Why people keep asking you to use Github  - <AUTHOR> http://lusislog.blogspot.com/2010/10/designed-for-developers-why-people-keep.html <comment><USER2> What BitBucket _does_ have is a killer free package which Github simply doesn't compete on.

So for the small development workshops (i.e. 5 or less employees) it is a definite no brainer of the other sort :)

<comment><USER3> We compete against BitBucket's free plan by providing better service & features, a much larger community, and an insane amount of publicly available code.

It came as no surprise to us when Atlassian decided the only way BitBucket could compete with GitHub was to essentially give it away.

While they can afford to do this now, I'm fearful that the people choosing BitBucket for this reason alone may get a rude awakening when Atlassian decides BitBucket shouldn't continue being a loss-leader for the rest of their products.

Our growth at GitHub has only continued to increase month over month, so while people laud BitBucket's free plan, many more understand the value of paying for a premium service.

<comment><USER2> I have huge respect for Github, but I don't like git. Hence my choice of provider.

But, ultimately, I see only good things in having two competing products and providers, and I hope you all both do well :)

<comment><USER3> I don't begrudge you for using BitBucket because you prefer Mercurial, but your original response only had to do with the cost of the service which is why I felt compelled to respond. Thanks for the kind words about GitHub.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I suspect I'm a minority, but I miss the old days of "download a tgz, make a change, mail the author a patch". There's a lot of effort involved in cloning (then discovering I need to fork first, then clone my fork), and somehow communicating my change to the author.

I think this has a lot to do with UI. Even after a few attempts at this, I still can't find the various buttons when I want to. For example, there's a pull requests tab on the original repo and on my fork plus another button somewhere above that. Which do I click when?

This is on top of the fact I'm rarely sure if I'm working on the "real" repo or some random dude's copy.

Note I don't dislike DVCS. I like it a lot. But if you don't read the right blogs or wherever it is the cool kids figure out which repos are active and which aren't, the github centric experience is frustrating.

<comment><USER5> 1\. Click "fork"

2\. Type "git clone email@example.com:mygithubusername/projectname.git"

3\. cd projectname

4\. make changes, and commit.

5\. git push origin master (master may be optional, or a different branch)

6\. Click the 'pull request' button

7\. Fill out the form

8\. You're done!

Also, git does support the 'mail the author a patch' workflow, too: it's just not what GitHub uses. I _believe_ the kernel is developed this way.

[http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git- format-p...](http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-format- patch.html)

<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/327249/ddg>

<comment><USER4> 1\. The fork button is a lot smaller than the git clone url staring right up at me in the middle of the page. 6\. Which pull request button on which page? There are several.

Yes, I've done this a few times. But the procedure is not internalizable in the same way that "mail patch" is. In particular, the pull requests tab always looks really appealing to me whenever I want to clone a new repo (I'd like to make a request to pull your source, after all). The problem is unrelated to git, I could happily use git with email.

<comment><USER5> Yep, I think this is just a preferences thing. The bug "Pull request" tab implies to me that they're pull requests that are currently pending, since it's in amongst the source, the issues... and since it's a tab. The button implies "start a pull request for upstream" since it's up near several other 'action' buttons.

To each his own. TMTOWTDI. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> IMO, the problem with GitHub is the community. For some reason the Ruby community rubs me the wrong way, in a way that the Java, Python, Lisp communities don't.

While I can respect Ruby and RoR technically, it's not so far above other products that it can make up for the fact that I'd prefer not to interact with the community on a day to day basis.

Maybe I've just hit a weird sample, but I've heard other people outside of my circle make similar comments, yet I've rarely, if ever, heard it said about other communities (except maybe the Slashdot community).

<comment><USER7> I believe javascript is the most popular language on github, either way I really dont see github as a "ruby / rails community"

<comment><USER6> I don't have the data in front of me, but if JS is #1, Ruby can't be far behind. And while I completely believe you, it still _feels_ to me more like a Ruby/Rails community than it does a JS community.

<comment><USER8> That's because it's not a community based on language use, it's a community based on code sharing via a specific source control engine + community/social features + project management features.

github has to be one of the few services/companies that use ruby that doesn't constantly push it in your face with a bunch of better-than-thou blog posts about how ruby is awesome. Twitter used to be like that (or at least felt like it) with ruby/rails and then eventually with whatever language or technology du jour they were using.

None of my github projects are ruby, and I don't think many of the projects I follow are ruby (I honestly don't really keep track of that, but it would be an interesting statistic).

While I know github uses ruby, I don't think of them as doing anything other than providing the github service/website. In the same way I don't really think of Facebook as anything other than providing the facebook service/website. It only comes up when we talk about hiring ("If you want to work at Facebook, you'd have to do PHP.") or when you get a fatal error (I actually got "Fatal error: Uncaught OAuthException: An active access token must be used to query information about the current user. thrown in /var/www/publisher/system/application/libraries/facebook.php on line 453" the other day -- that's only happened once for me). I'd like to think that some places concentrating on providing a good service/experience and the actual choice of implementation only matters to them and they'd use the best tools for the job (where "best" may be defined as amount of experience they have with it).

Consider the perception of the language agnostic nature of github vs codeplex. I don't spend a lot of time on codeplex, but I have this perception that just about everything hosted on codeplex is written in one of the limited subset of languages that Microsoft sanctions/supports (this may be a function of the Microsoft/Windows platform, where it's non-trivial to get things like, say, vanilla ruby or python running on Windows compared to .Net stuff). Code that is hosted on github is merely known to use git for source control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> St-Clock "The main reason is that at this point, BitBucket is simple attempting to feature copy from Github except using Mercurial in the background."

I am so tired to read things like that.

Issue-tracking at github is far behind bitbucket issue tracking (try to make complex search queries... you cannot link a commit to an issue except when closing the issue... tags are nice, but i dislike having to create a tag for each milestone/release).

Wikis at Github have only been recently backed by a git repository: as far as I know, wikis at bitbucket have always been backed by a mercurial repository.

It's true that bitbucket is a lot like github and that github has a bigger and more dynamic community (from my experience, github's infrastructure is also faster), but can we leave bitbucket alone and stop the bashing?

</comment><comment><USER9> > Mercurial and Git are pretty much at feature parity (as is Bazaar).

Someone hasn't tried to use bzr on a nontrivial project. Half the threads on the emacs-devel mailing list are either complaining about bzr or asking for help because it's misbehaving. (The people who aren't complaining are the ones using the git mirror.)

</comment><comment><USER10> The one question that bothers me is confidentiality.... code is IP of the company writing it. What prevents someone on a copyright fishing expedition from getting some kind of court order for the hosting provider to turn over all of my company's code without even telling me? It's the same argument for all hosted services.

For open development, it's awesome... closed - I wish so many saas providers offered self-hosted solutions with a subscription so I could at least control the hardware & it's location.

<comment><USER5> You're welcome: <http://fi.github.com/>

<comment><USER11> Except, their pricing _starts_ at $2,500 _per year_ for 10 devs. Holy shit.

I'll bet they sell scads of it to companies with more money than they know what to do with, but that seems crazy to me. As wonderful as github is, it's still just source control.

Here's hoping gitorious will get sanely installable at some point (i.e. `apt- get install gitorious`, not "oh my god": <http://gitorious.org/gitorious/pages/UbuntuInstallation>). I'd pay something for that.

<comment><USER5> Seems totally reasonable to me. That's not that much money for an actual business expense. If you have such Super Ultra Secrets that they Must Be Kept On Your Servers, or else The World Breaks!!!!1, then you can afford to pay good money to keep it safe. I'd argue that it's still pretty cheap. Compared to ten salaries?

<comment><USER11> Super-ultra-secrets has nothing to do with it (though if you're a small shop, pointing the finger at github if/when confidential stuff flies the coop isn't going to go over well with certain clients).

My code (and other assets) are important to me; if it ends up on a torrent server in china, that's bad. Github's security is better than mine, but I'm not a honeypot either. Perhaps the formal probabilities are against me; I guess I'm irrational in a few ways.

<comment><USER5> Truth. I do so much open source work that I'm not used to being in that kind of position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9DkGSlU...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9DkGSlUmYL0J:lusislog.blogspot.com/2010/10/designed- for-developers-why-people- keep.html+http://lusislog.blogspot.com/2010/10/designed-for-developers-why- people-keep.html&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=ubuntu)

Edit: appears to be back up now

</comment><comment><USER13> Color me a little disappointed that this article wasn't about the fact that GitHub's roaring success has watered down everyone's enthusiasm for git's decentralized model. People keep asking you to use GitHub, in part, because they aren't setting up their own git servers, although they could - and one could argue that the future's a little safer with people keeping a bit of control.

<comment><USER5> Even if you use GitHub, you're still decentralized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Paranoid thought: An "evil" service like this could handily take a look at promising private projects, right? I guess that if your company becomes too innovative you would not risk that innovation by putting it in somebody else's server. Or would you?

Edit: My question goes along the same lines as dedward's.

<comment><USER15> github has been profitable for a while now because of people like me who give them money for a great service. If something like this happened, they would stop being profitable.

It's hard to imagine what they'd find in a private repo that would make them more money than what they've got in <https://github.com/github></comment></comment>


The Future of Computer Science, and Why Every Other Major Sucks By Comparison - <AUTHOR> http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=442

<comment><USER2> Semi-seriously (as I assume the slides also are), I think the question's actually pretty open, as far as fields and disciplines go. There is a lot of cool stuff still to come in CS, but there's also a pretty big risk that CS will no longer "own" computing to the same extent it has. CS has historically owned _everything_ computer-related, just because nobody else could actually operate and program computers, even when many of the main questions were non- computational ones. For example, why is Pixar-type CG stuff associated with CS, not with film or digital media? Basically, because it required technical savvy that only CS had, even though the ultimate goals were entertainment/aesthetic ones that are more in keeping with the concerns of media practitioners. But will that continue to be true? Already scientific computing is slowly slipping out of the ownership of CS and towards the natural sciences; e.g. bioinformatics is as likely to be centered in a bio department as a CS one these days.

One "failure" scenario (to use "failure" loosely, since it's subjective) is, I think, the math one: CS becomes a narrow discipline of theory-of-computation, systems, and PL type theory, sort of like pure math. To get money, it spends its time teaching intro classes to other majors that the professors don't care about: the way math teaches everyone Intro Calc, CS will teach everyone Intro Java. And all the cool applied stuff, in this scenario, happens in other departments, which in 10 years will all also have computers, and many will know how to program. Not that likely, I don't think, but something to think about.

<comment><USER3> I went through a period where I worried a bit about that, but I've stopped. Regardless of how bioinformatics is structured politically, there's either going to be heavy CS involvement or, well, trouble.

The thing is, in general, a "person" might be able to hack together a small program that works for a particular problem most of the time, but it takes a computer expert to create a program that works essentially all the time, with good performance and strong reliability. If someone in the biology department is capable of doing that, it's probably because they're a "double-major", for some value of the term. A normal biology education will leave them unprepared, and trying to hack together a strong understanding of OpenMPI or something is certainly _possible_ but also extremely likely to leave gaping holes in their education. (Even if one has the brains to become both a biology expert and a parallel computing expert, one must question if that's necessarily the best use of one's time.)

CS keeps making it easier to write programs, but the cutting edge will remain CS's domain for a long time, and academia for some crazy reason tends to like the cutting edge. As specialization continues its march onward it will continue to become more and more difficult to be an expert in both $FIELD and computer science.

<comment><USER4> This viewpoint seems to go against the HN zeitgeist -- a lot of programmers are self-taught, especially in the sciences. Just by necessity, students in molecular biology and genetics learn some scripting and how to push data around on the command line, and from that point a fair number of them really get into it and start studying the finer points of software engineering on their own.

(NB: Nearly everyone in bioinformatics has to accept some gaping holes in their education -- who has time to become an expert in each of biochemistry, medicine, computer science, and statistics?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google docs link to slides: [http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.scottaaronson.c...](http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.scottaaronson.com/talks/futurecs.ppt)

<comment><USER6> Seems to be missing the jokes that the author wrote were included in the Powerpoint notes below the slides.

<comment><USER7> I uploaded it to slideshare with Scott's permission, and the notes are certainly included there: [http://www.slideshare.net/llimllib/the-future-of- computer-sc...](http://www.slideshare.net/llimllib/the-future-of-computer- science-and-why-every-other-major-sucks-by-comparison-3705322)

<comment><USER8> I might be going off on a tangent here, but that site provided a rebuttal to that PPT...

[http://www.slideshare.net/gmaney/computer-science-is-the- pro...](http://www.slideshare.net/gmaney/computer-science-is-the-problem)

...though reading that presentation made me feel like I was reading Time Cube quackery. What the heck is "Automation Science?" Google didn't bring up anything specific...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a side note, do you think academia or startups are leading the charge in revolutionary technologies? As a post-grad, my point of view was firmly skewed towards academia, but the pace of iterative technological improvements by startups makes it seem as if in the short term, startups are driving new technologies more than academic research.

<comment><USER10> A lot of startup founders are people who leave academia for one reason or another (graduates, ex-academics).

Also, a lot of excellent ideas (e.g. the Web) were of almost no interest to academic researchers in relevant fields at the time - they dismissed it as a toy. And perhaps from a purely academic viewpoint they were right - but that doesn't mean that it isn't of use to billions of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The last line in the slide notes is the best, "you COULD come to MIT and do something other than CS, but it would be like going to the greatest steakhouse on earth and then ordering a salad."

</comment><comment><USER12> As long as new digital products are produced, it still needs the basic software for its basic functionality. Unless if every device is using the same technology and the same set of software.

</comment><comment><USER13> Bringing women into computer science is also an important task. Of course we need also to address _keeping_ women in computer science, but since this presentation is about admittance, we need to be sure women are not isolated.

Slide 6 represents Facebook with an attractive woman. (why?) Slide 13 compares steak to salad. (why?) (and note that it's not as if women do not eat steak, but culturally steak is a more "manly" food than salad)

<comment><USER14> _"Bringing women into computer science is also an important task"_

Why? Because political correctness says so?

I don't understand this obsession with "diversity" in the U.S., I really don't. Personally, I think that we should instead bring intelligent and motivated people into CS. If they're all white males, so be it. They could be black-asian mixed-blood muslim lesbians... who cares? Just as long as they're interested. People who choose a career based on the "coolness" factor dictated by the clueless masses are like people who choose jobs based on the title (I will kill the next person who claims to be hiring _code ninjas_ )... they are sheep. We need wolves, not sheep.

<comment><USER15> No, because people of different genders/ethnicities bring different perspectives to the table. Because if a field is dominated by say, white males, the few women or non-white males are going to feel (frequently with good reason) like they're not taken as seriously by, or seen as being as competent as, the other white males. This is regardless of quantifiers such as actual competence, knowledge, or experience.

While I agree with you that ideally the most motivated, competent, intelligent people should be in X field and those are the only criteria one should care about, the reality is all too often quite different.

<comment><USER16> "No, because people of different genders/ethnicities bring different perspectives to the table."

What does that even mean? What you want is _diversity of opinion_ (so that, if one person has a bad idea, everyone else will call them on it instead of nodding like sheep), and _diversity of talent_ (so that everyone doesn't share the same weaknesses). I suppose those correlate with gender and ethnicity to some extent, but why not try to hire people with lots of different resumes (coders at big companies, startup founders, independent consultants, people who've lived abroad in different countries, etc.)? That would be way more efficient.

"Because if a field is dominated by say, white males, the few women or non- white males are going to feel (frequently with good reason) like they're not taken as seriously by, or seen as being as competent as, the other white males."

Proof? Some fields are obviously like this, but why all of them, or even most of them? If a field is dominated by people who are born in the winter (as many professional sports are), is someone born in June going to be assumed to be less competent?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The $300M Button (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://articles.uie.com/three_hund_million_button/ <comment><USER2> There's more to this that we've talked about.

I wrote a post in 2011, talking about the back story a bit: [https://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/17/the-back-story- fo...](https://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/17/the-back-story-for- the-300-million-button/)

And this is a more recent presentation on using metrics in design. I talk about the $300m button starting at 44m:45s - [https://www.uie.com/jared- live/#design-opposed](https://www.uie.com/jared-live/#design-opposed)

The important thing here isn't that a company implemented guest checkout. It's that when they did it, because we could see the problem in our research, they found $300m in revenue. Guest checkout won't work for everyone, but doing research like this likely will.

\- Jared

</comment><comment><USER3> "All we did was change a button."

I doubt it was that simple. The UX flow changes if you can purchase as a guest.

More importantly, I expect when the system was built, the developers asked if all orders had a user, received the answer 'yes', and accordingly built that into the system.

Then one day some consultant comes along and pronounces that 'not all orders have a user now, please implement a guest checkout'.

So the developers probably needed to recode the whole flow, possibly remove some foreign key constraints, allowing a user to only partially exist (which needs to reconcile with a real user later if the email matches an existing user later).

And what if they don't create an account at that time, but they do later, should all orders to a given email then get attached to that account?

Are there privacy issues around this? Can we assume an email address belongs to an individual, I am not sure you can.

All this for a system that is processing millions of dollars in orders. So regression testing and deployment, would have to be done very carefully.

This is all just what I can think of off the top of my head.

So, with respect, you did not just change a fucking button.

<comment><USER2> It wasn't simple on the back-end. Your estimate of "man-weeks" is off by an order of magnitude, because of the back-end system complexity.

As the article states, it started with the button, which, as you quite rightly point out, dominoed into a lot of changes and thinking about edge cases that didn't exist before. The point I was trying to make was that it started with the button.

The big story here isn't that adding this particular button will yield $300m in revenue. The story was that, by watching users, we saw an opportunity to reap $300m. And we took it and it worked.

<comment><USER3> Don't you think it is somewhat reductive not to even allude to that complexity in your article then?

Without that, the article does seem to claim that just changing the label of the button had that effect.

<comment><USER2> The original draft had more detail. As did the backstory piece we wrote. Editors cut it down for page count. (It was originally a foreword to a book on web form design, which was all about the buttons and the fields.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Read "Don't Make Me Think" a few years ago. It really put into words what I hated about certain designs, whether it was physical or on the web. All the extra steps, things that doesn't make sense, things that are convenient for the business but not for the user.

Wish more places invested in design. I had to help my dad with Massachusetts new design for their tax homepage. Just awful. You go there to pay taxes monthly, to come close to accessing that page is 3-4 buttons deep.

<comment><USER5> Ikea makes quite a bit of money with their anti pattern model of retail layout.

For some businesses it works because they offer enough to overcome the inconvenience while others do it out of incompetence or simply cargo cult.

<comment><USER6> I don't see what's wrong with IKEA's layout. I mean, it's bad if you came there to buy a particular something (though in that case, you can just skip the gallery section entirely and go straight to the well-organized shop and warehouse sections.) But it's exactly right for what I go there for: looking through the gallery as a 1:1-scale-model catalog, deciding what you want/need from that browsing, and then picking it up if you still want it by the time you see it again in the shop section. It's destination shopping, in the same way a bookstore is.

<comment><USER5> To me it's irritating when I know what I want and don't want to browse all day. I may want to see the qualities of an item upfront but I don't want to go thru the rest of the maze to get to the warehouse to pick out my items.

But it seems to work for most of their shoppers due to a combination of price and utility.

<comment><USER7> And this is why we shop ikea backwards... walk in the warehouse door, pick up a coffee, find the thing in the catalogue, and skip the showroom altogether.

<comment><USER8> Unless you're doing it because you enjoy the coffee, you can just find the right thing on the website, reserve it, walk in and pick it up. They do support that kind of workflow if that's what you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Probably from Best Buy, for those wondering: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=434850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=434850)

I like to put things into perspective: their revenue back then was around 40B a year, so this represented about a 0.3/40= 0.75% increase in revenue. Not shabby at all, especially because their web business wasn't anywhere close to 100% of their business.

<comment><USER10> full thread, 7 years ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=434510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=434510)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I cannot agree more with the article.

When I see a enter you email field, the first thing I think is "God, do I really want to receive more spam?".

When it is a enter your password field "God, I need to store somewhere this password so I don't forget it, and I can't give them a common password as these guys will almost certainly leak it".

And when it is enter my credit card details, I find myself almost never buying from a website I do not know if I can't checkout with paypal.

<comment><USER12> Between gmail and sanebox, I don't think about spam.

With 1Password, I don't think about passwords.

With Amex, I don't worry about fraud.

I think more about time. Often I want to find what I'm looking for, pay, and be done. Like running in and out of a shop. Like the article says, I'm not here to start a relationship. I've walked out of B&M stores when they do the survey thing at the register (what's your ZIP? What's your email? Sign up for a credit card?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> While this may be true seven years ago, today (2016), if you look major retailers like Amazon, Walmart and overstock.com, they all ask for login before proceeding with payment. Best buy has a both guest checkout and login page before payment. Something has changed over the years and is not yet captured here.

<comment><USER14> I've actually backed out of making purchases on walmart.com because I didn't want to have to create an account. I always use the guest checkout if available, and only create an account if I _really_ want a product on a specific website, or if I've purchased from the same company a few times already.

Amazon has many other services (including Prime) that require an account, so it makes more sense for them to require accounts than it does for any other online retailer.

<comment><USER15> > I've actually backed out of making purchases on walmart.com because I didn't > want to have to create an account.

Me too - on other sites as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The company I worked at a few years ago cargo-culted this advice. They believed that the real problem to conversions was _when_ the customer was told to register, and constantly A/B tested moving registration to different points in the process, to little effect.

</comment><comment><USER17> Great little piece. Stuff like this really makes me want to scream. How could these site designers possibly not understand how annoying login screens are? Do they not use the internet themselves? Forced login is the #1 most annoying thing you can encounter at a website, and I know that it seems as if I have all the benefits of hindsight, but I feel very confident in saying that I could have explained this to somebody in 2005. Simply bizarre that this is missed so consistently.

<comment><USER18> b-but I thought the reason facebook grew so fast was because of forced logins

<comment><USER19> Facebook isn't a retail site, it makes sense that you would need to login, because it's what's customize the site to you.

I think the complaint about login are on sites where it can't make any possible difference to what you came to do. Reading an articles or buying sausages should require a login, because it can't possibly contribute positive to the experience to add the extra step.

Honestly I believe that's why pay-walls doesn't work. It's not the at least some people won't pay, it's just that the processes of having to login to access something you paid for is reducing the appeal. I have a subscription for the Economist, I never use the online content, because I can't be bothered to login. I can't remember my username, or my password. It just because a hurdle and in the end I'd rather not deal with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I tried buying us postal stamps last week online.

This article gave me flashbacks: must make account with postal service to buy stamps.. Not to mention some strange government rules for passwords (10 characters....)

Give it a try!

[https://store.usps.com/store/](https://store.usps.com/store/)

I saw Jared speak at a php conference back in the day. Funny and informative. Though mobile has changed a lot in 4 years the slides are still up.

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1086584/Mobile%20%26%20U...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1086584/Mobile%20%26%20UX%20-%20In%20the%20Eye%20of%20the%20Perfect%20Storm%20-%20R2.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER21> When Jared Spool mentioned this $300M button in another of his classic talks, he emphasized repeatedly how the metrics that determined the abysmal shopping cart completion rate were completely missing. Even though the metrics for how many people are exiting the flow via password reset and never coming back were relatively easy to get from the retailer's db, they had a flawed funnel model that they began with. They were only measuring between 'adding an item to the cart' and checking out. They had no metrics for 'request new password (reset)'.

This may all be dated now with very sophisticated client-side metrics but at the time it was relevant to the mega-retailer.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a great example of why design changes should always be justified by measurement rather than simply by artistic opinion. I don't care if you think the new design is slick and modern and responsive and a work of artistic genius. Can you prove that it has a significant effect on whatever is our important business metric?

<comment><USER15> You may not always have the ability to properly make those measurements... it takes me a week before I can gather enough data to even weakly show the effects of a change, and I run a top 100,000 site.

Also it is much more difficult to measure long term impact. For example, I made a change a couple years ago that quadrupled conversion rates, but irreversibly dampened growth. By the time it was evident that it was -that- change, it was too late to recover.

This stuff is easy to talk about in theory, but real life ain't ceteris paribus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here are some other case studies we found related to UX improvements to the sales funnel. [http://www.webnographer.com/blog/2014/03/3-ways-of- optimisin...](http://www.webnographer.com/blog/2014/03/3-ways-of-optimising- the-sales-funnel/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm a bit amazed retailers aren't using federated logins whenever/wherever. Just offer a slew of them. There are libraries in most frameworks for most OAuth and OAuth2 providers.

<comment><USER25> Disclaimer: I work for a ecommerce contract shop.

Most of our clients aren't interested. They are as oblivious to what OAuth is and what it does as my mom is. The platform we use only got OAuth2 support built in about two years ago.

<comment><USER24> They don't need to know anything about it, all they see is the shiny FB Connect -> new account button.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> More like the $300M blunder. Eliminating all hurdles to completing a payment should be a no brainier. Ask to create an account after a purchase not before.

</comment><comment><USER27> Title is attractive but misleading. What they did was change the entire user flow not only change the button.

</comment><comment><USER28> What about social login (FB, Twitter)? Isn't it the easiest thing nowadays to improve conversion?

</comment><comment><USER29> I feel this article is fake. Catchy title and content to get more contractors. Although the UI/UX logic is worth noting. May be this is a different way of teaching UI/UX lesson.

<comment><USER2> What is fake about it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> So much for so-called recent "Flat" design movement. Nothing wrong with the previous UI design. Sometime people just get visual fatigue and decide to switch to another look and feel.

<comment><USER31> This is nothing to do with 'flat' design. It's to do with the UX anti-pattern of forcing user registration on checkout.

<comment><USER30> I'm talking about the Flat design in particular, unrelated to the article. Smartass.

<comment><USER32> This is the comment section for the article.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: ShortcutDB: database for Apple Shortcuts - <AUTHOR> https://shortcutdb.aleks.sh <comment><USER2> hey there, im a hacky PO. Can you give a simple example of :

\- what can i do with ShortcutDB that i CAN'T without. \- how to implement that ?

Thanks !</comment>


A Quick Review of Google Inbox - <AUTHOR> http://benmccormick.org/2014/11/04/a-quick-review-of-google-inbox/

<comment><USER2> Maybe I'm not as interested in this after reading the review, but it's still worth a go. The task management options seem like a good way to plan your day.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think people who are doing nothing right now, or have their own ad-hoc organization scheme using email will love Inbox. People who have a more disciplined system for calendar/todos/emails will not want to use the reminder/pinning features. But I still found it nicer than traditional Gmail for quick triaging.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do I tell my clients about email images being switched off? - <AUTHOR>

It's Friday morning, and again I seem to be having the perennial client hand wringing discussion ritual because people can't see the client's lovely email images because they have images switched off in their email client.
It doesn't matter how many times I tell the client to just send nicely written plain text emails. Clients love seeing their logos and products in massive size and multicolour.
There seem to be no stats which can reassure clients, most studies seem to suggest roughly 50% of people don't see images. A stat I will avoid burdening clients with as it will only worsen their marketing paranoia.
So, HN, is there any argument or reasoning I can use to convince clients that they should just get over this compulsion to shove images down people's virtual throats?
Or at least a way to end these discussions as soon as possible so I'm not wasting time babysitting corporate egos. <comment><USER2> Calm your attitude, they made a decision on what is important to them, just as did you. Their deciding differently doesn't make you right and them wrong.

Give them the statistics and let them decide.

</comment><comment> artumi-richard No. There is nothing you can do. There is nothing you can say. Choose a battle you can win.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you feel when you see "ninja" or "rock star" in a job post? - <AUTHOR> Do you like it? Does it sound condescending? Do job descriptions that have those terms tend to be for particularly good or bad jobs? <comment><USER2> I once got worked up about the subject, enough to write a blog post for CIO.com, back when I still worked there (<http://advice.cio.com/esther_schindler/rockstar>).

These days, it's a little bit of a turnoff. At a minimum a job ad including "ninja" or "rock star" communicates to me that you can't otherwise quantify what you want, so you use a vague description that doesn't help a prospective candidate judge whether she's suited for your company.

I'd rather see a job ad that's much more explicit in what the company wants, whether that's technically ("5 years of Python"), attitude ("We want someone so passionate about chocolate websites that she'll jump up and down on the conference room table... but please, _don't_ , it cost us a lot of money for that table"), or in visibility ("We expect to recognize your name; this is a job for someone who probably needs no introduction").

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't like to see such colloquialisms in job postings, but as someone who has done a fair amount of hiring in my career, I also don't want to see them on resumes or CVs unless you've worked for Rockstar Games, real Rockstars or Ninjas or on a game called Ninja.

</comment><comment><USER4> IMO, those terms are grossly outdated and are/were often representative of companies that are a little too full of themselves.

It sort of reminds me of the "Everybody is a winner" method of child rearing. There is quite a wake-up call when you realize that everyone is a "ninja".

</comment><comment><USER5> It's OK under one condition. The whole advert should go something like this:

"We're Looking for a Ninja BrainFuck Programmer. _Come hang out sometime and we'll see if you're a fit._ "

That's it. Anything else -- resume, phone screen, FizzBuzz, whatever -- and it's obvious they're pretending to be cooler than they really are.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've always had the feeling that those companies have bosses dedicated to plenty of duplication and little innovation.

</comment><comment><USER7> While I agree with many of the detailed points made by others in this discussion, I can put it very simply: it makes me feel like I'm not a member of the culture of the company.

And companies have to be pretty professional to tolerate some of their staff being from different cultures (narrowly defined) ... and one making such a advertisement sure doesn't sound professional to me.

</comment><comment><USER8> "We want rock stars" seems is used by some companies to mean "We want someone who is 5 times more productive than average but who will work for much _much_ less than 5 times average pay."

</comment><comment><USER9> I hate it and always try to avoid job postings that contain those terms. It's usually deployed by inexperienced/naive/arrogant teams and/or companies trying to sound "hip" and "with it". There's no way to measure what "rockstar" or "ninja" means ... for the most part, in my experience, I've found it most often to mean "superhuman", i.e., someone unrealistically and absurdly better than everyone else, who can meet 72-hour deadlines for a whole project (real encounter I had). It's definitely a bad omen when someone uses those words and an instant, severe reduction in respect for the company/interviewer.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's generally a bad sign. I wrote at length about it here: [http://thesethings.posterous.com/rapping-grandmas-and- ninja-...](http://thesethings.posterous.com/rapping-grandmas-and-ninja- rockstar-fatigue)

The gist of my post was: Originally, it was a way to suggest to a technical candidate, "Don't be scared, our place of work respects technical people." It was a code in a way for, "We're not a boring bank. Or if were are, you still might have fun here."

Now I think the term leveraged in the opposite interest: "We need YOU, the candidate, to be awesome. But our wacky language still gives no clue about us, the employer."

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't like it, because it goes again my own beliefs in what constitutes effective teams. As a geek herder, I can't think of anything worse than a team full of "rock stars". The best teams have a mix of good people who excel at different things. For example you never see a job ad for "compulsive documenter" but every team needs one.

</comment><comment><USER12> I feel like I'm not one of those.

</comment><comment><USER13> When you take a job, it's an investment. You want to make sure that the company you are investing in takes itself very seriously. Asking for Ninjas and Rockstars to fulfill an important role? Works only if you're casting for a movie.</comment>


Ask YC: A Hacker News Vote Icon? - <AUTHOR>

Is there a digg-like vote icon that I can embed on my sites to have people vote on an article / page? Or submit if it hasn't been submitted already?<p>I know there is a bookmarklet... as that's what I currently use. <comment><USER2> Mass sites like Digg use those icons as a form of advertising. I'd rather have readers who hear about us from friends.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please don't. While I want more high-quality content on HN, I don't want an increase in the number of visitors, votes or stories just for quantities' sake.</comment>


How people respond to being filmed (with devices like Google glass) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDumyGJdLrU

<comment><USER2> I'm convinced that Google Glass will fail for this exact reason. People really don't like being recorded. Even though surveillance cameras are widespread, it's much more personal when you can see the person recording you.

All it will take is one creepy app for Google Glass and people will start to revolt. Imagine an app that has a large amateur porn database that does facial recognition on people around you and displays naked images of similar looking people. Obviously that would be an incredibly hard software problem to get working well, but it doesn't have to work well; in fact it doesn't have to work at all. All that is needed is a single article about it in the press and it will take off.

I imagine that a very loud privacy vs free speech debate is imminent.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is a bad example, because one of the YouTube video comments are right (to me): " _The point you are trying to make is lost when you film people in a private place! That actually is not allowed._ " This experiment is sort of flawed since he does just budge into private rooms/settings and everything without permission. Also, I suspect he has a decent size camera (by some of the reactions), and not something discrete like Google Glass. I wonder if people would have reacted any differently if he was just doing this with Google Glass and it wasn't as obvious he had a big camera on them. He would have probably been treated just like anyone else interrupting a class or private setting. Also, they wouldn't have mentioned the video, but the results would have been the same.

I would like to see this experiment done in a public settings, or this same experiment but with a much more discrete camera.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the other parts he is filming in public and is getting the same reactions.

      Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bT1ZfRtrJc
      Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHG9ouQ17-M

But I'm not sure it's the size of the camera. Most of the people are not bothered by big cameras hanging everywhere.

Maybe it's because they don't trust the intents of the guy who is filming.

<comment><USER4> Oke now imagine 10 people around you with Google Glass on their head. You don't even know if they are recording you or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> AJ Jacobs at Esquire magazine wrote about his experience doing something similar back in December: <http://www.esquire.com/features/overly-documented- life-0113></comment>


Why babies in every country on Earth say 'mama' - <AUTHOR> http://theweek.com/article/index/243809/why-babies-in-every-country-on-earth-say-mama <comment><USER2> This is a highly contested subject in linguistics and very much not definitive like the article makes it out to be. There are many languages where mama does mean mother, but there are many languages where it does not. In some cases, you get the opposite. In proto-Old Japanese, for example, papa meant mother. In Georgian, mama means father and deda means mother. I don't know enough about the mama/papa topic to comment further, but a quick Google suggests that this paper is somewhat well regarded by at least some people:

[https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=where...](https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=where- do-mama2.pdf&site=1)

<comment><USER3> Finnish = äiti

Hungarian = anya

Kannada = ತಾಯಿ (taayi) ... "avva" sometimes colloquial.

Telugu = తల్లి (talli)

<comment><USER4> äiti, anya (pronounced ~aaya) and avva are still compatible with the explanation.

The Telugu word is the formal name (corresponding to mother on Wikipedia). Are you familiar with the language?

We'd need statistics on the frequency of the first consonant utterance, and see if it correllates with the distribution of the names given to mothers by babies.

<comment><USER3> Yes, Telugu is my mother-tongue and Kannada is my first-language. In spoken Telugu today, 'amma' is far more common than 'talli'. In written Telugu, both are equally common. 'talli' has secondary meaning of just refering to any female. For example, "chitti talli" (little girl), "talli-tandrulu" (mother- father, i.e., parents), etc. Similar remarks apply to Kannada. Avva is informal and more common in rural dialects.

<comment><USER5> > In spoken Telugu today, 'amma' is far more common than 'talli'.

That's intriguing, because 'amma' is the Tamil word for mother.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"Every language has a word for water. In Swahili they call it maji. In Dutch, it's vand."_

'Vand' is not an existing word in the Dutch language. The Dutch word for water is 'water'.

<comment><USER7> "Vand" is apparently Danish for "water". I guess the author isn't very good with languages.

<comment><USER8> Would definitely not be the first person to confuse the Danish and the Dutch, :p

<comment><USER9> Because they start with D? They sound so completely different …

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In Japanese, the work "Manma" is a baby-talk word that means food. "Mama" is used for mother sometimes, but I think this is a recent influence from the West. "Haha" is the normal (non-polite) word for mother, although children are taught to use the more polite "o-kaa-san." "Haha" still has those repeated "ah" sounds.

<comment><USER11> Haha isn't the normal word for mother, you only use it when talking about your own mother to someone else in a formal setting. Mama has the most casual sound to it. Okaasan (or one of its derivatives) is slightly more formal. Depending on the family, you might use either when talking to your mother.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My late father-in-law spoke a language, one of the Austronesian aboriginal languages of Taiwan, in which the word /mama/ indicated "father" rather than "mother." Several languages are like that, and some human languages do not have the word /mama/.

The article cites Roman Jakobson on the issue, and he is the correct person to cite, but the article doesn't digest the findings of linguistics (a subject I have studied) helpfully. There isn't any universal word "mama," and there isn't any universal association of one sound string or a small subset of sound strings with feeding infants.

AFTER EDIT:

Hurrah for the earlier comment here

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5694995>

which links to a much better article

[https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=where...](https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=where- do-mama2.pdf&site=1)

and well deserves your upvote.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interestingly, in Spanish "mama" means "breast". The intimate word for mother is "mamá" (stress on the second syllable, not the first).

<comment><USER6> Well, Spanish is a Romance language[1]. 'Mamma' is Latin for 'breast', so that makes sense. It's where words like 'mammal' and 'mammogram' come from.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LatinEuropeans.png>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Mama" in Hungarian means grandmother. On the very very rare occassions when I heard a Hungarian child call her mother 'mama', it felt really awkward and strange, and always suspected western cultural influences (i.e. western dad or moving between countries, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER15> I am dutch and I can tell you that the third sentence of that article is wrong. 'vand' doesn't even resemble a dutch word.

</comment><comment><USER16> > The "m" sound is the easiest for a baby mouth to make when wrapped around a > warm delicious breast.

</comment><comment><USER17> The article presents a hypothesis without experimental evidence.

<comment><USER18> Because the experiments to conclude the "natural" language by not teaching children any language at all are highly unethical.

<comment><USER17> I am sceptical of the claim that "mama" comes from the act of suckling. That claim is unsupported by evidence as far as I can tell from the links in the article and is reminiscent of behaviorism.

Verifying that hypothesis does not require depriving anyone of language and may be able to be achieved through observational studies of babies of babies that are in pre-existing situations where they do not suckle breasts and in cases where they have no interaction with their mothers.

Notwithstanding the above, if experimental evidence cannot be produce a hypothesis cannot be proven and the claim should be appropriately discounted.

<comment><USER9> But the hypothesis is that the word for mother _in a certain language_ comes from that situation. Those breast-deprived babies you observe would not be creating their own language (unless you do more than just observe :-/), so what would you be observing? A difference in frequency of ma-sounds from other babies?

<comment><USER17> > But the hypothesis is that the word for mother _in a certain language_ comes > from that situation.

No it isn't. The hypothesis described in the article explains the purported cause for the universality of the word "Mama".

And yes you would observe if the frequency of "ma" was lower which would tell you if the "ma" sound is behaviorally induced by suckling which is the claim described in the article.

<comment><USER9> It's still about words that are part of a language, not about sounds made by one baby. The universality was about the sounds becoming part of the language.

The process of creating a new word in language is not the same as the process of interpreting sounds as belonging to a certain word in a language. So you still have that bridge to gap between "higher frequency of ma" and how the word "mama" was created. Perhaps it's convincing, I'm not sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 3rd sentence is already wrong.

> "In Dutch, it's vand."

Should be:

> "In Danish, it's vand."

or

> "In Dutch, it's water."

</comment><comment><USER20> Their story checks out.

Using google translate, I can't find a single language that does not have a 'mama' or something very similar.

<comment><USER21> Fun thing I found on Wiktionary is that in Georgian, /mɑmɑ/ is a word for father[1] and mother is /dɛdɑ/[2].

Add: oh, and it's "panjo" in Esperanto... :)

Other languages outside of rule may possibly include Eshtehardi, Fijian, Greenlandic, Inuktitut, Igbo, Kyrgyz, Malay, Maori, Mari, Moksha, Thai and Vietnamese (suspections per <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mum#Translations> and <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mother#Translations>). Personally, I've unfortunately never even heard about half of those languages, and not familiar with the ones I've heard about to the extent I can confirm or opposite.

[1]: [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%9B%E1%83%90%E1%83%9B%E1...](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%9B%E1%83%90%E1%83%9B%E1%83%90#Georgian)

[2]: [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%93%E1%83%94%E1%83%93%E1...](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%93%E1%83%94%E1%83%93%E1%83%90#Georgian)

<comment><USER22> As a member of a Vietnamese speaking household, mom is still vaguely similar to English.

Of course, I could be wrong since I have moderate hearing loss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> in georgian, 'mama' is father, and 'deda' is mother. it is a striking exception.

<comment><USER24> Is it just Georgian or the entire Kartvelian language family?

<comment><USER23> the short answer is i don't know. however the kartvelian group consists of only four languages, geographically near each other, and they are 'closely related[1]' according to wikipedia. one might expect a some degree of mutual intelligibility, as between czech and slovak, for example.

[1](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartvelian_languages>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In spanish 'mama' and 'papa' are the actual words for mom and dad, respectively (and IIRC they are too in italian). Funny that other languages don't use the same simple sounds for both.

 _Auto-nitpick: Well, actually it's not 'mama' but 'mamá' (same with 'papa'), the accent is in the last syllable_

<comment><USER26> In Japanese you use "haha" and "chichi" to refer to your own mother and father (respectively), instead of the more formal "okaasan" and "otousan".

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've recently wondered if shaking the head to signify disagreement or refusal stems from that being an effective way for a child to refuse food it doesn't want. My son shakes his head almost reflexively, and it makes it very hard to feed him something he doesn't want.

<comment><USER28> Probably not. When I was in Nepal, I noted shaking head left and right means "yes". And "no" is done with the hand open, rolling it on the axis of the arm ("couci-couça" in French).

BTW Children are sponges, they copy you. For instance my wife and I do not like that much fruits, and our kid don't either, which is sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Here is an article I saw recently about word roots with possible global reach, called "Global Etymologies" <http://jdbengt.net/articles/Global.pdf>

It's quite interesting to just look at the examples. It's proposed that certain word roots might end up in different places in different languages, i.e. what means knee in one language can be close to elbow in another. Reocurring is of course that body parts and mothers, which is common humanity, is a big part of the words examined.

</comment><comment><USER30> This recalled a childhood memory. When I was extremely young my first words were 'mum' and I used to refer that for thirst. So mum meant 'give me water' and since mother used to be around, she was the one to provide it. Or it could be that mother taught me to associate 'mum' with water as that was the word I could pronounce first. Hmm..

</comment><comment><USER31> It is not universal but it seems fairly close to universal. I do think mmm comes as an early sound in part because of suckling. If a baby can't suckle, it likely won't live. The article is being a bit humorous about it but I made the same basic point to someone recently while discussing this.

</comment><comment><USER32> Is someone looking through my comments to write articles about? <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5671337>

Probably just a coincidence but feels a bit weird.

</comment><comment><USER33> In portuguese 'mamar' means to suck, usually associated with babies. Mother is 'mãe' or 'mamãe'. Actually, the r is usually dropped when speaking, so 'mamar' is usally spoken 'mama'.

</comment><comment><USER34> "The child is recognizing that the hairy flat-chested lunk trying to sing "Little Bird" to it is NOT Primary Food Dispersal Unit #1."

Laughed out loud with this. Nice article!

</comment><comment><USER35> The Basque (a language isolate) word for mother is 'ama'.

</comment><comment> alok-g It's probably the other way around. Babies learn their first sounds, and languages, as they develop, assign those words to the moms and dads.

</comment><comment><USER36> Interesting read. In Turkish 'mama' = baby food and also 'meme' = breasts. Also it looks like there is connection to word 'mammal'

</comment><comment><USER37> In my language Malayalam, mother is 'Amma'. Maman or more correctly 'Ammavan' is uncle.

</comment><comment><USER38> Mama in Mandarin Chinese literally means mother.

<comment><USER39> I always assumed that it was a loanword though, and that 娘, 母親 were the "original" words for mother.

Curiously, "ma" is _always_ the first syllable that is taught to students of Mandarin (to explain the tones).

<comment><USER39> Apparently it is not a Western loanword - <http://wold.livingsources.org/word/77161647552647739></comment></comment></comment>


Review: Chromebook Pixel is too expensive (and too good) for Chrome OS - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/03/review-chromebook-pixel-is-too-expensive-and-too-good-for-chrome-os/ <comment><USER2> The hardware looks great. The thing that bugs me about the pixel and chrome OS in general, is that I don't know a lot of people who can manage their day by day work using only web apps (no office, photoshop, autocad, eclipse, whatever). Web based replacements are good, but just not as good as desktop creation apps, and I'm still not even sure they need to be. The point is most people need win/Mac/Linux software and for the ones who don't (like my mom) - just get an iPad. Then again, I might be completely wrong here.</comment>


An Architecture History of the Unix System (1985) - <AUTHOR> https://books.google.com/books?id=5xyk_PXaloAC&lpg=PA8&ots=cZQ3TYbp71&dq=stuart%20feldman%20architectural%20history&pg=PA8#v=onepage&q&f=false

<comment><USER2> We need more of that! Wow they had everything back then ... down to the traps and pitfalls and utilizes the minimum resources for working engineer. Funny thing they couldn't express the parentage and origins of vi text editor which derived indirectly from the ed source via fork called em which was used to implement ex.

</comment><comment><USER3> Where is ESR's god now?</comment>


Microsoft Has Failed - <AUTHOR> http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/14/microsoft-has-failed

<comment><USER2> This guy displays in this article a fundamental misunderstanding about the direction Microsoft is going.

That's totally understandable, but it really undercuts the effectiveness of his argument.

<comment><USER3> Which direction you consider Microsoft is taking?

Personally, all I see them doing is the same thing they have been doing for 2 decades: milk their legacy cow. I don't really see big changes in direction. They have Windows Phone? Yes, but that's hardly new, they had Windows Mobile and CE for ages. Windows Surface? Sure, but again, not new, they are just catching up with the market.

The most innovative thing I've seen Microsoft release was the XBox - and even then, it was the next logical step after predicting the death of PC gaming. They released it to keep their DirectX/.NET lock-in.

<comment><USER4> Also, Visual Studio is still the most advanced IDE in the world. And also Microsoft's development suite for Windows Phone 8 is amazing. It's years ahead of android, and a "bit" better than iOS. Just no developers care because the market is so low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> He didn't even mention one of the other facts that lots of people are using their technology, the fact that C# is growing in popularity, which is why windows servers are purchased. Windows servers aren't purchased because someone wants exchange. The developers for a new company choose to use C# for development, then naturally want everything to be of one OS. Then they hire Microsoft IT personnel who install Exchange. He also says if you don't use Office you don't need Exchange. Who the hell uses Exchange because you're using Office? No idea what this guy is talking about. He also doesn't talk about other gigantic money makers, like Microsoft SharePoint.

<comment><USER5> C# can be used on other platforms so don't think they have much lock-in here.

Unity 3D (<http://unity3d.com>) uses it as a scripting system. You can author on Linux, OS X and Windows just the same.

If anything C# is becoming more popular because it's like Java but not from Oracle, one of the few companies that is less liked than Microsoft.</comment></comment>


How can I reduce AWS cloud server cost? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It depends on what you're currently using, how you're using it, and why. There are plenty of things from the easy but expensive (reserved costs) to the hard (rearchitecting). Depending on where you are in development and how much money you have there are plenty of things you could potentially do.

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of ways, but it all starts with an an analysis of where your bill is going now.

Generally, turn off idle things. Embrace elasticity. Autoscale. Look into spot fleets.</comment>


An Extremely Detailed Map of the 2016 Presidential Election - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/upshot/election-2016-voting-precinct-maps.html <comment><USER2> Blue districts are almost always close to red districts (by driving distance), but some red districts are really far away from blue districts.

</comment><comment><USER3> With the exception of college towns it's an almost perfect map of population density.

<comment><USER4> Except for New England, especially Vermont.</comment></comment>


Low-income students feel left out at Stanford - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/31/BAIMVHBG9.DTL <comment><USER2> What more can Stanford really do?

He goes there tuition free, his room and board are free, and he gets subsidized work during the summer. It was two weeks between when the semester ended and he started receiving his summer work paychecks - he really couldn't have saved up enough cash to cover two weeks over the course of a year?

On top of all that, he frankly has no right to be at Stanford with a 1300 on his SAT. I had a friend who was rejected from Stanford even though he was class valedictorian (at a ludicrously competitive school), captain of several school teams, and had a 1590 SAT.

He might be a bit bright, but Stanford has already bent over backwards to accommodate him. It's his fault if he isn't willing to do a little work himself. How hard is it to do 10 hours/week of research (paying $15/hr) during the school year? I (and most other people I know) often do so. He'd have several thousand dollars saved up without too much trouble (since Stanford is already paying all his expenses).

<comment><AUTHOR> _he frankly has no right to be at Stanford with a 1300 on his SAT_

What establishes a right to be at Stanford?

<comment><USER3> Why are people upmodding this? The intent of the OP was clear to me: schools are supposed to be a meritocracy, and if his friend was much more qualified and got rejected, why is this guy there?

<comment><AUTHOR> If schools are to be a meritocracy, what constitutes sufficient merit to get into Stanford? That was the thrust of my informational question, and I'd be happy to hear responses from anyone who has an opinion on that issue.

<comment><USER4> Some minimal standard of intellectual ability and interest. That really shocked me when I got to Stanford. I met people who'd gone to fairly decent high schools who were taking what was basically remedial math, and plenty more people who didn't really seem that interested in their classes or majors. I had a reaction similar to the OP when I saw that kid had a 1300. I knew plenty of smart, motivated people with better test scores who they could have still drawn a very diverse class from.

<comment><USER5> I'm not an American, so I don't know what a 1300 score says about a person. But if I was Stanford, I would be interested in the potential of a person, and not just what they have done. There are lots of "smart" people who are best in their class, but falls behind when they start at a higher level of education.

There may be many reasons why Stanford wanted to give him a chance.

Perhaps they saw something more in him? Perhaps he had a part time job his last year, so that he couldn't spend so much time perfecting his score? He can now focus 100% on Stanford without worrying about money (most of the time), and can probably more than keep up with the "elite".

The article also mention that students who come from families who can afford more, spend money on better high schools, SAT preparation, private teachers etc. to get a high score. In that case, a 1300 might not be so bad, when others need so much extra help.

<comment><AUTHOR> _I'm not an American, so I don't know what a 1300 score says about a person._

Here's a current chart showing how many students in the most recently reported high school class (students who graduated from high school in 2008) scored at different levels as a sum of scores from the critical reading section (200 to 800 standard score points possible, scores rounded to the nearest ten) and from the math section (same scoring) when they took the SAT for their best individual total score for one sitting.

[http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat_perce...](http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat_percentile_ranks_2008_composite_cr_m.pdf)

Although you are not an American, you have a good understanding of what else college admission committees look for besides high test scores alone. Your other comments mention several issues that admission committees claim to look at when deciding on applications.

Stanford's most recently reported interquartile ranges for SAT section scores of enrolled first-year students are here:

[http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.j...](http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=3387&profileId=6)

Please note that a few years ago, when the student mentioned in the newspaper article was admitted, the ranges would have been a bit lower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Disclaimer: I am a grad student at Stanford (which definitely makes me low- income :) Undergrads whose families make under 60k go to Stanford for free and under 100k don't pay tuition. Yes there are some students who can afford a lot more than others, but I think Stanford does a pretty good job helping out low- income students. Obviously all schools could do a better job at attracting lower income applicants, but I don't know why they're singling out Stanford.

<comment><AUTHOR> _I am a grad student at Stanford_

What are typical graduate student stipends these days at Stanford? I have no idea.

<comment><USER7> I'm a CS master's student at Stanford, which means I don't get funding automatically. But with a 20 hr/week assistantship (TA or RA) I get my tuition refunded, which is about $8200, and a roughly $7000 stipend. That's for one quarter (quarters are Sep-Dec, Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun). It's enough to cover housing, food, and a little extra...but it's certainly frugal living.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I grew up in a small town in Ohio. My mother was a high school librarian and my father was a unionized janitor. By the standards of our community, we were considered well-off to the point of being gossiped about a bit. A couple of weeks into college, I was talking to a friend whose father was a physician. He asked of my family and then said, "Do you guys do OK?"

</comment><comment><USER9> "Next fall, he plans to pursue sociology and will enter the Ph.D. program at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana"

Well, that will certainly not help his socioeconomic status.

During my undergraduate career, we had a speaker come in who was the subject of a recent novel. Growing up, he was a bright kid who lived in a miserable ghetto with violent, useless schools. He managed, somehow, to catch the attention of a local journalist who helped him get into college, where he excelled.

What did he choose to do with his college education? Did he choose to become an engineer, or a businessman?

No. He decided to get a PHD in Sociology and become a social worker.

I am mystified by the exceptional poor students that follow this path. Maybe they pursue subjects like sociology because it tells them that the reason they grew up poor is that society has wronged them. However, it is certainly an ineffective way to increase the prospects of themselves and their families.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps people who have managed to grow up without a lot of money better understand how to live a happy life with a job that doesn't pay $100k.

Let me quote a very famous person who grew up in poverty, Charles Dickens:

 _Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery._

One secret to being happy with a $30k or $40k salary is to maintain a healthy perspective on your social class: If you know that a lot of people struggle to live on $18k, your $30k salary will fell fantastically great. Whereas if everyone you meet has a $150k salary and a trust fund, you'd better have the same or you will feel poor. Happiness is relative. That's the entire point of this article.

It's not surprising to find that many of the happiest grad students are people for whom a grad student salary seems quite adequate, even generous.

<comment><USER11> Huh? Charles Dickens was ravenous in the pursuit of money.

<comment><USER10> Hey, I didn't say this was a _general_ theory of human motivation! This is merely a _glib_ theory of human motivation!

(Indeed, I don't believe in a general theory of human motivation. Keeping your lifestyle from creeping up to a range in which you've got to rake in a large salary to feel adequate is merely _one_ approach to keeping yourself happy. And it surely doesn't work for everyone.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't really understand this article. He was living in his Jeep? Didn't he bother making friends? I thought the whole point of college was to engage in Lord-of-the-Flies-style social hacking? That "one red paperclip" guy needs to teach this kid a thing or two...

<comment><USER13> I agree this article was a little weird. But it can be hard to make friends across economic disparities. You can't join them for lunch out, or a weekend ski trip, or chip in towards the keg. The one red paper clip guy worked because it was a novelty. The rich kids at Stanford would eventually get tired of buying this guy lunch in exchange for paper clips or whatever, and he'd get tired of asking.

<comment><USER12> No way. Really rich people LOVE hard-working poor people -- it plays into the whole theory that smart, hard-working Americans will always come out ahead. Also, really rich people often understand that they are simply not as focused or motivated as the hard-charging kids who NEED to make their own money. This is useful for future business ventures, or if the family company needs to hire some young smart people.

The kids in this article sound totally lame, and seem to use their lack of income as an excuse for hating their wealthier peers. Yeah, a lot of rich people are utterly hilariously out of touch with the world, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't want to be your friend and do things with you. If you feel there is some sort of major tension, it's got more to do with you and your insecurities than with your affluent peers. In fact, if some rich kid were to act like a total snob to you because of your lack of money, there is ALWAYS a MUCH richer kid who would love nothing more than to have an opportunity to say to the snob, "dude, shut up - my family can buy yours ten times over." (True story.)

This isn't some theory of mine, either -- I'm pretty much the poorest person in my neighborhood, which has taught me quite a lot...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It sucks that he had to live in his Jeep, but--Stanford has a lot of work- study positions reserved especially for students like him. He can earn $12-$14 an hour shelving books and spend half the time studying. He could do research in sociology and get room, board, and a little money left over during the summer when he's not getting sizable fellowships from the Haas Center. In fact, if he did research, he wouldn't have to lose any housing at all! If he's still not able to find housing for two weeks, something's wrong with his money management ability or ability to seize the plentiful opportunities Stanford gives him on top of his free tuition, room, and board.

It sucks that he feels like a fish out of water, but come _on_ \--imagine how much worse it is for an international student. I knew a kid in my freshman dorm who had never seen a pumpkin before, didn't know what the hell it was. It's equally bad for someone who was an introvert, chronically shy, dumped into a dorm full of loud parties where someone was always going to the ER every weekend because they'd drunk too much. He has it pretty good, and I believe that Stanford has done the most it can at this point.

I'm slightly shocked that he also says he's moving to a poorer part of the country to get away from all us rich kids. Nobody I've ever met at Stanford has shown any disrespect or distaste for poor students. One of the most popular staff members in my co-op's getting the whole free ride from Stanford, plus tons of work-study opportunities. It's very sad that he's leaving because of some insecurity that's only in his own head.

</comment><comment><USER11> _He scored 1,320 out of 1,600 on the SAT._

That's the only part that stood out for me. I did a lot better than that but never dreamed of going to Stanford.

</comment><comment><USER14> I attend(ed? graduating soon!) a college where all students received a full tuition scholarship - regardless of socioeconomic status. Besides being an effective "carrot" to attract students to a new engineering school (or, in some cases, persuading parents to allow their children to attend a new school), it was developed to help alleviate such disparities.

Yet I see the same difficulties as Stanford - the school is very competitive for admission, and there is little chance for some students to attend simply because there is no way they could have prepared themselves to be competitive.

As a side note, despite a generous endowment, my college is investigating charging a portion of tuition. Unfortunately, the harsh economy makes for some harsh decisions.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Stanford says it admits the brightest students regardless of their ability to pay. Yet only 12 percent of Stanford's 6,759 undergraduates receive Pell Grants, a yardstick used to measure how many low-income students such as Scott are enrolled."

I think this has a lot more to do with the low quality of education in the United States (especially for low income families) that leads up to higher education, and a lot less to do with who Stanford decides to admit.

</comment><comment><USER16> Should he consider studying part-time with a part-time job to sustain his life and interests? Or will he lose his scholarship for doing part-time?

I have learned from life that you don't need to rush as long as you know where you're heading and you are patient enough to work towards that goal. And there is no point to compare if you seriously know your strengths and passion. It is because you will succeed regardless of other people. :-)

<comment><USER17> _Or will he lose his scholarship for doing part-time?_

To answer your question: at Stanford, you have to take at least 12 units per quarter to be eligible for financial aid, unless you have special circumstances (i.e. illness). On top of that, I think you can go on academic probation if you don't take that many credits... Stanford doesn't really want you to do undergrad part-time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyone remember when scholarships were for _scholars_?

</comment><comment><USER19> They might feel left out at Stanford, but people are writing articles about them, so I don't feel too bad.</comment>


Copyright is not a divine right - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Copyright-is-not-a-divine-right-Delhi-HC/articleshow/54372014.cms <comment><USER2> In Australia, we had a High Court case in the 1970s[1] in which a university library was declared to have authorised copyright infringement by providing coin-operated photocopiers and taking no steps to prevent infringements.

To have a university openly producing and selling photocopies is (pardon the pun) a completely foreign idea to me. Does the university merely cover its costs (education motive) or make a profit on the copies (commercial motive)?

I'd be willing to make an uninformed bet that most of the photocopied books have non-Indian authors, and that pressure to change the laws will start when Indian authors start having their works copied – the same way that America routinely ignored piracy of foreign authors until the likes of Mark Twain began complaining about Canadian piracies of their own works.[2]

[1][http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1975/26.html](http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1975/26.html) [2][http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva74.html](http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva74.html)

<comment><USER3> Well, it's restricted to educational uses, so I don't anticipate a lot of pressure from Indian textbook authors on this one. The specific case seems to stem from professors suggesting students read various sections of different texts and the copying service preparing collections of those reading assignments for various courses.

It's a broader interpretation than the US version of Fair Use, obviously, but it seems to me the High Court judge had a good point that copyright must serve the public's interests as well as the publisher's.

<comment><USER2> > The specific case seems to stem from professors suggesting students read > various sections of different texts and the copying service preparing > collections of those reading assignments for various courses.

Actually, in Australia universities are permitted to do the same thing, as long as it's not the whole book (e.g. a chapter relevant to the week's lecture). So that seems more understandable than photocopying entire books.</comment></comment></comment>


Present presentation even in the absence of projector - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/deepsadhi/presentation2.0 <comment><USER2> This might make a good "Show HN".

Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, posted it :) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11438232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11438232)</comment></comment>


Spending $5k to put Zimbabwe on Street View - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/this-man-spent-5000-of-his-own-money-to-put-zimbabwe-on-street-view <comment><USER3> If you want to repeat that in your neighboorhood in a smaller scale, there's [https://www.openstreetcam.org/](https://www.openstreetcam.org/) (software open source, content CC-BY-SA) and [https://www.mapillary.com/](https://www.mapillary.com/) (propietary afaik, content CC-BY-SA)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_street_view_services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_street_view_services)

<comment><USER4> Open street cam looks pretty cool. I wonder how they're combining all of those images. Just looked it at, they're just a sequence of images of a drive. Don't expect a google street view like experience.

<comment><USER5> It's completely depended on what people contribute, if you collect 360 images with a 360 camera then you can get the google street view like experience. The community contributors to Mapillary have done a lot of 360 imagery.

<comment><USER6> Do they have a guide on how to setup your rig to get best results possible?

<comment><USER5> There's a forum where the community talks about capture setup [https://forum.mapillary.com/c/contributing-and- equipment](https://forum.mapillary.com/c/contributing-and-equipment)

It's varies a bit depending if you're capturing via car, bicycle, foot or any other mode of transport, then again based on your budget and how much effort you want to put into your setup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was impatient for Street View to reach my country so I made my own back in 2014. I took photospheres of my university campus and made a website for it using an embedded Street View container. I did it as a personal project. The university ended up discounting a reasonable chunk of my tuition as a recognition and for my effort! First I was taking individual photos on my DSLR and stiching them manually then I continued the bulk using a spare Android phone which made everything (slightly) easier (auto stiching, geo-tagged...) but I still had to stand at each point and take 18+ photos for each photosphere. You can check it on [http://discoveruob.com](http://discoveruob.com)

<comment><USER8> I really enjoyed clicking around and virtually touring the campus - <USER2> knowing how much work it must have been!

What a great project, glad the university recognized your effort.

<comment><USER7> Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While I'm glad someone found a way to turn money into happiness, this feels like the Black Mirror future of the gig worker economy.

"We need a map of Kansas City using devices we provide you. We pay nothing up front, nothing at completion, and no residuals for profits we earn from your imagery. You may not keep the equipment we provide. You are responsible for all expenses."

Who on earth would accept that Taskrabbit?

<comment><USER10> Presumably Google's normal target market for the camera loans are museums, parks, shopping centres, local government tourism departments and suchlike.

I.e. organisations that think it'll be a useful marketing effort, or it'll help their customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how they got gas or diesel... there is essentially none in Zimbabwe right now. Even cooking oil is getting hard to come by as everyone is running it as diesel in older mechanical engines (which burn it fine)

<comment><USER12> There is gas and diesel - it is just expensive for everyday folk relative to how much money they can realistically make.

If you work in SF and spend $5000 on a passion project flying to Zimbabwe, you will have no problem affording gas.

<comment><USER13> Currently in Zimbabwe. It's not an issue of affordability. The country allocates foreign currency to bring in fuel, there is a shortage of foreign currency and the government is struggling to bring in enough fuel to meet demand levels.

<comment><USER14> Exactly the same as when I lived there. We had the money, but we would queue round the block (even leaving cars unattended) waiting for the fuel to arrive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While this is a cool project and congrats to the guy, seriously, Google can't even cover the expenses for him and other people who do this kind of thing? How many people do this kind of thing, and how much would it cost Google to cover them all? How much would it cost them to cover a salary for them too, even a basic one? Do we have any way of trying to make a reasonable guess at that? Maybe Tawanda was aware of this and is still happy to do it, but for that not even to be commented on in the article is kinda weird.

<comment><USER16> The same thing could be said about wikipedia btw: In 2018 they received 104 million dollars (of which 2.3 went to pay for the servers), so if they wanted, they could actually get 100 million worth of content.

<comment><USER17> This is what really annoys me about Wikipedia - it begs for money like it's going out of business but in reality the money it gets, aside from the tiny amount that actually runs everything is basically frittered in what is little more than fraud frankly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Did he just gift the images to Google? Did he retain copyrights? Are they available under a license that would allow inclusion into an open repository of street view photos?

</comment><comment><USER19> Back in 2014, a Moroccan guy did something similar, created a Street view clone for a 10 cities in Morocco huge challenge for one person, with limited resources: [http://carte.ma/](http://carte.ma/)

</comment><comment><USER20> "Google Trusted Photogapher" here.

[https://www.google.com/streetview/hire/](https://www.google.com/streetview/hire/)

Verification: [https://goo.gl/maps/Nx9JwEB731m](https://goo.gl/maps/Nx9JwEB731m)

We can now add to Streetview instead of just adding to Google Maps. I.e. we can create a blue line instead of just blue dots.

And a lot of us are doing it, by request, and paid. And no, Google never paid us anything, we had to sell by ourselves and set our own prices.

So this guy will get paid, this is great PR.

<comment><USER21> > Google never paid us anything

> So this guy will get paid

Who pays for that?

<comment><USER20> By businesses who want a tour of their business or of the road leading up to it. Mostly likely just the business premises. But there are a lot of clients in that part of the world that would want to include roads like game reserves.

* I'm South African.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd love to see the vast trail systems of the US get the street view treatment.

<comment><USER23> I am just impressed they are mapped at all. Not entirely reliable as trails get changed over seasons and for maintenance and so on, but it is still impressive to be able to get an overview of a trail system.

<comment><USER24> I'm amazed that they went into my gym.

<comment><USER25> The business owner can hire authorized streetview photographers to upload images to Google Maps' native street view experience. It exists to strengthen Google's moat and incentivize SMBs to spend more $ with Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> While I may comprehend that any of those contributors must know and well understand a thing: that's a PROPRIETARY service, you pay but you do not really own ANYTHING after.

So consider OpenStreetMaps (they also have a kind of streetview project) or any other kind of FREE project in witch you invest money and after co-own the data.</comment>


Galaxy Without Dark Matter Found, Puzzling Astronomers - chupa-chups https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/mysterious-galaxy-measured-exquisitely-and-contains-no-dark-matter-at-all-753338968df6 <comment><AUTHOR> Dark matter is a supersolid that fills 'empty' space, strongly interacts with ordinary matter and is displaced by ordinary matter. What is referred to geometrically as curved spacetime physically exists in nature as the state of displacement of the supersolid dark matter. The state of displacement of the supersolid dark matter is gravity.

The supersolid dark matter displaced by a galaxy pushes back, causing the stars in the outer arms of the galaxy to orbit the galactic center at the rate in which they do.

Displaced supersolid dark matter is curved spacetime.

The reason for the mistaken notion the galaxy is missing dark matter is that the galaxy is so diffuse that it doesn't displace the supersolid dark matter outward and away from it to the degree that the dark matter is able to push back and cause the stars far away from the galactic center to speed up.

It's not that there is no dark matter connected to and neighboring the visible matter. It's that the galaxy has not coalesced enough to displace the supersolid dark matter to such an extent that it forms a halo around the galaxy.

A galaxy's halo is not a clump of dark matter traveling with the galaxy. A galaxy's halo is displaced supersolid dark matter.

</comment><comment><USER2> Optics of that Dragonfly telephoto array is just 48 normal Canon 400mm lenses in in two clusters.</comment>