Death to the Cult of Stealth Startups - <AUTHOR> http://stopmebeforeiblogagain.com/death-to-the-cult-of-stealth-startups/ <comment><USER2> Old Battlebots story, when my team was competing we would talk to other teams in the 'pit' area. There were a number of teams that kept everything covered up and hush hush until their first fight. Then there were teams like mine who would tell you anything you wanted to know about our bot. The stealth guys never did well in their first appearance, and if they came back the following year and stayed "stealthy" they didn't do well then either. It was the back and forth of multiple ideas and questions that helped people prepare for something which was essentially part chance, part strategy, part build quality.

Over the years Startups seem to have a similar path. I've known some which were ok but started out stealthy, but most that start stealthy seem to launch, and _then_ pivot after getting some real world experience and feedback. The ones that are pretty open seem to come out swinging and they already have answers for most of the questions thrown at them (which gives them credibility).

Perhaps notable, perhaps not, in the 30 years I've been watching I have yet to see a single startup that was open and that resulted in someone else "scooping" them and getting the prize. But I have seen startups that execute poorly not move fast enough once their market is proven to avoid damage by a nimbler opponent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great insights! I guess I'm no different in that I'm probably going to be pivoting after more real market exposure and feedback. I just want to go faster forwards and believe more radical transparency will help me with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good stuff. There are some ideas in that post that I want to crib / borrow from!

We are already about as far from "stealth" as you can get, in that all of our products are Open Source (Apache Licensed and on GitHub), we blog a lot, and we have a public facing website that makes it pretty clear what we're doing and aiming at.

That said, it's a sort of "static transparency". Anybody who cares to know, can come to fogbeam.com or our github site, etc., and learn a lot about us. But this post makes me think about a more "dynamic tranparency" where we push ideas / thoughts / code / whatever, out and more actively _solicit_ feedback and interaction around that.

Of course we already solicit feedback, talk about the roadmap, etc., _in private_ when meeting with potential customers in Customer Development interviews... but we could probably get more people involved and generate more good ideas that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. Feel free to steal. :) I think of it as one more channel for feedback, as to not miss out on insights otherwise lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why add unneccesary noise channels? Not everything is black and white. Open up when it makes sense to be open, and be stealthy when it's appropriate.

<comment><AUTHOR> How would you define unnecessary noise? Conversely, what do you see as the necessary noise channels? How would you define and know when it is appropriate to open and close? (edit: added last question)

<comment><USER4> Example of neccesary noise would be me trying to support clients who don't have a clue what they're doing with the product (and it's their stupidity to blame).

As for unneccesary noise example, that would be feedback of people whose feedback I do not value.

And as for edited and added last question - it depends. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you know to objectively value feedback sources? Why and how does it depend?

<comment><USER4> I usually bundle feedback in two groups - first one is my target demographic, the second one is professional. First one is pretty straightforward to parse, the second one is a kind of a double-edged sword.

Whatever your methodology is, at some point you can't parse more feedback, and it's then noise, whatever its contribution is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One reason NOT to share everything with everybody:

With the new patent laws, you only have a one year window to file from the time something is first disclosed publicly.

<comment><USER6> Assumptions: a) You believe in the value of patents and b) you have something that can be patented.

<comment><USER7> a₂) Your investors believe in the value of patents.

<comment><USER8> I had one investor tell me, "Patents are for losers." What he meant was that if you succeed, you don't really need the patent, and your time is better spent building your business than starting patent fights. If you fail, then at least you might be able to sell or license the patent. I'm not sure I agree, but it's an interesting perspective.

<comment><USER9> That's odd. I've always thought patent applications by smaller businesses are for defensive use. For example, when RFID was in a bubble the early companies patented and then licensed in a patent pool, but also had then for defensive purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At <https://starhq.com> we've made our roadmap public (link in footer) and let people vote on items to bump up their priority. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. However I've found it important to use the number of votes and feedback as a guide, with us making the final decision on what we roll out and in what order.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting idea. I've experimented with putting non-functional buttons and widgets in the app and register how many tap on them versus how many who complain about it not working. I believe you also have to ask the data, not just the people.

<comment><USER10> We do something similar via text saying "if you want X, get in touch via the feedback form" before implementing features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> But to what end are you serving by following this propaganda? Is there irrefutable empirical evidence that shows this, rather, extreme approach to product development actually yields better results? To me it is just part and parcel of some "do everything in public all the time" meme. Ironically, the view being proffered here is _much_ more like a cult than the view of being more, well, reasonable.

What I'd like to see from people like this is 24/7 webcams in offices programmers worker's mic'ed up, with some sort of peanut gallery available for viewers. :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice move! Just about the only nitpick I have is that there's no such thing as a cult of stealth startups anymore. That was a 2005 kinda thing. I think most people got the memo by now.

<comment><USER13> you'd be surprised. there are a lot of ex-Apple folks out there doing startups that think the only reason the iPhone was successful was because of secrecy.

<comment><USER14> To be fair, the iPhone did totally broadside the existing phone makers. Had there been hype years before, and prototypes floating around a year earlier, they'd have had a more time to react. (Not like they reacted very well anyways.)

<comment><AUTHOR> There were hype in spades leading up to the iPhone launch, though. And it is not like it was revolutionary in any other way than that it changed the business model of media and mobile phones previously in favor and control of the telcos to one in favor and control of Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The very reason we started <http://willthisfly.net> :)

<comment><USER16> Cool! Great start for such kind of website!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh and tl;dr I've decided to put all my bootstrapped startup's prototyping out in the public, declaring death to the cult of stealth startups. Would you do the same? Are you doing it already? (edited typo)

</comment><comment><USER17> I agree but not all start-ups are for mass public consumption. Also what you're essentially talking about are marketing channels, this can be time consuming if not managed properly.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow! Kudos for that move. There should be a place for discussing and reviewing click-dummies and mockups somewhere on the web, if there isn't already such a thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I guess I'll use my personal blog to share for now, keeping the startup's blog to share more about why we're doing what we're doing and topics around meeting new interesting people, shaping serendipity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So true! Finally someone said it.</comment>


Show HN: Fine Wordclocks: more than a time piece, they are a piece of art - <AUTHOR> http://www.finewordclocks.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Everyone. I have a Show HN that is a little different than what's typical. My side project is building word clocks. I've developed the entire physical item including the mechanical design, the manufacturing design, the electrical design, and the firmware. Moderator Dan saw this listed in my profile and suggested I share it.

I was inspired to make my first word clock after stumbling upon a DIY design on hack-a-day[0]. I really liked the idea of a wordclock but felt that the designs I found online were too DIY or too modern metal and sterile. I wanted a design that was both elegantly styled and with a professional finish.

My first word clock was given as a present to my parents and it still hangs in their home today. I made more clocks similar to that first design which I also gave out as gifts to friends and family. Later, I developed a simplified design that I donated to AS220, my local Providence artist group, where I periodically teach a word clock making workshop[1].

After a few years of producing word clocks for gifts and fun, I developed my first word clock which is for sale. It utilizes a combination of fine craftsmanship and clever electronics to produce a one of a kind piece of practical art. I'm proud of the fit and finish of my word clocks and want to share them with people who want more than just a utilitarian tool.

I do all the fabrication myself in my basement. Now that I have the manufacturing process down, I'm ready to start marketing them. I'm promoting them as limited edition art pieces, not a mass market product. This first design is limited to 100 units.

So far I've sold one unit on etsy[2] without any promotion whatsoever. So I'm hopeful that with a little promotion I'll be able to sell 2-3 per month. I'm not really interested in turning this into a large scale business. I already do that for my day job. My intent with this is to continue to expand my creative output. It's also a great excuse to acquire cool tools (aka toys) that I can teach my kids to use.

Please let me know what you think and feel free to ask questions!

[0] [https://hackaday.com/tag/word-clock/](https://hackaday.com/tag/word- clock/)

[1] [http://industries.as220.org/the- wordclock](http://industries.as220.org/the-wordclock)

[2] [https://www.etsy.com/shop/FineWordclocks](https://www.etsy.com/shop/FineWordclocks)

<comment><USER2> It looks really cool, but just one suggestion -- your homepage has four example pictures showing "It's eight o'clock" and all of the others are for "round" numbers of minutes. I'd really be interested in seeing how it handles something like "11:13" or "11:59," non-round numbers. That would be a lot of the appeal in something like this for me, I think...

<comment><USER3> I noticed that some pictures show the suffixe "ish" right at the bottom right corner (I think it's a clever trick; wonder if it's boring to basically always see that word lit up since it's less likely that a time is round)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. That's a valid comment about ish persistence. However, I haven't noticed that during my own use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you don't want to spend $1400 on a clock, but still want to read time in words, there's another option. You can build it yourself for about a 20th of the cost:

[https://bitbucket.org/vdham/wordclock](https://bitbucket.org/vdham/wordclock)

That one's in Dutch, but it's pretty easy to get a stencil in English and adjust the code.

<comment><USER5> Just build my own from scratch as Christmas presents. Saw the orig. Qlocktwo 10 years ago and always thought: the logic is so simple, I build this on my own. The main problem is a professional looking front plate, but after discovering online services for cheap lasering a SVG file, I re-thought my idea. Pro tip: separate every LED, not just the words, because you can use the LEDs as two letter 8x5 segment display to show temperature or a running text. Just finished the clocks a few days ago, so project not documented yet, but will also publish my code, because with the segment letters I added some more functions than on the usual wordclock tutorials. Project hardware basics: * Arduino Nano (also tested Wemos D1 mini for implementing a control app via WLAN sometimes) * DS3231 RTC * LED strip WS2812b

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Nice work! My first few clocks were holiday presents as well. I always like hearing about other people's creative stories. I'm sure the recipient will love it.

/snark

if they don't, then they don't deserve it!

/end snark

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This idea seems to be done before and seems copywrited as well: [https://qlocktwo.com/en/](https://qlocktwo.com/en/)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, how is this not infringement?

Otherwise, we would see $79 mass-produced word clocks at Target.

<comment><USER8> A word clock is a concept that requires patent protection, not a copyrightable expression.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lots of people that have seen my work have said "you should patent that!"

I don't see anything that is obviously patentable to my wordclock design or others that I've seen. IANAL but I do hold 4 patents (and other pending) in other domains so I have a little bit of experience.

<comment><USER8> Oh, sure: I was just clarifying that copyright doesn't help here. Honestly I think it'd be a silly patent? But USPTO grants lots of silly patents.

<comment><AUTHOR> ahh, got it. Thanks for the clarification.

<comment><USER7> It may be worth your time to consult with a real intellectual property attorney, not us HN IP fanboys.

You have alot of time and money involved in this endeavor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel like if someone is going to spend $1,400 on a clock, it needs to last an extremely long time. But the "ish" sounds a bit childish, and I think the clock would feel a lot more solid and timeless without it. There's a kind of appeal to a clock that just gives you the general time, a good fit for places where you want to relax.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here, thanks for your comment! I may consider trying to develop a new design that uses a larger lexicon like some of my earlier pieces. I discuss some of the lexicon here [https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=18953116](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=18953116)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't there an equivalent to DCF77 in the states? It would allow people to skip the cumbersome WiFi setup.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77)

<comment><USER11> See WWVB

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> These look awesome, but I cannot imagine spending $1,400 on a clock...

<comment><USER13> I agree. They look great, but I can't see the bill of materials being above $200-300. Quite the markup.

<comment><USER14> I get it; I'm guessing that this is a "I value my time at $60 per hour and each one takes 20 hours to make" type of situation, which unfortunately gets misunderstood ALL THE TIME in the art world. People will look at a one-of-one canvas painting and balk at a few thousand dollar price point, when in fact often times that price works out to under $10/hour for the artist. As a comparison, home construction rates are typically $90+/hr, and the craftsmanship that most laborers deliver for that (they're not usually the ones getting paid that much) is abysmal compared to something like this or almost all fine art.

Basically, is it worth it TO YOU? I understand the logic behind trying to put together a BoM in your head, but also consider R&D time, tools (and the wear on them), time spent sourcing, finishing, final assembly, shipping, building an eCommerce site to sell these, advertising...there's a ton of cost outside of just the BoM, as many Kickstarter projects which never ship can attest to. Makers who have done any kind of mass production tend to understand this sort of thing, as do those who were able to hand-assemble a dozen of a thing, then had to scale it to a few thousand (read about electronic conference badges, for example). [https://medium.com/@Haje/how-a-half-million-dollar- kickstart...](https://medium.com/@Haje/how-a-half-million-dollar-kickstarter- project-can-crash-and-burn-5482d7d33ee1) is another account of this.

Finally, it's art. Many luxury products have huge mark-ups of hundreds or thousands of percent (look up Luxottica for example...they make most of the plastic sunglasses that sell for >$100). Could YOU make a single one that is similar for less money? Probably, but that's not what you're paying for here. Most artists are not crazy greedy capitalists, but the ones who think through it enough to turn it into a longer-term successful venture tend to price things according to how much they need to make it worth their time to bother to produce them.

/rant on behalf of all my artist friends who wish they could do art full-time but can't because it would never come close to paying the bills

<comment><USER15> > I get it; I'm guessing that this is a "I value my time at $60 per hour and > each one takes 20 hours to make" type of situation, which unfortunately gets > misunderstood ALL THE TIME in the art world.

That's a sign that the artist's valuation of their time might be overpriced, plain and simple. Maybe people disagree with paying a $60/making-hour time value for a clock that they could build themselves or buy at a fraction of the listed price.

It is then up to the seller to make their case for why they think the product warrants a $60/making-hour price.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I would be very pleased if everyone that wanted one of my clocks but didn't agree with my pricing developed and built their own. I like enabling people to unleash their creative side and have been involved at AS220.org for over 20 years (including teaching a workshop on _how to build a wordclock_ ).

I started at AS220 as an "engineer" teaching "artists" how to use tools to make their art. Overtime, I realized I was also an "artist" making art. Much of this realization came when people that I considered real artists in my community started calling my work art. It was a GREAT feeling. I'd love to have others experience that too!

And yes, I do value my time. I have 2 young kids, a spouse and a dog. Plus other family and hobbies. So if I'm going to produce art for sale (and most of my art isn't for sale), it needs to be worth my time. I've even considered if my pricing is too LOW given the value of things I could spend my time on. I'll aways be making art for myself and as gifts. Selling it to other is something I'm trying out for now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I showed up to learn more about audio engineering.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_clock](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_clock)

<comment><USER17> You beat me to it. Having used word clocks in audio engineering for many years, this is a new use of the term for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Yup! Me too. I've been playing and recording music for decades before making these types of word clocks. It bugs me to about the naming overlap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I once made this on a rainy day: [https://www.propra.nl/clock/](https://www.propra.nl/clock/) (dutch version: [https://www.propra.nl/clock/?lang=nl](https://www.propra.nl/clock/?lang=nl))

Nice to run fullscreen or cast to your tv.

</comment><comment><USER18> To everyone commenting on the price: people regularly pay thousands of dollars for a wristwatch.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Thank you for your support! I've actually been wondering if my pricing is too _low_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why is "WiFi required"?

<comment><USER12> Probably to keep the clock sync'd?

<comment><USER19> I'd just hate to see my word clock hacked over the Internet, like so many IoT devices, and start spelling out obscenities at me... or simply giving me the wrong time at a critical point.

<comment><USER20> >or simply giving me the wrong time at a critical point

The use of "ish" tells me this isn't designed to be a high precision instrument.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Correct!

One of my earlier designs included the time "It's now" pseudorandomly every few days. I gave one of those to my father. One night he woke up unable to sleep, went downstairs, saw the clock and it said "It's now". He laughed as it was the one time he was actually curious what time it was. :)

<comment><USER19> Wouldn't a GPS or radio chip (like cheap home "atomic" clocks use) be easier? Some of us choose to not have always-on home WiFi.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't seen those packaged on board with an MCU. So actually for low quantity it's harder and more expensive.

That was where I first looked though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's a cool project and I admire the attempt, however

1) It's been done before, it's not original

2) The cost is outrageous (I see you use more expensive materials, but it's not $1400 more expensive material)

3) Likely copyright infringement

</comment><comment><USER22> The price on those are insane for the small size, but they are beautiful

<comment><USER23> Would you ideally have art priced by weight or by volume?

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I loved your comment. Maybe I should think about how to make my clocks heavier!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How is this not an ad?

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. It's an ad with a story and a Q and A. Just like all the other Show HNs. Isn't that why Show HNs have a separate section on the site?</comment></comment>


Elon Musk claims Tesla to launch fleet of over 1 million robotaxis in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/22/elon-musk-says-tesla-robotaxis-will-hit-the-market-next-year.html <comment><USER2> There's no way for me to phrase this while coming across as civil, but I'm genuinely curious: does anybody actually believe Musk? If so, why?

<comment><USER3> Not even a little, it's wishful thinking. No city is going to want a bunch of autonomous vehicles without proof that they won't be a danger to its people and traffic system. Imagine what will happen when Teslas start hitting people or start to stall traffic because they can't handle the situation. And that's just two variables of many that still need to be solved. Also, Musk likes to make predictions on time but he has yet to meet any of his predictions in terms of time. He reminds me of a boss I once had that liked to predict how much time a project would take yet he had no concept of the true time. He would promise a project for a certain time and we would look like jerks because we could not meet it. Eventually, we all got fired because the IT department was ineffective.

It might happen but not in 2 years. My guess is that we won't start to see auto autonomy until 2024. It's my guess but I bet mine is better than his.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tesla only produced 350,000 vehicles in 2018. A million by the end of 2020 containing technology they don't have yet, in addition to vehicles sold to consumers, seems...ambitious.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's a good narrative for raising more cash for Tesla (which they will need to do soon)</comment>


Former space workers struggle a year after last shuttle - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/story/2012-07-15/space-workers-jobs/56234378/1 <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4251003></comment>


Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981) - <AUTHOR> http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/MusicMindMeaning.html

<comment><USER2> Oh, this is cool. I'm trying to make an interactive web thing that basically builds a musical sequence from input - it builds what you like, essentially. How _do_ you get a computer to compose music? How do _we_ deconstruct music? When a section of music piques our interest, what is that we like? These are the sorts of things I've been thinking about lately.</comment>


ClojureScript development environment with Vim - <AUTHOR> http://astashov.github.io/blog/2014/07/30/perfect-clojurescript-development-environment-with-vim/

<comment><USER2> Pretty neat. Figwheel is pretty new to me, so it's something I'll have to look into.

I just recently got my head around using ClojureScript with vim-fireplace and Austin. It took a bit of work, but I finally got to a point where I easily have a browser REPL running using an environment stored in a var. This helps avoid security error, but it's not as simple a setup.

I suppose one big difference is the HTML I am using is being served via a Ring-based server rather than using a separate serving process. This allows me to add middleware in development mode that will inject the necessary JavaScript to connect to the browser REPL.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is great to hear success stories for the Clojure/ClojureScript workflow. I really respect the work behind LightTable and understand the natural lisp support of Emacs, but I have a lot of time and neurons baked into using Vim.

Most of my dev time is spent with JavaScript lately, I'm really curious what live reloading is like.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm learning OCaml now and this blog post really makes me wish if tooling around js_of_ocaml[0] were this great! Thanks for the detailed write up! Bookmarked for when I start clojure!

[0] - [http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/](http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/)

<comment><USER5> As this blog post shows (the author spend a lot of time working on this setup), the UX for starting with ClojureScript is pretty horrible, to much incidental complexity.

I hear the maintainers of Cljs are going work on it but its not a priority.

<comment><USER6> I don't see how you can get much simpler than this [http://swannodette.github.io/2013/10/27/the-essence-of- cloju...](http://swannodette.github.io/2013/10/27/the-essence-of- clojurescript/) for any compile to JavaScript language. Fundamental UX is definitely a priority - this is why fast incremental compilation and source map support exists.

<comment><USER2> I don't think it's so much that it's hard to get a productive working environment. In my experience, getting vim-fireplace working with a new Leiningen project takes nearly zero effort. Moreover, I get all sorts of nice functionality (easy evaluation of expressions, sourc/doc lookup, etc.). Getting all of these features with ClojureScript takes quite a bit more effort, especially connecting it all to a browser REPL. At least, this has been my experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would highly recommend anyone starting Clojure or ClojureScript give LightTable a spin. I find it's workflow generally fantastic. Connecting it to the browser is a snap too. You'll be up and running in 4 minutes, don't even need to download/install clojure; it does it for you!

</comment><comment><USER8> Figwheel is not widely known, but I've used it for several months and find the workflow very convenient.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow this is great!!! This is exactly the guide that I've been looking for. Thanks!!!

</comment><comment><USER10> Thanks Astashov for the very comprehensive guide.</comment>


Re-Thinking Engineering Education - <AUTHOR> http://khetarpal.org/2013/06/01/re-thinking-engineering-education/

<comment><USER2> But engineering is not just product design.

A solution to a problem that requires engineering expertise may be a hack of an already developed technical system.

Engineering, at least in a traditional sense, is more about applying science to solve problems and design technical solutions, not just making new products.</comment>


Hackernews PSA: Things that are hacking - <AUTHOR>

In no particular order, and varies depending on your religion and the year (especially the first two - many adopt one or the other).
- Writing code
- Exploiting code
- Chopping down trees with a hatchet or axe, using multiple swinging motions (no chainsaws, that is cutting)
Things that are not hacking:
- cooking is not food hacking
- sewing is not textile hacking
- media whoring is not PR hacking
- tying weather balloons to a lawn chair and floating away is not chair hacking
Overloading of the term 'hacking' to make it some generic wildcard verb considered harmful.
Thanks,
Larry <comment><USER2> Cooking perfect eggs by hacking a crock pot to a controlled temp bath is hacking.

Dragging a block of ice around with money it to draw abundant attention is hacking.

Presumably there are some awesome sewing techniques I am unaware of that I would have no problem calling hacking.

More generally hacking is using a fundamental understanding of the underlying processes involved in a system to manipulate the system into doing things it wasn't designed to do.</comment>


Some AOL Weblogs Inc. bloggers posting for free this month - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/you-can-get-something-for-nothing-after-all-some-aol-bloggers-posting-without-pay-this-month-twx-

<comment><USER2> Friday Jul 25: [http://valleywag.com/5029062/aol-asks-bloggers-to-stop- blogg...](http://valleywag.com/5029062/aol-asks-bloggers-to-stop-blogging- cuts-costly-products)</comment>


Ask YC: What Facebook application is the best? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious what you all think about Facebook applications - which are the best, your favorite. Especially if anyone likes some lesser-known apps...<p>(Disclosure: Working on an article so your suggestions might show up there...) <comment><USER2> ask on facebook</comment>


To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/to-beat-back-poverty-pay-the-poor

<comment><USER2> I believe each person should have the opportunity to rise to the limits of their own ability for both practical and moral reasons. If this program works, I am in favor.

That said, people aren't equal. Evolution wants diversity in human offspring to ensure survival of the species in the face of an unknown future. Until science can remove this diversity, the poor will always be with us by definition. Even if we could make everyone "equal", there's no good definition of "equal", and a monoculture would very, very bad for our species over the long term.

</comment><comment><USER3> This doesn't sound like anything more than a welfare program. Welfare programs generally don't work, because it leaves most people with little incentive to go out and succeed.

It's also interesting that the only way to solve the 'inequality gap' is to take money away from one person and give it to another.

<comment><AUTHOR> Begging your pardon, that strikes me as a quintessentially ideological response. The author's entire point is that the programs she's writing about _are_ working, that is, people are "going out and succeed[ing]", assuming you consider peasant farmers' children becoming nurses and accountants to be a success.

Do we have any evidence that she's incorrect on the facts? I don't mean in general, I mean specifically: in Brazil and Mexico, as the article describes.

The interesting thing here is the opportunity to observe and measure, rather than affixing labels ("welfare program") and dismissing based on pre-existing beliefs. The abstract arguments just lead around in circles.

Edit: this article was posted a week ago but received no discussion. I posted it again because, whether it's right or wrong, it deserves extensive discussion; plus if it's right, it counts as an interesting new phenomenon. New to me anyway.

<comment><USER3> "Do we have any evidence that she's incorrect on the facts?"

There are a few examples of this succeeding in the article. I would also like to know the overall amount of money spent, how much money was taken through taxes, and how many didn't succeed. I'm guessing these stats aren't available. Things aren't always rainbows and unicorns.

"The interesting thing here is the opportunity to observe and measure, rather than affixing labels ("welfare program") and dismissing based on pre-existing beliefs. The abstract arguments just lead around in circles."

Why can't we call it what it is? When people tell me I can't use labels, it's generally because they want to try to hide the truth about something. When you live long enough (although I am only 30), you realize that most things aren't new...including the ideas in this article.

The definition of welfare (taken from dictionary.com): receiving financial aid from the government or from a private organization because of hardship and need.

Pretty much sounds like these programs in Brazil and Mexico.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to move from Manager to IC? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently a Product Manager with people-manager like responsibilities. This is my second company to have this type of role. Before that I was purely a people manager, and before that a project manager. I have basic coding capabilities but it's been several years since I've done real engineering work.
I am tired of the meetings, of pestering people to get things done, of having surface level knowledge about a lot of different things but not deep knowledge about one particular thing. I want to be able to sit at my desk and build things, not move from meeting to meeting talking about why things aren't being built.
This leads me to think I should move into an IC role, and away from management. Has anyone done this before? How can I do this at my current org (a series B startup where I definitely am not strong enough engineering wise to jump right into coding, but could feasibly do something like technical writing). Or do I need to start over somewhere new? Spend a few months re-learning to code? I'm really lost but I know I need to make a change, soon. <comment><USER2> What does IC mean?

<comment><AUTHOR> Individual Contributor - in tech, usually an engineer, data scientist, etc. type job that doesn't involve management responsibilities.</comment></comment>


Coffeescript 1.9.0 contains a backwards incompatible change - <AUTHOR> http://blog.davidbanham.com/articles/coffeescript-psa/

<comment><USER2> CoffeeScript doesn't follow "Semantic" versioning. Most projects that claim to follow "Semantic" versioning actually don't.

Take, for example, the other news at the top of the front page, Io.js 1.3.0 — a minor version bump that should include _zero_ breaking changes to the public API.

And yet, 1.3.0 "broke" the way that urls are resolved with regards to trailing slashes: [https://github.com/iojs/io.js/pull/278](https://github.com/iojs/io.js/pull/278)

If you follow SemVer — and I don't think that Io.js should, or have to pretend to — this _must_ be yanked, and re-released as Io.js 2.0.

Ironically, the behavior being complained about in this post relates to how CoffeeScript decides to name internal compiler variables. This is not something that has ever been part of the public API — and is something we can (and might) change at any point. We've changed it in the past.

Breaking changes in your API are a good thing — when the new way is better than the old. But this isn't one of them.

For more on SemVer, and why you should resist giving in to its fascist attempt at world version domination, see: [https://gist.github.com/jashkenas/cbd2b088e20279ae2c8e](https://gist.github.com/jashkenas/cbd2b088e20279ae2c8e)

I get that SemVer is an attempt to address dependency pain — but it's woefully inadequate, reductive and dangerous. We can do better.

<comment><USER3> The point of the article is that NPM uses semver. If you disagree with semver you should use a different package manager.

> And yet, 1.3.0 "broke" the way that urls are resolved with regards to > trailing slashes: > [https://github.com/iojs/io.js/pull/278](https://github.com/iojs/io.js/pull/278)

Can you link to documentation of the old way? The way I understand it is that they fixed a bug. If they broke a documented API I would agree with you, should be a major version bump.

Lastly there's a gigantic difference between breaking code because you made a mistake and breaking code because you don't give a shit and romanticize version numbers.

<comment><USER2> Here's the documentation of the public API:

[http://nodejs.org/api/url.html#url_url_resolve_from_to](http://nodejs.org/api/url.html#url_url_resolve_from_to)

They changed the way that it resolves:

        url.resolve('/path/to/file', '.')

... to include a trailing slash when it returns the new URL to your code.

No big deal, but it breaks apps. It's not backwards compatible. SemVer is not about feature-vs-bugfix. It's about _changes_ to documented behavior. This is a breaking change, so it _must_ be Io.js 2.0.

If you think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here — I am. This change isn't a big deal. Io.js shouldn't have to bump to 2.0 to deal with it. But pretending to follow "Semantic" Versioning when you're not is just silly.

Death to tyranny, right?

<comment><USER3> You might have a point here, they should bump to 2.0. Let's see why they didn't do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> According to [1], the previously accepted syntax was never documented as being valid. That means that code affected by this change was relying on undocumented behavior.

[1]: [https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/issues/3819](https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/issues/3819)

<comment><USER5> Well that adds a much needed bit of context to the conversation. Someone decided to use undocumented behaviour in a production application and got bit. Worded as such it doesn't make Coffeescript to sound so ridiculous.

<comment><USER6> "decided" implies they knew they were using undocumented behavior and chose to do it anyway. The use of the word 'undocumented' also implies that unless a behavior is explicitly mentioned in the documentation, it should be considered 'private' and 'subject to change' \-- also not a safe assumption with many projects, whose documentation is far from completely covering all intended behavior.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, I'm not a Coffeescript user so I'm familiar with its idioms. I looked up the Coffeescript website and it says:

> As a shortcut for this.property, you can use @property.

It also said that since March 2010 according to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Why did this fellow decide to use `property` instead? I don't know but I wouldn't hold this specific situation against the Coffeescript team. But that's just like my opinion, man.

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely agree that the particular bit of code shouldn't have been relying on that functionality.

A totally reasonable response would be "Oh, sorry, I had no idea people were using that in that manner."

Fine, fair enough.

But! It was known that people were relying on that behaviour and it was mentioned in the changelog. That is a big point in favour of Jeremy as a package maintainer. Not only does he know how his code should be used, but he has an understanding of how people are using it in the wild. That's wonderful and praiseworthy.

Where I get grumpy is that this was seen as a significant enough event to mention to the humans who happen to be reading the changelog. Yet, it wasn't deemed appropriate to tell all of the computers that are installing dependencies about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's up with these kind of childish slander of OSS projects being upvoted to the top?

Anyway, funnily enough, this change was not only rectified on CoffeeScript 1.9.1, but it was also a change that only affected code that relied of the names of compiler-generated variables.

      foo = (@bar) ->
        # Bad: "bar" is not declared anywhere
        console.log bar
        # Good: the parameter is "@bar", so that should be used instead
        console.log @bar

Relying on a "bar" variable existing inside that function body is no different from relying on an "_i" variable exiting inside a look like:

      for a in arr
        console.log "the index is", _i

... which, BTW, would also break if upgrading to CoffeeScript 1.9, because the compiler-generated iterator variable would now be called "i" :)

Update: i misinterpreted something. What was rectified in CoffeeScript 1.9.1 was the addition of an "_at_" prefix for the generated parameters of `(@something) ->` functions, which broke Angular's dependency injection mechanism when using it like `(@$someAngularThingy) ->`. You still can't access the auto-generated "bar" parameter in the first snippet. If you access a "bar" variable inside that function, the auto-generated parameter is then named "bar1", which is the Right Thing to do :D

<comment><USER8> Did the first example at least give a warning or did it silently succeed?

<comment><USER7> Alas, no, the compiler does not warn about that. I don't know if it should though, as accessing a "bar" variable inside that function might be legal if bar was assigned as global variable, which the CoffeeScript compiler has no way to track.

<comment><USER8> Ah, thats unfortunate... I do think giving a warning should be possible though. Coffescript has some weird variable scoping rules but the scopes are still static so the compiler you should be able to detect if you are accessing one of the compiler-generated internal variables.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's interesting to note that the current #1 story on Hacker News is io.js 1.3.0.

And the current #1 comment on that story is wondering what the reason is behind the version jumps in quick succession without much in the way of new features (1.0.3->1.0.4->1.2.0->1.3.0).

These two stories nicely sum-up the romantic vs semantic versioning debate.

</comment><comment><USER10> The author of CoffeeScript also created Underscore. He did the exact same thing there: [https://github.com/jashkenas/underscore/issues/1805](https://github.com/jashkenas/underscore/issues/1805)

So bottom line: if you use CoffeeScript, Underscore of Backbone.js pay close attention to upgrades.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was burned by this as well.

The breaking code would look like this:

```

a = (@arg) ->

       console.log(arg)  # Used to print arg.

       # Now needs to be:

       console.log(@arg)

```

The problem was particularly exacerbated on our end by using `coffeeify`, which includes the latest CoffeeScript - so one could not easily pin to a particular version of CoffeeScript (i.e. 1.8.x).

This brings into question, for me, the decision making process for CoffeeScript. So the migration begins.

Contrast, lodash which just had a bunch of backwards-incompatible changes. They changed its version from 2.x to 3.x, so we all head a heads up. Lots of things broke, but we knew to look for them.

<comment><USER12> Why were you referencing a variable that doesn't exist? Your code shows a bug in CoffeeScript, which was fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> But, like...

Why did you update to a new version of Coffeescript and not know about this bug before it made it to your production environment?

I agree that Coffeescript should probably just use semver. But they don't, and you have no control over that.

What you _do_ have control over is when you update your dependencies and whether or not you validate releases before deploying to production.

It seems a little disingenuous to act like this is entirely Coffeescript's fault.

<comment><USER14> npm has a substantial amount of valuable automated tooling that assumes semver. It is the standard of that community.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I completely understand that. I work on big Node apps every day.

But anyone who's had an app in production for very long learns pretty quickly that you you use "1.8.0", not "^1.8.0" if you don't want things to break.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not sure why this was made into a blog post and put on HN. This kind of thing seems more suited to a bug tracker. Mistakes happen sometimes; report them and let the developer community take a look at them. That's the advantage of open-source.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think even when using semver, you should lock down your dependencies (e.g. npm shrinkwrap). My approach is often to periodically delete npm- shrinkwrap.json, Gemfile.lock, composer.lock, etc. and then install updated dependencies and thoroughly test things.

You still get the benefit of a reasonably loose specification of what versions of dependencies you expect to be compatible with, but additional security in knowing that you won't be surprised by unexpected breaking changes.

</comment><comment><USER17> Even if it would use semver, you should not auto-install or update packeges in your production environment without having it tested first. Semver is just a promise other people are making, and in production you shouldn't rely on that IMO.

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe semver needs a fourth "Vanity" version, that you can increment when it "feels right". i.e. Backbone 188.8.131.52

</comment><comment><USER19> The problem we had when trying to push semantic versioning of our app to the rest of the business internally was mostly the fact that breaking changes necessitated a change in the major version, but the business and marketing side wanted control of when a major version could be released.

I can see their point, because going from, for example, 1.1.0 to 2.0.0, a user might well expect lots of new features, or at least a significant UI change, and not just "it looks and does the same except for one or two breaking changes".

The compromise was to have an architect's vanity number at the front of the Semantic version, so VANITY.MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH

<comment><USER6> The other option is simply _not releasing breaking changes_ until you are ready for a 'major' release with new features. Sometimes this can be a pain, but every choice here can be a pain, the question is how much pain, and for whom (consumers, developers.... marketting people).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I understand the pain of having changes that should be innocent leading to breaks in production. What is your strategy around testing for upgrades like this? JavaScript is not my area of expertise.

<comment><USER21> Oftentimes, you'll already have written tests to make sure your logic works. Otherwise, you might just run your app in a test environment and make sure it doesn't immediately crash. (Because that's what CoffeeScript would do in this case, as far as I know.) Pretty standard stuff across the industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This reminds me of this excellent ode to exotic versioning schemes -- [http://sentimentalversioning.org/](http://sentimentalversioning.org/)

<comment><USER22> From the backbone archives (linked in the article): [https://github.com/jashkenas/backbone/issues/2888#issuecomme...](https://github.com/jashkenas/backbone/issues/2888#issuecomment-29076249)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've written a big project in Coffeescript in the past and it was teremendously more fun than it would have been to write in vanilla JS. However with ES6 around the corner I think it would be a mistake to start any projects in Coffeescript now. We just adopted ES6-to-5 translation via Babel[1] at work and people are really excited about it.

[1] [http://babeljs.io/](http://babeljs.io/)

</comment><comment><USER24> ES6 is pretty good - I'd rather write with that than coffeescript.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm interested in this story because Rust is a language that _does_ intend to follow semver, which AFAIK is something that has never been attempted by a programming language. As of yet it hasn't been forced to bump versions thanks to clauses 4 and 9 of the semver spec, but that will change as of the 1.0.0 release on May 15. Before that date I highly anticipate a document from the Rust developers that will attempt to lay out precisely what does and does not constitute a "breaking change" in order to avert the situation that has arisen here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Or they'll just pull on their grown-up trousers and bump the damn major every time there's a breaking change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've greatly enjoyed writing CoffeeScript, but am concerned that over the long term, it will fall behind javascript in terms of feature support.

The [Babel][1] transpiler (formerly 6to5) and tooling like Facebook's typechecker, [flow][2] have large teams and a rapid pace of development.

I don't want to miss out on cool features like generators, let/const, etc just for CoffeeScript's lovely bracket-less code.

[1]: [https://babeljs.io/](https://babeljs.io/) [2]: [http://flowtype.org/](http://flowtype.org/)

<comment><USER27> Ditto. I don't think the CoffeeScript philosophy as it stands will ever have it keeping up with the pace of JavaScript proper at this point. Within the next year, I think our company will be migrating back to the land of curly braces. The charms of CoffeeScript just aren't worth missing out on all the great stuff coming to JavaScript as of late.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> People can do whatever they want with their version numbers. But I like to follow the Apache Version Numbering ([http://apr.apache.org/versioning.html](http://apr.apache.org/versioning.html)) where backward compatibility is inherent in the number. Any change that breaks something requires a major version number change.

</comment><comment><USER29> Hint: if a project claims to be following semver and the major number is small, the project either is very young, not being actively maintained or they're probably not actually following semver. All three are red flags. Library maintainers shouldn't be afraid to bump the major.</comment>


How to Take Down Facebook -- Hint: It Ain't Twitter.  - <AUTHOR> http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2010/10/how-to-take-down-facebook.html <comment><USER3> I think Dave is dreaming up too complex a proposition.

If a social network has all these complexities, how will it grow? If FB had all these complexities, it would never grow so big. Now that it is big, it can experiment with groups, although even that is a second attempt because lists didn't work. People hate settings. FB is like an online version of a bar. People just want to hang out.

The intimate alternative he is imagining is email. People already use it and it works fine.

Before Facebook came along, was anyone writing blog posts about how nice it will be if a website let me share photos of my last holiday with my random old school buddies who I haven't spoken to in 20 years?

These things are quite random. So, in as far as something will take down Facebook, it will simply be something which is equally or more viral and fun. It does not matter what its specific form or function will be. Intimacy is not essential.

<comment><USER4> Dave isn't giving you a solution. He's pointing out a number of problems that need to be solved. Just because technology works fine doesn't mean it's the optimal solution. Tech develops incrementally.

Stack Overflow has a search feature and it works fine. But wouldn't it be cool if someone aggregated results from different programming websites? (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1854731>)

Check out Union Square Venture's blogpost from May: <http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2010/05/stackoverflow.php>. In addition to describing their investment, the post describes problems in the space. If you had never heard of Stack Overflow and you only read about the problems in that post, would you say the solution was too complex?

<comment><USER3> The headline suggests he is proposing a solution: a social network which beats FB by prioritising intimacy.

I think it's pretty much like dating sites. Before you solve the chicken-and- egg problem, it's meaningless to talk about how you add value. And the proposed value-add here (intimacy) makes the chicken-and-egg problem even more difficult (a dating site only for Mac lovers, anyone?).

 _Edited for clarity_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This really isn't an issue for anyone who has used any sort of sensible definition of "friend" when making and accepting requests. If you go with "anyone who asks" as your definition then you really shouldn't be surprised at a lack of intimacy.

Feels like a case of "people misuse software, blame software".

<comment><USER6> I disagree. All friends aren't created equal, and I don't want certain people hearing certain statements I make. Not that I distrust them, its just where our relationship is. I find it incredibly annoying to see older family "liking" status comments I make on pages of people they don't even know. After I delete the link to the comment on my page. fb facilitates this with their "so and so did so and so" in the feed. Too invasive.

<comment><USER7> But this thing is customizable, albeit not very easily. An example on how I use Facebook: I created a list of friends that are able to see my wall. It is a sort of a whitelist. If you ask me for friendship and I grant it to you, you just see some albums and the generic info page. I have to put you explicitly in the whitelist to let you see my wall.

Even if you are in the whitelist, I still can select what you see: I have a list of people from work, close friends, people who speak a particular language and so on. Everytime I post something to my wall I can decide to which lists it's visible and to which it's not. It takes a little to set up but after that it's easy to manage.

<comment><USER6> That's the thing....it wasn't even on my wall. It was a comment on someone else's page who wasn't a mutual friend. The link to the comment was deleted and they still found it, probably through fbs "look what x said on y's page " feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know how to say this without sounding self-promotional, but there are a few points here which agree with my post on why Diaspora won't kill facebook - [http://www.puremango.co.uk/2010/09/why-diaspora-wont-beat- fa...](http://www.puremango.co.uk/2010/09/why-diaspora-wont-beat-facebook/)

Specifically, we agree on the fact that many friends=problem. Dave doesn't really suggest a solution to that problem - I think it's something which can be solved technically. Dave also brings out a great argument as to why privacy matters to facebook, which I hadn't spotted before.

<comment><USER9> Can the "two many friends" problem be solved with more powerful personal internal groups, or better named - contact labels?

The problem is in the name "friend". Most of our facebook-friends are actually just contacts. Only a subset of those contacts are your real friends. So, the problem is with the name of the concept, not the concept itself.

It would be pretty useful if facebook expanded on the concept of labeling contacts and thus making contact subgroups. Yes, putting friends in groups is already possible, but I feel it is highly underpowered. It should rank a lot higher in the whole user experience and the facebook core itself (separate walls, photos, easier management, easier viewing, easier control).

<comment><USER8> The feature you're suggesting will only be used by the sort of people who like tagging and keywording and organising things. I.e. not facebook's users.

I think facebook should automatically and invisibly group your friends for you - in fact they already do filter out some of your uninteresting contacts automatically, but I feel there's more work to be done on that area.

<comment><USER10> Facebook already knows the likelyhood that Friend_A is closer to you socially than Friend_B based on the number of shared friends you have. Combine that with the frequency you "like" the posts and links of friends in that category, which signifies you pay attention to them, and you have an impressive dataset to dissect. I'm not saying it would be an easy task, but they already have enough data to build a reasonably accurate friend-group graph, at least for people that use it personally instead of an extension of business (marketers and lead generation).

It could be just enough for people to use the service and have to clean up a dozen or less of their 300 friends which have been mis-categorized, instead of individually placing the 300 friends in a group.

<comment><USER8> yep. And it's not just explicit actions such as like; facebook records everything you click on[1], so every time you view one of Joe's photos, or view his profile, or even just hover over his status update for a few seconds, that could bring you a little closer to him in the friend space.

This kind of thing probably already exists in facebook's internal labs, they're just waiting for their users to become ready for this kind of feature.

[1] - [http://www.gadgetell.com/tech/comment/facebook-employee- clai...](http://www.gadgetell.com/tech/comment/facebook-employee-claims-they- record-everything-you-do-and-can-read-your-me/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dave's writing style is distracting.

<comment><USER12> btw, u _do_ realize this post had no crazy fonts in it as an A/B test for u Haterz out there, right? ;)

<comment><USER13> Yes, it was the difference between "His writing style is quirky but his point is interesting" and "I'm not reading that".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This may be a tiny blip in a larger trend, actually. Jonathan Harris wrote an essay sometime back called _World Building in a Crazy World_ (<http://www.number27.org/worldbuilding.html>) where he argues, approximately, that social connection over the Internet has been moving towards the short and superficial for some time now, and has found an end-point in Twitter.

I believe he's right - when you've hit Twitter, the only way to go is to swing right back to intimacy - to meaningful, private digital connections. The whole essay is well worth a read.

Edit: Also, isn't the things that McClure is arguing for essentially what <http://www.frid.ge/> is doing?

</comment><comment><USER15> The reason for Facebook's popularity is its simpleness. Now that it is popular, it can experiment with additional features such as groups and more intimate group settings. Orkut, on the other hand attempted to do it the other way around. I am not sure how does it work now, but 2-3 years back, when one adds a friend, he is expected to rate the closeness in a scale of 1-5. This was to improve friend of friend suggestions as well as who is allowed to see what. The problem with this approach was that it was confusing for the users. This might be a stumbling block for new applications that try to foster a private group structure. But I do agree with Dave that there is a need for such applications.

</comment><comment><USER16> The basic problem is that FB models the social graph with a rigid, undirected graph when in fact we live in multiple, constantly-evolving, weighted graphs of social connections.

The newsfeed-ranking algorithm, privacy controls, friend lists, and latest groups incarnation are all simply hacks to try to shoehorn it's flawed social schema into what we actually experience in the real world.

</comment><comment><USER17> It took me a long time to understand why Facebook limits your friends to 5000, but I get it now. Facebook is very explicitly _not_ like Twitter, in that you want to connect to as many people as possible.

Facebook is a direct map of your real-life social circle, to the internet. It's just a way of taking your friends in real life and interacting with them more easily (much easier than emailing everyone, for example.) Of course, lots of people don't really use Facebook that way, but that's the behavior that is encouraged, and most people more-or-less follow that pattern.

In that case, I don't think having 500 friends is that big a problem. Sure, for most people, 300 of those friends will be people you aren't very close with, but so what? Other than the news feed, it shouldn't matter to you who these people are, except in terms of privacy. And you know what? With matters of privacy, I think the world is moving towards Robert Scoble's view - <USER2> assume everything is public anyway.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure that 5000 number is so deliberately chosen. Take the Tweet from Mark Zuckerberg in March 2009: "I find it funny that it's on Digg that I'm here. I'm looking forward to when people can have unlimited connections on Facebook soon!" - <http://twitter.com/#!/finkd/status/1297171671>. Then again, it's not happened yet, so maybe they changed their mind :)

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure it's so deliberate either - but I think that's what their strategy _should_ be, at least.

By the way, the number 5,000 is a great number: it doesn't really matter what the number is, as long as there _is_ a ceiling, it's pretty clear that you're _not_ supposed to add anyone and everyone. On the other hand, 5,000 is large enough that most users won't realistically hit it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There was an excellent presentation about real life social networks by Paul Adams from Google making similar observations:

[http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social- networ...](http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2)

</comment><comment><USER20> Twitter capped the length of a post. The upstart he's talking about might cap the number of people in a clique. Let's say 12 which could give rise to a domain with "dozen" in it. Like Twitter, it won't be built because it ticks boxes or has a great business plan, but just because. Rather than Twitter's asymmetric following or Facebook's friending, all members of a clique may need to approve any new member, and it won't be done lightly. "Is this person Sponge-worthy?" [1]

It could be simplified to its core. Picture New Twitter now but even simpler, and flipped horizontally. Post/item on the left side, and then banter on the right. Maybe one of the crew posts a jacket they're thinking of buying, or the result of a game, or a new movie trailer. Chit-chat fills the right hand side until people lose interest and move on to other posts.

Editing to add: I run a basketball forum which is a free-for-all. Anonymous posting, etc. And I often wonder how my experience of it would change if I just locked it down to the best 12-20 contributors - might miss a few challenging viewpoints, but there'd be no spam, griefers, brainless posts, etc. Perhaps picture the aforementioned concept as a micro-forum based around a particular niche rather than necessarily a particular group of friends?

And again (still thinking): You pick niches of interest and are randomly lumped with 12-20 others for as long as the group lasts. As with online gaming, you can privately kick out griefers or passengers. Perhaps you can only commit to 3 groups (wine, NBA, travel) to ensure you don't spread too thin. Elevator spiel is: Chatroulette + microforum + group decisions.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sponge>

<comment><USER3> If you cap the number of people in a network in any way, all you are doing is limiting its growth. A social network without growth is not a social network.

<comment><USER20> Good point, but I do wonder if there would be viral opportunities that arise because of the limitation, through value of invitations, etc. Picking and choosing the people for your group rather than seeing if they'll join so you can find and friend them.

<comment><USER3> Viral and limitation don't go hand in hand. Paul Buchheit made this point realy well in his startup school talk couple of years ago: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E#t=21m56s>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's a contextual problem that's been around for 50 years that FB is just making worse.

Human communications depend largely on context. We weren't made to blurt out every one of our feelings and observations to the community at large. Instead, we share this piece of information with this person, ask this other person for advice, listen in on these other folks when they talk about X, etc.

The is the natural way of being human -- to use a phrase from the movie, it's the social experience.

Every technical solution I've seen so far fails to include this contextual nature of communication. It's too much of a pain for folks to pick certain people for certain kinds of talk, and it's all so much a pain in the ass (compared with the old way of physically moving from one group to another)

Oddly enough, this was first noticed with TV back in the 1950s. Up until then, conversations were small and cliquish -- the natural order. TV brought in the idea of "universal" communicating in a way that radio, plays, or newspapers didn't. Suddenly everybody in the family was in the room when Lucy got pregnant, or when Opie killed the bird with the slingshot.

Of course, nobody bothered much complaining back then, because, after all, back in the 1950s what kind of radical information was going to be on TV? And nobody complained (much) when TV got into a lot more controversial issues in the last couple of decades.

But now it's not TV -- it's _us_. It's our lives, our pregnancies, our sorrows, etc.

I think people need the contextual nature of communication -- it makes society function. But I don't see any technology solution on the horizon that easily and naturally facilitates this. And yes, if it happens it might just be the next FB killer. But that's a big "if". Lots of folks have went down the road of trying to add context, including FB itself, and so far nobody has been successful.

<comment><USER22> _"But I don't see any technology solution on the horizon that easily and naturally facilitates this."_

Email

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Facebook's NEW groups feature solves this (the old one didn't):

<http://facebook.com/groups/>

</comment><comment><USER24> I think Facebook will be hard to replace until something else has enough mass. The problem is the FB is continuing to gain mass.

FB has enough gravity to pull most users back in. To break free, the user will need will power to ignore all their friends trying to drag them back.

<comment><USER25> People said the same thing about myspace a few years back. It was king of the social internets. Clearly, it wasn't quite as big as Facebook, but it's all a question of giving users what they want. If someone can identify the discontents and innovate on them faster than Facebook can, then we'll see a new, legitimate, challenger.

Of course, in order to do that, you have to think that FB won't innovate quickly enough to sit on whoever tries. It's the classic startup v. big company challenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Yup. Facebook friends trend towards bloat, which is problematic. Twitter followers/followees can be somewhat more manageable because there's a different set of assumptions about what following means vs. "friending".

The difficulty is that this is a very deep problem, and it is "solved" only partially by a very complex, very subtle, very tricky set of societal and personal customs and behaviors. The biggest problem from a social networking service standpoint is that computers very much prefer clear, explicit data, whereas human relationships exist in varying degrees of fuzziness. Most people don't sit down and write out a complete list of everyone who they consider a friend, nor do they create a tiered set of levels of friendships or a ranked list, nor would that necessarily be helpful as such levels are often in flux as friendships change, evolve, grow, and dissolve.

This is a problem everywhere with human behavior, it's one of the reasons why google was successful, for example. Back in the day every search engine was very practical and straightforward. Searching a set of terms brought you a list of web pages that had those terms on them, ranked by whatever convenient concrete metric seemed reasonable. To improve the quality of search results people would have to manually provide cues to search engines, via meta tags for example. Google decided instead to use a more sophisticated search strategy, extracting the implicit meta data about web pages via page rank and such-like. In short, google made web search conform to human behavior, rather than trying to get human behavior to conform to the requirements of search.

I suspect the same breakthrough is waiting to happen in social networking and will have just as big an impact.

<comment><USER27> Facebook could start by realising that I'm not interested in Farmville updates from people I have never interacted with beyond accepting their initial friend request, and am very interested in updates from the people whose events I attend and messages I reply to. They have a wealth of data on how I _intentionally_ interact with other Facebook users.

But most of the manual features for managing friends are already in place - you can update particular lists of people through groups, events and private messages. It's really not that tricky to decide who you want to invite to that awesome house party or on the cheap trip to Vegas.

Other features, such as the "how do you know them?" and focus on work/school/city networks seem to have actually been removed due to lack of use despite offering very intuitive and automatic categorisation of friends. Facebook's trajectory towards openness probably reflects a lack of desire towards using it in a structured way. A hypothetical startup whose main strength is removing the spam in the newsfeed and adding in the features they chose to remove probably isn't going to keep Zuck awake at night. I preferred Facebook before Zynga and gratuitous "liking", but I'm not going to persuade my closest friends to move to a clone to get rid of the bloat.

FWIW I think Dave's example of friend bloat is probably more a reflection of his social circle than underlying changes in Facebook itself. He'd have had a lot more friends in 2006 if he'd been attending university, and considerably fewer now if he was working 9-5 for an unglamorous small business and nobody read his blog. The number of friends I had grew far faster in early 2006 than in any subsequent period, and people I shared fleeting conversation whilst waiting for lectures with were arguably far more tangentially connected to me than, say, my sister.

<comment><USER28> "Facebook could start by realising that I'm not interested in Farmville updates "

OTOH, should Facebook be "smart" about this, or should they just provide a button to hide all Farmville updates? In fact, they try to do the first, and also do the second, so I don't know why people still complain about this.

<comment><USER27> I think they should do both, in a better and more obvious way. Certainly, some level of filtering of the feed has alwaye existed, but 1997 Yahoo tried at search and 2004 Hotmail had rudimentary spam filters and reporting tools. Google admittedly didn't have to fight against strong network effects to grab market share there, but it was the ability to incrementally improve that made their product offering more compelling rather than anything staggeringly original. And Yahoo and Microsoft had a better starting position to make improvements had they realised the true value of the underlying data on their user behaviour...

To be fair to Facebook's team, the feed does seem to have improved recently and not just because I've manually blocked Zynga apps. But with their data and talent there really shouldn't be any suggestion that a competitor starting from the ground up could better facilitate the social interaction they started off specialising in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> currently, my cell phone (non-smartphone) provides me with more meaning and intimacy than fb.

i get information quickly; it's fast, efficient, and effective; i don't have to sign in to anything (except for voicemails, which i very rarely check); it's pretty much with me wherever i go; it's relevantly actionable -- i get timely invites to go do stuff with people that i care about and want to do (because people with my # know what i'm interested in); i can actually talk to people, which is something i enjoyed doing a lot growing up.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think this is something the Fridge (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1631684>) is good for.

</comment><comment><USER31> Think it may go in cycles, for both search engines and social networks.

For search engines: First we had specific directories (Yahoo, others), then a single search engine (Google), followed by need of vertical search engines

For social: First we had all those nice forums; then (now) Facebook; again we could go to context specific verticals (e.g. HN a hacker vertical version of FB, which has the context for hackers)

</comment><comment><USER32> He's only got himself to blame - he clicked 'Accept' on every single one of those 2000+ friends. If he didn't want that many, he shouldn't have added them.

<comment><USER33> The total number of friends does not matter. It comes down to the fact that there is simply information you want to share with only your close friends.

You're not going to tell everyone that the VC you just met with is a tool - but I bet you anything there are a handful of people you do want to tell and discuss it with.

This issue needs to be solved from both angles. An experience that encourages the sharing of content with dynamic lists of connections + an interface that organizes content based on conversations and not strictly a news feed of interactions taking place within your personal network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I completely agree with Dave. Especially on his points about how many friends people have. I really dont want to share everything with everyone. I want a feeling of community not a feeling of exploitation. Its been driving me nuts that every page I visit has a facebook "like" or comment option. This is why I have been supporting Diaspora, I want to jump ship, but there is nothing viable to jump to, yet.

</comment><comment><USER35> I agree with Dave. Facebook is like your public social network, and you don't want to post private things on your wall. The question is can Facebook address this or is Facebook just fundamentally too public?

<comment><USER36> I don't understand why people don't have multiple facebook accounts reflecting different levels of privacy. I facebook-suicided because I didn't want to mix my personal and professional lives, and when I contemplate going back to it (mainly for professional reasons) I always have a two-account system in mind. Obviously, I don't use facebook much, so I might be missing something, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> >>> in each case above, there's a specific tight circle of connections I'd like to draw on, but they aren't always the same

Which, presumably, does not include Ron Conway or Michael Arrington.

<comment><USER12> LOL +1

(but strangely, I _would_ choose them not, in diff situations...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> FB treats friendship like its bimodal when in fact its not. People have many levels of friendship and FB does not take that into account. IMHO that is the main weakness w/ their site right now.

</comment><comment><USER39> All they need to add is the ability to star (or favourite) a friend. Then you can view just your newsfeed from your favourite friends. Perfect.

<comment><USER40> That doesn't resolve the context problem. Your close friends from school aren't your close friends from work. The two are not necessarily going to intersect. Starring is to one-dimensional, hence groups. But groups are a pain to manage. Pick your poison...

<comment><USER39> To me, starring captures enough of the functionality without being a pain to manage. But I see your point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Am I the only one who was just inspired to reduce his 'friends list' from 145 to 38?

<comment><USER3> No, I did it too. But I'm a nerd who has a love-hate relationship with FB. Most of my friends just gave me a "why would you do that?" look when I told them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Facebook groups solve this problem. However I don't think you want to manage your closest friends on one platform.

I communicate with the people I care about through all communication methods available, restricting this to one method would be a distraction.</comment>


Free private Git, Subversion and Mercurial repositories from cloud - <AUTHOR> http://try.deveo.com/free/ <comment><USER2> Probably a comparision between deveo vs gitlab vs github vs bitbucket would be useful?

Because in your feature list you have everything that at least on of you competition already do.

PS: SVN is still a thing? :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a blog post worth of comparison, naturally from very subjective POV. ;) We'll try to add it to the page as well.

[http://blog.deveo.com/what-makes-deveo-different-from- github...](http://blog.deveo.com/what-makes-deveo-different-from-github- gitlab-and-bitbucket/)

I would say the things you find in Deveo that you don't find in Github/GitLab/Bitbucket are at least, but not limited to:

\- real multi-tenancy, e.g. you always login to your company rather than the system as a whole

\- kanban board view for issues and ability to define the states for issues

\- projects that contain repos rather than just repos

\- git, svn, mercurial (svn is still alive, trust me)

\- webdav repos (e.g. dropbox alternative)

\- triggering hooks based on file/branch patterns

\- better ux (debateable)

In addition our servers are running in Europe, which might or might not be a thing for you.

Try it out yourself and tell if you found something else. :) We naturally also want feedback for our product to be able to improve.

<comment><USER2> > Here's a blog post worth of comparison

I'd suggest you a nice and simple table comparision. Some kind of TL;DR version ;)

> projects that contain repos rather than just repos

This one sounds interesting

> In addition our servers are running in Europe

I understand the server location is more like a marketing thingy; I live in Europe, but frankly, I don't give a damn about the location of the server.

I don't push/pull code every second, so the whatever latency is present is perfectly acceptable. Even if the server would be in the exact oposite point of the Earth, I could live with few seconds delay :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope the bullet points were enough for a TLDR?

The one project - multiple repositories is a design choice we made right from the beginning since it follows more naturally how work is done in actual companies, e.g. there are projects and in a project, there are frontend, backend, and other repositories. Finding all the stuff from one place is quite convenient.

Mentioning Europe hosting here is more like a marketing thing I agree, but hey, you need to distinguish yourself somehow. In addition, we are targeting European markets at the moment, so whatever relates to that is worth mentioning, right?

Also, we have been dealing with companies of different sizes for the last decade. During that time we have learned that there are legislations and such, that dictate where some code needs to be hosted. There are also people who are security constrained because of no apparent reason and want certain things, such as their code being hosted in Europe rather than in US.

The latencies might also contribute to the operations in the web UI in some cases. Anyway, it's not our biggest marketing message, but something I wanted to mention.

Thanks for your comments so far. I would love to hear more feedback from you after you have tried the product.

<comment><USER2> >I hope the bullet points were enough for a TLDR?

Absolutely, but unless you're planning to link this thread on the site, it won't be useful for EVERY user ;)

> more feedback from you after you have tried the product.

I'll create an account for my next project; there are some stuff that I would like to try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We are trying out new business model. Limited supply for now. Get it while it lasts. :) Comments, questions, etc. welcome. Will be checking this thread.

</comment><comment><USER3> Signed up, waiting for the email.

One question: does this have the largefiles mercurial extension enabled server side, and if not could it be?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment no I'm afraid. Probably it could configurable. Would you like to submit this at [http://support.deveo.com/](http://support.deveo.com/) so we can follow up with you when it's done?</comment></comment>


Give HN:  Free project/startup idea.  Please make this. - <AUTHOR> http://madebyloren.com/posts/11

<comment><USER2> Google Reader doesn't seem ugly to me. It does what it's supposed to: let me read feeds without too much clutter. I'd get rid of a bit of junk, but it basically does what it's supposed to, and does it in the real world, when there are times I only want to read certain feeds, when I want to mark stuff as read, and so on and so forth, and so need various buttons and settings.

<comment><USER3> I agree. I love the Google Reader UI, which is simple, easy to use, and has keyboard shortcuts.

The only thing I'd like changed is to have "j" take you onto the next item even if said item is in a different feed.

<comment><USER4> For that I press [Space], it changes to the next feed (or folder). If the article is open (and too long) just press [Enter] and then [Space] will have that effect.

When the next one is a folder (i dont usually read by folders) you can use Shift+N (next feed) and Shift+O (Open feed).

Now that I think about it, shortcuts in Reader and Gmail are extremely useful.

<comment><USER3> Yeah - it's shifting folders that's the problem - I wish that "j" would take me to the next item, even in other folders, rather than having to switch to using shift-n,shift-o.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes, RSS readers need some innovation, but No, the UI in that article isn't the answer. It's pretty horrid (1).

I would hope the new generation of RSS readers would rethink some stuff. And be social, not added-on-later-social like Google Reader.

Something like this? [http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2010/09/10/4765/time-f...](http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2010/09/10/4765/time- for-a-new-type-of-feed-people-reader)

(1) I use the words pretty and horrid together on purpose here.

</comment><comment><USER6> Actually I like requests like this (and this one in particular). There's probably a rather large crowd around that follows the 'learning new things makes you smarter' mantra and this is a very neat (small in scope, design already ~done~) idea to (ab)use it as a 'learn yourself some X' project.

I know that I'll brush up my nearly non-existant node.js/jquery skills by creating this, even if it ends up in the bin.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't like the design. It wastes precious space for nothing. Helvetireader is nice though: <http://helvetireader.com/> or Fever: <http://feedafever.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, Helvetireader wins hands down. Best I've seen, and it's slapped directly onto Google Reader so that's always a good thing. Where were all these good alternatives when I asked HN last time?

<comment><USER8> For Safari there's a great extension that reskins Google Reader and reclaims some wasted screen real estate:

<http://mariusth.channelwood.org/SafariExtensions/>

In use: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2282834/SafariReaderExtension.png>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think as the author, i have been looking for a long time for a magazine/bookmarks like page to use as home/newtab page and i can never settle because there is no great answer.

Anyway, I dont think his proposal is the solution, but its probably the way to go.

If anyone knows alternatives would be great to try them out

</comment><comment><USER9> I'll tell you why most iPad apps surpass web apps in both usability and design: they're easier to make and it's easier to make money off of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Honest question: are they really easier to make?

I know almost nil about iPad apps. The only thing I know is that they might be coded in Objective-C... which I know nothing about. But I do know about Rails, and I know it's dead simple once you get the hang of it. It took me about 3 or 4 months to get the hang of with no real prior programming experience, and now I could definitely code an app like this in a weekend. That seems pretty damn easy to me.

> _it's easier to make money off of them_

well, you've got me there :)

<comment><USER10> _I know almost nil about iPad apps. The only thing I know is that they might be coded in Objective-C._

I have to say that for fast iteration and explorative development, Ruby has it over Objective-C. I say this even though I very much like Objective-C and the iOS SDK.

Objective-C is like C++, but with a (IMO) better attempt to bolt the late- binding goodness of Smalltalk as the Object Oriented part, instead of the more complicated machinery of C++. The iOS SDK is like the best of Object Oriented Design from the early 90's, powered by an elegant message passing infrastructure, allowing clean implementations of patterns. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of stiffness from its statically typed roots. Iterative development is slower than for a dynamic language. It's very good, and I think XCode is a top-notch IDE. I even have an SSD for the purpose of making the Edit-Compile-Debug cycle as fast as possible. Despite this, investigating runtime behavior is still 2 to 3 times slower than in a dynamic language, refactoring is more work because there is more syntax and more repetition of entity names in different files, and there is more need to know how everything is laid out up front.

I'm facing this situation right now with converting my little calendar app to use a paged UIScrollView. You have to know a lot of how the UIScrollView works up front. I was able to get it to do the "Page Transitions" from month to month just by changing the data underlying my view. Now that I want to switch between different calendars with a sideways swipe, I have to create multiple views to do that, which involves yet more data refactoring. I had already refactored to support an array of multiple calendar objects in my view. Now I need to have multiple views with one calendar each. In a dynamic environment, I would be done already even without knowing this up front.

 _> it's easier to make money off of them_

Look at the history of technology. This _almost always_ trumps the more elegant technology. An ecosystem which rewards developers with money or some other satisfaction results in a virtuous cycle which results in more value created for the technology, which in turn makes it easier to create even more value and get rewarded.

EDIT: Another example. Look at the code it takes to _increment a Date by 1 month_. That is, I want to go from day N of month M to day N of month (M+1). It seems simple, but there's a bit going on there. In Ruby, this is one statement. In Objective-C with the iOS SDK, this involves _three objects_. To be fair, the iOS version is more powerful and flexible, which will let your code run correctly, even if you do something far-out like suddenly switch to a lunar calendar. 99%+ of developers won't ever benefit from that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are you really a guy whose name is Loren?

Sorry; had to ask.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, really. =]

<comment><USER11> If I were you, I'd be amused.

On one hand, I'd think about changing my name. On the other hand, you turned it into a strength, which is really awesome. (Username "guynamedloren"; website screams "Made by Loren"; etc. It gets you noticed, thus turning a "weakness" into a strength.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Admittedly, childhood was tough. I never really felt like I fit in and I'm sure my stupid girl name was a big part of it. When I was 16 I had really long hair and I was even confused for a girl on several different occasions.

But I've embraced the uniqueness. I've never once considered changing my name, even when I was younger and was made fun of daily. To make things worse, my sister's name is Brett (well really it's Brett-Ashley, but she goes by Brett) - which is most commonly a guys name.

Now I'm 22 and the jokes still come every so often, but I brush them off without thinking twice. I've built up a pretty strong sense of self over the years. Introductions are kind of funny, though... usually they go something like this:

\- "Hi, I'm Loren" \- "Warren?" \- "No. Loren. Like the girl. But I'm a guy."

.. and the ice breaks :)

<comment><USER9> Did you ever ask your parents why they named you and your sister like that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun_Also_Rises>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice design. Well thought out. Although in the image provided, too much screen real estate is taken taken away from the actual RSS content, in my opinion.

Just not sure what the benefit is for the developer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah, you're right about the real estate. I was tired and rushed when I threw the design together (quite the whirlwind of a week/weekend!). RSS could use a whole lot more space, with significantly smaller bookmarks at the top. It's just a concept mockup :)

> _Just not sure what the benefit is for the developer._

Enhanced skillset, of course. The best kind of benefits.

<comment><USER13> <http://www.shouldiworkforfree.com/clean.html></comment></comment></comment>


CEO of Shopify says long hours aren't necessary for success - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.sg/shopify-ceo-success-long-hours-40-hour-week-2019-12/ <comment><USER2> Active discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21892492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21892492) (489 points/217 comments)

</comment><comment><USER3> You usually are forced to work long hours when:

-management mismanages your project -Sales sells customers on a new feature within a vastly reduced time frame..without consulting the development team -Management decides to change around the current goals of your project, without changing the deadline

I once was brought on to a new project as a consultant that originally had a deadline of a year, this was reduced to 3 months after management dragged their feet, and I was expected to get it done..with the same amount of features in that new time frame.

I got it done in 6 weeks..but I had to work lots of extra hours to accomplish this. Luckily, I was able to bill them as a consultant...and not as a regular employee.

The crazy part is the company that gave me the project had a staff of salaried developers that only work on these sorts of death march projects. They charge a premium as a business..and probably do very well..but the stress of it has got to be pretty bad.

He's right. You really don't need to work long hours..when you have a good management team. But this is the exception to the rule in my experience.

<comment><USER4> > Sales sells customers on a new feature within a vastly reduced time > frame..without consulting the development team

This was my life for years. We need this giant feature/product, because we sold it, yesterday! We'd have jokes like "what startup are we building this week?". I guess at least I can thank that atmosphere for being able to work super fast.

The CEO at the time didn't really say no to any sale. But I didn't understand why sales couldn't sync with product or engineering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I worked for a company where the product manager asked me to work into the evening to meet another deadline which he mismanaged (and which I flagged weeks before).

He was met with a firm no (which ensued some very strange plaintive messages from his side). I resigned about a month later.

I'm of the opinion that perpetually mismanaging deadlines, not only shows a lack of expertise - but also a complete lack of professionalism (in regards to the greater team).

</comment><comment><USER6> Good luck convincing old school management on this. They measure productivity by how long they see you at your desk. It's sad.

<comment><USER7> They'll die out soon enough.</comment></comment>


Effective Testing with RSpec 3, Getting Real: Integration Specs - the-red-button http://blog.travisspangle.com/effective-testing-with-rspec-3-getting-real-integration-specs/ <comment> the-red-button Completed Part 2, building an application top-down testing! Excited to get some use out of the bisect flag and learning more uses for meta-tags.

Appreciate any feedback.</comment>


Facial hair trends over time - <AUTHOR> http://flowingdata.com/2014/01/08/facial-hair-trends-over-time/

<comment><USER2> Without labels on the X Axis these are worthless. Did someone shave their mustache off a few days ago which caused the sharp drop in the middle of the chart?

The bottom of the article mentions 1905 in relation to the beards chart, but which decline are they referencing?</comment>


RequireJS: a JavaScript file and module loader - <AUTHOR> http://requirejs.org/ <comment><USER3> What makes this different/better than Head JS, LAB, et cetera? If you're familiar with the project, pitch us.

<comment><USER4> Same here... Why would I use all these special (quite untested compared to GWT, Dojo) JavaScript libraries, instead of using Dojo - which has already a fine module layer as well as a build system.

<comment><USER5> I don't know why _you_ specifically would use it, but some developers prefer to mix-n-match their toolchain rather than use everything from one project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> i feel like requuireJS hit hacker news last week, and the week before that.

I'm would genuinely like more information on the authors of this library. I a little confused why their examples have the script tags in the HEAD of the document, when it is well known that script tags block all other resources from loading and should be placed at the bottom of the page.

[http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2009/04/27/loading- scripts-...](http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2009/04/27/loading-scripts- without-blocking/)

If the authors or developers have some magic to bypass this, besides just drawing the script tags via JS as Steve Souders suggests, I would be excited to see that presented more front and center.

<comment><USER5> An example for how to use RequireJS needs to be as clear and simple as possible, and putting a SCRIPT tag into HEAD is still the clearest and simplest way - the stuff that Souders writes about is Advanced JS hackery - <USER2> you understand Souders, then you also understand how to rewrite the RequireJS example to be even more efficient than it is.

One of the bigger misconceptions about RequireJS is that it's about efficiency. RequireJS does provide an efficient way to load up the scripts, but that's an important side benefit of the actual reason why it exists: To provide sane modularization and dependency management of your Javascript code.

<comment><USER6> thanx for the overview. Sounds like this falls into the same groups as LABJS and ControlJS to some degree.

I don't really agree that putting the script tag in the head is a simple example. The tornado web docs, talk about loading script tags last, and they cover a lot more than just where is the best place to put script tag.

<http://www.tornadoweb.org/documentation>

I could buy the "it's okay to write demos with script tags in the head" bit in the same why I buy it's "okay" to use document.write() examples b/c it's 'fast'. Which is to say, I don't buy either argument.

If requireJS is aiming at people who don't know any advanced JS 'hackery', why on earth would that same dev know they need "sane modularization and dependency management". They still think it's "okay" to load script tags from the HEAD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dojo has many similar features - compilation, dojo.require().. might be a consideration as well if this is attractive.

</comment><comment><USER8> omfg, that website is beauty itself. seriously.</comment>