Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/9727/the-microsoft-surface-pro-4-review-raising-the-bar <comment><USER2> I really liked my Surface Pro 1 when I got it. There were a number of small problems such as missing key up events that resulted in stuck Ctrl keys, cursor getting stuck in one place, random resets overnight, but nothing that I couldn't live with. Form factor was good and the hardware just about good enough all round - slightly small hard disk, one USB is a little annoying, but again, can live with it. I recommended it a few times to people and online.

Unfortunately the power supply died one week out of warranty. There was a long back and forth with support after one person said they could replace it free of charge since there were symptoms within the warranty period, and another said that person had made a mistake and that I'd need to buy a replacement. Not a good experience and device was out of commission for a long while waiting for their responses. I bought a third party power supply, which I don't really trust, but clearly the 100 USD Microsoft replacement power supply is not reliable either and is twice the price.

Now the power button is becoming unreliable and if it goes I'll be unable to use the device at all as there's no other way to turn it on, and it does reset itself from time to time still. I don't want to move it too much in case it turns off and I can't get it back on again.

I still really like the form factor, but what a review like this doesn't capture is the long-term reliability and service quality that comes with the device, and that's what's most likely to put me off buying another Surface Pro / Surface Book.

<comment><USER3> This is exactly what's holding me back from buying Surface devices. I rather stick to Thinkpads and Macs that I can replace/fix easily and which have great build quality/durability and available parts.

<comment><USER4> > Macs that I can replace/fix easily

How come? MacBooks were the first laptops in becaming fix unfriendly and every vendor is actually following that lead.

<comment><USER5> A good example is battery replacement. Yes, MBP batteries are glued in, but Apple has an official service that will replace it and the top case for not much more than it costs to buy say a Lenovo battery at retail. Also, eBay has a big supply of Mac parts that make replacing things pretty easy once you recognize that you gotta replace larger functional units together (e.g. LCD with cover glass).

The Surface is just as hard to repair, but without the official service options and fewer parts on eBay.

<comment><USER4> Microsoft has different levels of support as well as Apple and you can find parts on Ebay easily too. I honestly don't see how Macbooks are any easier to repair than any other ultrabook really.

<comment><USER6> Step 1 to getting Mac fixed. Take it to Apple Genius who may well just fix it for free (definitely if it's under warranty and quite often if it isn't) or tell you exactly what's wrong and how to fix it yourself or where to get it fixed cheaply.

Assuming your problem isn't already solved, then Apple products are no easier than rival brands aside from being better built in the first place, having standardized parts, a simple range of models, and an active third party market.

I'm sure Microsoft has different levels of support, but I suspect everyone you're talking to is referring to Apple's standard warranty coverage. I'd rather have an Apple product with standard coverage than anyone else's product with "gold" or "platinum" or whatever they call it support. (From my experience of high-end corporate support the only benefit I found was that when I told the support person "assume I tried all that crap" (rebooting, reinstalling Windows, rebooting anything else on the network, etc.) he actually went off script and got to the useful stuff.

<comment><USER7> The tip of my Pen on my Surface Pro 3 broke (I wasn't even sure when, or how, it could have been entirely my fault). I walked into a Microsoft Store and showed them the problem.

They weren't able to remove and replace the tip itself, so a few minutes later the CSR went to the back and brought me a new pen, and mentioned that it wouldn't appear as warranty service so I would be free to replace it down the road if necessary through "normal" repair channels.

This was without any additional warranty coverage. I can't speak for other Microsoft products, but they seem to go out of their way to support the Surface to provide a similar, if not superior, repair/replacement experience as Apple (I previously owned a MBP and had its screen repaired for free as well at an Apple Store).

<comment><USER2> MS support suggested (off the record) that I find someone who had a Surface Pro still in warranty and ask them to ask for a replacement power adapter. Said that they'd get one free of charge, no questions ask. Unfortunately I don't know other people who own a Surface Pro so that didn't work for me. Anecdotally I've heard of Apple offering informal service outside of warranty, so was hoping I'd get something similar as it felt like a borderline case, but no luck in my case. Even a reduced price to replace the faulty accessory would have gone a long way to improve the support experience for me. In the end I got a half-hearted apology from them and that was it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To me, it's almost as much of a reflection on Microsoft's OEMs as it is on Microsoft that, in 3 years, Microsoft has iterated from it's first device, which was a commercial flop, to a tablet/ultrabook that's only real criticism is the lack of a USB Type-C port.

Where would Microsoft be today if they had given up on their OEMs 5 years sooner, and gone head to head with Apple on hardware?

<comment><USER9> Microsoft actually did start competing with Apple on hardware already back in 2006:

[http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/14/microsoft-launches-the- zu...](http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/14/microsoft-launches-the-zune/)

So clearly Ballmer had this in the cards for a long time. The various iterations of Zune, even though commercially unsuccessful, laid the groundwork for both the "Metro" UI language and Microsoft's in-house hardware design.

Maybe Zune was a necessary "weaning period" in reducing Microsoft's OEM dependency.

<comment><USER10> The Zune wasn't half bad. I liked it much more than my ipod at the time.

<comment><USER11> It's biggest problem was timing -- launching less than a year before the iPhone was a huge problem. The market had moved on from the entire dedicated MP3 player space before the Zune had a chance to find a market and iterate on the product to refine it.

<comment><USER12> I don't know if that's true. The first few iPhones were very expensive unlocked and on contract, required signing up for a $70-$100/month phone plan, which was close to double what dumbphone users were paying. The iPod Nano, iPod Touch and iPod Classic saw updated versions each year, slowing down only once iPhones and Androids became mainstream and replaced dedicated music players.

<comment><USER13> The original iPhone was 400$ without contract (it was locked to AT&T though). However, it could be jail broken by simply going on a website using the built in browser. Unlocking it wasn't much more complicated too (within the launch week, you could unlock it with a turbo sim, and couple months later software unlock were released).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have a Surface Pro 3, and owned a Pro 1 (1st gen), I have to applaud Msoft for iterating quickly on their hardware line. Its been ~3 years and the (personal experience) general consumer approval of the Surface line has been gradually changing. It went from an iPad competitor, which was a terrible comparison, to a generating its own category, a tablet that can replace your laptop.

I typically skip a generation to upgrade machines, but the Pro 4 (based on this review) solves all the small quips I had with mine. Its looking like I am going to upgrade to the Surface Pro with Iris graphics. Still on the fence about the Book, I don't really need the laptopness.

<comment><USER14> > It went from an iPad competitor, which was a terrible comparison, to a > generating its own category, a tablet that can replace your laptop.

My experience, observing friends and strangers, is that they wanted an iPad to replace their laptop. Almost everyone I know with an iPad either 1) doesn't use it or 2) uses it as a laptop.

The thing is that the iPad was an awful laptop for a long time (lack of multitasking being the main issue). In my opinion, tablets are a very small niche, and most people want to upgrade them into cheap, light laptops by buying an external keyboard.

With the Surface, Microsoft was simply giving people what they were already looking for.

<comment><USER15> Maybe that's why I enjoy my Nexus 7 tablet so much. I have never owned a laptop, nor do I want one. I want a tablet so I can get to IMDB with a largish screen while sitting on the couch, not so I can do work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Strangely my workflow is in a place where most of my graphic programs also exist on Windows (Lightroom mostly, everything else is easily changeable).

It's my terminal workflow that I can only use on a Mac/Linux. Zsh, Vim, Tmux, LateX, Python and mostly a package manager (Apt on Linux, Homebrew on the Mac). Most of which I can just configure in a new system pulling the config files from my Github repository in less than 15 minutes after a fresh install.

That's what's mainly holding me from going back to windows (and the Application update process which is still awful as I can see from my VMware installation of Windows 10... seriously, updating the various components of Visual Studio in a semi manual way is just ridiculous), is there any good alternative for the Shell in windows that doesn't involve considerable tinking?

<comment><USER17> On Windows 10, I use babun along with a Vagrant VM for terminal-based development.

babun is a Cygwin distribution that's actually configured nicely out of the box with oh-my-zsh, etc. It comes with a very pretty terminal, a package manager, and more. That said, it's still Cygwin, which means I try to avoid doing complex, heavy-duty development in it.

For that, I just spin up a Vagrant VM. It's insanely easy.

<comment><USER16> This is a nice work method. But my biggest grip with it is that I use the GPU for CUDA calculations.

At least in OSX it's not possible to directly access the GPU trough a VM (in Vagrant or any other way), while in Linux it's possible with KVM.

How does it work on Windows?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This thing looks nice but I think the Surface Book is going to be the breakout device for Microsoft in this generation.

<comment><USER19> I agree. The Surface Pro 4 is an excellent device, definitely an achievement in the 'laptop replacement' game. No OS fork is a huge win to me.

As an ultrabook user currently, I'm targeting the Surface Book outright for my next machine. It simply has all the features I need (and a little more in the real graphics card) and even has engineered benefits for things I don't want now but will probably want when music software catches up (good touch input). I saw a lot of complaints following Apple showing off their "one plug to control them all" design because of how hardware interfaces and musicians/DJs/performers love redundancy and back-up plans, so I'll be interested to see if they start taking market share away from Apple...it'll be slow, if it happens, but I'm interested!

<comment><USER20> Just out of interest because you seem like you might know - does Windows across devices do a good job with audio latency? Presumably Windows as a desktop OS has it down, does that carry to phones and tablets too?

<comment><USER21> Windows still trails OS X and Core Audio here unless you're using ASIO. There are no real ASIO drivers (AFAIK) for the Surface Pro 3, though ASIO4ALL works if you want to dedicate your sound card to just ASIO apps (for me that sucks, because I want to hear other audio on my system at the same time!). With my Macs, though, it pretty much just works. I'd probably use an external interface if I absolutely had to use Windows (and I'd want a bigger screen than the Surface Pro, probably the Surface Book and even that's cramped).

<comment><USER19> Gotta say you really did hit the nail on the head with this comment. I'd like to mention though that I've been using 12" screen gear for about 5 years now, both in production and performance (DJ) environments, and I've yet to really run into issues. Granted, I've had an external monitor or a projector going from time to time, but, like when running Line6 Gearbox, I'm not looking at the screen nearly at all. When running Traktor Pro, I try not to look at the screen very much as well, because looking like I'm "checking my email" is a constant dig at folks who use laptops as performance platforms. I don't mention these as contradictions to your perspective, just another few thoughts to consider!

<comment><USER21> On the (sadly rare) occasion I get to play with music stuff these days, I really have trouble going away from my 2x1440p+rMBP 15 screen space. Even just the rMBP is super cramped. Different strokes, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They also posted a Surface Book "First Look" today with a couple of GPU benchmarks:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/9732/the-microsoft-surface- boo...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9732/the-microsoft-surface-book-first- look)

<comment><USER23> That's what I was looking for, thanks.

tl;dr:

> The Surface Book is a very interesting take on the Ultrabook by Microsoft. > I'll need some more time with it to get a full review completed, but initial > impressions are that it's a solid device with a great display, a good > keyboard, and a generous trackpad. The overall device is not as thin or > light as some other Ultrabooks, but generally those don't pack in 70 Wh of > battery and a real GPU. Stay tuned for a full review soon.

<comment><USER22> Looks like there's a massive amount of reviews for the SB coming in today:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3pmrt1/surface_boo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3pmrt1/surface_book_surface_pro_4_reviews_coming_in/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't like Windows that much, because I prefer open solutions. But is indeed a fantastic device.

Hardware is pretty similar to SP3, which is on its way to run smoothly under Linux. Quite soon everything will work with a stock kernel, plus Marvell drivers for wireless and the camera ones.

With a bit of ingenuity, I guess it'd be easy to come up with a nice tiling window manager setup.

</comment><comment><USER25> Anyone else think we're getting a little hyperbolic with the weight of these things?

"The first Surface Pro was a sizable 2.0 lb monster tablet which packed Ultrabook class components into a chassis that was over 0.5-inches thick. It was powerful, but heavy and the 16:9 form factor was not ideal for a tablet."

<comment><USER26> Yeah. I've had people tell me how heavy the 13" Retina MBP is ~_~

<comment><USER4> It is a bit heavy isn't? 3.48 pounds (1.58 kg), according to Apple.

[http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/](http://www.apple.com/macbook- pro/specs-retina/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Serious question: Can someone please sit on top of a surface and surfacebook (in a closed position)?

These devices have thinner-than-ever glass (and in case of sb, an air gap) and i am concerned that carrying them in a backpack can get them destroyed by other books/whatever. Would be great to find out otherwise :)

<comment><USER28> Would you sit on top of your laptop?

I carry a thin plastic laptop in my backpack for years and have never had a problem with books crushing it.

Just know that you have an expensive piece of equipment in your bag and don't toss it around.

<comment><USER27> i'm always careful with electronics, but the flight attendants and baggage handlers often arent unfortunately :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Personally, I actually prefer the 16:9 aspect ratio for any screen that has sufficient raw vertical resolution to not hinder productivity.

I feel that once a device gets past the point where the lack of vertical resolution limits productivity, the marginal utility offered by _even more_ vertical resolution becomes rather insignificant, to the point where I'd probably benefit more from having more horizontal resolution for things like snapping windows side-by-side and not having black bars on 16:9 video.

<comment><USER30> I am itching for a 4:3 simply because of digitized print media, e.g. books and PDFs and magazines.

You need a 12.2" 16:9 to display a magazine page at the same actual size as a 10" 4:3

3:2 is a compromise play, fitting video pretty well and requiring only a 10.8" screen to match the 10" 4:3 on print media.

That's setting completely aside questions of what aspect is simply most natural for a tablet- how comfortable it is to hold, how well it functions in both landscape and portrait, etc

<comment><USER12> I've been reading magazines and books on tablets for a while now, and while I agree that 4:3 portrait is naturally more suited to reading, most magazines are printed at an actual size of A4 paper or larger. So even on a 9.7 inch iPad, the content is being shrunk to "fit to vertical height".

This can make the content harder to read, as you're not viewing it at the actual size it was designed for. The alternative is to read it in landscape mode "Fit to horizontal width", but with visual clarity, the trade-off is having to scroll to read the whole page, which is annoying, and reminiscent of scrolling through a web page.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, even on the ten inchers there is some shrinking. We would really need a 11-inch 4:3 or something thereabouts.

Although to me, the ideal solution would be auto-cropping (or auto-zooming) the margins. The actual _content_ is often only, say, 9" by 6.5". The tablet bezel serves as a margin for us, we don't need double margins.

<comment><USER12> The auto-cropping works for most magazines but not all. Businessweek is notorious for using margins to include photo captions, graph legends and related articles. Most mags also use the margins to include page numbers. Source: used to crop margins on magazine PDFs when reading on a 16:10 Android tablet. Not worth the hassle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does anyone have information about battery life of core m3 vs I5 vs I7 in sp4?

</comment><comment><USER32> I can't stand the material of the soft plastic keyboard case. It drives me batty.

<comment><USER33> I have a Surface Pro (original) and have used both the original Type Cover and the Type Cover 2 (illuminated). Both are fine for a tablet/laptop hybrid. I tested the Type Cover 4 a couple weekends back and it's fantastic. If I weren't switching to a Surface Book, I'd definitely be considering a Pro 4 with that new type cover. The key feel is amazingly good for the size and weight.

<comment><USER34> The new Type Cover also works with Surface Pro 3 as well....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Was desperately looking for a more direct comparison between the m3 and i5. I can't decide!

<comment><USER36> If the m3 meets the performance requirements, then cheaper would seem to make the choice obvious and more potential battery life would be like free chocolate cake.

<comment><USER35> Agreed. It does look like all models share the 39 Wh Battery... now we just need a performance comparison.

<comment><USER36> Unless the unit is replacing a recent generation i7, probably not since it is reasonable to assume that the next generation hardware will offer comparable or better performance than a device several generations old when said device is performing reasonably.

There are edge cases where the difference between adequate and inadequate performance will come down to the CPU or graphics card. In those cases, the difference between a Surface and a different class of device will be more important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> How does this compare against the Macbook?

<comment><USER38> You'll probably be more interested in a Surface if one of the following is true:

\- You take handwritten notes or draw diagrams. \- You're an artist who would prefer to draw on the screen rather than on an external tablet. \- You want a 'consumption' device rather than a 'workstation'.

I would have never believed I would be saying to avoid a MS product of you want to get traditional work done but it's true in this case. Typing on it is not a good experience -- the keyboard is small, cheap, and missing many valuable keys, the touch screen is great but the mouse is atrocious.

Although they're trying to target artists, until the 'mobile' version of CS6 is ready is might be a pass. Pretty much any CS6 application will being the tablet to its knees and nearly burnt my lap.

The software selection is abysmal which sounds silly since just about everything is developed for Windows, but pretty much no one of consequence (except for MS themselves) is developing touch or pen friendly apps so you're left with muddling around with regular desktop apps which were designed with mouse/keyboard input in mind. It's not _bad_ , but it's a little frustrating and not the best experience.

This is a general comment on Win 10 but the UI now has absolutely no consistency. This has pretty much been true for all iterations after XP but it's much more noticeable and jarring now. It's like they got half way through developing Win 10 but then gave up because the deadline was coming. I don't blame them for rushing after the failure that was Win 8 but it shows. Apple might put form over function but as least they care about it.

You might not really care because your IT department will be imaging it anyway but holy crap did MS choose the most user-hostile defaults. I really shouldn't have to comb through every setting and group policy disabling all their tracking and other assorted bullshit.

The new Office is nice but it has the same problems the Adobe suite. Unless you're using the mobile versions you'll just watch your battery life drain away -- Desktop OneNote is by far the worst offender and is almost unusable because of it.

<comment><USER39> I disagree completely. I have two Macbooks (2015 air and 2014 pro) for work and home but also use an SP3 at home.

Biggest weakness of the SP3 keyboard is the lack of gaps. It's a little flimsy but that's not a huge deal. SP4 looks like it fixes both of those things and finally has a solid trackpad.

Either way once you get used to the keyboard, Office applications are still far better on windows than Mac. Even with the new Mac Office. If I were an Excel heavy user, it's Surface without a question.

Comparing El Capitan to Windows 10, I wouldn't say OSX better anymore. Windows 10 certainly looks far better, no competition. Similarly spec'd, my Macbook air feels a lot slower although I do still prefer browsing on it. For productivity, I much prefer the way MS snaps windows to each side and find it far superior to OSX's new split view. Now that Windows has their own 'mission control', the feature gap has closed significantly.

Touchscreen for browsing is pretty nice too.

<comment><USER40> If we're talking pure fit and finish, they did come a long way from the disaster that was Win8, but honestly, in a feature comparison, "non-optional telemetry uploading" is a massive point in the favor of literally any other choice.

I can't take Windows seriously as a primary computing platform with that in mind - it was the foot over the creepy line IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Nice. Tier 1. Supercalafragilistic.

Yet when I think about this amazingly cool device , as a developer, I feel no inspiration. I don't see what I'm going to develop for this thing that will be different from what I'll be developing for a bog-standard, 400-dollar Dell Inspiron. Okay I might stick a bit of touch in there but I won't be making it touch-first. Microsoft acknowledges as much with this amazing keyboard.

The pen is actually cool, but no cooler than the Wacom I have been able to buy for more than a decade, and for which all use cases have already been deployed. There's not a whole lot more one can do with a computer pen without going to an actual piece of paper. I see MS Edge's annotations feature and I raise it "show me cross browser".

So yes I'd love to own one. But I'm not having any eureka moments.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this device is not the device at all, but what it reveals about the rejuvenated Microsoft. That this company which many were dismissing as history, is able to bring out a product, even though fairly conventional, that easily challenges Apple, suggests to me that MS is getting its mojo back, and I'll be taking notice when it talks software. That to me is what's greatest about this release. Not yet another (highly competent, indeed stunning, but conventional) notebook.

<comment><USER42> I disagree - the experience of writing with the pen, _on the screen_ is totally not the same as writing on a Wacom tablet.

The pen can also be used as an ultra-portable mouse replacement - it fixes the "fat fingers problem" that plagues most touch screen interfaces and allows precise clicks, right-clicks and HOVERS which makes using multi level menus a breeze.

Regarding cross-browser annotations, that's something developers need to fix, :wink:, :wink:

I leave you with the mention of Staffpad[0], an amazing app for composing music which combines pen, touch, and some heavy processing into an amazing experience.

[0] [http://hanselminutes.com/473/developing-staffpad-a-new- class...](http://hanselminutes.com/473/developing-staffpad-a-new-class-of- music-notation-application-with-dr-matthew-tesch)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Hmm the NAND write is a little low. Not a huge deal but a little surprising for a machine of this spec/price.

</comment><comment><USER44> The Yoga 900 and this should be an interesting competition. I think I'll definitely grab one of them this year.

<comment><USER45> Isn't the Surface Book a more interesting comparison to the Yoga 900?

<comment><USER44> I thought yes, but the price points are so astronomically different I'm not sure. We're talking $1399 for 512gb/16gb for the Y900 while the Surface Book is, I think $2199 or so. Also the Book has a discrete GPU which isn't an option on the Y900.

<comment><USER45> > I thought yes, but the price points are so astronomically different I'm not > sure.

On the one hand yes, on the other hand surely that's something to factor in a comparison between machines which seem very similar in purpose?

> We're talking $1399 for 512gb/16gb for the Y900 while the Surface Book is, I > think $2199 or so.

Hahaha no. For 16GB/512SSD it's $2700, the $2100 option only has 8GB/256SSD, though both use an i7 and have a dGPU.

> Also the Book has a discrete GPU which isn't an option on the Y900.

The Book only has a discrete GPU on some options. The $1500 8GB/128SSD and the $1700 8GB/256SSD only have an iGP.

<comment><USER44> Woops, I was looking into the 256gb. That's obscene, $2700.

<comment><USER45> That's a big annoyance, but I find the RAM issue worse, 16GB RAM is only available on the $2700 and $3200 models (resp. 512GB and 1TB SSD), from the $1500 to the $2100 price-points you get 8GB period end of the story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Unfortunately, his review sample only had the weak Intel integrated GPU. I can't wait to see some numbers from the models with the nVidia GPU.

<comment><USER47> There is no nVidia chip in the Surface Pro 4. I believe you are thinking of the Surface Book.

[https://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/devices/surface- pro-...](https://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/devices/surface- pro-4#techspec-block)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I purchased a surface pro 3 when it first came out, and while it is a great improvement, it still can not compete with the iPad

* More Apps on itunes

* The glass is very easy to crack on the surface Pro

* Microsoft requires that you register the device. I suppose this is the norm for IPhones, but this detracts from the PC experience

* the Surface pro is not adept for comfort viewing - on the lap or in bed.

* It is still a PC that tries to be like a Tablet rather than a true tablet. It has a lot of very annoying issues: when watching a video in a browser, it sometimes goes in the background, requiring you to tab to the correct screen. The brightness and orientation take six clicks to adjust (this was fixed with Windows 10 in Tablet mode).

* The surface pro runs MUCH hotter - sometimes too hot to hold

* The iPad is more competitive for cost for the same specs

<comment><USER49> That's EXACTLY what it is, I believe that was the actual design philosophy behind the thing, you are stating this like they messed up or didn't understand what they were building. Whereas it's much more likely (by the sounds of it) that you didn't need a PC that can be a tablet, you needed an iPad. So I think they built the thing correctly, you probably should have just bought an iPad instead of Surface Pro.</comment></comment>


All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry - <AUTHOR> http://hackerjobs.co.uk/blog/2012/6/15/all-that-is-wrong-with-the-recruitment-industry

<comment><USER2> There's a great three part series[1][2] (well, parts one and two are great) at the Kernel magazine on recruiters as well as an expose on the top recruiting scams[3].

[1] - [http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/2401/tech- recruiter...](http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/2401/tech-recruiters- part-i-desperate-times/)

[2] - [http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/2403/tech- recruiter...](http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/2403/tech-recruiters- part-ii-fear-and-loathing/)

[3] - [http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/2404/the-10-sleazie...](http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/2404/the-10-sleaziest- tech-recruiter-scams/)

<comment><USER3> Ah, S3 group. The recruitment agency that for some reason feels it necessary to trade under more than twenty different brand names. One of the contractor bulletin boards in the UK puts up a list of the current ones every now and again IIRC. Purely as a public service to their readers you understand.

<comment><USER4> To spare curious readers some time here it is: [http://forums.contractoruk.com/general/58258-sthree-group- in...](http://forums.contractoruk.com/general/58258-sthree-group-interim- results.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a front-end developer who recently just went through the job-hunting process I can say that, for the most part, my biggest complaint on the US side for recruiters is that they have no idea what I do for a living. Never mind the fact that most of the job postings are seemingly written by people who have no idea what the job actually is. I really got tired of explaining that Java is in fact not the cool nickname for JavaScript.

I found my new job through a recruiter. He approached me and I found him to be quite good at his job. He talked with me first to get a feeling for my competency level and then suggested two positions with clients he has worked with before. One of them turned out to be my new job.

I think I talked to around ten recruiters total and only two of them knew what they were doing. The others really, really needed to find a new line of work.

I won't go into details of the oddities of my job hunt because I'm sure many here have similar stories. I just wanted to say there are recruiters out there worth knowing, if you can find them or if they find you.

</comment><comment><USER6> "The reality is that passive racism and ageism is still extremely active within the recruitment industry."

I agree this is an issue in the industry, but I believe this point is a serious issue at the companies end rather than the responsibility of the recruiters. Surely the reason it is easier to "sell" white European candidates is that is what the companies want, and the people they end up hiring, this is completely unethical clearly, but recruiters are reacting to this. I am sure if recruiters could submit any C.V. regardless of age and race and still make the money they would.

<comment><USER7> "had an unofficial yet extremely active rule where if the applicant had more vowels in their surname than consonants, their CV was instantly dismissed"

could somebody tell me who is it discriminating against? it sounds ridiculous, or I'm not getting the reference.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was a general attempt to eliminate a lot of African candidates. Probably should have clarified that. Remember, this company does not employ clever people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The most elegant way to "fix" a market is to change the incentives. There is a contract between employer and recruiter. The employer does not want to be pestered all day about useless candidates. Just subtract some percentage from the recruiters fee for each wasted call.

Let's say the employer gets on average 20 calls until a candidate qualifies and the third of those gets the job. This means 60 wasted calls for 3 candidates. If you subtract 1% per wasted call from the recruiters fee, he should make sure to reduce the number of wasted calls. Of course, the original fee must be a little bit larger than the mentioned £5k-£15k, since some waste is expected. Start with £18k, reduce wasted calls to 20, which results in a £14k fee and more time for the employer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting concept however it won't work.

The pestering calls are random agencies trying to get your permission to recruit for their roles. Give them permission and they won't pester you unless they legitimately have a good candidate. Usually a recruiter will send a maximum of 5 candidates per vacancy.

<comment><USER9> You say that, but we've sent back plenty of candidate cvs with a firm "no" the moment they arrive from a recruiter.

Would be interesting to have financial repercussions for low quality cvs coming through.

<comment><USER10> Do you still use the recruiters? Why give them financial INCENTIVES for mixing good with bad CV's?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The rewards are all wrong in this market.

(1) Most companies are bad at recruitment. It's just very far from whatever their core business is.

(2) Since the value of a better employee is huge companies are willing to pay for it. In most markets, when people are willing to pay for quality, firms are able to take that money and turn it into a higher quality product. If a market appears for $100k cars, car makers will spend that money making Ferraris. The value of that may be questionable given that 10k can do most of the stuff you'd be doing with the Ferrari but that's besides the point. The point is that the manufacturer found some way of _spending_ your money on the _product_.

The problem with recruiting is that they have no way of spending your money in any decent way. They can spend to get volume up, to a degree, but there isn't really of reliably spending your way into getting better candidates. Instead of doing something useful (to the employer _or_ candidate), everything goes into a zero sum game of fighting each-other for openings and candidates.

</comment><comment><USER12> My Key Recruiter Indicators, based on my experiences in the US:

Good: Working with a founder of a company that's more than a few years old.

Bad: Talking to someone different each time a company contacts you.

Toxic: Talking to someone new each time, and them making you go through the same "getting to know you" interview questions each time.

Good: The recruiter sends you job opportunities that match what you've told them to look for, and what they send you gets progressively better with more feedback.

Bad: Repeatedly send you jobs that don't match your skills or interests.

Toxic: Send you jobs that don't even match your location requirements.

Good: Gives you "behind the scenes" details about postings - what skills are really required and what they're willing to train, what the work environment is like, etc.

Bad: Only knows what's on the job listing, and, if you match the requirements, will tell you whatever you need to hear to get you to agree to the interview.

Toxic: Won't even tell you the name of the company they're submitting you to.

Good: Talking openly with you about their "cut", or at least open to ideas for increasing your take-home pay. (US contracting example: how much will they increase your rate if you switch from W-2 to 1099?)

Bad: Asking you for your rate/salary range to begin with, and using your bottom-of-range number as the starting point to negotiate you down from.

Toxic: Negotiating you down on your rate repeatedly, practically at every step of the recruiting process.

What really sucks about working with recruiters is, an average-to-bad recruiter can still get you a good job. Since it's a numbers game for everyone involved, there's at least some incentive to put up with assholes, as long as there's a chance that they will find you something good.

</comment><comment><USER13> Another issue is that open jobs become protected secrets to the extent that it becomes hard to find positions without a recruiter. It's some type of strange cyclic dependency where companies turn to recruiters because the employees have given up looking for openings on their own--which leads to job opening info residing only with recruiters (and, yes, an about us -> jobs page buried on the corporate web site), which in turn fuels the employees turning to recruiters.

I feel the glut of job boards hurts this as well. Everyone is so eager to start a site to get their own $20 job posting fee that employees are overwhelmed over where to spend their money. Postings are broadly scattered across dozens of sites, and as a result job postings get worse results than recruiters. So, companies turn to recruiters, which helps start the whole cycle up.

Then there's a different form of blacklisting--if you get hired via a recruitment agency, sometimes you can't get access to their exclusive jobs if you go looking again, for fear that the hiring company will fire them. Of course the agency will choose a portfolio of jobs over one hiring fee if the land the right company.

I was shocked to find out that in other industries, the workers pay the recruiters to find them a job.

</comment><comment><USER14> I agree - having recently been through tech recruitment processes its pretty painful - at the end of the day recruiters are just sales people, their single goal is to sell you and the roles, regardless of what your goals or skills are.

As a result, with a few friends I have been working as part of a team working on a product to try and disrupt the recruitment industry (was actually going to do a Show HN, as we have just launched two days ago!) - Its a online resume building site, that lets developers plug in to GitHub, stackoverflow, etc, to demonstrate their projects and experiences.

As well as this though, we are working on the companies section, where companies can register and effectively create their resumes pitching to developers why they should work for them (developer hardware setup, training agenda, oss contribs etc) - so making more incentives for companies to register themselves (and less so for agencies), and hopefully reduce that burden of recruiting on companies as they can easily see github contributions, stack answers etc and get a better indication of potential candidates skills.

Feel free to check out the site (in beta) <http://nerdability.com>

<comment><USER7> > Its a online resume building site, that lets developers plug in to GitHub, > stackoverflow, etc, to demonstrate their projects and experiences

sth like <https://masterbranch.com/> ? except the latter lets you connect other repos than github.

<comment><USER14> yep, it would certainly appear so..

Just as we were finishing build I also got a private invite to the StackOverflow beta career profile site (now publicly open i believe) which is the same thing but more mature (connects Stack score and a tonne of code repos etc)

So it seems we are not first to the party, but at least we can try and enjoy building a (hopefully) nice product!!

Hopefully a differentiating factor might be that we are planning on focusing more on the company profile/job stuff and generally the whole end-to-end recruitment experience, but lets see..

Thanks for letting me know about masterbranch though, seems like a really nice site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "I've come across many employers complaining that recruiters have actually copied their job postings word for word despite not engaging said recruiters to represent them."

I have been hit by this, and I believe I may have lost one or two opportunities because of this. My first hint of this practice was during a phone interview when the hiring manager said something to the effect of, "your recruiter will get in contact with you". Not "our recruiter", not $NAME. I got the distinct impression that I had been put in front of this company unsolicited.

From then on I started Googling for reqs that recruiters sent me that I was interested in. I soon discovered a pattern of recruiters copying open reqs, sticking a contract period on them [0], and posting them on job boards. I have seen multiple recruiters do this for the same position, sometimes with the actual company posting the same position on the same boards. A few even manage to leave the company's name in the posting. This more than anything drove me away from job boards, except SO Careers and the HN threads).

[0] These are all full-time regular positions.

</comment><comment><USER16> Recruitment agents work particularly well for contract developers, the ethics notwithstanding. Permanent is a whole different ball game that I'm not going to touch on.

TLDR: The model isn't broken, it could use some optimization.

Everyone likes to bash a recruiter. And, some guy who takes 80 quid a day out of your pocket for months should be an object of derision, no?

Look at the flip side: agents act as stimulus for the market, pushing through deals quickly and raising the ceiling on rates.

Sales is dirty and hard work (I've done it). Agents need to be like bulldogs as roles go fast, within days or hours. Without an agent in the mix contracts take longer to get signed.

They are far from the best judges of quality candidates. The closest they get is keyword matching and telephone screening if you're able to string a sentence together. But often this is a good 'low bar'.

Agent fees are expensive. As a contractor it's never good to find out what the client is actually paying for you vs. what you get. That said, the rates here in London are good compared to what I found in Vancouver and elsewhere in the UK. The difference I observed was the aggressive and competitive agencies here, where if they can squeeze more money out of a client they'll pocket a good chunk of it.

London's well-established and healthy contracting market is due in part to the agencies that have grown up around the candidates and companies here.

<comment><USER17> _Everyone likes to bash a recruiter. And, some guy who takes 80 quid a day out of your pocket for months should be an object of derision, no?_

People don't hate recruiters because they take money, but because they are rubbish at their job.

<comment><USER16> Their job is to place a candidate with a client. They're good at it otherwise they would have died out long ago.

The gripe I hear from colleagues is X, Y, Z always ending in 'and they take £££ from me a day!'

My post notes the problems with the model, but it isn't broken.

<comment><USER18> "They're good at it otherwise they would have died out long ago."

Not necessarily. They have not died out only because of lazy employers. Employers do not mind paying extra cash since they are too busy to even take an extra 10 mins out to quickly screen candidates. Having said that, I have come across some good recruiters who actually know the employers well, understand the industry and are not complete jerks. But that is like a needle in a haystack.

<comment><USER16> Exactly. There will always be lazy employers, and agents are good at giving them a kick up the ass to make sure the process gets completed in as little time as possible. (Self interest of course, as this corresponds to when they'll get their commission)

Good at recruiting is not equal to "know their employers well, understand the industry and are not complete jerks". Good is getting a candidate placed as smoothly and swiftly as possible.

"taking an unfair share for which they will lowball the candidates". Better become a better negotiator then. If you know your market value, this is what the client is willing to pay for you. They don't even factor in the agent fee as they are paying £xxx for a developer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yep! Dead on target. A very impressive article. But, Cheese and Peas, Steve, the recruitment mafia has probably put a contract out on you - so cool.

The only thing you didn't say directly though clearly indicate throughout is that no one (employers nor recruiters) cares about the candidates or their careers. Great article - it's about time someone said it out loud. Congratulations on your website and business, it looks great and certainly has the right idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the awesome words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been thinking of a new recruitment model: guaranteed employment. Suppose a recruiting agency guaranteed their recruits, as in, "We'll pay their salary for the [six months | year | whatever]. If they are acceptable, at the end of that period, you pay us back double. If they don't work out, let us know ASAP and we'll eat the cost."

The incentives are all right here. The employers essentially get a year long job interview. Qualified candidates are basically guaranteed a job. And the recruiters are rewarded for successfully meeting their clients' needs, and punished if they get it wrong. The current situation rewards harassment and puffing up their candidates' resumes.

<comment><USER21> As long as we're talking incentives, your plan gives a huge incentive to fire someone just before the end of their first year of employment. At the end of the year you're faced with paying a recruiter 2 years of salary, but if you fire them you just got a year of work for free.

<comment><USER20> That's just a technicality. :P

But seriously, I think this sort of service would be aimed at employers looking for long term professional employees, not some temporary code jockey. In that case, dismissing a proven employee in order to save a years' salary would be counterproductive.

However, your criticism is valid, and measures would have to be taken to keep employers like that at bay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Once I had more than about 4-5 years of experience, I never saw the need for working with a recruiter. I tried a few and they always sent me to those kind of shops where you can just smell in the air that everyone hates their jobs and the devs are just code monkeys churning out whatever garbage some product guy pitched. If I want a job at a company, I apply. There's enough demand (and I'm confident enough in my skill set) that I don't see how a recruiter could help me.

Frankly in my mind, if I hear about a company through a recruiter, I figure it must suck to work there, or else they'd be able to find people on their own.

<comment><USER23> _Once I had more than about 4-5 years of experience_.

How did you get a job before you had the experience and the skillset?

I think recruiters are not that effective (at least in programming), but it seems like a 'safe' and 'obvious' investment for someone with money and no idea of how engineers think and work.

<comment><USER22> Even before then I found jobs on my own, but I was willing to give recruiters a shot. Never had one send me to a job I was remotely interested in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Job boards are not doing anything even remotely innovative enough to disrupt > the recruitment industry and the primary reason for that is purely because > no-one wants to upset their cash cow. Except us that is. We don't pander to > the recruitment industry. Quite the opposite in fact. We've sent a number of > warning shots into the air to make them aware that we intend on impacting > the need for reliance on their industry. It's very early days but in my view > at least, the demise of the industry is only just beginning.

What are you doing different? Would be interested to read about it.

<comment><USER25> It may be exaggerating if I claim that <http://jobs.usethesource.com/> is "doing something even remotely innovative enough to disrupt the recruitment industry" but it does have some pretty simple rules:

1\. To post a job you have to have high Hacker News karma

2\. You can't be a recruiter

<comment><AUTHOR> I personally love this site but the biggest barrier to entry is that you're preventing a massive amount of the market from advertising. Our goal is to raise the standard across the board.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am a technology recruiter and I have to say that I can't disagree with 90% of the post. Unfortunately agencies have been started by people with little class on only desire money. I have always known that I will leave the business and I care more about my reputation than anything else. Like an infection, I am trying to espouse my style and philosophy, one built on trust, understanding of technology and LOBs and transparency. I don't want to chase I want to become a hub that people seek.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was in your shoes benkross.

There are a few decent recruiters out there mate. Keep your head up and keep your dignity at all costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The easiest way to kill this is to use stackoverflow jobs or emptylemon or something like that.

The moment you involve humans in the process, you're going to get asshat middlemen. Other equally bad forms of asshat middlemen: car sales, estate agents and letting agents and buyers - they are all the same.

The whole point of computing is to automate, solve problems and get rid of middlemen but we seem to have failed to solve our own problems.

The only positive with recruitment agents (at least in the UK), is that you can treat them like shit and they always come crawling back.

<comment><USER28> I've found the jobs section on Stackoverflow to either be

(a) company looky-loos doing a market survey to see who's available with what skillsets for a cheaper price (the buzzword for this is topgrading), or

(b) a company with an actual opening but you've got to dig so much to find really what the job & compay environment is that interest is lost in the process

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> (we're working on the same problem, so thanks for bringing this up).I think it is a real and HUGE problem.

There are various startups who are trying to attack it from different angles. E.g. checkout Path.to, geekli.st, branchout.

We think the solution is make matching process more efficient, with software. Instead of people recruiters trying to make a match through "numbers game" we match with algorithm and user feedback to make it better.

Check it out at monday52.com and let me know what d'you think.

</comment><comment><USER30> Discrimination is far too common. I'm deaf. As soon as they ask me for my number to call me and I tell them to use email instead... I never ever hear from them again. It's very rare for one to respond to emails unless it's a new "client".

</comment><comment><USER28> Personally I've found recruiters people who would excel at being used car salesmen or attorneys, except for the morals part - they're lower.

Here in DC they'll get $20-30K per person they refer that gets hired. Meanwhile the worker-bee is left trying to get $60-$65K as a developer because the company overpays the recruiter. So you try to change companys hoping for a $2.50/hr raise, only to meet up with a recruiter who'll get $30K off you if you do.

F*ck them and everything about them.

What's wrong with the recruitment industry - recruiters.

</comment><comment><USER31> Great post, but I'm not sure how a jobs board solves this problem.. where is the innovation? We're going to shaking up the creative recruiting industry here in Australia with Dragonfly. Our beta goes live next week, keen for feedback. <http://dragonflylist.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice hijack attempt. Have a read of our blog to understand the vision. Good luck with your company.

Protip: Disparaging companies attempting to solve the same problem as you is a dick move.

<comment><USER31> You're right that did come of a bit dickish, my apologies. But I was genuinely wondering what you were going to do to innovate. Your original blog post is pretty vague on where it is going. We're also looking to disrupt the recruitment industry here in Australia because it is similarly broken.</comment></comment></comment>


Skitch finishing transition to Evernote, sign-ups closing soon - <AUTHOR> https://support.evernote.com/link/portal/16051/16058/Article/4087/Skitch-Transition-from-Skitch-com-to-Evernote <comment><AUTHOR> Strangely, I never minded having my Skitch images uploaded to Skitch but I don't really like now needing an Evernote account. (it's my understanding that I will, but it's not clear)

It's really too bad when great software gets tangled with a service. What I mean is that I'd ideally like to use Skitch with whatever online storage I want.</comment>


Ask HN: I was a victim of bike theft. What can I do? - <AUTHOR>

Today I woke up to see my bike was gone. I've filed a police report giving them the frame number. I made a claim to my insurance (they declined) and I've been searching craigslist and ebay for ads posted recently.<p>Is there anything else someone in my position can do? I'm about to ask my neighbors if they saw anything. It happened between midnight and ~8 am. <comment><USER2> Was it in a relevant geographical location?

For instance, in Amsterdam (NL) there is a well-known black market for bikes, and when a bike is stolen there is always a good chance of finding it there.

On the contrary, for example in Paris (FR), my advice would be to forget about it — people even steal the heavily-impractical public rental bikes.

General advice for your next bike: take appropriate security precautions (more insecure neighbourhood -> bigger chain), and try to have it look cheap and dirty to discourage thieves.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in the south of the UK. I'm not really sure if there's any black markets for bikes here. I've never had to deal with something like this before.

<comment><USER3> Local car boot sales, private adverts in shop windows. If you are in or near London, Brick Lane market may still be a possibility, although Wikipedia says it's not so notorious as it once was.

Consider challenging the insurer's decline of your claim, particularly if the bike was expensive.

<comment><USER4> If he hadn't particularly registered his bike, I think he's out of luck, but he can try.

I work for an insurance company (not in the UK) and we specifically ask for such easily movable objects to be explicitely registered in the home insurance policy (make, model and in some cases identification numbers), they're otherwise excluded. People must remember to register new purchases (they usually don't), and it's up to the insurance company whether to cover them or not. As part of a bigger (proven/proveable) theft, they might, but usually not as a singular event (too easy to abuse).

Apparently in the UK it's an optional:

[http://www.which.co.uk/money/insurance/guides/contents- insur...](http://www.which.co.uk/money/insurance/guides/contents-insurance- explained/how-contents-insurance-works/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that was the issue. I didn't register the bike with insurance, so it wasn't covered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thief is unlikely to be an avid bike enthusiast, and very likely he will be trying to sell it ASAP.

Monitor local classifieds ads (craigslist, kijiji, or whatever in your area) about related items. Visit "potential" thiefs. If bike found - agree on price, leave deposit. Come back to "pickup your bike" together with police officer.

All "bike recovery success" stories and "how i screwed my bike thief" stories started exactly like that.

</comment><comment><USER6> It would be worth asking your neighbors, but honestly, I would just come to terms with it. I had a motorcycle stolen a couple years ago and never heard anything back. These people are able to do this shit because they're good at it and generally do it in a "safe" (for them) way.

You could try to set up a bait bike and hope they're greedy/stupid enough to do it again.

Also, sorry for your luck.

</comment><comment><USER7> Learn to lock it up better and get a new one.

<comment><USER8> When I was living in Cambridge, MA during the '80s that was completely inadequate, even the best locks would still allow for the stripping of unlocked components. _Everyone_ would carry their bikes up a stairway so it could be safe in the destination apartment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I read a story (or a post?) a while back of how a guy used TaskRabbit.com (I guess you could get a group of your friends to do the same) to go to local flea markets and scope it out.

If you find it, you might be able to either buy it back or contact the police if you had it registered.

EDIT: [https://www.taskrabbit.com/oakland-sf-bay-area/t/hit-east- ba...](https://www.taskrabbit.com/oakland-sf-bay-area/t/hit-east-bay-flea- markets-in-search-of-stolen-bike)

</comment><comment><USER10> Build a GPS tracker that is discreetly installed on your bike and launch it on Kickstarter.

Won't get this bike back, but this is a problem for millions of people out there....

<comment><AUTHOR> Would Tile work the same? I thought of buying one in the Summer when they're out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well, maybe you should try with: [https://racklove.com/stolen-bike- finder/](https://racklove.com/stolen-bike-finder/)

</comment><comment><USER12> You can also post something on reddit/r/<yourcity> if it's a large city. They can probably help you with other local resources for you to look into.

</comment><comment><USER13> Buy a new bike.</comment>


Greenlet – Move an async function into its own thread in the browser - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/developit/greenlet <comment><USER2> Worth mentioning: workerize[0], which Jason released a couple weeks ago, allows you to move entire modules to a web worker.

greenlet is a bit like "workerize-lite" in the sense that it allows you to move individual functions to their own thread.

Also relevant: a discussion with Jason yesterday about when it's worth moving functions to a web worker: [https://twitter.com/mxstbr/status/957312201987063808](https://twitter.com/mxstbr/status/957312201987063808)

[https://github.com/developit/workerize](https://github.com/developit/workerize)

<comment> dh-g workerize looks very nice. I've used [https://github.com/borisirota/webworkify- webpack](https://github.com/borisirota/webworkify-webpack) in the past but wasn't 100% satisfied.

Does anyone know of write-ups documenting performance of the various methods of pushing data to and from WW across different browsers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The code could use some work. I have no idea what's going on L18.

[https://github.com/developit/greenlet/blob/master/greenlet.j...](https://github.com/developit/greenlet/blob/master/greenlet.js#L18)

<comment><USER4> It's not just line 18, I barely have any idea what any lines are doing. Single letter variable names are almost always a bad idea except in one case, using `i` as an index, and even then I don't do that any more because `index` is more obvious.

<comment><USER5> Agreed! There's an open issue to address this - the single letter names are silly, since they get uglified anyway.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, saw the comment and opened an issue :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The name is certainly misleading. Green threads (greenlets) are a totally different concept entirely.

This is really a util method to simplify the call syntax for a web worker.

</comment><comment><USER8> >  Caveat: the function you pass cannot rely on its surrounding scope, since > it is executed in an isolated context.

That's a pretty major caveat and makes the project's tagline basically false. It's just a hacky way to spawn a Web Worker on the fly by evaluating a string that was made by coercing a local function declaration into a string.

</comment><comment><USER9> The example could be better chosen. Why execute an action that is already async like fetching a url on a different thread?

<comment><USER10> JSON parsing (also in the async function) is CPU-heavy, though. If you had a huge, huge amount of JSON it might be worth it. Maybe.

<comment><USER4> Not in this case, because copying data to and from a web-worker uses "Structured Copy" which is about as fast as JSON unmarshaling, but in this case it's actually doing significantly more work:

* read request

* parse from JSON to an object

* read the data from the object in the worker to the main thread

* create a new object in the main thread with the data from the worker

Those last 2 steps are about as slow as a JSON.stringify and JSON.parse, and are completely unnecessary. As others have said, adding some filtering to the example makes this example worlds better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> JS, browser only (uses Web Worker).

<comment><USER12> These two details should be in the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> On a related note, we could use Proxys to have pretty good cross-worker APIs handled automatically, but unfortunately we need cross-heap collection for it to work: [https://www.scirra.com/blog/ashley/38/why-javascript- needs-c...](https://www.scirra.com/blog/ashley/38/why-javascript-needs-cross- heap-collection)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is off-topic, but at the top of the readme is this:

> The name is somewhat of a poor choice, but it was available on npm.

npm has supported scoped packages [0] for years now, and it's a fantastic solution to this problem, as well as solving many others (like typosquatting in many cases).

I know this package is already named, but I really urge people to use scoped packages more.

[0] [https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/scope](https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/scope)

<comment><USER14> Why not making scopes mandatory, to fix these issues once and for all? Wait, that's what GitHub did for 10 years ...

<comment><USER15> Would it though? I've noticed a trend of libs being created under orgs of the same name, e.g.

\- [https://github.com/angular/angular](https://github.com/angular/angular)

\- [https://github.com/rollup/rollup](https://github.com/rollup/rollup)

\- [https://github.com/cherow/cherow](https://github.com/cherow/cherow)

\- [https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp](https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp)

Wouldn't we end up with a similar situation?

<comment><USER4> It does at least partially solve the problem of "typosquatting" where installing `anglar` could potentially be a malicious version. It makes it more obvious when it's happening (oh, you setup the `anglar` and created a ton of typo'd packages with a few lines changed each? That's probably safe to ban...)

It also allows those orgs to group "sibling" or sub-packages under their main name. So I know that `@angular/cool-angular-plugin` is actually from angular.

<comment><USER15> I get the benefits of namespacing. I'm just not sure making it mandatory solves any issues. For example, what's stopping someone from publishing `@developit/greenlet` or `@greenlet/greenlet` without owning the respective org/username in github?

<comment><USER4> Nothing is stopping that.

But for the downside of "having to type a little bit more", I think it's more than useful enough at what it does fix/solve.

In other words, it solves between 0 and "a bunch" of problems for packages, and the downside is fixed at "needs to type a little more".

Even in the worst case, it's not that much harm, but in the best case could prevent exploits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> @dang, can the title be modified to include the programming language/environment? (browser-only JS)

<comment><USER17> Sure.

Btw it's better to email us (email@example.com) than to try to get our attention this way, since we don't come close to seeing all the comments, or even all the threads.

<comment><USER16> Oh cool, gtk! Today I learned.</comment></comment></comment>


The Real Story behind Fermi & Oak Ridge: Bushes' legacy threatens progress? - <AUTHOR> http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2010/1/5/the-real-story-behind-fermi--oak-ridge-bushes-legacy-threats-progress.aspx <comment><USER2> I'm generally frustrated by articles on this site - and this one is no exception. It seems like there's some juicy rumor-mill news there, but the writing is so poor that it takes a great deal of effort to extract it. A conversational style can be fun when it employs good grammar and appropriate idioms. These articles always leave me wondering whether I just read something interesting or simply incorrect.</comment>


PxCode Challenge – Day 1 - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/no5VLybdKE0 <comment><AUTHOR> Give me your Sketch, and we give you the Code!

Preview the result here: [https://bit.ly/35jNCnI](https://bit.ly/35jNCnI)

Final source code at CodeSandBox: [https://bit.ly/35mXWvs](https://bit.ly/35mXWvs)

Hand-code web is painful and slow. We provide pxCode a better solution for web development in a much faster and joyful way without sacrificing code quality.

It's the first challenge from someone who gives us the Sketch download link. It seems a sample project, but it's still like a real and practical case to demonstrate.

We have completed the landing page from scratch within 48 mins 10 secs . You can check out the video on how to achieve in pxCode in detail. You can preview the result and final source code at CodeSandbox. Preview the result here: [https://bit.ly/35jNCnI](https://bit.ly/35jNCnI)

Final source code at CodeSandBox: [https://bit.ly/35mXWvs](https://bit.ly/35mXWvs)

We are welcome and excited to invite you to join the challenge. Let us help you!

pxCode Offical Site: [https://www.pxcode.io/](https://www.pxcode.io/)</comment>


Twitter Reacts to the #Dickbar Uproar - <AUTHOR> http://newsgrange.com/twitter-reacts-to-the-dickbar-uproar-not-killing-it-just-making-a-little-bit-less-annoying/ <comment><USER2> _argued that giving users the option to turn this feature off would be an "inelegant implementation."_

This is a good recipe for making me hate you as a designer. You don't always know better than the user. Options reflect that there multiple ways people prefer to do things. Eliminating options may be more "elegant", but elegance means nothing if I hate using you interface.

<comment><USER3> I'm a developer, but I find this kind of criticism (that usually is in the designer's/PM's domain) exasperating.

People write frustrated and angry posts saying things like "you don't always know better than the user." You're decrying the method, not the choices, but its the choices you hate.

When people make "opinionated software" we end up with much more useful tools, better experiences, and innovative ideas. Without designers forcing things on you that you don't necessarily want, and not giving you an option to turn it off, you end up with animated Myspace backgrounds, skinable MP3 players, and corporate portals. With that attitude, we get clean, informational, useful Facebook profiles, elderly and technophobic people using music software instead of carrying CDs, and Basecamp/Emacs org-mode/appropriate organization tools for the right job.

I agree - the trending topics bar is not only buggy, it's freaking annoying. I personally haven't started looking to switch clients because I'm assuming it wont be long before it gets nixed. But I applaud the gall that goes behind pushing it out. I want people developing the software I use to try and enable (and push us along towards) greater things. If something happens I don't like, the world is a large place. I can go find someone else who hasn't gone crazy who writes competing software. But I'm not going to trash Twitter for taking that risk. Should they have thought it through more? I think so. Should they keep doing things in a similar spirit? Yes.

<comment><USER2> _but its the choices you hate_

Indeed. However, the poor choice would not matter if there was option to fix that.

 _we end up with much more useful tools, better experiences, and innovative ideas._

I definitely agree with the 2nd and 3rd points, but how is a piece of software more useful or a better experience because I cannot customize it to be more useful to myself?

 _you end up with animated Myspace backgrounds, skinable MP3 players, and corporate portals._

Actually, two of these are examples of designers not giving an option to change things. Backgrounds should be able to be turned off (see how most IM clients will allow you to disable font styles to make things readable when talking to that friend who uses dark purple text on a black background). Corporate portals are example where there's no choice, assuming I'm reading that right. As for "skinnable MP3 players", I absolutely love foobar2000 specifically for that feature. I'm truly not getting how that's a bad thing, at all.

 _But I'm not going to trash Twitter for taking that risk. Should they have thought it through more? I think so. Should they keep doing things in a similar spirit? Yes._

This is where I think we simply disagree in philosophy. I can see how, as a designer, forcing new and interesting interfaces on a user can sometimes lead to innovation and change for the better. But as a user, I've found that I really dislike 99% of the time that's attempted, and I'd rather have the ability to overwrite what a bad designer decided was brilliant. There are good designs out there that I'm fine with and have never had to change, but most of the time, one interface does not fit everyone. Giving the user choice to tailor the interface to their preference and their use reflects that.

Edit: to expand further, I strongly agree with statement "good design should be transparent". The user should not have to think about the UI; it should enable them to do what they'd like painlessly. If a user goes looking for an option to change something that annoys them in the interface, then the interface is getting in the way of the user.

As a side note, this philosophy can be seen at the root of people who love Apple/hate Apple. Those who love Apple tend to admire them for their excellent sense of design and wonderfully made products. Those who hate Apple tend to dislike the idea that Apple tends to make decisions for its users, and have run up against that lack of choice one too many times. At least, that's my perspective as someone on the "generally disliking" side.

<comment><USER3> As you said, I am sure we do differ in philosophy - I feel like your dislike of things you can't customize to make them more useful to yourself and the idea that "if a user goes looking for an option to change something that annoys them in the interface, then the interface is getting in the way of the user" (in addition to the other arguments; I won't bore you by quoting all of them :) to be missing the forest for the trees.

The motivation that I admire behind this feature (and I presume that you do not) is making a choice that makes some (most? all?) users uncomfortable (surprised? annoyed?) because they believe it will make the service better (in the most broad sense possible).

People being aware of what is trending has the potential to keep people abreast of up-to-the-second current affairs, thoughts that are permeating the community, and ideas that similar people have that you may find intriguing.

The community also has a prevailing interest in Twitter making money, since if it folds, the community ceases to exist (this is for values of community contained in "people currently using Twitter") and any good Twitter Co. can provide ceases to increase.

Are these good enough reasons to introduce a truly hateful piece of UI? I don't think so. I'm glad they're willing to make decisions for reasons like the ones above, even if I think this one was not a good one. I personally am unconvinced trending topics _can_ be introduced well, but I don't think introducing unpopular things is bad, especially when it's unpopular for the reasons you've stated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From <http://twitter.com/dickc/status/44221580028547072>

_If an alerting mechanism is in your face_ all the time _, it's not a good alerting function._

Doesn't the iPhone still pop-up a modal dialog that you have to dismiss (and may accidentally interact with) for SMS alerts? (I personally can't believe anyone puts up with that -- you have to jailbreak your phone to get a better interface on that?) People stopped complaining about that a while ago, they'll stop complaining about this functionality of the twitter app soon enough.

Although, I like the suggestion in the OP to "[give] users a way to pay for the app to make it go away." That's a valid solution, and acknowledges that what shows up in the #dickbar is income related.

<comment><USER5> The SMS alert is not in your face all the time though. You can't dismiss the dickbar, you can, however, dismiss the SMS alert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If it was up to me I'd slip it in at the top between the search and the tweets. Conceptually it is also where it belongs: the list of tweets is arrange chronologically with the latest at the top. Trending topics are all about the moment. They belong at the top.

When you're in the middle of your tweets you are focused on moving upwards in the list and forwards in time towards the latest events. It is distracting to have the here-and-now intrude - you are still in the past. However if you make your way to the top you have read all the tweets and are conceptually right- up-to-date - what better time to see what else is happening in the world in the here-and now. Plus if you've run out of tweets you'd be much more likely to have a look at what else is going on.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for Echofon.

The issue with Quickbar is not that it is an annoying overlay, but the fact it was added. It is clearly something designed to stuff promoted posts down people's throat, and it looks like Twitter is going to keep doing it even with the new version (it just won't be an overlay). _This_ is how you kill an established goodwill - a major strategic mistake that creates huge opportunity for the competing apps.

Twitter now faces a choice between (a) backing off and making Quickbar optional and (b) modifying their API T&C to force other apps prioritize trending/ported content differently. It'd be interesting to see what they do.

</comment><comment><USER8> My question is, when will they force other clients to begin to use the Quickbar/#Dickbar? Or do you think this is just testing the waters?

P.S. I wouldn't mind them having it there if it wasn't so much darker and more distracting than the rest of the interface. I know it's supposed to catch your attention, but still.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was pretty amazed to discover there's already a workaround for Jailbroken devices: <https://twitter.com/chpwn/status/43493433217789952>

</comment><comment><USER10> If a company pays for a promoted hashtag, do people just start using it, or does Twitter need to.seed the hashtag with lots of related tweets first?

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://mobile.twitter.com> ... better than the client IMO.

</comment><comment><USER12> After suffering with the #dickbar for a couple of days now, it's become apparent to me that Twitter refuses to acknowledge that they're a protocol, not a service, and by implementing lightweight annoyances to monetize the userbase, inelegantly as DickC puts it, pushes users to find alternatives where they can still use the protocol as a communication device without the hassles of the hamfisted business approach.

Ask yourself, would ATT interrupt your calls to alert you of popular conversations from other users, even if they were sponsored? I highly doubt that.

<comment><USER13> AT&T might not be the best choice as an example of a non-hamfisted company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Named after Dick Costello? Yeah right.</comment>


The Basics of Computer Science - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-basics-of-computer-science

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if I like introducing computer science with a physical "computer". A physical "computer" is an application of computer science. I rather start with an abstract idea of computation, but my view point is very skewed towards academia. I'd love to hear what others have to say about this approach.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi Highwind. I start with the physical computer because that's what most people think of when you say "computer". If you read through to part five, I make exactly the point you do - the computer is the software (more accurately an implementation of a Universal Turing Machine) not the hardware at all.</comment>


EBay/PayPal report a guy to FBI for posting a phishing email screencap - <AUTHOR> http://www.ghettowebmaster.com/legal/ebay-paypal-reported-me-to-the-fbi/ <comment><USER2> mass overreaction to what looks much like a stock email.

I was with him that it was a bit silly till he decided to call them "retards" and to "piss off" right off the bat. He comes across as a bit of an idiot really.

<comment><USER3> He's entirely justified there. That _stock email_ could have cost him a lot of money and hassle if his ISP had been a little less clueful. Sending it was grossly irresponsible.

<comment><USER2> It depends how they found the picture surely?

If, for example, it was pulled off another site they would have no idea of the context.

Certainly a douchebag response seems to equal sinking to their level.

<comment><USER3> Sending legal threats like this, whose validity depends entirely on the context, with _no idea of the context_ , is _grossly irresponsible_.

He did not sink to their level. If he sent them and their ISP baseless legal threats that might result in a temporary loss of internet access, that would be sinking to their level. If he tried to trick their domain registrar into transferring their domain to him, that would be sinking to their level. If he tracked down the families of the legal staff and threatened them in their homes, that would be sinking to their level. All he did was write some bad words in his blog.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Imagine the scenario where somebody hotlinks that image, though. That's my only problem with it. If it were viewable only from his blog, that would be more fair use than what he has going on instead. A slight change in context and suddenly he's potentially enabling more phishing. Otherwise, I agree with him almost completely (minus the attitude)

<comment><AUTHOR> its not like image uploaders are rare though, why would the scammers bother with hotlinking his image when they could just upload the file to one of the million of image uploaders out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder why it is seen as acceptable to send out automated mails containing the legal equivalent of what I would call 'cartoony threats' - "I'm going to sue you for a billion dollars!" especially when they lack solid evidence of what is actually going on.

I'm not saying it should be illegal, but it does seem, at the very least, quite rude.

Publicly pointing out 'hey, company X was really rude, and it turns out that they weren't paying attention when they sent the mail' as this article does, is probably a good first step towards convincing companies to be a bit more careful before throwing around threats.

</comment><comment><USER6> There is a proverb that goes something to the effect of "A soft answer turns away wrath, but harsh words provoke anger."

Seems like useful info for this fella.

<comment><USER7> Seems useful for both parties. The initial message from Ebay/PayPal was harsh as well.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. Point being, we oftentimes overlook the very powerful ability to de- escalate a conflict by refusing to respond in kind.

I think part of this stems from the way people often picture the response of the other party in their minds when they formulate a piece of communication. If that response is level-headed and downright _nice_ when they expect it to be rude, you can completely unman them diffuse the situation. Just the fact that the response is very different from what was expected is often enough to cause the other party to reevaluate their position. "(Hold on, this reply is not what I expected, my understanding of the situation could be flawed, must reevaluate.")

The crazy thing is, the substance of your reply can be absolutely the same, but if you phrase it humbly and nicely you can often obtain a much better result. Call it social hacking :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> heh. yeah. I can't tell you how many bogus abuse complaints I get. The other day, I got a spam complaint; the 'spam' contained within was an abuse report sent by one of my customers.

Another time I showed someone on a mailing list how to look up the owners of IPv6 addresses. he included that with his abuse report to the owner, and the owner of the IP block (who happened to be an upstream of an upstream of mine) forwarded the message back to me, as if I was somehow involved.

In both these cases, I responded to all involved. in both these cases, I didn't hear anything back from anyone.

I can only imagine that most abuse desks are either understaffed or poorly automated. The thing is, handling abuse is important, but it's not easy. It's not easy to send a good abuse report, and it's not easy to parse it, to weigh the rights of all involved, and to do the right thing on the other end. An abuse desk person needs to be part lawyer and part network admin. Add to that the fact that most ISPs put the least effort they can into abuse, without getting put on blacklists, and you have a job that is usually done poorly.

</comment><comment><USER8> Agreed. I'm sorry I gave this guy more traffic than he deserves, if i could down rate this i would.

its just a standard email and that image could probably be easily found by just google image searching</comment>


Ask HN: Objective-C programming book - <AUTHOR> I found some brilliant discussion threads on learning C on HN, resulting in the purchase of the C Programming Language (2nd Ed) book and the C Puzzle Book, which I am working through at the moment. I've ordered C Interfaces and Implementations as well as The Practise of Programming, which should arrive shortly. As much benefit as I will derive from learning C, I'm interested in learning Objective-C, to allow me to write software for my Mac, as well as for iPhone, and therefore humbly ask if anyone has any recommendations for Objective-C books. I've found a Programming in Objective-C book written by Stephen Kochan for example, but wonder how good it is.<p>* Edited to fix errors <comment><USER2> Kochan's book is great for the language itself. But, that doesn't help you with the frameworks. For that, I'm a huge fan of Hillegass' Cocoa Programming (and its how I first picked up Cocoa), but, I'd only recommend it if you're more interested in the Mac than the iPhone. AppKit and UIKit are different beasts to learn.

Jeff LaMarche and David Mark's Beginning iPhone Development, Bill Dudney and Chris Adamson's iPhone SDK Development or Erica Sadun's iPhone Developers Cookbook are all very good books to look into (although, I vaguely remember hearing something like that Erica is working on another edition that covers iPad additions. May be worth holding off on this particular book for a bit..).

The problem is, the _really_ fun stuff (Game Center, multitasking, and iAd to name some; there's many more fun things that are.) is still under NDA. Or maybe there's not many printed books written on the topic, period (Blocks/GCD, AddressBook, using Instruments to debug/optimize your app, etc). So you want to figure out how to read the docs and guides from Apple as quickly as you can. Which, luckily, isn't too bad to do — the docs tend to be very well written.

</comment><comment><USER3> For learning your way around Cocoa Touch, I highly recommend Erica Sadun's "The iPhone Developer's Cookbook". I reviewed the first edition last year on my blog ([http://blog.ablepear.com/2009/03/book-review-iphone- develope...](http://blog.ablepear.com/2009/03/book-review-iphone-developers- cookbook_05.html)). She recently released a second edition, which I haven't had a chance to read through yet, but is nearly twice as big as the first edition.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hillegass is good, and I haven't read much of it, but Kochan is amazing, and I've read almost every word of it. It starts out with just the language itself, moves slowly, and assumes little programming experience. Then it moves you into Cocoa and UIKit and all that goodness, but only after you get the basics. <http://amzn.to/cYHKqg>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Yet more sound advice from the HN community. The C Puzzle Book is good fun, and based on comments in the C threads, I cannot wait to get my hands on CII. I think I'll get my hands on this Programming in Objective-C 2.0 (2nd Edition) by Stephen G. Kochan and Erica Sadun's iPhone Developers Cookbook in due course.

</comment><comment><USER5> This one is a must have for the beginner.

[http://www.amazon.com/Cocoa-Programming-Mac- OS-3rd/dp/032150...](http://www.amazon.com/Cocoa-Programming-Mac- OS-3rd/dp/0321503619/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272887904&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't look any where else other than the following books

1: Programming in Objective-C 2.0 (2nd Edition) by Stephen G. Kochan

2: Learning Cocoa with Objective-C, 2nd Edition by James Duncan Davidson

<comment><USER7> I worked my way through #2, and it's a good one, but there've been a lot of changes (particularly on the Interface Builder side of things) to Apple's developer tools since 2002.</comment></comment>


Sarien.net - Instant adventure gaming - <AUTHOR> http://sarien.net/ <comment><USER2> I grew up on adventure games like this. Making them semi-multiplayer is a really cool idea. It reminded me of an adventure game MMO that's been in development forever (<http://www.blackmasquegames.info/>).

<comment><USER3> I didn't just grow up with adventure games like this, I grew up with these specific adventure games.

It looks like they actually implemented the old Sierra game interpreter in Flash. I recall there being an open-source clone of the interpreter under the same name, actually.

Activision Blizzard owns the IP for these old Sierra games. I wonder what with Lucasarts recognizing the value in their back catalog (e.g. releasing some of their classic games to Steam, remaking Monkey Island, and porting the latter to the iPhone) if Activision won't actually re-release or even remake some of these titles to modern standards.

<comment><USER4> I don't think Flash is used at all. It's all done with Javascript and HTML. They claim the games work on the iPhone as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk says insults aimed at Thai-cave volunteer protected by First Amendment - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/27/imaginative-attacks-elon-musk-says-his-insults-aimed-thai-cave-rescue-volunteer-are-protected-by-first-amendment/ <comment><USER2> They likely are, in terms of potential action. Ugly speech is part of free speech.

Many of us do not like that, but there is an upside!

There also is no shield in the First Amendment. While it's likely to be found true the speech is protected, all of that says nothing to private actors.

That's basically everyone else!

Just because it can be said, does not mean it should. Musk may well find peers, fans, others in general, may reconsider their actions based on his speech.

</comment><comment><USER3> Which is technically true, the government cannot censor him.

That doesn't mean a third-party cannot sue him for slander.</comment>


Justin Kan #1 on Business 2.0's Most Influential People List (and i am responsible) - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/biz2/0706/gallery.peoplewhomatter.biz2/jump.html <comment><USER2> I couldn't believe they allowed voting at all. Even if it wasn't hackable, it would still produce garbage results. _Time_ tried this about ten years ago, and Attaturk won in almost every category, including, iirc, best athlete of the 20th century, and best poet.

<comment><USER3> Remember, you're talking about a magazine that misspelled "YouTube" on the cover of their last "Person of the Year" issue.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Business 2.0 has implemented a flash based voting system to pick the Most Influential people(from their list!) .The sleek interface looks great, but actionscript that runs behind the scene is amazingly lame.

Exercising democracy is far more better than,editors handpicking a top 10 list over a pizza.But if the system built to exercise democracy is lame, then all your fun are belong to coders!

Hacking/breaking/gaming a live system is not really a cool thing to do. But what if the target is too lazy and careless ?

<comment><USER4> "Hacking/breaking/gaming a live system is not really a cool thing to do. But what if the target is too lazy and careless ?"

That doesn't really matter. That's like saying "Judge, I only stole this car because the lock was lame and whoever designed it was lazy and careless." See how silly your argument really is?!

<comment><AUTHOR> For automobile industry [or any direct consumer product for that matter,say ,Gmail ], a lame product will be replaced by a competition. Thats how better products dominate the market.Thats how 'survival of the fittest' works.

But for lame practices, the answer is it to break it down and show them why they should care. This is a humble reply to an extremely careless coding practice.

I am not proud of what i did.For a beta product, if glitch exist, it can be reported. But come on..this is freaking CNN! Cant they just care to implement a decent system for The Worldwide Campaign they run?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised it's not Ron Paul</comment>


The Art of Hosting Good Conversations Online (1998) - <AUTHOR> https://www.rheingold.com/texts/artonlinehost.html <comment><USER2> In my opinion, based on 11 years of using Reddit, these things support good online conversations. I'm of the strong opinion that social media platforms should put less emphasis on general content aggregation (think of reddit's "front page of the internet) and they should put more emphasis on communities and specific topics. Twitter improved after it let you follow topics in addition to people, because topics usually provide more reasonable, more natural starting points for discussion than viral content does.

Here's my list of the best ingredients to facilitate good online discussions:

\- Smaller, niche communities that allow people to talk about common interests instead of just scrolling through shallow, forgettable, crowd-pleasing posts \- A voting system that lets better comments get more visibility \- A website design that prioritizes discussion over pure content aggregation, which does things like providing moderation tools \- A good headline for the discussion to start with. The starting point matters a lot. It helps when there is strong discouragement of editorialized and sensationalized titles. Good discussions usually don't result from a post featuring a provocative or polarizing photo or meme. A discussion is more likely to be good if it starts with a neutral title or an open question. \- It's better when there is complete transparency and openness about exactly what is allowed or not allowed, encouraged or discouraged, and what gets you banned. People care more about a community when the rules are enforced fairly and predictably. Otherwise they get resentful.

<comment><USER3> Reformatted for easier reading:

\- Smaller, niche communities that allow people to talk about common interests instead of just scrolling through shallow, forgettable, crowd-pleasing posts

\- A voting system that lets better comments get more visibility

\- A website design that prioritizes discussion over pure content aggregation, which does things like providing moderation tools

\- A good headline for the discussion to start with. The starting point matters a lot. It helps when there is strong discouragement of editorialized and sensationalized titles. Good discussions usually don't result from a post featuring a provocative or polarizing photo or meme. A discussion is more likely to be good if it starts with a neutral title or an open question.

\- It's better when there is complete transparency and openness about exactly what is allowed or not allowed, encouraged or discouraged, and what gets you banned. People care more about a community when the rules are enforced fairly and predictably. Otherwise they get resentful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For myself, I can't flirt online unless I've met and felt out their personality in person. I can send out official emails to strangers no problem, and I can pick up women in person just fine. But dating apps drive me crazy because I just don't care about you until I've met you.

<comment><USER5> The point of dating apps is generally to meet someone who _might_ be someone you're interested in, and then meet them in person as soon as possible to find out. Talking online generally doesn't reveal in person chemistry.</comment></comment>