Taskforce (YC W11) Helps You Organize Your Inbox and Become a Taskmaster - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/16/taskforce-helps-you-organize-your-inbox-and-become-a-taskmaster/

<comment><USER2> Their example of "Convert emails into tasks and clear your inbox" is amusing (<http://www.taskforceapp.com/?v=original_ft>):

>from President Obama to me:

>How are you? Was wondering if you could give me a quick intro to Julian Assange. Or even just his current address would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> Forgive my ignorance, and no offense intended, but how is an email extension considered a startup, and furthermore: a YC startup?

I realize that it's useful, and a great product, and I'm not implying otherwise, but this model seems to stretch the startup concept very thin.

<comment><USER4> And no offense taken :) I think it's important to keep in mind that startups grow and mature. Right now we're two people (only one programmer) who've been working for a few months. We've learned a lot and (in)validated more than a few crucial hypotheses, but things are _far_ from over and our aspirations are huge.

As PG once said to us, "Microsoft started with a BASIC interpreter for the Altair."

<comment><USER5> I think we should credit the two of you for convincing PG. After all, having a solid group of people is more useful than having a solid product. This is a great start and with you two at the helm, we can expect a lot more. Looking forward to it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congrats guys. I've been using Taskforce for about a month now and really liking it. The fact that it's right in gmail makes it really handy.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yet another miraculous tool to help you organise your cluttered inbox.

If you havent mastered the skill in organising your life so your inbox doesnt take over your life, no tool is going to make that any better for you.

Its a delusion.

<comment><USER4> If the point you just made was a person, I think I'd walk alongside him for 3/4 of a mile, and then stop right there. Do some people have trouble staying organized? Of course. Are they hopeless lost causes whom technology can't help? That's going too far.

The productivity field is an interesting area where, if you want to build something great, you need to do some real research on human behavior and psychology. If you had the world's most delicious ice cream, I doubt you'd try selling it in Siberia. Nor would you sell balloons at a funeral. Or cars without gas in the tank. So what's troubling is, plenty of people make seemingly-great productivity tools, and then promptly ignore obvious issues... like the fact that people tend to lose motivation over time. There's a reason we're building Taskforce in the inbox, and it's not because we're hopping on the "email overload" bandwagon.

We think that with enough intelligently-directed effort, we can create something that really does make people better at what they want to do.

<comment><USER7> Wait a minute. This is singularly the best piece of hostile customer persuasion i've seen in my WHOLE life.

I stand corrected and humbled. Even im going to sign up to this thing.

Where do i sign?

<comment><USER4> <https://www.taskforceapp.com>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's the revenue model? Ad supported, premium features later on, or something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> certain premium features, which are already in the pipeline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks like a great idea, but wake me when there's an Outlook extension. Most people who would want to use this are using Outlook (or possibly Lotus Notes).

<comment><USER10> Outlook has this feature...

<comment><USER9> True, but I'm not using it because it's not very slick. I also think the viral nature of this extension could be huge.

<comment><USER11> Last I remember, it's perfectly integrated into Outlook. The main problem I found with using it was that people don't like to get tasks assigned to them via impersonal emails. I suspect TaskForce will have that problem too...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks excellent. One thing that would be way cool is Basecamp integration, like syncing milestones/to-dos to your inbox.

<comment><AUTHOR> consider it in the pipeline :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Taskforce is really nice, I've been using it, and it definitely makes my life better.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sounds vaguely similar to <http://www.activeinboxhq.com/>

</comment><comment><USER15> A nice concept, and the collaboration aspect is great. But this won't get me away from the task management desktop apps I am used to.

The plugin has no concept of projects as far as I can tell, which could be by simply tagging in gmail. As it is, I can simply drag the gmail url to my current desktop application icon which creates a task.

Perhaps for someone whose only work related tasks come in through gmail, this would be an improvement over just tagging an email.

Even if it were my case, I cannot see myself relying this app. I moved away from Things to The Hit List because it had VIM-like keyboard controls, and am used to being able to move around in gmail with the keyboard as well. As far as I can tell, there are no keyboard controls for this plugin.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sorry but I already do this using Google Priority,Tags(TODO, TO READ) and Filters. works great ! But cheers for the effort of doing something more integrated and better looking, keep it going :D

Hum... installed but it doesn't work, did all things and still nothing.

</comment><comment><USER17> So does this work with Google apps for domains? I can't easily figure out how to enable it.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes it does, you should be able to download it from our website.

<comment><USER17> I did, but it says "Currently this single sign-in feature is disabled for the domain xxx Return to taskforceapp.com. For information on how a domain administrator can enable this feature, see these instructions."

I clicked on the link to return and it says can't login. And the directions don't make much sense.

<comment><USER4> Strange, are you using the paid version of Google Apps? And are you the admin for the domain? Shoot me an email at email@example.com, I'll give you a hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Seems they may be having some issues at the moment. Getting a lot of nginx 500 errors & can't get anything to show up in gmail after installing the extension. I'll try again later.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm going to give this a whirl, but I don't see any integration with the tasks GMail already has, built-in, so I can't get them to my phone. If you can sync tasks with GMail, then the android app I bought will take care of that sync step, right?

Also, if I do end up sticking with this, please don't sell this and shut down the service, like etacts did (the last YC company to do a gmail add-on, IIRC), although I never used that much.

<comment><USER20> I'd imagine if Google made a generous talent acquisition offer to someone like this team to work on gmail productivity tools at Google it would be hard to refuse, like divvyshot and facebook photos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd probably pay to use this if it had Outlook integration.

</comment><comment><USER22> Met Niccolo and Courtland at the Heyzap office around the time of startup school and I've been hooked since.

Congrats on the launch!

</comment><comment><USER23> a few comments after using it for a couple of days (not on my primary account):

a. The privacy policy should be a little more clear about the data (if any) being accessed from Gmail. Email is something around which people (or just me) take privacy seriously. The privacy policy is well written (not canned legalese), but does not cover issues around what kinds of data is collected. Rapportive (<http://rapportive.com/privacy>), also a YC startup has a very fresh approach to privacy policies.

b. at least for me, one of the best things about gmail are the keyboard shortcuts. Sparrow (<http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/>) does a great job of respecting gmail shortcuts.

c. Maybe they already have keyboard shortcuts, no way to know as there is no help or manual or faqs. (Not sure they need one either)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this Mohit - we take privacy very seriously, and only collect the necessary data to auto-complete collaborators emails within the widget.

Key board shortcuts are a great idea, that definitely increases accessibility and speed.

We do have a user guide: <http://www.taskforceapp.com/guide> \- and we also maintain a getsatisfaction page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I guess I'm missing something, but nothing has changed in my gmail after installing the extension. I see no taskforce buttons. I even set my theme back to the default one hoping it would solve my "problem". Help?

</comment><comment><USER25> I keep receiving this error when trying to use Taskforce "No response from server, Reload?":

screenshot <http://cl.ly/1h3U3e0u2i012j1v081G>

</comment><comment><USER26> Is any of my data sent to Taskforce servers or leaked in any way?

<comment><USER4> Your tasks are sent over HTTPS and stored in our database. We don't need or request access to your emails, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> /me adds a task in his existing task management system to try Taskforce once the "HN effect" dies down (500 internal server errors abound).

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixing it right now...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Seems to be loading very slow for me right now in Gmail. Maybe the Techcrunch attention has it crawling?

</comment><comment><USER29> Someone needs to go down to their basement and reboot the mac mini that's running this thing ;)

</comment><comment><USER30> The Link on Techcrunch appear to be broken, I'm getting a 500 error.

</comment><comment><USER31> i'm still really keen to try this, but taskforce doesn't yet support mailplane. Looking forward to getting that email when it does! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> we've actually been talking to mailplane, so it should be sooner rather than later.</comment></comment>


SETI 'should look for artificial intelligence' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11041449

<comment><USER2> No telling; worth considering.</comment>


Ask HN: Why not hide vote counts on links as well? - <AUTHOR>

I believe the quality of comments has increased since comment votes were hidden, why not try it on links as well?<p>Edit: I hope we can have a discussion about it either way. <comment><USER2> #13 on my list has 305 points while #12 has 3. Links aren't ordered in the same way as comments (they rise to the top) so I don't think you can compare the two.

</comment><comment><USER3> i agree with the quality needing some adjustment, there are waayyy to many osama links posted. its getting kinda annoying. but in terms of the links. well, i was already against hiding the votes for comments, but, i feel like if the votes are hidden from links, i would have NO clue what to read or whats just junk

<comment><USER4> I don't disagree that there are too many bin Laden stories, but I'd be hesitant to make any algorithmic changes based on a story that is a once-a- year magnitude event.

The problem isn't that there are too many bin Laden stories: it's that there are _any_. I know how to get to CNN or the NYT and it's completely pointless to post bin Laden stories here period. I would also say that politics and religion, even if there'a some vague technology connection, should be _verboten_. There should be some minimum level of genuinely applied or theoretical computing or math content.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Non-Confusing, Visually Correct Slider Toggle UI - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2012/11/invention-multiple-choice-windowed-slider-ui/ <comment><USER2> ...now seriously, what's wrong with good ol' radio buttons and check-boxes? they seem 100x more intuitive and with some effort (yeah, more than it should...) you can make stylish versions of them that will match you design

<comment><USER3> The entertaining bit (similar to the standard floppy-disk "Save" icon), is that most people who have grown up with the web always present... have never seen a radio with true "radio buttons".

<comment><USER4> Oh sh*t. It all makes sense now.

I'm kind of ashamed to write this, but I had never realized what "radio button" actually means.

I grew up knowing what they were (I was born in the 80s), but English not being my primary language, I never considered that "radio button" might mean "the kind of button you have in a radio". And I never felt the need to look for a definition :)

(are you done laughing?)

<comment><USER5> To be fair, English _is_ my primary language and I've been doing web development for 10 years and I didn't know why they were called radio buttons until very recently!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The windowed slider panel is a great idea. I couldn't agree more with the author's assessment of how confusing normal switches as shown can be, as I've felt the same confusion in the past, and know others do too. Interesting post and great ideas.

<comment><USER7> I find similar confusion when confronted by Play/Pause buttons on video controls, before the video has loaded and started playing.

"OK, it's displaying a pause icon - is that telling me it's paused, or that I should click it to pause?"

<comment><USER8> Indeed. I've got an enormous monitor; surely they can find another 32x32 pixels for separate play and pause buttons.

<comment><USER9> No, the player should not show play or pause while the video is loading. There are more than two states the player is representing with only two icons. Adding separate buttons would not help that.

<comment><USER10> Yes, it should, because I might want the video to play immediately after it buffers, or I might want it to just buffer and press play in a few minutes.

Having a play and a pause button which to push to indicate the current state of the video while it buffers is very useful.

Also, to the parent, a button should display its action, so a "play" button will play and a "pause" button will pause. Except when the interface is designed by a web designer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To me the whole thing that makes it confusing for me is that real slider switches are labeled externally:

         +</comment><comment>-+
     OFF |   |XXX| ON
         +</comment><comment>-+

That's much more clear. You could even put a little red "lamp" next to the on which lights up when ths swtich is on and darkens when it is off.

Putting the label under the sliding part of the control is what makes it confusing.

EDIT: just noticed that huhtenberg posted the same suggestion

</comment><comment><USER12> >However, there are a few times when a slider is warranted and even a Better UI choice: > >To switch back and forth between two states that both need to be described, such as a slider in your blog's control panel with "Published | Unpublished" as the choices for the article draft you're working on.

But we already have a UI element for that. In HTML, it's known as a "select" input, and it works very well, is extremely compact, and is already familiar to your users.

In fact, if you set the "size" attribute, then it even has the "window" functionality described in this article. The window typically is shown with no border, and it doesn't look as fancy, but other than that, it is exactly the same concept.

</comment><comment><USER13> His "solution" is just a tab/nav bar with different styling:

<http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/components.html#navbar>

Given that a click is simpler and quicker than a drag, I think this suggestion is a worse user experience than a tab bar.

<comment><USER14> They are slightly similar in design, but solving two completely different problems with different core functionality.

And who said anything about dragging? I read the whole post and was under the impression that the selection was made via click...

<comment><USER15> I was under the impression that part of the beauty of the design is that a click from my desktop would be supported as well as a touch and drag on my tablet. The UI intuitively supports both mediums.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This seems so obvious in hindsight, yet this isn't what everyone comes up with!

</comment><comment><USER17> You have to think of the constraints that informed the original design. There's very little horizontal space on iPhone and iPod touch, 320 points to fit a descriptive label and the control.

So labels on the sides don't work because of space constraints, on iPhone anyway.

The windowed version is also less space efficient than the stock iOS control but I think it has merit because it shows all possible states. What I'd change is reverse the tinting, to make the active state more visible and the other states shaded.

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://jsfiddle.net/LWFg3/6/> here you go. I call it ouija. Will probably bundle it as a component shortly.

</comment><comment><USER19> Lockitron also showcases the slider issue in their product video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D1L3o88GKew#t=7s)

</comment><comment><USER20> It is nice, but to my mind, a slider is different to a switch. The classic "on-off" switch that the author takes on is like a light switch - to that end, it does its job pretty well, I think, telling you what state it is in.

<comment><USER21> I don't know about you, but I rarely look at the labels on a light switch. When I find light switches that go side-to-side, I usually have to rely on my knowledge of the current state of the light rather than the position of the switch. Either way, you have to agree that the confusion the article speaks of is a reasonable one, and making interfaces that are resilient to be confusing is the job of the UI designer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't find the two-position slider switch confusing at all; it looks and behaves like a physical object - one of these: <http://cdnsupport.gateway.com/s/POWER/SHARED/q0012508.jpg>

The OP's controls are slightly more obvious visibly, but don't look as much like common physical switches and are more visually cluttered. The color- changing version doesn't resemble anything I've seen in the real world, though I'm sure it's possible to do.

<comment><USER23> Even the physical object is ambiguous -- do I slide it to the side with the label that represents the state I want, or does the label represent the state?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It certainly was non-confusing to try and slide pictures of sliders.

<comment><USER25> I just figured (until the end of the article) that it just didn't work on Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Totally agree. I find it so difficult to tell my parents to switch an iPad slider to ON or OFF, so I simply tell them to make the capsule blue or gray.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think the way Apple is doing this is much more elegant. The on state is visualized by a contrast background color and the off state is just a gray background. Much more simple and much more visible. This proposed solution with a slightly lighter color as indicator of selection is not very good, sorry.

Also your solution becomes more of a list than a toggle. There are already a lot of similar designed selectable lists.

</comment><comment><USER28> Someone needs to send that link to the Gnome 3 devs :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Take a quick look at ICS/JB on Android, which has already solved this problem.

The current state is written on the sliding bit, clicking anywhere will toggle it, but correctly show the current state.

The slider will also glow blue if it is on the ON state, and revert to grey on the OFF position.

See here: <http://i45.tinypic.com/263jypz.png>

</comment><comment><USER30> A simpler option for a binary choice is this -

          +</comment><comment>-+---+
       On |       | X | Off
          +</comment><comment>-+---+

<comment><USER31> Scroll down to the end of the article, or search for "Another Alternative".

<comment><USER30> It's a long article, so it should've started with the simpler options, shouldn't it? :)

<comment><USER32> Part of the point is that this solution is known to pretty much everyone already, yet it's usually rejected for the reason people choose the unintuitive alternatives up top: It takes up more space for the same font and slider sizes.

I tend to prefer that solution too (or if you're really cramped for space, the old AmigaOS "MX gadget" which shows only the selected state, plus a small icon to indicate it will cycle between states).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you're interested in adding the left/right style example and you're already using jQuery UI, you can use the ones I built here that inherit your slider styles:

<http://taitems.github.com/UX-Lab/ToggleSwitch/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER34> I like. The vertical variant looks very similar to a <select> element with the size attribute set. Maybe you could take some clues wrt styling from these elements? Not sure how that would look in a horizontal version though.

</comment><comment><USER35> Wholeheartly agree. I made a mockup of just this issue a few weeks ago: <http://dribbble.com/shots/747199-Night-Day-Slider-Switch>

</comment><comment><USER36> Not a bad solution, but I'd still prefer a red or green state (In my experience, color trumps shape).

Of course that doesn't work for more than two options, but I have a hard time finding a decent use case for that anyway.

<comment><USER37> 8% of men are red green blind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Sweet! This is quite nice. Good job. The best part about the solution is the consistency for different type of options like simple on/off options to ones which require long descriptions.

</comment><comment><USER39> I just gave up on the idea of using a regular slider to toggle between 'Any' & 'All', because I didn't want the selected text to be hidden. This solution would be perfect!

</comment><comment><USER40> I think this is _more_ elegant than a radio button.

<comment><USER41> I agree, but elegance cannot replace functionality. Apart from the touchscreen perspective (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4743643>) I would use only plain old radio buttons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's certainly confusing as is, but a good designer will use other design cues like color and depth to reinforce the state.

</comment><comment><USER43> Much better, it's obvious in hindsight. Now if you could work some magic on those horrible range inputs…

</comment><comment><USER44> Will this work in terms of accessibility?

</comment><comment><USER45> Congrats, you can add a paragraph about related work and an Usability section about arbitrary observed metrics on test groups and submit to CHI :)

</comment><comment><USER46> The sliders on the article seems inverted from iOS's sliders.

The article shows: [OFF [ ]]

iOS: [[ ] OFF]

<comment><USER47> Somehow the blog post does not even mention the iOS sliders, let alone compare the solution Apple figured out for this problem: colors. Grey is OFF, blue is ON.

<comment><USER7> Still room for confusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Congrats. You've invented the cursor.

</comment><comment><USER49> Wow. After all these decades and countless people we would have seen something like this before.

Reminds me of this little change that Apple made and then quickly reverted:

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/04/29/inside_mac_os_x_10...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/04/29/inside_mac_os_x_10_7_lion_developer_preview_3_dials_down_animated_tabs)

<comment><USER50> I really liked that design. I was really pissed when they changed it to something (IMO) inferior later on... :(</comment></comment>


Wakemate (YC S09) helps you kiss groggy mornings goodbye - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/24/wakemate-sleep-aid/ <comment><USER3> That $5 pre-order is far too easy to do. I bought one without stopping to research other products like the <http://www.fitbit.com/>. Brilliantly designed pricing.

It's a lot like Glastonbury ticketing. Deposits in autumn, full payment in January. This is extra profitable because in January many people are short on cash post-christmas and either can not or choose not to pay the full amount. You get to keep the non-refundable deposit and then sell the ticket/product again to another person.

As an aside, any idea on how hackable the Wakemate is? Presumably other devices could talk to it over bluetooth, eg a homemade arduino based alarm clock. Will the bluetooth protocol and data format used be published?

<comment><USER4> We're definitely open to the idea of letting people play with communicating to our device.

<comment><USER5> I've been aiming to write a Rayleigh random number generator-driven alarm app for my iTouch (to do random-phasic sleep, e.g., countdown 20+X minutes, X drawn from a Rayleigh(20) distribution). If something like that could integrate with your app, that could be really cool. Crowdsourced sleep research :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was fortunate enough to know these guys while they were building the wakemate prototypes, and even luckier to have had the opportunity to sleep with one (of the devices) for a week. It has made a tremendous difference in how I feel when I wake up. Congrats guys!

<comment><USER6> Can you give us some more details about your experience with the device?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, no problem.

I didn't get to use one of the new, super sleek, production quality ones. I used an early prototype that slipped inside a wrist band (like tennis players wear). It was actually still pretty comfortable to sleep with - I didnt even feel it after the first night.

It definitely woke me up at the optimal time in my sleep cycle. The alarm app was a really simple web app, and the bluetooth was simple. It was cool to see my sleep analyzed with all our different metrics and quality rated. The sleep analytics software was pretty simple, but definitely did the trick.

<comment><USER7> Can you elaborate more on how your sleep changed?

I don't have trouble getting to sleep if I put in a full day of productive work topped off with exercise. Is this product only for people with sleep problems?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am actually a pretty good sleeper. I naturally sleep about 8 hours a day, and if I wake up naturally, I usually wake up feeling pretty good (haha...people are going to hate me for that).

The problem is when I go to bed really late and/or need to wake up earlier than I would naturally. As it turns out, I am more affected by when I wake up in my sleep cycle than I am by how long I sleep. If I need to wake up at 7:30am for a call with east coast people, the wakemate would wake me up at "around" 7:30 (you can set a hard stop), during the point in my sleep cycle in which I am most amenable to being woken up. It's the difference between feeling like shit, and feeling like I woke up naturally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really like the idea, but putting "(works on all phones)" on your front page is kind of shady if the actual requirements are bluetooth _and_ internet access _and_ third-party app support. No phone I've ever owned has all those features.

<comment><USER9> Those features have been practically ubiquitous on GSM phones for about five years (except for the cheapest 3rd world models). That's as close to "all phones" as you can get.

<comment><USER10> Yes, most phones have internet _access_ , but I strongly doubt most people have that included in their monthly plan - I know I don't.

So do I have to pay extra charges for that? How much data is being sent? Can I view stats on my phone? Can I tether my phone to my computer to look at stats?

I can't find any of these answers on their site. Which is frustrating, because this almost sounds like something that would interest me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks like the same technology used in the ubiquitous sleeptracker. <http://www.sleeptracker.com/>

I've heard complaints that it doesn't accurately monitor your sleep cycles because it uses an accelerometer which obviously doesn't work if you don't move enough.

There is a product called Zeo that supposedly detects your brainwaves but then people complain about having to wear a strap on your head. <http://www.myzeo.com/>

Anyone want to share their experience with these sleep aids?

<comment><USER12> ubiquitous seems a bit of a stretch... :)

<comment><USER11> Well seeing how it was mentioned all over the media like Dr. Phil, 37 Signals, and Wired, Associated Press, G4TV, etc... I would say it is far more ubiquitous than the zeo.

<http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sleeptracker>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What kind of battery does it use and how do you charge it? How long before it needs to be charged. Your website is quite informative about the science but seems to leave out this basic operation information. Looks cool anyway, with free shipping to Belgium I'll definitly order one.

</comment><comment><USER14> Can someone in the know comment on the soundness of the scientific principles behind this product?

</comment><comment><USER15> I worked at a sleep company up until 2008 and there are a lot of startups and big sleep companies getting into lowcost devices that a customer would own or rent instead of going into a sleep lab. They would do more diagnosis or pre- diagnosis rather than just wakeup timing but I think some had that feature. I know there is a watch that does this.

One tip I would do if I were them were to contact all those huge sleep lab companies and try to get them interested. Insurance covered prescribed factory sleep labs drive the industry.

<comment><USER16> I think this is pretty significant advice. My daughter broke her foot one day before getting on a plane to Barcelona, where we planned on doing a lot of swimming, I had a waterproof cast cover over-nighted and they sent two. One for me and a free one for the foot doctor. The product worked so well, it literally saved our vacation and I couldn't say enough good things to the doctor when we got back. I'm sure giving the free sample to the doctor was a win for them, especially considering the doctor had never heard of the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> >>The wristband tracks the movement of your wrist through the >>night, which it can use to analyze your sleep patterns.

How is wrist movement co-related to sleep patterns ? Is there any scientific study / data out there that explain the co-relation ?

Co-relation of pulse rhythm is more obvious - cant say the same about wrist movement.

Anyone care to explain ?

<comment><USER18> They have a paper about the actigraphy technology they use on their website under the "How It Works" link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Of all the recent YC announcements this is the first one that has me go: Yes! solve a real world problem. Runner up is the flight delay guys, but I no longer fly a lot for business so it is not as much of a factor as it used to be.

Congratulations, excellent idea and a very nicely priced implementation.

I sincerely hope you'll sell these by the containerload.

<comment><USER7> I wonder how lucrative the market is though. As hackers, we're naturally inclined towards products like these.

If actigraphy is an established sleep-study technique, then you have to wonder why there aren't more players.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> One of the first pages I navigate to when evaluating a product is the About Us page. If I didn't know that Wakemate was a YC funded company I would not take the product very seriously. Luckily the 'How it works' page (<http://www.wakemate.com/about/>), and the references cited there make up for the absence of an About Us page (that would hint at your credibility - <USER2> least say you are YC funded!). I think it's worth a try! Pre-ordered one

</comment><comment><USER21> Love the idea of this. Pre-ordered.

<comment><USER6> I pre-ordered, but there was absolutely no info about whether or not it ships internationally (even after paying). Hopefully they'll be shipping outside the US!

<comment><USER22> On the home page: "For a limited time: free worldwide shipping with pre- order!"

<comment><USER6> Yeah, they added that recently. I guess they got that question often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have been using a Now & Zen alarm clock for the last 3 years. <http://www.now-zen.com/> (It looks like they are now calling the one I have the 'zen timepiece.') I was fed up with electronic noises. These clocks have a brass bowl that produces very pleasant gongs to wake you up. And it doesn't jab you awake like most all other alarm clocks I could find. It gongs and then waits a few minutes. If you haven't gotten up after a few minutes, it gongs again, and waits a couple more minutes. It gradually gongs more frequently over a period of 10 minutes.

Sometimes I am up at the first gong and sometimes it takes several. Now, hooking up my bowl gong to the wakemate could make for a great combination.

</comment><comment> Asa-Nisse So does it ship internationally or should we just assume this is US only right now? Clearly interested in this product but I'm from Scandinavia.

<comment><USER24> Excellent service from the guys! Sent them an e-mail about shipping and got a reply in eight minutes - "we ship worldwide for free if you pre-order".

<comment><USER25> Thanks. Pre-ordered.

<comment><USER26> That did it for me as well. Pre-ordered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does it support polyphasic sleep? And is there an Android version?

<comment><USER28> Polyphasic sleep for knowledge workers has been thoroughly debunked by real science.

<http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm>

The science has been done. The tests are clear. Polyphasic sleepers suffer performance losses in mental tasks compared to normal sleepers. In particular, it significantly impairs long-term memory coding.

Charlatans like Steve Pavlina always refused to do even basic scientific testing. His results simply can't be trusted, especially since he has a massive vested interest in it being effective.

If there is some reason you need to sleep less than 3 hours per day, then polyphasic is the best way to do that. However you will always have reduced performance compared to those who get a full 7 hour sleep.

If you want a sleep schedule optimized for creative/intellectual performance, free-running sleep is the best available. Piotr Wozniak has plenty of science of his website showing that this is the case.

<comment><USER27> _The science has been done._

I'm afraid I don't see any citations in that article for studies done specifically on polyphasic sleep. I see citations for the natural length of the human day (24.2 hours), sleep deprivation effects, maximum waking time for humans, etc. But nothing but unbacked, though strongly held, assertions about polyphasic sleep. I may have missed it, but every time the article goes into discussion of polyphasic, it seems to talk _around_ the issue when providing citations, and explicitly to the issue when it is clearly the authors opinion. It has the feel of a religious tract, rather than a scientifically sound article.

I'm not saying the author is wrong. I've never had much luck with polyphasic sleep, as I mentioned above, and I'm certainly not going to argue that it's a great idea without having had any success with it myself or at least having seen good science on the matter. But, if this is the best "science" there is to offer suggesting it does not work, then I don't think I'm convinced.

That said, I'm leaning towards one of the "core sleep plus naps" variants this time around rather than the 6x20 minute routine. I do enjoy sleeping. At least, I seem to, since I do it a lot, and frequently roll over and drift back to sleep in the morning. I also love a couple of cups of jasmine green tea in the morning with breakfast...it's a one to two hour ritual that makes me happy. And a polyphasic schedule would throw all of that for a loop...though I might try kicking caffeine for a while, too. I won't have an Asian market nearby from which to buy my Yamamoto tea, so I probably won't want to drink tea, anyway.

I don't read Pavlina and am unfamiliar with his arguments regarding sleep, so I don't know anything about his results.

<comment><USER28> Claudio Stampi tested all the various forms of reducing sleep and found polyphasic - the uberman style - to be the best out of them all.

At the same time, he found that polyphasic sleep results in poorer performance compared to normal sleepers. And this was considered non-noteworthy, since obviously 2 hours of sleep is worse than 8. You can find his articles on Google Scholar.

Steve Pavlina is the only person I know of who has claimed to be polyphasic for an extended period of time and claimed that there is no performance decrease. Unfortunately, Steve refused to do any scientific testing and relied entirely on his own subjective judgment. He gave it up after 6 months anyway, but still maintains it is effective.

Steve's Pavlina's experience however exactly fits in with the best scientific understanding of sleep (which Wozniak perfectly elucidates). Steve Pavlina was never able to maintain the schedule without an alarm clock, which indicates that his body did not adapt and was not co-operating or behaving in a "natural" way.

The theory that Steve was only getting REM is shot down by his own journals which indicate that he was getting both Delta and REM. My own experience with polyphasic also indicates that while the proportion of REM may increase, you still get delta sleep. I was fully (and rigidly) polyphasic for some weeks but never stopped having delta sleep. I also consistently showed decreased performance that could only be overcome by surges of adrenaline and autonomic excitation in general - which is easily caused when a loud alarm clock wakes you up when your body desperately desires sleep. You are tricking your body into a state of permanent fight or flight.

Anyway the studies were done in the 80s that directly measured performance. But in the modern day extensive studies have been done on sleep and everything we know about sleep now shoots down all the theorizing that the polyphasics use to justify their crazy. The idea that delta wave sleep is useless has been utterly rejected because it has been shown that delta wave sleep contributes to long-term memory encoding. If you cut down on delta wave, you cut down on long-term memory. If you cut down on sleep in general, you cut down on cognitive abilities in general.

This trade off may be worth it for some people, but they should be aware that it is a trade off. Magical thinking like that displayed by Steve Pavlina does not magically make you immune from the negative side effects of sleep deprivation. You get over the drowsiness with sheer strength of will and adrenaline, but the fogginess doesn't go away. (Steve considered the fogginess to be a benefit. But remember this is a guy who believes ghosts tell him how to win at blackjack.)

<comment><USER27> So, talking about this and reading what links I could find from your originally linked article, as well as reading up on Claudio Stampi leaves me no more illuminated. Stampi's book _Why We Nap_ is out of print, my library does not have a copy, and I can't find any other references to actual studies that prove the arguments against polyphasic sleep, though the opinion of most folks does seem to be that it's not a replacement for a full nights sleep. I just can't figure out how they _know_ , rather than merely think so. There seems to be a tremendous amount of regurgitation of party lines and mentioning of the same few, mostly dubious, sources. I think damned near everybody involved in the conversation, including you and I, understands less about sleep than they think they do.

You're right, however, that there is a cult-like feeling around polyphasic sleep discussion, and I view that sort of thing with extreme skepticism...but I'm surprised to find it happening on both sides. The "debunkers" are just as guilty of making unbacked claims, and poorly citing their opinions.

Every time I've seen a straight up assertion about how long one should sleep, whether napping can reduce the total number of hours needed, etc. I'm unable to find a study that directly backs the assertion. I guess such studies must exist, but no one is linking to them. Even Wikipedia is surprisingly lacking in citations of _directly_ relevant scientific research on the matter.

<comment><USER29> SwellJoe, I'm with you in that the "debunkers" seem quite dogmatic. Then there are people who have had personal success with polyphasic sleep and rave about it, typically doing it for a period of months but not on a permanent basis. Science doesn't have a lot to say, and everyone else is left wondering what to think.

References I found enlightening about the actual practice of it (in favor of it) are the book Ubersleep:

<http://www.lulu.com/content/2649551>

and Hacker News threads like this one:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=673726>

I've read enough anecdotal evidence to be convinced that when it polyphasic sleep works, it works -- that after a potentially rough (and potentially impossible, depending on the person) period of adaptation, the practitioner is not significantly impaired in day-to-day functioning. Skeptics' arguments usually boil down to "it's unnatural", "you can't get something for nothing", or "it didn't work for me".

In terms of needing to set an alarm, I don't know if the body can learn a polyphasic schedule or not; even if it can, the reasons busy monophasic people use alarms to regulate their sleep would apply all the more so to polyphasic sleepers, and I get the sense polyphasic sleep is a sort of "unstable equilibrium"; and if the body can't learn it, that still doesn't mean it's unnatural.

Science could come along and discover a long-term deleterious effect of getting so little sleep, in which case I'd be all ears, but it seems doubtful. I hope the science catches up, though, and we figure out what the deal is with sleep, so we don't have to argue quite so irrationally. There's a lot of interesting recent work on whether being unconscious for eight hours is mostly a behavioral adaptation rather than a biological necessity.

My general philosophy is "if it works, do it", and it definitely works in some instances. Reducing total time spent sleeping per day isn't like smoking cigarettes, it isn't going to slowly poison you. Lots of people get very poor sleep and are definitely impaired during the day, more so than a skilled polyphasic sleeper would report, and they aren't doing long-term damage.

<comment><USER28> The debunkers are cultish because the proponents are cultish. Just like atheists are cultish in response to cultish cults.

If reducing delta wave sleep by 10% significantly decreases performance on memory and reasoning tests, why should reducing delta sleep by 90% fail to decrease performance?

Lots of studies are done on sleep, but they are never as extreme as polyphasic because it would be considered unethical to perform those studies. Those few insane people like me who actually did go polyphasic don't get scientifically tested.

It _did_ work for me but I recognized that my performance had decreased because at the time I was in memorization-oriented schooling and using Anki to manage my memorization tasks. With the help of Anki, I could see quite clearly that my memorization abilities had decreased.

It was also never a natural state. It was a constant state of heightened autonomic response - fight or flight. Especially at nighttime, my body was surging with corticosteroids. This stress response is what provides the capability to stay awake so long, but it comes at the price of high-level thinking and memorization.

Typically in nature, humans will adopt polyphasic sleep in times of war and other extremely stressful situations. This is adaptive because their life is threatened. This is not the case for the modern knowledge worker.

There is tons of science on sleep. The polyphasic people base their theory on the outdated and discredited idea that we only need REM sleep. This has been categorically disproven by modern sleep researchers. Slow wave sleep provides many benefits, the most clear being improved memory but also better performance on other cognitive tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just a question that popped into my head: why choose to release the product on so many mobile platforms? That becomes very expensive development-wise, whereas the most active platforms cover most of the target market.

</comment><comment><USER31> One thing I don't understand: how does the wristband/app tell when you are awake and when you are asleep? The screenshot shows several spots of "time awake" during the night, how does it know this?

Preordered, anyway. I've always wanted to try this but the price point of similar gadgets have been over the "cool thing to try" level (>2-300 bucks).

It must be extremely motivating to see all of these $5 payments come into your account, too :)

<comment><USER32> I tend to move while awake and lie still when I'm asleep. It probably has something to do with that. ;)

<comment><USER31> I don't know about you, but I move around a _lot_ during sleep. Sure, if it only knows that I'm awake if I go to the bathroom or kitchen during the night, I understand the difference. Would be interesting to know how it makes the distinction, though.

<comment><USER33> You (supposedly) only move around when you're in certain sleep stages, and not others. When you're moving around, you're still asleep, but you're much more lightly asleep than when you're not moving around, so it's a much more optimal time to wake up _and_ you can also track how "restful" your sleep is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This seems brilliant. I've wanted to try the SleepTracker, but its a bulky, expensive watch and I never went for it. I'm pre-ordering this :)

[http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/stresseraser_and_sleeptra...](http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/stresseraser_and_sleeptracker_tech_that_can_make_your_life_better.php)

</comment><comment><USER35> Congrats on finding a hair-on-fire problem, and totally rooting for you guys. Just 2 weeks back I ordered an aXbo (<http://www.axbo.com/axbo/CMS/CMS.aspx?Language=E>) for the same purpose, but this is a much more convenient implementation.

<comment><USER36> The axbo uses similar technology and works well, but it is much more expensive, more difficult to use and less comfortable. Also they do not do any of the sleep analysis and personalized recommendations on how to improve the quality of your sleep.

<comment><USER37> I tried the axbo and it didn't work at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Weird. I am actually tempted to buy one.

</comment><comment><USER39> Can one of the Wakemate people please respond?

First off, I love this product. But before I click purchase, I want to know: how good of a proxy is the wrist accelerometer for brain wave activity?

Someone else asked this already but I didn't see a response. Ideally, I would love to know what the quantitative results were from your testing. For instance, if sleepers rate their grogginess after waking up every day, what kind of an improvement do you see in those ratings? What is the distribution like? Are there a certain percentage of people who don't respond to the Wakemate because for some personal reason their wrist movements don't correlate with brain wave activity?

I think this data would help sell a lot more of these since that's definitely what made me pause - and I was very ready to purchase.

Thanks!

<comment> brown9-2 You might be better off contacting them directly:

      Questions? Comments? Send an email to email@example.com, or call us at 1-800-951-4761

<http://www.wakemate.com/about/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It would be really cool to see what they could do for those who would like to wake up with their partner. If both could wake up without being groggy, that would be amazing. I'd imagine you might need a bigger window of possible wake up time.

<comment><USER41> It also depends on how many 'good times' for waking up you have in 20 minutes, and how much they last. For example if you have 2 minutes optimal waking time two times, you might have a 1% chance that a given moment is optimal for both of you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I asked this in the Techcrunch comments but I'm thinking it will be more visible here:

In terms of the iPhone app, how do they trigger anything without having to keep your iPhone on and in their app the whole time? Other than that I am sold.

<comment><USER3> The iPhone has to be on and the app open for it to work. No way around this limitation without 1) jailbreaking 2) digging around in private apis or 3) applying to be an approved accessory maker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Sounds really interesting. It's a shame it's not shipping sooner. I just had a 7 month vacation and getting my sleep pattern back to normal has proved nearly impossible. Some days I wake up super energized after 5 or so hours and then days like yesterday, I get 7 hours in and I wake up feeling like I haven't slept in days. Pre-ordered one for sure.

On a side note, this page is terribly hard on the eyes. <http://www.wakemate.com/about/> I don't know if it's just me or not, but I think they need some more spacing between the letters??

<comment><USER44> It does sound interesting, and for $50, I'd be very tempted to try it.

But yeah, who puts -1px letter spacing on their body copy? Ouch. Painful.

<comment><USER45> It works quite well with the Lucida Sans Unicode, if only they'd spelt the font name correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Love the idea, too bad I have a baby :)

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm particularly interested in using this to help trigger lucid dreams. For the past few years, I've had a song on my playlist that I've trained myself to always ask if I'm dreaming when I hear it. The idea being that this song would play at the right time during my sleep cycle to get me to realize that I'm dreaming.

However, so far I've had trouble triggering the song at the right time. Perhaps this app will be configurable enough to play an MP3 when I'm in REM?

<comment><USER48> Where did you get the idea to trigger lucid dreaming with a song? I am both very musically oriented and a frequent lucid dreamer, and I rarely ever have any music in my dreams, let alone any sort of recognizable tune. I'm talking months between each such event. Unless you frequently dream about music already (as we are all different), I would suggest sticking to the more conventional triggers.

One of these events took the form of a dream that I had written the most powerful, moving song ever, one that could forcibly move people to tears due to sheer awesomeness. Bear in mind I'm not talking about an abstract assessment, but a deep belief that this was awesome. For once, I managed to actually drag the song back up to the waking world, whereupon I discovered that my brilliant song was, in two-second-long quarter notes, the following incredible melody line: C, C, D, C, repeat.

(The full moon seems like a good one to me; I get a lot of circles in my dreams, only due to my science-fiction viewing proclivities, they tend to turn into Stargates.)

<comment><USER47> I don't usually have any music in my dreams. However, I have frequently found myself incorporating outside noise into my dreams (a television left on, a radio alarm clock that plays the morning talk show, my cat meowing, etc).

Using a song as a trigger for lucid dreaming seems like a reasonable enough way to send myself a signal, though I honestly don't have much to back it up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is there any reason to suspect its timed-wake-alarm could be better than just sleeping until you wake naturally?

Also, I presume the analytics can be used without the alarm?

<comment><USER50> Allowing yourself to sleep wake up naturally is probably the best option, but you could easily oversleep that way. Waking up when you are at one of your arousal periods is going to be the next best thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Just bought, having live chat like this on the first day is a very good idea that I'll have to keep in mind when launching a new product... And as others have said the 5$ preorder in exchange for free shipping is a great way to make us impulsive buyers.

I confirmed with them that worldwide includes China too (so many companies do not ship there that I've become wary) so will be getting one :-)

</comment><comment><USER52> Too bad they aren't shipping until January. I would definitely buy one as a present if I knew I could get it for Christmas.

</comment><comment><USER53> Does it work with iPod touch + home WiFi?

<comment><USER54> Not directly on the first-gen iPod Touch, since it doesn't have bluetooth, but the later ones do with OS 3.0 and up.

You could load the analytics app without it, but you'd need some device with bluetooth to trigger the alarm. Someone will inevitably release desktop apps to interface it, especially since all Macs ship with bluetooth and tiny USB dongles for your PC cost about a dollar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I have had issues with sleep for a very long time. Problem is: I love to sleep. I can sleep 10-12 hours a day, no problem.

I'd be quite happy sleeping like this, but it effects my personal life.

This sounds like it was made for me!

*e: Just to be sure before I pre-order. Any bluetooth enabled phone that has access to the internet will work, correct?

<comment><USER56> It needs Internet access?

<comment><USER57> From the article: "It then transmits your sleep data to your phone, which in turn uses its cellular data connection to upload it to the WakeMate servers."

<comment><USER56> I figured it needed network for the pretty graphs, but not to actually wake you up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Pre-ordered. Can't wait to try it.

The techcrunch post has an error, by the way. It says you get $5 off when you pre-order.

<comment><USER59> When I looked at the actual pre-order page, it doesn't seem like that is so. You pay $5, then you pay $45 later. Or you pay $50 when it comes out. What incentive is there, especially with an unreviewed product such as this? Will they tack on a subscription fee to use the device like the fit bit?

<comment><USER51> The biggest incentive I think is the free worldwide shipping if you preordered (at least for me living at the other side of the world)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Sounds awesome, but I don't use a cell phone. =( How hard would it be to get it to work with a laptop?

<comment><USER61> They're planning on opening an API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> That is slick...both the device and the purchase process.

My wife and I discussed something similar using EEG measurements but couldn't find a practical way to apply the electrodes in a consumer-grade product. This is a good example of solving that problem obliquely.

Pre-ordered.

</comment><comment><USER63> Sounds very cool. Though the only problem is that if I were to rely on it, I will most likely be late everyday to drop my kid to school :D.

On a different note, if this is bluetooth, whats preventing it from working with a computer etc. Why only phone??

<comment><USER64> I think it sets a time you will be up by, you just might get woken up earlier. Heck you might even be on time to drop your kid off if you can get that little bugger out of bed as well. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> _You may have followed all the rules: no caffeine before bed, an early bedtime, and all the rest_

I need something for the mornings after I don't follow all the rules ;)

Congratulations to the Wakemate team! I think you've helped me with my Christmas shopping.

</comment><comment><USER66> I hope you guys get enough orders to start shipping because I just put in my preorder. Very interesting looking product and chatting with a cofounder at 1 AM is a huge plus.

</comment><comment><USER67> This seems great, but what about couples that sleep together. Each person might have a different "optimal stage" of waking up. Did you guys offer any solutions for that?

</comment><comment><USER68> Why not just an iPhone app: tie the phone to your wrist and let the accelerometer record the movements. Would it drain the battery, or is the iPhone too heavy?

<comment><USER69> It exists. But yes, people don't like attaching the phone to their arm. [http://www.iphoneappsfinder.com/productivity-apps/absalt- eas...](http://www.iphoneappsfinder.com/productivity-apps/absalt-easywakeup- smart-alarm-clock/)

<comment><USER36> We have an app just like this, but haven't released it because a lot of people expressed concerns about not being able to charge their phone at night as well as breaking their phone. The WakeMate is a much better user experience in terms of comfort and convenience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> This reminds me of the gadgets sold in inflight magazines.

</comment><comment><USER71> How does the data collected compare to sleeptracker?

</comment><comment><USER72> Why do you need a smartphone to use the product?

Why doesn't the device just use wifi to call any number so that I could have it call my cell and wake me up?

<comment><USER4> You don't need a smart phone to use the product! Also, wi-fi is expensive, there's a reason we can price it so low :-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> congratulations guys! the demo unit I tried is amazing. pre-ordered for sure

</comment><comment><USER49> Anyone here tried the Zeo?

<comment><USER74> Yep, and I love it. See my comment above: <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=960532>

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Techcrunch needs an editor. That article was full of typos.

</comment><comment><USER76> Awesome idea, awesome product. Just pre-ordered mine :D

</comment><comment><USER77> with all this stuff they could have come up with sleepmate... take care of my sleep hours, hint me that i should sleep and stuff!!!

</comment><comment><USER78> Often the time you have to wake up is dictacted by factors out of your control (get to work/lecture/event at a certain time)

<comment><USER78> Can the downvoter let me know why this is down voted when it's a valid/decent point?

<comment> aka- i'm not the downvoter, but the device does let you specify limits for when you have to be up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> very cool

ive always had trouble with sleep, and especially functioning in the mornings

</comment><comment><USER80> Can I get one with GPS?

</comment><comment><USER81> Pre-ordered.

<comment><USER82> You think it's a good gift as well? I mean. If I am saving five bucks for pre- ordering...

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> So myself integrating the alarm clock beeping into my dreams is just a built- in way to delay the wake-up point until it hits one of the light-sleep windows?

In any case, cool gadget.

</comment><comment><USER84> so how come wakemate can get their product built and shipped in 6 months, and techcrunch is still working on the crunchpad since 2008?

Especially when you consider that wakemate is doing something a little bit more complicated than just throwing a bunch of common components together?

<comment><USER56> Probably because (1) Wakemate has simpler price constraints, and (2) because the software integration required for Wakemate is simpler than for that of an entire general-purpose computing device?

<comment><USER85> A big part of it is power supply (a tablet ps is extraordinarily hard to design whereas this can run on a large coin cell or AAA battery), and display (blinking LEDs are easier to get a hold of than nice color LCD with good touchpads).

<comment><USER56> What she said. What I said was comparatively dumb. Good to see you, Limor.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What "Worse is Better vs The Right Thing" is really about - <AUTHOR> http://www.yosefk.com/blog/what-worse-is-better-vs-the-right-thing-is-really-about.html? <comment> loup-vaillant Linus' and Alan's citations aren't incompatible. Actually, I think they're both true. Yes, massively parallel trial-and error works wonders, but if you favour the first solutions, you'll often miss the best ones. Actually, effects such as first time to market, backward compatibility, or network effects often trump intrinsic quality by a wide margin. (Hence X86's dominance on the desktop.)

Yes, Worse is better than Dead. But the Right Thing dies because Worse is Better eats its lunch. Even when Worse actually becomes Better, that's because it has more resources to correct itself. Which is wasteful.

The only solution I can think of to solve this comes from the STEPS project, at <http://vpri.org> : _extremely late binding_. That is, postpone decisions as much as you can. When you uncover your early mistakes, you stand a chance at correcting them, and deploying the corrections.

Taking Wintel as an example, that could be done by abstracting away the hardware. Require programs to be shipped as some high level bytecode, that your OS can then compile, JIT, or whatever, depending on the best current solution. That makes your programs dependent on the OS, not on the hardware. Port the compiling stack of your OS, and you're done. If this were done, Intel wouldn't have wasted so much resources in its X86 architecture. It would have at least stripped the CISC compatibility layer over it's underlying RISC design.

But of course, relying on programmers to hand-craft low-level assembly would (and did) make you ship faster systems, sooner.

<comment><USER2> Debian runs on many architectures without being slowed by bytecode JITs. I'd say that's a technically better solution.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but the software has to be compiled to the architecture too using that solution. So it is just putting the problem on to others: the users, the software developers, etc. - many of whom will happily just use something else.

<comment><USER4> > the software has to be compiled to the architecture too using that solution

Right. Which is why Debian has a package management system. Most people never have to compile any of the software they use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great essay -- I agree with its main point: "worse" products triumph over "the right thing" when they are a better fit for the evolutionary and economic constraints imposed by an evolving competitive landscape.

Some examples:

* In the case of the rise of Unix, the market of the 1960's and 1970's valued simplicity and portability over "correct" design.

* In the case of the rise of the x86 architecture over the past three decades, the market valued compatibility and economies of scale over the simplicity and elegance of competing RISC architectures.

* In the case of the current rise of ARM architectures for mobile devices, today's market values simplicity and low-power consumption over compatibility with legacy x86 architectures.

<comment><USER6> Yes, a great explanation, especially the wrap-up at the end.

You can see how people with too narrow a view of technical design would misconstrue this point. If you're hell-bent on (shallow) perfectionism, you perceive the dichotomy as perfect vs imperfect. One step more healthy is simple vs. complex, because it means you've recognized that time is finite, and too much complexity can legitimately kill a project; it's one of the first real-world constraints on viability that intrudes. "Viability" is really the goal, though, typically, when you include the motivations of the humans involved, like seeing their project be successful and have an impact.

The more you can align your moral compass with viability rather than turning smaller issues into battles between good and evil, the more successful you will be.

<comment> loup-vaillant Actually, making it simple is often _harder_. If it where things like the STEPS project[1] would be widespread by now.

Unix didn't won because it was simpler. It won because it was _easier to implement_. In terms of _overall_ simplicity, Lisp systems were probably far ahead.

[1] The punchline is "Personal computing in 1 book (20KLoC)" Compiler suite included of course. <http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf>

<comment><USER7> There _were_ Lisp systems that were simpler than Unix, such as AutoLISP, Scheme, and later XLISP, but the ones that were competing with Unix in the 1970s were things like MACLISP, Zetalisp, and Interlisp, which were much more complex than Unix was at the time. I mean, Zetalisp had its own _microcode_ , its own hypertext documentation, its own GUI, transparent persistence, and a WYSIWYG text editor, at a time when Unix had a couple of C compilers, man pages (its own typesetting system, to be fair), @ and # as the defaults to erase a line and a character, and ed as the standard text editor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I never really got the "Worse is Better" essay. It obviously doesn't mean what everyone says it means and what it does mean isn't clear. This post points some of that out. For example, Worse in the essay was associated with simplicity. But the classic examples of Worse triumphing in the marketplace (the OP cites x86 as an example) are anything but simple: they are hypercomplex. Not only that, their complexity is largely what _makes_ them Worse. Simplicity is rather obviously Better, not Worse. Smalltalk (which the OP cites as Better) is far simpler than its more successful peers. The more you look at the original essay, the more its conceptual oppositions seem muddled and at odds with history. I've concluded that it boils down to exactly one thing: its title. "Worse is Better" is a catchy label that touches on _something_ important about technology and markets and means different things to different people.

<comment><USER9> Such essays are always about concepts that cannot be precisely defined. That aside, I believe that it wasn't really _simplicity_ that "worse" was associated with but _easyness_.

This distinction is well described by Rich Hickey (of Clojure fame) in his "simple made easy" talk. The key point is that simple-complex and easy-hard are two separate axes and that "easy" usually leads to "complex" (the case of x86, I believe) but you can invest some effort in shaping the environment so that "simple" can be "easy".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I often think about software development in similar terms -- evolution versus intelligent design.

The weakness of evolution is that it takes millions of years, it's heavily dependent on initial conditions, there's lots of collateral damage, and most lines die out.

The weakness of intelligent design is that we're only so intelligent, which places a pretty low limit on the possible achievement. (And intelligence is generally regarded as close to a normal distribution, meaning that the smartest people can only handle a small multiple of the complexity of the average person).

Obviously, evolution and design need to be combined somewhat. The question is: how much of each, and at what times during a project? Do you spend 10% of the time quietly planning, 10% arguing with a small group of designers, and 80% trying things and trying to get feedback? Or is it more like 40%, 40%, and 20%? And how do you mix trying things with the designing things?

<comment><USER11> Evolutionary process is not just genetic. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOZ3Xt6ZMBA&t=6m15s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOZ3Xt6ZMBA&t=6m15s) David Sloan on the evolution of egg laying hens.

See the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_equation>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thank you Yossi for writing this piece. It's about time that Worse is Better argument was debunked. Worse isn't better, portable, free (libre, gratis, or at least really cheap) is better.

What many people forget is that during the time frame Worse is Better talks about, Lisp machines cost as much as two or more houses. You couldn't get a decent Lisp system on affordable hardware until MCL, and then you still needed a fairly high-end Mac to run it on.

OTOH, Unix and C-based software ran on a bunch of different machines, which you either already had or could acquire inexpensively. The software was easy to get and inexpensive as well. Then 4.3BSD and Linux came along, and you couldn't beat that on price.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting to note, in this connection, the rising popularity of Haskell, which is _way_ off at the "Right Thing" end of the spectrum.

Maybe it is really possible to come up with the Right Thing eventually -- it just takes a lot of research.

<comment><USER14> What makes you think that Haskell is rising in popularity? While this may be the case on sites like HN and Lambda the Ultimate, more broadly Haskell is nowhere. It certainly hasn't come anywhere near anything that could be described as success in the marketplace.

So your example actually supports the author's thesis, not your own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> An enjoyable and stimulating read. The original essay, by virtue of a few semantic ambiguities (what is "simple" anyway?) is apt to invite this sort of commentary.If I have read this correctly, the author eventually agrees that worse really is better, with the clarification on what this means outlined in the first part of the essay.

However, I was hoping to see a deeper analysis of how the nature of the evolutionary pressure in his domain contributed to the worse is better effect (I am an evolutionary biologist, so I find this kind of thing interesting). For example, if the "product" in question was a mathematical concept of interest to professional mathematicians, there almost certainly be a niche space in which version of the concept exhibiting "consistency, completeness, correctness" will dominate over the competition. For mathematicians consistency and correctness are strongly selected for (completeness, broadly defined, is usually much harder to obtain). For a the average iPhone app, these things still matter, but in a very indirect sense. They get convolved (or low passed, as Alan Kay describes) with other concerns about shipping dates and usability and so on. I would be interested to see a classification of different domains in which "worse is better" and "the right thing" philosophies dominate, and those in which they are represented in roughly equal proportions.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's not too instructive to look back on things that occurred mostly due to happenstance and try to assign reasoning to it.

And it's a bit of a stretch to associate Linux with "Worse is Better." A major reason for using Linux in the early days was that it was the best alternative to Windows 95 because it got process isolation on x86 right.

<comment><USER17> I don't see how to reconcile your first paragraph and your second paragraph. First you dismiss your virtual opponent's argument as trying to assign meaning to a random (or incomprehensible) outcome, then you turn around and assign meaning to the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment> j-g-faustus This actually reminds me of the Plato/Artistotele difference. Plato held that there was an ideal, perfect version of everything in a sort of Idea Heaven, and the goal of the philosopher was to get ever closer to understanding that ideal.

Aristotele, on the other hand, thought that Heaven was too remote, and held that we could learn more by measuring what we see in this world. As opposed to the presumably ideal, but unaccessible, concepts in Heaven.

The medieval church loved Plato, the scientific revolution loved Aristotele.

My point is that the difference between these two frameworks for interpreting the world seems to be fundamental. Fundamental in the sense that the distinction has been with us for at least a couple of milennia, and we are apparently not likely to agree on a single answer anytime soon.

<comment><USER12> It's funny you bring this up, because Platonic idealism has been thoroughly debunked in the past century. Some of the latest thinking on the subject is known as "new materialism," and its core tenet is exactly the "technical evolution" that Yossi talks about in the article. I recommend Manuel de Landa's _War in the Age of Intelligent Machines_ for an introduction (it's as near to a hacker's philosophy book as I've seen).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I try really hard to not take a left vs right view in software design.

I sometimes build systems that are overengineered and I sometimes build systems that are underengineered.

I do believe that every line of code, every function, every class, every comment, every test, everything, is like a puppy that you have to take care of.

If a team adds a "dependency injection framework" that adds a parameter to each and every constructor in a system that has 800 classes, which that's a real cost that's going to make doing anything with that system harder.

I'm a big believer in "cogs bad" because I've seen large teams live the lesson.

From my viewpoint the perfect system is as simple as possible, but well engineered.

</comment><comment><USER19> Another way to put this is that myopically optimizing for perfection along one axis may fatally de-optimize another.

</comment><comment><USER17> My angle at the problem is the concept of "engineering debt": if a well- designed product is the state of being "debt-free", and a deviation from good design is a unit of "engineering debt". That debt will have to be serviced in the form contortions you have to make to work around the design flaws, and then eventually paid down in the form of rewrite, or discharged in an engineering bankruptcy (such as abandoning the product).

Engineering debt, much like financial debt, is an instrument one can use to trade some present-point expenditure for a larger future expenditure. Where one makes sense so often does the other.

Sadly, engineering debt is much harder to account for. Old companies are carrying huge amount of debt and are often times oblivious to it.

I think we could advance the state of the art if were to find a way to quantify engineering debt. As a starting point I suggest a ratio of line changes aimed at servicing vs. line changes aimed at creating new features. If 100 lines of new functionality require 10 lines of base code changes, the debt is low. The opposite is true, the debt is high. I believe such metric could speak to both business managers and engineers, so it provides a good common ground for the two groups of reach consensus and prioritize work.

<comment><USER20> The woes of high debt has always been my argument against all debt since very early experiences as a programmer where I had to recover from a high debt situation. I thought I was being clever in pointing out a cost that is overlooked by divorced-from-details managers and blew it out of all proportion. What I forget, and is the main point I take from this essay, is that the cost of keeping a low debt increases exponentially as the debt decreases.

> I think we could advance the state of the art if were to find a way to > quantify engineering debt. As a starting point I suggest a ratio of line > changes aimed at servicing vs. line changes aimed at creating new features. > If 100 lines of new functionality require 10 lines of base code changes, the > debt is low. The opposite is true, the debt is high

That's the thing with this debt. You can only quantify it once you've paid it back because its quantity is predicated on the cost of paying it back, which differs depending on your aptitude for doing so. And because it's invisible neurotic programmers like me can start to actively fear it, leading to poor decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just don't think "simple" is quite the right word for Worse is Better.

"... It's called Accessibility, and it's the most important thing in the computing world.

The. Most. Important. Thing.

..."

[https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesv...](https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX)

<comment><USER3> What's really funny is that he says Google is ruled by people who only care about product and that platform is suffering, whereas amazon is all services by edict. But the most successful Android tablet product out there is the amazon Kindle Fire. So Google didn't even beat amazon on product and even ended up having to copy it with the Nexus 7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think the lesson is, "whatever is available tends to propogate, even if it is shit. Especially if it is for a large mass of humans, who tend to act stupidly in mass."

You can see it all over the place. How great of an Internet provider was AOL, for example?

</comment><comment><USER23> If he is a perfectionist and has been for many years, then his worst can only be so bad...

</comment><comment><USER24> There are so many generalizations in this article I don't know where to begin...

<comment><USER17> Begin by listing one that you think is unwarranted. Otherwise your comment detracts from the conversation rather than contributing.</comment></comment>


Gizmodo denied press credentials for the WWDC keynote - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5554994/at-this-mondays-apple-keynote-help-us-liveblog <comment><USER2> I guess they're not journalists after all.</comment>


Reddit's discussion of karma for comments - <AUTHOR> http://reddit.com/info/68xfg/comments/

<comment><USER2> I want my karma to be zero (null, nil, 0). Please help me guys using this comment's down arrow. We have just 24 hours.</comment>


Tesla factory is still open for business - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/17/tesla-keeps-fremont-factory-open-amid-covid-19-shelter-in-place-orders.html <comment><USER2> Musk is going to be totally destroyed later for that, especially as COVID-19 spreads in the US. I don't understand the logic over this decision to stay open 'because fears are overblown.' Especially since it's clear that the biggest problem isn't going to be coronavirus, which will pass within a few month, but an economic recession that will follow. Tesla is going to be hammered either way, why risk your employee health now?

<comment><USER3> The excessive focus on Musk is counterproductive, IMO. AFAIK, F, GM, and Nissan are not closing factories in the US.

These companies are very unlikely to do so without being forced.

<comment><USER4> let's add some news context

"Honda Plans to Shut Down North American Plants for Six Days Due to Virus Concerns, Demand Decline"

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/honda-plans-to-shut-down- north-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/honda-plans-to-shut-down-north- american-plants-for-six-days-due-to-virus-concerns-demand-decline-11584537844)

"UAW, Auto Makers Agree to Partial Plant Shutdowns to Curtail Coronavirus. Ford temporarily closes Chicago factory for virus-related parts shortage... The United Auto Workers and Detroit car companies reached agreements on coronavirus-mitigation efforts that for now will avoid a two-week shutdown of U.S. factories."

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/uaw-presses-auto-makers-to- clos...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/uaw-presses-auto-makers-to-close-u-s- plants-over-coronavirus-concerns-11584465805)

"Volkswagen, Airbus Halt European Production Amid Wave of Factory Closures" (Europe not US) [https://www.wsj.com/articles/volkswagen-airbus-halt- european...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/volkswagen-airbus-halt-european- production-amid-wave-of-factory-closures-11584442105)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ordered to close now.

[1] [https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Tesla-s- Fremont...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Tesla-s-Fremont- factory-ordered-to-shut-down-15137774.php)

<comment><USER6> Nope, that's just a rehash of the Sheriff's tweet. As far as I can tell nothing's changed in the last several hours. There's nothing in that article pointing to any specific order directed point-blank at Tesla. The only order I've seen to date is the broad "shelter in place" one, which Tesla either thinks doesn't apply to them or is intentionally defying.

(I've seen _rumors_ the Sheriff's office showed up at the factory today, and that a deal was reached to just finish cars currently on the production line, but nothing new from any credible source so far).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is yesterday's news. Does anybody have today's?

Yesterday they were classified as an essential service and were allowed to stay open (even though they could & should have voluntarily closed).

Yesterday evening they lost that classification, did they open today or not?

<comment><USER8> Seems to still be open as of 3 hours ago and sheriff showed up. [1] (Biased source)

[1] [https://twitter.com/ElonsTruths/status/1240249636914434052](https://twitter.com/ElonsTruths/status/1240249636914434052)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Worth pointing out that traditional automakers' factories remain open as well. The difference is they have the UAW, which still has some small amount of bargaining power. They were unsuccessful in securing a full shutdown, but did manage to negotiate a partial one, with some additional precautions to help limit the spread.

[https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general- motors/2020/0...](https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general- motors/2020/03/17/detroit-3-ceos-uaw-face-off-over-us-factory- production/5069864002/)

<comment><USER10> It's also pretty directly relevant that their factories are not in areas with a legally enforceable shelter-in-place order. Elon seems to be trying to get cute with transportation being one of the essential services exempt from the ban. He may be about to discover this is a bad argument to get into with the county sheriff. [https://www.wired.com/story/sheriff-tells-tesla-not- essentia...](https://www.wired.com/story/sheriff-tells-tesla-not-essential- musk-thinks/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Chronology of the events:

        The morning of March 16: Six counties in the Bay Area have issued a "shelter in place" order with the hope to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 and flatten the growth of the virus. It goes into effect on March 17.

        The afternoon of March 16: Tesla employees are told to show up to work unless they are feeling sick.

        The evening of March 16: Elon Musk says 'coronavirus panic is worse than virus itself' in email to Tesla employees. He tells employees to stay home if they don't feel comfortable, but Tesla will keep operating.

        March 17: local county authorities have confirmed Tesla is exempt as an "essential business."

        The evening of March 17: Sheriff department says Tesla is not an 'essential business' and the factory must obey coronavirus shutdown order

        March 18: Witnesses at Tesla factory says that employees are coming in to work and the employee parking lot is still full of cars for the morning shift.

from [https://electrek.co/2020/03/18/tesla-fremont-factory- operati...](https://electrek.co/2020/03/18/tesla-fremont-factory-operating- despite-sheriffs-order/)

<comment><USER7> From the comments:

i think they reached an agreement to finish the cars on the production line. They will probably clear out tomorrow

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> People were skewering Charter for this same behavior and identical responses: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22609038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22609038)</comment>


The outlook for Bay Area startup space in 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/10/the-outlook-for-bay-area-startup-space-in-2017/ <comment><USER3> I still don't understand why software startups get offices today. I don't see any value in pissing away half my capital enriching a landlord when there are perfectly good tools out there to collaborate without making everyone come to the same place every day.

And it's even better for the environment if we don't make everyone commute.

Can you imagine a world where all the software startups go fully remote and all that prime office space becomes residential? You'd still need the restaurants and bars and whatnot, but instead of a bunch of office workers coming in at noon, you'd have a bunch of neighbors who are all taking a break from their jobs. It would be glorious.

<comment><USER4> I know it's buzzwordy but after using it a bit I'm starting to think VR might really change this.

Instead of losing all of the signals from in person communication, the accidental bump into's or a glance causing you to notice someone doing something relevant to you (or vice versa), you can just walk over to someone else's space and collaborate with them. If they need a period of focus, they can disconnect from the group space and have a doorbell, but it would also be easy to rejoin.

And unlike skype you're not always 'on the call', everyone just happens to be in the same room and if nobody says anything all day it's ok. More to the point you could even mute people if it's not relevant.

<comment><USER5> Why hasn't it happened with video conferencing then?

I once did an 'always on' google hangout with another guy when I was working on a software project with him. It was remarkably effective substitute for being in the same room. Key was it was always on and we could speak to each other when necessary. Nobody does this although in the companies I have worked in.

Also many meeting spaces have microphone quality issues, and it can be hard to hear people in the other meeting room as they have conversations with each other.

Culturally I think it will be hard to pull off, virtue of video conferencing not being used in the same way today.

<comment><USER6> I've worked remotely at a few companies, some of which were "remote first" and some of which weren't.

I'm always surprised by the fact that more companies don't adopt the "always on" google hangout. It's literally in the name of the service, "hangout" yet people use it like a traditional conferencing tool.

If more people adopted it as a ROOM that you all worked in, I have a feeling many of the remote nay sayers would at least feel a little bit better about things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >> "Will SF still be as appealing when the talent can't afford to be here?"

If you're living responsibly, and saving like you should be, then I'd argue we're already at a point where talent can't afford to be there.

>> "Transportation is a major factor around where buildings are being built. It has to be unprecedented with how many more people are coming downtown and we basically have the same transportation system from 50 years ago, and similar levels of parking."

Call me cynical, but my faith that this city will, let alone state, will ever pull their shit together and build public infrastructure, is nonexistent.

<comment><USER7> I wonder what it would take to really kill the golden goose, so to speak - <USER2> really drive away the startups. Every year I hear how place X is the new startup mecca and it's so much cheaper and has all these advantages, and it doesn't happen.

Some people would argue it's basically impossible for the city to kill the industry (if they are even vaguely reasonable); others argue it's already dead.

I don't know, myself.

<comment><USER8> I think there'd be overwhelming support among the voters of San Francisco, Palo Alto, Mountain View, etc. to establish border controls, with "proof of residency before 19XX" and "proof that you are not employed in tech" as conditions of entry.

As far as tactics that might survive Supreme Court challenge, I could see SF's affordable housing program ramping up to 100% of units. The city could then apply those tests for eligibility in the program, in addition to the income ceiling it already uses. The city is already a command economy; state allocation of apartments according to the community's values (i.e. make life hell for tech workers at all costs) is a natural next step.

Seattle, Portland, Boulder, and New York might just do the same.

I will not be surprised to see the end of freedom of movement in the United States within my lifetime. The cities that are attracting migration _do not want more people_. There is widespread support, both among the greedy (who don't want their views and neighorhood character ruined) and bleeding hearts (who don't want the urban poor to suffer from gentrification) that urbanization needs to be stopped.

Maybe someone with a ton of money to spare (Apple?) will start a new city. Or maybe somewhere which is not so attached to its current state (Detroit?) will let us in.

<comment><USER9> Seattle, Portland, and Boulder maybe, but I absolutely guarantee New York will never do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Spending that much on rent for a starting company, is just completely ludicrous.

<comment><USER11> I've said for a long time that if investors insist on only funding Bay Area companies they should just skip the middleman and cut checks directly to real estate owners and speculators.

<comment><USER12> To be a little pedantic here, the numbers quoted here are San Francisco numbers, not "Bay Area" numbers. With just a quick check, I found considerably cheaper commercial lease rates in Mountain View.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are totally right. It was heavily focused on SF. there are great options outside of SF, but all along the Caltrain stops there is really expensive space because they are more accessible. Castro Street in MV can be very expensive. It matters a lot where the founding team lives and also where you want to recruit from and at what scale. there is a ton of talent in SV as well as East Bay to pull from. Good luck on your startup! thanks so much for your comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You could always move to Seattle!

<comment><USER14> I'm pretty sure we're headed the same direction up here

<comment><USER9> Not even remotely close. I have lived in both Seattle and NYC and the difference in rent cost between the two places makes you feel like you are in totally different countries at dramatically different levels of development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article primarily discusses SF, and not the Bay Area. The economics are likely very different in the South/East Bay.

</comment><comment><USER16> All I want is for everyone who complains on Hacker News about living in San Francisco or in the Bay Area to be able to live wherever their heart desires and keep their jobs. I think that would fix everything. Can we all resolve to make that happen? Please?

<comment><USER17> > able to live wherever their heart desires

This may be SF/Bay for those complaining. They feel they "deserve" for it to be cheaper.</comment></comment>