Coming Clean: Taking the Taboo Out of Employees Leaving - <AUTHOR> http://www.incmagazine-digital.com/incmagazine/march_april_2018?pg=56#pg56 <comment><USER2> I would like to think that more companies would adopt to this model and be more transparent about the departures of their employees, but I also understand why it is a difficult decision for businesses to make these types of announcements. Think about it from the business's perspective. Divulging why someone is leaving could be a potential black eye to the business and there could be unintentional consequences. For example, in the article the author commented about a gap between the person and the role. Being terminated for this reason could spark the question in each and every employee's mind about whether they are performing at their job. The unintentional side effect of the transparency is placing doubt in everyone's mind of if they are good enough for their job. I do, however, think it is an interesting take on the matter. Thank you for sharing.</comment>


Do you have a blog? And if so, why? - <AUTHOR>

Do you have a blog? And if so, why? <comment><USER2> Yes.

1) Blogging is like going to the gym except for writing: if I stopped, I'd end up an overworked, pudgy Japanese salaryman with no writing ability in English.

2) Blogging makes people say nice things about my ideas and that has always given me the warm fuzzies.

3) My decision to start a business 3.5 years ago was heavily influenced by accounts of success I had read from other people, and I wanted to leave similar encouragement.

4) My blog (or rather, a half-dozen handpicked articles from it) makes a far better case for hiring me than my resume or publicly available source code does.

<comment><USER3> I came here to say these exact things. Well done, and good luck!

Actually, I'd add a fifth item that is related to item 1:

5\. Writing about things helps me clarify my ideas and stop hand-waving over important details. So writing makes me a better writer, and it also makes me a better thinker.

<comment><USER4> Related to this: Writing about something I'm not 100% familiar with forces me to learn more about it both breadth- and depth-wise. When learning a new topic, it is extremely helpful to write up a tutorial describing "how to" do this new thing. If forces you to understand before codifying an attempt to help others understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes.

In my opinion, having a blog is as much about learning as it is about sharing information with other people. There's just something about putting your thoughts into words that helps you crystalize certain ideas that float around in your head.

For instance, if you read most of Paul Graham's essays, you'll notice that they probably serve more to teach him than to actually share things.

Plus, having people _read_ your thoughts serves as a good way to gauge whether you're on the right track or not. If there's something wrong with your idea, _believe me_ someone will let you know. This is why I sometimes submit articles to HN: to get an idea if what I'm writing is of any interest to hackers.

</comment><comment><USER6> No. I don't have a blog because my perfectionism keeps me from even starting to write. I feel like if what I write isn't extraordinary, I have no business putting it out there at all.

<comment><USER7> How can you ever start writing something that's extraordinary if you never start writing at all? Do you really think Mark Twain started out writing Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer? It is a skill that requires effort to become good at.

<comment><USER6> Oh, I agree. You're absolutely right. I know that the perfect is the enemy of the good, but just knowing that doesn't make it easy to get over the psychological hurdle.

The same hangup keeps me from trying many of my software ideas. It's a feeling that I'm constantly learning to fight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes.

1) I'm interested in the field of Computer Science (CS) and I like to write articles about various things I encounter and learn in this field. I'm also interested in other fields, but since I studied CS and work in this field, it's the one in which I'm "up to the mark". Well, that doesn't mean that I won't be writing articles about topics from other fields.

2) I love it when interesting discussions start around the subject an article of mine is addressing. For me, this point is one of the most rewarding things I get from blogging, since you can learn quite a lot of new things thanks to it.

3) I love to write tutorials, with the hope that somebody can benefit from them (hopefully in a good way :) I'm always happy when I read a comment from a user, whom a tutorial has helped in some way.

4) Since I read quite a lot of articles online, I use my blog also to post linkings to such interesting articles. I think the one or the other linking is appreciated by the few readers I have :)

5) It helps me to improve my language skills, since I decided to write the articles in English rather than in German. IMHO it's a good exercise.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes.

I've been running it since 2002, and every job I've had since then has come about as a result of connections made through blog related activity. It's an incredibly powerful professional tool.

</comment><comment><USER10> 1\. Arrogance. All writers have some form of arrogance because they think that what they say is worth reading.

2\. To promote my book. I hope readers of my blog will be tempted to buy The Geek Atlas.

3\. To quote Alain de Botton: "Authors write things down so as to have to think of them less."

4\. It helps me practice writing.

<comment><USER11> To quote you quoting Alain de Botton:

>3\. To quote Alain de Botton: "Authors write things down so as to have to think of them less."

This is what I do when I have a lot on my mind. It is a nice exercise to flush everything out and get closure.

Also, can I get a review copy of your book? Ill write a review on O'Reilly .. No? ok didnt think so ...

<comment><USER10> Try asking O'Reilly directly.

<comment><USER11> Is that how that works? Thanks for the tip!

<comment><USER12> In high school ('01-05) I had a site called "rants". It was a blog read by maybe 10 people total, including my parents. I happened to email O'Reilly to ask about something and they noticed the blog in my sig. They invited me to start posting reviews in exchange for free copies. I only got through two books but it was fun! Anyway, I found my old review of Learning Perl on the wayback machine:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20030421033045/http://rant.c99.or...](http://web.archive.org/web/20030421033045/http://rant.c99.org/review_LP.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yes. Because I decided that I don't have to be "a blogger." To elucidate: I like the idea of having readers and having an audience, but the standard format of most blogs frustrated me. I realized that what I want is to put up good writing and good content. Most blogs stick to a targeted audience in the hope of garnering recurring readership, and will try to do this whether or not they have anything worthwhile to say. I don't want to be an "expert," and have no interest in doing "regular updates" or "news." That makes blogging a chore.

But I can make a very comprehensive, "perennial" blog post on some topic. And rather than setting out to stick to the one topic, I can just let it get filtered by other sites. The resulting site essentially describes all my best work.

</comment><comment><USER14> No

1) Noise. I have opinions about things but they are just adding more noise. The only place I write is here... and I know I shouldn't...

2) Blogging is writing about doing instead of doing (I think Jeff Atwood said that).

3) Bloggers will do _anything_ for self-promotion and it makes me sick.

4) What a blogger writes just doesn't matter.

<comment><USER15> > 4) What a blogger writes just doesn't matter.

If that was true, you wouldn't have quoted Jeff Atwood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yes.

1) It attracts interesting people to contact me and offer work/projects/partnerships.

2) I like having a written history of the evolution of my business.

3) There are people interested in checking in on what I'm up to every once in a while that don't use social networks.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sometimes I wonder :)

For me it's about community. Physicists, Biologists, Medical Doctors all have professional journals. But for programmers and tech entrepreneurs there are the blogs. I think we all have to realize that blogs, and places like HN, are the conscience of the tech movement and I personally feel there's a duty in saying something if it's not being said elsewhere.

Look for example at Anthropomorphic Global Warming. Whether you believe in it or not you have to admit some of the stuff that's come out recently should never have been allowed to happen. Stuff like alternative opinions (see Richard Lindzen of MIT for example) being kept out of the science journals. The reason that sort of thing happens in a community is because rational scientists don't stand up to their community and say "This is wrong. I don't agree with this guy but we should hear him out". The fact that many in the climatology community didn't do that has set back our understanding of the phenomenon by years if not decades

To me blogging is a way to stand up to my community when I feel mistakes are being made or the community is going down the wrong path. That's why I do it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Several, but my main blog is my technical/professional journal. <http://www.codedevl.com>

I update it when I feel there is something to say, not out of a need to keep it current for activity's sake.

I write for two reasons: Firstly, to get my ideas from my head into written form for personal reflection upon either a concept, experience or reaction to piece of relevant content. Secondly as a means of sharing my own experience(s) with others who might be looking for a different perspective based on someone else's background. I have also found that my technical blog has gained me several acquaintances, a few good friends, and considerable work. While my CV is rather lengthy due to my fifteen years in the industry, I have found that my blog posts offer far better insight into my thinking processes. As such, my best and brightest works situations transpired from those companies which found me via my writings.

</comment><comment><USER19> Yes -- two of them, one of which I chiefly write and one of which I contribute to. The former is about books (which I like reading) and writing (which I like doing), and it's at <http://jseliger.com> . Now I'm one of the perhaps ill- advised souls in English grad school, so some of the material on it might eventually make it into papers. Occasionally I find other interesting book people too, which is an added bonus.

The other blog, Grant Writing Confidential (<http://blog.seliger.com>), is about my family's business, and it serves a couple of purposes: 1) it signals to clients that we actually know what we're talking about, 2) it brings in search engine traffic we'd other wise not get, and c) we get a chance to write about our work, which virtually no one else understands.

So in both cases, I write for a mixture of business and pleasure.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have a personal blog [1] and am the editor and a regular contributor to a public policy blog [2].

I blog because: I love to write; I enjoy and learn a lot from the dialogue that blogging enables; I think regular writing exposed to the scrutiny of others makes me a better writer; I love to read what other people have written and want to contribute my share; I like knowing that something I wrote was valuable to someone else; I'm a bit narcissistic; it's a very effective method of structured procrastination [3]; and it has led to a few employment opportunities.

[1] <http://quandyfactory.com>

[2] <http://raisethehammer.org>

[3] <http://quandyfactory.com/blog/1/>

</comment><comment><USER21> Yes. For apparently similar reasons to other people.

1) To write. Whether or not I am good at it or anyone reads it, I enjoy the act of writing.

2) To record a bit of who I am, not for the internet, but for my kids, just in case I get hit by a bus before they grow up.

</comment><comment><USER22> Yes: <http://alquerubim.blogspot.com/> (in Portuguese).

1) To practice writing; 2) To develop stray ideas that keep floating around in my head inconclusively; 3) To reminisce about 8 bit hardware and software.

</comment><comment><USER23> Two, although I will never, ever call them 'blogs' because the word sounds like something smelly and disgusting that clogs up the pipes in your house and must be removed by an experienced professional.

<http://journal.dedasys.com> \- to talk about the occasional tech related thing I've done that other people might find interesting. I don't write much, because I don't think I really do all that much that is worthy of communicating to the world at large.

<http://padovachronicles.welton.it> \- for the occasional anecdote about life in Italy.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yes. I have a personal blog that is 1) for me to remember all the things that I have done and 2) to share with friends and family and anyone else who might benefit from what I have learned.

Also, this reminds me of a post from Paul Buchheit's blog awhile back: "By sharing more of our own thoughts and lives with the world, we contribute to the global pool of "how to live", and over time we also get contributions back from the world. Think of it as "open source living"."

[http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/11/open-as-in-water- fl...](http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/11/open-as-in-water-fluid- necessary-for.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> Yes.[1]

I do research in programming languages, but until yesterday, I never posted much about my research area.

I use my blog to post on topics related to courses I teach. (Mostly advanced compilers and static analysis.)

I also post on new ideas from others that I don't have time to do original research in, but that I find useful or interesting.

I'm also using my blog to recruit students for our Ph.D. program. It worked pretty well for that this year.

[1] <http://matt.might.net/articles/>

</comment><comment><USER26> Blogging for me means reaching an audience easily. I'm from Italy but I've known a lot of awesome people in the world through blogging.

I'm also practicing English a lot, and I'm improving my writings skills every day.

It's also an opportunity for me to learn new things and compare them with like minded people.

I write mainly in 2 blogs, <http://oscardelben.com>, and <http://www.freestylemind.com/>

</comment><comment><USER27> I blog for three reasons

1\. To hone my writing skills

2\. To put a solution to a problem in the public or make some knowledge public as often when I'm researching some problem, it is in blogs that I find solutions. This is my way of giving back

3\. I'm interested in adsense optimizations and my blog provides an opportunity to test out my hunches.

My blog is at <http://www.manu-j.com/blog/>

</comment><comment><USER28> I write a lot, but I don't blog. The people I write for don't use RSS feeds or routinely scan a large number of sites, and I'm not prolific enough on any one topic to give anyone incentive to follow my blog, since I don't have any friends that share more than one or two of my interests.

When I write about food and recipes, I send an email to three or four people I know will be interested. When I write about a backpacking or travel destination, it's an email to a different handful of people. When I write about exercise, I put it on a private blog where I record my food, exercise, and weight every day. When I write about software, I usually throw it away, though I often find an opportunity to recycle the thoughts and language in a discussion online or in person. When I write about a book, I share what I've learned by talking to a friend who would be interested. Et cetera.

I've thought about putting everything on a blog and just sending links to people when there's an entry they'd be interested in, but writing a blog that has no consistent readership and constantly bugging people to read it just feels pathetic for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER29> Yes,

To contribute back to the community blog is part of.

As outlet of my creative thoughts.

As brainstorming/honing exercise (having to write it out really helps explore/define an idea).

To solicit comments, criticisms, improvements to my ideas.

My blog is primarily about RPGs, the pen and paper kind, <http://trollandflame.blogspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER30> Yes. I've found that pretending people are listening helps keep me focused on moving forward on projects. And sometimes people really are listening, and that helps even more.

My most successful blog, though, is my house blog (<http://big-old- house.blogspot.com>) - although I suppose that's my most ambitious project to date, too...

</comment><comment><USER31> Yes. Because:

1\. People have told me that they've found it useful. Even if I don't post very often, I won't take it down.

2\. I get to improve my English and communication skills. Writing forces you to express yourself clearly and succinctly, while leaving out irrelevant details.

3\. I often use it as a platform for publishing a lot of original content, and I'm looking for peer review. I often get useful comments.

4\. It's almost effortless for me. Most of my blog posts start off as email replies to people seeking explanations to certain things.

5\. It's an online identity I have full control over. When someone searches for me, my blog is what I want them to see. Not my Facebook or Twitter profile, which can tend to get clogged up with garbage from friends.

</comment><comment><USER32> When I'm picking up some new technical subject, the best way to learn about it is to google it. Most of the time, what I end up at is some blog post that tells me more or less exactly what I want to know. So it seemed only fair that I should try to give a little something back.

Some of my blog articles have been pretty popular. A couple of times they have been used as answers at StackOverflow. I always get a little buzz when I am the top google hit for some technical term.

Google rewarded me for frequent blogging by increasing my PageRank to 3. Now I don't blog as much as I used to, and they demoted me to 2. _sadface_

shameless plug: <http://www.platinumball.net/blog/>

<comment><USER33> Let me be the first person to thank you. I rely on blogs like yours daily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Two blogs:

Technical blog where I mostly just write about my own projects and experiments. The blog exists so I can publicize my work and other people can find it and use it. It's also a way for people (including potential clients/employers) to find out more about me. Maybe most importantly, writing about my work motivates me to finish it, and forces me to make it understandable and useable: <http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/>

And a personal journal, just for keeping in touch with my extended circle of friends and family: <http://mbrubeck.livejournal.com/>

</comment><comment><USER35> I started blogging this year as a way to overcome procrastination. The blog software I wrote forces me to post once a week or else it finks on me.

<http://milesforrest.com>

<comment><USER36> Miles, I love your fink software! Any chance you'll release it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I had two things to say(1,2), back in 2007 or so, so I started a blog. Now I've said them, as well as a few other things, but I don't really blog all that much these days.

Who knows, maybe I'll get inspired again one of these days...

(1) [http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/02/two-weeks- vaca...](http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/02/two-weeks-vacation-is- only.html)

(2) [http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2008/05/laid-off- one-t...](http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2008/05/laid-off-one-thing- you-absolutely-need.html)

</comment><comment><USER38> Mainly just for fun. I don't expect that my blog will ever be read by any significant number of people, and neither do I try to make any money out of it with ads. Writing down your ideas helps to clarify them sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER39> Turns out having a blog was the most google-friendly way to host my about me page.

</comment><comment><USER40> Actually, I've been blog free until just recently. I'm a terribly sentimental type of guy, but I had never realized the potential of a blog to be almost like the "new" photo album.

Since I started with that idea, I've also realized that online identity is becoming very, very important. So much so that people land jobs because of it. It's a great way to break the ice, on the readers terms.

So while I feel like I'm late to the game, I have now immersed myself into social networks. I started blogging, flickring, facebooking, tweeting, githubbing(?), and now, buzzing.

</comment><comment><USER41> This reason is kind of lazy, but: Blogs help in making an awesome site devoted only to a particular subject and news about that subject easily. But the only criteria is: don't let it look like a normal blog.

For a personal blog: 1) Love writing about ideas and my thoughts even though a selected few would only read them. Makes me feel good and keeps my brain working.

2) After school, we didn't have a proper language subject, just computer science, maths ..., writing maintains the communication strength. Language is important too!

</comment><comment><USER42> Yes-ish. I posted weekly programming essays in college, and post sporadically now.

I had developed lots of opinions about programming, and I couldn't clearly articulate any of them. Writing them for a broad audience forced me to adopt a consistent view of the programming world, and helped my writing develop.

As an added bonus, the internet is overly relentless when you make a mistake. It made me strive for a higher level of precision and quality that I wouldn't have developed just through my college courses.

</comment><comment><USER43> There was a time when I use to keep a handwritten journal of daily work "stuff" I did on programming, sysadmin & management. I think I got the idea from Clifford Stoll's "The Cuckoo's Egg" and I found it to be very useful "logging" system of my past activities :)

Anyway as you can imagine it was hard to keep this up and eventually fell by the wayside. However I have found blogging to be a handy subset of this and the fact it can be useful to others inspires me to keep at it.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's mostly for me, to chronicle my experiences for later reference. I find that you start to see patterns over time, and these can be critical in putting yourself on the right course.

Also, it improves my writing skills.

Plus, it's kind of cathartic. Starting a company is very stressful and not very rewarding in the early stages. Writing about it helps me to blow off a little bit of steam.

Finally, what I'm writing might be interesting/useful/comedic to others.

</comment><comment><USER45> Blogging has done one thing well to me and that's the reason I blog regularly. It helped shape my thinking well. Often when you have an idea it can be vague - formless. Writing it down gives it a good shape and setting it in stone. It's also not a magazine where every fucking thing is edited, you have the will to write whatever you want, however you want.

To summarise, discover your communicative personality and help set your ideas in stone.

</comment><comment><USER46> Sometimes I discover something I want to share with everyone else. Or I have an opinion I want to air to the world. In the end, it doesn't really matter that the world largely doesn't care because I don't promote my blog a lot, because I post very rarely or because my posts aren't brilliant like Steve Yegge's. I'm happy whenever there's someone who reads it, but I don't have enough time to put into making it better than it is right now.

</comment><comment><USER47> Yep.

1) Blogging helps build my personal brand,

2) gives me control over the first things people are seeing about me when they search my name, and

3) gives me platform to improve my writing / coding / design / SEO / and marketing skills.

I write about startups, marketing, and Boston entrepreneurship at:

<http://socialstrategist.com>

</comment><comment><USER48> Yes.

1) To practice my writing skill - I may be awesome at programming, but my prose comes out too slow. I hope practice will allow me to write faster, yet still coherently.

2) There are many people on the internet that are just plain wrong, and I must correct them! :)

3) To leave an impression when I am gone, albeit small.

</comment><comment><USER49> I've found that writing about something forces you to investigate all the possible ideas and nuances around the topic in a way that you may otherwise not do. It's a great way to really understand something. It's trained me to think more logically. That's part of the reason I blog.Plus, it's what got me my current job.

</comment><comment><USER50> Yes. Originally I had lofty ideas about writing interesting articles, but now I mainly just use it as a dumping ground for solutions to annoying technical problems to help other people who might be dealing with the same issues, or to remind myself how I solved a problem if I run into it again.

<comment><USER51> I still do have lofty ideas about writing interesting articles on mine, but amusingly the post that has attracted by far the most traffic is [http://blog.iangreenleaf.com/2009/03/rsync-and-retrying- unti...](http://blog.iangreenleaf.com/2009/03/rsync-and-retrying-until-we-get- it.html), a simple little bash script for rsync. A good lesson on the power of filling a niche - clearly I wasn't the only one Googling for "rsync retry".

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Yes, it provides an easy way of transferring ideas and scripts I'm using at home to work without having to pass code through an overly aggressive email filter.

Besides, as others have said people can see what quality level of code I can produce from it.

</comment><comment><USER53> YES (<http://capitalgeedesign.wordpress.com>). Because, similar to a journal, it keeps me living right. It helps me live each day "worth blogging about". -Garrett Gee

</comment><comment><USER54> In addition to dangrossman's comments, I have friends and family that are geographically distant. Blogs, and social networking in general (Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz), help maintain a sense of emotional closeness.

</comment><comment><USER55> I do have a blog, but I rarely update it. Occasionally I get the urge to blog again, post regularly for a few weeks, then lose interest and stop posting for up to a year. This has been going on for awhile now.

</comment><comment><USER56> Yes, because I like hearing myself talk. And apparently so do others.

</comment><comment><USER57> Kinda. I have a journal. I use it to share links, photos, ideas and random thoughts with my friends (and other likeminded people).

</comment><comment><USER58> yes, but it's not the kind of thing anyone would read regularly (almost all traffic is from search). it's a simple way (i can "post" by sending myself an email) for me to keep a note of interesting links and to publish technical fixes so that they appear in google searches for others.

</comment><comment><USER59> Awesome question, i guess so i can stay "hip" and "with it" its also kindof expected for developers.

</comment><comment><USER60> To have some semblance of control over my Google results.

</comment><comment><USER61> Do you write comments on Hacker News? And if so, why?

</comment><comment><USER62> Yes, because I used to write useful things.

</comment><comment><USER63> Yes. I keep technical notes in the cloud.

</comment><comment><USER64> Yup. It's my business.

</comment><comment><USER65> Yes.

I blog for three reasons:

1) To make some written record of my opinions and thoughts for my progeny to read years after I die

2) To organize my thoughts. I find that by writing about things that somewhat confuse me, I am able to clarify what I believe and why

3) To preserve my skill at long-format(!) writing. Blog writing is different than tweeting, or emailing. "Long format" seems a stretch, but in today's technology arena a blog is like a novel used to be. Being able to cogently organize a theme, a tone, a thesis, and supporting details makes me a better communicator overall.

There are some bonus reasons: it also helps me remember easily forgotten details of issues. It is a good way to have some lightweight web design work to tweak every now and then.

Blogging is a good habit that is good for you. I hate to see that Facebook and Twitter take a lot of my time away from it.

</comment><comment><USER66> Yes. Because I am better than you.

<comment><USER66> Joking of course. Blogging is good for the internet. And your career.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The main reason I blog is so other people can avoid having to go through some of the struggles that I went through. Examples: posting a useful code snippet; I will soon post a guide about how I fixed my insomnia. I soon hope to get the courage to tackle deeper, more personal issues about depression, friendship, identity, purpose, family, conflict, relationships. Although insomnia is serious and personal, which is why I'm holding off on posting it... for now. It will be written and published soon. I declare it.

</comment><comment><USER11> No, I feel a lot of people my age are not experienced enough to be able to write anything worthwhile. The result is "So I was reading this on [well-known blog] and here is my commentary", or "This is how you do X in Y", which should really be in the wiki for Y.

<comment><USER33> Not trying to be combative, but so what if they are?

My last (and widely viral) blog post was about me reacting to a blog post, but that didn't change the fact that many people found it interesting enough to forward on to their friends, post to Reddit, etc. I've learned so much from the reactions to my 3 short blog posts that I don't think I'll ever be "too busy" or "too inexperienced" to blog again in my life.

<comment><USER11> You must be the exception and congratulations on that. But surely we could all do without another junior-level-liberal-know-it-all-cause-I-keep-up-with- reddit/hn who will chime in on Google Buzz, Apple IPad, that dude who neglected his Markdown project, why Flash is dead, why Flash is not dead, why I switched to Django, why some language is the new hotness* , and beginner JQuery tips for good measure.

* for this week</comment></comment></comment>


Apple posts free developer documentation for iBooks users - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2010/12/19/apple-posts-free-developer-documentation-for-ibooks-users/

<comment><USER2> Whoah-when did this "Collections" feature sneak into iBooks? Very nice. I made a "Cocoa" collection and stuck them all in it.

<comment><USER3> iBooks 1.2 - updated in the last week

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I started out developing for the Mac with "The Objective-C Programming Language" but found it clumsy and kind of dense. In my opinion "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" by Aaron Hillegass ([http://www.amazon.com/Cocoa- Programming-Mac-OS-3rd/dp/032150...](http://www.amazon.com/Cocoa-Programming- Mac-OS-3rd/dp/0321503619/)) is much better in the way it introduces concepts, and flows from chapter to chapter. Well worth the investment if you're serious about developing for the Mac.

<comment><USER5> I found that Aaron Hillegass's book was decent enough as a tutorial, but halfway through it left me feeling like it raised too many questions without answering them. I was making toy apps but I didn't know what the hell was going on. Just my two cents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aren't these the same docs you can get with a free Apple developer account?

<comment><USER7> Yes, but formatted as books for iBooks.

<comment><USER8> This is newsworthy?

EDIT: This is a serious question... The article is a pointer to iBook versions of free PDFs. I can't imagine why this has been so well received. You can even view the original PDFs in iBooks... What am I missing?

<comment><USER9> Seconded. PDFs work just fine with Stanza and GoodReader too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is obvious that this link is just to bring more traffic to tuaw.com. This is becoming ridiculous on HN.

</comment><comment><USER11> The iOS HIG appears to have disappeared.</comment>


A/B testing in Django v.1.6 - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone have any recommendations for A/B testing libraries for Django 1.6? I've found a few on GitHub  (django-lean, django-experiments) but none of these repos are active anymore. The closest that applies is gutter by disqus, but I need something simpler. <comment><USER2> [https://www.djangopackages.com/grids/g/analytics/](https://www.djangopackages.com/grids/g/analytics/)</comment>


My first full app - <AUTHOR> http://quiet-earth-8715.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> Congrats on your first app. Twitter is always fun to work with. What did you use to make it?

PS the "tag that" button isn't working.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

I built it in Sinatra. It was a good experience for me to use APIs.

*Submit fixed.</comment>


How to help your team write better bug reports - <AUTHOR> http://bigbangtechnology.com/post/i_love_it_when_you_find_bugs

<comment><USER2> Max and I had a conversation about this piece and one thing we wanted to avoid was pigeonholing our bug reports into a category system like I've seen so many others do: Fill out 15 drop downs to describe the state of your machine when the bug was found. What component, what OS, browser etc… There has to be a better way than that right?

</comment><comment><USER3> Add a bug button on the prototype? Integrating the bug reporting means you can automatically supply a history of the last n things the user did, or whatever debugging state you think is helpful, and the user will fill in the rest. Similar to automatic crash reporting, except without requiring the crash.

<comment><USER2> This is a great idea. I wonder how much state information we would have to track for this to be useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is cool. But it wouldn't really help our internal team "understand" the bug in question - if that's important.

<comment><USER3> The bug button pops up the usual form for the user to fill out - describe the bug, etc. It's just that more extensive state can be silently added to help recreate the bug, or at least provide the context that is often missing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I didn't write this for customers obviously - they deserve to report bugs in any way they want. But I think developers need to do a better job helping their team-members write better bug reports.</comment>


Building Windows for the ARM processor architecture - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/02/09/building-windows-for-the-arm-processor-architecture.aspx

<comment><USER2> Content-wise, the good thing is that there is quite some information here. One thing that caught my attention is the phrase _"Metro style apps available from Microsoft that support a wide variety of industry-standard media and document formats"_. It made me wonder whether we will see a PDF viewer from Microsoft.

Style-wise, as often when reading MS 'blog posts', I wonder how many marketeers were in the committee writing it. This post is way longer than its content deserves, with repeated almost content-free adjectives such as "unique" or "intrinsic". To make things worse, it seems to suffer from serious copy-paste errors (for examples, search for "has a very high degree of commonality" or "enables creativity").

The post also sometimes almost conflicts with itself due to what I imagine to be marketing forces. For example: _"WOA builds on the foundation of Windows"_ vs "With WOA you can look forward to integrated, end-to-end products—hardware, firmware and WOA software, all built from the ground up"

I also found it funny to read _"of what we call, for the purposes of this post, Windows on ARM, or WOA"_. Are they really thinking that will prevent people from calling it WOA elsewhere? In a similar vein, we have _"Note: This is not a product plan or even a hint at a product."_ and _"(which are not the subject of this post)"_ Phrases like that belong in a press release, not in a blog post.

As a final reason why I do not like the writing style, I had to laugh when, over 1300 words in the article, I find "This post is organized with the following sections"

<comment><USER3> A metro PDF reader from MS for windows 8 has already been confirmed (apparently) [http://www.addictivetips.com/internet- tips/windows-8-modern-...](http://www.addictivetips.com/internet- tips/windows-8-modern-reader-is-metro-based-built-in-pdf-reader/) although it wasn't in the developer preview from what I could see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was wondering how Intel was liking the Windows on Arm development. The third paragraph of this is a bit telling in that regard. It's hard to tell if it's a shoutout to Intel/AMD to assuage their fears or just an acknowledgement of the work everyone put into it as a whole. Either way, it reads as a "don't worry, Intel, you still matter to us!"

</comment><comment><USER5> _Sinofsky also said that the Windows-on-ARM machines will come with several Office apps — Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote — that have been tuned to run in a very battery-efficient manner. But Sinofsky said that, although those applications will run in the traditional Windows desktop, they will be the only programs allowed to do so, other than components of Windows itself._ [1]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this one... why would they limit the OS, instead of saying that Metro was it, and have the Office15 team build out Metro versions of their applications?

Having the desktop/classic mode be only for built-in utilities and Office seems, at best, _extremely_ short sighted.

[1] [http://allthingsd.com/20120209/windows-on-arm-complete- with-...](http://allthingsd.com/20120209/windows-on-arm-complete-with-next- version-of-office-to-arrive-with-rest-of-windows-8/)

<comment><USER6> Just a guess, but Microsoft makes a lot of money from Office so I suspect the Office group _insisted_ on being there at release to show existing customers their commitment. No doubt there are currently a lot of restrictions about what you can do on a WOA desktop, they may not have even provided anything like the full Win32 API. It wouldn't surprise me to see them loosen up those restrictions eventually.

Plus, by keeping all the desktop utilities like Explorer and Control Panel as desktop apps in WOA it reduces the amount of work that needs to be done. When Windows 8 is being used on a desktop PC you'll want those to still be desktop apps, and they probably won't be used enough on a tablet to justify rewriting them all as Metro applets.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure they insisted on it, but they could have done more than flattening the style on their buttons. Having Office as the lone desktop app is going to piss off more Windows developers than it's worth. Choose your own baby/bathwater, forest/trees analogy here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I get this right, the only apps you will be able to run in the Desktop are:

\- Internet Explorer 10

\- Office 15 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote). What about Outlook, Visio, etc.?

\- Windows Explorer

\- Wordpad? Solitaire? Remote Desktop Client?

And that's it.

If I want to, say, unrar or un-7z a file I just downloaded, I'll need to go back to a Metro 7z app to do that?

Or what if I want to use Chrome or Firefox? Does this even comply with Microsoft's EU obligations (the browser ballot, etc.)?

Leaving the desktop environment only available to Microsoft apps is a very slippery slope, and I think it'll be a serious point of contention for developers and users. It really has to be all-or-nothing.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad they finally released good details on what is and isn't possible on Win8/ARM. My takeaway from this is: while they're not doing it, nothing is stopping someone from emulating Win/x86 applications on ARM. I've been playing around with doing it (nothing serious, just working through some of the tech challenges and using it as an excuse to learn LLVM better) and while there are challenges, it's definitely not insurmountable.

I have a feeling that if Win8/ARM takes off, this could be a big market -- maybe I should take it a bit more seriously.

<comment><USER4> As the owner of a HP Touchpad, I'm incredibly disappointed by this line

>Windows on ARM software will not be sold or distributed independent of a new WOA PC

I don't want to have to buy a new tablet with the same hardware just to run a new OS. Hopefully Technet subscribers can get a copy, or XDA et al can manage to provide. It'd be nice to have a legal option, though.

<comment><USER9> Your TouchPad doesn't have UEFI and there are no Windows drivers for the TouchPad either.

<comment><USER4> It would be possible, though probably not easy, if the proper people had the proper access.

<comment><USER9> There's a Hackintosh community so I'm sure there will be a Hackdows community, but MS isn't going to ship a version of Windows that requires "community" drivers to work. As far as MS is concerned it's WHQL or nothing.

<comment><USER10> The Hackintosh community is greatly benefited by the fact that OSX's Darwin kernel is open source.

For instance, Atom support was lost somewhere along the official way, but third-party patched kernels exist to reintroduce it (c.f. Nawcom et al).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _"End-users are technically restricted from installing a different OS (or OS version) on a device or extending the OS, so this is generally not possible, and rarely supported by the device maker. "_

and

 _"We architected our approach to ensure that software and peripherals can all benefit from the diversity enabled by the ARM architecture, along with the choice of form factors and manufacturers, and the openness of the platform."_

seem to be in conflict. How is my being unable to install an OS a good thing? These comments (along with later mention of UEFI and some other things) cause me some discomfort.

Well, looks like Apple won the hearts and minds of consumers--we now are looking at a future with much greater integration of software and hardware and much less freedom. Thanks folks.

EDIT: To clear up potential confusion, I'm not saying that what Apple did was not good business or that their success was totally bad--I merely am pointing out that the tight UX pushed by that company (and then aped to varying degrees by others) has out of necessity driven things in this direction.

EDIT2: _"In fact, WOA only supports running code that has been distributed through Windows Update along with the full spectrum of Windows Store applications."_ Oh goody.

<comment><USER12> The first sentence is related to policies of the device maker and the second is to M$'s policies

<comment><USER4> Ever since I've gained the ability to downvote, I've used it exclusively for people who write M$. Ignorance should never be tolerated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> ...and locking out Linux (and other open source operating systems) with the help of the UEFI secure boot.

[http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/01/microsoft- manda...](http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/01/microsoft-mandating- secure-boot-on-arm-making-linux-installs-difficult.ars)

<comment><USER9> Buy an Android tablet and jailbreak it.

<comment><USER4> Without a way to install WOA (MS says they won't provide images for it), that won't help.

<comment><USER9> We're talking about Linux. If you want Linux on an ARM tablet, buy an Android tablet and jailbreak it. You don't _have_ to buy a Windows tablet (unlike, say, PCs in the 90s).

<comment><USER14> And there lies one mistake MSFT is making. I definitely wouldn't pay good money for one of these if it can't run anything besides Win8. Perhaps only if it has a well supported jailbreak.

<comment><USER9> People who immediately remove your software (and sometimes ask for a refund) aren't a good target market. Seriously, why do you want to buy a Windows tablet and remove Windows? Why not buy what you actually want?

<comment><USER14> Because with Apple and MSFT requiring UEFI locked ARM devices, how much choice do you think will be available for people looking to buy ARM tablets they can run any OS on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So it will include desktop support. That makes it much more interesting.

<comment><USER16> It'll include desktop support, but Microsoft will be the only one allowed to release desktop apps for it, which makes it rather less interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Biggest takeaway is that everything is a PC. That ARM tablet you're holding in your arm? It's a full PC and won't be artificially crippled to being a consumption device only. Plug in or a dock a keyboard/mouse and you get the full notebook experience.

<comment><USER18> Are you sure about that? This seems to say exactly the opposite.

 _In fact, WOA only supports running code that has been distributed through Windows Update along with the full spectrum of Windows Store applications._

 _WOA PCs will be serviced only through Windows or Microsoft Update, and consumer apps will only come from the Windows Store, so you never have to worry if a program will run because you are not downloading or installing from a DVD outside of the store experience. A WOA PC will feel like a consumer electronics device in terms of how it is used and managed._

<comment><USER19> This seems like a policy adopted to help avoid angry customers making a big deal about how they cannot install this or that application from their PC. Consumers are familiar with the App Store concept.

Ergo, they probably won't be working hard to _lock_ the platform from other applications (what little applications that will exist, that is)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the video is an insight into the quality of Apple vs. Microsoft products. Apple would never let out a low quality product video like the one linked in this article. They didn't even have a decent microphone for the video and I was distracted by background static. Apple's culture embraces every aspect of a product's launch, with a product video being clean and simple just like their end products.

<comment><USER21> Apple wouldn't release something like this because they are a black box. At least Microsoft is blogging about the process and eliciting feedback along the way.</comment></comment>


The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets - <AUTHOR> https://thehustle.co/the-economics-of-all-you-can-eat-buffets/ <comment><USER3> One nice thing about buffets—all-you-can-eat or not—is that, if you want, you can eat small portions of a wide variety of things, rather than large portions of a small number of dishes.

The economics of a buffet are the only reason this is really possible; it's not like you could place an order for e.g. "five breaded shrimp, three grams of braised pork, two wontons' worth of wonton soup, ..." from a Chinese restaurant. You could only order each of these in larger amounts, because there are fixed costs to making a dish.

<comment><USER4> The other nice thing is if you're on some unconventional diet (keto, vegan, kosher, etc), you can pick whatever fits your belief system that day.

<comment><USER5> Buffets are terrible places to eat for a vegan or even vegetarian. Options are typically limited to simple salads, various types of potato (fried, baked) and occasionally pizza or pasta: i.e. cheap tasteless carbs.

Besides limited variety, the other problem is you need to choose very conservatively. Lots of options have animal-derived ingredients and the staff are either clueless or there exists commonly a significant language barrier.

<comment><USER6> Exception: Indian buffets. Almost always, veg items are kept separate from non-veg, and of that, what's vegan is usually easy enough to discern (or ask about), the two major ingredients to avoid being ghee and paneer.

<comment><USER7> Indian buffets are wonderful for vegetarians, they're a nightmare for vegans since American-Indian resturant cooking is loaded with every kind of dairy imaginable: yogurt, butter, ghee, and cream is in everything. Like you can't even have the naan at most places.

I will say it's an improvement on most restaurants simply because you can actually find naturally vegan options that aren't a sad salad but its tough otherwise since every place is different and uses wildly different recipes for a given dish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I organise some tech conferences. We tend to hold our speakers dinner at an upmarket all-you-can-eat buffet, mainly because we have a mix of adventurous and not-so-adventurous eaters.

We try to let our speakers and guests have an opportunity to try our local cuisine, but I'm starting to think that buffets aren't that great for doing so. Travellers new to a country/region wouldn't know what to take, unless there's a local by their side explaining the dishes to them.

As the person that foots the bill, I also usually observe how much everyone consumes — it's usually 2-3 small plates worth; probably valued at a quarter of what we're paying per head.

<comment><USER9> Really? I figure most people just take a little bit of everything the first round to figure out what they liked and then come back for more.

<comment><USER10> As a paid speaker who goes to a lot of conferences, I always eat way less than if I'm out at a social gathering.

Partly it's the professionalism - even in these mixer situations, I'm at work and with a client that's paying a (comparatively) lot of money for me, and demonstrating my ability to down eight plates then back up for dessert isn't great brand positioning.

There's also the volume of food at conferences. If I don't skip a few meals and eat smaller portions at the others, I could end up having a days worth of calories for all 3 meals, plus snacks, for up to a full week including travel.

<comment><USER11> One of the big changes I've made the past few years to my benefit is that, at conferences, I started making a point of not eating, especially mediocre food, at events just because it's available for "free." I basically never eat 3 meals a day and if I try to I start feeling really bloated.

<comment><USER10> I also avoid 3 meals a day - totally unnecessary in my case.

Alas, whether it was my upbringing or boarding school, I'm also a turkey-cum- labrador when it comes to free food and booze: I really, really struggle to stop eating. I can resist everything except temptation and all that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've got to shill for yet another all you can eat Polish buffet in Chicagoland that has been open for 40+ years. Warsaw Inn. That buffet is really amazing. So good! Go there. Eat all the different kinds of pierogies.

But also, they mostly just serve polish food, and I don't remember much if any seafood around either. It seems like for different types of buffets you'd have different food costs. Like a sushi buffet probably takes more than a taco buffet.

But the article says they think delivery food options killed the buffet. I'm not so sure, I think fast casual chains were around a lot earlier and did a lot of damage. You had the same labor savings with not needing dedicated wait- staff, and you could get a lot of people through the doors. While you can't cook in huge quantities, I'm sure they do a huge amount of all the prep in batches, which is how they can get the food out relatively quickly.

<comment><USER13> LOL that place is so far South you might as well call it an "Indianapolisland" restaurant.

<comment><USER14> I'm coming to a Beazley course in Andersonville this spring. Any good polish restaurants to suggest in the area?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm still at awe of the Sushi Buffet thing that you can see all around in Helsinki, Finland. So far I have not seen anything like it, anywhere else in the world.

Usually the price you pay is 10€ for an unrestricted and no time limit access to eating sushi.

And the sushi is incredibly okay! It's nothing compared to stuff you find Tokyo ofcourse, but the price for quality is literally unbeatable.

And all this is happening in a city where restaurant prices for main dish are usually around 18-20€.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER16> "What am I missing?"

I have been to a few all-you-can-eat sushi restaurants and the catch at all of them was: it is only Nigiri (not sashimi) and _you have to eat the rice_.

I can't remember if they simply refused additional servings until the rice was gone or if they charged _a la carte_ for un-eaten rice portions, but one way or another, the goal was you had to fill up on rice ...

<comment><USER17> Well the word "sushi" actually means the kind of rice they use. It isn't exactly fair to call it a catch since that's the dish. And at the all-you-can- eat sushi chains in California I've been to, it is always against the rules to remove the rice. In fact that seems like a common rule at all asian buffets I go to.

If they start making the fish super-thin that's quite lame though. A buffet chain near me did that as they were trying, unsuccessfully, to survive. I also once went to a regular sushi places that had an all-you-can-eat special and who kept ("oopsie") accidentally bringing way more california rolls than I ordered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The other technique not mentioned here is for buffets to just stop refilling the higher cost items on the buffet if a group of big eaters comes in. then let them sit empty while the diners fill up on potatoes or what not, before finally refilling them.

<comment><USER19> Another trick is to keep drinks topped off. Fills you up.

<comment><USER20> Adding more salt to the food helps this path, but maybe I've just been too cynical and that day's kitchen staff too heavy handed.

<comment><USER21> Salt makes food tastier and motivates you take another bite, which continues the cycle, so it's a good choice to put in the cheaper food by calorie/mass/volume/whatever-creates-satiety.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "By 2030, the National Restaurant Association projects that 80% of all restaurant items will be eaten at home..."

I doubt it. I'm not convinced that any of the delivery app companies are really making money; by 2030 they may not exist any more.

<comment><USER23> I mean delivery has always been a thing. Before the delivery-app-err it was maybe mostly pizza, but I don't see why delivery in general can't still be a major thing.

Also take out is always an option!

<comment><USER24> It was never 80% of food though. It's not even really 80% today.

If VC funding were to dry up I'd imagine either the higher delivery fees or the higher order minimums of the past would come back, and then consumers would respond to prices and reduce ordering out.

<comment><USER25> This probably depends a lot on autonomous vehicles. Right now VC money is subsidizing deliveries, but that's mostly subsidizing the driver.

Especially for items like this, because if you take the driver out of the equation and create purpose-built autonomous vehicles that aren't _intended_ to have human occupants, they can be much smaller and don't have to worry about passenger safety. You could have autonomous electric vehicles the size of RC cars delivering takeout to your door.

<comment><USER26> Right. There's a startup which uses cute small robots to deliver food in Berkeley right now [1]. There are still a lot of humans in the loop - <USER2> the actual pickup, remote-controlling the robots from Columbia - but even so that could save money compared to having a local driver in a car to make the whole delivery.

[1] [https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Kiwibots-win- fa...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Kiwibots-win-fans-at-UC- Berkeley-as-they-deliver-13895867.php)

<comment><USER24> Interesting. What happens if someone attempts to rob the robot?

<comment><USER27> Presumably the same thing that happens in most normal robberies; the robber gets the item but gets reported to the police. Presumably the delivery robots have cameras, making it easier to identify the criminal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The only thing I found more interesting than all-you-can-eat buffets actually turning a profit is that there are business people who are apparently content running a business with such slim margins.

This article quotes a 5% margin. I know food industry margins are low in the first place, but as a business owner in a different field I'm left wondering why anyone would even bother. The same business prowess and attention to detail you need to make a buffett run profitably could get you very far in another industry.

<comment><USER29> I think the average margin might be misleading. After all, most restaurants fail pretty quickly. That number could be skewed by the unsuccessful businesses.

But I think it's an interesting point. Why fight all day long for a 5% margin when you could put your money in index funds?

<comment><USER30> Because a 5% margin doesn't translate to a 5% annual return on investment.

Also at many small restaurants the owner and the owner's family is also working full time, and that 5% margin doesn't include their salaries.

<comment><USER31> > that 5% margin doesn't include their salaries.

This is something that often seems lost in this discussion.

The profit margin is usually after the owners themselves have taken a salary. If they are paying for themselves appropriately, and the margin is 0%, this is often described as "making no money".

What's making no money here is the business as an entity, not the owner, despite the frequent rhetorical conflation of the two.

Payout of positive margins, if they exist, are often classified as "profit sharing" in the simplest of businesses, like sole proprietorships. In more complex large businesses, they become dividends or employee bonuses.

Most people can't afford to pay themselves nothing while running a business.

<comment><USER32> They might also be optimizing for taxes by heavily re-investing, charging personal stuff on the expense account (like car/gas/travel)... That makes it look like they are doing badly while they are doing okay.

<comment><USER33> This would be clearly visible to investors because the company is accumulating assets.

<comment><USER30> 1\. It's unlikely investors are looking into small lifestyle businesses.

2\. The company isn't going to accumulate many assets if the owners are paying for gas, travel, food, and rapidly depreciating assets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've seen a number of instances where "all-you-can-eat" rapidly devolves into "all-you-can-find" \- where expensive items simply don't get refilled until the big eaters go away. We went to a Churrasco place one time with my startup team and the staff more or less spent half the allotted time essentially hiding from us. It was comical, but expensive.

The other aspect of buffets is that frequently the food is quite dreadful; they may have steak, but it's cheap cuts, cooked to the consistency of a Frisbee. Even if you're "beating the buffet" economically, you're just eating bad food for no reason.

<comment><USER35> The "better" all-you-can-eats are priced accordingly. The Bellagio in Las Vegas had a seafood thing that cost north of $40, if I remember correctly. The crab legs get constantly refilled, they also had giant prawns. This was years ago so it may not exist any longer. Founding Farmers in DC has a brunch thing, also expensive, but the lox tray is never empty. The surprise in the bill is the cost of drinks, espressos and mimosas add up quickly. I wonder if there's a different economic model for the more upscale all-you-can-eats. The food choices is more appealing all around.

<comment><USER36> Brazilian steak houses are often buffets as well.

<comment><USER35> I'm not a huge carnivore so those guys will never get my money, heh. _SO MUCH MEAT!!_ All in one meal! Today I split a 6 oz. steak with another person and it felt like a lot of meat.

This thread! All-you-can-eat as a hedging strategy is a bit unnerving, it's like a bet _for_ my vice, that I'll come out ahead. Something like _The Purge_ , all the crimes you can commit in 24hrs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The Red Apple, quoted in the story, closed their original location (that had been open for 30 years) last summer to make way for condos. At 5% margins it's pretty easy to see how a builder could make them a great or even life-changing offer.

</comment><comment><USER38> The danger for consumers is assuming this is a zero-sum and that the converse economic goal applies to you (i.e. assuming that the consumer benefits by eating a lot or focusing on meat). I conjecture that after factoring in the economics of health and quality of life, the economic optimum for a typical buffet consumer is the same as for any other eater: to eat sparingly and in a balanced manner.

<comment><USER39> Buffets feel like an unbounded solution to optimizing for calories per dollar, which is a ridiculous thing to focus on as an overweight engineer!

<comment><USER40> There is one other aspect about buffets: food is available quickly. This is primarily useful when traveling, if one wants to have warm food with significant cooked vegetable content (keeping in mind the aspects raised in other comment threads) without adding an hour or more to the trip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I sometimes drink a stupid amount of diet soda. I know drinks are usually high margin, but I wouldn't be surprised if some places lose money on me. I went to a Denny's recently and tried to count the number of refills I got, but I lost count. This is the same Denny's I went to in college, where the waitress knew me. She'd drop two pitchers of Diet Coke on the table before she took my order.

The epitaph on my tomb stone should probably be "Didn't do an autopsy. We just assumed he was one giant tumor artificial sweetener induced cancer."

<comment><USER42> All studies I've seen of artificial sweeteners have only shown that they are measurably worse for you than water. Sugar is worse than non-nutritive sweeteners

Similarly with MSG, studies show it is less toxic than salt. It is only 'toxic' in ridiculously large quantities.

<comment><USER43> There's studies suggesting artificial sweeteners aren't good for your gut microflora. I haven't heard anything beyond that.

<comment><USER41> I was (mostly) kidding about the epitaph. Healthcare Triage did a good video on the subject a few weeks ago.

[https://youtu.be/cj6oO-O1QsM](https://youtu.be/cj6oO-O1QsM)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> >The big buffet chains that once dotted the Midwest have been hit the hardest: Old Country Buffet is down to 17 of its 350 original locations; HomeTown Buffet has closed 217 of its 250 eateries; Ryan's Buffet has downsized from 400 to 16.

I am not surprised.

I went to an Old Country Buffet about two decades ago during the time I was working in a hospital kitchen. I recognized a lot of their dishes from work, they were serving the same lowest quality cheap food that we served to the patients.

Now Old Country Buffet has to compete with the variety of high-quality restaurants we have available today. Customer's tastes have changed and now eating a reasonable amount of higher quality food seems more desirable than eating unlimited hospital food.

There are high quality buffets thought, Indian buffets are the best thing ever. But the low quality ones are dying out.

<comment><USER45> Golden Corral has moved up to the midwest.

<comment><USER46> They've been there for some years (at least 10-15 in Indiana) - I lived there, though I think it has been at least 10 years since I've been there. I remember being somewhat disappointed the last few times and it was generally difficult to get beverage refills often enough. I'm not sure they are "quality".

The best I've had was an Indian buffet in Indiana and a hotel's breakfast buffet in Amsterdam. I woke up to eat breakfast there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This article links to two (!) different Wansink studies.

<comment><USER48> For context: [https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/?s=brian+wansink](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/?s=brian+wansink)

(he's a Cornell prof with dubious research/PR tactics)

<comment><USER49> A quote from the Brian himself illustrating how he is able to "publish" so much junk research.

> P-hacking shouldn't be confused with deep data dives – with figuring out why > our results don't look as perfect as we want. With field studies, hypotheses > usually don't "come out" on the first data run. But instead of dropping the > study, a person contributes more to science by figuring out when the hypo > worked and when it didn't. This is Plan B. Perhaps your hypo worked during > lunches but not dinners, or with small groups but not large groups. You > don't change your hypothesis, but you figure out where it worked and where > it didn't.

This is horrifically bad research practice and basically guarantees that all of your results will be completely p-hacked.

[https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2018/09/23/tweeking-b...](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2018/09/23/tweeking- big-problem-not-think/) is another hilarious example.

<comment><USER50> Really? Suppose you just ran a twenty year, many million dollar field study, the hypothesis was not confirmed, you just throw everything out & that's that?

<comment><USER49> No, you publish a negative result, which in many ways can be more or just as informative as a positive finding. See for instance [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1906848](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1906848).

It's totally fair to do subgroup analysis, etc to try to better understand the data, but you have to keep in mind that you can't claim statistical significance on those without very careful control over researcher degrees of freedom and other related issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I liked buffets a lot but in the last 15 years all but one buffet I liked to go to went dramatically downhill in quality. It is likely this was due to cost cutting measures to stay competitive. Eventually it got to where dishes and cutlery weren't even cleaned properly and I'd have to dig through a stack to find one without residue, and I was getting food poisoning about a quarter of the time. I simply had to stop going, they were bad, and unsafe. This is likely why there has been a mass purging of buffet chains nationally during this time period. It's not that the public has lost their interest in buffets, it's that people have noticed the quality is too low to be acceptable despite the price, which isn't a bargain anyway for any but those that game the system as is mentioned in the article, or for the ultimate in low cost places like all you can eat combination sushi-thai-vietnamese-mongolianBBQ-Chinese- italian-jello-mac'n'cheese lunch places only $4.99, or $3.99 if you use the pennysaver coupon.

Like the top comment mentions, some of us don't want to gorge ourselves, it's nice to have a variety of things to sample, but also buffets are useful for weekday lunch since you can be in and out with a full meal much faster than you can in a restaurant where you have to wait for your order.

One remaining buffet that's still good quality in my area is a certain classy Indian restaurant. They only do the buffet for lunch from 11-2, so it's impossible for people to come in and eat for 4 hours straight. Also there's almost no meat at all, so the restaurant doesn't appeal to those who come in to eat a pile of steaks. I've never seen anyone come and just eat plate after plate. People come because they can get good vegetarian food quickly for lunch.

High quality buffets will likely survive, but there's less of a market for them.

A successful hybrid model might be that of Olive Garden, which mixes reheated frozen food with unlimited breadsticks and salad, both which are extremely cheap to provide unlimited quantities of.

</comment><comment><USER52> Makes me wonder how the "Paradox of Choice" works in this situation since the customer is already committed to purchasing. Does this lead to more-than-usual consumption (cf. the usual shying away from purchase in a Choice paradox scenario)

<comment><USER53> Isn't loss aversion more relevant to this? You already paid for all this, so you would "lose money" by not eating more.

<comment><USER21> You mean sunk cost?

Loss aversion from the buffet would depend on how much food is available, not how much you paid.

<comment><USER53> Sunk cost fits better. I think loss aversion is however also not a bad fit: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion)

One is: I already _paid_ , therefore I should eat. The other is: I paid for _infinity_ , therefore I should eat _more_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> >A German triathlete was asked to prematurely leave an $18.95 buffet after consuming 100 plates of sushi.

Gotta love this guy's confidence in the ability of the budget restaurant to procure and handle properly high quality fresh seafood

</comment><comment><USER55> > _Even higher-end buffets, like the $98 brunch at the Hotel del Coronado in > San Diego, employ these tactics: "They hide the truffles, the foie gras, and > the oysters," says Britt. "You literally can't find them."_

I honeymooned are The Del, and they kindly comped our brunch for our entire stay. This was for the downstairs brunch, which doesn't have as much meat but is still amazing. It's about $40/person these days, and considering all that it includes (made to order eggs, bacon, waffles, pancakes, pastries, fruit, desserts, and fresh squeezed juice), and the level of service, it's a pretty good value.

</comment><comment><USER56> While very occasionally a buffet can be fun, I usually consider them not so great an experience. Yes, it is nice to be able to decide yourself the relative composition of ingredients, like adding the extra piece of meat or a lot of your favorite vegetable, but too often you end out with a strange mix of stuff on your plate. A plate, which as described in the article, usually is to small of this. So while you might get a little bit more food, it is often less quality, than if you had ordered a prepared dish. And of course, many restaurants offer dishes which are smaller or lager.

<comment><USER57> > but too often you end out with a strange mix of stuff on your plate

Bingo. When presented with a buffet, people (myself included) usually have a fear of "missing out" the good stuff, so they just load a little bit of everything to their plate. At a buffet, you usually don't have the information about (1) how filling an individual ingredient is and (2) how well they go together. So each and every time, you end up with too much food which doesn't really combine. In the end, you leave too full and slightly unsatisfied. On a menu, the individual menus or plates have been tested for months against the cooks and guests, and the kitchen has adjusted plates which were always returned with leftovers to be smaller and/or removed meals that led to too much complaints

So basically, on a buffet you will get an untested meal designed by someone usually not competent enough to design it (you), every time.

<comment><USER58> And even if you had perfect knowledge and would combine an exact replica of what was on the standard menu the fact that it is a buffet means the food has been out for a while. It seldom will be as good of an experience as just ordering the same thing.

Which I sometimes do. At which point people will look at you funny.

But you can't in many places and unless everyone does the same (unlikely) you end up getting your food when everyone else is about done.

I'm generally not a fan of buffets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I stopped going to all-you-can-eat buffets years ago for the simple reason that you don't stop eating when you're full - you stop eating when you hate yourself.

If the number of all-you-can-eat buffets drops, it's likely because society is starting to advocate healthier lifestyles in my opinion.

<comment><USER60> Hell, I struggle with even normal restaurants. I like going out, my wife and I can afford it, but I feel like I'm going out for the freshly, crispy yummy food.. and yet, I always end up taking half of it home because they hand me a massive plate.

I'm thinking next time we go out we'll try and get the same thing and split a plate. .. and then tip as if we ordered 2 plates because I feel guilty to the server. Hah.

<comment><USER61> Can recommend, it works well. We use that strategy a lot, and pass the savings to the server.

The portion sizes at many restaurants is just ridiculous and results in a massive waste of food and an unhealthier population.

Reduce the portions, reduce the cost, reduce the waste, reduce negative health consequences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> According to Drawdown, reducing food waste is the top individual action one can take to reduce one's impact on climate change. Buffets tend to be quite wasteful and/or encourage serving older food a lot more than a la carte orders. There could be some exceptions, such as buffets in hotels where it's included in the room rent and is a lot easier to plan for (the quantities) based on the number of guests and the guest demographics.

As a consumer, if you want value for money in a buffet, the best bets, IMO, are fresh foods and/or the ones that aren't processed much. All the high sugar and high fat processed foods tend to be made with low quality ingredients while also being terrible for health. Also focus on enjoying the variety with smaller quantities of everything you'd like to eat rather than trying to eat a lot more than your usual appetite.

<comment><USER63> It's unclear to me why buffets would be more wasteful than other restaurants, particularly in climate change terms.

There's some contradiction in what you've said about minimising waste and demanding fresh foods. If we stick to only the freshest foods, then we waste a lot more.

Surely being able to serve in quantity creates positive economies of scale.

<comment><USER62> In my observation, buffet customers tend to attempt to eat a lot more by filling their plates with a lot more than they can handle. This is because they've already paid for it and believe that eating more is the way to get more value for money. Once they're in the middle of the meal, they realize that they cannot finish it and that gets wasted. With a la carte, you'd at least have the option of taking the leftovers home.

<comment><USER64> Some places have a nominal "no leftovers" policy. I'm not sure if and how they enforce it, but the idea is that if there's something significant left on your plate, you should take it with you as you leave paying as if it were something you ordered from the menu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Guess the owners would not appreciate the local Keto meetup having an event at their buffet.

<comment><USER54> Depends. There are enough cheap cuts for slow cooking - and you could always drawn your meats in sugary sauces anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> The labor advantages for buffet-style restaurants generalizes - you eliminate a lot of downtime due to timing variability when you switch from make-to-order to make-to-inventory, reducing labor costs significantly. You can get this without a buffet model in restaurants, most notably with the conveyor-belt sushi restaurants that charge per dish you take.

</comment><comment><USER67> I saw a great solution to the over-eating problem in one sushi spot in Italy. Not exactly a buffer, but you could pay upfront and order as much as you want per person. The caveat is that you can only order four servings at once and you pay the full a'la carte price for everything you hadn't fully eaten.

<comment><USER68> Interesting exercise, but why not just throw the uneaten food under the table, or covertly take it to the restroom and toss it in the toilet?

<comment><USER69> The purpose is to incentivize people to think twice about what they are ordering and how much they can eat, not to prevent people who are already intent on abusing the system. For that, you simply have to observe and ban people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> There's one Argentinian buffet in Madrid (in Plenilunio mall if someone is interested) with an unusual system: they bring the food around the tables and you pick what you want. Most of it is barbecued meat. I avoid going there because I can't help eating too much every time.

<comment><USER71> Sounds like an Argentinian version of a Brazilian rodizio..

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod%C3%ADzio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod%C3%ADzio)

<comment><USER70> There's one of those in another corner of the mall, I should try one day. But are rodizios usually all-you-can-eat too?

<comment><USER72> Yes, rodízio is all you can eat but it's not always the only option, you can often order a la carte off the menu as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Buffets are making money on impatient customers who are piling up on fries and mac-n-cheese and other super cheap "fillers" and junk foods before discovering and allocating space for more delicious and expensive dishes that are typically placed at the far end of a food isles.

This way they compensate the losses caused by my visit. I don't touch any food until i do complete walkaround and learn about everything they have to offer.

Then i typically pigout on lobster legs, tenderloin cuts, fish-rich sushi and other high end proteins, carefully avoiding any cheaper "fillers". My visit to buffet would cost me the equivalent of ~$200 visit in a-la-carte restaurant.

</comment><comment><USER74> I wonder if the growth of intermittent fasting is gonna reduce even further the number of all-you-can-eat buffets. Fast for an entire day (or 2 if you're feeling brave), then gorge yourself the next day at a buffet.

</comment><comment><USER75> I remember a story from my dad that one of he and one of his friends use to eat at this one lunch time all you can eat buffet in the 80s. Unfortunately, one of his friends spoiled the deal by getting more to eat, he even asked the restaurant staff for a bigger spoon. In the end, they were banned (even though my dad I think had only two plates since he had a busy day ahead) from the restaurant.

</comment><comment><USER76> There was an all you can eat sushi place, they charge you for the sushi that you couldn't finish. I thought that was a pretty good way to charge.

</comment><comment><USER77> If I do go to a buffet I only eat protein because it seems to be the only way to get my money's worth.

<comment><USER78> If I go to a buffet I fill up my plate with all the food I most enjoy even if that includes the cheap stuff. Then I feel like I got my money's worth, even if they made a profit.

<comment><USER79> For some people, getting their money's worth (literally: the food they eat cost the restaurant almost as much, or more than, the amount the customer paid to eat it) is the enjoyment.

Several of my family members are this way.

<comment><USER69> Pretty sure that philosophy (sufficiently widespread) is what leads to the decline of societies.

<comment><USER80> A variation of that philosophy led to the end of a limited salad deal in China, supposedly patrons would stack their plates to an absurd height to get around the one plate limit. [https://kotaku.com/how-chinese-ingenuity- destroyed-salad-bar...](https://kotaku.com/how-chinese-ingenuity-destroyed- salad-bars-at-pizza-hut-834835079)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> back when i lived in the south, I would go to all you can eat chinese buffets and just eat crab legs. They even had scallops on their mongolian bar! They always lost money when I came in. These places are impossible to find and I don't think exist anymore for less than $20.

<comment><USER82> I've seen a couple in New Orleans but I don't know if I would vouch for their quality

<comment><USER81> i'm not sure how you can get bad quality crab legs, they're all boiled and they look ok.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> A friend of mine, not a native speaker, calls them "eat all you can" buffets.

</comment><comment><USER84> To quote a well-known Dutch hotel/restaurant owner: "They'll eat me poor but drink me rich". The margin on the food may be thin, but drink margins are usually more like 75-100%.

</comment><comment><USER85> I thought this was going to be about US healthcare.

</comment><comment><USER86> Meanwhile in France...

[https://www.lesgrandsbuffets.com/en](https://www.lesgrandsbuffets.com/en)

</comment><comment><USER87> Buffets are great but there's something off with the food at the all you can eat buffets with fixed price. Probably the food is of lesser quality..

</comment><comment><USER88> I read this while at a buffet.

<comment><USER89> better get your money worth of steak

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> i wonder if you can ever just take the steam tray a la homer.

</comment><comment><USER91> The trick is cheap food and tons of glutamate.

<comment><USER92> Why the glutamate? I find foods high to glutamate to make me want to eat more of them.

<comment><USER93> > _Why the glutamate?_

Because it's delicious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> now im hungry

</comment><comment><USER95> Vegetarian on diet: I eat at Golden Corral, only salad, watermelon, cole slaw, stir fried veggies (lot's of red bell peppers and some fresh pineapple), little rice, unsweetened tea - - and I only go from 2 pm to 4 pm weekdays when the price as $8 or $9 for senior, no charge for drink. It's pure torture to stay away from the dessert bar.

I cannot buy that variety anywhere for that price.

</comment><comment><USER96> The simple trick is you need to price it such that any combination will always cover the costs of the most expensive meal.

-Don't just downvote, explain why it won't work.

<comment><USER97> Because the difference between the average and the most expensive is so great, that people who eat the average meal aren't willing to pay enough to cover the most expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> They mention Golden Corral. They save money, notoriously, by serving "Dumpster-Aged" ribs.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1hubzj/all_you_can_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1hubzj/all_you_can_eat_ribs_courtesy_of_golden_corral/)

There's even an ad they ran that featured this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj43JdXjLNQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj43JdXjLNQ)

<comment><USER99> That's a parody ad, not an official Golden Corral ad.</comment></comment>


The Living Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.livinginternet.com/ <comment><USER2> Got a "stand with Tr*mp" ad on the page, among other ads. No thanks.</comment>


Ask HN: Small web site owners, how do you deal with the GDPR? - nils-m-holm I'm running a small, static, non-commercial website (http://t3x.org) and I'm currently investigating options for dealing with the new General Data Protection Regulation, which looks like a minefield to me that opens the door for all kinds of dubious C&D letters.
So far I have thought about:
- contacting a lawyer to work out a proper data privacy statement, but I don't think I can afford this
- deactivating the server logfiles so that the site really does not store any user-related data (is this really safe?)
- shutting down the site (currently most probable)
How do you deal with the situation? <comment><AUTHOR> Do I understand correctly that your concern is about the logs? You can set up an Amazon S3 static website, and no logs will be collected, unless you enable it. The first year is free, and after that it's pennies a month. I use this, plus Route 53 DNS, and my total bill each month is ~ $0.54 (US), with $0.51 for Route 53.

If you need other options to cut cost, freedns.afraid.org offers free subdomains under ~68000 second level domains.

</comment><comment><USER2> A few alternatives:

* Move your site to Github, it is free and you get a domain like your_username.github.io. Works great for static websites.

* With less than $100 per year you can buy a .com domain name from a US registrar and a cheap VPS on DigitalOcean or Linode, chose a VPS from US or some other now European jurisdiction.

* Another free approach, host it on Azure see [https://buildazure.com/2016/08/25/free-website-hosting-in-mi...](https://buildazure.com/2016/08/25/free-website-hosting-in-microsoft-azure/) for an example.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is just my own methodology that I have always followed for my own person hobby sites, but I don't imagine many people do this, nor would they, nor should they.

I log access to a ram disk and truncate the logs daily. If I start having issues that require keeping logs, I rsync to a secure location or rotate until x percentage of ramdisk is full.

My machines boot up and bootstrap their static content, cgi scripts, etc, from a git repo over a VPN link. They dynamically format a data volume using a long random key that I have no knowledge of. The end goal being ephemeral and cattle. If I need to back up anything in a data volume, I do so over a VPN link.

Again, this is just my lunatic method and has never been tested in a legal case. I could argue a thousand reasons to not use my methods and only a few hundred to use them.

</comment><comment><USER4> I see your hoster has plans for a dataprocessing agreement, I'd look into that: [https://www.manitu.de/unternehmen/eu-datenschutz- grundverord...](https://www.manitu.de/unternehmen/eu-datenschutz- grundverordnung-dsgvo/) (should be easy enough, and answers on what basis they store your logs)

If your hoster allows you to change whats in the log files you could look into that too (e.g. don't log full IPs, or delete them after 2 weeks and only keep unpersonalized access logs longer: right now it's not entirely clear from the purposes you list why you need to keep IPs at all).

Not sure if you're supposed to have a German version too, despite your site being in English. (unrelated to GDPR)

<comment> nils-m-holm I have no control over the log files other than being able to edit and remove them manually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recommend doing _absolutely nothing._ Nobody is going to come after your obscure personal site.

<comment> nils-m-holm In Germany, there are lots of shady lawyers that will scrape the net and come after everyone from whom they an extract a few hundred euros. Sending dubious C&D's is a viable business model in Germany.

<comment><USER5> Is it enforceable? If you get a letter in the mail, throw it in the garbage. They'll move on to easier prey.

<comment> nils-m-holm It is enforceable. I know a few people who have been in court over things like this.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Samsung SelfieType Is an Invisible Mobile Keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://www.geek.com/tech/ces-2020-samsung-selfietype-is-an-invisible-mobile-keyboard-1815486/ <comment><USER2> Wait, so the advantage of the keyboard with no tactile feedback is that you _also_ can't see the keys, so the input is pure heuristics both from the user and the computer side? Wow. I've used many keyboards - this one, from the description, sounds _painful_.</comment>


Give Your App to Apple Employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.karelia.com/mac_indie_marketing/give_your_app_to_apple_empl.html

<comment><USER2> For those of you attending one of the iPhone Tech Tour stops (if it hasn't already occurred): get the UDIDs of Apple folks' phones while you're there. I know I'll be doing that (or dying trying) in Toronto on the 3rd.</comment>


Indie short film shot in Japan which looks like a big Hollywood movie - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1261313080/dust-0

<comment><USER2> It appears you guys are getting pretty close to your deadline and your goal. I wonder, if you get closer to May 6 and still have a funding gap, if you could could just put a $10k charge on your credit card, and then immediately pay it off after you receive the funds from Kickstarter.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The teaser is here: <http://vimeo.com/39011756></comment>