Tracking Users Across the Web via TLS Session Resumption - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.07304 <comment><USER2> > To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to report on the > applicability of TLS session resumption for user tracking.

Whoa. I had no idea browsers were sending unique identifiers back to previously visited sites, even with cleared/disabled cookies. Nginx can pass $ssl_session_id upstream, so it's very possible that this is being used for tracking in the wild: [http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_ssl_module.html#varia...](http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_ssl_module.html#variables)

Luckily, it looks like Chrome incognito mode does have a different TLS session cache, so at least things aren't leaking there. [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=30877](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=30877)

But it's unclear, for instance, whether mobile browsers use separate TLS caches for private browsing.

On top of the tracking described in the OP, the very presence of session resumption introduces an interesting timing attack. Imagine a malicious site which attempts to embed assets from various sites, all of which are known to have a similar RTT (perhaps they're hosted from the same datacenter). By seeing which are fulfilled more quickly than others (by virtue of resuming TLS sessions), you could probabilistically know which sites the user has visited before. Malicious actors could use this for phishing, or to establish bona fides in extorting payments (particularly for obscure sites with questionable content). It's exactly why we don't allow Javascript to introspect whether a link is blue or purple. Not good.

<comment><USER3> FWIW, Tor browser has had it disabled for years. Caching and anonymity are almost always at odds.

For timing attacks, I think the required sample size of first connection to third party would be too large to reasonably exploit. You have to see if your first attempt does just a couple of TCP handshake messages shorter, future attempts would send the session ID from the first in client hello. There's too much between the third party and your user's browser for you to make any assumptions about just one loaded resource's TLS shortcut.

<comment><USER4> > There's too much between the third party and your user's browser for you to > make any assumptions about just one loaded resource's TLS shortcut.

Are you assuming that or is there some testing you know of that can help back that up?

Because I've heard of timing attacks happening over networks with a surprising amount of precision.

Granted I'm inclined to believe you, it's my gut feeling as well, but I've been so very wrong about this in the past that I default to assuming there is no amount of latency or jitter that can hide a timing attack from a determined attacker.

<comment><USER5> "Because I've heard of timing attacks happening over networks with a surprising amount of precision."

They can, when you can issues thousands, millions, or even billions of attempts that are sufficiently statistically independent and then do statistics on the result. In this case, you want to see if the user has an open TLS session to a particular resource, but you only get one shot at the result, because after the first shot, now the user certainly has a TLS session open to the particular resource. So you have no opportunity to do many K/M/Grequests to nail down the differences and are swamped by other random events.

Across a population of browsers you might be able to extract a small fraction of a bit per user, but you're certainly not getting anywhere near the full bit (yes they have open session/no they do not) on a per-user basis. While you can extract non-zero amounts of information I don't think you could count on getting any sort of _useful_ information from it.

<comment><USER4> That's a really good point, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is interesting and disturbing (like many other studies related to tracking/profiling). It looks like a never ending race between privacy and convenience/performance.

I'm disappointed that iOS has longer windows (120 minutes) for session resumption. Also, is the browser engine restriction on iOS the reason why all the tested browsers support the same duration? Or is it that the browser developers haven't yet looked at this in their iOS code?

Even the desktop scene looks good, among well known browsers (to me), only for Brave and Opera, with a duration of 30 minutes. The others are subpar for me. Firefox and Safari on the desktop are both terrible, with a one day duration for session resumption. When I started reading this paper I expected these two to be the best or the second best.

<comment><USER7> Now this identified I'm sure Mozilla will fix the issue quickly

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This has been known forever, and it doesn't only affect websites. DNS over TLS has the same issue, and effectively gives _more_ information to DNS providers than regular DNS.

Which is why dnscrypt-proxy can disable session resumption for DoH, or can use a new key for each transaction when using the dnscrypt protocol.

(Intra won't allow disabling it because apparently, users are idiots [https://github.com/Jigsaw-Code/Intra/issues/101](https://github.com/Jigsaw- Code/Intra/issues/101) )

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there a setting to change this in firefox?

<comment><USER10> There is a setting (security.ssl.disable_session_identifiers). You have to add it yourself, it's not in about:config by default. See [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=967977](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=967977)

<comment><USER11> And many settings are documented in this project [https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js](https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js)

[https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js/blob/master/user.js#L10...](https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js/blob/master/user.js#L1004)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lol I'd rather someone cut my tounge than have to praise Microsoft but dang, edge protects against this and chrome and Firefox sleepin

</comment><comment><USER13> Url changed from [http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/1810.07304](http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/1810.07304).</comment>


Show HN: Recover bouncing visitors with special offers - <AUTHOR> http://maxtraffic.com

<comment><USER2> The demo is not really doing anything for me... I get the welcome pop-up when I enter the site, but nothing has come up when I go to leave the site (whether I have clicked on anything or not). Is it supposed to bring up an alert when I go to leave?

Side note: I am not sure how I feel about these techniques. I remember something similar on hobbyking, where if you left a page open for too long a pop up would come up offering you a discount for the item. Once I figured out it did this, I would go around leaving pages open hoping to get discounts. It was annoying, and I would refuse to pay full price after I saw this in action, even when it stopped making me offers. Be careful when overly gaming your customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback! I guess we need to improve demo site, so it is more clear. Our idea in demo page was to show different kind of targeting examples while simulating a purchase process. And the Exit example is in further steps. About overly gaming customers - sure, based on our experience we suggest our client suitable campaign ideas, and it actually does need always to be a discount, it can be some ongoing promotion or reminder about some specific feature.

<comment><USER3> It isn't working for me. I added some stuff to my card, tried to check out and got the message "Move your cursor to the cross or address bar as if you were about to abandon this cart", but nothing happens when I do as the message says.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty simple to do on your own. And although I appreciate the idea of charging folks who don't want the hassle of building something themselves, some might want more control: [http://tonylea.com/go/examples/jquery-exit- popup/#](http://tonylea.com/go/examples/jquery-exit-popup/#)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just launched our new site, and we offer 1 month free trial, would be happy for any feedback.

<comment><USER5> Are you overriding the back button to show an offer when clicked? Or do you show the offer before the click by tracking the mouse position?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have both options: 1. Exit Intent - track mouse position, show offer when you are about to leave 2\. BounceBack - show offer when you click the Back button and only in cases if you would leave site. If you click Back again, you get sent to the previous page (for example, search engine)

<comment><USER6> Back button hijacking like this is spam. Please stop selling this product. When someone hits the back button they want to leave. Forcing them to stay on the site after that action is wrong. Shameful. I know you won't care, because people who create things like this don't have an ethical compass, but sometimes I just can't help myself.

<comment><USER7> I agree. There is one legitimate use of this type of product and that is at the end of sale funnel. I have found on one of my sites where the customer is shown the final confirmation page that they sometimes leave without submitting even though their intent is to complete. It seems that some (most) customer don't (can't) read and think that they don't need to confirm their order is correct. If they click away or back out at this stage I ask them if they really want to do this as they have not yet submitted their order. I find I catch around 15% of customers at this point turn around and submit the order after getting this message so I can only assume that I have saved them from a mistake.

<comment><USER8> Another legitimate use is when you're in the middle of designing something (drawing app, for example) that you might have spent a long time on and hitting the back button will lose your progress.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Survival of the Best Fit - <AUTHOR> https://www.survivalofthebestfit.com <comment><USER2> Well done! It's not really a "game" as there is no challenge, but it succeeds in explaining the issue in a captivating way.

<comment><USER3> No it doesn't, because it always will choose based on color, even though you may hire explicitly based on skill for instance. What it's missing is that it is the human component that evaluates a person's skill influenced by the color, before giving the information to the algorithm. So this whole charade just seems forced.</comment></comment>


Size Matters: why universal 'mobile-first' is a bad strategy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/7715e2860bad

<comment><USER3> Well said in general but I have 2 fundamental disagreements

re: #2 - this assumes that the quality of workflow/creation tools have peaked. Part of what drives the growth in tablets as a work device is simply that an office filled with tablets is an order of magnitude cheaper to supply than an office filled with workstations. I'll admit some category of activities (eg programming, architecture, anything precision related) will resist the shift to mobile/tablets harder than others, but many white collar jobs don't actually require desktop grade computing, it just happens to be the case that desktops/laptops were all that was available and that is where the tools were. (even this is being pushed - look at the Binary App for development and Plangrid for architecture)

Re: #3 - Marco argues this point re: HTML5 (and Android) really well. With the hardware accelerated graphics made possible by iOS 7 (and the better hardware coming with the next gen iOS devices), you're going to have to work REALLY hard to create HTML5 apps that "wow" like native ones can.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your #2 is actually self-defeating. Your assumption would be that the desktop tools have peaked as well. The point that I'm making is that a lot of studies have shown increased productivity with increased screen real estate and that many work tasks benefit from more display space.

Re #3: Again, this depends on the type of application you're making. Not all great interfaces need max out the hardware (think Dots or Medium).

<comment><USER3> Fair on #2 - I don't think the desktop tools have peaked though. Just that the quality on mobile/tablets is growing faster.

The studies you cite will also have the built in bias of comparing a 3 - <USER2> year old computing paradigm with one that's had a quarter century to mature . . .

<comment><AUTHOR> The studies are actually desktop vs desktop. Big screen versus smaller screens.

As for #2, we'll see where things head. I'm just seeing some refocus on better desktop UX that I hadn't seen in a few years.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thorn - <AUTHOR> http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4086

<comment><USER2> Superficially, it seems a lot like an implementation of Hoare's CSP, but without the fine grained control of processes that allow a bunch of them to be executed only in sequence.

Message passing seems to be becoming popular now.</comment>


Clicker Diet: Tracking Diet with Tally Counter - <AUTHOR> https://clickerdiet.com/ <comment><USER2> > I also noticed that calories counting was the most efficient way to drop off > extra weight, but counting calories is a very-very-very daunting task. If > you ever used MyFitnesPal or similar tool you know how much time it takes: > unlock your phone, find the app, wait till it loads, go through the list of > categories, find the right food (if you are lucky), try to measure what you > ate/about to eat and adjust numbers, save. Eventually, it became "I will add > all these things in the evening," then I started missing days until I gave > up entirely.

If you are embarking on a diet, I would highly advocate minimizing meal variability to remove the cognitive overhead associated with meal planning. If you pick 3-5 healthy meals that you can eat everyday, calorie or macro counting becomes simple because you already know that what you are going to eat will fit into your daily totals.

I cut from 300 to 215 lbs several years ago and kept the weight off. If you're interested in reading some high level dieting advice, please refer to my post here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15604761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15604761)

<comment><USER3> The amount of weight you have or had or lost (in lbs or kg) does not tell the reader anything about your height, age, or BMI.

<comment><USER2> When I started my diet I was a very obese, 300 lbs, untrained (no lifting or running experience), 6'2" male in my early 20s. I am now 225 lbs and have put on significant muscle mass. I don't know what my BMI is, but BMI for a lifter is a useless metric as it doesn't take lean muscle mass into account. I achieved almost all of my weight loss over the course of one year; obviously putting the muscle on took much longer than that.

<comment><USER4> If you care, you can get an accurate measurement of lean muscle mass from a DXA scan for about $50.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like this amounts to "Tracking calories wasn't working, but tracking calories divided by 100, that's the ticket!" While a mechanical clicker is certainly cleaner than an app, you hit the same snags of not really knowing the calorie content unless your diet is incredibly regular. While I'm happy the author found a gimmick that helps them stick to their calorie targets, I don't think this needed a write-up, much less a dedicated website.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most crucial part is adjusting a total number of points each "sprint". This way you start with each click = 100kcal, but eventually, it will be something else based on how your brain estimates the caloric content of the food you eat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The points system reminds me a lot of the Weight Watchers system where foods have roughly assigned point totals.

<comment><USER7> > I was thinking – what if I assigned a particular number of points to each > food I eat and try to keep points under certain threshold daily, and, which > is more critical, weekly.

Yup, even the weekly total is very similar to the Weight Watchers system.

<comment><USER8> I think the insight is that you don't really have to track down the points for everything you eat. you can guesstimate how many points something is and the measurement error will come out in the wash after you calibrate it to observes weight loss / gain. Pretty neat IMHO!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In Feb, this year, got severe coughing, went to the doctor just to find out I had really high blood sugar. Next thing - do as I did 10+ years ago - cut all carbs/sugar - 6 months later, on (I guess) keto diet - I'm from 320 -> 275lbs - without calorie restriction - e.g. I eat as I like.

For some unknown reason cholesterol also went down. My only "gym" exercise are walking the dog - mile, two or three a day. Iron mind #2, #2.5 and #3 and few more like it, and recently started again doing occasional push-ups, pull-ups, dips, etc.

I know that once I get back into shape, and start going to the real gym, and hit the legs - I'll lose even more :)

<comment><USER10> _> For some unknown reason cholesterol also went down_

I tried a keto diet last year.

Unfortunately, my cholesterol went through the roof. Shot up from "concerningly high" to "holy shit that's high" in a single month.

<comment><USER11> Your cholesterol can balance out over time, might be worth trying for a longer time and seeing if it goes back down. It's also worth trying to reduce your dairy consumption to see if that makes a difference.

<comment><USER12> Humans also respond to dietary cholesterol differently. I'd leave this up to the doctors.

<comment><USER9> I just gave another blood test today, waiting to see how it goes. But stopped my lipitor in the mean time. We both decided to experiment with the doctor and see how it goes... Fully metrics-driven development :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Log how much you eat at your current weight. Then eat less of that. Once you hit a new plateau you decide if you want to weigh even less. If so then eat less again.

I'm 35 pounds down from my high weight and have kept it off for 6 months now. I eat all the same crap (candy included). I just eat less of it.

It is only rocket science if you choose to make it rocket science.

<comment><USER14> > Then eat less of that.

The hard part is finding a way to do that, especially over a longer period of time. Generally people are working against some combination of social, cultural, psychological, physiological, and financial pressures so it is not necessarily simple to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This was one of the best explanations of why "calories in, calories out" isn't true. [https://betterhumans.coach.me/why-caloric-restriction- fails-...](https://betterhumans.coach.me/why-caloric-restriction-fails- part-2-ec0c0c337649)

<comment><USER16> "So what happens if you are trying to lose weight by adopting conventional advice to reduce the dietary fat and calories, and eat 6 times a day. By doing so, you keep insulin levels high because you are eating lots of low-fat bread, pasta, and rice and eating all the time."

I don't think "conventional advice" is to eat 6 times a day. And "conventional advice" is certainly not to eat lots of bread, pasta, and rice.

Fung is pretty obviously setting up a strawman argument here.

Furthermore, even accepting his absurd strawman, wouldn't the body still end up burning fat when you sleep (8+ hour fast)? Fung himself said so earlier in this article: "But what happens when you go to sleep? Because you are not eating, you are fasting."

This article is mere ad copy to sell Fung's books (and whatever else he is selling).

By the way, I personally think there may be something to intermittent fasting and I plan to try it sometime myself, I just can't stand con-men who have to puff themselves up by creating strawmen arguments and preying on people's insecurities about their weight, which is basically what Fung is doing here. Any benefit from intermittent fasting will just be a marginal improvement over achieving caloric reduction through other means.

If you want to lose weight, cut calories. You can do that by eating 6 meals a day, or occasionally fasting, or eating low-carb or eating low-fat, whatever works for you.

But if you consume fewer calories than you eat, you will lose weight. Read carefully and you will find that even people like Fung are forced to admit this. Be skeptical of anyone who tells you otherwise, they're almost always trying to sell you something.

<comment><USER17> While I completely agree with you on the general puffery of most of these diet book people, note that Fung comes at this from having treated thousands of people for diabetes, with a great deal of success. I think you should take a closer look at his writing, which is fact-based and extensive.

The eating six times a day advice IS advice I have repeatedly heard and I have known many people who follow it. The idea that we should be eating lots of carbohydrates IS conventional advice if you consider the medical community's decades of instruction that we should not eat fat or meat: the only remaining macronutrient that most westerners will eat is carbohydrates. The popular prevalence of keto and paleo and Atkins makes people forget that the prevailing medical advice STILL effectively directs people to a high carb, low calorie diet.

Calories-in-calories out isn't wrong, but it is incomplete. It doesn't explain why the "Biggest Loser" winners see their base line calorie consumption drop way below what you'd expect for someone of their new weight. It doesn't explain why some people NEVER have to diet while other go through life starving but still gain weight. If it were just "calories in calories out", you wouldn't see these anomalies. In short, it doesn't explain hunger.

Fung's insulin theory has good science behind it and fits well with a lot of historical observations, such as the increase in sugar in our diets. And the ADF diet study had incredibly good results.

<comment><USER18> > It doesn't explain why some people NEVER have to diet while other go through > life starving but still gain weight

This is simply not true. I monitored behaviors of my friends or asked them probing questions where I suspected this was the case. They may 'skip dinner' or 'have a light dinner' the day you watched them gorge on cake, but you might not see that. They may run 10 miles the day after eating the same Mexican food as you.

Same with other side, people who say they don't gain weight in spite of eating 1000s of calories in surplus just aren't eating 1000s of calories in surplus. They think they are because they often eat candy, ... but they may take a bite or two and 'save the rest for later', or 'have dessert for dinner' and think that's eating lots of calories.

They may also be taller than you by a couple inches and you're underestimating the effect height has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is it just me or did the OP just reinvent Weight Watchers points?

<comment><USER20> Yes, and he describes it as his "lightbulb moment".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think it's probably better to train yourself to accurately estimate the calories in food than it is to assign food to clicks for two reasons. One, it's easier to measure calories in vs calories out if you use the same units for both. Two, adjusting the unit you are measuring (clicks vs calories) doesn't solve the problem of bad estimates. My calorie estimates are rarely off by the same percentage, often times my estimates on certain food will be off by 50% whole other food is spot on. 50% could be a choicing a few clicks less on certain high calorie foods causing your counting to be inaccurate.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm not sure I can envisage any situation where I wouldn't be chipping away at point totals like a particularly needy Product Manager

</comment><comment><USER14> Excellent!

One of my little side projects (perpetually in progress, unfortunately) is an Apple Watch app with exactly the same mechanic.

(That is, to budget food in terms of points where a 1 point == "my estimate of 100 calories", and you adjust your daily budget based on long-term weight change.)

The idea is to distill the benefit of tracking calories -- which I think is (1) the basic mindfulness around eating to stop and think for just a second before stuffing something in your mouth; and (2) the valuable feedback loop it creates... while minimizing the tracking tasks.

However, I think this is really best for experienced calorie counters because while the estimates don't need to be accurate, they do need to be fairly consistent and proportionate. And, I suspect, you need to be ready to calculate calories when you're facing an unfamiliar meal.

I'm encouraged that it has been working for our author.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting concept. How does the clicker relate to the spreadsheet? that is, if you're entering the data into a spreadsheet anyway, why also the clicker? (isn't the point of the clicker to simplify away the laborious/unmaintainable spreadsheet stuff?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Clicker is in my pocket and I "sync" every evening (or next morning before the first meal)

I like the convenience of it. I do not have to pull out the phone to enter a number. I can discretely click it while it is in the pocket while in the restaurant without bringing up dieting topic. And I personally like mechanical feeling of it.

<comment><USER24> I'm working on a expenses tracker app, I hope I could find a similar way to input money expenses. Pulling out the phone/unlocking it/opening the app/entering data sounds easy, but it's not when you have to do it several times daily, it depends too much in discipline.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not quite seeing how clicker would work for precise stuff like money/budgeting. Perhaps the opposite would work - you "click" when you save? I.e. you look at something you want to buy impulsively, and refuse to do it. And reward yourself with a point (or multiple)

Just throwing an idea.. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The healthiest thing people could do is realize that the five year success rate for weight loss is about 1%, and those people in the 1% that maintain their weight loss invariably manage it by becoming obsessive with their calorie counting. Ergo, chasing a number is bad for your physical and mental health.

Also, unless you're class 2 obese or above, you are probably healthier not losing any weight. Being thin is more about looks than actual health.

Want to be healthy? Exercise. Toss the scale.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a great idea. I've been on a several year cycle where every 3-4 years I go hardcore again and cut 20-30 lbs with minimizing meal variability and exercising constantly. This feels like a great solution for the intermediate time of trying to slow/stop my general daily increase of 10-20% increase in calorie intake. Even having a small, easy habit like using a mechanical tracker would make me more mindful of what I eat and have a beneficial impact.

</comment><comment><USER18> Practical diet for software engineers:

\- Breakfast + dinner <= 500 cals

\- Lunch eat what the company gives or go out with teammates, don't get 2nds or lots of dessert. Keep it to 1000 cals.

<comment><USER27> best advice here IMO

also just memorize a bunch of common food items you eat, bananas are about 100 calories, bowl of cereal + milk, protein shake, etc. Should be less than 10 items you need to commit to memory, you can guesstimate everything else off of these. For reference, a burrito bowl from chipotle w/ everything but guac is ~1000 calories, ~300 calories for a tortillia shell, its a good balance eyeball measurement to use, since most of the food groups are in there.

Have some nonperishable consumable foods to balance calorie vs hunger intake. I use jerky.

Drink increased amounts of water to reduce appetite on weight loss

Unfortunately my dinner and lunch meals have too much variability so it becomes hard to keep track of though. Mine looks like breakfast <300 calories, early lunch and late dinner <800 calories.

For bulking you just need to adjust the breakfast / lunch / dinner values. Easiest way is to make breakfast a fullmeal, and add a 4th meal (protein shake) at night, but keep everything else the same

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Highly relevant: [https://blog.beeminder.com/bites/](https://blog.beeminder.com/bites/) (about tracking bites of food and committing to a max number per day)

<comment><USER29> This is bonkers, but _slightly_ less so once you realize that the author means "mouthfuls of food or caloric liquid" rather than literal bites (which you hopefully do many times per mouthful of food).

<comment><USER28> Ha, thanks for saying that. My mother had the same reaction and I assumed she was just being obtuse but now that a commenter on Hacker News has said it I'm going to assume there's genuine ambiguity there and add a little prescript to the post to clarify! ... and done. Thanks again!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Neat idea! This is intuitive to how I approach eating and working out in general. I gauge the overall consumption and activity and make adjustments for the next day or week. Progress is generally slow but consistent.

<comment><USER30> For instance I also gauge how repetitive the foods I eat so I also maintain an internal awareness for the need to have variety and a good biome.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Re: weight watchers - it is close, but not the same. the ultimate goal is to get mind assign points for food, no matter how much each point worth in calories. 1click = 100kcal is just a starting point.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is awesome! Thanks so much for sharing, how do you handle increases or changes in activity during a sprint?

<comment><AUTHOR> I do put notes about my workouts or anything out of ordinary, but in general I just trying to keep it down to number of point (which no longer represent 100kcal anymore) and adjusting total number after each "sprint" and its results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Calories in calories out." Yes, hooray we've restated the 1st law of thermodynamics, because it's never wrong, and you can never be called out for saying something incorrect when you trot out that phrase. But it's also about as relevant to effective nutrition as it is to the current price of soybeans.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think the simpler the plan the easier it is to maintain.

I lost weight and maintain it without any exercise, dieting and only minimal portion control (which is now super easy and I can cheat whenever I want, even every day).

How I have lost weight, and not only maintained the lost weight, but also continue to slightly lose more, is to be ok with being hungry.

Being hungry is good and normal and if you can get to this point mentally then every meal tastes better, you eat less automatically (some portion control is related, next paragraph) and when you are hungry your stomach has contracted some and you need less food to feel full. Also, you have more energy, and more time (less spent on dealing with food).

To ensure you are hungry before the next meal, eat less and less every time until you understand your body intuitively. Not with measures, but with skill honed by experience, customized information/data to your exact body and life.

An average day (currently), I make an egg/milk (add ice to make a shake) type drink for breakfast and lunch. Sometimes a very light lunch, and then I eat whatever I want to for dinner. Anything I feel like. (anyone can find something super light, just to get you through a few hours, and then be hungry before lunch.)

If in the future my energy level changes? (from more/less exercise or activity) Then so will my hunger status, which automatically adjusts how much I eat.

But feeling hungry has to be ok. I like being hungry for about an hour before I eat a meal.

This is with no exercise at all, none.

Also, when on vacation, if I pig out (not as enjoyable as it used to be) or drink more than usual, then it doesn't matter at all, because if I go up a few pounds, they will shed easily in the next couple days.

\--Experiment from the past year.

Last year (summer) I did intermittent fasting, and got up to running 2 miles a day. I lost 15 pounds in a month. I kept most of it off, but limited my running a lot after this, and by December I decided to see if pure strength exercising would be enough to control weight. It was not, I gained weight, mostly muscle, but my waist did not shrink.

Then last January, I decided to try the "be hungry and ok" technique, and I've done this for about 8 months. My weight has consistently fluctuated in a downward trend. I will never go back to gorging, exercise for weight loss or any of that really stressful stuff, it doesn't work long term for me.

I will start running again soon, and it may help with weight loss, but I won't rely on it. I exercise to be strong and healthy, not to fix my eating problems anymore.

Cheers and encourage to everyone dealing with health and weight issues.

<comment><USER3> Great post. In addition, some foods/drinks are able to satisfy more than others whilst their calories don't add up.

Consider simple water. I once read a book which recommended to drink water right before dinner so you'd eat less; it seemed to work. Drinking water in general when I'm hungry helps, and has far less calories than soda or alcoholic beverages. Best of all, if you're in a restaurant in The Netherlands you may ask for tapwater and it has to be free (IIRC they could ask you service costs, not sure). But you need to make sure you ask for _tap_ water.

Also, learning to fast (practicing) can aid with feeling OK to be hungry. Some people start to feel terrible if they don't eat for a while (my partner has this problem) whereas I fasted for a longer time and it certainly changed my perspective on food in general. I'm not eating for a few hours? I'll survive. I've been through worse (whilst I was on smoking cessation I barely ate for a week, with very light foods such as cucumber).

<comment><USER34> Each year I do 2 dry fasts of ~7 days each, in addition to one or two water fasts of ~25 days each time. It's a great experience, and best gift you can give to your body.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I guess this is a law now. I have nothing against it, but imma be the first to coin the observation. Let it be known that today tw1010 was the first to observe that it seems, funny isn't it, like every new pet project the tech world stumbles into (biohacking, economics, etc) will eventually find all its subcomponents (fasting is a subcomponent of biohacking, etc) combinatorially combined with all the concepts in the tech sphere (agile, etc), as long as the combination makes sense (but sometimes also when it doesn't make sense; a nonsensical blog hidden in a github gist viewed by 13 people).</comment>


Ascribing Mental Qualities to Machines, by John McCarthy - <AUTHOR> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/ascribing/ascribing.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Side-note: we need more technical articles here. Someone on reddit said that there are too many business/web 2.0 articles posted here and they're drowning out the previously awesome technical articles.</comment>


Texas Gunman Escaped from Mental Health Facility - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/us/texas-shooting-church.html <comment><USER2> This title should be edited to reflect the actual title of the piece: "Texas Gunman Once Escaped From Mental Health Facility"

The difference is important.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. He did so in 2012, not recently.</comment></comment>


It May Not Feel Like Anything to Be an Alien - <AUTHOR> http://cosmos.nautil.us/feature/72/it-may-not-feel-like-anything-to-be-an-alien <comment><USER2> This is a fascinating book about consciousness and the future. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_(novel)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_\(novel\))</comment>


Revenue per employee in the computer industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.devdaily.com/business/revenue-per-employee-computer-services-industry

<comment><USER2> I find these numbers are not so useful because they are artificially inflated by outsourcing things like building maintenance. If the people actually producing iPhones were Apple employees, their number would be much lower. Profits per employee would say more, but can quickly turn zero or negative in a bad year.

<comment><USER3> Every company aims to keep costs low, employees count at a minimum, and profits high. I don't see why these companies should be any different.

The companies that 'actually produce' the physical products have their own set of numbers to worry about, too.

<comment><USER4> Revenue-per-employee doesn't tell you anything about "aim to keep costs low", though, _only_ about keeping employee count low. You could improve your revenue-per-employee figure by finding $100m of employees, firing them, and then hiring an external firm for $200m to do the same job. All that's really done though is just hidden the employees: they're now employees of another firm, but they're still indirectly costing you $200m. To account for that, you need a measure other than revenue-per-employee, like perhaps revenue-per- dollar-spent.

It really tells you more about corporate structure than anything else. Companies that do a lot of in-house work will do badly on the measure, while companies that prefer to mostly pay others to handle large portions of their work will do well--- regardless of which company manages to get the work done cheaper.

<comment><USER5> Exactly!

Take it to an extreme: Berkshire Hathaway has 21 employees at the headquarters ('09 annual report), with revenue of about $130.22B (yahoo finance). How's $6.2B / employee sound? Of course, if you add in the head count from the subsidiaries, you're up to about 257,000 (again, '09 annual) and $506k / employee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Those of us working in the low revenue-per-employee companies really want to work for the high revenue-per-employee companies. It also makes me wonder if the high revenue-per-employee companies are getting the 10x value out of employees that is oft mentioned (and debated).

Of course, revenue is misleading as others (Torklingberg, _delirium) have pointed out, because it doesn't reflect cost.

What I am most interested in is the productivity per employee, which is rather elusive.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how much these figures are skewed by hiring practices at google, et. al, where they tend to outsource a lot of non-tech jobs.... are all those amazon people who pack boxes counted as employees? Maybe some of those figures would be different depending on who you considered an employee.

I'd like to see an analysis of revenue per engineer......

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The fact that Apple and Google generate about $1.2 million in revenue per employee is amazing.

<comment><USER8> I've seen a few specialty Property-Casualty insurance/reinsurance companies that do better, but I don't know much about other industries, so I'm not sure if it's common or not (probably not).

<comment><USER9> I believe advertising companies can do better than this - I remember a friend telling me where he worked they had 200 employees and a turnover of about $300 million.</comment></comment></comment>


The Nitrogen Fix: Breaking a Costly Addiction - <AUTHOR> http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2207 <comment><USER2> Might like my startup - <http://www.earthturfco.com>. Our lawn seed mixes combine drought tolerant grasses + a special type of nitrogen fixating clover - stays green without synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, needs minimal water, low growing.

We are working to show people their lawn doesn't have to be a mono-culture of hungry, thirsty grass.

<comment><USER3> That's fabulous. By the way, I really like your site's front page. It's direct and to-the-point and the copy is compelling.

<comment><USER2> Thank you, it's coming together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most farmers (including my parents) have a simple, sure response to such fertilizer complaints, to wit, "You like eating, doncha." Until we have a credible response to that, nothing will change.

<comment><USER5> We overproduce food, and produce far more of particularly inefficient kinds of food (e.g. corn) than we need.

Although the ultimate long-term solution is to bring the world population down to a more sustainable level, at least if we want everyone to be able to enjoy a First World standard of living, in the near term there is much that could be done to reduce impact without everyone suddenly starving.

The status quo is not the only way to feed everyone. The status quo has created an obesity epidemic on one hand, and an environmental disaster on the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "...as ubiquitous as man made carbon dioxide is in the air"

50-80 net parts per million is ubiquitous?</comment>


Show HN: Tpr – Testing GitHub pull requests locally - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ric03uec/tpr

<comment><USER2> I've found that adding

      fetch = +refs/pull/*/head:refs/remotes/origin/pr/*

to my .git/config lets me treat PRs as regular remote branches. This looks neat, but does it provide anything extra that's PR-specific?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, adding that lets you see all remote branches, including PR's. The goal with this tool is to eliminate editing .git/config for each project and make it easier to work with pr's locally. This is just the first step. Definitely planning to add more pr-specific feature. Do open an issue if there's any particular feature you would like to see. Thanks :)</comment></comment>


Amazon 'robo-pricing' sparks fears - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/26c5bb7a-c12f-11e1-8179-00144feabdc0.html#axzz206xx7k6d <comment><AUTHOR> If you can't access it directly, do a google search for the title of this post, and it should take you to the article.</comment>


Timber compiler 1.0.3 released (functional reactive language) - <AUTHOR> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/17200

<comment><AUTHOR> Anyone here use this for anything?</comment>


DARPA's AlphaDog robotic pack mule is ready for battle (and awesome) - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/97883-meet-alphadog-darpas-robotic-any-terrain-mule-poodle

<comment><USER2> Ready for battle? Awesome? Both of these are plainly false. Obviously we have learned nothing from Metal Gear Solid 4...

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone else have an uncontrollable urge to jump on that thing and ride it around? I suppose it would be dangerous, but this could spawn a new breed of bull-riding scientist-cowboys.

</comment><comment><USER4> The total lack of detail here is completely uninteresting. Look up bigdog and you cam see tons of cool articles and better videos. BigDog was an awesome prototype but not ready for prime time. I was hoping to see whether they solved the major noise issues that essentially made earlier prototypes unusable. In the military, if you are going through rugged terrain, it's very common that you are doing so for stealth reasons. Earlier versions of BigDog wouldn't allow for this.

<comment><USER5> The last line of the article "Not to mention, the sight (and sound) of AlphaDog is sure to instil more than a little fear in the enemy, too…" makes me think that even if the good information were available, the reporter doesn't have the knowledge of the area to ask the right questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm no tactical attack expert, but don't think that the prototype in the video is "battle ready". However, the news of al-Awlaki killed by a drone attack (along with numerous other such successful hits) implies that the armed forces are definitely moving towards more drones and robots.

I don't know what the chances of AlphaDog against a man with a high powered rifle, but think of this: A number of these, armed with some sonic weapons (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon>), attacking a compound at night. Then, the "instill a little fear in the enemy" bit may not sound so stupid.

</comment><comment><USER7> A newer(?) video showing it actually being field-tested: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqMVg5ixhd0>

// please mute the speakers

</comment><comment><USER8> Put some armor on this thing and some sniper detection systems it will map out all the enemies locations who shoot at it or put a soflam on it and it can run through the mountains marking hidden targets for a drone or AC-130 overhead.

But there are so many technologies that you can integrate together on the Alpha dog (platform) to create so many military capabilities.</comment>


Show HN: Finally opening signup on my education for business startup, Learndot - <AUTHOR>

HN,
I've been mostly lurking, semi-active on HN for over 4 years. For most of that time, I've been working on my startup, Learndot. I have always wanted to do a "Show HN" post, but I never thought it was ready.
We've now finally launched web signup and using a freemium business model. I feel I can now post and offer something to the community (a new app to try out) and hopefully get good quality feedback.
Here's the site: http://www.learndot.com
Would appreciate any or all thoughts: From pricing/positioning, to design/performance.
The app is written in Sproutcore and backed by an API written in Scala.
Thanks so much,
Paul <comment><USER2> As others have said, really nice design. I know a little bit about this market (business courses/internet marketing gurus) so here are my thoughts/questions:

1\. Are you creating the content yourself? Are you partnering with domain experts?

2\. Are you targeting corporations or individuals? Corporations likely have their in house training tools. For individuals and small business owners, "Learning is a competitive advantage" is a very weak message. Most people who would want to buy from you want to know how to get more traffic, how to get cheaper traffic or how to make more money from the leads they get.

You are competing with serious hustlers like Frank Kern and Perry Belcher, both of whom are extremely aggressive at what they do (they've had issues with the FTC) and also extremely successful.

Having hung out in both worlds, here is common issue I see. The HN crowd is generally very bright and talented. They have great design insticts, coding skills and a healthy dose of "do no evil" sensibilities. But they are too soft-core to make money online.

The hardcore internet marketing crowd (think warrior forum) doesn't care about design or saving the world. They make do with ugly 'geocities era' landing pages. But they sure know how to make money online. I would suggest you spend some time in this latter world. You will learn a thing or two that will help clarify your offering, target customer and value proposition.

<comment><USER3> thx.. very interesting. Can you say any ore about the kinds of things these people do that the smart but unworldly hackers don't, or more places to bury our heads in?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just a few initial thoughts, not having dug in too deep.

The site looks great, aesthetically. But I wasn't sure exactly what your product was until I scrolled down quite a ways on the homepage. "Make learning a competitive advantage" is a good tagline, but not great for being the only text I immediately see on your homepage. Something based on the "platform for customer, partner, and team training" would serve better.

I'm not certain who your target market is, and I don't know enough about the product to really say, but there is a large gap between $0 for your smallest plan and $250/mo for the next plan. Keep reading and you can get the $10/mo/learner with the free plan (at which point it's no longer free), but my immediate reaction is the large price gap.

<comment><USER5> I would also echo this: "Make learning a competitive advantage" is vague. It was only until I clicked on "customers" that I got a rough sense of what your product is trying to accomplish.

Also, the "see pricing and plans" button doesn't need to be up on top with your tag line (because its likely that users won't know about your product from the current tagline alone). This should be somewhere down the bottom after someone has gotten a sense of what your product does.

In fact, I think you already wrote your most powerful tagline: "We'll be the software behind <https://learn.MY-COMPANY.com>. Just put that up top.

I just concentrated on the front page. The color scheme is quite pleasing :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Definitely sounds like we need to tighten up the message.

This is great. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Clickable: <http://www.learndot.com>

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm going to agree with the other people who've commented so far in that your value proposition and problem you're solving isn't very clear. It takes a lot of digging just to piece together all the information.

This high LTV customer you're aiming for in the B2B sector is only going to scale really well if you can do an arbitrage through Google Adwords or other channels. This isn't a viral, word-of-mouth type business (for the most part). So you want to lower the amount of time it'll take someone to understand what you're offering after they quickly click on an ad. You should really sit down with people, like your target customers, and ask them, "What does my website offer?" and see how long it takes for them to answer.

I like the design a lot but you need to take full advantage of it with more clarity in copy.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hey guys, thanks for your comments, the actual app can be found here.

<https://signup.learndot.com/#/plans/1>

Would love to hear some feedback on it as well.

</comment><comment><USER9> Funny I was just looking for a solution like this and wasn't able to find anything.

I'm confused on why the pricing is a monthly price per learner.

With our internal training we have a set amount of information to communicate to our team. Once they've learned it, they're not going to need to go back to it regularly. It's a one and done situation and wouldn't make sense to continue paying after a team member has learned the info. Why would it make sense for anybody to pay a monthly fee per learner?

Maybe I'm just confused on the market you're going for and how it works.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm doing something similar. Prepare yourself for the glacially slow pace of B2B sales. Lots of big companies get CornerstoneOnDemand for HR, and they throw in a LMS. Lots of companies can't store their material off-site for "security" reasons. For some reason HR people can't figure out how to use an LMS effectively.

On this page: <http://www.learndot.com/customer-success/> All your links go to pricing rather than telling me something.

</comment><comment><USER11> I remember you guys from: <http://www.learndot.com/how-to-name-your-startup/> .... I remember posting on that asking if it was logical to spend 9 months on deciding a name of a product.... and here, it's a year and 2 months on... I really sincerely hope you do well, but I wish you'd work faster than the velocity you're pulling.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice work! I think the "see pricing and plans" button should be located elsewhere. The first call-for-action button should have a clear benefit for the users. E.g. "Try our learning tools for free" or "Get a free trial" and with small letters for example "no credit card required".

</comment><comment><USER13> Your landing page structure needs work. I didn't learn what it was until I made an effort to find out. Others don't usually do that. Plus, this is a B2B product. Why not get _their_ feedback and close a few sales at the same time?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks – that's similar to what cooperadymas was saying.

Who did you mean by "their"? We are soliciting feedback on our more B2B channels too. But I'm posting here because a) it's a startup and HN likes startups and b) I like HN and wanted to share. :)

<comment><USER13> * We are soliciting feedback on our more B2B channels too.*

I'm sorry, but I don't understand this sentence. Do you mean that you are getting feedback from prospects? Or getting feedback from other businesses (that are not prospects)?

By _their_ , I mean businesses who might actually buy your product. That's the only feedback you should really pay attention to. Asking for opinions on HN is good, but ultimately, less valuable than trying to make a sale with a real prospect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, prospects. Mailing lists, relevant LinkedIn groups, etc.

I generally agree with you, but I think this community has an eye for detail we might not find in other groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Beautiful design! :)</comment>


Locked in the Ivory Tower: Why JSTOR Imprisons Academic Research - <AUTHOR> http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/locked-in-the-ivory-tower-why-jstor-imprisons-academic-research/251649/ <comment><USER2> Some excellent points. The solution seems all too easy to be real.</comment>


Future Screens Are Mostly Blue - <AUTHOR> http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/future-screens-are-mostly-blue/ <comment><USER3> The best bit is the anecdote about LCARS in Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was all due to a budget shortfall:

"Star Trek also may have helped create the entire image-under-glass paradigm that governs our digital world. The interface, known as LCARS, is cool- looking. It's distinctive. And it's actually the result of a budget shortfall.

Star Trek: The Next Generation didn't have as much money for set design as did the original series, which had panels wired with jewels and glowing buttons. Instead, they cut out film and put them over glass panes."

It's usually constraints, not the lack of them, that give birth to true innovation.

<comment><USER4> The LCARS (and its various IRL implementations) is also among the least usable UIs, so I wouldn't exactly call it "true innovation".

<comment><USER5> I've only seen LCARS themes, but I do like the concept that everything is displayed on a screen, at once, with no overlapping windows.

Overlapping windows are the worst possible UI decision ever. I've been using tiling window managers for four years now and I never want to go back.

<comment><USER6> Overlapping windows in a cascade (so the bottom left corners act a bit like a tab selector) are my preferred window layout.

Random overlapping doesn't work particularly well. Any time you have to manage the z-index of more than one window, something has gone wrong. Thus cascading.

I can't stand tiling though. Either everything is too small, or you can't get enough stuff on screen at once.

<comment><USER7> Why would you want cascading windows over tabbed interfaces (e.g.: any modern browser)? What does it actually buy you?

<comment> yoz-y For me overlapping windows are better for using two applications at the same time - copy pasting, drag and dropping between them etc. This is because their position is deterministic. Tabs are better when I have a boatload of unrelated pages (e.g.: tabs). This is also why I find tabbed interfaces in code editors useless.

<comment><USER8> I find tabbed editors useful in that they allow you to open the current "working set" of files, and then disregard the rest of the project files. After I open up the working set, I usually close the tree view (Sublime, in my case) so my code has more room.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Consider the MicroTAC, one of Motorola's first cell phones. It did not sell well."

It was nothing to do with the MicroTAC being £3,000? No, it was the direction of the flip. Right.

The later MicroTACs with LCD sold loads. At the time, most people seemed to _prefer_ them to the early StarTAC.

<comment><USER10> I have a friend who used the starTac until AT&T forced him into something else. He fought for months trying to keep his old phone working. He moved to an iPhone but says it doesn't compare.

<comment><USER11> It's been several years since I moved to a touchscreen phone, and I still hate them for the "making calls and answering" workflow - I used to be able to make calls and answer without having to physically look at the phone - <USER2> StarTac's flick to open would be a good example of that.

Of course, touchscreen phones make great computing devices, which makes their inadequacy as phones irrelevant.

<comment><USER9> Same. I used to be able to text without ever looking at the screen

I seem to have passed peak-smartphone, I check it much less often, and phone more. I've been tempted a few times by the flip-smartphones that exist in the Far East - I wish they were available here so I could trial one in a store. Don't want to buy until I decide if they're best of both worlds, or worst...

<comment><USER12> I would buy a Japanese flip/smart phone in a second if it was properly supported outside of Japan. From what I heard, they have weird rules about warranty and even software updates outside of the country.

It's really annoying to be forced in the direction of fake technological "progress" that's mostly a result of extensive marketing. There is no fundamental reason why a smart phone can't have proper keys for calling.

There are couple of Android flip phones on the market, but since Android UI is designed 100% for touchscreens, I am pretty sure the experience of using them will be horrible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What a stupid statement: _" blue is so rare in nature (if you discount the sky and the ocean ..."_

Of course the Blue Planet isn't blue if you remove all that makes it blue...

<comment><USER14> The sky and ocean are not always blue.

For most cultures on Earth, the last color they named was blue --- this is thought to be due to its rarity in nature.

Up through the Renaissance, the pigment for blue paint was made from Lapis Lazuli which made blue a very expensive paint and rare in most art. This is another sign of the rarity of blue in nature as pigments for other colors were much easier to come by.

I haven't listened to this episode of Radiolab in a while, but I think it provides more info/source on both of these points: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/211119-colors/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/211119-colors/)

There is also an interesting anecdote where one of the interviewees tells the story about teaching his daughter colors. He and his wife made the decision not to tell her what color the sky was; he would go on walks with his daughter and ask her to identify the colors of various plants and objects, when asked about the sky for a while she didn't have an answer and when she finally did she said its as "white" not "blue" \--- which does seem like a better way to describe the sky since even on a clear day the brightest parts can look almost white; but someone told me once it was blue.

<comment><USER15> > For most cultures on Earth, the last color they named was blue --- this is > thought to be due to its rarity in nature.

And for the sky and water that we'd now call blue, there was no need to differentiate between blue and green. You might want to tell someone "Don't pick the green fruit, only the ones that have turned red," so having a single word for green and red would be a problem. But the sky is always going to be either blue, gray, or red, so a single greenblue word doesn't constrain your communication about it.

I can think of a couple exceptions, like blueberries (where you can refer to their darkness instead of hue for ripeness) and green tinted skies in severe storms, but it definitely makes sense that the word for blue would be invented last.

<comment><USER16> Blue is also the color human vision is worst at. You have many fewer blue color receptors than green or red. Images colored blue look more blurry than ones colored green.

That said, it's still one of the three basic colors humans can see. There was clearly an evolutionary advantage to seeing it. And I find it hard to believe that radiolab episode that said people literally didn't see blue, not just use a different word.

<comment><USER14> > And I find it hard to believe that radiolab episode that said people > literally didn't see blue, not just use a different word.

The hosts did keep talking about "not being able to see blue", but I believe what the guest was getting at is that without the word for blue you see it but do not perceive it (or at least as strongly as the perception of other colors).

I wonder if this is related to the color/language study talked about in this episode: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/211119-colors/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/211119-colors/) (the part discussing a rat study with Charles Fernyhough).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe assisted by the Orange & Blue bias in film colouring, [http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of- orange...](http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange-and- blue/)

<comment><USER18> I hate this trend, it's almost impossible to unsee it in modern sci fi movies (e.g. anything Marvel churns out). It's almost at the point where I lose respect for a movie when I see that kind of grading being used.

A notable exception is the Matrix which opted for a green caste specifically to highlight scenes that are in the Matrix itself.

<comment><USER19> Matrix used different hues for different environments: Matrix/Loader/Zion/etc.

<comment><USER17> Nice, when used to effect it's a great thing, City Of Lost Children springs to mind. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaFeK5LWDxw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaFeK5LWDxw)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> While I'm sure we can learn lots from science fiction, some designs imposed by fictionary authors are while looking cool, super impractical. Blue screens are one of the impractical designs: if I were to stare at blue colors all day, I think would get a headache more quickly. I'm super greatfull for Apple's true tone display, that makes reading on my iPad much better and night shift is also a feature I've long missed enough. It think we should rather focus on our environment to know what we need to improve interfaces. Science fiction movies sometimes do that for us.

But regarding blue screens: the less blue and the more yellow (or other warm colors), the better.

</comment><comment><USER21> We seem to have gotten over the obsession with blue LEDs that was wildly popular around 10 years ago, when almost every device had blindingly bright blue LED indicators or decorative lighting.

<comment><USER22> I still have a stack of small round black stickers for the purpose of reducing the brightness of (mostly) blue leds. On some devices I had to stack 2-3 of them to reduce the amount of light enough.

<comment><USER23> Same here, and the green leds on my Thinkpad get the same treatment.

<comment><USER24> I glued stabilo pen caps over those leds - instant goa uld spaceship fuse box look

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > _And that is one of the many design lessons we can learn from sci-fi_.

I'm sorry, but whoever wrote this knows absolutely nothing about design. Or worse, is the type of visual designer who treats usability like an afterthought and thinks aligning with whatever is _fashionable_ is an indicator of quality.

None of the design decisions made in those examples reflect the needs of someone using a machine. It reflects the needs of a TV-series of movie to have cheap props that fit their narrative of exposition and drama, as well as the budget restrictions.

</comment><comment><USER26> Every time I see something about LCARS I'm re-amazed at how modern it _still_ looks, nearly three decades later now.

<comment><USER27> Everytime I listen to Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene II, I feel this is "future" too. I've recently heard it in a commercial of some car with traction control and some digits projected on road. Connect LCARS and Oxygene and you have perfect futuristic music player?

<comment><USER28> The problem with these is that they're the 80s' future.

<comment><USER22> Oxygene was '76 ('77 most places outside France), but has largely avoided sounding dated, to the point where in particular Oxygene 2 is still regularly used to evoke a sense of futurism in TV and ads etc.

If you want to pick out "80's future" electronica, then the Airwolf theme or Crockett's theme (Miami Vice) would be more natural choices in my opinion... Or if sticking to Jarre, tracks like Moon Machine or Computer Weekend, which sounded cheesy at the time too. And for those who likes their 80's cheesy, purply-neon, metallic, there's also the Outrun subreddit [1] which tries hard to take it places where even the 80's wouldn't go - turns out there's several electronica sub-genres dedicated to it as well.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/outrun](https://www.reddit.com/r/outrun)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Well, what if the sound is the interface? Audio is a much more efficient > gauge of surroundings, since it spans 360 degrees, whereas vision only > covers 120 degrees. It might be that there are sensors on the outside of the > Millennium Falcon that provide 3D sound inside the gunner seat. So when we > hear ships blow up, we're actually hearing an augmented reality interface > that Luke and Han hear. Maybe?

The game Terminus took that approach. The game had a bunch of settings that let you get "arcade-like" physics and appearance of space, but the manual explained that this was provided by the ships on-board computer systems to make it more intuitive for people to fly them.

You could opt to "turn off" all the enhancements, such as moving starfields, bright nebulas serving effectively as markers to help orient yourself, "outside sound" etc., up to and including "computer assisted" firing of navigational rockets (so that rotating the ship would start changing direction by automatically firing rockets vs. being able to rotate the ship while continuing in the original direction)

</comment><comment><USER29> Isn't this a subset of [http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of- orange...](http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange-and- blue/) ?

</comment><comment><USER30> There's a significant difference between an interface which looks good as a feature of a scene, and an interface that looks good / is functional when it is occupying your entire attention..

</comment><comment><USER31> They missed the fact that the "make it so" context aware button already exists. Your average Playstation controller has at least 4 that do different functions depending on the context.

Modern TV remotes have also long drifted in that direction with the four color buttons that change use depending on what screen you are on.

<comment><USER32> And a typical aircraft flight management system would involve inserting a series of instructions then pressing the execute button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm skeptical there's anything going on here other than an overwhelming trend in film to make everything that needs to be visually distinctive be blue. [http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of- orange...](http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange-and- blue/)

</comment><comment><USER34> What always strikes me is how uniform the appearance of screens is in SF films. When I look at my own screens, I see various applications that have all made different choices, within the bounds imposed by the GUI itself. An old app doesn't magically get new design styles. Old Windows XP apps, for example, may look odd when run on a Windows 7 system. Apparently, in the future, not only is everything blue, but the platforms they use have very rigid design rules that are strictly enforced.

</comment><comment><USER35> This was one of the things I loved so much about Android's Holo UI. It LOOKED LIKE THE FUTURE.

I will probably never love a software UI as much as I loved Android 3.0-4.1.

</comment><comment><USER36> A theory:

Good Sci-Fi movies are smart and interesting, they appeal to the mind. Thus they use a cold, cerebral color. If they were about emotions, like a Rom-Com, they would use a warm, comforting color.

<comment><USER37> See also the orange/blue or teal/orange color correction often used in modern movies: [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrangeBlueContras...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrangeBlueContrast).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> One of the most aesthetically "future proof" movies is probably 2001: A Space Odyssey. Compare Star Wars, released almost a decade later, and how the Stormtrooper armor looks dated (at least to me): [http://i.imgur.com/sLhv0LJ.png](http://i.imgur.com/sLhv0LJ.png)

This is a great related essay: "HAL, Mother, and Father: Watching the sixties and seventies through 2001 and Alien." [http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/09/hal-mother- and...](http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/09/hal-mother-and-father/)

<comment><USER39> I dunno, whilst Kubrick deserves credit for giving his space explorers a proto-iPad, those gorgeous space station interiors[1][2][3][4] scream _1960s cutting-edge style_ in the way plastic bodysuits, or indeed the more functional interiors of the Death Star don't really say much about the seventies. I'd put the tacky appearance of the Stormtrooper armour down more to Lucas being less obsessive about detail than Kubrick.

[1][https://hansbkahl.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/2001_a_space_o...](https://hansbkahl.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/2001_a_space_odyssey- space-station-main-level-d-lobby.jpg) [2][https://hansbkahl.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/968full-2001-a...](https://hansbkahl.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/968full-2001-a-space- odyssey-lunar-journey.jpg) [3][https://hansbkahl.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/on_space_stati...](https://hansbkahl.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/on_space_station_v_dr__heywood_floyd_places_a_videocall_to_his_daughter_on_earth.jpg) [4][https://drnorth.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/vlcsnap-11937.jp...](https://drnorth.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/vlcsnap-11937.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> "Noessel posits that, because blue is so rare in nature there's something fundamentally mystical, unnatural, and inhuman about it."

This is strange. First the ocean and the sky look blue. So regardless of whether they are, they are.

Second, there are blue flowers, blue birds, blue fish, blue eyes, blueberries, Kentucky Bluegrass, Blue Heelers, and Blue Tick Hounds. It doesn't seem more rare to me than red or yellow. Green is everywhere. But blue doesn't seem rare to me.

It is the second most common color in flags (behind red) for a reason.

it is the second most common color in logos for a reason.

</comment><comment><USER41> I love the interfaces in the movie Oblivion: [https://vimeo.com/64377100](https://vimeo.com/64377100)

<comment><USER42> GMUNK also did work for Tron:Legacy and the Windows 10 default wallpaper.

<comment><USER43> He recently spoke at OFFSET in Dublin and went through about 900 slides in 30 mins. Mad man. His early flash work was very cool to see as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's because _movies_ are mostly blue (and orange). Blame the colorist.

<comment><USER45> I think the cyan/orange colouration is more of a recent thing

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> You mean they don't choose a yellow-on-white emphasis with matching yellow highlight color? /snark

I really thought the blue-histograms over the years was super cool.

What happened in 1991 where it suddenly became RED? [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103064/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103064/)

Terminator 2: Judgement Day - the interface from Arnold's point of view was a RED overlay.

Which, one might consider an invalid sample as it was not meant to represent a human-computer-interface but in fact, an Android interface.

Anyways, great article!

<comment><USER47> Red's a bit more evil/aggressive looking. "Seeing red" and that. You can sense the guy in the picture is in for an unfortunate time [http://media.gizmodo.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2011/11/termin...](http://media.gizmodo.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2011/11/terminator_vision.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> What I love the most about that videophone sequence is the little girl asking for a phone for her birthday. Here we are, living in the future, and what do kids want for their birthdays? Phones.

</comment><comment><USER49> Funny enough this was posted just a month before "Her" was released in the US, I remember that had a really warm feel to everything.

</comment><comment><USER50> How about the overwhelming blue/orange cast in movies?

Or the fact that old terminals were green (thus not futuristic) and red is damn hard to read.

</comment><comment><USER51> That's a lot of analysis for something that some art directors just decided to go with because it looked good, or spring boarded from previous designs...

<comment><USER52> "Art History" is a discipline of study for a reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This should have (2013).

Also: I love how Terminator 2 made 1991 red.

</comment><comment><USER54> Hmmm... Isn't the real reason for the blue interfaces because futuristic movies employ loads of green-screen shots?

</comment><comment><USER55> Commodore 64, way ahead of its time.

</comment><comment><USER56> So, blue screens and the OCR font?

</comment><comment><USER57> There are no blue foods.

</comment><comment><USER58> Computer blue.

</comment><comment><USER59> Bleu foncé meme.

</comment><comment><USER19> re "make-it-so button" \- I have that button, too. It's labelled "git push", and Makes It So for all sorts of different things ;)

<comment><USER60> Doesn't the label actually say: "git push --force"? ;).

<comment><USER19> Nah, you don't want to automatically override safeties (this week it's 30 years since the Chernobyl disaster, hint hint).

What I was trying to say is that it makes sense to first set up a self- contained transaction, and then a single universal "button" to push it into the world, instead of firing off single commands, one at a time. (Especially at the latencies involved in cross-galaxy communication)

<comment><USER61> The "make it so" button is actually a Makefile

GNU make, just to drive the purists nuts.

<comment><USER19> Makemake? (That's no moon!)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


North Korea just built the creepiest water park you've ever seen - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/10/18/north-korea-just-built-the-creepiest-water-park-youve-ever-seen/

<comment><USER2> This article is nothing but propaganda. I'm no defender of NK and all the screwed up stuff they're doing (political prisons, torture, inequality, threatening their neighbours, et al) but they're trying to turn a story about NK opening a nice little waterpark into this dark conspiracy. Plus labelling it "creepy" is frankly just bizarre, and simply does not fit.

If you want to take digs at NK you don't have to be this disingenuous, just remind people of all the screwed up stuff NK actually does to their citizens (like real, honest to goodness screwed up stuff).

Plus traditionally aren't articles about children and women the go-to topic for propaganda pieces? You know, play up the emotive side of it to the point that no rational discussion against the propaganda can take place? Nobody is going to get emotive about a damn waterpark.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady 1\. How is this creepy?

2\. How is this in any way relevant to HackerNews?

<comment><USER3> >How is this in any way relevant to HackerNews?

From [http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):

>On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

<comment> k-mcgrady A new water park doesn't seem to fit that.

<comment><USER4> Some people are really into depictions of North Korean life because it's truly alien to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like a pretty average water park from the pictures...

<comment><USER6> Agreed; Washington Post may be over egging this one...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?strPageID=SF01_02_01&n...](http://www.rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?strPageID=SF01_02_01&newsID=2013-10-14-0025&chAction=T.nyud.net)

</comment><comment><USER8> Exactly what's creepy about this?</comment>


"I Didn't Know" – Mark Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/mark-zuckerberg-i-didnt-know-1830471759 <comment><USER2> The whole quote was actually "I Didn't Know, trust me dumb fucks."</comment>


Mnemonic Not Working – Recovering Lost Cryptocurrencies - <AUTHOR> http://damien.la/2017/09/10/mnemonic <comment><USER2> Very in depth article! I can see the author put a lot of effort into doing this.

You could create a business and charge quite well for a service like this.</comment>


Your guide to selling against Zenefits [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://info.maxwellhealth.com/hs-fs/hub/364947/file-2535768742-pdf/Sales_and_Marketing_Resources/Maxwell_Health_-_Zenefits_Battlecard.pdf

<comment><USER2> _" Give the illusion of self-service, but actually have a very high-touch, highservice model \- Feedback we've gotten from groups that have left Zenefits to come back to the broker + Maxwell model is the increasingly poor level of service and responsiveness to urgent issues."_

This rings true for us. We're a small company who would've blindly walked into zenefits if they had simply walked us through our enrollment process smoothly. Instead we had repeated paperwork glitches which always left out a few of us (from a very small group already) employees out of the quote/enrollment process.

We started looking at Trinet in parallel and to our astonishment found that the comparable health plans, from the same provider, available on Trinet, were significantly cheaper... (as in ... ~30%) for our situation. The Zenefits glitches were really a blessing in disguise for us.

(The key to these discounts was that with Trinet you're getting into a group plan... while Zenefits simply enrolls you as individuals if you're a small startup).

<comment><USER3> When we tried Zenefits out last year, they were very transparent about this. The rep I spoke with told me upfront that a PEO would be more cost effective for a company of our size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is waiting until they implode from bad management a viable strategy? I remember reading on Quora, a prospective hire had offers at Zenefits and Uber, and asked for guidance in making his decision and the CEO of Zenefits came in and publicly revoked his offer.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job- off...](http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job-offer-on- quora-2015-5)

<comment><USER5> I guess there's an argument to be made against doing things like that publicly, but the prospective employee sounds like someone I wouldn't want to work with.

<comment><USER6> I agree. It _sounds_ bad, until I RTFA. If I saw what the person said as an employee at Zenefits, I would've told my boss to rescind the offer.

<comment><USER7> If you expect all incoming outsiders to be excited about your company and have decided you can't convince those who aren't to become excited, you've got a cult, not a company.

Dissenting views? Skepticism? Interests that might not align completely with our delicate, fragile startup? Shun! Shun!

It's incredibly insecure. Maybe for the first ten hires you need that kind of alignment to get the culture vector pointing in the right direction with a significant magnitude. But after that? Having to defend your ideas to internal skeptics makes you stronger. Hiring rose-glasses yes men might let you coast for a while, but when the end comes, it will be swift (see e.g. RIM).

EDIT: I can _maybe_ see doing this quietly, though it would be pretty hard to swoop in as CEO and rescind an offer without letting your employees on the interview loop know. I really think it's the public aspect of this behavior that bothers me.

Just think: what kind of chilling effect does this have on employee speech internally? It really projects a "get in line or get out" mentality.

<comment><USER5> What are you talking about? The employee's issue was that Zenefits is not buzzy enough and he wants to work at Google.

<comment><USER8> The fact is, there are a set of universities and employers that open doors. Did you go to Harvard or MIT? Grad school at cmu? You get an interview. You're not necessarily hired, but you get an interview. Google is one of the employers that open doors in the same way; Zenefits isn't and probably never will be. There's nothing wrong with employees acknowledging reality and mapping out a career path.

<comment><USER6> We get that. And, don't work at a startup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm the benefits administrator for our startup (ahhh, the joys of being a cofounder) and we started before Zenefits was available. I might migrate there for the ease of management...

But I have to say, it really is hard to replace a good, responsive broker. They don't cost anything (they take the same commission Zenefits takes) and it's easy to get someone on the phone if the inevitable insurance mishap occurs. Then dealing with the insurance company is their problem, not yours.

If we started today, we would absolutely be on Zenefits. Now? I don't know if it's worth the migration.

<comment><USER10> Honestly, I'd mirror the comments in that PDF. I was one step removed from dealing directly with Zenefits at a small (<20 employee) company that switched to Zenefits. The experience was fairly negative overall; lots of manual work they had to do on their end, outdated plan offerings, broken integrations, etc. Basically self-serve for us was nonexistent because every time we tried to do something there was some exception (not code exception, just exceptional circumstances) that meant we had to contact a person anyway, and they weren't any more (or less, I guess) responsive than just going directly to a broker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sigh - I hope this marketing crap isn't what Hacker news turns into, marketing wars from startups.

If this was some actual customer experience, so be it, but its posted from

cgoodmac - PM from justworks.com - a "payroll and benefits" company...

If you agree with me, feel free to click 'Flag' on the parent post.

<comment><USER2> I agree it's slightly shady for a direct competitor to be posting anti- zenefits posts (at least without an acknowledgement). But fwiw, this thread is bringing out a bunch a people's own customer experiences so that's nice at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _Why would an HR person or a CFO EVER give up 1) expert benefits consulting > 2) protection against the ACA 3) access to long-standing carrier > relationships that allow for renewal negotiations 4) ability to support > complex benefits strategies_

I'm really not buying their case here.

1) Expert benefits consulting seems like something that could be made easily accessible via research online 2) Obamacare FUD? 3) Haggling is a feature? 4) This seems like expert consulting re-worded

<comment><USER13> > _Rumor that they may have struck a deal with ADP to be their benefits > administration system and replace TotalSource_

Heh, guess not ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9679312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9679312))

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Rumor that they may have struck a deal with ADP to be their benefits > administration system and replace TotalSource

If these discussions were going on, I suspect ADP's move to block Zenefits today was either a result of these negotiations breaking down, or a bezos- style move to get more leverage on this negotiation :)

</comment><comment><USER15> I read this as Zenefits business model is so good that it's pissing off the entrenched lazy incumbents.

<comment><USER16> I read your comment as not knowing how sales works. These documents are standard practice.

<comment><USER17> You're both right (without the lazy part) Zenefits is doing so well that it's now viewed as a direct threat by incumbents who are putting together sales collateral to compete against them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We're using Zenefits and like many of you here super disappointed by the experience for many of the same reasons listed over and over. The main reason we haven't moved away is that they've really automated the onboarding process. Gone are all those email/word doc/PDF's that get passed back and forth as you manually set up a new employee. (To the best of my knowledge) you can't replace that via a broker (which we had before)

</comment><comment><USER18> Link is broken. Anyone have an archive?

<comment><USER19> I too am hoping to access the PDF.

<comment><USER19> Here's the battlecard: [http://cloudoru.com/battlecard.html](http://cloudoru.com/battlecard.html)</comment></comment></comment>