A new locker system from Amazon sends your deliveries to 7-Eleven - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/09/02/090211-tech-technews-amazon-lockers/ <comment><USER2> I love this idea. I travel full-time, and have no permanent residence. Amazon Prime has been a godsend...but, even that only works when I'm staying somewhere long enough to get something shipped in (I upgrade to overnight for $3.95 per item quite often), and in a place where I can have something delivered. Fedex and UPS do not yet accept GPS coordinates as a destination for delivery (my motorhome is often parked off the grid in the desert or mountains on public land). The ability to ship something to a 7-Eleven in the nearest town or along my planned route is just too wonderful to express.

I recently had to buy a new phone, somewhat urgently since my phone is my GPS/map/Internet/etc. and I'm lost without it, and was trying to figure out how to get one shipped in quickly. The one I wanted at the price I wanted to pay was not available with Amazon Prime shipping, so it was going to cost $40 to overnight it, in addition to the hassle of having to be in a specific location with a fixed address through the weekend and into next week. Luckily, a T-Mobile store had it for the same price, so I got it same day for only a few bucks more (because of sales tax)...but that's usually not the case. Had I needed an unlocked phone, or needed something not widely available, it would have been an ordeal.

In short, I don't know how many normal people are going to use this service, but I am going to use the hell out of it as soon as it is widely available.

<comment><USER3> _I travel full-time, and have no permanent residence._

do you not file a state tax return?

<comment><USER4> He is still a lawful resident of the state, whether or not he has a permanent address.

<comment><USER5> In my state, Pennsylvania, it is my understanding that the homeless are not allowed to drive or even to receive mail, because a mailbox cannot be used for the address on their driver's license, and they cannot get a mailbox, neither from the Post Office nor from a reputable mailbox rental business, without already having an address which they can prove is their residence. Therefore, unless the rules are different in his state, he is not allowed to drive, and if that's the case, then: How can he be a lawful resident?

<comment><USER6> That's what most states claim but it simply isn't true. You can use a mailbox service.

<comment><USER5> Possibly, but: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2957882>.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazon already has these up and running in Japan.

Amazon Help Article (JP): [http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId...](http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200219420)

Google Translate: [http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ja&tl=en&js...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ja&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.co.jp%2Fgp%2Fhelp%2Fcustomer%2Fdisplay.html%3FnodeId%3D200219420&act=url)

<comment><USER8> Yes, and it has been running for several years now. Very handy.

In Japan, the customer doesn't have to mess with any lockers. In the convenience store (Lawson instead of 7 Eleven) there's an electronic terminal used for buying tickets, pre-paid cards, etc. The customer inputs the order code and key into that terminal to print a ticket. Then they hand it to the clerk who picks up the package from the storage.

<comment><USER9> 7 Eleven in Taiwan has the same system. It's a delivery option for Taiwan's big online store <http://pchome.com.tw/> and Taiwan's eBay <http://ruten.com.tw/>.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Something similar has been around in Germany for 10 years now. The boxes there are not owned by Amazon, but by the Deutsche Post AG.[0] This allows competitors to use them as well.

0: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packstation>

<comment><USER11> Itella in Finland have them also (SmartPost) for use by any online merchant. As a merchant, you can also use them to drop your parcels off.

<comment><USER10> The German version allows you to send packages by putting them into an empty box in the Packstation. Same for the Austrian version. Deutsche Post also maintains so-called "Paketbox"es, which are only for sending stuff.

The Österreichische Post AG (Austria) is testing a new system where they install a couple of boxes right inside apartement buildings, typically next to the residents' post boxes. When a resident isn't home they simply drop the unlock code in his post box and put the package in one of the boxes. (The package is obviously too big to be dropped directly into the resident's post box.)

Packages can be exciting ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How soon before state governments start claiming that these lockers are a physical presence of Amazon's retail operations?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, apparently the only one in existence is in Seattle (about eight blocks away from me, as it works out).

My guess is that the answer to "how soon" would be 'the second one of these boxes appears in a state where Amazon does not yet collect sales tax.'

That said, I'm guessing that Amazon's lawyers would argue that this is effectively identical to a P.O. box, and therefore totally exempted. At least, that's what I'd argue.

edit: or not owned by Amazon at all. Good call.

<comment><USER13> Or the boxes are owned by a company which is not Amazon.

Make it a joint venture with UPS and use it for all kinds of deliveries and win.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, but the law is always murky about what constitutes a "physical presence," and the interpretations vary from state to state. I'm fairly certain that if they started springing up all over the US, there would be a lot of debate about whether a sales tax was required.

In any case, there's no way Amazon would keep these around if they alone necessitated a sales tax, since the trade-off would be too great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15>
        When the package is actually delivered, the
        customer receives an email notification along with
        a bar code to his smartphone and heads to the
        7-Eleven. There he'll stand in front of the
        locker system, which looks like the offspring
        between an ATM machine and a safety deposit box.
        The machine will scan the bar code on his handset
        to receive a PIN number. He'll punch that PIN
        number and retrieve the package.

I don't understand the purpose of the PIN. If I'm reading this right, it scans the bar code on my phone and gives me the PIN, and then I enter the PIN to get my package.

Why doesn't it just give me my package when it scans the bar code? The PIN doesn't seem to add any security.

I supposed the PIN could be an artifact of the implementation, rather than a security measure. For the prototype it might have been easier and cheaper just to use some stock keypad-based lockbox, and so they have to tell you the PIN, rather than to do some custom engineering to hook the locking system straight up to the barcode system.

<comment><USER16> Proper Security: Something you have and something you know.

<comment><USER15> Since they tell you the PIN at the point of use when you present the bar code, the PIN is not "something you know" from a security point of view.

Two factor authentication requires that you have two separate items of evidence to attest to your identity. The PIN in the Amazon system as described in the article is just evidence that you knew the bar code, not evidence as to who you are, so their system is just one factor.

A good way to think about it when considering a purported two factor system is to ask how many things a bad guy has to steal to impersonate you. In a two factor system, he should have to steal two things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is similar to what FedEx does with packages that can't be delivered. You can have it redirected at no charge to the nearest FedEx Office (formerly Kinko's) location and you can pick it up when it's convenient. It's like having a UPS Store box without having to pay the monthly fee.

<comment><USER15> In my experience, FedEx often redirects packages that CAN be delivered, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems like a no brainer, especially partnering with a ubiquitous local retailer.

I am rarely home when the majority of the packages I order actually arrive in my city. If they were to send me an email asking me if I'll be home on the scheduled day of delivery, I'd be more than happy to let them know I'm not, to save them the trip of trying to deliver to me when I _know_ I won't be home. This has always seemed like a major inefficiency in the courier system that I've always thought they would have eliminated. I just can't imagine that I am an outlier, do most other homes usually have someone home so its not worth sending out an email to check? Can anyone comment on this? I think about this problem every time I receive a package, it seems like such an obvious problem easily solved by technology.

<comment><USER19> Once I saw that a package was set to be delivered the next day so I called UPS and told them that I wouldn't be home and that they should just drop it off at the plant for me to pick up. They said they couldn't do that until the delivery guy tried at least once.

It seems easy, but perhaps it isn't or at least it isn't cost effective enough. The delivery person seemingly isn't given a route everyday (or at least that's my guess) and for now it's too complex/expensive for UPS/FedEx to institute. Also, they are rushing so much and there are so many processes before your package is put into the brown truck that there are all kinds of timing issues. This Amazon idea may help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This system is working very well. We have had that in France and Germany for the past couple of years, they call that Packstation in Germany:

<http://www.dhl.de/de/paket/privatkunden/packstation.html>

<comment><USER21> In France it's <http://www.cityssimo.fr/> I have never tested it

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > _...which looks like the offspring between an ATM machine and a safety > deposit box._

The author evidently has never seen a modern transit station locker system. (Admittedly less common now that lockers have been removed from airports.) At Union Station in Chicago there is a wall of lockers that looks almost exactly like this; all your interactions with choosing and locking and unlocking a locker are done with the computer kiosk in the middle (which, in that case, has a credit card reader). Amazon is surely not using custom hardware for this (or at least, not from-scratch custom), just reprogramming what's out there.

<comment><USER23> You mean this one?

<http://www.smartecarte.com/storage-lockers>

There's a hidden aspect of these lockers, you know. TSA likes it when they can have a backdoor to these lockers when needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is pretty cool, but my first thought after seeing this would be how easy it would make credit card fraud.

Thieves wouldn't need to provide a new address anymore, just one of these lockers and go pick it up.

</comment><comment><USER25> Lucky Dragon Nanofax!

Darnit, now I have to re-read the Idoru chain of Gibson books again...

<comment><USER26> This was _absolutely_ the first thing I thought of the moment I read the headline.

I very much want to believe that someone at Amazon had a brainstorm after that book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> All over Denmark for a couple of years: [http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_IlrPuze6Aps/THpLTSbhdCI/AAAAAAAACB...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_IlrPuze6Aps/THpLTSbhdCI/AAAAAAAACBA/HHE3yqva0p4/s1600/d%C3%B8gnposten.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER28> They could do the same for big employers too - Microsoft, Google, Boeing, etc. You could get a notification that you can pick up your delivery after work in a locker on location - all without inconveniencing a receptionist.

<comment><USER29> Inconveniencing a receptionist is a non-issue for big employers, since most of them already have a designated shipping and receiving department. For instance, at NVIDIA, I can have a package delivered directly to my desk, the same way that, for instance, hardware parts and development boards are delivered to me from an India location.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> A funny thing that's missing from this article is the payment aspect. It's my understanding that the 7-Eleven delivery system in Taiwan also handles payment — in effect, 7-Eleven acts as an escrow agent for Ruten, accepting both the goods and the cash before releasing either to the other party.

It seems like not having to use credit cards (with the attendant risks of credit card theft, identity fraud, false fraud alarms canceling your purchase, etc., not to mention cutting out people who don't have one) or PayPal could be a huge benefit. Less so for buying from Amazon, though, than for buying from eBay sellers.

</comment><comment><USER31> In Norway we them: <http://www.posten.no/17889/postautomat>

</comment><comment><USER32> Hopefully coming to the UK soon. This (well, ideally a generic multi-retailer version) has been to me an obvious business opportunity for years; if I had the slightest of relevant contacts I'd have been trying to set it up. Hopefully it will take off and we'll begin to see the _real_ possibility of online retail.

<comment><USER33> Not sure which shops. Now the supermarkets are buying up the convenience stores, and they consider Amazon competition they are not feasible.

<comment><USER32> That's definitely the challenge, but the advantages of last-mile depot collections as a universal service rather than the current 'system' of waiting for the missed delivery cards then trying to find a depot 20 miles away would be a major benefit and, I suspect, one customers would pay for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Awesome. I think my use case is common. I live in an apt where UPS can't leave packages and I am also not home during the day. I get my packages shipped to my relative's house, but I know several people who just don't order things online much because of this problem.

</comment><comment><USER35> This problem has been solved hundred years ago. The solution is called post office. Nowadays they were getting to expensive and therefore have been replaced in Austria by post partners like gas stations, or small super markets in your neighbourhood. Works perfectly.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is awesome. Really good for people who live in an apartment and aren't there during the day to take deliveries.

...but what surprised me more about this was that it was shared from The Daily.

</comment><comment><USER37> In several Asian countries it's been like that for the past 10 years. Good luck US becoming modern. What else is gonna be news next, electric toilet? :D

</comment><comment><USER38> This would give Amazon a physical presence in all 50 states. Really bad idea unless they wish to start charging sales tax.

</comment><comment><USER39> That's a great idea. I hope this grows into being able to ship anything to a 7-11 and then picking it up.

</comment><comment><USER40> books.com.tw, the Taiwanese alternative to amazon, also has this feature. I bet other online shops have it too. But you can even pay your taxes at 7/11 here, so nothing really surprises me anymore :)

</comment><comment><USER41> Sounds a lot like Kinek.com but they do it will all sorts of retailers

</comment><comment><USER42> > this nightmare scenario

Hyperbole much?

</comment><comment><USER43> A better system might be farming out the delivery to a special service that sends a package at any hour of any day. Amazon gives the package to this agency for a fee and they will deliver it to any gps coordinate at any time (but someone has to sign for it).</comment>


The simplest way to get JS function location from reference at runtime - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/midrissi/func-loc <comment><USER2> Thank you for sharing! The module is based on the inspector native module to get internal properties.</comment>


Why I'm excited to own 0% of my startup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@brianyork/why-i-m-excited-to-own-0-of-my-startup-b9ffd8c92a97?_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9MpKNPn03X03Ffoyn-ex5hQW-jZtgbalbJHgodm3Y5Dvm6hDvUpnI_XtauH7P_6Ywl6F6Gi_GBHXmZwsRwPY0cNVJkOw&_hsmi=21040145 <comment><USER2> "Despite our initial traction with revenue and customers, we realize that we still have a long way to go and trying to optimize for ownership now is like hoarding monopoly money — it's worthless!"

Yeah, this wouldn't work for me. I've owned 30%+ in all of my companies. I'm not going to put my life into a company with no assurance legally that I will own my share when It actually becomes successful.

Money and success change people. All too often, I've seen founders get booted out of their own company because they signed the wrong contract.

This happened to a friend of mine a few years back. He was essentially turned into an employee. The CEO even took his name off the website as a founder.</comment>


Researchers turn cement into metal - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2013-05-cement-metal.html <comment><USER2> I thought "metal" exclusively referred to a metal element, but it seems the definition is broader than that: (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal>)

      Many elements and compounds that are not normally classified as metals
      become metallic under high pressures.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget the astronomers, for whom a metal is any element that isn't hydrogen or helium.

<comment><USER4> Add enough pressure and you can even get metallic hydrogen, which has been predicted to be a room temperature superconductor.

Not that you'd want to be in any room with that kind of pressure (250k atm).

<comment><USER5> But if this is true and can be demonstrated, I guarantee that there are people who will want to try to commercialize it.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps I'm misreading your phrasing... but why wouldn't they?

<comment><USER5> It is hard to commercialize a substance that we are unable to create/maintain the conditions to use.

But if someone can demonstrate how to make and hold solid hydrogen in a configuration where superconduction can be demonstrated at room temperature, then you've clearly gone several steps towards addressing feasibility, and you've demonstrated the existence of potential commercial opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is exactly the opposite of the music industry, which has been turning metal into fake rock for years.

</comment><comment><USER8> That is an interesting result. The ability to create contained electrons on demand would allow for creating what minecraft folks think of as red bricks :-). More seriously though it you can pass an electric field over otherwise insulating surfaces you can do lots of clever things. Not the least of which is interfering or enhancing the transmission of signals through such materials.

<comment><USER9> I think you are referring to redstone, and I personally find it somewhat painfull to work with. Don't even think about making that a thing.

I'm kinda thinking of turning concrete into solar cells.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks promising, could we 3d print houses now? The last part of engineering which have now been automated.

I want something like cement-metal protection on my car paint coating, ceramic coating and or sapphire based coating. Ie something super hard and non-sticky to dirt and non corrosive.

</comment><comment><USER11> This will wreak absolute havoc in the lives of game programmers who are going to have to deal with reflective surfaces friggin' _everywhere_. Come on! Hasn't science gone far enough?

<comment><USER12> I guess those that represent future as shiny are correct then...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The best part of this article is the comment hiding at the bottom.</comment>


SiFive Introduces 7 Series RISC-V Cores with E7, S7 and the U7 Series - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/11/02/sifive-7-series-risc-v-cores-e76-s76-u74/ <comment><USER2> When can I buy an affordable, complete RISC-V computer? I've been long planning to cook my own with FPGA but it seems like soon we'll start getting affordable RISC-V CPUs with other utility support?

<comment><USER3> With QEMU you can already do amazing things. Every component required by Linux From Scratch has been stable, and you can get a Fedora/Debian image for that as well.

<comment><USER2> I know QEMU works, I wrote a small kernel using RISC-V and just want to see it on bare metal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> HiFive1 - Arduino RISC-V Dev Board

The HiFive1 is a low-cost, Arduino-compatible development board featuring the Freedom E310 making it the best way to start prototyping and developing your RISC‑V applications. Not only can the HiFive1 help build RISC-V platforms, but it is also the first commercially available option to do so! The HiFive1 can simply be plugged into your computer via the micro USB port located to the front of the board. Additionally, the HiFive1 comes programmed with a simple bootloader and a demo software, that way you aren't restricted to the Arduino IDE if you don't choose to do so.

[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15026](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15026)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've only had a passing interest in learning assembly. It's always been in the "maybe one day" category.

But after learning about how small the RISC-V instruction set is (less than 50 apparently, but I can't find a citation for that anywhere), I'm far more motivated to get into it.

<comment><USER6> I recommend the 6502[1] if you're just starting. What you learn applies almost everywhere, and it's very much a what-you-write-is-what-happens sort of processor. No branch prediction, no caches, no fancy features. Its op-set is very small and highly expressive. They still make them, in fact.

That said, whether you choose to start with it or RISC-V, from personal experience SiFive's implementations are phenomenal. I used one of their free- implementations, and I was blown away by how easy it was to use their automated tools to build a core exactly the way I wanted. Not as easy as generating a NIOS core, but much more capable. With an Artix-7, I had a very capable low-range processor in about an hour.

[1]: [https://skilldrick.github.io/easy6502/](https://skilldrick.github.io/easy6502/)

<comment><USER7> If you just want to dip your hand in, chip8 is also a good starting point (if even less useful than 6502): where 6502 has about 80 actual opcodes acrosss ~50 mnemonics ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502#Assembly_l...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502#Assembly_language_instructions)) chip8 has 35 opcodes across 19 mnemonics (ADD, AND, CALL, CLS, DRW, JP, LD, OR, RET, RND, SE, SHL, SHR, SKNP, SKP, SNE, SUB, SUBN, XOR).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am pretty excited about RISC-V. Hoping to see a v8 JavaScript and Node.js port in the future.

<comment><USER9> That shouldn't be super hard. I don't think there is much assembly in either. And C can be compiled to RISC-V already.

My only experience porting node was to a specialized ARM system a while ago, so ARM support may have been already built in or things may have changed.

edit: as people have commented, there indeed is a fair amount of arch specific stuff for reference the mips directory [https://github.com/v8/v8/tree/master/src/mips64](https://github.com/v8/v8/tree/master/src/mips64)

<comment><USER10> V8 has a JIT, which is always going to require work to port to a new architecture. But the new-ish TurboFan backend is supposed to have the architecture-dependent parts relatively well factored out[1], so it's not as hard as it might be.

[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_eLlVzcj94_G4r9j9d_L...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_eLlVzcj94_G4r9j9d_Lj5HRKFnq6jgpuPJtnmIBs88)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> SiFive press release here: [https://www.sifive.com/press/sifive-core- ip-7-series-creates...](https://www.sifive.com/press/sifive-core-ip-7-series- creates-new-class-of-embedded)

</comment><comment><USER12> The M7 is an out-of-order processor, these all look to be in-order. Many artificial benchmarks (including Dhrystone) are very forgiving of in-order stages, so I would expect this to underperform relatively to a similarly benchmarked M7.

<comment><USER13> M7 is actually an in-order processor. It does have six-stage dual-issue pipeline.

<comment><USER12> Oh you're right. It has speculative execution, but is otherwise strictly in- order, my mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hmm, does it really have only 16 KiB of RAM or am I misinterpreting the spec?

What would be the use case for a 320 MHz processor with 16 KiB RAM? Even ESP8266 has 80 KiB and runs at 80 MHz.

<comment><USER15> The only place I see that mentions 16 KB is the instruction cache on the S7 monitor core. Apart from cache, it doesn't look like any of these include RAM.

<comment><USER16> That's fairly standard. The problem there is going to be attaching ddr3 modules to a board. BGA is a pain in the ass for anything past 10x10 using a toaster oven. And for doing it "right" you really need xray QA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this based on the open source rocket chip, or is it a proprietary design?</comment>


RIAA, BPI, IFPI sue largest YouTube ripping site - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-mp3-ripping-site-sued-by-ifpi-riaa-and-bpi-160926/? <comment><AUTHOR> Whats very interesting about this is the huge implications it could have for adblocking. If the labels win on the 'circumvention' clause, the impact could effectively outlaw adblocking. If youtube can say "you can only access our content with a browser that doesnt save the audio portions of our video" then they can also say "you can only access our content with a browser that shows all ads"

Although google does not appear to be a plaintiff here, they have certainly indicated they could be one in the future ( [https://torrentfreak.com/google- threatens-to-sue-huge-youtub...](https://torrentfreak.com/google-threatens-to- sue-huge-youtube-mp3-conversion-site-120619/) )

</comment><comment><USER2> Do they actually make 'millions' in ad revenue though? Even if this lawsuit is successful, another site(s) will just replace it.

Taking audio from a youtube video is pretty simple code wise and it'd be a good idea to open source that maybe as a browser extension if someone hasn't already done it.

<comment><USER3> There's a CLI [https://github.com/rg3/youtube- dl](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl). Which is possibly used by some of these sites.</comment></comment>


Secure your secret messages with printable invisible ink - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/secure-secret-messages-printable-invisible-ink/ <comment><USER2> Please correct me if I'm wrong but won't this still print your printer's unique stenography sig? Just "invisibly?"</comment>


Shen-js Browser REPL - <AUTHOR> http://gravicappa.github.io/shen-js/shen.html#/.doc/welcome.html

<comment><USER2> Looking for a feel for Shen?

A Strange Loop talk by @deech (40minutes): Shen: A Sufficiently Advanced Lisp. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMcRBdSdO_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMcRBdSdO_U)

An essay: [http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html](http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html)

It's insightful and readable and it links to several articles new Shen users would be interested in[0]. It was written before Shen, so it talks about Shen's predecessor, Qi. This article and the Bipolar Lisp Programmer by Mark Tarver (creator of Shen) made me feel not so weird for not "getting" UNIX, and helped me get excited about lisp.

I'm looking to use Shen or another highly cross-platform functional language for my next project. Application logic in Shen with type-checking. web code using some framework.

[0] Wow I'm re-skimming it now: it has Stanislav, James Gosling, buncha Smalltalk, Rob Pike's "Systems Research is Dead" and a lot more. This is actually a good overview of ways to be disillusioned with programming. IMO disillusionment by knowing our historical failures is an antidote to the hype- machine.

<comment><USER3> I loved the essay and how it explains the problems with collaboration in Lisp

One thing I'd like to add though: The reason collaboration fails isn't just NIH being easy. The language is so malleable that its hard (sometimes even impossible) to understand other people's code. You have to get into the their mind and adapt to their way of thinking to make any meaningful contributions. For every new developer, you potentially get to learn a completely new and different language that need not have any principles behind it (at least Haskell EDSLs are all guided by the same principles of a few type classes and concepts from category theory).

So, inventing your own stuff is easy, _and_ at the same time understanding other people's stuff is hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some information for people who don't know; this is about the Shenlanguage.org; a Lisp with a novel (to me anyway) implementation (it is written on top of a kind of minimal Lisp called KLambda and thus very easy to port) with some great features and many target platforms, all under BSD license.

Nice work with the REPL Ramil, however, the site could use some testing on at least Safari, as it looks like this; [http://i.glui.me/1deY5lR](http://i.glui.me/1deY5lR) (Safari 8, latest update).

This is good work towards getting people working with Shen faster. There is a long way to go but it's worth it!

</comment><comment><USER5> Has anyone written KLambda in erlang? Would be an interesting alternative to Lisp flavored erlang.

<comment><USER4> I think some people mentioned plans to do that; don't think anything materialised yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The greenthread impl is not getting enough hype here! Great work!

</comment><comment><USER7> This is fun. I like that you can load shen source code from random places on the web. That would make a good personal scratchpad.</comment>


Vizeddit: Live Reddit votes and comments from the Reddit API visualized in pure javascript - <AUTHOR> http://erqqvg.com/

<comment><USER2> Cool. How does this work? Is it polling the Reddit API every 15 seconds? Gnip? Comet? Something else?

<comment><USER3> It's polling reddit - every 30 seconds by the looks of the code. Fairly standard AJAX approach to grab reddit's JDON data via their API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These are beautiful! It would be fascinating to see a similar set of visualizations for HN.</comment>


More New Yorkers Opting for Life in the Bike Lane - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/30/nyregion/new-yorkers-bike-lanes-commuting.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> I wish Brooklyn would have more bike lanes.</comment>


How to Pretend You Know UX When You Don't - <AUTHOR> http://thehipperelement.com/post/66097606120/10-ways-to-pretend-you-know-ux-when-you-dont <comment><USER2> This is bad, comes across as a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" rant

"There is no such thing as a "design perspective.""

Hello? There's a whole theory of design: grids, colors, hierarchy, typography, etc. It's not as simple as "drawing something pretty" as most may think. This may of course clash with UX and a good professional will know how to balance them. (And of course some may pull this card as to push their personal preferences, as developers pull the "this can't be done" card often for the same reasons)

About 7: yes, it's a bad idea if you do it blindly, but it may often be your best guess. Adapt to your situation and check if it works for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love this comment, thanks for writing it. There is a DEFINITELY a theory and a method to design. I would never say otherwise, and you're absolutely right.

The second part of your comment was precisely what I was getting at: people who hijack "UX" or the "design perspective" as a way of justifying their preferences without any further discussion.

I literally saw this happen the day I wrote this post. They offered no other explanation than "The design perspective says..."

If you're working with a grid, you can certainly discuss how something fits or doesn't fit, or works within that grid. Colours have meaning, hierarchy is crucial in aesthetics and usability, and typography is a whole discipline of its own. I wholeheartedly agree.

If someone knew all of that and used it to justify their choices, they wouldn't need to co-opt the "design perspective" as their argument of choice.

It's when someone says that "Blue is the best colour for links" or "the 960 grid is the most usable" or "sans serif is the most readable" — from a design perspective — that we have a problem.

Thanks again.

<comment><USER3> If a person can backup or explain their use of terms like 'the design perspective' with appropriate nuances, it's not bullshit.

If they can't, then sure, they're bullshitting you.

That's not to say the simplified version of the rule isn't useful though. It can save us from forever explaining x years of experience to everyone we encounter, as well as potentially confusing people new to the subject. Teachers do this a lot, intentionally.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sometimes I laugh when I see articles like this. Yelling at people is so effective.

Before there was UX there was UI. UX is a modern concept that basically came with the web. Yet people designed effective interfaces in applications long before the web (which is why it was called UI). Back in the 80's the idea that artist type people could design interfaces was not common at all, in fact it was more of a programmer speciality (today people laugh at this). The point was that you were trying to identify how people could effectively interact with your application and generally you had to do that in code. There was no Photoshop to draw pictures in. I used Hypercard in those days when I needed to show how I thought it should work to product managers or other programmers. Then I did the implementation. In those days you usually had to figure it out yourself as their were few resources to even look at.

Today the concept of UX is very different and few UX people would ever consider implementation part of their job of even consider it in their design work.

<comment><USER5> > Before there was UX there was UI. UX is a modern concept that basically came > with the web. Yet people designed effective interfaces in applications long > before the web (which is why it was called UI).

In a submission about design bullshitting, nice job (by Po's law, I can't tell if you are serious or not)! UX has been around for far longer than the web. The term UX gained popularity in the 90s to emphasize that its not just about the visuals.

These days, things are a bit more specialized: we have visual designers whose primary tool is Illustrator (a few are still crazy pixel-based photoshoppers, but most have moved onto vector), but then we also have lots of interaction designers whose primary tool is visio and powerpoint (many designers in web do both and might even code, but this doesn't work for complex products). Most programmers still don't get design and can't really tell the difference.

<comment><USER4> I'm talking about the 1980's, the 90's was the transition period to UX from UI. In the early days the visuals wasn't much since the OS's had so little to work with. Basically we were inventing what an interface was in those days. Most application categories (besides the web) were first seen in the 80's.

<comment><USER5> Graphic (visual) designers existed in the 80s and much longer before that, even if they weren't working on computers back then. Interaction design, on the other hand, comes about in the 70s but doesn't get its name until the 80s. Even today, most people don't grock what interaction designers do (hint: its not visual).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Came looking for little nuggets of wisdom; being a programmer that has mostly had other programs as my 'users'.

Left with nothing more than having spent some time watching the OP pat his own back.

(I Still don't know how to pretend I know UX or feel any better at sniffing out fakers)

<comment><USER7> This is my feeling as well. I wanted to have a more rational foundation for how I design my interface, but this is a list of pet peeves, this does me no good!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 11\. Write an article like this one.

</comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps even more infuriating than this is the notion that by virtue of being a user of a system, the user knows how the UX should be.

It's often repeated that "developers don't know UX", but some has taken that to mean that UX/UI decisions should be taken by anyone other programmers.

<comment><USER10> and as a 'UX Designer', it's hard to avoid this. I loathe when peers use rationale, but I understand.... because as a designer, ou're expected to use your experience as a guide you

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Extract the UX part and the article could be a primer on how to blag your way in pretty much anything.

That's not to say I disagree with what it says. As a UX designer I've been on the receiving end of most of these - and probably perpetrated a few as well.

(Slightly off-topic: I don't think the term Information Architecture is helpful even though that's what I do. IA, UX, UE, EA, whatever - it's all design. Though Information Architect or Experience Architect does sound fancier than just Designer.)

Design perspectives are vital as good design is about finding creative solutions to problems, best practices and patterns are useful as they help avoid common mistakes and research and testing is useful for refining and developing existing ideas.

However, the main difference between a blagger and a real expert is that the latter is able to articulate where and why each rule, guideline, finding etc. should be followed or broken.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not a lot of concrete help, here. What _am_ I looking for in a good UX conversation?

I would be interested in an article that explains how a good conversation proceeds. Any thought?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, you're right. I wasn't aiming at a "be-all, end-all" post though... just highlighting some common ways people piggy-back their preferences on "UX". However, your suggestion is good and I added it to my (relatively short) list of articles-to-do. To be fair, a good UX conversation can take many forms depending on the project and context, but there are certainly key points to cover no matter what.

I have written about good ux before:

[http://thehipperelement.com/post/51160057897/ux-is-a- science...](http://thehipperelement.com/post/51160057897/ux-is-a-science-not- an-art)

[http://thehipperelement.com/post/51569751954/protip- tuesday-...](http://thehipperelement.com/post/51569751954/protip- tuesday-5-launching-is-an-experiment)

<comment><USER13> Thanks for stepping back in to clarify. I think what hurt this article the most was its emphasis on conflict over collaboration. How can people work around these habits of dressing up preferences? Telling them to 'call bullshit' is kind of empty, and it sounds like you've got experience that can inform those situations better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article is spot on. It is applicable not just to designers but to anything web-related in general that is not a hard science. I've seen these techniques used most often in discussions of design and SEO.

I am amazed at how many times I've heard from charlatans, "We have data that shows..." which is analogous to your "The research says..." Then when you ask for the non-existent data it turns into a "don't look behind the curtain" discussion straight from the Wizard of Oz.

Don't let the angry designers commenting here make you think that your post isn't accurate. It is. I suspect a lot of people erroneously think you're talking about them merely because they've never had the displeasure of working with a true fraud who uses these techniques constantly.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is terrible, it's just a list of 10 things NOT to do. I didn't learn anything about UX.

<comment><USER16> Useless AND insufferably smug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love when people list some fallacies online. It's a good reminder of the practices you need to avoid. This article does that in a funny way but the problem i see is the lack of solutions that the author offers in it. There's little to learn in there, in my humble opinion, for any person interested in UX.

This article would be awesome if every point is related in the sense of situations. For example, you're in situation A where you probably will need to use the infamous X argument, don't use it, try to argue Y better. That explains both problem and best exit and, also denotes the process you need to do for making a seriously good UX.

<comment><USER18> Is a rant what would you expect?

<comment><USER17> I said what I would expect. You can't tell someone what is bad if you can't say what would be the good side of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The title should be "How to argue with someone who knows what they are doing when your self efficacy exceeds your ability"

</comment><comment><USER20> Great article but terrible (misleading) title. :)

Unfortunately, the info is mostly helpful in hindsight. One must have had an experience with a so-called "UX expert" to really appreciate this article, but I'm not sure it would have helped me in occasions I had the clash with some self-appointed UX "guru"... But it was a fun read nevertheless and very very very true! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER21> >Never use jargon if you can help it.

Funny in the context of an article peppered with the term "UX". I know what it means, and I suspect most people on HN know what it means, but does the average "client, boss, and colleague" know what it means? If not, then it's jargon.

Oh, and "eye tracking, card sorting, .. , A/B testing". Ditto.

</comment><comment><USER22> JoelMarsh,

I enjoyed this article and agreed with all the points. However, I am calling bullshit on the title "Experience Architect"

<comment><AUTHOR> That has been my title for several years. If you can be a User Experience Designer or an Information Architect (both well-established job titles), what is wrong with "(User) Experience Architect" if you do both?

<comment><USER22> To be honest, both "User Experience Designer" and "Information Architect," especially the latter, have a ring of bullshit, but they are at least in common enough use that I know approximately what the job actually entails (again less so with information architect).

So when you make the change to "Experience Architect," dropping the "User" prefix, it becomes vague to the point where I literally had no idea what you did for living, although I guessed from the article's content that you worked in UX somehow, presumably designing user interfaces or consulting about them. But as someone who (rightly) rails against vagueness in marketing and against bullshit that masquerades as expertise, I would think you'd be averse to a title which trades clarity for puffery.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your thoughts are not uncommon, unfortunately, but they come from a lack of, or confusing, information... not a high level of bullshit.

And oddly enough, I wrote an article about that too. :) Maybe this will help:

[http://thehipperelement.com/post/47950319899/do-you-have- the...](http://thehipperelement.com/post/47950319899/do-you-have-the-wrong- job-title)

<comment><USER22> Another good article. It has not changed my mind, however :)

As someone who values making scientific decisions, I would challenge you to survey people in the tech industry (programmers, visual designers, UX experts, etc) and ask them if they know what an "Experience Architect" does.

It is difficult enough that some people don't know that user interaction and user experience are jobs different from a graphic designer and front end developer. But I think user interaction and UX are at least somewhat known. As you said: "If you do information and interaction and UX, go with "UX" as a job title."

It sounds like "UX Designer and Information Architect" might be accurate in your case? And it sounds almost as impressive as "Experience Architect" :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The author of this article failed in stating up front a basic assumption about UX which is that you need to be making your decisions from a position that is informed by quantitative and qualitative observations about the actual users.

When you collect the data you can test things 'from a design perspective' and 'best practice' standpoint and see if those hold true. Any other way and you're making stuff and justifying your decisions after the fact.

If you're not talking to users then you're not doing USER experience design, you're just making up an experience design. See Whitney Hess: [http://whitneyhess.com/blog/2011/04/23/youre-not-a-user- expe...](http://whitneyhess.com/blog/2011/04/23/youre-not-a-user-experience- designer-if/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Ok, so as someone who has used the "design perspective" to avoid verbalizing something I simply understood to be true intuitively, what are good resources for understanding the theory and explaining UX choices?

<comment><AUTHOR> I respect the fact that you asked. :)

There are lots. Not to be self-serving, but I post all the best links I find on www.thehipperelement.com, if you feel like scanning through them.

But a few, off the top of my head are:

\- www.alistapart.com \- [http://www.uie.com/articles/](http://www.uie.com/articles/) (run by Jared Spool, I think) \- www.smashingmagazine.com is a bit hit and miss, but what they lack in quantity they make up for in quantity. \- www.unbounce.com \- www.goodui.com is a good, quick, visual reference for best practices. You could make a career just from enforcing some of those, haha.

And these two books would lay a good foundation in general:

\- "Web Form Design" by LukeW (his blog is also interesting) \- "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug

If you only spent a few hours on those you'd be ahead of the game. And if there is anything you feel is missing from the world, let me know on Twitter and maybe I can write something about it. @HipperElement

Hopefully that helps.

<comment><USER24> Thank you, I'm actually prepared to spend a lot more than a few hours. I wish this was integrated in Computer Science programs. Not being able to objectively justify some of my choices has been pretty traumatic and your list nicely summarized why :)

<comment><AUTHOR> This was nice to read. Let me know if there is anything I can help with (seriously).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So let's break this down:

1) "From a design perspective" \- bad wording, true, but the underlying idea is "from a user-centric perspective" as opposed to "from an implementation, engineering, or data-centric perspective". The latter still being unfortunately the driving force behind most interfaces, any designer will need to use some form of this phrase fairly frequently in most real-world situations.

2) "Best Practices say" \- again, this can be misused, but heuristic and expert evaluations of an interface are the bread and butter of most designers' toolset. A/B testing, on-site user testing, user interviews, et al, are all great tools, but in many cases, they're luxuries. When you're part of a small team trying to hit a MVP, starting with baseline best practices is the pragmatic way to go. Insisting on reinventing every dropdown or tabset is a sure fire way to singlehandedly sink a startup.

3) "Let's use an analogy" \- generic, applicable to any problem-solving endeavor. This has nothing to do with UX. This is where the whole article started really stinking of linkbait.

4) Jargon - industry jargon is a powerful way of communicating specific, granular concepts to a peer audience. Yes, if you're using UX jargon when presenting your ideas to an outside audience, you're doing it wrong. But saying jargon is wrong is just dumb, and once again, jargon is hardly a UX- specific phenomenon.

5) "The research says" \- let's just repeat #2 and blather on some more

6) Again, see #2.

7) Ok, so the basic idea here is that the True Pure UX involves coming up with brilliant new concepts in a vacuum. Leveraging successful ideas is verboten. I'm not sure how this guy could get anything done without the support of a 20-person UX team, with the other 19 people covering for his theoretical brilliance.

8) To be perfectly honest, I don't think I've ever heard the term focus groups used by anyone in the UX field, and I've been at it since '98\. But you need 10 bullets on that list, I guess.

9) Probably the only point on this list that I agree with, and something I'd never seen until very recently. The concept of "stupid users" has obviously been entrenched in the development side since Day 1, hence the need for UX in the first place. But it's definitely disturbing to start seeing supposed user advocates start to toss this one around.

10) Big numbers are bad unless they're the right big numbers. Gotcha, mate. Misusing statistics and measurements is obviously an epidemic confined solely to the UX sphere, and not a basic human foible.

</comment><comment><USER10> to be fair, there are some use cases where focus groups (maybe not traditional focus groups, but focus group style discussion) can be useful. I'd generally still agree with that comment as well though

</comment><comment><USER26> I'll take data over bullshit articles like this any day.

</comment><comment><USER27> How is this @ +50 votes? Why do people vote on these articles? I've seen awesome articles floating at ~10 with 0 comments a lot of the time.</comment>


Amtrak lost money every year since 1971 – here's why train are so expensive - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/amtrak-why-so-expensive-america-train-system-2019-3 <comment><USER2> Since the article doesn't really go in detail as to why Amtrak is losing money, most of Amtrak's losses are from long routes across the US, not short distance travel.

This article from a few years ago has a breakdown by route: [http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2013/03/long-distance- trains-...](http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2013/03/long-distance-trains-and- direct-costs.html?m=1)

That being said, Amtrak is definitely an interesting way to travel, and the route between Denver and California on the California Zephyr is really awesome if one likes landscapes.

</comment><comment><USER3> > In fact, it's often more expensive to take an Amtrak train from New York > City to Boston than to fly. Why does the US, a country that created > billionaire railroad tycoons, have such an expensive and inefficient train > system?

Japan has the most efficient train system in the world. For example, in the next half hour there are four bullet trains departing from Tokyo to Osaka (550 km), each taking less than 2:40. There's no need to buy in advance, no long security or boarding lines: you just go to the station whenever, buy a ticket, and get on the next train.

The train service is _extremely_ popular, likely each of the trains I mentioned will be at least half full.

Nevertheless, flying is cheaper.

<comment><USER4> I wonder about the economics of the Japanese bullet trains. Are they profitable?

Are cars so expensive in Japan that the cost of a train ticket can be higher in comparison to the US?

<comment><USER5> No, the trains are faster and more comfortable. Driving Tokyo-Osaka is probably 6 hours, while the train is less than 3. saving 3 hours each way on a trip is worth a lot of money to a lot of people. Imagine you work in Osaka and have a meeting in Tokyo. If you're driving you'd have to leave a day early, and spend a night in a hotel, leave as soon as possible after the meeting and probably wouldn't be home before midnight. With the train you hop on the train in the morning, work all the way to Tokyo, attend the meeting, grab the first train back and finish up any work you had on your way home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Meta comment: how wonderful that this includes a transcript and thus doesn't need the [video] warning in the title. I wish more web sites would do this.

</comment><comment><USER7> GG Wash, a very pro transit/rail site, did an analysis of Amtrak cost-per-mile recently. [https://ggwash.org/view/10891/funding-amtrak-is-more-cost- ef...](https://ggwash.org/view/10891/funding-amtrak-is-more-cost-effective- than-subsidizing-roads). Amtrak's direct subsidies are more than 10x higher per passenger mile than roads. The site then adds back in a bunch of externalities like CO2 and parking (which is totally fair), and concludes that Amtrak is ever-so-slightly cheaper per passenger mile ($0.439 versus $0.447). As we move to more electric vehicles, car travel will become outright less subsidized than Amtrak even accounting for all the externalities. But look at the usage: 6.5 billion passenger miles for Amtrak, versus 4.24 _trillion_ for roads. Amtrak is a rounding error in the country's transportation system.

In fact, rail as a whole is a rounding error, accounting for less than 1% of passenger miles. The political attention spent on high speed rail, subways, etc., is completely out of proportion with the actual number of people who use it. It gets a lot of attention because yuppies use it, but 99% of passenger miles in the U.S. are logged on cars and planes.

Rail doesn't deserve the amount of political attention it gets. Public money spent on rail is welfare for yuppies at the expense of people in need. Most low-income people can't afford to live near a train station in any U.S. city with a significant rail network. Low-income people who use public transit ride the bus, which costs _half as much_ per passenger mile: [https://journalistsresource.org/studies/environment/transpor...](https://journalistsresource.org/studies/environment/transportation/bus- versus-rail). So when you spend money on rail, you're spending money on something that (1) disproportionately benefits yuppies, and (2) you're spending more of it to move the same number of people the same distance because rail is a less economically efficient mode of transport. It's morally indefensible.

Disclosure: I love trains. I ride Amtrak all the time, and ride the D.C. Metro every day. Which is precisely why we shouldn't fund rail. If you look around a Northeast Regional, it's mostly business travelers. Metro is likewise mostly white-collar workers (in the evening, comparatively well-off tourists and locals enjoying the night life). The folks cleaning houses in D.C. aren't hopping onto the Orange line at Clarendon, they're driving in from Herndon.

<comment><USER8> Different modes of transport serve different purposes. I would however like to point out there's a very strong distinction between long distance trains and rapid transit trains (i.e. Amtrak vs. subways a la DC or NYC): long distance is for travel between cities outside of the origin's metro area. Rapid transit is for travel within a city. Amtrak's only meaningful source of profit is their Northeast Corridor route [0]. That route effectively subsidizes all of the other routes. It is my understanding that the other routes are operated to provide access to rural communities that are otherwise unserved by transit.

Buses are generally better than subways until the surface level roads physically cannot contain the buses necessary to ensure there's enough space for passengers. Once that point is reached, subways are essentially the only option to prevent excessive amounts of sprawl.

I interned just outside of DC last summer and I agree the Metro was remarkably free of people who appeared to be working class. However, my personal belief is that it's a consequence of the Metro's distance-based pricing. In NYC, it's a flat $2.75 per trip if you're paying on a per ride basis regardless of how far you travel. On the NYC subways, everyone takes the subway. There, there is a mix of poor and wealthy on the subway. NYC is so densely built that the number of buses needed to accommodate every journey physically would not be able to fit on the (typically very narrow) streets.

[0]: See last page of [https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...](https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/monthlyperformancereports/2018/Amtrak- Monthly-Performance-Report-March-2018.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Amtrak isn't profitable anywhere--it runs an operating profit in the northeast corridor, but that doesn't account for the fact that the federal government pays for capital expenditures. So even the NEC is subsidized--which is unjustifiable considering that NEC riders are primarily quite well off, often business travelers.

As to the rest of Amtrak--what is the purpose of connecting rural areas to transit just for the sake of it? Amtrak serves an infinitesimally small fraction of trips in these places, at subsidies an order of magnitude higher than for road travel. What is the logic of spending such disproportionate resources on that tiny handful of people?

<comment><USER8> As far as I can tell from some brief research you're correct that if capital expenses were accounted for, the NEC would run a fairly minor loss. I agree that NEC-fares should probably be raised so that it's profitable without government aid.

> What is the logic of spending such disproportionate resources on that tiny > handful of people?

Government enterprises don't exist to make a profit. They exist to make the people better off; sometimes resources are focused on the most needy. If you view Amtrak in that light, then it's substantially more justifiable. I'm not saying that Amtrak is the best form of making people better off via providing easy transportation, but it's something.

<comment><USER7> > Government enterprises don't exist to make a profit. They exist to make the > people better off; sometimes resources are focused on the most needy. If you > view Amtrak in that light, then it's substantially more justifiable.

But that's precisely the problem. Amtrak users even in rural places aren't "the most needy." Amtrak is more expensive than driving, especially if you're traveling with a family, and everybody in rural America has a car (you can't get to an Amtrak station without one). Portland to Eugene is $28 per person, for a trip that's about $15 worth of gas. Over $100 for a family of four, and then you still have to get where you're going at both ends. You can't even take the train to less economically advantaged places along the Oregon coast. But everybody has a car.

That's what's so morally pernicious about rail. It's rich yuppies' idea of what poor people use and need. Poor people don't take the train. They don't work in a downtown office building near transit. They work in the suburbs or exurbs or in the country. On Christmas they pack their kids in a cheap car and go from their house, which is nowhere near a city center, to grandma's house, which is nowhere near a city center. What helps needy people (and frankly, the 90% of America that lives outside major cities)—lets them get to work, go visit family, etc., is roads, cheap gas, and in more developed areas, reliable bus service.

<comment><USER8> You're presuming that everyone has affordable access to a (reliable) car. That's not necessarily always true. Amtrak is significantly cheaper than renting a car to travel short to medium distances when there's a corresponding route.

Support for Amtrak-style rail is very low. Hell support for subway-style rail is still pretty low, but it has its uses in the truly developed areas (a la NYC). I'm ambivalent about Amtrak. I'm strongly supportive of subway-style rail, when it's appropriate (it's not appropriate aside from a small handful of cities).

There's multiple types of poor (rural, suburban, and urban). Are you not facing selection bias from living in a fairly suburbs-dominated metro (DC)?

<comment><USER7> > You're presuming that everyone has affordable access to a (reliable) car. > That's not necessarily always true. Amtrak is significantly cheaper than > renting a car to travel short to medium distances when there's a > corresponding route.

We're talking about Amtrak in rural areas here, and for a statistical definition of 100%, 100% of folks in rural places have access a car. Life is impossible without one. As to urban poor--they take the bus. A saver fare for Austin to Houston is $48. Greyhound will get you there for $9.

> There's multiple types of poor (rural, suburban, and urban). Are you not > facing selection bias from living in a fairly suburbs-dominated metro (DC)?

Every metro area in the U.S. is suburbs dominated except NYC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Worked for AMTRAK. It's northeast operations are very profitable. The people who work in their ops center in Wilmington, DE work their butts off. So do their yard staff. The problem is with their top heavy management and admin staff.

</comment><comment><USER10> SEA-PDX by train = ~3.5 hours, ~$50, with a low chance of delays, although if you are delayed, it will likely be for 1 or more hours. Trains leave ~6 times per day or so.

SEA-PDX by air = ~50 mins, $90, with a low chance of delays, and those delays add ~10-20 mins usually. Flights leave ~20+ times per day.

If Amtrak can't get the corridor between these two cities to a competitive state, why would I ever bother with them on a more serious trip?

<comment><USER2> Is that 50 minutes door-to-door or are you taking into account the need to travel to the airport, show up early, going through TSA, etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Strange that unions go unmentioned, as they raise the cost of existing service: [https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/242053-union- defen...](https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/242053-union-defends- amtrak-concession-workers) and new service: [https://californiapolicycenter.org/how-unions- artificially-i...](https://californiapolicycenter.org/how-unions-artificially- inflate-costs-for-infrastructure/). Union costs are one of these open secrets no one wants to talk about.

<comment><USER12> > _Strange that unions go unmentioned, as they raise the cost of existing > service_

Strange that salaries go unmentioned, as paying people instead of using slaves raises the cost of existing service.

> _Union costs are one of these open secrets no one wants to talk about._

Wastefully paying people instead of using slaves is one of these open secrets no one wants to talk about.

Oh how horrible it is to pay people for work.</comment></comment>


Beginners Guide to HTML/CSS - <AUTHOR> http://learn.shayhowe.com/html-css/terminology-syntax-intro/

<comment><USER2> I really wish they didn't link the w3schools at the bottom under resources. They are a spammy, and often incorrect, resource for learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. MDN has better docs, no ads, and no trying to sell you dubious "certifications."

<comment><USER3> i agree with you. they're much better resources out there. honestly, nothing compares to current books about subject, as i feel they give more depth to the why, when, how, etc. i think they better prepare for mastering the topic. have someone read these pages and then head over to an html spec and see if they understand what is being discussed or proposed :)

edit: site is nice though.

<comment><USER4> If w3schools has a use-case it's a quick reference which fairly exclusive from buying and reading new books or trying to parse specs

Sadly w3schools has some serious SEO-mojo enough to win out for a lot of search queries for basic reference in html/css/javascript. At least we can be thankful experts-exchange has seemingly gone away.

<comment><USER5> You mean expert sex change, right? ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I made this website for a course I am teaching at Code Academy (<http://codeacademy.org>) in Chicago, IL. The website here is a work in progress and is being tested out in class. Thanks for all of the feedback so far, I will do my best to incorporate it. Please stay tuned for updates and more lessons to come!

<comment><USER7> Looks fantastic, all i can say is: bigger fonts please, and don't give up finishing it! The world needs something better than w3schools, but simpler than MDN. You could be that.

<comment><USER8> I agree. The design sense is going in the right direction; it needs simpler descriptions and clearer writing so that people who really don't have any experience can understand the tutorial. As was mentioned above, n00bs probably won't know what an "object" is.

<comment><USER9> This isn't a standalone resource yet. Shay uses this in class to explain all the key concepts in further detail. After each class, the students can back go back and reference these concepts.

However, everything can be better, so we will make sure to make the language and the flow can work for anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is beautifully designed. But the language still may go over non-coder heads. For example; elements are defined as _"designators that define objects within a page"_ , this already assumes some knowledge. Believe it or not there are a lot of people who have no idea what an 'object' is in this context.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. "To put this into laymen terms, HTML determines the semantic structure..." doesn't sound like laymen terms to me.

<comment><USER9> Like Shay mentioned below, this website is a work in progress and still being tested out, but right now the website is a supplement to what Shay teaches in class. Shay uses this in class and we mix in lecture, demoing, and lab work to help the Code Academy students understand the content. The students also use this to reflect back on what Shay has taught in the previous classes.

As of now, this is the best standalone resource, but it is a couple weeks old, so we will definitely improve it.

<comment><USER11> That actually makes a big difference. As a supplement to what's taught in class, I think the language is probably appropriate as it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm so mad I metacaptioned an image. <http://i.qkme.me/35uqnl.jpg>

Seriously tho, <http://screencast.com/t/Qunx72f4rJC> I know these aren't ready yet so they're deemphasized, but I'd like to be able to read them anyway. :)

<comment><USER13> First, this kind of comment about the appearance of a website should be done by asking directly and nicely to the author. For example you can easily direct message him on twitter instead of polluting the HN comment thread which should always contain useful and informative comment.

Second. I can read them pretty nicely on my computer. It is clear a lot of work was made to make this website very nice. Your comment is a bit harsh.

Third, you are on HN, you should know how to read the code without being angry.

<comment><USER12> Judging by the position of my comment in the thread, it is not clear that everyone shares your view of it being merely thread pollution. I wasn't really mad, that comment was a play on this joke, which is fairly well known on the net: <http://1389blog.com/pix/im-so-angry-i-made-a-sign.jpg> So what should I do, be mr serious and drone on like a broken record about accessibility? Is it so bad that I try to address the point in a whimsical way? If you think that telling someone to make a _minor change to their text styles_ is harsh, read more comments here. It's not uncommon to see someone's entire business model questioned and torn apart in the comments; if the worst complaint is about text color, that's a good day! :)

One thing you said does, in fact, really irritate me: "I can read them pretty nicely on my computer." _This is not the standard by which accessibility is judged!!_ It doesn't matter if you can read fine in 7px grey on gray, that doesn't make it accessible.

I'm not just pulling this stuff out of thin air, by the way. <http://www.accesskeys.org/tools/color-contrast.html> These are widely accepted best practices, and you should follow them if you care about people with abilities different than your own being able to use your site.

<comment><USER13> It seems you are right. The low color contrast on a small disabled part of this website seems to be the major shared point of view.

Sincerely, it wasn't a personal attack. I am just sad a short comment about the look & feel make the top instead of a comment about the content.

Even if in the end, I tend to agree with you that this color contrast is a design error.

ps: Also, if you visit my website, you will see I am fully aware of accessibility and try to take a good care about it.

<comment><USER12> Agreed: my comment should not be the top comment; it's just one small critique. I just see this so frequently (low low contrast, hard to read text) as well as other accessibility issues on sites linked from hn that I started griping about it. FWIW I don't _just_ gripe about it, sometimes I actually do something: <https://github.com/addyosmani/todomvc/pull/37> :)

In the end I think it's important to remember that even if the content is the best thing in the world, that doesn't mean much if people can't read it. I'm probably just a curmudgeon but I've clicked links to posts where I saw the contrast and size and said "I'm not going to bother reading this. It is too hard and I don't care enough about this article to change my browser settings to correct the designer's mistakes." And many people don't have the skills to do so. Three cheers for agreement! :)

<comment><USER13> I know exactly this bad feeling when going to a website with great content and terrible design.

I am pretty sure you know about these, but just in case.

To address this problem I used readability from arc90. Now I use a solarized[^1] version of readable[^2].

Cheers :)

[^1]: <http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized> [^2]: <http://goo.gl/jISPf> => will go to <http://readable.tastefulwords.com/> with solarized theme (my tiny contribution).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm really not a fan of the "Design" of this. It looks pretty, but the "wall of text" approach feels overwhelming.

It feels like it's half guide and half reference, but not particularly excellent at either.

Also the organization of content seems way off to me. In the first lesson I learn about things like code validation and CSS resets, but I don't even learn about html list elements until lesson 9?

I think with a lot of reorganization and better 'chunking' this would be a lot better.

<comment><USER15> Other complaints aside, I just wanted to say that I quite like the "wall of text" approach. Thinking back to the article on API documentation from Parse (<http://blog.parse.com/2012/01/11/designing-great-api-docs/>) I'll agree that having everything on one page, quickly accessible, is a good way to do. By breaking up the page with relevant headings and sub-headings the docs can be made much less daunting (as they are here). I'd be much more annoyed with having to click between pages too often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What is the intended audience exactly? The language is tense ever for myself with 20 years of coding experience: "To put this into laymen terms, HTML determines the semantic structure of content on a web page..." How is 'semantic structure' a layman term?

<comment><USER9> The intended audience is for Code Academy students here in Chicago learning web development and user experience design. Shay uses this as a resource to guide the students through their learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "One principle of development is D.R.Y., also known as don't repeat yourself. Within CSS this principle can speak volumes as it is easy to continually write the same styles over and over again. Don't. CSS was designed in a way to allow you to cascade styles and use classes so that you easily apply and inherent styles."

This is wonderful, useful advice to beginners and seasoned developers alike. In fact, anyone who works with CSS, regardless of how they write it (raw, sass, less), should be force fed this advice. At the end of the day, CSS is a declarative cascading language, and you must leverage it as such in order to optimize code reuse, performance, maintainability, etc.

Aside from this tutorial being beautifully designed, the notes about semantics and best practices are enough to make me feel good about recommending it to anyone who wants to learn more about HTML & CSS.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great! However the pacing still feels dense. I think beginners reading this could use two things: 1. more frequent sectioning and 2. more examples. Bonus round would be giving the students a way to actively demonstrate their newly gained knowledge inline with the tutorial. Anyway, I think what you've got is fantastic.

<comment><USER9> "Bonus round would be giving the students a way to actively demonstrate their newly gained knowledge inline with the tutorial."

Nailed it. The site is is the foundation of Shay's weekly lecture, and in class, we have students do exercises where they incorporate what they just learned. We also have students demo what they built to the class.

The pacing is still a work in progress, we do our best to make sure that we aren't flying over the students heads too much, but we know we can do better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Minor nit: HTML comments go in <!-- this -->, not <\-- this -->.

</comment><comment><USER20> The flow of the site immediately sticks out in a great way. As a user the navigation bar for the lessons is easily understood.

Each lesson has its own key terms that can be used as a mini nav within the lesson which is helpful.

The code layout is simple and not overwhelming. Its nice to see _long hand vs_ short hand

People can argue all day long about the right content but this seems to be a great start. Clearly the author has put much prep and time into considering this.

</comment><comment><USER21> I haven't read about css in ages, and I need to throw some together. I couldn't remember the syntax of the type, id and class selectors, specifically putting them together. You reference combining selectors, and then immediately give an example of "ul#social li a {". Does this mean list items and links within the ul with the id social? Or what?

tl;dr; The lesson is pretty poor. Sorry.

<comment><USER22> That means all links under list items in the unordered list with the id "social", including non direct children (e.g. an <a> inside an <em> inside a <p> as well as just an <a> inside an <li>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I guess?

It has a pretty small font size and for any modern monitor slides to the left and only takes up 50% or less of the page size.

Meh...

<comment><USER24> Do you want it to take up the full screen width? I find that reading incredibly long lines is difficult, because when you finish one line and move to the next, you lost track of your position.

This is why systems like LaTeX default to wide margins and narrow columns.

Now, as for the font size, it could definitely use some expansion.

<comment><USER23> If it's not going to take up the full screen width it should at least be centered. It feels weird having 50% of the page to the right of the guide blank.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can we fix the typos? "HTML comments wrap the context [sic] starting with <\-- [sic] . . ." and "doctype deceleration [sic]".

</comment><comment><USER26> Great thing to do but it doesn't seem to teach much of the basics. I'm not a developer but learning the core concepts of Programming at the moment and I can see someone doing the same thing for HTML may not understand anything about tags if they have no experience at all.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wish this was up on github so everyone could contribute to it to build a better set of docs

<comment><USER28> Makes a lot of sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This tutorial is awesome. I have been in a bunch of tutorials online and I found them pretty confusing. Shay's website not only has good content but the design make it easier to understand. Thanks a lot. Looking forward for the rest of the chapters

</comment><comment><USER30> I suggest adding interactive examples for each section where a user can type in some HTML to see what it does. This way it reinforces what they have just read, and it can be easier to learn when they are doing things hands-on.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a great resource Shay! I wish someone would have built this accessible curriculum 18 months ago when I started learning HTML & CSS. This feedback on HN will only make it better.

</comment><comment><USER31> You certainly have a different definition of "beginner" than I do.

</comment><comment><USER32> Looks clean/simple, lessons are well-organized, and the usage of white space / negative space is great. I don't get the font size comments. Command+Shift+'+' peoples.

</comment><comment><USER33> Basic guide to CSS syntax: <http://procssorapp.com/help/topics/syntax/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER34> "Semantic structure" is definitely not layman['s] terms.

</comment><comment><USER35> I am trying to learn HTML5. What are your favorite resources for this?

Thanks for this beginners guide. It is very helpful!

</comment><comment><USER36> I wish I had this guide 4 years ago :(

<comment><USER37> I am the you four years ago I think, so I am luckier :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Wonderful layout and great content! Looking forward to the next lessons.

</comment><comment><USER39> Well designed, but depends on what you call a "beginner".

<comment><USER36> What would be more "beginner" than that?

<comment><USER40> _"As on [sic] overview, HTML is a hyper text markup language created to give content structure and meaning. CSS, also known as cascading style sheets, is a presentation language created to give content style and appearance."_

 _"Elements are designators that define objects within a page, including structure and content. Some of the more popular elements include h1 through h6, p, a, div, span, strong, and em."_

It's friendly to people who have prior experience, but I wouldn't give this to a fresh beginner. What's "content"? What about "objects"? I'd like a beginner's guide to introduce the reader by pointing out what each tag corresponds to on an actual web page so they can relate to it. It feels like a reference guide to HTML rather than an introduction.

<comment><USER9> It is both a reference guide and an introduction to HTML & CSS. This was built (initially) as a compliment to Shay's weekly lecture to the Code Academy.

Most of our students in Code Academy are "fresh beginners" and have been going through Shay's class for the past four weeks, and they have been improving greatly from the first day of class. They are currently learning web development, so they are definitely picking key concepts for Shay's class to help with their front-end learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Great design and extremely helpful!

</comment><comment><USER42> What a wonderfully designed guide!

</comment><comment><USER43> No one uses the strong tag.

<comment><USER44> False. At the very least, Reddit uses the strong tag, and so I don't feel like scouring the web for more bold text. I did do one search, and it turns out other people recommend strong over b in most situations, like this person: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/649305/alternative-to- the...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/649305/alternative-to-the-html- bold-tag)

<comment><USER43> HTML describes a document semantically and using tags like <b> and <strong> is bad practice. Styling, like what results from using <b> and <strong>, should be done via css.

<comment><USER44> Well, if that's what you meant, you should have said that, instead of making false claims about what people do and don't do.

Now that we're back on track, If you're trying to make a semantic point in an article by emphasizing certain things, wouldn't you want that reflected in the HTML? Do screen readers do something special for bold-via-css or is the emphasis lost on the visually impaired?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> How is this even relevant to hacker news visitors? I thought we were all leet.

</comment><comment><USER46> Excellent resource!!!

</comment><comment><USER47> What language is this? Java?? j/k ;) A nice and concise guide that every beginner should get a hold off! In this case, the simpler, the better.</comment>


Kenya announces death penalty for poachers - <AUTHOR> https://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2018/06/26/death-penalty-for-poachers.aspx <comment><USER2> The anti-poaching team is already outmanned and outgunned. This will do wonders for their numbers.

This means poachers now have nothing to lose if they get caught (they'll get killed if captured), so they might as well try to blaze their way out of the situation. Anti-poachers will themselves become endangered.

We tried this in the US wrt kidnapping in the 60s. All it resulted in was dead kids, since kidnappers had nothing to lose if ransom demands were not met-- whether they release the victim or not, they were going to fry for the crime either way. We had to scale back the punishment to provide some incentive to release victims alive.

<comment><USER3> You write the 60s, but wasn't the FKA passed in the 1930s? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Kidnapping_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Kidnapping_Act)

<comment><USER2> That is true. I was thinking only of when kidnapping was reclassified as a non-capital offense, not when the original act passed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > the Wildlife Conservation Act, put in place in 2013, carries a life sentence > or fine of $200,000 for offenders; however, the sentences weren't acting as > a strong enough deterrence.

Clearly, a life sentence is an extremely strong deterrent. You will not gain significant deterrence from capital punishment, people that are committing the crime clearly don't expect to be caught. Or they have such desperate circumstances so as to completely skew their risk/reward perception - case in which capital punishment can even be seen as immoral.

Therefore, attention should be focused on properly enforcing the existing law, making sure the fines are applied _in addition_ to strong prison sentences, going after the ring leaders, their profits and cronies in office, etcetera.

You cannot fake a working judicial system with political theater and draconian sentences applied only to those poor enough to get caught.

<comment><USER5> I agree, unless this empowers anti-poachers to use lethal force more freely in the field, then I'm all for it. I realize that sadly, the poacher on the ground is the low man on the economic totem of poaching, but they're also the sharp end of that stick. We don't really have time to change and improve the relevant societies before there's nothing left to protect. We should have been doing that more actively for decades, but now that it's come to this, we need snipers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not sure how I feel about this since it hits the most vulnerable of the criminals hardest, the low level poacher getting pennies on the dollar for the ivory or skin he is procuring. It's similar to the war on drug approach which gives lengthy sentences to the lowly corner dealers while those who control the market on a macro level rarely get caught or receive good plea deals when they do.

</comment><comment><USER7> Fantastic news. Nobody needs rhino horn "supplements", ivory anything or giraffe skin items. Killing these endangered animals for pure vanity and/or commercial gain is barbaric. Time for poachers to get what's coming to them. Now this needs to happen in Tanzanian law also.

<comment><USER8> The problem with the death penalty is that sooner or later, someone innocent might get killed.

<comment><USER9> If someone is caught out in a wild area with endangered animals and has poaching equipment on them (i.e., a large rifle), I don't see how you can argue that they're innocent.

We're not talking about a murder in a first-world urban area where you didn't catch the suspect red-handed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Saying that we can't penalize the poacher because his boss may still be unpunished isn't going to convince me to go easy. Also the idea that poachers will somehow become even more violent against anti poachers doesn't hold much weight either. Poachers have never hesitated to use a gun.

</comment><comment><USER11> At some point poaching an endangered species should be a capital offence. This is irreversible species death we speak of. I know we can in theory sequence them and create eggs and somehow raise to term - in some future time and cost. So once the animal hits a critical rating - this death penalty kicks in, and I mean kicks in hard. All those geezers with rhino horn daggers - stomped by a rhino. This would limit the demand - those guys like to swagger with their rhino horn daggers - make it legal to shoot them from ambush...

I would like to see a world where rhino horn could be farmed in tissue farms, same for ocelot furs etc, never any need to kill an animal for body parts</comment>