The Hacker News New Page Scroll of Death and Some Possible Solutions - <AUTHOR> http://www.almostinfinite.com/other/hacker-news-new-page-scroll-of-death.html? <comment><USER2> I feel that a lot of HN visitors do not at all check out the "new" page. How about another solution, where the front page shows a box on top with last 3 submissions from the new page, so that every new post get's at least some exposure, and get's a chance to get up voted once or twice. Each new post would be shown 2-5 times in the new box on the front page (depending on the volume of traffic to the front page vs. volume of new submissions).

So, for instance, let's say there are 9 new posts in the "queue" and there are 3 concurrent visitors to the front page. Visitor A will see links 1-3 from the new queue, visitor B will see links 4-6, etc. After being shown at least 3 times to front page visitors the link get's dropped from the new queue if it did not gather a single up vote. However, if it does get an up vote, that also resets it's show counter, and it has 3 more chances to gather another up vote.

The number of showings (lives) can be adjusted based on the ratio of new submissions to front page visitors. But I suspect that that ratio is more than high enough to accommodate 3-5 showings.

I feel like this would be a relatively easy system to implement, and could result in better overall content. Thoughts?

<comment><USER3> I personally think this is probably a good solution for visibility. If the issue is visibility of new submissions, random promotion of them to the front page seems like a valid solution.

Though it might also mean that scores will be more variable for new submissions, and that may have an impact on front-page/2nd-page variability and bounciness, which doesn't seem like it would be friendly to casual users.

<comment><USER2> Hmm, well the way I was imagining it, every new post will get the same amount of promotion, but it's true that it is random in that you never know who you are going to show it to. Some people might pay attention to the New Posts box, some may not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It may be worthwhile to reference my "If your HN submission doesn't get any upvotes, don't worry about it" note ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9864254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9864254)) The probability of hitting the front page is low at all times of day and all days of week. (see: [http://i.imgur.com/MdUvMB9.png](http://i.imgur.com/MdUvMB9.png))

A separate /new list won't make a difference because it won't improve the average content _quality_. Not everything submitted to HN "deserves" to receive upvotes, to be perfectly honest.

Personally, I've had a number of submissions get upvotes after it's fallen off the first page of /new. I admit it's counterintuitive, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Not everything submitted to HN "deserves" to receive upvotes, to be > perfectly honest.

This is certainly true. It is also the case that some things submitted to HN deserve upvotes and don't get them. A case in point, this very article:

      Try #1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10007658
              ==> 4 points by curtis 17 hours ago | discuss

      Try #2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10011219 (this submission)
              ==> 42 points by curtis 2 hours ago | 18 comments

The obvious conclusion is that the first submission didn't get upvotes just because it wasn't very good -- it simply didn't deserve them. And the second submission got upvotes because it was better. It was quality content. But of course in this example, they're the same article!

Now let me be clear. I understand that it is the nature of this particular beast that there is simply going to be a lot of randomness. However, I believe we can make it noticeably less random with some fairly modest effort. And if we can make it less random, then I think that would be a good thing. Would the proposed "preview" page actually do that? I don't know. But I certainly think it's worth talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a problem we had to solve at reddit a long time ago. It's called the "rising" sort:

[https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/c6f959504466333c0d7d51...](https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/c6f959504466333c0d7d51c131240473aaf78b04/r2/r2/lib/rising.py)

</comment><comment><USER3> Let's be realistic, even when the number of articles coming in is really high, you're talking about 100-150 posts for an hour.

The HN algorithm has temporal-gravity to help pull down old content that wasn't hugely popular. Due to that algorithm if the content doesn't take off in the first hour, it likely won't take off.

Those 2 points point to a far simpler solution. Just show most of the items from the last hour on the new page. So instead of 30 items, you show 100 items on the new page, which should accommodate most of the recent posts without requiring any clicks.

(minimaxir's point is also very valid.)

<comment><USER6> > Just show most of the items from the last hour on the new page.

Someone else suggested this recently, and we've heard it before, too. We're game to try it as an experiment.

What's the best way to measure whether it works?

<comment><USER7> Well, the first step is identifying _what the problem is_. To me it's not obvious and a concrete statement of what we want to solve would help.

That is, we know it's that "articles that _should_ be on the front page get overlooked"—but votes are the main metric we have for what _should_ be on the front page. How can we tell an article that fell off /new because it was bad from one that fell off because nobody saw it?

One way of evaluating this would be to exercise editorial discretion, pick out articles _you_ (or some set of people) believe are good and compare how they progress with different versions of the page. However, this is rather labor intensive and risks biasing the experiment based on who picks the articles out.

I can't think of other approaches off-hand. Coming up with a concrete statement of the problem would probably help here.

<comment><USER6> I agree. That's why I asked how to measure whether it works—it requires defining "works".

Upvotes alone don't determine HN's front page. If they did, HN would be dominated by controversy, gossip, and fashion—those get the most reflexive upvotes, and there are more reflexive upvotes than reflective ones. Coutervailing mechanisms include flagging and moderation.

The fundamental difficulty is that HN cares most about quality and one can't easily measure that or automate it. Human curation is needed, plus humans don't always agree about what counts as high-quality.

Anyone who wants to know about our current approach to this problem should read [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134).

<comment><USER8> It might be interesting to be able to follow other users (who you know will tend to like the kinds of stories you want to see) and you can share saved stories or something. Or have related content or per-account filters that change the frontpage.

If, as it seems, there's no objective standard for quality (since it can't be measured or defined) then maybe subjective filters are the way to go.

<comment><USER6> I think there's value in HN having a shared single view of the front page and the threads. It means we all can't do the standard internet thing of self- selecting into subworlds that don't interact. This leads to friction in the short term—we're all exposed to things we don't like, some of which is uncivil and shouldn't be here, but some of which is merely disagreeable because it contradicts what we believe or like, and that's unpleasant. In the long run, though, my bet is that having a single whole community provides something deeply valuable.

On the question of how objective vs. subjective HN's notion of quality is, I don't think it's completely subjective. Everyone has their personal tastes, but HN's standards are reasonably well-established too. So I still think we may be able to come up with a story curating mechanism to supplement upvoting that is open to any user who wants to put in the effort. The big question, again, is how to score the effort. It can't be just "vote for whatever you like," because we already have that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think many important entries get to the first page not because people upvote them on the "new" page, but because people keep on re-submitting them, where resubmition actually functions as an (unintended) upvote.

That said, it seems that HN has grown so big, many "top stories" don't get enough time for discussion before completely disappearing from the front page. It might be time (shudder the thought) to introduce channels...

<comment><AUTHOR> I have long suspected that this is true for certain types of articles. If a new article appears on some really popular website like CNN or Slate (for example) and it is about some HN-worthy topic, there's a good chance that multiple HN users will encounter the article browsing the original source site and submit it from there. Now you've got a submission with 3 or 4 upvotes, none of them from the /new page.

<comment><USER10> Especially 'Ask HN' and 'Show HN' posts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Allowing submissions only from users with a minimum karma (50, 100, 200, x) would be a better solution for preventing spam and flooding. Something similar to down-voting permissions that currently requires 500 points.

It would be also much easier to implement.

<comment><USER6> A few problems with that: missing a good story costs HN far more than tolerating a bad one (kind of like startup investing that way); users with higher karma by no means reliably submit high-quality stories; by closing newcomers out, karma thresholds heighten the risk of the community becoming insular, something we definitely don't want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> c'mon now, they aren't even about to fix the simple 'comment layout on mobile' problem. You really think they're going to go through the trouble of adding a whole new ranking system? :-)

<comment><USER6> > they aren't even about to fix the simple 'comment layout on mobile' problem

Why do you say that? We've put a ton of work into that problem, which is not quite as simple as you'd think.

<comment><USER13> Hey dang!

Just wanted to first say that I absolutely have enjoyed your work and time on HN, but from my experience as a user (important distinction here), the mobile interface hasn't changed much in the last few years.

The only thing I see is a slightly bigger triangle button and a whole lot of tiny tiny text. I completely understand that my phone isn't the target audience (S3), and so I use an Android app to make up the difference, but when I saw your comment I reopened HN on my phone to see if had improved since I had last checked a year ago.

Here's what I saw: [http://i.imgur.com/CRonP5c.png](http://i.imgur.com/CRonP5c.png) I am NOT a UX expert (or even novitiate) but if you would, compare the size of the refresh button to the size of the upvote or comments buttons and notice the vast difference in area.

I took the liberty of coloring in the comment link in red, and comparing it to the refresh button: [http://i.imgur.com/GZEs7cN.png](http://i.imgur.com/GZEs7cN.png) and that it is less than 1/10th of the same clickable area.

Now, I am 100% not saying you should be targeting this button size or that specifically, but that would be a reason I would make this type of comment.

Hopefully that isnt too frustrating of a response, I assume there are a lot of factors going on that I am not aware of.

Thanks.

<comment><USER6> Sorry! I see now that my comment was far from clear. You're right that there haven't been major changes to the interface, but that's not because we haven't been working hard on it. It's because we haven't released that work yet.

We did make a couple attempts at quick fixes for HN on mobile that provoked howls of protest, so we rolled those back and have been working instead on rewriting HN's markup entirely. This is not a small project, and everyone working on it has other responsibilities, so it has taken a long time. It is, however, getting closer to being ready. That's why I objected to the statement that we "aren't even about to fix" it (and also that it's a "simple" problem)!

When we do have something ready, we'll release it for a while as a different set of URLs and start taking everyone's feedback about what still doesn't work right. I imagine there will be a long process of tweaking it, and we'll be happy to do that over time.

(Also, that was very nice of you to be so friendly even though it sounded like I was saying something silly.)

<comment><USER13> That sounds great dang, thanks for continuing to work on it even if there was a backlash. I will be interested to see what shows up in the next few months (hopefully) :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One of the possible advantages of the "preview" page from the proposal is that it might draw more eyeballs to new submissions than what they're receiving now. This is because the design interleaves new submissions with submissions that have received some degree of filtering. I really spend very little time checking the new page, and I suspect I'm not alone in that. I don't know if HN would be better if regular users spent more time looking at the new page, but I suspect that it would.

It's also worth noting that HN _could_ interleave new submissions into the front page to get them more visibility, forgoing a preview type page altogether.

</comment><comment><USER14> Perhaps the New feed could be tweaked, so that if a New submission gets an upvote it goes back to the top of the New feed. If the submission reaches the front page then its chronological position on the New feed could be restored.

</comment><comment><USER15> Put in a random recently posted story on the front page, different for each visitor.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I pay for my Windows Phone 7? - <AUTHOR>

Hey all,
Last night I bought an HTC Titan from AT&T and it ended up costing me $227.30.  Additionally, my phone bill is going to come out to about $110/month and I won't be able to upgrade my phone for 20 months.  This means that this phone is going to cost me close to $2,500.
Now, I could just pay for this out of pocket, but where's the fun in that.  Instead, I'd rather write apps for Windows Phone 7.  I've got several years of C# in Silverlight development under my belt, so I don't think I'll have too much trouble developing for the phone.  Unfortunately, I'm not very familiar with the apps available on the marketplace and I'm not great with coming up with "business" ideas anyhow.
So, I'd like to ask the HN community if they have any ideas for apps that I could develop for Windows Phone 7 that would make me $2500? <comment><USER2> If you're out of ideas check the iTunes and android marketplaces and make better versions of popular apps while you think of a more unique project for yourself.</comment>


Colleges: Unknown, Unsung & Unusual (1963) - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,830138,00.html

<comment><USER2> Shimer is still unknown (except among some homeschoolers, I think) and still unsung. Here are some current Common Data Set descriptions of Shimer College:

[http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.j...](http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=2372)

[http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.j...](http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=2372&profileId=1)

[http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.j...](http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=2372&profileId=6)

[http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.j...](http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=2372&profileId=2)</comment>


Twilio: Powerful API For Phone Services That Can Recreate GrandCentral In 15 Lines Of Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/20/twilio-powerful-api-for-phone-services-that-can-recreate-grandcentral-in-15-lines-of-code/ <comment><USER2> Hi Guys, thanks for the kind words about Twilio. If any YC folks want invites, just hit me up: firstname.lastname@example.com. Can't wait to see what you guys can build.

</comment><comment><USER3> I got a chance to talk to Jeff from Twilio over a month ago and the service looks really promising, especially once they get some speech recognition integrated. Definitely check it out!

</comment><comment><USER4> This is really an awesome product with a classic, real business model: "Here's something that lets you build stuff to make money a lot faster than before. Please give us money for it." I love it!

Also: international outbound calls are hopefully around the corner, since that's a key requirement for what I have in mind.

</comment><comment><USER5> I met Jeff from Twilio at a conference recently -- his pitch was instantly very compelling. It's one of those a-ha ideas that I think is going to go a really long way.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Note, the preferred stack is Apache with Erlang running on a linux hacked > Coleco that's missing one controller.

Quality stuff on the home page. I'm excited about this service.

<comment><USER7> I wasn't aware that Linux ran on the z80...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Damn impressive. Make sure you hit up the site's homepage and look at the 4 demos they have available.

I don't know if you can really do GrandCentral in 15 lines, but the examples they provide get the mouth watering.

</comment><comment><USER9> It could be made clearer that it won't work outside US/Canada.

</comment><comment><USER10> Twilio looks very impressive and we are seriously considering using it. Has anyone written an app with it yet or looked at the competitive landscape? Ribbit?

RB

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow, this looks really great. I'm excited to see how far this goes. Just out of curiousity, is your blog supposed to be invite only (it is at the moment)?

</comment><comment><USER12> someone SHOULD recreate GrandCentral. Its been a long time since Google bought them, and people still can't register new accounts.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like the simplified API. Can anyone recommend an ultra-simple API for SMSs? I am soon to need a lib (maybe for ruby) that has such simple semantics but for SMSs. One key attribute I'll need is to easily associate SMS replies to the context of the previous send. This will be my first SMS app, so any pointers would be appreciated.

<comment><USER14> At PollEverywhere, we got a great head start from textmarks.com (41411). Although we may outgrow it, it's got the most straightforward API of any.

We're also big fans of Twilio. We're eager for dictionary-constrained speech recognition. Great job, Jeff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> After looking into it, I'm very impressed; simply amazing how simple it makes it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think I'm going to play around with this service soon. Seems very exciting.

</comment><comment><USER17> What an awesome idea! This could be very useful to us.Kudos.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here is a startup with a "clear" business model: Pay as you go.</comment>


Facebook Takes Steps Against 'Click Bait' Articles - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/business/media/facebook-takes-steps-against-click-bait-articles.html?ref=business <comment><USER2> Why oh why didn't the Times give this story the headline, "You Won't Believe What Facebook Is Doing To Your Timeline"?

<comment><USER3> I'm sure they A/B tested it.

<comment><USER4> Maybe not. It is the Times, after all - there's no way those "For an Article, Headline Written Like Yoda" headlines are optimized for clicks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Links to [http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/08/news-feed-fyi-click- bait...](http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/08/news-feed-fyi-click-baiting/) I can't read the submitted article because of the paywall, but does it add anything to the announcement?

<comment><USER6> The submitted article is shorter and more concise, but you're not missing anything by only reading the official announcement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thank god.

I was sad to have to unfollow "Wimp.com". It was (and I guess sort of still is) a site that would upload 5 new videos a day. They'd be anything from funny to cute to jaw dropping to inspiring to just plain interesting. But you could pretty much bet on them being great.

A few months ago they decided to turn their titles into clickbait. It was so incredibly frustrating to see them go down that path. I don't know if their quality bar for videos also dropped, or if that's just my disappointment seeping through.

<comment><USER8> Wow, I haven't been to Wimp in a while and it looks totally different now. It used to be so elegantly simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Facebook says its algorithm will now consider how long users spend reading > an article as a way of judging the importance.

A result of Facebook monitoring your browsing habits on other web sites.

Thank goodness for Ghostery [1]

[1] [https://www.ghostery.com/en/](https://www.ghostery.com/en/)

<comment><USER10> Did you read FB posting[1]? Especially this part:

      One way is to look at how long people spend reading an
      article away from Facebook. If people click on an article
      and spend time reading it, it suggests they clicked
      through to something valuable. If they click through to a
      link and then come straight back to Facebook, it suggests
      that they didn't find something that they wanted. With
      this update we will start taking into account whether
      people tend to spend time away from Facebook after
      clicking a link, or whether they tend to come straight
      back to News Feed when we rank stories with links in them.

[1] [http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/08/news-feed-fyi-click- bait...](http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/08/news-feed-fyi-click-baiting/)

<comment><USER9> "One way", and a speculative one at that. Their tracking cookies are a much more effective means to gather that sort of data with certainty. Anything else is just fancy guesswork.

<comment><USER11> They don't even need tracking cookies. They can just use the Like button.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Facebook says its algorithm will now consider how long users spend reading an article as a way of judging the importance.

Now the titles will be "[Number greater than 20] Things You Won't Believe About The 90's"

But seriously, I hope this has a meaningful impact. I despise the lists.

<comment><USER8> 'One Weird Trick To Fight List Articles'

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Let's all remember that facebook is not doing this for the users, but just because it has to minimize the most effective strategy --as of now-- publisher use to lure the sticky users out of the facebook cave and onto their websites.

<comment><USER14> > Let's all remember that facebook is not doing this for the users

Let's all remember that for-profit companies rarely do things "for the users." That's not a bad thing. [It's only bad in monopolistic situations where there is little or no incentive to improve the service/product in order to make more money].

<comment><USER13> For profit companies whose users don't pay a dime for the service. I was just pointing that out because this change against linkbaits look like something good for us, against the tyranny of stupidity that even once-glorious publications are imposing on the social networks users. It is not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems it would be easier to just make the "Never show me content from X.com" menu item actually work.

</comment><comment><USER16> The vast majority of FB uses are using an app, not a browser. clicking a link in the FB app does not take out "out of Facebook" they know if you clicked the back arrow within the app, and went back to your feed.

<comment><USER17> _citation needed_ \- seriously, is there a link to stats that show mobile has vastly more users than desktop for facebook?

<comment><USER18> Not exactly what you meant: [http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/13/facebook-mobile- user-count/](http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/13/facebook-mobile-user-count/)

<comment><USER17> That link shows 700 million daily, 470 million of those mobile. If I understand the numbers presented correctly, then 61% of their audience is using mobile. While more than desktop, it's hardly "vast majority".

Thanks for the link. I was underestimating the impact of mobile. But I believe the parent to my comment was overestimating, and I'm kind of sick of the "everyone uses the web on mobile anyway" meme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Too bad for Ashton Kutcher as well! His Facebook posts are all click baits!

</comment><comment><USER20> Facebook makes one small change, you won't believe what happens next!</comment>


Apple should replace the MacBook keyboard with a touchscreen - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/2018/06/02/apple-should-kill-macbook-pro-keyboard/ <comment><USER2> LOL. After the way people rioted when they touch-ified just the F keys? I don't even mind that but I would mind this. This would totally kill MacBooks for programmers.

<comment><USER3> Seriously. The MacBook would no longer be a real option for most professionals and developers if this happened.

The title of this article almost seems like satire.</comment></comment>


What the Count of Monte Cristo Can Teach Us About Cybersecurity - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/what-the-count-of-monte-cristo-can-teach-us-about-cybersecurity <comment><AUTHOR> If you haven't read this masterpiece yet, I strongly recommend that you do. An adventure if there ever was one, and possibly the classic of revenge. The prison bit is particularly memorable. Who cares if Dumas didn't write the whole thing.

<comment><USER2> The Count of Monte Cristo is a truly magnificent accomplishment, but I found the prison part to be the weakest and slowest part of the book. It's also really cliche by now.

The book only really takes off after the prison part is over.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's when the mother of all revenges develops, for sure.

Maybe it's become cliche because of its very brilliance, I don't know. Thing is I wasn't all that familiar with the plot before I read it, hadn't seen any of the cartoons or movies, so I was sort of "unpolluted", maybe that made me enjoy it more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _... between Paris and Lille, a distance of 230 kilometres (about 143 miles) ... The first symbol of a message to Lille would pass through 15 stations in only nine minutes. The speed of the line varied with the weather, but the line to Lille typically transferred 36 symbols, a complete message, in about 32 minutes ..._ [1]

So a short message could be sent at around 450km/h, like two orders of magnitude faster than the postal service it partially replaced, or, I guess that more likely for that kind of communication, still more than on order of magnitude faster than messenger pigeons. Then again, snail mail obviously still had vastly greater throughput.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> ... and _bad weather_ of course meant "no connection".

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It is also worth mentioning that this novel, and many others at the time, were published as wildly anticipated serials, not that different from the currently so popular series. You can tell from the cliffhangers at the end of many chapters.

<comment><USER3> A year ago, that was how I last read it. I would read just one chapter, each night, before I went to sleep. There were many nights where I would want to read the next chapter. (I recall reading it was not released a chapter at a time; but, that was the easiest way to break it up.)

<comment><AUTHOR> You are more disciplined than me, I binge read it during a holiday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can I recommend the mini-series with Gerard Depardieu

[http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0167565/](http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0167565/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, it's in the pipeline now!</comment></comment>


How to Fail with JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_-93M6A0Io <comment><AUTHOR> This is a talk about game development, genetic algorithms gone wrong, ascii art misadventures and why I'm desperate enough to build a new language.

You might enjoy this talk if you've ever wanted to make games and found it hard, had to write JavaScript and suffered, wanted to make a new programming language, or if you're interested in WebAssembly or functional programming.

Happy to answer any questions :)</comment>


The $800M Family Selling Art Degrees and False Hopes - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/katiasavchuk/2015/08/19/black-arts-the-800-million-family-selling-art-degrees-and-false-hopes/

<comment><USER2> Very interesting. I was wondering about all the "Academy of Art" signs when I visited SF.</comment>


Lasca Language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nau/lasca-compiler <comment><USER2> There are several things I don't like, but this one is the worst:

'no _ in ident names'

It has been shown that for better readability, _ style is better than camel case (we are used to reading words separated by white space, which _ essentially is). Whether you want to believe this or not, enforcing camel case at programming language level is a bad idea.</comment>


Stories vs. Statistics - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/stories-vs-statistics/?hp <comment><USER2> This is also one of the reasons that storytelling in print can be such an extraordinary marketing vehicle.</comment>


Ask HN: Open college job boards - <AUTHOR>

My university's job board mainly posts jobs nearby but I want more diversity. Post university job boards that do not require a login. <comment><AUTHOR> Lots of jobs in the Utah area and some not: [https://cs.byu.edu/jobs](https://cs.byu.edu/jobs).</comment>


How to Bypass SMS Verification of Any Website/Service - <AUTHOR> http://www.effecthacking.com/2015/07/how-to-bypass-sms-verification-verify-sms.html

<comment><USER2> Those numbers are most of the time flagged as "fake" or "shared" by big websites. So, this click bait is kinda outdated, I think.

Furthermore, iirc, Google has a limit of numbers that you can reuse.

You can create at most ~5 accounts with the same phone number. As those websites are used by ~100+ people, you can quite imagine that those numbers are flagged very quickly.

Thus, useless.</comment>


A new set of vulnerabilities affecting users of PGP and S/MIME - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/attention-pgp-users-new-vulnerabilities-require-you-take-action-now <comment><USER2> Response by Werner Koch (GPG), contains some details:

[https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg- users/2018-May/06031...](https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg- users/2018-May/060315.html)

<comment><USER3> >Due to broken MIME parsers a bunch of MUAs seem to concatenate decrypted HTML mime parts which makes it easy to plant such HTML snippets.

To me this sounds strictly like a MUA issue, not a PGP/SMIME one. If that's really all it is it does seem massively overblown to me. Why not single out the broken MUA implementations instead of saying "don't decrypt emails OR YOU'LL DIE"? I mean just look at the wild speculation in this thread, nobody understood what was going on or even what was really vulnerable and what wasn't. Given the alarmist tone and the claims of "no workaround available" I was personally expecting a deep conceptual flaw in PGP/SMIME themselves. Terrible communication IMO. The parent email in the GnuPG thread seems to agree: [https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg- users/2018-May/06031...](https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg- users/2018-May/060317.html)

We'll know for sure tomorrow I suppose.

<comment><USER4> I dunno, a client issue like this seems pretty terrible to me since there is no obvious (to me) way to fix it. If I am encrypting a message, I have no control over what client decrypts it (and whether that client unwittingly passes the information along) without maybe changing the standard completely.

The thing is, If I am reading correctly, it seems like this kind of vulnerability seems totally predictable.

<comment><USER3> I agree, after getting the details it's fair to say that while some MUAs should fix their handling of encrypted emails PGP implementations and the S/MIME standard shares a part of the blame by not detecting and preventing the decoding of tampered documents. Still, the way the problem was disclosed is rather misleading and confusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a guess at what the "attack" might look like.

First, you need to know that each MIME email is made up of a series of subcomponents, which the email client interprets and concatenates. One subcomponent could be PGP encrypted while the next is not.

So given an old email where message X was encrypted to form a component Encr(X), simply write a new email of the form:

        Part 1:

Then the client might decrypt this to the message . Which is fine until the email client decides to automatically execute any code it happens to be given in an email, in this case, load the image.

To be clear, I doubt very much that this is the attack, but it sounds like it's along these lines.

</comment><comment><USER6> What about Keybase[1] app, and Autocrypt[2],PEP[3]? Even dough Keybase is not email client, it can be used to continue to communicate with users that have PGP/GPG keys, over their app. And Autocrypt is Thunderbird extension, and PEP is for Outlook and Android.

[https://mastodon.social/web/statuses/100026482838593277](https://mastodon.social/web/statuses/100026482838593277)

[1]: [https://keybase.io/](https://keybase.io/)

[2]: [https://autocrypt.org/](https://autocrypt.org/)

[3]: [https://www.pep.security/](https://www.pep.security/)

<comment><USER7> This seems to be a mis-hyped vulnerability in certain mail clients that use PGP (badly).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Given that they recommend against decrypting any email, it sounds like the bug is some sort of remote-code-execution against the decryption step, that would then allow (among ~anything else) exfiltration of keys, ciphertexts, and plaintexts.

EDIT: Having read a bit more I'm not so convinced that this explanation makes sense.

<comment><USER9> The original tweet linked in the article [1] says "They might reveal the plaintext of encrypted emails, including encrypted emails sent in the past.", so at least that much is probably compromised. They also say there are currently no reliable fixes, which seems to suggest the problem is a flaw in PGP's design rather than a security bug in some specific library or tool, since a simple (but widespread) bug would most likely have a clear fix.

[1] [https://twitter.com/seecurity/status/995906576170053633](https://twitter.com/seecurity/status/995906576170053633)

<comment><USER8> Good point.

I wonder what kind of flaw in PGP's design could make it unsafe to decrypt incoming mails.

<comment><USER10> At a guess:

1\. Take previous email (X) that you want to decrypt.

2\. Apply transformation (this is the actual secret sauce) to previous X to get email Y.

3\. Because of how Y was constructed, decrypting it causes X to be decypted.

4\. Phone home with the result by using some kind of tracking pixel.

My reasoning is that they didn't talk about RCE and they didn't talk about stealing the key, and they did warn about automatic decryption, so it should be about tricking the decryptor into decrypting whatever you want for you.

<comment><USER8> Update: you were right :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've always handled PGP via cut-and-paste of the ascii armored block, through a text file on a ramdisk (or between systems), then using command-line pgp or gpg to decrypt, and the reverse. Not always on a VM or machine without external network access, but for signing keys for software and stuff, yes. It just seemed too easy to mess up auto-decrypt/auto-encrypt and accidentally send out cleartext -- the cut and paste or textfile intermediate step makes it verifiable.

Unless there's a protocol bug where the message itself can include "dump the secret key to a public keyserver on decrypt", I'm not too worried.

(I also don't use PGP for routine communications, because it's so inconvenient to use it, and due to lack of a good mobile solution. Signal, or for routine email, tls to a mail server I control is fine too.)

<comment><USER12> I wonder if that doesn't open up similar problems: Pasting the mail into the gpg command line program prints out the clear text to the terminal. There are all kinds of magic control sequences that might be in that clear text. Isn't that conceptually similar to having HTML "executed"?

<comment><USER13> Console control characters won't cause you to make an internet connection. There are some weird control sequences which are designed to execute a command on the reader's terminal, but nobody implements those these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "They figured out mail clients which don't properly check for decryption errors and also follow links in HTML mails. So the vulnerability is in the mail clients and not in the protocols. In fact OpenPGP is immune if used correctly while S/MIME has no deployed mitigation."

\- by GnuPG ([https://twitter.com/gnupg/status/995931083584757760](https://twitter.com/gnupg/status/995931083584757760))

<comment><USER15> This is worth reading with the Researcher then (publicly :)) asking him to "keep this quiet". I think some of the subsequent commentators have a point which is that the media will take this to mean PGP is broken.

<comment><USER16> According to Werner Koch (link to the email posted by other commenters already), the GnuPG people weren't contacted about this issue. So that comment from the researcher looks a little out of place, iMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Our advice, which mirrors that of the researchers, is to immediately disable > and/or uninstall tools that automatically decrypt PGP-encrypted email.

This advice strongly suggests a side-channel attack, not anything which affects encrypted data at rest. The worst case is that PGP has a remote code execution vulnerability in the decryption step.

</comment><comment><USER18> This doesn't make sense.

PGP is encryption software, whereas S/MIME is an encryption standard.

It's like saying that a vulnerability affetcts users of OpenSSL and RSA.

<comment><USER13> PGP is both software and an encryption system. ([https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4880](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4880))

<comment><USER19> To be more precise, the standardized encryption system is called OpenPGP (RFC4880) whereas PGP is the name of tool which was written by Phil Zimmermann.

<comment><USER15> Though it would appear the source of the original PGP software is no longer publicly accessible [1], so how would one know if it was vulnerable? I think the EFF probably meant people using various implementations right?

[1] [https://philzimmermann.com/EN/findpgp/](https://philzimmermann.com/EN/findpgp/)

<comment><USER19> Yes, especially mail solutions which are using OpenPGP implementations such as GnuPG.

It looks like its rather an mail client issue than an OpenPGP implementation issue: [https://twitter.com/gnupg/status/995931083584757760?s=19](https://twitter.com/gnupg/status/995931083584757760?s=19)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This seems way overblown. An in-depth explanation Werner as to why this is most likely not an issue if you're GPG is > 2.1.9 [1]

An (older) example of expected behaviour [2].

[1] [https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg- users/2018-May/06032...](https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg- users/2018-May/060320.html) [2] [https://sourceforge.net/p/enigmail/bugs/538/#43ff](https://sourceforge.net/p/enigmail/bugs/538/#43ff)

</comment><comment><USER21> _" Due to our embargo being broken, here are the full details of the #efail attacks. [https://efail.de/](https://efail.de/) "_

[https://twitter.com/seecurity/status/995964977461776385](https://twitter.com/seecurity/status/995964977461776385)

Discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17064129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17064129)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is an email client vulnerability, not a PGP one. The obvious solution is to not use a client that autoloads HTML to decrypt your emails.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm a little confused. Is this an attack on the PGP protocol or just an attack on the software implementation of PGP?

The advice they give seems to indicate that somehow a well-crafted payload can expose the secret PGP key from "tools that automatically decrypt PGP-encrypted email."

This seems to me that it is an implementation-level attack and not a protocol attack on the basis for PGP. Is anyone else getting that same thought?

<comment><USER24> This is what I thought as well. The EFF warning was specifically against decrypting messages so I think it's unlikely to be a protocol vulnerability. But my experience with software exploits is limited to reading publications about exploits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> From an essay I wrote in 2015 on "Why Encryption Use Is Problematical When Advocating For Social Change": [http://pdfernhout.net/why-encryption-use-is- problematical-wh...](http://pdfernhout.net/why-encryption-use-is- problematical-when-advocating-for-social-change.html) "In general, a system intended to ensure private communications is only as secure as its weakest link. If any of these levels is compromised (hardware, firmware, OS, application, algorithm theory, algorithm implementation, user error, user loyalty, etc.) then your communications are compromised. ... If you want to build a mass movement, at some point, you need to engage people. In practice, for social psychology reasons, engaging people is very difficult, if not impossible, to do completely anonymously in an untraceable way. People have historically built mass movements without computers or the internet. It's not clear if the internet really makes this easier for activists or instead just for the status quo who wants to monitor them. If you work in public, you don't have to fear loss of secure communications because you never structure your movement to rely on them. If you rely on "secure" communications, then you may set yourself up to fail when such communications are compromised. If your point is to build a mass movement, then where should your focus be? ..."

</comment><comment><USER26> I wouldn't be surprised if this is either:

1\. A bug in a library any pgp implementation uses, likely allowing even remote code execution

2\. A bad Interaktion with some other mail "extension"* e.g. external bodies

*With extension I mean anything added to mail in a later rfc, which isn't really an extension in the classical sense but I'm not sure what to call it otherwise

</comment><comment><USER27> Any word on whether or not mutt is affected?

</comment><comment><USER28> Ok, healthcare messaging in US is based on S/MIME ([http://wiki.directproject.org/](http://wiki.directproject.org/)). According to EFF, it should be shut down now?

</comment><comment><USER29> Yeah that sounds pretty bad. It is possibly some injection attack since it mentions automatic decryption of PGP. Or maybe some fundamental flaw in the formats... How exciting!

</comment><comment><USER30> My main question is does it affect gpg as well?

<comment><USER31> According to the quote in the article, yes.

The flaws "might reveal the plaintext of encrypted emails, including encrypted emails you sent in the past," Sebastian Schinzel, a professor of computer security at Münster University of Applied Sciences, wrote on Twitter. "There are currently no reliable fixes for the vulnerability. If you use PGP/GPG or S/MIME for very sensitive communication, you should disable it in your email client for now."

<comment><USER32> >"If you use PGP/GPG or S/MIME for very sensitive communication, you should disable it in your email client for now."

So folks relying on these thing for sensitive communication should do no communitcation until..??? Just trying to clarify.

<comment><USER8> Until a fix is released and they've installed it, one would assume.

The paper is being released tomorrow morning at 7am GMT so we should learn more then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This seems like some code-execution thing. I suspect that the vulnerability executes a command when text is decrypted

</comment><comment><USER34> It's not clear to me if PGP encrypted files are affected if it's not email.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think PGP should implement a centralized auto-update mechanism so that software can disable itself in cases as severe as listed (with advice to "immediately disable and/or uninstall tools that automatically decrypt PGP- encrypted email").

[I've removed an earlier longer version of this comment.]

<comment><USER8> The problem with a comment like this is that it's practically impossible to reply to it without sinking to the same level.

You're getting downvoted with no replies because almost everybody disagrees with you but nobody can be bothered to argue your nonsensical points.

EDIT: I see now what's going on. You baited people into disagreeing with your crackpottery, you then edited-down or deleted all of your comments in this thread so that we are the ones who look like crackpots. Well played, I guess, but not the kind of conduct I've come to expect on HN.

<comment><USER9> Absolutely agree, although I want to give a better typewriter example. I'd say this announcement is much more similar to:

\-----

May 14th, 1918.

Attention All Users of Typewriters: Stop Using Patented "Secret Envelopes".

Recent research has demonstrated that under certain lighting conditions, "Secret Envelopes" become transparent. There are alternatives to "Secret Envelopes" and we urge you to use them instead for the time being.

\-----

In which case I would not only accept the announcement, but probably toss out my secret envelopes for good, or at least until it's proven to work again.

<comment><USER35> [removed]

<comment><USER8> > my specific firm, non-negotiable suggestion about the infrastructural > changes that PGP admins need to institute.

The good news is I don't think anyone is going to make the mistake of trying to negotiate your suggestion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


JS/CSS Packaging to Minimize Requests and Randomly Evil Algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://bjk5.com/post/4918954974/js-css-packaging-to-minimize-requests-and-randomly-evil

<comment><USER2> The article addresses a few issues you may have with packaging assets into "rollup" files:

1\. If you set your JS or CSS rollup file's versioning number as the (root) revision number for your entire codebase, then editing an unrelated file will bump your rollup file version and unnecessarily void the previously cached version. Clients end up re-downloading the exact same file.

2\. Google App Engine and other proxy caches may exhibit problems with the query string versioning technique: all.js?v={version}

The solution is to derive the version number of the rollup file from the version numbers or a hash of the contents of the actual files included, and to include this version number in the rollup file name, not the query string: all-{version}.js instead of all.js?v={version}

There are a number of other considerations that the author didn't cover. I will mention the ones related to _what_ is included in an asset rollup file:

1\. If you need to include a popular third-party library such as jQuery or YUI, utilizing Google or Yahoo's CDNs may likely result in a resource cache hit even for visitors brand new to your site. [1]

2\. If you have certain JS or CSS files that you update frequently, they would be candidates for splitting off into a separate rollup file. Thus, frequent visitors will only need to re-download the contents of the smaller, frequently updated rollup file.

3\. Different sections or pages of your site may warrant different rollups. If a high k-weight set of JS/CSS files are required only for admins or for an infrequent task such as uploading files, you may not want to have every visitor of your front page downloading all that k-weight.

These decisions require looking at the cost of extra HTTP requests and added complexity versus the amount of downloaded KB saved. But they are worthwhile considerations for optimization.

[1] As previously mentioned by iamjustlooking.

<comment><USER3> Great tips. I've always wondered what the cache hit ratios are like for various site's userbases when using Google or Yahoo's CDN for a popular library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Smart. There's a Django app, jezdez's django-compressor, that will do this for you, including packaging and minifying JS and CSS then generating a file with the new hash in its name in the way this article describes.

<comment><USER2> Link: <http://github.com/jezdez/django_compressor>

<comment><USER5> Does it support hosting/syncing the static content to a 3rd party service like s3?

The problem with most of these asset management apps is i can't use the templatetags, since they save new css files etc. During deployment i usually ship the static media to S3.

<comment><USER4> I haven't tried to do that myself, but django-compressor has a management command if you don't want to use template tags, which are really just there for the convenience factor:

> The concatenation and compressing process can also be jump started outside > of the request/response cycle by using the Django management command > manage.py compress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I prefer to load resources like Jquery using googles CDN and then pack my own javascript separately. Using something like HeadJS you can load both items non-blocking and in parallel.

<http://headjs.com/>

<comment><USER7> The OP is solving an entirely different problem.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, I read the part about packing and minifying javascript and it made me want to mention that.</comment></comment></comment>


Millions of Unemployed Face Years without Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/business/economy/21unemployed.html?hp <comment><USER2> It seems we have at least ~20 years of a serious transition problem, even if in the long run it's a symptom of positive technological progress: there's a large cohort of blue-collar workers in their 40s and 50s caught out by the rapid decline in US blue-collar jobs. Some will find other skills, or go back to school to acquire skills (and valuable pieces of paper), but can that absorb millions of middle-aged people who have been blue-collar workers all their lives and now find that to be a dead end?

<comment><USER3> Unskilled workers can progress to doing tasks that involve labeling data for machine learning - computer vision, sentiment analysis in audio and text are examples currently being done on mechanical turk.

The only limiting factor currently is lack of imagination and investment from so-called innovators - they'd rather 'innovate' by creating another social network or incrementally improve a 1960s technology (microsoft) than do anything truly useful to society.

Efforts in this area include google goggles/voice and microsoft project natal (though it's woefully underfunded compared to it's potential).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of my predictions for 2020 is that services like Mechanical Turk are going to employ a significant number of people in the US. The only reason this hasn't happened already is that there is a lot of friction once the tasks get more complicated than checking whether or not an image is porn. But once someone invents a 'programming language' for outsourcing that allows people to easily Turk higher-wage tasks, I think we are going to see an explosion of piecework knowledge workers.

The fact is that these people are never going to have jobs again, and once their unemployment runs out there is going to be this huge unexploited resource just waiting for someone to arbitrage.

</comment><comment><USER5> The positive spin for HN folk: if you are an entrepreneur, get cracking ! This is both opportunity for you, as well as a Good Thing to do for the economy (yes yes, I know, unlikely to hire a long term unemployed person for a new internet startup, but it still doesn't hurt !).

<comment><AUTHOR> Though you might not directly hire a long-term unemployed person, you could indirectly, by causing growth in suppliers.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, the problem I see with direct hiring is that a lot of the work entrepreneurs do is about creating efficiencies which remove these people from the workforce.

Mechanical Turk would be a good counter example but I don't think anyone in the US could realistically make a living from it.

Maybe the answer is a start up that aims on giving these people a new skill set, which allows them to do something that is fairly procedural but something that can't be automated. Some of the jobs we find boring and monotonous may seem new and exciting to people just moving into tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> how can she possibly be in danger of going homeless if her husband gets $1595 a month? it's b/c their rent is 1380.

just move to a cheaper apartment. if you're broke with no job prospects and stay in a pricey apartment you can't afford, how is that a sob story that should make us sympathetic to more welfare spending? why should i pay more taxes so she can live in an apartment that costs more than mine?

<comment><USER8> You know, I don't normally get into these types of debates, but the heartlessness of your comment really bothers for some reason. It reminds me of the fable of the ant and grasshopper (circulated by the teabaggers lately), which basically states that the grasshopper, because of poor planning, should be kicked to the curb to die in the cold rather than forcing the industrious ant to lend a hand. (You would love the altered version descibed here: <http://www.grist.org/article/the8/>)

And your comment further down that they should have set aside money for moving when they still had it is completely unhelpful. I once heard of a person who took his Pontiac to a mechanic because of a problem he was having with it. He asked the mechanic "What should I do?" to which the mechanic replied, "Don't buy a Pontiac". Not really helpful.

So, your solution to Ms. Eisen's problem is that they should simply move to a cheaper apartment? Well, turns out that due to a work injury, her husband is confined to the couch. So, not only would he not be able to help move, but they type of apartment they could get would be restricted by his accessibility requirements. And, their vehicle broke down, so they would have to rent a moving van or rely on friends. Moving does cost money and it may not be an option.

Oh right, they "should have thought of that when they had money". Well, setting aside how completely unhelpful that comment is, maybe she didn't think she would be out of work for 2 years, and now the money they had set aside is gone, and they never thought they would get to the point where they would have to move? Maybe they live near by treatment centers for her husband and the only places with cheaper apartments are too far way? There is not enough information in the article to come to the conclusion that simply moving to a cheaper apartment will solve all of their problems so that you won't have to "pay more taxes so she can live in an apartment that costs more than mine."

So, what would you do if you were standing in front of you? Tell her "Too bad so sad, you should have thought about all this when you had money", and then throw her aside in disgust, but not before handing her a couple of Ayn Rand's books so she can learn how to pull herself up by her own bootstraps?

When society begins to suffer, we all ultimately suffer my friend, no matter whose fault it is.

<comment><USER9> IMHO one of the greatest, and most misguided straw men we have as a society is the boogeyman that is the lazy, stupid citizen. I've recently started working with the homeless, and had the opportunity to live in an industrial, working- class slum in Canada... what I see in those places is not maliciousness, nor laziness.

Have I met the lazy, good-for-nothing freeloaders living in a shack in the slums? Sure - but that guy is _really_ not as common as people seem to think. It's a critical mistake that betrays the arrogance of the monied in this country to assume that these people are anything but a minority in homeless and poor population.

It's so easy to try and take full credit for your success, and try to push all blame for failure to the individual. It's far too easy to judge people you have never met using assumptions you have never truly tested. For everyone railing against the poor, I'd highly recommend volunteering some time with your local non-profit that handles these issues. Meet these people, put a face and name to your wild accusations, and you will find it much harder to scream about lazy, freeloading Americans - because they're actually kind of hard to find.

Instead of being monied and ignorant, be monied and informed.

<comment><USER7> In other words, you've met countless people who could easily live on $1595 per month? Cool. I have no doubt they exist. And that they could have handled the situation from the article better. Why can't welfare policy focus on helping those people? Competent slum people are more effective to help, and much more sympathetic, than incompetent people getting a monthly check for more than full time minimum wage work.

<comment><USER10> According to the article, Mr. Eisen gets a $1,595 monthly disability check each month _because he has diabetes, hypertension and liver failure_. Surely you realize that medical care for these kinds of conditions costs something, especially in the US. Calling him and his 57 year-old wife "incompetent" and implying that an elderly couple with medical issues could live off of a single minimum wage salary is heartless.

It's important to make sure that welfare policy doesn't become a disincentive to work, but we're talking about a disability check that doesn't even bring them up to the poverty line.

<comment><USER7> Hello? They are spending 1380/month on rent. That's what I said. Did you read it? Obviously if they stopped doing that they'd have far more money.

And I'm saying I don't want them to be given more money, not to take away his check. If you don't find a job or a cheaper place for 2 years you shouldn't go "omg i'm gonna be homeless, we need help, we're the perfect sob story, write about us in the NY times and then mention how obama wants to extend unemployment so i could get more checks that i totally deserve for not working or managing my budget for 2 years".

<comment><USER9> Please keep it civil - the other poster didn't sling any mud at you, it would help your credibility if you did the same.

<comment><USER7> What mud? He ignored what I said. I pointed this out. I didn't say anything about him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there any average-skill, reliable way that people can make an income during a down turn like this?

I'm thinking outside of the internet-set like istockphoto / writing articles / etc.

Tangible, GDP positive tasks.

Farming?

<comment><USER2> Cottage industry, possibly? Farming is difficult to pull off at more than subsistence levels without significant machinery, even if you're targeting the relatively high value hand-picked/local/organic market.

A lot of the obvious cottage industries _also_ decline during a downturn, like miscellaneous arts and crafts, but I've run across people making decent livings from textile work that they sell on ebay. For smallish amounts of money, one step up the farming chain to baking is fairly profitable. However it gets complicated fast if you want to make a full income doing it, because there's all sorts of health regulations for being a baker or confectioner that pretty much prevent you from doing it out of your home kitchen. Can probably get away with ignoring them if you're selling cookies and bread to <50 friends and friends-of-friends.

<comment><USER11> That's an interesting idea.

Locally I've seen a variety of people springing up offering to do meal services (eg they'll cook for you and your family, as well as their own).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I only see this getting worse in the future. There just isn't enough work to go around anymore. How many white collar/service jobs don't involve any actual work? I just hope our economic system can adjust so we don't have a perpetual, growing underclass.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe this is an illusion. It always seems like technology is eliminating jobs, but it has always tended to create as many as it kills, which is why after hundreds of years of new labor-saving inventions, the number of jobs is still close to the number of people who want them.

<comment><USER13> [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/02/21/business/21un...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/02/21/business/21unemployed_graphic2/21unemployed_graphic2-articleInline.jpg)

That graph is the scariest thing I've seen about this recession, and I think it makes a pretty convincing case that this time actually is different.

I honestly think unskilled labor is dying off. I can't imagine what _new_ jobs can be done with minimal education that won't be automatable within the next decade, and many _existing_ jobs will be lost as well. It's a matter of time before people start smashing self-checkout machines.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely a scary graph. But surely it's more likely that it is a graph of a bad recession happening than a sign that a trend that has run for hundreds if not thousands of years has stopped at this exact point in history.

What was the number like in 1933?

<comment><USER14> The unemployment rate in the US peaked out at about 2.5x what it is now in the Great Depression. Even now the US is the US isn't really in that bad of shape for a developed nation; it's about 2% higher than most EU countries.

The US has just had very low unemployment for the last 15 years or so, so it feels more dramatic. It was actually higher than now at one point in the early 80s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What I don't understand is why people aren't calling for massive restructuring of the financial system that leads to fucked up situations like this, i.e. collapsing bubbles caused by greedy investors looking to get something out of nothing. A CEO gives himself a multimillion dollar bonus and nobody flinches and chalks it up to the way the market works. If the cognitive dissonance doesn't make your head explode well then there isn't much point to making up sob stories like this.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been thinking of hiring a bunch of commission based salespeople for our startup. Has anyone done similar? Can people still receive their unemployment until they start making some sales or would they have to stop immediately when they started calling on prospective buyers?

We can't afford to put them on a salary yet, but it could be a good opportunity to help get some unemployed people going.

<comment><USER17> It is based on the time period, at least in the state that a friend has worked in. So if the time period is 2 weeks, then if you pay once a month, that will be a 2-week period where they were employed, and a 2-week period they were not. For individuals it is run on a cash basis, that is, if you cut them checks every 3 months, they would only lose benefits for 1 period each 3 month interval.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The day of reckoning for an entitlement-based economy is coming. Many people will have a hard lesson to learn: no one _deserves_ a job or unemployment benefits. This idealism is a product of good times.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, some people deserve to starve. Fuck 'em.

<comment><USER20> Nobody deserves by virtue of existing to be supported by someone else. Nature dictates that the least fit die. We humans have decided to disagree. We named it "civilization".[1]

[1] We haven't got it quite perfected yet, but we're working on it. So far, it hasn't been half bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> But the Obama graph shows massive improvement since Bush left office!!!!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130898>

<comment><USER22> No, it does not show that more people are finding jobs; it shows that people are losing jobs much more slowly.</comment></comment>


Adobe CC outage status update page is suffering an outage - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.adobe.com/adobecare/2014/05/15/recent-service-outage/ Getting: Error establishing a database connection <comment><USER2> Don't link to it then. Flagged.</comment>


How Sierra and a Disgraced Cop Made the Most Reactionary Game of the 90s (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3n8ea/how-sierra-and-a-disgraced-cop-made-the-most-reactionary-game-of-the-90s <comment><USER2> > "There were a lot of people at the company that were horribly, horribly > unhappy… that Ken and management would capitalize on someone as > controversial and dark as Daryl Gates. And Police Quest 4 got [a] different > name inside the company. We started calling it Rodney King's Quest."

Pretty interesting read. I was totally oblivious to all this as a kid who loved Sierra games.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you want to know more, there are more details and background here, [https://www.filfre.net/2019/07/chief-gates-comes-to- oakhurst...](https://www.filfre.net/2019/07/chief-gates-comes-to-oakhurst-a- cop-drama/)</comment></comment>


Radical Leftists Built Their Own FOSS Alternative to Reddit After It Banned Them - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/zm3wbj/radical-leftists-built-their-own-reddit-after-it-banned-them <comment><USER2> While you have every legal and moral right to build your own little bubble to associate in, as a leader or influencer of a group like that, you really should ask yourself whether this is the healthiest choice for a community of human beings.

Are you really making the world a better place in this niche community?

</comment><comment><USER3> Lol. "Reddit sucks because they banned us. So we're making a better site where _we_ decide who gets banned, not those other guys."</comment>


Ask HN: What to do about key supplier TRIPLING their prices at short notice? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I am hoping some of you may be able to offer your advice on this on, as I imagine it's a fairly generalised problem. The specifics of the issue aren't actually that important, so I'm not going to include company names or any other identifiable details.
My company has a contract with an essential supplier who I pay several hundred dollars a month for a particular service. This service is absolutely essential to my product. The original contract was for a year, and comes to an end in the next two weeks.
Today, I was told that I am a legacy customer, and need to be put on a new plan. This new plan costs $10,000 a year, i.e. about triple the price I am currently paying. Given the timing of this price hike, I simply don't have time to find an alternative supplier before my contract runs out.
What can I do? <comment><USER2> To me, the place to start is with the consideration that if a key vendor isn't turning a healthy profit then that key vendor is likely to go away. The second thing to do is run the numbers and determine if the new pricing means shutting down your business, seriously impacts the odds of future success, or is rounding error.

The third thing, is to act on the results of your analysis and if it's not time to shutter the doors come up with a plan for mitigating the effects of the dependency.

From the vendor's point of view, your company wasn't pushing a renewal deal through and therefore the vendor's revenue stream has been uncertain. It is also possible that over the past year the vendor has repositioned itself toward a different scale of customer and is taking their product in a different direction.

Maybe the cost can be passed along: [http://jacquesmattheij.com/Double+your+price+%28and+no%2C+I%...](http://jacquesmattheij.com/Double+your+price+%28and+no%2C+I%27m+not+kidding%29)

</comment><comment><USER3> Negotiate for a shorter contract ($4000 for 4 months), find an alternative supplier.

</comment><comment><USER4> Post the actual details of the product on a website aimed at entrepreneurs and tech-savvy people (aka "hackers"). Someone might see a good business was opportunity, and you'll have yourself a new supplier.

</comment><comment><USER5> What you do is provide some unique value and commoditize the @#$% out of everything you depend on.

Could these suppliers be competing with you? How essential is _your_ part to the combination of whatever you do plus their service?

</comment><comment><USER6> More details (but still anonymized) could help give better advice.

I guess first question should be: What makes you think you will find an alternative supplier at a much cheaper price at all?

</comment><comment><USER7> The general solution is to renegotiate your contract further in advance, so that you have time to find an alternate supplier.

</comment><comment><USER8> Pay them...

</comment><comment><USER9> UserVoice?</comment>


DocuSign Hackathon – $10,000+ in Prizes - <AUTHOR> https://momentum.docusign.com/hackathon <comment><USER2> Every time Docusign is mentioned I can't help think of how they ripped off HelloSign [https://www.hellosign.com/blog/docusign-copies-hellosign- use...](https://www.hellosign.com/blog/docusign-copies-hellosign-user- interface)

<comment><USER3> That's great, it's called competition and is good for people like me, the customer.

<comment><USER4> If you don't mind, I just Ctrl-A & copied your excellent blog post about Bidirectional Varint Encoding [0]. I am going to post it on my own tech dev blog with my name replacing yours at the bottom. It's OK, its good for my readers. ;)

[0] - [http://samuelhughes.com/blog/9.html](http://samuelhughes.com/blog/9.html)

* - not really

<comment><USER3> That would be copyright infringement. If you don't have a legal right to exclusive use of your UI (for example, the One-Click patent) others have every right to copy you. In fact, mimicry of other UI's is part of every UI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I sometimes feel like I miss out on cool opportunities like this because I live in a midwestern city. A tech hub like SF probably has as many hackathons/dev meet ups/etc in a weekend as my city does in a year.

But then I look at housing prices and feel a little better.

</comment><comment> enahs-sf I read the description, but I'm not entirely sure of what the purpose is of this hackathon? What would contestants be trying to build?

<comment><USER6> >Bring your ideas for groundbreaking eSignature implementations and compete to win $10,000+ in prizes (along with fame).

clearly some sort of project that uses docusign.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> DocuSign's API is very frustrating to work with, as you can't go into production without getting their "approval" first.

Amongst other things, the approval process requires you (or did require you when I last tried) to run a specific number of test transactions on a specific API endpoint.

Whilst reasonable for a complex integration, if someone just wants a simple "send this PDF for signature" script, this complex and slow process simply isn't worth it.

<comment><USER8> That seems insane. They won't let you use their API unless you test it? Don't they have QA teams?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How about everybody get together and just try to improve their API?

<comment><USER10> What is wrong with their API?

Edit: To be clear, we're actively using it.

It is has a ton of features, yet simple and well designed. Has good documentation and nice tooling.

<comment><USER11> It wasn't built for API-first use. Their API is a bolt-on to the web interface, whereas HelloSign was built with the API as a first class user. In comparison, DocuSign is much more of a pain to configure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Of all the document-signing firms I get forced into using, I like them the best because they let me use my touch-enabled laptop to generate my real signature.</comment>


Ask HN: Tips for writing a job description? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a developer that has been tasked with helping an online e-commerce client make their first permanent tech-hire (in an existing non-technical team of 4).
This person will have broad responsibilities in a company that is looking to expand their tech rapidly
Anyway, I'm having trouble with how to approach the job description. I understand it's difficult to ask for advice with such sparse details but it would be great to get some general tips of people who have written job description and hired. What worked, what didn't work, what tone should be used, how should responsibilities be addressed etc. <comment><USER2> Consider detailing how this position can help in candidate's development. What he/she could learn, what interesting[#] tools will be in use, things like that.

I hear way too little about that from recruiters, and even then, only clichés like "international team" or "bleeding-edge technologies".

[#] Django, Ruby and MongoDB are not considered interesting here. There's plenty of places where one could use them. On the other hand, opportunity to use Coq, for example, would be very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing you should keep in mind, do not only ask that the candidate has to offer in term of skills and experience, also explain what the candidate will receive for taking that job.

Compensation, equity, life-style, company culture, perks, type of experience the candidate will gain, possible career growth...

Make your job offer stand out: clearly explain what the job is about, why should the candidate work for you, do not only list a list of skills, that will not define the job.

</comment><comment><USER4> give some idea of compensation (salary range + equity). If the client is profitable, talk about that. If you don't get any qualified people after a bit, either reduce what you are asking for, or up your offer.

Differentiate between skills the candidate needs and skills that would be nice but could be learned on the job. Give some examples of tasks that the person would do.

Consider splitting up the broad responsibilities into discrete entities, or several jack of all trades. Remember if you have one guy who does everything, that guy quits/dies, there is no guarantee of any documentation having been written.

Alternatively, consider hiring a (paid) intern or junior engineer so that your big hire can focus on the big issues.</comment>


We don't need a new Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://jaxn.org/article/a-clone-is-not-an-alternative

<comment><USER2> Interesting. The argument is that to build something that "is like facebook but..." is a poor idea and that it would be better to not build a monolithic structure. So in the end the argument is "build something that is like facebook but distributed" :)

<comment><USER3> Honestly, it looks like what he is trying to say is that even a distributed facebook is not ideal. What I get from this is he wants to "Build something entirely unlike Facebook" using an interface and medium that are not a website.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bingo.

Not that I am all that sure what that would be.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Streaming music and licenses  - <AUTHOR>

Other than Youtube, are there any practical options out there? I suppose I can use something like Rdio's API, but this would limit the app to Rdio subscribers. I'm wondering if there is any possibility for smaller-scale apps to negotiate some kind of streaming deal, similar to internet-radio licenses. How do sites like Turntable.fm pull it off? Is the short answer lots of lawyers?<p>Thanks. <comment><USER2> ASCAP, BMI, Harry Fox?</comment>


Connectors: Wallaroo's Window to the World - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wallaroolabs.com/2018/10/introducing-connectors-wallaroos-window-to-the-world/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello I'm the author of this post and am happy to answer any questions you may have.</comment>


Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology - <AUTHOR> https://spectator.us/robots-ancient-greeks-loved-alexa/ <comment><USER2> All this further supports the theory that the gods of old were in fact a highly advanced civilization quite apart from but meddling with nascent human civilization. I love that idea :).

<comment><USER3> I think you mean out of space aliens but technically advanced messengers bringing teachings like agricultur, writing, and metallurgy, demanding offerings in return and keeping relative peace fits the bill just as much, especially if the Lords ventured from places high in the sky, mountains that is.

At a lower layer, it's just veneration of the elders, preservation of memory through old stories traveling through time, not space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I didn't read the article, but I feel like we might rapidly get to the point where technology is magic. As arrogant as using "even" in this context sounds - EVEN people on here generally don't understand more than a few fields. For example, when it really comes down to it, the way pain meds work might as well be magic to me, though I could probably sputter some scientific-sounding explanation that I really don't understand. Same with modern computers - I can mumble about logic gates, but the reality is that my electronics knowledge stops at vacuum tubes, just because that's what's accessible without an EE/chemistry specialization.

<comment><USER5> To me 'magic' is the gap between our internal models of the external world and reality.

You stand before a magician, he is holding a card. You believe this to be true because some photons entered your eyes and your mind constructed a realistic simulation that conforms to the sensoral input.

The magician waves his hand— the card disappears — in a very real sense. The simulation that your consciousness creates and inhabits has updated and erased the card from your reality.

That it is in fact behind his hand and that he was able make your internal model of reality diverge from actual reality with some words and a gesture is what creates magic.

So how does this apply to technology — if the technology is so advanced that your mind can't model it's behavior — then it perpetually creates that divergence by merely existing. You're always going to have to update your mental model to account for what it does.

But I think that sort of magic is fairly temporary, because people are nothing if not adaptable — hand an iPhone to a toddler and it's simply another new thing to explore and understand, no more mysterious than the light sparkling from a glass of water or a leaf blowing in the wind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> should technology only stay at near dream state ?

</comment><comment><USER7> Rant incoming.

I doubt they "would have loved Alexa" (which doesn't occur again in the body of the article, at all). I mean, of course they would also have loved the idea of owning slaves, but I still don't see how to get from there to Alexa, which is beholden to Amazon, not the user.

[http://arkbooks.dk/leisure-in-ancient-greece-with-hannah- are...](http://arkbooks.dk/leisure-in-ancient-greece-with-hannah-arendt/)

> Leisure — _skhole_ — can be seen as one of the acid tests of sorts here: In > its positive capacity, it is a characteristic of _vita contemplativa_ as a > specific freedom to abstain from the life of a political engagement. Its > obverse, 'un-quiet' — _a-skholia_ — functioned traditionally as a negative > term to characterise vita activa as seen from the philosophical perspective > of 'the absolute quiet of contemplation'.

That's kinda different from "not having to work so there's more time to consume things, and having more money to be able to consume ever more expensive things", which seems to the dream for many... rather than finally having time to ponder everything, finally not having to ponder anything! Because that is work, too. Or as a HN comment put it,

> _learning a huge amount of useless facts, [instead of] being able to look > them up like the rest of society does_

That's the antithesis of the contemplative life. I don't think the Greeks would have liked that, though I don't claim to know, that's just my impression... and at any rate I disagree with them in some things, and agree more with Arendt:

> A rehabilitation of _vita activa_ , and especially of the activity of > action, the one defining for the human experience of freedom and for > politics

Insofar automation and "AI" is just used by few humans to control many humans without having to face them directly, it doesn't increase the freedom to act. It gives "freedom" from having to be a free citizen, with the illusion of being allowed forever to just graze on land the owners could turn into jungle or a golf course, with the very same machines that make the masses obsolete. I certainly don't buy that those who so far do their best to hoard and exploit will suddenly want to share or even serve, that doesn't pass the smell test for me.

Anyway, what's so unfathomable about making new life and treating it well and being a good friend / parent, rather than a slave?

It's silly to talk about whether androids ( _Why androids? That 's an odd choice of words, like seeming more human to us in shape would have anything to do with their mental or emotional capabilities_) "can have a moral sense", considering how we are currently using our moral sense. It's like people who drink and fight all day, and don't have a book in the house, and keep hitting their child on the head all the time, asking about whether it might attend university one day. The actions kinda betray that they're not seriously asking, they just want to be able to say "it wasn't our fault, we hoped our child would make it".

It generally feels more like it's not even about making "another human, or something even more human than humans", but simply robbing humans of their humanity. We seem happy to equate showing all the right "signs of empathy" with actually feeling it on the inside, basically adopting the the approach of a sociopath.

> _" All you have to do is keep quiet about the failure of the Voigt-Kampff > test here today. You and your colleagues keep going as you are, we start > feeding Nexus Sixes into the earth population, and in a couple of years you > make out you've suddenly discovered the test mistakes human beings for > androids. But by then, it'll be too late to turn the clock back."_

> _" So human beings won't be able to tell themselves apart from androids."_

> _" Nor androids from human beings."_

> _" And so we forget what it really means to be human."_

> _" No fuss. Let society and its attitudes just evolve."_

This is like a car with no wheels, and some say it's for transportation, but I say it's to block a road. If it was for transportation, why does nobody care that it has no wheels?

What if empathy and morality isn't _just_ something that is instinctive or selfish, something you can just "train" or get by applying "game theory", but also the result of relationships, as they actually are, infinitely complex and unique? Can empathy and morality exist without relationships as a person with other person? I don't know, but would rather try that route first, not the slave / tool route.

I mean, life can be kinda hard and confusing, it's actually really hard for many of us, even though we have so many other people to speak with and learn from. What will AI have? The comforting knowledge that the rights-holders are doing great on the stock market? Or not even that, but just a bunch of data with no inherent meaning, and people who kill each other over what is true and what isn't? We currently live "might is right", and that combined with AI is supposed to produce... androids with a moral sense? Wat?

And even if we give our AI other AI friends it can do more than fight with, but still treat it like shit (which treating someone like a tool is), will it ever have a moral sense regarding _us_? Why would it? So why not start it like you want it to continue? Why start with vivisection, when we want to end with some kind of soppy "love on first sight, happily ever after" story?

You don't work in a clean room to get clean. Likewise we can't make AI to become better ourselves, we need to be better before we can make AI that is a "person" that will want more of us than a swift mercy killing.

We ask so much what AI can do for us, precious little what it might need of us, what could be fun for both. As Bill Hicks said, let's make a nice world to bring children _into_.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you hire for drive? - <AUTHOR> I've hired quite a few people over my career and one of the most challenging attributes to hire for is drive or proactiveness. In my mind, this is the most important criteria that separates a great employee from just an okay one. Do they have internal drive? Will they proactively seek out opportunities and solve problems? Will they be an independent thinker and own their area of work? For the hiring managers out there, how do you screen for "drive"? I'd appreciate hearing your tips and advice. Thank you! <comment><USER2> First, I find that internships are great for this. You can bring someone in for a summer. If they show drive then we really try and get them converted to full time upon graduation. Second, I'm going to turn it around on you and ask "What are you doing to foster drive in your employees?". Drive is not just a static attribute. It must be fostered, encouraged and demonstrated as necessary. If your employees do not show drive, you may be unintentionally killing it.</comment>


"Growth Hacking for Android" Tutorial – Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fabgate.co/growth-hacking-for-android-let-the-user-invite-her-friends-part-1/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there!

I have written the first part of an Android tutorial. It is about letting the user invite her friends to use an App by accessing the contact list on the phone.

If there is anything I can optimize, please let me know. Questions are also welcome.

Cheers!</comment>


Sketching for user interfaces - <AUTHOR> http://micrypt.com/2013/04/05/Sketching-user-interfaces.html

<comment><USER2> I find that I tend to fall into the trap of spending _way_ too much time worrying about having the best and right tools. I've opted to use printer paper and a simple ruler now. I don't compromise on the pencil, though (to be a bit hypocritical) and that pencil is seriously the best you will ever find.

<comment><USER3> > I don't compromise on the pencil, though (to be a bit hypocritical) and that > pencil is seriously the best you will ever find.

Do you treat your pencil to hand sharpening, or just use a commodity sharpening tool? [1]

[1] <http://www.artisanalpencilsharpening.com>

<comment><USER2> It's mechanical, so neither.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Completely disagree with this example of sketching.

Sketches should be visceral, messy, and fast. The entire purpose of sketching is to get the ideas out as quickly as possible.

I don't understand the purpose of creating preliminary sketches that you then redraw on nice paper. Are you trying to design a UI or make a pretty picture?

Also, throw sketches away? Are you crazy? Keep them. Later when you are adding a feature or changing the UI, you'll be glad to have those ideas to return to.

I use whatever pen is sitting around (usually the cheapest money can buy), and whatever paper is handy (usually scrap printer paper with stuff on the other side). My sketches are ugly and I take no pride in them.

The widget shown in the post isn't that great of an example. I'd have no idea how to use a UI like that in a real context. Also, it seems like you just chose to build the very first thing you sketched. You say design is iterative, so where are all the other concepts?

Sorry to be so brutal. I appreciate the spirit of your post. I agree with your rationale for sketching, but your examples/practices don't seem to match it.

<comment><USER5> Considering that I mentioned on multiple occasions that it's an iterative process, there's not much else I can say.

Throwaway sketches and thumbnailing are a hack for dealing with creative block. It's a pretty well-known technique.

It's definitely not meant to be prescriptive, and I hope not presented as such. What works for me might not work for you. Bonne chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use pen/pencil and paper a lot these days, even for note taking and stuff.

Its just much more fluid for me to spill out my mind onto paper than diagrams or UI layouts on the computer.

I'm sure one day when you can draw onto a tablet just like putting pencil to paper I will switch, but that day is a long way off.

A Cintiq is 5% the way there. And digital pens for tablets are as far away as a mouse.

Any lag, any lack or precision and also the back light are all issues. I am confident they will one day be solved and I will carry a true digital notebook where the contact of pen to paper is indistinguishable from the real thing.

Why do I long for this future? Because I love digital and I wouldn't all my work on paper being stored as a digital notepad. (Scanning is not a solution because I want to pull up notebooks from the past and work on them using my "digital notebook")

This was a bit a pointless post actually, Instead of deleting it I'll leave it here in-case anyone has anything to add or disagree with.

<comment><USER5> It's not at all pointless. I for one am always glad to hear what works for others.

Before settling on a tablet, I considered the Wacom Inkling and even tried using the iPad and a few apps, but could never quite get the same level of precision as I can manage with a pencil. The tablet's just a stop gap, and keeps me from going crazy and loading up a boatload of sketching gear (psst… Copic pens). My Intuos 5 + Autodesk Sketchbook Pro combination gives me some degree of freedom without the clutter of gear I'd unavoidably end up with if I went shopping for stationery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ok, maybe it's just me, but I read and re-read what the UI control in question should do: "entering a time or date in the future, a range of some sort". And I can't understand how the resulting sketched UI control works :-) And since I've spent more than e few moments to think about this, now I've grown very curious about it. IMO, a range has 2 parts: from_datetime, to_datetime. I can only see one in there... Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER8> I used to worry about having all the right tools: different pens/pencils, grid notebooks, rulers, stencils, etc when sketching UI's. Now I really just use one nice mechanical pencil and regular white printer paper. My focus is really just getting things down, seeing how it looks, and changing it as many as possible before going to digital creation. Whiteboard replaces paper when working in a team.</comment>