Facebook's fail is going to be epic - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/21/fb_nielsen_fall/ <comment><USER2> One wonders whether the stable number of Facebook users is approximately equal to the number of high school and college students.

The hypothesis that high schoolers with Facebook profiles will continue to use them throughout life is only now being put to the test. And here's the thing: In high school, many people really care to know exactly what each of their classmates is doing and who they are dating. Sometimes that continues through college. But eventually people grow older, and they escape the social fishtank that is school, and they go out into the world... and, what do you know, eventually you stop hanging around with all of your school friends. You make a big show of keeping up with all of them for a while... but eventually it tapers down to sending Christmas cards now and then. You visit every few years. And you certainly don't visit them all.

I'm not saying that you'll ever stop using social networks. But there are a lot of social networks now. They're not that hard to develop, and they're just going to keep getting easier. And the result may well be that different people will gravitate to different ones as they go through life.

Facebook's counterargument is that they are going to be the generic platform on which all future special-purpose social nets will be based. But Facebook wasn't designed as a generic platform. It was designed as a social network for college students. And I'm not sure that opening the user base and tacking on a thousand third-party apps has really changed that. It's hard to take a tool that was carefully optimized for one task and repurpose it for N other tasks... especially when there are a thousand competitors with similar technology, and the lock-in isn't that strong.

<comment><USER3> This would be circumstancial evidence for school being a popularity contest ( <http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html> ).

<comment><USER2> Well, that argument feels very circular to me, since I had PG's essay firmly in mind when composing my words about Facebook. :)

But PG's essay is mostly about high school and earlier, as I recall. Facebook was originally designed for college students. So I wouldn't want to suggest that the app was built around the kind of warped prison-yard junior-high- school culture described in the essay. The situation is not _that_ bad: Facebook _is_ an app for adults, and it remains relevant for adults. But it is primarily an app for _young_ adults, of a certain age and social position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Judging from the eager way in which people are seizing on this tiny bit of evidence, it seems like a lot of people _want_ FB to fail. And when you want something to be true you should be especially skeptical of evidence for it.

Sites have flat spots. I would be careful before counting those guys out.

<comment><USER5> You think people want Facebook to fail? My impression is the opposite.

Seems like everyone with money invested in web 2.0 really wants them to succeed. Your argument works equally well there. Don't be so sure of Facebook's infallibility, either.

Basically, everybody just chill out.

<comment><USER6> True. If Facebook fails then it's all the "web 2.0" world that will be affected, I hear a lot of people talking of another bubble about web 2.0. Some want their convinctions vindicated, others want to save their start up and money.

My bet is that the truth is in the middle as usual, just like when the first bubble bursted, it was a godsend who cleaned up all the mess produced by the basical non-understanding of the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In w3m:

      You are using an incompatible web browser.

      Sorry, we're not cool enough to support your browser.
      Please keep it real with
      one of the following browsers:

        ⢠Firefox
        ⢠Opera
        ⢠Safari
        ⢠Flock

      Facebook (C) 2008

Hacker News, on the other hand, is quite usable:

      â Hacker News*new | comments | leaders | jobs | submit              login
      [grayarrow] Facebook's fail is going to be epic (theregister.co.uk)
                  48 points by nickb 1 day ago | 68 comments
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        [grayarrow] 14 points by pg 18 hours ago | link
       ¢            *Judging from the eager way in which people are seizing on
                    this tiny bit of evidence, it seems like a lot of people
                    want FB to fail. And when you want something to be true you
      *             should be especially skeptical of evidence for it.

                    Sites have flat spots. I would be careful before counting
                    those guys out.

       ¢           nreply

Facebook has already failed ;).

/sarcasm (just in case)

</comment><comment><USER8> At least we know now that memcached really, really works.

<comment><USER9> But but but its beta.

My next app I am going to put in 'zeta' for the duration of it's lifespan, to show that its super-duper mature.

<comment><USER10> memcached is not in beta and hasn't been for a very long time as far as I know. Maybe you're thinking of memcachedb?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it that big of a fail if it stabilizes with 50 million users? The real question is if they can find a way to monetize that (like AdWords did for Google) before they run out of cash.

<comment><USER12> Considering that Facebook has been "valued" at $15 billion, yes, 50 million users is a failure. That would mean that they'd have to justify why each and every user is worth $300. A good percentage may be worth close to that much, but certainly not every one.

<comment><USER13> Well, technically if you want to use that model, then if each user spends $25 a month on products/services they find on facebook, then after a year(collectively) each user will have at least spent, $15 billion, which I think is worth...well... $15 billion.

<comment><USER12> True, if TiVo or a cable company had 50 million subscribers, then yeah, it could be worth $15 billion. I don't see a $25/mo product from Facebook, though.

Not to mention that we don't know what percentage of the 50 million are active, participating users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Most commentators thought Zuckerberg was an idiot to turn down the $1 billion offer. My guess is that they can't wait to have their opinion vindicated.

Personally, I've yet to find a reason to even visit Facebook. I still have plenty of old friends - don't need any replacements yet, nor a different way to keep in touch with them.

<comment><USER14> Facebook is less about making new friends as it is about communicating. I know you mention that you don't need any new ways, and I used to agree with you, but the plethora of options it provides for pinging your friends makes it quick, easy, and fun to keep in touch with far more people than you would otherwise. I'm not saying it deserves the hype it's gotten, but I definitely think it has some value.

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen The Register's fall is going to go unnoticed.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if it crosses the mind of anyone else that Microsoft is using its billions as weapons. Facebook is a massively successful site. But by investing in a small stake of a company at some huge, overestimate of a valuation, Microsoft is shuttering the valuation of Facebook, and pretty well all of social networking.

<comment><USER16> If that were true, then Facebook would have declined letting MS have a stake.

Rather than stunting social networking, it seems MS is just trying to get in the game, since their home-grown efforts to date have been lackluster.

<comment><USER15> It might actually be an advantage to facebook to see the social networking investment market turn sour temporarily, to keep out big VC funded marketing campaigns that you have to do _something_ to compete with.

Besides, typically, if someone is going to give you money at an absurd valuation, unless the terms are particularly onerous, it makes sense to take it.

<comment><USER16> Is Facebook worried more about competitors or sustainable revenues?

I don't have any friends there, so this is just speculation, but if I had to guess, I'd pick the latter.

You're right about accepting large valuation investments.

By the same token, it's hard to imagine the investor rooting for the company to fail, after having taken a stake (unless, of course, MS really has a Facebook killer waiting in the wings).

<comment><USER11> Revenues, revenues, REVENUES!! They've created wealth (something people want) but if they can't monetize it, they will fail as a company. Right now people are actively saying they want Facebook instead of its competitors by _using_ it. Their competitors now are the Internet giants - Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Google. Their size and valuation has put them in that category (not a niche startup) so now they need to find a way to earn billions to stay there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _A total of 400,000 seem to have become bored with the social network and didn't bother to return._

I guess I'm not the only one...

<comment><USER18> I became so bored with Facebook before I joined, that I never actually joined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't know... we could simply be entering the trough phase of the hype cycle. What might follow is a wave of more interesting apps that bring traffic back in full force. Time will tell.

</comment><comment><USER20> Well from my experience dealing with facebook's salespeople - it costs approximately $160,000 to have a facebook.com/mybusinessname page made for your company. So long as companies believe the social-media hype enough, facebook will be making money from at least that (and you'd be surprised at the companies that have already signed up).

Let's not forget the $1,000,000 initial retainer to do any kind of partnership with them (i.e., Beacon).

<comment><USER21> plus the sponsoring of free gifts... I would be surprised if a round of free gifts was as cheap as one million.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well... FaceBook has attracted quite a lot of money and a very serious number of smart folks who aren't sitting idle as we speak. They must be working on something: generating ideas, bouncing them off each other, coding, etc.

Articles like this one tend to neglect the fact that armies of smart people concentrated in one place worth not less (perhaps more) than previous achievements, be it user accounts, traffic or revenue.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some people keep using FaceBook because it doesn't easily let you delete your account and your peers have an expectation that your account should be current. In the long term this may work against FaceBook. The popularity of a social network site evaporates when the proportion of inactive web pages hits a threshold. A similar phenomen occurs in online games. The online worlds expand with the number of users but then interaction becomes very sparse when the number of users declines. This creates a downward spiral of decline. Anyhow, if FaceBook can reduce the prominance of dormant accounts and rely on peer pressure then an active user base can be maintained. However, social network sites don't have natural monopolies because sooner or later, you'll encounter a stage five clinger.

</comment><comment><USER23> Many of the people I know are withdrawing their profiles from Facebook. Not deleting them, but removing 80% of the information.

Facebook is a LOUSY ad platform because users are interested in interacting with friends, not watching ads.

The subject is bang-on: Facebook's fall will be EPIC

</comment><comment><USER24> The thing here is - for every social app, people are going to ask a) is it worth my effort to join this social network? or b) can this leverage my existing social network? And so, facebook, being the largest 2.0 social network becomes a cornerstone of the next generation of social apps.

I see it like the free-rider problem: facebook is like roads or plumbing or some other infrastructure, everybody profits from having one central established social network, but the reason it is in that position is because it's free. The hard part is just like paying for roads - you have to find a way of getting people to pay for it without diminishing its appeal

</comment><comment><USER25> I bet you Facebook has some statistical models that estimate when their user base will stop growing/start shrinking, so they probably knew at least a month ago that this would happen.

</comment><comment><USER26> What would happen if they just said, "Okay, no more access to your site unless you pay 12 dollars a year". Or...no more than 50 page views a day without a subscription, or similar.

Would it be a total collapse? If advertising isn't working, well...

<comment><USER27> I think that would be a total collapse. Well, maybe not total, but there would be a flood of people leaving the service, for sure. I, for one, would not pay a cent to access Facebook. I just may copy down information for the people that I've gotten into touch with over Facebook and deactivate my account.

As for page views option, that wouldn't work either. I, personally, don't do more than 10 page views a day and most of my friends are the same. I suspect many people just check their profile, answer wall posts or messages, look at some apps and log out. There is not much there that can hold your attention.

All Facebook can really do now is pray that people still find it interesting. I think the Beacon was their attempt at monetizing the interest. That got shut down, so they're SOL.

<comment><USER26> * I suspect many people just check their profile,...*

I suspect many people spend hours and hours on it. These are the ones who should, perhaps, be urged to pay. The light users are more likely to leave on any harassment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How many of you haters have a facebook account?

<comment><USER29> I only still have one because they won't let me delete it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Not epic, just predictable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Epic, in current internet meme speak, means great or huge. When they say that they're worth $15B and the reality strikes and they lose $10B off that valuation, the fall will be huge (especially to investors).

<comment><USER30> I don't see the reality of the old adage "A fool and his money are soon parted" as being epic though.

Bigger fools is all. I won't lament their loss.

<comment><USER31> Having used Facebook exactly once to get at the thrift documentation, I won't miss it. However if it sinks it could take a good chunk of social-network investor confidence wiith it.

That said I think there are plenty of things Facebook could do to stave off a total collapse. Based on the success of the scrabble application, if I were them I'd make a big effort to become more integral to the online gaming community.

<comment><USER32> Part of me wants to be quick on the jump here and say Facebook can salvage the scraps by getting rid of the applications, but that'd be fallacy in it's highest regard. Applications for me are less about how annoying some of them can be, and how poorly they're implemented.

Those that require you to send invites to friends before you can make use of it, or simply requiring you to add the application just to see how someone has ranked you compared to the rest of your friends should get a slap on the wrist. It kills usability, and it hurts. I'll never use these apps, I'm just curious to see what my friend is trying to tell me.

Then again, at the same time you have applications that say you have a message waiting for you, when it's really nothing more than an invitation from someone else. Borderline Spam Marketing from your friends. And when your friends Spam you, what asylum is left?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Co-Working on Vacation: A Desk in Paradise - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/business/co-working-on-vacation-a-desk-in-paradise.html <comment><AUTHOR> It sounds to me like this isn't a vacation at all: it's just a business trip, paid for by the employee's company.

<< Matej Hrescak, a product designer at Facebook, spent several weeks at the Surf Office on Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands, near one of the island's noted surfing beaches.

"I really appreciate long uninterrupted periods of work time in order to dive deep into a particular problem, and having a destination where you're far away from usual distractions made this possible," he said. The high-speed Internet, fully stocked office, access to a kitchen and camaraderie of other guests at barbecues, biking trips and other planned group activities, he added, all contributed to his productivity. >>

I wouldn't be very happy if I were expected to contribute to travel or lodging while "co-working on vacation" \- or if the trip used up any vacation time.

<comment><USER2> The use of the word vacation in relation to remote work is definitely odd.

I personally have been a full-time remote worker for over 3 years now (I'm Australian but sitting in an apartment in Barcelona right now) and work with a bunch of other remote workers. We very definitely have very distinct holidays/vacation time. Our work and personal lives are just as separate as a regular in-person worker. The only difference is that when I go on vacation I don't typically have to go anywhere as I have previously relocated to my desired vacation spot.

<comment><USER3> Did you have to obtain any special visa or permits for this?

Do you happen to know if it also works the other way round? For example, suppose I'm from the EU, can I travel to Australia as a tourist and legally telework from there?

<comment><USER4> _Did you have to obtain any special visa or permits for this?_

Australian citizens require a work visa to work in Spain [1]

[1] - [http://www.expatica.co.uk/es/visas-and-permits/work- permits/...](http://www.expatica.co.uk/es/visas-and-permits/work-permits/Work- in-Spain-Guide-to-Spanish-work-visas_103258.html)

 _..can I travel to Australia as a tourist and legally telework from there?_

No. Again you need a work visa [2]

[2] - [http://www.immi.gov.au/Work/Pages/Work.aspx](http://www.immi.gov.au/Work/Pages/Work.aspx)

These articles like to paint a rosy picture of just jumping a plane with your laptop to an exotic location. The reality if you want to be legal is different and much more difficult that that.

<comment><USER5> If you're under 30, you could look into the Working Holiday Visa program that many countries participate in: [http://www.workingholidayinfo.com/](http://www.workingholidayinfo.com/)

[Side note - the owner of that website also blogs at Nerdy Nomad about working from a laptop while travelling the world: [http://www.nerdynomad.com/](http://www.nerdynomad.com/) ]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm hoping to try the co-working vacation this year to see for myself if I'm still as productive in a new city or country without being distracted by wanting to explore this new place I'm in. I think having a space where other freelancers and startups are working would make it easier to get up do some work around like minded people and still enjoy a new place.

It's a different twist on traveling that doesn't bind you to trying to see as much as you can in the 3 weeks you have off a year. You can really get to know a city or country if you stay there for longer. I don't really want a work life balance, I want it more intertwined so that I can do my work while living my life and co-working might just give me a chance to do so. Joel at Buffer was right about not wanting to have a deferred live plan where we work to then enjoy life.(1) I think with today's technology and forward thinking bosses and company's its possible to do great work wherever we are.

I still need to test this out and see if I am actually productive. This fall I spent a week in Vancouver and a week in Fernie and was really productive even in a new environment. I think the co-working spaces around the world will just make it that much easier for me to do longer trips. I'll have the reliable internet and quite space if needed to do good work without worrying about the wifi at coffeeshops and worrying about my gear being stolen if I get up and use the bathroom.

1\. [http://joel.is/why-we-go-on-international- retreats-3-times-a...](http://joel.is/why-we-go-on-international- retreats-3-times-a-year-with/)

<comment><USER2> Serious question, what is a "co-working vacation"? If you are working surely your employer doesn't expect you to use your vacation time.

I have been remote working full-time for over 3 years while my wife and I have traveled around and do not blur my work and my vacations so I find the term "co-working vacation" puzzling.

<comment><USER7> It is a "vacation" in that you are no longer domiciled in your home; you're travelling.

It is not a "vacation" in that you're not taking time off work.

It has all the aspects of a travelling vacation, except during work hours.

<comment><USER8> It has all the aspects of a vacation except for the vacation part. Working from an enjoyable location does not make it a vacation.

It's remote work, not vacation. The ability to remote from various locations part or all of the year may be an interesting job perk, but if it burns vacation days you're just getting shafted.

<comment><USER7> There's more than one aspect to a vacation. Many people specifically take vacation so that they can travel. The end goal isn't necessarily time not working, it's experiencing new things in new places.

<comment><USER8> > There's more than one aspect to a vacation.

Never said there was only one way to spend your vacations.

> Many people specifically take vacation so that they can travel.

So?

> The end goal isn't necessarily time not working

The point of vacation very much to have time off. What you do with that time off is up to you (possibly up to working at an other job), but if it's not time off it's not vacation.

> it's experiencing new things in new places.

And if you can negotiate to do that without taking vacations more power to you, but again vacation is time off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At the end of the week I'm setting out on something similar. I work for a startup that lets employees work one month a year from anywhere. I'm flying to Hong Kong and then onwards to Koh Lanta in Thailand for a month. Beautiful beaches and (reportedly) decent wifi. There's even a coworking space. The company offers a cash bonus to cover some of the expenses and I used frequent flyer miles for the ticket so I'm only out a few hundred bucks from my own pocket for this excursion.

<comment><USER10> I just came from Koh Lanta. Amazing place, quite literally the most beautiful one I've ever been to. I spent a few days in Ko Phi Phi, which is great for partying, then went to Koh Lanta to chill. It's incredibly relaxed vibes. I went to Hong Kong afterward and spent the whole time there missing Koh Lanta!

<comment><USER9> I've only been to Koh Phangan and Koh Samui before so I'm definitely looking forward to checking out the Andanaman Sea side. Since I'll be working I decided I don't want to move around islands, just pick one place and work there.

<comment><USER10> Ah nice. I was hoping to make it to Koh Phangan for the full moon party but my girlfriend got sick that day and we stayed in Phuket. :(

I haven't seen the Eastern islands myself -- definitely next on the list. Be sure to check out the herbal selection in koh lanta! ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wonder about the legal aspects of this. I guess one cannot come from Asia/Europe to the USA on a tourist visum and legally telework from there. Other countries seem to have trouble with foreign teleworkers, too. Wasn't there an article about a police raid on a Thai coworking space, a while ago?

But I guess it's allright if you're from Sweden and travel to Spain to enjoy the Mediterrean during the day and work in the evening (both countries are in the EU).

<comment><USER11>
        > I guess one cannot come from Asia/Europe to the USA on a
        > tourist visa and legally telework from there. Other
        > countries seem to have trouble with foreign teleworkers,
        > too.

I'm not aware of any country taking enforcement action, or even attempting too, as long as you're not disguising employment in the host country. Who benefits, seriously? Make sure you're legally resident somewhere where all your business activities are being conducted via, and that you're paying tax there.

Who wants to be the first country to say that tourists can't check their work email while on holiday?

        > Wasn't there an article about a police raid on a Thai coworking
        > space, a while ago?

Yes, but it came down to a misunderstanding about what was going on there. Chiang Mai police later further clarified that they're fine with tourists tapping away on their laptops:

[http://chiangmaicitynews.com/news.php?id=4366](http://chiangmaicitynews.com/news.php?id=4366)

<comment><USER4> That's true, but they recently deported a few Russian travel guides in Pattaya despite saying that they would allow them to work a few months before.

The law is really flexible in Thailand. What's unenforced today could be enforced tomorrow.

<comment><USER11>
        > they recently deported a few Russian travel guides in
        > Pattaya

Which - even if they gave it a nod - is a completely different situation.

        > The law is really flexible in Thailand

Which assuming you aren't destitute, can sometimes work in your favour...

If you're in Bangkok, drop me a line and let's grab a coffee.

<comment><USER9> The people doing this also aren't likely doing visa runs, they'll just come in under the 30-day visa free entry and then go home once it expires. Much harder to get caught that way.

Though I did read rumors of Thai police cracking down on a coworking center in Phuket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I work at Mozilla (I believe ~70% remote workers) and certainly see people do things like this all the time, though often on a smaller scale. For example, if they have a conference or meeting in Europe or Asia, they might extend the trip to visit other locations and work from either hotels, coworking spaces, coffee shops, trains, or "camping" in our other offices.

I certainly encourage it, for people who both want to do it and whose lifestyle supports it! Caveat international work and visa laws, where prohibited, of course :-)

</comment><comment><USER13> does anyone know any other coworking retreats like the ones mentioned in the article? I'm writing a blog post about this for my remote work newsletter blog, and so far I found those:

[http://www.thesurfoffice.com/](http://www.thesurfoffice.com/)

[http://coworking.camp/](http://coworking.camp/)

[http://coconat-space.com/](http://coconat-space.com/)

[http://www.sun-desk.com/](http://www.sun-desk.com/)

[http://www.thebluehouse.io/](http://www.thebluehouse.io/)

[http://startupgetaway.co/](http://startupgetaway.co/)

[http://hus24.org/en/](http://hus24.org/en/)

[http://www.sanktoberholz.de/](http://www.sanktoberholz.de/)

[http://www.47ronin.co/](http://www.47ronin.co/)

<comment><USER14> [http://www.hackerparadise.org/](http://www.hackerparadise.org/)

I think I met one of the people involved in it at a recent event in Chiang Mai, Thailand (or maybe someone just told me about it).

<comment><USER15> Howdy! HackerParadise organizer here.

Shameless plug: we're doing a trip with 4 weeks each in Da Nang, Vietnam, Bali and Chiang Mai, Thailand starting February 15th and still have a few spots left. If you're thinking of trying out the workaway lifestyle, check us out (we handle the hotel + co-working space with good Wi-Fi, snacks & coffee, etc + the trip is full of hand-picked, interesting people).

More broadly about the 'burgeoning industry' \- from having interviewed hundreds of applicants at this point, I don't think the growing trend is developers going totally nomadic. There's some of that, but then there's also "I want to get the @%^! out of NYC/Berlin during the winter," or "I want to take a month off and see how I could work from here". My feeling is it's a lot more fun to take a month-long workaway than a weeklong vacation, simply because you don't have to be a tourist at the speed of light (just use the weekends to explore) and you get a much more authentic experience of the place you visit while avoiding the guilt of not being productive while the rest of your team is working hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I very often work on vacations (2 to 8 weeks at at time). I work whenever I feel like it or don't have anything better to do. It's easy to find a few free hours most days without sacrificing your vacation time. That way, I can travel longer, and it keeps me busy. However, I normally don't stay more than a few days at the same place, and don't work full days so co-working wouldn't really make sense for me.

However, it sounds like a good idea if you want to be at a specific place for some time and don't want to be alone at the hotel or in a coffee shop. That way, you could socialize with similarly-minded people or work in a more engaging environment.

</comment><comment><USER17> Definitely check out Hubud in Ubud, Bali. I'm out here for 9 weeks teaching a Rails bootcamp and they have the whole work/lifestyle thing figured out... [http://hubud.org](http://hubud.org)

</comment><comment><USER18> This would be fun IF:

1\. My boss paid for the whole thing 2\. and paid for my family to go with me 3\. and it didn't count toward my paid vacation days.

(In other words, no chance in hell.)

But if I'm taking off to go somewhere, you can forget it. My vacation is for me.

<comment><USER8> 1 and 2 make no sense unless it's a long-term business trip. But if you're working and expected to work, it definitely shouldn't count towards vacation (otherwise it's a vacation and you don't do jack shit for the company)

<comment><USER18> 1 makes perfect sense. I can only afford 1 big trip a year. So of course I would spend it on a real vacation, and not some business trip. If my boss wants me to travel, my boss should pay.

As for 2 - You'd have to pay me a ton of money to abandon my wife for two weeks. Paying for my wife to go with me is just cheaper for my boss. :-)

<comment><USER8> If your boss sends you somewhere that's a business trip. The article is not about business trips.

So no, neither 1 nor 2 make sense because they've got nothing to do with the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Co-working spaces tend to suck, in my experience. First, there's the knobs on phones all the time. Even talking in loud hushed voices and walking outside, they're still distracting. Then, there's the people constantly talking trivia... hi, weather, lunch dates, coffee. Finally, the lighting is almost always crap: high glare or artificial. Every one I've yet seen has been centered on a massive open office cubicle type layout... the worst thing for programming. Finally, often they're not even cheap. I much prefer hotels.

<comment><USER20> what is the best type of lighting for this type of space?

<comment><USER19> Low but readable natural with access to personal (ie. non-intrusive for others), diffuse, ideally broad-wavelength lighting when required.

At no point should (1) a light be in anyone's eye while they are looking at a screen (2) window/skylight/outside be reflected on top of anyone's screen (3) major thoroughfares be located directly in front of anyone.

This requires thoughtful seating arrangements and non-crappy architecture/interior design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I own HackAbroad.net and HackAbroad.com. I am interested in developing a program for college students to spend a summer/term abroad, hacking on their own projects. I want to use it as an excuse to go abroad myself. Would likely entail building hype, taking applications, then choosing a location and renting a place for a few months.

I just graduated from Yale and want to develop this in the next 6 months. If anyone wants to assist, please get in touch - email@example.com

<comment><USER21> I handle exactly that for a few US university summer programs here in Peru (Cuzco, Machu Pichu, Amazon Rain forest etc..)

I'll send you an email..

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I moved to the UAE last year and feel rather disappointed there aren't that many techies or co-working spaces here. If anyone would like to come here for a popup retreat to the desert let me know, there are some pretty amazing places here, e.g.:

[http://qasralsarab.anantara.com](http://qasralsarab.anantara.com)

Most countries get visa on arrival, and the country is a hub for two big international airlines, so getting in is easy!

</comment><comment><USER23> Please, somebody do this at a good skiing location.

I did it myself with 3 other guys back in 07-08 in Fernie, Canada, and it was awesome - but also a lot of work to get set up across the world before we arrived.

<comment><USER24> You're in luck! I actually have two friends who just started their own little space in Chamonix, might not be the most professionally organized office right now but really fun guys and awesome location

[http://theskilocker.com/](http://theskilocker.com/)

<comment><USER15> A friend and I have been skiworking in Austria over the past week, actually. We'll ski from ~10 to 12:30 then hit up a cabin at the top with good Wi-Fi, have lunch and work until ~3PM, ski until 4 or so, then go back to the hotel and have dinner & do a second work session after dinner.

It's been surprisingly great, though certainly pricier (even with the deal we got) than doing an equivalent attempt with Surfing in SE Asia. I also don't think I'd do it for more than a couple of weeks. Let me know if you're curious about a writeup and I'll put one together.

<comment><USER25> that would be an interesting write-up

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So what does a place like this cost, to stay (i.e., room with bed), to live (eat/do stuff) and work (desk and wifi)?

<comment><USER27> Hi, this is Matthias from Coworking Camp.

Generally we aim to make Coworking Camp affordable for early stage startup founders. The cost to attend consists of different components: 1) You need a Coworking Camp ticket. It ranges from €250 (1 week) to €650 (6 weeks). There are ealry bird discounts, so make sure to signup to our newsletter. Also there are volunteer opportunities available that get you a free ticket.

2) We haven't finalized the hotel for Tunisia yet, but expect about €30 per night for a single room with all inclusive food/drinks. Double rooms will be slightly cheaper and we are trying to also negotiate an early booking discount.

3) There are cheap flights around €200 to Tunisia from nearly all major European airports. For the cheapest option look for tourist charter flights leaving on weekends. It is also possible to fly to Tunis and then take a cheap bus or train to the hotel. More info once we decided about the hotel.

So the total for the ticket, the hotel and the flight should about €650 (1 week) to €2100 (6 weeks). If you share rooms, volunteer or book early the cost could go down.

($1 is a little less than 1€)

<comment><USER26> That's not too bad, thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Vue.js and GitHub and Tailwind CSS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/davidesantangelo/github-vue-card <comment><AUTHOR> now there is possible to change username take a look at [https://github-vue- card.netlify.app](https://github-vue-card.netlify.app)</comment>


Do Progressive Web Apps have a future? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I don't know if they do or not, but I switched to developing iOS apps in Swift a few months ago. I spent the last seven years writing web apps for a living, and it wasn't hard to learn the new stuff. I do wish SwiftUI was better documented, but I'm sure that'll get better in the next year or two.

</comment><comment><USER3> I sure hope so. With all the back and forth with Spotify/Epic/etc. vs. Apple, I've always wondered why at least some app that are not games (dependent on native code for performance) don't invest in/publicize their PWAs. Spotify has a semi-functional PWA.</comment>


Learn X in Y minutes Where X=Nim - <AUTHOR> http://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/nim/

<comment><USER2> Learn X in Y is pretty cool as a high level overview of a programming language. But I really like How I Start[0] because it focuses on how a programmer, often times the language creator or at the very least a prevalent user of the language, goes about starting a library or project. Nim also has an entry on How I Start[1]

[0] - [http://howistart.org](http://howistart.org)

[1] - [https://howistart.org/posts/nim/1](https://howistart.org/posts/nim/1)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing. I found [http://hookrace.net/blog/what-is-special-about- nim/](http://hookrace.net/blog/what-is-special-about-nim/) enlightening as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We've elected to use Go in a lot of our backend services - nothing striking there - but I've also been playing with Nim for fun.

I can see clearly where I might draw a line of delineation between where I select Go vs. say, Rust, but I'm not as clear where that line is for Go vs. Nim.

Does anyone have any enlightening thoughts on that?

<comment><USER5> Nim provides you more flexibility than Go or Rust.

Go is a GC'ed language and that's that. Like any other GC'ed language, the treatment for GC woes is palliative.

Rust is designed around no GC and that's that. Of course, Rust did at one point have a baked in GC and it can be used with a GC, but you need to fully understand the Rust way of doing things and will always be working with the borrow checker in mind.

Nim's GC is special in comparison to mainstream GC'ed languages as it offers you great control. For ease of development it is a GC'ed language, yet for performance and ABI purposes allows deterministic GC. It seems to offer the ultimate in flexibility and expressiveness at the cost of footguns and complexity.

<comment><USER6> > Nim's GC is special in comparison to mainstream GC'ed languages as it offers > you great control. For ease of development it is a GC'ed language, yet for > performance and ABI purposes allows deterministic GC.

Unless you need to GC pointers shared between multiple threads, in which case your only option is the Boehm GC (which is imprecise, unlike Go's). This is a significant disadvantage in both expressiveness and safety that Go does not possess.

<comment><USER7> In what situations would you need to do this? I have been using Nim for a long time now and never felt limited by this.

<comment><USER6> All the time. It's the bread-and-butter of high-performance concurrent programming.

\- I have a large graph data structure allocated in one thread and I want to transfer it to another thread without copying.

\- I have a lock-free data structure and I want the benefits of a GC so I don't have to use less efficient hazard pointers [1].

\- I have an in-memory database that I want to be able to query efficiently from multiple threads without copying.

\- I'm doing work stealing on a large, complex data structure and I need to be able to access pieces of that data structure from multiple threads with unpredictable memory access patterns.

\- I'm using a multicore job queuing system (like most AAA games do nowadays) and almost all game assets can be accessed from any thread.

These are just a few. Sure, you can use unsafe manual memory management to work around it, but without RAII and a library designed for manual memory management you suffer a huge penalty in usability—not to mention the safety problems. I can foresee people easily ending up in a situation whereby they can't multithread their applications because they started out using the GC and would have to rewrite all their code to switch from automatic memory management to unsafe manual memory management.

Another way to work around the restriction is to copy the data, but that usually ends up making your parallel algorithm slower than sequential unless it has very high arithmetic intensity. (This is based on experience.)

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

<comment><USER8> _All the time._

Some people need these kind of optimisations all the time.

Most people don't need them even once in their entire life.

<comment><USER6> Every Cocoa app I've written has used "[NSObject performSelectorInBackground:withObject:]", which relies on having a thread- safe GC (atomic reference counting).

<comment><USER8> And just as Cocoa abstracts this away from you any popular Nim frameworks that need such optimisations will also abstract them away from you.

<comment><USER6> I don't see how. The abstraction here _is_ automatic memory management -- i.e. the GC -- and the problem is that the abstraction doesn't work for this popular use case. The language needs to provide a more flexible abstraction: a thread-safe GC.

And it's not a question of optimization, it's a question of semantics. Performing an operation in a background thread with a strong mutable reference to an object is a _semantic_ concept. Without a thread-safe GC you simply can't do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And HN was doing so well, I haven't seen a nimrod post on here in days.

<comment><USER10> Nimrod name was changed to Nim, by the way.</comment></comment>


Playlist of YouTube videos linked from top 1024 HN stories (2010/07) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=BEFD900D9EF4D29D

<comment><AUTHOR> These are all the youtube links mentioned on top links, similar to last time (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1425184>) but with all new content.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice on strictness of credit card validation - <AUTHOR>

Our business is such that we authorize credit cards ahead of time, and then do a bulk capture (actually submitting to "charge" the accounts) at the end of the day. We also allow the user to "store" there credit card on a third-party, PCI compliant provider.
Until this point, we have not been very strict on the way we verify/validate credit cards. So today I was implementing additional levels of verification and felt like things were getting a little complicated/strict.
Here are the various levels I am working with:
* Typical checks for presences and lengths of fields as well as algorithmic credit card check
* Address Verification Service (AVS) which matches first 5 contiguous street digits along with 5 digit zip code
* Require CVV code (3 or 4 digit code present only on the card itself)
* Attempt $0.01 or $0.00 authorization (and then immediate voiding of transactions)
Note: when a transaction fails to match with AVS, there is an option to "accept and hold for review".  However, this seems somewhat meaningless as I would not know whether an address was "valid" or not unless it was clearly fraudulent (i.e. "123 main street" type of stuff)
Main question: When the user initially enters their payment information, should we be performing $0.01 authorizations every time? Also, for stored credit cards, should we ask again for the user to provide the CVV (since it is never part of the stored payment information)?
Just want to make sure that this level of strictness is really necessary.  It doesn't feel like most sites that store my payment information require me to constantly reenter my CVV.
Any advice or "here is what we do" type of responses are appreciated. <comment><USER2> This whole entire business is in dire need of a major disruption - it's ridiculous and takes an Einstein to even figure out the charges. That said...

1\. I read a thread on here a while back (<3months) talking about address verification and why NOT to do it. You'll have to do your own search - but I'm reasonably confident that it was related to 37signals in some way.

2\. CVV verification reduces your fraud levels and it is a MUST have for web transactions, IMO, but you'll need to check with your merchant account to see if it also reduces your charges per transaction. I'm thinking that the CVV verification does reduce it. Why wouldn't you need this on a recurring transaction? Presumably, the recurring transaction already has done the verification??? The way it's processed isn't really a new transaction, but a recurring. If you do a new purchase, even with same company, I think you'll be asked for CVV again. I honestly don't know, but I bet it has something to do with this. Never have done recurring transactions before, but someone here will be able to answer.

Why void the authorization? Again, this stuff is all relatively cryptic to me, but I thought the purpose of the auth was to at some point actually charge? The gas station I use always charges .01 - I see it on my account before the actual charge goes through. I'm sure they are just verifying the CC info is accurate. I don't think they void it though. Anything wrong with authorizing the entire purchase amount you expect to charge, and then just process it at the appropriate time? For sure, the auth is good for more than the "one work day" you outlined above.

Myself, I've always wondered about the authorization transaction. I thought that I got charged some fee just for doing that, then another fee to run it. I'm probably wrong on that, but I was so confused by how I got charged and what percentages that I did the absolute minimum necessary. Customer has a rewards card? Great, we charge you extra for that! Amex is the worst with charge backs. Sorry...you've brought back some bad memories! :-)

EDIT: Here, I did the search I mentioned above. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953137>

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes to CVv.

Only use AVS if your shipping.

Authorize only for 1.00 to verify card for subscription billing or authorize the card for full amount if you are batch end of day processing. The authorization holds the money for a period so you can capture it and if you never do it releases it back. It only affects a cards available credit and does not affect you or the consumer unless you capture it.</comment>


USCIS: Immigrants Linked to Legal Weed Unfit for Citizenship - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/uscis-immigrants-linked-to-legal-weed-unfit-for-citizenship.html <comment><USER2> This is really unfortunate. Its difficult enough to get a green card and then a citizenship. To make it artificially more difficult by adding "moral" guidelines just feel malicious.</comment>


Zed Shaw's Latest Project - SongBe.At - <AUTHOR> http://zedshaw.com/blog/2010-01-24.html

<comment><USER2> Hm. Cool, but doesn't work on Safari Mac. The "Kinda Player" lib seems to be to blame.

<comment><USER3> Actually it looks like I broke something since it was working a little earlier. Seems it only works on Firefox now. No chrome or safari.

I'll fix it up tomorrow.

<comment><USER2> Nah, I don't think it's you, or at least the issue I'm seeing isn't. The examples here don't work for me on Safari Mac either:

<http://stcamp.net/examples/kinda_player/>

That page works on Chrome, though.

I confirm that songbe.at doesn't work for me on chrome either so perhaps there's two different issues.

<comment><USER3> I just fixed it for Firefox and Safari. It was a load order problem between flash and javascript (SM2 needs a stupid variable set so it can find it's flash plugin or it barfs). Try it out again.

<comment><USER2> Now it works on Chrome but still bad on Safari (Mac).

This error comes up in JS console:

"TypeError: Result of expression 'i.o._createSound' [undefined] is not a function", thrown by sm2.js.

<comment><USER3> What version of Safari? I've done it on all the pages so far, but I'm thinking I'll have to get "creative" on that damn sm2 loading.

<comment><USER2> Version 4.0.4, ie Snow Leopard 10.6.2, with Flash version MAC 10,0,32,18.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Here's a $99 Android tablet running Ice Cream Sandwich you can buy right now - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/06/ice-cream-tablet-from-mips/ <comment><USER2> Sold out now - apparently will be available for sale in the USA in a few months for $99.</comment>


Using Deep Learning to Listen for Whales - <AUTHOR> http://danielnouri.org/notes/2014/01/10/using-deep-learning-to-listen-for-whales/

<comment><USER2> discussion from 570 days ago with some good comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7036315](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7036315)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


The Two Phases of Successful Seed Fundraising - <AUTHOR> http://startuphoodlum.com/2011/07/05/the-two-phases-to-successful-seed-fundraising/

<comment><USER2> Well said. This mentality can also work for dating.

<comment><USER3> elaborate... how would this work in the dating context?

Phase 1: I'm not interested in dating. Phase 2: I've got a dinner date tonight, do you want to meet up afterwards?

<comment><USER2> Play hard to get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> .... in a perfect world!

</comment><comment><USER5> Cannot even read the entire article because of the Onswipe theme. Who's awful idea was this?</comment>


Ask HN: Joining a startup as employee #5. Any tips for contract negotiations? - <AUTHOR> Tech position/CTO, Startup is VC funded, ESOP/Equity program will be available but has not yet been started, 50 to be hired.<p>Do you have any personal hints or links to checklists or similar about what to think of before signing a contract, avoiding to get fooled? <comment><USER2> well the best course of action will be to ask them(employer) for a rough draft of the contract, so that you could go through it before hand, and get an advice from your lawyer, if you have one.</comment>


Interslavic Language - <AUTHOR> http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/introduction.html <comment><USER2> As someone who has followed the constructed language and international auxiliary language community for a couple of decades, and as someone with an undergraduate degree in linguistics, I do not see a constructed language catching on with the mainstream public any time soon.

A constructed language is a language that someone sits down and creates; this is different from a natural language which just forms as people communicate with each other. There are many constructed languages: Klingon in Star Trek is an actual constructed language, as is the language the Elves spoke in The Lord of the Rings.

Esperanto, and Interslavic, are examples of _International Auxiliary Languages_ (IAL), languages specially made to be easy to learn to facilitate international communication. We have had those languages for well over a century, and none of them have caught on.

The reason why an IAL has not caught on is because people are motivated to learn a language when it has prestige, not because it's easier to learn. Right now, for better or for worse, English is that language (with all of its warts: Auxiliary words to carry tense, the rather strange tense/lax vowel distinction, etc.) right now.

I would love to see an IAL to catch on, but there's a serious marketing issue, especially since a lot of people just don't have the mind to learn a new language as an adult, no matter how easy the language is to learn.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious what you would think of the history of Standard Italian or Modern Hebrew. In both cases, there was no such thing as a native speaker 300 years ago, but they were revived from historical literary sources to coincide with a new political identity or state, and today millions of people count them as their native language.

It seems awfully like the story of a constructed language with high state, political and cultural support, that succeeds and grabs a foothold. Seems like it can work if it captures a particular zeitgeist.

I am sure that stories like this exist elsewhere, these are just 2 cases I happened to have read about and come to mind.

<comment><USER4> The Israeli case is illustrative for two reasons:

* Most of the people involved had some familiarity with written and liturgical Hebrew already.

* The revival was kicked off with a seed population of self-selected, ideologically-motivated Zionists in-country.

* When that seed of fluent speakers spread it to larger waves of immigration, there was no alternative lingua franca.

Italy was also a case where there was no alternative lingua franca, and it _was_ in fact a dialect which was both mutually-intelligible with extant dialects, and was in fact made official in many Italian states well before unification.

More generally, these both are exactly in line with GP's point: "people are motivated to learn a language when it has prestige". Both languages were absolutely high prestige at the time.

<comment><USER3> > and it _was_ in fact a dialect

Based on Tuscan dialect, but my understanding (correct me if I am wrong) is it was not 100% the same as that dialect and drew from historical written forms.

The fact that mutual intelligibility exists with other dialects certainly helps. But the same is attempted here to bridge Slavic languages.

But yes. My two examples are high prestige, emerging at the right time alongside a new national identity. It has better chances than some Slavic language bufs on the internet. Just trying to say that the line between "constructed" language and a real native tongue is sometimes blurry. Failure of these attempts is not inevitable, given the right circumstances.

<comment><USER4> These were absolutely not constructed. The Italian case was a process of making official a register that had evolved naturally over 700 years; as it had been in continuous use in modern states, updating was not necessary.

In the Hebrew case, the language had been in continuous literary use for thousands of years; the only changes required to make it into a spoken everyday language were to add vocabulary. If that's a constructed language, then French is "constructed" every time the Academie decides on a word to replace an English loanword!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting. I've tried to read some texts and I could easily understand them (as a native Polish speaker). I wonder if it is as easy for other Slavic nationalities. If so, it could be a nice intermediary language, if only for written texts. Unfortunately I guess almost nobody would learn to write or speak it but it is still funny to have a passive ability to read and understand and I guess all Slavic languages could be automatically translated to this interslavic version. It could be tried in museums, restaurants, etc.

<comment><USER6> I am a native Polish speaker as well, and I can understand the texts very well, but I think they might be more difficult for younger readers, who did not learn any Russian. It seems to me that Polish has drifted away from most other Slavic languages.

As an example, without learning any Russian you have no chance to understand "govorju" which is like the Russian verb "govorit'", which is "mówić" in Polish.

One thing I found interesting is that the cyrillic versions are actually easier to read, as many Slavic sounds can more easily be represented (like "ч" or "щ").

<comment><USER7> To anecdotally confirm this point: I am not a native Russian speaker, but I am fluent and Russian, and I am also very familiar with Polish (it's complicated). Those texts are very readable to me, so knowing Russian and Polish is likely to cover the widest base.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> orbital-decay There's also another language designed to be understandable by most Slavic speakers [0]. For some reason, the authors of both seem to hate each other. [1]

[0] [http://www.slovio.com/](http://www.slovio.com/)

[1] [http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/introduction.html#disclaime...](http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/introduction.html#disclaimer)

<comment><USER8> > For some reason, the authors of both seem to hate each other.

Not surprising if they visit each others web pages too often.

<comment><USER9> So to reduce hate we should stop people visiting websites? It might actually work. (Yes, I'll get my coat.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A sorta-weird thing about Slavic languages is, they evolved different meanings from the same roots—though related. So you constantly have your recognition of words misfiring.

E.g. Old East Slavic 'недѣлꙗ' ('nedělja'), meaning 'Sunday', somehow come to mean 'a week' with Russian 'неделя', while even close Belarusian and Ukrainian have 'нядзеля' and 'неділя' for Sunday, same with Bulgarian 'неделя' or Czech 'neděle'.

<comment><USER11> Also for non-slavic speakers' interest: "ne" is No, and "dělat" is Work, so Sunday is literally the day of "Nowork".

<comment><USER12> I am Russian, and you just blew my mind with that piece of info.

<comment><USER13> Same! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a defunct auxlang project called Lingula that aimed to focus on comprehension between romance speakers.

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

I don't think an international auxiliary language besides english would ever be able to take hold, but I think something like Interlingua that just focused on romance languages and used a simplified romance grammar rather than simplifying it further would have been very interesting.

I think esperanto would have had a better shot had it adopted Zamenhof's early reform.

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

<comment><USER10> Can't speak from my experience here, but others say if you know one Romance language, you begin to easily understand words in other ones. So I guess any one of them would work as an international language, but Castellano seems to have a large headstart.

<comment><USER15> I'm learning French (B1 level) and was surprised how much I could pick out of a Romanian movie (the tremendously enjoyable [https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/christchurch/the- whistlers/](https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/christchurch/the-whistlers/)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very cool. I'm Serbian and I can understand this text:

[http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/umetny_ili_prirodny.html](http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/umetny_ili_prirodny.html)

I have to read it much slower than regular Serbian text, but there were only a few words I couldn't make out of. If speakers of other Slavic languages can read it on the same level, it's awesome.

<comment><USER17> I'm Polish, I'm having more difficulties. I have to read stuff twice and guess a lot.

<comment><USER18> +1. Native Polish speaker here, and I can eventually figure it out, but it's a struggle. Still, cool, though, since I can piece it together without a dictionary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's near-100% intelligible for a Russian speaker: [http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/selo.html](http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/selo.html)

> кде мы знајемо всих и јесмо знајеми од всих

Funny enough, this reads like "old Slavic" to me, rather than "new Slavic" :)

<comment><USER20> Kinda makes sense, no? Looking for similarities you inadvertently go back to the common root, and you end up with something that reads like Old Church Slavonic.

<comment><USER21> it's actually the other way round.

interslavic is deliberately based on osl [0].

it is basically "modernized" osl with simplified grammar and lexicon "averaged" from the existing slavic languages.

and, btw, osl is no way the "common root", it's absolutely not proto-slavic, just old bulgarian (from the 9th century) which happened to be the orthodox church liturgical language and thus had very significant influence on many slavic languages.

[0] [http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/](http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A friend once told me that you need to know 3 slavic languages to understand all of them very well. I learned that to be true from my own experience.

If you're born in a slavic country, learning second and third slavic language can be a matter of few months.

Perhaps, the value such language comes in that it could be designed to cut this process down to simply learning one additional language.

The point is, you don't need another language to speak with other slavs. Most slavs can understand each other you just need put effort into it.

Such language can perhaps broaden your ability to understand each other while speaking your native slavic language, instead of being a replacement language for all.

That's where it could work in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER23> My impression (as being Slav myself and speaking Serbian/Croatian as a mother tongue, and a bit of Russian that I've learned in school) is that Slavs can understand each others fairly well when everyone is simply just speaking in their own language. I really see no point in making the artificial language, as while understanding it is probably not hard, learning a language like this would be super hard because of how close, but still different it is to the existing languages. So you end up with a language that everyone understands, but no one is able to speak it...

</comment><comment><USER24> This is interesting and would be rather useful (also sort of cool) to have a common language shared by so many people living rather near each other (except for far-away regions of Russia). Unfortunately, it doesn't look easy at all: 7 cases and 10 plus 6 extra declensions for example. However, in reality such a common language already exists and it's English, especially among young-enough speakers. In my experience, others often prefer to switch to English rather than pursue the fun of trying to connect the foreign words of a similar language with their meaning.

<comment><USER25> Ludwig Wittgenstein: _the borders of my language are the borders of my world_.

English is a language many young Slavs learn in preparation to or in the course of their professional life as in the world of the Pax Americana it quite simply has become an economical necessity to know it well. However, the English language cannot naturally transmit any of the linguistic particularities (proverbs, turns of phrases) and, generally, cultural notions and historical familiarities that to a certain extent are shared by the various Slavic peoples. English for Slavs is a _foreign_ language in the true sense of the word, whereas a language like Russian is much closer linguistically and culturally. There's the heritage of the Soviet Union which makes Russian the trans-national language of choice for the generations educated in the Soviet times. And indeed that could be the very same reason why these days it's rather unpopular among the young people in, say, Poland. Which is a real shame because as a trans-Slavic language IMO it does a great job and is a very beautiful language as well.

I am Polish and when speaking to a fellow Slav, I much prefer to try to get us to speak in our own languages, even if it requires effort. Otherwise, I prefer to speak Russian if the person I'm communicating with knows it too. I find it very, very awkward using English in those situations, i.e. in conversations with a Serb or a Czech (but not with a German or a Swede).

<comment><USER13> I think it depends on the fluency of your Russian vs fluency of your English. I'm Russian and I'm fluent in English so if I sensed you don't quite understand what I'm saying in Russian I'd immediately try English. I'd have probably ended up mixing the two.

<comment><USER26> > I'd immediately try English.

Unless it's a literal matter of life and death to understand what the other person is saying without too much of a delay, it's a pretty _asshole-y_ thing to do:

a) The other person will "immediately" know that you think that their Russian is not up to snuff. b) They'll know their well intended effort isn't appreciated.

<comment><USER27> I'm living in a foreign country and speak fluently 3 languages, and known a few things in a forth one. Deciding which language to use with which person is a taxing effort in itself, especially in a group setting. There is no such thing as "asshole-y thing" to use English because each communication setting is different. Sometime the most important thing is to be understood quickly, then using English if there is any friction makes sense. On the other hand, if the goal is to build some emotional rapport, trying harder in the other person's native language is worth doing.

<comment><USER26> > There is no such thing as "asshole-y thing" to use English because each > communication setting is different

Exactly because each communication setting is _different_ , in a number of them, switching to English _unconditionally,_ which is what the parent was suggesting, is indeed an "asshole-y" thing to do.

> Sometime the most important thing is to be understood quickly

Isn't this exactly what I said, "Unless it's a literal matter of life and death to understand what the other person is saying without too much of a delay?"

> Deciding which language to use with which person is a taxing effort in > itself, especially in a group setting

In a group -- yes. Else, you just sound lazy at best and like a person who doesn't give a duck at worst.

> On the other hand, if the goal is to build some emotional rapport, trying > harder in the other person's native language is worth doing.

The goal is to just be a decent human-being who is at least sometimes considerate of others' wants.

<comment><USER13> It heavily depends on the goals of conversation, imo. If someone tells me he wants to practice his Russian, I have no problem with that. If I'm talking to a girl in a romantic setting, and she wants me to speak Russian to her, regardless of her understanding of it, sure. But if the goal is to actually exchange information, and their English is more suitable, then I don't see why they would be offended.

Also, there are a couple of nuances:

\- sometimes people assume that if I'm Russian I always prefer speaking in Russian. I don't see why I shouldn't let them know when it is to the contrary.

\- even if for some reason they want me to speak Russian when the goal of the conversation would be better served by using English, how should I speak to them? The way I normally speak to my Russian friends, or artificially slowing down my speech and choosing simple phrases? Which one is more offensive?

p.s. I see your point though (i.e. not appreciating the effort). I've heard it's common in some parts of France, where people don't want to you speak French if you don't speak it perfectly. Agreed on the "asshole'iness" of that :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There was recently a video posted of Interslavic being used with a Bulgarian, a Polish and a Croatian.

[https://youtu.be/NztgXMLwv4A](https://youtu.be/NztgXMLwv4A)

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting! I have been thinking about a similar "average Germanic" language, but I don't really have enough linguistics background to pull that off yet.

Also, I have _very_ roughly compared the Slavic languages to see which one I could learn to be able to communicate with people of most Slavic languages[0] and decided that Slovak was the most "average" language so I am planning to learn that. Too bad there's no Slovak Duolingo yet.

[0] Not "most people of Slavic languages", which would obviously mean Russian.

<comment><USER29> What would that Germanic language cover? German, Dutch, Flemish? That's it, right? English is out, because that's half French, and the Scandinavian languages have drifted too far from German to be even half-assed mutually intelligible, no?

<comment><USER9> It would also cover the Scandinavian languages. I'd like it to include English as well, but not use any of the English-only Romance vocabulary; but there's a large chance that that would not result in anything that's useful for interacting with English-speakers. The grammar would be almost entirely based on German and Dutch with maybe one or two Scandinavianisms thrown in to make them feel a bit more at home, but for word choice all languages would take part. Non-Germanic words used in most of those modern languages would be included (like restaurant or station).

About mutual intelligibility with Scandinavian: quite a few basic words are identical in pronunciation between e.g. Swedish and Dutch, and many are similar enough that when speaking slowly you can get reasonably far, I would think, although I haven't tried that much since in practice you fall back on English all the time. When you look into the dialects there's even more you can find that's very similar.

<comment><USER30> There are some attempts at Pan-Germanic listed at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan- Germanic_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Germanic_language)

Of the two that have their own Wikipedia pages linked from there (Tutonish and Folkspraak) I can just about understand almost all of the examples given, though they are very short and selection bias may be at play. Also I speak English, German, and Norwegian, so I guess I have an advantage over speakers of only one Germanic language.

Especially when learning Norwegian I noticed that many words are obviously cognages with _either_ German or English, but not both. For this reason I'm skeptical about the possibility of one vocabulary that is understandable to speakers from all branches. I don't know any Slavic language but know French and some Italian, and the Pan-Romance languages listed elsewhere in this thread seem much more readable to me than these Pan-Germanic ones because their vocabularies are more similar, I think.

<comment><USER29> > Especially when learning Norwegian I noticed that many words are obviously > cognages with either German or English, but not both.

There's some extra hilarity there because it's not like all three Scandinavian languages have chosen the same cognates as each other. Swedish more often picked the German version of a word instead of the Old Norse that Norwegian and Danish picked.

"window" is "vindue" in da/no, but "fönster" in se, from "fenster" in ge.

"question" is "spørsmål" in da/no, but "fråga" in se, from "frage" in ge. (Oh look, English picked the French word here!)

There's probably examples of the opposite where Swedish picked the Old Norse word, and Danish or Norwegian picked something from German instead, but I can't think of any right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> From tutorial:

> Neoslavonic has 7 grammatical cases.

Fascinating. The vocative case has disappeared from Slovak (but not Czech). It exists historically, and is still available for ironic contexts, but scholars consider it dead.

Historically, for instance in the Lord's Prayer: _Otče náš, ktorý si na nebesiach, ..._ (Our Father who art in Heaven ...). This "otče" is the vocative case of "otec" (father), something a modern speaker wouldn't use to address his or her father.

Ironically, in phrases like _chlapče môj ..._ (my dear fellow/boy ...), vocative of "chlapec" (boy).

</comment><comment><USER32> Isn't Bulgarian a better candidate as it's simpler than Russian, for example (fewer cases, less gender-specific things).

<comment><USER33> Native Bulgarian here. Better candidate: yes. Good candidate: no. Yes, it is considerably simpler but it is also vastly different from the larger Slavic languages: I have friends from other Slavic countries and I've observed that Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Ukrainians for instance have far less difficulties understanding each other than understanding me. I would assume it's the same story with Russian but I have almost 0 interaction with Russians. And even for me, it took me days in Poland to start picking up on words, phrases and sentences. Then again I can understand over 70% of Serbo-Croatian without even trying but again, those make up for a very small number of the total Slavic population.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Did anyone see the strange disclaimer at the bottom? It reminds one of ancient BBS or online flamewars.

</comment><comment><USER35> I wonder what's the benefit of this versus learning whatever the common ancestor of the Slavic languages is.

<comment><USER10> A sane alphabet. Cyrillic before the 20th century had some freaky things and weird use of letters that we still have. Aficionados say that 'ѣ' and 'ъ' could be properly used only by people who memorized all the words with them. (Which is not how modern Slavic languages work, even though English-speakers wouldn't bat an eye at that inconvenience, hur hur.)

<comment><USER36> In Czech, some "y" vs. "i" can't be deduced. Schoolchildren need to drill the words that use "y". Similarly to what "ѣ" had with бѣдный блѣдный бѣлый бѣсъ, except our thing doesn't even rhyme :) (Not that I'm complaining. As you note, English is vastly worse in this regard.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Please make the page readable without Javascript. It looks fine in Firefox Reader mode.

</comment><comment><USER38> >Alphabet extensions

So... all those "Ś ś" and "Ć ć" instead of using Cyrillic? Yeah, no.

<comment><USER13> It seems like they support both Latin and Cyrillic transliterations.

<comment><USER39> Came for the orthography fight. Disappointed.

But progress?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Interslavic vocabulary, vocabulary, interslavic

Don't you tell me to usměhati You stick around, I'll make it zasluženy</comment>


Facebook Said It Would Give Detailed Data to Academics. They're Still Waiting - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/slow-facebook <comment><USER2> >As frustrations mount, researchers and the major foundations that fund their work fear that the ambitious project may not survive, multiple people told BuzzFeed News. A source with knowledge of discussions between the key parties involved in the project said the funders — which include the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, the Democracy Fund, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation, Omidyar Network, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation — are now discussing ways to increase the pressure on the social media giant.

>"[Facebook has] definitely thrown major talent at the issue; but ultimately, the proof is in whether we ever get to eat the pudding," David Lazer, a distinguished professor of political science and computer and information science at Northeastern University, and one of the researchers due to receive Facebook data, told BuzzFeed News.

Why do these researchers feel entitled to my personal data? Is Facebook willing to hand me data on the propaganda networks the media uses to manufacture consent?

<comment><USER3> > Why do these researchers feel entitled to my personal data?

Do you feel facebook is entitled to your personal data? (I assume your complaint implies you use facebook)

<comment><USER4> Of course they are.

I gave it to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like journalists just put facebook between a rock and hard place.

"Facebook is sharing data with company X, arrrggh"

"Facebook isn't sharing data with Academics, arrrrgh"

<comment><USER6> That's still a much better place than the one where it really belongs to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly, I'm not entirely convinced they were right to promise access to this data to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER8> SS1 researcher responded on Twitter, [https://twitter.com/SolomonMg/status/1164927631957143554](https://twitter.com/SolomonMg/status/1164927631957143554).

TLDR: they've been working on building a framework to preserve privacy and then to train researchers on how to access the database. That isn't a simple process.</comment>


Wherein Peter attempts to establish his testing cred - <AUTHOR> http://www.gigamonkeys.com/blog/2009/10/08/testing-cred.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting discussion on Peter Seibel's experiences with TDD and unit testing. I think one factor that clouds this discussion is that people tend to conflate testing in general, with the practice of test driven development. Testing your code is a good thing; running your code a couple times is testing, though it may not be as rigorous or repeatable as a suite of unit tests. Driving your design by first writing tests... well I think the jury is out on that one. It may work in some problem domains, but not all.</comment>


China is creating an alternate reality about the Hong Kong protests in real time - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1647908 <comment><USER2> This is a step beyond the kind of thing done by the Trump administration to claim inauguration numbers were significantly higher than they were. China is actively censoring news on the protests to a really impressive (in a bad way) degree. Really, though, the only thing that surprises me about this is that they've gotten the process down enough to put a giant lid on such a huge event in a short time.</comment>


First Recall of Food Item in India – Nestle Maggi Noodles - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Centre-pulls-plug-on-Maggi-in-first-recall-of-food-item-in-India/articleshow/47560836.cms <comment><USER2> Nestle know the value of Indian market and he doing what ever they can do to stay in Indian Market. After few months all the packets again they sold in Indian Market with help of Ministers.</comment>


Twilight of the Winterkeepers - <AUTHOR> http://mountainjournal.org/twilight-of-the-yellowstone-winterkeeper <comment><USER4> There's something truly fascinating about meeting these sorts of people.

I've never met Steven Fuller, but I had the joy of speaking with Frank Sanders [1] at Devil's Tower National Monument. His story is a similar one - <USER2> decades of traveling the country, he found a park which captured him entirely, and never left. He lives within the monument, climbs the tower almost daily, and gives occasional talks at the park campsite. He's also a resource for the park rangers there - he holds no position, but has longer tenure and more familiarity with the site than any of them.

Flowery language seems inescapable in this description. He was the human version of a genius loci - inextricably bound to a single place, and familiar with it to a depth surpassing what one would think possible. I don't think the comparisons to shamans are merely metaphorical. This sort of intimate knowledge of land _feels_ supernatural, to the degree that it helped me understand how people might believe someone was communing with nature spirits.

It's something all too close to lost today. I'm grateful to have met Sanders, but it saddens me that people like this are so scarce in our world.

[1] [https://www.climbing.com/places/under-the-devils- spell/](https://www.climbing.com/places/under-the-devils-spell/)

</comment><comment><USER5> When you spend a certain amount of time engaging in .... non-human.... environments - that is, what is conventionally called "nature" (which is a misnomer, as we all exist in nature), your perceptions of the human life start to shift and mutate. Things like _time_ become a little less exact. The romantic view of wildlife evaporates. The difference is stark between someone who has spent that amount of time and someone who is a dilettante or a tenderfoot.

It's important to be careful in our thinking about it. Someone who just likes being out of buildings or driving an ATV - neither ipso facto wrong - <USER3> different in kind than Fuller, Muir, or the other individuals who know their land.

<comment><USER6> Fuller walks around looking at the world through artificial lenses. He sleeps in a warm bed at night. There are some for whom that life is far too removed from wilderness.

You draw an arbitrary line between someone who drives an ATV into nature ("a dilettante or a tenderfoot")and Steven Fuller. You could put the line anywhere, and on any number of different spectra.

You talk about the evaporation of the romantic view, and yet you have an incredibly romantic (and arbitrary) perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of the seasons Gary Snyder spent in a fire tower in the Pacific Northwest:

[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47182/mid-august- at-s...](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47182/mid-august-at-sourdough- mountain-lookout)</comment>


Online Sales of Louis C. K. Special Cross $1 Million Mark - <AUTHOR> http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/online-sales-of-louis-c-k-special-cross-1-million-mark/ <comment><USER2> It is heartwarming to read that he says that he has never had a million dollars all at once in his life, and yet he has donated $280k to charities from the sales on this special. He was looking for worthy overseas charities that accept paypal on Twitter a few days ago, and I see Kiva and charity:water amongst the beneficiaries.

<comment><USER3> I was surprised (even a little disappointed) he isn't keeping more of the cash, as an investment in more specials or better infrastructure, or just a retirement fund. I'm kind of worried that he feels guilty and will give away a lot and consume the rest.</comment></comment>


Without trial data, how can we trust Russia's Covid vaccine? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccine-russia-exp/scientists-ask-without-trial-data-how-can-we-trust-russias-covid-vaccine-idUSKCN2571TL <comment><USER2> How can we trust American/Western/European vaccines more? Western Big Pharma has quite a bad reputation for pushing bad drugs that cost a lot but either didn't work or had deadly side-effects.

The truth will come out in the end. Personally, I'd be more inclined to trust a Russian/Asian vaccine than a Western one just right now.

There was quite a failure regarding the quality of Western Covid19 tests earlier this year, when, again, the Chinese tests weren't regarded by the West as being 'good enough' and the West insisted on only using its own CDC test kits. [https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/18/health/who-coronavirus- te...](https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/18/health/who-coronavirus-tests- cdc/index.html)</comment>


Running Goes Barefoot - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/the-roving-runner-goes-barefoot/

<comment><USER5> I've started barefoot running and I have to agree that it really helps you focus on running with proper form.

People interested in running barefoot should definitely start out slow and run somewhere safe, like a soccer field or park. If you decide you like it, I also recommend checking out the Vibram Five Fingers. I only just got a pair a few weeks ago, but so far I'm having lots of fun running in them, and they give your feet a bit more protection against debris.

<comment><USER6> I run in Vibram Five Fingers. BHousel is right on when he says start out slow. The first day I got them, I excitedly ran my usual w/ shoes length of time. I spent the next two weeks with calve muscles and ligaments so sore that I had trouble walking down any lightly sloping hills or escalators. That was three months ago. I now run exclusively in these shoes. I used to have knee problems; Now, no part of my legs ever are in pain during or after running.

Mmm, anecdote.

<comment><USER7> Funny, I did the same thing. I was so thrilled with all the hype surrounding barefoot running that I did 7 barefoot miles (on pavement) the very afternoon I purchased my FiveFingers.

Holy fuck that was a bad idea. Bear in mind I am a semi-serious runner who has no problem doing a long, slow 13-15 on any given day. I haven't had significant soreness from running since I started, back in high school.

Well. That was before I ran for an hour on my tippy toes. I was partially disabled for a week. Same thing--calves felt like they got hit with a hand grenade, ligaments FUBARed, also some gnarly blisters on the soles of my feet (turns out asphalt is hot in the summer).

In spite of this I definitely could see why it's better for you; heel striking is just not an option and you sort of prance instead of planting. OTOH I am among the lucky 20% who have never had a running injury because I tend to tread pretty lightly anyways. I think it's still possible to have a healthy stride in shoes, but going barefoot forces the issue: everything else hurts like a bitch.

I have yet to try the anti-shoes out again. The buzz continues to crescendo so I probably will, but let this serve as a warning if you're thinking about trying it out: start slow on these, now matter how much of a badass you think you are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I want a pair!

But...

Could this be an example of media hype? What do you mean?

Well, as already mentioned this is not the first time an article has appeared on the HN. Not a bad thing. But lets look a little closer.

Like him or hate him Tim Farris has reviewed these. I used to like reading his blog until I couldn't help feel 90% of his stories were there to push you to buy something ( Lead Gen, no less from another article in the top 30 today ) or left you wondering if he was paid to write that story.

The New York times has ran at least two articles related to these shoes.

Wired has an article and a review.

There is a chance that they are being discovered on the merit for what they may or may not be. I don't live in an english speaking country. Equally I am a huge running fan. I am yet to see any here, not even in boutique shops. ( Oslo Norway ) So I wonder how these amazing shoes are only being discovered in mainstream tech ( type ) sites which are aimed at a particular market.

So I googled it a little. "vibram site:news.bbc.co.uk" - <USER4>

"vibram site:guardian.co.uk" - more than 1.

Interestingly they first hit the guardian end of 2006.

"vibram site:dagbladet.no" - 0 ( main norwegian site )

"vibram site:abc.net.au/news" - 0 ( australian site )

menshealth ( us site ) - <USER4>

menshealth ( australian site ) - <USER4>

Clearly my searches are small subset of places I like to read, yet for me it does hold some validity that this could be "new media marketing".

Would love to hear if any of you agree or disagree and why?

Equally would love to hear how as consumers we can read thru the lines of "hidden marketing" and "real" reviews.

<comment><USER9> I would normally be suspicious of something that keeps cropping up like this (ref. PG's "The Submarine"). However, sometimes something comes up because the truth will out.

I think the "discovery" of these shoes being American is not an accident. Other markets are too small, and the USA probably has the biggest contingent of foot-damaged runners in the world. Although I live in Italy, Vibram keeps its Five Fingers shoes out of the market (they are available in Germany, even though Vibram is an Italian company). Part of the reason is, people _already_ prefer flat-soled shoes here. Nike style sneakers are almost non-existent.

Some alternatives to VFF: Closer to home for you, perhaps, is the Feelmax Planka, and the UK has Vivo Barefoots which may be a bit overpriced. I don't suppose thin soles will perform well in a cold environment though!

As for me, all through summer I wore what in a different age would be called "canvas plimsolls", and I am now dreading having to wear winter boots. If someone could make a waterproof canvas hi-top, I'd rest easy. So yes, I do think these articles are coming out because people experience the sheer joy of wearing minimalist shoes (perhaps explainable by the sensory organ density of the foot?).

These are almost identical to the shoes I wore. <http://www.seejackshop.com/images/uploads/ASOS-plimsolls.jpg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not a runner, but recommend "Born to Run" as a fun read (it's mentioned in the article and clearly inspired the article). I've always thought ultra endurance athletes were a little off - in a fun way - and the book tells some good stories on these folks, including the Tarahumara Indians, who run barefoot or with minimal gear for incredible distances as a social activity.

<comment><USER11> A friend of mine from our jogging group just finished "Born to Run". He now starts every sentence with, "You know the Tarahumara Indians..." :) He's also showed up to run for the past few weeks in sandals!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Abebe Bikila won 1960 Olympic marathon bare-footed: [http://hubpages.com/hub/Interesting-Olympic-Moments-- Abibe-B...](http://hubpages.com/hub/Interesting-Olympic-Moments--Abibe-Bikela- The-Man-Who-Ran-Barefoot)

</comment><comment><USER13> I've never seriously run barefoot, but I can confirm that it improves your balance and form to walk barefoot as well.

When I had issues with my hiking boots on the Appalachian Trail, I took up barefoot hiking and noticed an immediate change in how I stepped: more on the balls of my feet and less on my heels. And you'd be amazed what your feet can get used to; the first two weeks were hell, but about a month later the rocky, sharp, debris-covered ground didn't bother me at all and in fact I had LESS foot fatigue than I experienced while wearing boots.

You do get some serious calluses though, which as a female I was less than happy about...

</comment><comment><USER14> This is turning into a recurring topic on HN. Last time it appeared I commented that some traditional japanese split-toed shoes I have are super comfy to walk in, and someone responded that they might make really good running shoes. Well I haven't tried running in them, but I recently danced on a hard packed dirt field three days straight, 6 hours, then 8 hours, then 12 hours, in these shoes with a split toe and sole about 10mm thick if that. And aside from my calves aching for the next few days, my feet were very happy. In normal shoes my feet would have been in agony by the end of the second day.

<comment><USER15> Please describe the circumstances for dancing on hard packed dirt for 26 hours in three days.

<comment><USER16> The Burning Man festival?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> While I've always run heel first when using shoes, when running barefoot perhaps unconciously I've always gone ball/toes first - I guess it really is what comes naturally.

There was also another article a while back that perked my interest with a bit about runners in South or Central America who would go ultra-long distance running with only a thin slice of rubber strapped to their feet.

<comment><USER18> heel-striking is bad no matter what you run with. you will suffer injury if you continue to heel-strike

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> you have to be careful where you try this

your inclination might be to try this on trails. wrong. trails are full of rocks and tree roots. if you run barefoot or in vibram toes, you will have broken toes. any trail runner seriously bonks their toe box once per run. this is why trail shoes have toe boxes that are rock hard

i don't understand what the fascination is with barefoot running, and i say this as someone with 50+ marathons under my belt. its not something that elite runners do and novices aspire to...its more like the token town freak who shows up to the marathon in cutoff jeans. there is always one.

<comment><USER19> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot_running#Prominent_bare...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot_running#Prominent_barefooters)

Seems to indicate that this _is_ something that (at least some) elite runners do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why is this a topic on Hacker News?</comment>