Ask HN: What Happened to GitHub's Atom? - <AUTHOR> When Microsoft acquired GitHub, there was speculation (and fear on my behalf) that GitHub would end up axing Atom in favor of Visual Studio Code.
Taking a look at the commit activity for Atom on github.com [1] shows that since the end of June 2019, development has basically stopped completely.  Does anyone have any insight as to what is happening here? Has GitHub abandoned Atom development?
Before you angrily shout that "Visual Studio Code" is better, or "just use VS code", please recall the current situation with Google Chrome mono-culture. Say what you will about Atom, but (especially in the last twelve months) the product had become very fast and in my opinion, provided a much better user experience that VS code.
[1] https://github.com/atom/atom/graphs/commit-activity <comment><USER2> I went from Sublime Text to Atom, then back to Sublime, as Atom was painfully slow in large projects. After a short break from the tech world, I came back to find that VS Code had taken over, and I couldn't be happier. It "just works" and offers a great experience out of the box.

<comment><AUTHOR> Out of curiosity, when did you leave and when did you return?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It turned out the Atom is garbage, basically. It was supposed to be a better version of Sublime Text, and open source, but never got close to feature or performance parity.

I stopped using it because it is a pain. I watched the multi-line regex issue in Atom for years, and no progress was made.

VS Code didn't have multi-line regex when it launched. It does now though.

</comment><comment><USER4> I still use Atom and it works great for me. Just because someone isn't blasting code in it constantly doesn't mean it's dead (infact I usually prefer it to constant, chaotically high levels of change). How often does rsync change and does that prevent anyone from using it?

That said if I was going to switch to something I would probably go back to sublime (which I have a license for). Microsoft is dumping a lot of money on the coding space right now and I'm really not interested in finding out why the hard way.

<comment><USER5> I mean...vscode is MIT licensed.

<comment><USER6> Only if you grab it from github - [https://code.visualstudio.com/License/](https://code.visualstudio.com/License/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The biggest contributors stopped contributing around 2016. It seems like they achieved what they wanted and put it in maintenance mode.

[https://github.com/atom/atom/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/atom/atom/graphs/contributors)

</comment><comment><USER8> The thing that drives me batty with both of these Electron editors is that it is apparently not possible to pop out a child window for one file without launching another whole instance.

As somebody that grew up with Windows when MDI was all the rage, it is weird that this doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER9> For all the people going with "just use vscode"

at least use VSCodium as it is a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft's editor VSCode

[https://vscodium.com/](https://vscodium.com/)

<comment><USER10> I don't really mind the telemetry vscode sends. There are only so many ways the developers of an application can get feedback on usage and performance patterns.

Metrics are important in any service or product you build as it allows you to better understand your user and adjust your product or roadmap.

I also remember the option to disable the telemetry has been added but it still reported the fact that you disabled it which I think they'd fix but cant find the github issue :/

<comment><USER11> Telemetry makes sense but I mind individual apps making any network connections and sending/receiving whatever is not essential to solving the actual task I use them for, let alone send data about me in a black-box manner. There should be a centralized system service apps would pass telemetry to for it to send it further and all the data should be in human-readable format.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sorry that everyone is telling you "just use VS code"!

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd be curious to see the download numbers of Atom since VS Code's meteoric rise a few years ago. As an ex-atom user, I was initially hesitant to move over as I found VSCode "awkward", but many quality of life patches sold me on it and haven't been back

</comment><comment><USER14> I personally prefer Sublime as well, and I looked into VSCode, but the VSCode monoculture also means that VSCode has the best plugins. When it comes to graphical editors, Sublime's golang and Rust extensions are so bad.

</comment><comment><USER15> I used to write most of my codes in Atom, but it was too slow when your project gets bigger. Then I shifted to VS Code on a colleague's suggestion.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wouln't say vs code is better (these are all personal tastes things), but it was already way more popular than atom long before ms bought github.

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=%2Fm%2F0134xwrk,%2Fm%2F0_x5x3g,%2Fm%2F0b6h18n)

</comment><comment><USER17> Github abandoned Atom before the the MS acquisition.

</comment><comment><USER18> Atom was built to showcase electron, with no other goals in mind at the time.

<comment><USER19> If I recall correctly Atom was originally developed on top of node-webkit before they decided to fork and create Atom Shell based on Chromium. The catalyst that pushed Atom Shell to become the Electron project we know and love was Slack investing in getting it up to snuff to replace their existing desktop apps at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Remember that vscode is an atom fork... afterwards MS put a lot more resources and seriousness into it though!

</comment><comment><USER21> I never moved to Atom. Never understood the big hype about it. For people who moved, why did you?

<comment><USER22> It's free, Cross-Platform and a "normal" editor, so at work it enables to work with others on the same computer. When I tried VSCode, I found the UX a bit unusual and I think I run into bugs IIRC, but I might give it a try again.

(I think I would pay for Sublime if they'd open-source it with some premium package or so because it's much faster.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just use a real text editor that doesn't embed Google Chrome just to write code. There are tons of quality ones.

<comment><USER24> To be fair to VSCode it's the most slick and speedy electron app I've seen by miles. I forget often that its backed by it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I value a technically inferior alternative insofar as it provides an "out" from a corporate entity. Sadly, using Firefox doesn't really mitigate Google's grip on my data since I'm still searching via the big G. I don't see the point of Atom as it's also Microsoft-bound, identical to vscode in ethos, and as you point out, gets far fewer man-hours of development. I am an emacs user.

<comment><USER26> > Sadly, using Firefox doesn't really mitigate Google's grip on my data since > I'm still searching via the big G

That's rather easy to fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> At some point, either before or after the acquisition, GitHub found out about emacs and realized they were wasting their time.

</comment><comment><USER28> It sounds like a typical Microsoft strategy, they want to dominate markets and nowadays it's by offering free services and products and sometimes buying up the competition.

</comment><comment><USER29> It couldn't compete technically with vscode, just as firefox can't compete technically with chrome. Users will just follow what's better.

</comment><comment> d-d I honestly don't get why people use Atom or even VS code for that matter. Vim and emacs come shipped with many systems, have good plugins, and are waaaay faster; not to mention no telemetry!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a vim user for a lot of things, but there's some things that are just not as good. For example, auto-completion is definitely better in VS Code or Atom. Although, vim is improving in this respect with things like coc.nvim, they are still a _nightmare_ to setup.

<comment><USER30> Ever tried YouCompleteMe? I love it for Ruby, Python, JavaScript.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've used YouCompleteMe extensively for a couple of years. The only language I thought it was nearly as good as these "full" web editors was TypeScript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> VS code is a better editor than atom, just like Chrome is better browser than others (imho based on number of browser downloads). I don't know if it would make sense for the company to keep two competing(free) products. It would be great to see download statistics and see if Atom makes sense anymore for MS

<comment><USER32> Chrome is better than Firefox? You are joking, right?

<comment><USER31> I think you missed the full comment. I said in terms of downloads which is the primary factor for companies investing in them. This might be an unpopular opinion considering the negative votes on my comment, but numbers speak otherwise</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: RSS feed that links direct to Hacker News not source? - <AUTHOR>

Every RSS feed I've found for HN (official or not) links to the source site as the "primary site".<p>Anyone know of a feed that has the HN discussion page as the primary URL? <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but the feeds at hnrss.org always seem to provide a link back to the comments in a thread even though they do link to the source.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was it, thanks

[http://hnrss.org/newest?link=comments](http://hnrss.org/newest?link=comments)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but the feeds at hnrss.org provide a link back to the original post, (even though they do link to the source.)</comment>


Time-lapse: Package shipped with a hidden camera - <AUTHOR> http://flowingdata.com/2013/04/18/time-lapse-package-shipped-with-a-hidden-camera/

<comment><USER2> The original post, containing more details and more commentary, and by the person who actually did it, is here:

<http://www.rubenvandervleuten.com/AtoB.html>

It was posted to HN here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5501262>

The result was the sound of crickets, which I think is a little sad, because it was a great little project that I found intriguing.</comment>


Facebook sees mixed Q2 earnings with slowest-ever growth, stock tanks - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/25/facebook-q2-2018-earnings/ <comment><USER2> > Facebook still managed to boost its average revenue per user in all markets, > growing from $23.59 to $25.91 in the US & Canada

Is that revenue per quarter or per year?

<comment><USER3> Per year iirc

<comment><USER2> Thanks.

If FB would offer option to subscribe for $2.2 per month with no ads and strong privacy, they would not lose anything.

<comment><USER4> Not true. Users who are willing to shell out for premium service are a much more lucrative advertising audience.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Redis site now implements interactive examples with embedded live Redis cli - <AUTHOR> http://redis.io/commands/mget <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to Pieter Noordhuis (that started from the work of Alex McHale in try.redis-db.com) for implementing this awesome thing.

I hope other sites will follow this approach of a "live" documentation where the user can type commands. This makes a lot of sense for dynamic programming languages as well.

<comment><USER2> amazing! thanks for that. curious, how is this implemented on the server? seems like each command is posted to /session/ url.

<comment><USER3> All keys are namespaced to a unique session identifier, so parallel sessions are isolated. You can check out the code for the interactive stuff here: [https://github.com/antirez/redis- io/tree/master/lib/interact...](https://github.com/antirez/redis- io/tree/master/lib/interactive)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really incredible. I am showing this to people and they don't quite believe it. They think it's some kind of simulator or JavaScript trick.

</comment><comment><USER5> I just ran "MGET key1" and it returned "FOOBAR". Has this happened to anyone else?

<comment><USER3> Sorry about that, just deployed a fix to make it less likely for session identifiers to collide. Shouldn't happen again.</comment></comment>


Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-experiment-crashes-browser-tabs-impacts-companies-worldwide/ <comment><USER3> I chuckled at this:

> "Do you see the impact you created for thousands of us without any warning > or explanation? We are not your test subjects," said an angry sysadmin. "We > are running professional services for multi million dollar programs. Do you > understand how many hours of resources were wasted by your 'experiment'?"

Did you, dear sysadmin, pay anything for Google Chrome? No? Are you in any contractual relation to Google that covers your use of Chrome? No? Well, there you have it. You are not a customer, hence you aren't really in any position to demand anything. You basically agreed to take whatever Google shoves down your throat for free, and if that includes "experiments", then that's what it is.

If your multi-million dollar programs move so much money around, maybe take some of that to either invest in the necessary software - including the browser - so you are a paying customer and may actually demand anything, or pay some people to be up to date on the intricacies of Google Chrome and test them under your environment or disable them if undesired. The experiments are not exactly a secret program and have existed for a while. Firefox has a similar thing going. The Firefox one can definitely be disabled. The Chrome one unfortunately not (at least I don't know of a way at the moment, there might be one, maybe it's also only available for the Enterprise subscription that I have never personally heard of any business to be using, but for which money is actually paid, hence there might be leverage in that case to force Google to offer an opt-out).

Or ultimately you could also just compile yourself a Chromium from scratch and update it regularly. I've done it, it's not that hard, and that gets you the ultimate level of control over that nice free piece of software that you depend your business upon.

<comment><USER4> Yeah.

> We are running professional services for multi million dollar programs. Do > you understand how many hours of resources were wasted by your 'experiment'? > \-- Angry sysadmin

Well, do they pay Google for testing in their environment?

Chrome is a free-to-use product. Their rollout strategy is good. Not that they experiment in prod - the flag was in beta for 5 months. And then they turned that on in prod for %1 users, still no reports.

Well what better could they do?

<comment><USER5> Making experiments opt-in seems like a good first step, no? As it is, there wasn't even a clear opt-OUT.

<comment><USER6> Was there any opt-out at all? Even an unclear one would do, then at least users can point each other to the option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been dealing with this bug for the last couple of days and it's been hugely frustrating.

This was not a new version of Chrome or a software update. None of our software was updated at all (and we spent a long time checking!). But apparently Google have an ability to change a setting and globally affect the behaviour of all Chrome browsers by enabling experimental features.

We carefully manage our software updates and patching so that we can test it and roll back if it impacts the business. Google had been good at understanding "enterprise" requirements - disabling automatic updates, setting policies etc. But this shows that they're really focused on consumers and business users will always be an afterthought.

<comment><USER8> As an admin why would you not also run the beta version of the browser in a limited setting? That would have helped you find out about this issue sooner, since the experiment was enabled there for a while.

<comment><USER9> I'm sure plenty of admins do, that doesn't mean you will test with the same flags chosen in an experiment it only means you will see changes going into stable permanently enabled a bit early.

My own experience with ChromeOs is that I switch to beta, report bugs via interfaces provided (by Google) and then the chromium team acts surprised when the regression hits stable.

If you ignore signals don't ask for them.

Edit- clarity

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >Many didn't know that Chrome engineers could run experiments on their tightly-controlled Chrome installations, let alone that Google engineers could just ship changes to everyone's browsers without any prior approval.

Uhm, isn't that the entire auto-update feature, that google ships changes without you even being aware?

<comment><USER7> This change didn't come from a binary update.

We were affected and our version hadn't changed (in fact we weren't quite on the latest version - we were still testing it). We have updates disabled and are very much aware of how to manage this.

Google changed a feature flag that was automatically picked up by existing copies of Chrome and changed their behaviour.

<comment><USER10> Whoa, that wasn't clear in the article. Thanks for enlightening me!

<comment><USER11> That was crystal clear on the article. Be honest you just read the title.

<comment><USER10> Right, I put a quote from the end of the article but I just read the title. /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If something is critical infrastructure for you, better make sure you have a backup.

I've seen this in a Swiss government agency that has Firefox installed exactly for this purpose. Their main browser is the built-in one, but if it can't or must not be used (e.g. because of a zero-day threat), they can quickly roll out a change to make Firefox the default browser until the problem/threat is over.

<comment><USER13> >they can quickly roll out a change to make Firefox the default browser until the problem/threat is over.

...why not just make firefox the default browser full-time?

<comment><USER14> What if Firefox has a problem?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is the trouble with Google's aggressive auto-update policy. "Everyone is always on the latest" is mandated because everyone should have the latest security updates, but it works great except when it doesn't.

Another example is a recent issue where a Chrome update broke WebView based Android apps and stopped them from being able to make certain types of network requests. It was fixed in 2 weeks, but that 2 week period was full of unhappy customers and lost revenue.

I'm hoping the upcoming Chromium based Edge from Microsoft will allow IT Admins to control when a browser update is rolled out and give them more control over the update process.

Chrome auto-updates can be disabled for networks behind a firewall by blocking the update server address, but that's a very crude way, and doesn't allow for updating a test machine to see how the new version works, or updating to the latest minus 1 version.

<comment><USER16> This is not about auto-updates. Organizations which had disabled auto-updates were still affected. In this case Google changed Chrome behavior _without changing the release version_. That's absolutely unacceptable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> With Edge being based on Chromium I expect many corporations will start switching away from Google Chrome, but it's just swapping one corporate overlord for another.

<comment><USER18> It's switching two corporate overlords for one, so I think they'll still see it as a net win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think we are now seeing that the attitude of Google in the way they treat Chrome users is seriously worrying. There are now a litany if issues - <USER2> adversely affecting ad blockers, linking Google sync to logons to Gmail and to now rolling out "experiments" unannounced... surely by now it is time to seriously consider Firefox?

Of course, Mozilla needs to make sure they never enable extensions like the way they did for the Mr Robot one many years ago...

</comment><comment><USER20> So when Firefox did this earlier in the year for the expired cert, everyone was freaking out that Mozilla had that ability.

Where is all the freaking out at Chrome? My theory is that is was mostly Chrome users (the majority) complaining last time when they had no personal experience.

</comment><comment><USER21> There's lots of browsers out there, why are these environments single-sourced to Chrome? Hope is not a strategy.

<comment><USER22> Because for years, IT managers have been fending off requests from users to give them something other than IE6. Since 2008, Google Chrome has been the "winner" of the desktop browser wars, with IE falling away completely and Firefox's word of mouth impact plateauing against Google's relentless marketing of Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The problem I see here is that companies are not moving to Firefox en masse.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've seen Chrome in so many corporate environments and never understood why. Native browsers work fine and are crafted to work reliably in the environment they're used in. My guess is some admins simply like Chrome and thus decided everyone should. I like Firefox but I keep it at home, at work I use Microsoft Edge.

<comment><USER25> Perhaps easier to manage Chrome than managing a different browser for each operating system?

<comment><USER24> Not really, that would be an excuse if someone said that to you. Most enterprises use Windows Server and manage this through Group Policy, which supports all browsers for all operating systems. If you're not using Windows Server it can be more difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Except for the intent, it sounds like an attack.

"The attack is only possible through a carefully crafted browser ..."

</comment><comment><USER27> What's the alternative?

Google thought this feature was polished, finished, and ready for release. What used to happen was it would be pushed out in an update, and then everyone on a server would have seen the crash. This "experiment" is just slow releasing.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can we stop the "not paying, no demanding" BS? First it's unfair to silence people just because they are not paying. Second, we are always paying. If not with money with our privacy.

<comment><USER29> The problem is the tone of voice. One thing is you asking, humbling, why did this happen, if it can be reverted since I had a problem in my specific setup and how I (as the non paying customer) can disable it. The other is to be arrogant saying that I am a multi zillion company, you're idiotic for enabling this feature and I demand you to disable it ASAP and never do this again.

The quote from this article is clearly from the later case, even if I am sure that other people reported it more humbly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> While Google might have fucked up, what could possibly be your workflow where a single crashed tab costs you one and a half day's of work?

<comment><USER31> Well it wasn't just one tab. At my company all work is done on the browser (Web app) and the browser would just crash and there was no indication what could be the problem. So although it didn't cost the entirety of one a half days work per user it severely diminished productivity all around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Enterprise environments don't click on ads, so they don't matter to Google.

Enterprise IT management should realize this.

<comment><USER33> > Enterprise environments don't click on ads,

Not sure where you've worked!

<comment><USER32> The article seemed to be about an enterprise where people in some job used the browser mostly to access in-house systems. That generates no revenue for Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I came arcoss the loading circle tab suspending on Chrome 78.0.3904.97.Even if I close the tab,the circle was still on browser,Finally I had to restore down the chrome in order to clear it up.

</comment><comment><USER35> Its about time Google had a CFAA charge brought against them. I'm pretty sure most network admins didn't know Google had such a whopper of a backdoor deliberately snuck in through their security measures.

</comment><comment><USER36> Even though it might break sometimes, it is one of the reasons why I choose Chrome over Firefox: The updates on Firefox take just too long (mostly before starting) on Chrome they just happen... However, it would be nice if they asked before.

</comment><comment><USER37> Thank god Brave has field trials disabled by default [1], among many other Google "services" [2].

[1] [https://github.com/brave/brave- browser/issues/4283](https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/4283) [2] [https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations- from-...](https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from- Chromium-\(features-we-disable-or-remove\))</comment>


New Stanford class on  - <AUTHOR> http://www.greenbuilding-class.org/

<comment><USER2> One thing I really like about this is that it's a great example of a university making it's expertise publicly available.

Universities are definitely entitled to their proprietary intellectual property, but things like class content is something that the public can really benefit from and the marginal cost of production is near zero. Much of this content is valuable, but let's face it, it's not worth the tuition Stanford and other schools charge (now maybe the compete college experience is worth it, but that's a different discussion).

Kudos to Stanford for setting the bar high, let's hope other schools follow (MIT, CMU, we're looking at you...)</comment>


Awesome Imperial Desktop - <AUTHOR>

Found this wallpaper today, totally rad: http://super7store.com/new-arrivals/wallpaper.html<p>Wanted it as a backround for my desktop, but couldn't find it on the artist's site or anywhere so I made one w/ their pic. Looks sweet tiled on a 30" monitor: http://i.imgur.com/9zTEV.png <comment><USER2> This is pretty fantastic, though it would only be made better if you bought the wallpaper and put it up in the room with your computer in it.</comment>


Why is Mars' Moon Phobos Hollow? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/05/you-couldnt-make-this-up-european-space-agency-rumors-mars-moon-phobos-is-an-artificial-satellite.html <comment><USER2> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

<comment><USER3> Or, extraordinary claims require a psychological need to believe. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Couldn't the right-angles detected be crystalline in origin, rather than from Home Depot?

<comment><USER5> I don't believe that geometric shapes and structures existed before Home Depot but you know how dodgy aliens are always messing with time portals to bring lumber back to the future.

<comment><USER3> Some natural geometric shapes:

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1228844/Th...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1228844/These- stones-really-ARE-rolling-Mystery-Death-Valleys-eerie-moving-rocks.html)

[http://www.ironammonite.com/2009/12/surviving-cueva-de- los-c...](http://www.ironammonite.com/2009/12/surviving-cueva-de-los- cristales-giant.html)

<comment><USER6> And of course the hexagon atop Saturn. <http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/saturn-hexagon/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have a read of the "source" material:

<http://www.enterprisemission.com/Phobos.html>

It is even more bizarre than the original article. Of course, by Poe's law, either of these could be subtle parodies. (Although I suspect not).

<comment><USER8> From the article:

 _So yes, what you are staring at (probably, in shock at this point ...) is, in fact ... nothing less than what we've been saying all along ... since trying to educate the first Bush Administration on this data, in 1989 (see below):

That Phobos is, in fact--

An "ancient ... ex terrestrial ... very battered ... 15-mile-long"--

Spaceship._

That definitely isn't a scientific article. It sounds more like a conspiracy theory website.

<comment><USER9> It is. Richard Hoagland believes there is a secret space program interacting with/covering up an alien presence in our solar system. He's on Coast to Coast AM on a regular basis as their special space advisor.

<comment><USER10> He seems to have some interesting views. From his Wikipedia page:

 _Hoagland has commented at great length[66][67][68] on the so-called Norway Spiral, an extraordinary display of light seen over much of northern Norway on 9 December 2009, caused by the partial failure of a Russian SLBM test flight. Hoagland draws special attention to the fact that this event occurred close to President Barack Obama's arrival in Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

On 2–3 February 2010, on the Coast to Coast AM radio show,[69] Hoagland announced that the Russian SLBM had in fact been captured by Dark Forces intent on preventing mankind's exploration of outer space. These Dark Forces, he explained, were probably headed by Nazi officers who had escaped into space after World War II. To Hoagland, this was a sufficient explanation of President Obama's desire to cancel Project Constellation, since Obama had clearly accepted that any attempt to return to the Moon would be thwarted by the superior technology of the Nazis in space._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C._Hoagland>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No it isn't. There is no reason whatsoever to suppose Phobos isn't a natural phenomenon.

On the Phobos blog, you can find a recent post (<http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/7/1085>), which says:

      [..] provide meaningful new constraints on the
      corresponding range of the body's porosity (30% ± 5%),
      provide a basis for improved interpretation of the
      internal structure. We conclude that the interior of
      Phobos likely contains large voids. When applied to
      various hypotheses bearing on the origin of Phobos, these
      results are inconsistent with the proposition that Phobos
      is a captured asteroid.

In other words, the moon is pretty porous and asteroids aren't, so it isn't a captured asteroid. However, that is only one of three hypotheses. In a previous post (<http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/7/989>) they state:

      The origin of Phobos is a mystery, in fact three scenarios
      are considered possible.  The first is that the moon is a
      captured asteroid; the second is that it formed in-situ as
      Mars formed below it, and the third is that Phobos formed
      later than Mars, from debris flung into martian orbit when
      a large meteorite struck the Red Planet. Among other
      objectives, the Phobos flybys are designed to provide
      clues towards answering this question.

So one of the three hypotheses has been ruled out. The other two are still candidates. There is no mention of any internal voids with inexplicably 'geometric' shapes

<comment><USER8> I have a feeling that most of this article is outright sensationalism. Sadly I don't have a subscription to the scientific site so I can't read the whole paper, but so far I haven't found any other source talking about the "geometric rooms" inside Phobos.

Phobos looks fairly normal on the outside, other than a few strange lines:

<http://dad2059.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/phobos-41410.jpg>

The article is probably link bait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was unclear about how they determined that the internal cavities were large. I get the same density if I have a rock with 30% of it's interior carved out by phasers, or if I have volcanic style (porous) rock.

Are their instruments sensitive enough to get a line graph of gravitational attraction as their sensors pass near the moon? If that were the case, you might be able to determine large voids vs porosity, but if they only get a single data point, than you wouldn't be able to.

</comment><comment><USER13> They are using enterprisemission.com as a source? Seriously? What is Daily Galaxy, the Weekly World News of Astronomy?

For those who don't know, Enterprise Mission is the outlet for all the paranoid schizoid ramblings of Richard C. Hoagland, aka Mr. Face on Mars.

</comment><comment><USER14> The notion that Phobos might be hollow is not exactly new. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_%28moon%29#.22Hollow_Pho...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_%28moon%29#.22Hollow_Phobos.22_suggestions).

</comment><comment><USER15> Anyone else read "The Monkeys Thought 'Twas All In Fun" by Orson Scott Card?

</comment><comment><USER16> Someone has been reading "Mostly Harmless" again I think.

</comment><comment><USER17> ...that's no moon

Occam's razor wins again!</comment>


Giving the RIAA the Middle Finger - <AUTHOR> http://blog.earbits.com/online_radio/giving-the-riaa-the-middle-finger/

<comment><USER2> The commenters are morons who do not get it. Sadly, so is the article author.

No insights or deep thinking that you couldn't have gotten from a 4/chan thread, with better pictures.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have plenty of more insightful posts about this topic on our blog. This was a rant. I don't need to recap everything we've already said every time we want to make a point. It's not CNN coverage of the election.

<comment><USER2> You are mistaking a tantrum for a rant.

Your post told me about your position on this subject, and showed how little you understand it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah yes, my 500 words imparted to you a full understanding of all my knowledge of the music industry - you insightful sage you.

<comment><USER2> You insightful sage, you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3>
      > particularly the older ones whose only sources
      > of income are album sales and licensing

I don't particularly have sympathy for people that feel that should profit for the rest of their lives off of their music. Either: 1) manage your money wisely when you're making buckets of it (instead of ending up broke when the gravy train stops) or 2) get a job when you stop making music.

I seriously doubt that anyone but big name artists are making any significant amount of money from royalties on catalog albums.

<comment><AUTHOR> It takes more than the few hours you're in the studio to hone the craft and create that art - why shouldn't you be compensated for as long as it's a product people want?

Nobody needs your sympathy. They need you to either buy the product, or refrain from using it. It's a very simple arrangement.

<comment><USER3>
      > why shouldn't you be compensated for as long as
      > it's a product people want

Even 70 years after the author is dead and gone? I'm not advocating copyright abolishment, but I sure as hell think that something as short as 15 - 20 years (from creation) would be reasonable for copyright. Saying that someone is _entitled_ to still get money into their estate for years and years after they are dead and gone is ridiculous.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would be fine with a lifetime copyright, or 20 years, whatever is longer. If you're still alive, you ought to have rights. If you die 2 years after creating something, your family ought to get something for your "property". Obviously, though, very little of what we're talking about in this discussion is 70 years old. Led Zeppelin doesn't tour anymore. They should still be making money from their copyrighted material.

<comment><USER3>
      > Led Zeppelin doesn't tour anymore. They should
      > still be making money from their copyrighted material.

Why? What's wrong with a hard 20-year cut-off? It's not like they would lose copyright on newly created merchandise, just on their older recordings. If they _really_ wanted to, they could compensate for the lack of copyright on the older recordings by re-recording.

      > Obviously, though, very little of what we're talking
      > about in this discussion is 70 years old

The Birthday Song is a good example of something that doesn't need to be under copyright anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> The ability of an artist to make successful and popular music for the whole of their lives is next to impossible, as cultures change and the older generations don't necessarily adapt to what's popular. Why should they? Do you want your Grandma making Hip Hop videos? Meanwhile, some artists created a product during their professional lives that continues to generate revenue into their golden years. Why should we tell them - yeah, people still buy your albums but they're public property now. What about your ability to make money? Hmmm...See if people will buy the new version WITHOUT John Bonham. They won't buy it? Oh, then here is your Social Security check.

The Birthday Song, on the other hand, I agree with. It's like the Q-Tip/Kleenex trademarks. It should be deemed too damn popular to prevent its use in things like TV shows or restaurants. I know...I'm a contradicting hypocrite. Sue me.

<comment><USER3> I think the flaw in your reasoning here is that people should get money for their work until they die. That's a ridiculous notion. The logic:

      > As long as people continue to derive value from
      > something, the creator deserves to get revenue

Fails on a number of fronts:

* Scientists/academics contribute to the whole of human knowledge, and arguably advance us more as a race than rock stars do, yet I don't see you arguing that they should be able to license their ideas and wring revenue out of each an everyone until 70 years after they are dead. If this was the case, I would need to pay money to the estate of Albert Einstein every time I wanted to use "E = mc^2."

* If I hire a plumber to fix my pipes, I arguably derive value from having functional plumbing from that point on into the future. Should plumbers be able to collect licensing fees for that?

      > Do you want your Grandma making Hip Hop videos?

Thanks for trying to appeal to emotion rather than logic. I'm sure your arguments had merit at some point, but you've gone off the rails and are a stone's throw away from resorting to personal attacks to get your message across.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, the issue here is that you're confusing the premise of the argument. The logic is:

      > As long as people continue to purchase or commercially use a product
      > the creator deserves to get their share of the revenue.

Nobody brought up scientists and I don't know enough about that to have an opinion. The obvious difference is that Einstein observed/discovered "E = mc^2", he didn't create it. But there is just no point in comparing apples to oranges.

The problem with your plumber argument is that, if he wanted to charge you less up front and a fee for each use of the faucet, that would be his and his customers' choice to make. As long as you pay the agreed upon fee to the plumber, whether it's a one time fee or a license, you and the plumber have agreed that it's a fair trade. You're arguing that, at some point, a person who previously did not purchase a person's song should suddenly have the right to own it at no cost, simply because the song has been around for over 20 years. Why should this new person have that right?

The Grandma point was just to demonstrate that popular, high-selling music is usually made by the younger generation. If someone creates something during that time that continues to produce revenue, why should we insist that they no longer make money for it and force them to learn a new trade, since it's very impractical to assume that they, at their age, can continue to make popular music for an audience they're out of touch with?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the author ignores the elephant in the room: RIAA being part of the labels share > the artists share - ever! So torrenting a track/disc/anthology _monetarily_ hurts the labels more.

However, it hurts the artists disproportionately more, but this is because artists get a paltry amount anyway. So they get less or none of their $.35, but labels get none of their $15.

My hope for all this is that artists will just empower themselves and use the newer channels of distribution the internet offers. I can't in the least bit, after all their congressional lobbying to restrict the public rights and expand their corrupt initiatives, feel bad - ever - for the RIAA or labels. Everyone knows their fat, lumbering, dinosaurs..

<comment><AUTHOR> Nobody is saying you need to be chums with the RIAA. What I'm saying is pirating music because you think the RIAA deserves what they get is like punishing a corrupt business leader by locking the doors and burning the building with the employees stuck inside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "...enjoy enough to steal". Piracy != Theft. Say what you will about the economics or morals of piracy, but don't say it's theft. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement>

<comment><AUTHOR> You can argue semantics all you want. To rely on the definition of theft as an argument while saying it should instead be called something that is described as an act of war that usually involves robbery seems like a pretty weak defense.

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

<comment><USER5> I suppose I agree with you: piracy is an equally poor description of digital copyright infringement. Note I am not defending copyright infringement. Still, theft it is not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Note the author's confusion of "millions of artists" and RIAA. You're not giving the middle-finger to the RIAA, you're giving it to the artits. Ha ha ha.

</comment><comment><USER7> HA! Most people don't think about the fact that buying McDonalds' food costs money, and so does download an episode of something legally. To them though, food has value, the episode is digital and thus free. Its a weird outlook on things.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an understandable issue of perception because so many content owners are willing to give things away. And, many people don't even know what's legal and what's not. The problem is the attitude of entitlement that people have who clearly know the difference.</comment></comment>


"A form of search that depends on design" -- BooYarr - <AUTHOR> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8464 Here is my response to:
"Startup Ideas we would like to fund"
Particularly number 16: "A form of search that depends on design"
Try it out! It grows on you, trust me.
Any feedback would be appreciated!! <comment><USER2> Read the entire EULA before you install. It's pretty interesting.

"By sending BooYarr any information, material or communication (User Submissions) or posting User Submissions anywhere on the Site, You grant BooYarr a worldwide, unrestricted, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, copy, reproduce, display, perform, modify, prepare derivative works of, translate, transmit and distribute those User Submissions, and You also agree that BooYarr is free to use anyideas, concepts, know-how or techniques included in User Submissions for any purpose."

<comment><AUTHOR> I have removed that (scary paragraph) from the EULA.

I completely forgot to read over this more carefully and apologize. Laziness on my behalf.

I will be working on getting a more accurate EULA up and running asap.

Just note, I do not track search queries at all!! Its really no interest at all to me!!

I have put this extension together rather quickly, perhaps a bit to quickly!!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey people, This is my response to a new form of search that depends on design. It's pretty different to anything I have seen, it does take a bit of getting use to but once you do it's really quiet fast and useful. Appreciate any feedback!! Thanks

</comment><comment><USER3> What's with the huge smiley face taking up half the browser window?

<comment><AUTHOR> Best image I could find at the time....

<comment><USER4> Aah, just looking at the screen shots, I thought that was the design that this "new form of search that depends on design" depended on...</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you go about asking someone for ownership of their domain? - <AUTHOR>

I have this absolutely amazing idea I am going to run with, but someone owns the domain already and I want to get it from them for exchange of services instead of money.
I don't have any money, but I am willing to exchange services or even include the organization in my start-up idea.
The domain is www.tracklete.com.
Got any ideas how I could present it to the organization? <comment><USER2> From looking at the current site, it seems "the organization" is one guy who never got any further than spending a saturday afternoon editing some html in notepad.

I would argue that most "absolutely amazing ideas" can exist on any domain, so there is no "the domain" in this case. There IS a domain currently registered that is probably more fitting to your idea than registering some iteration of "mydmnhsnvwls" or something.

If I were you, I'd probably start running with your idea and implement whatever you're going to implement. Petition the current owner of this domain to transfer it to you for a reasonable fee. Since the current domain appears to be setup as some kind of track and field scholarship/fundraiser site, maybe you could make an offer for $xxx.yy and a donation of $xxxxx.yy some time in the future when you reach a goal of profitability or sales or whatever. Appeal to what the current owner appeared to want to achieve, but never did.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your right, but a catchy name does help. Like I said, I have no money, but right now I do agree I should run with the idea and buy the domain alter from him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I work with a non-profit organization called Kate's Club (www.katesclub.org). Until recently, however, www.katesclub.com was owned by a guy who was using it for erotic images, and we received more than a few complaints about this. A friend of mine emailed the site owner and said he'd like to purchase the domain, and the guy responded with a relatively high price. The owner asked what he needed the domain for, and when he told him, the owner gave him the domain for 1/10th of what he originally asked.

I suggest you present your idea and motives to him, however you might not want to mention that you're planning on making a whole lot of money or he may hold that against you. Come at him with a price and see how he responds. It doesn't look like this site has been maintained nor does it appear to be making any money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for this advice. I gave him my ideas, now im going to see what he says.</comment></comment>


Thinking the Way Animals Do (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html <comment><USER3> It would be interesting to hear what Dr. Grandin has to say on _" What it's like to be a bat"_:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_it_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_it_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F)

</comment><comment><USER4> She gave a wonderful talk at google in 2014 about the different ways humans conceptualize the understanding their surrounding world and how her thought process differs from that of non-autistic people.

"The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum" [60min]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA4tE3_2qmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA4tE3_2qmI)

<comment><USER5> So I notice that her brain has been scanned and a careful analysis has been performed to detect differences relating to the areas she exhibits strengths in, and also the biological roots for some of her struggles.

It sounds like it was part of an elaborate project, but what was it, and how did the organzers arrive at the decision to approach and invite her to the study? Or did she hear about it, and ask to participate as a matter of curiosity?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Asa person with autism, it is easy for me to understand how animals think because my thinking processes are like an animal 's._

this is either trite (in that all humans are animals), or an extremely bold claim indeed.

<comment><USER7> That's her thing. She has made a living consulting on animal behaviour for the design of animal handling processes such as slaughterhouses. She was good at it and people valued her insight into small details that would bother the animals. She also writes about her experience being autistic and her ideas about cognition from her unusual perspective.

I have met her and had a chance to chat, have lunch, etc, and hear her give a technical talk on designing animal handling systems. She's very smart, competent and confident. Her autism makes her quite a strange person to hang out with. Her overly bold statements and confidence could be part of that, but it's not so unusual for professors, writers and similar types to behave that way.

But she honestly believes she is missing some of the particular human stuff, while still being very bright, and thus has unusual intuition into non-human animal cognition. It's hard to provide evidence for this, of course.

In summary: not trite at all, but indeed a bold, interesting and controversial claim.

(Edit, caveat: I last met her 19 years ago and have not kept up with her work since)

<comment><USER8> I think it's no coincidence she specifically works on animals in /captivity/, her public talks basically start with how she was "broken in" like a wild animal as a child having to learn to act like a "normal" person.

<comment><USER9> I always assumed that her objective in working with captive and doomed-for- slaughter animals is that they're the biggest opportunities for mitigating harm. Not sure where I got that idea, maybe just guilt over not being vegan myself.

<comment><USER7> Another simple explanation is that there is a large industry around domestic animals, with consulting opportunities that don't exist for wild animals.

I don't doubt that improving welfare is important to Grandin, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tangential, but if you would like to learn more about her life, there is a movie entitled "Temple Grandin" ([http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1278469/](http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1278469/)). I found it inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER11> Fascinating, eye-opening article.

As a child, I used to have vivid imagination, vivid dreams, be afraid of silly things such as fear literal ghosts that could live in our (dark) corridor, at the attic or the shed on the far side of the garden. I remember taking more pleasure in playing, reading, interacting with other people, playing computer games, telling jokes (I used to be good at this), being more open, having many more friends.

In recent years I found few things give me pleasure, I very rarely remember my dreams, I can't really get into PnP RPG sessions because I have hard time visualizing what's happening, I have practically no friends, low stress resistance, affinity for vector graphics rather than raster (bitmap) graphics. I'm looking for work as a programmer. Emotionally, I'm an unhappy person. I'm barely even scared by horror movies (I never watched them until recently - <USER2> was too afraid as a child). I tend to watch "strong" movies, often thrillers, because they make me feel _something_ , unlike most other movies. Girls stay away from me because they think I'm cold and emotionless, even call me a psycho.

This year, I've been diagnosed with Schizoid Personality Disorder. It boils down to I'm very uncomfortable showing emotions, and even _feeling_ emotions. I avoid situations (even watching certain movies) which make me feel emotion. I won't go into detail but SPD is a very good description of how I feel.

This article makes me realize what happened to me as I grew up. To a degree it's common in all people - moving from a affective, visual kind of mind to a more verbal kind of mind. In me, it's pushed to an unhealthy extreme and causing me unhappiness. My psychiatrist told me what, this article is the missing piece of the puzzle as it tells me why and how.

Some people have an affinity for drawing, and raster/bitmap graphics which is a lot like it. I feel drawn towards vector graphics, SVG and Inkscape because I can utilize my analitycal mind and verbal thinking. With vector, you throw down some shapes and deform them. It's more like sculpting in clay or play- dough than drawing!

But I digress. Now I know how to move in the opposite direction, towards child-like imagination and the times I miss so much. Call it regress if you like. Away from depression, lack of friends, lack of purpose in life. Don't repress emotion, learn to express it. Take singing and/or dancing lessons, something I used to be deathly scared of (until I had an insight: I had to endure much worse things). Exercise my imagination the way I exercise my programming skills and work out. Do more vector graphics (they look cool in a github README.rst), but also try to learn drawing the old-school way. A couple of women, not asked, have told me I have a nice voice. I like fantasy and SF, why would I NOT record some audiobooks ? I can focus on short stories that are no longer copyrighted. I lived in a world of irrational fears. People don't care about me if they can't have a use of me, so they won't remember my antics.

<comment><USER12> I too found the article fascinating, along with your comment. My reaction is that in your openness, you exhibit a bravery and presence of mind that I admire.

<comment><USER11> Because I don't like where my life has been going and intend to change it. It's like watching life from the sidelines, and people distancing themselves from you one by one. I suffered much and realized it was much worse than the effort of working on myself and trying once more. Very little to lose. I suspect the biggest change in my attitude came when I started working out - the dopamine kick pulled me from depression(not the only factor, but the largest contributor) and I only have mild symptoms now. Later, my psychiatrist literally told me to never stop working out. That's more encouragement than I got from my physician (and my health requires regular exercise).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The degree to which people take everything this person says at face value is astounding.

<comment><USER9> Even if she's full of it (which is unlikely if she's a professor at a well- known university in the USA), she is probably doing net good in the world by getting people to even consider that animals, especially ones that they eat or rely on for physical labor, might think and feel in the first place.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth it to work as a software engineer at a hedgefund? - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
I currently work at one of the large tech companies in the bay are and have received a very luxurious offer from an east coast hedgefund to be a software engineer. Both the problems and the offer are very tempting, but I'm worried about leaving my friends in California and the long hours.
Should I take the chance to get better and make money? How do I properly evaluate this? <comment><USER2> What s compensation Delta (normalized by the cost of living)? From experience unless we are talking very big raise , the added happiness gain by your new salary won't offset the stress of leaving your friends</comment>


Laminar – lightweight continuous integration - <AUTHOR> https://laminar.ohwg.net/ <comment><USER2> Simplicity in CI is what werden all need,thanks for that.

... but. Wtf. Triggering job dependent on exit code?!</comment>


Procedurally Generating Life Stories of Fruit Flies Across Generations - <AUTHOR> https://theinvisiblecityproject.com/2018-10-13.html <comment><USER2> The underlying article for this post is interesting, too.

[http://www.freeholdgames.com/papers/Generation_of_mythic_bio...](http://www.freeholdgames.com/papers/Generation_of_mythic_biographies_in_Cavesofqud.pdf)

I'd love to have more time in the universe and the computing power to not look at the information transfer or the number of degrees of separation but to consider how those connections were formed. What could we learn about human relations by investigating the chain of connections of millions of humans? I'm certain it would give huge insights into how we could generate fictional narratives that are richer, also, but that would be the least.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your Work From Home setup - <AUTHOR> Since the pandemic started, I am working from home 100% (like a lot of others). Initially, I just created ad-hoc work place, with table and chair I have at home.
Now I want to make a proper WFH setup, thinking about furniture, monitor holders, laptop stand, keyboard, mouse etc.
What is your favorite (home or office) setup, what are essential things for your productivity and what are nice to have? <comment><USER2> CloudNine Mechanical Keyboard - Very similar to Microsoft Ergo 4000. Ultrawide monitor. USB webcam. USB switch to switch between sending peripherals to my personal desktop or my work laptop. Wacom tablet. Electric standing desk with 4 programmable heights. Dedicated room for home office with lots of windows looking over a lake. Lots of green and blue in my vision until I have to pull the shades later in the day.

<comment><USER3> Which standing desk do you have?

<comment><USER2> Wish I could tell you. There are no brand markings on it and I don't see anything about it in my inbox or my amazon order history. Odd. It was just the frame, so I had to order a top separately. I looked for one that could go as low as possible, and I found one that would go to 24 inches. When sitting, I want the keyboard as close to my lap height as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My work from home and work on the road setup is a yoga mat. I found that my shoulder and back health were severely degrading after years of sitting and despite daily physical exercise, and this was the only solution that reversed that pattern for me.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a desk with a personal desktop and a basic computer chair. I can put my laptop on top of the keyboard when sitting or put it on top of my desktop tower to stand. I have an antifatige mat for standing since the floor is not carpet.

I think a dual monitor setup could be the only thing that would improve my setup. I haven't gotten around to setting up my desktop monitor to work with the laptop.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's one law professor's setup. I thought the telepromter was a nice touch if you have to do a lot of presentations. [https://reason.com/2020/05/24/my- new-eight-monitor-display/](https://reason.com/2020/05/24/my-new-eight- monitor-display/)

<comment><AUTHOR> that's one hell of a setup

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wrote about my favorite setups at [https://bestwfh.com/best-work-from-home- setups/](https://bestwfh.com/best-work-from-home-setups/). It was quite an interesting journey of discovery.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow, there are already platforms that cover this topic. Cool, thanks for posting it

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _what are essential things for your productivity_

Interesting problems to solve.

<comment><USER8> How does WFH factor into that?

<comment><USER7> I was already WFH, so as far as the setup nothing has changed.

I worked with several very productive people, and not one of them cared about workplace setups. I remember I asked my boss (the founder of a company which later got sold for half a billion) why doesn't he get an external monitor, and he said alt-tab works good enough for him. All he needed was his laptop and a place to sit. He seemed to be equally comfortable working at home, in the office, or on the plane.

If I'm interested in what I'm doing I will be productive. If not, no setup will help.

<comment><AUTHOR> You've got a valid point, you need to have an interest, to be productive. But there is nothing bad imho, in making life easier, ride more pleasant in the process, and if better home or work office setup makes it so, then why not.

If you are working from home already, I guess you already have some kind of setup, that you have developed over the years, I am genuinely interested in that (maybe i can find something interesting for me)

<comment><USER7> Sure, I've spent a lot of time and money on my setup, but at the end I realize that it does not make much difference - even in terms of enjoyment. You get used to whatever you have.

I got Uplift bamboo desk, Leap chair, and two PG27UQ monitors. MX Keys keyboard and MX Master 3 mouse. HD 600 headphones. Brio 4k webcam.

But sometimes I take my macbook to a library, and I'm just as comfortable working there without any of those things I have at home.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Civilization: 25 years, 33M copies sold, 1B hours played, and 66 versions - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/18/civilization-25-years-66-versions-33m-copies-sold-1-billion-hours-played/ <comment><USER2> I started playing civilization when I was 12 or 13 (Civilization 1), and still, to this day, the closest thing I have to meditation is playing Civ V.

I travel a decent amount, and one of my great joys is being on a plane _without_ wifi but _with_ inseat power (Civ V on the mac is a ridiculous power hog), and knowing that I've got X hours of civilization to play with no one to bother me.

My strategy isn't great, I have everything set to Random, and I just drop into whatever situation and work it. At the end of a flight, I close that scenario, and rarely pick it back up - I start a new one. And I feel relaxed and my mind is clear. It's amazing.

<comment><USER3> not sure if it's just because I'm older and less into gaming, but civ5 seems markedly less fun as a game than civ1 and civ2 were. I just couldn't get into it, and I used to spend entire nights on the older games.

<comment><USER4> Did you ever play 4? Was the best one, IMO.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. Civ 4 with Beyond the Sword was the pinnacle of the series I think.

Thousands of hours I lost in that game.

<comment><USER6> I prefer Alpha Centauri and Civ 3.

MOO2 was much more to my liking. (I still play it)

Civ end game are just ___brutally boring_ __and just never really wanted to finish them. The start and middle were the best parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nobody else has mentioned this, but something Civ has taught me is how to appreciate realpolitik. Nothing makes it more clear than when you catch yourself having thoughts like:

\- "Washington spawned too close for comfort; they're a threat to my peoples' long term security. Annihilate them first."

\- "Hmm, the Mayans have some strategically valuable territory..."

\- "Hey, the Persians are way back in the Renaissance, while I'm in the modern era, and they have luxuries I need. Let's send a few battleships over there."

<comment><USER8> If you're interested in realpolitik in games, I'd like to recommend the excellent Crusader Kings II game and its DLC. You play as a feudal ruler, and find your character plotting murders, marrying off daughters, and conspiring for claims to titles.

<comment><USER9> Then you'll end up trading those normal realpolitik thoughts for "I'll marry my heir off to my sister because she's a genius", "I'll just have these 5 children assassinated for their father's land". Choose your own poison.

<comment><USER10> Ideally you choose their poison, not your own.

Unless you want to commit suicide to be able to bring your strong, genius heir to power.

<comment><USER11> Gotta get the Depressed trait first for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I highly prefer Colonization to all the Civilization episodes I have played. Colonization feels more focused, more tangible, and yet still manages to be a great management game with credible threats with multiple parties: natives trying to fight back for their land, other European powers trying to establish successful colonies on their own, and ultimately the royal power you will fight against to secure your Freedom. The tension gets really high, really quick. And there is no "shortcut" you can take to have a technological advance versus your enemies.

<comment><USER13> Too bad they kind of missed the mark with the Civ 4-engined reboot.

The only really unbalanced part of the original was if you happened to land in a temperate area with lots of beavers, friendly Indians with the Fur Trapper training, and managed to roll Henry Hudson for the first Continental Congress member. Very quickly you could start churning out full stacks of furs and basically printing money that would allow you to buy specialists, cannon, ships and supplies.

<comment><USER12> Yeah the Civ4-reboot was awful. Or at least, it was just a recreation of the original without any addition while it could have been a great opportunity to build on it.

> The only really unbalanced part of the original was if you happened to land > in a temperate area with lots of beavers

Sure - there are actually many ways to make money fast, but they also have a system that rebalances prices back in Europe when you sell too much of the same thing (price fall) - this forces you to diversify your production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazing series.

I still recall being able to recount all of the 7 wonders, all of the large Greek city states, and all that other countless historical context that the developers packed into the game that gave me a slight leg up in middle school history class.

And of course I'll encourage my children to play someday. No childhood is complete without having to fight back Gandhi's unrelenting hordes of musketmen with stealth bombers.

<comment><USER15> It would be remiss to mention Civilization and Gandhi on a tech site without discussing _why_ he was such a crazy warmonger.

In the original Civilization, Gandhi's "aggression" rating was set to 1 to make him a pacifist. Except that when a civilization adopted the Democracy form of government, this reduced the leader's aggression rating by 2. The ratings were unsigned, so this wrapped around and gave Gandhi an "aggression" rating of 255 once he adopted Democracy. Oopsie.

<comment><USER16> It's also worth pointing out that apparently in some later editions of the game they have reimplemented this bug as a joke. (Not a very good joke, IMO.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I came perilously close to failing several university assignments thanks to an unhealthy obsession with original Civ. And I loved every minute of it.

I still play the newer versions now and then, but the original stands out as a paragon of game design. It was grid based, so unit movement was easy with keystrokes. That along with hot keys for everything meant that you could play a complete game without a mouse. This was particularly useful at keeping the endgame speedy. Something that I think is missing in later versions.

<comment><USER18> 1B hours played. Think about your experience with a couple hundred hours, and then multiply that by a few million similar instances - how much productivity has been lost? Or how much history has been learned, friendships built, and strategy developed? Similarly, how many billions of hours have been spent browsing Facebook, for better or worse?

I think one of the most important ethical questions we can ask ourselves is how can we write great gaming, working, and social networking software that has a net positive effect on the world through the hours that are spent in it.

<comment><USER17> You have a fair point in regards to responsibility. I'm guessing that I think similiarly to you that these experiences are subjective?

One person's addiction with a 4x strategy game is another's gateway into a lifelong fascination with building complex information systems. One person's compulsive Facebook checking leading to depression is another's connection with family members when they're working overseas.

There is an ethical responsibility in creating technology, but there are many shades of grey in how people use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My favorite thing about Civ is that its creator has kept control over it, and continues to evolve it. We'll probably be enjoying a new Civ in 2026. The charm is that it's the same game in many respects — parts evolve, but the core remains.

This seems unusual; I can point to several popular 90's games that peaked there and never recovered (Roller Coaster Tycoon, Age of Empires II, and arguably SimCity 4 if you include the early naughts). I wonder why; as a player, the Civ model seems preferable (you always have modern versions and new, but not heretical, variety).

<comment><USER20> Strategy games in general seem to have hit a slump for some reason.

<comment><USER21> Yeah sadly. More game developers changed to "console first" or "mobile first". Streamlined casual gameplay pay to win / free to play and the lack of a precise input device (mouse) on consoles almost killed the former very popular PC strategy games segment.

Civ, SC and Anno barely survived that trend in some streamlined form or another. I am still playing old perls from Age of Empires, Roller Coaster Tycoon, SimCity, Command & Conquer, Empire Earth, Settler, Industry Giant, etc series. The PC strategy game era I am familar with was between 1990 and 2005. The good thing all software still works and 2D graphics of some titles is good enough and aged better than early 3D graphics. And C&C Generals, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, Age of Mythology and Age of Empires 3 still look very good, 12-15 years later.

<rant>It's like Crysis 1 from 2007 and GTA 4 from 2008 are still top notch, and can be compared with the best titles in 2015 like GTA 5 PC and AC Unity. No wonder with all the stagnation that highend GPU on 2k is running on just 25% load these days.</rant>

<comment><USER22> There are hopeful signs that this is starting to change. The 2012 XCOM title has a more console-friendly interface (it plays better with a controller) and has a great mobile port (the iOS version is mechanically identical to the PC game, and is only missing a few maps and graphical flair). Yes, that title is streamlined, but that streamlining sanded off the rougher edges of the 1990s games (especially in the tactical mode, where managing time units was a constant pain).

<comment><USER21> Sorry, but you wrote 180 degree opposite response to what I actually wrote.

The problem I see is a lack of strategy games, especiall real time strategy games that are not trying to clone Star Craft 2 (like 10 SciFi clones, boring!). And the casualization and streamlining of gameplay makes it pointless for real core PC game players. PC games of the 1990s and 2000s had a great PC UI, I don't want dumbed down UIs and gameplay of bad console ports. I want micro management and real time gameplay like in the games mentioned in my previous comment. (The same goes for console players who don't want to do micro management of single small units with a controller, that's why console strategy games aren't very popular and have different gameplay.)

<comment><USER22> There's a difference between streamlining useless micromanagement and removing gameplay mechanics.

To use XCOM as an example:

The 1994 game featured a time unit stat. You would have to measure out, manually, the number of tiles you would move past, multiply that by four (the amount of TU moving one tile would take), add two if you were kneeling at the start of the turn, subtract two from the available total if you wanted to kneel at the end of the turn, and subtract from the available total the number of TU necessary for the number of shots (or reaction shots) you wanted to take. On top of that, there were three different shot types (an aimed shot that would take up almost all TUs, an auto shot that would take up about half of the available TUs, and a snap shot that'd only take up about a quarter but also maxed out at a 20% chance to hit, making it mostly useless). This process and complexity was not fun, especially since the UI didn't make it easy to count the tiles you'd be moving.

The 2012 removed TU and replaced it with a few systems. For moving, you have a pair of lines that marked a move or a dash. A basic move allows for a shot (either on-command or as a reaction), while the dash would extend range (and could be coupled with a shot based on a class-specific ability). A single character move takes seconds instead of minutes, regardless of the platform. It took an overly-complex mechanic, simplified it, and made it more fun.

Civ 4 vs Civ Revolution. Civ Rev combat is simplified in a bad way -- it's build a giant stack of combined "army" units and whittle away at your opponent, with combat resolved by die rolls and modifiers rather than unit attributes.

It's worth noting that the new XCOM was developed by creating a board game; measuring distance is common in tabletop war games (think Warhammer and its ilk).

In my mind, it's a suitable like-for-like replacement of TUs (you still have to balance movement, exposing the map, etc., with firepower) with an implementation that requires less fiddling with the UI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've played 1-5 extensively and Civ III is the most fun by far.

Anyone know how I can get Civ III on a Mac?

It's been "not available" here forever: [http://www.aspyr.com/games/sid- meiers-civilization-iii-compl...](http://www.aspyr.com/games/sid-meiers- civilization-iii-complete)

I've tried playing the Windows version via Parallels but it fails out during load.

<comment><USER24> Have you tried it with Wine? Wineskin ([http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/](http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/)) lets you package Wine installs as self-contained Mac apps, which takes most of the hassle out of it.

<comment><USER23> I will give it a go!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Gods the amount of time i spent on civ.

But didnt that article seem to stop all of a sudden? I checked twice on my phone to see if i missed a more button.

Didnt civ 4 get an award for audio?(and i loved the music on 4, was so disappointed with 5s audio), the article left me with a , meh, what about. . . ! for so many things.

Being only 32 i would imagine a great article to show me things i didnt know.

Sigh. The temptation to play more right now is strong, but i need to get this work done :-)

<comment><USER20> Baba Yetu, the theme song of Civ 4, was the first video game-related song to win a Grammy. Rightfully so too, in my opinion.

<comment><USER25> Thats the name of it. I need to listen again soon. So relaxing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> free & opensource version: [http://www.freeciv.org/](http://www.freeciv.org/)

web version: [https://play.freeciv.org/](https://play.freeciv.org/)

<comment><USER27> You should also check out the first Master of Orion. The origin of the 4X name, and still one of the best examples of the genre.

(There are fan-made patches available. Make sure to get them.)

<comment><USER28> Also worth mentioning Master of Magic. It's Civilization I with spells.

<comment><USER29> Yes! And get the Caster of Magic fan-made patch[0]. It fixes a ton of bugs and rebalances the game in some dramatic ways. The author has had to severely tone down the bonuses the AI gets at higher difficulty levels and it still feels way more difficult than the original game! I've got several of my friends hooked on this new version, we just can't seem to get enough!

[0] [http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=7751](http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=7751)

<comment><USER30> From the description, it's a pretty severe revamp of the game. Do you think it is justified? Also, I wonder, how did he go about improving the AI: it's a closed source game, after all.

<comment><USER29> _Do you think it is justified?_

After playing a lot of it, the answer is: totally! The original game has some pretty severe balance problems: tons of spells are so underpowered that you never cast them and generally avoid researching them. Most of the units in the original game have so much resistance that nearly all of the unit curse spells have little or no effect on them. The disparity between the realms of magic was also way too high on the original game.

 _Also, I wonder, how did he go about improving the AI_

With a hex editor. A bunch of the AI code in the original game is decently well written. The problem is that the game has tables of hard-coded priorities for things like spells, units, buffs, etc. that are way out of whack. His detailed changelogs go over the hundreds of adjustments he's made to these priority values.

He also just fixed a whole bunch of straight bugs with the AI. Some examples: it would cast spells without a valid target (wasting mana and spellcasting skill), build and disband units repeatedly, miscalculate combat odds and then carry out an attack that had no chance of succeeding, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My father still plays civ 1. His windows 94 broke down a number of years ago. He was so sad about not having civ 1 so I set the game up for him in dosbox.

<comment><USER32> I get the appeal of simplicity,but why not try newer-but-still-simple Civ like Revolutions or something?

<comment><USER33> Revolutions was too simple for my taste.

<comment><USER32> Yes, but we're talking about Civ 1. Civ 1 is also much simpler than the modern games. Revolutions I thought was a good distilling of the Civ mechanics.

<comment><USER33> Civ 1 still felt deeper to me then rev. It was ok, but I would have preferred a mobile version of Civ 1 instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Played the original Civilization on an Amiga and have played every release since (including CivNet).

Civilization II was easily the best game in the series. It's sad that Civ V, as pretty as it is, is so freaking horrible.

<comment><USER35> Let me guess, II was the first you played? Everybody has a special attachment to the first one they got addicted too.

In my opinion II was the worst of the five. It was basically the same as the first with more of everything. More techs, more unit types et cetera. Didn't really add anything to the game except make it longer. It meant you couldn't finish a game in a single sitting which really lessened the appeal to me.

Starting with III they started added more dimensions like religion and culture. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't but I appreciated exploring how strategies changed.

Edit: did a really poor job of reading your post or else you edited it. Oh well, just pretend my comment stands alone, please.

<comment><USER36> In my opinion, each civ built on the last, until 5 plummeted the interest factor. Played 1 first.

<comment><USER37> Same, I've played a lot of 1,2 and 3, but 4 was ridiculously deep and well balanced. Never got past Prince.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In my opinion this is the best game humanity ever managed to design. I've never played anything that I've enjoyed more.

</comment><comment><USER38> The way Civ let you email a multiplayer round was awesome when connectivity was an issue.

<comment><USER39> Lots of similar BBS games, like some versions of Empire for example [1], supported "play by mail" in various forms so they could be played on custom clients offline followed by uploading the moves.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> After I graduated to dwarf fortress, I never looked back.

</comment><comment> Smircio- Im still trying to tell myself that the time played clock is because I left it open all night on accident... a few times...I didnt.

</comment><comment><USER41> Sid Meier's Civilization V

You've Played 786 hours

Last Played Today

</comment><comment><USER42> By far the game I wasted the most time in my life :) Managed to kill my addiction and stop after Civ 4.

<comment><USER43> I haven't been able to kick the Civ habit completely, but I indulge much less frequently then I did back in college.

I have told my coworkers though, if I come into work in the morning and look red-eyed and tired, its probably not because I was up late drinking last night. Its because I made the terrible decision to fire up a game of Civ at 9pm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> One of the greatest games of all time - recently added windows 10, bootcamp, virtualbox... just to be able to re-enjoy the original classic version again. Future versions don't do justice to the original.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think Civ.Net was the first game I played on the internet against someone I didn't already knew. Could have been early 1996.

It wasn't the best gaming experience though. Each turn took like forever (well, minutes), after a few hours we had to pause the game and agree on when to continue the next day.

Still, finding an opponent "on demand" was something that did hint about what was to come later.

(well, there were BBS "door games" earlier, but not really "real time" in the same way)

</comment><comment><USER46> I like how so many of the posts in this thread are "[this one] was the best!", but I'm pretty sure I've seen all 5 of the main games held up and possibly one about Alpha Centauri too.

I'm sure when Civ 6 comes out we'll have people complaining because it's not like 5 or 4 or whichever one was their favorite, but I like that they change every time. If I wanted to buy a new game every year that was the same as the previous one, I'd be playing Madden.

<comment><USER47> All the Civ games are great on their own right. I know people that still prefer 1, 2, 3 or 4.

The main reason I currently play only 5/BE is their far superior graphics and interface. And no stacks of doom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The Civ series has always been on my radar as they seem to be quite interesting games. I remember going through the tutorials of either 4 or 5 but I never really got hooked. Not for a lack of trying, but I just didn't know what to do in the games. I always felt like I needed more guidance or something. Are there guides out there to help learn how to play these games? I might try 5 again after reading this!

</comment><comment><USER49> Count me in as another person who was hopelessly addicted as a kid. I remember one summer in middle school I would hit the power button on my PC and play this game until dinner. What's different about this game was that I would play it and not feel bad that I spent so much time doing it. Few games are like that for me today. This has to be one of the best dynamic puzzle or strategy games of all time.

</comment><comment><USER50> My first intro to overrun bugs. I couldn't otherwise have found myself yelling "effing Ghandi" so often.

</comment><comment><USER51> Civ is hella fun but it doesn't scale well - massive games become untenable due to app slowness and memory footprint.

I think this is in part due to Civ's design of each player gets all their moves consecutively, rather than in parallel. Although it would change gameplay Civ could take advantage of multi cpu by either staging decision trees based on likely actions taken by the player and other civilizations or creating multiple rounds of actions in each turn which are executed in parallel.

This would have the added advantage - if "they" chose to code it this way - for hardcore civ players to offload compute to AWS or other services. I would love to crank up a world domination Civ game with 50+ entities that doesn't take minutes per turn.

Wishful thinking for Civ VI but there you go.

<comment><USER52> Yeah they should also use Node.js to make it more async and MongoDB for webscale.

<comment><USER51> Sarcasm doesn't become you. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I hate to think how many of those hours I am responsible for...

</comment><comment><USER54> You can see the video here:

[https://youtu.be/SPmKCh5BOjo?t=1991](https://youtu.be/SPmKCh5BOjo?t=1991)

<comment><USER55> It's private.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> All I want is an orthogonal perspective UI with Civ I or Civ II rules, minus Civ I's bugs. I find the freeciv angled view unusable.

</comment><comment><USER57> Does anyone have a good suggestion for the most civilization like game for iOS?

<comment><USER58> Well, there is Civilization Revolution 2 for iOS which is a nice squares based remake of the series.

<comment><USER22> It's really not the same. Research, city management, and combat are nowhere near the level of complexity a Civ game really needs to shine.

Combat boils down to Civ 4-era "stacks of doom", only after the early game you need to build 3 of every unit to combine them into an army of that unit. From there, it's building the biggest stack of doom and ranking up units the highest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Civ I is impressive, even to todays standards (mobile gaming)

</comment><comment><USER60> The serie in its latest iteration is hugely underwhelming.

</comment><comment><USER61> I used to play Civilization II... damn I feel old.

</comment><comment><USER62> first time heard of this, how does this compare to mindcraft? is this good for young kids?

</comment><comment><USER63> Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri are still the best balance of simplicity vs fussiness in my opinion. I like Civ 5 quite a lot but there's a lot of fussing about with the resources like horses or oil and there are a lot of edge-case city improvements.

<comment><USER64> Given the amount of fussing required to get the most of Supply Crawlers in SMAC, I'm surprised to hear that viewpoint.

Nevertheless, the scope of SMAC's vision continues to inspire: [https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/](https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/) is analysing the canon and implications from the various quotes and project videos.

<comment><USER63> You're right that the fussiness is there with supply crawlers and some of the terraforming options, but they can be ignored.

Civ 2 is pretty much perfect. Each terraform has 1 or 2 upgrades (road/railroad, irrigation/farmland, etc) and each city improvement serves an exact purpose with no "filler" improvements.</comment></comment></comment>


Tesla driver dies in burning Model S after hitting a tree - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2016/09/07/tesla-driver-dies-burning-model-s-hitting-tree-tesla-investigation/ <comment><USER2> According to Dutch news, firefighters could not enable the cars safety features to disable the power. Car was too badly damaged.

Driver was already dead when firefighters arrived. Took them eight hours before they could safely remove the body from the Tesla.

Tesla is investigating.</comment>


Why You Haven't Launched - <AUTHOR> http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/11/10/five-reasons-you-havent-launched/ <comment><USER2> 0\. You're truly not ready.

A recurring meme here (and almost everywhere else) is the equivalent of "Just Do It". Excellent advice, almost all the time. Almost. Except when it's terrible advice.

Yes, as someone who has suffered after launching too soon, I will go against prevailing wisdom and suggest the unthinkable, "Maybe you're really not ready and can do more harm than good by launching prematurely." Just a few of the bad things that can happen:

1\. People will visit once, see that it's crap and _never come back again_ , no matter what you do.

2\. You will be overwhelmed by support requirements to the extent that all development stops.

3\. You will be overwhelmed by support requirements to the extent that much support never gets addressed.

4\. Your calendar becomes science fiction; everything has changed and it's a whole new ballgame.

5\. The stress level will become so overwhelming for some of your people that you will simply lose them. Forever.

6\. If you have taken people's money and not delivered, the guilt can become so overwhelming that it cripples you.

7\. Your marathon has turned into a sprint you cannot finish. You have launched and lost.

I love the idea of pushing the envelope and launching sooner rather than later. You must have real world feedback and launching is best way to get it. But launching _too early_ early is just as bad as launching _too late_. So how do you know when the time is right? I don't have a definitive answer, but I do know that "your gut" is a critical input. Sooner or later, you just have to go with it.

<comment><USER3> _1\. People will visit once, see that it's crap and never come back again, no matter what you do._

Most of your cases are valid and important, but this point is unworthy of your concern. It's unbelievably hard to produce Internet content that is hated AND widespread. More often, crap is filtered and forgotten. Scroll to the bottom of any large HN thread to see what I mean - there's always a long tail of posts that are practically unread, some written by well-respected members of the community.

Irritating some fickle people is a small price to pay for getting feedback from someone who likes your idea.

<comment><USER4> Cuil.

<comment><USER5> Cuil didn't have the problem of people visiting once and never coming back again despite its amazing strides. It had the problem of being crap from start to finish. If Cuil had improved, I guarantee you most of the early visitors would have given it a second look.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So if I can't find the right idea in a month I should give up and become 'a lifer'?

I don't buy it.

The corollary of this is that every entrepreneur should be able to come up with an idea that will be a rock solid success _every_ month.

It is easy to come up with ideas, but successful ideas (whether the reason for the success is being first to a new market, a better implementation of an existing idea, or whatever reason turns a good idea into a successful idea) are hard to come by.

Superstar entrepreneurs may be able to come up with such ideas with such frequency.

But if you can't, you should give up? I don't think so.

<comment><USER7> The idea seems to be that it doesn't have to be the right idea, or a successful idea, but it does have to be an idea worth pursuing. If you don't have that, you'll just be spinning.

<comment><USER6> I guess an 'idea worth pursuing' needs to be good enough to overcome the fear associated with starting a startup. You need a strong belief in the idea if you have a lot of fear to overcome.

Maybe his point(1) is indirectly really about point(5) (for many of us)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The procrastination point is quite an obvious one. By way of cutting down on my HN time (as I don't play WoW), I've started using the pomodoro technique (<http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/>) to keep me focused on one thing at a time. So far it seems to be working quite well and I'm cutting down on my distractions.

What do other HN'ers use here to cut down on distractions and interruptions?

</comment><comment><USER9> Some valid points here, but I strongly disagree with No. 2 "You're Set on Doing Everything Yourself" for various reasons. So here's why I think you should do everything yourself, at least for the first time around. (If it's your second or third time around the block, some of these probably wont apply.)

1) _Constraints force innovation._ This could be taken several directions, but what I'm really trying to get at here is if you have very limited time and limited budget, you're forced to do only what is necessary and only add critical features to your product. A one-man bootstrapped startup probably won't have the time and funding to add every single feature, which is blessing in disguise - the product ships faster and doesn't have a bunch of crap that nobody wants.

2) _Nobody realizes your vision like you do._ Sure, other people could do some of the coding, design, and usability work for you, but who says those people will get it right? They don't see the product like you do, and that could make or break your vision. (This doesn't apply to dime-a-dozen skills like psd slicing).

3) _It's invaluable to learn new skillsets._ Maybe you aren't destined to be the world's greatest designer or code ninja, but learning these skills will enhance your understanding and communication down the road. Knowledge of these skills could certainly aid in hiring employees and could prevent you from getting burned in an outsource deal later on.

</comment><comment><USER10> No the real reason is: you can still w.nk yourself with the idea! (pardon my French) without the pain of taking care/answering real, demanding, not getting it, or plain indifferent (non)users. Until you have launched for real, you can dream of your beloved app/API/novel/idea/etc, that it will be so great, so new, so cool, everybody's going to be blown away and come to it in flocks. You can still dream in the Limbo. Once it's out ... the hard indifferent reality sets in. (Until that hockey stick curve of course ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> For me, it's a case of "You Have Launched, But No One Noticed", I launched TradesAlerts (<http://tradesalerts.com>) in Nov 2010, the first few days got a few users from HN and Facebook... in short -> no sign-up.

Looking at my Analytics stats, most of my visitors are from the USA, but my site is more Asia focused. So now, I'm working on a variation to make it more localized.

<comment> mike-cardwell Did you mean "Nov 2010" ? If so, I'm surprised you only gave it a few days before giving up and putting a "This is now a Closed site, consider joining the Forum instead." message up...

<comment><USER11> O... I'm not giving up, instead I'm working on a variation which overcome these issues;

\- Target Asian traffic instead USA traffic.

\- Try to convince users I'm not selling snake oil. It is not easy especially when the service can help investors make money. A common question I get is why then am I giving it away. People might think I'm trying to Pump and Dump the stocks.

So now, I am focusing my efforts on my friends and WOM instead. I hope by helping them, they can recommend potential customers to me. I feel that this approach might be more appropriate for this type of service.

Any feedbacks welcome. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've found the biggest distraction from getting a product launched so far is contracting.

Although it has meant I've got the cash now, so I'm bringing a guy on part- time through summer.

<comment><USER13> I had nowhere near 100% utilization (in consulting) between May 15th and October 15th but I didn't get a single line written for Appointment Reminder in that interim. I just couldn't find the mental bandwidth or the kick in the pants I needed to dig in and start writing out the full system ex-nihilio.

What eventually worked for me was getting myself about 2.5 months of a breather from all consulting commitments and getting BCC past the busy season. I've been able to devote almost 100% of my time the last two weeks to AR, and it is progressing faster than any project in my life.

I also hired a virtual assistant and have been aggressive about firing off things to her rather than spending an hour or two chasing them down myself. I'll write it up after I have some results to show, but it has been a real stress saver to know that e.g. bookkeeping for January through October is now in the "being accomplished" pile rather than the "have to put it off to tomorrow because I've got code to write today" pile.

<comment><USER14> Hi Patrick, Where did you get your virtual assistant from? Can you recommend a good company for this? Thanks

<comment><USER13> I Googled for VAs from the Philippines and picked a service which looked reasonable.

I'll be happy to recommend them after they produce recommendation-worthy results, but I'm barely started with her yet. The first task was only partially successful, but that wasn't her fault. (I had her cancel a service that I've had AOLesque difficulty canceling. They wouldn't talk other about it, but she did get a direct line to a CSR with cancellation authority for me to call, so I was done in two minutes on the phone instead of an hour.)

If she can reduce my bookkeeping backlog from ten hours to one, then I'll spend an hour singing their praises on my blog. (And then figure out some more grunt work to get rid of.)

<comment><USER15> Ha! Might have been all local calls, conducted in her native language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Our product is mostly ready for launch but we're waiting for a partner to finish integration with our API so we have some actual data to present present to our users.

</comment><comment><USER17> Great article and insights. I just happened to listen today to Techzing's episode 56 which has as a guest the author of this same article.</comment>