How to Kill a Great Idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070601/features-how-to-kill-a-great-idea_Printer_Friendly.html <comment><USER2> This was a pretty interesting read. I think the important lesson from the demise of Friendster as well as the subsequent demise of MySpace (which some people try not to admit) is that engineering actually matters. Friendster failed because it did not work. It was too slow, sometimes pages would not load at all and it was too easy to spam.

So it got to the point where people had to take forever just to delete the spam from their folders, because it would take a couple of minutes to open each message and discover it is spam.

The article talks a lot about business decisions, but the business side does not really matter that much until you get your web site to work.

<comment><USER3> That's a great take-away I think. I think that is one of the reasons Facebook was so successful. I've been a member of Facebook since 2004 and I can't remember a single piece of spam I've ever seen through it.

In 2004 when I joined, it was a pretty simple, no-AJAX standard PHP site and worked very quickly. From there, it just took off and they were able to hire some of the best engineers and server architecture people out there.

<comment><USER4> I've gotten 5-10 pieces of spam through facebook in the last year or two, but it's all been from non-techie friends who had their account phished. So at least I was able to help them clean it up and (hopefully) learn how to avoid it in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My favorite bit of the article.

 _[Abrams] was particularly vexed by the company's apparent obsession with partnerships. "At the board meetings they would say, 'We should do a deal with AOL," he recalls. "And I'd be like, 'Guys, the site is not working." He never got anyone's attention, and in 2005 he was stripped of his chairmanship._

<comment><USER6> Straight out of the The Business Man handbook. What does running a company mean? It means doing Business Deals with other Business Men. The rest of the time you need to sign Business Papers in your Business Chair while making Business Calls.

<grumble>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That was an amazing read. And it shows that the winners get to write the history books.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think this is a great warning for those who think that VC funding immediately equals success. Eating your ramen noodles for a while gives you time to get good foundations in place before things start moving too fast.

It made me feel much better about bootstrapping Gridspy

</comment><comment><USER9> _Friendster, the first online social network_

Factually inaccurate? Friendster was launched in 2002, LiveJournal, for example, in 1999.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great article, and a good moral.

It does fail lesson #1 of journalism though: put the important bits at the beginning, not the end. It was tedious to read through a history I already knew.

<comment><USER11> I knew almost nothing about Friendster and I found the article captivating. Maybe you already knew the important bits?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The interesting thing about Friendster is that it was recently bought for around $100 million. Not Facebook returns, but not bad.

<comment><USER13> Looks like less - $26M according to Crunchbase.[1] Far less than the capital it raised. Maybe you mean FriendFeed?

[1] <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/friendster>

<comment><USER12> I seem to remember there were a number of news articles reporting the $100 million figure. I'm not privy to any inside information on this so I don't really know the answer. Tech Crunch is probably the most reliable for this kind of information.

A few of the $100 million articles:

[http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/973571/Friendster- bought-1...](http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/973571/Friendster- bought-100m-deal/)

[http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20091210/friendsters- caution...](http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20091210/friendsters-cautionary- tale-ends-in-100-million-sale/)

[http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2009/12/4/unk...](http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2009/12/4/unknown- asian-group-buy-friendster-100-million/)

[http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/200949/4892/Friends...](http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/200949/4892/Friendster- on-the-verge-of-100-million-buyout)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The print friendly version is hard to read due to unbroken lines. The normal version has too many pages splits.

Does anyone know a good javascript commandlet that will apply good style to plain text?

<comment><USER15> <http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In contrast, here's a 2004 interview with Charlie Rose at the height of the companies growth explaining what Friendster is.

<http://bit.ly/9EAhU9>

<comment><USER6> <http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/1229>

FYI: URL shorteners are neither required nor preferred on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> gotcha. thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Friendster? Socializr? This guy has a talent of coming up with the most generic Web 2.0-style names imaginable.

<comment><USER17> Friendster launched circa 2002; I don't have the etymology of "Web 2.0" committed to memory, but it's safe to say the silly naming really kicked in much later.

<comment><USER18> If anything, "Friendster" is what started that trend.

<comment><USER19> Ever heard of Napster?

<comment><USER20> he he. good one, paulster

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _Rather than address the problem of too many calculations, Sassa opted to > make massive investments in hardware and software in 2004. Under Winner's > leadership, a team of engineers completely rewrote Friendster's code into a > different programming language and spent more than $1 million on a Hitachi > (NYSE:HIT) storage area network, effectively halting business development > for six months._

Anyone knows the technical details? What was Friendster originally written in, and in what did they rewrite it?

<comment><USER22> Java to PHP: <http://ma.tt/2004/06/friendster-goes-php/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great story and a perfect illustration of why old people shouldn't shoot for the stars. Old people do not understand tech trends. They try to, but it is beyond their ability. Friendster was a site created by old people, run by people, and filled with old people users. Anything that starts from the old will never migrate to the young. Old people are not leaders. They do not determine the trends. Facebook got it right from the start by restricting it to colleges. I'm sure people wanted to open it up sooner, but the talented young leaders of Facebook knew that the next big thing would be determined by how young people choose to adopt it. Old people would follow like cattle later on, which they did. Facebook even made sure to hire young talent at the start because any bad hire would hurt the company when it was small. If you haven't made something of yourself by 30, don't think you're gonna quit your job as a career software engineer and come up with the next big thing. If you wanna do a start-up, you're only chance is to create a lifestyle business or maybe have a mild exit, which is still pretty good.

<comment><USER24> Spoken with the false confidence of youth.

Here's a few examples of fairly revolutionary achievements post-30, even within the relatively narrow field of tech startups:

* Jimmy Wales was 36 when Wikipedia was founded. Larry Sanger was 34.

* Steve Jobs was 30 when he founded NeXT, 31 when he took over Pixar, 40 when Toy Story, their first major film was released, and 42 when he returned to Apple and led them to a major market turnaround, OS X, the iPod/iTunes, the iPhone/AppStore, etc.

* Jeff Bezos was 30 when he founded Amazon, 37 before it turned a profit.

* John McCarthy was 31 when he first designed LISP.

* Marc Benioff was 35 when he co-founded Salesforce.com (I don't know how old his cofounders were.)

* David Winer was 33 when he founded UserLand, 41 before they started offering web publishing software.

* Larry Ellison was 33 when he founded Oracle, 35 when they made their first sale, 40 when Oracle became an ACID-database.

* PG was 40 when YCombinator first launched.

That's just off the top of my head (I had to look up the dates) and I don't particularly pay attention to the age of tech company founders. I'm sure there are dozens of better examples.

For a more comprehensive survey, see <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1431263>

I actually kinda hope you're trolling with this comment, you're way off base.

<comment><USER23> Why don't you actually read my comment? I said that old people with no achievements aren't going to suddenly become great entrepreneurs.

Jimmy Wales - extremely successful options and futures trader

Steve Jobs - I forget what company he was involved with before NeXT, but I think it was pretty big

Jeff Bezos - one of the top people at D.E. Shaw, right under Shaw himself

John McCarthy - programming languages don't really count as entrepreneurship, but I'm sure you could find many examples of old people creating languages

Marc Benioff - youngest VP in Oracle history

David Winer - I really have no idea what UserLand is

Larry Ellison - ok, fine. I guess if you're trying to make Oracle, it's ok to be old. I don't mean that as a slight to Oracle, but I don't think Oracle's story applies to web startups.

PG - I didn't say anything about old people not being able to become investors

<comment><USER24> Now I know you're trolling. Good day.

<comment><USER23> How on Earth is that trolling? I completely refuted your argument, and you can't respond so you call it trolling. None of those people were 30-year-old career software engineers who had achieved nothing and dreamed of entrepreneurship. They were all already successful.

And I know Hacker News is mostly that type of person, but you people need a reality check. You can downvote all you want, but it won't change anything. I bet you really wish it could because forums like this are probably all you have left. You're going to wake up tomorrow and do what you're doing. I'm going to wake up tomorrow and do what you dream of doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here's a thought. Friendster failed in part because he got the name wrong. And his new business, Socializr - much worse.

Thanks for sharing, I wasn't aware of his story.</comment>


Ask HN: Good Laptop without WebCam? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for laptop without webcam. Specs: Year 2013+, 15"+ screen, AMD or Intel processor, 8GB+ DDR memory, 250GB+ 5400rpm hard drive, DVD-R/RW is a plus. Price $500 or less. I've looked on NewEgg, Amazon, TigerDirect but most newer laptops all come with webcam installed. Any ideas ? <comment><USER2> You should seriously consider getting an SSD > 5400rpm drive, if you can afford it. It makes a massive difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not interested in SSD at this time :-) 5400rpm works well for what I need.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have You Had Success with Programming Boot Camps? - <AUTHOR> Currently I'm about a year out of work in an industry and field I have no intention of returning to. I originally graduated with an civil engineering degree.
I started looking into programming boot camps as a way to jump start into another job market with out going back to school for 2-3 years.
Can anyone shed light about their experience and or usefulness?
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> Some older discussion in "Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14518093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14518093)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


How do I deal with a NNPP Tech Lead? - <AUTHOR> Several months ago I began working on a project.  I really like the company.  The pay is good, the hours are easy, the benefits are fantastic.  Since day one I've been working on upgrading the framework we're producing.  I've worked on hacked together stuff before and can accept that anti-patterns slip in.  But I've finally had to accept that my tech lead is a net negative producing programmer.<p>Is there anything I can do other than find a new job? <comment><USER2> First, code written in a rush, caused by tight deadlines will push nearly everyone to write sloppy code. That doesn't make someone a nnpp. Even the best hackers will create substandard work under heavy pressure.

What you can do is start writing tests. Cover the pasta you're working on and use common coding standards. With some examples at your hand on how to improve things, meetup with your lead and explain him your sorrows without criticizing him. Tell him what makes it hard for you and others to work with the code. He'll also have valuable ideas for improvements.

Real nnpps are less common than you might think.</comment>


APIs are key to Quantified Self - <AUTHOR> http://blog.singly.com/2012/08/09/apis-are-key-to-quantified-self/

<comment><USER2> Absolutely! Opening QS data through API will make lead to more tools that would enable people to share, mash-up, visualize and otherwise interpret their own data, gamify the QS process and take the movement mainstream. ————————————————————— Can you express your everyday life in numbers? Can you improve your life by turning it into a game? Follow my personal self- quantification and self-gamification experiment to find out: www.measuredme.com

</comment><comment><USER3> Quantified self APIs is one of the fastest growing areas of APIs in the last 6 months. I think this will be one of the quickest paths for APIs to penetrate the masses.

After quantified self it will be other home, environmental and auto APIs that developers can use.

</comment><comment><USER4> They're key just so you can get the data out in the first place. (First law: all non-Free software is a dead end.) You may be willing to copy out data by hand for short one-off experiments, but not when datasets stretch over, say, years, as they will come to do so.</comment>


Florida Man Sues Apple for $10+ Billion, Says iOS Devices Copy His 1992 Drawings - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/28/florida-man-sues-apple-1992-invention/ <comment><AUTHOR> I love the fact that the guy not only couldn't pay his patent fee (so the patent was never official) but he waited until 2014 to file an official Copyright notice. Even then he originally did his drawings right about the time Apple unveiled the Newton, which this looks not that far from.

I guess this will get thrown out in 5 minutes.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I had to check when the Newton was released (1993) but official development started in 1987 according to Wikipedia.

Good luck to the guy, maybe, though Apple could be kind and settle with a free iPhone 7...</comment></comment>


I'd rather pay for software than get it for free - <AUTHOR> https://rolandas.blog/posts/id-rather-pay-for-software-than-get-it-for-free <comment><USER2> I agree that it's a good idea not to rule out paid options just because you have to shell out for them. And certainly, paying for something will encourage you to make the most of it.

But I feel that, in a free market economy, there will always be people developing free-of-charge alternatives, so I'm not sure developers can be expected to charge for their products, if that will put them at an economical disadvantage.

The "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product" quote does hold some truth, but is not universal. There do exist products and services that are free of charge yet do not do anything malicious with your data. But I do agree with the notion that paying with money is often better than sacrificing personal data.</comment>


Show HN: Dead simple dual-licensing for open source software - <AUTHOR> https://license.land <comment><USER2> > _One is free but has restrictions, like_ [...] _not make money (Creative > Commons)._

I think that software with this license is not consider "free software".

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! I meant to convey free-as-in-beer; I'll fix this wording now!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I'm Ben Carlsson. I recently left Twitch (YC W2007) after five years and have founded an open source esports startup. In my downtime I've been trying to solve the perception issue that causes many open source authors (including myself) to be afraid of making money off their software.

Several times a year I've seen open source authors have mental breakdowns and post, more or less, "I'm giving up because of the unbelievable stress and/or lack of income, someone please take this off my plate".

As a community, it's embarrassing that such dedicated and successful authors have been driven to the edge, but on top of that every time it happens it contributes to a perception issue about open source software: "it might lead to a mental breakdown, better not".

Something is broken here. The kind-hearted are being driven away from open source. It's time to marry kind-heartedness with the free market. Open source should not mean poverty. Open source should not mean sacrificing nights and weekends with friends and family to fix bugs for large corporations for free. Working hard is one thing, but consuming your life with perceived obligations that don't put food on the table is another.

I believe dual licensing is a possible solution to this, but it hasn't taken off for two reasons:

1\. Authors are afraid companies won't use their software because of the friction involved (not the $, but the internal bureaucracy) 2\. Authors just want to write code, and can't be bothered to deal with licensing and payments and "customers", so just choose MIT

Dual licensing is what it sounds like -- the author chooses two licenses instead of one. The user chooses which one they want to use. Usually one is free but has restrictions (e.g. GPL), another is paid but has no such restrictions (a commercial license).

I'm trying to solve these two issues with dual licensing. I built Licenseland to take on #2, taking the extra headaches out of things like accepting payment. For now the #1 fear still remains, but I think it can be abolished with good success examples helping to set industry standards. Companies need to know that great open source software might cost some pocket change, and that letting their engineers spend that money should be a well-lubricated flow without second-guessing.

I will fall in love with you if you give me any feedback on this idea! I've been an open source developer and advocate in and out of companies (and government programs) for a decade now. Much love <3</comment>


Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart - <AUTHOR> http://dougmccune.com/blog/2016/07/21/sculpture-of-housing-prices-ripping-san-francisco-apart/ <comment><USER2> Very beautiful, poetic, relevant to a lot of the audience of HN, and props for detailing the tech behind it.

Meanwhile... the highest and lowest hex I can spot is 1265 / 457 = a ratio of 2.76 with both endpoints having relatively steep curves compared to the rest of the histogram. With the graph's Z0 set to 457 and Zscale set to an arbitrary ratio, the sculpture-graph conveys the impression that there is a discrepancy of 5 or more times between the top of hill on the bottom tier vs the nearby flat area of the top tier. When the reality is something more like 1234 / 810 = 1.5

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good point! Yeah, please be advised there's artistic license taken and the Z-axis scale is arbitrary (well, not arbitrary, it's linear but stretched and certainly doesn't start at 0). You're totally right that the difference between the lowest areas and the highest isn't really as exaggerated as it appears. The real delta between lowest and highest is about 2.7x. I'd argue though that a difference between ~$500/sq ft vs $1,200/sq ft is enough of a difference to make the top of the range feel entirely out of reach for anyone living in the bottom of the range, and that's what the sculpture was meant to convey.

<comment><USER3> Truly, you'd want to pin rent as 25% of income and then have the height be related to where you would need to be on the U.S. income scale as a percentile to be able to afford it.

ie: You've got a $899,000 home sale, that's supposedly a ~$4000/mo rent, which leads towards a "25% rule" of $16,000/mo income => $192,000/yr => which is supposedly 93.9%-ile.

Going from $4000/mo => $5000/mo, it seems like it takes you to 96.8%-ile.

<comment><USER4> The absolute difference in dollars scales ridiculously high though once you start getting above 90%ile though. Going by percentile practically makes it a logarithmic scale.

<comment><USER5> > Going by percentile practically makes it a logarithmic scale

In theory as well. Small changes of the log of a variable are approximately equivalent to small percent-changes.

Edit: Though percentile is a little different than percent-change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an outsider, the solution to the SF housing issues seem pretty simple... Vote out the NIMBY politicians and replace them with people who will change zoning laws to allow for more building. I'd assume almost no one likes the current situation unless they are a landlord.

<comment><USER7> >> almost no one likes the current situation unless they are a landlord.

Anyone who owns property in the city, whether they are a homeowner or a landlord, likes the current situation. For non-landlord homeowners, the current situation keeps their property values and home equity high and it ensures that the neighborhood and quality of life they bought into stays permanently stuck in time.

My local Nimby group, for e.g., sends out monthly notices (e.g [http://pastebin.com/0TJiV0aM](http://pastebin.com/0TJiV0aM) ) letting us know where the next development is, why we should protest it and sends us sample templates on how to email politicians to protest any new development. While large developers are probably able to lobby politicians, I doubt they're able to do this kind of astroturfing.

<comment><USER8> A lot of people who do not own (i.e., renters) in SF also do not want high rises. They feel like SF would have a long way to go before all of the foreign money runs out and those apartments would become affordable to them. In short, they don't think more building will benefit them in terms of housing, but will instead be bad for them in terms of quality of life, e.g., more people and traffic, etc.

<comment><USER9> High rises are one thing but they are not the way to solve SF's housing shortage. One 5-story building on one corner of every block in the sunset would easily relieve the shortage.

Geographically speaking most of SF already suffers from poor quality of life. Except for the northeast quadrant of the city, SF is dominated by flat, boring, ugly zones of car-centered banality.

[https://email@example.com,-122.5023375,3a,75y,...](https://email@example.com,-122.5023375,3a,75y,171.61h,76.92t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s1DuoxbLQ7H7iToQ9TZGoYA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D1DuoxbLQ7H7iToQ9TZGoYA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D48.55154%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656)

There's nothing in this photo worth preserving.

<comment><USER10> The problem with building mid sized apartments everywhere, is that now you have to be involved in political fights everywhere.

With high rise buildings, all you need to do is convince ONE place to build a bunch of them. Perhaps in a place such as south SOMA, which is packed with industrial warehouses that could be replaced with apartment sky scrapers.

Nobody is going to be gentrified when the old dirty warehouses in south SOMA get replaced.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. I hate how people keep casually mentioning that "oh, you could just build up n% of the low-rise areas", as if convincing _all those neighborhoods_ to go along with it and replacing all those buildings were somehow easier -- politically or otherwise -- than 20 SoMa/FiDi high-rises.

<comment><USER12> Ideally the political solution would be only a single step that allows property owners to build x-story buildings in certain zones. That shouldn't require the persuasion of every single neighborhood, because "neighborhood" shouldn't be a political unit with the ability to stop a property owner from building a structure that is permitted by the larger government's (i.e. the city's) zoning laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The one thing that is missing from the article is a top view of the sculpture. Although I believe it, I would like to see the sculpture align to the outline of the city.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does if you can get far enough away to take a photo without the perspective distortion being too great. Here's the model with a few shots going from looking directly straight down and then slowly rotating the perspective: [http://imgur.com/a/b4SGy](http://imgur.com/a/b4SGy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why is SF so opposed to building up? Build more high rises filled with apartments and condos, there are plenty of areas that could be rezoned to accommodate high rise living.

<comment><USER15> It's not; there are literally tens of thousands of new units currently under construction[1] in the City. The issue people have is most proposals for new construction in San Francisco consist almost exclusively of luxury housing.

There's no shortage of housing in San Francisco, only a shortage of _affordable_ housing.

[1] [http://paragon- re.com/San_Francisco_Housing_Development_Repo...](http://paragon- re.com/San_Francisco_Housing_Development_Report)

<comment><USER16> According to your link, there are about 10,000 new units under construction. That's about 10-20 buildings worth. Not exactly a huge boom.

<comment><USER17> It's better than nothing.

And developers don't tend to want affordable housing. That's why it usually has to be enforced by regulations of some sort. They're quite cheap and want to maximize their profit (like any other business). City, cultural, etc concerns come second.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why hasn't this guy donned all black and put this piece for sale in a swanky gallery for $1mil? It's the perfect blend of art and social commentary, and beautiful to boot!

<comment><AUTHOR> If you come pick it up it can be yours for the low low price of a cool half mil. But seriously, I'm just dipping my toes into this whole artist thing, I definitely don't know how to navigate the gallery/sales world. Right now I just like making shit, maybe one day I'll try to make some money doing it.

<comment><USER19> 90% of artistic value is simply saying the art has value. Tell people you've had several offers for $100k and you can probably find someone offering $101k for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've had several offers for $100,000. I'd certainly consider your offer if you can beat that. Paypal my email address :)

<comment><USER19> I like your attitude :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> People keep saying 'SF should allow for more development' as if it's a universal human right to live in SF; while current residents are being mean by not wanting highrises on their block. SF is nice, more people want to live there than there's space, hence, not everyone can afford it. Why would the current owners/residents want to change that? I really don't get it.

<comment><USER21> Think of it reverse. Is it a universal right to have luxurious places to live in a high demand area? Why would people who want to move into or remain in SF on a budget not want to change that?

This is why issues like this are complicated. Both sides have some merit.

(also, not taking sides since I don't live there any more)

<comment><USER20> Not very complicated, there are universal human rights, plus whatever is guaranteed in a relevant constitution. Everything else is for those who can afford it. Luxurious place in high demand area is one example. (should we strive to make Ferraris affordable?)

Otherwise, can people come live in your apartment? Why do you keep your place and your food and your car to yourself? Certainly a lot of people would want to change that.

<comment><USER21> Ok, sure. It's not a universal human right, but we can do better than the absolute minimum to give some semblance of equality to people instead of leaving people's lives to the fate of where they were born in the world and how rich their parents were.

If there was universal health care out in the world that said vaccinations and emergency procedures were free for everyone, but if you were born on Feb 1st, you also got a personal trainer and free cosmetic surgery, everyone else would be within reason to complain about such a system. This is effectively what is happening here.

<comment><USER20> as someone born in USSR, I assure you that artificial equality sucks much harder than natural inequality

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Mirror: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://dougmccune.com/blog/2016/07/21/sculpture- of-housing-prices-ripping-san-francisco-apart/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, in case that doesn't work for some reason, here's the post as one big image: [http://imgur.com/a/cIk1h](http://imgur.com/a/cIk1h)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow, this looks amazing. I'd love to see more sculptures based on data.

</comment><comment><USER24> Lovely piece! A little misleading with it's z-axis (given the range isn't very much and it seems exaggerated or logarithmic at least) but that's more artistic license, which is fair (and pretty).

I would be interested to see what it would look like with a more linear scale though.

</comment><comment><USER25> I love the aesthetics and implementation - very cool. In reality, however, I think of the rip more between everything that's there and what's not pictured. The difference between the top and bottom home sales is not all that much, though the social divide between those who could afford to stay and those who can't even live here at all anymore is the underlying purpose.

I guess I don't buy that the home prices are dividing the landed gentry in Noe valley from pac heights as much as the rich elite from everyone else who's not buying homes in SF.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is indeed poetic: sculpture bemoaning gentrification realized through the kind of technology that is celebrated by bearded hipster millionaires that drive up housing prices.

<comment><AUTHOR> The irony of a rich white male bay-area programmer using a 3D printer and data viz to explore/comment on housing prices in SF does not escape me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Lovely idea, fascinating way to visualize demographics.

One comment, and not at all a criticism of the art: I'm not sure if relative property values between neighborhoods really describes how SF is being ripped apart over time; for that, it might be more accurate to graph, say, proportional difference in median rent over the past n years, which might more closely hew to contested neighborhoods (ie, Pacific Heights doesn't usually catch headlines for how much it's changed in the last 5 years).

</comment><comment><USER28> If you don't like the house prices, move out of San Francisco

<comment><USER29> I don't like the housing prices. I would love to move somewhere I could afford a house with a nice yard, instead of my little condo. But I don't know anywhere else I can have the career security as a data scientist that I have here. If something goes wrong in the bay area, there are always tons of other places hiring.

<comment><USER30> But I guess that means that the prices are justified. If it's better for you to live in SF, even at the high rent/prices, than it is to move somewhere else, then the prices seem to be low enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> WOW, this is utterly profound! Like that time someone put an empty McDonalds cup on the floor of a fine art museum and everyone stood around proclaiming its genius.

<comment><USER32> Or, somewhat the reverse:

[http://qz.com/535482/italian-museum-cleaners-mistook-a- conte...](http://qz.com/535482/italian-museum-cleaners-mistook-a-contemporary- art-piece-for-trash/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "but if neighboring areas are too far from each other I allow them to split, tearing the city along its most severe economic divides."

Interesting that, from an artistic standpoint, the high delta's in nearby neighborhoods house price leads to a more interesting sculpture. The city may be 'torn', but in this case it's a good thing... assuming you think mixed neighborhoods are better than the alternative (gated communities and slums).

</comment><comment><USER34> This is actually -- and I'm sure the artist will agree, albeit with a heavy heart -- a really great representation of investment opportunities.

</comment><comment><USER35> The sculpture is really beautiful, but is the real issue that San Francisco is "ripping apart"? Even the lowest numbers on that chart ($457/square foot) are more than double the average price per square foot in Chicago ($219 according to trulia.com), for example. Is SF ripping apart, or simply becoming so gentrified as to be only livable by the wealthy?

</comment><comment><USER36> you should post this on thingiverse! you'd get a lot of appreciation there for the impressiveness of the print itself (as a fellow 3D printerer, daaaaaaaamn), and honestly it's so gorgeous I wouldn't be surprised if it got featured.

<comment><AUTHOR> good call, will do!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> when i first saw the sculpture, i was like, hmm...

then, when i read the article, i was like... WHOA!!!

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm in awe ... it's so organic looking (but then I guess homo sapiens are technically organic).

The only problem I see with sculpture for data visualization is when your boss asks for an updated report next week.

Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER39> Maybe if he sells a lot of these he can afford a million dollar fixer upper or teardown.

<comment><AUTHOR> I moved to Oakland

<comment><USER40> Let's hope that you won't have to build a second sculpture for there in the future, too. But Oakland seems to have more prudent housing measures in place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Seems like the site went down, and Google Cache isn't helping.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it was up and down for a bit. If it's down again and people want to see the visuals, here's the post as one large image: [http://imgur.com/a/cIk1h](http://imgur.com/a/cIk1h)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Cool</comment>


An instant note-taking web app. - <AUTHOR> http://scrib.in

<comment><USER2> Nothing new here. Any elegance gain over EtherPad hosts or HackPad is lost due to the ad at the bottom (and I don't think there is any, besides).

A blog post about building it, and the philosophy behind the site could have made it interesting for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd change the headline. It's a bit easier than pastie for anonymous non-code text, but "awesome note-taking" requires more IMO.

<comment><USER3> I hope that didn't sound like a put down though, I can see this being great for stashing and sharing non-sensitive (or useless out of context) data. Bookmarked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I changed it to instant... Seems a bit more appropriate ;)

<comment><USER4> I like the simplicity and good idea on changing the title :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A modern typewriter - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bertrandom/a-modern-typewriter-7d8b4c86b625 <comment><USER2> There is great irony in that this was written by a platform engineer at slack - widely recognised as the greatest theft of productive time in recent memory.</comment>


Acetaminophen reduces social pain: behavioral and neural evidence (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20548058?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click <comment><USER2> We need more empathy in the World!

From painkiller to empathy killer: acetaminophen (paracetamol) reduces empathy for pain [1]

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5015806/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5015806/)</comment>


Ask HN: Best website for making source code public according to the GPL - <AUTHOR> Shipping products with open source components requires fulfilling some tasks, such as make the code of GPL-derived work public.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, I am thinking about making the code available on one website offering public git hosting such as github or gitlab or bitbucket.
Based on your experience, what hosting service would you recommend? Why? <comment><USER2> I've used all three at one point and they are pretty similar and will get more similar in the future. For public repositories all are free. In my opinion now in 2018 there's no clear winner, just personal preferences.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your full stack web development? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> JavaScript all the way down (React, Express, Node, Somata)

</comment><comment><USER3> Python, Django, Nginx, Gunicorn, Postgres, Ubuntu, jQuery, Bootstrap, Angular when I need it.

<comment><USER4> I'm working on a side project website and currently using all above except for Angular.

jquery been enough to do basic ajax form post, update some data, but I'm looking to do more dynamic pages using a simple library, I don't need a complete replacement for django templates, just a supplement

have you tried vanillajs or vue.js

<comment><USER3> I haven't. I like Angular because it's easy to integrate with DRF and the templating language is very similar to Django's, so it was fast for me to pick up. This is v1. I haven't tried Angular v2 though. I tend to stay away from JS as much as possible and my JS files rarely exceed 100 lines. But I think you should use whatever makes sense to you. Our stack has been really good to us. All those things just keep running. And supervisord keeps the Gunicorn workers up so can't be happier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My backends usually default to Perl - usually CGI::Application, but I'm using Mojolicious and Dancer a lot more these days, along with a couple of microservices which are written in golang.

For the front-end I suck at design so I use bootstrap, and am planning on spending this upcoming weekend looking at themes to improve a couple of sites. Too many of the bootstrap-themes I see are spammy things that are just landing pages, not setup for actual applications so I expect it'll take a long time to find something that I like and can actually use.

</comment><comment><USER6> Work: Python/flask with gunicorn and nginx, postgres for relational (90% of the time), mongo or Cassandra for document store, jQuery, sass, gulp, puppet for config mgmt, centos 7.2.

Personal: mostly the same except Mac osx or heroku for host, and no config mgmt.

</comment><comment><USER7> Java, Tomcat, Maven, Spring (limited use), JSP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, IntelliJ IDE, Jira (issue tracking), Bamboo (continuous integration), subversion.

<comment><USER8> Why Subversion?

<comment><USER7> The company is in the process of moving to git now. Subversion met their requirement fine and so for the longest time they stuck with that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> jQuery, Bootstrap, Ruby, Rails, Nginx, Passenger, Postgres, ,Redis ,Ubuntu

</comment><comment><USER10> php, I haven't decided on a php framework. For ruby, I use the Ramaze framework.

Photoshop, Notepad2, Sublime Text, Faststone Capture, Licecap, Google Chrome, WinSCP, WAVE chrome addon

</comment><comment><USER11> Work: Python, Django, PostgreSQL, Various AWS services

Home: Go, gRPC

</comment><comment><USER12> Company: asp.net mvc

Home: Play Framework or Spring Boot

</comment><comment><USER13> asp.net mvc/webapi, c#, ms sql, entity framework, redis, nUnit, bootstrap, sass, vue.js

</comment><comment><USER14> Go, React, Postgres, Sass, AWS

</comment><comment><USER15> Linux Apache Golang Postgres

</comment><comment><USER16> redhat linux, postgresql, modern C++, and plain old js

<comment><USER12> How do you use C++ for web development and why ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> python, django, atom.io, heroku, postgres</comment>


Show HN: An SQL database on top of a blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pixelspark/catena/blob/master/README.md <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, happy to answer any questions. The implementation notes [1] may be of interest as well!

[1] [https://github.com/pixelspark/catena/blob/master/Implementat...](https://github.com/pixelspark/catena/blob/master/Implementation.md)

</comment><comment><USER2> What are the relevant scenario's for using this? I think it might be useful for IoT devices, but other than that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Could be anything that you could also use Ethereum for. This provides similar functionality, only with a more familiar (SQL) interface.

Some things I thought of: governmental registries, tracking history of physical assets (e.g. tracking of maintenance history of aerospace components), software licensing, storing timestamped cargo manifests (like the Maersk case). You could even build a currency on this with the right set of privileges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congratulations. I've never seen so much effort put into so dumb and wasteful idea. Or at least, so dumb at the first sight. What's the point of using _timestamping_ service (blockchain) to store _data_?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, using a blockchain for timestamping alone is pretty much worthless if it's not connected to an application. Bitcoin, Ethereum and others don't use a blockchain just for timestamping either, but store all sorts of data in it (transactions in Bitcoin and even complete programs in Ethereum).

That said, this is obviously not meant to store large amounts of data. But you could quite easily build a currency on top of this (add a 'balances' table, and use grants to determine who can update what - a future version could even provide smart contracts through SQL stored procedures).

<comment><USER3> > Well, using a blockchain just for timestamping is pretty much worthless in > practice.

Quite the opposite. Using blockchain _for anything but timestamping_ is worthless, because there are faster and less resource-intensive protocols for about everything. Data storage, for instance, has distributed hash table, and change coordination has leader election or consensus protocols.

> Bitcoin, Ethereum and others don't use a blockchain just for timestamping > either, but store all sorts of data in it (transactions in Bitcoin and even > complete programs in Ethereum).

You're putting the cart before the horse. These "all sorts of data" in blockchain are in fact _documents_ that get _timestamped_ \-- the timestamp says "document X was issued before document Y". A Bitcoin transaction in isolation from all the other transactions is nothing more than a semi-random string of bytes. For it to be a money-like thing you need to have previous transactions (and how do you know they're previous? by _timestamp_ ) that testify the account had enough resources for all the output.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, so what this does is timestamp transactions (in this case SQL DML) in a decentralized way between nodes that do not or cannot trust each other. All this while enforcing write permissions ('grants') that were agreed upon earlier.

The idea that some of these transactions store data is not any different from the idea that some transactions in Bitcoin add new coins to the system, or that some transactions in Ethereum create and store contracts (which are code and data).

Now of course you could, instead of storing the actual data and/or SQL, put data in a DHT and reference and timestamp that.

<comment><USER3> > Yes, so what this does is timestamp transactions (in this case SQL DML) in a > decentralized way between nodes that do not or cannot trust each other. All > this while enforcing write permissions ('grants') that were agreed upon > earlier.

And this should be the very first thing to put in README. This is the single most important thing about any program that uses a blockchain protocol: what exactly is the decentralized, adversity-proof timestamping used for. Right after that should be placed rationale, i.e. how does the hostility resistance help compared to cooperation-based protocols.

<comment><USER4> Why would that need to be in the README? Isn't it the whole point of blockchain?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it is actually a good idea to describe the whole point of using a blockchain as suggested. A lot of organisations I encounter don't really have a clue and do not realize that even a traditional database could fill their need perfectly in many cases.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Create instant data back-ends for applications from spreadsheet data - <AUTHOR> https://nonstopops.io/excel.html <comment><USER2> I like these things, the problem is that they all assume your spreadsheet is organized like an SQL table.

<comment><USER2> Organizing data in a spreadsheet as if it was an SQL table is not a good idea.

In one hand, if you're organized like that, you come up with a schema and follow it, why aren't you using SQL directly?

On the other hand, by using spreadsheets as tables you lose 80% of the spreadsheet's flexibility and powers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I presume you are talking about formulas here?</comment></comment></comment>


Privacy row over FBI iris scan 'trial' - e-sushi http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36783515 <comment><AUTHOR> Discussion of Verge article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12081059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12081059)</comment>


Troubled crypto exchange QuadrigaCX owes customers $190M and cannot access funds - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/QuadrigaCX/comments/am50nd/coindesk_article_revealing_details_of_qcxs_filing/ <comment><AUTHOR> Submitting Reddit link because it looks like the Coindesk site is banned on HN.</comment>


5 Million Dollars 1 Terabyte - <AUTHOR> http://www.art404.com/5million.html

<comment><USER2> It's a hard drive on a pedestal. "Toggle Info" is clickable, and brings up the message:

"5 Million Dollars 1 Terabyte" (2011) is a sculpture consisting of a 1 TB Black External Hard Drive containing $5,000,000 worth of illegally downloaded files. A full list of the files with clickable download links can be found here: <http://www.art404.com/5million1terrabyte.pdf>.

Interestingly, there don't appear to be any music or video files on the disk. It's stuff like Adobe, Autocad, and Rosetta Stone software, games, font collections, and book collections. "Fiction Books 2003-201", "Science Text Book Collection", "Fiction Library", and "Osprey Book Collection" accounts for a little over 4 million of the total.

Makes me wonder how little space would be required to rack up 5 million dollars worth of copyright infringements if DVD rips or MP3s were included on the device.</comment>


Ask HN: Should a real developer care how things work? - <AUTHOR>

What do you think?<p>For example, if you are advanced in jQuery, should you know how you can
write that particular jQuery function in plain Javascript? (that's just one example) <comment><USER2> It depends on what you mean by "real developer". If you are a PHP guy who just needs some plugins on his page, you're good not knowing what's in the black box. If you plan to put JavaScript on your resume, not knowing how jQuery works under the hood is not going to cut it.

Look at it in reverse. I decide not to learn C#, even though I have an idea of how they work. Do I need to know how to query a database? No, I can leave that to someone else and concentrate on JavaScript and call those ASPX APIs. But I don't plan to put C# on my resume.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it is a matter of being pragmatic and not reinventing the wheel. If you don't need anything different than the tools you are using provide, I think it is ok to just use the tools. If you want to learn how things are done under the hood and you have the source code you can always have a look. If you want to learn to do it from scratch and you have the time, it is ok to take the time to think how you would implement it and work on your approach. If you need something more than what the tool (library, framework) provides, you can either extend it (if you have the source code) or go for something completely different (Monthy Python pun not intended). Anyway... real developers use Vi.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, you should, a lot of times when debugging you will have to dig deep into libraries/frameworks you're using, to resolve some problems, and internal knowledge of how things work will help you.

</comment><comment><USER5> Definitely. Not to the extent that you've basically in your mind got every piece of jQuery mapped out, but you should at least build the ability to jump into the source code and see what is going on, and know the base concepts. For the same reason it is advocated to learn C but develop in something higher level - you need to know what pointers and memory management are to adequately grasp why the things you are developing are reacting in certain ways. I generally crack open the source code whether or not I'm having troubles, I think seeing and dealing with other people's code is one of the most beneficial (and humbling) habits a developer can have.

</comment><comment><USER6> Jquery's ease of use comes from the combination of two anti-patterns:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_object>

Jquery has essentially abstracted the API's of web browsers so much that they've created a complete duplication of them inside a god object. Generally "real developers" try to identify and avoid the use of anti-patterns in their software.

<comment><USER7> Your comment is purely academic at its best and pretentious at its worst.

There is a good real life problem for jQuery style and your so called anti patterns are in fact the main feature and sole point of existence for jQuery.

Once could argue that jQuery God object replaces not one half assed implementation of DOM God object, but at least four (IE DOM, FF DOM, WebKit DOM, Opera DOM).

I agree that in a fair world jQuery wouldn't even exist. Any problems that it brings to the table I will gladly solve, sice my brain has a lot of better stuff to do than to memorize all the bugs and quirks of all the stupid browser engines out there.

So while you real developer bunch smugly program your assembly, I will gladly carry the flag of an untermensch programmer and just ship the goddamn product. I know my co-workers and clients like me for not coming up with a new framework for every job I do.

<comment><USER6> The OP asked, from an academic standpoint, whether jQuery should be used. My answer is no, and I gave the reasons. To extrapolate further, JQuery is for "developers" who don't know what a subroutine is. Designers love it because they can cut and paste unrelated snippets of code without worrying about architecture. People who overuse JQuery generally avoid any type of architecture in whatever they're building. And although it's possible to ship a product with half-understood jQuery snippets it does not necessarily make that person a real developer.</comment></comment></comment>


Announcing AudioSet: A Dataset for Audio Event Research - <AUTHOR> https://research.googleblog.com/2017/03/announcing-audioset-dataset-for-audio.html <comment><USER2> This is great. It is really nice to see someone take the time and effort to create large usable dataset. Only the break through research and next big thing in neural nets seems to get all the attention. But an average Joe as no easy way of getting access to data sets.

I also like that they even leveraged stuff like "x for y hours" style videos on youtube. (Eg: Dog barking to 10 hours).

I remember Andrew Ng mention something about being able synthesize even more trainable data by using combination of data as noise. (Eg: Women talking + dog barking (as introduced noise)).

Good job google, keep it up. I wonder when I will see other major players publish large data sets? Maybe Microsoft is next?

<comment><USER3> Microsoft [1][2] and Google [0]have been doing this for years. Google's billion word language model dataset is a notable example which was central to a lot of important research.

[0] [https://research.google.com/pubs/pub41880.html](https://research.google.com/pubs/pub41880.html) [1] [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/project/mslr/](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/project/mslr/) [2] [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/project/microsoft-3...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/project/microsoft-3-handpose-dataset/)

<comment><USER2> Very nice, although the link suggest the dataset is made available through request only. But I didn't know about the hand dataset.

<comment><USER3> [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic- program/da...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/data- science-microsoft-research/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The ontology is made available by Google Inc. under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license." \-- Github page[0]

Looks like the... tag names? and example urls have been released, but the videos and sound are under their respective licenses -- ie, mostly the standard Youtube license.

This is neat. Can a ML model developed on this dataset be used for commercial purposes? I guess, at minimum, the paper and tag list are provided as help for those corporations that would wish to build/use a private dataset for similar purposes?

[0] [https://github.com/audioset/ontology](https://github.com/audioset/ontology)

</comment><comment><USER5> I spent a few minutes browsing through the data, and immediately founds lots of mislabeled data, e.g. an industrial power washer labeled as a toothbrush sound.

<comment><USER6> The quality estimate for 'toothbrush' is 70%.

[https://research.google.com/audioset/dataset/index.html](https://research.google.com/audioset/dataset/index.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you use Reddit daily? - <AUTHOR> Some of my friends are Reddit addicts. As a Software Developer, how do you use Reddit? What subreddits do you check? Any other useful tips? <comment><USER3> I had to ban myself from Reddit due to the addiction and timewasting. I'm pretty sure I'm happier and more productive for doing so. I still allow myself HN and Slashdot; they're lower volume so you can only waste so much time on them per day. I also recently cut out Facebook and Twitter - I used to go on them perhaps 4-5 times a day. It wasn't much _time_ wasted, but cutting out the distraction has definitely given me a stronger sense of mindfulness and connection to my daily life.

Edit: I edited my /etc/hosts so that reddit.com resolves to localhost. You can still go on it if you want to, but it just gives you a few seconds to think "is this a good way to spend my time?".

Edit: Also worth noting you can often get good info on niche subjects from Reddit. Recently wanted tips on buying a GPU - straight to /r/BuildAPC. Wanted to learn to play a strategy game - /r/CrusaderKings sorted me out. I even once wanted to find a song I made years ago and lost; there was a fan subreddit for the band I was in and they had a repository of old unreleased tracks, including my own lost song!

</comment><comment><USER4> While Reddit does have some very smart people on it, you have to spend absurd amounts of time sifting through the mediocre to find their content.

Therefore I use Reddit for cats and memes once a day. Anything else and you really should start considering finding another tool.

<comment><USER5> It's good to end the day on a positive note. I occasionally spend ten minutes on Reddit right as I get in bed. It doesn't take long to find something in the comments to give me a solid laugh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A year into college, I realized that there was nothing positive I was getting from Reddit. So, I blocked it using one of those productivity apps (which probably only just changed my hostfile) and told my friends that if they caught me on reddit, I had to give them $10.

I haven't browsed Reddit in a few years now, and I don't miss anything. I'm not saying that there isn't good content on Reddit, but I am saying that it's not worth the time I put into it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Reddit is Usenet 2.0. Usenet never had a "just browse all the most popular groups" though, mercifully. Same rules apply; the more narrow the group and the more connected to something real, the more likely it is to be useful. Reddit should be viewed as raw material from which to construct a personalized experience of value, and all of its default affordances (/r/all, default subreddits, etc) should be shunned if you're worried about this sort of thing, because they're all terrible, compared to what you can find if you try.

I've got the language communities for all the computer languages I'm currently interested in, a couple of things I'm sorta hobbiest-level interested in (SpaceX, for instance) and want more in-depth news, a couple of weird off-the- wall subs that have a low post rate (/r/scp, /r/cellular_automata) for a more, ah, "refined" sort of entertainment (and perhaps more importantly, simply _less_ entertainment), and a couple of subreddits being used as "more intelligent comments & discussion" for some internet shows hosted on YouTube. The upshot is a stream of news that isn't dropping 100 links an hour on me, is generally interesting, and mostly full of real people having real conversations about things I find interesting and not merely 50-level deep pun competitions.

Reddit's what you make of it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I built a site that aggregates content from HN, I added reddit as a source and track it via there.

The current criteria are: /r/programming top 10, /r/dataisbeautiful top 5, /r/Technology top story, /r/science/' top story 1

The site's [http://www.serializer.io](http://www.serializer.io) if you want to check it out.

EDIT: code is here: [https://github.com/charlieegan3/serializer](https://github.com/charlieegan3/serializer)

<comment><USER9> I just checked out your site, I don't see reddit as a source. Which icon is it?

<comment><USER8> Take a look at: [http://www.serializer.io/custom](http://www.serializer.io/custom)

Reddit isn't a source on the homepage, it's one of the custom ones.

EDIT: my bad, reddit _IS_ a source on the homepage. oops.

<comment><USER10> When I visited your site the first time I was taken to a /welcome page where it listed Y, Reddit, and P as the "default" or what I assumed was the default

And without clicking anything on /welcome and just visiting the home page again reddit looks like a default!

<comment><USER8> Sorry, my mistake. It is a default source on the homepage. Bear in mind that all reddit items count as one source, even though they're curated from a number of subreddits.

Sorry for the confusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1\. Browse "front" to read some tech news, world news and intelligent subreddits like askhistorians I am subscribed to.

2\. Browse "all" and have a laugh.

3\. Repeat 1 and 2 compulsively every 30m to 1h.

Edit: Who am I kidding. Step 3 is every 30 seconds.

Edit 2: That being said, I NEVER browse Reddit at work. Well, except on my own data on the loo.

<comment><USER12> 8 years on the site and this is still my daily routine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I block it using my hosts file and unblock it (and HN) about once a week. Then I look at the top content from that period of time and look at it all at once, then bookmark them (in a folder) and usually never click the bookmark again.

Facebook I'll check about once a month (also blocked in hosts).

I got into the habit of instinctively typing in "news." or "redd" into my browser as soon as I sat down, the lost productivity was too much and the hosts solution seems to work for me.

For PC games, I have to uninstall them. I'm actually glad games are 60 GB these days because it means I have at least 1 day to consider playing a game. If at any time I decide I don't want to waste 50 - 100 hours playing I can cancel the download and delete the files. Yes, I'm getting Google Fiber next year and this method will not be available because it will download in about 10 - 20 minutes. I'm looking into a time-delayed safe or the cheap plastic tubs with a timer for storing an SSD for those games.

<comment><USER14> so which sites do you browse instead?

<comment><USER13> Netflix and YouTube, but I'm strongly considering adding them to the block list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The quality of the community on Reddit seems to have drastically declined in recent years. There is a dearth of bad information and the comments section seems to be headed towards Youtube levels of hostility... This isn't just in mainstream reddits, it's also prevalent in the niche technical topics. After seeing enough information that was blatantly wrong and wasting time sifting through comments debating the validity of said wrong information I unfavorited reddit and haven't looked back.

Maybe use it as a time waster but avoid it as a resource for useful information.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's what I'm subscribed to (don't read too much into some of these choices, i.e. /r/conspiracy):

/r/artificial, /r/cambodia, /r/cellular_automata, /r/ClassicMetal, /r/compling, /r/compsci, /r/conspiracy, /r/crypto, /r/dailyprogrammer, /r/devops, /r/django, /r/EndlessWar, /r/Entrepreneur, /r/futurebeats, /r/iamverysmart, /r/LanguageTechnology, /r/linguistics, /r/MachineLearning, /r/mathrock, /r/musictheory, /r/noip, /r/noiserock, /r/opensource, /r/programming, /r/programminghorror, /r/Python, /r/redditdev, /r/startup, /r/Vaporwave, /r/web_design, /r/webdev, /r/whatstheword, /r/wikipedia

Mostly music and technology. I also periodically block reddit in my hosts file.

</comment><comment><USER17> Reddit can be a huge time waster if you let it be.

I am subscribed to a bunch of niche subreddits specific to my interests, and I cruise it a couple times a day. The benefit to less popular subreddits is that you don't need to check them a hundred times a day to see if they've changed. I don't read the big popular subreddits.

Once a day, usually in the evening for 10-15 mins, I'll cruise the top images on Imgur. That keeps me up to date on the memes so I can know what the kids are talking about.

</comment><comment><USER18> I subscribe to a variety of non-default reddits: /r/programming, /r/python, /r/android, /r/programmerhumor, /r/gaming, /r/truegaming.

I'm also a mod of /r/science and /r/askscience.

I enjoy a few extra ones, such as /r/askhistory, /r/cleveland, and /r/daystrominstitute (star trek discussion), but usually browse them once every week or so. Other than that, my interaction with reddit has decreased over the years. I could say the same about Twitter and Facebook too.

</comment><comment><USER19> I actually spend more time on reddit than on HN. HN is great as a tech news source and the comments are usually top notch and offer even greater insight than the original article posted.

That said, reddit, once you ignore all the immense levels of hatred, bigotry, and memes, has quite a few great groups of people. I've had an account on reddit for going on 5 or 6 years now, and I've filtered my feed down to the very specific subreddits that fit my needs. I've met a great community of other players of some rather low population games, which has led to countless weekends of fun.

Getting to your question, as a developer, the only thing relevant for me is /r/ProgrammerHumor. Reddit really is (for me, at least) only a source of entertainment, not education or serious discussion.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't. Stopped browsing reddit years ago, when it septembered, was a user from very early days, having jumped from digg when that septembered.

I dunno. There's too much noise, not enough signal, and I don't have the time or will to get pissed off while trawling through stuff.

<comment><USER21> It's funny (actually funny, not being mean funny) that you consider the digg exodus period as 'the good old days' of reddit, because those of us who had been there a few years were really pissed off and nostalgic for how it had been before.

I'm sure I was somebody's september as well.

<comment><USER20> Oh, I was on reddit from very early on, concurrently with digg, and dropped digg as it got increasingly toxic and facile - definitely noticed a shift as the mass exodus picked up, and about 18 months later moved on from reddit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I mostly visit niche subreddits. I like to get all my software development news from here instead. So I use reddit for whatever other interests I might have at the time. Basically whenever I have a new interest/hobby, I would spend a few days into that specific subreddit and absorb as much of the collected information as possible. These vary a lot so I might subscribe to some subreddits only for a few months and then go on to others.

</comment><comment><USER23> I use reddit, HN, and lobste.rs to give myself mental breaks throughout the coding day.

I'm subscribed to a lot of niche subreddits, but even so, the quality of reddit has dropped pretty noticeably in the last few years.

I'm sure its partly from the expanded userbase, but the site itself has actually degraded.

* You can no longer see upvotes vs downvotes.

* Comment replies are no longer automatic. Instead, the little red envelope updates its status once every ~45 minutes.

Which wouldn't be so bad, except:

* Now when messages are deleted, there's no guaranteed [deleted] message, and the message will disappear from your inbox.

* In really popular threads, some messages beneath a certain vote count appear to get automatically deleted?

* The inbox status notification is broken. I have about ~100 comment replies I've kept marked as unread in my inbox, for long term saving. Reddit used to just notify you when you received a new message, but now every once in a while, it will realize I have unread messages, and give me a "new messages" notification, despite nothing having changed.

Not to mention just how bad all the astroturfing has gotten, particularly on the default subreddits.

And that's just off the top of my head, its a shame really.

</comment><comment><USER24> While the frontpage and default subs are drastically down in quality the smaller more specialized subs are still valuable to me.

/r/writing /r/math /r/boardgames /r/Debate<topic> and programming subs are still valuable.

Honestly, I think Reddit is ripe for disruption. There are some good ideas there but I think it is struggling under some initial assumptions that worked when there were fewer people with fewer interests and agendas that just don't work but would be hard to change at this stage. And while there is a bit of a network effect in value, unlike something like facebook where there is a lot of value in the 'archive' aspects of it, Reddit is a very 'here and now' phenomena that could be replaced without too much pain assuming people decide they like some other system better. And it might be a Craigslist kind of thing where specialized sites that better cater to the different areas can chip away audience from Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER25> Reddit is mostly entertainment for me.

I read /r/cfb for a good overview of what is going on in college football. I glance through /r/nfl to get an idea of nfl and when I want extra entertainment I read the frontpage.

There's a few work related ones I read occasionally to keep up to date on issues with our products, but outside that it is mostly entertainment tbh.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've got an account where I've subscribed to various hobby- and interest- related subreddits and unsubscribed from the vast majority of the defaults.

It really can be informative and entertaining if only by virtue of the huge user base. By the same token, it follows any large group with similar demographics: lots of fluff, no small amount of (what I consider) crap, and pockets of great content.

None of that surprises me though. If I consider all of the people in my city, a similarly small percentage would be considered friends or welcomed as colleagues and collaborators on projects while the majority would share few interests or have compatible personalities.

For all the complete BS on that site, I've gotten some of the best advice, answers to questions, and found more informative and entertaining articles than many other forums or websites. It just takes a bit of effort to curate your subscription list.

</comment><comment><USER27> I mostly just use it for really specific topics (sports I follow, TV shows I watch, etc) where Reddit provides perhaps the largest discussion board for that topic. I've generally found that HN covers tech news better, and that most subreddits with less targeted focus just fill up with junk.

</comment><comment><USER28> I found consuming Reddit is a lot easier when you treat it like Usenet. So I have RSS subscriptions for the subreddits that interest me in my RSS reader.

That also means I can easily organize them myself by topic. In the dev related area are things like /r/rust, /r/perl, /r/rust_gamedev. And even /r/programming, which many people dislike, but I appreciate for the purpose of having people from different communities interact. I found some interesting links in discussions in there in the past that I wouldn't have run into otherwise, because it's not directly related to anything I currently do.

There's a bit of change over time in what subreddits I read. If I find myself not going back to a specific one (entries always maxed out), I just remove it.

</comment><comment><USER29> I subscribe to various programming language subreddits, a couple that hit my current interests (at the moment r/running, r/fitness), and some where people post neat photos (such as r/abandonedporn).

I browse it probably every day, usually while sitting somewhere waiting for other people to join me, or for an appointment or something. But not for too long. Probably 30 minutes on average, with some nights where I get bored and don't want to read a book leading to a several hour binge.

I do avoid all the particularly addictive subreddits, similar to my avoidance of the youtube trap. If I'm going to get lost online for hours in endless tabs it'll be a Wikipedia binge. At least that way I come away more informed than when I started.

</comment><comment><USER30> I use Reddit for all the other subjects than programming and startups that I'm interested in.

For example, I'm interested in energy production, energy policy and climate change, and there are several interesting energy related subreddits providing different view points and opinions (e.g. /r/energy, /r/climate, /r/nuclear, /r/hardenergy)

Also, I'm currently recreationally training running, swimming and weight lifting and Reddit gives a good view to all of these through /r/running, /r/swimming, /r/fitness and more specific subreddits ...

</comment><comment><USER31> The largest, I think, community for the niche software that I create is located on reddit. So I use it to see what's going on in the community, help people, show my products and so on.

Otherwise I only use reddit as a time waster.

</comment><comment><USER32> Removed most of my subs and subscribed only to subs related to current learning. Reddit usage has gone down noticeably and when I procrastinate, I'm browsing subjects I need to learn about.

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't. Facebook also gone. Got work to do. Maybe when I retire.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's like biting my nails. Without thinking, there I am, looking at something on reddit. Always just use the website. Follow my favorite sports team, pics, and gamedev mostly.

But, I'm going to be phasing it out of my life. As I get older, I feel like it's not good for me. I've done the same with Facebook and Twitter, it's time for Reddit to stop, and I'm a little worried about Pinterest - but I basically use that as my Google for ideas like Camping Hacks or Gluten Free recipes.

</comment><comment><USER35> As a Software Developer, I don't.

</comment><comment><USER36> Honestly, I've been addicted to reddit for something like 5 years now. I browse all day. I browse at work. I think "Right, better get off reddit" go sit on the couch and lo-and-behold, I'm already redditing on my smartphone. When I go to a browser absentmindedly my hands automatically type "red" before I even realise what's going on.

I've tried giving up a few times with limited success. If anyone can share any advice I would be grateful.

<comment><USER37> Interesting; you seem to like reddit a lot. So why exactly do you want to give it up?

<comment><USER38> Be careful not to confuse "liking" something with compulsively using it to distract yourself from the bleak pointlessness of existence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> /r/all, until it gets to the weird subreddits (like MLP) or when I've had enough / it's time to go to bed. It's mostly stupid entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER40> I have a couple of Zapier zaps set up to alert me of hot posts in a couple of niche subreddits. I use these alert mostly to inform my thinking and content for a blog I'm working on. It helps me decide what content will add value as I can see the type of questions people are asking, and it allows me to promote my blog as I can reference it in comments / answers.

Most of my interaction with Reddit is driven by these alerts.

</comment><comment><USER41> I have 2 accounts, one is personal that I check out stupid things on during my own time a few times a day, other is one that is only programming related subs which inevitably are just reposts of things here with less moderation. It'd be nice if there was a persona type system to combine those built into reddit but it certainly doesn't seem like there's a lot of active development going on there.

</comment><comment><USER42> Reddit is fine if you avoid the big default subreddits. I left reddit for HN some time ago. Now I find myself migrating back. /r/hackernews gives me the best of HN content on reddit. The comments on HN keep me here.

A few subreddit recommendations: /r/rust /r/rational /r/TheFutureIsNow /r/gamedesign /r/MorbidReality

</comment><comment><USER43> I check reddit a few times per day mostly because I'am a mod over there and want the subs to be clean but other than that I read /r/netsec a lot, very nice community with focus on quality.

Almost never share any content there but the few times I do I get really good feedback so next time I want to share something reddit will absolutely be the first place.

</comment><comment><USER44> I follow certain specific subject matter with it. My particular interests include (but are not limited to r/formula1, r/cars, r/guns, r/karting, and any game subreddit I may be interested in...

Everything else is short-term, quick-look entertainment (r/gifs, r/funny, r/pics, r/mildlyinteresting, etc).

</comment><comment><USER45> /r/programming, /r/python and /r/linux I read daily.

There are a handful of niche subreddits I follow as well (/r/futuresynth etc).

I stick an entry in the hosts file while I'm working as the temptation to just hit reddit to see what's happening is a little too high for comfort on boring days.

</comment><comment><USER46> I really at this point only check /r/haskell as that is the "best" spot for learning about new things for that language.

Otherwise most of my reason to go there has dropped off. Even the above can be mitigated by following the right twitter accounts (and I hate twitter but it has its uses).

</comment><comment><USER47> RSS of the monthly top 10 for niche subreddits: [https://www.reddit.com/r/mechanicalkeyboards/top/.rss?sort=t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/mechanicalkeyboards/top/.rss?sort=top&t=month)

</comment><comment><USER48> I switched to voat.co because of all the shill accounts, vote brigading, shadowbans, and corrupt mods on reddit.

Oh, not to mention the absolute insanity of the discussion that takes place in those threads.

I actually mostly browse HN now, a couple old forums, and RSS feeds via Feedly.

</comment><comment><USER49> To sate the need to express a narcissism of minor differences that drives enthusiasts apart.

</comment><comment><USER50> I really enjoyed Reddit. I can't say I was ever addicted. It was mostly a tool for procrastination. But then suddenly it didn't interest me anymore and I just stopped visiting. Perhaps I grew out of it?

</comment><comment><USER51> Anyone have advice for blocking reddit on an android (not rooted) phone? I found the site too addicting and time-wasting so the site is listed on my host file for my PC, but now I exclusively browse on my phone.

</comment><comment><USER52> I read mostly r/programming aka proggit and r/netsec. Both are active and have sometimes good content. Lots of noise though.

</comment><comment><USER53> I can't stand reddit. I've never been able to.

I "use" reddit by seeing memes and other popular imagery on Imgur.

</comment><comment><USER54> Find subreddits with few subscribers and many comments.

</comment><comment><USER55> > Some of my friends are Reddit addicts.

So the question is really "how do you not let it waste too much time"? I'm unsure whether the question is loaded or not.

EDIT: here is a more _constructive_ part of this comment, a more general technique to dealing with doing "useless" stuff in general:

Get a small notepad and a pen. Imagine that you have two hours of free time. Now before you're about to do something, write down what you are going to do. Not a plan of the two hours, but what you are going to do right now - <USER2> "wash the dishes", which might only take five minutes. The point here is to shake you out of whatever autopilot you are running on, and do things in a more _intentional_ way. When you are done with the dishes, you might write "practice the guitar". After that, maybe "check the front page of proggit, and bookmark the interesting links for later" if you don't have time for that right now, or want to do it later.

Hopefully this will avoid habitual things like the other poster mentioned, like immediately opening a browser and going to proggit or HN once the computer is turned on (I do this too!).

And of course, this technique can be used whenever, not just in your _free time_. The two hour free time was just an example.</comment>


Ancient kids' toys have been hiding in the archaeological record - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-toys-kids-archaeological-record <comment><USER2> Debate about whether or not artifacts are for ritual purposes always reminds me of a wonderful book by David Macaulay called "Motel of the Mysteries." [1] The publisher's description gives a good sense of it:

"It is the year 4022; all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one of then on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization."

[1] Some images here: [https://wearethemutants.com/2017/12/06/david-macauleys- motel...](https://wearethemutants.com/2017/12/06/david-macauleys-motel-of-the- mysteries-1979/)

<comment><USER3> I have this book! It's delightful and absolutely introduced me to a new perspective when I was a kid.

</comment></comment><comment> happy-go-lucky As kids growing up in a village, my friends and I played with button whirligigs and we made them out of broken pieces of clay pots discarded by our parents: Take a piece, rub its boundary on a hard irregular surface until it is smooth and discoid, make a hole in the center (take care not to break the object), pass a thread through this hole and keep the thing at the midpoint of the thread. Hold the two ends of the thread with your hands, spin it for a while and stop, and then immediately start whirling the thing by alternately pulling and releasing the tension on the thread.

Here's a wiki with some nice drawings:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirligig#Button_whirligigs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirligig#Button_whirligigs)

We also made ropes with jute, spinning tops of wood with an iron tip etc. We could not afford to buy things such as these. It was fun :)

<comment><USER4> Interesting, our process was way simpler. Flatten a bottle cap and make two holes in it with a nail.

<comment><USER5> Ours was even lazier. Find an oversized button.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just wanted to point out that it's great seeing the "Citations" and "Further Reading" links to the actual studies at the bottom and within the article. If only more of those 'science' news sites did the same...

</comment><comment><USER7> _Kids must have made those somewhat unevenly shaped jars and bowls, each easily held within a child's hand,..._

I feel a certain knowing connection with these parents of 4,000 years ago, when I imagine them also with a shelf of inexpert yet earnest pottery.

</comment><comment><USER8> > "Hey, what's this?" asks the first guy. "I dunno, probably a toy … or a > religious object," says the second.

> Archaeologists have long tended to choose the second option

One of the many reasons archaeology frustrates me. If you can't figure out why somebody built something in the past, its always for ritual reasons, rather than more mundane reasons.

For example, I went to Chichen-Itza last week. If something happened, and all the street vendors' stalls were abandoned, it's almost certain that archaeologists of a thousands years in the future would conclude that it was a major religious pilgrimage site, of a culture obsessed with miniature pyramids, obsidian miniatures, marble chess sets, and brightly glazed ceramic skulls. What they would make of the multitude of ceramic phallic hash pipes, I'm not sure I want to speculate about...

<comment><USER9> In your example, the activities are not religious.

However, to me, the tiny pyramids and other trinkets are a kind of modern day ritual - if something that has no clear explanation or practical purpose can be called a ritual.

Let's take a moment and think: why do we carry those items home after journeys? I've observed most of the time we toss them in a drawer and smile aftre discovering them 5 years later. We place them on the shelves. Do we use them to signal social status? Not really, they can usually be readily bought locally. When we gift them, do we expect the other person to remember what they meant 2 years later?

Or do we do it because "this is what people do"?

Of course, maybe there is a different answer, but to me, it looks like we produce these things to fulfill some irrational, ritualistic? need. If we do that now so often, then people in the past most likely did that too.

<comment><USER10> The problem is not the label "ritual", it's the way the word shuts down all further discussion.

Why? "Ritual." Done.

But that doesn't actually answer "why" it just gives it another word.

Another example in the same light: "How was the world created?" "God" vs "How was the world created?" "Big Bang".

In both cases you have answered nothing. You just used another word. "How was God created?" "Don't know", "How was the Big Bang created?" "Don't know".

Using a scientific sounding word _does not actually answer the question_ , anymore than using the word "ritual" answers the question.

Instead the lack of knowledge should be made explicit, and not hidden behind a "comfort" word. (I.e. a word used to make you feel better about not knowing.)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Bitcoin Donator Preview - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoindonator.bensbit.co.uk/preview/

<comment><USER2> Why reject tiny donations? Why not just stock them up and then send multiple donations in a single transaction?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm planning on lowering it to about 0.01. but I don't want it to be spammed so to speak with miniature donations.

<comment><USER3> Hmm, with bitcoin, how is this a problem?

<comment><USER4> transaction fees?

<comment><USER2> Are rarely necessary except for larger payments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So is the intention to generate addresses for the organisations without info going through you? Using js in the browser? (That would be awesome!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. The user chooses the organisations they wish to donate to, they are given an address to send there donation. When the donation is received it's distributed between the chosen organisations and sent. All done as simply as possible so you can donate to loads of worthy organisations in seconds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure that making it easier would convince me to part with my hard earned Bitcoins any easier.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not meant to, it's if you wish to donate it makes it easier to find/discover organisations accepting bitcoins as a method of donation. I know there's a page on the bitcoin wiki but you still have to go onto each site and search for the bitcoin address. This also makes it easier to send to multiple organisations quickly and painlessly.</comment></comment>


Why are IT people notoriously condescending?  - <AUTHOR>

"Why are IT people notoriously condescending?"<p>It just seems that most people I've met in IT come off as very condescending, I have even been known to come off this way and I'm trying to be more aware of this. <comment><USER2> I don't believe it's any more prevalent than the public service sector or any other field where one group is typically inundated with the requests of another group, and where request/action responsibility is never reciprocated to even out the power dynamic.

Add to that the issue that IT workers rarely get to deal with their users when things work well or perfectly. When IT systems work, they're invisible to the users, and no one thinks to go say thank you. Again this isn't just in IT- things that just work become invisible, and we don't tend to appreciate them until they fail and then are quickly restored. Then we go back to ignoring that the system exists.

If the strong majority of your experience in automobiles were crashes, or the only time you saw your parents were when they were angry, your opinions around automobiles, their operators, and parenting would be drastically different than others.

There's also just the simple fact that people who tend to deal with machines more often than people may not end up perfectly socialized and end up reacting in a way that feels natural but might be seen as 'different' to those who would work in (say) a daycare all day, unintentionally coming off poorly. A company's Social Club planner is going to have a very different view of what "fun" in the office is compared to most people, I think it just comes down to expressing appreciation and trying to remember that everyone is trying to do their best.

I do hope none of this was read as being condescending, I don't intend for it to be.

</comment><comment><USER3> I rarley talk down to other technicians regardless of experience. I always think it's worthwile to listen to what other techies and IT staff have to say since experiences vary and sharing knowlegde is important. And by that i mean giving just as well as taking. If I meet an older technician I greatly aprreciate every second he/she sacrifices in order to answer a question. I also feel obliged to treat pepole with less experience the same way that I myself appreciate to be treated.

When it comes to pepole outside of IT however i rarley bother with being polite. here's some of the reasons:

Pepole generally treat IT staff badly. Things should "just work" and if they don't we're the ones left witht the noose around our necks. No bad descisions made by HR,Economy or senior management could ever have any effect in the outcome of a project or the quality of service. Most pepole in the forementioned departments know little or nothing about what IT is actually doing yet they often play a big part in important desicions concerning the IT enviroment in a company. If something goes to hell its always "the servers aren't managed properly" and never "it's because we denied you the budget needed for new hardware so we could show off a .1% better margin this quarter". It's never "My god we should have listened when you told us you needed a new programmer since the workload has skyrocketed latley" and so on and so forth.

Making a change in how IT is managed is rarley done based upon logical conclusions and reasoning and very often done based upon numbers in a spreadsheet. It's the first thing companies cut back on in bad times and it's the last thing companies spend money on in good times. This often results in a "They don't understand us and they don't care about us" attitude amongst the IT staff. Most of us love what we do and care just as much about the company we work for as any other person. how do you expect us to treat pepole who constantly tread on our toes and then hangs us when we can't run the mile fast enough?

here's a real life example for you: a person with a position quite high up in the hierarchy walks into the room where the 1st line technicians reside and want's an extra screen. The reply he/she get's is "I'm sorry we only have a few spares left and we want to reserve those for pepole whose primary screens break." he then replies "Yeah yeah, but you can buy new ones." this is when it turns ironic. the technician replies "No sir i'm sorry but we can't do that, you see we have a very tight budget as costs are rising so we don't have much of our budget left and we have to manage that carefully in order not to run out". The manager is clearly annoyed and walks of in a huff after clearly stating that "In that case the IT budget has been very badly managed, i think that it's a shame you can't do your jobs properly". This could have been true. If it hadn't been for the fact that they recently merged with another company and this was not given a separate project budget at all. resulting in the IT department having to spend almost all of their budget mergin the networks,ad's,financial systems etc of the two companies. This was not planned for at the beginning of the year when budgets were set. In this case an IT employee got a verbal beating for a desicion made by higher ups and it clearly shows a lack of understanding from senior management and economy in how IT works and what's needed budget wise to make things work. And you know what, it's not the first and most definatley not the last time similiar situations will occur.

*Edit to format the post a bit it was a huge wall of text and not very readable(first post here so i'm not quite familiar with how things work yet :) )

</comment><comment><USER4> If someone is in an advisory role, it's easy to take their advice as condescending.

When a non-IT person has correspondence with an IT person about IT stuff it could come off as condescending because more often than not, the shared common knowledge is not there.

You probably could come off less condescending if you teach your users in terms of "Best Practices" instead of "Things to Avoid".

<http://hustletips.tumblr.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> i think its simple. when someone from IT has to "help" you, its usually because of something you did, or did indirectly because of a lack of basic computer knowledge. when your career is based off of the ignorance (and sometimes downright stupidity) of others, you tend to adopt that type of tone. it provides you more general control over situations.

<comment><USER6> I've noticed that I can sniff out pretty quickly who is actually interested in what's going on and is willing to learn things so they can fix it the next time. (Hint: these people also tend to appreciate your services).

It's the remainder - the _Idontfuckingcarejustgetitfixed_ crowd - that ends up with my disdain and condescending feelings after a time. You know they'll never learn, they'll never _care_ to learn, and you're just an obstacle to whatever is waiting on the other end of that Powerpoint or Farmville run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> At the risk of sounding like a snob (though please note I am not in IT):

Folks who are reasonably bright are often given hell in school and become social outcasts because of stuff teachers, society and other kids do (teachers are really bad about holding up the smart kids as examples to follow even though no amount of studying will make the other kids that smart and, no, it really isn't anything the teacher did though they are trying to take credit for it). Condescension can be a form of ego defense -- ie "I have few if any friends and I know you hate me on sight just for being me, but I'm better than you and probably make more money".

You can often get past something like that by overlooking it and being genuinely nice to them and sincerely respecting their brains/ability/contribution instead of resenting it and trying to fight for the limelight with them. Only the occasional hardcore asshole will persist for long with consistently asinine behavior in the face of genuine, sincere niceness and respect/appreciation.

(Though, really, all the folks from IT at my company that I can recall interacting with have been just genuinely nice to me from the get go.)</comment>


Ask HN: Offline mode for SaaS - <AUTHOR>

im planning to build a SaaS, my potential clients will generate transactions every 15 minutes or so, they also have very weak internet links cause they dont live in the city, so it could be the case that internet is down for more than 30 minute. I guess the solution would be to build an "offline" mode, but im not quite sure how can i do that or where should i even start, any pointers in the right direction would be appreciated.<p>thanks, B. <comment><USER2> For posting data, you could check connection status (or $.ajax error callback) and if the client cannot access then store the data locally using localStorage [1]. When the connection becomes available again then post all data from localStorage to the end-point and clear out local store.

[1] [http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_webstorage.asp](http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_webstorage.asp)

<comment><AUTHOR> nice, sounds like a start point :)

thanks. B.</comment></comment>


Trion developing its first server-based, "thin client" MMORPG - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconalleyinsider.com/2008/6/trion_preps_first_server_based_game_inks_scifi_channel_deal

<comment><USER2> Sounds interesting. It's gonna be a challenge and a half to get this to work though, can't imagine the number of challenges that this approach will create</comment>


Show HN: Syrup – Slickdeals like deal site only for the startup tools - <AUTHOR> http://getsyrup.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys, we couldnt find any deal aggregator site for startup tools. So, we built this in our spare time. We are not sure how to market this or how to make it bigger/value accretive. Please give us your feedback and suggestions.

There has been AppSumo, but we dont see many good deals on it these days. And since we dont have great connections like Noah we cant get deals directly. :) Its a chicken and egg problem.

</comment><comment><USER2> You need a big audience. If you have one you can even get away with something like this: [http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special- offers/](http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers/) :-o

<comment><AUTHOR> We are starting from small :) But we will see as we dont have a big audience. Its a chicken and egg problem, so what we are doing is doing a bit of customer development first. We are also talking with product owners for exclusive deals.</comment></comment>


U.S. Power Plant Hit by USB-Based Malware - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414371,00.asp <comment><USER2> seems like a CD-R would have been a better choice. if they needed something more permanent take it to another system that is out of the control loop and copy it off the CDR to a flash drive.</comment>


I Am Not a Machine. Yes You Are - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/79/catalysts/picassos-got-nothing-on-ai-artists <comment><USER2> Something I've come to value increasingly more and more in art is its canonicity. Beyond a certain quality threshold, I find that through sufficient exposure, I can train myself to appreciate and enjoy any art. For example, the first time I listened to Bach's organ works, I didn't like it much, because I had so little exposure to organ music. But after continuing to listen, eventually I got it and now I deeply appreciate Bach's organ works.

Beyond a certain threshold, art quality stops mattering as much as exposure. And beyond any shadow of a doubt, the amount of art past this threshold is already much more than anyone can expose themselves to in a lifetime. Given all this, it follows naturally that one should choose art based on other criteria, like how much it has driven history, or who you can discuss it with at a dinner party. In short: its canonicity.

Any artwork churned out by machine is non-canonical almost by definition. Even if it turns out to be "good" (whatever that means), the fact that it can be churned out en masse means any particular piece of it has zero cultural value. Maybe with exceptions for e.g. the absolute very first piece that gets broadcast live (like a "Beatles on Ed Sullivan" moment). Certainly you would never find someone else at a dinner party who would say, "Oh, yes, I too enjoy Microsoft's Still Life #565343598753. What do you think of the way the computer did the clouds in that?"

<comment><USER3> Expertise grows with that exposure. You are learning to recognize and appreciate particular aspects, and those aspects can be tweaked by an AI artist.

Appreciation grows even deeper when you know something about techniques, theory, contexts, etc.</comment></comment>