I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit - <AUTHOR> https://howonlee.github.io/2020/02/12/I-20Add-2020-20Seconds-20of-20Latency-20to-20Every-20Website-20I-20Visit.html <comment><USER2> I ran a website for youngsters several years ago. One of the duties to maintain it was to moderate discussion boards. Some kids were difficult to manage and would not accept to be banned (via email/IP/or whatever solution) and would keep recreating profiles.

Ultimately I dealt with those ppl by "greylisting" them. Added a sleep() prior each page rendering of 5 to 25 secs (actually it was more sophisticated and would stream chunks over TCP so the slowness feeling was even more real).

Worked like a charm. Few days after the recalcitrant would no longer come on the website.

I called this "moderation by degradation of user experience", and was pretty effective like the solution described in your post.

Think about page load if you need to restrain visits.

<comment><USER3> This reminds me of the old VBulletin plugin "Miserable Users"[0].

We also had a community suffering from this problem (during the early 2000's). Bans would take care of a lot of problem users, but would just give energy to those truly out for blood, troll, bored, or very immature.

We had one user get banned over a dozen times while we tried banning IPs, name regex or anything else we could think of. Finally, like you, we found that if we annoy them first, they get bored and shuffle off to some other, lower barrier place.

Some of the nice features from that plugin (via the site) were:

1\. Slow response (time delay) on every page (20 to 60 seconds default).

2\. A chance they will get the "server busy" message (50% by default).

3\. A chance that no search facilities will be available (75% by default).

4\. A chance they will get redirected to another preset page (25% & homepage by default).

5\. A chance they will simply get a blank page (25% by default).

6\. Post flood limit increased by a defined factor (10 times by default).

7\. If they get past all this okay, then they will be served up their proper page.

* [0] [https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=93258](https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=93258)

<comment><USER4> Kinda reminiscent of advice I've overheard for breaking up with a narcissist: make them break up with _you_ by being boring.

<comment><USER5> This is the 'Grey Rock' strategy:

> So, how do we escape this parasitical leech without triggering his > vindictive rage? Gray Rock is primarily a way of encouraging a psychopath, a > stalker or other emotionally unbalanced person, to lose interest in you. It > differs from No Contact in that you don't overtly try to avoid contact with > these emotional vampires. Instead, you allow contact but only give boring, > monotonous responses so that the parasite must go elsewhere for his supply > of drama. When contact with you is consistently unsatisfying for the > psychopath, his mind is re-trained to expect boredom rather than drama. > Psychopaths are addicted to drama and they can't stand to be bored. With > time, he will find a new person to provide drama and he will find himself > drawn to you less and less often. Eventually, they just slither away to > greener pastures. Gray Rock is a way of training the psychopath to view you > as an unsatisfying pursuit you bore him and he can't stand boredom.

[https://lovefraud.com/the-gray-rock-method-of-dealing- with-p...](https://lovefraud.com/the-gray-rock-method-of-dealing-with- psychopaths/)

<comment><USER6> > his mind is re-trained to expect boredom rather than drama

> he will find a new person to provide drama and he will find himself drawn to > you less and less often

> he can't stand boredom

Unnecessarily gendered language is jarring for the reader and also, (possibly) unintentionally, sexist. The singular they/them/their is generally acceptable to use in cases such as these.

<comment><USER7> I disagree. I did not find it jarring nor did I perceive it as sexist.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps we need a browser plugin for people to detect when 'he' is being used as the default gender and convert it?

'He' worked as the default pronoun for a long time in many languages all over the world. (And still does in many languages) I find it curious how many people can be sold into the idea that a language can be considered sexist.

<comment><USER9> > browser plugin

They exist. I'm not sure that they can de-gender language, but they can swap word A for word B

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is brilliant! I've been suffering from work related anxiety for years which I've learned to douse with Youtube, Reddit or HN. This became a huge problem for me recently and so I had to try to break my habit loops (Cue -> Action -> Reward).

I cannot quit cold-turkey because all the methods that I can think of to block the websites I can undo in the mania of anxiety.

Youtube always gives you an option to look for more content, either on the side of the video you are currently watching, on the screen immediately after you are done watching or by going to the home page and giving you the options. Using Origin ad-blocker I removed all the immediate suggestions. And also the youtube home button, the only red element of the Youtube gui that catches your notice, that you click on to reduce your anxiety. That you then develop a habit on, just like the suggestions. On mobile I uninstalled the app and used the ad-blocker to render it useless. All external links play videos and the search still works.

For reddit I force the old view, without the infinite scroll, just like the author. I also removed the 'all' link from all the pages as I had formed a habit with that as well. And I limit the number of posts visible at any given time.

I have, other than the author's solution, no counter for HN.

For other websites, I've similarly blocked such habit forming gui features. And the most important bit has been deleting websites from the auto suggest feature of firefox. I've deleted a good number of the common offender websites form it, but I still don't know how to disable those ~10 websites that show up when you go to type something.

The Key has been disrupting the 'cue' of the habits. It leaves you a little confused when you don't find your habit enabler on the websites, but then it gets better. Or like me you form other new habits. The solution author suggests will definitely be of help.

Edit: Words. Also, does anyone know how to disable the dropdown suggestions in the address bar? The one you get when you haven't typed anything, because I've got a habit with the dropdown button as well. There is nothing in the options, but what about the developer options?

<comment><USER11> I do this exact kind of blocking. On Reddit I blocked the entire bar at the top of other subreddit suggestions.

YouTube, I got rid of suggestions on the side, at the end of the video, and at pause.

Call me crazy but I even got rid of typing suggestions in the Firefox address bar.

On Android, I like the Niagra launcher because I can customize my entire home screen and hide everything else so that I only see it when I'm looking for it. No recommendations!

<comment><USER12> The crazy thing about addiction-forming parts on websites is, that even stack overflow has it, with their hot networks box. Great (/s), when your metric as a provider is not how helpful you've been but user engagement...

Luckily they're easily blocked with uBlock Origin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a self-diagnosed completionist and I hate the infinite scroll so much that I developed a mental habit that helps me work around it. When I visit a site with infinite scroll (e.g. YouTube or new Reddit) I immediately scroll down until the first loading spinner (e.g. by pressing the End key). At this point I stop and go back up processing the items in reverse order. This might sound silly, but it gives me a sense of completion and a natural exit point once I get back to the beginning.

<comment><USER14> I've been working on a Chrome extension called Hide Feed that automatically hides the feed. It's not quite yet ready for prime time, but it should help remove the need for that habit because you can just hide the feed whenever you don't want to look at it anymore.

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

<comment><USER15> I've been looking for something like this ! Definitely interested (will you open source it?)

I'm doing this manually using Stylus for facebook and twitter. It's unbelievable how healthier it made my consumption of these sites. I couldn't find stylus for mobile firefox though...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a funny and particularly well written post that touches on a serious topic. Tech addiction and attention seeking are not yet being self-moderated. We are living out a massive social experiment of sorts because of the rapid advancement of the internet. I believe it is a certain net-positive on society, but we need to pay more attention to the cons.

<comment><USER17> > we need to pay more attention to the cons

I like the probably-accidental double-entendre here. ;)

I think there is some attention (though probably still not enough) being paid to algorithms/clouds/etc gamifying our dopaminergic cycles, often without our best interests in mind. But it's worth remembering that individuals can easily fall into these anti-patterns independently, without coercion from centralized servers or dark UI patterns.

When I first heard the RHCP lyric referencing "getting high on information" I thought it a clever turn of phrase, maybe even a bit of a good thing; now I view the phenomenon with deadly seriousness, as I find it an ongoing struggle in day-to-day life, trying to keep focus on what matters amidst a deluge of both noise _and_ signal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Packages show up on the lawn it is astonishing how they appear.

They are astonishing surprises.

It's what I ordered the cat food the espresso machine the two new tables.

Ordering things and how they appear basically I am a small-scale sorcerer.

On the road I press the button and the music goes.

Air conditioning gas pedal restaurant take-out etc.

It is my will being perpetually sated.

Pretend we are writing a fable in which a sorcerer always gets what he wants.

Consider what happens to a soul which always gets what it wants.

— Emily Bludworth de Barios, from the preview page for issue #31 of Forklift, Ohio (and, indeed, the issue itself, if you have it):

[http://www.forkliftohio.com/index.php?page=freight-31](http://www.forkliftohio.com/index.php?page=freight-31)

<comment><USER19> A few weeks ago, in support of a customer's new facilities, I tasked a satellite imaging platform to take a photograph of Dubbo, Australia, using an app on my iPhone. Placing the instruction took less than two minutes, the longest part of which was downloading the app. The processed image was downloaded to my device before close of business that same day.

Against a glowing surface, my hand describes a complex sigil, and orbital mechanisms leap into action on my whim.

Next up: pulling together the components for Karsus's Avatar

<comment><USER20> After reading your comment, I was curious what your photograph might have looked like and where Dubbo was. A moment later, I had selected, searched for, and been presented with images of and articles about Dubbo. I gave them a brief, bored glance and moved on.

<comment><USER19> This age of mundane wonders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is actually a brilliant idea, but I want to ask about something slightly off-topic, hope others can chime in as well:

> Withdrawn mostly from Reddit __in favor of early 2000's style forums that I > pay money for __

I 've never heard of such forums. Does anyone have any examples of these? In particular ones that you pay for, but I'm interested in free ones too.

<comment><USER22> The SomethingAwful forums [0] used to cost $10 to join [1] in the early 2000s. A more recent example is the Farnam Street community, which costs money to join [2].

[0] [https://forums.somethingawful.com/](https://forums.somethingawful.com/)

[1] [https://secure.somethingawful.com/products/register.php](https://secure.somethingawful.com/products/register.php)

[2] [https://fs.blog/membership/](https://fs.blog/membership/)

<comment><USER23> Does anyone here use FS? Do you find it helpful (we'll leave aside questions of cost), or is it like ... productivity porn?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Here in my country (a developing country in Africa) internet speed is so bad you don't have to add any latency filter - just thinking out loud.

<comment><USER25> Hmm. Are there any VPN providers there? :-)

<comment><USER26> How is a VPN supposed to increase speed?

<comment><USER25> If all of my procrastination passed through a slow VPN, it would increase the speed of my real work greatly. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've been thinking of these types of quotes for a while now "Amazon found that every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales. Google found an extra .5 seconds in search page generation time dropped traffic by 20%." (from this first link in the post)

And kind of thought that no one believes in that anymore, that it was a 90s thing - at least when considering the absolute mad UX that is prevalent today. Some sites must deliberately pretend to process your decision for close to a second just to annoy you.

100ms latency is bad but privacy banners with stupidly obvious dark UI patterns (where they are even deliberately breaking the law) are worth it? In what universe does that make sense? There is something seriously ill with the web today.

Maybe this article is a cure. Not one I imagined but I'm intrigued.

<comment><USER28> Not only that but latency is introduced artificially to make users feel more confident about changes they've made.

[https://uxmag.com/articles/let-your-users- wait](https://uxmag.com/articles/let-your-users-wait)

[https://www.fastcompany.com/3061519/the-ux-secret-that- will-...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3061519/the-ux-secret-that-will-ruin- apps-for-you)

<comment><USER29> If the app or site isn't trying to sell me something then I don't see the draw. I understand the research around the marketing aspect but if I've already paid for something using a sleep() doesn't seem like it would make me trust something. I think I would rather ask why something is so slow (and doubly-so for anything on-prem which should be fast!).

If research shows users aren't sure if something happened then fix the UI to give some feedback to the user that their action was registered. This will likely involve a small delay even if it's just in the user's perception of the feedback but less than presented in the articles.

It's been much too long since I've run or participated in a UX study so maybe it's a good time to get back into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wrote an extension for this since I couldn't find a good one for Firefox. Feature and pull requests welcome

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/delaywebpage/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/delaywebpage/)

<comment><USER31> Just what I was looking for! Thanks for this add on. For me youtube.com would still be extremely important. I set the blue window with the text to white and deleted the text, it's too embarrassing to have the big blue text on my screen.

<comment><USER30> I'll add youtube to the list! Hm, I hadn't thought of that angle, maybe a white background and small text is a better default

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is fascinating.

My laptop died during this one month of travel I'm doing, and I'm stuck doing everything on mobile. (No apple licensees where I am.)

I bought a keyboard for my iPad, it's still painful AF. So I began avoiding and canceling unimportant tasks because of their inconvenience.

And then I realized: how much of this mindless garbage do I accept on my plate just because I am trying to "optimize my productivity"?

(Typed with two thumbs. Perhaps hypocritically?)

</comment><comment><USER28> A couple of years ago I was pretty addicted to Facebook and would compulsively open a new tab and start typing "f..." in the address bar. Even if I had another tab with Facebook open.

I tried blocking it for lapses of time but it didn't reduce my addiction. What did work was logging out of Facebook. The annoyance of having to log in and stop my flow was enough for me to stop using Facebook. Now I use it less than once a month when I want to contact some company that only has a Facebook page.

<comment><USER33> It helps that Facebook is pretty annoying when logged out, not sure it would translate well to Reddit (or HN). Maybe I should insert adds, banners, etc, on purpose in my tabs?

<comment><USER28> It would not help much on HN for me but if I was forced to use new Reddit I would stop using it. AFAIK you can't opt out unless you are logged in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Another from me: blacklist the recommended questions from other stackexchange sites! I always get distracted by some juicy story on workplace.se or interpersonal skills or academia or worldbuilding or politics. My monkey brain will read those questions and think about the answer, then I have to click and see what others say. But Stackoverflow remains productive if I block this box.

<comment><USER35> I wonder if, in the near future, we might not need blinkers¹ for internet, like we put on horses to keep them focused on the road, or conversely not distracted or scared by things around.

Basically ad/js blockers elevated to content selectors, somewhere halway between full functionality and reader mode of the core content of a page.

I see a literal tsunami of tiny projects like that on HN and various other places, and I suspect it's quickly gaining the characteristics of a product category — how much would you pay, or give away, to reclaim a distraction-free highly-focused web experience? Not sure about individuals (most mainstream users), but in businesses, offices, on the clock? That makes a stupid amount of sense. _( "stupid" because, heh, it's seeking a solution for a problem we created in the first place, businesses deploring the consequences of things whose causes they cherish, should we say champion in modern lingo.)_

[1]: not that kind! [https://www.pictorem.com/collection/900_Pawel- Kuczynski_blin...](https://www.pictorem.com/collection/900_Pawel- Kuczynski_blinkers.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> You don't need a fancy solution to randomly add latency -- just do what I did and sign up for Cox Internet.

<comment><USER37> I've heard the latency can be as bad as 3 days depending on how strong the wind blows.

<comment><USER38> This is the trap that so many fell into when they ditched DSL for CPL (Carrier Pigeon Line). The price was right; the bandwidth was _incredible_ (1TB packet sizes!); and the latency, bad as it was, was something you expected and prepared for. What's easily missed, as you pointed out, is the variability of that latency. If the wind is in your favor you'll have the latest copy of the internet downloaded in one or two days, unlike those plebs on fiber who have to spend weeks downloading the thing. But one strong headwind later and you'll be spending your time reading the x86 reference manual* for the hundredth time while you wait.

* Fun side fact (as if this comment was enough of a tangent already), you used to be able to request a _free_ physical copy of the x86 reference manuals. Not sure if that's still the case, but younger me was _thrilled_ when I found out and received that small library in the mail.

<comment><USER39> You haven't been able to do so for at least a decade. I requested one from Intel a decade ago and they recommended asking a print shop to print and bind the PDF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Low-latency isn't the only problem, I think. The small-enought latency seems to be worst: you click somehing and wait for the reward just few ms later. Incresing this wait to seconds prevents this effect.

<comment><USER41> Well I am on a not so fast connection a lot and what is even worse: click on something and get absolutely no clue the click event was registered.

Click again to see if you did something wrong and, yes, youe action was registered 2 times causing all kinds of trouble.

To all SPA developers around the word: show me if I interacted and show me if something is loading.

<comment><USER42> I ensure my loading graphic shows for a minimum of 333ms to make sure my users see that something was happening, just incase the operation completes too fast for the user to realize it happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I just use a VPN connecting to a far away server so that the latency does go up and at the same time confuses the sites I'm visiting.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h You know, it never occurred to me to treat the latency of TOR as a feature rather than a bug.

<comment><USER44> The only reason why I wasn't using TOR for all of my browsing is because of the latency. I guess I might just use it now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Nice! I recently launched a similar Chrome extension (free, open source, no tracking or ads) that also includes a greyscale option to make the websites less interesting / addicting once they load [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/get-your-focus- bac...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/get-your-focus- back/hgokmjffmfnkaofmgjekjpiiocfafdoc)

<comment><USER46> Thanks for reminding me to reset my iPhone to black and white!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is a great idea. I know various types of addiction have a negative impact on the prefrontal cortex, which handles your ability to focus and manage time. I would like to see research investigating the relationship between internet addiction and one's attention span - I feel like my ability to read difficult literature and focus on creative hobbies like music is worse today than it was when I was in middle school.

</comment><comment><USER48> Any recommendations for a Firefox alternative to Crackbook Revival?

<comment><USER49> You can configure Leechblock (1) to do this. You have to configure it to show the 'Delaying page'.

(1) - [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock- ng...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock-ng/)

<comment><USER50> I tried that, but only works for the first visit of a domain? Once I've waited those seconds for the page to load I can mindlessly wander around for hours if I don't close the tab.

<comment><USER49> there's a checkbox `Block only first accessed page of site when delaying page is used`. Uncheck it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Not simulating slow connection but delaying page display via JS/Tempermonkey.

[https://jsfiddle.net/16yuzxLr/](https://jsfiddle.net/16yuzxLr/)

</comment><comment><USER52> Something I've found beneficial is to self-enforce a "search-only" usage of social media (youtube, twitter, etc). Essentially, don't allow yourself to mindlessly consume feeds, but if you'd like to search for something specific, go ahead.

It might be worth writing some sort of extension or wrapper website to enforce this.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm late to the party, but this article inspired me to write this script to slow down connections to reddit

         #!/usr/bin/env bash
         DEV=enxe04f439470d2
         DOMAIN=reddit.com
         LATENCY=5200ms

         sudo tc qdisc del dev $DEV root # Ensure you start from a clean slate
         sudo tc qdisc add dev $DEV root handle 1: prio
         sudo tc qdisc add dev $DEV parent 1:3 handle 30: netem delay $LATENCY
         for IPADDR in $(dig @18.104.22.168 +nocmd $DOMAIN any +multiline +noall +answer | grep -E -o "([0-9]{1,3}[\.]){3}[0-9]{1,3}")
         do
             echo "Slowing down connections to $IPADDR on $DEV"
             sudo tc filter add dev $DEV protocol ip parent 1:0 prio 3 u32 match ip dst $IPADDR flowid 1:3
         done

</comment><comment><USER54> Another suggestion: Limit your browser use to only one tab at a time. Or, allow yourself multiple windows but only one tab each.

If it takes 8 seconds to load a website I could see someone just opening a bunch of tabs and coming back to them later. This suggestion avoids that (among other accomplishments).

<comment><USER55> Good suggestion. I do feel that any self-imposed rule or limitation will be vulnerable to you simply deciding to ignore or bypass it though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> LeechBlock NG (the browser extension) has a "delay" mode of blocking. Make sure you enable "count only active tab" or it will waste much RAM and CPU.

With full blocking I used to cheat by disabling the block, and then "forgot" to enable it again.

With delay-based blocking I'm also cheating: instead of waiting for the delay I get up and do some minor chore. I used to feel smug about how clever I was, sabotaging my own block. Until I realized what a positive change this was.

PS: I've waited 40s to submit this comment. You'll need another plugin to recover the text if you submit and then hit the delay page. Or submit before the timer runs out.

<comment><USER50> Please tell me how you configured LeechBlock NG. I tried the delaying mode, but only works for the first visit of a domain? Once I've waited those seconds for the page to load I can mindlessly wander around for hours if I don't close the tab.

<comment><USER57> I think that is the point. It doesn't block the website entirely lest you go and disable the extension. It's designed to frustrate you slightly.

<comment><USER50> I see. Not very functional for those who have tabs for these sites permanently open.

<comment><USER56> Right, I always open news front pages from a bookmark for some reason, and stories as background tabs. Each tab has its own delay-block when activated, and at some point I usually close unread tabs instead of waiting for them.

But the block repeats every few hours, and I'm pretty sure that clicking on a link within the same tab repeats the block then (maybe depends on the page). So yes, the "dosage" of how many delays you get is not very well controlled for. Still, I'm using this setup for years and it definitely does something for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> It seems like this kind of thing is much easier if one has a considered purpose and direction in life, that let one derive joy from making stepwise progress toward those: a vision, strategy, goals, tasks. We all have to choose what we love the most, and implement that in our daily decisions & acdtivities. Whether one is religious or not, I have written about this more, at a simple, I hope skimmable, site: [http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854588981.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854588981.html) .

</comment><comment><USER59> Exception: If I'm researching technical topics I want the fastest computer, browser, and internet possible.

<comment><USER60> You want the fastest possible connection when doing real work. But slow when just playing around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I get the sentiment, but I do not agree at all... similar to putting fences around all the coastlines of the world, I would rather just teach my children to swim.

I had to go back and make sure what was being said was actually the case which now makes me question what one does with all that latency time... just sit and breath and try not to totally freak out? I don't want to come off as too crass on this, but this type of self-regulation is just totally missing the mark (unless I'm missing something here).

<comment><USER62> A good quote I don't have a source on: you do not rise to the level of your ambitions, you fall to the level of your systems. Willpower is finite, but you can maximize it with systems like this.

<comment><USER61> Makes me think of the quote (paraphrased): "Your reach should always exceed your grasp." To me it feels like you are tamping down your maximum reach.

<comment><USER62> I tried that for a long time and didn't get anywhere. Building a safety net of systems/habits raises the floor for the inevitable slips back down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> See also [https://www.xkcd.com/862/](https://www.xkcd.com/862/) 's alt text

> After years of trying various methods, I broke this habit by pitting my > impatience against my laziness. I decoupled the action and the neurological > reward by setting up a simple 30-second delay I had to wait through, in > which I couldn't do anything else, before any new page or chat client would > load (and only allowed one to run at once). The urge to check all those > sites magically vanished--and my 'productive' computer use was unaffected.

And: [https://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction- corr...](https://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-correction- extensio/)

>At various times, I thought of doing it with an X modification, Firefox extension, a Chrome add-on, an irssi script, etc—but none of them worked too well (or involved a lot of sustained undistracted effort, which was sort of a Catch-22). Then I hit on a much simpler solution:

>I made it a rule that as soon as I finished any task, or got bored with it, I had to power off my computer.

<comment><USER55> I'm always interested in the "one year later" follow-up to these suggestions. I love that someone found a cool hack that worked for them, but did it survive?

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> There's an analogue for consumerism in young single adults who haven't settled down: Next time you move, put everything you own in a box. You can only take something out of the box to use it. After 6 months (or a duration of your choosing), simply discard the box and everything still in it. The theory is that you won't miss anything you didn't actually need.

</comment><comment><USER65> Interesting. I'm surprised this actually works for people. For me it would it would just make me waste more time, and turn browsing into a stress multiplier instead of a stress reliever.

I favor extensions that give an alert or block the site after a certain time. More effective and less anger inducing for me personally.

<comment><USER66> I can understand where they're coming from I think.

I browse HN or reddit a lot when I put something in motion that will take 4-30 seconds to complete. Because who can wait tens of seconds for something.

Then 15 minutes later...

But if I know that I'll probably have to wait just as long for the site to load then perhaps I'd just sit and endure, maybe...

<comment><USER67> Lately I've simply been keeping the slow activity visible on screen, it's been enough that the flicker of motion when it finishes can pull me away from the distractions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Network Link Conditioner is new to me. (I'm not a developer.) I find it strange that this exists, because as a mobile application consumer, it has been my experience that many apps don't seem to consider network quality in their implementations. (Again, just based on my personal use; absolutely zero rigor in my method.)

I suppose this the result of a feature of the human being: be lazy as possible. Rather than write code for poor quality networks (which in my experience are prevalent in rural areas and in older parts of cities) simply declare "we need faster mobile networks for all!"

I suspect this will be a never-ending battle, and developers might consider caring at some point, to reach those eyeballs that will never have the cutting edge mobile networks.

Or, don't, and said eyeballs will be slightly less likely to become addicted, if this article is to be believed.

</comment><comment><USER69> I'm still surprised that this type of findings hasn't had more of an impact on commercial design. It is not uncommon to find Fortune 500 sites with load times over 20 seconds. I get it that it is hard to write and maintain clean code, still, repeated studies have shown the value proposition is there.

Here is a little proof of concept I did awhile back to see how tight I could make a responsive page with a good amount of graphics. The whole page is two server calls (one is for the fav icon). It loads in about 400 ms total from github or in less than 200 from Godaddy shared hosting: [https://pbskidd.github.io/cockenoe](https://pbskidd.github.io/cockenoe)

</comment><comment><USER70> I was recently looking at getting new hardware to improve Chrome loading times. (This is a somewhat theoretical affair for me since my desktop is already pretty fast.) But, now I wonder if I should downgrade.

Maybe it's good not to upgrade to the latest iPhone?

</comment><comment><USER71> You can use a somewhat similar method easily on your phone, using iOS' Screen Time to "block" certain apps. Then it'll pop up and tell you you've "reached your limit" and gives you enough time to think about what app (or web/Safari) you're about to use in order to interrupt any default undesirable patterns (also related maybe to the psychological concept of Delay Discounting). I've found it very helpful to reduce my app usage - [https://www.nexle.dk/5-simple- steps-to-improving-your-mobile...](https://www.nexle.dk/5-simple-steps-to- improving-your-mobile-phone-productivity-and-calmness/)

</comment><comment><USER72> I dropped my phone a while back and the screen now has issues. It gets "streaks" all across the entire screen. It's harder to see content, but you can get by. My first inclination was to get it fixed, but I've now had it this way for several months. I find I use my phone a lot less and now sort of consider the streaks a "feature".

I've investigated going to a true dumb phone, but that's not nearly as feasible now as I would prefer. The Nokia 3310 is the only reasonably priced option I can find; and all the boutique, low volume dumb phones are absurdly expensive.

<comment><USER73> Overall, the not-smartphone thing is great! I wasn't particularly hooked on my (basic) smartphone, but definitely feel a bit more present without it. The urge to look at the rectangle in my pocket after being idle for 5 seconds is gone.

I switched to a Nokia 8110 a couple months ago, and really want to like it, but the basics are too poorly done. On the 8110 in particular, the keys are quite small, and their debouncing is terrible. I worry the debounce might be the same for other phones in that family, which all seem to have the same guts. A single keypress is very often interpreted as a double-press, which makes T9 frustrating and the predictive mode practically impossible.

There's no way to switch the ringer off, without opening the cover and navigating two layers of menu. The music player is borderline useless, a shame considering it has a microSD slot.

At least on my network (Vodafone NZ), MMS messages don't work in either direction - basically you have to ring someone back when they try to send you one.

The idea of having maps is nice. But, in practice, I've just reverted to noting directions in a notebook that I carry anyway. So, while maps was one of the main reasons I tried a Nokia KaiOS phone, it's not a requirement for the next one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Source code for the Chrome extension mentioned is here: [https://github.com/Ishmaeel/CrackbookRevival](https://github.com/Ishmaeel/CrackbookRevival)

</comment><comment><USER75> I use wondershaper:

[http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man8/wondershaper...](http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man8/wondershaper.8.html)

And limit my speed to 256KB/s which sounds like a lot and 15 years ago that was really fast, but it's enough to stop me from gorging on YouTube videos, which interestingly are less addicting when viewed at a maximum of 480p.

Adding latency is not necessarily the best route, because some apps (looking at you, gmail) send tens of requests in sequence just to load the main page.

<comment><USER76> A monkey that occupy the screen for 5 seconds on each new frame load with quotes might neatly solve that problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> > Android is the hardest to do this in.

The Firefox addon LeechBlock NG can delay access to sites. Of course, that can't stop you from opening Chrome - which as far as I can tell, you can't uninstall from Android.

</comment><comment><USER78> Is there any Free software alternative to the proprietary Charles Proxy?

<comment><USER79> After trying to find something similar myself, originally I found some "methods" online to bypass the trial time, but I eventually just gave in and bought a license - and IMO it does exactly what it says on the tin, and is still updated and is cross platform so I think it's worth it.

But if anyone knows of any nice GUI tools that are similar do share!

EDIT: Just thought I'd mention how I use it. Basically I use it like the chrome network tools, but I intercept POST requests to the server and try to much with the data that's sent to make sure the backend isn't blindly trusting the client, or to see if there's weird ways I can break the code with special input, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> This happens naturally for me. The worse a website is, the more javascript it uses. This is a pretty solid correlation. So I use a browser that is meant to browsing websites instead of one that's meant to run javascript applications.

This makes going to web app sites (the bad sites) fairly slow. Especially when I have to serially temp-whitelist 4 domains each requiring a reload of the page every time I visit.

But normal web sites that don't suck pop in instant and fast.

</comment><comment><USER81> What about making it so that the amount of latency added is dynamic? It could be set up so that frequency of visitation leads to greater and greater latency. Something like exponential growth of 1.5x every time the site is visited with an exponential decay function applied since the last time visited. This would encourage slowing down, and would most heavily penalize the most heavily used sites which seems coherent with the goal.

</comment><comment><USER82> The author's description of this as 'watering down' the Internet, as if some élan vital is absent, I think is potentially misleading. As the author makes clear, this is working to minimise the addictive aspects of browsing, not to block the content. All the content is still there, just organised in a way that forces you to acknowledge that you can't and shouldn't deal with it all at once, or non-stop.

</comment><comment><USER83> There are ISPs that do this to customers who sign up for low price unlimited bandwidth deals and then hammer them for torrents. Traffic shaping them down to 1Mbit/sec or lower means they're likely to move onto another ISP within a few months.

Legally dubious, but no other way of managing the 1% of users who are using 95% of the bandwidth in a way you'd not provisioned for (because then your economic model is broken).

<comment><USER84> Non peak bandwidth should be effectively free for ISP's. Limiting their bandwidth during those peaks should be sufficient without losing a customer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> I was really hoping this was more of an attack on the site, a way to get back at sites that don't work well due to too many ads/tracking. We should all really slow play the connections and data rates from advertisers/trackers - make them pay in latency. We need a tool to slow-play ads/trackers that happens in the background, where the user experience is blocking them anyway.

</comment><comment><USER86> I have been using a chrome extension called waitblock [1] which does something similar and it did wonders for reducing my addiction.

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waitblock/kcnjfepp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waitblock/kcnjfeppclpdinikcljfjigoongebpkh?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER87> Linus Sebastian says that making his phone slower to open made him enjoy it more[1]. One easy way to make your phone slower to unlock is to give it a long password, this has the additional benefit of making your phone more secure.

[1] [https://youtu.be/WGZh-xP-q7A?t=305](https://youtu.be/WGZh-xP-q7A?t=305)

</comment><comment><USER88> The article mentions that he has "Withdrawn mostly from Reddit in favor of early 2000's style forums".

Which good ones are still around that are not specific to a certain topic? I am interested in this.

Since he said "that I pay money for", I'm assuming somethingawful maybe? Are there any others that are still good and active?

<comment><USER89> I'm also curious about this. I frequently find myself wishing for a Reddit alternative but haven't been able to find something worth switching to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Does anyone know any free/open-source alternatives to Charles? The closest I could find was this [0] but it doesn't look like it can throttle connections for specific hosts

[0] - [https://github.com/sitespeedio/throttle](https://github.com/sitespeedio/throttle)

</comment><comment><USER91> I'm wondering what are those "early 2000's style forums that I pay money for". A few months ago I stumbled into such a website mostly for programmers and the style is completely different from HN or Reddit or whatever sites I'm on. Sadly I lost the website during a laptop breakdown :(

</comment><comment><USER92> This might be a good alternative to tools like Leechblock. Instead of blocking sites, give the "bad"/timewaste sites a bunch of random latency. It might discourage but not stop usage, which is useful when you need to use reddit or something to do research but not get distracted.

<comment><USER93> And it could be an escalating latency, so it gives you a bit of fast experience, but the more you use it, the slower it gets. I've used Leechblock, but I also find myself trying to game Leechblock sometimes. Being totally cut off from something can make me motivated in ways that just being annoyed by the experience wouldn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> "You get the web from 2 basic kinds of nightmare rectangle: laptops and desktops, where you control a material portion of the computing environment, or mobile and tablets, where you control less."

Gonna start using "nightmare rectangle" instead of "computer" from now on ...

</comment><comment><USER95> Another good way to reduce time spent on social media is to reduce the number of connections on each platform to less than 100 people/brands. All platforms struggle to find new crap to feed you with once you go below this threshold (except YouTube)

</comment><comment><USER96> Interesting approach. I have gone one step further: I have simply blocked major sites I visit regularly. Every time I try to visit one of the sites I am reminded by the blocker that I should not.

(HN is one of them - but only on my mobile device)

</comment><comment><USER97> This sounds a lot like what Apple slowly does to iOS to make you buy a new phone...

</comment><comment><USER98> If you need this, consider just getting cheaper and slower Internet connection :)

</comment><comment><USER99> This post has some pretty good suggestions. But I always get frustrated with this issue and honestly there will never be a great solution to it.

The underlying problem is that addicting people is core to the business model of facebook, twitter, and many other sites. With the web coupled to the profit motive there will always be infinitely more resources put towards making sites addictive than making them user-friendly, ie, encouraging healthy user habits. If the web was treated as a shared, public utility with no-strings-attached funding for developing shared tools like social media as well as supporting user-written clients for everything, effective tools for this that anyone can easily use would proliferate and web addictiveness and these clunky solutions would be nearly a non issue.

This is basically the dream of socialism. Utility set free from the malignant requirements of profit. I think it's much closer to people's original dreams for what the internet could be before venture capital crept in and came to rule everything.

</comment><comment><USER100> My internet addiction was at least 90% as bad even when I only had dial-up. Unfortunately, tabs make the latency thing an ineffective deterrent.

(In the dial-up days, before tabs, my workaround was to have 20 IE windows open.)

<comment><USER101> The Crackbook Revival chrome extension he mentions restarts its timer if you switch tabs, so at least it remains effective despite tabs

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> >Android is the hardest to do this in.

I don't know a lot about Android development but could you use the Android VPN APIs to add latency to requests? I might use an open source app that adds this kind of functionality.

</comment><comment><USER60> > Coerced old-style on Reddit without an infinite scroll

This is why I deleted the reddit apps and use the mobile site instead. Having only one page at a time really helps from sitting forever in an infinite scrolling list.

</comment><comment><USER103> Does anyone know of a 2G/3G cell network in the US? Its would be cheaper and I know I avoid my phone a lot when it reverts to 3G when I run out of 4G data. I still want email, uber etc though.

</comment><comment><USER104> >Deleted all variable pictures from YouTube with my adblock. The avatars of the people, the teaser images with people making obnoxious faces on them, the logo, etc.

invidio.us with "thin mode" on

</comment><comment><USER105> I also deliberately slow down certain sites! It's wonderful.

[https://github.com/jtolds/twitoderm](https://github.com/jtolds/twitoderm)

</comment><comment><USER106> I wonder if Apple would consider adding this to the Screen time feature? Otherwise I don't see how you can apply it on the iPhone for just certain websites or certain times of day.

<comment><USER107> They probably wouldn't because it's too specific. I'm in Germany and figured I'd just connect to one of the currently most used VPN Servers in New Zealand. Makes my connection slow when I can't procrastinate or want to reduce screen time without actually blocking apps by enabling iOS Screen Time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> Lag is absolutely infuriating on a web browser.

[https://theoatmeal.com/comics/no_internet](https://theoatmeal.com/comics/no_internet)

</comment><comment><USER109> Blocking comments from various sites is an amazing idea.

Are there any extensions anyone can recommend for doing this comprehensively across all the popular sites / 3rd party comment engines?

<comment><USER33> I often browse with umatrix blocking all third-party js, so I tend to whitelist some of those on a per—site basis. That might partially work for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> this is a fascinating idea but I had never heard of Charles Proxy

<comment><USER79> It's really great for a lot of network testing. It let's you intercept and modify requests/responses directly which is great for testing front end /backend input sanitization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> My household has too many devices to setup individually. Anyone knows a good router to do this on? My router can blacklist ips and urls, but cannot just add latency to them.

<comment><USER112> My MikroTik router has traffic shaping fairly easily configurable. I have used it at times for the similar purpose. Though, if you know how to disable something, you eventually will.

If you want to know how it works in Linux:

[https://lartc.org/howto/lartc.qdisc.html](https://lartc.org/howto/lartc.qdisc.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> This is an excellent mental trick and I would love to be able to configure gradually increasing latencies as I sit on the internet for an extended duration

</comment><comment><USER106> This is actually a really brilliant idea. Just make an addiction inconvenient instead of denying yourself. You could apply this to all kinds of stuff.

</comment><comment><USER114> I took similarly extreme measures to end my video game addiction many years ago.

I played MMOs compulsively. They basically hijacked the reward center of my brain to the point where what happened outside of the game seemed completely irrelevant to me. I didn't even see the point of showering.

During "moments of clarity" I understood perfectly well exactly what was happening to me, how the game was specifically designed to put me in that sort of state, how fake and toxic it all was.

So during these "moments of clarity", I would take some of my life back by deliberately sabotaging myself inside the game so I wouldn't want to play anymore.

I destroyed all my valuable items and deleted my characters.

When I came back, I told support it was an accident and they recovered the items and characters for me...

So then I gave all my valuable items to other players, thinking support couldn't take those back from those people, because that would be creating free duplicates.

So I told support it was an accident, and they recovered the account and created duplicates of all of my lost items.

So I did that again, this time handing all the items to someone I knew.

Support again recovered the account and created duplicates of everything, but warned that they wouldn't be able to do this a third time because of concerns about in-game markets being disrupted by duplicates.

So I did it again.

This time they recovered the account, and some of the items, but none of the most valuable ones.

Even then, I still wanted to play.

So this time I did the same, deleted all my items, deleted my characters, and created a new email account on yahoo.

I made that yahoo account's username and password both something complicated I would never remember. I changed my game account's email to that yahoo account, confirmed the email change, changed my game account's password to something long I would never remember, changed all the game account's personal and contact information to nonsense, logged out of the yahoo account, logged out of the game account, and closed the incognito tab.

I tried, but I never figured out a way to recover that account.

So I created a new account. Several times, but always repeatedly sabotaged myself during moments of clarity. Eventually, after a few weeks, I completely lost interest in trying and could finally do other things with my life.

I've used this same tactic with every game since. Total gameplay hours over the last 10 years have been maybe 50 hours or so for Fallout 3, and that's it.

I don't play anything anymore. Life has turned out unreasonably good since then, too. Career in software exploded.

Maybe because of redirected compulsivity.

Now I'm having a similar problem with workaholism.

I guess the real-world implementation of my prior solution would be to give all my money away, burn all my bridges, and go meditate in a forest somewhere. That doesn't seem like such a great idea, though, especially with people depending on me. I'll have to figure out a different solution for this one..

<comment><USER115> What you're looking for is probably "semester". Depending on where you live, your employer can't deny you two weeks off. Then you go somewhere where you wont have access to a computer. And treat yourself well. You should do that at least once or twice a year. You can also set "working hours" and just don't do any work outside those hours. Having a healthy work/life balance will make you even more productive at work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> > Used an extension to remove all the comments from Youtube

it's enough to block all cookies on YouTube and comments stop loading

</comment><comment><USER117> I've been using this since this morning and can already feel the benefits. It's a great idea/extension.

</comment><comment><USER118> The artisanal "slow internet" movement. It's like slow food movement, but for your data consumption.

</comment><comment><USER119> Would a 25-minute latency be a good way to incorporate this tactic and Francesco Cirillo's Pomodoro Technique?

</comment><comment><USER120> This is a great article to explain the dopamine fueled feedback loop. It's a simple way to fight it and win.

</comment><comment><USER121> I add 1 second of latency when a Chrome user visits my website.

And I already convinced my boss to switch to Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER122> reminds me of The Disconnect, the web-based magazine that you can only read when you're offline: [https://thedisconnect.co/one/](https://thedisconnect.co/one/)

<comment><USER123> that's hillarious, but if you reconnect, you lose your scroll position. i normally read things over days, weeks, months

</comment></comment><comment><USER124> Amazons underlying revenue comes from you paying for faster servers...

</comment><comment><USER125> It's a common practice to put title in URL to boost SEO, but the URL seems to convert all space (%20) to 20 and I doubt it would still be useful...

/2020/02/12/I-20Add-2020-20Seconds-20of-20Latency-20to-20Every-20Website-20I-20Visit.html

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not, it's just how my blogging thing works, I don't care much about SEO

<comment><USER126> It makes the URL less readable though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER127> i'd like to do this on a home router for certain domains like reddit, facebook, instagram - are small devices capable of such selective buffering for long periods of time?

</comment><comment><USER128> hello Howon! Hope you're doing well. :-)

 from Vinay (an old friend)

</comment><comment><USER129> For anyone who wondered why large tech companies pay Software Engineers so much, this is the reason. Software quality and performance translate into quantifiable dollar amount, and that amount is quite high.

</comment><comment><USER130> So how do you calculate the expected added latency?

</comment><comment><USER131> 2007: Breakthrough Internet Communicator

2011: Black Mirror

2020: Nightmare Rectangle

<comment><USER132> "Nightmare Rectangle" is a brilliant phrase

</comment></comment><comment><USER133> Alternate solution: downgrade to a dial-up ISP.

<comment><USER123> speed isn't latency. i want to get my OS updates in a timely manner. but i don't want hackernews to be so enjoyable

</comment></comment><comment><USER134> this is why I still use old iphones. They're slow and I have javascript turned off so the web is WAAY less addictive.

</comment><comment><USER135> > Reddit with 150ms latency feels like cocaine: Reddit with 8000ms latency > feels like coffee.

Reddit with Spectrum internet latency feels like water.

</comment><comment><USER136> why this application suggested on Blog read the Browser History.

</comment><comment><USER137> So you're intentionally wasting power and time. Cool. Maybe just go outside.

</comment><comment><USER138> I also use Comcast.

<comment><USER139> Here's an app that simulates bad networks named Comcast:

[https://github.com/tylertreat/Comcast](https://github.com/tylertreat/Comcast)

:)

<comment><USER140> What if you use your Comcast connection to test, the universe might implode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> seedless-sensat Or, move to Australia to curb internet addiction.

</comment><comment> vincent-toups This rules.

</comment><comment><USER141> > Withdrawn mostly from Reddit in favor of early 2000's style forums that I > pay money for and HN

What are the names of these early 2000's style forums? I would like to join them too.

<comment><USER142> City-data.com and metafilter.com comes to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER143> I've had similar addiction, 22 hours of AoE out of 24. But if you're addicted to just regular web, maybe you should go see a therapist. You might be trying to suppress something.

</comment><comment><USER144> In remembrance of the dial-up time where, during load, you'd decide if you liked the content you thus far saw. Or, where you'd load some websites and disconnect internet to read offline.

</comment><comment><USER145> The only time I want latency is when I have diarrhea.

</comment><comment><USER139> You might find freedom.to useful. You can block websites for certain times of the day and it works with all devices.

I've found that if you can break the habit of reaching to some site when you're bored the addiction falls off pretty quick.

Programming has a lot downtime sometimes - waiting for a build or a long test run - and there's sometimes a steep context switch to working on something else. (At least for me if I start something new I'll forget what I was working on before) It's those times when I found myself on Twitter or Reddit.

One thing I've been trying to do instead is read an actual book - non-fiction does ok, I can usually follow the argument reading a few paragraphs at a time. And Kindle makes it easy to read in your browser and pick up where you left off on an e-reader.

One tricky thing though: I blocked YouTube only to be reminded that Google's login still goes through a YouTube domain, so I inadvertently made it harder to login :(.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone making money from open data? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I have heard of a couple of companies working on maps: local crime rates, parking tickets and school ratings allow them to improve property estimation. OpenStreetMap is a big source for them correcting official occupation maps. They sell the resulting maps to real-estate agencies and distribution companies.

Funny detail: their maps are more accurate than official ones on many aspects; when I asked at a conference if they'd consider giving back to the community and authorities, they'd say it wasn't worth it, they wouldn't take it. When pressed (fairly certain OSM would welcome and had detailed APIs for it), they confessed not trying, because it wasn't in their commercial interest.

The impact of their work appears to heighten urban issues: segregation and white flight, gentrification and pricing out incumbents… But then again: that's the obvious consequence for more information. I doubt the solution to those issue is by regulating those services.

Local volunteers for OSM are aware of the free riders and would consider negotiating giving back, but they don't thing it's worth their non-existant legal ressources. Government officials appear intellectually unaware that this could happen.

</comment><comment><USER3> In our town we have a new Open Data hub website which I getting government support. So that's one angle.

On the other side of town we have an Open Data Institute - and these (again centrally funded) run a number of corporate level training days around open data. The idea is to make a little ecosystem around it.

</comment><comment><USER3> See the OpenStreetMap ecosystem.

Admittedly it's not quite the same vein as most Open Data, as the majority of Open Data implies it coming from closed sources.

I'd also include other geospatial companies who provide visualisation and analyses tools which are using other things apart from OSM.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not mine, but I stumbled on this site recently that packages open data in different DB/file formats: SQL, Excel, Access, CSV.

[http://www.easydbs.com/](http://www.easydbs.com/)

Edit: typo.

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting!!

<comment><USER5> This is a easy passive income project generating $30/month.

[http://bit.ly/QjA7eg](http://bit.ly/QjA7eg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://panjiva.com/](http://panjiva.com/) (port authority data), [http://www.buildzoom.com/](http://www.buildzoom.com/) (contractor licensing boards), and [http://enigma.io/](http://enigma.io/) (aggregating and cleaning up many sources) come to mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly it isn't quite obvious the way these firms are using the open data.Do you mind expounding how how they are using the open data?

<comment><USER6> For Panjiva: [http://strata.oreilly.com/2012/12/panjiva-government-data- pl...](http://strata.oreilly.com/2012/12/panjiva-government-data- platform.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Factual and MapBox are two companies making money from open data.</comment>


I'm on LinkedIn--Now What?? - <AUTHOR> http://brickmarketing.tradepub.com/free/w_ha08/prgm.cgi

<comment><USER2> Good question. Maybe the answer is, 10 years on, someone now has to do this:

<http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/release749.html>

Opportunity to really change enterprise software through the Internet?</comment>


The Need to Move Away from Traditional Selection: Part 1 – CVs - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychreg.org/recruitment-methods-cv/ <comment><USER2> Salami sliced too thin.

The author is right about the problem, which I think is common knowledge. She mentions that there is a better way but doesn't tell us anything substantiative about it.

Maybe she wants me to like her on Facebook or sign up for an email newsletter or click click click but there are so many articles and so little time...</comment>


CloudUnit new open source Java PaaS fully Docker based - <AUTHOR> http://www.cloudunit.fr <comment><USER2> The most promising and easy to use Cloud Java Paas. Check by yourself, it's open-source.

</comment><comment><USER3> Free, usefull, efficient ! Thanks CloudUnit !</comment>


Multicore prerequisite patches appearing in released OCaml compilers now - <AUTHOR> https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/multicore-prerequisite-patches-appearing-in-released-ocaml-compilers-now/4408 <comment><AUTHOR> Given the amount of debate around multicore in one of the latest OCaml releases, and the questions on its realisability, I think it's good to point out that the work is slowly but steadily moving into the main compiler.</comment>


Plants Can Hear Animals Using Their Flowers - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/plants-use-flowers-hear-buzz-animals/579964/ <comment><USER2> Some comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18892825](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18892825)</comment>


Before Hack, Twitter Contractors Caught Spying on Users Including Beyonce - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-27/twitter-s-security-woes-included-broad-access-to-user-accounts <comment><USER2> an anonymously sourced yet scandalous bloomberg tech piece, you say

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone have fulltext?

<comment><USER4> [https://web.archive.org/web/20200727171129/https://www.bloom...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200727171129/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-27/twitter- s-security-woes-included-broad-access-to-user-accounts)</comment></comment>


Okay, Google, you officially beat Siri - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/24/google-siri/ <comment><USER2> The author brings up an interesting example where Google Now provides him a tool to automatically identify and describe a TV show he is watching at night. When he later tries to demo this feature to his friend during the day, it simply does not appear.

The author takes this as an example of Google Now being very smart and learning from his behavior. It knows he watches TV at night so it provides him the identification feature during that time period. It doesn't provide it to him during the day, because it knows he isn't usually watching TV during the day (at least this is the author's assumption).

I take away a different message from this example and it is part of the reason I am very skeptical of software like Siri or Google Now.

Fundamentally I believe the one of the most important features of a software application is that it is predictable. When I do 'X', I expect the program to do 'Y' always. If it can't do 'Y' because of certain situations, I should get an explicit, informative error message.

The author's TV example is an illustration of deep unpredictability. It is quite possible that he is right and there are powerful learning algorithms driving the Google Now's behavior in this case. But all I see is unpredictability.

Yes, I want to customize and shape software to my own identity and patterns. But unless I control that process, I am likely to become very frustrated, very fast as a software application changes under my feet.

<comment><USER3> What the author is described is simply Google Now's contextual awareness that a feature could be useful in a given situation. Even if the Listen to TV card doesn't appear in Google Now, you can simply say "Ok Google, listen to my tv," and it will start listening.

<comment><USER4> Is there a reference for all the phrases it recognizes?

<comment><USER5> The best list I've seen to date: [http://trendblog.net/list-of-google-now- voice-commands-infog...](http://trendblog.net/list-of-google-now-voice- commands-infographic/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was in Bangalore some weeks ago and I tried the query "OK google, directions to vidyarthi bhavan." And it worked perfectly. I was amazed!

The first thing that amazed me was that Google understood what I meant by vidyarthi bhavan! Note vidyarthi bhavan is a generic phrase in many Indian languages which just means 'student building.' In _Bangalore_ , it refers to a specific restaurant in Gandhi Bazar famed for its masala dosas. And I bet there are plenty of people who live in Bangalore right now and don't know about this restaurant. The contextual knowledge here is amazing. And it wasn't just geolocation, I was about 15km away from Gandhi Bazar at that point. And Bangaloreans will know corresponds to an eternity given the traffic situation. And the software did all this by recognizing a phrase consisting of two words, both of which are not in English!

That moment was an epiphany for me, it the precise moment that I realized that personal digital assistants are here, and they _actually_ work.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, but I think this is just Google Maps. Sitting here in the USA, typing "vidyarthi bhavan" into maps.google.com takes me to the one in Gandhi Bazar, too. Maybe because it has 155 reviews?

<comment><USER8> Somebody wrote the following but it is gone now. (Still had it in my other tab.)

It's actually just plain old web search. Search this on Google ([https://www.google.com/search?q=vidyarthi+bhavan](https://www.google.com/search?q=vidyarthi+bhavan)) or Bing ([http://www.bing.com/search?q=vidyarthi+bhavan](http://www.bing.com/search?q=vidyarthi+bhavan)) or DuckDuckGo ([https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vidyarthi+bhavan](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vidyarthi+bhavan)) or Blekko ([http://blekko.com/#?q=vidyarthi%20bhavan](http://blekko.com/#?q=vidyarthi%20bhavan)) or Yandex ([http://www.yandex.com/yandsearch?text=vidyarthi%20bhavan](http://www.yandex.com/yandsearch?text=vidyarthi%20bhavan)) or Baidu ([http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=vidyarthi+bhavan](http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=vidyarthi+bhavan)). Baidu is the only place where I saw it being the second result and not the first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an advert.

Marcio Cyrillo is the director of marketing at CI&T, who work for Google:

[http://www.ciandt.com/us-en/about-cit/partnerships](http://www.ciandt.com/us- en/about-cit/partnerships)

<comment><USER10> I thought it was an ad too but there's nothing to suggest they work _for_ Google.

Check the link you posted for evidence they work _with Google products_.

<comment><USER11> cheers! i am the author of this article and i work for CI&T, a Google partner for Cloud Platform. This wasn't an advert. My first article actually defended Siri ([http://www.uxmindset.com/2011/11/between- apple%e2%80%99s-sir...](http://www.uxmindset.com/2011/11/between- apple%e2%80%99s-siri-and-google%e2%80%99s-voice-actions-there-is-wilson/)) and as a technologist interested in the advances of machine learning, I decided to compare the two services again, this time pointing out what Google did to transform voice actions into Google Now and thus to outpace Siri.

Feel free to shoot me an email to firstname.lastname@example.com if you have any questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apple really dropped the ball with Siri. It feels like the upgrade to iOS 7 made Siri slightly worse, and I was hoping for much, much better.

The key use for me is responding to texts or making phone calls while driving. Being able to say "Call home" is really great, but the really annoying thing is that it I can't appear to force it to use speakerphone. Why is such a small feature unavailable to me? Also, the response time for Siri is extremely slow, and the responses are far too verbose. I wish you could do things like adjust the speaking speed, etc.

The other thing is Apple should have allowed people to integrate their apps with Siri, but it doesn't seem like it's possible. I would love to launch some apps verbally, but Siri isn't useful enough to do that.

Sure, it's clever enough to figure out "I'm locked out of my house" to mean call a locksmith, like the ad shows, but other than what I mentioned above, and setting timers and alarms verbally, it has become almost complete useless to me.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'll share my amazement story also.

I was visiting Hawaii and Google Now popped up saying that there has been an earth quake in Vancouver and there is an expected tsunami within 2 hours in Hawaii. I was just about falling sleep at the time. I got up, checked the TV and sure enough there was an expected tsunami. The expected water elevation was 3 feet and we were at 30 feet.

Another time it popped up to tell me that my flight was cancelled the day the Korean 777 crashed at SFO.

<comment><USER14> The tsunami thing would be less amazing if you lived there rather than being just a visitor. Tsunamis are a big deal in Hawaii. Growing up there, we had monthly tests of the tsunami warning system - sort of like air-raid sirens. They teach tsunami preparedness in the schools and spend a lot of time in the local history class (hawaiiana) talking about the devastation caused by tsunamis in the past. I would not be surprised to find out that the engineer responsible for the tsunami alerts in Google Now was a kama'aina.

<comment><USER15> Tsunami warnings in Hawaii are broadcast by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and through NOAA's weather broadcast. The PTWC is based in Ewa, so _technically_ it's kama'aina. I live on Oahu right now and I've never received a tsunami warning with Google Now, only with the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) that are not specific to any carrier or phone. Flood and severe storm warnings are also broadcast using the WEA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find it really creepy. Do a single search for a pop or movie star on Google.com and it remembers and Google Now alerts you to news about the person.

I have disabled Google Now and Location Services (the service that tracks your location and also sucks a lot of battery life) on my phone.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, that's a bit creepy, I admit. But for a teenager, could be a great feature. Honestly, I'd also like to know when <insert some old rock band> concerts in my area.

<comment><USER17> You might wanna check out Songkick: [https://www.songkick.com](https://www.songkick.com) \- it does exactly that and it's awesome.

<comment><USER18> "awesome" ???

I just tried it, for the bay area it said there were 1887 concerts, then gave me no way to facet the search results by genre, venue etc. I tried the search box, which, confusingly, is right next to the "sign up as an artist". The search results despite the bay area being set as my location showed me concerts in London as the first result.

I wouldn't say songkick is anything like awesome.

<comment><USER19> That's not really the use case. The use case is more along the lines of "I like this band a lot and would love to see them live but I can't be bothered to track this stuff", so you go to songkick and it will send you an email when they announce dates near you. _That_ part is awesome.

Your use case should be accommodated too, granted, but it's not the direction they're currently headed.

<comment><USER20> If they haven't really considered that use case, and their service doesn't handle it well, why on earth do they provide the means to make their service look bad?

Based on the GP's (and your) report, the search box should be replaced with a freeform text field or somesuch that lets you input artists you're interested in, and a button that subscribes you to notifications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm frustrated that there's no extensibility - fine Google, you haven't been able to negotiate with the Neanderthal Australian TV networks for TV guides [1], but don't just tell me that the "What's on TV" feature isn't available, let me plug in an XML feed from somewhere or write an app to do so!

[1]: [http://apcmag.com/Content.aspx?id=3786](http://apcmag.com/Content.aspx?id=3786)

<comment><USER22> I agree that would be a good feature!

Unfortunately Google probably can't ingest the data without the agreement in place. So unless Google Now actually ran on your phone (it doesn't), you're outta luck.

<comment><USER23> They can ingest the content of every copyrighted book without prior agreement, but TV schedule licensing scares them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I want technology like this in my life. I mean what Google Now ultimately could become. A personal assistant powered by near-magical machine learning. But I don't want to sacrifice my privacy to companies that have proven untrustworthy.

More so than that, I don't want to invest a piece of my life into a service, when Google has a track-record for either A) abandoning the product, or B) mucking it up. Let's talk about the future, where Google Now feels like a human secretary in its capacity for intelligence. One day you ask it to schedule an appointment for a Friday lunch. Instead of the usual friendly acknowledgement, (s)he asks you if you'd like to share this appointment on Google Plus. Suddenly you can't make reservations at a restaurant, without having a Google Plus profile. They wanted to abate abuse of the system by linking reservations to real people. Now you have to "fire" your secretary, and spend weeks training up a new one. And (s)he'll never be as good as the old one.

Hopefully you understand the point I'm making. It wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the tendency of all these modern services to form their own little monopolies. Take YouTube for example. I want to switch away from YouTube. But the content creators I love don't have their content available elsewhere. We talk about all the freedom our modern internet enabled society brings ... but yet most of what we create these days gets linked inextricably with some walled garden.

I want a technology like Google Now, but I want the data it learns to be stored in an open format which I can port around as I see fit. I want to be married to my data, not to a service provider.

Having said all that, I know my dream won't come true for quite some time. Non-trivial technology almost always breeds walled gardens, due to the expense required to develop and maintain them. We likely won't see open standards here until the technology is old enough to be implemented well in an open source project.

<comment><USER25> They won't abandon Google Now, but i do see the advantage of Google Now as an open format..

<comment><USER26> His point isn't just abandonment. His point is that what if tmrw they introduce some new restrictions (like the g+ profile needed), that would mess things up. He doesn't want a situation where he has to comply with google's whims or be forced to leave the tech he loves. Not to mention all the effort put into training that tech. So he wants the data google collected on him to be portable. So that if tmrw he decides to use some other service in place of google now, he can just take out his data, and plug it into the new assistant. Now wouldn't that be cool?

PS: i understand google has absolutely ZERO incentive to do something like this. But hey, just explaining GP's point

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Ar-Curunir I just find stuff like this really scary. Google basically knows everything about this guy's life.

I understand that he isn't personally concerned by this, but I feel that a lot of people would be scared by things like this.

<comment><USER27> If you had a secretary, they would most likely know even more about your life, and you would have to pay them. I don't find it too scary - if it didn't know anything about me, what use would it be? It could place calls and set alarms for me, like Siri, but there's no way you can truly call that a "digital assistant."

<comment><USER28> That analogy is flawed. A human assistant probably wouldn't store every information about you forever. It usually is a single person, not a megacorp. You would pay the assistant as you already stated - the motivation of the assistant to provide services are clear and well understood.

I agree with the GP, this scares me. I am interested in this technology, but won't hand over the required information. A 'personal' life tracking/assistant service would be useful..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My favorite feature is its ability to detect flight schedules based on e-tickets that have been emailed to me. It's great when I on the phone and see a reminder about the flight and what time it leaves and how long it takes to go to the airport.

<comment><USER30> What's especially awesome, is if other people travelling with you forward on their confirmation emails as well, it'll aggregate them and show everyone with tickets + seat numbers.

<comment><USER31> awesome? That sounds honorific.

"OK Google, remove all semblance of my privacy"

<comment><USER32> Your intention is still clear, but I think you meant to write "horrific". Otherwise I'm a bit confused. :)

<comment><USER31> Oops. yes, you're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Reading this, I'm happy I never fell for the apple or google phone trends. These devices are intrusive snitches into your life constantly watching you, where you go and what you do and reporting to notoriously dubious giant corporations behind them with privacy and basic human rights respect issues.

How long before those "personal assistant" start influencing and controlling our decisions then our lives ? The stasi or the eye of moscow would have love theses devices and probably made them mandatory.

[http://i.imgur.com/CoKDEVh.png](http://i.imgur.com/CoKDEVh.png)

I would never trade these informations about me for some extra convenience.

</comment><comment><USER34> Here lies the benefits of handing your personal information over to a company like Google.

To me, it's always been a choice, no matter which service I use (paid or free) I am not going to naively believe that for one second my information won't be "abused." When someone says, "XYZ is collecting data on you" the obvious [and always correct] retort is "so is your XYZ provider; or at the very least the NSA is making them." The questions should rather be "who is going to do the least harm with your data?", "who will try to help you the most with the data that they have collected about you?" and "who will make a competent effort to fight for your privacy on your behalf?" From what I have been reading lately, Google gets the best scores - which is why they will continue to trusted with what I choose to share over the internet. Technology should get a job done and then get out of the way as quickly as possible - if "whoring" out my personal information to someone is the path to putting technology back into its rightful place, then so be it.

</comment><comment><USER35> What I would love is an app that does this locally, without sending my data to the cloud. I would readily pay a good deal for it. Better than my information being sold to advertising agencies and their cronies.

</comment><comment><USER36> I get annoyed with Siri every time I use it. Either there's a long delay and she doesn't quite understand me, or I get the response I got this morning when trying to look up directions: sorry, I'm not available right now, please try again later. It was amazing using my friend's Nexus phone and watching Google interpret what I said as I said it.

</comment><comment><USER37> "Google Now is definitely a great response to Siri."

That's an interesting way to put it. One could also say that Google Now is a great continuation of Google Voice Search. Or a great extension to Google Search. But of course it's also ok to say it's a response to Apples response to these technologies. Probably makes a better headline as well.

<comment><USER38> Yeh, my HTC Desire had working voice search long before Siri came along.

Just goes to prove the power of Apple's marketing message, most people think Google Now is a copy of Siri rather than Siri being an enhancement of something Google was already doing.

<comment><USER23> _Yeh, my HTC Desire had working voice search long before Siri came along._

Are you sure about that?

Siri company founded 2007, iPhone app demonstrated at D7 conference May 2009.

Siri approached by Verizon to be a default Android app, Autumn 2009.

Siri on iOS first release date: Jan 2010 in the App Store.

HTC Desire first release date: Feb 2010.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wish Google would open up an API for Google Now to developers. There are many custom notifications that I would love to add to my Now screen, but right now I am limited to the few that Google provides.

<comment><USER18> "API for Google Now to developers"

that would last about 5 minutes before Now turned into another ad platform.

<comment><USER40> You can have your event, flight, hotel and restaurant reservations, orders and parcel deliveries, and prompt for reviews or custom actions in Google Now by adding meta-data to your notification emails:

[https://developers.google.com/gmail/actions/google- now](https://developers.google.com/gmail/actions/google-now)

From the other direction, you can have Google Now call back into your Android app, triggered by hot words, as demonstrated in the new version of Todoist:

[https://todoist.com/blog/2013/11/todoist-for-android-adds- su...](https://todoist.com/blog/2013/11/todoist-for-android-adds-support-for- google-now-and-dashclock/)

I can't find any published API for the latter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Google Now and Siri are two different things. Now is a push system with minimal pull ability. It really sucks at commands, and it doesn't do well with things like "hotel in springfield with a pool".

Siri is a voice interface that doesn't really do anything preemptively.

Neither of them have the ability to "program" via voice the way Plexi does. [http://plexivoice.com/](http://plexivoice.com/)

<comment><USER42> I was going to watch the video on that website but it got pulled from YouTube.

...seriously?

<comment><USER41> It doesn't have any porn, or music... Guess Google Didn't like advertising a competitor?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I can't believe I didn't know "O.K. Google" trigger until today..</comment>


Show HN: Create Google Viz in Seconds - <AUTHOR> https://vida.io/pages/google-charts

<comment><AUTHOR> Our team just released this feature. Look forward to your feedback. Here are a few examples.

Zillow Traffic Growth:

[https://vida.io/charts/DYkAacZSKKQYE7dAk](https://vida.io/charts/DYkAacZSKKQYE7dAk)

Youth Happiness Index:

[https://vida.io/charts/8hnbj3YZ2rvsBqs7F](https://vida.io/charts/8hnbj3YZ2rvsBqs7F)</comment>


The Lava Lamp Just Won't Quit - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/the-lava-lamp-just-wont-quit/ <comment><USER2> I remember, at the turn of the millennium, when lava lamps were actually used to produce entropy. An SGI project called lavarand had a battery of the things bubbling up and down, used low-end digital cameras to capture images and, after some postprocessing, hashed the results to get what was effectively a fairly good PRNG.

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand)

<comment><USER3> Didn't it turn out to be the case that SGI discovered that they got the same amount of randomness from the CCD from just taking a picture with the lens cap on?

<comment><USER4> > they got the same amount of randomness

It's hard to quantify randomness. It's possible that whatever test(s) they were using reported similar results, even though the data from a lens-capped camera might be somewhat predictable if you know the physical properties of the device.

I know individual models of camera frequently have _very_ similar thermal and electrical noise profiles, so that wouldn't be too surprising to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a lava lamp on my desk at work- not only does it attract attention (more so than the more boring plasma globes), it's also very relaxing to watch when thinking about some bug or implementation detail.

Unfortunately, the quality of the ones you find today is pretty dismal, and they're easily ruined if you leave them on for too long or if they stay in sub-optimal temperatures (e.g. an office building that gets cold over the weekend). Collectors seem to favor the Lava Lite from the 80s for durability.

<comment><USER6> I also do. And - funnily enough, once I got mine on my desk, one of the others in the office brought his in from home, and a third engineer asked his wife for one for Christmas so now he has one on his desk as well...

<comment><USER6> Oh, re. reliability, I turn mine on every morning, and off when I leave each night. I wouldn't leave it on overnight. One of the other guys has his on a timer, I believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >Determined to pursue the idea further, Craven contacted Dunnett's widow and purchased the man's patent for a sum of less than £20 (about $30 USD).

This is slightly misleading. If that was the actual price he paid, it was the equivalent of about £500 today.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sadly, the article didn't mention one big problem that will become worse and worse going forward: incandescent bulbs are on the way out.

I have a lava lamp that uses a 40 W "appliance light bulb" as a light and heat source. I haven't been able to buy a "frosted" appliance bulb in a number of years. I was able to buy a "clear" bulb a while ago, but the light isn't quite as pleasant from it. And in a few years I'm sure all incandescent bulbs will go the way of the Dodo bird.

<comment><USER9> That is the fault of the EU, they banned sales of incandesent lightbulbs in order to be green. Meanwhile the retards move back and fourth between two cities every 6 months and fly all over Europe.

<comment><USER10> Is the word "retard" really a necessary or useful addition to this sentence? It is roughly the equivalent of calling someone "nigger" or "faggot" as an insult. When used in this way it is demeaning to the developmentally disabled.

I understand that this is somewhat common usage on the Internet at large, but I believe we'd all like to see Hacker News be better than the Internet at large. And, I'm sure you don't intend harm or insult anyway (other than the "people who move back and fourth between two cities"); but, the harm is there, whether intended or not.

<comment><USER9> Unless you are developmentally challenged you should not comment on whether things are offensive. Lets not turn HN into tumblr.

<comment><USER10> So, I can't call out racism when I see it? Can't call out misogyny in a conversation with only men in it? Can't call out oppressive language in any circumstance unless I am directly effected by it? No, I don't think that's the way it works, and it's not the way it should work. I hit the privilege lottery: I'm white, male, able-bodied, middle class, American. If I'm unwilling to call oppression what it is, I'm empowering the oppressive behavior.

I believe my request was polite and stated without malice or (much) judgment. I would ask you to consider where your desire to argue with that request comes from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> " Bottles are still filled by hand (one employee is able to get through about 400 per day); as a result, Mathmos lamps start at $80 while cheaper, mass- produced lamps sell for as little as $15. "

Let's do a little math. Assuming the person doing that makes $20/h, so $160/day. That makes the cost of the employee per lamp $0.4.

I dont think the $65 price difference to China can be explained this way.

<comment><USER12> Add on the cost of premises, power, distribution. Then factor in the costs of the components. And realise the wholesale price will be half the retail if they are selling through shops. Direct sales could be full value.

Still, I reckon there is a healthy profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Stating that the formula is still a secret after all these years, isn't google-compatible.

[http://oozinggoo.com/howto.html](http://oozinggoo.com/howto.html)

<comment><USER14> DIY is still a pretty big pain, I've tried several different kinds from those pages. I have to give Mathmos and/or Lava-Lite credit, they /do/ have the chemistry down pretty well. The commercial ones are far more reliable than homebrew.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Funnily enough, my lava lite quite very reliably after a couple hours. It will run normally for a while, and then it will just have a big blob in the bottom.

I suspect that there somehow is not enough heat being dissipated at the top. I had toyed with the idea of 3D printing a heat sink, but my design would have cost about $100 USD.

I actually have a USB temperature probe, it would be simple enough to just plot the temp over time and see what's going on.

</comment><comment><USER16> Beautiful article.</comment>


When to make a button or a hyperlink? - <AUTHOR>

I've spent the last few hours learning how to make buttons in Photoshop for the web.
It got me thinking, when should I use a button or a hyperlink?
I don't think it's as simple as "Links open other pages, buttons do actions on the current page".
Any UX experts here have an opinion on this?
Any good examples of a button where a link should be or vice-versa? <comment><USER2> From a UX standpoint, I would go with the link to Luke Wroblewski's article on primary and secondary actions.

From a semantic HTML standpoint, I use the following criteria when links and buttons are both styled visually as buttons:

Link,  tag: Persistent resource. Is it something you can GET and expect to be able to GET again in the future.

Button, <button> tag: An action modifying or changing a resource. Typically performs a POST, PUT or DELETE. A successful result that isn't local (i.e. client-side) will likely receive an object the was subject to the modification performed when the button was pressed.

While there may be some conflict in the UX view and the semantic HTML view, I would contend that a "cancel" link when it is a secondary action is often unnecessary. In a modal dialog, the X icon in the top left or right corner performs the same action. In a mobile interface, the back button (physical like on an Android device or virtual like in iOS apps or the browser back button) performs the same action as cancel. The only situation I can think of where a "cancel" link like in LukeW's article makes sense is where the action is an AJAX modification of the page, like when you "edit" a part of a question on Quora for example. That's really one of the few times I can think of where a "cancel" link next to an "Okay" button makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check this out:

<http://www.lukew.com/resources/articles/psactions.asp>

Google does this a lot. Facebook too. Hope it helps!

</comment><comment><USER4> Button: persistent interface element or call to action

Link: supplemental resources</comment>