Facebook Timeline is too awful to be an accident - <AUTHOR> http://jeffdechambeau.com/friending-fast-and-slow.html

<comment><USER5> >> "When information is organized in a list, it's trivially easy to scan it, but with Timeline your eye has to dart around and try to combine the layout into an understanding of what the person's been up to. It induces cognitive strain"

Well, the whole idea is to engage the user. They hang around a lot more when they engage. If you give somebody a list they will trivially take the head the second time onwards ( they will pop the stack, for any imperative folks out there ). That's because the very first time, you actually traverse the list. From then on, the head tells you if the list has mutated. So your brain will save you the cognitive load by simply taking the head of the list and then saying to you, look, there is no need to engage further since there hasn't been any destructive update since the last time you looked. So you will log off.

To prevent disengagement, all creative media ( magazines, newspapers, movies, comics, TV etc. ) will assault you on multiple fronts. So you don't get a list anymore. So Time magazine will have multiple columns on the same page, with each column corresponding to a different topic. One of those columns will have a picture, another an ad, the third an infographic, the fourth some text, and so on. I took a bunch of semesters of screenplay writing where this stuff is actually taught in some gory detail - how to keep the viewer hooked. Never be linear - the viewer is smart and will simply (and often correctly) guess where the movie is headed. So confuse the viewer by presenting information in a non- linear fashion deliberately, and occasionally throw interesting but unrelated bits of filler/second unit stock footage into the plot. Spice things up. I believe it was the british who came up with the more accurate term "sex it up". That's what facebok is doing. Frankly, it works very well - for the non- programmer types. Lets be clear, your life isn't all that interesting. If I just show you status updates in a list, you will be bored stiff after a point. But if I introduce a tiny element of stochastic displacement in your timeline, you will wonder, hey, where did this come from , when did I do that, etc. That'll keep you engaged, and that translates to a longer duration on the site => more $$

<comment><USER6> I think Facebook timeline differs in a fundamental way from, lets say, newspapers.

Newspapers work well with multiple columns because there's no inherent connecting features. Sure a page from the sports section will all have sports related items, but in general all the columns stand by themselves.

Facebook timeline is united by time. As in, what I say at the top of my timeline might be directly related to what I said before, and that might be directly related to what i said before that, and so on. So as humans, we want to read objects in the way they were chronologically presented. But on the new timeline, in order to do this, we have to zig zag from left to right, to left again. This isn't engaging the user just as making me do jumping jacks while I read isn't engaging -- yes it is spicing up my reading experience, but that just forces me to relearn something that is harder than what I was doing originally.

If the timeline was broken up into pieces, I could deal with that. Wall posts on the left, images and polls on the right, etc. Give my eyes some logical way to focus on only a part of my screen. But the exact middle of the screen on Facebook is a dividing line between left and right that presents almost identical information, and I have to form a structure from that.

Taking another example, in movies, it makes sense that the movie makers try to confuse and sex up a movie -- our brains want to be stimulated. But there's a difference between spicing the content of entertainment and spicing up the delivery method that content is offered -- imagine going to the movie and having two videos on the screen at once -- both showing different things. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be happy.

<comment><USER7> _imagine going to the movie and having two videos on the screen at once -- both showing different things. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be happy._

But some TV shows (Burn Notice, for one) do this frequently. It works pretty well.

<comment><USER8> That's not the same thing. Burn Notice (and more notably, 24) use that technique for _very_ short periods of time to change things up. And during that time there is _never_ anything important going on in any of the 2 scenes --no one is going to risk half the viewers missing a relevant plot point just because they happened to be focusing on the wrong half of the screen at that moment.

Try going to Fry's and finding a spot where they have 2 TVs next to each other that are showing different channels. Try just watching one of them: It's maddening. To me it's equivalent to animated ads on web pages--it just makes it impossible to concentrate.

<comment><USER7> But with Burn Notice, they don't _expect_ you to concentrate on just one of the scenes... instead, you look at both or all of them at once, and you get a pretty good idea about what's going on in all of them. This is possible because meaning-wise, video is usually very sparse; lots of people "watch" shows while doing other things, and still have a sense of continuity about the story the show is telling. I also find this a bit distracting, but many people I know seem to use this as the default paradigm of watching TV.

However, the thing I find interesting is other people in the comments here have mentioned that they just look at the center and take in what's going on on both sides, which is exactly the same technique, and Facebook timelines are sparse in the same way that video is. It's easy to get a sense of what your Facebook friends are doing with a quick skim, without fully concentrating on any particular post. During this skim, your attention might be drawn to a specific post, but if it's not, you've absorbed a high-level overview and moved on, without having to read each post individually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems to me the much more likely scenario is that Timeline was created to give a better (and prettier) interface for users to access the information posted to facebook - not some kind of secret psychological advertising conspiracy.

<comment><USER10> But it's not a better and prettier interface. It's just awful. Granted, the only ads that appear on a Timeline page are in a narrow column off to the side (I didn't even know there were any ads until I specifically checked for them after reading this article), so I'm not sure how valid this conspiracy theory is. But it doesn't change the fact that Timeline looks horrible.

<comment><USER11> It is worth noting that every change Facebook has ever made has been deemed awful by a significant number of people. I'm not certain Facebook, or anyone for that matter, could make an update that satisfies everyone.

<comment><USER12> You're absolutely right and it's called Baby Duck Syndrome, which you can learn about after the blackout here:

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

<comment><USER13> <http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/baby+duck+syndrome>

<comment><USER14> Just hit Esc when the Wikipedia page is loading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the formulation that "the smartest people in the world are working hard to come up with ways to get you to click on ads" is awfully reductive. Reading Steven Levy's _In the Plex_ really gave me a sense of what the people at Google are actually about, and it's not just making money. There's a somewhat naive idealism at work that you can judge however you want, but you should acknowledge its existence.

While I tend to give the people at Facebook less credit, I do think there's a similar idealism at the core of the project. But I think they're fundamentally undermining human connection in many subtle ways that I've written about on my blog. Specifically, and more to the point, I think Timeline undermines the human intimacy of private sharing for the benefit of public performance.

[http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/10755504272/intimacy-and- perf...](http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/10755504272/intimacy-and-performance- on-facebook)

</comment><comment><USER16> It has its rough edges, but I have to say that scrolling down the Timeline is a more personal and emotional experience than can be found anywhere else.

<comment><USER17> I have to disagree. Going through a photo gallery is far more emotional and personal than browsing a two column grid.

<comment><USER18> Photos are a pretty emotional experience, true. However I think there's a major difference. Typically photos on my facebook represent moments, short memories in time... mostly happy.

Looking at a photo makes me remember the context of the photo. However a status update is different. They're more frequent, they're less significant. They give context around the less important things.

For example, I remember the first time I looked at my timeline there was a status update that said something along the lines of "Oh man new doughnut at the Dunkin!" I wrote it a few years ago, and it was Completely pointless, and meaningless.. but then I remembered it, because later that day my mom was hit by a car. The entire events of that day flashed in my mind. Frankly that was pretty emotional for me.

<comment><USER19> I'm sure Facebook, just like google and twitter try to find and display only relevant. Nobody is perfect

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The problem with timeline, for me, is lack of context. Scroll back to the beginning of my life on facebook and you see exchanges between me and my then girlfriend.

Scrolling through 5 years worth of status updates gave you context for this (sortof), it was psychologically "far" away.

Being able to just click "2006", and easily see that stuff is _creepy_.

This is why I can't stand this timeline nonsense.

So...do I delete all of this stuff? I don't have a problem with these things being a part of my history, I just don't like them being presented in such a readily-available way...

<comment><USER21> This is also my main problem with it. The idea is nice to have some sort of diary where you log important events in your life so that you can scroll back in someone's history and see when important things happened.

But sometime before Timeline, Facebook made a change so that each post has an individual visibility to give users more control or whatever, and when I switched over to Timeline, all my old posts that weren't private automatically appeared on my timeline, and I can't _easily_ change the visibility of all those old posts, that are now much more easily accessible.

I want the newer posts on my Timeline to be visible, so others can see the latest crap I shared with my friends, but I want the older posts to fade into obscurity, unless I actively bring them back again.

<comment><USER22> You can change the visibility of all the past posts easily; select " Limit the Audience for Past Posts" in Privacy Settings.

<comment><USER21> Thanks, but you can only set past post visbility to "Friends", not "Private", and I don't see any definition of how old a post has to be to be considered a "past post".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love the timeline layout.. id rather scroll easily through stuff from a couple of years ago and get a good overview of what I was doing than go through photo galleries I have on my PC with no context or further information.

<comment><USER24> The real question is, are you OK with your "friends" going through your profile and doing the same thing?

<comment><USER23> ..yes? Why I would I friend someone if I didn't want them to be able to see my info/pictures? I'm sure people care a lot less about me than I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Kahneman and his research is fascinating. Vanity Fair had an short article that serves as a goodish introduction to him that is worth a quick read. ([http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/12/michael-l...](http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/12/michael- lewis-201112))

</comment><comment><USER26> The problem I have with Timeline is the _awful_ way that it organizes posts. The two column format is awkward and it makes it hard to search or even casually read posts as you scroll down, because your eyes are darting between the two columns rather than one. The grouping is pretty crap, too.

<comment><USER27> As much as I want to like it, I don't even try to read people's profiles anymore.

If Facebook wanted me to pay 100% attention to the Status feed, they've succeeded. And by Status feed, I don't mean whatever that thing on the right frame is. Who reads that anyway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I found timeline confusing at first, but then I realized if I focus on the line in the middle then reading posts becomes just as orderly as it was before, with the added benefit of greater information density. It also unclutters the left side of the page which was a column before. And also by turning the background blue it gives better contrast to the news/chat panels on the right. About a third of my friends have switched over now, and old profiles just look old. The large banner was a nice touch as well.

</comment><comment><USER29> You are not the target audience. Yes, if you're reading this, you are not the audience that Facebook is building for. The Timeline is there after being extensively tested and stays there are long as the results (Facebook definition) are better than the alternative.

In case you missed it, to be clear - you are not the target audience.

</comment><comment><USER30> As a layperson, I think Kahneman's work is brilliant and I can't wait to read the book, but do understand that to the actual evil scientists - <USER2> psychologists - he is Donald Knuth, not, um, whoever's hot in CS these days. They think his ideas revolutionized the field a few decades ago, and it's great that he finally got his book published, but meanwhile, we've learned a lot and that whole dual-system thing is kinda quaint.

So lucky for us, if Facebook were really basing their designs around what is more Poor Richard's Almanac than the Bible, we can build far more compelling experiences than Facebook using _actual_ cutting-edge psychology - and I feel kinda lucky to get paid to do just that.

<comment><USER31> Any recommendations for books that are less "quaint"?

<comment><USER32> Dan Ariely at MIT has picked up where Kahneman and Tversky left off in terms of behavioural economics. He has written a few books.

That said, Kahneman Tversky and Ariely dont deal with scene perception - <USER3> is what you would want to look into if you were interested in planting ads. They all started off as vision researchers then shifted into deeper cognitive work.

If you want some scene perception look into Dan Simons or Ron Rensink.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Jeff, if I read you correctly, you think turning on brain system 1 and brain system 2 to insert advertising constitutes a grey or dark pattern [1]?

[1] <http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Home>

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting. I know what I'll be doing with my afternoon.

I lacked this language, but yes I think that's a fair reading of my position.

There's a broader argument that facebook really is providing a valuable service to us by making us aware of products and services that really will make our lives better. I'm unmoved by that claim, as I suspect most of us are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I don't know. I think making money is a sideline to Facebook's real goals.

That might not make sense to people with a simplistic view of what corporations are for, but I think it's true nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER35> "the smartest people in the world are working hard to come up with ways to get you to click on ads."

Does anyone know what quote he's alluding to here? I recall skimming an article on it some time ago, but I can't actually find the original.

I've been thinking about this trend - and, quite frankly, being depressed by it - a lot recently.

<comment><AUTHOR> I went looking for it too but came up empty handed. I know it was said/written somewhere.

And yeah, it is depressing. And I spend my time thinking about what they're doing... not sure if that is better or worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I like the new Timeline feature but the inability for me to switch to some sort of "old" view when I just want to see a perfect list of updates without any fancy grouping an annoyance. For casual use the Timeline is good but it leaves a lot to be desired when I want to see everything.

<comment><USER37> Buy an iPhone.

Joking. But the Timeline view in the iOS app places all items in a single column.

That said, Facebook has basically become a place where I sync my tweets and other services like Instagram so that people that I know who don't use Twitter yet can see them.

<comment><USER11> The iPhone app is just a thin wrapper around <http://m.facebook.com/>, so any browser will do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If anyone else had trouble reading the site because of font rendering in Firefox (what is up with those r's, D's and S's!?), I found readability made it digestible.

<http://www.readability.com/bookmarklets>

<comment><USER39> Stopped using Readability and switched to Readable when their bookmarks started doing funky stuff involving their servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Along these same lines, one could say that Timeline's addition of the personalized banner image with the user's name across it makes users look more like brands, possibly in an attempt to desensitize Facebook users to the difference between brands and actual people.

</comment><comment><USER41> The biggest benefits of timeline are (1) making it easier to see stuff in the past and (2) calling out the most memorable important events/content while hiding less important stuff. They could have done this in a list format, but using the Timeline makes it much more clear that important things are being called out while some other things are being left hidden.

It's a powerful solution to the problem of browsing all of a user's content over time, which was very difficult in the old profile. And it's a perfectly good reason for Facebook to try Timeline without ascribing ulterior motives.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'd never heard of System1/2 before, but it makes a lot of sense. Sites that are similar to the FB timeline, like Pinterest (which I recently signed up on to try it out), also give me that same sense of having to 'pay attention' more. It becomes more of a novelty instead of something that I'd want to use all the time. I think that is part of the popularity of sites like Craigslist and Hackernews, which present the information in an easily scanned format. They both fall into System 1. I think that as I do UX design for my site, I'll keep this in mind.

</comment><comment><USER43> > Timeline also makes branded posts (ads) look nearly identical to the actual > content we're on facebook to see, so it follows that they'd be processed > similarly.

I'm not sure what the author is referring to, but the ads on the side (regrettably IMO) look nothing like the organic content in the main Timeline columns. There isn't enough space to show more organic content on the side as there is next to the Newsfeed. Why does the OP think that the ads are "nearly identical" to organic content?

</comment><comment><USER44> While an interesting theory (I should read the book), how are you certain that system 2 comes online when viewing the timeline?

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't be certain, but I know that from a subjective perspective my brain feels the same way browsing timeline as it does when I'm doing math or reasoning intently. The experience of cognitive strain is present in both cases.

One example in the book is that even hard to read fonts can cause cognitive strain and make you judge the content of the text differently. I see that as being largely analogous.

<comment><USER45> From my reading of the book (and the exerpt you have mentioned here), I'd agree that System 2 is in play when looking at the Timeline; it does create some cognitive load.

However, I can't remember anything backing your assertion that System 2 is more susceptible to advertising. In fact, my reading is the opposite: System 1 cannot help but read words or look at images, and it is easily swayed by various advertising techniques. It would be System 2 that processes what's happening, realizes you are trying to be sold something that you probably don't want/need, then rejects it. Isn't it a lack of engagement of System 2 that leads people to instinctively click ads or follow spam links?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Having followed the changes in their platform for years that doesn't seem to be the case. It s probably somebody new wanting to try some new idea. Zynga does have an optimization engine in place, Facebook does trial and error too much: profile boxes, tabs, no boxes, top stories etc, it's just pointless variations of a newsfeed.

</comment><comment><USER47> I can't be the only person who has never used timelines?

I assumed other people used facebook like me: To read what friends had posted, maybe occasionally post myself and respond to messages/events, nothing more.

The only timeline I have seen was one in which my friend put a picture of baby Jesus as his birth picture...

</comment><comment><USER48> That font is too awful to be an accident.

</comment><comment><USER49> Isn't this the basis of "disruption"? Change the format and you cause people to look more closely at something. Users will get used to timeline and they'll have to change again. Also I'm skeptical of the statement "facebook will be changing the way our brains process advertising".

</comment><comment><USER50> I agree with the headline but I think the real purposes is to drive more people to the news feed instead of browsing profiles. The ads are inserted into the news streams.

</comment><comment><USER51> Or the Facebook Timeline is their New Coke--they can roll it out, then in a few months roll back to something similar, but not exactly the same as, the old layout.

<comment><USER52> If it is their New Coke, then what you mean is they can roll it back to something exactly the same, and then have conspiracy nuts repeat nonsense claims that it is different now. New Coke was not a way to distract people while they changed the recipe of classic, classic didn't change.

<comment><USER53> Classic did change. It went from having cane sugar before to having high fructose corn syrup afterwards.

<comment><USER35> Not sure about that.

What Coca Cola actually ships from Atlanta is the syrup, unsweetened. The bottlers add water and sugar to this, and AFAIK [1], it is up to their discretion what type of sugar to use.

This is one of the reasons that Coke tastes different in different places - <USER4> can of Coke in Montreal is very different from one in Toronto.

I'd have fact-checked this, but for some reason, Wikipedia is down... :)

[1] Perhaps this is no longer the case, but it certainly was in 1989, when I "interned" at a Coke bottling facility in Harare, Zimbabwe for a week

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The first time I saw the timeline, my first thought was "Wow, that's roughly as cluttered as MySpace. We've almost come full circle."

</comment><comment><USER55> Very good points there, I can't help but agree. I'm also rather glad I'm one of those anti-Facebook nuts. Where's my foil hat?

</comment><comment><USER56> Re: "the smartest people in the world are working hard to come up with ways to get you to click on ads."

Maybe the third-smartest. The smartest people in the world probably aren't working hard, period. The second-smartest people are working hard to build shit that _sells itself_.

</comment><comment><USER57> Effective? I doubt it. I haven't clicked a single ad or promotional item in FB, after using it for years.

I click on Google ads at least a couple times a month, because they tend to be relevant to what I'm looking for at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER58> I was just talking to a friend about timeline and how hard it is to navigate. I can't even go on friends pages that use it - it's just too hard to get used to, especially when almost everyone else uses the regular interface.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, ran out of bandwidth. Called my host and should be back online in a second.</comment>


Image Processing Troubles. - <AUTHOR> http://www.issackelly.com/Blog/entry/Image_Processing_with_free_tools/

<comment><AUTHOR> Twitter, Disqus, and my own implementation with GD tools processes this PNG the same way, anybody know what's going on here?</comment>


Experiment: Eliminating Toast Sweat - <AUTHOR> http://murrayhurps.com/post/82442316389/eliminating-toast-sweat <comment><USER2> Infrared thermometers like the one used in this article are (typically) calibrated for an emissivity of 0.95. If you use one on a material with a lower emissivity, it'll give inaccurate readings. This can be cheaply solved by sticking a piece of electrical tape on the surface, and measuring that.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic insight. I did have trouble picking up a temperature at certain angles, but at 90 degrees it returned the highest reading, which still wasn't burning my hand so is probably not above the value registered.

Might have gotten away with it because it's stoneware of some kind, but will definitely try a tape patch next time.

<comment><USER3> 90 degrees what?

a quick and easy test whether something is below or above ~50 degrees Celsius, is whether it's immediately painful to the touch.

it's the temperature at which most of our proteins start to denature, aka the temperature at which a steak changes from "warm but raw" to "very rare", and therefore the temperature that _hurts_ your fingers.

it's not super accurate of course, but it'll do if you just want to eyeball 53C.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The main problem here is that the moisture in the toast has not yet completely exited. So what I do is I toast at a lower temperature (if your device allows this) and / or leave the toast in the toaster for a few minutes after it's done. You'll notice that if you put your hands on top of the toaster after it's done, water is still evaporating like crazy. Imho this works better than a cooling rack or putting the bread on its side. Then you can reheat a bit if you want to, too. Is it weird that we've all thought so much about this?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's weird that we're thinking about anything, if you think about it enough.

And your thought raises the question: how much moisture do you actually want in your toast? Is zero acceptable?

<comment><USER5> I would think zero is not good, but of course it's subjective. I like my toast crispy, but soft enough that it's not like a crouton.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For a pseudo-scientific analysis ... it's a shame the units of measurement weren't defined up front.

(I live in one of the 190+ countries that use Celsius, but I know that 99.8% of things on the Internets are written by people from just one of those three other countries that doesn't. I'm also aware that for reasons that are a bit bewildering, everyone in those 190+ countries politely goes out of their way to make it clear that we're talking metric, because we're now used to the idea that if people don't mention units then they're probably from North America, and consequently are almost definitely using gallons (US, not UK gallons), miles (US, not UK miles), Fahrenheit and other deprecated units. We should probably stop being so considerate.)

<comment><USER7> This is interesting, can you give some examples of unit omission? As an american I am having trouble thinking outside of my environment. I know I am guilty of temperature unit omission: "It was 10 degrees outside /The high is going to be 60 tommorow." I am having trouble coming up with others. I am having the most trouble with gallons and or miles:

I was running on fumes, it took _3_ to fill my car up.

My friends new truck is super efficient for a pickup it gets _35_ / _35 miles_ / _35 to the gallon_.

I ran for _3_ yesterday.

Buffalo is _120_ from Syracuse.

<comment><USER6> dfc - you're right, I think, that it's almost always ambiguous temperature references, doubtless because the 'degree' part of the unit name is shared between the three common measures.

As rgarrett88 points out, short distances are often reduced to foot and inch numbers, with the receiver left to intuit context. Sometimes people will assert they hit a hundred, or went from zero to a hundred in x seconds, and weight-lifters are likely to talk about the _number_ they can push ... again reliant upon sender and receiver sharing the same cultural background.

My comment about 'us' being so considerate was somewhat tongue in cheek, natch, though (since I'm speaking for all the rest of us now) we'd really like it if you guys would switch over to metric at your earliest convenience. I won't say ISO / SI, as working in K is just too unwieldy :)

<comment><USER7> I like to think our rejection of the metric system is because we are standing on principle and reject the semantic inconsistency that is the kilogram. Base measures should not be prefixed;)

<comment><USER6> Cling onto that raft! I fear it's a combination of NIH (despite the same being said of imperial, Fahrenheit, etc), fear of change, and irrational dislike of the French. Of course, Daniel Fahrenheit was Dutch/German, and Anders Celsius was Swedish.

But if you think kg is frustrating, I'm learning electronics now - every book, when starting to talk about capacitors, says something like 'However, the Farad is not a convenient unit, and you'll most be working with 0.0000000001F capacitors'. Yes, the SI unit is unhindered by a prefix, but you can't but help wish they'd thought more carefully about this before writing it down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Were tests done beyond the 53C temperature, to see if this resulted in a total elimination of toast sweat?

I realize that this may make the plate "too hot to handle", but I'd gladly eat breakfast with one hand in an oven mitt if it would result in better toast.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another excellent question. At this stage, I had my sweat-free toast, and wanted breakfast, so no. I've made a note for the next set of tests though, thanks.

<comment><USER9> Application of research methods before breakfast? good man.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have never had problems with toast sweat: Just stand the two slices upright on the plate so that they look like a T from above. It's very easy and stable and after a minute the steam is out so that they won't sweat anymore.

I never measured it, but I had the feeling that the A form (looking from the side) slightly interferes with the rising steam.

How do you do it?

<comment><USER11> I just don't take it out of the toaster when it comes up, I wait about a minute.

In the past I leaned it (like the A-form you mentioned) against some other stuff, like the cup or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd enjoy a follow-up where they test different materials against the 'keep- toast-dry' 53 degree temperature of clay plate.

Would something like neoprene/polystyrene plates (as insane as it sounds) provide a solution to slightly soggy toast at a lower temperature?

It's one thing to find an optimal temperature, but a completely other beast to find a practical solution to it!

<comment><USER13> Perhaps brand (and, specifically, water content) of bread plays a big role too. With the brand of bread I use I don't experience this problem (or maybe I just eat my toasts rather quickly?).

Also, paper critically omits condition of toast prior to heating - was it stored in the fridge or in the cupboard? Was is stored in vacuum packaging or not? How old was the toast from the manufacturing date? Also toast can be weighted before and after heating, and after removal from the plate to measure loss of water content (it's my understanding that water on the plate is actually condensation, and not part of the toast, but is it indeed so?).

Murray should seriously consider establishing Murray Institute of Toasting Research and addressing these important topics in subsequent scientific publications.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points, and added to the list of paths to explore for the next version.

Also hard to disagree with your suggestion as a new life path.

The global bread market is predicted to hit $170B by 2015 (GIA report), if we can capture the minds of just 1% of that market, then I'll be able to afford a better thermometer.

<comment><USER13> >if we can capture the minds of just 1% of that market, then I'll be able to afford a better thermometer.

I'm sure that just after couple publications consulting gigs for brad and toaster manufacturers and speaking engagements will pay not only for thermometer, but also for microgram scale and hygrometer.

Interestingly, I spent some time thinking about where condensate is coming from, and so far it's not really obvious - some humid air needs to get colder for it to appear. May it's indeed evaporation from the piece of bread itself? But then it would be visible, in the same way evaporation is visible on top of cup of hot tea. Mystery.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm thinking very sensitive scales to measure both the bread and the plate before and after the test period, which should answer that question definitively.

The question now though is, how much would that condensation weigh? And hence how accurate do the scales need to be?

<comment><USER13> 1 cubic centimeter of water weighs 1 gram. This looks like 1/10 of cubic centimeter at most. Milligram scale should work - $20 at Amazon, but you'll have to use rather small plate (the more you weigh, the less precise the measurement of difference between two objects).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why not use a cooling rack? Then air can circulate under the toast, eliminating the moisture and removing the need to pre heat a plate.

<comment><USER15> I just keep my toast in the toaster a bit longer.

<comment><AUTHOR> What if you have two slices of toast on your plate?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Today we learn about dew points?

This is no different than why you have vapor barriers in certain climates.

Without trying to sound dismissive, i was not aware there was a lot of experimentation here necessary to figure out the temperature at which the water would stop condensing on the plate again.

Still a fun article, of course :)

<comment><USER17> This post is a great example of what was discussed here

[http://brooklynoptimist.com/2014/04/10/hacker-school- banning...](http://brooklynoptimist.com/2014/04/10/hacker-school-banning- feigned-surprise-is-absolutely-brilliant/)

YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T HEARD OF DEW POINTS??

<comment><USER18> i know of a few times that i showed surprise finding out that somebody never heard about something.

this surprise was however never about the other person, but about myself. i realized, that my worldview was so skewed about some topics, that i believed them to be almost universally accepted. the topics themselves were often unknown to people outside of my online-bubble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A plate heated to Murray Temperature seems like it would be too hot to handle comfortably? Did you find this to be an issue?

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent question, it was indeed hot to handle, but didn't burn. [http://www.antiscald.com/prevention/general_info/table.php](http://www.antiscald.com/prevention/general_info/table.php)

<comment><USER20> Perhaps "gentle warming" is a bit of an understatement then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is amazing. Keep up the good work. I'd be quite happy if governments would give small grants to this kind of every day useful research. I personally eat large amounts of toast so this is an issue very close to my heart. Here in the UK toast is often balanced on it's side against something to avoid this. I believe you can also buy a small toast rack for this purpose. (However I often fear that this cools the toast too quickly.)

I'd be interested to know next if it's possible for the plate to be _too_ hot?

</comment><comment><USER22> So - why is Toast Sweat bad? That question was never addressed.

<comment><USER23> It's less than ideal for sandwich toast, where you want to contrast the dry and crunchy toast with your moist and chewy interiors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Toast sweat is on par with pizza sweat. As a pizza retains its heat for much longer than toast, I usually just put it on a rack or slide a large knife underneath to prop it up.

<comment><USER25> Your oven is not hot enough.

<comment><USER6> This is almost definitely true, but most domestic ovens don't get hot enough (400C from memory is close to ideal). Hottest oven I've had in a 'normal' rented place went as high as 270C, and even with a pizza stone it was hard to get enough moisture out in the 8-9 minutes before the rest of it was at risk of being overcooked.

While the knife wedged under the edge works to stop it going too soggy, the other trick is to use a wooden tray or chopping board to serve on - this pulls out some of the residual moisture.

<comment><USER25> I had this hauled in a few months ago [https://twitter.com/luyben/status/416255790002225152/photo/1](https://twitter.com/luyben/status/416255790002225152/photo/1) it's with some stretch the best purchase I ever did. If you have the space for it, I would recommend ordering one _today_.

I am a huge pizza fan (I can and some times do eat it every day) and have been screwing around with pizza stones, oven hacks, different flower etc to make that 'restaurant pizza'; it's the temperature. With this thing everything comes out like it was created by the gods; it does not really matter what you put in; it just starts bubbling 2 seconds in and is fully cooked under 2 minutes. You will burn your entire mouth to stuff it in as quickly as you can while baking the next one and you will bake and eat way too many the first few goes leaving you ill and hating pizza (for about 1 hour). And when the fire dies down, you put in bread dough for the most wonderful bread. Life is good for such a small price. If you are handy and have a lot of time (I am handy ; no time) you can build it yourself. Don't make it too big; when it's the right temp, you can make 1 pizza per 2 minutes which is enough for most settings. If you have one which fits 2+ pizza's, you'll be tossing in crazy amounts of wood to get it started.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Also I'd be interested to know how the room temperature affects it. If I eat my toast in my fridge will I get less toast sweat? What should I set my house thermostat to? My guess is setting the room temperate as high as possible (and as close to Murray temperature as possible) would be best but I'd like to know for sure.

</comment><comment><USER26> Can't you just use an rack?

</comment><comment><USER27> I love this! I am also regularly saddened by the phenomenon of toast sweat. I looked in vain, though, for an RSS (or Atom) feed so I could follow your site, but didn't see one. Did I miss it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Much appreciated! Will add a link shortly, but try [http://murrayhurps.com/rss](http://murrayhurps.com/rss)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> C'mon, no need to experiment. Just make a toast teepee -- stand those suckers up against each other and let them evaporate before making that sammich.

<comment><USER29> The standing up methods are inferior because the parts of the bread in contact with the (cold) plate still sweat. When the plate is hot enough there won't be any condensation at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is this something that doesn't happen in some climates? I've never noticed nor even heard about this "toast sweat" in my life.

</comment><comment><USER31> does the suggested temperature also eliminate toast sweat in different varieties of bread?

</comment><comment><USER32> Or you could put a piece of kitchen towel on the plate.

<comment><USER33> Then you have a piece of toast on a wet towel. Along with suggestions that suggest a cooling rack (I'm not a fan of cold toast), I think this misses the mark.

"Never serve hot food on a cold plate." -Ramsay

It seems obvious enough when you get in the habit and you wonder why you never started warming your plates to begin with.

It's usually not an extra chore if you capture the ambient heat of a cooking source. Putting plates in the oven when you take the food out to rest. Putting a plate on top of the toaster for half a minute could work in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Important information.

</comment><comment><USER35> Toast sweat killed my uncle. I'm glad someone is finally fighting back.</comment>


Show HN: Bsed – Simple, English syntax on top of Perl text processing - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/andrewbihl/bsed <comment><USER2> Kinda off that this is written in Python, and not Perl. If it was written in Perl, it'd have the portability that the underlying translated commands have!

I'd be happy to help you port it to modern, high-quality, readable Perl if that's something you're interested in. Being able to install this by dropping a single Perl file into ~/bin/ would be neat.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, if it were entirely Perl it would have essentially no dependencies. Right now the audience is limited to those with a currently functioning Python3 environment or willing to configure one.

My only concerns are:

I do not know what the process of getting comparable tab completion would be in Perl. I depended on the argcomplete package for this feature which I consider to be essential...the clarity of the syntax depends on being a bit verbose, and this is only usable because tab completion makes it fast to use.

Also, I'm somewhat reluctant to develop in Perl, though I'm willing to do it provided the benefit + demand is there. It would be ironic to have learned Perl as a consequence of building a tool whose primary function is to prevent one having to learn Perl.

I'll send you an email to discuss further.

<comment><USER3> I haven't used the following (I simply never had to implement the shell autocompletion as try I avoid the shell as much as I can, preferring to organize my code in the actual files that I can reuse from my editor) but I guess it can be the best start to include significant parts of this code inside of your final script, if the goal can be to have a single easily usable script doing everything, as somebody mentioned that ideal here (still take care to keep the compatible/same license):

[https://fastapi.metacpan.org/source/PERLANCAR/Complete- Bash-...](https://fastapi.metacpan.org/source/PERLANCAR/Complete- Bash-0.320/lib/Complete/Bash.pm)

You can surely omit the lines between =pod and =cur (they are used to create the documentation) and most probably also the "description" parts.

> It would be ironic to have learned Perl as a consequence of building a tool > whose primary function is to prevent one having to learn Perl.

It's less ironic than you think, I consider it the bigger irony that Python turned to be the major compatibility problem in all but single-user single- program environments (it's really not trivial to have to work with more Python variants as the dependencies for different code). You can be sure that any Perl 5 skills you obtain can remain quite portable and usable across the different environments.

I've also already written here, I consider Perl significantly "safer" language than Python: when I modify some big Perl scripts, very often the Perl compiler (when used with the "use strict" and -w option) will tell me early enough what is missing for a program to function correctly again, as Perl simply more explicit, in some weird way almost like the typed languages. I never have the same feeling of "it will work" with the modification of the Python scripts.

That "line noise" is actually meaningful, much more consistent than the shell languages, and safer in case of the changes than Python.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perl aside, I would say that's almost imperative to learn sed and awk. They invaluable tools for getting things done in *nix. They seem cryptic at first, but put a weekend into learning them and you learn that they are simply concise.

<comment><USER5> And then you have a script that needs to run on a mac as well and you can either fight that the people will install the gnu version or you just rewrite your one-liner in perl.

I'm not a huge fan of perl but I've been writing my one-liners in it for a few years now and I've had less problems with portability.

<comment><USER4> I would use another language for distributing a script (probably) python. Awk and sed I use more on a one-off basis although I do have a list of ones I use frequently.

<comment><USER6> Would that be the deprecated 2.x with OS X or 3.x which has been available for years?

To put it another way, you've replaced sed incompatibility with python incompatibility. It's not really a win.

I'm not saying Perl is the best choice here, but it's a better choice than Python for cross platform compatibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is cool! I've wanted to explore something similar but incorporating a broad range of Unix commands.

I imagined a drag and drop interface (sort of like the Scratch programming language) with English descriptors of the functions being performed. You'd make it a web UI or something that generates a bash script you can paste into the terminal.

</comment><comment><USER8> some notes on the sample awk/sed/perl one-liner given:

        # input line has to be explicitly printed
        awk '{gsub(/Jack/,"Jill")} 1' file.txt

        # -i will do inplace editing, unlike the awk command
        # -i by itself won't work on non-GNU versions, needs backup extension
        sed 's/Jack/Jill/g' file.txt

        # use single quotes always, unless double is needed
        # -p will behave like default sed
        perl -pe 's/Jack/Jill/g' file.txt

personally, I prefer the terseness of these commands over verbose SQL like syntax (and also the fact that I don't know SQL like tools)

However, I would agree that initial learning curve is tough for sed/awk/perl. Once you get familiar with their idioms, they become the swiss army knife of cli text processing (along with grep). I have an entire repo dedicated to such tools[1]

[1] [https://github.com/learnbyexample/Command-line-text- processi...](https://github.com/learnbyexample/Command-line-text-processing)

<comment><USER9> Shameless plug for even terser syntax: [https://github.com/chmln/sd](https://github.com/chmln/sd)

<comment><USER10> That looks very nice, thank you for sharing/writing it!

Are you responsible for updating the Cargo package? It's the first time I've used Cargo and was wondering how often I should re-run it or check for updates?

<comment><USER9> You can run cargo install-update -a every now and then to check for updates. At some point in a few weeks I hope to have binaries distributed with every release, which means there will be better/faster ways to install sd than cargo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to hear any questions or feedback. I've gotten quite a bit of use from this tool personally and have had a lot of fun making it.

<comment><USER11> Really looking forward to trying this out. The syntax looks very clean & clear. I hate the insanity of sed, and assuming the performance is here, I'd switch to this in a heartbeat.

<comment><AUTHOR> In my experience, Perl outperforms sed on most equivalent commands. I should do some benchmarking and add it to the documentation.

<comment><USER12> You should really use psed then, which came with perl5 from 5.002 until v5.21.1 and is now on CPAN. This is a proper sed, implemented in perl.

[https://metacpan.org/pod/release/RJBS/perl-5.21.0/x2p/s2p.PL](https://metacpan.org/pod/release/RJBS/perl-5.21.0/x2p/s2p.PL) [https://metacpan.org/pod/release/LEONT/App-s2p-1.000/script/...](https://metacpan.org/pod/release/LEONT/App-s2p-1.000/script/s2p)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd definitely incorporate it into my projects if it were ported Go, Rust, or any reasonable redistributable form, and continued to use a BSD license. Way clearer than cryptic sed and awk one-liners! Big kudos to you for making this and sharing it with the world!

Python apps which are more than a single script are a non-starter for me. It's a big pain to get everyone on my 120+ person dev team to install it properly, they're all over the place with regard to environments. "Oops, I'm on Python 3.4", or python 2.6, or "I use this other python path"; it's inevitably a headache.

<comment><USER14> Yep, this. Python is a headache for this sort of thing IME. (Nothing against the language though, although I don't know it)

<comment><USER15> > IME

> I don't know it

Huh?

<comment><USER16> One can have "experience" with something, and not "know" it.

Could just as easy say: "I have experience in scenarios where I must use python or run its scripts in an evironment, and it has been a headache, but I can't say I dislike the language because I haven't needed to explicitly create programswith it."

<comment><USER14> This is exactly what I meant to convey, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is very cool for simplifying interactive use :) but I'd like to caution people away from immortalizing it in their scripts. sed and awk are both standardized by POSIX and can be found on pretty much any system, and trivially ported to new systems. Porting Python, on the other hand, is comparitavely a mammoth proposition, and often impossible on some platforms. For this reason, I'm generally allergic to "new $x replaces $y!" for any $y which is governed by portable standards.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. For anything longer term, I'd recommend finding the right bsed command and then using -t flag to get the Perl translation.

Perl is installed by default on common operating systems.

<comment><USER17> >Perl is installed by default on common operating systems.

Aye, but what about the uncommon ones? For your consideration, I'd like to share Perl's configure script:

[https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/blead/Configure](https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/blead/Configure)

It's my favorite configure script of all time, but I would hate to be the guy who has to extend it with a new platform :) And I have!

<comment><USER18> This is something I love about Perl: in an age of many subtly incompatible operating systems, Perl said "F it, we'll do what it takes to compile and run your program everywhere." People don't appreciate this now, when everything is Linux, Mac, or Windows, but back when you regularly had to deal with various BSDs, HPUX, AIX, Mac OS 9, and even the occasional VAX, Perl was a godsend.

<comment><USER19> $_ =~ s/was a/is a/g;

There, I fixed it for you.

Seriously, I see so many ways of re-inventing these wheels, written in the fad languages/systems d'jour. Perl works very well, for a large subset of tasks that are common.

The same code that ran 25+ years ago (in perl4) on my Sun and Irix machines, runs today on my laptops in linux, MacOSX. I remember building Perl atop the Cray J90 running Unicos in grad school, as I had built run automation software in it (not a queuing system, but code to encapsulate some of my runs and return the relevant data). I had developed that code on my OS2 based desktop with Perl.

Perl is a go-to language. It gets stuff done. Without pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > bsed giant_malformatted.json replace '\'' with '\"' | bsed replace 'True' > with 'true' | bsed replace 'False' with 'false'

bsed giant_malformatted.json replace '\'' _that begins or ends a string_ with '\"' | bsed replace _unquoted_ 'True' with 'true' | bsed replace _unquoted_ 'False' with 'false'

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point. I mostly put those commands together to illustrate concepts. Two things you've touched on though that I haven't implemented yet: compound conditionals, and a nice way to indicated word boundaries (as opposed to the regex solution)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21>
        TEXT PROCESSING DIVISION.
        PERFORM REGEXP-REPLACE "LETTER A; LETTER B; ONE-OR-MORE-CHARACTERS;" EMPTY-STRING
        .

<comment><USER22> Or, rather:

        PIC A(2)X(integer01)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Neat, but a little scary because you rely on it to interpret your intentions correctly. Usually when I am trying to do something, I build up my command in multiple steps, printing outputs and verifying it is correct before actually running the command. Maybe you could have a "diff" or "dryrun" mode that would show the potential changes. Another idea would be for this script to "compile" a CLI command using grep/awk/sed etc instead of doing the actual editing itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> The interpretation is only translating into standard Perl one-liners, and by default the execution writes to stdout instead of modifying the file. I haven't written code to actually do the text transformations.

My normal workflow is to write commands, pipe them together as needed, and when I think I am satisfied I'll store to a temporary file. If I really need to be extra sure then I will use my preferred ddiff tool to compare against the original before doing the swap.

I may have mis-interpreted but I hope between this and the unit tests your concerns are alleviated

<comment><USER23> Okay I misunderstood, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great, now I only have to google SQL syntax :)

(Sorry, had to take the easy one. Tooling using something as wide-spread as SQL is definitely a good thing!)

<comment><USER25> Its worth your time learning. Its been an in demand skill for decades now. Compare that to JavaScript framemworks....

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does it compare performance-wise to other tools with similar goals? Seeing this is written in 100% python, I suspect it will be an order of magnitude slower.

<comment><AUTHOR> The python code only carries out translation into Perl. The actual execution of the text transformation is Perl, which is generally the fastest of the available tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The HN entry title might be misleading: this is a _Python_ tool, Perl is only mentioned in the Readme for comparison.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perl is actually executing the text transformations. The python is a translation layer between the bsed syntax and the Perl command, so you get the performance of Perl with a very minor time cost for interpretation done in Python.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, there's not a lot of point in having the python layer. Perl excels at these kinds of things. I'm guessing that the original developer just doesn't know perl well enough to implement that part. Which is not to denegrate his work, but this could easily be a drop in single file perl executable if someone does the actual (not that much) work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ah, googling for some awk wizardry. Best done with a sandwich.

</comment><comment><USER29> Odd that it installs with pip but uses perl.

</comment><comment><USER30> Based

</comment><comment><USER31> He lost me at "Perl".

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate? The tool doesn't require you to learn/know perl, that's just what operates under the hood. I actually chose to exclude any reference to Perl in the title, though it appears a moderator changed it.

<comment><USER32> they are trying for cool points by hating on perl

<comment><USER33> ...which is such an odd thing to do on a forum frequented by people who pride themselves on their breadth of knowledge and openness to new ideas.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NP-Complete Problems and Physical Reality (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0502072 <comment> kenny-log_ins If you enjoyed this I highly recommend both his book, "Quantum Computing Since Democritus", and blog ([http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/)). Tagline of the blog is "If you take just one piece of information from this blog: Quantum computers would not solve hard search problems instantaneously by simply trying all the possible solutions at once."

<comment><USER2> Wholeheartedly recommend this book as well. He gives a brief overview of classical complexity, how quantum matrices work, then how quantum complexity works. It's really accessible to those with some complexity background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On the point of anthropic computing: it is important to note that you have not accomplished any _improvement_ to your condition by killing yourself; before as after, you had found a correct solution with probability 2^-n. Anthropic computing is just "fancy guessing".

What is interesting about it to me is that the "true computational nature of reality" must be such that sufficient computation is available for you to run the _validation_ of your solution in logarithmic time an exponential number of times ("in parallel"), because otherwise you could not find yourself _at all_ in a universe where you knew you had found the correct computation. Which does make it strange that quantum physics does not seem to give us any way to "get at" all this computation that must be going on behind the scenes.

(Unless the "true nature" of reality is such that a subset of the wavefunction is being computed "for cheap". Collapse exonerated?)

<comment><AUTHOR> By running the validation "in parallel", do you mean running it in each of the possible quantum "many worlds" in which validation takes place?

If so, aren't you implicitly assuming that these other parallel worlds somehow draw on a shared pool of computing resource? This might be true [1], but equally there may not be a "behind the scenes" of reality at all.

[1] How would we know? Run a timing attack on the underlying compute infrastructure?

<comment><USER4> I'm leaning toward the parallel universe hypothesis as well, except I'm thinking it's more like there are part-time processes that run in parallel, do their work, then exit after they come to some type of consensus of state. It would end up looking something like a bunch of containers running a game on your computer, processing all the other player's moves, arriving at consensus, sending that consensus to a central 'compute' spot where a global consensus took place, wait for a reply, then take what the global central thing said was a valid state of things. Rinse and repeat. Stick it all in blockchain in case there's a disagreement.

I keep pointing out to people I can't make their beers (including glass) disappear while we're talking at a table. That this universe doesn't allow me to hack it (and presumably keeps others from hacking it) is a nice feature.

<comment><AUTHOR> If the multiverse / physical reality has a "global central thing" then it has a scaling bottleneck, and we have a problem.

<comment><USER5> We wouldn't really notice if the simulation keeps getting slower though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "But another reason we believe P≠NP is that otherwise mathematical creativity could be automated!"

I have a problem with this. Just because the thought is unpleasant does not make it true or false. Besides, perhaps this is the very difference between automation and intelligence, perhaps the point at which you can ask this of a computer is the point at which you should no longer consider it a computer.

<comment><USER7> There is zero reason to believe that human level mathematical creativity is computationally significantly more expensive than normal day to day thinking.

<comment><USER8> In terms of the computations performed in the brain by the mathematician, at the time the insight is achieved, it's not.

But appropriately accounted for, I think it is.

The relevant metric would be, "what do I have to increase in order to get more [interesting, new] theorems proved?" Is it as easy has having mathematicians work more hours? Having more people start working on them?

Intuitively, it is not so easy -- each insights need exponentially more work as time progresses. An exponentially-small fraction of humans is capable of producing novel results, and so on.

This, I think, is what Aaronson is getting at: if P = NP, if proving is as easy as verifying, then coming up with hard mathematical insights should be as easy as following a cookbook, or any other routine, mundane mental task.

But that doesn't seem to describe the world we live in, where getting mathematical insights has rapidly diminishing returns per unit resource invested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A point that has become more obvious over the years is this: there are "soft" instances of NP-complete problems where you can find good approximations in reasonable time, and there are "crunchy" instances of the same class of problem where you don't find a good approximation.

Commercial ILP solvers (e.g. Gurobi, CPlex) profit from the fact that quite often it is possible to formulate NP-complete problems and find good solutions in acceptable time. Similarly, many of the "physical" ways of solving NP- complete problems work ok for easy instances and get unwieldly fast if confronted with difficult instances.

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember a TED talk on the failed attempts to find cases in which nature solves a NP-complete problem. Paper must be an interesting read.

<comment><USER11> This one is always fun: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvBSkt6LhJE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvBSkt6LhJE)

Related: [http://www.wired.com/2010/01/slime-mold-grows-network- just-l...](http://www.wired.com/2010/01/slime-mold-grows-network-just-like- tokyo-rail-system/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I posted this link because (a) it seemed like a good survey of the subject, and (b) I felt like I almost understood most of it. Does anyone have any suggestions for accessible further reading at the intersection of computer science and physics?

<comment><USER12> His Philosophy-Complexity paper is also fantastic, in case you have not read it already: [http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf](http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf)

It has also been discussed most recently here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9061744](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9061744)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'll definitely be reading those.

Aaronson's talk on Computational Complexity and the Anthropic Principle [1] also looks interesting.

[1] [http://www.scottaaronson.com/talks/anthropic.html](http://www.scottaaronson.com/talks/anthropic.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "If some physicist wants to continue the tradition of naming quantum gravity theories using monosyllabic words for elongated objects that mean something completely different in computer science, then I propose the most revolutionary advance yet: thread theory."

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm looking forward to his take on the recent thing about memristor machines being able to solve NP-complete problems...it was on HN a couple of days ago.

</comment><comment><USER15> From 2005</comment>


Ask HN: Do you get as productive when you stand and code? What other alternative - <AUTHOR> Lately, I have had back and neck pain issues and now I am standing and coding. But I feel it might be not as productive as when I sit. Maybe the concentration part of it is the challenge. Just wanted to know if there are any good practises out there to address issues. Not looking for any recommendation on products as such, but what has enabled to address the problem. Is couch better or a lazy chair or standing itself but on a more soft surface ? Does some sort of music help in this  etc. Thanks <comment><USER2> Try an anti fatigue mat if you plan to work the whole day.

</comment><comment><USER3> Take a walk each day, somewhere in the middle</comment>


Inside Facebook security: defending users from hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/25/2996321/inside-facebook-likejackers-spammers-hackers

<comment><USER2> I thought this quote was interesting: "With a high degree of certainty, we know who you would be friends with."

I guess if I solved one Knuth's hard problems in one of this books and then sent a friend request telling him I solved it, it would end up in spam.

How sad! The Internet is supposed to help folks get to the other side of the tracks.</comment>


Wonder – A key-value store for your life - <AUTHOR> https://wonder-bot.com <comment><USER2> This may be nice, but it makes me extremely uncomfortable to have this ran by a company on a server that knows my phone number.

It looks like its also skipping any sort of encryption and is instead just using sms messages.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I wonder if the paranoia I feel about storing such personal information your service is pathological"

</comment><comment><USER4> Would be much cooler if it was open source and you could run your own bot.

</comment><comment><USER5> That looks almost too intimate.</comment>


Instead of reading HN comments about AGPL, read the AGPL - <AUTHOR> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html

<comment><USER2> AGPL is mostly used by companies that want to sell software (e.g. <http://itextpdf.com/> ). It's a commercial business model with an Open Source teaser. Fortunately AGPL is easy to circumvent and therefore unlikely to become widespread.</comment>


The "Auschwitz concentration camp personnel" database - <AUTHOR> http://en.truthaboutcamps.eu/ <comment><USER2> Look at the job titles from clicking around. You'll see nothing but things like "farmer", "bank clerk", "shop keeper", "businessman" after translating.

Food for thought, that you don't have to be the one pulling a trigger to be complicit in atrocities.

<comment><USER3> There's also a lot of people missing description though. Obviously, "professional sociopath" wasn't a job description they would have put in there, although it was probably quite characteristic for many of those "careers". I think they recycled a lot of criminals. The SS in general, while having started as a weird "aryan" elite group in the 30s, became a mercenary organization with divisions from all parts of the world later in the war. There were even muslim SS members.

<comment><USER2> It was also full of draftees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if any point the Germans thought they had took it to far

<comment><USER5> From my reading on the subject, many Germans did. Some of them were intimidated into silence on the matter, while others acted in support of the genocide directly or indirectly.

Many Germans - whether or majority is up for debate - supported the Holocaust as they understood and/or admitted it to themselves at the time.

As an aside, your grammar is incorrect in your comment. I mean absolutely no offense by this and I'm hesitant to point it out, but if it were me I would want to be corrected. "had took" should be "had taken".

<comment><USER6> I don't doubt your intentions and it was nice of you to preface your correction with such reservation, but I gotta give a shout-out to descriptivism: if you can understand what's meant, maybe it's not incorrect!

<comment><USER5> That's a good point, and I don't disagree.

For some background, I grew up in northern Arkansas. I have a very pronounced Southern accent if I allow myself to, and I've always made it a point to carefully enunciate and use "correct" (read: "Standard American English") grammar because my native accent is one that's generally associated with lower education or even lower intelligence.

I credit my vocabulary with my reading everything I could early in life. I'm in my early thirties and there are still times when I have to ask others how to pronounce a word because I've never heard it spoken. I would much rather take the embarrassment of asking over the implicit judgement that people make if I badly mispronounce a word.

<comment><USER7> I find this site very helpful for many languages, including English:

[https://forvo.com/languages/en/](https://forvo.com/languages/en/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The motivation behind publishing this database is interesting. It's a response to the western media using the term "Polish Death Camps", which enrages polish public. Personally I didn't think it was a big issue until I saw Obama use that term.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not sure why this was flagged as it's a historical page, and in that sense no different from, say, the Atlas Obscura pages that make it to the HN front page from time to time.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow. After a quick glance at the database, it seems like many of the guys working at the KZ had little to no education. Many of the ones where there are photos look like they have some kind of mental handicap. I wonder whether some of the people who worked there were also taken advantage of.

<comment><USER3> Keep in mind that that's true for almost the entire population in the 30s and 40s. Large quantities of the population had no better education than primary school plus job training. In the 1950s, only 5% of Germans had Abitur (which is 13 years of school and required for studying), in the 70s it was still only 10%. Most likely even less in the other countries (Hungary, Romania) where many of the garrison workers came from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't get this. The link is titled The "Auschwitz concentration camp personnel" database, but it just appears to be a page that basically gives an opinion towards the holocaust that, to me, is somewhat obvious.

Where's the database?

<comment><USER2> [http://pamiec.pl/pa/form/60,Zaloga-SS-KL- Auschwitz.html](http://pamiec.pl/pa/form/60,Zaloga-SS-KL-Auschwitz.html)

After clicking through a few links you can find it, it's tough because the content is repeated in several languages rather than via the commonly used "language switcher" UI we're all used to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> flagged? why? Did the alt-riech get their feelies hurt?

</comment><comment><USER13> Great documentary about Treblinka, the death camp in which one-third of the killings occurred. It's not talked about very often, so it's refreshing to get an in-depth look:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFq-- lStmgs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFq--lStmgs)</comment>


Silicon Valley Adjusts to New Reality as $100B Evaporates - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-adjusts-to-new-reality-as-100-billion-evaporates-11574764205?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> I think you mean "adjusts to reality". The only new thing is this phenomenon where as long as a company is growing by 50% a year it's perfectly fine if it's losing five billion dollars a year and has absolutely no idea how to ever make a profit.

<comment><USER3> I've watched from the sidelines as a lot of rapid-growth but loss-making companies with "no idea how to make a profit" suddenly figure out how to make a profit. I said "pah, unprofitable!" And turned down opportunities to invest in Google, Facebook, Amazon etc at tiny fractions of their present valuations.

A company with a lot of growth is nothing to sneeze at, even if they haven't yet properly monetised. Speaking of which I've been meaning to buy Uber shares...

<comment><USER4> Google, Facebook, Amazon all had idea how to make profit and especially how they build a moat against competition.

Uber still has not figured out how to be profitable once things settle. At the basic level it's just an app matching drivers and customers. They have little moat against other apps and conventional taxi companies adopting similar apps when price competition becomes brutal. Uber has externalized car maintenance etc to individual drivers. Taxi companies can manage their fleets more economically.</comment></comment></comment>


Tunde Ednut Accused of Sending Photos of Other Men's Pens to Young Women - <AUTHOR> http://naijcrackgist.blogspot.com/2017/05/tunde-ednut-accused-of-sending-photos.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> > Tunde Ednut Accused of Sending Photos of Other Men's Pens to Young Women

Fountain or ballpoint?</comment>


Urban story telling with Open Data - <AUTHOR> http://civic.io/2012/12/20/urban-storytelling-with-open-data/

<comment><USER2> Certainly tells a (disturbingly) good story, mapping areas with the respective number of incidents might tell the more vulnerable areas from the others</comment>


Show HN: Like TED, but hate finding videos? We've got you covered - <AUTHOR> http://tedocracy.com

<comment><USER2> they're mostly on netflix, thats where i watch them these days. Having said that, if you dont have netflix this would be cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we also recommend videos to you based on previous talks you've enjoyed or disliked.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Feedback on my site: pageonetimes.com - <AUTHOR>

Can you take a look at my site, pageonetimes.com, and let me know what you think. It is a "reddit", but just for sports. I am a sports fan and interesting stories are hard to find, so I decided to make a site to solve that problem.<p>As an interesting footnote, the site should seem familiar, because it is written in Arc and is based on news.arc, the same code that powers this site. <comment><USER3> I feel like the design is too cluttered. It looks like a sports rag, but the designs of most sports rags are too cluttered. I'd go with 2 columns max.

The idea is a solid one. No question. Digg Sports isn't very good. If you can keep the community focused I think you'll do well.

<comment><USER4> _It looks like a sports rag, but the designs of most sports rags are too cluttered._

You might like to read this: [http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002462.ht...](http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002462.html)

The important bit: "the real reason pizza flyers look the way they do is because that's what pizza flyers are expected to look like"

<comment><USER5> The principle doesn't translates across mediums. A newspaper interface works in real life but not on the web.

<comment><USER6> How does this make sense? The principle is based on the fact that something is easily recognizable because it looks familiar and follows an expected template. So, how is it that this does not translate across mediums.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been following your site from the start from the Arc Forum and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised when I took a look at it today. The design is so much more pleasing now than it was originally--which is not too say the original design was bad, quite the contrary. I'm not really much of a sports fan, but the site does intrigue me since you decided to go with Arc to create it. Not sure if you're holding it secret or not (which would be totally understandable), but if not, I would love to see the source code for the site seeing as how I am currently learning Arc as well and I love comparing my ideas with others to spot better ways of doing things.

Either way, code closed or open, the site does look great and I think its a really great idea. Good work!

<comment><AUTHOR> I owe a lot to pg for making news.arc open, and to the people who run Anarki as well. Some things I am thinking about:

\- it is harder to open-source something than to deploy the site, because w/ open-sourcing, both the site and the code have to be in good shape, whereas with just deploying a site, it is not as big a deal if the code has some quirks. In other words, there are some deviations from Arc best practices that I want to take care of.

\- I am thinking about whether there is an opportunity to have an open-source digg-killer based on Arc, and if so, what that would look like.

Anyway, if you want to work something out then shoot an email to: email@example.com

<comment><USER8> People who download open-source code know that most code is in bad shape. They're very forgiving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like it. Alot. I'm a sports fan and immediately saw about 7 stories I wanted to read. I'll def bookmark this and come back. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER10> It actually looks like a nice take on feed aggregation - and sports is a great niche to start with.

If you're planning on taking the look & feel further in the direction of print news, check out sIFR and consider making it an interface option. You have a lot to gain by improving the quality of the page. (sIFR is here: <http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/>)

In your place, I would also play with placement and formatting of certain stories with respect to the others. It would probably require backend work, but determining which of those stories is most important and then displaying them as such would be pretty cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> That seems like an interesting tool and a novel approach. It is a little hard to wrap my head around how this does things that straight CSS cannot - <USER2> there some sites that use this that I can check out?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think site looks cool!But what the domain does mean? domain does not sound sporty?

<comment><AUTHOR> The thought was, what I really want is a newspaper, but with just sports on the front page.

<comment><USER12> I agree that the site looks cool but the domain is misleading. Maybe something like, thesportspage.com (not sure if its available, just off the top of my head)

<comment><USER13> sportspageone.com is available. thesportspage.com is taken, unfortunately.

I really like the tag line though. It certainly makes the address make sense. "Page One Times - Where Sports Belong."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it looks great. I know your angle is sports on the front page, but I almost wonder if it would be better to make it a generic news site and have pageonetimes.com/sports or what have you.

At least, I wish the newspapers around here would do that... I would love to be able to go to mylocalpaper.com/business to read the business news or mylocalpaper.com/local/phoenix to see the local news for Phoenix.

<comment><USER15> I've been working on something just like what you are asking for. I follow news in a few different cities, so I wanted an easy place to track all the news outlets in each location.

I'll post a link this weekend when its live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Many of the design tips here are right on, it could use a bit of tightening. One very specific suggestion--try adding this to the style-sheet:

html { overflow: -moz-scrollbars-vertical; }

It will keep the scroll bars in Firefox from appearing and disappearing as new pages are loaded. The scroll bar wouldn't be an issue except that it alters the centering of the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a great nugget!

<comment><USER16> Thanks. Wish I could give credit to the place I first found it, but I can't remember. Lately I stick it in every page I make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great idea, seems well executed.

A suggestion: Maybe you should try a different design technique to differentiate the stories.

There is a lot of text on the pages. It's kind of intimidating, makes it seem like a lot like work. If you just broke it up more and maybe added more white space it would look friendlier to read.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like it. Id like it more if you added a section for MMA. Regardless Ill keep my eye on it

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. If you check back, you will now see a section for MMA. It doesn't have a lot of stories yet, but I will make sure to add some.

(added the MMA section via the REPL on the live server)

<comment><USER18> nicely done. Hopefully you can build a nice community around this, in which case I will be a regular visitor.

Just curious, is it just you manually submitting links at this point?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am the primary contributor, but I have small circle of friends and family who also post, which you can see here: <http://pageonetimes.com/leaders>

<comment><USER18> I built a HackerNews firefox extension a few days ago to monitor new comments directed towards you or your submissions which you could port pretty easily to your site if you were interested. Or if you build an api to a users threads/comments (need just be an RSS feed) Id port it for you if you wanted it.

You can grab it here: <http://wildstabmedia.com/hackernews> and just save the xpi to disk and unzip to get at the source

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link, it is interesting. I think I am going to opt for the rss plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like the service, but I think the name needs a non-generic angle. Not some crap like swifflr.com, but something that lets me know that it's a sports site without even going to it.

Other than that, it's clean and focused.

</comment><comment><USER20> nicely done a few suggestions - the categories (nba nhl mlb) look really crammed together maybe a visual separator | would help.

Agree that the domain name is a bit odd, but not a huge deal.

Would be great to have an RSS /subscribe tool so I can read the headlines in reader, maybe even by sport.

Also if it grabbed an image "ala facebook" share feature that would be cool.

A bit more white space.

Most of these are nice to have and are likely already on your list of possible features. Overall well done!

</comment><comment><USER21> I like the clean design. Though I'm no design expert, I think it would be nice if the user's eyes were clearly directed, since right now nothing really jumps out of the page that much.

<comment><USER22> I agree. The three column newspaper theme is a little overwhelming. I also think legibility could be improved by changing to a sans-serif font.

I see potential, but the name really should be more sports sounding.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's interesting...before last night it was sporting helvetica font throughout, but I switched it to times to give it a little bit more of a newspaper feel. I like the logo in times, but the content looks better in helvetica. Is it a design atrocity to have a mix?

<comment><USER22> It isn't against the rules to mix it up. I was just at theonion.com, and they definitely mix it up. The headlines are either serif if the body is sans serif or sans serif if the body or link is serif. The button navigation is also sans.

I think your page would be easier to read if you mixed it up a bit. It just looks like a wall of text which is intimidating. There needs to be differences in the text to distinguish if they have functions or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link, I am going to try mixing it up and see how it looks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am a sports fan and I love it. The most important thing to me were the categories along the top. One click on "NBA" and I found everything I'm interested in. Lots of good stuff I haven't seen anywhere else. (Where did you find it?) The front page was too diverse for me (and probably anyone).

General complaint not directed to you, but to many:

Lots of people say this is MY fault. I am still 800 x 600 because of vision problems. This works perfectly for me all the time except when I encounter a web page that is hard coded to a large resolution (like yours). This happens more and more often and drives me nuts with all the horizontal scrolling. I would have left your page, but I loved the content.

Why not check the browser's resolution and adjust the css, or simply use tables? Maybe I'm old school, but I just don't believe this should be the customer's fault (or problem).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I use the nickb method to find stories, <http://www.hackerne.ws/item?id=99966>, and also my friends help too.

For the resolution, you are in the right and I will see what I can do to make it better. I'll email you when I am done so you can take a look.

I use the blueprint.css framework (which has a hard-coded width), and the 3 column layout is deep in the code (I am not sure that any CSS will make 3 columns look good on 800x600), so I am not sure there is an easy fix. The news.arc makes significant use of tables, but I had to make a decision to replace most of them with CSS for various reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Looks useful. Nice.

Small suggestion: You should reduce the leading for multiline headers, they look too far apart so it hurts scanability.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the feedback. I think it is really high-quality, and now my to- do list is well stocked. I made some changes in the CSS area to address the various font issues. It is still a work in progress, but I think the advice on the sans-serif font is right on. If you get a chance, check it out and let me know.

</comment><comment><USER25> I like the simple short presentation or articles. At glance I get to see pretty much all the latest articles. I will also suggest a change of domain name pageonetimes sounds very yahoo news to me. Cool stuff, I'll add it to my Sports search engine.

</comment><comment><USER26> Looks good. Personally I really like the clean and simple look. Sadly I'm not a sports fan.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think it looks cool. Would probably add some colored fonts, pictures etc.

</comment><comment><USER28> I like it! Nice job, Idoh.

</comment><comment><USER29> I like the site but have you considered adding a search?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have thought about it and may add it in the future. Right now I want to focus on the tagging parts, such as having it configurable in the profile, and supporting logical ANDing and NOTing of tags.

The thought is to make this a great "browse engine", to help people find what they are not looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nice, although I would prefer a more readable font.

</comment><comment><USER31> where's the hockey?!?!?

edit: found it - it just wasn't a major category like the other sports at the top of the page

<comment><AUTHOR> I just added an nhl top level section - it is a major sport and deserves it! If you refresh you should see it. I'll work on getting some more stories in there.

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> its a nice beginning - you may want to add some color to it - at least for news headlines ...</comment>