A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design - <AUTHOR> http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ <comment><USER3> I just watched the video, and typed my reactions, as I had them; no idea if this will be of interest.

* * *

People still travel for meetings? By plane?

Wait, someone is driving the car? Thats not very productive.

There are bellhops? Why are there still bellhops in the future? What do they do?

Why is the screen so small? Why have a screen, if you have those perfect augmented reality glasses?

'Creating reply interface'? We still have to wait for computers?

There's still global poverty, and benefit concerts? When these people have all that fancy tech? Damn it.

Copy and Paste is still around?

Kids are still taught long division? Why? Why do they use a pencil?

Also, won't the future be one of neural interfaces? Isn't there something wrong with interfacing two electrical signal processing machines (brain + computer) via all these muscles and optical sensors and so on? I know there's a lot of science to be solved first; but surely the future of interfaces is that they are invisible, and built in to us?

<comment><USER4> I guess it's meant to depict a not so distant future. Either that, or you could criticise the Office team for not having the imagination to take it any further.

        Kids are still taught long division? Why?

Same reason people learn it today, same reason we didn't stop the second the slide rule was invented or cheap calculators became available 20 years ago or whenever. Learning simple algorithms is important for future development.

<comment><USER3> Well - those were just quick reactions I had to the video. But, I think if I could now somehow set my own childhood educational curriculum, I don't think long division would be on it.

I don't think I know how to do long division, at the moment. I certainly haven't done it in very many years. I suspect very few people ever do it. Computers even follow different algorithms.

I would definitely agree that learning simple algorithms is important for future development. But why division? It'd be good to show kids an example, to let them see how its possible. But I wouldnt make them practice it, to internalise it.

I'd put something like 'binary search' on the general curriculum, instead of long division. I see a future where many more people are going to have to manipulate information, all the time, and I think teaching things like simple programming concepts to the general population, is probably more valuable than teaching simple arithmetic rules.

I don't know what way data manipulation technology will pan out - but I'd hope that in future, we can come up with better things to have children internalise, than simple arithmetic algorithms.

<comment><USER5> Arithmetic is totally abstracted away in virtually every language we use today.

I don't think it's safe to assume binary search won't be similarly abstracted away in 20 years (to the point that even embedded developers are using something with extremely expressive template algorithms built in.)

Best to start with the bare minimum. Given a set of numbers, how do you add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Granted, it's not too unreasonable to consider a machine that has no divide instruction, but it's still a basic computer algorithm that's within the reach of computers. I think the big problem is that people don't have a grasp that computers compute things in a manner not too different from how we do it by hand (and that we can use more advanced computer methods by hand to good effect.)

<comment><USER3> I think, we've reached this situation, where huge numbers of people, across different professions, need to manipulate data.

For the last 10/20 years, the dominant paradigm for data manipulation, was probably the spreadsheet. Spreadsheets give an enormous amount of power, for relatively little investment. So, now, a wide range of professionals - business analysts, geologists, even engineers, use spreadsheets as their standard data manipulation tools.

But I think we've entered a world where data manipulation is so central, that spreadsheets just aren't a powerful enough paradigm for these jobs.

At the moment, I feel that the best way for manipulating data, is probably a general purpose programming language, like Python. I would advise people starting a career in information work ( anyone that does advanced data processing and analysis - which is a great many people, these days), to try and learn to program. I see a lot of merit to the argument that programming is becoming a basic professional skill, like literacy did.

(I would advise something like Python, over something like R, or even Matlab; I think its just semantically more consistent, and cleaner. This is completely a personal opinion, but I think R, in its present form, will ultimately be considered a failure, as a data manipulation tool.)

Given this worldview, it'd make a lot of sense to _currently_ be teaching binary search, in school, rather than long division.

Now, programming languages are probably the best general purpose data manipulation tools we have currently, but, for all their power, I suspect that future generations will look back on what we use now, as we look back on writing machine code - a painstaking, and primitive exercise. There's plenty of people trying to build more powerful general data manipulation tools, at present, but I've yet to see something thats a convincing advance over both the spreadsheet, and the general purpose programming language.

But, even if we do have better data manipulation paradigms in future, where the binary search is completely abstracted away from the data manipulator, then I would still guess that it might make more sense to teach school kids binary search rather than long division.

I don't accept the argument that long division is in some sense more primitive, or more 'bare minimum', than binary search is. It is, in the order we currently teach things; but I don't see that order as at all fundamental. I think from an algorithmic worldview, binary search is a pretty fundamental operation. You can do a lot of algorithms before you need to divide anything - why not have them come first?

I'm not saying this is the definitive world view to have, and 'binary search' is just an example here; but I am saying that I don't see why we have to be so focused on the arithmetic-centred view of things; and I would hope that 'in the future' we'd have moved beyond that. Fewer and fewer people are going to have any experience with complex arithmetic, but more and more of them are going to have to manipulate data.

I don't think we give a lot of importance to childrens time at the moment; I think they are sent to spend time doing long division because thats what they've always been sent to do; but I think that this might all be about to change, as education is coming into line for some massive disruption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't help but think that the success of the iPhone and iPad has caused a big step _back_ in usability among devices that try to copy them.

Two similar examples:

Garmin's newer aircraft GPS units have touch screens instead of knobs and buttons. The iPad has proven very popular among pilots. I can see why Garmin would decide that "touch is the future." But, while I'm flying an airplane, for my money I'd rather have knobs to grab and twist, and buttons to push and feel.

Tesla's new Model S uses one huge touch screen for its in-dash interface. Surely, if you want to change your music's volume or turn on air conditioning while driving, it's harder to hit touch targets that are Pictures Under Glass than to grab and twist a knob.

<comment><USER7> I would counter those sentiments with the ZuneHD experience. Most people haven't used one, but touch isn't vision focused. With the Zune in my pocket, I can unlock, skip a track, stop, play, change the volume (on the screen, not a rocker on the side). I can also try to shuffle/unshuffle, but that isn't as easy.

I was actually amazed that Apple completely missed the ability to use touch when you weren't looking at the device.

<comment><USER8> They didn't _completely_ miss it - go to settings, general, accessibility, and you can enable voiceover which reads anything you touch out loud and makes you double click to activate, so you can navigate without sight.

It's terrible if you want a hardware button to skip a track, but it's usable for basically any iOS app with standard UI controls - including web browsing - which a hardware button isn't.

I've never seen a Zune in person - do you just mean it has lots of buttons for all those tasks, or how does the touch interaction work on it without individual hardware buttons?

<comment><USER7> No the ZuneHD doesn't have buttons for those interactions, and the ability to read out whatever I touch is more of an aid than an true interaction element.

My ideal is that we shouldn't always be aiming for items on the screen to interact with. We've traded hardware buttons for software buttons, even though the ability to recognize things like swipe now exist and are much more natural. With a button, I have to hit that exact spot. With more natural movements, like swiping, I am creating an action over a more general area. I don't have to be so exact, and therefore, I often don't need to look at the screen at all.

On the ZuneHD, it works like this, swipe right to left on the screen is skipe forward a track, swipe left to right is back. Swipe up is volume up, swipe down is volume down. Hold the right side is fast forward, hold the left side is rewind. tap the center is play/pause, tap bottom left corner is shuffle/unshuffle (though this is a visual button, it is fairly easy to hit without looking at the screen).

Unlocking a ZuneHD is the same as a WP7 (though many people haven't seen those either). You just swipe up on the lock screen and it unlocks.

With all of these interactions (excluding shuffle), you aren't aiming for a button, just a general area on the screen.

In comparison with the iPod Touch/iPhone, to unlock, you are targeting a fairly specific area at the bottom of the screen. Easy to miss the swipe area if you aren't looking. On WP7 the whole screen is the swipe area. As long as you start at the bottom, and swipe up.

Same with skipping tracks, on iPod Touch, it is a forward button on screen. You have to hit the specific spot. With the ZuneHD, you just swipe across the middle-ish area of the screen, and it will go forward the track. You aren't aiming at a specific item to interact with. It is all a very natural feeling.

This was one of my big disappointments with the iPod Touch. After the original iPod was such an amazing design for navigating and playing music, Apple told us about this great new touch interface and how we could swipe our fingers across the screen to interact, and how it was all so natural. But the swipe interaction was only on coverflow, which is somewhat useless. They missed the opportunity to make swipe a key navigation element in iOS.

I feel the same way about iOS apps today. Why do I have a back button at the top of the app. The back button slides a panel from left to right and shows me the previous content. Why am I aiming for a target at the top left (rarely comfortable if you are holding the phone in your right hand), rather than swiping across the screen and sliding the panel?

<comment><USER9> I was never sold on the idea of swipe becoming pervasive. That being said, I'm not sure if a 'natural feeling' interaction for the sake of convenience is necessarily the best.

The swipe interaction isn't the most intuitive interaction for new users navigating around screens or other digital content and Apple seems to have used it for content that's derived itself from physical content or pages, such as books or images. If Apple were to use swipes as OS wide navigational gestures, it would preclude the use of swipes in app-specific contexts

<comment><USER10> I have a ZuneHD and didn't even realize there was a swipe interface except to switch songs (when playing music).

pedalpete is still right though. If you tap the center of the screen when playing the song, you get an overlay that is separated into quadrants. Tap the top of the screen, volume up. Bottom, volume down. Left, previous track. Right, next track. Center, pause/play. I never look at my screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When you rescale the human body in proportion to how much of the brain is concerned with each part, you end up with this:

<http://www.jwz.org/blog/2004/12/sensory-homunculus/>

The hands are huge because so much of your brain is devoted to skillfully moving and precisely sensing things with your hands.

Your hands are basically the focus of the human body in interacting with the environment around it.

This explains how moving from buttons and sensors to a touch-sensitive experience is a major and hard-to-explain qualitative difference.

It also underscores the great point made here, that we can make devices far more suited still to the primary way we're designed to interact with the world.

<comment><USER12> You're going to want to add an NSFW to that link. I glanced at it while on my work computer and was not pleased to find male parts on the 3d model.

<comment><USER13> God forbid a model of a human being should actually resemble a human being...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Another major problem with "research visions" like this is that they portray a thoroughly "bourgeois" future. We know already that in order for every human on this planet to have basic needs taken care of, highly consumptive 1st world lifestyles like the one portrayed in the video will need to be replaced. If you've ever built anything, you'll know that it takes an immense amount of resources to obtain that kind of polish. I know that some designers like clean, shiny things, but perpetuating the meme that the future won't be characterized by rough-edges is escapist if not simply irresponsible. If we don't imagine a future for ourselves that involves patterns of behavior that are conducive to conservation of resources and supply-chain+community resilience, then I'm afraid that the only people using tools other than shovels and guns will be a super-elite living in fortified micro-cities (so perhaps it's accurate after all).

Some more silly videos:

\- Nokia (w/ AR goggles): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4pDf7m2UPE>

\- Cisco Songdo City: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1x9qU-Sav8> (this one's real!)

For those sympathetic to the argument of the OP, you may be interested in Bill Buxton's papers on bi-manual interaction. Bill is a huge (and early) proponent of this point of view (that computer interfaces should make full use of the capabilities of the human body): <http://www.billbuxton.com/papers.html#anchor1442822>

<comment><USER15> Wise words of Bruce Sterling in "Shaping Things" (MIT Press):

"We need to understand technology with a depth of maturity that mankind has never shown before. We need to stop fussing over mere decade-long "Ages" and realize that there are only three basic kinds of "technology" truly worthy of civilized use. None one them are entirely possible yet.

1\. The first kind, and likely the most sensible one, is technology that can eventually rot and go away all by itself. Its materials and processes are biodegradable, so it's an auto-recycling technology. The natural environment can do this kind of work for itself, while also producing complicated forests, grasslands and coral reefs, so, someday, an artificial environment ought to be able to biomimetically mimic that achievement. This doesn't mean merely using available "natural materials" that we repurpose from crops or wilderness. It means room-temperature industrial assembly without toxins. [...]

2\. The second kind of technology is monumental. These are artifacts deliberately built to outlast the passage of time. This is very hard to do and much over-estimated. Many objects we consider timeless monuments, such as the Great Pyramid and the Roman Colosseum, are in fact ruins. They no longer serve their original purposes: a royal tomb and a giant urban playground, and they no longer look remotely like the did when their original builders finally dusted off their hands and demanded their pay. Bat at least these "monuments" don't crumble unpredictably, leach into the water table and emit carcinogens while they offgas. [...]

3\. The last kind of decent technology is the kind I have tried to haltingly describe here. It's a fully documented, trackable, searchable technology. This whirring, ultra-buzzy technology can keep track of all its moving parts and, when its time inevitably comes, it would have the grace and power to turn itself in at the gates of the junkyard and suffer itself to be mindfully pulled apart. It's a toy box for inventive, meddlesome humankind that can put its own toys neatly and safely away. [...]"

Full quotation here: <http://msutherl.net/txt/3kindsoftech.txt>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Disclaimer: I used to work in the group that produced this video.

You have to remember, that while the "wow" factor (to some folks) is the screens and form factors, this video is made by a group in Office - the things they're really researching and trying to demonstrate is the vision of how your personal information and your "work" information (i.e. your social circles, your coworkers, your job) interact with each other.

How can context really be used effectively with productivity in an office setting? Context is this huge term here - device form factor, the people you're with, the things you're doing, where you're at; there is a ton of information available to apps / services now about who you are, what you're doing, etc - what are scenarios in which that information is actually combined and put to good use?

They really should've made the Director's Commentary to go along with this, there's a lot of research and data behind this video along with the special effects.

<comment><USER17> Are the research and data publicly available?

<comment><USER16> Not all of it, it's very much a synthesis of different sources; some are public, some are MSR papers, some isn't publicly available

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Man, Bret Victor seems to have some of the most consistently interesting and inspiring articles I've seen.

I suppose he's just pointing out one area of the future to think about, but I wish he'd mentioned other ideas. I think voice and language, in particular, have some of the most room to grow to make interfaces more intuitive.

edit to add: Along this line, I've often wondered if it'd be worth learning Lojban to interact with the computer more easily. Supposedly the language is perfectly regular and well suited to that sort of thing, but I don't know for sure.

It could be easier to teach humans Lojban than computers English (or however many other languages).

<comment><USER19> Natural language does have room to grow.

Computers can probably learn English as soon as they have learned Lojban. (Does that make sense? Assume a program that can understand Lojban. Then write a program, in Lojban, that understands the basic English grammar and the major exceptions. Then add the ability to deduce minor exceptions.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This used to be a computer's model of a human being: [http://librairie.immateriel.fr/fr/read_book/9780596518394/ch...](http://librairie.immateriel.fr/fr/read_book/9780596518394/ch01s03#)

The iPad is really, really awesome. But. All that's really changed is that they've added an extra finger. (sure there are three- and four-finger gestures but those just boil down to a different kind of single-finger gesture)

Sadly, we're probably going to have to wait for the advent of supersubstances that can dynamically reconfigure their physical characteristics before we get beyond the finger-and-eye, which I doubt will happen in my lifetime (tears).

</comment><comment><USER21> The author makes a very valid point, and it would be quite interesting to see what kinds of tactile UI designs might be achieved. But I think there's an important distinction to be made in how we build tools to solve _physical_ problems and how we build tools to solve _conceptual_ ones.

Apart from purely remediative technologies such as Braille, I can't think of _any_ technology from any era of human history in which conceptual information has ever been conveyed via the tactile sense. There have never been tactile clocks, tactile books, or any kind of tactile language. When human minds attempt to import _ideas_ from the outside word, they use the eyes and ears, not the hands.

There's certainly a real problem with the UIs presented in the MS video, but it's not that they're visually-oriented. It's that they're designed to appeal _to the eyes themselves_ , and fail to encode information in a way that's optimally suited to the _mind_. The aesthetics of the UIs in that video are stunningly beautiful, but I have no idea from looking at them how I would use them as tools; each notification, dialog box, and prompt for input seems fine in isolation, but when I try to conceptually 'zoom out' and understand how each function integrates into a workflow that allows me to apply my capabilities toward fulfilling my needs, I'm completely at a loss.

There seems to be an unfortunate trend toward pure visual aesthetics in the software industry today - perhaps a cargo-cult attempt to emulate some of Apple's successes - and MS seems to be suffering from it almost as badly as the Ubuntu and Gnome folks.

<comment><USER22> You should check out the book The Myth of the Paperless Office. They report research where they gave folks tasks like writing a summary of several magazine articles and one group did it all on a computer and the other did it on paper and they watched how people actually worked. There was a lot of subtle physical interactions in the paper group, such as moving different articles closer and farther away on the table that the computer group tried to do analogues of and failed because of the limitations of the medium. So it's not just the eyes and ears.

<comment><USER21> The position of the paper on the table seems like an entirely visual variable. What information about the documents or the content within them did the latter group ascertain through tactile senses?

I'd assume that the amount of information about the _content_ that was acquired tactilely was _none_. Feeling the paper can only give you information about the paper medium itself, not the ideas encoded in written language on it - conceptual content is non-tangible, by definition.

So the mistake the computer group made was to try to model the human-paper interaction with software, when software isn't made out of paper. They should have attempted to figure out what human- _content_ interaction was being proxied via re-positioning the paper, and modeled _that_ in the software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The article focuses on "everyday object" manipulation, but he's right about technology too: there are a wealth of common HCI tools that glass cannot accommodate.

\- The textual keyboard remains one of the fastest methods of text entry. It can be used without looking, offers high bandwidth, affords both serial and chorded inputs, and works well for precise navigation in discrete spaces, like text, spreadsheets, sets of objects like forms, layers, flowcharts, etc.

\- MIDI keyboards are comparable, but trade discrete bandwidth for the expressiveness of pressure modulation.

\- The joystick (and associated interfaces like wheels, pedals, etc) are excellent tools for orienting. They can also offer precise haptic feedback through vibration and resistance.

\- The stylus is an unparalleled instrument for HCI operations involving continuous two dimensional spaces. It takes advantage of fine dexterity in a way that mice cannot, offering position, pressure (or simply contact), altitude, angle, and tip discrimination.

\- Trackballs and mice are excellent tools for analogue positional input with widely varying velocities. You can seek both finely and rapidly, taking advantage of varying grips. Trackballs offer the added tactile benefits of inertia and operating on an infinite substrate.

\- Dials, wheels. A well-made dial is almost always faster and more precise than up-down digital controls. They offer instant visual feedback, precise tuning, spatial discrimination, variable velocities, can be used without looking, and can be adapted for multiple resolutions.

\- Sliders. Offers many of the advantages of dials--smooth control with feedback, usable without looking--but in a linear space. Trades an infinite domain for linear manipulation/display, easier layout and use in flat or crowded orientations.

And these are just some of the popular ones. You've got VR headsets for immersive 3d audio and video, haptic gloves or suits, sometimes with cabling for precise pressure and force vector feedback, variable-attitude simulators, etc. There are weirder options as well--implanted magnets or electrode arrays to simulate vision, hearing, heat, taste, etc...

Dedicated interfaces can perform far better at specific tasks, but glass interfaces offer reconfigurability at low cost. That's why sound engineers have physical mixer boards, writers are using pens or keyboards, artists are using Wacom tablets, nuclear physicists are staring at fine-tuning knobs, and motorcyclists are steering with bars, grips, and body positioning; but everyday people are enjoying using their ipad to perform similar tasks.

Glass isn't going to wipe out physical interfaces; it's just a flexible tool in an expanding space of interaction techniques. More and more devices, I predict, will incorporate multitouch displays along dedicated hardware to solve problems in a balanced way.

<comment><USER24> > A well-made dial is almost always faster and more precise than up-down > digital controls.

Eight years ago I bought a microwave oven for my apartment that had a digital knob. It's a physical knob hooked to the timer, but since it's digital, it accelerates. Below one minute, each "notch" increases the time with 5 seconds, but as you go higher, each notch adds more and more time to the total until it starts adding 5 minutes per notch.

It's a fantastic input method for setting a timer since it's tactile - <USER2> feel each notch where the time changes, it's deterministic - 30 seconds is always a quarter of a turn, 2 minutes is always a bit more than one turn, 7 minutes is always a bit more than two turns, etc, and it's superior to an analogue timer - it accelerates, you get more precision in the lower ranges and less precision in the higher ranges.

A few years ago I moved and had to buy a new microwave. Except I couldn't find one with a digital dial, all manufacturers had switched back to the shitty input method of +/- buttons again because.. I don't know. Fashion?

It makes me furious when people and companies make interfaces that are clearly inferior existing alternatives for no good reason at all. But most consumers don't care, and here we are. :-/

<comment><USER25> Same here, I spent a long time looking for and failing to find a microwave with a knob.

I wanted two knobs - power and time, and a start button.

Instead I found myriad devices intent on offering me a plethora of buttons designed to 'defrost a medium size chicken and one potato'.

Sigh.

<comment><USER26> Maybe there's a market for these kinds of appliances?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Oki doki, so given plausible future technology let's try to brainstorm a solution that addresses the issue of tactility in interaction, I give you the ... _drumroll_ KinBall (Kinectic ball). The Kinball would essentially be a wireless ball, like a small juggling sack (the smaller ones) that you could interact with to control devices.

So the Kinball would have the following features

* Gyroscope/acceleratometer so it knows which side is up and how fast it's being moved and where it is.

* Sensors so it can feel where it's being squeezed/pressed and how hard

* Some kind of detecting mechanism for when two balls (cough) are touching each other. * Ability to vibrate in different frequencies and also only partially on different parts of the ball

So with a device like that you now would have to come up with a gesture language, some ideas

* If the future allows it, ability to change color

* Holding the ball and moving the thumb over it is "cursor mode, pressing in that mode would be clicking (and you could "click" and hold for submenus )

* Similarily swiping your tumb over the ball would be the swipe gesture

* Pinch-squeeze could be a specific gesture, perhaps combined with a gesture (like spritzing cookies :)

* If you hold the ball in the whole hand and move it from your chest and forward you could simulate resistance by varying the frequency of the vibrating to "feel" interface element

* you could roll the ball in your hand forwards and backwards, for instance for scrolling

* Double the balls, double the fun. With two balls you could perhaps do interesting things with the distance between them and again simulate resistance by vibrating the balls as you bring them closer to each other

* Social balling, you could touch someone elses ball (ahem) to transfer info, files etc

* You could have the ball on your desk and it could change color or pulse in different colors for different notifications.

This kind of interface would have some interesting features. You get tactile feedback and most gestures are pretty natural. You don't have to get smudge marks on your screens. The ball is pretty discrete and hardly visible in your hand. Heck with a headset (for getting information, like reading smss) you could just get away with a ball and the headset and skip the device altogether for some scenarios.

On the other hand it's another accessory you can lose and a ball in your pants might not be the best form factor.

Anyways, if Apple introduces the iBall you know where you read it first

<comment><USER28> You know, combine this with some sort of display (glasses, projection, implant) and you could be on the right track. That's my first thought.

Second one is about carrying this ball, how easy it might be to lose it. What if instead there were rings on middle fingers or even all fingers? Could handle a few of the things you mentioned.

Electronic handshakes just got a lot more literal.

Perhaps typing in the future would take the form of hand shapes/signals, akin to traditional signing for the deaf? Assuming voice input will not be able to completely replace it.

Maybe the future computer is a display in the form of an eyepiece, monocle or implant, finger rings as an input and then a processing component in pocket or within a belt?

<comment><USER27> Well, it wouldn't be a solid ball since it would have to be able to be squeezed so if dropped it atleast shouldn't roll away, and contrary to most smartphones it would actually be able to handle being dropped quite well. Rings/camera/gestures (minority report) in general are of course interesting but I think the downside of that approach is no tactile feedback

<comment><USER28> That's true. What tactile feedback could a hackysack-size ball really give though besides perceived firmness?

If the finger rings were actually more like thimbles, could they impart some texture onto a finger tip? If you were brushing over a virtual surface, could they then give a sensation of texture? Raised on a page to denote a button, etc?

I really liked the OP's article, but found it frustrating stopping short of real suggestions and predictions - great opportunity to try to forecast where things could be in 10-15 years.

<comment><USER27> Well, the ball could in theory feel how much pressure you excert on it and where, and provide haptic feedback. In a super advanced scenarion perhaps the ball could provide feedback by varying it's firmness. Guess it depends on how advanced technology is how good the thimble solution could be, but it strikes me easier to manipulate a ball, which you could do even when it's in a suit pocket than to do gestures in the air. Some gestures might be doable though. I have a hard time coming up with a "Cursor" scenario for that solution though and tactility makes it so much more easy to control. Maybe if you used your fingers against a hard surface but that would limit it's flexibility.

<comment><USER28> Instead of thimbles, implants beneath the skin within fingers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Another avenue for substantial progress in interface design, in the same vein as the article's proposition, is tactile feedback, available today from vendors such as Senseg:

<http://senseg.com/experience/senseg-demos>

This technology has the capacity to bring us beyond "pictures under glass", and seems ready for integration in today's devices, with proper OS and API support.

I could see combining an e-ink display with this kind of tactile feedback surface to replace the user-exposed lower half of a laptop with a device capable of contextual interfaces. Something like this would offer great potential benefits to the user, with no apparent drawbacks.

</comment><comment><USER30> The OP is rehashing the concepts around pervasive or ubiquitous computing: the notion that computing will expand out to meet us in tangible products, as opposed to being solely accessed on dedicated computing devices.

There's been much more than "a smattering" of work in this area. Lots of really smart industrial designers and engineers have been working on these ideas for quite some time. I personally based my Industrial Design degree thesis around these concepts almost 12 years ago. Hiroshi Ishii's Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab comes to mind. The Ambient Devices Orb was a well-covered, if early and underdeveloped, attempt to bring a consumer pervasive computing device to market.

These products are here today and will continue to emerge. A recent example would be the thermostat from Nest Labs, a device that beautifully marries the industrial design of Henry Dreyfuss' Honeywell round thermostat with a digital display, the tangible and intangible interfaces working seamlessly in concert.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, I was going to bring up the Media Lab and TMG myself (I was a solder monkey there for a while as an undergrad). Go look at some of the stuff they have on their webpage. <http://tangible.media.mit.edu/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Love the effort put into the presentation of this blog post.

Although I personally love all the shiny finger gestures, must agree that this "vision" is only a sexy marketing trick and contains very little actual innovation, and probably even less actual innovation that Microsoft will actually build in the near future, or the long future.

As per the abundance of motors skills that we have, it would indeed be lovely to have those utilized in the future, along with voice and vision, all combined in some complexly simple and elegant way of interacting. Baby steps at a time?

<comment><USER33> Why single out Microsoft? Isn't everyone working on these problems now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I see the article as pointing to incremental improvements by advocating fine motor manipulations with feedback over touching-glass-and-seeing-the-result (which is in ways harder than hitting a keyboard and at least getting some kinesthetic feedback). But I think we need to consider things in greater generality:

1) Interface designers seem universally fixated on designs that are visually and touch/kinesthetically oriented. What's missing in this is _language_. In a lot of ways this winds-up with interfaces which indeed _look_ and _feel_ great on first blush but which become pretty crappy over time given that most sophisticated human work is tied up with using language.

2) Even the touch part of interaction seldom considers what's ergonomically sustainable. Pointing with your index finder are fabulously intuitive to start with but is something you'd get really annoyed at doing constantly. There are lots of fine motor manipulations will get hard time as well.

</comment><comment><USER35> This was similar to my own reaction [0], that these concept videos don't look far _enough_ forward.

And, maybe because I'm just a born contrarian, as the world moves toward touch-based direct-manipulation paradigms, I've personally been moving toward a more tactile, indirect paradigm. I recently bought a mechanical-switch keyboard, for example, that I'm growing more and more fond of every day. I've also started looking for a mouse that feels better in the hand, with a better weight, and better tactility to the button clicks.

The lack of tactility in touch screen keyboards has always been especially annoying to me. There's just so much _information_ there between my fingers and the keys. I mean, there's an entire state -- the reassuring feeling of fingers resting on keys -- that's completely missing.

I accept the compromise in a phone, something that needs to fit in my pocket so I can carry it around all the time. But this makes me lament the rise of tablet computing. This is the sort of place that I refer to when I talk about tablets privileging consumption over production.

I don't think the problem is relegated to UI hardware, though. I think part of what's holding back a lot richer and more meaningful social interaction online is the fact that current social networking paradigms map better to data than to human psychology. It's the parallel problem of fitting the tool to the problem, but not the user.[1]

I'm not sure I agree with the direction he points to (if I understand him correctly). Making our digital tools act and feel more like real, physical objects is akin to 3D skeuomorphism. It's like making a device to drive nails that looks like a human fist, but bigger and harder. Better, I think, to figure out new ways to take advantage of the full potential of our senses and bodies to manipulate digital objects in ways that aren't possible with physical objects. And, please, Minority Report is not it.

[0]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3184216>

[1]: More here: [http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/11670022371/intimacy-is- perfo...](http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/11670022371/intimacy-is-performance) and here: [http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/12261287667/in-defense-of- the...](http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/12261287667/in-defense-of-the-new- google-reader)

<comment><USER36> """these concept videos don't look far enough forward."""

If you look at any 'visions of the future' from the last 150 years, their visions retrospectively look silly and naive. From a forward looking perspective, though, would a true vision of the future make sense to a person seeing it? Maybe a clunky 'TV + rotary telephone' 60's vision of videophones would be more understandable/realistic/visionary than the sight of an iphone with a forward facing camera...?

Incremental steps...there's no point in looking too far forward or you wont get anywhere.

<comment><USER37> Did you even read the essay? Visions of the future are critical in shaping the focus of today's research. GUIs, laptops, etc. came almost entirely out of Alan Kay's mind. Visions of the future that just plain suck, such as Microsoft's, then become misguiding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm actually surprised no one has mentioned Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge yet. He actually presents a vision of a very natural, expressive near future UI.

While he doesn't go into technical details about everything, he does describe interacting with "Ubiquity" through small gestures throughout the body, whether small shrugs or interacting with hands. Further, he touches on the issues surrounding flat interfaces and even the virtual 3D interfaces.

And that's just the UI side of the novel.

</comment><comment><USER39> I would submit that part of the problem is that nobody really has a clue _how_ to use your hands. Are we going to have a thingy for every subtask that we want to do? Are our computer workstations going to resemble carpenter workbenches? Probably not, if for no other reason that lack of cost effectiveness. We've got something like the Wiimote as pretty much the epitome of hand-based interaction, but it's not very precise for anything that isn't a game.

I don't mean this as a criticism of the post, I mean it as a stab at an explanation. It is a good point and I've been complaining about the primitive point and grunt interfaces[1] we've had for a while, but it's not even remotely clear where to go from here without (touchscreens are only an incremental point & grunt improvement over mice, you get a couple more gestures at the c another huge leap in processing power and hardware, at the minimum encompassing some sort of 3D glasses overlay for augmented reality or something.

[1]: The mouse is point & grunt. You get one point of focus and 1 - 5 buttons (including the mousewheel as up, down, and click). For as excited as some people have been about touchscreens, they're only a marginal improvement if they're even that; you still have only a couple kinds of "clicks", and you lose a _lot_ on the precision of your pointing. Interfaces have papered that over by being designed for your even-more-amorphous-than-usual grunting, but when you look for it you realize that touchscreens are a huge step back on precision. They'll probably have a place in our lives for a long time but they are hardly the final answer to all problems, and trying to remove the touchscreen and read vague gestures directly has even _bigger_ precision problems.

<comment><USER8> Similarly, how would we use touch feedback? If physics and technology was no objection, would you want your phone to have more mass and inertia when you turn it when it has more email, and be less massive when you've read it?

If you could simulate sloshing water in a glass, what general infomanipulation would map well to that feeling?

What sort of mapping is there between hand manipulation and "next song" or "post Facebook status"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> the problem with revolutionary user interfaces is that nobody knows how to use them. when you see a "picture under glass" of a piano keyboard, you know that in order to make noise you tap the keys. if your interface is a minor incremental change from the status quo, it doesn't require education.

this vision of the future isn't just cool, it's _relatable_. anybody can look at the products displayed there and think "hey, i know how to use that". if you dream up some amazing new tactile user experience, it might be revolutionary but will people understand it?

<comment><USER35> I'm not sure that the benefit of making things intuitive or easy to learn is worth the cost of limiting the technology.

Calculus is less intuitive, harder to learn than arithmetic, but it's much more powerful.

Can't we reboot our interfaces, start with a large but consistent vocabulary, and remove limits instead of imposing more of them upon the altar of immediate and complete understanding?

[http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/9325300749/a-different- kind-o...](http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/9325300749/a-different-kind-of-gui)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Great post.

Has there been any interaction research done on using something like a stress ball as an interaction device for digital environment? In my imagination a ball would have standard accelerometers and gyroscopes, but in addition fine- grained sensing capabilities to sense different kind of grips. It could also provide tactile feedback.

<comment><USER42> Actually, we (me and a student) have built exactly such a device this year. Did not have time to finish and evaluate it yet, however.

Some papers on grasp interaction with spherical objects: Tango: www.cs.mcgill.ca/~kry/pubs/iser/iser.pdf Graspables: www.media.mit.edu/~vmb/papers/chi09.pdf Grasp Sensing for HCI (my paper, more generic): [http://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/pubdb/publications/pub/wimmer20...](http://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/pubdb/publications/pub/wimmer2011GRASP/wimmer2011GRASP.pdf)

<comment><USER41> That's awesome! What kind of system you use to sense different grips, i.e. what kind of sensors there are inside the "ball".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Well, this is supposed to be a video about the future of interaction design and not the future in general. But I have two points that I want to say:

\- The future technology should help the man kind be independent. It doesn't need to make you rich, but just do your own thing. I don't like that someone is driving my car or waiting me in the airport. I'll prefer that they play music or baseball.

\- We don't need high tech gadget and assistance. Get out of your computer and go see the world. There are hundred of millions of people that are diabetic around the world. Go and solve that, billions and may be trillions of $$ are there.

Brief, we don't need touch screens everywhere in the future. We don't need valets, actually having them is worse for the man kind. There are huge scales problems like disease and famine and joblessness that need to be solved.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've read many versions of this rant, written under many different authors' names over the last thirty or more years.

I'm waiting for the iteration of this rant - or even the actual UI some engineer's put together or some designer's rastubated - that shows that anyone involved has spent a _single, solitary moment_ thinking about how a disabled person could use these interfaces. The next one will be the first one.

The more of the range of human ability an interface requires, the more human _disability_ becomes a barrier to use it. What's so exciting about a future that shuts out people because they don't have the full range of action that some twit thought would be cool to make gratuitous use of?

No, contra Victor's ignorance, every human being does _not_ in fact have hands or feet or normally-capable versions thereof.

</comment><comment><USER45> I feel like I have just undergone a major epiphany. And just after the epiphany, I realized that pretty much the exact same content is hiding as one of those relatively insignificant background world-building details baked into Neal Stephenson's _Anathem_.

And in the non-fiction realm, Wii-mote and Kinect devices. We've totally got the beginnings of tactile, full-body interface technology that's just as reconfigurable and programmable as pictures under glass.

</comment><comment><USER9> The long standing mantra has been 'form follows function.' This is predicated on a particular product or object having a form (that reflects its purpose) to begin with. As items become increasingly 'form-less'I've always wondered what this means for design. There are a lot more considerations that must be made.

I know it's been mentioned in the documentary 'Objectified,' but has anyone seen any other commentary?

</comment><comment><USER46> I think I disagree with the rant.

It's a little inconsistant as well. On the one hand, he argues that Pictures behind glass isn't where we should be heading, and instead we should come up with better visions, as an example he uses the someone who came up with the original idea for a "goddamn ipad"...

But wait, didn't he just say pictures behind glass was a bad model to work towards?

Personally I think if we could implement a fraction of the things in that vision video, the world would be a better place for it. If some of the things don't work, or the interaction feels wrong... we can always change the vision.

The Apple Knowledge Navigator doesn't resemble the iPhone at all... But it was/is a good vision to work towards.

<comment><USER47> You are taking that first bit out of context. H is pretty clear in the article what he means. He believes that pictures behind glass are a transitionary phase and _not_ something we should work toward, because we already have them. The Dynabook was a vision of the iPad but it was a vision someone had 40 years ago. His point is that Alan Kay's vision truly _was_ visionary in that he saw a future interface that did not come to pass for decades, but that Microsoft's vision here is not truly visionary because it basically shows you where we are today.

<comment><USER46> As I said in my other response, there is a lot in that video that is visionary. Alan Kay's drawing had a keyboard in it... That's not visionary... he's just copying the typewriter - what a stupid vision!?

Augmented reality, Proximity networking, transparent computers, visual recognition, AI, interfacing with the kitchen... seriously we are saying "Not visionary" because there are glass interfaces with hands swiping on them...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I agree that we need more vision to expand our capabilities.

But I would add that all of our senses are ripe for innovations in interaction. There are things we have yet to accomplish in terms of audio and sight, and even smell. Our fingers get in the way when we use a touch screen-- will there be a system powerful enough to track my eye position to the point where it can assist navigation?

</comment><comment><USER49> One input method that a colleague discussed with me recently was in using a webcam to determine where keyboard input should go. The computer would track your eyes and where your focus went, and then make the application you're looking at have focus. So that it wouldn't matter where your mouse was, but when you typed the application you're looking at would get the input.

</comment><comment><USER50> I've never considered the richness of normal interaction in comparison to the "picture behind glass" model. Very eye opening read. However,

"Do you know what it's called when you lose all sense of touch? It's called paralysis, and they push you around in a wheelchair while you calculate black hole radiation."

isn't cool at all.

<comment><USER51> He's making a specific point regarding the relative importance of our senses. On the surface level, vision seems to play a far more important role in human life than tactile sensation.

Losing your sight (the sense screens use) results in a normal person who has to make a few adjustments to accomodate their blindness. Losing your sense of touch (the sense that touchscreens can't use) is paradoxically far more debilitating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> "Rant" may not have been the best word choice for the article title. I got the impression that designers shouldn't be so closed minded in futuristic thinking that may or may not be that far away. And I agree with him. Nor did I realize this until reading this excellent post.

Thanks for a great read.

</comment><comment><USER53> I always said to my peers that I find myself uneasy when touching a smartphone, and that the feeling would disappear when they come up with a texture that feels like a pretty lady's skin :)

I definitely agree with the article. Pictures under glass do feel weird.

</comment><comment><USER54> I think this is the problem with TED-talk style Interaction Design. More in line with hollywood, than grounded in reality. We all know its nice to hold stuff, but that technology just isn't ready yet.

</comment><comment><USER55> Excellent Post. More of that please.

I think some sort of HUD in glasses will be the future. Doesnt take up much space (presumably) and allows for rich gesture interaction (like whats already possible with Kinect)

<comment><USER56> Kinect is an excellent example of what the author thinks it's wrong with the vision. It provides absolutely no sensory feedback.

<comment><USER55> I dont think the author thinks kinect is wrong. What he criticizes is that a touch interface we you physically touch something needs to supply tactile feedback.

Kinect however is IMO not bound to the same scrutiny for tactile feedback. If you take the Kinect Sports games, you can pretty much see yourself in the game in 3d, making it really intuitive and very natural to move to the game.

I agree though, the menu navigation in Kinect is horrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Fantastic article - thanks for writing this - it is exactly how I feel about UI and the dissapointment that generally follows anything these days that is claimed to be "innovative".

</comment><comment><USER58> What about the rest of our capabilities using our other senses (sound, smell, taste)? Does anybody think that we will incorporate them into future interfaces more?

<comment><USER59> Sound probably. But I doubt smell and taste would ever play large roles in UI design - it isn't a huge part of how we interact with the world aside from the obvious bits about eating.

<comment><USER58> Smell is an interesting one. Memory along with visual is tied to smells. A lot of UI is based off of memory recognition. It would neat to see a UI based off of smell (i.e. smell flowers if hit right button)

<comment><USER60> That would be so cool! I bet it would also be useful for educational software. You load up the chem program for the first time in months, and immediately smell your _studying chem smell_ , lets say hazelnut coffee, and the memories start flowing back.

<comment><USER61> What would be cool is if you could (optionally) smell the chemicals you're learning about to further cement them in your memory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'm not sure how he can tell from the video that there is no tactile feedback.

</comment><comment><USER63> Great article!

I'm not too worried because I think voice manipulation (Siri, others) is as natural as hand manipulation and one at which digital devices will become more adept in the coming years.

Voice control and speaking interfaces, backed up by visual ones would completely overcome the concerns raised here.

</comment><comment><USER64> "There is no 'technology', there is no 'design', there is only a vision of how mankind should be, and the relentless resolve to make it so. This is the way that I teach."

I have committed this to memory Brad, it is my mantra.

</comment><comment><USER65> This post would make a lot stronger case if it didn't use an eye-bleeding, small gray font.

<comment><USER66> What are you talking about?

The basic text -- 12 px Arial? -- is pretty standard. I'm sure I'm not the only person who read it without issue.

But what's more -- unlike most things I read online -- this essay even has text that's much bigger!, darker!, blue-er!, and illustration-y! where appropriate.

That's perhaps the most snide, trollish, unimportant pot shot I've ever seen here. Don't blame the author because your own display resolution is apparently too fine to support your eyesight.

<comment><USER67> It's a web font, PT Sans, it ends up being smaller than Arial or Helvetica because of the awkward smoothing.

<comment><USER65> kitsune, I think you have identified the issue. It might look better on a different platform. I'm stuck on Windows XP at work (and yes, I do have Clear Type turned on.)

I stand by my criticism of the font choice as rendered. I went in with Google Chrome Inspector and turned off the font and the color and was much happier with the result.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Where can EU citizen study computer science tuition-free? - <AUTHOR>

I'm very close to finishing high school and am wondering where can i study computer science, electronics or similar field in EU countries tuition-free? <comment><USER2> Nordic universities are all tuition-free for EU students. The main problem as a foreigner would be the language. For masters-level study there are many English programs, but for the bachelors level, there are fewer. There are, nevertheless, several of them.

Two examples:

* Roskilde University: [http://www.ruc.dk/en/education/full-degree-undergraduate/int...](http://www.ruc.dk/en/education/full-degree-undergraduate/international-bachelor-study-programme-in-natural-science/about-the-programme/)

* Kristianstad University: [http://www.hkr.se/en/study-at-hkr/programmes-and-courses/bac...](http://www.hkr.se/en/study-at-hkr/programmes-and-courses/bachelor/)

<comment> workhere-io Also Aarhus University, Denmark ([http://cs.au.dk/](http://cs.au.dk/)). If I remember correctly, one of the reasons Google chose to have the V8 JavaScript engine developed in Aarhus was the fact that the CS department there is really good.

<comment><USER2> They do have a good CS program, but all their bachelor's programs are in Danish, as far as I can tell. For example, the CS bachelor's says Danish in the right sidebar: [http://bachelor.au.dk/en/computer- science/cpage/introduction...](http://bachelor.au.dk/en/computer- science/cpage/introduction/view1/0/Course/index/)

Their CS Masters is in English: [http://kandidat.au.dk/en/computer- science/](http://kandidat.au.dk/en/computer-science/)

That might not be a problem, but it typically takes at least a year or so for foreign students to gain a level of Danish sufficient to enter a Danish- language program, and you'd need a way to support yourself in the interim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Both of the swiss federal technology institutes are very good and almost free (about 500 euros per semester) but life in Switzerland can be quite expensive.

</comment><comment><USER4> I believe Scotland gives free tuition to EU member countries.

</comment><comment><USER5> For a Bachelors degree if you cant speak the language you can pretty much forget it since as far as I know the UK,Ireland,Scotland all have high US-like tuition costs.

If you can speak the language pretty well, i.e. conversations are no problem and you can read books without difficulty then you can take your pick: Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France or Spain are all basically free (some minor costs but nothing compared to us schools).

What id recommend if you need to learn the language, is go to the country for 3-6 months, take language courses so you can learn the language, and then start studying there.

EDIT: At least in Germany (im guessing its like this in other countries), you have to pass a C1 level language course to be able to study (see: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Re...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages))

<comment><USER2> Two corrections: Scotland has near-zero tuition fees, and the Nordic countries + Switzerland have (some) English-language bachelor's programs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Spain is cheaper than other countries like Sweden or Denmark, think here the fees for study one year is about 1000 euros but the cost of living is lowest.

But in Spain the computer science work sucks at 95%.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Internet.

</comment><comment><USER8> Germany</comment>


Scientist's Gender Is Switched in Press Coverage - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/That-Lab-Coat-Looks-Good-on/231445/

<comment><USER2> In case anyone reflexively thinks, as I did, "probably making a mountain out of a typo molehill", the author says:

> To be fair, "Kelsey" can be an androgynous name, but female pronouns were > used in the original news release, so these had to have been deliberately > changed. One of the news organizations that changed my gender had actually > interviewed me, in person.

and, heartbreakingly:

> … why does it matter? The women who set the path before I came along had to > deal with much more egregious social norms and behaviors. By comparison, > these "small" things hardly seem noteworthy. However, even small things add > up over time to create an environment that makes it clear when you're an > outsider.

</comment><comment><USER3> > If you do an image search of the word "scientist," you will likely get a > flood of pictures of mostly white males wearing lab coats.

This appears to no longer be the case, at least for me in the US.

<comment><USER4> I agree, but most of the pictures look like stock photos or clipart. In my opinion, the first genuine photo are #16 and #19 (in my personalized order produced by Google image search, your numbers may vary). Anyway, the apparent genuine photos also have a good variation.

My complain is that most of them use white coats, so they look like Chemistry/Biology/Medical scientific. I never saw a Physics scientific with a white coat.

<comment><USER5> What should a physicist stock photo / clipart show?

That's probably a useful niche: stock photos and clip art that represent actual science.

<comment><USER4> Stock photos of real science is hard, it's easier to put someone standing at the side of the equipment they use in the real scientific work.

For experimental physics I like the photos of optical tables ( [https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=optical+tables+lase...](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=optical+tables+laser) ) and the racks with a lot of electronic equipment ( [https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=physics+laboratory+...](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=physics+laboratory+rack) skip the first 10 images). They look like something you may find in a real laboratory.

Theoretical physics is harder, they look like normal people (i.e. mathematicians) until they start to talk about the real word. I prefer to discuss writing in paper, but for a photograph the only sensible solution is to write a bunch of slightly related equations in a blackboard.

(And there are many other science branches. For Geology you may put someone with a bunch of rocks, but I don't know a real geologist so it may be not a representative image.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish there was a law that all articles had to have an abstract at the beginning.

<comment><USER2> To be fair, this is a blog post, not an article; and I think that the HN title (which is not the blog post's title) is about as succinct an abstract as you can get. (EDIT: I'm sorry, I'm wrong; it _is_ an article on The Chronicle of Higher Education. I think that my second sentence still stands.)</comment></comment>


Scientists identify potential inhibitors of cancer metastasis and MS - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-10-scientists-potential-inhibitors-cancer-metastasis.html <comment><AUTHOR> Full text of the paper (early):

[http://www.jbc.org/content/early/2015/07/27/jbc.M115.675108....](http://www.jbc.org/content/early/2015/07/27/jbc.M115.675108.full.pdf+html)</comment>


CSS Gradient Text Effect - <AUTHOR> http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/css-gradient-text-effect/ <comment><USER2> Very impressive. Is it just css or did you use any images etc.? Are you a designer?</comment>


Ruby Chocolate Wants a Place at the Table with Dark, Milk and White - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/business/ruby-chocolate-pink-flavor.html?mcubz=1 <comment><USER2> _Ruby chocolate "satisfies a new consumer need found among millennials — hedonistic indulgence,"_

You mean like... avocado toast?

<comment><USER3> Wow, glad we finally invented hedonistic indulgence. And just in time to make less money than previous generations, too!

<comment><USER2> Nothing in that article makes any sense, but that was the most egregious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll wait for Python Chocolate.

<comment><USER5> Meh, unless it's _strongly and statically-typed_ I'm not going to use it in production.

/typical HN response

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Certainly intriguing, although if it will be 6-18 months until I can try it I'm not sure why I should care.

</comment><comment><USER7> White chocolate doesn't deserve a seat at the table.

Joking, but not really. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_chocolate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_chocolate)

<comment><USER8> Preach!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What I find puzzling is that this pink chocolate 'invented in 2017 by a Swiss company marketing to millenials' appears to have been available in British sweet shops for over 20 years.

[https://www.sweetsncandy.co.uk/a-jar-of-pink-and-white- choco...](https://www.sweetsncandy.co.uk/a-jar-of-pink-and-white-chocolate- mice-1-5-kg-jar.html)

[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/66/0b/87/660b8713654b075c0a81...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/66/0b/87/660b8713654b075c0a8158d961ae02c4.jpg)

My conclusion: while the Swiss are masters of chocolate, the Brits are masters of time travel.

<comment><USER10> Hehe. I could be wrong but I think the pink chocolate mice are made with food colouring rather than coloured by the bean.

They do seem rather cagey on how they process the bean though.

A cacao pod sometimes looks slightly reddish, I wonder if the colour could come from that?</comment></comment>


New Australia Law Could Jail Founders for Livestreams - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-29/social-media-executives-jail-fine-terrorist-material-new-laws/10955208 <comment><USER2> This is how you quickly get a lot of "x is not available in your country" and citizens using VPNs

</comment><comment><USER3> At which point do laws such as this effectively become censorship?

<comment><USER4> Ten years ago?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Knee jerk law making is always a bad idea.</comment>


How Growers Gamed California's Drought - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/30/how-growers-gamed-california-s-drought.html <comment><USER2> It takes a gallon of water to grow an almond. So eating a single almond, grown in California, is like opening one of these ([https://hornstrafarms.com/product_images/large/monadnock_gal...](https://hornstrafarms.com/product_images/large/monadnock_gallon_water.jpg)) and pouring it down the drain.

California grows 99% of the almonds in the United States, and 80% of all the almonds in the world.

This is only financially possible because we give almond farmers (and agriculture in general) gigantic subsidies on their water bills.

Sources:

[http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres- califo...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-californias- water-going)

[http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/07/almonds-are- sucking-...](http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/07/almonds-are-sucking-the- life-out-of-california/374373/)

<comment><USER3> Almonds are a drop in the bucket, compared to the sacred cow(s) that is meat.

It's just a tad bit more than NPR's 'trying to lose weight by cutting your fingernails'.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-j-rose/how-to-take- long-s...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-j-rose/how-to-take-long- showers_b_6875644.html)

[http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/californias-drought- whos-...](http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/californias-drought-whos-really- using-all-the-water/)

[http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/sustain/global/sensem/MeatIndustry...](http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/sustain/global/sensem/MeatIndustry.html)

<comment><USER2> You're absolutely right. A quarter-pound hamburger costs 1,300 gallons of water, according to the WSJ: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB120001666638282817](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB120001666638282817)

The organization that represents California cattle ranchers begged to differ, contesting that it's only 110 gallons: [http://blog.calbeef.org/how-eco- friendly-is-beef-infographic...](http://blog.calbeef.org/how-eco-friendly-is- beef-infographic/)

Even using the latter number, just think about that. Eating one hamburger is like dumping 110 one-gallon jugs of water down the drain -- or leaving your kitchen faucet running full blast for over an hour with the current 1.8gpm flow restrictor mandated by code. Or flushing your code-mandated low-flow toilet 89 times.

And if you're talking about a 1-pound steak, multiply all those numbers by 4.

Am I saying you shouldn't eat beef? Of course not -- it's delicious! But California's beef producers should have to pay market rate for their water. If that means the price shoots up and I have to start eating hamburgers made from Texas cattle, so be it.

<comment><USER4> Those kind of statements imply that cattle destroy that water. The water is returned to the environment a few hours after it's ingested. It's usually just part of the natural cycle.

I know you understand this: you talk about eating Texas cattle instead of California cattle, but I wanted to emphasize it for others.

Vast numbers of cattle are raised in semi-desert conditions in Texas and Montana without the use of irrigated feedstock. Those cattle occupy the same ecological niche as the bison did 150 years ago, with a similar environmental impact. Tearing up the native prairie to grow any sort of grain or vegetable crop would destroy the land.

<comment><USER5> >> "...cattle occupy the same ecological niche as the bison did 150 years ago, with a similar environmental impact..."

Montana boy here. Even if I concede for purposes of argument that cattle and bison are ecologically interchangeable ungulates (debateable at best), surely we can all agree that it is not the cattle but rather the _cattlemen_ primarily responsible for reshaping the natural environment in the American West, by bulldozing stock ponds, stringing barbed wire over the range, drilling wells, poisoning coyotes, supplanting native grasses with snakeweed and cheatgrass, and most importantly by enforcing a monoculture of cattle. Nature abhors a monoculture almost as much as it abhors a vacuum, and you would never find a bison-era Western landscape with only a single species of charismatic megafauna.

Nobody objects to a smallholder's spread of a dozen head of angus, but when millions of acres are given over to beef production alone, it's broadly disingenuous to claim that the environmental impact of cattle is isomorphic to that of bison on a systems level.

Cattle country today looks like this [0] and this [1], for miles and miles and miles.

Bison country looked like this [2].

It's hard to see how those landscapes are even approximately interchangeable.

[0] [http://harpers.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/HA027__1MHK0-1...](http://harpers.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/HA027__1MHK0-1.png)

[1] [http://harpers.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/HA030__1MHK0-1...](http://harpers.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/HA030__1MHK0-1.png)

[2] [http://harpers.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/HA031__1MHK0-2...](http://harpers.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/HA031__1MHK0-2.png)

NB. All these pictures are taken from an excellent and rather relevant piece of journalism that ran in Harpers here (paywall): [http://harpers.org/archive/2015/02/the-great-republican- land...](http://harpers.org/archive/2015/02/the-great-republican-land-heist/)

And I stole my list of rancher's sins from Ed Abbey.

<comment><USER6> History repeating. Here's Harpers from 1947 on the exact same topic: [http://home.comcast.net/~mdevoto/AGAINST.htm](http://home.comcast.net/~mdevoto/AGAINST.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The hair-shirt environmentalism of laws like "restaurants can only serve you water if you ask" is... it's really kind of appalling. It's like if you came into an emergency room with one of your arms literally torn off your body and they wouldn't, you know, triage you, but instead sent you to talk to a doctor about how you're ten pounds overweight and how you really need to lose that weight or else god think of the negative health consequences.

<comment><USER8> That silliness has more to do with raising awareness and being a reminder than actually something which actually conserves water --simply it's symbolic

<comment><USER7> But it's not symbolic, it's distracting. It focuses limited public attention on doing something that's mildly personally inconvenient instead of actually effective.

<comment><USER9> But if you get enough public attention it can snowball into actually changing what matters.

You tell everyone to think about the almond trees and it's so far disconnected that they tend to forget about it. If it's the third restaurant visit this month they had to ask for water, then they're going to be more accepting of policy to save water with the farmers (i.e. do their part).

<comment><USER10> >then they're going to be more accepting of policy to save water with the farmers

The policies are just saying that normal consumers have to save though. People would be plenty accepting of a policy that just said farmers have to cut back. There is no reason for shared sacrifice here. The small users (normal people) already pay a fair price. The elephants are the ones screwing everyone and we are wasting time discussing how the minority can cut back more. It's stupid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article doesn't address why the California government is being so stupid about water rationing.

Why isn't it reforming these broken water laws that are mentioned in the article?

The CA govt just dodges the question, every time. Why? Are the agriculture lobbyists really that powerful? Or is something else going on here?

<comment><USER12> Farmers are sacred in America. People are terrified of the idea that, "if we cut how much water they get, how will we eat???" Never mind that such thinking is nonsense. What will happen if water becomes more expensive is that farmers will adopt more efficient technology, they will grow somewhat less of the thirstier crops, and those crops will go up in price somewhat.

So yes, the downside is that the price of your almonds and alfalfa will be a bit higher; the upside is that people will have enough water for day to day use to live normally.

<comment><USER13> I'm ready to have a STEM-based government where all of the participants ( read: politicians ) are from a Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math background.

<comment><USER14> Doesn't China have a government like that?

<comment><USER15> Yes, especially if you include economics in STEM, then 5 out of 7 on the standing committee are in that boat, as well as many of the previous members.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "the Central Valley, which is, geologically speaking, a desert"

Source? It seems contrary to what wikipedia says on the subject:

"The northern Central Valley has a hot Mediterranean climate; the more southerly parts in rainshadow zones are dry enough to be Mediterranean steppe or even low-latitude desert." \-- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_%28California%29...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_%28California%29#Climate)

<comment><USER17> It's worth clarifying, because every time this comes up, some California- basher says "hurr durr why are these morons trying to farm in the desert" while ignoring the fact that, pre-irrigation, natural runoff from the mountains made many areas in central California swamps/wetlands.

It's incredibly fertile land with an absolutely massive water source (in "normal" years). It's the diversion of water that's caused the issues, which have been exacerbated by the drought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's a novel idea: charge market prices for water based on supply and demand. The problem will sort itself out.

<comment><USER19> The problem will also sort itself out when the water is gone.

<comment><USER16> Market forces will force us to start conserving and optimizing now; and solving problems sooner is generally better than solving them later.

<comment><USER20> I'm skeptical that your use of "market forces" is distinguishable from "magic" here.

<comment><USER21> You could solve the problem just by making water cost more. Wasteful farming can't take the hit, residential users can. It doesn't take magic.

But even simpler than that, if you let people with water rights _sell_ their water, they will be less likely to _waste_ it.

Or maybe get rid of water rights...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Previous conversation on this topic [1] yielded about the same results that we've had in the past 30 minutes here. Doesn't seem like anything's going to change; we'll all just continue posting about it to our favorite blogs and meta-blogs, and (almond|alfalfa|whatever) farmers will continue to eat subsidies and turn them into drought.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9175649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9175649)

<comment><USER23> At least people are starting to discuss this, which is an important improvement over the past situation. These are the first articles I've seen coming across my news feeds which are daring to bruise the sacred cow of California agriculture -- and I've bumped into a couple of people now who unprompted mentioned the 80% statistic for statewide agricultural water use. So word's getting around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Charge market prices for water, and let the tech industry help with efficiency.

That's how Australia did it: [http://irrigation.org.au/documents/publications- resources/co...](http://irrigation.org.au/documents/publications- resources/conference_papers_2008/200508_Stream1_RMaskey1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER2> If you live in California, and you're not registered to vote by mail, please do so. It only takes five minutes.

Here are step by step instructions:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/housingforsf/comments/22xoht/help_h...](https://www.reddit.com/r/housingforsf/comments/22xoht/help_hfsf_register_to_vote_by_mail_and_tell_us/)

<comment><USER25> I'd like to add that registering to vote is the first step.

Researching the propositions (and candidates for that matter) that get put on the ballot yourself (LAO[1], SOS[2], Ballotpedia[3] and Google) and ignoring media coverage/ads can make a huge difference.

The Legislative Analyst Office (LAO) is particularly useful. Their analysis of prop 1[4] combined with Ballotpedia's[5] summary was very informative.

[1]: [http://www.lao.ca.gov/](http://www.lao.ca.gov/)

[2]: [http://www.sos.ca.gov/](http://www.sos.ca.gov/)

[3]: [http://ballotpedia.org/](http://ballotpedia.org/)

[4]: [http://www.lao.ca.gov/ballot/2014/prop-1-110414.aspx](http://www.lao.ca.gov/ballot/2014/prop-1-110414.aspx)

[5]: [http://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_1,_Water_Bond_...](http://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_1,_Water_Bond_%282014%29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> More and more the US is starting to look like one of those countries full of corrupt and incompetent politicians and their cronies who enrich themselves from the sweat of the general population and are untouchable.

<comment><USER27> So, reversion to the mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Fortunately we in California have a well-established means of circumventing partisan bickering and political gridlock. Granted it usually ends in disaster, but I am counting the minutes until one or more water-rights related voter initiatives show up on the ballot. Considering how the numbers stack up, I would be very weary indeed if I were a Central Valley farmer.

</comment><comment><USER29> Things I don't understand as a California:

\- Why we continue to sell (nationally) bottled water from California

\- Why public golf courses are green

\- Why my public officials nag us not to water our lawns as often, when that's not the problem. (FWIW, yes, I replaced my own lawn with drought resistant plants a few years ago.)

<comment><USER30> Because why have a golf course at all if there's no grass? How many golfers do you see practicing their chip shots on asphalt? Golf courses aren't the issue, as they pay the market price for water and often have very maintained irrigation systems as they have to keep their water bill low enough to remain profitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> California and water wars go back a long time.

Water law is incredibly complicated (grants, rights, etc).

It's wikipedia, but still a good read:

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

</comment><comment><USER32> Most of the western states have totally messed up "water rights" laws.

</comment><comment><USER33> But hey guys, at least we might soon have a law saying restaurants have to be explicitly asked before serving drinking water!

</comment><comment><USER34> [http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/arithmetic.html](http://www- formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/arithmetic.html)

</comment><comment><USER35> Issues like this aren't resolved until enough people are personally effected. When a community or two wakes up and turns on their faucet and nothing comes out, then there will be change.

</comment><comment><USER36> They need to grow something under those trees.

</comment><comment><USER37> How many raindrops are there left?

</comment><comment><USER37> How many raindrops are there?

</comment><comment><USER38> Israel is/will be producing one-third of its water from desalinization. The largest plant produces 165 million gallons per day. The firm that runs that plant is building a plant in Carlsbad, CA which in 2016 will produce about 50 million gallons per day. Other plants will be built.

[http://www.haaretz.com/business/1.575985](http://www.haaretz.com/business/1.575985)</comment>


Ask HN: Alan Kay or DHH? - <AUTHOR> The quote I was looking for and still have not found is Kay referring to the problem that the best minds are absorbed by unimportant tasks that pay good money instead of solving meaningful problems.
While trying to find this quote today, google turned up this page:  http://www.devtopics.com/101-more-great-computer-quotes/
See quote #53: "The best way to predict the future is to implement it." – David Heinemeier Hansson
Not sure if this was a mistaken quote or if DHH is delusional.  That part doesn't matter much. What is troubling is there are two comments at the bottom of this page.  One reads:
"Hi Rob, Yes, when I was translating the article, I thought #53 was Alan Kay too. But apparently David Hannson is credited with saying it on many of the quote sites, so I'm not sure who was first."
Has it really come to this?
Bonus points for anyone that can come up the quote I was originally looking for ;)...
EDIT: not trying to bash DHH here. I was just adding some humor to my quest to find the original quote I was looking for. Still noone has been able to come up with any ideas. <comment><USER2> In all frankness this thread is gossipy. Most programmers know that Alan Kay is the author of the original quote and a simple Google search would verify that. Just because a site or two quote David Heinemeier Hansson on a variation of said quote, it doesn't mean that he claimed it was his quote. Your message is an open invitation to bash him for no good reason. Quite frankly this is the sort of attitude I'd expect on Reddit not on Hacker News.

<comment><USER3> Geez, how elitist can you get? I just started coming here because there's more programming related stuff that sometimes doesn't hit /r/programming, but I haven't seen any evidence that people here are somehow more sophisticated or something than people on reddit. Seems about the same to me, except without the pun threads, and the layout is similar but slightly worse than reddit (like how replying opens a new window).

<comment><USER4> > I haven't seen any evidence that people here are somehow more sophisticated > or something than people on reddit.

Many of us also have reddit accounts. What's really different is the culture:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

People want this to be a civil, interesting, and mostly serious site about hacking and startups.

<comment><USER5> These guidelines have little to do with it, though the editors probably do. The main thing that distinguishes Reddit, Digg, and HN is pure volume.

If HN had the same traffic Digg did, you better believe that the average intelligence would go down, and you'd need a heck of a lot more editors to keep the content on target.

<comment><USER4> Well, the guidelines sum up some of the culture, and you're right that it wouldn't be possible to transmit that if too many people showed up at once. However, it is a real thing. There aren't many editors here, and the idea is to keep the volume down by only posting things that interest a limited segment of the population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's from Alan Kay, in 1971.

      Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do.
      The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

"The origin of the quote came from an early meeting in 1971 of PARC, Palo Alto Research Center, folks and the Xerox planners. In a fit of passion I uttered the quote!". — Alan Kay, in an email on Sept 17, 1998 to Peter W. Lount

<http://www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html>

<comment><USER7> hm... so what this translates to is: Stop wasting time on HN?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm truly honored to have a whole post dedicated to me because a mistake on a list of 101 computer quotes. Someone has too much time on their hands.

Oh, and OF COURSE I was quoting Alan Kay.

<comment><USER9> Note to self re HN:

* dhh is actually DHH

* rms is not actually RMS

<comment><USER10> if rms wants the username though, he can have it

<comment><USER11> I would be funny if the real RMS got banned from Hacker News over karma transfer :-)

<comment><USER10> I think I would be expected to keep my karma -- this account would have its username changed to my real name, and rms would get a fresh account. Gotta respect the integrity of the karma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Blasphemy. Alan Kay first said "The best way to predict the future is to _invent_ it" in _1971_ , before DHH was _born_.

If DHH decided to tweak Alan Kay's quote (changing "invent" to "implement") and attribute it to himself, well, that's bullshit.

<comment><USER13> _If DHH decided to tweak Alan Kay's quote (changing "invent" to "implement") and attribute it to himself, well, that's bullshit._

You can safely assume he didn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can anyone recall the quote I was looking for? It had something to do with how the brightest minds are being wasted and aren't working on the most interesting problems.

I could even be wrong about it being a Kay quote, but I think so.

thanks HN, I figure if someone here doesn't know, maybe someone can call Kay and ask him ;)

<comment><USER14> I have one very related quote, though by Greenspun, not Kay:

"We will live in a society where the best educated engineers are not designing anti-lock brakes. They are either managing comparatively poorly educated people who are designing anti-lock brakes, stitching up wounds in people who were injured by faulty anti-lock brakes, or defending companies that got sued for their anti-lock brake systems that didn't work."

from <http://philip.greenspun.com/school/tuition-free-mit.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. that's a nice one. The Kay quote is along those lines. I'll know it when I see it. It will be odd if it turns up and its not Kay ;)...I think so though.

<comment><USER11> You may also want to google _grim meathook future_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow. That just makes me amazingly sad--not simply because it's factually wrong, but because attributing it to DHH loses its impact. DHH is an amazingly egotistical man who made a couple of somewhat popular websites and an okay web framework. Alan Kay, working with Dan Ingalls and other luminaries at Xerox PARC, invented many of the concepts that define what a personal computer means today. I am profoundly sad to see such historical ignorance.

<comment><USER16> It's profoundly saddening to know that this, of all things, makes you profoundly sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> or...

A lot of people:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=predict+future+create+-kay>

And a number of sites have Lincoln saying it,

<http://www.ehow.com/how_4415898_predict-your-future.html>

I'm sure there are earlier varieties.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a well-known statement by Kay:

<http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htm>

I highly doubt that DHH claimed to have originated this. The problem here is the proliferation of adspam quote sites that attribute whatever to anybody. This same quote is even attributed to Lincoln on a few of them.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure if it's what you meant, but I found this:

 _Perhaps it was commercialization in the 1980s that killed off the next expected new thing. Our plan and our hope was that the next generation of kids would come along and do something better than Smalltalk around 1984 or so. We all thought that the next level of programming language would be much more strategic and even policy-oriented and would have much more knowledge about what it was trying to do. But a variety of different things conspired together, and that next generation actually didn't show up. One could actually argue—as I sometimes do—that the success of commercial personal computing and operating systems has actually led to a considerable retrogression in many, many respects.

You could think of it as putting a low-pass filter on some of the good ideas from the '60s and '70s, as computing spread out much, much faster than educating unsophisticated people can happen. In the last 25 years or so, we actually got something like a pop culture, similar to what happened when television came on the scene and some of its inventors thought it would be a way of getting Shakespeare to the masses. But they forgot that you have to be more sophisticated and have more perspective to understand Shakespeare. What television was able to do was to capture people as they were.

So I think the lack of a real computer science today, and the lack of real software engineering today, is partly due to this pop culture._

<http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~sue/475/AlanKay.html>

(Edit: I just saw that this was from a 2005 interview, so it can't be what you were referring to.)

<comment><AUTHOR> great stuff!! this does sound like a 2005 evolution on the original thought/quote I was trying to hunt down. thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The closest thing I found (via quick search) was a quote (apparently) by Paul Krugman:

"Meanwhile, how much has our nation's future been damaged by the magnetic pull of quick personal wealth, which for years has drawn many of our best and brightest young people into investment banking, at the expense of science, public service and just about everything else?"

<comment><AUTHOR> that's a good one too. thanks. The quote I'm looking for, I know I read in 1995 or maybe before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Worldofquotes attributes the quote to Theodore Hook, source: Bubbles of 1825, in "John Bull"

[http://www.worldofquotes.com/author/Theodore- Hook/1/index.ht...](http://www.worldofquotes.com/author/Theodore- Hook/1/index.html)

<comment><USER22> I found the article in question, Bubbles of 1825, and it's definitely not from there. Too bad:

[http://www.archive.org/stream/choicehumorouswo00hook/choiceh...](http://www.archive.org/stream/choicehumorouswo00hook/choicehumorouswo00hook_djvu.txt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There are themes of what you're looking for in <http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html>

</comment><comment><USER24> DHH was probably paraphrasing Kay's quote, and assuming the readers of the interview would be familiar with the original.

</comment><comment><USER25> It doesn't matter. Good advice stands on its own, and doesn't need its creator's name to help it along.

</comment><comment><USER26> The quote is actually by Lincoln. I'm sure a lot more people cringe when it's attributed to Kay than when it's attributed to DHH.

In neither case it has anything to do with the persons it's attributed to. The whole point behind attribution is that it's done by third parties.

What a useless mud slinging invitation.

<comment><USER18> I would be very surprised if Lincoln said this. It doesn't sound like a 19th century thought to me at all. Notice how all the garbage fake quote sites out there never cite any references?

<comment><USER27> "Notice how all the garbage fake quote sites out there never cite any references?" - DHH.</comment></comment></comment>


AI to a new Level: Milo & Kate [working title] (E3 Demo) - <AUTHOR> http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/14354412/lionhead-mylo-project/videos/lionhead_natalproject_e3.html <comment><USER2> Too me this is extremely creepy. It reminds of the Resident Evil security system, or the male equivalent.

I do doubt how well it would work, for example; telling the difference between laughing and crying, telling the difference between sadness and anger.

But I don't know too much about this, or what's currently going on in the field so perhaps somebody made a breakthrough. Or this may be the breakthrough.

<comment><USER3> For a while now, computers have been able to recognise human emotions more reliably than humans can: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/rainbow/emotions/>

Given a good full frontal view of a face, a computer can tell the difference between laughing and crying or sadness and anger. The real challenge is dealing with variance in pose and lighting.

(Disclosure: I was doing a PhD in that research group.)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which web analytics service do you use for your projects / business? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I use Google Analytics and I was also trying out clicktale but couldn't get much value from it using their free plan, they don't offer a full trial or something like that, you would need to buy it for a full year to test it and I think it is too expensive, at least for me...

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out segment.io, they let you plug in lots of analytics services easily.

<comment><USER4> Segment.io is awesome and I highly recommend them. As for the actual analytics use GA + somethings else. Check out HeapAnalytics they have a pretty awesome tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We use Google Analytics and KISSmetrics for matchist (<http://matchist.com/talent>).

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.improvely.com>, which I built.

</comment><comment><USER7> Google Analytics. All I need.</comment>


Help Me With My App and Restore My Faith in the American Dream - <AUTHOR> http://ihardlyknewer.tumblr.com/post/20925909292/help-me-with-my-app-and-restore-my-faith-in-the

<comment><USER2> This post made me laugh, and I sure hope that's what it was supposed to do. It happens more circa once per week to me that somebody "has already done all the legwork" and only needs me to design and code "the app that will make us rich"..</comment>


Video-game interface for Khan Academy ... built on Google Maps - <AUTHOR> http://bjk5.com/post/1664635835/constellation-knowledge

<comment><USER2> Bravo! This is really cool. The JavaScript is clean, a pleasure to read and a learning exercise in and of itself. Extra bonus points on the user interface, which looks incredible.

I just got into watching some Khan Academy on Roku and I'm loving it. I haven't tried any exercises, but this makes me want to.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Check out Jason's work designing the UI here: [http://shipordie.com/post/1670651184/first-iterations-the- ne...](http://shipordie.com/post/1670651184/first-iterations-the-new-exercise- dashboard) and let us know if you have any feedback. We'll be getting a bunch of solid data from real students soon as they use the interface in an upcoming school pilot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've long thought that Google Maps API was great not just for the maps, but for other uses. I did something a bit similar a few years ago for a university project: <http://qut.rodh.org>

I've used the maps API but rejected the whole maps/satellite imagery part of it, and added my own map of the university. In the back end the vending machine staff can move and place the vending machines on the map. It uses the long/lat functionality (but not the real long/lat values) to work out the closest machines to you etc.

The javascript isn't nearly as nice as the Khan Academy one (was one of my first Javascript heavy sites) and I'm sure there's a few bugs (site hasn't been used in years). Perhaps with HTML5 there might be better ways of doing this but Google Maps has a great framework now for doing some cool cross browser things.

Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER5> Very cool. I love to see our API being used in creative ways.

Great write up, too. There are some nice techniques in here that would be useful for other developers (restricting viewable bounds, restricting zoom levels, custom map tiles, using custom overlays - MarkerWithLabel).

</comment><comment><USER6> Pretty cool. What are the long-term plans with stuff like this? How is it helping education & learning? Because it looks like a game people will be more motivated?

<comment><USER7> Our current belief is that there are several game mechanics and game-like visualizations that will help students measure their progress and maintain momentum. We don't know this for certain, but there is already anecdotal evidence that these kinds of things are motivating students at the Khan Academy. In the short term, the plan is to collect a lot of data to see exactly how these kinds of features impact the students and teachers that use them.

<comment><USER6> Interesting. If you don't mind me asking, do you work for Khan Academy or are you just helping out on the side?

It makes sense that such an environment would increase motivation (and increase learning as a result). Our (I'm in the same field) goal with education technology is really the same goal I believe a teacher should have: to create and sustain the optimal learning environment to maximize student learning. Currently there's not much out there that does this well.

I'm interested in hearing more about this. Feel free to e-mail me if you want to bounce around some ideas!

<comment><USER3> Jason and I started out helping on the side and just recently began working full-time on K.A.

Always willing to chat about this stuff -- let us know what you're working on at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> this is better than anything i had imagined so far. blew my mind, awesome. looking forward to using the API.</comment>


The World's Worst Industrial Disaster Is Still Unfolding - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/the-worlds-worst-industrial-disaster-is-still-unfolding/560726/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I'd argue the invention, and widespread adoption, of plastics is the world's worst industrial disaster given how they contaminate the environment and are effectively forever with the exception of the ones that mealworms and waxworms can digest into safe compounds.

This one ranks up there though.</comment>