Products For People Who Make Products For People - <AUTHOR> http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1285436217.html <comment><USER3> There is really no mystery about UI. Yes, it requires skill and a deep knowledge of how humans process information, and even a touch of design genius.

But the real problem is that most shops can't measure usability in a fine- grained way. And yet everyone does have some idea that it's really important. Consequently they are bamboozled by anyone who purports to have such expertise.

For the most part, so-called usability experts are really just graphic design snobs. They have a certain aesthetic they like, which is arguably "cleaner" and has more white space. So the page might be better organized but that's nowhere near what true usability is.

Real usability work is about trying to understand how the user is _thinking_. What their mental model is. What their goals are. In what context they are trying to achieve a task. Not just how their eye is scanning for information.

Anyway my point is, when it comes to real usability work, programmers are just as (un)qualified as graphic designers, marketers, or any other kind of "product" person. Arguably the designer is supposed to have a larger toolbox when it comes to possible graphic treatments, but the programmer also has a toolbox of quantitative methods, experimentation, and a deep understanding of how the system _could_ work.

<comment><USER4> You know, I thought I had UI design mostly figured out, using a few simple rules:

* Minimise the total number of clicks needed to access the sum of the program's functionality.

* Make frequently-used functionality easier to reach than rarely-used functionality.

* Don't have more elements in the UI than is easy to parse quickly.

* No surprises.

However, after reading this article, I get the feeling that it's a more arcane art, which not many people know. What are some simple rules about good UI design, in your opinion?

<comment><USER3> In my opinion it isn't arcane, at least, no more arcane than other "soft" design fields. But the simple rules are complicated to follow.

Your first three principles are about efficiency. That's a big part of usability. When you reduce clutter, you make it easier to use by clarifying the next action the user should take.

But "No surprises" is rather complex. It means that you not only have to explain what you are doing, but also work with the user's mental model, which might be totally wrong.

Here's an example from my current project. We are designing a web form to upload images and video to Wikipedia. In 2010, the users' model of media uploads comes from Facebook, ImageBucket, and maybe Flickr. Even after you make them click on a box that says they give up their own rights before proceeding, they don't understand what they did. Apparently people's mental model just continues on blithely until it smacks against a major contradiction.

So we've tried various metaphors. "License your work" was replaced by "Release rights", and the next iteration is going to be " _Donate_ your work". That wording was the suggestion of a usability testing and analysis firm we hired, by the way. So it does take a certain amount of inspiration to come up with alternatives, but recognizing where the problem areas are is just a matter of measurement.

Inspiration is aided by just having a bigger bag of tricks, too -- knowing common problems and solutions. For instance, if there is so much to do on one page that users are finding it overwhelming, it is helpful to break it into multiple steps (a "wizard"). That's another approach we have taken.

Anyway, I'm not sure if my expertise with usability is so deep that I could pronounce just a few principles. Maybe "reduce cognitive load to the minimum" is one, which has been more memorably distilled by Steve Krug as "Don't Make Me Think". Since we want to avoid onerous information transfer and cognition, there are some models of communication that might be helpful here; a classic text on human communication is The Responsive Chord, by Tony Schwartz. He argued that most communication is about activating stuff you already know (at the right moment), which you can see at play in the example I gave.

But ultimately it's about motivating human behavior, so it's only about as complex as the human heart. ;)

<comment><USER4> Thank you, that's very interesting. You can't get everything right the first time, but yes, it doesn't seem to be something magical that you don't have any control over (other than praying to some UX god), either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hear a lot of "programmers don't do good Ui" as well as "marketers dictate bad UI" in my travels. I used to try to work out some sort of theory about which statement is true, and why. But then I experienced a revelation, Sturgeon's Revelation:

 _90% of everything is crap._

Therefore, if handed ten UIs designed by programmers, nine will be crap. If handed ten UIs designed by marketers, nine will be crap. Perhaps there is a characteristic way in which the nine programmer crap UIs are crap, but the observation that most programmer UIs are crap is not insightful and doesn't magically justify the idea of turning UI design over to product management.

<comment><USER6> That's a really good point - but I think a really big issue is that a lot of programmers (and I don't know why) seem to think that a good User Interface (API, Visual, Docs, etc) is just not needed.

That; and the attitudes range from "who cares" to downright hostile "if you can't understand it, you're stupid". I say this _as_ a programmer (who spends a lot of time on the "user" facing components), not as a business person.

That attitude has to change - I don't care that the business people think hackers are Eloi fit for the slaughter while they are the Morlocks - <USER2> intelligent ones. Good business people don't have that attitude, good business and product people do care about scalability, supportability and quality. Those that don't will fail.

On the other hand, the constant refrain I hear from people in my own community and profession about making something usable and intuitive just makes me upset. I can't change the broken business people - I can try to make my corner of the world better.

<comment><USER5> Interesting that you compare "a lot of programmers" to "good business people." It is no surprise that the programmers fare poorly in comparison. What do you have to say about Good Programmers? Or A Lot of Business People?

May I attempt to find common ground between our points of view by suggesting that 90% of programmers have this attitude? And that by the same token, 90% of business people are busy demanding flash web site intros and banners that SCREAM without doing the A/B testing or other quantified analysis to know whether they are generating higher conversions?

But your last statement is absolutely spot on: making what we do better is what matters most. Upmod gladly given.

<comment><USER6> Well, the larger HN community seemed to not take kindly to my comment, which seems odd in and of itself.

Regardless, I concur with you - I can't speak to business people directly as it's not my particular domain, but yes - I've seen the same behavior that you have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You know Zed - this was a really good read. There's not much I can personally disagree with here, especially your final point (which I won't give away so people will _read_ it).

Very well written; and some great advice. I much prefer this to ranty-zed :)

<comment><USER7> I was thinking the same thing, "Well reasoned with 75% less hyperbolic rant". Good stuff Zed, keep it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Colophon:

The Long Beards, (Latin _Langobardi_ , later "Lombards") were a tribe of Germanic "barbarians" who settled in Northern Italy in the late 500s AD. They were primarily responsible for thwarting the Byzantine Emperor Justinian's campaign to reconquer Italy and re-establish the Western Empire.

<http://historyofscience.com/G2I/timeline/images/alboin.jpg>

Today Lombardy is the most populous of Italy's 20 regions and Milan, the capital, is Italy's leading financial center.

<comment><USER9> That's interesting; I didn't know the origin of "Lombard". Justinian's attempt to conquer Italy was one of the bloodiest periods of European history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another word for programmers who "make products for people who make products" are systems programmers.

I'm sure Apple values systems programmers. And Google. And Oracle (at least they certainly should). Microsoft could not possibly build their products without systems programmers. Amazon could not have created its cloud products without systems programmers.

In Apple's case, their products would be impossible without the capabilities that the systems people build. Without an operating system that they could strip down and fit on a phone, while keeping much of its core functionality, no iPhone. Likewise if they didn't have the technology underlying Safari under their control.

Much of the eye candy that wowed people in Mac OS X came as a thin layer on top of the technology built by systems programmers. Like the graphics APIs underlying Expose. And the fast, system wide indexing behind Spotlight.

So, if you want to be appreciated as someone who "makes products for people who make products," work for a software company that makes products requiring innovation in systems software.

</comment><comment> cool-RR I agree with many of the things said in the article.

I'm so annoyed with people who make open source projects that _don't_ comply to the principles that Zed listed. (Clear code, documentation, easy to get started, reasonable defaults, support, etc.) It happens so often that I interact with such OSS projects and it's so hard to work with them.

I feel bad for all the honest effort that these people put into the core parts of their OSS projects, without realizing that if they concentrated a bit more on the things that Zed mentioned, their project would become so much easier and fun to work with, and they'd have a bigger healthier community around it.

<Sociopathic rant> Sometimes when I see one of these projects, (let's call it, as an example, project FooBar and say that it converts between image formats,) I fantasize about forking the project, fixing up all the documentation to be good, make a good UI, give installers, make a nice logo, etc. Then rename it, sell it as a commercial project and become a millionaire, without crediting the authors of FooBar. Then I will drive in my fancy car to visit the core developers, and I will show them a wad of $100 notes and tell them: " _You see this?_ This could have been yours. This could have been yours _if only you documented your freaking code_. You worked so hard on this code, and if you would have only taken care of the things around it, like documentation and binaries and design and UX, you could have made a lot of money. But you didn't. You suck." Then maybe for their next project they'll write freaking documetation. </Sociopathic rant>

<comment><USER11> Sounds like an xkcd comic involving the guy with the hat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "let's say you can pull this off and you have permission to really make the UI sexy. Alright, where's your designer? In every mega-corp and government agency I've worked for there has never been a staff designer of any kind."

Amen to that. I'm working on a project to boost a new product line for my megacorp that competes against the established leader. So I asked to really boost the UI. And it was approved, provided of course, I made it myself :( . All my pleas for a designer were unheard or shrugged off.

With some help from the Internet, I've come up with a design that doesn't suck, but it's still a far cry from what a designer would have done in a tenth of the time (in effect, they hired me as a crappy designer and spent far too much of my time aka their money, but they don't see it that way)

</comment><comment><USER13> Excellent read. I found myself relating this to the division between hacker types and the MBA types. I think the comparison is close as sometimes the product people are the MBA people.

As a hacker, I enjoy having large blocks of time to create what I think is good and not coding some autocratic vision of a product. As I've grown older though, I have come to appreciate and value the interaction between MBA types and myself. In one particular project an MBA type brought me valuable information about what we were doing well, how we compared against competitors, and what he thought our customers wanted. He then told me to run with it and stepped out of the way. I thought that was pretty neat.

Another thought - A quote from the article:

"A sudden rise in Long Beards simply copying Product People Products but doing it cheaper using their cost reducing backend skills."

reminded of the Paul Graham essay "Copy What You Like"

<http://paulgraham.com/copy.html>

... and copying something you like is probably a good way to bridge the gap between back end "long beard" and product designer.

<comment><USER10> "I think the comparison is close as sometimes the product people are the MBA people."

One of the founding principles of Y Combinator is to make the Hackers the product people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's what I do to plan my code based on user experience. I use Free Mind <http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page> and write in the middle of the home node "Things A User Can Do"

I end up with things like "arrive at site", "create objectX", "view & edit objectY" as the next level nodes and keep going down levels from there. Since a mind map is a tree structure, it really helps to visually map out decisions a user will make. Following a branch is the user making a decision of what to spend their limited attention on. If you are improperly the distributing number of decisions a user must juggle at a particular node or repeating a lot of functionality in different areas, you will instantly visually see it.

Then when you start translating to code, if it's M-V-C architecture like most webapps, the first order nodes are the names of your controller functions.

What methodologies do other people use?

</comment><comment><USER15> Just one point on Cooper and the Inmates book... it was written 11 years ago. Cooper being a vaguely smart guy has learned stuff since then and has quite a different view on the way development and ux folk fit together now.

Folks interested in a look into his more current thinking might want to take a look at his keynote for Agile 2008 [http://www.cooper.com/journal/2008/08/alans_keynote_at_agile...](http://www.cooper.com/journal/2008/08/alans_keynote_at_agile_2008.html), and his keynote at Interaction 08 <http://interaction08.ixda.org/Alan_Cooper.php>.

And from his involvement in things like the [http://www.andersramsay.com/2010/02/04/notes-from-the- agile-...](http://www.andersramsay.com/2010/02/04/notes-from-the-agile-ux- retreat-at-cooper) things are moving on from there too.

There's a large chunk of the UX community that's moving away from the developers-as-enemy attitude. And vice versa for the developer community I hope :-)

</comment><comment><USER16> In my opinion usability requires a lot of grunt work. You have to craft error messages for any and all user input. You have to degrade gracefully if the user's interface (no JS, IE6, small screen on a phone, etc) doesn't meet the ideals for which you've designed the interface. Usable is much more work than functional.

Most programmers are aware of that, and are willing to put the time and effort in to making what's required. But often the product people, besides deciding what things should look like overall, are also in control of the budget and schedule, and they expect all those kinds of things to just magically appear.

</comment><comment><USER9> Couldn't agree more about how a poorly designed backend can increase costs, however pretty and well-designed the frontend is.

We have a situation at work just like this: the inherited backend code is dreadful, full of WTFs due to poor implementation, lack of knowledge and lack of planning and design. It's eating away our profit margins. New features and customization take far longer than they should, and time estimates are impossible. Bugs, from simple UI stuff to server issues, are numerous and end up adding to customer support costs, not to mention reputation.

Do the management understand this ? Nope, they just consider these costs to be the normal cost of doing business in this sector. We have pleaded time and again to rewrite and refactor the code, but never given the time or leeway because the sales team want the latest shiny feature to sell to the client.

The irony is that we have a healthy and growing user base and top-rank clients. An outside competitor (of which the developers are aware, but about which the management are oblivious) are about to eat our lunch because they can simply execute better and faster.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think his "longbeards" actually do quite well on iOS where it says "Do X just SO" and you get a pretty decent design if you just follow the 1-2-3s

<comment><USER6> I don't know - they probably do, god knows it allows me to make something that doesn't look like a series of cat turds, but formulaic designs don't last long term. You need something which really differentiates you from the pack.

<comment><USER17> I think it could be argued that formulaic design/experience HELPS long term, if you have some functionality that the user needs. If your app looks/acts/feels like the rest of the OS or environment, the user will (in theory) learn it faster and use it more fluently.

A 'revolutionary' design may be awesome, and may increase the productivity or ease of use of your specific application, while causing some serious friction between your app and it's environment in the users mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ryan-allen It's very refreshing to see someone write about their ideas and at the same time, demonstrate them with a real product. It's more than most people do when they proclaim things like what he has in his essay. Zed is someone worth listening to.

</comment><comment><USER18> Steve Jobs on design: "It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works"

This applies just as much to infrastructure as it does to anything customer- facing. To a non-programmer, for example, sendmail, nginx, and mongrel2 may all look like user-hostile crap. To a developer or administrator, it's easier to discern the differences in the design of this part, which is itself a major part of the usability of a webserver.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have been a "product person" for 15 years and I believe that product people like Michael describes are bad product people. A good product manager knows the UI and the guts behind it. I am not an engineer by training but I wouldn't be a good product manager in this field if I didn't know how to build a web server either. For the "Jeep Cherokee made from iron ore": I give up. ;-)

<comment><USER20> I want to believe, but I'm dubious.

I'm almost certain when he says he can "make a web server", he means that he can sit down with a text editor, a compiler, and a standard C library, and produce a program that will serve HTTP requests. There's some gray area beyond this, but he definitely does not mean that he can download, configure, and run a premade piece of software.

Is this what you mean too? Is there really a population of self-described "product people" who have this knowledge? Or did you interpret his statement differently? I certainly agree that such people exist, but I would be surprised that their luxurious gray beards don't blow their cover. Which is to say, do they really work as product managers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The comments here are very UI-centric, but what I found interesting was first the reminder to invest in fad-resistant skills (and don't forget, he drew a distinction between UI and hardcore design skills!).

And second the stuff about parsers in the section about making usable infrastructure software. Every time I peek at the mongrel2 source, there's one or two more Ragel files in there, some of them generating token streams to be consumed by a Lemon parser. I figured there was a good reason for that (although I shot a quizzical glance at the one that just parses "--a --b b" CLI args into key/value pairs). What I didn't realize was how much that's an integral tenet of his software design philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER22> You know there are entire disciplines dedicated to the study of usability and user experience. Zed seems shocked that someone would claim that programmers (who generally have no training or interest usability) aren't good at making usable products. It's about as controversial as saying that construction workers don't make good architects.

</comment><comment><USER23> Good to be reminded once in a while that code is written for people and not machines.

<comment><USER24> _English_ is written for people and not machines. Code needs to be written for both. It's too bad that coders often forget that someone is going to need to be able to read it later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> On a side note, Heroku's web site is really, really pretty.

<comment><USER26> Check out their documentation for the new Addon program: <http://addons.heroku.com/provider/>

Click some of the links at the bottom. It's so gorgeous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well Copper designed the first prototype of Visual Basic. I think that explains lots. When you combine Zed's argument that "Nope, because the tools they've given you are again controlled by some corporation with a certain design ideal. If it's Microsoft then the things you have to work with are Microsoft looking and feeling. "

How many unusable software products came about because of Visual Basic? I can rant and rant about Copper.

</comment><comment><USER28> I would kill for nicely designed API's for the things I work with.

Then maybe I can stop writing stupid shell script wrappers.

</comment><comment><USER29> Frontend - Backend = Profit

Awesome

</comment><comment><USER30> Great stuff. I think I'm developing a severe case of nerd crush on Zed.

The part about linguistic experience was especially good. I have thought for some time now that all configuration files, command-line options etc. should have simple and clearly defined syntax. Some already do. My dislike of weird, inconsistent and complex syntax (and semantics) is so severe that I've semi- intentionally not learnt shell-scripting, Perl or Ruby.

Sadly, there are very few systems that I feel I get a good linguistic experience(TM)(R) out of. I have come to think that GUIs as we know them are based on fundamentally flawed ideas - pointing and grunting - instead of using a language, the feature that separates humans from other animals.

I really wish good textual UIs (there aren't many that I know, but I'm using one for writing this comment: GNU/Emacs) became the norm, instead of the randomness of the contemporary GUIs or the bass-arckwardness of shell-like languages. I think UIs should aim to become Turing-complete, completely self- documenting and reflective. The distinction between a function, a program and an user interface is in my opinion mostly arbitrary and harmful, creating an unnecessary wall of misunderstandings between the author of a program and its users.

<comment><USER10> "I have come to think that GUIs as we know them are based on fundamentally flawed ideas - pointing and grunting - instead of using a language, the feature that separates humans from other animals."

The dilemma is that human language is staggeringly ambiguous. This works because human beings have an extremely sophisticated model of other human beings in their head and a really good pattern matching facility, which makes us really good at selecting the intended interpretation without even noticing the ambiguities. Presented with the languages we use to instruct computers, designed to be perfectly unambiguous, normal humans quickly get upset that the computer doesn't understand them if they veer the slightest bit from the tightrope of a language they're given to use.

In other words, if you have a computer that faithfully and consistently passes the Turing Test, you may have something. Otherwise, pointing and grunting might be less frustrating for normal people.

Another aside: pointing or at least gesturing is much better than even the perfect language interface for editing a photo or playing a video game. So it depends on the application.

<comment><USER31> One of the issues is that current UIs for computers have very little context information about whats on screen, which would make language based interaction much more convenient.

Also, editing a photo is a perfect example of where language interface _would_ be useful: instead of hunting through Photoshop's millions of menus for the graphic effect you want, you could just say/type things like:

      Scale to 200%
      Increase contrast 10%
      Resize to 400 by 600

I'm pretty sure that language based interaction for photo-editing would increase productivity by huge amounts.

The other thing is that we've somehow locked onto the idea that the computer should be able to understand everything immediately or else it's not even worth it. But in the real world human's constantly miscommunicate, and we solve that problem very simply: ask more questions. So if the user says something like:

      Adjust contrast by 10%

The computer could respond:

      Do you want to increase by 10% or decrease by 10%?

<comment><USER32> But then you need to know the magic words (scale as opposed to "make bigger" or "zoom" or some other combination). Point and click context menus try to fix this -- "oh, it's 'scale'"

<comment><USER31> Or you could just allow all of them. If they serve different functions in different situations, the program can just ask which function the user meant. The point is that rather than view the program as a slave that is expected to follow orders unflinchingly, the program can be viewed as something to be conversed with, and capable of asking questions of the user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Yet another blog post for the sake of a blog post.

Every educated software engineer know, that by respecting and following a fundamental programming methodologies, such as data-abstraction, modularity, encapsulation of details, and other basic techniques for managing the complexity of large systems, you will get maintainability and programmer- friendliness for free.

The problem is - most of in-house back-end developers and their public teachers doesn't have a even a basic engineering education.

People who have managed to understand the ideas on which the SICP book is based upon, let alone MIT graduates, never write such long but empty posts.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's one thing for a random comment, but to see it on an actual, real live blog post by the likes of Zed is irritating.

"couldn't care less", please. How can you be hackers if you can't get some basic logic right?

</comment><comment><USER35> If there were Zed Shaw fanboys I would be one.

</comment><comment><USER36> Looks like Zed got some different Cooper's book than I did. Or misread it completely. "Inmates are running the asylum" was one of the most useful books I ever read, it completely changed my attitude. It's not "don't let programmers to do interfaces", it is "build interfaces for intended users and intended usage". If Zed thinks that Cooper's book is idiotic then he is just unable to get what it's all about (like many other nerds — and that explains why open-source is good for servers and sucks in UI department). I hope he sticks to building awesome web servers nobody needs.

<comment><USER37> I don't know what book _you_ read but the title alone, "The Inmates Are Running The Asylum" is offensive since it implies _I'm_ the inmate. But take this quote just from the product description at Amazon:

"The Inmates are Running the Asylum argues that, despite appearances, business executives are simply not the ones in control of the high-tech industry. They have inadvertently put programmers and engineers in charge, leading to products and processes that waste money, squander customer loyalty, and erode competitive advantage. Business executives have let the inmates run the asylum!"

Don't get much clearer than that, but let's talk about the damage the book caused. For a book that purports to try to improve things for humans it sure caused a ton of damage to humans. It was lacking in almost any real substance and was effectively a thinly disguised rant about coders. It was used to fire programmers, boost fake ass business guys, and created the plague of crappily implemented products that may look slick, but fail in horrible ways.

In my own personal experience with the book I have had _numerous_ executives and biz people toss it on my desk and say they read it and they agree. I've had friends fired or demoted because of this book. It also spawned whole generations of "UX consultants" who fleeced people using the phrasing and words in the book. I personally had to deal with consultant after consultant who would come in, looked at the best we could do, and then insult us. And any time a programmer tried to show who was really in charge and to blame, out came this damn book to prove us wrong.

I could go on, but no matter what little snippets of text you remember, the impact of the book the way _I_ remember it is one of negativity toward a group of people who were not to blame: programmers.

<comment><USER38> Then it sounds like you've known some asshole executives and consultants that have completely misread this book.

Cooper's point was that, sans any other guidance, programmers naturally tend to create interfaces that reflect the structure of the code (since that is what they are immersed in) rather than the structure of their user's goals. And the reason they don't have any other guidance is that people running technology companies didn't have _any_ kind of design phase other than sending salesmen out to get pointless checklists of features.

If anything, the book is a criticism of the way tech companies are (or at least used to be) run rather than a criticism of diligent programmers doing their best with incomplete information. In fact Cooper says this several times during the book. Unfortunately, it seems easier for a lot of business guys to use the book to transfer blame to programmers rather than implement what it actually says.

Really bad Amazon summary too.</comment></comment></comment>


The Battle for the Future of Stonehenge - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/08/the-battle-for-the-future-of-stonehenge <comment><USER2> Typical planners nightmare: they all know a better tunnel would work, but nobody has the balls to propose asking for the money and beurocracy demands the people who could make it happen, won't make it happen.

It's at _best_ a political football. At worst, a victim of progress.

(spent time here as a kid in the sixties)

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Simply widening it is unthinkable: the Stonehenge heritage site is a > precious prehistoric landscape._

Looking at it on Google Maps, it seems the south of the road is just fields. It's unclear why the road can't be widened and a tunnel would be needed.

[https://www.google.fr/maps/place/51°10'38.8"N+1°49'33.4"W/@5...](https://www.google.fr/maps/place/51°10'38.8"N+1°49'33.4"email@example.com,-1.8281397,549m/)

<comment><USER4> It is a very sensitive area for conservationists and historians. Pretty well guarantee that if they started to dig a hole to build a new road they would find something of interest that would delay the build and make the cost sky rocket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how long Carhenge will last?[0] Probably not very long, I guess. Rust.

0) [http://carhenge.com/wp-content/gallery/carhenge-1/FOC_bw- pic...](http://carhenge.com/wp-content/gallery/carhenge-1/FOC_bw-pic.jpg)

<comment><USER6> Concretehenge should last I think: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryhill_Stonehenge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryhill_Stonehenge)

<comment><USER7> What about Achill-henge? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achill- henge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achill-henge)

:D

<comment><USER5> That went up in one weekend! Using stock concrete slabs, I guess. Maybe the sort they use for bridges, given their size and shape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The funniest thing about Stonehenge is the obsession that it was all about some type of religion. Read any BBC article on Stonehenge for an example of this or watch any BBC documentary.

It is the default myth where all specifics can be imagined or presented earnestly in a learned TV programme. Many assumptions go into this including the idea that our ancestors needed some convoluted religion instead of some connection with the world around them. Anyone can project their fictional quasi-religion onto what our obviously ill educated ancestors thought, it is so easy, like a mirror.

I wonder if in 5000 years time there will be people making similar observations regarding airports and placing their own idea of what our primitive religion must have been to have created these things, making connections regarding the orientation of the runways and some variant of the Mayan calendar.

Stonehenge is a gift that keeps on giving for the industry that surrounds it. People that are involved on this gravy train are up there with firemen and nurses in that their work is so much more worthy than that of your typical office admin worker or shop assistant.

I mean, who wouldn't want to protect England's most treasured monument?

Meanwhile the more interesting history of England does require some intellectual curiosity rather than idle thoughts about embellished mystery. Stonehenge invites tourists in to engage with some mystical bullshit. Who cares that there are many, many other vintage monuments and stone circles in South West England, there for anyone with a proper Ordnance Survey map and walking boots to discover and enjoy. The thing is that Stonehenge creates a spectacle, other neolithic stone circles are just that, some stones in a circle and can be seen as that without having to go into some quasi-religious awe.

Also quite useful for this awe and wonder is that most things from pre-history was made from bio-degradable materials. Our ancestors could have had the most amazingly crafted houses with furniture made from willow but we would never know they just louched about on comfy willow couches as all that remains are a few things like Stonehenge, meaning that BBC TV programmes insist that everything was all about some mystery religion.

<comment><USER9> My mom bought a shadow box filled with coffee beans a tiny grinder, miniature mugs and other scaled down coffee accessories. The word "Coffee" was written prominently in 3 dimensional letters.

She doesn't even particularly like coffee. She just bought it to cover up her old landline phone jack on the kitchen wall, but I keep telling her it looks like she built a coffee shrine.

I'm certain that if archeologists found it 5,000 years in the future, they'd construct elaborate stories about our daily devotions to the deity we called _Coffee_.

<comment><USER10> Wait until future civilizations start digging up Startbucks's

<comment><USER11> Or tanning salons. Future generations will be horrified people cooked themselves and willingly gave themselves cancer in the name of "beauty."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1.7 Billion ... for a couple miles of tunnel? Through/under green fields? That is an insane amount of money.

Put down some gravel and pave a road. Any artifacts will be safer under the road than if dug up for a tunnel. If you dont want to see the road, box it in above ground. Plant hedges around it. Dont rip up history just because you dont want to spoil someone's view.

<comment><USER13> There already is a road there. That's the whole point. It's one of the busiest in SW England and it is only ~200m away from the monument. The whole area (I.e. the "view") is a protected historic landscape and it is blighted by the road. The plan is expensive because it is a bored tunnel. It is where the entrances of the tunnel are that is controversial - the middle of the tunnel will be deeper than the archaeology.

<comment><USER4> On a weekend just have to avoid the road there. Yes it is busy but what makes it so awful is everyone slowing down to 20mph so they can gawk at it. Then there is the inevitable shunts as someone forgets to brake in a line of traffic. Personally I would plant a hedge to shield view from the road. This in itself will make traffic flow better. Of course hedge will just not fit in with the Salisbury plain landscape. Stonehenge was put there originally for its long views of the horizon and the sun rising/setting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So the government allocated £1.7B for tunnels. While I don't know how much of that is for that actual tunnel construction, it seems quite excessive given the landscape. It's not London where tunnelling anywhere runs the risk of encountering other tunnels/infrastructure/WW2 bombs/etc.

Makes me wonder what Elon Musk would charge?

<comment> m-i-l Original article says it is £1.7bn for just under 2 miles of tunnel. For comparison, the new Crossrail is £15.4bn for 73 miles including 13 miles of twin tunnels under central London[0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail)

<comment><USER15> That's rather disingenuous, the tunnelling contracts for Crossrail's 42km of tunnels came to £1.5b in 2011, or £1.8b today - £40m per km.

The tunnelling was 10% of the total cost of the project.

Stonehenge requires 6km of tunnels, which would be £250m at crossrail rates, if that was also 10% of the total cost that would be a £2.5b project

The tunnels aren't comparable either -- each bore of crossrail is 7.1m, I believe the ones needed for the road tunnels would be larger than that, but on the other hand crossrail project included electrification of the GWR to Reading and resignalling.

<comment> m-i-l Crossrail is also Europe's largest construction project - some of the numbers are incredible, e.g. "Over 3 million tonnes of excavated material from the tunnels was shipped to Wallasea Island in Essex to create a new 1,500 acre RSPB nature reserve"[0]. It also required spending £1bn[1] buying up and demolishing large areas of prime real estate in one of the most densely populated and expensive places in Europe to create 10 brand new stations. Not to mention that "100 archaeologists have found tens of thousands of items from 40 sites, spanning 55 million years"[2]. So the fact that it is more than 10% of the cost of this for a short tunnel under open fields in a sparsely populated area for relatively few people and providing no major new public transport hubs is I think all the more surprising.

[0] [http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/crossrail-in- numbers](http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/crossrail-in-numbers)

[1] [https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/gla_migrate_fi...](https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/gla_migrate_files_destination/Crossrail-2010.pdf)

[2] [https://archaeology.crossrail.co.uk/about-tunnel-the- archaeo...](https://archaeology.crossrail.co.uk/about-tunnel-the-archaeology- of-crossrail/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Samy Kamkar: PoisonTap – exploiting locked computers over USB - <AUTHOR> https://samy.pl/poisontap/ <comment> grey-area Very clever. Apparently by default, Windows, OS X and Linux recognize an ethernet device, load it as a network device and perform a DHCP request, even when the machine is locked or password protected. Ouch.

</comment><comment><USER2> Samy is basically a modern day magician. I'd recommend watching most every blog post and video of his.

His youtube channel:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/s4myk](https://www.youtube.com/user/s4myk)</comment>


Are chatbots living up to the hype? - <AUTHOR> With all the hype towards chatbots, I still haven't come across a chatbot I can say was really useful to me or was really fun to use.
PS: I don't consider the "type 1 for x, type 2 for
y" bots as conversational bots
Have you come across any truly conversational chatbots that you really enjoyed engaging with?
What was your experience like?
Discussion on twitter: https://twitter.com/codezed_/status/1302564268240297984 <comment><USER2> They are a good example of the underlining scams in IT and the delusions of the programmers within.

No, they all are fake. Have never existed, will never exist.

People love them because a good chatbot that can tell us which washing machine to buy, means we have general AI!

Which everyone wants. Of course once we have general AI we won't want chatbots, we only ever wanted chatbots for their AI.

Great to demo and excite people to get money out of them though.

<comment><AUTHOR> ouch.</comment></comment>


Success of Y Combinator startups? - <AUTHOR>

Is there a review of all the ycombinator startups somewhere?<p>I think I have seen such data before, at least about how many of them were still businesses out of the total number of funded companies.<p>(Btw is it Firefox or Hacker news that is correcting spelling?) <comment><USER2> Of 80 we funded prior to the current cycle, 55 are still operating, 6 were acquired, and 1 merged with another YC-funded startup, meaning 18 have died. I don't know details of all the live ones' revenues.

There are 22 in the summer cycle, so the total funded is 102, representing roughly 250 founders.

<comment><USER3> So if they continue being acquired and dying at the same rate a YC startup has a 24-28% chance of acquisition (depending whether you count the merged startup as an acquisition or a death).

<comment><USER2> It should be higher, because deaths tend to happen faster than acquisitions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check the following out: <http://rankedindex.com/yc>

[http://sam.bluwiki.com/blog/2007/04/y-combinators- portfolio....](http://sam.bluwiki.com/blog/2007/04/y-combinators- portfolio.html)

<comment><USER2> Rankedindex would be pretty handy if it sorted numeric columns by their numeric rather than ascii value. 900 < 8000

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not Hacker News correcting spelling, and Firefox obviously did a poor job.

What do you mean by "review"? TechCrunch "reviews" many of the YCombinator funded startups when they first launch, so you could search there. I remember seeing a large list of the companies and their "status" (e.g. acquired, funded, etc). However, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator> is the only list I can find at the moment which isn't very comprehensive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where did I misspell?

Anyway I ment measuring the success. How many are actually making money(I mena not just having revenue but revenue > expenses).

<comment><USER6> "Success"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a list here: <http://ycombinator.com/faq.html></comment>


Show HN: How much does my Facebook/Netflix time cost? - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/how-much-does-my-facebook/gbaikgaciacbfbpoagdpbcbapioboodj?hl=en-GB&fbclid=IwAR0KvwVa7_TyA_V9wdmq0wKNizzs0svsg3Tc76F6ZMZZlQHnpW1asgUj4S8 <comment><AUTHOR> It is actually a continuation of this thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21613364#21614731](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21613364#21614731)

I have started doing this app last Friday and it's driven by the community feedback.

</comment><comment><USER2> Neat idea, I like how your ad-space makes a lot of sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :-)

<comment><USER2> Out of curiosity, have you thought of putting an affiliate link there to monetize? Are there plans for extensions for other browsers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it all would depend on traffic level. And for that, I first need to learn how to get media coverage.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Honest summary of nutritional advice out there - <AUTHOR> https://www.soroushjp.com/2019/03/30/honest-summary-of-nutritional-advice-out-there/ <comment><USER2> But it's not honest is it?

It's a poor attempt at justifying meat and dairy diet by saying that organic food may or may not be better for you.

If you cannot make a conclusion, how is this an honest summary?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi skilled, author here.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly. I don't think I'm advocating for a "meat and dairy" diet -- actually those were on the very lowest quantity end of my recommended food groups, and that's if you'd personally like to include it at all (plant-based whole food diet is fine too, IMO).

Regarding organic food, I left it in the bonus section with a couple of high quality references so that people can make up their own mind. I gave my personal decision but don't advocate for it for others -- there's not a strong medical consensus on the subject and I think it comes down to some personal views.

<comment><USER2> Hey Soroush,

Thanks for replying. I am pretty sure I was having a bit of a slow morning and didn't think my initial reply through.

I do agree with you on all points about eating real food. I think it's crazy how most stores and supermarkets consist of 99% dead food and 1% organic. I think it's crazy that you have to look for the organic/natural section in the store opposed to it being the first choice.

Nevertheless, I do not agree with using science to depict the topic of fruit vs meat or X vs meat. As someone with firsthand experience (5 years vegetarian and 1 vegan), there is absolutely no need for dairy, meat, or other animal products to live an extremely healthy life.

In fact, an organic lifestyle is not even in the same bracket as animal produce. Most stuff we buy in stores today - meat, etc. - is extremely mass- produced with a ton of hormonal injections for faster growth and production.

If anyone can justify that then they need serious help because it's not normal.

Grass fed? Perhaps, but the conditions would need to be just right. Elk hunting and such I can agree with to a degree; as long as overpopulation is an actual thing.

Of course, I love latte and cereal, so hell, I guess that makes me a hypocrite. But perhaps I am just that passionate, without all the science bullshit shoved down peoples' throats.

<comment><USER3> Organic is a separate category and doesn't just mean fruits and vegetables, you can have organic meat as well. Also its not as easy for fruit and veg to say organic is always better, look at the 'dirty dozen' lists and there are more important things, like leafy greens to buy organic, vs something like avocado which has a thick skin so is generally less harmful to buy non-organic to the consumer, especially because most people are not rich, the issue gets more complex.

I thought the author did a nice succinct oversight, most people don't want to read books on the subject, or they would read book on the subject. According to my diet Meat and Animal products are some of the most health-promoting foods, but the quality of the environment they were raised matters quite a bit.

With most Americans it becomes more an issue of we have forgotten how to cook our own food from base high-quality ingredients, or lack the time to do it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


One Page For Life - Nice and easy way to share your social links via a QR Code - <AUTHOR> http://1p4l.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> It has been made by a friend and since he hasn't posted it on HN yet... here it goes!

I personally found it really useful to avoid sending tons of links to direct people to my social profiles. (Linkedin, Github, etc.)

Next step would be to print the QR code on a physical business card :)</comment>


"target=_blank" is not only bad practice, but could be harmful - <AUTHOR> https://mathiasbynens.github.io/rel-noopener/ <comment><USER2> Can someone please explain why window.opener is set and modifiable when a user clicks on such a link? It seems inappropriate to me and I really don't see a compelling case for not changing this behavior and adding yet more cruft to HTML (ref="noopener") that'll slowly become the "secure default". This is particularly irritating: [https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg- archive/2...](https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg- archive/2015Jan/0008.html)

<comment><USER3> Likely the same reason a lot of things are iffy on the web: backwards compatibility. You've got large organizations that built line-of-business apps in the early 2000s; they've since laid off the entire development staff but the application continues to run.

Now a new version of Chrome comes out and the app doesn't work because the behaviour of window.opener has changed. What to do? Well, you can version lock to the newest version of Chrome that doesn't exhibit this behaviour (probably via an Active Directory Group Policy), or you can require users to use IE or Firefox instead of Chrome. Re-build the web app instead? That's pretty expensive and isn't on the roadmap until Q4 2017, but due to budgetary pressure may not happen until Q3 2018.

<comment><USER2> > _Likely the same reason a lot of things are iffy on the web: backwards > compatibility. You 've got large organizations_

These large organizations, affected by purely hypothetical problems (nobody bothered to check for any real issues, or release a developer version of a fix), are a clear minority compared to the entities affected by the security problem that needs fixing. If that's how all the cruft gets added to HTML by a few people from 2-3 browser vendors, it's no wonder that it looks like it does and increasingly frustrates web developers to the point of resignation.

<comment><USER3> For the record, I'm one of the web developers that resigned. Not from a large company, but from a small consulting company. I'm back in embedded land, and I'm way happier for it. Sure, the vendor-provided code is often shit, but it can be rewritten if necessary.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Custom Infographic Resume after failed startup - <AUTHOR> http://adamtreister.com/

<comment><USER2> That is certainly innovative. It would get you noticed for sure, especially for positions that require presentation skills/communication/sales/publicity.

I didn't quite understand the woman logo in your interests section and I wonder if that should be taken out in a professional context.</comment>


Open Source, Tech, and Tribalism - <AUTHOR> http://brandonhays.com/blog/2014/10/19/open-source-tech-and-tribalism/

<comment><USER2> Amazing article. A must read for anyone in the programming industry.</comment>


Tim Cook says Facebook should have regulated itself, but it's too late now - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2018/3/28/17172212/apple-facebook-revolution-tim-cook-interview-privacy-data-mark-zuckerberg <comment><AUTHOR> Swisher posed a question for Cook: What would he do if he were Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg? His answer: "I wouldn't be in this situation."

You are a savage, Tim, and I mean that in the most flattering possible way.

<comment><USER2> I know right! That had me smirk uncontrollably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Earlier discussion (over 30 comments): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16700403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16700403)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you find a cofounder for your project? - <AUTHOR> I am launching a project and I am finding a cofounder. I've seen several pages like www.waxidea.com to find someone. Do you think they are a good way to find someone? www.waxidea.com <comment><USER2> Which kind of co-founder are you looking for?

<comment><AUTHOR> I need an expert in marketing to complete my team.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Webapp like CodeSignal.com or leetcode.com. how to implement a compiler? - <AUTHOR> Hello all,
Maybe one or the other can give me a hint.
My goal is to create a Webapplication like codesignal or leetcode for my final project of a 3months-coding-bootcamp.
I want to code it with Java, Spring boot, html, css and Javascript.
A Admin of this page should be able to upload problems/cases with test-cases.
A user should be able to write his code in a given method and once he submitted, the test cases should run his code.
But i am struggling how to approach it. Like how can i implement a compiler in this construct?
Thank you very much in advance. <comment><USER2> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVa5xpGHhrM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVa5xpGHhrM)</comment>


OnePlus Admits It Was Snooping on OxygenOS Users, Says It Will Tweak Program - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/oneplus-admits-it-was-snooping-on-oxygenos-users-says-1819487335 <comment><USER2> I know there's alternative ROMs such as LineageOS, but I wish it was possible to install Android directly from Google. Like, you download an app from the Play Store, it scans your hardware and download a fresh Android build from Google compatible with your device and your done.

Not really doable, but I wish it was.

<comment><AUTHOR> This might be in the realm of possibility with the new HAL (Project Treble) they introduced in the latest Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a OnePlus user, what can I do about this? Is there a well supported third party ROM (?) I can use?

<comment><USER4> pm uninstall -k --user 0 net.oneplus.odm

<comment><USER5> This is what I did on mine, I haven't confirmed that it is no longer sending anything to oneplus but it did remove the package.

To clarify:

* Make sure adb is installed ([https://www.xda-developers.com/install-adb-windows-macos-lin...](https://www.xda-developers.com/install-adb-windows-macos-linux/))

* Run "adb shell" (you should see a prompt that says OnePlus)

* Run "pm uninstall -k --user 0 net.oneplus.odm" (you should see "Success")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Was/Is OnePlus 3T also affected? (asking for a friend)

<comment><USER7> According to the Reddit post some weeks ago, yes.

<comment><USER6> Do you have a link to this reddit post/thread? (asking for the same friend)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I (wrongly ?) assumed every Android phones did this

<comment><USER9> Probably not. Seems this stuff is too easy and too tempting not to do.</comment></comment>


Xcode 4 - review - <AUTHOR> http://fireballed.org/linked/2011/03/09/xcode-pilkington/

<comment><USER2> Can anyone comment on the differences between this and the Xcode 4 GM Seed 2 that I've been using for the past few weeks?

A bit of browsing led to noticing that the version reported on the welcome screen shown in the screenshots section of Xcode's App Store page is the same a the GM 2 version number.

Of course they could just be reusing screenshots but I'd love for somebody to check this.

 _Update:_ I noticed that the download page for Xcode 4 reports that it's version 4A304a, the same as the GM seed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh wow, this review seems to be THE review I've been seeking for weeks. Hope this time I could download the stupid 3GB faster...

</comment><comment><USER4> The one thing that Xcode 3 does better for me: My main monitor is in portrait orientation. A UI based on a single window with vertical panes doesn't really jive with that.

<comment><USER5> View -> Assistant Layout

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is nobody mentioning that Xcode 4 is not a free download? It's only free if you already paid $99 for the developer account. It's $5 for the rest of us.

Though $5 is not a huge amount, it's difficult for me to send that money to Apple. All I have is a debit card. Getting a credit card is impossible for Indian students. I'll have to call an "adult" (I hate that word) and convince them to let me use their credit card for an Xcode purchase.

On the other hand, The Pirate Bay has a free copy I can grab ...

<comment><USER7> It's even more disappointing for open source projects.

<comment><USER8> XCode 3 has been updated as well (3.2.6), it includes SDK 4.3 and it's free. You can use it for shipping new apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One annoyance he didn't really touch on, but that has driven me up the walls, is that [edit:thanks thought_alarm!!!!] double clicking a build error does not jump to the build results, which are now in a renamed "Logs" view.

Also, it is incredibly slow and crashes several times a day.

That said, the IB integration is amazing and the navigation between related files is so good that I am using it.

<comment><USER10> Hit Command+7 to view the "Log Navigator", and you'll get the familiar build log and results. You can configure XCode to automatically jump the Log Navigator when a build starts; see the "Behaviors" section in the Preferences.

The Log Navigator includes a history of all your builds, debug sessions, and commits, which is kind of neat.

You can also use Command+' and Command+" to navigate back and forth between build errors or "issues".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does this include the iOS 4.3 SDK? Or do I have to do another 3GB download in a couple of days if I download this now?

<comment><USER12> The only button I'm offered in the iOS Dev Center says:

> Xcode 4 and iOS SDK 4.3

<https://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/index.action>

<comment><USER3> Actually there's this _Looking for Xcode 3? Download_ button, right under the Xcode 4 button. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good review. Not sure if I should update before finishing the current iOS app I am working on...

<comment><USER10> You should keep XCode 3 around, regardless. Both versions can co-exist, so install XCode 4 into, say, /Developer4 instead of /Developer.

And when you open your project in XCode 4 it won't trash your XCode 3 project settings or prevent you from going back to XCode 3. However, any project settings you change in XCode 4 won't be visible in XCode 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why $5? Seems to be a bit random.

</comment><comment><USER15> Go to the conclusion, then go to the last paragraph of the conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER16> >I've always considered Xcode to be the nicest IDE to use in terms of user interface, though it wasn't exactly pretty. It's just the competition was so ugly and cluttered. I've often likened saying Xcode 3 was the prettiest IDE to saying that it was the nicest smelling dog crap. Xcode 4 however, genuinely is pretty. I love looking at it and admiring the amount of work that has gone into it. Apple has had some of the prettiest developer tools in terms of Interface Builder, Instruments, Quartz Composer etc for quite a while, but Xcode was dated. It now feels like the sort of user interface you'd expect from Apple.

Looking at the screenshots, I don't see how it's prettier than, say Visual Studio 2010. Maybe it's subjective? Xcode from the article:

[http://fireballed.org/linked/2011/03/09/xcode- pilkington/xco...](http://fireballed.org/linked/2011/03/09/xcode- pilkington/xcode4review%20findreplacepreview.png)

Visual Studio:

[http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/wordpress/wp- content/u...](http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2009/10/vs2010.jpg)

<comment><USER17> Not an entirely fair comparison, is it?

Here is the equivalent new project window in Xcode: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/new.png> (also: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/project.png>)

A shot of the main window: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/main.png>

<comment><USER18> Have you two seen the new project window in vim? It's far less cluttered.

<comment><USER17> I did not make any statements about the UI of Xcode, I merely pointed out that the comparison was unfair.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chinese concentration camp prisoners subjected to gang rape, medical experiments - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-xinjiang-uighur-muslim-detention-camps-xi-jinping-persecution-a9165896.html <comment><USER2> I always wondered how nazi germany must have been observed from the outside. I think it was somehow equal to todays china.

</comment><comment><USER3> this is just a summary of the article here [https://www.haaretz.com/world- news/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-milli...](https://www.haaretz.com/world- news/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-million-people-are-jailed-at-china-s-gulags-i- escaped-here-s-what-goes-on-inside-1.7994216) you might as well read the original article as this one adds no value.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is just sad

</comment><comment><USER5> Children are getting raped and dying in American migrant concentration camps. Women are getting disappeared.

<comment><USER6> In the US, the crimes are reported, investigated and the abusers are punished. The reports are then investigated by independent journalists, and publicly reviewed by congress. Although there are horrible abusers in both China and the US, the US appears to have transparency and be attempting to resolve the abuses. Does China have similar transparency and independent review?

Additionally, it doesn't appear that the US government is sanctioning the abuse or facilitating the coverup of said abuse. The article implies that the Chinese government is doing both.

Yes, the article is single sourced based upon one woman's testimony. Is it credible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Counterparts of concentration camps[1][2].

[1] [https://www.esquire.com/news- politics/a27813648/concentratio...](https://www.esquire.com/news- politics/a27813648/concentration-camps-southern-border-migrant-detention- facilities-trump/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans)

<comment><USER8> Did you actually read these and compare them to the original article? If you did, I doubt you'd be posting them.

<comment><USER7> Here is how the Chinese people were treated by America[1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I want to start a web company what books should I read? - <AUTHOR> What books helped you? <comment><USER2> The thing that helped us the most were Paul Graham's essays: <http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html>

My personal recommendations are: <http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html> <http://www.paulgraham.com/13sentences.html> <http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html> <http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html> <http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html>

I think these essays were both necessary and sufficient for making our start- up successful (in terms of reading, lol).

<comment><USER3> I'd recommend a lot more than those, and even made a summary for the best parts, which I pratically made my co-founders read (<http://bit.ly/b7R7nQ>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.custdev.com/> \- Learn how to do Customer Development, an essential component of the Lean Startup philosophy. Learn how to: Find prospects and how to approach them, Develop and iterate your "Minimal Viable Products" (MVPs), Segment markets, position products and when to pivot, Validate before scaling"

[http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/startup-lessons- learne...](http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/startup-lessons-learned- season-one-2008---2009/10286294) \- "Written by Eric Ries, one of BusinessWeek's Best Young Entrepreneurs of 2007, Startup Lessons Learned is a collection of 128 essays originally published at StartupLessonsLearned.com from 2008-2009. Each essay, or blog post, is unmodified and presented chronologically, rather then thematically, so that the reader can see ideas develop over time. Eric Ries provides actionable insight and advice on how to build successful products by listening to and learning from your customers. Startup Lessons Learned is a must-read for anyone trying to build a company in this new economy."

<http://www.startupbook.net/> \- "Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup"

</comment><comment><USER5> The E-Myth Revisited. It's not specifically web related, but it's a great book (with a cheesy pie shop metaphor) on how to start a business that is a system you own rather than a business that owns you.

Check out the Amazon reviews, they're telling: [http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth- Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abou...](http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited- Small-Businesses-About/dp/0887307280)

<comment><USER6> I read this book years ago and it still has a lasting impression. I agree that this is a fantastic and almost essential choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank - about finding product / market fit, customer development, how to manage the process. Peppered with interesting and entertaining anecdotes.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. But note that it's more like a textbook rather than an inspirational read. Don't expect to "finish" over a few bathroom breaks (unlike rework (which is great also (but more "easy"))).

If you search for Steve Blanks course notes, you can read the first 3 chapters for free. If you buy the book, it comes with handy dandy worksheets (as well as the rest of the book).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I cannot recommend enough "Founders at Work" by Jessica Livingston.

It is a series of interviews of the founders of companies like Apple, Paypal, etc about the very very early stages of their start-up before they ever knew they would be successful. It is a great book to read both for motivation and for lessons learned.

You can read some of it here: <http://www.foundersatwork.com/>

Good luck with your start-up!

<comment><USER10> The problem with the interviews is that those early days are colored by the fact that they were successful. It would be interesting (although impossible) to have interviews before they actually reached measurable success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://ycombinator.com/lib.html>

<comment><USER12> I've read through this list a couple of times. Always great stuff.

In case anyone wants all of these links in one pdf: [http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5081628/Y%20Combinator_%20Startup%20...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5081628/Y%20Combinator_%20Startup%20Library.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Four steps to the epiphany." (its about customer development). Many angel investors wont even invest in someone who hasn't read it - which is how I learned about it.

I went to business school and that book taught me more than 4 years of wasted time.

</comment><comment><USER14> In my opinion this is the best book out there I've read relevant to starting your own start up!

<http://www.startupbook.net/>

I've read quite a few and where some are in sightful / useful when scaled or when funded, this book is the best I've read for a typical software developer to have a successful start up business!

It is also written by a fellow HN'er Rob Walling - so you know it'll be full of great information! Check out his blog 'SoftwarebyRob' for a taster.

<http://www.softwarebyrob.com/>

<comment><USER14> While I'm at it. I'll tell you about some other's I have read.

\- Getting Real by 37 Signals <http://gettingreal.37signals.com/> \- Rework by 37 Signals <http://37signals.com/rework/>

These are great and really get your mind thinking about alternatives to what most people believe.

\- Sarah Lacy's Once your lucky, twice you're good. [http://www.amazon.com/Once-Youre-Lucky-Twice- Good/dp/1592403...](http://www.amazon.com/Once-Youre-Lucky-Twice- Good/dp/1592403824)

This isn't a technical book, but can really get you motivated to succeed reading the stories of previous successes! It also gives a bit of an insight into the internal workings of a start up in the early stages. It highlights networking as an important factor!

\- Start up success guide - [http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Success-Guide- Books-Profession...](http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Success-Guide-Books- Professionals/dp/1430219858/)

This book was quite good, but felt a bit dated in comparison to Rob Walling's 'Start up book'.

Finally 'Founders at work' is definitely worth a read. [http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups- Problem...](http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Problem- Solution/dp/1430210788/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> These won't necessarily teach you how to do it, but reading them definitely helped motivate me when things got slow. Hearing the experiences and successes of other startups/founders always gets me excited to get to work.

Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good - Sarah Lacy

Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston

The Facebook Effect - David Kirkpatrick

</comment><comment><USER16> Lean Startup 101: <https://www.socrated.com/courses/226>

</comment><comment><USER17> <http://37signals.com/rework/>

I really like this book. It helps put things into perspective, especially for smaller companies.

</comment><comment><USER18> \- Customers.com: How to Create a Profitable Business Strategy for the Internet and Beyond by Patricia B. Seybold. \- Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application by Jason Fried, Heinemeier David Hansson, Matthew Linderman.

These books top my list of MUST READ for web startup.

Customers.com is very useful if your web company is more service focused. It teaches you how to target the right customers, own the customers total experience, streamline business processes that impact the customer, provide a 360° view of the customer relationship, let customers help themselves, help customers do their jobs, deliver personalized service and foster community.

Getting Real is more for code monkey making their own stuffs. This one I hope for all my bosses to read it. :P

</comment><comment><USER19> Hey,

I created a list in Listiki [http://listiki.com/best-startup-books-to-read- before-startin...](http://listiki.com/best-startup-books-to-read-before- starting-your-company/) with most of these titles where they can be kept in one place and be voted upon and ranked.

Dimitris

</comment><comment><USER20> Free - Chris Anderson; 4 Steps to Epiphany; Founders at Work; Crossing the Chasm; Viral Loop; Groundswell; Loosing My Virginity - Richard Brandson; Good to Great - Collins; Entrepreneurs guide to Business Law;

</comment><comment><USER21> "Inbound Marketing, Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs" by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah takes you step by step through exactly what its title says.

<comment><USER22> ...and one of the authors reads HN, so that should count for something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Don't read too much before getting your feet wet.

If you must pick one, Getting Real is all what you need.

<http://gettingreal.37signals.com>

Quote: "Everyone can read a book. Everyone can come up with an idea. Everyone has a cousin that's a web designer. Everyone can write a blog. Everyone can hire someone to hack together some code.

The difference between you and everyone else will be how well you execute. Success is all about great execution."

</comment><comment><USER24> "The Web Startup Success Guide" by Bob Walsh is fantastic [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1430219858?tag=keysofgeni-2...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1430219858?tag=keysofgeni-20)

In case you don't know Bob, he's the guy behind the <http://www.47hats.com/> blog, which is a great resource for startups and MicroISV's. He also does The Startup Success Podcast.

</comment><comment><USER6> Getting Real by 37signals: <http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php>

</comment><comment><USER25> Questions about what to read have been asked and answered quite a bit on Reddit. You might find these reading lists worthwhile: [http://www.reddit.com/help/faqs/programming#Whatprogrammingb...](http://www.reddit.com/help/faqs/programming#Whatprogrammingblogsorwebsitesdoyouread)

</comment><comment><USER26> Up the Organization - [http://www.amazon.com/Up-Organization-Corporation- Stifling-S...](http://www.amazon.com/Up-Organization-Corporation-Stifling- Strangling/dp/0787987751/ref=pd_cp_b_1)

And outstanding book about running a business.

</comment><comment><USER27> <http://www.startupbook.net/>

</comment><comment><USER28> Agree on Four Steps and Getting Real, also check out:

Purple Cow and The Dip by Seth Godin The Long Tail and Free by Anderson

</comment><comment><USER29> <http://gettingreal.37signals.com/>

</comment><comment><USER30> I think you should just go out and do it instead of reading about it. Don't get into that rut.

<comment><USER31> +1 for just doing it. You won't get any of the stuff in these articles without context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Crossing the Chasm" - Geoffrey Moore (for company in general, can apply to web co)</comment>


Ask HN: The dawn of a new monetary system.. or just a hoax? - <AUTHOR>

http://www.recipco.com/
I came across this website while mistyping a research. Recipco aims to provide a new non-monetary trade system. And they seem to have quite a lot of resources and people behind this, from what James Fierro says in his last newsletter post from April 2012.
And here come they great big BUTs:
- Google search results for Recipco: 4,520 - Google News search results for Recipco: 0 - The website and their pitch seems like it was made in the early 2000s - Businessweek profile (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/board.asp?privcapId=7284104) All recipco board members who actually are from Recipco have 43 relationships, which is the number of board members. I usually don't go into pseudo-paranoid mode but I'll allow it just this once.
Call me crazy but such a disruptive idea which is said to have interacted with over 200 multinational corporations should at least come up in a few random newspapers. This is just from a quick research I did,I find the idea interesting but something seems out of place.
Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> For me, the website does a terrible job of intuitively explaining the proposition. Not sure I understand it entirely, but an exchange for under- utilized capacity is not a replacement for the current monetary system.</comment>


Yaxi, the Uber for Mexico, shows best practices for mobile app support - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hipmob.com/post/45774427653/a-case-study-yaxi-the-uber-for-mexico-shows-best

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone - Ayo from Hipmob here. We gave the team at Yaxi a little bit of help but they were up and running in a very short time and have seen a ridiculous amount of growth. Happy to connect anyone or answer any questions!</comment>


Five Books I want to Read in 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ediggs/five-books-i-want-to-read-in-2017-7765d05dd1da#.wnlkost38 <comment><USER2> I'm always skeptical of someone that reads self-help books like the Tools of Titans mentioned on this list. In my opinion, they seem to think all they needs is to if they find "one secret that billionaires don't want you you know".</comment>


Lock-Free Work Stealing, Part 3: Going Lock-Free - <AUTHOR> http://blog.molecular-matters.com/2015/09/25/job-system-2-0-lock-free-work-stealing-part-3-going-lock-free/ <comment><AUTHOR> The latest post in the series finally goes into details about the lock-free implementation of the work-stealing queue.</comment>


Meltdown and Spectre – Impact on Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://nodejs.org/en/blog/vulnerability/jan-2018-spectre-meltdown/ <comment><USER2> I found this pretty useless. The security impact for most things is "you're fine if you can guarantee you are only running trust code". We know that. TWhat I was hoping for were some sort of benchmarks.</comment>


Making Cities Fun Is The Best Stimulus - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/12/28/urban_playground/?page=full <comment><USER2> Seems to tie in with the idea that cities that attract 'creative' types are more successful.</comment>


Andreessen Horowitz Invests $80 Million in Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20110209/exclusive-andreessen-horowitz-invests-80-million-in-twitter/ <comment><USER3> Worth noting that Twitter isn't seeing any of that $80m, since it's on the secondary market (i.e. shares that have already been issued and paid for).

<comment><USER4> Yeah, they're investing in Twitter _stock_ , not Twitter itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > While an IPO is a possibility, so is an acquisition. Several months ago, > while it was doing its funding round, Twitter had incoming interest from > Facebook, which lobbed in a $5 billion soft offer, as well from Google.

Wait...what? FB offered $5B to buy Twitter? WTF! I guess that Goldman deal has gone to Zuck's head. That seems a bit crazy to me.

With FB revenues of just $1.2B - $2B, that offer was the equivalent of 2X - <USER2> revenues. I know that it was probably a stock and cash deal - but still. That's ridiculous, when you compare it to what FB is making. Sounds a bit exuberant if you asked me.

</comment><comment><USER6> I read that more and more VCs want the cachet of having invested in hot stocks like twitter, fb so that they can tell future investors about their portfolio and go raise the next round.

Not that there is anything wrong with that but we need to be more careful with the term 'invested in.'

 _Primary Investment_ versus just plain _Investment_ say when you and I buy GE on Ameritrade?</comment>


Jaw bone discovered in Ethiopia is oldest known human lineage remains - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/04/jaw-bone-discovery-in-ethiopia-is-oldest-ever-human-lineage-remains

<comment><USER2> It's worth remembering in these cases that the date of the earliest fossil find is only weakly related to the date of the earliest instance of the fossilized species: [http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1610](http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1610)

Sparsely sampled distributions will necessarily have tails that are not represented in the sampled data, and for early humans those tails could plausibly go back much, much further than the current record shows.

As such, we can expect that there will be a slow, steady stream of "surprising" early finds that push back hominid evolution to much longer ago than previously appreciated. The same is true of dinosaurs or any other species: the rarity of fossilization events is such that the probability of the earliest surviving fossil being particularly close to the emergence of the species is just not that high.

It would be interesting to do a serious analysis of the fossil discovery distribution to see if we can make a better estimate of the earliest emergence of hominids based on empirical estimates of fossilization and discovery probabilities.

<comment><USER3> How do you define an emergence of a species when these hominids are always in a state of constant change? Wouldn't this mean that there is no concrete way to determine if a fossil is from 'one side' or the 'beginning'(earliest point) of a species?

Might be slightly off-topic.

<comment><USER4> Well, this is an open question in evolutionary biology :)

One important thing to keep in mind is that species are hypotheses that can be tested, and the interpretations can vary from person to person and field to field. For example, many molecular geneticists will often discover new cryptic species on the basis of their DNA sequences, that a morphologist might not consider to be a true species. For fossils, of course, there almost always only morphological evidence for species.

The relative roles of anagenesis (change within a species) and cladogenesis (splitting event that creates two new species) in evolution is still being investigated, especially by paleontologists. One of many problems is that the fossil record is extremely incomplete, and so it's difficult to determine whether anagenesis or cladogenesis dominates. For me (as a non-paleontologist) my simplifying assumption about evolution is that anagenetic change doesn't occur, but again this is still an area of active research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Jaw bone fossil discovered in Ethiopia is oldest known human lineage remains

Trilobite fossils are older human lineage remains, or at least plenty of species we know led to mammals, if trilobites didn't descend to us.

The article specifies "... that belong to the genus Homo, the lineage that ultimately led to modern humans," which is probably what the headline meant.

</comment><comment><USER6> The fact that I read the title and immediately thought of a silly and mistyped headline for a piece about a wearable device means I should be reading less about technology.

</comment><comment><USER7> As I read the title I started thinking, what's "news" about Ethiopians having Jawbone Ups...</comment>


Powerset's Dilemma: Go For It, Or Sell - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/10/powersets-dilemma-go-for-it-or-sell/ <comment><USER2> The value of Powerset is not consumer facing.

Powerset could make a killing licensing it's search to large businesses who are swimming in data, especially pre-digital data. Applying a natural language program to these archives can associate relevant information and tie it to other piles of data. There's real (non ad-supported!) growth potential for Powerset as a B2B.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is a very transparent shill for Powerset. The company is clearly using an influential blogger to say they want to be bought, because it would look desperate if they did so themselves. They must not see any light at the end of the tunnel, because there is none.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sell.

<comment><USER5> Why?

<comment><USER4> Powerset has many signs of being doomed. Natural language search, based on "commercialized" research, taking a long time to launch, talking a lot before doing it.

<comment><USER6> I think it's sad that there are Powerset haters here, of all places. Especially from someone like you, Paul.

I can deal with the company I work for being slammed on techcrunch, because that's what techcrunch is for. But to see the people on news.ycomb start jumping on that bandwagon makes me sad. This is supposed to be the place where startups are explored and taken seriously.

Powerset is not a micro-social site with some added value like some of my previous projects. Making a new search engine is a massive undertaking. It took google several years, but no one seems to want to give any challengers a real chance.

<comment><USER7> Search could still be orders of magnitude better, and google seems worse and worse lately.

Console yourself with the thought that if PowerSet fixes this problem, you'll see a lot of haters become fanboys. Bear in mind, though, that the pre-bluster has historically been correlated with failure, not success, so people are skeptical. I've read about techniques that will cure cancer _so_ many times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Founders Fund is known for letting founders cash out, so that could be another option.

Powerset has many employees. If the deal goes through it'd be interesting to see if MSFT gets them all to move.

Either way I wish those guys luck. Their founder Barney Pell seems like a cool guy.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why sell? Why doesn't anyone have enough courage to try something big and take on the big boys? Google did it and why can't Powerset?

Come on, someone please COMPETE!

<comment><USER10> They would sell because their product has no demonstrable value at this point.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't that be the worst time to sell? Wouldn't you be able to negotiate a higher price with a product with demonstrable value?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > When I tested the service I had something very similar to the "Aha!" feeling > that ran through me the first time I ever used Google. In short, it is an > evolutionary, and possibly revolutionary, step forward in search

Google's search engine wasn't revolutionary either. It was only moderately better than AltaVista and others. Most of all the visual design was cleaner. Google's main accomplishment was imo the introduction of AdSense.

<comment><USER12> In the beginning, what was revolutionary about Google was the experience, not the search results. A lot of that has to do with visual design. But mostly, in Google's case, I think it has to do with the extreme focus they have on search.

<comment><USER13> I think it was a combination of:

* A better search algorithm than the competition

* Lack of paid-for search rankings, which were common-place previous to Google

* Tasteful, lightweight, fast design with a lack of intrusive banner ads

All 3 are largely taken for granted these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems that the only reason they would consider selling is that they are not confident enough in their product. If I felt that I was going to revolutionize search, I wouldn't sell out.

At the same time I am not in this situation so this may just be my idealism talking.

</comment><comment><USER15> i simply can't understand how powerset could sell for anything remotely close to $100 million. the rationale that Google would buy them to keep them away from MS, seems incredibly weak.

anyone care to enlighten me?

<comment><USER16> I'm guessing his assertion is rooted in his belief that Powerset is a remarkable service. In the comments, he says that if Powerset indexed/displayed information as good as they do already with wikipedia/freelance but for the entire web, he'd use it instead of Google. From that, he thinks that Powerset is going to be a huge player in the search industry, ultimately leading a revolution to Google's demise, which is why Google would want to take them in, instead of giving MS that edge.

Has anyone else seen a demo of Powerset? Did you indeed experience the same remarkable 'Aha!' moment as Arrington?

<comment><USER17> what he doesn't address (and perhaps wasn't briefed-on) is the rate at which they can crawl and process pages. i have to imagine that the per-page computational costs are fairly high. if that's true, then it might not be appropriate for anything other than restricted, well-bounded domains (which can still be a huge market, but not a google-sized market imho).

<comment><USER18> More importantly, Powerset is currently only indexing content that is actively checked for correctness--content which contains very little deliberately misleading information, duplicate content, or SPAM.

Do you remember when you could tag your content with keywords and the search engine would naively trust that those keywords were relevant? I think Powerset will _only_ excel in domains where that kind of trust makes sense--closed and/or heavily moderated communities.

<comment><USER6> Powerset deals with Spam the way every other search engine deals with spam. It's not like wikipedia is free of false information (every snapshot is a unique snowflake with some entertainingly wrong things, like that ReiserFS- kills-wife-chart).

Sometimes people have difficulty separating NLP from AI from an Arbiter of Truth. NLP is just understanding semantic information, it's not arbitrating truth/correctness (a.k.a 'you can't squeeze blood from a stone'-principle) nor is it some kind of HAL9000 that can take queries like, "9 people who have been CEOs and who have Christian names" and make sense of them.

In this regard of correctness/spam, Powerset and Google are in an equal starting position. If you search for "cures for cancer" or "causes of autism" on google you get some pretty factually incorrect results in the top 4.

In the case of Spam, check out what Google is forced to do with "hot-button" spam searches, like "Mesolithioma". Where did your standard search page go? :)

Hopefully when powerset has a public product people can play with it and see that really, what we're doing is an evolutionary step forward from keyword search, not some kind of boil-the-oceans-and-google-was-always-wrong-anyways approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is it just me, or do they seem to be trying to do what AskJeeves tried to do back in the day?</comment>


Lightbot: Puzzles Game Using Programming Logic - <AUTHOR> http://lightbot.com <comment><USER2> If you're interested in this type of games… Look at _any_ game from Zachtronics: [http://www.zachtronics.com/](http://www.zachtronics.com/) . Plus maybe Human Resources machines: [https://tomorrowcorporation.com/humanresourcemachine](https://tomorrowcorporation.com/humanresourcemachine)

<comment><USER3> Whoa - he's responsible for infiniminer? Considering Minecraft was built on top of it, I wonder how much credit he's been given...

Also, most of these games actually look like you could learn something from them, while having fun...

<comment><USER4> Minecraft wasn't built on top of infiniminer, it was inspired by it. The games are actually extremely different if you play them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Today's Google Doodle is relevant to this.

[https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2017/12/4/16733396/googles- doo...](https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2017/12/4/16733396/googles- doodle-50-years-kids-coding-december-4)

</comment><comment><USER6> Check out RoboZZle, which is more advanced (including eg call stack, enabling some fancy tricks): [http://robozzle.com/](http://robozzle.com/)

<comment><USER7> Seconded; robozzle offers more variety and bigger challenges.

<comment><USER8> Amen. There are some truly mind bending puzzles there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember playing it years ago, it's very well designed and even as a software developer, some of the later puzzles took a while to figure out.

...I think I'll play again.

</comment><comment><USER10> I got this game for my kids (6 and 7). They haven't quite got the concept yet, but I think they'll understand it soon. They can make the robot go straight no problem, but they still have problems figuring out when to put down the left and right tiles.

I also play the board game Robot Turtles with them. It's like a simpler version of Lightbot with physical tiles to move around. They do understand how Robot Turtles works, so Lightbot shouldn't be far behind.

</comment><comment><USER11> Similar to [https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/](https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/)

<comment><USER12> I wish that was available for Android/PC/Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The thinkfun series is also awesome - [http://www.thinkfun.com/learn- coding/](http://www.thinkfun.com/learn-coding/)

Appears related to lightbot, but it's closer to cellular automata - where the robot has a state that determines its next step. It's played using cards, which feels more fun strangely. My 10yr old loved it.

</comment><comment><USER14> The name and art seemed familiar, I remember playing an old Flash version[0] of this. Cool game from what I remember.

[0][https://www.kongregate.com/games/Coolio_Niato/light- bot](https://www.kongregate.com/games/Coolio_Niato/light-bot)

</comment><comment><USER15> Anyone looking for a similar type of programming game, but as a tabletop boardgame, look up RoboRally. It's a competitive MP game, but it's a great basic introduction to writing a program. A good family game, as well as one to play with adults.

</comment><comment><USER16> My neice and nephew love this game. They're 5 & 7\. My only complaint is that I think the difficulty ramps up a bit fast or their could be a bit more easier levels. Would pay for that.

<comment><USER17> It looks like they have a Jr game - maybe that doesn't ramp up as fast?

My 5 yr old tried human resource machine the other day, got a couple of levels, but that ramped up way too fast for him. I'm afraid that this might ramp up a bit fast, too, but maybe the Jr version would work.

He also plays with "hopscotch" \- which is free and a little more free-form. It has some nice tutorial videos that walk you through building various simple games, or you can just do your own thing. (NB - he can read, which helps with that app.)

We're also gonna give the Lego Boost a go this Christmas (partially because I wanna play with it) - it also has a similar block-style of programming, but you get to move a physical robot. (Or any other lego creation.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tricked my nieces into programming with that. :D

<comment><USER19> Yeah, my kids love[d] it and it was totally worth buying it.

My one complaint was that it got too hard "all of the sudden". It seems like more puzzles in the middle difficulty level would increase the value and replay-ability of the game.

<comment><USER20> I agree. I have been playing this with my daughter (she's 6) a bit. It is fun and she really enjoyed the early parts.

We got to a part requiring the recursive calling of a function and she didn't bat an eyelid at the idea of it.

<comment><USER19> Yeah. Strangely [to me], my kids (then 4 and 6) had more trouble with the "do I turn left or right?" than they did with recursion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there something similar for Xbox One? Would love to get something like this for my niece and nephew.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'll definitely share this one with my nephews.

</comment><comment><USER23> I loved this game for years.</comment>