Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in? - <AUTHOR> http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/23247/why-dont-users-want-to-see-adverts-relating-to-products-services-they-might-be

<comment><USER4> My only real complaint with those ads that follow you around the internet is that they're nearly always trying to sell you something you already own.

I bought one of those GoPro cameras that you mount on your surfboard a while back, and was punished with six months of nonstop ads telling me how awesome my life would be if only I'd purchase a GoPro camera. It was annoying to the point where I actually dropped down that little menu in the hope that it had an option for "OK, I bought it already. Please stop now."

It's the same problem with any recommendation engine. Amazon/Netflix/Lovefilm are constantly recommending things I already own, since my buying history shows they're related. "Hey, I notice you bought Series 2 through 8 of 24! You should totally check out Series 1 of 24!"

Thanks. Now stop.

<comment><USER5> I like Amazon's "you bought a SatNav, perhaps you'd be interested in these other 8 SatNavs"...

Possibly the answer is that the algorithms aren't close to good enough. That "might be interested in" isn't good enough.

<comment><USER6> Another one of Amazon's which frustrated me was that after a few years of buying similar items (programming books, computer odds and ends etc) it started recommending reasonable things. Then I put in an order for two children's books for my mother (who teaches young kids), and from that moment on Amazon somehow only recommended kids books to me.

It's never really recovered, however since I bought a blackberry cover a year or so ago it has started recommending other blackberry covers so I guess it's sort of improved.

<comment><USER7> Amazon has an option to remove items you've purchased or looked at from their recommendation engine. I don't know exactly where it is as I don't use it very often, but with some poking around you should be able to find it.

<comment><USER8> Depending on where the recommendation is being displayed it will typically a have a "fix this recommendation" button right under the item. Then you can select that you are't interested, already own it, bought it as a gift, or simply mark it to not be used for recommendations.

The problem with this is, it seems to take ten or fifteen minutes of effort to get the system to go back to showing somewhat relevant items after purchasing a few gifts, or browsing some atypical items. Who wants to spend that kind of time pruning advertisements. It's easier to just ignore them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Because some of us like to think of ourselves as - oh, I don't know - <USER2> beings and citizens, rather than mere "consumers".

Because some of us would like, just for once, some space (either virtual or physical) that's not inundated with advertisements.

Because the basis of advertising is manipulation of free will to serve commercial interests, and is thus inherently degrading.

That's why.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. And in the example of searching for baseball bat, if I search for "but baseball bats online", all I care about are organic search results. Yes, those _are_ different than ads, and yes, even when I have a strong intent to buy something right now, I still don't want to see ads. They are lying, bending the truth, or just simply presenting me with suboptimal choices. Personally, there is no context I found ads useful in. Ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Personally, I'd just be happy to see adverts in the right language.

Every major online advertising engine appears to assume that my geolocation equates to my preferred language.

My browser passes the Accept-Language request header of en-GB, but they all ignore it and give me adverts in German or Spanish (or where ever I happen to be visiting or living) based on an IP-to-geolocation lookup.

What I find interesting is that it firstly makes me actively aggressive towards the brands, as well as the site. Secondly, it increases my advertising blindness.

I see this on Google Adsense and Facebook ads.

I assume that in the United States, Spanish speakers are equally ignored? Any Spanish speakers in the US that can confirm this?

<comment><USER12> I wonder if the issue is resource and/or delivery time based. Is the number of people affected by this negatively, less than the delivery time or other costs when trying to facilitate this?

<comment><USER11> As you stated, I would imagine that the ad networks see people like me as a very small minority.

However, there are particularly notable exceptions. There are ~11.5 million Catalan speakers in the world, and most of them in Spain. While the majority of Catalan speakers can also speak Spanish, they are extremely defensive of their language and you will find most road signs, governmental correspondence and general communication in Catalan as well as Spanish.

Most Ad networks will shoe-horn these users into Spanish ads. I imagine some Catalonians find that practice offensive. When you compare the number of Norwegian speakers in the world (~5 million), it puts things into perspective.

In actual fact these ad networks are missing a pretty big slice of the market when you add everything up. In Europe there are huge migrations of different nationalities. In a very short time the numbers of Greeks who leave Greece for other European countries will start to sky rocket. This open migration throughout Europe means that this problem will only get worse, and the numbers of people being mistargeted will increase.

That is what I would call a market niche (or unique selling point) that is potentially up for grabs.

<comment><USER12> Maybe it is on their todo lists.. Perhaps they do serve that Catalan group, though you mentioned they do in fact get shoe-horned? You'd think someone would have solved this by now if it was valuable enough to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in?

Obviously, because they actually are _not_ interested in them.

</comment><comment><USER14> Too many negative experiences with overeager matching algorithms. Yes, it's helpful to show me ads for spades if I'm searching on Google for "buy spade", but Amazon will not stop suggesting things to me that it thinks I "might" be interested in. They seem surprisingly bad at it too; I looked at a TV costing around £500, and subsequently got an e-mail every few days containing a list of their entire stock of TVs, without any consideration of price. If I'm looking at one worth £500, I'm probably not interested in a TV that costs £150 or one that costs £1500. They do badly on ebooks too, where the recommendations just seem to be "other books by the same authors you've already bought from", which I barely need; what I'd like are suggestions of similar books from other authors that I don't know about yet.

I feel like I don't mind seeing ads that I'm interested in, but there is a difference between that and being shown hundreds of ads that I _might_ be interested in. I guess a sufficiently smart recommendation algorithm could theoretically overcome that eventually, but it seems to be a pretty hard problem since it's apparently not been well solved yet.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have the feeling stackexchange-ux isn't the best place to ask this question. There would be a use for a stackexchange-behaviourial/psychology site.

How many psychologists (or marketers with valid psychology knowledge) are going to explore stackexchange-ui ? Not everything that happens on a screen can be explained by a computer engineer, a computer scientist or a coder :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I think one of the main reasons is that targeted ads tend to show products you already know (whether you already own them, researched them, or just because you are interested in the subject). Then visual recognition (picture or name of the product) occurs and your focus shifts to the ad for a moment --- when you can just unconsciously ignore just 97-98% of the ads you see on the Internet or on the street. And we all know how annoying commercial crap can be when you are not looking to buy anything

Another thing that applies to older generations and educated people among younger ones (I don't think the young masses understand this or care about it) is the privacy invasion argument.

I'll add that, since most people hate ads altogether, adding just a little annoyance to them can seem like just pushing it too far. I think the only places where ads are not hated are subway stations, since waiting in gloomy underground tunnels (most of those in Paris are, anyway) can be a bit depressing

</comment><comment><USER17> "Users don't spend all their time purchasing goods on the internet - <USER3> they are doing different and completely unrelated tasks, sometimes at the same time."

Its got to make you ask why the only people who purchase space on a screen are people who are selling goods. How much is a reader worth to someone like NYT? How valuable is a poll answer? I can think of plenty of valuable things people would pay to display there that aren't "ads".

<comment><USER18> Theory: because the NYT can get more reader acquisition for its buck via non- advertising means. Spend the money on ads or on content marketing, aka journalism? For a newspaper, that's a pretty simple choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For the longest time I avidly clicked answering Hulu's "Is this relevant to you?" question that came with ads.

After a few months, I began to suspect they were not using the results. They never learned I didn't want a new car, for starters. Not the kind of purchase a commercial is going to change my mind about. (And I can't even recall the brand.)

I'd actually like a decent as network just fine.

</comment><comment><USER20> Where's the evidence to suggest they don't want to? A few privacy nuts on sites like stackexchange/HN/Reddit?

</comment><comment><USER21> AdBlock, anyone?

<comment><USER22> Only reasons I do use AdBlock, Saves bandwidth, data plans are expensive out here. Also ads that expand/play music or video directly - are annoying. I don't mind plain and simple ads. AdBlock beta has an option to allow non- intrusive ads, I do keep it on. Infact it would be great if there were some sort of guidelines (adblock checklist if I may call it so) which marketers can follow and pass adblock if this option is on.

<comment><USER21> That "white list" already exists and comes ON by default on Firefox's AdBlock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Embracing targeted ads requires a mind shift that the per-Facebook generation will not be able to conceive. Most people worried about targeted ads are merely riding the ill-fated privacy bandwagon without weighing the pros and cons of such a system. The future generations will prefer targeted ads.

<comment><USER24> I think not. The TARGET case in Forbes ("How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did") suggests it is best if targeted ads are surrounded by random ones to stop people from creeping out. More here: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how- targe...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target- figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/)</comment></comment>


A Slower Speed of Light physics engine open-sourced - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/playing-with-einstein.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Project site: <http://gamelab.mit.edu/research/openrelativity/>

GitHub: <https://github.com/MITGameLab/OpenRelativity></comment>


Device Metrics - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/design/tool/devices/

<comment><USER2> Really unfortunate to see how this has been marked up - div elements with classes corresponding to table elements (e.g. <div class="tr">). For accessibility, why not just use the native semantic elements, e.g. <table>?

<comment><USER3> Site author heard "don't use tables", but not the part "...for layout". Or decided that having the whole page be a table was table layout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish they'd publish USER_AGENT strings used by browsers within these devices.

That would be nice piece of reference data for all kinds of analytics.

<comment><USER5> Computers are capable of running more than one web browser program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A little dated but similar: [http://screensiz.es/](http://screensiz.es/)

</comment><comment><USER7> That data in API format would be nicer ;-)

<comment><USER5> It's not that much data. You could copy-paste that into a data structure in your code.</comment></comment>


Show People Kindness - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jarederondu.com/show-people-kindness

<comment><AUTHOR> what products do you love?</comment>


Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/gmo-promise-falls-short.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0&referer=http://m.monitor.hr/ <comment><USER2> The page with the graphics is the best: [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/30/business/gmo-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/30/business/gmo- crops-pesticides.html)</comment>


Pong in 83 lines of F# - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/dmnd/Sharpong/blob/58812ca68dd38bc1bff749ec7fcd0f7c0af7a67a/Sharpong.fs

<comment><USER2> I'm no F# guru but is there any reason you have omitted #light from the top of the source code?

<comment><AUTHOR> The latest release of F# assumes #light as the default.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Inspired by the recent Haskell and Clojure versions.</comment>


What is the link for "non-hacker related news" ? - <AUTHOR>

Can't recall off hand what the new forum url is for "non-hacker" related stuff? I just wrote an article on my blog against proposition 8, http://blogkinnetic.blogspot.com/2008/10/no-on-prop-8-civil-rights-must-not-be.html and wanted to post it, but couldn't recall the url for "non-tech" news kind of stuff. <comment><USER2> I guess you are referring to the NewMogul news site by nickb: <http://www.newmogul.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.newmogul.com/> ?

</comment><comment><USER4> He's talking about Matt Maroon's site: <http://nonhackernews.com>

Or maybe REDDIT!</comment>


How can engineering schools not teach startups? - <AUTHOR>

I mean, every revolution in history has been driven by tech.  So why do the business guys get taught entreprenership, capital markets, etc, while the guys with a chance to innovate are taught to crank turn and think in terms of bounded small problems.  WTF? <comment><USER2> If you had to design an engineering school from the ground up where the input was an 18 y/o w/ HS math + science and the output was a good engineer, it would look nothing like universities do today. Engineering is diced into its core components and those components are diced into their core components until you end up w/ a prof drawing lines and dots on a blackboard that have no connection to the lines and dots being drawn on all the other blackboards you saw that afternoon. All the while your goal is to predict what lines and dots will appear on the test in a month.

I don't deny the need for a thorough and disciplined understanding of math and physics. But... I didn't understand the need for calculus until I needed a way to go from pos/time to velocity/time. I didn't understand linear algebra until I needed to transform vertices in 3d graphics. Personally I don't understand a hammer unless I see the nail. Engineering school is all about showing you everything there is to know about a tool except what to use it for.

I think E-schools should be like obstacle courses where you have projects that REQUIRE understanding of a concept in order to complete them. Classes about said concepts are given as the NEED arises.

Most E-schools suck. Just take as many project based classes as possible (CS is decent for this) and get a degree. Universities also have lots of grants that nobody knows about where you can get money to build cool things.

Maybe this is just me, but I don't think I'm alone. And it probably explains why I failed to hang my pictures with a chainsaw.

<comment><USER3> You just described Olin, at least as I understood it from the visit.

<comment><USER2> Right on. I wish I had gone to Olin...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few years back I was talking to the Electrical and Computer Engineering department head at University of Toronto about pretty much the same topic. He's very much an entrepreneur - started & sold his own business, knows lots of people in the industry, etc.

It's not so much something to "teach" as a culture that needs to be encouraged. Sure, you can offer some business, accounting, economics (entrepreneurship?) courses to engineers, and to some extent U of T does that. But the important thing is, after you graduate chances are you'll do something similar to your friends. All your colleagues are only talking about grad school or working on their resumes and applying for jobs? Chances are that's what you'll do. Been throwing around business ideas with your friends since day 1? You might actually decide to start something.

Don't know if there's an easy solution... good courses and guest speakers help... entrepreneurship/business clubs might help... but if the culture doesn't exist, how do you kickstart it?

</comment><comment><USER5> Every revolution in history has been driven by tech, and the revolutionaries where NOT taught about startups in engineering colleges. So ..you get the point. For revolutionaries, its not required. [and why did you plugin that "wtf" at the end of your rant ? Trying to get that Diggitude? ]

<comment><AUTHOR> Points taken, admitted end in bad taste, newbie mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know much about the University of Waterloo (I'm a Mudd ITR), but they do have one guy there who is very big on startups, Larry Smith. Of course, he's in the economics department:

[http://www.zachbaker.com/articles/2006/11/30/larry-smith- the...](http://www.zachbaker.com/articles/2006/11/30/larry-smith-the-hidden- world-of-big-bucks-software)

</comment><comment><USER7> If you think school is the answer, every university with an engineering department also has business courses. However, ourses teaching entrepreneurship and "innovation" are usually a joke.

</comment><comment><USER8> If it makes you feel any better, no university actually teaches how to start startups, including business schools.

<comment><USER9> Aside from "learn by doing", how would you recommend we change universities to make people more likely to start startups?

I'm personally in favor of noting the most capable students around 7th grade, let them finish highschool in 8th grade, and spend high school years learning depth and trying to make things people want. This might be a bit ridiculous.

<comment><USER8> I don't think you have to change universities to make people start startups. Once word spreads among hackers that it works, more will.

What I'd ask is: what could you teach in universities that will help people later in startups? There are some interesting answers to that. One thing engineering schools could do right now is teach more product design, instead of assuming their graduates will all go off to work in big companies as mere implementors.

<comment><AUTHOR> One thing that I think universities could change is to make freshman year more than a rehash of high school calc and physics, albeit at a more involved level. This is a recipe for extinguishing imagination.

<comment><USER7> Most high schools in the USA are so bad that freshman year is mainly remedial. Actually, most high schools in the USA are so bad that the entirety of college is remedial.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. There should be a a separation either at admissions or with honors classes for kids that can do more. Universities typically aren't nearly as bad as high schools with this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My university began offering a minor in "technology-based growth venturing" last year, and it was certainly worth taking. The school of business and economics organizes it for the sciences departments, which allows it to be properly framed. Only afterwards could I appreciate how the classes focus on marketing and VC.

</comment><comment><USER11> At Ohio State University they have started an entrepreneurship minor and there were a good number of engineering students in my classes. Maybe the engineers that you have witnessed need to take the action to join a business course.

</comment><comment><USER12> Can you actually teach entrepreneurship? It seems more like a state of mind that you have to learn over a long time of self discovery.

<comment><USER13> True. I think it also takes a sense of rebelliousness, in the sense of, "Why should I have to answer to anyone but myself?" That has been my attitude as long as my memory goes back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Big problems are made up of small problems. Who is going to be able to solve the small problems if not the engineers?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are an infinite number of small problems. How are they going to know which are worth solving in their finite lifespan? How will they learn the value of anything if they are not given context?

<comment><USER15> Engineering Managers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone know of a good college with a healthy balance between the two?

<comment><USER15> <http://www.olin.edu>

It's not much easier to get into than MIT, though.</comment></comment>


Is Kosmix the new Google? - <AUTHOR> http://www.start-up.co.nz/is-kosmix-the-new-google/

<comment><USER2> I've read a bunch of marketing books, and one thing I've learned is that you can do the equivalent of "push polling" with questions.

When you ask "is thing X adjective Y?" you're basically saying "I think that X is Y".

Personally, I find it a lot more honest if a person just comes out and owns their own assertion.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, it's not.</comment>


IBM's Watson Dominates Humanity's Best in Jeopardy - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/02/16/watson-jeopardy-day-2/ <comment><USER2> Humanity's best is by no means present in that contest. These Jeopardy champions do not represent the world not even all Americans. In most cases people that compete in these games are not by any definition the brightest. I really like the idea of the Machine versus Humans contest, but having some already retired champions of a game competing with a tireless computer and supposedly representing humanity at its best it is at best unfair.

<comment><USER3> Fair or not is an entirely different argument. The purpose of this whole thing was to demonstrate whether or not Watson was capable of thinking more inline with human thought processes rather than base on static data. I think this is the beginning of an amazing advancement.</comment></comment>


What Was the Scotch Whisky Boom? Part 1: Value vs. Volume - <AUTHOR> http://thekrav.blogspot.com/2015/01/what-was-scotch-whisky-boom-part-1.html <comment><USER2> Very nice analysis of the "boom." Anyone who regularly buys single malt Scotch has observed the strong upward movement of bottle prices in the last few years. With the growing visibility of world whisk(e)y, I'll be interested to see if the Japanese and other producers help moderate the price of Scotch or if they join in the upward trend.

On a somewhat related note, it's interesting to see how small and simple some of these world-famous distilleries are. I visited Islay last summer and toured Ardbeg, Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Kilchoman, Bowmore, Bruichladdich, and a few others. Bowmore is definitely the Walmart of the bunch, while Kilchoman was more like a mom-and-pop operation.

<comment><USER3> We were in the Highlands and Speyside this summer and did some tours as well.

It's worth knowing that most of the famous distilleries roll up to one of a couple mega-corps --- Diageo, Ricard, Suntory. Lots of those distilleries are small operations. It's the same in the US: the best known, best regarded bourbons are almost uniformly owned by giant companies.

There's an interesting comparison between the tours at, say, Aberlour (a mega- corp-owned large-scale distillery) and Benromach (an independent small-scale distillery). I'd rather tour the small operations. But honestly, I'd (mostly) rather drink the products of the larger ones.

 _(A warning: I 'm more inclined to nerd out and even less qualified to hold forth on this topic than I am on criminal law or cryptography. Sorry!)_

<comment><USER4> Busloads of tourists rolled into Talisker (Diageo) on the August day we visited. We sat in the Talisker 'experience' while waiting for our time slot.

After an hour we were ready and got taken around by a suited guide with gilded lapel badge. She took us through the usual history, distillation process and then to the tasting: a nice range of their ages and brands.

A slick, well-packaged distillery.

A few days later we arrived on Mull and toured the Tobermory Distillery. Small and cute just like the town. The tweeded master distiller had so many stories, transporting us back through its varied history.

That history sure made the dram taste great.

Looking forward to making it onto Islay next time.

Slàinte!

<comment><USER2> Islay is amazing. If you make it there, consider staying at The Bowmore House[0]. Andrew and Alison are wonderful hosts, the breakfasts are marvelous, and the rooms are great too.

[0] [http://www.thebowmorehouse.co.uk/](http://www.thebowmorehouse.co.uk/)

<comment><USER5> If you go to Islay, it might be worth going to Jura that has it's own distillery, interesting scenery (if you like fantastically rough coastlines and raised beaches), the house where Orwell wrote 1984 and at the north end between Jura and Scarba the infamous Gulf of Corryvreckan with its whirlpool:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Several distilleries have hit points where supply exceeded demand, so they closed for years to let the market stabilize, only to start producing just shy of too late to have enough product to continue selling. The end result was you couldn't find label X or Y for a few years because they ran out and couldn't churn out the old label in time, so they would issue a _new_ label using younger whiskey as an intermediate gimmick.

Aside from consumer demand, other production issues come up, like the fact that white oak casks/barrels are actually in such high demand that America is having a hard time keeping up the supply (basically everyone gets their high quality barrels from us).

And in general, the global market continues to increase due to new markets [developing countries], which is going to at least marginally drive the price up (because there aren't a flurry of new distilleries popping up).

</comment><comment><USER7> I recently read an interesting article about 'whisky' vs 'whiskey' [http://www.thekitchn.com/whiskey-vs-whisky-whats-the- di-1004...](http://www.thekitchn.com/whiskey-vs-whisky-whats-the-di-100476)

<comment><USER8> Penderyn distillery in WalEs produces whisky thereby breaking the mnemonic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For anyone interested in a startup working in the craft beverage industry, my company builds quality control and flavor profiling tools using machines learning. We focus on the craft beer, artisan coffee, and premium spirit industries.

www.gastrograph.com JasonCEC [at] the above url

</comment><comment><USER10> Irish whiskey is going through it's own boom - it would be interesting to compare the two. They have different histories and tastes.</comment>


California allows therapists to challenge law on child porn reporting - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-26/california-supreme-court-therapists-child-porn <comment><AUTHOR> Mandatory reports to police for certain crimes or registering people who seek therapy like in Canada only serves to push people away from getting therapy.</comment>


Son's autism leads to innovation - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8634607.stm <comment><USER2> See also: John LeSieur builds simplified web browser (Zacbrowser) for his 6-yr old autistic grandson, Zackary

[http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2008-06-0...](http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2008-06-03-grandfather- zac-browser_N.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://jambav.com> is one such venture by Zoho (started when it was still AdventNet), dealing with _autism + scratching one's own itch_ need.

Read about it at.. [http://startups.in/India/Edutainment/Jambav--Indias-Magic- Ki...](http://startups.in/India/Edutainment/Jambav--Indias-Magic-Kingdom-On- Web-1/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Certainly one of the great examples of scratching one's own itch.

<comment><USER5> Necessity is the mother of invention. I made ktype for my paralyzed cousin ( <http://chir.ag/projects/ktype/> ) but his condition worsened to the point that he couldn't even keep his eyes open. I even shared it with HN and lots of people said very helpful things on what else I can do with it. My cousin's condition has improved so he might be able to use it and now I want to make it work on the iPad. It would be the perfect medium/device - it is light, has touch, and a fast web-browser - not to mention it is CHEAP when compared to typical medical equipment. I'm hoping to make an iPad/iPhone app that has audio/speech-synthesis etc. and can be used by a lot more people than my cousin. Let's see what happens...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How would something like this (long lead time, plenty of dedication, no income for the duration of the project) fit in to an OSS strategy?

2000 pounds is a boatload of money for a piece of software, there must be many people that could use this software but can not afford it, but I can see how the author does not have many options other than to charge for it.

<comment><USER7> The 2000 pounds isn't just for software:

>Speaks4Me is currently sold on a portable, touch screen media player imported from the Far East. But the company is finalising a "software only" price...

<comment><USER6> Ah, thanks, I completely missed out on that, I thought you had to order that separately, didn't realize the price was all-in.

<comment><USER5> This kinda stuff would be awesome as iPad/Android apps. I'm hoping that when I get some time later this year, to make apps for accessibility. For the user, the cost will be pretty much the cost of the device.

<comment><USER8> Based on an iPhone project that I did last year and a discussion I had with my then-boss, I was considering something like this.

I did a bit of research and found that someone had already created an application that does this, Proloquo2Go (<http://www.proloquo2go.com/>). It was first featured in USA Today in May 2009 ([http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-05-27-iphone- autism...](http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-05-27-iphone- autism_N.htm)).

At $150 plus the cost of an iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad, this is a damned sight cheaper than anything else out there. Does it compare well? I don't see why it wouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is also a company named Invention labs which has developed a product named Avaz for people with Cerebral Palsy

<http://www.inventionlabs.in/avaz/aboutAVAZ.html></comment>


Ask HN: How do you work with slow/metered connection? - <AUTHOR> I leave in an area where there's no fiber. We only have ADSL and 4G. usually ADSL is pretty slow, especially during peak hours. And 4G is metered so it start to be a little costly with time. Sometimes I have to download hundred of Megabytes of  dependencies and it takes almost an hour to finish.<p>What are your tricks to manage internet when it's slow? PS: moving to another place isn't an option with all things related to COVID-19. <comment><USER2> The first time I was in Afghanistan the personal internet was available at dial up speeds from shared access over a civilian satellite dish. Think 56kbps speeds with high packet loss and occasional service interruption. I was there for a year so you just learn to make due. To complicate matters I was frequently traveling and when traveling I had no personal internet, so I would have to plan wisely and download everything I needed before going on my next work adventure.

> Sometimes I have to download hundred of Megabytes of dependencies

I refuse to do that even now. I make two exceptions:

1) ESLint is a really nice package, but has a sickening number of dependencies. I don't update ESLint very often and because I use it enough I just use it anyways. I always install it globally instead of including it in my projects because of its dependency bloat.

2) At work the team might make a horrible decision and force usage of AngularJS, or something equally stupid. If they want to waste my time with that stupidity then so be it. I get paid to sit there all the same.

My various trips to Afghanistan have largely shaped how I program. Back in that day I thought jQuery at about 65k was horribly excessive, and now you could require 300mb of packages to write a page of HTML. I won't do it even though I have gigabit internet at the house.

</comment><comment><USER3> If possible, I work on a remote machine with a faster connection, if that results in less traffic and is comfortable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, this is quite interesting indeed. However, currently I require a powerful machine in my day to day work. I considered renting a Hetzner machine as they are reasonably priced specs compared to AWS.

<comment><USER3> In my case right now it's my workstation back at the office, but yes, renting also is an option. Something expensive cloud-based could still make sense over a rented dedicated box if you always shut it down when not in use, but you need to run the math on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Change work-flow?

Figure out what you need in dependencies and set up a job to run overnight when you're asleep and/or at lunchtime or dinner time when you'd be eating/cooking, or any other idle time like a bit of exercise?

</comment><comment><USER5> I think Desktop as a Service (DaaS) providers can solve your problem.</comment>


Google is creating a Nexus call center for device support - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/uncovered-google-creating-a-nexus-call-center-for-device-support-20121011/

<comment><USER2> My Galaxy Nexus (via Google Play)'s wifi broke after one month, just outside of the Google Play Store 30-day guarantee. No attempts at software changes fixed the issue; clearly something went bad in the hardware.

I've been delaying getting it fixed because it'll be a five week turnaround from Samsung support, according to forum posts regarding similar issues. It also sounds like Samsung's support is nightmarish.

Meanwhile, I'm sure if this had happened with my old iPhone 4 (which I'll be using while my GNex is away), I could have gone to the Apple Store about half an hour away and gotten it either replaced on the spot, or at least been able to work with an employee right there to get it sent out instead of having to go through the standard terrible warranty processes. Even if there was no Apple Store near me, I've never heard any complaints about Apple's phone support like I have about other manufacturers.

The point of all of this: while Google obviously won't have the retail support an Apple Store does, by having exclusive call centers regarding only a few devices, they'll be able to make sure their employees are better trained and their phone processes much more streamlined than the manufacturers ever could. In fact, maybe I'll just tough it out with my wifi-less phone until the new call center opens...

<comment><USER3> You bought something and quickly afterwards it broke?

Don't repair, get a refund and buy it again. Easy.

<comment><USER2> Google has a 30-day guarantee for it.

It broke on day 35.

It's now under Samsung's 12-month limited warranty. No refunds, no exchanges, just repairs, unfortunately.

<comment><USER4> Did you try to contact Google's refund people and ask about this? I would be surprised if they turned you away.

If they did turn you away, you might want to think about getting a credit card with purchase protection. All Amex cards, and some Visa and MasterCards have this feature.

If the merchant won't give you your money back within 90 days of your purchase, just contact your card company and they'll give you the money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Slightly puzzled how this is a surprise. I've been amazed that they've managed to sell hardware without any of their own support for some time. Nobody else gets away with it unless it's rebadged for someone who does have a call centre

<comment><USER6> My Nexus tablet has a bad flicker on the screen, and I've been living with it b/c Google offers no support.

Edit: By "no support," I mean "little support for the backing brand and seller of the device"

<comment><USER7> I found switching the screen brightness setting from (A) auto to a set level and this fixed what appeared to be a flicker or constant changing of the brightness level. I was assuming it was software related, however my issue might be unrelated to yours.

<comment><USER6> I will give that a try, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Shouldn't that be a Call Nexus?</comment>


The Science Fiction Gateway soon to have out of print scifi classics - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgateway.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Are publishers finally start to "get it" on ebooks and digital life? A big British publishing house is building an e-community around scifi and simultaneously releasing thousands of out-of-print classics as ebooks in multiple formats from many of the great authors (like Robert Silverberg, Arthur C, Clarke, L. Sprague de Camp, Samuel R. Delany, Philip K. Dick and many more). Seems smart.</comment>


Using AngularJS + UnderscoreJS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mohammedlakkadshaw.com/AngularJS_Underscore_ultimate_web_development.html

<comment><USER2> If anyone is wondering why people use a factory here to inject it. This stackoverflow comment sums it up nicely

         Probably for the same reasons you inject anything,
         instead of putting everything in the global scope.
         However, since you're a lot less likely to want to
         substitute out your underscore library during testing
         than some other more specific dependency it's
         understandable that it doesn't seem necessary. – fess

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14968297/use- underscore-i...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14968297/use-underscore- inside-controllers#comment24351367_14968873)

</comment><comment><USER3> We use Underscore with Angular using this tool: [https://github.com/obibring/grunt-angular- service](https://github.com/obibring/grunt-angular-service)

An example of how is in the README.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some small-scale investments where having coding skills helps? - <AUTHOR> I recently began investing in Bitcoin, and find that knowing something about programming, and information security in general, helps you handle your Bitcoin securely.<p>What are some other investments where a person who knows how to code will be much more likely to maintain and grow their assets than a person who doesn't? <comment><USER2> Having dabbled in a bit of computer vision for a personal project, I saw how powerful it was and knew how important GPUs would be to cv/machine learning/AI at scale. Invested in NVIDIA late 2015, more than doubled the money so far.

If I didn't know programming, I would be clueless as to what computer vision could achieve, and thus its potential impact on society.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not exactly the type of speculative high-risk investment you're talking about, but I've been thinking about a script to automatically re-balance my ETF portfolio. This can potentially decrease the time I spent thinking about my investments from the current ~4 hours a year. I can still benefit from a long- term 7% ROI.</comment>


Ask HN: What languages produce self contained binaries? - <AUTHOR> Go is one, are there any other languages which produce self contained binaries out of the box?<p>Or link dynamically but only to very few libraries like glibc so they are easy to distribute? <comment><USER2> C, C++, D, Nim, Haskell, OCaml, Rust, Swift, Objective-C, Crystal..... the list goes on. Many of the languages have a native code implementation in addition to an interpreter or a byte code compiler — e.g. Common Lisp (SBCL), Scheme (Chicken Scheme), Kotlin/Native.....

<comment><AUTHOR> I was looking for languages which produce binaries which are self contained (in terms of being statically linked OR dynamically linked with few dependencies) close to what go produces, out of a default build process.

I guess with musl C, C++ and Rust can do that though it is a bit of work.

OCaml seems to link only to non OCaml stuff dynamically, which fits the bill too.

<comment><USER2> Why does default build process matter? Once you haven figured it out and automated it (say, using a makefile), it doesn't matter whether you're using a default build process or not.

Also, the likes of Haskell let you build binaries dependent only on OS provided libraries whereas the likes of Nim compile to C. You might want to play with the short listed languages to get an idea. A simple Hello World will tell you what they link with by default. Anything beyond that is up to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was actually wondering with all these new languages like zig, Odin and v are there any that produce dependency free binaries.

I've done some work in rust, c++, and nim before. But looking at some of the comments here and rethinking the pros and cons it seems a fully self contained binary might be more trouble than it's worth and some dependency is fine as long as an easy to use packaging and deployment process is found.

Sorry the question was a bit vague. I don't think I explained well what I was looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Delphi/FreePascal

</comment><comment><USER4> Link dynamically if you care about security upgrades.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was looking to distribute small cli tools easily.

I guess packaging them through the relevant package manager is a better option from a security perspective as opposed to a big static binary.

<comment><USER4> Yes, especially if you depend on security critical libraries like OpenSSL that might require urgent updates.</comment></comment></comment>


A Data Scientist's Reference for Choosing AutoML Python Packages - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/georgian-impact-blog/automatic-machine-learning-aml-landscape-survey-f75c3ae3bbf2 <comment><USER2> Hi all, I am one of the authors, I am working for Georgian Partners as a machine learning researchers and we decided to share this collection of tools as it has been useful to our team. Feel free to ask me anything. Thanks!</comment>


Student Loans are the New Indentured Servitude - <AUTHOR> http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/10/student_loans_and_payback_time.php

<comment><USER2> article makes a few interesting points :

1) is it fair to ask "children, 17, 18 or 19 years old, to try and assess how much of a student loan debt burden they can handle vis-a-vis their future income over their entire lives"?

2) "people under indentured servitude had the job waiting for them"; students do not.

3) Obviously, after living a lifestyle one cannot afford for several years, it will take more than several years to pay off the debt.

Student loans are _not_ indentured servitude; living above your means is.

<comment><USER3> > is it fair to ask "children, 17, 18 or 19 years old, to try and assess how > much of a student loan debt burden they can handle

I don't know about you, but I discussed that question off and on throughout high school with my parents while deciding where to apply for college. It's not like it was a surprise one morning where I had to decide with no time to prepare or ask someone more experienced about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The borrower is SLAVE to the lender. This statement has been true since the creation of the floating rock. Our grandparents knew this. That's a big reason why they are the "greatest generation". They live by this creed and thus prospered. We ignore it so we pay...and pay....and pay.

There are two issues I have with our system.of education 1) who said that college was all that important 2) why is there a necessity to jump from high school directly to college. The apprenticeship model works ten times better. In my opinion an aspiring lawyer would do much better if he just got a job working at a law firm. By working his way up he/she would gain valuable experience, hands on training, and here it comes MAKE MONEY. Even if he worked for peanuts the experience alone would be worth more than a college or university could ever teach. I would bet any amount of money that, after the same eight years the apprentice would have spent in some pampered cocoon of a college/university, he/she would be a better lawyer than 99% of Yale or Harvard graduates who at most may have done an internship. The same goes for doctors. Even still, if the individual wanted the college experience let him have a year or two to learn how the world works. It's not doing any of these teenagers any good to go from the sheltered atmosphere of mom and dad's to that big and expensive procrastination of true life we call college. By experiencing life and understanding the value of a dollar, individuals will be better prepared to make proper financial decisions. Furthermore, by waiting a few years and not throwing people (in there most immature and naive stage in life) you avoid the ignorance and stupidity that is college life.

If an individual decides to seek their higher learning from one of our countries institutions the first lesson taught should always be: the borrower is slave to the lender.

<comment><USER5> Well I tried this approach with my IT career. I avoided the high cost college fees by relying on commercial programming courses and my work experience (started on help desks and now I'm an independant software development consultant). I also avoided big student loans (though I did end up with about 10k owing) and basically continued to work part time or fulltime since high school graduation. So I did pretty much exactly what you suggested but heres my problem. I wonder about the path I didn't take and the kind of interesting work I could be having now if i paid the money and went to a top tier CS college. What kind of interesting research work or product development work could I be doing now, if I had invested in a first class education?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not doing badly...but I wonder about the jobs I have the talent for and interest in but not the educational background...many doors are shut to me now because of a decision I made to forego college 15 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A big problem here are the schools. A lot of degrees are just not worth the money and a lot of schools essentially trick students into getting into enormous amounts of debt based on unrealistic expectations for their careers.

I think a solution will be for the government to be more selective in which student loans it guarantees. I.e., the government should honestly survey the types of degrees that are needed for the economy and only provide loan guarantees for those degrees and for institutions that have shown they can train people properly in those degrees. If schools want to provide other degrees they can but they would have to rely on the free market.

Also, bankruptcy law should be changed to allow people to discharge their student loans in bankruptcy. I think that if a person shows (i) hardship and (ii) that they are not using their education in any way or form, they should be able to discharge their loan provided that their loan will be reinstated if they start using their education.

<comment><USER7> Be very careful what you wish for in the last point.

Anything that makes students loans less "guaranteed" will make them much less available. Right now, the only way to "game the system" is to die. If you allow someone to take $250K of student loan debt and then just piss off and do something that "doesn't use that education" and have it discharged, think about how much harder it will be for some other middle class kid to get a student loan to pursue their dream.

ObDisclaimer: My student loans are long ago paid off, partly because I prostituted myself to ROTC to pay for 80% of MIT or so. Still, I'd have hated to be unable to attend MIT (my dream since age 11) because student loans were unavailable because the repayment guarantee became only as good as a routine personal loan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Milton Friedman's solution was interesting. Basically VCs fund your education in exchange for a certain percentage of your income over an agreed upon period. Similar to how VCs invest in your company in exchange for a fraction of ownership.

<http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/fried1.htm>

<comment><USER9> The government already takes a certain percentage of our income; and the more you make, the more they take. It follows logically that they should pay for our education.

Of course, as with healthcare, the rest of the world figured this out a long time ago.

<comment><USER10> The problem is that an individual school does not get rewarded based on how well it educates the students (except perhaps for private colleges who make money from alumnae donations). Ideally, you're education tax dollars would forever go back to the school that educated you. That way the school would have an incentive to train you well.

<comment><USER9> This incentive does not exist today, either. To even hope to stay financially solvent enough to remain in existence, universities have to direct their resources towards research, not teaching. Having researchers teaching classes annoys the researchers and the students. But since it's the only way the system can work, it is tolerated.

There is no money to be made in teaching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> the problem is that the value of a college degree has plummeted. 20 years ago, it was a guaranteed way to get a high paying job, now it's just another checkbox that doesn't separate you from anyone else.

Paying $60-200K for a checkbox is hardly worth it, when majority of college students(outside the hard sciences), will end up working in the same jobs they would have gotten w/o a degree.

<comment><USER12> I agree completely - the costs of college vs. the benefits don't line up anymore. It pisses me off to no end that young people mortgage their lives for a piece of paper that's worth very little. Employers have always cared more about actual productive skills, but the credential has been hard-coded into enough HR screens that it makes sense to check the box as quickly and inexpensively as possible. (Assuming you want a job, of course - if you're starting your own business, it doesn't matter at all.)

I'm in the midst of writing a series on my blog about getting college credentials as quickly / inexpensively as possible. Part 1 (<http://personalmba.com/hacking-higher-education-clep/>) covers testing out of college via CLEP examination. Part 2, which will be published tomorrow AM, covers how to graduate from Harvard without being accepted for ~25% the cost of a standard Harvard undergrad degree. Happy to post it on HN if anyone finds this stuff useful.

<comment><USER13> That was a very interesting article and brought up a couple of tools I wasn't aware of. I'm unsure of your intended audience, so take this with a grain of salt: your writing style tends to be verbose and you could do without much of the introduction.

That said, I'll be looking forward to part 2!

<comment><USER12> Thanks - glad you found it useful! The intro was there because writing about degrees is a departure from my normal topics. (I write predominately about business principles and self-education.) Didn't want my audience to think I went completely off the deep end. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Now we are currently asking children, 17, 18 or 19 years old, to try and assess how much of a student loan debt burden they can handle vis-a-vis their future income over their entire lives._

19-year-olds are children? We let them go to war and get killed. We can let them go into debt.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been considering this issue a lot lately since I have a kid and hope to have more in the next few years. I'm planning on saving for their future in such a way that leaves things flexible just in case college isn't the best option when they are adults. I will do pretty much anything to convince them not to go into debt for school unless they are going into an engineering field or something that we can clearly see how they will make it up and pay off that debt quickly. I'm planning on starting this lesson early with the hope that when it comes time they already are able to make an informed decision without me having to get worked up about it :)

</comment><comment><USER3> 26K of debt for a 2 year degree is on the high end. Tuition will run around $2500-$4000 per semester if you are in-state, you're still living at home so living expenses are minimal, and the coursework is not so difficult that you can't hold down a part time job at the same time.

So I'd have to say that the self-assessment of "Years ago, I lived for now. It was so stupid," probably has some truth to it.

<comment><USER16> Tip: Go to community college for the first two years of required classes that nobody cares about at prices that are almost as good as free. Most locals have a nice reciprocity system between the community college system and a local state school, often even sharing professors. Get an A.S. or A.A., transfer to the state university, first two years are done! If your GPA was stellar, get grants to cover the rest of tuition. Entire 4 year B.S. or B.A., books included, should be had for less than $18k minus grants and scholarships.

If they got loans for that amount, that's not really a big deal either. If the first job outside of school pays $60k, they can live _OK_ and still pay that amount off in a year or two.

Why this simple formula escapes so many is a fantastic mystery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If not for credentialism, this would quickly be recognized as the shitty deal that it is and far, far fewer people would go to today's colleges. They would instead learn through apprenticeships and other methods. In fact, there are some signs of this happening already, despite the continued credence given to credentials.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've known people who had larger student loans 2-3 years after graduating than at graduation. Interest is really a killer for many people.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's not hard to imagine YC issuing an RFS about this.

Student debt, you are officially on notice.</comment>


DataHand - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataHand <comment><USER3> If you're reading this, you probably need make a majority of your income using your hands, and your ability to type things with them.

 _Please_ get yourself a proper keyboard. They keyboard on your laptop, or even a good external one, is likely destroying your wrists. You're injuring yourself.

I _highly_ recommend the microsoft sculpt keyboard. It's cheap (for something that will help you protect your livlihood) and will make a substantial difference in the longevity of your wrists.

Keyboards should be split. If you're not using a sculpt at the least, please change that. You'll thank yourself when you're older.

(Currently typing this on a keyboard.io -- it's a lot more expensive than the sculpt, and a lot of that cost goes to the cool factor of it, imo. The sculpt is a great keyboard.)

<comment><USER4> I _highly_ recommend looking for a bowl-shaped keyboard as the second priority after split. Kinesis advantage is popular, and similarly priced to the keyboard.io. There are also maltrons, if you're willing to shell out a little extra dough. There was also a project to make a bowl-shaped split keyboard you could 3d-print at home. I can't remember the name.

I was also very excited about the moonrim, a project that portended to go a step further and change the hands' orientation, so they would face inward instead of down. Sadly, it ended up not taking off.

<comment><USER5> The Dactyl is a bowl shaped split keyboard that you can 3D print the case for. From what I've read it's a very complicated build.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's an open source DataHand project:

[https://github.com/JesusFreke/lalboard](https://github.com/JesusFreke/lalboard)

At CES Samsung demo'ed a "keyboard" using the Selfie camera.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-51057261/ces-2020-sam...](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-51057261/ces-2020-samsung- s-invisible-keyboard-for-smartphones)

Once we use a camera to track our hands, we can invent other motions to augment a traditional keyboard.

Also, this keyboard reminds me of DataHand:

[https://www.charachorder.com/](https://www.charachorder.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wouldn't want this as a keyboard, I'd want one hanging from my right front pocket while looking at my phone with my left hand. It's the touchscreen interfaces that are terrible and need replacing, not the qwerty keyboard. The backlash against touchscreens has started with interior car controls and I'd like to see that spread everywhere else.

(Yes I have RSI problems.)

<comment><USER8> How about a pair of gloves that can sense the muscle movements in your fingers and hands and learn to associate those movements with letters on the keyboard as you type. Then when you're away from the keyboard, the gloves just use the model to infer what your movements intend as you "air type". Surely this is possible with modern machine learning techniques and hardware.

<comment><USER9> The Senseboard virtual keyboard tried to do that a decade ago: [https://sandipsandilya.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/senseboard-v...](https://sandipsandilya.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/senseboard- virtual-keyboard/) and the AirType as well a bit more recently [https://www.ohgizmo.com/airtype-keyless-keyboard- future/](https://www.ohgizmo.com/airtype-keyless-keyboard-future/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Previously, on _Hacker News_ :

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7144044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7144044)

Very interesting 63-comment thread from 6 years ago.

<comment><USER9> 2014? That dates how long I've had this Sidewinder X4 keyboard from my reply there, and roughly how long my experience with the Datahand and Plover has put me off buying another strange or unusual keyboard. Specifically the "Truly Ergonomic"/Cleave keyboard which came up in the last year or so for another round of production, and when I googled it found a review by Xah Lee [1] - <USER2> no longer uses it - and this guy I'm sure you'll recognise - [https://www.sacrideo.us/not-your-typical- keyboard/](https://www.sacrideo.us/not-your-typical-keyboard/) \- who seems to no longer use it, and both previously owned a Datahand too [2].

I wonder what the incidence of people continuing using their strange keyboards long term, vs. raving about them and then not using them after a few months, really is. And what happened to the guy who bought my Datahand and paid international shipping to get it.

[1] [http://xahlee.info/kbd/truly_ergo_keyboard_cleave.html](http://xahlee.info/kbd/truly_ergo_keyboard_cleave.html)

[2] [http://xahlee.info/kbd/datahand.html](http://xahlee.info/kbd/datahand.html)

</comment></comment><comment> Birch-san There's a bunch of hackers trying to reverse-engineer and open-source the DataHand here (most recent reply was yesterday):

[https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=41422.0](https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=41422.0)

I've had a couple of DataHands (and still keep one under my bed). It's a real marvel. For certain repetitive strain injuries: it's the only thing that helps.

I'm using regular keyboards now, and I'm grateful that I can. But I look forward to the day when anybody who needs one can find one.

</comment><comment><USER10> In the late 90s I had a co-worker who managed to wrangle one of these at our office. I think he tried it for a few weeks and then returned it. I solved most of my RSI problems at the time by switching to dvorak.

<comment><USER11> I had a very similar experience with RSI and Dvorak. It was getting pretty bad and many years later, my wrists are holding up great. Maybe I'd have learned Colemak if I learned today, maybe not.

<comment><USER12> I used Dvorak since 2005.

After one look at Coleman / Colemak, and typing "he" (the second most common digraph in English) I'm sticking with Dvorak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Bob Moog and John Eaton designed a multi touch synthesizer with a similar design vision. [http://experimentalsynth.com/eaton-moog-multi-touch- keyboard...](http://experimentalsynth.com/eaton-moog-multi-touch-keyboard/)

From what I hear and having attempted to play one myself, it's mentally taxing and hard to express artistically.

</comment><comment><USER14> i distinctly remember this product, not because i used one...but because my friends and i learned about it on compuserve! same night was my first use of mosaic. prior all my "internet" use was actually either muds via telnet or dialin bbs.

<comment><USER14> to be clear, after we saw that we were all positive that Blade Runner was going to happen before we graduated middleschool...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> cykey.co.uk is an interesting option - very easy to learn (I did it in an afternoon), but suffers from a couple of shortcomings: 1) there's no dedicated backspace key; 2) the characters regularly used by programmers are awkward to get at in some cases. Both of these issues could be addressed, and I'm experimenting with my own build which will use two rows of 5 keys, the upper row providing access to key layers + BS.

PS. It's also IR, not bluetooth - but thats a trivial DIY fix.

</comment><comment><USER16> I used to own one of these. It was utterly unusable.

Looked cool, though.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some no-code tools for the back end? - <AUTHOR> Off the top of my head, I would love an add-on kind of tool that I can point to my database and all manner of CRUD APIs are generated and managed by the tool itself. Although I'm speaking as a developer.
Just brainstorming here, what kind of no-code tools can exist for the backend?
- Simplified drag-drop schema builder
- CRUD API generator on top of the above
- Templatized plug-and-play schemas for common use cases, role based user access capabilities, teams, billing system, feature based pricing etc. <-- All of these really have the same-ish playbook in every tech stack, might make sense to abstract it out in a nocode tool
What other nocode tools can be built for the backend? I'm specifically talking about backend only, since this is likely the hardest area for nocode to tackle, it would be like automating all of software development itself, or at least laying the groundwork to begin with.
Keep in mind I'm talking strictly about the no-code audience (which means no code at all, no/optional SQL, no tech stack, nothing, no tech stuff - only tools that can be used easily by the 99.7% of humans that don't code) <comment><USER2> Not exactly no-code, but the spirit is the same in what we are building at XgeneCloud. Via our GUI you can scaffold most of the repeatable code that is required in any backend and modify it to your business needs from there on.

* [https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud](https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud)

* Demo link : [https://youtu.be/gEU-QvmwSKQ](https://youtu.be/gEU-QvmwSKQ) (Creating CRUD APIs via GUI for a MySQL database)

* So by just pointing to a database via a GUI, you can generate CRUD-Aggregation APIs (REST/GraphQL) automatically for any given database. It has built in GUI to edit and manage schemas and access control as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> You're talking about a "strictly no-code audience" who are just building backends? That'd be a very strange situation if you asked me since audiences that are somewhat technical in the first place are usually not put off by a little bit of optional code.

Here are a few products that are close but not spot on:

* [https://parabola.io/](https://parabola.io/)

* [https://useparagon.com/](https://useparagon.com/)

* [https://n8n.io/](https://n8n.io/)

</comment><comment><USER4> For people that don't code, I think what you're describing they know as MS Excel. They don't know what a schema is and possibly can't define what user roles would be for what they need.

Generated code is great to start with and then someone requests a change to do something, for example add a column, and you need someone to maintain that code from the database thru the backend up to the UI to add that column.

I think no-code is really geared towards verticals and not a generic base of an application.

</comment><comment><USER5> Where's the demand for such a tool? If you have the experience and understanding to build a good back-end with a no-code tool, then you're already at a point where working with code isn't a problem for you.

<comment><USER6> Usually to streamline certain oft-repeated tasks. The audience for such tools is not people who dont know how to build them, it's people who know how to build them but dont have time, which is very common condition for people working in computers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does the need for some front end JS meet your criteria? If so, an interesting one is [https://userbase.com](https://userbase.com).

</comment><comment><USER6> Ethernet Cable

Switch

Box cutter

RJ45 crimper

<comment><USER8> ROFL</comment></comment>


Pulse Raises $9M in Series A From NEA, Greycroft and Lerer Ventures - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pulse.me/pulse-raises-9-million-in-series-a-financing

<comment><USER2> Awesome. Love this app. The most used app when I'm on the toilet.

</comment><comment><USER3> We're also hiring! Check out our jobs page: <http://www.pulse.me/jobs></comment>


Time to Demand Explanations for the Barcelona Terrorist Attacks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@twistsandturns/time-to-demand-explanations-for-the-barcelona-terrorist-attacks-a15d6fb830e <comment><USER2> I was just thinking about this the other day, recalling how I visited Barcelona a week after the attacks in trying to convince a friend to travel to a place with [constant] conflict despite an increased perceived state of conflict v. as per usual, but these events come and go it seems, the media publishes the stories, it's all sensationalized with Facebook profile picture changes and "we stand in solidarity" but what are the learnings and next-steps to preventing such events? Certainly, we don't hear as ofteon of each successful prevention of a terrorism attempt but too little information on progress made makes improvement and impact difficult to measure and critique !

</comment><comment><USER3> This is very interesting, but it lacks (IMO) more references.

As it is written, it asks us for trusting the narration (which I am tempted to do) but it does not give much in support to this narration. For example can we have some artifact in support to the claim that the Israeli Intelligence has informed the Spanish Intelligence Agency and the Spanish Homeland Department?</comment>


Tool-Up Time: The 54+ Very Best Front End Web Developer Tools - <AUTHOR> http://blog.debugme.eu/front-end-web-developer-tools/ <comment><USER2> Great list to wade through in holiday downtime. Thx for sharing.</comment>


Purple: An all-in-one data service for microservices, FaaS functions, and more - <AUTHOR> https://purpledb.io <comment><USER2> This is amazing news

<comment><AUTHOR> Bot</comment></comment>


A review of RubyMotion - <AUTHOR> http://samsoff.es/posts/rubymotion-review

<comment><USER2> One of the ObjC examples could be more concise. He writes:

      id navigationBar = [UINavigationBar appearance];
      [navigationBar setBackgroundImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"nav-background.png"] forBarMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault];
      [navigationBar setTitleTextAttributes:[[NSDictionary alloc] initWithObjectsAndKeys:
        [UIFont cheddarFontWithSize:24.0f], UITextAttributeFont,
        [UIColor colorWithWhite:0.0f alpha:0.4f], UITextAttributeTextShadowColor,
        [UIColor whiteColor], UITextAttributeTextColor,
        nil]];

which could be

      id navigationBar = [UINavigationBar appearance];
      [navigationBar setBackgroundImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"nav-background.png"] forBarMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault];
      [navigationBar setTitleTextAttributes:@{
        UITextAttributeFont : [UIFont cheddarFontWithSize:24],
        UITextAttributeTextShadowColor : [UIColor colorWithWhite:0 alpha:0.4],
        UITextAttributeTextColor : [UIColor whiteColor],
      }];

as compares to the Ruby,

      navigationBar = UINavigationBar.appearance
      navigationBar.setBackgroundImage(UIImage.imageNamed('nav-background.png'), forBarMetrics: UIBarMetricsDefault)
      navigationBar.setTitleTextAttributes({
        UITextAttributeFont: UIFont.cheddarFontWithSize(24.0),
        UITextAttributeTextShadowColor: UIColor.colorWithWhite(0.0, alpha:0.4),
        UITextAttributeTextColor: UIColor.whiteColor
      })

Also kind of wondering where he got "cheddarFont". :-)

<comment><USER3> I didn't know about the new @{} syntax for dictionaries - [http://blog.ablepear.com/2012/02/something-wonderful-new- obj...](http://blog.ablepear.com/2012/02/something-wonderful-new- objective-c.html) \- very nice.

<comment><USER4> You can't use that unless you're running Mountain Lion and you can only submit apps to the store with a released version of Xcode. The new syntax is amazing though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Objective C classes and methods are designed to be long and mostly typed by Xcode's autocomplete. With RubyMotion, I will end up typing out all those verbose methods, which I don't know if it's something I feel too big about.

The example author made here feels like I will end up typing about twice as much with RubyMotion than objective C.

Ruby: @window = UIWindow.alloc.initWithFrame(UIScreen.mainScreen.bounds) @window.makeKeyAndVisible

Objective C: self.window = [[UIWindow alloc] initWithFrame:[[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds]]; [self.window makeKeyAndVisible];

<comment><USER6> The real benefit with Ruby is the creation of DSLs that make working with these UI elements much easier.

It's only a matter of time before someone creates a DSL that looks something like:

      window = screen.main.new_window(
        frame: true,
        key: true,
        visible: true
      )

Or something like that. I'm not an iOS developer, so I'm not really sure what parts of the insanely-verbose method calls are actually necessary.

(As an aside, I have Vim rigged up to do autocompletion with Ruby. I'm sure it would work with these Cocoa libraries as well)

<comment><USER7> _I'm not an iOS developer, so I'm not really sure what parts of the insanely- verbose method calls are actually necessary._

It's called "Intention Revealing Names." Names are long to provide the programmer information, so shortening them would have a negative impact.

 _As an aside, I have Vim rigged up to do autocompletion with Ruby. I'm sure it would work with these Cocoa libraries as well_

If someone writes the necessary plumbing.

<comment><USER8> Somebody already did once[1], though it's gotten a bit out-of-date. It needs to be manually revised every time a new SDK comes out, so it's going to keep falling out-of-date.

[1]: <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2674>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As someone who uses ruby for the sheer joy of it (and finds ObjC a bit clunky), I want to be more excited about this. I am just not seeing the benefit yet.

Ruby syntax is nice, not having autocomplete available is a problem, especially since a good deal of time is spent figuring out the appropriate calls to underlying libraries. Maybe this will be remedied in future releases.

I tend to like command line / REPL interactive development... but does this really add any significant benefit when making iPhone Apps? I would imagine if you have a lot of calculations or String manipulations involving non GUI/device interaction this could be handy. But every actual test of code is going to involve running rake and the emulator, which is not an advancement from running make (by clicking a button in XCode) and the emulator.

Finally, what about running an interactive debugger or memory management tools? XCode/ObjC has a number of benefits that eliminate some of the need to be intimately acquainted with some of the underlying painful details. There is not a lot of appear in trying to write an App in Ruby, backing out and rewriting it in ObjC/XCode, and then porting it to Ruby.

Still, it was just released. Perhaps improvements in these areas will be forthcoming in the future...

<comment><USER8> _> I tend to like command line / REPL interactive development... but does this really add any significant benefit when making iPhone Apps? I would imagine if you have a lot of calculations or String manipulations involving non GUI/device interaction this could be handy._

You could certainly us it for GUI interactions. Take the MacRuby equivalent to:

        [[[[[[[UIApplication] sharedApplication] delegate] window] rootViewController] view]

That gets you the main view on screen, to which you could add or remove elements at your pleasure.

<comment><USER9> Thanks - that is a benefit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Arcanum-XIII It's not a real review — it's a guy having fun with a new toy, which is nice. I'm still not more informed about the real advantages or disadvantage of this solution, nor its speed... But to be honest, this soon, I wasn't expecting much.

Still, as other, I'm perplexed with the difference. It all seem to boil down to syntax (and I must confess I like the objective C one, it being my second language after C) — and syntax is not that important, it's the concept behind. XCode is not a good IDE, but not that bad for its purpose. Is there an equivalent for Ruby, especially to debug the app ?

Alternative is good, but it need to add something to be really differentiated. I'm not sure using ruby syntax is enought...

<comment><USER10> The differentiator is the console-based development flow and the REPL, which is not an afterthought but a prime feature.

The REPL is basically your debugger.

Also, while the Ruby stdlib is not running on rubymotion, I see a chance for sharing Code between rubymotion/ruboto environments (ruboto is Jruby for Android).

<comment> Arcanum-XIII Does the REPL work on the live application ? Otherwise I'm not sure it's that usefull — but I'm more of compiler/breakpoint guy at the moment so feel free to prove me wrong !

\-- EDIT --

Ok, I've read the review from ArsTechnica, and yes you can do that. Now I'm curious to try it !

<comment><USER11> Yup it does. There's a screencast on the Pragmatic Bookshelf site that shows it off. You can change things live in the app (e.g., label text, state, whatever). It's incredibly cool.

<comment><USER12> But you can already do that in gdb and lldb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What is the advantage? I'm neither an iOS or ruby developer, please enlighten me. It seems like this gives you a different language syntax to access the same libraries with no additional abstraction. It doesn't seem like it would speed up development much.

<comment><USER14> The interactive REPL looks fantastic. It's one of the things I love about developing in ruby - you can try things without going through the compile or even save/execute process. There is a lot to be said for a short/instant feedback loop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The only clear win I can see from this is the REPL.

Everything else is down to preference... I'd rather write native Obj-C code, but the guy next to me would rather write in ruby.

It's very subjective and down to coder preference, I can only hope that the ruby world has a great work around for the very verbose selector names in the iOS SDK; I was expecting some sort of wrapping for the iOS SDK to make it simpler.

<comment><USER16> REPL seems to be a crutch for not having a visual interface builder. His example in the video wouldn't have been an issue in Xcode as you'd have positioned and named the label correctly to begin with, and would have seen it in context too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a long time Ruby and Objective C developer who loves both languages I'm not impressed.

Sure the REPL stuff is neat, but I would position my UI elements correctly in interface builder to begin with. I'm also not keen on typing out the code to assign properties that were done with the GUI before. There doesn't seem to be any support for Storyboards which are awesome as segue transitions save a ton of code that you'd normally have to type. Storyboards provide a visual layout and ease of inserting steps in a flow or changing connections.

Once you have proficiency in Objective-C your coding method in XCode really consists of typing 3-4 characters, hitting tab, a couple more characters, a variable name and so forth. Code completion rocks and works quite well in particular with Objective-C. I would expect all of the examples given there would be many fewer keystrokes in Objective-C than Ruby.

I find the side by side code samples somewhat humorous. I expect to see something like coffeescript to javascript which is visually obvious which one is more concise. Instead I see roughly the same code expressed differently. Sure Objective-C turns people off who don't know it, but once you do it's really not a big deal.

Xcode also gives you great tools for refactoring code that due to the nature of Ruby simply are not possible. This is pretty important for large projects.

The tough part of making non-trivial IOS apps is learning the API and the best practices in using it. That can take months or even years.

</comment><comment><USER17> I took a look at RubyMotion and came away pretty disappointed. It seems like the target market is for people who already write apps in Objective-C, but want to write them in Ruby instead. The larger and more lucrative market is for people who want to write apps without touching Objective-C at all or knowing anything about it (i.e. using their existing knowledge of web technology to write apps).

Compared to other abstraction frameworks on the market like Titanium, the RubyMotion code is way too verbose and obtuse, and is really only obvious to those who have already worked with Obj-C. On top of that, you don't get the autocompletion and hinting because people don't typically write Ruby in IDEs. I love the idea of using Ruby in this manner though, and hopefully people will begin to build frameworks on top of RubyMotion so I can use it with a single helper method call and a dictionary of options, like Titanium or a jQuery plugin.</comment>


So long, broadband duopoly? Cable's high-speed triumph - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/so-long-broadband-duopoly-cables-high-speed-triumph.ars

<comment><USER2> The whole article is based on the flawed assumption that DSL is reaching its theoretical maximum.

20+ Mbit DSLs are already widely available in many countries (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wikipedia/ITU_G.992.5>). And 100+ Mbit DSLs are being rolled out (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL2>).

Is there a reason why DSL speeds can't keep up in the US?

<comment><USER3> That might be fine for dense cities but once you get any real distance in the lines the speed drops way off.

<comment><USER2> Operators typically bring fiber close to homes, while still using DSL for the last mile. True, this requires investments, but not much compared to wiring each home with phone lines, cable, or fiber (all of which have been done before).

Note that part of the reason that cable is able to reach such high speeds is precisely because they use the same infrastructure I described: fiber to the neighborhood, then coaxial cable for the last mile. I don't see why DSL operators shouldn't be expected to do the same if they want to compete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is talking about leading edge tech heavy users. The difference between being able to get 24Mbps at AT&T ( <http://www.att.com/u-verse/explore/internet-landing.jsp> ) and 50Mbps from Verizon ( Link is down at the time of posting: [http://www22.verizon.com/Residential/FiOSInternet/Plans/Plan...](http://www22.verizon.com/Residential/FiOSInternet/Plans/Plans.htm) ) or a cable company doesn't matter to 99% of the population. By the time the "average user" wants higher speed the providers will spend the capital to roll out the infrastructure.

Look at the numbers provided by Internet World Stats for the USA for 2010 ( <http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/us.htm> ) and you'll see that only a third of the users are even on broadband at all...

People in the USA: 310,232,863

People in the USA on the Internet: 239,893,600

People in the USA on the Internet with broadband: 85,287,100

This isn't due to the fact they have no option to get cable/DSL/Satellite -- it is that their dial-up "works just fine for me". These are fixed line stats, not mobile -- so this may show that many are skipping fixed line broadband and going full mobile.

<comment><USER5> If I could get unmetered 10mbps mobile internet, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I'd pay $150 a month for such a thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not to diminish "net neutrality" but this state of monopoly--or duopoly, if you're so lucky--seems like a more immediate issue to me. If there was competition amongst providers I could even see net neutrality becoming less of an issue.

I don't know what to _do_ about this issue, though. Nationalize cable lines? Consider Internet access a piece of common infrastructure and have governments build it out, competing with the existing private companies?

<comment><USER7> There are really three competing systems phone lines, cable, and fiber. Now, I switched from cable to FIOS a while ago and it's a huge upgrade so IMO even cable is a distant second place. Verizon realized they needed to ditch copper a while ago and now it's just a question of how much fiber they can roll out.

<comment><USER8> Earlier this year VZW said they were stopping FiOS rollout and would only finish what they had already announced.

<comment><USER9> Citation? I'd love to hear more about that.

<comment><USER8> [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230341040457515...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303410404575151773432729614.html)

It sounds like working through the red tape in each community was costing them so much they finally said screw it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The cable provider in my area in germany just upgraded to DOCSIS 3 which enables me to get 128Mbit instead of 32 which already was twice as fast as the fastest DSL in the area. I am going for 64Mbit though, 128 still is to pricy but i like the development of bandwidth here. Also had many problems with DSL in the past (losing sync, broken splitters etc) while my cable connection is flawless. But many people say their experience was the other way round, so it heavily depends on the area i guess.

</comment><comment><USER11> I believe it, I can already see it happening among my peer group. Some of it is poor reliability with AT&T, but mostly it's better latency and download speeds.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sure, it's a duopoly now and could turn into a monopoly in the near future but wireless/mobile networks are making improvements and that could bring real competition to customers.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, all 4 of them (quality varying by location), oh boy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Did someone miss the memo?

The future is wireless.

<comment><USER14> South Korea has very advanced wireless infrastructure. Yet, most people access internet through cable.</comment></comment>


Yellow Lab Tools – test web pages for performance and code quality issues - <AUTHOR> http://yellowlab.tools/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not my tool, but just discovered this and I think it can be very useful. Detects common problems and also checks for things like duplicate CSS selectors and heavy Javascript use.

Besides this hosted version there are other options available, including a commandline client and an API. Check the GitHub repo [1].

[1] [https://github.com/gmetais/YellowLabTools](https://github.com/gmetais/YellowLabTools)

</comment><comment><USER2> Very nice tool.

It helped me a lot to optimize my website perfomance. I highly recommand for all web developpers...

If you use to many !important tag you'll be noticed.

If you load more than one version of jquery, you'll also be informed...

You can also know if you make too many request on your DOM. So you'll have to use JS variable instead of doing a lot of DOM request ...

All these informations are critical to get the best web performances.

Regards,

Ben Younes Ousama.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you for sharing!</comment>


Show HN: Snippetbox – a new way to do code snippets - <AUTHOR> https://snippetbox.xyz I am currently in the process of testing an MVP of the real product and I am hoping to get some feedback on it as it currently stands.<p>Thanks <comment><USER2> Because there is nothing for people to try out or play with, this isn't entirely consistent with the spirit of "Show HN."</comment>


Ask HN: Whats missing from podcasting? Why hasn't the market grown larger? - <AUTHOR>

iTunes makes subscribing to a podcast really simple. With so many iPhone/iPod users out there, why hasn't the market grown lager? What do you think is keeping podcasts from being more mainstream? <comment><USER2> Podcasting for most is an analog for radio and until podcasts are as at hand as radio is, it's market share will be capped. Most people want to be able to press a button their dashboard and here a show, not go search it out, put it on their iPod and then hook that up to their car.

</comment><comment><USER3> Listening to podcasts takes too long. I can speed read articles and skip the boring bits. Podcasts are too linear. I have even tried playing back at 150% speed, but even that takes too long. Another problem with podcasts is that they are produced by people who can't say things succinctly and in a very interesting way. They seem to mostly like to hear their own voices. What we need is really clever comedians write and produce the stuff. Then it might be entertaining and informative enough to make me tune away from the radio jocks.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would listen to more podcasts if I could wake up with them(alarm clock), listen to them in my car without burning a CD or loading an USB key. I think that's the missing link.

I think people think the alternative(radio stations) suck but the convenience of only having to turn the radio wins.

</comment><comment><USER5> the audience has hit its saturation point. if you're not podcasting, either you don't understand it (i.e, you don't need an ipod to consume podcasts), don't know about it, or don't want to do it.

i'd like to see a popular alternative podcasting application rise up. something better than itunes, geared towards the users that don't have ipods. i'd use it. does it exist already? i have no clue, and i consume tons of podcasts. it would definitely help to break the association between podcasting and ipods, which i think is holding some users back.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can listen to the shows on the web through the flash players most of these guys have on their pages. Is it the effort to listen to the show or the effort to discover the show?

<comment><USER5> both.

a desktop application allows you a variety of options with respect to obtaining and consuming content. you can listen to content on the provider's webpage, sure, but it narrows your options greatly.

and sure, its not really that tough to discover new content online. something that helps you discover new purely podcasting content just helps to reduce the noise and makes proliferation of the medium easier for people who have a lower tolerance of technology and/or inconvenience. i can find the podcasts i want just fine. but i'm the current audience. you need to make it easier for soccer moms or grandfathers to find podcasts in order to break out of the current stagnation.</comment></comment></comment>


Terrorist or pedophile? This startup says it can out secrets by analyzing faces - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/05/24/terrorist-or-pedophile-this-start-up-says-it-can-out-secrets-by-analyzing-faces/ <comment><USER2> Looks like snake oil to me. I think this opens a niche for DaaS startups [1].

The article is more balanced than I expected. I like this quote:

> _"The evidence that there is accuracy in these judgments is extremely weak," > said Alexander Todorov, a Princeton psychology professor whose research > includes facial perception. "Just when we thought that physiognomy ended 100 > years ago. Oh, well."_

[1] Discrimination as a Service.

</comment><comment><USER3> "What's wrong, officer?"

"I don't like yer face is what's wrong."

Barely innovative ;)</comment>


Are Emotions Prophetic? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/are-emotions-prophetic/

<comment><USER2> People making emotional decisions don't ask for more information when they are uncertain, and therefore can't rationally analyse what further information / support is needed and use technology to gain that information.

Therefore, even if emotional decisions are more accurate than a reasoned decision made with no technological assistance (whether the assistance is from pen and paper calculations or a complex model with data taken from the Internet), reasoned decision making can benefit from this technology and so is likely to be more accurate for that reason.

<comment><USER3> Check out Gerd Gigerenzer's work: Gut Feelings, and Fast and Frugal Heuristics. He also studies Bayesian reasoning.</comment></comment>


Saving the Mobile Ecosystem - <AUTHOR> http://microreviews.org/saving-the-mobile-ecosystem/ <comment><USER2> This piece is entirely content-free.</comment>


Porsche Unveils 911 Hybrid With Flywheel Speed Booster - <AUTHOR> http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/02/12/porsche-unveils-911-hybrid-with-flywheel-speed-booster/ <comment><USER2> "flywheel generator mounted in its passenger seat that can spin at up to 40,000 rpm"

Now that is what I call exciting: sitting next to a few kg of metal spinning at 40K rpm.

<comment><USER3> Not sure if it's a grammar mistake but actually that parses as: The _passenger seat_ is spinning at 40k rpm.

Now that's what _I_ call exciting. ;-)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tiiiny growth ideas for SaaS - <AUTHOR> https://tiiiny.com/?launch <comment> tim--

           curl https://tiiiny.com/js/index.js | grep quote\" | sed -e 's/.*: \"\(.*\)\"/ * \1/' | sort

</comment><comment><USER2> Thought this was going to be obnoxious but some really great suggestions popping up. Nice work :)

</comment><comment><USER3> A similar resource in the same vein: [https://ladder.io/playbook](https://ladder.io/playbook)

</comment><comment><USER4> When I saw "Message meetup coordinators and ask for speaking gigs at local events" I misread 'message' as 'massage', and thought that's brilliant!!

..then I saw it read 'message' and was disappointed at the generic advice :(

</comment><comment><USER5> Cool, thought it was a generated quote thing, but looks like a front end for the quotes sitting in index.js.

      var quotes = [{
          "quote": "Create a Crunchbase page"
        }, {
          "quote": "Share your website on Startupli.st or Erlibird.com"
        }, {
          "quote": "Share your pre-launched website on Betalist.com"
        }, {
          "quote": "Respond to unanswered questions in your niche on Quora. Look for questions with a lot of people waiting for an answer.",
        }, {
          "quote": "Submit a free press release using a service like PRlog"
        }, {
          "quote": "Message meetup coordinators and ask for speaking gigs at local events"
        }, {
          "quote": "Film your speaking gigs and share videos of your talks on your blog"
        }, {
          "quote": "Send personalized E-mails to your existing users, ask for referrals or their help promoting your company"
        }, {
          "quote": "Create an infographic, share on free distribution sites like Visual.ly and Pinterest."
        }, {
          "quote": "Write a post called "Our competitor vs Our Company" - This will attract search engine traffic looking for reviews of your competitor"
        }, {
          "quote": "Submit a presentation or slidedeck to Slideshare"
        }, {
          "quote": "Giveaway a free ebook, and let users download it in exchange for their email address"
        }, {
          "quote": "Write a "how-to" guide on Medium for something that is difficult in your industry"
        }, {
          "quote": "Promote your product in your email signature"
        }, {
          "quote": "Sponsor a newsletter on Upstart.me & promote your product to other people's lists"
        }, {
          "quote": "Submit your product to Producthunt.com"
        }, {
          "quote": "Create a free online course on a topic related to your product"
        }, {
          "quote": "Reach out to relevant bloggers and ask to write a guest post on their blog (don't forget to include a link to your project)"
        }, {
          "quote": "Update your Linkedin status and link back to your website"
        }, {
          "quote": "Grow your social media follower base by following the followers of your competitors"
        }, {
          "quote": "Create relevant Youtube videos and add relevant keywords in the title and description"
        }, {
          "quote": "Run Facebook Ads"
        }, {
          "quote": "Run Google Ads"
        }, {
          "quote": "Run Twitter Ads"
        }, {
          "quote": "Run Linkedin Ads"
        }, {
          "quote": "Subscribe to Helpareporter.com and provide quotes to journalists"
        }, {
          "quote": "Reach out to podcasts to get interviewed"
        }, {
          "quote": "Start your own podcast"
        }, {
          "quote": "Let your first 100 users pay with a tweet, to sign up in exchange for a share"
        }, {
          "quote": "Create a Facebook page"
        }, {
          "quote": "Make your UI remarkable and shareworthy"
        }, {
          "quote": "Run Stumbleupon ads"
        }, {
          "quote": "Get an Instagram influencer in your niche to promote your product"
        }, {
          "quote": "Get a Youtube influencer in your niche to promote your product"
        }, {
          "quote": "Get a popular Facebook page in your niche to promote your product"
        }, {
          "quote": "Add screenshots of your product to a Pinterest board"
        }, {
          "quote": "Create a profile on Angel.co"
        }, {
          "quote": "Ask your friends to share it with their friends"
        }, {
          "quote": "Sponsor a hackathon"
        }, {
          "quote": "Sponsor an event by offering a service (instead of money) in exchange for promoting your product"
        }, {
          "quote": "Go live on Periscope and talk about your product"
        }, {
          "quote": "Engage in online forums where your target audience is hanging out"
        }, {
          "quote": "Write on-topic comments on Reddit.com where your product seems to be a solution to the discussion"
        }, {
          "quote": "Start a Facebook group"
        }, {
          "quote": "Post articles to Reddit.com in relevant subreddits"
        }, {
          "quote": "Submit your project to ShowHN on Hackernews"
        }, {
          "quote": "Comment on industry blogs"
        }, {
          "quote": "Host giveaway contests on social media"
        }, {
          "quote": "Offer discounts in exchange for sharing your website"
        }, {
          "quote": "Create a free Slack community for your target audience"
        }, {
          "quote": "Host a webinar"
        }, {
          "quote": "Start a daily email newsletter where you link to relevant news that your audience might be interested in"
        }, {
          "quote": "Giveaway t-shirts with your logo & website on them"
        }, {
          "quote": "Create different landing pages with different messages, that all link to your main website"
        }, {
          "quote": "Attend conferences and talk to as many people as you can"
        }, {
          "quote": "Be the bonus in someone else's product. Let a different company promote you to their audience in exchange for a commission"
        }, {
          "quote": "Got a beautifully designed product? Apply for design awards."
        }, {
          "quote": "Create a course on Udemy.com"
        }, {
          "quote": "Advertise at conferences"

<comment><USER6> Of course there is no way to know if the array is generated dynamically on the server :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great idea, surely it will help people stuck. This can be a good way to start a day for beginner SaaS owners.

The button animation is a bit "crunchy" in Chrome 64.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would pay to have my own version of this with my own tips!!!

<comment><AUTHOR> You should contact us :)

<comment><USER9> The best answer!</comment></comment></comment>