for a screen to be worse for you while eating than while not eating?

<comment><USER15> There is evidence that distracted eating tends to increase overall food intake: [http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/97/4/728.abstract](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/97/4/728.abstract)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is way more a artistic photo shoot than anything approaching journalism.

<comment><USER17> Yes, a lot of staged shots, and off camera lighting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> They are missing something: if you don't feed the darn animals first you don't eat in peace!

Where were the pets in the pics?

<comment><USER19> [http://huckcdn.lwlies.com/admin/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/1...](http://huckcdn.lwlies.com/admin/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/131204_brandy_john_039.jpg)

"Wednesday: Brandy and John."

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Australia here, I guess our dinner times are reasonably similar to the US.

Personally, I'm a fan of the old stable table in front of the TV. Alternatively, being inappropriately drunk at a nice restaurant seems to happen more often than I'd like.

</comment><comment><USER21> Only pictures on unhappy looking people? Was that for artistic or for didactic purposes?

<comment><USER22> That's a very interesting point.

Writer-filmmaker Errol Morris has written extensively about how there are no absolute truths in a photograph. A photograph, like art, can cover up facts, reveal new truths and distort reality.

So when I view these pictures in a particular way, like you, I too sense melancholy.

But seen in another way, these are little domestic vignettes, filled with pizza, contentment, sitcom laugh-tracks, boredom and some anxiety.

The question is, how _do_ we want to view these photos? What do we want to believe about dinnertime in the USA?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My family is in the minority; 4 of us eat at a table. Though my son wolfs it down to get back to Roblox. Unless mom is gone, then we revert to animals.

</comment><comment><USER23> A lot of pizza.

<comment><USER24> Pizza is great, people should have pizza for dinner all of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Read the article while sitting at my computer with my dinner, what a coincidence.

Yes, I can eat in the living room on the proper dining table, but I don't like it. When I was living with my parents, we had a decent table in the kitchen, where we had all our meals. Sadly my kitchen in this apartment is not big enough for any kind of table, which is really sad.

</comment><comment><USER26> Can't say if it's just me, but I noticed that almost noone (the ones actually sitting at a dining table) use an actual tablecloth.

</comment><comment><USER27> In the first picture of Natalia and Maryann, is that a CRT monitor in the background?</comment>


Apple wants to standardize the format of SMS OTPs (one-time passcodes) - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-wants-to-standardize-the-format-of-sms-otps-one-time-passcodes/ <comment><USER2> I'm honestly tempted to tell my bank I no longer have a SMS capable device and will not be getting one (and that my number on their file is no longer under my control and as such is a security risk).

I want 0 to do with SMS security, I am happy to use 2FA via an app, and backup codes, that I have to manually enter, with an insanely long 50 char password that's unique for each site.

Sim jacking is a real issue, and it's possible and sometimes easy to assume control of somebody's phone number.

SMS is also not a secure protocol in any way, shape or form. No security or privacy is built in, similar to emails.

Now if we go about adding something like private public key pair authentication that would be a good start, and a standardized "build your own security" where you can add as many layers to each site rather than relying on them to keep you secure which they often fail at.</comment>


Apple updates desktop iMac line with "5k" Retina displays - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/apple-updates-desktop-imac-line-with-5k-retina-displays/

<comment><USER2> And still no update to the Thunderbolt display... :(

<comment><USER3> They couldn't use the same panels for a thunderbolt display. Thunderbolt 2 has a max data rate of 20Gb/s, but the 5k monitor they announced has a data rate of

5120 x 2880 x (24 bits per pixel) x (60fps) = 21Gb/s

Just over the limit for Thunderbolt 2 unless they want to do 4:2:2 or some other compression technique.

<comment><USER4> Couldn't they just use both thunderbolt ports?

<comment><USER5> Dell could do something like that, but Apple wouldn't. It goes against their philosophy.

<comment><USER6> Sure they would. The old 30" Cinema Displays required Dual DVI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, I was excited to be upgrading to a 4k monitor soon, and before I even get one I'm obsolete. I can't wait to try out the new display. Hopefully DP1.3 will be out soon with good video card support as well.

</comment><comment><USER8> The 980M is twice as fast as the graphics offered. Disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER9> 67% more pixels than 4K. That's certainly more than expected!

<comment><USER10> Bear in mind, though, that the working resolution will probably be 2560 x 1440. The quality and definition will be probably outstanding too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why are there three links for the same exact news item? It's not like the different sites are providing any extra commentary. Could the mods consolidate them?</comment>


Construct HTML landing pages in seconds - <AUTHOR> http://landinggear.me/

<comment><USER2> Nice website. What value does it offer relative to other landing page generators though?

Also, just for my curiosity, what can you tell us about how it's built? How long did it take to put together and by how many people?</comment>


AI Journalist Helps You Talk Trash During March Madness - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2011/03/16/ai-journalist-helps-you-talk-trash-during-march-madness/#more-29326

<comment><USER2> More interesting than the baseball stats, to me:

"StatSmack will give you any stats it can find that support [that a tiny, unranked team will beat #1]. (...) In almost every industry we are faced with an overload of data. (...) We will need to turn to computers to process these piles of data (...) Stat Smack is a clear example of how that dependence could be a danger if we're not careful. With enough information, an AI can select data to support almost any conclusion you want to draw."

More concretely: to what extent will something like Palantir actually improve decisions, and to what extent will it be used to produce reams of supporting evidence for a predetermined outcome?

<comment><USER3> This page [1] suggests Southern is a good candidate for "worst team" and Ohio State a good candidate for "best team". It is interesting to compare the two smacks [2] [3].

One interesting side effect of how this is set up is that while the system will tell you what you want to hear, the very first link after that is basically "And here's why that's wrong", which suggests one way to ameliorate your concern. A good understanding of stats could help. Though that's a scary thing to require before safe use of a beguilingly-simple tech can be used safely.... then again we've been using stats to lie by hand for a long time. Maybe this isn't so new.

[1]: <http://www.teamrankings.com/ncb/rankings/>

[2]: [http://statsheet.com/mcb/teams/stat_smack?t2=ohio- state&...](http://statsheet.com/mcb/teams/stat_smack?t2=ohio- state&t1=southern-university) \- Southern better than OSU

[3]: [http://statsheet.com/mcb/teams/stat_smack?t2=southern- univer...](http://statsheet.com/mcb/teams/stat_smack?t2=southern- university&t1=ohio-state) \- other way around

<comment><USER4> In particular, check out the crime statistics at the bottom of each page. Apparently Columbus and Baton Rouge both have higher crime rates than one another!</comment></comment></comment>


The future-proof e-reading platform - <AUTHOR> http://blog.threepress.org/2011/02/02/the-future-proof-ereading-platform/

<comment><USER2> (an ad for an html-based ebook app, with little explanation of how it works or what the tradeoffs are)

<comment><USER3> Indeed, and badly written. I read "That's why we've decided to aggressively pursue licensing Ibis Reader in 2011" three times, and gave up on trying to determine whether they were licensing something from someone else, or looking to sell licenses.</comment></comment>


Apple hires Near Field Communication expert as mobile commerce product manager - <AUTHOR> http://www.nearfieldcommunicationsworld.com/2010/08/13/34302/apple-hires-nfc-expert-as-mobile-commerce-product-manager/

<comment><AUTHOR> via [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/apple-hires- mobile-...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/apple-hires-mobile- payment-expert/), which has a little bit of value-add</comment>


Bird Two launches with 50% more battery, autonomous sensors, anti-puncture tires - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/1/20749511/bird-two-electric-scooter-battery-autonomous-sensors <comment><USER2> The best quote is at, _" Anti-encryption software will help "deter theft and protects riders from potentially malicious hacks.""_

...you know all those thieves and their sinister encryption</comment>


MOOC's aren't the future of education - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@michaelao/moocs-aren-t-the-future-of-education-e65889723e <comment><USER2> weak argument, very little article to even go on.. sounds about right for medium</comment>


The Encryption Farce: Justice and the FBI can't get their Apple stories straight - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-encryption-farce-1461624399 <comment><AUTHOR> Paywall bypass here: [https://archive.is/CYpbc](https://archive.is/CYpbc)</comment>


A browser-based front end/gui for GDB - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cs01/gdbgui/#a-browser-based-frontendgui-for-gdb <comment><USER2> I have been searching for something like this.

Microsoft's vscode is close, but what I really need is a ui with remote debugging capability.

not sure if this one can do it?

<comment><USER2> nvm, I don't need remote debugger with this. This is web based, it launches a little web service. I can run the service on the remote system. This is as good as remote debugging!

really cool!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very good idea! Will try it over the weekend, hope the implementation is sound, too.</comment>


Servo WebRender Overview - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/glennw/webrender/wiki <comment><USER2> The title on HN is very editorialized and I can't overemphasize how preliminary and experimental this work is. Take all numbers with a huge grain of salt.

That said, I'm obviously really excited about this project. :) I feel strongly that it's the right from-scratch, modern approach for painting Web content. Happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER3> > _The title on HN is very editorialized_

Indeed. Care to suggest one that's accurate and neutral? (In the meantime we'll take out the word "impressive".)

Congratulations on the ongoing work, too!

<comment><USER2> Hmm, maybe something along the lines of "Servo WebRender overview". Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Ok, we'll use that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to see a Web renderer based on Vulkan. The reduced CPU overhead and much improved threading should be a huge win. You'd be able to cache on the command buffer level instead of just the vertex buffer level. Seems like a bleeding edge graphics API would be a good match for an experimental project like Servo as well.

To really use Vulkan as efficiently as possible, though, you'd probably want to write a renderer mostly from scratch rather than maintaining some sort of abstraction layer to support both GL and Vulkan.

<comment><USER2> > I'd love to see a Web renderer based on Vulkan.

I agree! The current graphics and driver landscape is too fragmented to bet on Vulkan in the near-term, however.

We do anticipate being able to keep most of the code around when Vulkan hits the scene. Our approach isn't to write an abstraction layer per se but rather by keeping our direct GL usage as isolated as possible, so that we can easily rewrite that stuff from scratch to really make good use of Vulkan, as you say. (This also allows us to support D3D if we want to.) Most of the logic here—batching, culling, texture atlas management, display list optimization—is very general logic that will apply no matter what hardware API we end up using.

<comment><USER4> My impression has been that Servo isn't focusing on the near-term. Is that changing?

<comment><USER2> "Near term" is relative. Multicore has been here for many years and we can safely assume its presence (though even then we're making sure we have good sequential performance). But it's not even clear that Vulkan will be available at all on all devices we might care about in the foreseeable future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there an explanation of how exactly this differs from current browsers?

All things that are described in the page seem pretty "normal" and "obvious" things to do, so it's not quite clear which things are not being done in current browsers.

<comment><USER2> The main differences, as I explained in another comment, are that (a) the API is fully retained-mode, not immediate-mode; (b) CSS is rendered directly without going through a vector graphics API first. The former feature allows us to achieve very aggressive batching and GL state optimizations, since we always know we have the entire draw list available to us. The latter feature has two benefits: (1) it makes all these optimizations much easier to do, since there are no vector paths involved and clipping regions are much simpler; (2) it allows us to skip all the difficult, slow stuff that arbitrary paths require (CPU path rendering, complex tessellation, stencil buffer clipping, etc.) in favor of simple hand-optimized code that renders CSS directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know servo and project around it are all experimental, but I can't help but feel excited about it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Great thing to see being worked on. Out of curiosity does any of Moz2D's back- ends support stencil then cover approach to rendering on the gpu.

[http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2012/presentations/S002...](http://on- demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2012/presentations/S0024-GPU-Accelerated-Path- Rendering.pdf)

At first I thought it might be a good idea to implement a gallium statetracker for such a framework but with the direct3d statetracker not being supported by projects like wine I thought maybe vulkan will open up an opportunity to implement something with similar performance which is driver,vendor and platform agnostic.

<comment><USER2> I think Skia-GL might (and who knows what Direct2D does).

Note that one of the biggest benefits of WebRender is that it doesn't _need_ to do any of that: if you render CSS directly, you can avoid all of these complex path rendering techniques.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I often run browsers over ssh and I really hope this "draw programs like a game engine" stuff doesn't catch on.

This is already the approach taken by Chrome (trace Chrome and you'll just see a bunch of full window resolution PutImage calls), and it's very slow over the network, I get around 1 fps.

Firefox on the other hand uses more X11 calls, and it's much more responsive, close to running it locally.

<comment><USER9> I'd call this more a gap in modern remoting functionality on Linux than anything else. With the prevalence of hardware encoding and decoding, there is little reason not to just send H.264 (or your choice of video codec) over the network. Not (just) to compensate for the kind of issue you mention, but also because it allows animations, videos, games, etc. to work over the network, and is likely to compress better than X11 anyway.

Actually, I believe NX already does this in the latest (proprietary) version, though I don't use it.

<comment><USER10> XPRA supports various encodings like this: [http://xpra.org/](http://xpra.org/)

But video codecs does not give the same experience as running apps that are actually written to take some care about what/how it updates. Not least because the artefacts when they can't keep up are less consistent with what I at least expect from a desktop environment.</comment></comment></comment>


North Korea nuclear test: Hydrogen bomb 'missile-ready' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41139445 <comment><USER2> Every 10 years or so North Korea starts to run out of money from the last deal (1994, 2003). A big money maker has been concessions for not pursuing nukes [1]. The money must almost be dried up from the last one, thus the posturing.

In the end this stems from a lack of coherent plans after invading Korea back in the day. We are lucky Vietnam didn't end up the way Korea did or we'd have the same situation still today. The middle east may also turn into something like this.

The US has to learn to win wars by economically winning over people and giving them more opportunity and freedoms, like Marshall plans back after WWII, ones in which we were also paid for but benefitted all.

We are greatly failing at rebuilding after invasions and this is another example of how that has blowback.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework)

<comment><USER3> The US _did_ invest heavily in rebuilding Korea after the war and in "economically winning over people and giving them more opportunity and freedoms". The portion of Korea that was and still is occupied by UN (primarily US) armed forces is now a healthy, well-educated, free and prosperous country—South Korea.

North Korea, on the other hand, is an impoverished totalitarian state that has been using the threats to demand aid for decades. It wouldn't even exist if China hadn't decided to intervene against the UN command in Korea and flood troops into the peninsula, and to this day it is the one and only country in the world China has formed an alliance with.

And your assessment is that the problem wasn't that the PRK chose communism, but instead it was the US not offering enough freedom or economic opportunity!? What about its communist allies?

I'm not a fan of all of some the US's military actions in recent decades, but if ever there was a war worth fighting since WWII, then surely the Korean War was it. You'd have a hard time finding anyone in the south wishing the communists had won the entire peninsula and that they'd become part of the PRK.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#China_intervenes_.2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#China_intervenes_.28October_.E2.80.93_December_1950.29)

<comment><USER4> PRK chose communism but they've got dictatorship now - insane, totalitarian dictatorship.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_Korea...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_Korea#Program)

Excerpt of the aims:

"... guaranteed basic human rights and freedoms, including those of speech, press, assembly, and faith; universal suffrage to adults over the age of eighteen; equality for women; labor law reforms ..."

Sounds pretty good.

Many in the North probably would love communism (or anything!) in preference to what they have.

The communists didn't hold the North, the PRK was killed off quickly, the Kims soon took over as dictators - Wikipedia says the suggestion to have a "trusteeship" was from USA, that then put the Kims in power ...

An ignorant reading of this would be "USA saves communism from spreading by installing evil dictators instead". As a child we got our share of USA propaganda - in UK - the hated commies.

Except now it seems they were hated because they form a challenge to the rich capitalists. If workers demanded the profits from their labour in other countries, and the rich lost their places of power, then why wouldn't US Americans do the same?

Is that why USA has been at war against communism? To protect the positions of the wealthy elite over their own countrymen?

Am I wrong?

<comment><USER5> I will say the obvious. History showed that whoever wanted to implement Communism ended up in a similar situation. Perhaps we should drop the game of empiricism and accept that Communism is very very hard to implement and no matter how much you tune the parameters most likely it will end up a freak Totalitarian setup. It just does not worth it.

<comment><USER6> Yeah it doesn't matter what the stated intent is.

Let's overthrow the old government.

Now let's say the population is in charge but they don't actually vote... We'll just have to "represent" them, vigorously.

Now let's choose our leader according to who can murder their rivals the best.

...how can that turn out well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That nuclear technology from Russian, also you can to see "topol-m" and mobile launcher of korea.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there a particular signature from a seismograph that would indicate this isn't solely a fission bomb?

<comment><USER9> No, but experts in the field tend to believe a yield this large is explained by a hydrogen bomb:

> That means it's probably "only" a few hundred kilotons depending on depth. > 8/ Still a staged TN weapon. But I need to sleep. 9/

[https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/90419708681554329...](https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/904197086815543296)

<comment><USER8> Cheers, that's very interesting.

I just found this too (from 2016), which backs up what you're saying

[https://www.wired.com/2016/01/science-can-tell-if-north- kore...](https://www.wired.com/2016/01/science-can-tell-if-north-koreas-test- was-really-an-h-bomb/)

It seems according to that, you could only tell from the radionuclides emitted as to what type of bomb it was.

Interestingly there was a 500kt fission bomb - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_King](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_King) (but I assume experts must have a particular reason for thinking the DPRK detonation was a type of hydrogen bomb).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What if we just invited the Kim family over? Brought them to some state dinners, and conferences, or some such?

They're not great people, the stick doesn't seem to be working.

What's the worst that'll happen?

<comment><USER11> I doubt they would come. If they came we might not let them go.

<comment><USER12> I also doubt they'd come or be invited, but if they did, they would be protected by the Vienna Convention ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_immunity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_immunity) [http://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/convention...](http://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf)). The US _could_ break that, but not without serious consequences for their own leaders and diplomats abroad.

Could the ICC issue an arrest warrant? Yes ([https://academic.oup.com/jicj/article- abstract/7/2/315/90220...](https://academic.oup.com/jicj/article- abstract/7/2/315/902208/Does-President-Al-Bashir-Enjoy-Immunity-from)) if only the US was a participant in the ICC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Using the 6.3 Richter scale, the energy released would be ~43 kilotons of TNT. I think that's a pretty good guess- they seem kind of skeptical of the 6.3, but there may be some additional energy that wasn't transferred into the quake, like heat loss/air pressure.

I plotted a 43.2 kiloton airburst bomb over LA using NUKEMAP[1], which is under heavy load right now (surprise surprise). tl;dr: 166k fatalities, 341k injuries, 270 m fireball and 100% fatalities within 1km. Almost all structures destroyed within 2.5 km, and 3rd degree burns within 3.2 km. Still far from a "real" nuke, but significantly more impressive than their last tests. It's about 1/10th the size of the biggest fission bomb the US made, the Mark 18. Our current missiles are ~475 kilotons per warhead, with 12 warheads per missile (several hundred times more destructive).

[1]: [https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=43.2&lat=34.0453902&...](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=43.2&lat=34.0453902&lng=-118.2525158&hob_ft=0&casualties=1&zm=13)

<comment><USER14> > Using the 6.3 Richter scale, the energy released would be ~43 kilotons of > TNT.

That's curious. Every yield estimate I've seen so far was substantially higher than this. Could you explain how you arrive at this number?

<comment><USER15> I'm curious as well, my estimates based on data from a 5MT explosion being about 6.8 on the scale and various formulas, I'd get into the megaton range, then again, other methods do arrive at a sub-100kT range too.

<comment><USER16> Jeffrey Lewis says that its a megaton, that would make them part of the club. [https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/90419708681554329...](https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/904197086815543296) (the guy from [http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/](http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/) says so)

Interesting if India and Pakistan will decide that they now need to acquire and test thermonuclear weapons of their own. (unexpected side effects?)

<comment><USER9> Lewis' completion of that line of tweets says it's in the couple hundred kT range, but still a staged TN device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone know how NK is able to successfully fully develop Nuclear and missile tech inspite of sanctions. I believe many countries like Iran Iraq have been trying without success for many years

<comment><USER18> Google Bill Clinton North Korea deal... there ya go.

<comment><USER19> That deal had North Korea's weapons-grade production facilities shut down for eight years, despite US foot-dragging on our side (we'd agreed to supply reactors that were _not_ suitable for weapons production, and then the GOP Congress refused to fund that).

So, what restarted weapons-grade plutonium production there? The George W. Bush administration effectively abrogated the deal, claiming that the DPRK had a separate active nuclear weapons program, based on evidence about as sketchy as what they provided to argue that Saddam Hussein had one. (He didn't.) The Yongbyon plutonium-production reactor was back in operation within a month.

Clinton's deal was imperfect, but it worked a whole lot better than get-tough shit from his Republican successor.

Ref: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework)

<comment><USER20> That's some serious revisionism.

Bill Clinton's administration allowed NK to obtain nuclear weapons while supplying them with food and fuel. Their approach didn't work at all and is how we wound up in this state.

For the record not blaming the administration (Republican administration have done things equally or more stupid so not a partisan taking point, it's just they can't be excused for the dramatic failure on this because someone prefers Democrats). Likely it seemed the best course of action, they expected at least some compliance, but NK did not abide by it's agreements _at all_.

[https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron](https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron)

<edit> NK also made commitments to Putin to suspend the ICBM program in exchange for aid which they also violated. So again, Clinton is not the only one burnt by them. But saying the Clinton administration's approach was a success is not right. It was very much an unsuccess.

<comment><USER19> The DPRK's first nuclear test was in 2006 --- six years after Clinton left office, and three years after Bush's temper tantrum led to the breakdown of Clinton's deal and the unsealing of the Yongbyon reactor. If you think it's revisionist to say Clinton couldn't have done much about North Korea years after leaving office, you have an odd way of defining that term.

<comment><USER20> Because they had been cheating on Uranium enrichment in the late 90's while receiving food and fuel aid.

There is plenty of blame to go around, the Bush administration certainly handled, well just about everything it came across, very badly, but saying the Clinton approach worked is just wrong. It didn't work, NK was cheating on the deal while being fed and fueled. Certainly we shouldn't go back to paying them extortion and bribes, that is not a good idea at all.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact- checker/wp/2017/08/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact- checker/wp/2017/08/09/history-lesson-why-did-bill-clintons-north-korea-deal- fail/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I thought China's wording in their statement had interesting wording: "If the U.S. and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean...."

They particularly mention "regime change" and use the "and" word, not "or" word. Given there is a language and cultural difference, I may be reading into this too much, but nevertheless I thought it was intersting.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm empathetic to China's position... having a war that close the homeland is bad for business. They have some difficult decisions ahead of them. [If someone was threatening Canada or Mexico, we'd probably intervene for purely geo-political reasons, for example]

What I don't understand is Russia's alliance, I'm hoping someone can explain. NK seems a lot less of geo-political importance for Russia than it is for China.

<comment><USER22> Russia's position is "Nk is sonovabitch, but it trolls US, let's support it"

<comment><USER23> I'd be more inclined to think of it as an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" kind of a relationship. The USSR has historically supported North Korea as well, so the expectation and past relationships at various levels are still going to be there regardless of what the Russian government looks like these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Morbid question: If you want to guarantee 11 9s of durability in a world where nuclear war doesn't have negligible probability, do you need to start building data centers inside of nuclear bunkers? Would that even help with EMP attacks?

[https://xkcd.com/705/](https://xkcd.com/705/)

<comment><USER25> South Africa, we're quite far away from global conflict zones and have a very low chance of natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes or volcanoes too.

<comment><USER26> Don't forget the great food and nice weather.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think North Korea is getting lots of help: their rockets are from Ukraine (or perhaps Taiwan) and now a hydrogen bomb? If it truly is an H-bomb, then did some other nation gave it to them?

In any case, NK is moving in the wrong direction. If we don't stop them, Japan will.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, as long as they have nukes, even a single working one, no one will touch them.

Kim Jong Un is no fool. His iron grip on power comes from his ability to steer the nation towards a situation where there is adequate amount of fear about the chaos of interfering with it.

<comment><USER29> >Kim Jong Un is no fool.

Eh, do you actually think Kim Jong has any power in North Korea ? I see him as a pure figurehead, with all power in the hands of top military brass.

<comment><USER28> Dosen't seem like it. He seems to be in total control. It's not far fetched to think so. In any case, on what basis do you say that he is only a figurehead?

<comment><USER29> That his supposed power is entirely based upon the North Korean military, I see him as nothing but a puppet.

<comment><USER28> Well, his family's cult of personality ensures that the military will tow the line.

It's not unheard of in history for one person to have absolute control over a large military force. Hitler comes to mind.

<comment><USER26> Read about the Korean War and how his grandfather managed to get China and Russia to help. This situation also reminds me of the Cuban Missile Crisis under Kennedy - perhaps the only short term viable option if you want a real embargo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> We'll just have to learn to live with it. American exceptionalism is a farce.

<comment><USER31> What American exceptionalism? There are seven countries besides the US and NK with nuclear weapons, including China itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > The North has previously claimed to have miniaturised a nuclear weapon

"The North" What is this game of thrones?

</comment><comment><USER33> Kim is becoming less sure of his grandpa's defence treaty with China.

Yet, NK is a Chinese proxy state. All what it did to harm SK and Japan goes on in total synchronicity with political climate in Beijing

</comment><comment><USER34> This guy seems to have his cards flat out on the table, open to all, that he wants nuclear war and he will start it as soon as his weapon systems can deliver it.

Hard to see how to avoid such an outcome when that's all he wants and all he's planned and planning for.

And when it comes of course then the U.S. will be blamed and it will be on for all.

And NK has spent many many years preparing for conventional war with SK so all the artillery and weapon systems are going to be dug underground and hidden. U.S. style bombing won't have much of on outcome and we've seen from Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam that boots on the ground wars don't go anywhere good.

Great. Just great. As if the world wasn't already sufficiently fucked from global warming.

<comment><USER35> Why would he or anyone in NK want a nuclear war? Do they think that anyone of them will come out alive if they try to attack South Korea or Japan?

<comment><USER34> I really don't think Kim gives a shit what happens. He is probably literally living a kilometre under ground in a palace with as much food and women and luxury as he wants.

He wants the big one - the war - and he doesn't care what happens to his people or anyone else.

Kim is the head of a brainwashed cult of "Dear Leader" and his actions are not rational.

<comment><USER36> If this is so obvious, why don't any of the people who know the DPRK well think this is what's going on? The majority of them believe the purpose is deterrence. Literally no-one outside of blogs and newspaper comment sections believes its intention is war. What information do you have that they don't?

<comment><USER34> Sorry, the missile launched over Japan is not deterrence.

Along with the many explicit statements that he intends to use his weapons.

<comment><USER36> > Sorry, the missile launched over Japan is not deterrence.

You say that as if it's a known fact. But deterrence seems like by far the most likely hypothesis to most observers. What's the alternative?

> Along with the many explicit statements that he intends to use his weapons

KCTV is a State TV station, issuing propaganda. It often claims it is on the brink of invading South Korea, destroying Seoul and raining fire upon New York, Guam, and sundry other targets. Perhaps a small proportion of the less critical part of the DPRK population, having been force-fed State propaganda since childhood, believes what it is told. No-one else does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is the only way to prevent a USA invasion, glad for NK

<comment><USER36> Given the DPRK's secrecy, there's always tealeaf-reading involved in any interpretation of its behaviour. Many DPRK-watchers do suggest that the neocon drive to regime change in general, and the 2011 Libyan intervention in particular, cemented its determination to gain a credible nuclear deterrent.

If the US had a normal President, this might be rational enough. As things stand, we're a whisker away from a war which will incinerate millions, kill the world economy stone dead for decades, and prevent all progress on the many critical issues facing our dying planet.

<comment><USER38> You say a normal president would help, but a "normal president" was behind the shit in Libya that you said cemented NK's determination. No matter what kind of president America has, our reckless foreign intervention through the past few decades is to blame.

<comment><USER36> I didn't say a normal president would 'help', nor did I defend the US's MIC. I said nuclear deterrence as a rational response on the part of the DPRK depends on the assumption of a normal functioning President. Given the incumbent, the DPRK may have made a miscalculation that will end in ashes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does anyone remember in 1999, the Bosnian war. Where the US bombed the Chinese embassy?

Who is to say, that if HK nuked Guam. That the US launches missiles and a few of those hit China (by mistake). I mean, in this instance a first strike in key locations. Would mean that China couldn't retaliate as quick.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER40> I don't think the US would launch anything without China's tacit approval of non-retaliation.

<comment><USER39> China already stated that if the US first strike, they would retaliate. But if HK first strike, then they would be neutral.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Learning to code, can't afford bootcamp. What should I focus on? - <AUTHOR> It's not me, but rather my professional musician friend. He wants to make supplementary income. I told him that Javascript, then React would be the way to do it. What do ya'll think? <comment><USER2> Your friend should start with a project in mind. Even if they fail, it will guide everything else. First thing they need to find out is do they have any talent, or equivalent amount of burning desire, etc. Programming is hard, and not for most people (imo.) Supplementary income is one of the worst reasons to do this, but understandable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try [http://freecodecamp.com/](http://freecodecamp.com/)

Do your best and develop a portfolio. You'll get a job once prospective employers have something to see.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm interested in seeing the responses to this. Personally, I went with Python first - but it's not too late to change tracks if there is a better way.</comment>


Software estimation considered harmful? (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2007/04/26/estimation-considered-harmful/ <comment><USER2> Unless I missed it in there, there is another reason for estimating work - deciding whether it's likely to be worth the effort to build it.

It's rare that a development organisation has run out of things to build. There's almost always going to be several ideas competing to be the next thing to start, and there's got to be some way of deciding which you should go for. One obvious way is weighing up the likely cost v benefit of each idea, both of which require you to make some form of estimate.

Of course those estimates will almost certainly be wrong, but at least starting with a view of whether you think it's going to take a week or 9 months to add a mobile optimised version of your website, or whatever feature you're considering next, is going to be more helpful in making that call than starting with absolutely no idea at all of the effort it's likely to take.

<comment><USER3> Totally agree. Whether you're creating a new product feature, or doing a specific piece of work for a customer you need an estimate to define the cost, resource and time-line. Without it you can't understand whether the work is worth doing.

For managing cost and resource the estimating process acts as a way of discovering the complexity in the problem. Yes, it will probably be wrong to some degree, but there are ways of handling that (ie probability) on the effort analysis side. The other thing that helps is to identify the edge of what you can see, if something truly is totally unknown then breaking the work into blocks or discovery stages makes sense.

At a practical level time-line is the one that's the least useful to estimate up front, and seems the least amenable to assessment.

Without the ability to make some sort of estimate you cannot assess whether the work is likely to be worth the investment.

<comment><USER4> > Without the ability to make some sort of estimate you cannot assess whether > the work is likely to be worth the investment.

I completely agree. But I'll add that without some notion of risk, the estimate is itself risky. In other words, when building a business plan around software estimates, getting a one number as an estimate (30 days) is a bit crazy. It would be much more useful to attach a range or confidence to the estimate

What happens now is that Project Manager asks Team Lead for an estimate. Team Lead pads the estimate a little and says 40 days. If Project Manager expects a 20% ROI, there's a significant risk that the project will still end up in the red. Or the team ends up crunching like crazy to "catch up", which is basically the same thing since your spending other things (quality, employee health and goodwill, etc.) instead of budget. Whatever the exposure, there is significant risk that is not clear in the business plan, which is a failure of management.

In contrast, maybe Team Lead could give a 50% chance that Project Jabberwocky will be done in 30 days and a 95% chance we'll be done in 120 days.

Wait, Project Manager says, that's a wide range of values to plan around! He's right, but the emotional reaction is due to him being educated about risk, not due to the Team Lead dragging his feet or something.

So what is a Project Manager to do with that estimate? Take the risk into account. Plan around 95% estimates (keeping in mind that 1 in 20 projects will still miss the mark) or make sure the risk is mitigated in other ways: lots of little projects, relatively low cost projects, projects with huge expected ROI, etc.

<comment><USER5> The book mentioned in this article, 'Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art', actually goes into a lot of depth about this. For example, what is statistically likely to happen if you only use single point estimates when they are aggregated together, and how to correctly handle range estimates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Surprisingly good read. I will be looking more into the study showing that folks with no estimation had a higher productivity. I can say from experience that the Herculean task of estimating my own work adds to my stress significantly. To the point that I have no doubt that it hinders me.

Oddly, just having a deadline is nowhere near as destructive. So, coordinating with folks is a lot easier if they tell me when they'll need something, rather than asking when I can have it for them.

<comment><USER7> The worst case scenario is when there are only vague requirements or too many half-baked ideas. And somehow you're supposed to say when those poorly-defined features can be done. As if the completion date is not closely tied to the full definition of the finished feature. This is why I almost prefer the waterfall approach when hard estimates are required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The need to estimate highly depends on whether you are developing a project or a product. On a project, the customer always wants to know _what_ will be done at which _date_ , and how much that would _cost_.

A product however, can be released "when it's done", so there is no real need to estimate. The additional benefit is also that it can be released when the developers feel that the product is ready for release, unlike a project, where there is a lot of pressure to deliver things.

My personal view (and experience) is that developing without estimates saves time and creates a higher quality product. But other (smart) developers that I know like to work within estimates because they think it pushes everyone to deliver things.

We probably are both right, because there is yet another factor that comes into play when choosing to estimate or not: motivation of the developers. Highly motivated developers who love their job, rather work in their code instead of goofing off on the internet. But when the project/product is not that special, and not everyone feels passionate about it, estimating and follow-up is probably preferred to put a little pressure on getting things done.

<comment> UK-AL Estimates should never be used to apply pressure(people take shortcuts), they should always try to reflect reality. In products estimates are used to work out which features provide the most value, in the shortest amount of time.

<comment><USER8> > In products estimates are used to work out which features provide the most > value, in the shortest amount of time.

With products, estimating the value of a feature is even harder than estimating the implementation time/cost. And calculating the future revenue of your product is also harder than calculating the future implementation cost.

You might argue that your product must be finished before you run out of money (which you can calculate with estimates), but MVP's don't rely on estimates that much and you can test your product/market fit at the same time.

In theory, product profitability and selecting features seems highly depend on estimates, but in practice I always saw that gut feeling was good enough, for both features and how long a development will take. You can't drop the must- have features, and nice to haves can be implemented after your first release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "a Wesabe developer who consistently gets excited about developing things that Marc refuses to allow into the product should probably make sure their resume is up to date"

If you cannot read the mind of our CEO who changes the direction of the company every two weeks, you are fired?

<comment><USER10>
        If you cannot read the mind of our CEO who changes the
        direction of the company every two weeks, you are fired?

I've experienced this.

Pretty much. Whats even worse is if it's some guy between you and the CEO, who can then pretty much travel back in time and paint you in whatever picture he sees fit to put his interests above yours as a lower level developer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it's more that estimates don't work well with projects. If you know you're going to be building a, b, and c as part of the project then there's not a huge benefit in estimating them.

I also think projects don't often work well as a way of building software. There's often uncertain deliverable a long way off into the future, and a guess at whether it will actually generate any value.

I don't just think that estimating the cost of features along a project is a bad idea, I think trying to come up with features a long way into the future is a bad idea. Things you learn along the way are likely to require you to scrap them or make significant changes, unless you're ether prescient or learning nothing.

Without projects estimates become more useful again. Focus on the most valuable things you can be building in the next couple of weeks. Estimating the top n that seem the most valuable will tell you a) if it's achievable to complete them in 2 weeks, b) give you an idea of the value:cost ratio to help prioritisation.

<comment><USER12> So... agile?

<comment><USER11> Well yes. I suppose the problem is people think they are being agile when they actually have a 6 month backlog of user stories and won't release anything for months.

In that scenario estimating things becomes very tedious and not particularly useful.

<comment><USER12> But what if you actually have a 6 month backlog of real user stories? As in, you know these requirements pretty well, for instance because you're re- implementing a legacy system?

<comment><USER13> What's the difference then between the new system and the legacy one?

<comment><USER12> In this hypothetical scenario? Any number of nonfunctional requirements.

<comment><USER13> So no added business value can be conveyed in stories?

<comment><USER12> Sure it can. User story: "The software is orders of magnitude too slow. Rewrite it from the ground up using scalable technologies."

<comment><USER13> Point being that it isn't a rewrite but a new piece of software.

<comment><USER12> If you're implementing, say, a general-purpose accounting system, from scratch, then I think your requirements and feature set is well known beyond the "a few weeks" horizon, and planning that feature set months in the future is not unreasonable.

<comment><USER13> Actually wouldn't agree with that example. Accounting systems are very diverse e.g. Sage, Wave, Freeagent, SAP, Excel+Access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think part of the explanation for why the software products with estimates performed poorer in terms of productivity can be explained by parkinson's law[1].

Now, this phenomenon isn't always deleterious imo. I've noticed in myself that my work 'expands' in two ways: if I'm working on something dreadfully boring, then it expands through time wasted on hacker news or time spent on side projects. If on the other hand I'm doing meaningful work, then it's quite often that the work expands when I take on refactorings and minor additions that will benefit long-term productivity.

If the work is indeed expanding in a meaningful way, then even though the measured productivity might not seem 'optimal' it doesn't necessarily indicate a big problem either.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law)

</comment><comment><USER15> My big point is:

\- If you don't know what you are doing or you are doing for the first time, there's no point in estimate as your estimations will be off anyway.

\- If you know what you are doing and already did it before, there's no point in estimate as you already know how much time it'll take.

<comment><USER16> _If you know what you are doing and already did it before, [...] you already know how much time it 'll take._

So you've estimated it then?

If the argument is that we spend too much time producing detailed estimates that don't actually reflect reality, then I agree.

If you're suggesting that a sensible way to run a business is to say "I have absolutely no idea how long this will take, and how much it will cost, but let's do it anyway" then that's crazy.

Even the team as Wesabe (in the article) are estimating - _He does encourage his developers to spend most of their time working on things that they can finish quickly_ and _When they need to, Wesabe developers will tackle bigger projects_. You can't distinguish "finish quickly" from "bigger projects" without estimating. It may be the quickest easiest form of estimating "big or small", but it's still an estimate.

The reality of the argument is that a lot of organisations can make do with a lot less formality and rigour in the estimation process. Moving from "vaguely approximate" to "slightly more accurate" is an expensive process with all sorts of cultural side effects that too many people assume is "worth it" without any real justification.

 _But_ we all estimate, because it's pretty rare that you can justify starting a piece of work that might take a day, or might take 10 years - I'll let you know when it's done.

<comment><USER17> I think that part of the problem is that when people say "estimate" in our profession, they're thinking of capital-E-Estimates. With a whole bunch of theatre and disruption and danger and political nonsense.

It's not the informed prediction of the value of some unobservable variable that upsets us. It's the larger picture around it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Of course the higher value a thing has, the less you need to quantify that it has high value. Conversely, the lower your margin, the more you need to control it to within an inch of its life. You could even say that if it needs estimating it maybe isn't worth doing.

<comment><USER17> Where I work we have weekly sessions to plan the week's work. We ask our customer to put stories in order of value to them. It might look like this:

        A
        B
        C
        D
        ---- week marker ----

Then we perform a quick estimate for each of the stories. We can talk them over quickly, ask clarifying questions and so on. Because of research on the unpacking effect, I like to make sure to say aloud the sort of subtasks I think will be involved, but sometimes we don't.

We quickly do a "shoot out" and then simultaneously reveal our point estimates for the story we're estimating. On divergence we explain our reasoning. Sometimes it takes a few rounds to reach a consensus.

So after this process, it might look like this:

        A    4 points
        ---- week marker ----
        B    2 points
        C    1 point
        D    1 point

Because we've got velocity of 4 points.

At this point the customer can change the order of stories. They might decide that having stories B, C and D is actually better than having story A by itself.

Just trading purely on value _or_ on estimated effort/complexity doesn't give you the full picture. It's the ratio of the two per-story and _between_ stories that helps a customer make the best-informed decision.

<comment><USER13> Agree that you want to get a view on whether a task is easy or not - but this is rarely understood until you have started. And frankly most advocates of estimation aren't talking about T-shirt sizes but some kind of currency they can tot up to measure 'productivity'. The danger with trying to predict it is that you are getting deep into a specific implementation at that point and it is exerting a pull on the project aims. I think that can conflict with business value as the driver for doing anything. What's more important for eliminating waste (and death march ftm) is a set of alternatives (outcomes and implementations) and a framework which makes it cheap to back up and switch routes when you find something isn't turning out to be easy thing you imagined.

<comment><USER17> We deliberately focus on simple estimates of a unitless measure (story points), rather than imposing a unit that will cause distortions in our thinking. The value of those points is specific per-project and it emerges from actually doing the project.

I agree that allowing change is important. Reduce the cost and risk of changes, and you will make changes as and when required. You'll also become less preoccupied with perfect planning, because it won't be necessary to manage risk.

There's two loops here. One leads to small, light, manoeuvrable projects. The other leads to building bigger plans because the risk is higher, which means that a bigger plan is needed, which raises the risk, so the plan is more detailed so that ...

<comment><USER13> Impact mapping gives you that big plan without having to detail implementation and keeps it manoeuvrable. Kanban lets you switch the backlog around through the day and doesn't lock the project into sprints (which are mini waterfalls imo). Estimation is entirely optional here. (The main benefit I've seen from estimation is in forcing a dev team to collectively confront what's involved in implementing a feature - as an input not an output.)

<comment><USER17> I've found that Kanban leads to coordination overhead because you always have too much work in flight in too many stages. I prefer story-by-story development, which is the direction to which most Kanban implementations wind up evolving. One small thing, to completion, at a time, per pair.

<comment><USER13> WIP limits should iron this out

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The author questions the concept of an estimate in Software Development, and proposes four sub estimates. I'm not sure that replacing one estimate with four will do the trick...

</comment><comment><USER17> One of the things I sometimes say to our clients at my workplace is that estimation can be done two ways. The traditional way is summative. Take all the things you want to do, estimate them (which is where McConnell's book really shines), then produce a range that expresses your likely outcomes.

The other way is emergently. Build a pile of things you want to do, put them in rough order of value, then estimate a few things at a time. Then start working. Only after a few weeks will you be able to begin to predict outcomes.

This is old news. I'm talking about velocity. Which is actually the perfect word, because summative estimations are about a total distance travelled; velocity is about the speed and direction you're currently moving in. Velocity is the differential of the project's outcomes.

Velocity is a more powerful metric because it includes its own mechanism for updating estimates. A classic "estimate smell" is that the first estimate made is the _last_ estimate ever made. The closely related smell is "estimates that fit the plan", aka "estimation by fiat".

Velocity, however, emerges from _observation_. No additional action is required to update summative estimates. And what comes for free is typically, in software methodology, all that gets done.

Another way in which moving to velocity as your estimating technique is that you change what is fixed and what is fluid in discussions with clients. Traditional project management takes the work breakdown as a fixed outcome and then looks to optimise around that. Time, schedule and quality are then the variables. Velocity allows you to vary scope and work as well. You can then hold quality, time and schedule constant instead.

It's hard to convey how big of a deal this is in practice. It seems like a minor alteration. But taking _seriously_ that the speed of light in a vacuum is fixed (per Maxwell's equations) means that spacetime varies. Which makes ... a big difference to physics.

I have seen this change in thinking bring high-risk projects to a successful conclusion under tight deadlines, with high friction, with high technical demands, in short timeframes. We had the data to show where the project was going, and that allowed us to focus on ensuring we were delivering in order of value. It also allowed us to discuss with the client what was possible and what was not possible.

Under traditional schemes we'd have had a fixed pile of features and the project would've been a "failure". Yet it did everything that was needed on a particular day, with very generous margins of safety.

</comment><comment><USER19> OFF TOPIC RANT

Just have to register my frustration with the cliched "[x] considered harmful" headline in the IT world. It devalues the proposition instead of lending it authority.

EDIT: "Betteridge's law of headlines" also applies here ( _Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no._ ) Since it's an opinion piece, state your opinion in the headline, and stick with it. The question mark suggests even the author's not sure he agrees with the premise, which makes me think the article is not worth reading.

<comment><USER20> If you don't rant how do you learn from your mistakes?

It makes you reconsider what went wrong like The Mythical Man's Month (tools considered harmful aka silver bullets) by F Brooks the project manager that nearly killed IBM and OS360 is such an example.

Coding is about creativity and innovation. Not about respecting the authority. It is a hard mix of conservatism (standing on the giants' shoulders) and like the other giants ... to rant.

At one point the best developers new ideas are rants ex robe pike vs Unix (plan9, Go) (all his rants against unix (see cat) are a very good source of knowledge for unix devs)

And rants are always instructive when done by great person.

* [http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/](http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/) (I learned a lot with [http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/symlinks](http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/symlinks) [http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/dynamic-linking/](http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/dynamic-linking/) ) * computer for cynics on youtube (a rant against computer industry in general)

"It's a curious thing about our industry: not only do we not learn from our mistakes, we also don't learn from our successes." — Keith Braithwaite

<comment><USER19> I meant that my comment was an off-topic rant.

I have no problem with the article itself (I didn't even read it), nor the right of anybody to rant about anything. It's the cliched headline on which I was commenting.</comment></comment></comment>


React-sky: easy animated backgrounds - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lucagez/sky <comment><USER2> Great idea. :)

I'm working on something vaguely similar but for foreground effects - [https://github.com/onion2k/react-neon/](https://github.com/onion2k/react- neon/) \- it's a library that adds a canvas over a component with an interactive effect. It's very early, and Chrome only because it relies on ResizeObserver (but that's going to change to use Mutation Observer very soon).

I added an example that puts Inigo Quilez's WebGL raymarched clouds on a fullscreen canvas yesterday. It makes my iMac sound like a jet engine. [https://react-neon.ooer.com/fullscreen/clouds/](https://react- neon.ooer.com/fullscreen/clouds/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> react-sky is a react component that makes super easy the creation of animated backgrounds. Just pass some images and react-sky will do the job!

Live demo: [https://codepen.io/lucagez/full/oQoRyK/](https://codepen.io/lucagez/full/oQoRyK/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice, but why do you need react for this?

<comment><USER2> You don't, but it makes it easier to integrate in to some existing code. Usually these libraries are written for personal reasons (eg needing it yourself) and then open sourced. If you're making a React app at the time then it ends up being a React library.

One day I'm going to 'un-React' Neon (see my other comment), but until then it 'needs' it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly that (:

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice. Would be great if I could set a background image as well :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You can! You can pass also the props "background" and in it you can pass a regular URL

<comment><USER4> Great. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


YouTube is now altering comments? [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptiWBrd9YbQ <comment><USER2> The author does not even bother to mention which video, which browser plugins he is using, or even what domain he is on. I am skeptical of these claims with no attempt to reproduce.

I would like to know if another browser would show the original comment or the altered one. Because the comment shows up and is then altered after the fact, I would blame a translation plugin on the client side.

I could see a poor-quality plugin being fooled by a different-language version of YouTube and auto translating.

<comment><USER3> He mentions the video, it's the latest Curious Droid video : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZHONQAMV48&t=626s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZHONQAMV48&t=626s)

I met the same problem when some videos had bizarre, translated titles. Nothing as weird as the OP, though.

This one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8TS1Nnbc54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8TS1Nnbc54)

I see the title "Grandpa's Grub #2 in the Aude" in Firefox; but in Chromium the title is "LA POPOTE À PÉPÉ Épisode #2 Dans l'Aude à Saint-Gaudéric." which is probably right (all the videos in the series are French, in French and titled in French).

So there's definitely something weird going on, and it's breaking badly youtube. Google never was able to understand that I'm able to read several languages, thank you, and I don't want no stupid auto-translate, ever. Particularly when auto-translate randomly drops words (as in my video example).

<comment><USER4> "Google never was able to understand that I'm able to read several languages, thank you, and I don't want no stupid auto-translate, ever."

Same problem on Ebay, and they have a much worse translator than Google, so that English product names get sometimes translated in funny totally unrelated words. I asked them if there's a way to turn off the translation and get only original English terms but alas no way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> half-kh-hacker Honestly I'd be more inclined to write this off as a bug with Polymer.js or something rather than jumping to a conclusion from the YouTube comments like "Say goodbye to free speech" \-- It's much more plausible to be a technical issue than an attempt at controlling the contents of _YouTube comments._

The guy says it was an amalgam of his previous comments he'd made that day and I'm sure if you have a channel of his size, you're likely to have YouTube open for quite a while, and since it's an SPA, you could get all sortsa concurrency bugs or whatever.

<comment><USER5> Probably a bug with the new DragonFly rollout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I guess the main critique here would be the question of authenticity. How can you prove that it was actually youtube and not some homebrew lookalike site he cooked up?

With that said, I'd like to add the obvious "BIG if true"

<comment><USER7> > "BIG if true"

I 'm sorry, but even if true, who cares about youtube comments?

<comment><USER8> That it's YouTube is utterly irrelevant - _if_ this is not an external factor (e.g. a clientside translation plugin, as suggested elsewhere) it sets a very dangerous, and likely illegal, precedent, even more notable from being a Google-owned site.

I strongly doubt that this is on YouTube's end, however - not because I trust Google not to alter comments if they believe it fits their interests, but rather because I believe they could do it in a more subtle manner (test backlash by only fixing typoes at first, for example, and probably hide major alterations from users).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> could it be .. spez again

</comment><comment><USER9> Easy to fake, and a sample size of 1...I think this requires more examples before being taken seriously.

<comment><USER10> I post YouTube comments frequently and I've never seen this.

I'd be inclined to think it's a bug in some extension he's using, or Chrome's automatic translation feature is doing something it shouldn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This title is misleading and should be changed. At least use the "YouTube is now ALTERING our comments?!" or something,,,

<comment><USER12> In what way is the title misleading?

<comment><USER13> Perhaps because it turned into a statement rather than a question? We've put the title closer back to the original. (Submitted title was "YouTube automatically modifying comments on submission".)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is hacker news suddenly clickbait shitpost?</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone hiring for a remote product position? - <AUTHOR> I am looking for some work. <comment><USER2> Tell us about yourself.</comment>


With the iPad Mini, Tim Cook Has Rebuilt Apple in His Image  - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/10/24/with-the-ipad-mini-tim-cook-has-rebuilt-apple-in-his-image

<comment><USER2> We've heard many stories about how the iPad was in development for at least 5 years, and the iPhone around 3-4.

I think it's extremely likely any product we're seeing today was in development before Jobs passed. Give it a few more years until we start to see products Jobs had not yet thought of.

<comment><USER3> Apple like most large company's have a lot of R&D products that never see the light of day. Deciding which of those to take all the way to consumers is a huge part of what makes or breaks a tech company and I suspect we have already seen some slight changes. Even if it's just 'new iPad' vs 'iPad 3' style changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's funny, Jobs had no problem going back on things he said once he changed his mind. But now that someone else is in charge, that same thing ends up being "rebuilding Apple."

</comment><comment><USER5> The biggest surprise was how indifferent the Mini is.. $429 for the 32GB model versus $249 for the soon-to-be-announced 32GB Nexus 7, and with inferior hardware (much lower resolution screen, half the RAM, slower processor, etc). I hope for Apple's sake that this isn't a sign of things to come now that Cook is in charge.

I was never a fan of Jobs, but I have to hand it to him that he always upped the ante with new product releases. With the Mini, Apple bring an inferior product late to the party.

<comment><USER6> The problem is that the Nexus 7 doesn't seem to have any "killer app" that really show cases that extra umph in the power dept that wouldn't be possible on an iPad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd say they're probably following a product roadmap that was laid out by Jobs and Cook prior to his death. Apple has been working to where Cook thinks it should go for a long while now, unrelenting progress in maximising, and increasing the efficiency of, the supply chain.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems like a lot of people are looking for stories about Apple's 'new' management. It surprises me that these stories always use the products themselves as evidence of new directions or decisions. It's too soon for that.

There are other things that people could point out or discuss but they're a little more subtle. For example, I wonder about the following:

\- Are there more leaks from/about Apple now? Perhaps the new management isn't as zealous about shutting them down? Or is this simply a result of more scrutiny?

\- The explicit comparisons with competitors products seems out-of-whack with keynotes of old. Almost makes them look desperate? Would this have happened several years ago? I don't remember seeing outright comparisons with windows machines.

\- Way too many jargon words in this keynote, which takes away from the 'magic'. Do I really care about 'plasma deposition' or 'nits' of brightness?

I feel there are difference between old-Apple and new-Apple but I don't know if I'm imagining it. Regardless, I'm pretty confident that we're not close to seeing any of new-Apple's products just yet.

</comment><comment><USER9> This article is moronic.

> Cook yesterday unveiled the long rumored iPad mini, a move the purist Jobs > condemned just two years ago... Cook reacted, quickly plugging the final > hole in Apple's consumer electronics empire.

Steve Jobs _routinely_ panned the product configurations and strategies of other companies, only to turn around and release something that entirely contradicted his earlier stance. This was a guy who slammed Intel at _every single keynote_ , showing off whatever benchmarks his team could think of to emphasize the PPC's superiority over x86 – until he announced WWDC attendees could order an Intel-based developer box because the times, they were a-changin'.

So while this article would have us believe that Cook initiated a crash program to build a 7 inch iPad immediately upon Jobs' death, what I think is more likely is that the form factor has been in progress since it was understood that the iPad was a hit.

<comment><USER10> This is exactly why I think Apple will move to ARM for Macs soon, even though most Apple users find that hard to believe.

<comment><USER11> As someone who would have liked an 11" MBAir but got the 13" because there isn't enough space in the 11" to hold batteries to run an x86 cpu as long as I'd like, this makes sense to me.

There's only one way to go thinner, smaller, or lighter on their laptops at this point, outside of some huge breakthrough in battery technology.

What doesn't make sense, though, is apps (built for x86)... Though an app- store-only model (and requiring ARM builds for inclusion in the app store) is not entirely out of the question, iOS style. Back to the Mac, indeed.

I don't know if an x64->ARM translation layer for the transition is feasible, performance-wise, though - perhaps someone with more knowledge of the architecture can chime in here.

<comment><USER12> > I don't know if an x64->ARM translation layer for the transition is > feasible, performance-wise, though - perhaps someone with more knowledge of > the architecture can chime in here.

It's completely feasible. The problem I see is that mapping 64-bit addresses into a 32-bit space is expensive. I can't think of anything in ARM that will make things more performant at the moment, but I'm sure there's some sort of way to pull it off. If OS X binaries are relocatable by default, that'd be an easy solution.

<comment><USER13> 64-bit ARMs are around the corner; I wouldn't be surprised if Apple has a cooperation agreement with ARM that gives them access to the not-yet-finalized but good-enough-to-work-with 64-bit ARM architecture.

Apple has the expertise to be such a client. They're a very significant customer of ARM, and also (unless things changed when I wasn't looking) a major shareholder.

Emulating intel code on the ARM is feasible, though going to be 5x-10x slower for high performance compute code. However: most apps are not high performance compute code; and given that native ARM for most apps is not a lot more than a recompile away, that might not be a problem.

(With notable exceptions like Adobe - I'm sure Apple can solve these individual problems well enough to make that into a non-deal-breaker)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > The year Apple became the biggest company in the world, successfully accused > Samsung of plagiarism in court, and finally released the iPhone 5 — a > beautifully fine-tuned device.

"Plagiarism"? Are you kidding me? I'm sorry, but this is horrible reporting. They successfully accused Samsung of many things, but none of them were even similar to plagiarism.

<comment><USER14> Does this article seem to you as if it's interested in something resembling fair and balanced journalism? It seems to be linkbait for apple fanboys.</comment></comment>


HNSort.com: Hacking Hacker News to make it sortable - <AUTHOR> http://www.scrollinondubs.com/2009/07/27/sortable-hacker-news/ <comment><USER2> He really should have known beforehand that it's a terrible idea to start a new project in Coldfusion. Now he has proof!

Coldfusion has everything bad about PHP, but without any of the ease brought by popularity, the cheap hosting, the instant deployment, the extensibility with native modules, the piles of open source code (or implementations), or even people controlling it that still care. The fact that it's been implemented in Java for a while doesn't help you one bit, since it's at least as difficult to find cheap hosting with JRun et. al.

<comment><USER3> Whine whine whine.

This is still a totally awesome app.</comment></comment>


DoAT releases mobile web app boilerplate - <AUTHOR> http://geeks.doat.com/2011/09/11/introducing-touchy-boilerplate/

<comment><USER2> I wish the Demo links were live demonstrations not just links to the source code of demos.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you haven't yet tried DoAT for the iphone, you should now. It's how a mobile internet search engine should work.

<comment><USER4> Seems not available in the Hong Kong Appstore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks awesome. Wish it was in Ruby though :(

<comment><AUTHOR> I was just at the talk where this was released and the presenter was trying to downplay the PHP aspect, saying that the PHP was just meant for examples.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Xplode – Mobile App Promotion and Monetization - <AUTHOR> https://xplode.iddiction.com/#!

<comment><USER3> Apps that display Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected, unless designed for a specific approved need (e.g. health management, aviation, accessibility, etc.) or which provide significant added value for a specific group of customers

<comment><USER3> Wow no response to the fact you can't use it on apples app store. I take no pleasure in pointing it out but this is pretty fundamental. Time for a new project?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After watching the video and reading the FAQ, I still don't really understand how it works. Is there some bar always hanging out at the bottom of my app that a user taps on to bring up the app discovery grid?

If so, I'm personally not interested. No offense, it just feels as painful of a user experience as iAd.

I'd much rather programmatically call up the app discovery grid based on some action a user in my app takes.

That all said, my comment may be moot, but I wouldn't be able to tell because I haven't been able to figure out how Xplode works from the Xplode site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points! Integration is completely customizable. The bar is optional, and you're free to programmatically call up the grid using breakpoints defined in your code. If you do choose to integrate the bar, it can be completely customized to fit the style of your app. It can also be placed on the top of your interface if this is more appropriate.

We're allowing complete customization so that the developers that know their users best can decide how to implement it in their apps.

<comment><USER4> Ahh ok - that's much, much more appealing. I would definitely consider something like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stop with the buzzwords. How does it work? Tell me and I'll pay you.

As it is, it looks like a bunch of BS. And Disney uses it? Really? Do you want me to email some exec from Disney to verify this? Because I have a contact.. don't make me do it!

<comment><USER6> It looks like a clone of ChartBoost and AppFlood. As an indie game developer, I have found these sorts of things somewhat handy. Often you don't really want to bother monetizing a game with ads and the like while it is growing and you would only make a couple hundred a month anyway. Instead you can show these cross promotion options instead. Basically it is like selling ads and using the money to buy ads for yourself, but more efficient since you are cutting out the middle.

Cross promotion methods are part of how larger companies get their games so many users. E.g. farmville will advertise cityville, etc.. So options like these help smaller guys compete with some of the powers of larger companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Your blue <h2> tagged text is underlined on hover, leading me to believe they are links. They are not.

Right away, I am unhappy.

Then I realize this is your how it works page and there is no text about how it works anywhere on the page.

-Actually, that's not your how it works page, you've just got the wrong link in your faq, taking me to /#how-it-works and not #!page/how-it-works. Pretty confusing.

I don't want to watch your video. If you want me to watch it, you'd probably do better by having a mid-sized box video preview, so I don't worry that the player isn't embedded.

You can't have a CTR of 140%. That's not possible. It would mean 40% more people clicked an ad than saw it. I'm not the mayor of Chicago; I can't get more people to vote for me than exist in my district. Likewise, you have to see my ad to click it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tips and the note about the broken link. We'll fix these things.

As I mentioned in another comment, we had a developer that saw an overall 140% CTR because his users clicked on the app discovery grid multiple times. Meaning - there were users that clicked on multiple apps in the app discovery grid.

<comment><USER7> So, if I'm reading you right, you have a grid with multiple options open, and you counted clicking each option once so if I click two options, that's +2, 3 options would be +3, but viewing the options page only counts as 1?

The problem is that you should only get 1 click from 1 view for a particular object. So if I am selling 3 things in your grid, and someone clicks on all 3, it's not +300% for me, it's 100%. If someone clicks one out of the three options, then overall I'd have a 33%.

It's not as useful that way, though. So if I transition this to talking about a series of banner ads as an example: If I have 3 ads for 3 different products on the same page, I'll count their CTR separately. If someone clicks on ad 1 but not ad 2 or three, then ad 1 has 100% and 2 and 3 both are at 0. If someone clicks all three on the same view somehow, then each ctr would be 100% for that view.

100% is the max. Otherwise it's not really useful; how do you know from your way which ad is successful? That's really what CTR starts to measure.

Plus, 140% out of how many options on the list? What if there are 20? It's just not useful unless 100% is the max.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would be really curious to see a ratio comparing user engagement and usage when they download from something like this vs when they discover you on the app store.

I would assume that app store or other inbound discovery that was within the context of their search would become a much more engaged user of my app - <USER2> I would really like to see data on that spread.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see your point. I think cross-promotion, if done right, can drive some very engaged users. In both cases, it's a true organic user. However, with this, it's likely you're getting users with better engagement than a random user browsing through the store. A lot of developers have integrated our app discovery grid with a button that the user chooses to tap on. This results in installs from dedicated users who are already engaged with that developer's apps and chose to view it in an effort to find more of the developer's apps or apps the developer would recommend.

Although this doesn't contain the control data you're curious about, here's an example of the results one of the developers on our platform is seeing: [http://easytigerapps.tumblr.com/post/78759270430/developers-...](http://easytigerapps.tumblr.com/post/78759270430/developers- listen-up-heres-the-mobile-discovery-tool).

<comment><USER8> So you are saying the apps which show up are curated with respect to context. So if I make a bible reading app, strip club apps will not show up as options...more likely you will see religious or reading apps?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is completely up to the app developer to choose which apps they want to show. The developer controls this. So they can just show their own apps and / or apps that are complementary to theirs. They can change this in realtime on our backend dashboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have suggestions on their favorite static site generator for building a standard html/css/js website? Looking for basic templating and file formats sublime will understand how to work with.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd like to try it. But guess I need an invite. If you can send one that would be awesome.

Our company is currently looking for a new iOS monetization strategy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Just request a code on the Xplode registration screen and we'll send one your way: [https://xplode.iddiction.com/registration](https://xplode.iddiction.com/registration)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why won't they be up front and explain how they plan to make money?

</comment><comment><USER12> 140% CTR? What does that even mean?

<comment><AUTHOR> We had a developer that saw an overall 140% CTR because his users clicked on the app discovery grid multiple times. Meaning - there were users that clicked on multiple apps in the app discovery grid.</comment></comment>


English rules of thumb with grep - <AUTHOR> As a native spanish I was wondering about the words ending in tial or cial, in Spanish they end in cial, for example
English tangential => tangencial versus
English spacial    => espacial
grep to the rescue:
grep -cE "[^aeiou]tial$" british-english => 40
grep -cE "tial$" british-english => 43,
conclusion: with 3 exceptions the rule is   (no vowel) + tial
grep -Ec "[aeiou]cial$" british-english => 21
grep -Ec "cial$" british-english => 26,
so with 5 exceptions (vowel)+cial.
There must be many low hanging fruit to collect rules of thumb using grep to help you use words correctly.  Perhaps someone can give a hint about some of them.
Edit: It seems this rule is well known: https://howtospell.co.uk/cial-and-tial-spelling-rules <comment><USER2> "help you use words correctly" how exactly? This is an interesting bit of etymology, to be sure; but is just one example of a whole library of similar relations. For example, there are entire books devoted to the historical transitions between Germanic languages ('d', 'v') to English ('th', 'f'). That is, you'll see even more impressive numbers with this approach: grep -c -i "^th" british-english

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have a German dictionary, my point is that a german person can discover interesting relations between English and German using grep, for example the one you suggest about ('d','v') becoming ('th','f'). The use of gerl is not essential but is a handy tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You should listen to the [http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/](http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/).

He goes into great detail about how the Proto-Germanic languages evolved via sound changes (e.g. Grimm's law).

Also see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is cool. We have particular problems with English vs. British spelling for medical terminologies. We have a lookup table for these and other synonyms:

e.g.: "Haemorrhage" vs. "Hemorrhage" etc</comment>