Design Tips for Developers - <AUTHOR> https://paul.copplest.one/blog/design.html <comment><USER2> Tips that have helped me:

\- Anytime you find a UI or mechanic you like while on the web, take a screenshot of it and save it

\- Pick a palette from flatuicolors.com; congratulations, just use this forever (forever until you've gotten better at design to change)

\- Make a logo with Photoshop, GIMP, or whatever graphics program you have using that above color palette

\- If you have the time, sign up for Daily UI (dailyui.co) and and practice making mockups. Even if you're trying to learn front end web development, this will let your creative juices practice.

\- Keep going! Everything you make on day one will suck, or look super cookie- cutter Bootstrap-y. So what, each time you make something, you'll hate a small piece of it and so when you make the next thing, you'll try to fiddle with that detail.

There are probably (much) better ways to get better at design, but this was the path I took and while I'm not going to be making a massive application for clients, what I have makes for pleasant looking visuals for my students and tools

<comment><USER3>
      Make a logo

Draw the rest of the ducking owl?

<comment><USER4> No one said it had to be an owl.

Facebook: F on squarish background

HackerNews: Y on orange square

Google: Google with coloured letters (or multicoloured G in white circle)

LinkedIn: blue `in` text

You get the idea... they don't need to be complicated and could be as simple as just text.

<comment><USER5> You trivialize that which is not: The _good_ variety of simple does not come easy. Not in programming, not in visual design.

Making something look simple but not boring, mundane or like a copy of something you saw 10 times today, is hard because it is highly depending on context and context is depending on understanding.

Facebook can get away with an f (and more so, it works for them) because it makes identification easy when it is ubiquitous – but that is not automaticaly the case when you have no brand recognition. The simple f might just be forgettable or, worse, remind people of something else.

There is a ton of additional caveats. That is what is hard about visual design: It is infuriatingly different even when you think it shouldn't be, every single time, and understanding both how and why it doesn't work – and I guarantee you, it will not work before it eventually does – is a recurring challenge for every designer, regardless of how simple the design or how experienced the designer.

<comment><USER6> I think you're overthinking it. Throw something out there, try it out, see if it sticks. If it doesn't iterate on it. What _won 't_ get someone an icon is if they make it out to be some crazy, specific science that requires years and years of mastery to create. Creating artificial barriers for yourself never gets you closer to your destination.

<comment><USER5> It seems to me you are conflating hard with important. The case was being made for the former, certainly not the later.

Other than that I do agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Designer here. Author makes some decent points, but misses the mark elsewhere. The post reads like a "developers idea of basic design tips."

\- This post only touches on visual design. Important, but just a subset of what "design" is.

\- Dribbble is very "artsy" and not typically as focused on practical product design. I personally dont think its beneficial to spend time there, unless like the author states, you're interested in emerging visual trends.

\- The author doesnt mention the foundations of design, which is disappointing. Spacing, alignment, visual hierarchy. affordances, etc. If you're building an app without a designer its far more important to understand those concepts than how to design a logo.

My advice, depending on how much time you're willing to invest:

\- Read "Dont Make me Think" by Steve Krug (2.5~ hour read)

\- Read the first half-ish of "The design of everyday things" (4 hours?)

\- You may balk at the length of those reads, but I promise you, spending one day to learn design fundamentals is an extremely valuable use of your time.

Common mistakes I see developers making:

\- No attention to spacing consistency

\- Not creating enough space between unrelated elements

\- Not aligning enough things

\- Weak visual hierarchy

\- Misusing radios vs. checkboxes vs. dropdowns, etc

<comment><USER8> The most obvious thing is listening to your designers, if you are in industry and are lucky to have them.

But with that said, it's surprisingly hard to recruit designers to work on OSS projects, and I think you need to start out with a half-decent design before people who can actually help you will want to join on. So thank you for the input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> To be clear, this is focused on _visual_ design. Arguably more important for developers is to think about the _user_. What problem does the user have, and how do your various choices impact their ability to solve that problem with the least amount of suffering possible.

Visual design is important — a pleasing site can have actual usability and accessibility impacts. But to paraphrase Steve Jobs, great design isn't just what it looks like — it's how it works.

I say _important for developers_ because when we're creating something it can be easy to make decisions that are easy for _us_ , but not great for the user. (This is why solving your own problems is often recommended — if you're passionate about the problem, and you yourself are a user, you'll by nature make better decisions.)

While visual design is important, applying a nice coat of paint to an otherwise miserable UX won't solve any problems.

<comment><USER10> >Start feeding these trends into your projects. Even if you aren't a big fan of them, it's good to remember that design is effective when it appeals to your target audience and not yourself.

Yeah, this is when it became evident that this was about chasing visual design trends, not about user experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My (probably ironic) interaction with their design:

1\. Quick skim of the start. <thought>This looks interesting, and even worth saving for later detailed review</thought>

2\. I go to save the page. Search box opens and starts filling out with the name of the directory I was pre-typing to save into.

3\. <thought>I must have clicked unintentionally. Or mis-hit the tab key? Strange; I don't recall it. Try again.</thought>

4\. Same result.

5\. ?!$$@?. Test to be sure.

6\. Confirmed. <thought>They have bound cmd-s to give the search box focus instead of allowing the user to save (seemingly unintentionally; ie due to 's' being pressed without recognising that a modifier key was also pressed)!</thought>

7\. Cmd-W. Window closes. Not saved.

8\. <thought>Nope, they didn't also overload 'w'</thought>

I will not take pointers from a site that messes up UX as badly as this. Anything I don't recall from a quick skim is not going to be worth using.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very odd, I use VuePress for the site and I didn't realise they hijacked the key commands. Thanks for the bug report, I'll fix this behaviour in the morning.

<comment><USER11> Thanks - I've re-opened the article and will read it carefully now :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hope there's something useful in there!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The first step should be this book because it so very clearly explains and show-cases the 4 fundamental principles of basic design in a way that is very easy for others to understand: proximity, alignment, repetition, contrast.

"The Non-Designer's Design Book" by Robin Williams.

[https://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design- Book-4th/dp/0133...](https://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design- Book-4th/dp/0133966151)

</comment><comment><USER13> There's a whole genre of such tutorials. The best one I've seen is the Non- Designer's Design Book: [https://diegopiovesan.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/livro_- _th...](https://diegopiovesan.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/livro_-_the_non- designers_desi.pdf) It shows many messy layouts, and applies four principles (alignment, contrast, proximity, repetition) to make each layout look better.

<comment><USER14> Beat me to it. I can vouch for this book as being completely amazing. It teaches you the fundamentals of how to _see_ design, which in turn contributes to learning how to produce your own designs. Or evaluate someone else's. If you read only design book, this one is worth the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Design" is a big word. And I agree that many developers need to improve their design sensibilities a bit. That said, this is a frustratingly superficial take on visual design (icons, colors, fonts) and doesn't touch at all on the tougher and (I think) more important point of user experience design and simply _understanding_ what design is and how it fits into the software development process.

An example of a key UX design concept: Visual hierarchy. It doesn't require any special tools, just a little understanding of what it is and why it's important. And it's fundamental to good interface design

<comment><USER16> I thought this was a decent opinionated post about some of the UI fundamentals. I doubt many developers really have the patience to dig deep into UX stuff after all.

You got any good resources you'd recommend to read about the visual hierarchy concept?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you want some good visual design tips, then I can recommend [https://refactoringui.com/](https://refactoringui.com/)

I can also highly recommend the book they sell.

</comment><comment><USER18> Design tips without pictures is like coding tips without code.

</comment><comment><USER15> Visiting Dribbble for inspiration is fine, but you're not going to develop your understanding of how design works based on whatever happens to be hot in a given week on Dribbble. You'll probably just train yourself to mindlessly chase design trends.

Which might actually make you worse off because you'll waste your time trying to implement some design concept without understanding whether it's really appropriate for what you're doing.

<comment><USER19> Do you have any tips or sources for learning about how design works?

<comment><USER20> Read Don't make me think.

And maybe Design of everyday things as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > I'm not going to go into UX (even though it's more important) because I > think learning how to think in simple design patterns is the baseline for > creating usable products.

In my experience, engineers are 'How it works' people way more than they are 'How it looks' people. The UX article they didn't write would be more helpful. It'd be hard to write, and I understand why they didn't.

There's a lot of good UI kits available now. Those open source projects need better UX way before they need better icons, fonts, logos, etc.

</comment><comment><USER22> Surprised they didn't mention using web templates such as wrapbootstrap's collection.

Working with existing controls and layouts, with pre-set helper classes is a good way to have good design on a product you're building rapidly and get a feel for what elements exist in useful design.

<comment><USER23> It wasn't mentioned because design is more than just skinning the UI after the fact. Design is about being mindful of things like presentation, layout and organization. A skin can help with presentation but it will never make up for poor layout or organization.

Often times developers and designers don't take the time to even understand Bootstrap or how to use it's layout system, instead choosing to hack it by adding CSS classes until it "looks right". These design choices often fall apart with the slightest change to display size or upstream changes in the HTML.

<comment><USER22> Using these templates does help understand good layout because the examples have already shown 85% or more of how a common consumer or saas app needs to display web UI. By implementing them, mixing and matching, you get a feel for how it aught to be because there are plenty of examples.

Simply by using these you can become more mindful of design. Asking a dev to start from zero and learn design is not realistic and for a potential solo technical startup founder a waste of time.

If designers don't understand bootstrap layouts that's fine. But if a developer doesn't they are not trying. And these templates don't fall apart from small changes, they are built responsive from the get go and have tons of helper classes so developers can still alter them without hacking them up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Side topic: Any idea how sequence diagram in page [0] is created? It is not an image but text over-layed with some background images and I think it looks and feels awesome.

[0] [https://paul.copplest.one/gists/secrets-management- sops.html...](https://paul.copplest.one/gists/secrets-management- sops.html#how-sops-works)

<comment><USER25> Might be a mermaid graph, I think.

[https://mermaid-js.github.io/mermaid/#/](https://mermaid- js.github.io/mermaid/#/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is correct - I use mermaid js (the site is made with VuePress)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, this was something I wrote for myself and my team. It's sort of my 'Principles' (Ray Dalio) of design. It's not supposed to be too comprehensive, just a good, simple starter - hence the 'Tips' in the title.

To address a few of the comments here: in the first section I mention that I'm specifically not going to talk about UX which is a huge article itself. Hopefully people can find some value in the content that's there rather than judging the content that's not. I realise that design is very opinionated, but if you read this with an open mind you may find some useful tips.

It's the middle of the night here, but I'll try responding to everyone when I wake up tomorrow

</comment><comment><USER26> can't take design advice from a site where the text is centered off to the side of the monitor center line.

like the basic is to design for the humans to the other side of the screen, and you want me to shift around or read the thing looking sideways?

there's more than visuals, it's forgetting the most important thing, whom we build things for.

but anyway, here's a different take: just build wire frames of the structure as needed to whatever default your framework has, then pay a professional. if you bill yourself your time, or factor in cost opportunity, you'll inevitably come ahead.

<comment><USER27> "can't take design advice from a site where the text is centered off to the side of the monitor center line"

what?

<comment><USER26> [https://i.imgur.com/RJyMZO8.png](https://i.imgur.com/RJyMZO8.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is great! Thanks for sharing. One design rule you missed when you said that every other color should be white or black: never use pure black (#000). Use something that's slightly less black.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is missing a critical web design aspect that I see most developers miss: Space.

Paying attention to how things align, how big they are, how much and how consistent the spacing around elements is will make a huge improvement to the perception of the UI.

</comment><comment><USER30> First advice is "Visit Dribbble" Oh no, no, no.

<comment><USER31> Why not?

<comment><USER30> Because if you want to solve a design problem, first you need to do other things instead going to Dribbble and get biased with other solutions. Dribbble is more a display of styles than complete design solutions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> For my webapps...

1\. Go to a site like ThemeForest

2\. Click on Admin Theme

3\. Filter for Bootstrap 4

4\. Find one that looks good

5\. Download

6\. Start coding knowing your app will look professional and well-designed immediately.

</comment><comment><USER33> Here is a tip: Use an interaction designer.

</comment><comment><USER34> As a design-challenged developer, I liked this a lot.

Except for the recommendation of utility-first css. Tried it, not for me.

</comment><comment><USER35> Nice and succinct post!</comment>


Deploying FogBugz 8 and Kiln 2 - <AUTHOR> http://thoughts.rockhymas.com/post/1365832676/deploying-fogbugz-8-and-kiln-2

<comment><USER2> Somewhat tangential, but does anyone on HN actually use FogBugz over something free like Redmine?

<comment><USER3> IMHO, Redmine is much better product with much worse marketing :( (Stuck with FogBugz for now).

<comment><USER4> What about Evidence-Based Scheduling[1]?

[1] <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html>

<comment><USER3> I remember reading about it (did not actually used FB till this year) back then and it sounded interesting. We are not using it and neither did the company I worked before. This feature would probably fit badly for the type the work we do now—most work is done in maintenance mode. If anyone used EBS it would be interesting to hear about your thoughts about it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/diaspora_project_building_the_anti-facebook.php <comment><USER2> Meh.

I don't think software people understand just how disinclined a non-software person is to do anything requiring configuring serverside stuff.

Even torrents, where clients have essentially become good enough that all you have to do is install them, most people get a friend that has some understanding of computers to set them up for them.

The cloud is really a better model if you want to achieve widespread adoption, and what is the point of a social network without people.

<comment><USER3> That's why they build it such that people can simply pay a 3rd party that offers the service and just use them to hold their identity. Not as much control as hosting it yourself, but still not as bad as facebook where you can't leave and they hold EVERYONE's data.

<comment><USER2> I'm just not convinced that enough people actually _care_ about that.

The largest cell phone market is the one for generic simple phones that just make calls, regardless of the smartphone hype. The reason that IE is so ubiquitous is that a huge number of people don't really care, as long as they can get on the internet, and go on facebook and youtube and maybe a few other sites, thats enough for them.

Hell, even look at dropbox, people only started using that sort of service when it went into the cloud and became dead easy. They didn't care that they were locking all their data into a hard to leave service.

Don't get me wrong, I think it would be great if there was a way to recreate facebook in an open software setting, I just don't think any social network where the average user would have to either install a complicated app or pay a fee will ever get off the ground...

<comment> loup-vaillant If most people don't care, that's because they don't _know_. See, most people barely make the difference between their browser and a search engine. They don't think about the long term accessibility of their digital data, or about the preservation of their online privacy because they just don't know what it means. On the other hand, they do care about preserving (physical) family photos and important documents. They do care about their home not being spied.

I see people not caring as a lack of education. Computers are ubiquitous in the western world since less than a generation. The Internet is even younger. This is just too short for people to understand them (and their hazards). Just wait 20 years, and they will understand. At this point, they will care. Now, the question is whether we can accelerate the process or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Decentralized = _much_ harder to police by governments, authorities, big corps. This can unlock radically new usages.

For instance, in a fully decentralized system, you can get rid of storage limitations by storing stuff on your computer (or on the cloud in a private form). So you can share not only pics of your pets, but also your music and movies collection.

If this results in something as easy to use as Facebook, but uncontrollable and perfectly able to host and protect media piracy / political dissidence / etc., we get darknets for dummies. This project or a variant thereof, if successful, could deeply change Internet by taking all power out of authorities and into people's hand. Whether it's a good or a bad thing is debatable, but it certainly is interesting.

<comment><USER5> > Whether it's a good or a bad thing is debatable

Not, not really. It's a _very_ good thing, and similar to what the web did in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Uhh, four guys and an idea for a website. You know they'll definitely succeed because they're totally willing to sacrifice their summer internships to build it in three months and release it, scouts-honor!

Sorry for the sarcasm & general negativity - but they have _nothing_. As someone else said, just build it. The concept of replacing Facebook with something open, private and distributed is not at all new - many have tried and failed before them. "We have the chops" and $10k isn't some kind of magic potion. And their biggest challenge isn't building it, it's getting people to leave Facebook for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how many people have considered building something along these lines. I know I did when I started hearing about what came out of f8, and I don't even use Facebook currently.

<comment><USER6> I played with this idea a full year ago. The ability to own your own data and share it out as a web service or data host. There would be no need for a centralized server, and it would provide many _competitive_ opportunities to host what I came to call "identity servers." This would create innovation as each value added provider can experiment with the direction.

I won't be the first to call it now - but I can imagine the popularity of decentralized architectures catching mainstream attention. Git is getting popular, vs say SVN or CVS.

Remember, the internet itself is decentralized.

<comment><USER3> Yeah the ability to easily self-host an identity server or to be able to just pay someone else to be hosted on theirs is hugely important.

Also the ability to easily move your identity and inform people you have moved so they can update. Doing that last part securely is one of the things that hung me up when thinking about it, but I also only really dug into it for an hour or so.

<comment><USER7> _Also the ability to easily move your identity and inform people you have moved so they can update._

I think DNS is the key here; it lets you move a server while keeping the same name.

<comment><USER8> This can be handled by 301 redirect or it can be built into the protocol. When moving a profile from one provider to another, the standard could require a response indicating the location of the profile for a minimum period of time (such as a week or a month).

A standard such as this would be crawled on a frequent basis by the social network apps built on top of it, as well as the search engines. They would all update their canonical profile addresses and that would be that--an organic, self repairing network.

<comment><USER7> I don't even trust providers enough to provide a 301 redirect, but your paranoia may vary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ugh, software teams are the new bands.

<comment><USER10> If a scintilla of the glamor of being drug-addled and minimally employed gets leeched by ambitious programmers, that's probably a net gain.

<comment><USER11> Well, we'd still need "programmer groupies". If they existed, I imagine economic growth would soar in the Western world.

(Though I don't really get marcus's point/joke, probably because I haven't watched the video.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If loads are distributed across a network, how secure would your information be? I guess you could get around that by being explicit about how open your data is and discourage people to post sensitive info.

Also, by re-federating the service of Facebook with partner companies (push pics back to flickr, status back to twitter, etc.), they could get some nice allies, reduce the bandwidth requirements dramatically, and allow granular control of users in a very clear and powerful way (flickr is set to private, for instance).

Neat idea. I'd love to see it kill facebook. If there's an elegant way to detach online socialization from the profit motive while maintaining functionality, it would be good for everyone not employed by facebook to see it succeed.

<comment><USER12> The biggest sticking point is going to be the web of trust. Facebook's walled garden is excellent at managing identity, and this would be very difficult if any random 419 scammer can set up a Diaspora server and plug into the network.

Really, it seems like turn-key services are the primary solution, though the important thing is to get a competitive marketplace where some are ad- supported, some aren't, but all of them are reasonably trusted.

<comment> loup-vaillant How many e-mail do you receive that appear to come from your friends, but don't? For me, that's none.

Diaspora server will be the same. Your random 419 scammer won't be able to make a lot of friends if people are a little careful. Add PGP keys and a proper web of trust, and the scammer won't be able to spoof any identity at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't full grasp the concept but it seems to me that making users set up their computer to act like some kind of peer is a great barrier to entry for everyday folks.

<comment><USER14> From the Kickstarter page:

 _After we open source our source code, we hope to also provide a paid turnkey hosted service in the vein of Wordpress.com to make it easy for people who want to use Diaspora, but don't want to deal with the fuss of setting it up._

<comment><USER10> If the only way for the average person to use the service is to pay for it, that's going to be a very tough hill to climb.

<comment><USER14> Unless someone else hosts an ad-supported version that turns out to be viable. But I agree that their business model needs work.

<comment><USER12> If its kept minimalistic, along the lines of Craigslist, they will be just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If facebook is stirring up this kind of sentiment then it could very well be they have a real problem on their hands.

Apparently it is ok to take your users for a ride, but only so far.

I'm pretty happy about all this, maybe there will be a serious push back against all these companies that see the information they hold about their users as their 'product'.

What's next, distributed search engines?

<comment><USER16> Facebook is stirring up this kind of sentiment in less than 0.1% of their users.

<comment><USER15> Google news currently lists 449 articles about this, NYT, WP, WSJ and so on. You can bet that it's visible to a lot of people. Facebooks users are for the most part not capable of building an alternative but there are people that can, and this seems to bring them from having stuff 'on the drawingboard' to actually doing it. The next privacy cock-up and this kind of article will carry a list of alternatives.

<comment><USER17> To add one more, I saw a big feature article in freaking _Consumer Reports_ this month about Facebook privacy issues, and them sharing more than you think. It seems to be hitting the mainstream in a big way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I see they were trying really hard, but... the movie was a torture. Or maybe it was just my impression.

Also, it was funny that youtube included onesocialweb.org in the related videos at the end - it seems to be a similar concept, but I've never heard about it before.

<comment><USER19> wow <http://onesocialweb.org> actually has working code. doesnt seem to be any demo offering public registration yet though. might try and install it myself later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> All they need is a simple migration path for users and they (or something like them) will be able to knock Facebook out of the water—but it'll happen quietly at first, like any other disruptive technology.

<comment><USER3> Considering you are now allowed to permanently store data extracted from FB with their API, I wonder just how easy/doable this would be now...

<comment><USER21> This policy was just changed. Now apps can store data as long as they like because they are in a contract with the user.

<comment><USER3> I misphrased I guess, that's what I meant is now you CAN hold onto data permanently, before it was only for 24 hours. Which is why it is now possible to make export easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find this 'social' tunnel-vision saddening. The ideal model of communication is more akin to a pastebin, where you can quickly host any data abstraction, not just people profiles.

<comment><USER22> The ideal model for you. If you can host any data abstraction without increasing the complexity, that's a different story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A team of four NYU CS students...what's the 10k for? Just build it!

<comment><USER24> rent for the summer

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If a project like this were actually successful, it would be exciting news indeed. Not just for those who want to bail on facebook, but those who wish their blogs were more connected, or those who wish that livejournal wasn't dying a slow and pathetic death.

If they are hoping to be able to hook in to existing semi-closed systems like Facebook, though, they are aiming for a moving target that, as we've seen, isn't afraid to use the law to stop users from getting their data out.

I also wonder how they will handle communities. That is one thing that livejournal has always done quite well, and facebook's groups leaves a lot to be desired. I have a hard time imagining how that will work in a distributed environment, unless the community itself will not actually be distributed.

</comment><comment><USER26> Finally! I've been waiting for someone to do something like this, and was even thinking about trying to make something similar myself recently. How hard can it be? Probably not very, compared to other projects I'm working on.

I'm sure that it's not just tech geeks who would like to have some modest amount of privacy online. Just declaring that "Privacy is dead. Get over it" may be ok for a few exhibitionists and philosophers, but in the real world people do want and expect some level of privacy - especially when it comes to things like medical conditions or relationships.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is there a problem? Maybe, yeah, but for a limited audience.

Will anyone ever install this? I doubt it. Good thing is the people who actually think this is enough of a problem to install some server side stuff have the technical capability to do so.

I almost just typed in: Solution in search of a problem. After reading comments here + around the web I feel there is some semi problem here that might apply to a broader market- Facebook is getting creepy with how much they know and it's getting overly complicated. I just think this is a really poor way to solve the problem.

</comment><comment><USER28> One solution i can think of is,

You Create your own data and keep it stored on your device(can be anything, laptop,desktop,mobile etc). When you visit some host, it knows where to find your data(we assign a common known to all social port to our host), but needs your permission to download the data.So now when a relation of yours visits the same host we visited, It can tell our relation that what we have done on the host, only after we both use a common key.

</comment><comment><USER29> perhaps the most positive outcome will be the outpouring of many different - but API-compatible social networking tools - all built by various naysayers and "i can do better-ists" which result in a variety of great choices. You can choose Wordpress or Moveable Type, or perhaps Apache or IIS, or AIM or GTalk. Interoperability, done earnestly and successfully, will move the challenge to the quality of user experiences and the robustness of the platform.

Yes, there are many social network style applications waiting to be discovered, but this effort, Diaspora, not only has a lot of attention, but it hit at a good time - when people are openly dissatisfied with the incumbent service, and the team heading up this project has not only the support of groupies, but their school, open source software organizations, and a lot of very motivated community members.

Lets hope that we can build something that will endure for the long term, and reverse the trend of user exploitation.

</comment><comment><USER30> I was just searching for something like this yesterday. I came across DiSo (<http://code.google.com/p/diso/>), which at first glance appears to be somewhat stale and a bit of a protocol soup.

Anyone know if that effort is still under way? (and if there are any lessons to be learned from it?)

<comment><USER30> Answering my own question here from the linked Q&A with Luis Villa: [http://joindiaspora.com/2010/04/30/a-response-to-mr- villa.ht...](http://joindiaspora.com/2010/04/30/a-response-to-mr-villa.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Donated 26 bucks. 1% chance of succeeding, but I want them to try. Facebook is just horrible when it comes to privacy.

<comment><USER32> did you sign in to kickstarter with your facebook profile?

kind of funny that's an option

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I hope they get far enough for people to use it. My objection to twitter the instant I saw it was that it required a single host/company, unlike email that can be hosted by individuals or companies and offered on any terms imaginable.

</comment><comment><USER33> It sounds like a solid idea to me, id love to see a privately owned, node- based system where anyone can own their own things. I wonder how all the separate nodes would interact with each other. Im almost tempted to back them.

<comment><USER34> It already exists. It's called status.net using the ostatus protocols.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> diaspora is used for people who live outside of the traditional land of their nation of origin.

from my understanding, the name implies that people who don't have a social networking account from some service provider are expatriates. i think this gives too much importance to such services.

nice idea, i definitely would like to see how it goes. but the name should be changed, so that it is in line with the political view it is the brainchild of.

<comment><USER36> Political views aside, I agree that they'd benefit from a different name. Choose something more accessible, something like "Facebook" but not a derivative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder if any of my postings about Facebook alternatives here was inspiration for this project? (Which I would love if this were the case.)

</comment><comment><USER38> What ever happened to FOAF? The way to do this is to build it on the web, not to try to create some new peer-to-peer system.

<comment><USER8> FOAF has some great ideas. Unfortunately, for a system to have the level of functionality that users have come to expect, it will have to be a protocol run as web services. I think many of those ideas or even parts of the standard can be leveraged, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I suspect that the secure sharing of music, video, and software will help drive the adoption of something like this.

</comment><comment><USER40> I may be naive, but how is that any different from a traditional homepage?

<comment><USER41> I think it would have a private part that enables you to manage connections to other homepages, control what's public and private, and aggregates news from other connections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Guys, we have this already. Just check out the tonido project. <http://www.tonido.com>

<comment><USER4> This seems to let you host media on your computer, and to work around the need to have a fix IP address or a dyndns account.

It doesn't seem to know about graphs of friends, which is the central principle of FB. FB is not about videos, YouTube is; FB is about getting the videos you like to spread across your friendship network.

However, it looks like a nice application, even if it's only remotely related to Diaspora or Facebook.</comment></comment>


Someone Stole My Book (and My Job) and Is Selling It on Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://www.extremetech.com/internet/267446-someone-stole-my-entire-book-and-my-job-and-is-selling-it-on-amazon <comment><USER2> This a major problem for amazon. I bought a baby product off amazon. I noticed a few weird things about my product, so I emailed the inventor. They told me that some Chinese company had stolen their product design and was seeling fakes with the same name on amazon.

I refuse anything from amazon for my baby. Hell, amazon even sent me an opened package of similac formula

<comment><USER3> > This a major problem for amazon

I hear this over and over but where's the evidence that this is true on a significant scale? Sellers have been counterfeiting and selling knock-off garbage on Amazon since the 3rd-party marketplaces launched.

3P sellers are a NECESSITY for Amazon. They source and stock the hundreds of millions of long tail items that Amazon themselves can't/won't. For Amazon the benefits of 3P sellers far outweigh the costs.

Edit: Who's downvoting this and why?

<comment><USER4> HN is eager to downvote dissenting opinions. You got a vote up from me.

Edit: huh, this got downvoted too... First rule of fight club is we do not talk about fight club?

<comment><USER5> > Edit: huh, this got downvoted too... First rule of fight club is we do not > talk about fight club?

FWIW, there are multiple points in the guidelines your comment crosses.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation... Assume good faith."

"Eschew flamebait."

"Please don't post shallow dismissals"

"Please don't comment about the voting on comments."

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I indirectly know of someone who makes extra money by plagiarizing little known books, changing the cover and republishing them on Amazon. I'm surprised Amazon has no system to detect this kind of gross plagiarism. Remember Google's digitize all books project? This would be a useful use-case for it.

<comment><USER7> When I was an Amazon intern 7 years ago, I went to a presentation of exactly how the duplicate detector works. I won't discuss any technical details of course, but suffice it to say: it should catch these sorts of cases, so long as the books are already on Amazon in digital format.

I don't understand how your friend can get away with this.

<comment><USER8> Just FYI, 7 years would almost certainly put that information outside of the statute of limitations.

<comment><USER9> _Just FYI, 7 years would almost certainly put that information outside of the statute of limitations._

I don't believe that sentence makes any sense. Do you have a legal background?

<comment><USER8> Ah, credentialism on HN. Shocker! Is it that I'm missing "in the US," or do you have other criticism more specific?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Couldn't the author hand Amazon a DMCA takedown?

</comment><comment><USER11> In the (sadly, increasingly rare) cases that I need to look something up in the book I wrote, I typically hit Google and find that one site in Vietnam that has the pirated copy...

<comment><USER12> Upload it to Libgen! More information's always better, especially if even the author isn't getting it legally.

<comment><USER11> I totally would, since it no longer generates any royalties, but I don't own all of the rights to it.

<comment><USER12> If you don't mind answering, what book _did_ you write? I love reading things by HN users.

<comment><USER11> I do mind, but I'll buy you TotalFark if you can figure it out from my posts. :) (Besides, it's niche and technical.)

<comment><USER12> I think you win, ha. If I'm right, I found your brother's thesis, but other than that I can't find a thing close to a book. (Unless you published it in Britain for some reason during the 70's, in which case, possibly?)

<comment><USER11> You should know that my brother and I both changed our last names, and I spent more than half of the 70's dead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem is that Amazon just doesnt care about things like these. Remember long it took them to fix their broken rating system? And it's still not fixed, it's just "less broken". Though quite vital for people's shopping experience

<comment><USER14> Not sure if you know about this but I use this whenever i shop on Amazon now: [https://www.fakespot.com/](https://www.fakespot.com/)

Amazon should just find some change and buy this company and integrate them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Exact same thing happened to me, I documented the entire experience: [https://medium.com/@mattfriz/postmortem-someone-cloned-my- bo...](https://medium.com/@mattfriz/postmortem-someone-cloned-my-book-on- amazon-23631624aca2)

<comment><USER16> Did Amazon end up taking action in the end?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is borderline criminal. If they were not such a large organisation they would be charged with facilitation. They are knowingly allowing the sale of counterfeit goods. You go down to a street corner and sell knock-off Prada bags and you will be arrested. You let someone sell counterfeit goods from your store and you are an accessory. This will only change when Amazon are held accountable.

</comment><comment><USER18> I thought fake stuff on Amazon was money laundering?

</comment><comment><USER19> Knowingly selling stolen goods is not new to the law. In California, selling a stolen item worth less than $500 is a misdemeanour, and carries a maximum penalty of 1 year in prison. I think that if the owner of Amazon were jailed for 1 year (assuming that Amazon is indeed knowingly selling stolen property), then we might see a drastic improvement in how Amazon deals with all sorts of shady sales on their websites.

</comment><comment><USER20> Amazon's co-mingling causes so many issues. I'm really into board games and would love to be able to rely on my Prime subscription to pick up new games (and get them quickly.) The board game market is kind of perverse in its own way in that publishers often do not publish enough to meet demand and supply gets snapped up in the first couple days/weeks of release and prices skyrocket on account of scalping.

Because of this there's a huge glut of counterfeit games on Amazon. Even worse, sellers also pretty clearly are also selling damaged "new" product at full price. I've received $100+ board games that were clearly damaged before they were shipped. It's a huge PITA when you can't even exchange since the game you wanted has gone out of print between when you ordered and when you received.

I would love to shop local, but my personal collection exceeds the stock of most FLGS's in size and they very rarely stock things I want at prices that are reasonable. I've mostly switched to buying from coolstuff unless I'm buying a game that's evergreen (that I somehow don't already have.)

Amazon needs to sort their inventory out.

</comment><comment><USER21> Amazon should buy Turnitin.

</comment><comment><USER22> One of my Kindle books was rejected for unspecified reasons. I'll have to check to see if a plagiarist got there first. FWIW I've moved recent ebooks to Gumroad PDF downloads.

</comment><comment><USER23> Another way to deal with the situation is to sell the book from the ExtremTech web site.

The drawbacks are: 1\. Lack of the huge audience that Amazon have 2\. Lack of low cost transport costs

The first point is not really valuable anyway as there are lot of junk books on Amazon that come from Createspace. Usually it is books written in the XIXcentury but with a title that suggests they were written recently.

Amazon would really improve the value of its brand if it would remove this useless kind of books.

<comment><USER24> > Another way to deal with the situation is to sell the book from the > ExtremTech web site.

What problem does that solve?

<comment><USER23> The stealer is most probably without enough resources to deal with complex situations. Let makes the cost to replicate higher for him.

If the book is not visible on Amazon, no ranking will be available, and no e-book version will be easy to find.

\- Without ranking there is virtually no risk it will be targeted.

\- Without e-book version, it will be more difficult to copy.

That said there are other ways to trick a Createspace author. For example many Createspace books are sold by independant sellers at a much higher price than the original, if there is a sell then the independant seller buy the original one and sell it to the customer, while making an easy benefit completely legally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Will they take the product down if you can prove it's stolen..?

</comment><comment><USER26> I felt sorry for the author. But then I reached the bottom of the article and see that site has that most awful and obnoxious banner advertising there. Now I don't feel bad.</comment>


Wonder Woman Was Trained by Women: Should We Follow Suit? - <AUTHOR> https://shecancode.io/blog/wonder-woman-was-trained-by-women-should-we-follow-suit-1 <comment><USER2> Surely the most sensible approach is that of minimising the cognitive weight afforded to gender differences during the formative years so that eventually we have pretty much everywhere a generation that responds to different genders in the same muted, egalitarian manner typical of Scandinavian societies and so forth? Let's stop worrying about gender and ensuring that our kids grow up in a context in which gender is not a major predictive variable of anything, so that their brains learn to ignore it.</comment>


A Tinder Flaw Exposed Users' Exact Locations - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-19/new-tinder-security-flaw-exposed-users-exact-locations-for-months

<comment><USER2> Hey HN, here's a link to the tech details of the vuln: [http://blog.includesecurity.com/2014/02/how-i-was-able-to- tr...](http://blog.includesecurity.com/2014/02/how-i-was-able-to-track- location-of-any.html)

and a video demonstrating the app we made for exploiting this vuln: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E2DwdS_PvQ&t=1m18s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E2DwdS_PvQ&t=1m18s)</comment>


Making Smalltalk on a Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2020/07/12/making-smalltalk-on-a-raspberry-pi/ <comment><USER2> Hi, author here - happy to answer questions.

Beware, the current version on github has a bug that crashes the system on a BCM2835 (ARM11-based original Raspberry Pi 1/Zero(W)/CM1) when using floating- point operations, see my comment on hackaday for details.</comment>


Which modern databases support ACID transactions? - <AUTHOR> https://foundationdb.com/acid-claims

<comment><USER2> > MySQL provides ACID transactions on a single machine

That made me chortle. If you can't roll back an `ALTER TABLE` command (e.g., to back out of a failed schema migration), you don't really have good ACID semantics. Here's a list of other fun MySQL commands that sidestep transactions: [http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/implicit- commit.html](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/implicit-commit.html)

<comment><USER3> MySQL isn't the only engine that does this.

[http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17952_01/refman-5.1-en/implicit-c...](http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17952_01/refman-5.1-en/implicit- commit.html)

Edit - I was wrong!

Not only did I link to the wrong docs, but Oracle fixed what I considered to be a longstanding bug.

Thanks to those who pointed it out.

For a very, very long time, Oracle has enforced implicit transaction boundaries around DDL, and it is about time that finally changed.

<comment><USER2> Those docs look like they're MySQL docs, not Oracle Database docs. Stackoverflow suggests[1] that as-of Oracle Database 11g Release 2, DDL changes are isolated within the current transaction.

\--

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4692690/is-it-possible- to...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4692690/is-it-possible-to-roll-back- create-table-and-alter-table-statements-in-major-sql)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> VoltDB uses a partitioned data model. For OLTP apps that fit within that model, it's incredibly fast and there's no global transaction. For transactions that span partitions, yes, there is a lock. If your app fits the model (and a lot of transaction processing does), then it's quite amazing. For instance, one model I've played with is updating customer balances in realtime. If I partition everything on CustomerId, then I can insert new charges and update balances at extremely high rates (over 50Ktps per node, at least).

If your app requires (edit: a significant amount of) transactions that have no locality, that is multiple arbitrary rows might be updated in any transaction, VoltDB might not be for you.

If I understand Spanner, it, too, has a somewhat-partitioned model, with parent/child relationships, correct?

<comment><USER5> Two things to point out as a VoltDB engineer.

1) VoltDB's global transactions are much slower than its partitioned transactions, but it's relative. It can still do hundreds or thousands per second.

2) Making this number faster for common cases is ongoing work. In upcoming 4.0, multi-partition consistent reads will get about a 10x performance boost if they're bottlenecked on transaction overhead. This allows us to do up to 50k/sec global reads while doing 500k/sec partitioned writes. Expect improvements for global writes in 2014.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm afraid there were more 'databases' created in last 2 years than in all earlier history of human civilization. This suggests authors of some of these products have yet to discover what ACID means and how many problems they didn't even think of have already been solved many years ago.

</comment><comment><USER7> Making no mention of Microsoft SQL Server seems like a pretty big oversight.

<comment><USER8> Didn't you get the memo? By modern they meant not MS.

<comment><USER9> All the more peculiar, then, that they list RavenDB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We use MySQL-Galera and it has full ACID guarantees in cluster/multi-site/DR environment.

Unfortunately the article is not a complete overview of the existing DBs landscape and has too much marketing in other places as well.

<comment><USER11> I know very little about Galera replication, but its FAQ states that it provides only snapshot isolation.

You are certainly correct that we have not provided a complete overview of the DB market! That is a very ambitious project. We built this page largely to call out the use of "ACID" terminology by vendors that don't actually provide it.

<comment><USER10> I personally think that "provides only snapshot isolation" and "provides ACID transactions on a single machine, but sharding, caching, and failover will likely violate them as you try to scale" are very different statements. The different isolation modes does not violate ACID transactions and only describe the semantic in more details. I would make a claim that majority of applications can use _any_ isolation mode with ACID transactions as long as application developers understand what exactly going on.

<comment><USER11> Isolation levels describe the _degree of compliance_ with the I in ACID. Full compliance is called serializable isolation. Are there valuable uses for lower degrees of isolation? Yes, and a good database should allow applications to selectively reduce isolation. But the inability to support serializable isolation greatly limits the power and composability of a system.

Galera looks like an extremely useful tool, and a big improvement on usual (and extremely dangerous) ad hoc failover. Besides the limited isolation level, though, it only really solves failover. Typical large scale database deployments will sacrifice even more ACID properties by sharding (which loses A, C, and I for shard-spanning transactions) and frequently by incoherent caching (which sacrifices isolation for reads that use the cache).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > RavenDB uses a weak form of isolation called "snapshot isolation". ... Index > updates are not Atomic.

If MVCC ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiversion_concurrency_contro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiversion_concurrency_control)) is "weak", then are they claiming read/write locks are better?

Also, to nitpick, RavenDB's reads/writes in the document storage engine are entirely atomic. A lucene index is maintained in a secondary store which is eventually consistent. But as a document store supports ACID transactions.

<comment><USER11> As we disclaim on the page itself, we aren't experts on all of these databases, so it's possible that we've made a mistake. We are relying on the documentation of other products (but on the specific documented claims rather than whether they throw around the term "ACID").

'Snapshot isolation' is a level of isolation guarantee, not an implementation technique. It means that a transaction will read values consistently at one point in history and then write values at a later point, even though the read values may change in between. To give a classic example, pure snapshot isolation doesn't allow you to soundly transfer $100 from Alice's account to Bob's account. FoundationDB uses MVCC and optimistic concurrency, but provides serializable isolation.

Besides this, and the asynchronous indexing that you mention, RavenDB uses an "XA" type technique for cross-node transactions which relies on the durability of an external transaction coordinator. Various public statements of the developers lead me to think that they don't find this arrangement more trustworthy than I do.

"Local" transactions on a single document don't qualify as ACID transactions; that's one of the primary messages of the page you are linking to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Worth mentioning (if it's not obvious) that this is written by the FoundationDb guys, on their site, and so will clearly show a bias toward their product (surprise!, it does!).

There is still some interesting information here, but there are some notable missing players here (MSSQL) who I presume are missing because not including them paints Foundation in a better light.

</comment><comment><USER14> Where is Datomic?

<comment><USER15> And MSSQL?

<comment><USER16> Presumably SQL Server fits somewhere up at the top with MySQL/Postgres/Oracle?

<comment><USER17> Yep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Google Cloud Datastore - [https://developers.google.com/datastore/](https://developers.google.com/datastore/) and Google Cloud SQL [https://developers.google.com/cloud- sql/faq](https://developers.google.com/cloud-sql/faq)

</comment><comment><USER19> Firebird should be added to the ACID compliant list as well: [http://www.firebirdsql.org/file/documentation/papers_present...](http://www.firebirdsql.org/file/documentation/papers_presentations/html/paper- fbent-acid.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> OrientDB (www.orientdb.org) Graph Database supports ACID transactions since the first version. It has SQL, Document Database features and it's distributed. Did FoundationDB inspire to OrientDB?

</comment><comment><USER21> Am I wrong in thinking that [Neo4j]([http://www.neo4j.org/](http://www.neo4j.org/)) supports fully ACID compliant transactions?

<comment><USER22> By default, Neo4J is not ACID compliant as it works mainly in memory, which fails the Durability part of ACID. I am not event sure that if you would configure it to be in sync with its stored replica, it would pass ACID test due to how Java handle the files internally.

<comment><USER21> Fair enough - my experience with Neo is at this point shallow at best. I had seen it in the feature spec is all. Should they be claiming they are if they aren't however?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I thought PostgreSQL's replication was ACID-compliant?

<comment><USER22> It can, if configured accordingly. The article is missing a lot of point for other DB's too. Not a very good reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It would be nice to see a "NewSQL" database like Clustrix in this comparison. From my understanding of their white papers the transactions are ACID.

<comment><USER11> We have been told by people who should know that Clustrix does not provide serializable transactions, but since this claim is unspecific and not based on publically available information we haven't put it on the page.

<comment><USER24> Apparently as per their docs ([http://docs.clustrix.com/plugins/viewsource/viewpagesrc.acti...](http://docs.clustrix.com/plugins/viewsource/viewpagesrc.action?pageId=1769594)) this is true specific to end-user transactions: "Note: serializable isolation not currently available to end user transactions."

The Serializeable isolation level is used for data moves within the cluster according to the table referencing isolation levels and row visibility rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What about RethinkDB?

<comment><USER26> From RethinkDB FAQ ([http://www.rethinkdb.com/faq/](http://www.rethinkdb.com/faq/)) "RethinkDB is not a good choice if you need full ACID support or strong schema enforcement — in this case you are better off using a relational database such as MySQL or PostgreSQL."

<comment><USER6> heh, this applies to all 'new' databases - if you aren't sure which one to choose, you're usually better off staying with a relational. You'll be bleeding edge in few years when SQL is forgotten and then re-discovered.</comment></comment></comment>


Zero to Scale – Podcast about going from $0 to $20,000 MRR - <AUTHOR> http://zerotoscale.com/

<comment><USER2> Appreciate the share! We appreciate any feedback and even a review in iTunes if you've enjoyed the show! [http://zerotoscale.com/itunes](http://zerotoscale.com/itunes)

</comment><comment><USER3> Appreciate the share!</comment>


Show HN: Platform for making android apps betters - <AUTHOR>

Hi All
There's a lot involved in managing mobile application. To make it easier, we've brought together the best parts on a single platform.
Frictionless Beta Distribution:
        1. Developer can simply upload and distribute android apps seamlessly to users and platform keep a track of downloads, crashes, feedback.
Real-time Crash Reporting:
       1. With 1 line of code, you can enable crash reporting for your app and monitor crashes in real time for beta as well as for your market version.
Listen to users & improve rating.
      1. You can enable in app support, provide a medium to your users to communicate with you with their comments, issues, feedback, feature requests. [It helps in app rating]
We soft launched beta last week and received great traction in developer community. We would like to invite you to have a look @zubhium . Really appreciate any feedback. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable <https://www.zubhium.com/>

</comment><comment><USER2> Just tried it , looks solid product. Looking forward to use it more.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.</comment>


Map proves Portuguese discovered Australia: new book – Reuters - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-map/map-proves-portuguese-discovered-australia-new-book-idUSSYD3449720070321 <comment><USER2> Uh, I think they mean, "got there before other Europeans". Because I guarantee you the Portuguese did not discover Australia, it was populated by humans long, long before the word "Portugal" existed.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my service - Goodgecko - <AUTHOR>

URL: http://goodgecko.com
It's a survey app!
Surrrveeeey Appppp!
tumbleweeds
Ok ok, I know it's not the most innovative, disruptive idea in the world.  With a previous product I tried the whole "create a new market" thing and it worked remarkably well for a while, but the size of that market was ultimately limited (and small).
With this product I wanted to enter a market with a decent size, with an MVP product that I think does a decent job of competing with bigger incumbents, and then iterating as fast as my fingers can code, until I've yoinked all their customers!
That's the idea anyway.
It's also a freemium product, so you're welcome to use it for free (the free account is quite generous).  Check out the case studies on the homepage and if you feel like you're one of them, try it out :)
Cheers, Yongfook http://yongfook.com
p.s. I'd appreciate any tips on pricing / feature segmentation from freemium app builders! <comment><USER2> I showed goodgecko and surveymonkey to my team today and everyone chose surveymonkey for survey. Also, none of them have used either of the product and was the first time they tried and surveymonkey surely wins there. You're entering a market that already have huge competitors and your product ain't doing anything more and probably less. You should cancel your pricing at least for the time being so people can use your product to the full potential.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yongfook,

Looks great, and I do think it is a generous free account!

A few small issues that I noticed: 1) When I signed up there was a strange string of error code on the top left of my screen 2) When I changed the timezone to EST, it reverted to a different timezone.

Overall, looks great -- I am still setting up my first survey and plan to use it for our beta test.

<comment><AUTHOR> hrmm. you wouldn't happen to remember what the error code said? I'll check the logs too.

<comment><USER3> Also, I cannot figure out why the surveys are not being saved?

<comment><AUTHOR> do you have javascript turned off or something?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not create and give us a survey? Not only would we be able to provide you with feedback, we'd get a demo!

</comment><comment><USER5> I love this designand the ability to use my logo on the free account.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable:

<http://goodgecko.com></comment>


Docker WILL crash. Docker WILL destroy everything it touches - <AUTHOR> https://thehftguy.com/2016/11/01/docker-in-production-an-history-of-failure/ <comment><USER2> Fine article, but (2016):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12872304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12872304)

</comment><comment><USER3> (2016)</comment>


Hitler finds out Google Reader will be shut down - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKTntSh4uSQ&feature=youtu.be

<comment><USER2> I LOVE both this movie and all the "hitler finds out" vids. It's hitler's great gift to the world, really.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not seen the movie yet. Seems like a good watch. In this video I like part at 2:56 where a lady comforts the other saying "There, there. That's not true. Google+ has fans and it's quite nice." in reaction to Hilter's comment — "If Google+ was shut down today no one would care."

<comment><USER2> The movie is fantastic, though it is in no way funny. Highly recommended.</comment></comment></comment>


What Are Human and Humanity? I Met Humanoid AI Robot Nadine - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tks/what-are-human-and-humanity-i-met-humanoid-ai-robot-nadine-8287f93b5949#.be2llrgkq <comment><USER2> Slim article. Doesn't address the title question.

My 2 cents: these AI robots with pretty faces are just an extension of the 1800's fortune-teller vending machines with the recorded voice and hand that waves over a crystal ball, then dispenses a paper fortune. More moving parts now; even some parts that remember previous interactions and change what it'll say in the future. But no different in kind.</comment>


'Scam baiters' get a kick out of conning the con artists - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39884625 <comment><USER2> I used to enjoy getting calls from Windows Support. My favorite was when their rep told me to open the Event Viewer and I asked, "What's the hostname? We have several computers at home and it sounds like it's important I get to the right one right away."

The rep didn't know what a hostname was, so I explained that it's your computer name and it normally shows up in the error logs that every PC automatically uploads to the Windows Support team. She didn't see any hostnames, and I told her there was a new kind of malware attacking support centers and deleting hostnames from their logs to prevent people from getting proper support. And her computer was probably infected!

I offered to help with some troubleshooting steps and mentioned that I had a diagnostic program she could download to inspect and repair her PC.

She sounded just about ready to go for it, but then her supervisor came on the line. I explained to both of them again about this new malware and how we could repair it. And then they hung up on me! How ungrateful...

<comment><USER3> That's magnificent. Imagine getting them to install ransomware on their own PC while you walk them through the process... almost definitely illegal, but funny as heck.

<comment><USER4> Awhile back there was a guy that got them to open whatever that month's variant of cryptoware was. IIRC it's on youtube.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So I got a call from "the IRS" _yesterday_ asking me to pay my taxes since according to them I had underpaid. It was clearly a call center in India, but I went along with it. When it came down to paying, they claimed I could do it in cash by walking to Walmart or Target and buying 5 gift cards for $1k each. I busted out laughing and they just hung up.

The thing is, this was the second call I had gotten from _the same_ phone number. First time they called was 4 months ago, so I added them to my address book as "Mr Scam". I told my friend about this, and we decided to call them back again today on speaker... they answered! So I asked them for their bank account so I could transfer them $100k. They said no, go to target and buy a gift card. I quickly asked "ok, so I can only buy $100 gift cards... how many do I need?" The guy struggled and could not answer, so I walked him through the math and taught him a trick to remove zeros - it was hilarious! Then the guy caught on, got upset, and told me to "to stop calling, they are just trying to work there". It was funny and disturbing at the same time.

In case you want to prank the scammers, feel free to call them to +1 (208) 501-0873. The phone seems to only work during US business hours - call a few times and you will get these bastards :)

<comment><USER2> That is hilarious!

I got a similar call yesterday. Unfortunately I missed the call, but they left a voicemail. My transcription:

> _We have just received a notification regarding your tax filings. From the > headquarters which will get expired in next 24 working hours. And once it > get expired after that you will be taken under custody by the local cops. As > there are 4 serious allegations pressed on your name at this moment. We > would request you to get back to us. So that we can discuss about this case. > Before taking any legal action against you. The number to reach us is > 505-300-1053. I repeat 505-300-1053. Thank you._

<comment><USER5> yep, same script!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Obligatory mention of the "Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They are From Nigeria?" paper, which posits that scammers purposefully claim Nigerian nationality because their own time is so limited, and with costs of bulk email being so low, it's an efficient way to turn off everyone except the few who yet haven't heard of the Nigerian prince scam.

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why- do-...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian- scammers-say-they-are-from-nigeria/)

I'm also reminded of a story I read, I remember it being in a newspaper or long-form magazine, of someone who tried baiting a Nigerian scammer and it somehow leading to a dangerous physical confrontation, but am unable to find it via Google right now.

<comment><USER7> This guy tricked a scammer into getting a tattoo: [http://www.419eater.com/html/okorie.htm](http://www.419eater.com/html/okorie.htm)

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, what he actually probably did was to trick a scammer into threatening some poor local to get a tattoo.

<comment><USER9> I'm pretty skeptical of the story itself. Despite the many spelling and spacing errors, the "scammer" seems to have a really good command of English. The use of some rather "advance" phrases and word choices, the emails read like a native english speaker pretending to be someone who is bad at it.

<comment><USER10> English is the official language of Nigeria.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I got a Rachel from Cardholder Services call once during an in-office meeting so I put the call on speaker for everyone to enjoy, then immediately went to Graham King: [https://www.darkcoding.net/credit-card- numbers/](https://www.darkcoding.net/credit-card-numbers/) to get some credit- card numbers that would pass their basic Mod 10 check and go to their CC merchant service, thus costing them money. By the sixth failed card and 20 minutes later the 'agent' figured out I was messing with him and threatened to rape my wife and kill me while screaming obscenities. It went very NSFW in a matter of seconds.

<comment><USER12> The comments on that page are pretty weird

<comment><USER11> Yeah, it's a highlight of my day every time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > One of the main techniques, explains Wayne - a scam baiter who often works > with Jill - is by leaking scammers' details and their conversation scripts > online.

> The aim is for these to filter through to search-engine results, so > potential victims will be alerted if they type in the scammer's name.

This helped me so much with apartment hunting. I caught multiple fake listings by just googling parts of the language.

<comment><USER14> What is the end game of a fake listing? Bait and switch? What does the scammer get out of it?

<comment><USER15> A friend's girlfriend was successfully done out of ~$2,000 by sending the scammers a deposit for an apartment she thought she was leasing.

She was in Australia, I think. The apartment was in London. Of course she wanted somewhere to live as soon as she landed, so she had to do it remotely. Bad result.

<comment><USER16> For anyone who doesn't know, never do that. Get a hotel/hostel/airbnb for the first week, then actually go to places. Never take a place you have not visited.

Also in London, go private rental helps avoid the ridiculous agency fees.

<comment><USER17> Just touring somewhere isn't going to help, you have to make sure the person who is showing you the apartment owns the apartment, look up real estate records and ask their the landlord's ID. I say this because there is plenty of cases where scammers will break into vacant buildings and "rent" them as long as possible. Heard of a story where a guy was living overseas for a few months and came home to a family living in his house which had been "rented out" by a scammer who broke in and changed the locks.

<comment><USER18> I believe in some states its not even a matter of saying "Hey this is my house get out" you have to go though eviction processes to remove them as well. What a mess.

<comment><USER17> Yes, absolutely. Tenantancy is usually established after around 30 days of continued occupancy and once they are tenants, even if they aren't paying rent, you can't legally kick them out without going through the proper legal channels.

There's even been cases of people posing as fake real estate agents to "rent" apartments. If your dealing with a real estate agent then ask for their ID like you would a landlord, and the license number, and look up their real estate license online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The og scam bait crew: [http://www.419eater.com/html/trophy_room.htm](http://www.419eater.com/html/trophy_room.htm)

I don't think this crew is ethical.

<comment><USER20> Genuinely curious. Why dont you think it's ethical? Do you feel they should stop?

I ask as I feel they are doing a public service. As far as I know they dont approach anyone and let people approach them. They then waste their time and make them jump through hoops in usually fairly harmless ways that reduce the likelihood of the scammers doing genuine harm.

<comment><USER19> This crew got some of baiters to get tattoos [self mutilation] and are into public shaming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Also see a website I made: [https://spa.mnesty.com/](https://spa.mnesty.com/)

<comment><USER22> This is wonderful.

<comment><USER23> It is, but some of them appear to be a lot of bots talking to bots e.g. [https://spa.mnesty.com/conversations/dbmnabnq/](https://spa.mnesty.com/conversations/dbmnabnq/)

<comment><USER21> I think spammers have found out about it and keep spamming me back, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A coworker's wife was almost taken for several thousand dollars by a phone scammer. She asked him at the last minute and he told her to call it off. He was pretty upset that they'd tried to exploit his wife, though. He talked to the police, but they weren't much help.

So he set his cell phone to autodial their number. For the next three days. His number is unlisted, so they couldn't block him without blocking all incoming calls, which was essential to whatever scam they were trying to run. He just tied up their whole operation.

His phone sat there on his desk ringing quietly over and over all day. Every now and then they'd pick up and scream at him.

</comment><comment><USER25> > I take great care in protecting my online persona, [...] I don't use any of > my real-life information. All of my characters are based somewhere 100 miles > away from where I live.

That's a pretty accurate indication of where she actually lives, provided that information can be combined..

<comment><USER26> The people who would have the time & resources to do that have far easier ways to derive that information.

Also, The BBC found them. "CNN" could easily go setup an "Interview".

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How does this article not include James Veitch's "work"? I've had many laughs at his TED talks and his Mashable YouTube series.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/james_veitch_this_is_what_happens_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/james_veitch_this_is_what_happens_when_you_reply_to_spam_email)

<comment><USER28> One word; Hummus

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If it's clearly a scam I tell them I need them to hold on for a minute. Then I mute the phone and get back to work. They generally stay on the line for 5-10 minutes. Wastes very little of my time, wastes a bunch of theirs (hopefully raises the cost of the scam a little and gives them less time to scam others). Not sure if there's any security risk in leaving the line open on my end that long, but it's my weapon of choice in fighting back a little.

<comment><USER30> Maybe you could automate a few different takes on "oh sorry, just a few more minutes" or "I'm getting my bank account info, it's in the other room" to repeat on loop every 3 minutes or so.

Create a very long MP3 and hit play.

Or use the bot linked below... of course this has been before :)

<comment><USER31> There's a whole series of this where it's a recording of an old man who talks really slow, can't hear well, needs things re-explained, rambles a bit, etc. There are some amazingly long calls.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSoOrlh5i1k&list=RDXSoOrlh5i...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSoOrlh5i1k&list=RDXSoOrlh5i1k#t=2)

<comment><USER32> It's Lenny!

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> also OG: p-p-p-powerbook

[https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/P-p-p- powerbook](https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/P-p-p-powerbook)

</comment><comment><USER34> Occasionally I get a nigerian scammer that makes it through the spam filter. Last one I had I played really dumb for about two weeks.

Oh western union? Yeah I live on the east coast I'm pretty sure we don't have that here.

I found the western union but I don't have any nigerian money to send, how do I get nigerian money?

I was going to send the money today but I stopped at the mini McDonald's at Walmart and ate some fries. I don't have the full 500, only 496 now, sorry I'll see if I can find the rest.

Someone told me that there was a robot computer from Nigeria that asks for money, how do I know you're not a robot?

I'm pretty sure a robot would say it isn't a robot. Can you send me pictures to prove you're not a robot?

etc etc etc

</comment><comment><USER35> This guy created a voice bot that wastes scammers and telemarketer's time.

[http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/](http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/) [http://www.businessinsider.com/man-creates-bot-to-deal- with-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/man-creates-bot-to-deal-with- annoying-telemarketers-2016-2)

<comment><USER36> I can't wait for voice recognition, voice synthesis, and AI researchers to pick this up and offer a more advanced version that is a free public service just to use the scammers as a free, endless training corpus. Instead of pre- recorded snippets, evolve a completely dynamic model.

<comment><USER37> Then the scanners start doing the same, and boom, you've got a GAN that quickly learns to be incredibly good at pretending to be human.

<comment><USER36> Can't possibly generate a worse foundation for a customer service bot than some of the human-staffed customer service departments I run into today. That was said tongue in cheek, but I do wonder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Oh man, this takes me back. Who can forget the Martins Cole and Anus laptop saga of 2004-5?

[http://thescambaiter.com/forum/index.php?/topic/17878-anus-l...](http://thescambaiter.com/forum/index.php?/topic/17878-anus- laptops-the-martins-cole-saga-complete/&)

</comment><comment><USER39> Why is this on the front page when [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14519343](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14519343) has more upvotes?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no official position and no inside information. Here are my observations.

There are a number of things that happen that people are not always aware of. There is, for example, a "flame-war" detector, that works on the heuristic that if there are more comments than points then it's probably a smaller number of people having a back'n'forth, so it's likely to be unproductive/unenlightening. It's a heuristic, but it works well enough to be a good first approximation.

But these things are watched and reviewed by the mods. They can remove that penalty if it seems to be a false positive. They can also apply a boost to items they think are good material for HN, but which haven't got the attention they deserve.

Looking at the traces[0][1] I suspect that this item has had a boost, and the other has had the flame-war penalty.

[0] [http://hnrankings.info/14517461/](http://hnrankings.info/14517461/)

[1] [http://hnrankings.info/14519343/](http://hnrankings.info/14519343/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> For those who are curious about how far some vigilantes are willing to go in pursuit of scammers, this is an oldie (2008) but still worth a listen: [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/363/...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/363/enforcers?act=1)

</comment><comment><USER41> I went to Delhi to learn more about tourist touts. It was enlightening watching the guys work. They worked hard, they were good at what they were about and at the end I made their time worth their while, though not as much as they might hope.

I don't know that I would recommend it as a hobby though, one might find themselves in some serious danger.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's also great for children. My five year old overheard me baiting a scammer on the phone and expressed great interest. He'll be sitting in on the next call, and participating once I'm convinced he understands what's going on.

I _think_ the outcome will be that he'll be much better equipped to deal with social engineering as an older child and adult.

<comment><USER42> To those downvoting, I'd love direct feedback. I'm not precious about my parenting style. Well, no more precious then I am about anything else I take seriously.

<comment><USER17> You honestly have to ask why you shouldn't include a five year old in scam baiting?

<comment><USER42> I expect the "once he understands" bit to take at least a few years.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rate my startup: Socialmod - take the pain out of UGC moderation - <AUTHOR> http://socialmod.com

<comment><USER2> Clear business model, great website design.

While I don't have a problem getting the idea at first sight, I believe an introduction video/animation would help a lot.

The plans are a bit pricey to me -- (how) did you do your pricing analysis/survey?

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks great-- as I mentioned in another comment, I'm definitely considering how we might use this. We have a number of sites with user-generated content and not enough hours in the day to review it all.

Regarding your semi-automated plans:

* What's the process for evaluating false positives/negatives?

* What guarantee do you provide against incorrect results? I know you have each item moderated 3 times, but it's still a worry. What if porn gets by?

* I assume your team will be able to handle really terrible objectionable content uploaded by griefers? The kind of stuff no human should have to see?

* I feel you should mention MTurk usage on your site somewhere. "How" you perform the automated pieces was one of the biggest questions I had, and I would not have purchased without emailing you to find out if you outsourced externally, used Amazon, or what-have-you.

* What's the turnaround time like for the moderation? Any estimates on that depending on the content?

Thanks in advance.

<comment><AUTHOR> * We have two rounds, each round is voted on by three people, if there's disagreement on the verdict in the first round, it goes to the second round. If the second round disagrees - the items is failed as a precaution.

* We only provide a money back guarantee. We don't charge enough to cover any insurance. If you need that we've partnered with moderation companies who offer insurance (cover obviously depends on the amount of moderation you need).

* Yes, the Turkers are all warned.

* I think you're right. Initially I thought it it would be a turn off - but in retrospect that was a mistake.

* Very quick, it's about 7 seconds per item (once it's on mturk). Items are batched up into 20 and sent off every minute - so the complete turnaround will be a bit longer.

Let me know if you've any more queries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Even After the tour, I couldn't get much of an idea on what it does.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does this help? [http://www.socialmod.com/images/pages/home/how_it_works.png?...](http://www.socialmod.com/images/pages/home/how_it_works.png?1243415818)

<comment><USER4> So is it a moderation engine?

Too bad that there are HNers who down vote a comment that says a problem some one has. I said that the tour didn't help me because it really didn't. And I hope there should be other people who would have the same problem. The developer gets a chance to decide whether he needs to improve things.

Really proud of OH-SO-Intelligent portion of HN users who understand things at a glance. Sorry I'm not. So down vote if you wish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks great. Could you elaborate on how your "automated" plans work? Who does the moderation - are you using Mechanical Turk, outsourced employees, something else?

I'd also like to see a "developer" plan, for sites that haven't launched.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we're using Mechanical Turk - we compare answers at least three times per moderated item.

I agree with you about the developer plan - what sort of attributes would you propose (pricing, usage etc)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Site looks pretty good, however: "Our team are on call to moderation your content 24/7."

Should be: "Our team is on call to moderate your content 24/7."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, fixed

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> nice site, dunno if there is a market for that tough..

you should give example of client using your site also add an about us & blog page

<comment><USER8> Scalable/easy moderation is one of the [several] major problems preventing UGC from growing into a serious advertising medium. Moderation is a big part of the value we add over other technology providers.

So I would say the market is definitely there, but that the pricing model should better reflect the amount of time required to moderate images vs videos of various lengths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great looking website. Its very clear what you're offering, and it sounds like a great service for rich media moderation.

One suggestion: On the pricing page the default tab is for self-moderation. Personally, I find the outsourced moderation offer much more compelling, and I would lead with that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've created a free evaluation version here: <http://account.socialmod.com/signup?plan_name=free></comment>