Anti-Web-Design Manifesto (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://brandon.invergo.net/news/2013-03-10-Anti-web-design-Manifesto.html <comment><USER2> > With regards to visual design, the fact is that any individual has a far > better idea of what constitutes comfortable-to-read text for them than a > designer could. A designer either designing for his or her own tastes or > trying to find some best-of-all-worlds design will ultimately fail to > satisfy the vast majority of visitors to the sit

> Designers, it may come as a surprise to you, but not everyone loves your > work.

Computer scientist, it may come as a surprise to you, but there are competent people outside of your field of expertise. You're not a genius, and everyone else isn't stupid.

If a designer (or whoever decides) chooses to have custom fonts, client-side scripting or custom style sheets, it's because he weighted the downsides of said choice and still opted for it. If he did not, or he is not aware of the downsides, then it's a matter of incompetence, not web design. So, your pseudo-manifesto should be anti-incompetence, not anti-web-design.

Being "anti-web-design" only tells us that a) you know nothing about design (you don't have the smallest idea regarding methodology or even simply what a designer actually does); and b) it's no more than a rant - all your valid points (which are a few) are obscured by the arrogant and oblivious attitude.

<comment><USER3> I think you are judging this on the wrong premise.

It's a manifesto not a lecture it's even an anti-web-design manifesto. I for one appreciate someone trying to establish other perspectives than my own.

Yes we designers know a lot that he doesn't, but a trip to Dribbble will tell you that there are also many of us who are victims of some of the patterns he is trying to establish an opposition against.

<comment><USER2> > Yes we designers know a lot that he doesn't, but a trip to Dribbble will > tell you that there are also many of us who are victims of some of the > patterns he is trying to establish an opposition against.

Still, that's a problem with incompetence, not with web design. And Dribbble it's not a good example at all - what's the ratio of pixel-pushers to designers? 10:1? 100:1?

I wouldn't say that it's a problem with "us", since it's clearly a separate group which deserves addressing. There are designers who actually "design" (meaning, they conceive a solution to "someone"), and there are pixel-pushers which mix and mash the latest fads without any particular regard for users and their context (elderly? Here, take flat design! Teens? Flat will do!).

These are two completely distinct objectives: designing vs. doing "something" which looks good. I think the "manifesto" is - or should - be aimed at the latter: gratuitous usage of UI elements/patterns/options. But that's not what design is about, so the "manifesto" is totally misguided and - to be honest - it even becomes ridiculous when the author starts to speak condescendingly to designers (as in the example in my original replies), while being completely oblivious that "design" in itself would imply that any of the options he criticizes were adequately considered (against users and their context).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > 6 No non-standard fonts

I really hate those. Especially sites like github who capture the Tibetan Unicode block for their font, as this is a character set that I need. [http://kephra.de/src/WylieUTF8/](http://kephra.de/src/WylieUTF8/)

 _ok_ I'm likely one of the few who can read Tibetan, but this shows a typical US ignorance, and certainly gives github a bad karma, as they make it impossible to display any Tibetan text on github.

11: Sites that can be viewed better without CSS, if you are a NoScript user. e.g. main page of Medium shows a grayed out layout where its not possible to click on articles without JS. But the become readable again once you disable CSS also. eBay does similar.

<comment><USER5> I really hate sites that send all content as html, but then hide it only to unhide it with JavaScript. It's getting quite common though. I wouldn't go as far as the OP and say no JS, but how about: don't use JS just because you can, use it to actually do something that makes the site more usable.

<comment><USER6> I think it's highly possible because ads, to prevent people disable JS to block ads so there's no content.

<comment><USER7> Adblockers take care of that. I run NoScript for security and not because it makes pages look prettier - believe me, it doesn't.

I see hiding the content of the site for lack of JS simply as lazy web development, which only considers the most common use case. I don't bother visiting sites who don't support NoScript or text-mode browsers such as Links2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "If you are trying to make a web application, just stop. Build a native application. It's nicer for everyone." <\-- On which platforms? Windows + iOS + Android + OS X + ...? Or, I could just make it a web application. Not a hard choice. This point was ill-considered.

<comment><USER9> exactly - doesn't that sound nicer for everyone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just found this: [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/) I think it passes on all points.

<comment><USER10> [http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com)

Unsure is it better, should check on more devices/systems/browsers.

<comment><USER11> I'd say it is better. The first one is very uncomfortable to read in a full- screen/maximized-window browser on a widescreen, and mine is only 1080p.

I think it's a great counterexample of the point it's trying to make. Of course is a satire, and the author probably would add a bit of design in a "real" web site.

<comment><USER12> How much of the difference between those two pages is enshrined in web standards? Are Firefox or Chrome still standards-compliant if they set the default line-height to 1.4? If they bump up the default font-size and change the background colour to a light grey?

I imagine bumping up the margins could be problematic, but I'd say all of the other problems are just browser bugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Old Man Yells At Cloud

<comment><USER14> yup, an actual cloud CDN for serving convenient javascript libraries and webfonts and muddying his ideal world.

</comment></comment><comment> yoz-y That seems quite excessive and only applicable for web sites that display articles.

Amazon without javascript and multi-column pages would be unbearable. Ad- supported content is fine and keeps the web free, as long as ads are sufficiently on-topic and unobtrusive (sponsored posts, light banners à la The Deck, native advertising...).

Also, the fact that the page is unreadable without either using a custom CSS or resizing the window does not add much to the credibility of the author.

<comment><USER5> I works quite fine without any css for me with any window size I tried. Are you using a mobile device? However, he does include images from third party sites which may cause referrer leakage which goes against the no-tracking issue he raised. (I'm only being this harsh because the article is too)

<comment> yoz-y No, I am viewing it on a 24" screen. However I consider long lines of text as unreadable and my default size for a browser window is quite large. I really think most sites with simplistic CSS would include

        body { max-width: 11in; }

or something similar in their stylesheet.

Note that my own personal website conforms very well to his expectations (except loading images from flickr (without javascript) which, as you pointed out, leaks private data). I would add however that the most important thing is readability, responsiveness and speed.

A webpage without stylesheets is technically responsive, but in practice not very readable, due to pretty bad defaults in most browsers (i.e.: tiny fonts and cramped text)

Finally, the most important part of any article-based website (for me) is a full text RSS, which enables me to have actually good reading experience - outside of a web browser.

<comment><USER15> Is it not better to specify max-width in ems?

        body { max-width: 35em; }

That way, if the user makes the text very large, the entire width of the window will be used.

<comment> yoz-y This probably depends on the browser but Safari, for example, scales inches (and centimetres) with the zoom level, so the result is probably the same. I don't like em and rem much as they do not really reflect the actual size in tangible units, but that is largely a personal preference.

<comment><USER15> What if the user changes the font size with CSS?

<comment> yoz-y That is a valid point. Although I think that if you are modifying CSS then you either know exactly what you are doing, or disabling it altogether and replacing it with your own stylesheet. I think that there is quite a lot of stuff that will break if you increase the font size too much.

I'll play with it a little bit more, the ems might be a better solution after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't see the point of these manifesto-rants. To quote : "designers with goals often counter to our own interests". Well of course and it's perfectly fine. The website you visit is not yours, and is not made to comply to all of your demands. If you don't like what you see don't visit it. The day you pay to visit a website, you will have the right to complain.

<comment><USER17> What the article proposes is an extreme position, and while I don't agree that the entire web can work this way, a lot of it can. Look at the page you're currently viewing (hacker news): It's by no means a terrible experience, and yet it manages to check all the boxes: it has no javascript necessary for viewing (there is one function for voting, but that is non-essential), no proprietary plugins, no ads, no visual clutter, doesn't download fonts, no tracking, and if I just want to read content, no account is required.

So we see that it's not impossible to make sites that follow the goals of this "manifesto", and I would say that all of these non-features speaks in favor of the quality of HN.

Clearly, there are sites that do not follow these guidelines, and their business model makes it impossible for them to do so (Facebook, anyone?). As a consumer, which one of those would I rather use?

<comment><USER16> That's exactly my point. Most users do not care about javascript, css override and whatnot. Web designers build website with their specifics goals in minds (maximise revenue, maximise viewers etc...). And thats fine, that's what make the web viable. I am not saying it's impossible to build a website following that manifesto, as indeed HN is pretty close, but HN target a specific audience. Their designers didn't search to monetize but to maximise their presence on the web. In that case their interests do not conflict with yours (no advertisements, simple design etc..). They did not design HN with your specific preferences in mind but the majority of viewers.

"As a consumer, which one of those would I rather use?" Well you might prefer HN to Facebook design, but the majority of Facebook users would not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Somehow all the annoyances, abuse and clutter mentioned in the manifesto have won after the mobile app/javascript framework duo dominated to influence the newest web apps.

Maybe we should build a new "sub-web" for hackers with a unique safe browser with no plugins, ajax, javascript, css-animations, html5-* with only non obstrusive sound, video, image and form support.

<comment><USER5> If only there was a search engine that filtered for these criteria.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> One point not mentioned in the OP: the people in charge of Firefox, Opera and Chrome have been and will continue to be a hindrance, not a help, on net to users who agree with the manifesto. The qualifier "on net" is intended to acknowledge that they do some pro-manifesto things, such as allowing any user to install any third-party extension, but that those things are cancelled out by anti-manifesto things, such as web fonts. (Note that these years, the company behind Opera gets most of their revenue from advertising.)

The people in charge of Safari, Edge and Internet Explorer have not been much of a help either although I suppose there is a chance that will change some day since their sponsors don't make most of their money from advertisers and other professional persuaders. (Although one could argue that the people in charge of Internet Explorer helped a lot in the 1990s and the first half of the last decade, I have seen no signs that they have been helping since then.)

Sometimes I think that the only way for users who agree with the manifesto to get free of the need for regularly writing new user CSS, installing new add- ons and extension and continuing to tweak about:config settings is for them to migrate to a browser whose maintainers have some sympathy for the manifesto.

I sometimes believe that what I just wrote would make a good business plan for a startup.

If I were to buy a phone or a tablet today, I would probably choose one from Apple just because of the content-blocking API Apple promised for iOS 9. (Yes, theoretically, the fact that much or most of Android is open source makes it possible for some new organization or project to offer an Android fork that offers even better ad-blocking than iOS 9 will allow, but after 23 years of experience with open-source software, I know that merely the existence of a particular software freedom does not mean that programmers and designers will do the hard work of converting that freedom into actual code that I will want to use.)

</comment><comment><USER20> This article is suggesting not using any js library, no XMLHttpRequests, no single-page aps. Just go back to 1990?

<comment><USER21> Is it really that bad?

Most of the web is about _reading content_ , and this is where all points on the page shine.

I agree with basically everything on that page.

In fact, we built fully-fledged browser extensions to override website's choices in fonts, colors and whatnot (point 1).

We build extensions to kill js by default (point 2).

We increasingly disable plugins by default (point 3).

We have extensions to block advertising, including inline ones (point 4).

Frames are a thing of the past (point 5), although visual clutter still reigns in "web tabloids" (although we still patch the css via custom styles/extensions)

6) Web fonts have very often poor hinting and lower quality than the exact equivalent in the system. The difference between my locally installed Roboto font and the Woff version is _insane_. The worst part is that the google font loaders loads the woff version ANYWAY!

Web tablois will still chose random fonts based purely on the looks. Combined with poor hinting, this has prompted me to disable web fonts on my standard browsing profile.

Of course, nobody wants tracking, this seems quite widespread now, with browsers including the useless DNT header (point 7)

"No pagination" went even overboard with continuous loading pages, which many (including myself) hate (point 8).

What about the "facebook/linkedin" login that many websites/betas require to join, and that almost everybody hates? (point 9)

And when all you need to do is reading, you don't want over-the-top animations when you hover on this, dynamic loading that prevents pages to be saved to disk for later reading, and whatever webdesigners think "it's cool" nowdays, because in the end what matters most is the _content_.

The fact that we have "reader modes" in browsers now is pretty saddening. And it's all due to massive, abusive design using otherwise good browsers extensions.

<comment><USER22> Yes. There is a difference between optimizing the design of the parts of the web which are for reading text, or filtering the web as it is to your liking through plugins or whatnot, and forbidding the web from ever being about anything more than simply reading text.

Because of course, _most people_ don't have a problem with the web as it is, except maybe for a few details like intrusive advertising which could be done away with without eliminating javascript, css and layout complexity entirely. They use it, and enjoy it, and it brings value to their lives.

Insisting that the web is wrong, that most of the people using it are wrong to accept it, that most of the creative decisions made in it are wrong for even attempting to design it, that every possible use of javascript is wrong by definition, and that the only "proper" web is one in which simple, static text documents be allowed to exist is, yes, "really that bad."

<comment><USER21> I think you're conflating too many things in your argument. I'm not against evolution, and there's plenty of good uses for most of the recent browser developments in the last decade.

Heck, I love what you can do in interactive python notebooks, and there's plenty of very successful pages that use modern technologies at their finest.

But it's a very small minority. So small, in fact, that a "whitelist-based" approach, such as disabling webfonts everywhere but selected sites, has a net- positive effect: it also works on the websites that choose good fonts, because those websites are ironically _also_ the websites that gracefully degrade and/or use html semantically. Similarly for other features.

Many websites, to put it simply, are simply "badly styled" (I don't like to use "designed", because designed would imply some tuning based on a real usage pattern).

I also don't think that users that think that way are in minority: it cannot be that "reader" extensions (which do - in essence - exactly what has been described in the manifesto!) got bundled into browsers _as a selling point_. If there was no need, they wouldn't be bundled at all. Clearly, there are some non-insignificant amount of people that see this as a plus.

<comment><USER22> Fair enough - it's impossible to argue that the backlash isn't due to a real phenomenon. Although, browsers also ship with developer tools so I don't know how widely used the reader mode is, or whether it's targeted at a general audience or the tech audience. Most of the (admittedly anecdotal) complaints I see on social media sites have to do more with changing the UI around and messing with people's expectations than with poor fonts or loading times, or javascript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would love to browse proper internet described in this manifesto. Too bad that noone will listen to it, and many people are forced to disable JS, disable CSS, etc, just to be able to read articles without much annoyance.

<comment><USER24> Reader mode in Safari and Firefox comes close. Try Readability, Pocket, or Instapaper for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I agree a great deal with some of this. I disagree a great deal with other parts.

<comment><USER26> I agree with some of what you say, but disagree with other things you say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> These arguments are poisonous for the web. This may shock some people, but JavaScript is not evil. Its use should be limited, yes, but declaring that it should never be used is just ignorant.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the article is a bit extreme but he does raise a lot of good points. I actually went and checked my website without css, and even tried it in [links]([http://www.jikos.cz/~mikulas/links/](http://www.jikos.cz/~mikulas/links/)). I very much agree that the the use of JavaScript for the simplest of things has gone overboard, but I wouldn't be as harsh as the OP. Cross site scripting is out of the question in my book.

</comment><comment><USER22> tldr; anything beyond unstyled, purely textual HTML in a single column, without plugins (and _definitely_ without javascript) is objectively wrong and bad and people shouldn't be allowed to do it. I'm assuming images are fine but I wouldn't be surprised if not.

The last paragraph in this manifesto is the author pre-complaining about every possible change that will be made in HTML in the future. How much more "hipster yells at clouds" can you get?

As I too am a Person On The Internet, allow me to retort:

HTML was never entirely about displaying plain text, but content. That that content is primarily text doesn't imply it _must_ be primarily text. That train left the station when img tags became a thing.

The ability to embed plugins was a breakthrough, not a mistake. Plugins are the reason video on the web is possible, and video on the web is _revolutionary_ for sharing culture and expression. Flash and Java applets, for all their faults, allowed applications to be accessible by URL, and thanks to HTML5/Canvas and tools like asm.js and whatever-to-js transpilers, we're on the verge of having the web become a network of hyperlinked applications. When you think about the ramifications of that, it's a really big deal.

To want to forbid the web from even reaching the complexity and richness of HTML 1.0 is, frankly, asinine and presumptuous. Notwithstanding that, yes, simple text-based sites have a place and, yes, most uses of javascript to display simple text are kind of pointless and absurd, the author is wrong to want to limit the world's creativity and the web's expressive potential to the boundaries of his own personal elitist prejudice.

</comment><comment><USER28> All the shitty things we do to websites is to make money. We stuff them full of ads because ads make money. We load 10 megabytes of JS trackers because it helps the ads make money. We paginate articles in order to show more ads, to make money. We add unnecessary columns of social media streams, related articles, and share widgets to trap people in an endless cycle of clicks (to see more ads. To make more money.)

</comment><comment><USER29> 9) No abusive account requirements

9) bis - If your site/app/product/service requires an account, show me what I'll get BEFORE forcing me to sign-up!

</comment><comment><USER30> > Fonts are subtle, in that most people probably do not pay much attention to > which one is in use

False. Fonts make a massive difference in how people perceive a brand, and different fonts can be used for different types of content.

Imagine if every company used Comic Sans for their logo font. [http://comicsansproject.tumblr.com/](http://comicsansproject.tumblr.com/)

<comment><USER31> And this one could not care less.

Seriously, i looked over the page and could not tell the difference for the most part. Only ones i noticed some difference was those where you had a single prominent letter doing all the work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Of course the web is full of crap design – there's a very low barrier to entry. That's a good thing. There's also some great design. And a lot of in- between stuff (otherwise decent sites compromised by too many ads/scripts). It serves whoever pays for it and makes it. Don't use it if you find it 'abusive'. This guy needs to get over himself.

</comment><comment><USER33> This reminded me of Dogma 95, a similar manifesto for film directors. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_95](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_95)

It's not practical, but something uniquely valuable can be grown from the constraints.

</comment><comment><USER34> body { max-width: 1000px; }

Ahh. Much better.

<comment><USER35> Strangely enough the CSS has "body { /* width: 47em; */ }" commented out.

Maybe they really want to show the importance of user CSS?

<comment><USER34> He clearly makes a point of supporting user CSS, but also a point of being usable by default, so it clearly misses that...

Also, I doubt most regular users could be bothered to actually write custom CSS for the entire web. Most people have zero knowledge of how to do it, not to mention how to actually improve what they want to improve.

The only reasonable real world case I can see is accessibility, which is certainly a valid case, and should be considered by all web designers/developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My favourite part was when, after reading a rant about the evils of web applications, client side scripts and plugins, I was encouraged to visit his Bandcamp to load up a web app with client side scripts and plugins.

</comment><comment><USER6> 6.1 No tiny font size

Don't expect your users to surf your website with a magnifying glass, e.g. [http://smittenkitchen.com/](http://smittenkitchen.com/)

</comment><comment><USER37> _Under very few circumstances do you actually need the visitor 's email address_

how do you retreive a forgotten password?

<comment><USER17> I believe the point was that you probably don't need the user to make an account. If they don't need an account, they have no password, and you need no email address, unless your true goal is to put as many people as possible on your mailing list and spam them.

<comment><USER37> actually, in the same paragraph he goes on to say:

 _In any case, if a login is required, take the absolute minimum of necessary information, ideally only a login name and a password._

maybe better than a login name and password, make it an email address and password. email address seems pretty vital for any kind of future communication

<comment><USER5> Some sites let the user provide a email address in order to allow password reset, but don't force it. I think this is a good practice.

<comment><USER34> If you have any kind of non-tech savvy users, it's a terrible practice, as you would be flooded with support requests on how to get into their accounts with no way of verifiying the actual owner.

<comment><USER37> yes.. even having an unconfirmed email address can get really messy when you need to get in touch with someone but just can't because the address is invalid

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The Church of HTML send thy 10 commandments. Only the purest of websites will make it to our kingdom.

obey you heathens.

</comment><comment><USER24> First, I agree strongly with Brandon on virtually all of this, with one minor clarification.

My read is that his "no foo" requirements _don 't disallow_ sites from using CSS, javascript, plugins, etc, but _require that core functionality be available without these_. At the _very_ least the ability to _read_ the page.

I'm leaning strongly to sites focusing on a small number of basic design templates and allowing strong user deference in how those are styled: article, homepage, gallery, slideshow, catalog page. That may be a vain hope, but most sites operate with a small set of basic templates, and tools such as LaTeX have achieved tremendous mileage from a small set of standard document types. Yes, they tend to look similar. ThatsThePoint.jpg.

As a strong counterexample, take another current HN story, "On doing things other people can't", a Blogspot post:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10136955](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10136955) [http://pathsensitive.blogspot.com/2015/08/sources-of- power.h...](http://pathsensitive.blogspot.com/2015/08/sources-of-power.html)

 _Unless I specifically enable JS_ for pathsensitive.blogspot.com, www.blogger.com, and www.blogblog.com, _the article displays as a blank page._

Even _with_ these enabled, the page is awkward to read -- a pop-out menue overlays the top of the scrollbar, the fonts are too small, the line length too long, and an annoying persistent header overlays the top 25% of the page (including browser elements: titlebar, tabs, navigation, and menus). I literally transcribed raw text to Markdown to read the entry

Of major blogging sites, Blogspot's among the worst for default themes, and its "dynamic" themes are especially bad.

I'm among those who've been ranting about the horrible state of the Web _for basic reading_ for some time:

[https://redd.it/256lxu](https://redd.it/256lxu) [https://redd.it/29eqrk](https://redd.it/29eqrk)

So, if I may offer some interpretations of Brandon's suggestions:

 _Completely override-able CSS:_ Not "don't use CSS", but "use a standard, minimal page structure which allows elements to be readily identified and styled, and don't go fucking overboard with styling.

Compare, Mark Pilgrim's _Dive Into HTML5_ , which 1) has a really nice default stylesheet, and _a really fucking minimal page structure_ :

[http://diveintohtml5.info/index.html](http://diveintohtml5.info/index.html) view- source:[http://diveintohtml5.info/index.html](http://diveintohtml5.info/index.html)

The entity nesting depth is mostly _one_ (there's not even <article> tags), rarely more than two.

Contrast that with pages in which every single element is explicitly styled inline and absolutely positioned. I've got a "bruteforce.css" which strips most such nonsense. As Brandon notes, excessive div nesting is almost always a sign of such breakage.

 _No client-side scripts:_ Again, _to simply read the site_. See the Blogspot example above.

 _Plugins:_ As before. Better: look through old sites featuring A/V content and note the instances of RealPlayer requirements. I'm not sure that plugin's even available any more, I certainly wouldn't want to rely on it. Sites which provided WAV files, or better, MP3 or OGG downloads, _still work_. Sites reliant on proprietary plugins, not so much. Flash and client-side Java are rapidly heading here, similarly Silverlight (specific to Microsoft MSIE).

 _Advertising:_ Many or most of the problems online are a direct consequence of advertising: bloated pages, cross-site scripting, security vulnerabilities, and crap content. I see a fundamental need to change the funding model, though no clear path to doing so.

 _No frames, multi-columns or other visual clutter:_ On this I agree. I've restyled many sites to push sidebars, asides, floats, etc, either _above_ or _below_ the main content. I'll occasionally encounter such sites unstyled and ... it's usually a shock.

See: [https://redd.it/1tm4ox](https://redd.it/1tm4ox)

Examples:

Stock/multicolumn: [http://i.imgur.com/80zmE3i.png](http://i.imgur.com/80zmE3i.png) [http://i.imgur.com/M2OiyOU.png](http://i.imgur.com/M2OiyOU.png)

Modified/single column: [http://i.imgur.com/nBdCZoY.png](http://i.imgur.com/nBdCZoY.png) [http://i.imgur.com/sNoOdZp.png](http://i.imgur.com/sNoOdZp.png)

 _No non-standard fonts:_ The problems I have here are, variously:

1\. WebFonts which simply _do not render._ Medium.com on my (ancient) Android mobile device is completely blank, as is Wired.com. This is annoying.

2\. Fucking with font-weight, letter-spacing, and/or text-shadow. You do not want to do this for body text _EVER_. My instant response on seeing such a page is to simply sigh. Usually I'll move on.

 _Pagination:_ This is an absolute. There's no need to break up content any shorter than a book chapter (though improved content navigation for longer works _is_ a weakness of HTML).

 _Account requirements /registration:_ Data. Are. Liability. _Any_ time you request user data, you should ask yourself, "can we not do this?" You cannot lose what you do not have. You _will_ lose what you do have, though when, where, to whom, and how far after the fact you realise it are all open questions.

What's really sad is _how old most of these guidelines are._

Jacob Nielsen compiled his _original_ list of 10 mistakes in Web design _in 1996_. Modulo a few technology nomenclature changes, _they all still apply_ :

[http://www.nngroup.com/articles/original-top-ten-mistakes- in...](http://www.nngroup.com/articles/original-top-ten-mistakes-in-web- design/)

1\. Using Frames (now: iFrames)

2\. Gratuitous Use of Bleeding-Edge Technology

3\. Scrolling Text, Marquees, and Constantly Running Animations (carousels, autoplay video)

4\. Complex URLs

5\. Orphan Pages

6\. Long Scrolling Pages (for landing pages. For articles, not so much)

7\. Lack of Navigation Support (also: mystery-meat navigation, see "hamburger").

8\. Non-Standard Link Colors (now: nonstandard _any_ colours. Fad now is fucking with ::selection colours).

9\. Outdated Information

10\. Overly Long Download Times

Nielsen's returned to that topic many times, see:

"Ten Good Deeds in Web Design":

[http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-good-deeds-in-web- design...](http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-good-deeds-in-web-design/)

"'Top Ten Mistakes' Revisited Three Years Later" [http://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-ten-mistakes- revisited-t...](http://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-ten-mistakes-revisited- three-years-later/)

"113 Design Guidelines for Homepage Usability" (October 31, 2001) [http://www.useit.com/articles/113-design-guidelines- homepage...](http://www.useit.com/articles/113-design-guidelines-homepage- usability/)

"The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines" (November 10, 2003) [http://www.nngroup.com/articles/most-violated-homepage- guide...](http://www.nngroup.com/articles/most-violated-homepage-guidelines/)

Note especially: 2. Use a liquid layout that lets users adjust the homepage size. Yes, responsive design. In _two thousand fucking three._

</comment><comment><USER9> > 2) No client-side scripts If your website cannot be viewed properly with > Javascript disabled, it is broken.

Completely disagree with this one. The web has evolved into a landscape that exceeds its original intended use. It's not just about semantic documents any more - its community, interaction, and more in the most portable format we've ever seen.

The web has taken on a life of its own, beyond what it was initially designed for.

</comment><comment><USER39> Not everyone has these demands and well.. cares this much, to be honest. I would say that the majority of web browsers (the human kind) simply don't mind the different fonts, and colors and what not, it's part of the experience and who the hell even knows what CSS is?

This is of course obvious to all of us, and probably to this author as well, but I felt like I had to point that out.

Strange.</comment>


Where Wizards Stay up Late: The Origins of the Internet (1996) - <AUTHOR> https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=547625 <comment><USER2> I lived the book. :-) (Full disclosure: Katie Hafner is a good friend.) Katie is an engaging and skilled observer of the social aspects of our complex society and the people that populate it. Other books of hers that you might like:

 _Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier_ ;

 _The Well: A Story of Love, Death & Real Life in the Seminal Online Community_;

 _A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould 's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano_;

 _Mother Daughter Me: A Memoir_.

</comment><comment><USER3> What I found curious about all histories of the Internet is a scarcity of information on when the name 'Internet' originated. Most narratives just talk about various networks and then suddenly start using the name Internet with no introduction. Others point to its appearance in the name of TCP/IP but not explain its use to denote the network as a whole. Others say that the Internet came into being when arpanet and nsfnet merged, but that feels to much like a post hoc story to me.

Does anyone know when the one single network came to be called Internet and why?

<comment><USER4> Didn't Marvin Minsky name it as the "Intergalactic Network"?

<comment><USER5> Not Minsky, but JCR Licklider!

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish teens today could experience the glory of the Internet in the 90s. It was an anarchist's wasteland of data and possibility, and the idea of there even being consequences for anything you might do online seemed absurd.

<comment><USER7> Looking back it's clear to me that 9/11 changed everything in North American culture.

<comment><USER8> Was it all 9/11, or was it the tech bubble popping as well? I don't know how to disentangle those two things, culturally.

<comment><USER7> Many things happened all in a couple years then -- Bush election, .com bubble pop, 9/11, the Seattle WTO protests, the turn of the milennium.

To me it was kind of like the closing of a somewhat utopian-perspective era that started in the mid-90s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks like just a catalog page. It's a good book, but a catalog page isn't substantive enough to make for a good HN submission.

</comment><comment><USER10> This book has been on my reading list for a while and I started it today. I'm only a couple of chapters in. Reading about how it was necessary to convince the military to accept their projects is really cool. Are there any similar books/articles covering the adoption of quantum computing?

</comment><comment><USER11> anyone read this recently? thoughts?

<comment><USER12> It's a good account of ARPANET through early TCP/IP. Also focuses on BBN for a good chunk which is cool because the name does not come up a lot. Definitely would recommend if you haven't read it before.

<comment><USER13> >Also focuses on BBN for a good chunk which is cool because the name does not come up a lot.

That makes me feel a bit old given that I knew a lot of people at BBN when I was in school although I didn't really know much about the proto-internet at the time :-)

But you're right. BBN's role has sort of faded into history.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Finding it very hard to get a job - <AUTHOR> Hey Hacker News, I've been applying to a lot of developer jobs(junior) in my area(Cork, Ireland) within the last 6 months and finding it very hard to get any sort of job. I've had a few interviews but some companies don't give feedback, another said I did not fit the role and another company just never got back to me.<p>Would be great to get some tips or best places to brush up on interview skills. also here is my cv: seanoneill.me/cv.pdf <comment><USER2> If I gave you any interview tips, it would be the result of a google search that I'm sure you've already done. But I hope I can provide some other ideas. I'm in Florida, USA so I have no clue if what works for me in my part of the world will work for you, but here's how I got my first 2 jobs after transitioning from social work to software.

First, network as much as possible. I primarily used meetup.com to find events where I could meet people. You don't have to limit yourself to only software- related meetups, either. You can bring a lot of value to the other people at an event because you're the only software person in the room.

Second, stop applying to jobs, and start stalking companies. Rank every single company in Cork (and anywhere you're willing to relocate to) that needs what you have. Decide which ones you really want to work at, and stalk them. Learn about the company, the leadership, the team you might work in, and the technologies you would use if you worked there. Find out where they hang out, and start hanging out there. Ask for an informational interview. These can be way more powerful than a formal interview.

Third, once you find out what technologies your favorite companies use, start learning those. It will give you a focus and purpose to your learning which will make it more joyful and productive.

Applying for jobs always felt like a slow death to me. I hated it. I call my method "Company Hunting" because you're not just looking for a job, you're looking for an entire company to be apart of, and to add value to. It feels much more focused and intentional to me.

PS if you feel you really need help with your resume, interview skills, etc, you may consider paying for a career coach. If you land a job 3 months sooner because of them, think of that career coach as giving you 3 months of salary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply, Started making a list of mainly small companies I like to work for yesterday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You are in that awkward position of applying for entry level software jobs a couple of years after graduation.

Was your most recent training about devops? Is there nothing from it that you can pull out in your skills list? Devops is hot right now and you are in a hosting hotspot.

I'd apply to smaller companies and gov departments or internally at your current one. Talk to your manager and if no luck hr at your current place.

You could try putting your degree in the header, and then unifying education and training into a single section. Also add some words on the training saying what you learned. I can't what level the post degree training was at from this and it is wierd android or aws are not in your skills list so maybe you didn't like the courses but put that stuff .

Anyway good luck, first job in a given field is the hardest.

<comment><AUTHOR> After i got my bachelor degree, I went back and done two other courses cloud computing and android development, then ended up in technical support, since i am no longer with that company I wanted to get into development, since that is what my degree was in.

<comment><USER3> Don't tell me, write it in your CV :-)

You should be able to add android and java to your skills list.

I suggested devops because if you have that training and know those tools there is a skills shortage so it is an opportunity to easily get recruited and overlaps with software dev.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interview skills: join Toastmasters, [https://www.toastmasters.org](https://www.toastmasters.org) , which will help you develop your public speaking and leadership skills. Several clubs in Cork, apparently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, never heard of Toastmasters before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Come to the Czech Republic, there is a huge abundance of offers. My company would hire you immediately, for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Might look into Czech Republic, I loved it when I lived in Prague before.</comment></comment>


Peerwiki: all of Wikipedia on BitTorrent - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mafintosh/peerwiki <comment><USER2> Author here. If anyone is interested I presented this at jsconf.eu last year as part of a BitTorrent talk, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTCsSwCpGP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTCsSwCpGP8) (slides: [http://mafintosh.github.io/slides/jsconf-2014/jsconf- eu-2014...](http://mafintosh.github.io/slides/jsconf-2014/jsconf- eu-2014.html))

<comment><USER3> What are the obstacles to running this client-side in the browser? That would lower the barrier to entry for users by a lot.

Edit: I just finished watching your talk where you mention that [https://github.com/feross/webtorrent](https://github.com/feross/webtorrent) is already doing that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The idea is to showcase how a large dataset is pretty good at being shared without having central servers. Here using bittorrent.

mafintosh showed how wikipedia could be shared without a central server(s), and instead rely on a network of peers.

subtack did something similar, peermaps, which is a showcase on how you can share geo data over bittorrent. Imagine a google maps without a google servers. [https://github.com/substack/peermaps](https://github.com/substack/peermaps)

Of course there's many unsolved questions, like "how do you update?", "how do you manage the data?", etc. But the examples are pretty solid.

</comment><comment><USER5> This README is a bit short on telling what it actually does. Anyone?

<comment><USER6> Pretty sure that it's: When you want to go on a wikipedia article, it requests the file from other peers in the network using the bittorrent protocol. It's a copy of Wikipedia placed on bittorrent, presumably with some semantics for article updates.

<comment><USER7> It looks like it uses a single Wikipedia dump from over a year ago. Would be cool if it supported deltas somehow, so the network doesn't split when a new dump is used.

<comment><USER8> Bittorrent doesn't have support for that, but you could publish torrents that just host a full version of all the modified pages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can an observer watch what pages people read?

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this like Popcorn Time for Wikipedia?

I think Bittorrent is also working on a similar project for the whole web, called Maelstrom:

[http://blog.bittorrent.com/2014/12/10/project-maelstrom- the-...](http://blog.bittorrent.com/2014/12/10/project-maelstrom-the-internet- we-build-next/)

<comment><USER4> Closed source?

<comment><USER10> I think so, yes.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't want something like this to be closed source. It's very important that the security of the decentralization can be validated.

And in these NSA times it's even more important.

<comment><USER3> If the concept works well, an open source variant is sure to be created precisely for this reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A Wikipedia hosted in a decentralized manner (i.e. DHT on running computers) that could still be updated in a distributed fashion would really help us maintain that knowledge for the future while not relying Wikimedia's servers to keep running.

</comment><comment><USER12> Would a blockchain-like solution work here? Where new edits piled up on top of the existing data, constantly sharing it across all servers?

<comment><USER13> It could but it would be an unnecessary hurdle, because there is no need for a global consensus on a single version of the encyclopedia. Think of it as a git tree, and checkout the branch you like. With a currency, it's imperative that everyone refers to the same branch all the time, not so with an encyclopedia.

In practice there would be a few "popular" branches, and one would likely dominate, so that it would be trivial to identify it by relying on a social consensus.

Using a blockchain when what you need is a distributed database is overkill.

<comment><USER3> If you consider malicious actors ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long- term_abuse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse)), some form of local consensus becomes necessary. In the real Wikipedia this is handled by admin actions right now. And that's really the only workable system I can come up with right now.

You could have different branches with different admin teams, but in a sense we have that technology already: anybody can download an XML dump of the Wikipedia database and set up their own Wikipedia clone with minimal effort.

<comment><USER13> Yes, we do have that technology, yes it's Wikipedia, yes it can be distributed, no that doesn't require a blockchain nor particularly benefit from one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why? Specifically - why would I choose to browse this way over just accessing wikipedia?

<comment><USER15> You wouldn't ask if you lived in China. Though bittorrent traffic may need to be disguised.

Decentralising the internet is generally a great idea.

<comment><USER16> An interesting point here is that Wikipedia actually works in China, only some articles are censored. I tried to bypass this by typing [https://www.wikipedia.org](https://www.wikipedia.org) into the browser, but it loaded the http version regardless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting project.</comment>


A Pandemic Is a Terrible Time to Buy Real Estate - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-09-13/should-i-buy-a-house-now-covid-19-pandemic-says-wait <comment><USER2> [https://archive.is/4gwYl](https://archive.is/4gwYl)</comment>


What Development skills do you think you will you learn this year? - <AUTHOR> One of the things I love about being a developer is constantly learning. What skills do you plan on learning this year? <comment><USER2> I'm going to be continuing to spend more time on learning R, (re) learning Python, and learning some more parts of the Python ecosystem like Numpy, Scipy, Pandas, Scikit-learn, etc. I'm also planning to spend some time on Prolog. And if there's time left over, I want to at least dabble in Scala a bit more and learn to use Figaro.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really excited about learning Elixir+Phoenix, possibly React too.</comment>


Gangs of Baghdad - <AUTHOR> https://mwi.usma.edu/gangs-of-baghdad/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Our military needs to be able to understand and work with both legitimate and illegitimate sources of power in urban areas. Just understanding host-nation political and military capabilities will not suffice."</comment>


Show HN: Wayback.co, Easier Wayback Machine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/soheil/wayback.co <comment><USER2> Your code is just pointing the browser to a _specific_ waybackmachine URL that has the date embedded. It's not showing you the page from a year ago; it's showing you the page from 12/29/2014\. Many sites aren't cached by waybackmachine for every day, and there's nothing particularly noteworthy about that date, so forgive me for being blunt but...what's the point?

<comment><AUTHOR> Wayback Machine automatically displays the closest matching date if it doesn't have a page available for the specified date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Making Wayback Machine accessible in the context of the site that your likely to be wanting to view is so simple yet incredibly helpful. Thanks very much.

</comment><comment><USER4> Show oldest page:

[https://web.archive.org/web/00000000000000/news.ycombinator....](https://web.archive.org/web/00000000000000/news.ycombinator.com)

Show newest page:

[https://web.archive.org/*/news.ycombinator.com](https://web.archive.org/*/news.ycombinator.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thats's really cool!</comment>


Particletree - PDFs Worth Checking Out - <AUTHOR> http://particletree.com/notebook/pdfs-worth-checking-out/ <comment><USER2> PDFs are almost never worth checking out. They tend to indicate someone believes their words are too valuable to demean them with a mere website...and folks who think that way are generally blow-hards. I think I'd rather catch up on Particle Tree articles than read the suggested PDFs (because it's a great resource...but I think this post is off the mark).</comment>


Extracting data from Wikipedia using curl, grep, cut and other bash commands - <AUTHOR> http://loige.co/extracting-data-from-wikipedia-using-curl-grep-cut-and-other-bash-commands/ <comment><USER2> Because i was randomly curious, can extract this data from the structured html with some dom selectors in a similarly haphazard way:

Start with: [https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/html/List_of_Olymp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/html/List_of_Olympic_medalists_in_judo)

Run this js one-liner: [].slice.call(document.querySelectorAll('table[typeof="mw:Transclusion mw:ExpandedAttrs"] tr td:nth-child(n+2) > a:nth-child(1), table[typeof="mw:Transclusion mw:ExpandedAttrs"] tr:nth-child(3) td > a:nth- child(1)')).map(function(e) { return e.innerText; }).reduce(function(res,el) { res[el] = res[el] ? res[el] + 1 : 1; return res; }, {});

The result is an object with the medalists as keys, and the count as values. JS objects are unordered so sorting is left as an excercise for the reader.

<comment><USER3> Nice. Nasty, but nice :)

I can't help but notice a small bug.... Driulis Gonzalez for example has medalled 4 times, but your script gives his count as only 3. Similarly Gévrise Émane isn't listed by your script. Something to do with split tables cells I suspect.

Still, it's inspiring. I've often used bash and perl to scrape data from web pages. I'll definitely consider JS in future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is you-can't-parse-HTML-with-regex [1] level hideous, only worse, because Mediawiki markup is essentially a Turing-complete programming language thanks to template inclusion, parser functions [2], etc.

The only remotely sane way to do this is to use the Mediawiki API [3] to get the pages you want, then use an actual parser like mwlib [4] to extract the content you need. Wikidata and DBpedia are also promising efforts, but both have a long way to go in terms of coverage.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match- open-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags- except-xhtml-self-contained-tags)

[2] [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:ParserFunction...](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:ParserFunctions)

[3] [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page)

[4] [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Alternative_parsers](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Alternative_parsers)

<comment><USER5> This isn't for production-level data migration. It's for smooshing some source text into a shape which is useful to you.

Parsing HTML with regexps is fine if you're just curious roughly how many images are in a page. It's great for quick command line experiments. It's just not good when you need to be "doing it properly".

<comment><USER6> I mostly agree, been using Regexes to parse known limited subset of HTML tags in known limited format (1 tag per line, forced padding, no attrs, etc.).

But on the other hand, this is often how long term "proper" solutions are born — evolved from something cobbled together in couple of hours.

<comment><USER5> Oh yeah, the golden rule for quick hacks is NEVER show them to someone non- technical, especially someone non-technical who's in your chain of command.

I learned _that_ one after mocking up some UI screens using VB6 and then having to explain over and over again that no, just because we showed you some buttons on a page doesn't mean that the program (which had to be a Java applet, mind you) was "almost done."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ...or we can just use SPARQL and dbpedia!([http://wiki.dbpedia.org/](http://wiki.dbpedia.org/)) There are questions where you'll have to scrap more than one page to get an answer and things could get really complicated with shell commands.

dbpedia is a triple-store that allows us to perform simple queries against wikipedia data like listing music bands based on a particular city:

      SELECT ?name ?place
      WHERE {
        ?place rdfs:label "Denver"@en .
        ?band dbo:hometown ?place .
        ?band rdf:type dbo:Band .
        ?band rdfs:label ?name .
        FILTER langMatches(lang(?name),'en')
      }

or queries that involve multiple subjects, categories etc.

<comment><USER2> I looked at dbpedia, but it was non-obvious to me what statements to use. We can also use SPARQL with wikidata, although the coverage isn't particularly great.I threw together an example query for medalists and michael phelps doesn't make the list, because he doesn't have the appropriate participant of/award received statements:

[https://query.wikidata.org/#SELECT%20%3Fhuman%20%3FhumanLabe...](https://query.wikidata.org/#SELECT%20%3Fhuman%20%3FhumanLabel%20%3Fcount%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20SELECT%20%3Fhuman%20%28COUNT%28%2a%29%20as%20%3Fcount%29%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%3Fevent%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ18536594%20.%20%23%20All%20items%20that%20are%20instance%20of%20Olympic%20sporting%20event%0A%20%20%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%3Fmedal%20wdt%3AP279%20wd%3AQ636830%20.%20%20%20%20%23%20All%20items%20that%20are%20subclass%20of%20Olympic%20medal%20%0A%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%3Fhuman%20p%3AP1344%20%3FparticipantStat%20.%20%23%20Humans%20with%20a%20participant%20of%20statement%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%3FparticipantStat%20ps%3AP1344%20%3Fevent%20.%20%23%20..%20that%20has%20any%20of%20the%20values%20of%20%3Fevent%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%3FparticipantStat%20pq%3AP166%20%3Fmedal%20.%20%23%20..%20with%20the%20award%20received%20qualifier%20of%20any%20of%20the%20values%20of%20%3Fmedal%0A%20%20%20%20%7D%0A%20%20%20%20GROUP%20BY%20%3Fhuman%0A%20%20%7D%0A%20%20%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22en%22.%20%7D%0A%7D%0AORDER%20BY%20DESC%28%3Fcount%29%0ALIMIT%20100%0A)

      SELECT ?human ?humanLabel ?count WHERE {
        {
          SELECT ?human (COUNT(*) as ?count) WHERE {
            ?event wdt:P31 wd:Q18536594 . # All items that are instance of Olympic sporting event

            ?medal wdt:P279 wd:Q636830 .    # All items that are subclass of Olympic medal

            ?human p:P1344 ?participantStat . # Humans with a participant of statement
            ?participantStat ps:P1344 ?event . # .. that has any of the values of ?event
            ?participantStat pq:P166 ?medal . # .. with the award received qualifier of any of the values of ?medal
          }
          GROUP BY ?human
        }

        SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en". }
      }
      ORDER BY DESC(?count)
      LIMIT 100

EDIT: The dbpedia search should be something like: [http://dbpedia.org/sparql?default-graph- uri=http%3A%2F%2Fdbp...](http://dbpedia.org/sparql?default-graph- uri=http%3A%2F%2Fdbpedia.org&query=SELECT+%3Fhuman+%3Fcount+WHERE%0D%0A%7B%0D%0A++%7B%0D%0A++++SELECT+%3Fhuman+%28count%28*%29+as+%3Fcount%29+WHERE+%7B%0D%0A++++++%3Fevent+rdf%3Atype+dbo%3AOlympicEvent%0D%0A++++++%7B%0D%0A++++++++%3Fevent+dbo%3AbronzeMedalist+%3Fhuman+.++%0D%0A++++++%7D+UNION+%7B%0D%0A++++++++%3Fevent+dbo%3AsilverMedalist+%3Fhuman%0D%0A++++++%7D+UNION+%7B%0D%0A++++++++%3Fevent+dbo%3AgoldMedalist+%3Fhuman%0D%0A++++++%7D%0D%0A++++%7D%0D%0A++++GROUP+BY+%3Fhuman%0D%0A++%7D%0D%0A%7D%0D%0AORDER+BY+DESC%28%3Fcount%29%0D%0ALIMIT+100&format=text%2Fhtml&CXML_redir_for_subjs=121&CXML_redir_for_hrefs=&timeout=30000&debug=on)

      SELECT ?human ?count WHERE
      {
        {
          SELECT ?human (count(*) as ?count) WHERE {
            ?event rdf:type dbo:OlympicEvent
            {
              ?event dbo:bronzeMedalist ?human .
            } UNION {
              ?event dbo:silverMedalist ?human
            } UNION {
              ?event dbo:goldMedalist ?human
            }
          }
          GROUP BY ?human
        }
      }
      ORDER BY DESC(?count)
      LIMIT 100

<comment><USER7> It's not surprising that Phelps is not on the list, you're grouping by ?human and he is not... jk, maybe there is an ontology issue i.e. new triples are using a different class or that triple-store is not up to date.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > You will not need to open an editor and write a long script and then to have > an interpreter like Node.js to run it, sometime the bash command line is > just enough you need!

This is a bad attitude to have for working with _data processing_ , where QA is necessary and the accuracy of the output is important. A 50 LOC scraper with comments and explicitly-defined inputs and output from functions is far preferable to a 8 LOC scraper that those without bash knowledge will be unable to parse.

And the 8 LOC bash script is not much of a time savings as this post demonstrates; you still have to check each function output manually to find which data to parse / handle edge cases.

<comment><USER9> I've used Makefiles to coordinate a zoo of perl/bash scripts before. It's pretty effective.

<comment><USER10> Makefiles are underrated. The concept is so simple – it is basically a dependency graph with attached shell scripts – yet so powerful. Not just for building software, but also for everyday tasks where you need some files to be updated under some condition.

I recommend mk (original make replacement for Plan 9, available for different OSes through Plan9Port [0,1]). It has a bit more uniform syntax, and can check that the dependency graph is wellfounded.

[0] [https://github.com/9fans/plan9port](https://github.com/9fans/plan9port)

[1] [https://swtch.com/plan9port/](https://swtch.com/plan9port/)

<comment><USER11> another advantage of make is that every host have it. like vim.

mk is not there yet.

<comment><USER12> Did you mean "vi"? Lots of systems don't install vim by default.

<comment><USER5> And contrariwise, lots of hosts install "vi" which actually seems to be vim. Aah, 'standards'. :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the kind of query that excites me for WikiData's development.

[http://wikidata.org](http://wikidata.org)

<comment><USER2> see also the SPARQL search: [https://query.wikidata.org/](https://query.wikidata.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is the other option to use Parsoid.

[https://github.com/wikimedia/parsoid](https://github.com/wikimedia/parsoid)

That is MediaWiki's official off wiki parser that can turn wikitext into HTML or HTML back into wikitext. It would be reasonably simple to hook into its API and use it for data extraction instead.

<comment><USER15> Is converting Wikitext to HTML/RDFa really going to help with this task? I'd say it's actually clearer how to get the data out of the original Wikitext.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My 2 cents: the cut/grep lines could be replaced by a sed/awk one-liner such as:

sed -n 's/. _flagIOCmedalist|\\[\\[\\([^]|]_ \\).*/\1/p'

<comment><USER17> Agreed. I was a long time abuser of cut, but has moved to relying on sed instead. I find that it's generally a lot more robust if you think through your expressions. For certain cases awk will also do the job. Perl oneliners do seem convenient but that has never been my cup of tea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is an active project sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation called PyWikiBot that I've been a contributor to and user of for over a decade now. If you want to do anything and everything with Wikipedia, look no further than: [https://github.com/wikimedia/pywikibot- core](https://github.com/wikimedia/pywikibot-core)

</comment><comment> mickael-kerjean You should try wikidata for any type of query that can't be answer using google and where all the information itself is already on wikipedia. it's way faster (if you know about sparql) and way more powerfull and flexible. It only seems surprising there isn't more people talking about it, triplestore are awesome

</comment><comment><USER19> ... there's an API making half of this superfluous. You can do pretty much any MediaWiki reading or writing through it. (All Wikipedia bots are required to use it, for instance.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php)

The article text is a raw blob of wikitext you have to process, but you don't have to go to stupid lengths trying to parse HTML without a browser.

<comment><USER20> But he didn't parse any HTML in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Extracting data from Wikipedia with type providers: [http://evelinag.com/blog/2015/11-18-f-tackles-james- bond/](http://evelinag.com/blog/2015/11-18-f-tackles-james-bond/)

</comment><comment><USER22> An xpath like `//table/tr/td[2]/a[1]/text()` seems like it would be a lot simpler.

<comment><USER23> This is my goto approach every time I have to parse html or XML. I still don't understand why people don't use something as simple as google spreadsheets and write a simple xpath to load tabular data using =IMPORTHTML().

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Large part of Bioinformatics data processing involves these commands. They seem little cryptic but gets job done. I would also like to mention Datamash: [https://www.gnu.org/software/datamash/](https://www.gnu.org/software/datamash/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Isn't this a poster child example for the semantic web?

</comment><comment><USER26> errrrrrrrrk. Extracting raw wiki-markup and trying to use it? Not the greatest of idea. The only true parser of that language is mediawiki. Doing it yourself is a recipe for a massive headache.

<comment><USER27> I was thinking the same thing. Wikimedia makes all of wikipedia available for download. You don't need to screen scrape. LOL. I guess they had some other wikis they want to get data from but the "main" worldwide wikipedia site, that everyone thinks of as wikipedia makes the data freely downloadable, and I've downloaded it before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> A couple of years ago I found Perl was fastest at processing Wikipedia dumps.

It also didn't require having a JVM preloaded to make startup times acceptable during development (naming no other tools).

I do use shell tools to process data, a lot. They're particularly good for exploratory programming and initial analysis of new datasets.

<comment><USER29> cut, awk, grep, and perl can churn through an initial data dump like nobody's business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Or, for a lot of the structured elements, you could use DBPedia.

</comment><comment><USER31> There is also a wikipedia library for Python. An example of its use:

Using the wikipedia Python library (to search for oranges :)

[https://jugad2.blogspot.in/2015/11/using-wikipedia-python- li...](https://jugad2.blogspot.in/2015/11/using-wikipedia-python-library.html)

And there maybe libraries for other languages too, since the above library wraps a Wikipedia API:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:API](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:API)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I actually added some of your alternative solutions to the bottom of the article, thanks for commenting :)

</comment><comment><USER32> Python has excellent packages like mwparserfromhell and wikitables for this kind of processing.

</comment><comment><USER33> I appreciate this for the novelty factor, but, somebody show this dude how to use a spreadsheet!

<comment><USER34> Honestly, what novelty factor?</comment></comment>


Test Load Balancer - <AUTHOR> http://test-load-balancer.github.io

<comment><USER2> This seems really awesome.

I'm using CircleCI, they have an experimental option to collect junit xml files and give you a nicer output as well as try to make parallelization smarter, but the smart parallelization feature only works when you're using the inferred test command :(.

One really nice feature that caught my eye: "In addition to balancing, TLB does other interesting things like re-order tests within a subset(set of tests that run on a partition) before they are executed. For instance, it re- arranges tests to execute failing ones(that failed in previous build) first, hence ensuring early feedback."

I haven't read through the docs in detail, so maybe this is a stupid question, but wouldn't it be better to have a single service that includes the data and balancer and exposes functionality through a REST API? Then you could use it with any language, without having to install java on the machines that are running your test.

<comment><USER3> I agree. The primary purpose of the server is to split the tests and send them for execution. I started this as a side project[1], but never got much further with it.

1\. [https://github.com/kunday/getting_dumped](https://github.com/kunday/getting_dumped)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Alternatively for RSpec and friends there's [https://github.com/grosser/parallel_tests](https://github.com/grosser/parallel_tests). Works without a centralised server.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do like parallel_tests for rspec but specifically like that TLB is multiplatform as we use many test engines in my shop for our Ruby, JS, Scala, C#, and Swift code. I don't mind installing a jvm but really appreciate setting up one server and being able to leverage it for multiple code bases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is this project still maintained? I don't see any commits since 2013. I saw a demo of this when I used to work at TW and gave it a shot and it worked like a charm. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any rspec3 runners!

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not sure, maybe it is just done and they don't have any major bugs? I do know the recently open sourced go.cd continuous deployment software is planning on integrating TLB so maybe they will take over maintenance if needed.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who do people use for e-commerce delivery? Recommendations/Experiences? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Shopify is integrated by default with Amazon, Shipwire, and Webgistix. I know from experience that it can be fairly easily integrated with other 3rd party logistics providers.

On a related note, I heartily recommend Shopify as an e-commerce platform.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just setting up a shopify site. Had to do my first delivery (from a kickstarter) and courier messed quite a few things up, hence why I ask. Thanks for feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://shutl.com/uk/](http://shutl.com/uk/)

<comment><AUTHOR> They are awesome, I spent a couple months living with the Tom, renting a room in his flat before he setup Shutl.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (also how do you put a question in Ask HN?)

<comment><USER4> You start the title Ask HN:

<comment><AUTHOR> did I do it right, don't think it worked.</comment></comment></comment>


Uber gutted Carnegie Mellon's top robotics lab to build self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/5/19/8622831/uber-self-driving-cars-carnegie-mellon-poached <comment><USER2> ouch, hopefully uber isn't biting the hand that feeds

CMU just recently won a huge case against Marvel for patent infringement, if CMU cuts access to their patents that many of Uber's new staff have worked with or developed, then Uber may be out of luck</comment>


Ask HN | How you guys make Time Estimates  - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if you guys could share your knowledge and experience on estimating the number of hours a software project will take. I do freelance RoR work and many of the clients ask for an hourly rate and an estimated number of hours. I find my self totally confused when i try to estimate hours for a large and complex enough project. How should one go about this ??  thoughts , experieneces, suggestions please. <comment><USER2> I do front end dev work, and mostly it comes down to experience. I usually try to work out a small test of some of the more complicated problems beforehand, so I might have a sense of how much time they'll take. Then I break the project down into parts and assign hours to it

You can bill your client for actual hours, or do a flat rate based off the hours you think it'll take. I tend to do a hybrid approach where I bill them based on a flat rate with a defined scope, then can charge more if they change the scope or something takes significantly longer than expected. Most of the time I come in under my hours, but not always. It's worked well for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find that a key component in any estimation is finding the number of hours I think it will take, then multiplying that number by a factor of 1.5 or 2, depending on how I read the client. It is very important that you get a feel for the client before you move forward, if they seem like they will be a pain in the neck, move on. It is much better to turn down work and find better than create a poor relationship.

</comment><comment><USER4> Experience really, but the key is the granularity of the requirements. The more well defined the project scope is the easier it is to estimate and the closer I find my estimates to be. The more information you can get out of the client about what they want the more accurate any estimate is going to be. I would never let myself get tied to any quote that wasn't made for a specific set of requirements.

</comment><comment><USER5> Think of how long it would take ideally, then double it, then add a week to clean up before the next project.

It's uncanny how well it works for me.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_class_forecasting></comment>


SpiderOak Encryptr v2.0.0 - <AUTHOR> https://spideroak.com/solutions/encryptr <comment><USER2> No manual, no explanation of what its features are, no screen shots. Just a scrolling wall of marketing. Seriously, why is there no explanation of what the product does for you?</comment>


A Drug to Cure Fear - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/opinion/sunday/a-drug-to-cure-fear.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> I feared that many participants here would react to this interesting article's headline rather than to its content, and it appears that that fear is warranted. But, seriously, this is a thoughtful article and well worth reading for better understanding of debilitating phobias and how they are currently treated. It is also good to read the whole fine article to see what the medical doctor author has to say about the trade-offs of the proposed drug treatment suggested as an addition to the currently standard exposure therapy. I don't know anyone among my close friends who has a phobia as disabling as those described in the article. There is a big difference between such phobias and the everyday caution and avoidance of rash behavior that helps keep us all safe.

AFTER EDIT, AFTER OTHER COMMENTS TO THE THREAD: I remember that back in the 1980s propranolol (a beta-blocker originally prescribed to prevent heart disease) was investigated for anxiety conditions like stage fright. (The cases of stage fright among performers I know best largely resolved as the performers gain in performance competence from more coaching and practice and reduced fear of performing by performing in public more often.) So this line of research about propranolol has been going on for a long time.

<comment><USER3> This article seems a little inaccurate to me, or at least incomplete.

On phobias, it's not quite as simple as a 'fear memory', although certainly a part of it when we're discussing 'conditioned fear' (e.g. PTSD). There's a part of your brain called the amygdala that is implicated in modulation of memory formation and emotional processing. It's part of the limbic system, which is tied in to the body's autonomic nervous system. This controls your 'fight or flight' response, essentially a sudden release of adrenaline into your system which causes 'anxiety symptoms': increased heart rate, increased perspiration, butterflies in stomach (due to diversion of blood flow to large muscles in your limbs).

The amygdala is sort of like a 'heuristic co-processor' that receives sensory input earlier than other parts of the brain. If the input matches a heuristic, the body's fight or flight response is activated. If the amygdala is dysfunctional, is 'pre-programmed' with heuristics now considered maladaptive, or you've had experiences that have 'programmed' inappropriate heuristics, it will activate your fight or flight response in response to non-threatening stimuli.

Drugs like propranolol, which I take daily for a panic disorder, antagonise (i.e. block) beta-adrendergic receptors, blocking the action of adrenaline and noradrenaline, which dampens the fight or flight response. This reduces or eliminates panic/anxiety like symptoms, and alters how memories are encoded while under its effects (however I'm not clear on whether this interferes with memory formation, or whether it causes the memories to be encoded in a different way).

The part I find most interesting is the 'pre-programmed maladaptive heuristics' still present in our heuristic database. Evolution is a slow process, and has not caught up to our rapidly changing context. For instance, if you've ever given a public speech, you've probably experienced a 'fight-or- flight' response. It's not because you've had some bad past experience with public speaking that has conditioned a 'fear response'; it's because of a left over heuristic in your amygdala that may have been adaptive a thousands of years ago.

Humans used to live in small tribes or groups with maybe a dozen other humans, and the only other humans they might have contact with in their life would be when fighting other groups for resources. If you publicly humiliated yourself in this context, it would have likely meant elimination from the gene pool or possibly even death. In a modern context, where you're giving a speech to a room full of people in another country, this isn't even mildly the case. But evolution is a slow process, so many of us still experience a fight or flight response anyway, which is maladaptive.

<comment><USER4> In your experience taking this drug, does propranolol have any effect on 'pre- programmed maladaptive heuristics'?

<comment><USER3> I'm not 100% sure. I think so, possibly in the same way that exposure therapy can be helpful.

On rare occasions when I've forgotten to take my propranolol dose, I think I experienced less severe panic reactions to provoking stimuli compared to in the past. This might be due to higher levels of 'exposure' when taking propranolol without a concurrent onset of panic symptoms, leading to a partial reversal of 'fear conditioning' (perhaps better characterised as 're- conditioning'?)

In my case I've found it to be very effective at treating the symptoms of my panic disorder, which are mostly physical/autonomic nervous system mediated. I think beta-blockers wouldn't be as effective for anxiety disorders where the symptoms are mostly 'mental' (e.g. catastrophic thinking, irrational anxious beliefs etc.).

tl;dr - Propranolol is great for 'physical' anxiety, possibly not as effective for 'mental' anxiety

<comment><USER5> Wonderful description - thank you very much. Sounds very promising as a treatment for post-CBT resistant anxiety, which is a simple word for what I have. I can feel a physical fear response coming on and a large drain in my willpower resources based on very small stimuli that aren't cognatively fear- inducing. Sounds like this could help calm my overactive fight or flight system - its been on my list to try for a long while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Title is misleading; article is about PTSD, phobias, and other mental disorders, rather than fear.

<comment><USER7> Phobias and PTSD are pathological fear conditions. The title is not misleading.

<comment><USER8> I agree with the OP - getting rid of fear is foolish. Most of us are fearful of rattlesnakes.

This is about managing the memories of fearful situations. PTSD sufferers were right to be fearful in the original case - it's just the repeating of that fear in other situations is less helpful.

<comment><USER4> > getting rid of fear is foolish

Name one instance of sensibility in retaining fear-response in this modern world.

<comment><USER9> You need to cross a busy street. You could cross in the middle and get to your destination faster, but your fear of getting hit impels you to go to the crosswalk instead. That wasn't even hard.

<comment><USER4> Is that an excuse for a chipmunk crossing the road? Seriously, as a member of intelligent species you don't _need_ fear to inhibit yourself from doing such a senseless and risky act of crossing in the middle of a busy street. A rephrasing of Hanlon's razor is appropriate here: "Never attribute to lack-of- fear that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Indeed, normal people with fear intact perform such risky acts on a daily basis (i.e., despite being fully capable of fear); I was raised in India, where busy streets with erratic traffic patterns are usual, so I should know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What I found fascinating here are the implications for the neurobiology of memory. Here it is limited to highly emotional fear-based memories, but nonetheless the idea that a memory gets rewritten immediately after recall, as saving a file after edit, and that that is an opportunity to completely redefine the memory, is quite striking.

<comment> xkcd-sucks There's some evidence that recalling a memory makes it labile, and that interrupting memory reconsolidation processes during this labile period can 'erase' them, much like not getting sleep after initially forming a memory can prevent it from becoming permanent.

Emotional/fear associated memories are a really easy model to work with, and are also the most clinically compelling application of memory extinction.

See Cristina alberini's work, and others, as well as reviews like [http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v8/n4/abs/nrn2090.html](http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v8/n4/abs/nrn2090.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the incisive suggestions! This is remarkable stuff. Here's a good one not behind a paywall: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3056265/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3056265/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been using extended release propanelol daily for the past couple years as part of the treatment for chronic mixed tension migraines. I'd been struggling with migraines leaving half of my body feeling extreme muscular tension 2-3 times a week. I can't comment on beta blockers effectiveness in treating anxiety, but it does seem to have a powerful effect on soothing the nervous system without the damaging side effects of addiction and impaired memory when I was taking Xanax or Valium.

<comment><USER4> > [using extended release propanelol daily for the past couple years] seem to > have a powerful effect on soothing the nervous system

If you don't mind me asking could you comment on what effect this drug has had, over the past couple years, on your fear-responses? Not talking about phobias, but normal fear-responses.

<comment><USER10> I seem to have less nervous tics associated with stressful situations, but anxiety related racing thoughts don't seem to have changed. E.G. Propanelol doesn't seem to impact problems like laying in bed worrying about the upcoming day

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the response.

Could the difference, in those two kinds of situations, be due to the presence/lack of awareness of the _trigger_ of fear response?

To explain my thinking: it appears that you are normally aware of the fear- triggers on those "stressful situations" (i.e., _what_ triggers the fear), which awareness of trigger in combination with propanelol's inhibitiveness, leads to you have less nervous tics than usual (and less fear-responses). Whereas, it appears that on other kinds of situations, such as laying in bed running through dispersed thoughts about the upcoming day, there is no well- defined trigger (or so it seems) that can be pin-pointed in time, leading to propanelol not being as effective, thus resulting in racing thoughts.

The original study[1] involved a 2-minute exposure prior to administration of propanelol for it to be effective in eliminating the fear-conditioning. And this 2-minute exposure implicitly includes awareness of the fear-trigger.

[1] [http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-322...](http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223%2815%2900313-3/abstract?showall=true=)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> tl;dr this is about phobias and anxiety not "fear" we seem to have Discovered a drug that when a subject relieves the trigger emotion (sees a spider) the drug inhibits the reconciliation of the memory into long term storage. Something previously not thought possible

It clearly has some value for phobias, but it's big value might be in PTSD treatment _but_ from family experience this is a big difficult area and silver bullets are rare.

US and UK need to do much more for long term expensive treatment of the veterans we have made - and if governments complain about the cost, we should very loudly point out they can save money in the future by simply stopping creating new veterans of wars.

<comment><USER4> I don't think your summary is accurate.

It is more than _relieving_ "the trigger emotion". According to the linked study, there is an _ending_ of the conditioned fear-response itself:

"Disrupting reconsolidation of fear memory transformed avoidance behavior into approach behavior in a virtual binary fashion—an effect that persisted at least 1 year after treatment"

... which ending naturally segues into approaching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's common practice amongst professional poker players/gamblers to use beta blockers.

[http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/poker-players-take- performance...](http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/poker-players-take-performance- enhancing-substances-12074/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Weren't they having good success in clinical trials using MDMA in a similar manner?

<comment><USER13> Indeed, and MDMA really can help you in a transformative, psychological manner, but it's not a drug which can be taken with regularity, and it can have major side effects. It requires careful monitoring and therapeutic assistance.

This drug is much more side effect free and can be used regularly so not exactly in a similar manner.

<comment><USER12> Right, that's why this research is so exciting. I just found it interesting because MDMA is a stimulant which probably has the opposite effects of beta blockers. But I guess that is overridden by the serotonergic effects with respect to anxiety.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [...] the arachnophobes who were exposed to the spider and given the drug were able to touch the tarantula within days and, by three months, many felt comfortable holding the spider with their bare hands [...]

Meditation in a pill?! Where do I sign up?

</comment><comment><USER15> Attention grabbing headline aside, a very interesting read. A good reminder that there are viable treatment options for severe anxiety.

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting small study of 45 people. It seems like it could be investigated quickly in the military today. Propanol is still used to treat high blood pressure. Most doctors have switched their patents to metoprolol(longer half life, and doesn't cross blood/brain barrier as easily), but propanol is still an effective way to reduce high blood pressure. It also helps a bit with anxiety-- maybe?

I know a bit about it because I have taken these drugs. I also had a nervous breakdown with symptomology very similar to those that have PTSD.

I took propanol for 15 years. I didn't have any complaints with the drug. I actually think beta blockers are healthy for patients high blood pressure, and prone to anxiety. I said healthy--in my case I think they might be healthy. I can't explain it, just have a feeling?

That said the fear title threw me; I call it anxiety. Ever since that breakdown, I have never been the same. My fears were random. I was scared of heights on one week, and was fine/better the following week. Some months I was scared of being around people; other times I seeked out crowds of people. There was no reason to my fears. My brain just went bezerk, and I didn't get better for years. I'm still not the guy I used to be. Yes, I'm still employable, but barely. I hide my problems pretty well, or I think I do? My anxiety didn't affect my ability to learn new things--thank god!

When I was younger I had consistent fears, actually only public speaking. I got through college with only one oral report, but it took a lot of planning.

After that breakdown, I was fearful almost everything. I felt like I reverted back to being a child, or worse. I wasn't a fearful child. When I blew a gasket, the world became difficult, and I was scared of it. There was no rhyme, or reason to my fears. The stuff I was scared of before, like public speaking, and a slight fear of snakes--completely vanished.

I guess what I'm trying to say is they still don't know much about anxiety(o.k. Fear).

When I took propanol I developed new fears. Repeat--when I took a beta blocker I developed new fears. My fears would come, and go away. They weren't consistent. Yes, this is all antidotal, and I'm probally not the best subject; I don't think I'm like you guys anymore, but who knows?

That said, I was hoping they would have found treatments for anxiety related disorders by now. In my case, heterocyclic, and tricyclics dugs did nothing for my anxiety. Addictive drugs, and alcohol are the only drugs that helped.

I hope a beta blocker will help those with PTSD, and guys who have been hit with whatever hit me. I didn't have a bad childhood, or wasn't more nervous as a child as the other kids. I just Blew a gasket in my twenties. If you are reading this and are slightly dizzy, slightly anxious, just don't feel like you did; you have my complete sympathy. All I can say is it gets better with age. Most of you will be better a a few weeks. I have never met someone like myself, but my doctor like to say, "All my patients are different." He's right! That's why we need to study mental disorders more carefully.

Right now they treat us like cattle when they set up these studies. "Oh, you have this, and this out of twenty symptoms. I'll put you in this category." No wonder we have low efficacy treatments. And yes, I know it's expensive to do quality studies.

Sorry, about rambling on. I just kinda tense up with new cures for anxiety. I took so many drugs that didn't work. And the therapy--well give it a shot, I guess. You will never quite know if you don't give it a test drive.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not being snarky but it would be nice to have a drug that cures the sort of fear associated with FUD.</comment>


Sharing passwords for a video streaming site? This company will track you down - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/8/18174161/netflix-hbo-hulu-shared-password-account-synamedia-machine-learning-ai <comment><USER2> Do you really need ML to spot this? It seems like looking for the same account logged in from multiple locations at the same time would give you 90% of the results with 1% of the work.

<comment><USER3> you are speaking in common sense. i dont think you need an AI or an ML. ihave a hunch this is just a scarecrow to chase off the least technical offenders. sharing a password is easy to spot. mirroring the service is another matter entirely, legally as well as practically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> but if you use the analog hole and restream, then the passwd stays local, the restream can be made available to a remote guest accessing your LAN.</comment>