JavasScript and HTML5: Chrome beats IE10  - <AUTHOR> http://crossbrowserbook.com/Blog/javascript_and_html5_chrome_beats_ie10

<comment><USER2> The title is misleading.

The OP tests the browser in three benchmarks, two of them are performance related , one being written by Google, and Chrome beats IE10 in that one (IE10 being the fastest in the other).

Additionally the conclusion makes me think that the OP has a bias toward Chrome.

I nevertheless think that Chrome is faster, however I am annoyed by all this IE bashing.

<comment><USER3> Even if IE was proven twice as fast in all test there is still plenty of reasons to bash it. Every version released is another variation developers will have to test on, branch code for and add some meta tags to work around it's quirks for years to come. At least that's how it's played out for the last 15 years or so. Time will tell if their recent changes will make things better, but better than horrible isn't really an admirable goal.

That said, yesterday I opened a site I've been working on and have rarely tested in any version of IE, it makes heavy use of the Google Visualization API with several interactive charts and tables on a single page, it destroys IE 6, 7 and 8, was OK in 9, but 10 rendered and executed it perfectly. So there is hope that the next 15 years won't be as plagued with IE quirks as the last but that is if, and only if, IE 7 to 9 can be eradicated faster than 6 was AND MS keeps up with the faster and transparent release cycles AND they support older OS versions AND they stop trying to add 'features' that cause developer lock-in AND developers stop buying in when they inevitably do. But that is a lot of ifs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It does not matter which is fastest as long as both continue to make performance improvements where possible. We now have great performance from JavaScript (a key technology) in all modern browsers - which is the good news.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your right of course but if IE 10 will be around 1 year ([http://www.favbrowser.com/preliminary-internet- explorer-11-a...](http://www.favbrowser.com/preliminary-internet- explorer-11-and-internet-explorer-12-release-dates/)) we will be glad for ever bit of performance it has...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, misleading title. But it really surprised me that IE10 wins the Sunspider test. I guess all the IE-bashing has lowered my expectations of IE way too far. It is a wonderful thing for the internet that IE10 isn't completely worthless.

</comment><comment><USER6> And Kraken gives Firefox an edge while IE 10 leads Robohornet.

Frankly, it's all about what the benchmark tests and in what way. All browser vendors optimise along _some_ benchmark and that's what they are good at.

The bottom line is that pretty much all of them are fast enough to do most of the things you're doing with them.

<comment><USER7> Seriously people should stop using SunSpider; it's way too old and simple (2007 design which means Jurassic, although it had a minor update in 2010). It's considered a microbenchmark suite by today's standards, doesn't mirror modern Javascript usage in any way: code style, size, features (eg typed arrays), libraries. Both Mozilla's Kraken and Google's Octane are much better.

<comment><USER6> Well, SunSpider is nowadays kinda a test how fast a browser can run through a loop. I'd still wager Robohornet is a little better (and it also considers things like scrolling and rendering speed and DOM manipulation for certain scenarios – plenty of things that probably contribute more to how fast a browser feels than raw JS performance).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Performance: Chrome beats IE10 in Google-written test, IE10 beats all comers in SunSpider, more like it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Did someone doubt about that really?

<comment><AUTHOR> You never know... And Microsoft claims that the browser is awesome, secure and fast...</comment></comment>


Are web 2.0 and sound software engineering practices incompatible? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems to me that web 2.0 is essentially a race. The faster you get your service launched -- no matter how buggy -- the better your chances.

Consider for example the importance of getting your facebook app out as quickly as possible.

In such an environment, you might expect many good software engineering practices (e.g., unit test cases) to go out the window.

<comment><USER2> Yes and no. Launching quickly can be an advantage. Bugs or slowness can be a disadvantage. Often times people don't have time to revisit a site. They check it out once, and if they don't like it they never come back. It's important not to overmarket your site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Google has tried to solve this with the Google Web Toolkit.

Robust Web 2.0 functionality, but backed by rigid static type checking and unit testing. This provides sound software engineering practices for large projects with many developers involved.

</comment><comment><USER4> No; in fact the phrase "Web 2.0" is popular with much the same people as the phrase "software engineering."

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe so, but I don't see how this implies that sound software engineering practices are compatible with web 2.0 startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In web space most of software has already been engineered and put up online for you to grab for free: just plug in your database, stick your own queries and skin it with your own CSS.</comment>


Four Open Letters To The Book Industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/31/four-open-letters-to-the-book-industry/

<comment><USER2> OK, I am not very deep into the Kindle vs publishers thing, but isn't it a bit dangerous to root for Amazon to build their monopoly? As an avid reader, I am not sure I want one company to be in control of "my drug".

Not saying the publishers are necessarily the good guys (probably aren't). But this isn't about loving books, this is about market dominance and control. Not exacty the thing that inspires me to write a love letter to Amazon (though I usually buy from them and I like their service).

Ultimately, do we really need Amazon for a proper ebooks distribution? It seems to me in theory every author could put their books on a web site right now, using whatever payment system he likes. The Kindle seems more like a Trojan horse to me - we let it into our lives, and then we can't get rid of it anymore, unless we are willing to let go of the 1000 books we bought, too.

I, as a reader, don't want to be held hostage, neither by Amazon nor by book publishers.

<comment><USER3> Personal anecdotes incoming:

I live in a Japanese apartment. Like many Japanese folks, I read a lot and cannot possibly keep all the books I read here. Most go in the garbage when I'm done. I have no particular desire for ownership but, if I did, I own the bits on my Kindle in a much more durable fashion than I own the atoms in my trash bag right now. (Thirty volumes just got evicted.)

 _It seems to me in theory every author could put their books on a web site right now, using whatever payment system he likes._

This has been true in ten of the last ten years, and I have never bought a single book through it. The experience matters, and the Kindle is an _amazingly_ better experience for me than reading on my screen is. (Amazon also beats the stuffings out of Google for book discovery, which is what I'd have to do to get to your website if you sold it directly. I can't very well Google [sci-fi I would enjoy], but Amazon will give me four titles fitting that bill on my front page. And they're pretty good at it, too -- Amazon probably has a better handle on my tastes than anybody except my siblings.)

<comment><USER4> Just out of curiousity, why don't you just give them to Hard-Off / Book Off or donate them to the local library?

(I only ask because I was having the exact same conversation with my girlfriend yesterday)

<comment><USER5> I often suggest people donate unwanted books to the local library, and they say "oh it's not library material". Just to be clear, libraries don't put books that you donate on the shelves - they sell them and use the money to fund their programs. So (at least in the US) they're just as happy to take your "low-brow" stuff. Perhaps things are different in Japan (where the up- thread poster is)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Amazon is behaving like Walmart here: squeezing suppliers in order to provide lower prices.

Walmart is certainly not good for Walmart suppliers, because if you want to sell there, your profit margins will go down and down, and you will need higher and higher volume and lower and lower marginal costs. It's what Walmart does. The resulting type of product is generally known as _junk_.

Is it good for consumers? Probably, because low prices are good, and if you don't want junk, you can go elsewhere. If the same thing eventually happens for books, then Amazon will be selling mostly cheap and trashy stuff, while other, more expensive, online bookstores will show up and get exclusive deals with better authors.

In such a scenario, Patrick's comment:

 _I will buy books from authors willing to sell them to me. I might get a little depressed over not being able to read my favorites, but if you haven't noticed, I read a lot faster than you can possibly write and that makes me promiscuous by nature._

strikes me as wrong. While you may substitute other good stuff for good stuff, you won't substitute _The Duke's Boardroom Affair_ for _Pride and Prejudice_.

<comment><USER3> _The resulting type of product is generally known as junk._

I know I'm supposed to feel class disdain for poor people because their Chinese-factory-made T-shirts cost a fifth of what my name brand Chinese- factory-made T-shirts do, but my brain has never been good at mental gymnastics. It is even less good at them when I can do bitwise comparisons of the two products and be guaranteed of equality.

<comment><USER6> Note that I didn't say Walmart is bad. In fact I said: 'Is it good for consumers? Probably', and I mean that.

I called their goods junk, just as I'm willing to call _The Duke's Boardroom Affair_ junk, because that's how those products are seen, even by people who buy them. That doesn't imply any disdain for people who buy Chinese-factory- made T-shirts, or people who read romance novels.

(If you consider the number of people who buy Chinese-factory-made T-shirts or read romance novels, you'd have to feel disdain for an _extremely_ large percentage of people).

The point is simply that what Amazon is doing could turn them into the Walmart of bookstores, for better or worse.

<comment><USER7> Razor blades are junk? Toothpaste is junk? No. They are commodities. Wal-Mart traffics in commodities, selling them at commodity prices, squeezing suppliers but generally benefiting their customers.

If MacMillan can't work out a deal with Amazon and sells their books elsewhere, bully for them. If enough publishers did that, maybe Amazon would have to capitulate. But I suspect that Patrick was right, and that most of us would just buy other books, most of the time. The reality is that there is an enormous ocean of good to great books, more than I can ever read, and Amazon's conveniences are likely more significant than which authors get published on Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _I just posted this to the comments of Patrick's blog_

I think you're misreading the publishers, Patrick-- I haven't seen any of them proposing "windowing", except as a retaliatory move against Amazon. Instead, the main point of disagreement is about the price-point, and your post provides support to the publisher's position.

Amazon is trying to set a universal $9.99 price point for e-books, similar to iTunes $.99 price point for songs. Macmillan, on the other hand, wants a sliding system with e-books starting out at $12-$15, and gradually dropping in price over time (similar to the current system, whereby the price drops as books move from Hardcover to Trade Paperback to Mass Market paperback to Remainders.)

<comment><USER3> _I think you're misreading the publishers, Patrick-- I haven't seen any of them proposing "windowing", except as a retaliatory move against Amazon_

You're incorrect. From the horse's mouth:

 _This past Thursday I [John Sargent, from Macmilla]n met with Amazon in Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for e books under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale [i.e. the ones where Amazon acts as a wholesaler and can set prices], but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles._

<comment><USER8> Look again, Patrick.

The windowing only would apply to the "old terms of sale", where Amazon can arbitrarily set the prices. Macmillan wants new terms, with prices to be set according to a sliding scale.

"Windowing" is being used as a threat here, to push Amazon to the new terms-- it's not what Macmillan wants. (Amazon in turn retaliated by opening the ultimate window-- delisting Macmillan altogether.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fair warning: not my usual software marketing beat, at all. I saw all the Amazon/Macmillan flap today and wanted to chime in in more depth than a HN- friendly comment.

<comment><USER9> 100% on the same page with these letters. It frankly astounds me how out of touch the media companies are with their respective customer bases, and this Amazon v. publishers battle is just more evidence of that. Sadly, it _shouldn't_ astound me that this is going on, since I've been it time and again. Maybe Publishers 2.0 will get this right...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> And I thought the first letter was going to be an F.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious about your loyalty to Amazon: if there were another marketplace of ebooks for your Kindle, would you consider using it as well?

<comment><USER12> He already describes himself as promiscuous to authors and publishers, so I doubt he would have any qualms about leaving Amazon for another company that beat the experience of a) finding, b) buying, and c) reading books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Patrick, I love you mate.

And I'm with you by the way. Kindle is changing the way I read. I'm not sure if I like it or not - I'm jumping around a lot more, because I don't have to worry about finishing a book to take off the large stack of books I'm traveling with. So I'm reading a little history, a little philosophy, a little fiction, and so on.

Anyways, while we're on the topic, may I recommend Gutenberg.org if you haven't already thoroughly perused it?

Here's a few you might like.

Their top 100:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top>

History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/731>

Japanese literature including Genji Monogatari:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19264>

Complete Sherlock Holmes:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1661>

On War:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1946>

All of Shakespeare:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/s#a65>

Thus Spake Zarathustra:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1998>

Oh my, Gutenberg is just awesome. That's just the beginning of what I got. If you like literature, definitely try out Genji. If you haven't read On War, you simply _must_ check it out - it teaches you how to think. At least read the first 20 pages, it's that valuable. Very incredible even if you don't care about history or military science, it's definitely been more valuable to me than Sun Tzu, and a lot of people like him.

As for Nietzsche... he's an odd duck, isn't he? Anyway, check out Zarathustra, you'll either love it or hate or both. I find myself disagreeing with quite a lot of it, but then occasionally he explains himself so completely perfectly and explains reality so succinctly and accurately. The good parts of Zarathustra are like Individualism Crack, it's a huge high reading and getting excited at.

There's lots more on Gutenberg, too! Almost everything out of print that's well known. I got 53 books from Gutenberg the day I got my Kindle so there's quite a lot I haven't gone through yet. Got copies of a lot of the foundational science texts to skim later for inspiration, etc. Really great stuff, highly recommend you spend some time on Gutenberg if you're the voracious reader.</comment>


Secure Multi-Party Computations With Python  - <AUTHOR> http://viff.dk/

<comment><USER2> This has been a subject that caught my interest recently. For those that don't know a lot about SMPC, this library can be used to implement distributed cryptographic applications [1].

In other words, a group of peers that don't trust each other with a key can perform RSA in a distributed matter that is Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT). Specifically, all parties can generate a distributed key pair and then decrypt a message without specific knowledge of the private key. A fixed number of attackers (usually less than one third of the total number of participating clients) can behave in an arbitrary manner during the process without affecting the ability of the trustworthy peers to correctly decrypt the message.

There are of course performance issues and caveats involved, but fascinating stuff.

1\. <http://viff.dk/doc/applications.html#distributed-rsa></comment>


Has web 2.0 made lying to users acceptable? - <AUTHOR>

An example of a common lie would be to give the user the impression that some of their data is visible to others while this is not actually the case.
Another example is to give the user the impression that the site is busier than it is really is via fake profiles/data.
What other sorts of lies do web 2.0 services use?
Taking this further: suppose you don't feel bad at all about lying to your users.  What sorts of lies would you use? <comment><USER2> I often see "social media" sites hiring users (via Craigslist's writing section or Mechanical Turk) to create accounts and engage in some baseline level of participation. I know there's the old chicken-and-egg issue when working toward critical mass on a community site, but something about hiring scads of primarily-disinterested users seems a little dirty and dishonest to me.

<comment><USER3> It depends on your intent if it's only hiring those users to get some first users or if you hire them to have a baseline level of participation so as to get feedback and find bugs you wouldn't find otherwise....

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think some citations would be in order.

</comment><comment><USER5> _"An example of a common lie would be to give the user the impression that some of their data is visible to others while this is not actually the case."_

Reddit really, really angered me this way. I continued writing comments for about a month before realizing they were invisible to everyone else. While I was logged in, though, the site displayed them. I was absolutely shocked at the level of deception and dishonesty.

How many others were similarly tricked into thinking they were actually communicating with the online community?

<comment><USER3> I didn't know any website doing that... Is it because something triggered their spam detection? (I mean I don't see the point otherwise of doing that to a user)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> hate to break it to you but politics=coercion and capitalism=exploitation

it is our wisdom, good will and such that pushes politics to be less coercive and capitalism to be less exploitative while getting by but to be very successful at either requires the opposite.

which is all to say, the fundamental architectures of our societies are designed against us.

let me know if you find a solution :)

<comment><USER7> Could you help me find the connection to the original submission?

<comment><USER6> sure, the poster seems to be under the impression that lying to get business is something new in web 2.0, and these black hat SEO strategies, teasing consumers, puffing up businesses to look bigger than they are etc are something unique to web 2.0. i posted to share that this is not a web 2.0 phenomena, and once again it's just the net reflecting existing things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think lying to users is ever acceptable. Perhaps "web 2.0" just makes a common phenomenon more transparent and easily recognizable.</comment>


Show HN: Canon Every HTML Element - <AUTHOR> https://dosyago-coder-0.github.io/canon/? <comment><USER2> <marquee> is the best.

</comment><comment><USER3> This would be a useful overview for beginners. Nice work!

But are you sure that it's _every_ element? I think there are still a few missing. Off the top of my head:

\- abbr

\- address

\- audio

\- details

\- dialog

\- figcaption

\- hr

\- mark

\- meter

\- progress

\- summary

\- script

\- strike

\- sub/sup

\- time

\- video</comment>


Show HN: Free PDF signing over email - <AUTHOR> https://signandreturn.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I heard that you should be embarrassed by the first version of your product. Well, today I'm delighted to announce that I'm positively humiliated by the first version of this free tool that I made for myself.

It's a super-simple e-signing application for PDFs that works over email. Email it a PDF and it'll email you back a link to edit it. Or, if you're sending someone a PDF, cc: it (email@example.com) and it'll take care of the rest.

It's an experiment in how much UI I can remove from the process of getting a document signed.

Ideas for improvements? Let me hear them! Maybe with your help I can unembarrass myself.

EDIT: Need a sample PDF? Here's one: [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6821374/samplecontract.p...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6821374/samplecontract.pdf)

<comment><USER2> pdf to webpage and write it back as pdf. what tech stack are you using?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh hey, sorry, hadn't checked this thread in a while. It's Node, using ImageMagick for the page images and pdftk to assemble the final PDF. All the interesting bits (in my view, because email is mysterious to me) are handled by Mailgun [http://www.mailgun.com/](http://www.mailgun.com/) which I've been very happy with so far.

<comment><USER2> oh so there is no pdf2html involved. just image overlay. do you plan to open source this tool?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just tried it out and looks pretty good, nice work!

My business account is on Office 365 and the emails that come in from the system go into my Junk folder. I took a quick look at the headers and didn't notice anything obvious. Perhaps the body is to short and with the link it looks suspicious??

Other than that, I got 2 email notifications that the email is available and then another 2 emails with the success after the signature.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for trying it - I'll look into both the spam issue and the duplicate emails. Did you send the email to yourself? Maybe it's not handling that properly. The spam report is very helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Works just as intended. I work in a startup where we constantly have to send invoices and contracts to our users, and this service could really alleviate the hassles of legality at our end.

</comment><comment><USER5> I haven't got to try this yet because I haven't received any email yet.

Can you explain some of the technical details - how/where are signatures stored? Are they encrypted when stored?

For example on OS X, Preview.app has had the ability to add a signature to a PDF (t's part of annotations) for many years, and the actual signature is stored in the OS X Keychain (which also means it gets synced if you use iCloud Keychain).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out. Is it possible something went to your spam folder? I don't have enough data yet to know how spam filters are going to handle these emails.

Re: signatures, they're not saved in the browser at all (yet), and they exist on the server in the form of temporary files that are deleted after the final email is sent. As it exists right now, the solution is "security-free." Don't use it for anything sensitive.

That raises an interesting idea - maybe I can have v2.0 generate and send the final PDF directly from the browser. You would still have your signature in a PDF going over email. Until I add optional "sign in" and secure download, the email aspect is going to be a weak point.

As you mention, if you're on OS X, Preview is the best software-based solution I know of. Even there, it seems like every time I try to stamp a PDF with Preview something goes wrong. This solution also removes a few steps even from that workflow--namely any concept of dealing with files and their location-- and works basically the same on most devices.

Thanks again, I appreciate your feedback.

<comment><USER5> My main concern would be the signature sitting somewhere for someone to grab and apply to documents. In theory they can do that from a pdf too but it's much simpler if they have the original vector of the signature.

I can't say I've had issues with preview signatures for a while - I have a signature and initials captured and they pretty much just work.

It would be nice to be able to suggest something to people without that option though (eg Windows using clients) - any chance you'd open source it to allow self-hosting?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I will open source it. I just need to get mail server integration and a sane install process nailed down first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Nice idea. I thought about esign several years ago but never nailed it as a service like this. Great job!

</comment><comment><USER6> Neat. I'm taking this for a spin now.

<comment><USER6> So this worked as I expected it to.

UI wise it'd be nice to click an area of the PDF and be prompted for the kind of input I wish to create on that spot, but I survived.

Admin wise it'd be nice to be able to say "and don't allow them to click OK without having placed at least X signatures".

I pitched this to our IT team and our HIPAA compliance team. Their issue was they don't want NDAs and similar things they sign in the cloud. "If they would open source this or sell us a self hosted version, we'd use it and it'd be better than what we do today."

It'd be nice to be able to get an identifier in the subject line that'd let me parse out documents received back from people by person. I can see how sending this out to 60 people would become unwieldy. Perhaps that's how you "get em" \- you allow this for free but you have to create an account to organize all you've sent.

The number of companies who send me a doc file to enter my cc info in and send back to them is endemic. If I as a business owner and credit card holder could turn it into a PDF, use this service to fill it out and securely send it back, it'd be good. I suspect this isn't the killer use case, but I mention it.

This is a legit and useful idea. Have an upvote.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks for these comments, this is great.

Click-on-document to add an element is good, I definitely need to add that.

As I'm sure you know, there's a tradeoff between it being dead easy and therefore free-form, vs a) more secure or b) guided ("need signature page 4"), since those both require additional interactions on one end or the other. I started with the minimal case but I do want to offer more sophisticated features as an option.

A self-hosted version is an interesting idea, hadn't thought of it, but should be able to do it.

I'll address some of these items as soon as I have time. Thanks a lot for writing up your thoughts.</comment></comment></comment>


A PostCSS plugin for people who prefer to write English properly - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jevakallio/css-properly <comment><USER2> There is a sweet spot to being the languge underdog. In the UK we've borrowed 'program', 'dialog', 'analog', 'disk' etc for computers, but retain the British for non-computer uses. And, amusingly, we can tell the difference between 'router' and 'router' by pronounciation.

It seems software has become far more prescriptive of late. Although had autocorrect in Word 97(?) and smartphones, recently MacOS and Google have been aggressively rewriting text as you type. It's gone from "did you mean the American version?" to "I've changed it, don't worry". And not everyone has the wherewithal to configure their locale properly.

I see this as a significant form of cultural erasure over the coming years. Given what we've forced on the world historically, I don't think the UK can complain! But it's interesting to observe.

<comment><USER3> And, not content with US vs. Brit spellings, my Android phone's autocorrect stubbornly and insistently _refuses_ to spell "fuck", even when I tap the word out a letter at a time. Instead it insists I meant "duck". Imposing American Puritan moralistic filters on my use of the language,... whatever next?

<comment><USER4> Have you tried adding the word to the keyboard dictionary?

<comment><USER5> One would think that a very common word would already been added to the dictionary, and not require the users to enter it to their own dictionary. I'm pretty sure "fuck" is in every major dictionary as well, so why the fuck not in the phone dictionary?

<comment><USER6> Because phones are still sold to adults that "think of the children" and decided the easiest way to stop swearing is to pretend it doesn't exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminded me, when in the beginning of my career in the mid 2000s I spent hours trying to figure out why some css did not seem to get applied in IE6 (Well trying to figure out why x didn't work in IE6 was what people were doing 30%+ of their time in web application development back then)

In this case it turned out to be that I was using "grey" for a color which worked perfectly fine in Firefox, but Internet Explorer only knew about the US spelling "gray" so it just ignored my declarations.

I haven't used css color names since.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is really funny but also practically helpful. My muscle memory for words like colour and centre is so strong that I have to pause whenever I write them to make sure I'm using the right spelling in the right context.

On a related note, I was on a website owned by a German company the other day that used ReCAPTCHA which asked me to identify all the images that include a "crosswalk". The right answer was clear from context but the assumption that I would know the answer was a little worrying.

As a British person I'm glad I occasionally rub up against the colonial attitude of Americans on the internet. It reminds me to think a little more about the cultural assumptions I'm making embedded in what I create.

<comment><USER9> I had that recaptcha also, I am in Denmark, I missed the first one not because it was unclear but because I have bad vision and didn't have glasses with me and one of the crosswalks was partially obscured so I wasn't sure if there actually was a crosswalk there. I thought there was but couldn't really see it so I said no. Then I had to answer 3-4 other captchas to get through after messing the first one up - the last one was another crosswalk question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this the perpetual meme that will never die?

[https://aloneonahill.com/blog/if-php-were- british/](https://aloneonahill.com/blog/if-php-were-british/)

<comment><USER11> Ironically the APPLE ][ used to have this some keywords where changed between UK and US version - or at least that's what my aging memory tells me

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ouh disappointing, I was expecting a transpiled CSS alternative that reads as English, eg.

        When touch screen is bigger than 600px:
            Paint class important-button:
                - red background
                - solid 1 pixel white border

</comment><comment><USER13> At the risk of being sent to the tower - I've caved in on -ise/-ize and the former looks wrong to me now. And I'm on the fence about center/centre.

Color/Colour however. No, not now, not ever...

<comment><USER14> In the UK, the -ize spelling is generally attributed to "Americanization", but it's actually more etymologically correct even for British English.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling) (It goes back as far as Shakespeare!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I prefer Oxford spelling. Why bother having Z if you can't use it?

<comment><USER2> The 'z' is there so you can press cmd-z to undo whenever you press a 'z'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > padding-ton padding-top When you're thinking of your favourite bear

:-D

</comment><comment><USER17> Shouldn't it be called PoshCSS? :).

</comment><comment><USER18> Oh, but where is the LICENCE file?

<comment><USER2> Today I learned that American English uses the same spelling for the noun 'licence' and the verb 'license'.

If you think it's odd that we distinguish in British English, what about 'advice' and 'advise'. I think Americans still retain the two spellings?

<comment><USER18> English is not my first language, and in school we were taught British English. However, most English language culture I consumed was American. I have given up speaking anything but franken-english.

<comment><USER17> Same here. To this day I wonder why are we teaching people British English? It's not like my country is somehow beholden to the Queen, and the only English anyone here will experience outside school setting is American.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure where your country is but at least in Europe, I think British English is more commonly taught because people are (thought to be) more likely to move to the UK/Ireland or interact with Britons/the Irish so BrE is marginally more applicable. I'm not sure that's actually true with the population differences at play.

Also, at least in a few countries what more often seems to affect the curriculum is where one's teacher is from or was trained. I don't know how widely true that is.

<comment><USER17> I can buy the "where the teacher was trained" argument. Though if so, then there's also a huge inertia, because a growing number of teachers, particularly in private English schools, is from my generation (~30-ish people), and we grew up in thoroughly Americanized world.

I don't buy the "move to UK/Ireland" justification. Someone knowing American English will handle the UK perfectly fine (the two dialects aren't _that_ different). But only so many people travel or move to the UK; meanwhile, almost everyone in Europe is living thoroughly immersed in American culture and language - in movies, songs, books, technology, social media. From practical and economical POV, American English is a better choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Now I want one that takes Webster's improvements to English further, and substitutes things like "through" with "thru".

Not that "through" is in a css property that I know, but I just want English to be phonetic.

<comment><USER21> juː kɑːnt gɛt ə ˈtruːli fəʊˈnɛtɪk ˈɪŋglɪʃ baɪ ˈʧeɪnʤɪŋ ə fjuː ˈspɛlɪŋz. ði ˈælfəbɪt ˈɪznt ʌp tuː ɪt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There was one of these many years ago as well [https://github.com/HashanP/postcss- spiffing](https://github.com/HashanP/postcss-spiffing)

I think spiffing has a few more pieces in it.

<comment><USER23> I love the !important → !please. I've been corrected many times by Brits for using _yankeeisms_ but is 'opacity' really one of them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I always have to wonder about (former?) colonial countries that still want to dictate what "proper" forms of their language are. It's a British English plugin.

</comment><comment><USER25> This could be applied as an anti-forensic countermeasure to something like "speech pattern analysis".

</comment><comment><USER26> I could've sworn that there was an effort to insert British equivalents in CSS. what happened to it?

</comment><comment><USER27> Much like [https://aloneonahill.com/blog/if-php-were- british/](https://aloneonahill.com/blog/if-php-were-british/)

</comment><comment><USER28> >padding-ton

Count me in.

</comment><comment><USER29> haha, i like this

</comment><comment><USER30> Yes please!

</comment><comment><USER31> The mistake here is equating English with the set of symbols borrowed from the English language for the purpose of creating a new language.

I like British spelling but this is surely a pernicious additional layer of transformation.

<comment><USER32> It's just a joke.

<comment><USER33> Should be obvious, especially with `padding-ton`

<comment><USER34> And if that's not enough, there's also z-index.

<comment><USER35> I've never even considered before that some people might pronounce it "zee index" \- do they really, or is that also part of the joke?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


For threat Intel Twitter: tweets can no longer contain file hashes - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/gossithedog/status/1283665518671560705 <comment><USER2> I like that someone in that thread found they could change the font and still post hashes. Makes me really curious how they implemented the regex on this bandaid.</comment>


Code-Pointer Integrity [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi14/osdi14-paper-kuznetsov.pdf <comment><USER2> This is only for pointers into instruction space, not data space.

There's an argument for using a separate stack for subroutine return points. A few CPUs have been built with hardware for that. (One from the 1980s only had a 20-deep call stack, which was kind of limiting.) That achieves much of what this paper proposes.

This is a solution to one specific type of attack - overrunning the stack and overwriting a return pointer. That's a problem, but only one of many pointer- related problems. Fixing subscript-out-of-range problems more generally is much more useful.

<comment><USER3> (Mill team)

All exploit mitigation checks most welcome!

The Mill has a hardware managed stack and various other security-related details, many of which are good old ideas not previously making it into silicon. But defence is best in depth. More details [http://millcomputing.com/topic/security/](http://millcomputing.com/topic/security/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Something like this make the burden of annotating lifetime like someone would do in Rust, to avoid the insecure parts of C and C++ kind of a complete productivity lost, unless you are fan of metaprogramming...

This can make those languages king again, given they are still unbeatable when someone needs performance and fine tunning..

I wonder if this could really meant, we can use those languages for rockets, cars and airplanes, without worrying, the human lives lost or burning large sums of money because of dangling pointers family of bugs..

<comment><USER5> It's a dynamic check for correctness, which you'd probably want to avoid in a rocket or an airplane.

<comment><USER3> Tangentially related, I was struck the first time I saw a compass on an airliner seat-back display... Is the plane's navigation system really interfacing with a Windows CE entertainment system? And how do you isolate it so a crashing entertainment system (we've all seen blue screens of death on the seat backs) doesn't adversely affect the flight system? I'm imagining optical isolators, or a separate compass just for the seat backs, or ... Hopefully it is isolated physically and not just by code review!

Extending this, it is easy to imagine modern military aircraft are interconnected so their radar etc interacts with others. How do you protect it?

(And is, say, 2.6% CPU a price worth paying up front to do so?)

<comment><USER6> They aren't connected.

For example, car systems use real-time micro kernel and systems only talk via the network with something like CAN bus.

This already provides some isolation.

Then you have MISRA for C and C++ code, High Integrity C++, Ada and Ada SPARK, and code generation based on formal methods. This coupled with static code analysis and rigorous certification processes that all of these systems are being used as they should.

You can get an idea of these issues are discussed from the High Integrity Software conference programme.

[http://www.his-2014.co.uk/programme.html](http://www.his-2014.co.uk/programme.html)

<comment><USER3> Yet in the real world things get hacked over the network all the time. When two systems talk, there is the potential - _tendency_ , even - for the protocol handling on one side or the other to be exploitable.

<comment><USER6> Are you planning to open the plane fuselage or car chassis to plug into the network cabling?

<comment><USER3> I am replying to someone saying that these checks are too slow for use in aeroplanes by reflecting on how modern aeroplanes _are_ part of a network.

And who would be surprised to find some kind of plug on the pcb in the seat rest?

<comment><USER6> As I mentioned on my post entertainment system is not connected to the flight system.

<comment><USER3> So you are saying that the commercial airliners have separate compass etc to drive those seat back displays?

Because it was quite a storm when hacking via in-flight wifi and entertainment systems was demonstrated by Ruben Santamarta at Black Hat...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Duplicate of: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8442049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8442049)

</comment><comment><USER3> On behalf of the silent majority, we really appreciate work in this area! We all depend on systems written in memory-unsafe languages and the idea that exploit mitigation techniques are just a compile away is very heartening.</comment>


How to Read a Book - <AUTHOR> http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2007/06/230501.html

<comment><USER2> The gist of what he is saying for people he'd most likely want to reach but can't for the very same reason he's adressing with his lengthy post: When reading a long, carefully arranged cohesive body of (text)work, it does not help to be distracted. With ubiquitous access to seemingly useful resources, it is very easy to give into such and deviate from the intended reading material. Book publishers don't seem to get this when devising their solutions for the declining book readership problem.

Another note by me: Good writing is very similar to good programming/programming language design/engineering: a system/text does not get better by adding more to it, but when you can't remove anything from it anymore without changing your intent/its purpose.

Petzold could have done with a shorter post ;)

<comment><USER3> Joel gets away with longish posts by illustrating with stories or being funny all he way through. There's nothing wrong with a bit of comic relief if it's relevant or if at least it doesn't distract you. The following joke bought Petzold another screenful's worth of my attention.

 _Here's some advice for successfully reading a book: You need to stay focused, so try to avoid distractions. Avoid multitasking. Avoid task switching. Turn off the TV. Shift positions occasionally so you don't get cramps or backaches. Don't get too comfortable or you might fall asleep. (Interestingly, many of these same rules apply to having sex, except that you can read a book with a cat in your lap.)_

Then again, you need to be sure you can pull it off. There are few things as devastating to your writing as trying to be funny and failing (hi Yegge.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the best books I ever read was "How to Read a Book", written by Mortimer Adler. I think it was written in the 60's or so. I read it in high school and it immediately made me a significantly better reader, and the impact wasn't short lived.

<comment><USER5> I think it was first written in the 40s, then revised in the 60s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have to agree with him to some extent. It easy for the mind to wander, and yes, I think thats true for even good books. Having a distraction free environment is a good idea regardless of what you are reading, further, having the ability to write while reading is also important.

Having said that, I have no issues with electronic format of books (except they make my eyes hurt). Sitting at a computer reading a good book works just as well as reading a paper book. If you are that enticed by the web, unplug your ethernet cable.

On a side note, has anyone read "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" by the same author. I am halfway through it, and I think its a phenomenal book.

</comment><comment><USER7> The moment I open a novel by Neil Gaiman and a display ad pops out either asking me to punch the monkey or telling me that I might be interested in something ghostwritten by Tom Clancy is the moment I become a Luddite.

</comment><comment><USER8> I used to sponsor 3M by keeping a pile of PostIt notes beside me when reading, but paperclips are just as good once you recognise that the smaller inner part of the clip can indicate which side of the page you are marking.

<comment><USER9> Book darts (<http://www.bookdarts.com/>) are another option. Precise marking without the bends caused by paperclips.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I always enjoy a good read during sex.

</comment><comment><USER11> What a silly argument. If the book is good, you will read it anywhere. Who would lock himself up in room just to read a book? Must be bad books. If the book is good, most people will prefer reading it on paper.</comment>


Fukushima nuclear reactor radiation at highest level since 2011 meltdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/03/fukushima-daiichi-radiation-levels-highest-since-2011-meltdown <comment><USER2> As I posted on last week's original submissions of this story:

This is _bogus_. The new, higher readings are from areas never measured before[0]; levels are falling consistently.

[0] [http://blog.safecast.org/2017/02/no-radiation-levels-at- fuku...](http://blog.safecast.org/2017/02/no-radiation-levels-at-fukushima- daiichi-are-not-rising/)</comment>


Scientists solve mystery of spontaneous smog formation - <AUTHOR> https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/scientists-solve-mystery-spontaneous-smog-formation <comment><USER2> Smog would be much worse were it not for the catalytic converter, invented by a Caltech professor.

If I read the article correctly, though, this mechanism would not account for the formation of smog in Los Angeles in the summer, when temperatures never drop to 41 deg F.</comment>


MaruOS is open source - <AUTHOR> http://blog.maruos.com/2016/02/11/maru-is-open-source/ <comment><USER2> Seems like an interesting potential product/project.

The Blog seems a bit awkwardly worded - "is open source" instead of "is going open source", as there doesn't seem to be a code repository available yet, nor licensing info, (etc).

But, it sounds like you'll be off to a good start when you get those bits in place. :)</comment>


Show HN: Dropbase – Turn your CSV files into live databases in seconds - <AUTHOR> https://dropbase.castodia.com <comment><USER2> Hey HN, we built a tool that uploads CSV files to a hosted PostgreSQL and gives you database credentials to query it. We recently built a number of database integrations for one of our products and had to manually create test databases with seed data in them. We think this would be helpful if you're building a simple web application or taking a coding course and need a quick way to add some of your own data for testing. It might also be helpful if you are running a demo/pilot with a potential customer and want to easily add a more relevant dataset for them. Give it a try and let us know if you have questions or feedback.

<comment><USER3> Since the idea is to quickly get a database up and running, it would be nice if it generated code/cli commands to connect to the database that you could just copy and paste.

Edit: Also, drop multiple csvs to create multiple tables? Or drop another csv once you've been given credentials to add a table?

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you be willing to connect with us over a 15-20 minute call? Would love to learn about your use case and see how we can improve the Dropbase experience for you. We're at email@example.com. Let me know if what's the best way to reach you!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How Often Does Amazon Kill Projects or Products? - <AUTHOR> We often hear about Amazon's "two pizza team" strategy for starting new things, and we know they've had a couple of high profile flameouts, but, does anyone know how many internal product ideas or projects on these two pizza teams make it vs get canceled?  Given how innovative Amazon seems, I'm just curious if their hit rate is better than average. <comment><USER2> Looking only at AWS, the only service that's being very gradually sunset is SimpleDB.

From a PaaS perspective, they don't even EOL anything.

No clue what happens inside that never sees the light of day, of course.</comment>


Systems We Love - <AUTHOR> http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2016/09/26/systems-we-love/ <comment><USER2> Double post? Different URL but .. same title?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12586664](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12586664)</comment>


Ask HN: A good charity to contribute to? - <AUTHOR>

I have a good friend who is a software engineer and is very dedicated to the open source movement. Is there a good charity to contribute to in honor of his birthday? <comment><USER2> EFF for sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> The big 'Pay with PayPal' link really throws me off about the whole thing.</comment></comment>


Is it okay to ask how many women are on the team I'd be working with? - <AUTHOR> http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/17512/is-it-okay-to-ask-how-many-women-are-on-the-team-id-be-working-with

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't work in a team with a suspiciously high % of females. Nothing against female programmers per se, but if a company values my contributions less than a female's simply because I have a penis (which seems to be the case with most so-called "gender equality" programs) then I don't want to work for/with them.

So I'd say yes, it's okay to ask.

<comment><USER3> My experience with _some_ so-called "gender equality" programs is that the company will _try_ to value my contributions equally, even though I have a vagina.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm mortified that the "why is it important to you?" comment has so many votes.

Protip to men: if you find yourself being reflexively defensive whenever you have to _think_ about gender equality in this industry, you're part of the problem.

<comment><USER5> Why do you believe a person asking the question is "reflexively defensive"? And what is "the problem" that the person asking is part of?

I don't think I'm the only one who can't understand what you are trying to say. Could you carefully explain your thoughts in detail, making your assumptions and values more explicit?

<comment><USER4> That comment served no productive purpose toward answering the question. Even if the response were _" because I hate men"_, the original question would stand: _is it OK to ask if there are any other women on the team?_ Yes, of course it is.

It was plainly made to imply that the asker is being _somehow unreasonable_ for even caring about the question at all.

<comment><USER5> Asking the motivation behind a question is often helpful in _solving the underlying problem_. For example, a junior programmer I was working with once asked me how to store arrays in Postgres. I asked why she wanted to, and a non-answer was the most useful reply: "CREATE TABLE a_many_to_many_b ( a_id BIGINT REFERENCES(a.id), b_id BIGINT REFERENCES(b.id))." (Skipping indices, constraints.)

In any case, I'll ask again - could you lay out your reasoning in more detail? I really can't figure out how you determined this implication of the question, what "the problem" (as you perceive it to be) is or why you believe it was "defensive".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a woman and I totally understand why another woman would want to know that. And when I've been part of an interview panel, the panel was asked that. I responded that we have a mix of genders and ethnicities.

On the flip side, I've never asked that when interviewing for a position myself, though I've always been curious; I just assumed that asking would blow my chances of getting the job. I've always assumed that the team would probably be all male. And that it could be OK for me either way, depending on the personalities and attitudes of the team.

<comment><USER5> _I 'm a woman and I totally understand why another woman would want to know that._

Could you explain why?

I became curious after timr pointed out a comment asking about this.

<comment><USER3> I've worked on a number of teams that were all male - other than me, of course. In some cases, I had no issues related to the fact that I'm female. In other cases, I encountered males who assumed that I was incapable of performing the job, simply because I was female - and told me so. And even when I proved myself as capable as them - or more - I was constantly challenged/tested verbally on my technical capabilities _in ways that the males were not_. A few people continually told me that I was hired/retained/promoted simply because I was female. . .even after I had proven myself to be as capable - or more - than they.

That's quite a mental/emotion drain that males on all/predominantly male teams don't face - at least regarding their gender. And since all/predominantly female teams are rare in tech, it's a situation that male techies will rarely, if ever face, or even need to contemplate - at least regarding their gender.

So, I would be curious because I would wonder if I _might_ encounter sexism on the team - sexism at a level that would drain/distract me. Well, I never let it distract me, but it was certainly draining.

<comment><USER6> > That's quite a mental/emotion drain that males on all/predominantly male > teams don't face - at least regarding their gender.

There are million other ways to give somebody a hard time. There are people who just want to be assholes, they can accomplish that even if you are white male.

> So, I would be curious because I would wonder if I might encounter sexism on > the team - sexism at a level that would drain/distract me. Well, I never let > it distract me, but it was certainly draining.

What about sexism from women towards men? is that okay?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would say it's a sexist question during an interview, and might possible be illegal.

<comment><USER7> I don't think it'd be illegal (in the US anyways). AFAIK only the employer is legally restricted as to what questions they may ask. I believe a prospective employee may ask any thing they want. What the employer responds to a question with might be restricted though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can you just search linkedin and look around the office?</comment>


Building a better way to write posts in multiple languages - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/597373993776783/building-a-better-way-to-write-posts-in-multiple-languages <comment><USER2> As an on-off Arabic linguist in a former life, and someone with rudimentary NLP and computational linguistics coursework, good luck with that.

Jokes aside, as people commended the Arab Spring for the Twitter/FB revolution, I often feel this type of interface presumes people want to communicate across language boundaries. If anything, and as a computer geek a quite depressing observation, it has largely allowed Balkanization to improve. You wanna mobilize x number of activists in your region, specifically, with your dialect? Copy and paste text into FB. Twitter, or whatever least resistance platform. You can even ask them to translate the interface surrounding said text for you, as they did in the Arab world with some tech savvy people, they called themselves Al-Mugharridoon (Tweeters, like literally the sound the bird makes), but no one cares. FB and Twitter and amplification systems now for local media and communication, facing inward not outward. Translation or localized UI has made little difference, beyond allowing islands of similar regional groups, even those peering at each other and hating each other (Egyptian Islamists and liberals) both operating on the same infrastructure! It's awesome in a truly scary way.

I have made similar comments to experts on the media industry, specifically in the Arab world. We were all taught in college to speak proper Modern Standard Arabic as bridge language for Arabs to understand each other despite significant structural difference in dialect. Living in the region for half a decade, I see its importance going down. Where I live Arab kids use English for this function, even with limited education and broken English in most cases.

With the increasingly cheap tech, just like FB, amplifying your local dialect and facing inward is now cost-effective. Al Jazeera, yes even those credited with Modern Standard Arabic on satellite and rejuvenating pan-Arabism, has Mubashir (Direct) channels with local content, for example Egypt, where you get Egyptian commentators speaking Egyptian slang directed at Egyptians. There is value in this, and regional channels do the same, with a far smaller budget? Why and how? It's cheaper, I do not need education to enage, and I honestly do not give a crap about those outside my community, unless it through my local lens looking out within a frame I appreciate.

Of course I see the value for FB engineers and the general crowd here. But sadly living abroad has taught me the cheapening of communication tools is increasing insularity except for those who want do, as a joke BGP-style node work between cultures. Those people have a tough gig, and it blows up in their face a lot, just like BGP.

(Pardon the networking joke, I am in a rare mood.)

</comment><comment><USER3> So they are getting something like thousands of parallel translated posts a day. Add in all the stuff you can get from outside source, I'm honestly surprised they are not better at this or on part with Google.

Maybe some of Google blogging platforms hve multiple language options, that gives Google an extra edge in the data race.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish they had a good way to post formatted source code on Facebook posts...

<comment><USER5> +1

Also markdown

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This will be so good for training translation</comment>


Which hashing algorithm is best for uniqueness and speed? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49550/which-hashing-algorithm-is-best-for-uniqueness-and-speed

<comment><USER2> Didn't we see this yesterday?</comment>


Werner Herzog Talks Virtual Reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/werner-herzog-talks-virtual-realityhttp://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/werner-herzog-talks-virtual-reality <comment><USER2> He seems to be as completely baffled by the possibilities of virtual reality as the rest of us are. The most interesting thing I mined out of this conversation is Herzog's feeling that life already is a virtual reality. As I now turn my head from left to right and see the tables and objects around this room I suddenly feel the unreality of lived existence. Now I imagine wearing a virtual reality helmet, playing a simulation of a person, who then puts on a virtual reality helmet and proceeds to load up a similar game himself, and so on, ad infinitum, as I fall into a fractal abyss of perception/experience/unreality. I pop the helmet off in a panic and suddenly realize that I'm back in the game, but this time the game's main hardware is my head itself. I'm anxious but excited for what will emerge from the VR and AR revolution.

<comment><USER3> The reason you and others feel the unreality of reality is likely the excessive exposure to media and the facade of unrealities presented to us as "reality"

News is crafted more like entertainment rather than investigating facts. The trend with cinema seems to be realism of fantasy and fiction. Reality TV is presented to us as if it were documenting "Reality" when it's actually a team of writers and producers carefully designing a planned narrative.

We sit at computers reading social media posts of friends and strangers presenting their own selective narratives to their "life" which is more or less a facade that omits the mundane or "real" aspects that we would encounter and be aware of were we not all so far removed and isolated by otherwise anonymous apartment complexes, neighborhoods, and (sub)urban typologies.

Personally, I would not desire any sort of luddite reversion of technology and entertainment. I do believe there is a concerning trend of detachment from reality born out of cultural habits, that is largely derived from mass media.</comment></comment>


UPenn Internet and Web Systems Course (CIS455/555) - <AUTHOR> http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~zives/cis555/

<comment><USER2> UPenn gets pretty pissed about being confused with PSU.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, thanks. Fixed now.</comment></comment>


Why Every Professional Should Consider Blogging - <AUTHOR> http://technicalblogging.com/why-every-professional-should-consider-blogging/ <comment><USER3> Great article, and very true in my experience. One of my favorite, unexpected benefits of blogging is it's like a time-machine/memory dump for your brain.

Here's what I mean. When you're thinking about a problem, you struggle, and struggle, then find some insight. When you go to sleep that insight might be gone. So you write it down, ideally in the shortest, most vivid language that can recreate the idea in your head: I serialize my mental RAM into words, and at a later date, reload that information into my head.

If I wrote well, the deserialization is fast (few minutes) and my head is back into the mental state when I "got it". Then I can continue working, add some new insights, then serialize that new state back into words (a follow-up post, or adding to the original).

Over time, you develop some deep insights which are the result of several "me"s collaborating on the problem. I know that college-me understood class XYZ really well, and because he wrote down some insights, 10-years-after- college me can reload that memory very quickly, and maybe add something new. It's like having a perfect tutor (you, when you got it) jump into your head and bring you up to speed. I don't remember vector calculus very well, but I can deserialize my notes and in a few minutes be 80-90% up to speed.

This was a hugely unexpected benefit to blogging which I hadn't even considered. And incidentally, if you write in a way that deserializes well for you, it will likely be useful for many other people too.

tl;dr: create a standard library of thought snippets so you can #include "vectorcalculus.h"

<comment><USER4> _One of my favorite, unexpected benefits of blogging is it's like a time- machine/memory dump for your brain._

I've had this experience too, albeit not in a coding sense. I will say, however, that I use Devonthink Pro according to Steven Berlin Johnson's scheme: [http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/0002...](http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/000230.html) to archive my own posts, as well as other quotes, writing, and so forth, and DTP's "see also" algorithms often find material I wrote years ago but that's relevant to what I'm doing now. It helps me get to this: "Over time, you develop some deep insights which are the result of several "me"s collaborating on the problem."

<comment><USER3> Really interesting. I use Notational Velocity to keep track of text snippets, but it doesn't have the "see also" feature. I imagine it could be very useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I hadn't blogged personally 10 years ago, I'd not have been approached to write a book for Apress. Without that book I wouldn't have launched the professional blog that was my main source of income for several years (more than the book was!). Without that professional blog, I wouldn't have got the podcasting gigs or launched the weekly newsletter which has now turned into 5 profitable newsletters and has just helped me become co-chair of an O'Reilly conference.

This is not to brag but to show the "chains" that can happen by putting yourself out there. It's totally unpredictable but increasing your "luck surface area" has amazing outcomes. Also, consider Jeff Atwood, a similar chain arises.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. Funny that you mention "luck surface area". At some point in the book I actually say as much:

> There is no magic wand that can make this happen, instead it's all about > increasing your luck surface area.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I was really just trying to confirm your message ;-) I probably subconsciously stole that term from when I read your book actually(!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I blogged, I was popular but felt like a scammer. When I stopped blogging, I wasn't popular but made some pretty nifty stuff. I'm not saying it's like that for everyone, but I'd rather be building stuff than become yet another talking head on a soapbox.

<comment><USER7> "I was popular but felt like a scammer"

I think I know what you mean. I titled my latest blog post "Stop Using Single Point Estimates" but almost immediately regretted it. The tone was too rigid and link-baity. What I really wanted to say was, "Hey, point estimates are fine, but do you realize that you may be missing an opportunity by not using range estimates?" Really I just wanted to show people a different way of thinking about something. But it can be easy to pander to the up-votes.

But mostly I stay true to myself and use my blog to educate, which is truly rewarding. My favorite post is "Roadmap for Learning Rails" because it genuinely helps people and that's a wonderful feeling.

So I think if you are blogging and start feeling like a "scammer", step back and re-examine your goals. Instead of viewing it as primarily for self- promotion or making money, view it as contributing to the community and participating in the joy of education and sharing. Also, I'm realizing that the blog posts I feel the best about aren't opinionated as much as informative and helpful.

<comment><USER6> I think the clear delineator for me in this space is:

"Am I writing to get on the front page of HN, or am I writing this because I think it needs to be said?"

I haven't had a piece on the front page here, but I could see how someone could get addicted to that.

I've often thought about writing one of those opinionated pieces as my entry back into blogging, but decided it wasn't worth writing.

So I agree with you 100%.

<comment><USER8> Joel Spolsky (I think) wrote a good article about why he adopts a stance in his blogging even though he knows it's always got exceptions to it. Can't find it for the life of me though.

There is something to be said about presenting a clear message. It's easier to follow the flow and a critical reader should be able to take the point an author is making without blindly accepting the conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not so sure.

Maybe every professional should hone their writing skills, but blogging is not the ideal exercise. Typical pop blogs spew out thoughts with regularity, even when the writers haven't thought about the subject carefully, they write just to write, to make the blog look up to date. That's ok as a writing exercise but it's not in the interest of readers who's attention they'll inevitably try to attract.

You can blog out many quality posts if you have some big yet narrow theme to write about. But most people don't. If you want to keep a diary of thoughts, it will work much better as badly edited short braindumps, not writing exercises.

If enough professionals blogged, it wouldn't be a good way to improve your career and make professional connections, since there would be a multitude of terrible blogs and it would drag down the current reputation of blogging, which isn't so hot already.

That's why every professional should treat the separate aspects of blogging like writing exercises, attention whoring or leaving braindumps, as separate aspects.

</comment><comment><USER10> As serial failed blogger (3-4 "dead" blogs) let me ask you "pro" bloggers this:

\- how do you stay motivated over time and don't get sidetracked

\- how do you keep a focus on the blog i.e. that it doesn't turn into some random rantings about daily politics etc.

\- how to you keep pushing for that blogging thing over other similar "productive" tasks (i.e. reading/writing articles, conference papers etc)

<comment><AUTHOR> In the book I discuss at length about how to keep your blog up, but Joel's advice is pretty spot on. It really comes down to treating blogging like a business and scheduling time to write:

* 2-4 hours a week need to be booked for this marketing activity.

* Use the pomodoro technique during those hours to help keep you focused and more productive.

* Give your blog a clear focus and "reason for being", whether it's a niche blog (e.g., CoffeScript Inside) or a more general one (e.g., stfu's adventures in web development). Answer the question "why should readers care?".

* Keep a list of headlines you intend to write about in the future in an ideas.txt file or Google Docs.

* Get your blog popular (and perhaps profitable). Part of the reason why I focus so much on getting bloggers to attract traffic (and then benefit from it) in my book, is because when you start seeing traffic spikes and perhaps even getting some extra benefits (money, freebies, etc), you'll get addicted to that feeling and you'll be more inclined to keep up with blogging.

<comment><USER11> My biggest problem (coming from the same route as the gp, with multiple failed attempts) is exactly

"Keep a list of headlines you intend to write about in the future in an ideas.txt file or Google Docs."

I consider myself able to express my thoughts in a manner that is 'good enough'. I actually like writing. But why oh why should I (seeing it as a business is hard at the start for me. It's like I'd imagine bootstrapping a startup is, on the smallest of scales)? And - well - what about?

For all the interesting things on this planet the net has good resources. Talking about my own tiny life seems like a bigger version of twittering 'Just went to the toilet'. Who cares if I tried and failed to solve problem NN of Project Euler in Clojure?

Why would I blog, instead of (if we're taking the benefits of writing as a given) doing a journal for me alone?

<comment><USER12> "For all the interesting things on this planet the net has good resources." Do you truly believe that?

<comment><USER11> No, honestly (and I thought obviously, but the text medium is limiting) I don't. But my interests are limited. My knowledge ('share'!) as well. If I learn Clojure and there are tons of blogs about Clojure, using Clojure, learning Clojure, Clojure in the real world.... why another one?

I work with C#/.Net in my day-time. There's probably _nothing_ tech related to that stuff that isn't covered better by reading a very limited number of blogs and following people like Eric Lippert on SO (yes, this time I'm serious).

I guess this distills down to the feeling of having nothing of global value to contribute, at which point I don't see why it should be published at all (vs. journal). A good part of my thoughts might be related to rules in society for me. In my world, shouting out chit-chat/smalltalk and whatever comes to ones mind is not clever and certainly not well-received. But - that's exactly my feeling towards writing a blog (no offense intended - I'm talking about my own issues starting my own blog. Works for you? Great).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find this article to be spot on, especially for professionals in very technical careers.

Specifically, the bit about improving your writing skills is very pertinent. Most technical professionals would benefit quite a bit by learning how to communicate with those outside of their profession, i.e. a large portion of the people who might read your blog.

I, for one, keep writing a blog with essentially no readers for more or less this reason.

<comment><USER14> I've had blogs before, and having no readers is a little bit depressing for me. It REALLY doesn't seem worthwhile when no one is reading it. The few times I managed to get a link to stick on reddit's r/programming, the blog posts were mostly ignored, then buried and on one I was flamed because people didn't understand it.

<comment><USER13> Having no readers is a bit of an over-statement. I have some friends who read it occasionally and ask about specific topics, and a few random people who probably glance at it once or twice a week.

Point is, blog's are useful even if only a few people are reading it, because it's just important as a tool for you as for other people.

<comment><USER15> Might I recommend adding the link to your HN profile's "about" section? It may be of interest to some folks here (at least, I don't think I've been able to go very long without seeing people here talk about economics).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I tried blogging once, but what put me off was the amount work and time it took to make it look good. You've got to format it so that it's readable to persons other than yourself. You need to provide links to relevant/related sites (which sometimes you have search for it because you didn't bookmark it, which you didn't think you needed to because you didn't know you were going to use it in your blog). Embedding stuff is such a pain in my experience. If it's a video, you got to get the size right, the default is always either too big or too small. And I have yet to find a hassle-free way to embed code, especially from the free blogging sites. With images, you need to resize them so that there's a small one inside the post itself, which links to the bigger one when clicked. All that time spent on making it look good is better used to actually do my work, in my opinion.

<comment> eric-hu Good aesthetics has been on my mind too. I started one on a Wordpress site and after a few posts, my interest fizzled because I wanted to make better looking posts. When I spend all day trying to make some pages look good at work, I don't really want to do the same thing at home.

I've been trying to think of ways around this, and one might just be to embrace minimalism more. Keep it simple so as to keep creating content. That is what's of value, right?

Going further down the timeline, I want to try to improve that minimalist site, but this desire can't eclipse the desire to keep recording the meaningful thoughts I've had.

<comment><USER16> If it's only thought-recording, then it's fine. But the reason I wanted to blog in the first place was to make a kind of online notebook where code snippets, useful videos/audio, progress history etc. are online and easily searchable. Kind of an personal online reference, but accessible by the public. It's just too much work. It's a good idea for a startup though - <USER2> friendly online notebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> HNers including Patrick ([http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=by%3Apatio1...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=by%3Apatio11+\(blog+OR+blogging\)+AND+resume&start=0)) and Matt Might ([http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=by%3Amattmi...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=by%3Amattmight+\(blog+OR+blogging\)+AND+money&start=0)) have been talking about this for years now. There's a lot of benefit to be had by carefully grepping through the comment archives of HN.

</comment><comment><USER18> A good post but it misses the single biggest reason I blog - to share knowledge. I want to share what I've learned and for others to do the same so that we all can become improved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I think you may have overlooked this part, "The number one reason to blog for many people, is the desire to share their knowledge and teach others."

<comment><USER18> Ah so I did. That's under the bullet point "Blogging can help you reach and teach a wide audience" and I missed it. Now I have to be honest, by the end I was reading the bold headlines and skimming the text. Oops. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Most of these benefits can be achieved from being a contributor to popular forums or support sites (StackOverflow etc). I think blogs suffer way too much fragmentation, are too difficult to find and require a lot of effort just to keep people coming back. However if your contributions are in a popular, well visited place they'll get more exposure and things like karma make it easier for users to access how valuable your contributions are.

<comment><USER12> Between RSS and Twitter, people generally find their way to interesting material. You just can't expect every single thing you write to garner attention. If you're writing for your own edification as much as for others, that's not a big deal anyway.

<comment><USER19> >If you're writing for your own edification as much as for others

Agreed. I know a few people who do this but the article focused on professionals. There's little point spending time writing stuff which doesn't get attention if your sole motivation is professional advancement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So how does this fit in with a job at a corporation that would not appreciate public broadcasts of the details of what (or heck, even what) you are working on?

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out HR to see if there is a business conduct guideline or blogging/social media policy. As an IBMer I can't disclose too much information on my blogs, either. But it does still leave me with plenty of disclosable information to blog about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Personally, I blog because writing helps me think. But as it turns out it's also a marvelous lead generation tool, and just generally a brilliant way to put my name out there and make sure people remember me when they're thinking "Hmm, where could I find a crazy coder right now?"

Not to mention the rush of adrenaline when a post sticks and starts raking in traffic. Very addicting.

</comment><comment><USER22> i've been thinking about starting a blog for sometime. There seems to be a lot of ways to achieve this.. I'm a developer but not sure if i want to host/administer my own instance of word press.. aside from working 50-60 hours, i spend 10 hours a week on personal projects, so not a lot of spare time.. what's a good streamlined way to start a blog quickly, but still have good flexibility in it's appearance?

<comment><USER23> I highly recommend going with hosting your own WordPress. The setup is painless and allows you to quickly get your blog up and running. There are tons of themes to choose from that you can use as a foundation to get the appearance you desire. The plugin system also works great and allows you to easily add various features to your blog.

I have used WordPress for a non-technical blog for over 3 years now without any issues. I've also been thinking about starting a technical blog and have been looking into using Drupal for it.

<comment><USER24> If you're hosting your own WordPress (or any other solution, actually), you really should be keeping an eye for any updates. WP is a popular hacker target, even waiting a day after an announcement can be enough to get hacked. Thanks to Muprhy's law, such an announcement will definitely come when you're on vacation somewhere.

That's, of course, assuming that such an announcement is made in the first place. Last year the timthumb bug was being exploited and not all theme download sites bothered to alert the users that the themes were vulnerable.

<comment><USER23> Definitely. If you log in to your WP blog at least once a day, it informs you about any updates and lets you apply the update with the click of a button.

Ah, I remember reading about the timthumb bug at work and checking right away when I got home if my site was vulnerable to it (which it wasn't).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Progressive Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.04671 <comment><AUTHOR> See also the excellent summary by The Morning Paper: [https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/10/11/progressive-neural- netwo...](https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/10/11/progressive-neural-networks/)</comment>


Maybe We Should Stop Calling Smartphones 'Phones' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/maybe-we-should-stop-calling-smartphones-phones/259290/

<comment><AUTHOR> From the same research ...

"Among the smartphone users surveyed in O2's research:

More than half (54%) say they use their phones in place of an alarm clock

Almost half (46%) have dispensed with a watch in favor of using their smartphone

Two-in-five (39%) have switched to use their phone instead of a separate camera

More than one quarter use their phone instead of a laptop (28%)

One in ten have replaced a games console in favor of their handset (11%)

Perhaps indicative of where things are moving, one in twenty smartphone users have switched to use their phone in place of a TV (6%) or reading physical books (6%)"

</comment><comment><USER2> Agreed. Especially with 'phones' like the galaxy S 3 looking more and more like mini tablets.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you answer, "How many customers do you have?" - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
We are a new start up and at the stage now where we are giving demos to medium/large organisations.
A common question we get is, who are you current clients and how many do you have? Our answer at the moment is none, and this never goes down well at all.
How have you handled these questions? <comment><USER2> I once attended a conference with a bizdev guy who answered like this:

"How many clients do you have?"

"Hmmm... I think we're under 300 right now"

In reality, we had none. I couldn't help but chuckle, but it was technically true and he closed some deals that way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lots of companies would consider the answer to that question to be confidential information.

When I worked at a startup, the initial deployments were well aware that they were beta sites and that they would be working with us to polish the product. This could have been taken both ways: they would have some input on development, but they could expect to face some issues with it from time to time.

</comment><comment><USER4> The other day I talked to a business partner and told him that our customer base grew by 150% in the last year. He then asked for absolute numbers. I just told him the absolute numbers are still embarrassing low and left it at that.

</comment><comment><USER5> Stick with your honest answer of none.</comment>


Ask HN: Historical examples of when housing prices become too high? - <AUTHOR>

I keep reading about how expensive it is to buy a home in Silicon Valley, NYC, London, Toronto, etc...<p>I want to know if there is any historical context to when housing prices become unaffordable to the middle class. what happens? Do young people shift en mass to renting? Does the "bubble" eventually bust or do home prices stay stagnant? etc <comment><USER2> In SV, there's a huge range of prices depending on neighborhood. There are many cheap neighborhoods close to tech companies. Mostly, what you pay the big bucks for is living in neighborhoods with other rich people, and sending your kids to school with their kids. In the cheaper neighborhoods, many of your neighbors will be blue-collar.

Real-estate agents will of course extoll the benefits of living in a neighborhood with people who make more than you, since they get 7% of what they can convince you to spend. Obviously, lots of people consider living in an affluent neighborhood worth paying for. But you can live a nice life in a cheap neighborhood too.

You have to consult your values to decide what's important to you.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my webapp - Goalbot - <AUTHOR> http://www.goalbot.org

<comment><USER2> Really like this idea, it's a really nifty concept. On the design side of things I'm on the fence, I like the logo and serif font at the top, though I'm still unsure about the monospace caption, it's possible the entire header would look better in a monospace font, worth exploring.

From the design of the header, the buttons and heavy gradient don't really work for me, you start out very crisp and clean, but quickly clutter with excessive gradients and rollovers, and the central page layout feels very 'cramped' as well, possibly playing with the spacing between objects and the contrasts would help.

Honestly I think your design would greatly improve with a more liberal use of whitespace, possibly no borders for the content, no boxing things in? and I'm not sold on the rounded navigation either, but this is possibly just due to the images not really jiving with me.

Here's an example: <http://thismat.com/images/goalbot.png>

Obviously this all subjective to taste, but I thought I'd throw it in as food for thought...you might not even be ready to tweak on the design yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! This is really helpful. I've often felt like the design was sort of cramped, as you say. Unfortunately, I'm only an aspiring designer so sometimes I can't figure out just how to fix my problems. I've also been a bit hesitant to play around with the design too much as I've been trying to get the functionality into place.

But you've inspired me. I'm going to play around with the spacing and borders this weekend. At this point I don't think I want to do away with the content borders entirely, but your graphic shows how much more open it would be. Hrmm... I'll have to ruminate on it.

I know the screenshot wasn't a super intensive edit or anything, but it was really nice of you to go through the trouble. Thanks so much!

<comment><USER2> Not a problem, for the record I just used firebug to hide the background images and took a screen shot ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! You sly dog.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi, I triggered a 500 error somehow.. probably because of my javascript being disabled. You should add a small but very visible warning that js is required. Wondering how many hn-readers are using noscript. About the whole concept. I do not get it. At least I am not sure if I do. To be fair. I spent less then 90 seconds on your page. I would recommend that you produce some sort of workflow-demo. Wink (<http://www.debugmode.com/wink/>) does a nice job. I use the linux version to do the screencapturing and use the more advanced windows version to add audio. Do you have a business model in mind? Or is this just a fun project? Best wishes, have fun.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I'm still working on getting the non-javascript enabled functions working properly. At the moment the site does require JS, but it won't when it's "done", though the UI will be somewhat clunkier without the JS.

I've thought about adding a flowchart of some type, but in actuality there isn't really a sequential path through, other than having to plan your goal(s) before you can track and connect on them. I'll considerate further and see what I can come up with though.

Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A tried a few things like: "go to law school", "develop a video game", "work on open source", none of which came up with any suggestions. I really like the idea, I think the database just needs some population before it becomes really useful.

Also it would be super cool if people could have public profiles where they post how they did things. You might be able to pay/interest some authors or famous people (like Neil Gaiman or Steven Fry, both of whom LOVE services like Twitter). Get them to write public how-tos on achieving your goals.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely, the site needs a lot more content before it's particularly useful. Those are all great goals, I'll definitely be doing some research and developing content in those areas.

I have a lot of thoughts on where the site is going, and how public profiles will work, but I hadn't particularly thought about the "famous how-tos" angle. Thats really interesting, I'll add it into the brainstorm soup!!

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not to be nitpicky, but in startups every little bit helps, you should change loose weight to lose weight in the "start a business" goal. Loose refers to the opposite of tight. Lose refers to the act of removing something.

Other than the dialog boxes that pop up like crazy the site is interesting. One thing you might want to elaborate on is how the system uses the data you provide to fine tune the algorithms.

If you are crowdsourcing the data for goals how are you going to prevent malicious activity from corrupting the goal set?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right. I should fix that title.

The "loose weight" entry was from a beta tester and I haven't quite finished the 'similar goals' part of the database, which will connect "loose weight" to the correctly spelled goal "lose weight" (which is also in the database). That should be working soon, which will help to minimize accidental entries.

In regards to malicious entries, this is a tricky subject. I'm thinking of malicious entries in terms of spam-type and just plain junk entries, is that what you mean? To some degree, worthless entries will be weeded out because no one will select them, so they will fall to the bottom of the recommended goals list (more to the point, the opposite will happen - the good will rise to the top). There are also a number of other steps I'm taking, including implementing a flagging system that will help with manual moderation.

Thanks for taking the time to check out the site! I'm going to be making a number of changes based on the feedback I've received here. I'll report back once things are further along.

<comment><USER5> No problem. The site definitely has potential. It might be a good idea to add some kind of chronological aspect of the goal system into it too. By that I mean to have the goals sorted by chronology in addition to rank. Most goals have a linear progression that if the suggested goals are ranked in a manner that is consistent with the natural progression of attaining the goal it will help in make the system more usable. If you wanted to implement this system you could take a look at how people order the subgoals when the goals are added to the main goal. You could also keep stats on what goals are added in addition to the goal that someone just added and do a netflix style "We noticed that you added 'get married' as a subgoal to your main goal of 'live a full life' might we suggest 'find a date' as a correlated goal?" or something along those lines. Good luck on it and I look forward to seeing your progress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll be honest; dialogue boxes appearing _everywhere_ put me off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the honesty!

I'm assuming you mean the pop up dialogues when you've started planning a new goal (and not the tool tips when you hover over certain items). This is really designed for first time users to help explain how the system works.

Do you think that level of explanation is unnecessary? Or is there a better way of adding that information?

<comment><USER6> no I think it is good to see it.

Just within a few seconds of getting to that screen I had about 5 boxes appear in front of me and it was a bit confusing.

Maybe just a reorganisation of where they appear?

EDIT: ok I went back to have another look. It's not the placement that put me off; it was the speed. It sounds crazy but I think the popups are too fast in appearing - I bet if you got them to fade in a little slower (2-3 seconds) then it would feel more natural.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, I'll play with the timing and see what I can do. Thanks for taking the time to look again!

EDIT: I slowed it down a few seconds, but from the feedback so far I think I might need to rethink how the instructions work exactly...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the design, although the dialog boxes are somewhat annoying. I don't find it useful to me, but the concept is very interesting and original. Good luck with your webapp.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've slowed the popup dialogs down a bit, but I might need to rethink how it works based on the feedback here.

Thank you for taking the time to check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious whether you're planning to have Goalbot automatically learn from the collective successes of your users (example "people who skipped this step were twice as likely to fail at goal X"). Surely some goals are going to be personal, but I could imagine a lot of interesting insights arising from studying the paths of those who were successful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the plan and track sections of Goalbot are based around 'learning' which subgoals are most effective in reaching the parent goal. This was actually part of the original inspiration behind the idea.

Also, I agree that there will be some personal goals added. At the moment we're getting around the public/personal issue by making goals public once a certain threshold of people have typed it in manually. This way no private goals will ever be made public (though as the site develops I'll likely have to make it a bit smarter).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nothing big, but something I just thought I'd bring to your attention if you haven't noticed.

I'm assuming you have different colored images for the menu bar items ("Plan", "Track", etc) when users hover. It doesn't look like the images loaded immediately and it caused a couple second lag where a mouse-over caused the button to go all white.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I've noticed the lag on some of the roll-over graphics.

I'm planning on converting the images to use CSS Sprites, which I believe will solve the problem without having to resort to preloading (and, of course, make the site run a bit faster too).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice site. I'd personally use the word "checkpoint" or something instead of "sub-goal", but it's a small thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny you should mention that. One of my beta testers was particularly hung up on the word "subgoal". She thought it sounded too technical, but so far everyone else has thought it was okay.

There are some other wording changes I'm contemplating, so I'll have to give this one some further thought as well.

Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yeah, I got a 500 error as well when I said I really want to ... poop

I have JS enabled.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, thanks for pointing that out. I figured out where the error was and fixed it. It wasn't the wording that was the problem!

But, yes, the site now accepts poop. :)

<comment><USER12> I too have Javascript. Nothing works, I get an error 500 every time.

Note: this is not browser-related:

$ curl -I <http://www.goalbot.org/plan/start/sleep/>

HTTP/1.1 500 INTERNAL SERVER ERROR

[...]

<comment><AUTHOR> I have to dig further into what happened there. It should be fixed now though, I've tested through several options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think I like it, but I'm probably not going to use it, at least now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Understandable. I'm still working on getting enough content in the learn and plan sections to make it truly valuable without network effect from the connect section (which is a social network/forum combo).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> cool idea Can we add timelines in the goals somewhere ..and i feel popups need a bit of rework..it annoys a bit initially....

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of details like due dates, etc. are set up in the back end but haven't been exposed through the UI yet. I'm working towards that, should be soon.

I agree about the pop-ups, several people have mentioned how annoying they are. As per the suggestion of a previous commenter I'm going to set it up so that it is controlled by the user (i.e., they can select if they've had enough instructions after the first pop up or if they want to see more instructions). I think that will help.

On a side note, those pop ups should be seen rarely by the user once they've actually set things up (though I realize first impressions are critical).</comment></comment>


Programming sucks - <AUTHOR> http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

<comment> rebekah-aimee This post is beautiful. I have to show this to my mom.

Was that last example Obfuscated-C or something? I can't even tell. It's just that lovely. Of course I want to live in a world where that wins contests.

There's just something wonderful about a culture with this much openly acknowledged absurdity. People who sometimes literally dream in code, who have an unstoppable urge to grep books, who have had others point out grammatical errors because they reflexively ended a sentence with a semicolon;

But there's a lucidity about it. "Yes, I taught my computer to speak orangutan. As a side project, I scare normal people. What are your hobbies?"

In programming, you don't have to pretend to be reasonable. You can genuinely like what you do, and that usually makes you so good at it that you can get by with having your boss hear that your computer now knows fifty definitions of "Ook." And there's something incredibly special about making hardened bureaucrats take that without losing dignity.

I can't tell if the writer actually dislikes programming or not. (May seem an incredible statement.) But for how much programmers half-seriously complain about how ridiculous their work is, I don't know a one who would've gone back in time and told their younger self not to learn programming. Maybe they'd have said not to try to make a corporate career out of it, but that's more the brokenness of corporate structure than of programming proper.</comment>


Firefox Quantum vs. Google Chrome Speed Test - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2017/11/15/google-chrome-vs-firefox-quantum/#VugFswNI6aqG <comment><USER2> Would love to see a similar test with CPU usage as well. I tried Quantum on OS X for a few days and had to go back to Chrome because it felt like 75% of the time opening a tab would cause my computer to take off</comment>