Who really runs Wikipedia? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/05/economist-explains-who-really-runs-wikipedia?fsrc=neurogami <comment><USER2> I recall taking a class on journalism and we argued about whether or not true objectivity could ever exist. Some people pointed out that it was possible to write an article that consisted only of factual statements, and therefore such an article proved that objectivity was possible.

There were several counter-arguments: what about the factual statements that were not included? You could factually say "The nation of x invaded the nation of y and slaughtered 10,000 innocents." That makes the nation of x sound pretty bad. It might also be factually true that the nation of y had invaded the nation of x the previous month, but if you leave that out, is your article still objective? It only consists of factual statements, but those factual statements paint a misleading portrait.

I recall the professor of that class insisted that most of the bias he saw in newspapers happened at the level of deciding what subjects to cover. During his career he had seen the following scenario: a newspaper might run an objective article about corruption in Egypt, and an objective article about the brutality of the Iranian government, but then the paper would perhaps never run an article that objectively covered the treatment of some people under Israeli rule. Each article was objective, but the overall coverage was biased.

And so too, with Wikipeida. 85% of the editors are male. Does that have an impact one what decisions get made? This opening is interesting:

"LATE last month Amanda Filipacchi, an American writer, discovered that the editors of Wikipedia, a crowdsourced online encyclopaedia, were re- categorising female American authors from "American Novelists" to to "American Women Novelists". No corresponding "American Men Novelists" subject area existed at that time. "

Even if each article tries to acheive Neutral Point Of View, there can still be bias merely in the way things get categorized.

<comment><USER3> > You could factually say "The nation of x invaded the nation of y and > slaughtered 10,000 innocents."

Probably not. "Innocents" is not a factual description, nor is "slaughtered", and "invaded" is dubious. More importantly, even to the extent that that statement could be rephrased into a series of fact claims, that doesn't make it objective. Fact claims aren't inherently objective, as belief in a fact claim is generally based on subjective interpretation of evidence for that claim.

Striving to eliminate as much as possible the reporter's subjectivity results in what we see frequently in the media today: "He said, she said" journalism where the reported facts consist merely of reports that varying parties made various claims.

<comment><USER4> > _Striving to eliminate as much as possible the reporter's subjectivity > results in what we see frequently in the media today: "He said, she said" > journalism where the reported facts consist merely of reports that varying > parties made various claims._

Wikipedia does that too to some degree. The goal for claims in a wikipedia article is that they be _verifiable_ , not that they be _true_. The definition of a "verifiable" claim is that somebody made that claim in a "reliable source". So people wanting to push a point of view will pad out the article with references to other people expressing that view. Pointing out that the view is _wrong_ and explaining why tends to be discarded as "original research".

In instances when the conventional wisdom is wrong but widely reported, wikipedia will tend to report that conventional wisdom.

The good news is that often when this happens, you can find what contrary points of view are being suppressed by skimming the associated talk page. It's usually worth doing that on controversial and/or current topics.

<comment><USER3> > Wikipedia does that too to some degree. The goal for claims in a wikipedia > article is that they be verifiable, not that they be true.

Tertiary sources are _by design_ about summarizing and relaying what secondary (and sometimes primary) sources have stated about subjects. They serve a different function than news reporting.

What is a sensible approach for an encyclopedic reference is not a sensible approach for news reporting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The NPOV and sourcing rules are what they are (quixotic, doomed to fail), but one thing that I think doesn't get enough attention is the violence they do to _style_. Wikipedia can at best read like the output of a really good text summarization algorithm; usually it's even worse. I love reading Wikipedia, and I love it even more when I come across gems like "the midget commits bowel movements" [1] that gets edited down from the delightfully insane to the beigest beige.

I am aware that looking for reading pleasure in Wikipedia is a fool's errand, and I'm not suggesting that anything change; but the relationship between the Wikipedia house style and their rules about "objectivity" is perhaps under- appreciated.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Trapped_in_the_Clo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Trapped_in_the_Closet&diff=prev&oldid=436411213)

<comment><USER6> _the output of a really good text summarization algorithm_

Yes. And I value this aspect very much.

Often as not, I prefer the wikipedia page description over a (open source) project's self-description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One point that I had from experience is that Wikipedia tends to entrench the bias of its editors, through seemingly sensible policies. A specific example happened to me while contributing to the Arab spring pages (while the Arab spring was ongoing). It was claimed that the Tunisian revolution was the first by an Arab country. I disagreed because Sudan had a couple, which I know of because I am Sudanese. Sensibly, the admins requested citation needed and no original research. Given that the statement in question was mentioned in the NYT and the British Guardian. I had to contact the journals, and the Guardian actually published a correction, before the issue was settled. For other issues involving Sudan I was generally not so lucky. Wikipedia reflects the US understanding of Sudan, with a European slant, much more than it reflects the situation in Sudan.

My lesson: we must try to understand the New York Times effect on man..

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra I no longer donate to Wikimedia until they find a way to end all kinds of sociopatic bullshit surrounding it.

<comment><USER8> I think you are setting the bar too high. Nothing is perfect, but Wikipedia is great.

If you have some better idea how these things should be handled, then please explain.

<comment><USER9> This is mildly off-topic, but since we're talking about the little hitlers that dominate wikipedia content, here goes...

I (John Kozubik / rsync.net) will donate USD 10,000 to wikipedia if they change their official stance to inclusionism, and adopt a "all well formed articles belong" stance.

Yes, most of what is in deletionpedia is garbage. Yes, it deserved to be deleted. But somewhere in there are thousands of articles that people spent hours on, in good faith, zapped away due to "notability". If it's well formed, it gets in.

<comment><USER10> I just got bit by this recently...there used to be an excellent article on frisson in WP. Full of great information and a nice collection of external resources. It was 2 or 3 pages long and was up for several years if I recall. It was probably one of the best summaries of the topic on the Internet at one time.

It's gone, redirects to "cold chills" [1] which is not only incorrect, it's a far inferior article to begin with.

Having given up on contributing or editing things in WP due to the rampant and frustrating deletionism I have no idea how to even begin the labyrinthine process of getting the old article returned. The only thing I can find of it is a history where sometime in 2007 it was marked for redirection...but I know that it worked at least through 2010 and into 2011 (my own comment history has a link to it back then).

1 - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson>

<comment><USER9> Frisson is not in deletionpedia - perhaps they do not retain articles that were simply merged, etc.

Your frustration is shared by many, many people. Here's a well formed article on a software package:

[http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=EleBBS_(d...](http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=EleBBS_\(deleted_10_Jul_2008_at_04:15\))

that was deleted because some kids hadn't heard of RA before. There are _thousands_ of these.

<comment><USER10> > perhaps they do not retain articles that were simply merged, etc.

if that _is_ the case, that's infuriating, I wonder how many tens of thousands of man hours and how much knowledge has been vaporized in this way

 _poof_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't forget that even though en.wikipedia is the most important, each language version is independent. Some of those have distinct characteristics.

Many things are carried off from the largest one, but for example governance can include unique features (e.g. Arbitration Committee, which is rare). Each have their own established practices in deletions. For example En.wikipedia has merit-based deletion, where you suggest support or delete with an argument and it hopefully leads to a consensus. In fi.wikipedia only the numbers in a community-wide vote matter. There are also some optional quality assurance methods (Flagged revisions).

For example De.wikipedia has a very developed, almost professional Wikimedia foundation chapter behind them. They run several development projects and global services on behalf of the whole community. Flagged revisions was piloted there. They also have a distinct look due to strict guidelines on image use. Unlike most, they don't allow fair use pictures.

<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Flagged_Revisions> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Arbitration_Committee>

Tektok @ Economist: "Wikipedia is run by those who have the most time to waste and energy to outlast others." Unfortunately this is not far from the truth.

</comment><comment><USER12> If one wants to know the official narrative of the US government or the EU, you only need to glance into a recent history book distributed in schools, or Wikipedia.

<comment><USER13> Of course I agree, but there's an extra reason why this is the case on Wikipedia. Let's take a look at "History of Iraq" on Wikipedia back in 2002 -

[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Iraq...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Iraq&oldid=569103)

"Once known as Mesopotamia, Iraq was the site of flourishing ancient civilizations, including the Sumerian, Babylonian, and Parthian cultures. Muslims conquered Iraq in the seventh century A.D. In the eighth century, the Abassid caliphate established its capital at Baghdad, which became a frontier outpost on the Ottoman Empire."

Now let's look at the US State Department profile of Iraq it had from 2001 to 2003 -

<http://www.state.gov/outofdate/bgn/iraq/24819.htm>

"Once known as Mesopotamia, Iraq was the site of flourishing ancient civilizations, including the Sumerian, Babylonian, and Parthian cultures. Muslims conquered Iraq in the seventh century A.D. In the eighth century, the Abassid caliphate established its capital at Baghdad, which became a frontier outpost on the Ottoman Empire."

Yes, the history of Iraq on Wikipedia was literally written by the US State Department. As have the histories of most of the world's countries.

<comment><USER14> Isn't it possible that the state department plagiarised Wikipedia?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I always though Wikipedia was run by lobbyists and publicists who have their clients best interests at heart.

<comment><USER16> Big pharma has massive influence on a whole lot of Wikipedia articles, it is quite disgusting to be honest.

<comment><USER17> I would like to know more, could please explain further and give some examples?

<comment><USER16> Let's just say, they would go as far as saying parachute is unproven as it has never undergone a double blined trial.

They would then go on and somehow imply parachute is bad for you by citing parachute accidents.... Nicely sourced.

It's... disgusting.

This is actually not isolated to big pharma, a whole host of other pages on Wikipedia suffer from the same kind of agenda pushing editors.

<comment><USER18> Instead of fabricated strawman examples of what you could imagine they might do, do you have any examples of what they have actually done?

<comment><USER19> Electronic cigarette article summary doesn't mention that they are healthier than tobacco. And the article was much worse in the past.

<comment><USER20> Bad example. The e-cig article does a fine job of pointing out that they're healthier than cigarettes.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_cigarette#Health_con...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_cigarette#Health_concerns)

"Proponents of electronic cigarettes often claim that electronic cigarettes deliver the experience of smoking while eliminating the smell and health risks associated with tobacco smoke."

"While e-cigarettes may give nicotine addicts more or less the same amount of nicotine as a conventional cigarette, they do not produce the same toxic smoke that can cause lung disease and cancer when inhaled over time. Since there are no products of combustion to be inhaled, no tobacco toxins are inhaled besides nicotine"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The answer is short: the policies are in charge.

Follow a few discussions and the (crowdsourced) rules are continually umpiring them. Do all editors follow them, no. But when other (more experienced) editors come along - eventually - the hammer falls. You'll see an admin in the fray now and then, but rarely.

</comment><comment><USER22> Reminds me of the early worries, wikis can never work yadda yadda yadda. In fact there may be countless changes, but if people care about a subject they will monitor it and notice even the tiny changes.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if Wikipedia will suffer from some of the same problems the open directory (DMOZ) did when it began to stagnate. Ops became openly hostile and started promoting or punishing various people / causes / businesses depending on their personal alignment.

</comment><comment><USER13> Well start with Wikipedia's head, Wales. Where does he come from, how does he think? We know he ran an Ayn Rand mailing list before becoming involved with Wikipedia, but how does his personal, political thinking influence Wikipedia? Well he himself has said that conservative Friedrich Hayek's work "is central to my own thinking about how to manage the Wikipedia project". While he is not always blatant and draconian in politically influencing Wikipedia, this has cropped up again and again.

For example this Arbitration Committee spoken of - in mid-2005 Wales appoints an editor so biased against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims that Wikipedia Review has a whole forum on this editor - JayJG ( <http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showforum=46> ). People find him incredibly biased and the vote of all Wikipedia in early 2006 for ArbCom members kicks him out. But Wales is not happy with this and decides to stuff ArbCom, like FDR threatened to stuff the Supreme Court. So Wales creates a new ArbCom seat. Does he appoint the Wikipedia-wide next highest voted neutral editor to ArbCom? No, he reappoints this Arab and Muslim hating editor JayJG.

You can find many examples of this sort of thing. With Wikipedia, the rot starts at the top. One day, a rival wiki encyclopedia will come into play and trounce Wikipedia (or at least be an alternative to it).

<comment><USER20> Jimmy Wales doesn't run Wikipedia and is not the head of Wikipedia. He is a figurehead. There's a very dramatic difference between the concepts.

That fact makes your entire rant pointless.

<comment><USER23> A figurehead who can create new seats on committees and arbitrarily appoint people to them doesn't seem a "figurehead" to me, unless you're insinuating that he's merely doing someone else's dirty work.

<comment><USER24> I'll put it this way: grandparent's example was from _7_ years ago. If Wales was not a figurehead, his chosen example should be a little more recent, shall we say?

<comment><USER23> I agree that he's renounced his long-held sweeping powers a few years ago, but he still has "editorial input", sits on the board and clearly still holds a certain influence.

I have nothing against the guy, to be honest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The days of people being lazy information consumers are long past. If something is important, it's incumbent upon you to pursue understanding of said something. Wikipedia has been a very useful platform, but it is no more secure in its future than horseshoe manufacturers were a century ago.

People and society need information and if someone or whatever outlet supplies good information, people will use it. If the person or whatever outlet start putting out bad information, the audience will leave for better information sources.

</comment><comment><USER16> PR firms LOVE Wikipedia...

<comment><USER26> They do because that website hasn't got the faintest grasp of what "Conflict of Interest" means. One or two years ago there was this thing that Wikipedia calls an RfC on conflicts of interest, and you had to scroll down half of a huge page before someone would even properly define it. That person was someone with an IP address. Wish I could find that one.

<comment><USER27> This comment reeks of enmity. Google "WP:COI", which was the standard in place when I was editing back in ~2007. The notion that "that website" hasn't the "faintest grasp" of what conflict of interest means beggars belief.

Instead, what's happened is this: WP is entirely built out of volunteer contributions, volunteers are often interested in specific topics close to their daily lives, and contributions from subject matter experts --- that is, the best contributions --- tend to be freighted with COI issues. So resolving how the project is meant to handle COI without shutting off their best contributions is difficult and can involve lots of rules-lawyering.

Again, these kinds of arguments always seem to take for granted that we are talking about perhaps one of the most successful group projects in the history of the Internet; Wikipedia is, of course, an achievement on par with many of the best of the last 20 years. But now that we have it, and the novelty is all gone, all we can do to engage with what WP is doing is snark at it.

<comment><USER26> > Google "WP:COI", which was the standard in place when I was editing back in > ~2007. The notion that "that website" hasn't the "faintest grasp" of what > conflict of interest means beggars belief.

It's not WP:COI. It's a different page, a Wikipedia RfC that they held for some reason or another; they were theorizing for quite some time why it doesn't matter if a contributor holds a conflict of interest, Wikipedia will correct itself over the long term, and only eventually someone came up and defined what a conflict of interest actually is. I still cannot find the page but wish I could show you.

[edit] It's this one: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/COI)

Jesus Christ, twenty years ago the medical press learned about conflicts of interest at the hand of the tobacco industry, and still a substantial part of contributors believes it's unimportant or will correct itself eventually.

Only a few months back, a BP representative declared their involvement with BP _and proceeded to edit the page on BP unimpeded_. Companies send press kits to trade journals, but they never got to actually write material, unless labeled "advertisement".

The way Wikipedia deals with PR is simply hideous. OK, they are waking up, but the fact of them ignoring centuries of real-world experience with the subject thinking they could do better just makes my head shake.

<comment><USER27> I don't see anything in your comment about how Wikipedia deals with PR. I cited the Wikipedia policy on conflict of interest issues, and you keep talking about some discussion that took place on Wikipedia at some point, as if a discussion on a site run by anonymous volunteers was somehow dispositive.

<comment><USER26> The discussion there shows the viewpoints of the participants and the suggestions going forward in dealing with PR, and they are for the most part naive.

Here is an actual example how PR has been dealt with: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/TimidGuy_ban_appeal).

The protagonists are "TimidGuy", a person affiliated with Maharishi University of Management engaging in advocacy for Transcendental Meditation, and "Will Beback", the fellow who attempted to put a lid on the PR. The outcome: a siteban for Will Beback and no consequences for TimidGuy.

A weak performance.

<comment><USER27> Did you actually _read_ this case? An editor is topic-banned from editing pages about Indian religions after a pattern of advocacy is detected. The ban expires, and the editor resumes contributing to pages on those topics, but without the advocacy; for instance, the user adds negative material about topics he'd previously advocated for.

Another Wikipedia editor notices the resumption in editing and goes nuts, trying to out the user, appealing for the user to be banned, and picking intractable fights.

What conclusion was this case supposed to come to?

Is it your belief that the whole of ArbCom are secretly in the tank for commercial transcendental meditation?

Also, look at how much time Wikipedia sunk into trying to resolve this case carefully. How do you find a way to make that a bad thing?

<comment><USER26> > What conclusion was this case supposed to come to?

I said this already: in the real world companies send press releases to trade journals, who then turn those into editorial content. The equivalent on Wikipedia would be that the PR professional makes his suggestions on the talkpage but is banned from the main article. It this even a question? What alternative do you suggest? Neither Harvard nor Maharishi University get to write their own pages in US News & World Report College Rankings Issue.

I can understand well how someone can go mad and eventually become completely out of order when faced with a history of ethically questionable behaviour. Unfortunately Wikipedia isn't very lenient with mad people.

> Is it your belief that the whole of ArbCom are secretly in the tank for > commercial transcendental meditation?

They are just inexperienced and clueless. But that isn't an excuse, clue is required when in a visible position at one of the world's top websites.

Did you ever read the Conflict-of-Interest RfC? Actually it is a product of that TM Arbcom case. There are some real howlers in there:

Jclemens: _Whether an editor is directly paid to edit Wikipedia is irrelevant to the quality of their contributions_

Sandstein: _Conflict of interest (COI) is a problem only where it leads to the production of non-neutral (or unverifiable, or otherwise policy-noncompliant) content_

Sven Manguard: _We should not treat paid editors differently from unpaid editors._

Elen of the Roads: _... to be clear that the problem is not working for Acme PR, being Prof Elk or having a lifelong interest in debunking astrology. It is breaching the contract with the reader that articles will be fair, balanced, neutral, give due weight to all the current thinking._

All of these are prominent Wikipedians with very, _very_ muddled thinking.

<comment><USER27> The one example you've managed to provide is of Wikipedia going through tedious and extensive efforts to prevent conflict-of-interest edits. Maybe you could provide a more convincing example than this one?

I simply don't care what you read on some Wikipedia discussion page about what random people on the Internet think about conflict-of-interest edits. The project has rules; cite those, or cite instances where the rules weren't followed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Predicting Most Likely Catch Based on NOAA Data - <AUTHOR> http://whatthefish.ml/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is my first public data project and I was just hoping to get some feedback from the good people at hacker news. Thanks!</comment>


Hang Around with People who Get Shit Done - <AUTHOR> http://jaxn.org/article/hang-around-with-people-who-get-shit-done

<comment><USER2> In the realm of "productivity", there are many different personality types:

\- People with vision, who can recognize potential in a concept or idea

\- People who, given an idea, can conceptualize all the use cases and rare exceptions

\- People who can initiate projects and provide good momentum for all those involved

\- People who take a task, buckle, down and get their part done

\- People who carefully examine other folks' work to check for mistakes

\- People who can take a languishing project and bring it through to completion

\- People who play constructive devil's advocate, helping you consider all the possible risks

\- People with all sorts of other skills that I didn't think of right now

\- People who slack

When building a team, you'll need almost all of these personality types (you could probably leave out the slacker, though). Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater by only looking for the "manager" types or the "coder" types.

<comment><USER3> Might just be me, but I feel like you're really over-analyzing things here.

<comment><USER4> Ah, the constructive devil's advocate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is - frankly - bad advice. Especially for a young child.

It's a bad idea to pigeon hole yourself into "hanging around" one type of person or one people who are dominant in one type of trait. The whole reason people build teams is to maximize differing traits to gain the most value from each. You'll gain the most from life from leaning to recognize this as early as possible.

In this case, people that "get things done" at youth levels are generally those with strong implementation skills - the "doers" of the world if it were. But implementers are only part of the picture. There are several other personality types that are just as beneficial to outcomes, and by excluding them you exclude many strengths in the name of pure productivity.

eykanal leads into this in his comment but I'd like to expand on it a bit.

Stereotyping examples here for ease of explanation:

People with strong vision and ideas tend to be able to see 10 steps ahead of others. However these people also tend to be horrible at getting things done on their own. Their joy is looking forward, not being in the moment. Without these people however, we cannot move forward. These people will be the ones that think it would be neat to build an Eiffel Tower out of toothpicks in the first place.

People with an eye for detail tend to be strong editors/coaches etc. These people might not dream up new approaches or work hard to see them to completion, but they are experts at critique and can notice, for instance, that the toothpick Eiffel Tower could be 3 feet higher if you simply adjusted the angle at which you glued the toothpicks together by 5 degrees.

People who "get shit done" often tend to be implementers. They may have seen that toothpick Eiffel Tower in a book or heard about it from a friend, but they went out and got the resources and started putting things together.

My entire point: None of these people are more or less valuable than any other. It isn't the skill-set that is the important variable, but the degree at which the person employs their talents that matters. Suggesting your child should "hang around" the implementers _while discarding others_ is basically teaching them that only certain key talents are valuable and the rest are garbage.

That type of thinking actually _reduces_ their long term chances of success, because like it or not, no one person can be outstandingly good at every viable human talent. People who realize what they aren't good at will team up with others who excel in that talent and will get much further ahead overall.

Accept and reject _individuals_. Don't evaluate personality types. Some of the most profound thinkers in history were slackers. Some of the best coaches of elite athletes suck at the sports they teach.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here.

It was not my intent to pigeon hole people based on their outcomes. Time spent doing is different than creating or implementing.

For instance, reading all of the Harry Potter books is getting something done too. Flipping channels on the couch all day, not so much. The skateboard example in my post is also a good one - that is getting something done. Standing around the ramp and pretending to skate isn't.

Also, coaching is doing something cool.

As for the comment about visionaries. Doesn't that only matter if they can sell their vision? And wouldn't "selling a vision" be getting something done. (I don't mean sales in the $$$ way, just in the sense of transferring the vision to others and maybe inspiring action)

Thinking isn't really doing, but sharing those thoughts is. Frankly, the most profound thinkers who never shared their thoughts in a way that impacted others had no real impact on the world.

<comment><USER6> "For instance, reading all of the Harry Potter books is getting something done too. Flipping channels on the couch all day, not so much."

I've always found it interesting that reading, as a form of entertainment, always seems to be held on a pedestal compared to television, cinema, or videogames. It's a kind of elitism that the literati hold over everyone who doesn't find reading as enjoyable as them. Consider this: one person reads the entire Harry Potter series and another reads the entire Twilight series, both are reading but the quality of the material is completely different. Assuming that literature is de facto superior to any other form entertainment is completely ignorant and wrong.

In this case, swap "flipping channels all day", which could include watching informative shows such as Bill Nye, How It's Made, or Mythbusters, with "watching Jersy Shore all day" and confusion about entertainment quality preferences are removed.

<comment><USER7> I mostly agree with you, with a caveat: reading involves practicing an increasingly scarce skill: the ability to focus for long periods of time.

<comment><USER8> I think this quote is relevant:

"One of my mentors asked me what was better – to spend 10 hours in front of the TV or to spend 10 hours doing other activities. Of course, I said the latter – there are few things I think that are worse than just sitting in front of the TV. Wrong, he said. It makes no difference – because what matters is how intensely you do any of those activities. It's how much intensity you inject into those 10 hours rather than how you superficially spend them. If you watch TV intensely, with purpose, for 10 hours, you probably spent those 10 hours well."[0]

I acknowledge that _watching with purpose_ and _flipping channels_ are different things—the point is, maybe _what_ you do matters not as much as _how_ you do it.

Perhaps watching TV is an activity that by its nature discourages any purpose and intensity, while reading has opposite effect? (Although I totally can read with my mind half-off, so it probably depends on an individual.)

[0] [http://thescenicroute0.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/passion- make...](http://thescenicroute0.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/passion-makes-all- things-alive-and-significant/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dude totally buries the lede.

You gain respect from others who get shit done by _getting shit done_. It's not just important to hang around folks who do things, you need to participate in the community by doing things yourself.

The advice "hang around people who do things" and "dump people who don't do things" is very much losing the forest for the trees.

<comment><AUTHOR> To me, that means it is a feedback loop. Hang around people who do things, do things, more people who do things hang around, etc.

Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER10> It is a feedback loop, but how can you hang around people who do things in the first place? Someone in your group has to be the one who initially does things, so why not make that you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While this advice is sound, it borders on extreme. I'd tell my kids (I don't have any, and don't plan on it btw) to hang around good people. Some of those good people will 'get shit done', others won't but there is something to gain from being around good people. Valuing people on their amount of output seems to cheapen their existence. I know a lot of people who don't 'get shit done' but are great people who I value, and I am happy to have in my life. I don't blame my lack of productivity on those around me.

<comment><USER12> I'd guess the best way to summarise the type of people you mean are "positive" people. Positive in their outlook, attitude and output.

<comment><USER11> Yes, 'positive' is a better way to describe the people I am referring to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I learned this a long time ago: "If you want to get something done ask a busy person to do it."

<comment><USER14> And better is to decide to be a busy person.

My wife keeps asking where I get the energy to do so much. Answer: I don't, it's not about having the energy, it's about just doing what needs to be done.

<comment><USER5> Just remember that life is what is happening while you are busy getting shit done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is so true. Surrounding yourself with people who are making things happen is a sure fire way to get motivated. Not to mention, these are definitely the type of people you want to have around you when building a team. Very good post.

</comment><comment><USER16> Clearly good advice, but I'll add two cents.

Hang around people who are passionate about things and try to make your circle include people passionate about very different things.

</comment><comment><USER17> I totally agree with the poster, but at the same time it feels a little pretentious. I think people might have more fun if they just hung out with people that make them feel good, which may include 'people who get shit done' or 'people who are not overly judgmental' or 'people who really like playing magic'. It's easy to get caught up in constant productivity. There is merit to the phrase 'stopping to smell the flowers'. 2cents.

<comment><USER14> <http://www.xkcd.com/863/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> People like to throw around this kind of advice often. Hanging around people who "get shit done" is a privilege that not everyone has. What happens when you go to a cheap college in Mexico where none of the computer science teachers have ever worked in a large scale application and most haven't even written one in their lives? How do you apply this advice when 90% of your classmates can't read a sentence of english and learning something unusual like python and deploying a toy app on some server not only puts you ahead by miles of the rest of your class but also of the rest of your entire generation? Some communities don't have this kind of people. Is someone in this position supposed to ditch everyone around him/her?

<comment><USER19> If you have internet access, hang around on-line communities that get shit done that interests you. Open source projects are the trivial example, but there are other options too.

For instance, I do participate in flashmobs organized via Facebook and I didn't know anyone there the first time I went. Some friends are the core group of a well known latin-american mailing list dedicated to crack software (and most of them learned how to use cracking tools by hanging around in the list). These friends are from small towns around Argentina (where usually there are very few interesting people). Also, lots of charities and political parties are open for people who want to do things and organize via internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nowadays I think a viable substitute is simply exposure to such people through a technical medium. A lot of my friends don't accomplish anything, yet I associate through technology with people and energy that inspires me to accomplish more.

I also think this advice can have negative repercussions. I have friends who think "I can only be disciplined and accomplish anything if I am around inspiring people," and use it as an excuse to accomplish nothing on their own and be an emotional leech when they are around successful people.

</comment><comment><USER21> I interpret this in the sense that your environment is a key driver of your actions.

For me this is most evident when observing where I (/ my friends) live. If you live with people who drink four nights a week, guess what...you probably will too. If you live with people who cook healthy food and go running three times a week there is a much greater chance you will too.

Obviously you can rise above your surroundings but if you have a goal then you should put yourself in an environment conducive to getting there.

</comment><comment><USER22> As the saying goes "show me your friends and I'll show you your future"

</comment><comment><USER23> There is no way to keep up close rlationships with everyone you meet so it is important to give preference to people with the qualities that you most admire and desire to replicate.

Driven, Creative, Intelligent, professional, and Open-minded are a couple of my general "qualifications" I use when deciding where I should put my effort.

It might sound cold and calculating, but that is because I am trying to put no bias into it. I promis I am not that ruthless and cold.

</comment><comment><USER24> Anybody have a twitter list of people who always tweet about things they get done? I hardly use twitter, but would if I had such a list.

Related: Show HN posts: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4053427>

<comment><USER25> I'm going to guess that a non-trivial fraction of people that get things done don't bother tweeting about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This advice generalizes well: if you want to lose weight or be fit, join a running club.

<comment><AUTHOR> Part of the inspiration for the post actually :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> As a dad-to-be I find this "advice" to be awfully elitist and wouldn't entertain it with my child in the slightest. Judging your friends on there abilities is sad .. friendships are not made this way.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we all try to teach our kids to avoid the mistakes that we made and to grow from the successes that we have had. Your lessons will likely be different from mine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Reminds me of this:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/health/25iht- fat.4.6830240...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/health/25iht- fat.4.6830240.html?pagewanted=all)

While the results of this study are fairly intuitive, they also are fairly profound. When I take step back and look at my core group of friends and how we have evolved over the years, it is frightening to notice the similarities in our evolution (if you can call it that).

</comment><comment><USER29> Also surround yourself with slackers. Surround yourself with people every type you can. Learn from them all. Even the lazy ones can teach you things.

<comment><USER26> "Surround yourself with everyone" isn't really actionable advice. It'd be sort of like hanging out at the mall or the quad of a large univerity. Maybe instead spend some time with the niches and factions of life. To continue the university analogy: stop by the chess club, hang out with some rowers, say "hi" to the debate team, show up at the stoners' party.

<comment><USER30> As a chess-playing collegiate rower who likes engage in random debates with people, I think I've done all of the above :) Variety is definitely important to keep things interesting - I think getting stuck in one "niche" circle is fairly alienating - even if that niche group gets shit done. You start filtering people based on some common preconceptions. Being part of several different groups with differing viewpoints, on the other hand, should make you value individuality more and be a more rounded/easier person to be around.

Just my $0.02

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is great advice - I would like to add a bit of philosophy that someone once gave me:

Experience is more important than achievement.

</comment><comment><USER32> I would not teach my children to hang out with people to get things done per se. Just start getting stuff done regardless of others and as a nice side- effect you will find yourself hanging out with others who get stuff done.

</comment><comment><USER33> And the converse: avoid spending time with slackers.

<comment><USER34> Depends on your definition of slacker... The original article says "Getting air on a 10 foot tall ramp with a skateboard? Also cool." yet most people would describe a skateboarder as a slacker.

I think being around people that aren't necessarily "productive" is perfectly fine. It's being around people who do NOTHING that is bad but I find that if you are the kind of person who does things then you will find yourself around inactive people less and less over time.

Couch potatoes seem to attract one another and repel everyone else.

<comment><USER35> It does seem to be a fairly context-dependent term. A lot of people here are one kind: the kind of person who has enough time to accumulate thousands of posts on HN is, at least in some people's minds, a kind of slacker, the 2010s version of the 1990s posting-from-work Slashdotter. :)

It even takes a certain kind of slacking, in a sense, to read lots of random Wikipedia articles, keep up with current events, browse arXiv papers not directly on the topic of your current work, keep up with recent music, etc. Arguably reading a lot is not really slacking. But maybe keeping up with recent musical trends is? Seems all quite subjective, unless you literally are doing nothing.

I tend to see it more as different thought/work styles along several axes. For example, on a question of dabbling in side projects, for some people it'd be good advice to suggest laying off and concentrating more on one thing, while for others, encouraging a bunch of side projects is exactly the right advice. Some people need to do less random-walk reading, while maybe others need to do more...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> As someone who does a pretty middling amount of shit in the grand scheme of things, articles like this make me sad.

</comment><comment><USER37> well i don't have kids but the one thing i'll teach my kids when i get them is the pomodoro.

The fact that you can be insanely productive in short bursts of time while taking breaks in between should not be underestimated.

you certainly don't need to be around productive people to be productive.

<comment><USER38> I have been using a much simplified version of the Pomodoro Method to encourage teenagers to do homework/work individually without distractions in class.

Modest progress; I'll push it earlier next year

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> To quote a previous HN article:

"You are the average of your 3 closest friends"

Pick your friends wisely.

</comment><comment><USER40> I would've thought people who get shit done don't do much hanging around, on account of all the shit they're getting done.

<comment><USER41> It's true. People who get stuff done are rare. Hence finding other people to hang around can be difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Everyone believes they 'Get Shit Done'. Its just that everyone places value in different shit.

</comment><comment><USER43> nice job bro...

</comment><comment><USER44> Solid advice</comment>


On the existence of two states in liquid water [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://polymer.bu.edu/hes/articles/mmcjggjms16.pdf <comment><USER2> John Baez has some interesting things to say about different structures that appear in water:

[https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2013/11/29/water/](https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2013/11/29/water/)

And these things have a very strong temperature dependence. I wonder if it has anything to do with the current discussion.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting that the low end of this phase transition range coincides with the maximum safe temperature for mammals and birds. It could be that the delicate biological mechanisms we've developed over the years are highly sensitive to some of the bulk characteristics that change in this range.

<comment><USER4> The paper talks about this. It's not just mammals and birds, proteins in general become less stable over 60C:

"This raises the question of whether temperature-driven structural changes in water affect biological macromolecules in aqueous solutions and in particular in proteins... It was found that the temperature stability range of the protein is confined to the reversible interval 45–65°C. ... In all cases the critical temperature of the protein denaturation is very close to the crossover temperature T* observed in all the properties of liquid water reviewed in this work."

This is probably why sous vide temperature is around 60C.

<comment><USER5> > This is probably why sous vide temperature is around 60C.

But why are sauna temperatures above this, being in the range of 70C-90C?

<comment><USER6> That small organisms cannot survive saunas, only large organisms with temperature regulation ("warm-blooded"), is probably a design feature.

<comment><USER7> This and because you don't stay in a Sauna for more than a few hours

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it is cool that there is evidence for these two states in water. I don't think, however, that the biological relevance was made particularly clear. There is hardly any life on earth for which these temperatures (upwards of 45C) play a role, and consequently, any effect on proteins would be 'out of context' within which protein function was under selective pressure. Whether or not protein stability is affected by these transitions of water states could therefore be purely coincidental. Having said this, however, one could perhaps learn more about how water affects protein function in 'normal' temperature ranges by breaking function with the other water state (but I don't understand this well enough to think of a way how to do this).

<comment><USER9> > There is hardly any life on earth for which these temperatures (upwards of > 45C) play a role, and consequently, any effect on proteins would be 'out of > context'

It makes me wonder what the pressure dependence is for this phase change. [http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/water_phase_diagram.html](http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/water_phase_diagram.html)

Pressures inside a particular piece of cellular machinery can be much higher than 0.1 MPa (1 bar).

<comment><USER10> There's nothing on the article about thermal expansion and heat coefficient. So I'm assuming in both states they are the same.

If so, there is really no reason to expect this state change to be much affected by pressure.

There also seems to be no latent heat absorbing¹, and from the widely varying changing temperature, I imagine both states coexist on those ~20°C. Water is really weird.

1 - Otherwise people would have discovered this long ago.

<comment><USER9> I just realized you're forgetting a huge class of life -- soil organisms. Compost heaps contain the most diversity of life when "cooked" between 55C and 65C.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ELI5 please?

<comment><USER12> the conclusion probably says it all?

"In conclusion, a review of the physical properties of water in the 0–100°C temperature range reveals a bilinear behaviour that defines a crossover temperature at 50 ± 10°C. This observation supports the hypothesis that there are two states of liquid water. We find that these two states play an important role in the thermal and optical properties of nanomedical systems. Finally, our preliminary findings suggest that the structure of liquid water strongly influences the thermal stability of proteins. More in-depth research on the thermal stability of proteins dispersed in liquid water is needed."

<comment><USER13> Yes, but just what _are_ those states? I see no explicit hypotheses. The clearest hint that I see is that the calculated dipole moment is 2.3 Ds at 0–60°C, "which is close to the value for ice", and 1.8 Ds at 60–100°C, "which is comparable to that reported for the vapour phase". Lower dipole moment means weaker hydrogen bonding, and less tetrahedral structure.

<comment><USER14> > Yes, but just what are those states?

That's covered in the introduction.

> Despite these efforts, the structure of liquid water is still not fully > understood.

> This suggests that there are of two states in bulk liquid water that differ > in the amount of their dipole moment. Unfortunately, a correlation between > the dipole moment and the microscopic structure of these two states has not > yet been determined.

<comment><USER13> Yes, I should have quoted those bits.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Piet: a programming language in which programs look like abstract paintings - <AUTHOR> http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet.html

<comment><USER2> Cool! Seems like I can teach my 2nd grade friends some 'colorful' programming.

Are others allowed to contribute to this language? I would like to do so in a few days... (well... I have my exams going on now, so in the vacation for sure)</comment>


Air Force ordered software to manage army of fake virtual people - <AUTHOR> http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/18/revealed-air-force-ordered-software-to-manage-army-of-fake-virtual-people/ Federal Contract for "Persona Management Software" https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=d88e9d660336be91552fe8c1a51bacb2&tab=core&_cview=1 <comment><AUTHOR> Air Force Contract for Persona Management Software [https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id...](https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=d88e9d660336be91552fe8c1a51bacb2&tab=core&_cview=1)</comment>


Astrophysicists do a 3-day long AMA about the discovery of gravitational waves - <AUTHOR> https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/45g8qu/we_are_the_ligo_scientific_collaboration_and_we/ <comment><USER2> I'm part of the LIGO team responding to the AMA. If anyone on HN sees a good question that hasn't been answered, link it here and I'll sure we get to it!

<comment><USER3> Again, asking here since it's easier, but sorry if that wasn't the intent.

To get a better understanding of what LIGO is observing, does every massive object create a gravitational wave as it moves? Do gravitational waves act similarly as to how moving a charged particle creates magnetic flux? Do we know from LIGO if gravitational waves propagate at exactly the speed of light?

<comment><USER4> Not on the team. Not even close. My under standing from other comments from the team is yes and yes. The reason we needed a collision of black holes was to get the signal up to where we can detect it. And they definitely said that this proves that gravitational waves propagate at the speed of light.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the reddit AMA, DW wrote:

> Myself and one of my supervisors had a conversation about this a few weeks > ago. We did some calculations which suggest that if you were in a space-ship > close to the merging black holes you would feel a force which was pretty > comparable to the force you feel by standing next to a loudspeaker at a > music concert. You'd feel a vibration travelling through your body, but we > were pretty confident it wouldn't hurt you!

Maybe the gravitational waves wouldn't hurt, but the gammas etc would be painful. I'm reminded of Greg Egan's _Diaspora_.

<comment><USER6> Assuming no accretion disks, there wouldn't be any em radiation as far as I know. Where would it come from?

<comment><USER5> Thanks. I see now that it's merging binary neutron stars that create the huge gamma spikes.[0]

[0] [https://www.astro.cf.ac.uk/research/gravity/tutorial/?page=4...](https://www.astro.cf.ac.uk/research/gravity/tutorial/?page=4blackholecollisions)

Edit: That tutorial also explains that black holes are very simple objects, so the chirps and ringdowns are likewise very simple. So black hole masses can be calculated very precisely. Also, amazingly:

> Just as optical radiation and radio waves, the luminosity of gravitational > radiation falls off in inverse proportion to the square of the distance from > the source. This makes binary black hole inspirals standard sirens: if we > know what the masses of the two black holes are then we can infer the > distance to the source by measuring its apparent luminosity. We can > precisely measure the masses because the rate at which the frequency and > amplitude of an inspiral increases depends only on the masses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a physicist and programmer I just love that Python was used both for controlling the actual experiment and for analyzing the data! Six years ago when I started my PhD I also moved all the code for my experiment from proprietary software (Matlab/Mathematica/Labview) to Python (+matplotlob, pyvisa, PyQt/PySide). Many of my colleagues and supervisors were rather skeptical about this back then as Python was still considered quite new and the tooling was not as good as it is today. It seems though that Python is finally becoming the de facto standard for experiment control and data analysis, especially for more complex use cases that require a good software architecture (which is hard to implement e.g. with Labview). This is really great news for me as it makes sharing code and data much easier (if they had done their analysis in Matlab it would be hard to reproduce for people that don't have access to that software, but with the iPython notebook everything you need to reproduce the results is open-source). Great stuff, let's keep pushing Python forward :)

<comment><USER8> wow, that is a very interesting piece of news. Any chance you can cite the original reference to this ?

<comment><USER7> They mention it in the AMA, have a look at the "How big is Python in the scientific community?" question!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A fantastic discovey for the ages. Makes you wonder how many civilisations out there were technologically advanced enough to hear that chirp.

<comment><USER10> Zero

<comment><USER10> Hahaha truth hurts b-otches? The truth can hurt ya or the truth can change ya. What will truth do to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Should we building a 3rd or maybe 4th LIGO so we can know where the events actually come from?

What's the best timing precision possible on the different reception times, to get better triangulation (if there was at least a 3rd LIGO)?

What's the odds of seeing one event when starting it up, and none since then?

How long will it take for any new events to be announced?

<comment><USER12> > What's the odds of seeing one event when starting it up, and none since > then?

They have seen other events, this was just the biggest.

<comment><USER13> [citation needed]

<comment><USER12> What's the MLA format for word of mouth? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thanks for doing this. I am concerned about the base rate fallacy[1] and would like to know whether/how the probability that this signal was a false positive has been estimated.

I read much discussion regarding the probability of a false alarm given the baseline model.[2] However, without an estimate of the probability of detecting a true signal during the same time frame, we cannot calculate the probability this is a false positive. Such an estimate would obviously require some prior estimates of the rate at which these black hole mergers occur and the percent that can get detected, etc.

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

[2] [https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.11...](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102)

<comment><USER15> It sounds like you've already read about how we estimate the false-alarm rate for signals, so I'll just add that the estimated rate of BBH mergers was highly uncertain before this observation; the error bars spanned three orders of magnitude. See, for example, Fig 5 of [http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.7314](http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.7314), which compares the previous LIGO-Virgo upper limits on similar events to the expected rate from population synthesis models and observations of high-mass X-ray binaries, known BNS systems, etc.

The rate inferred from GW150914 is on the high end of the rate estimates from astronomers, but it's completely consistent with prior observations. Certainly, if we had seen ten events in the first 16 days of data, it would not have made sense! But one event is well within expectations.

<comment><USER14> A lot of this information seems to be available, for example figure 4 here[1]. According to that, the horizon distance for "a binary black hole system with the same observed spin and mass parameters as GW150914 for optimal sky location and source orientation and detected with an SNR of 8" was 1.5-2 Gpc. Now we only need an estimate of the rate at which events with these properties occur, not using the data from GW150914. I presume this is somewhat (a few orders of magnitude) less than the rate at which the mergers occur in general.

[1] [http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.03844](http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.03844)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I couldn't see it in the post, but I'm interested in how much this specific event, and future events, allow us to tighten the bounds on our models.

It's mentioned a few times that the size of the black holes/other model parameters were "within expectations" and so were a good fit.

What are some of the specific quantities that these measurements will allow us to refine? Previous astronomical measurements have allowed us to put better and better estimates on things like the size of the sun, or the gravitational constant - do we have any idea what estimates this technology will allow us to improve?

<comment><USER15> In [http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.03840](http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.03840) we describe the various parameters that we were able to measure for this signal, and in [http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.03841](http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.03841) we compare the results to the predictions from general relativity.

In Figs 6 and 7 of the second paper you can see the constraints from GW150914 on what are known as the "post-Newtonian" expansion terms of Newtonian gravity. Previously, terms beyond first order were only loosed bound, mostly from observations of the Double Pulsar system J0737-3039.

Just from this one event, we can also constrain the mass of the graviton to an order of magnitude less than the previous best measurement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The announcement is the climax of a century of speculation, 50 years of trial and error, and 25 years perfecting a set of instruments so sensitive they could identify a distortion in spacetime a thousandth the diameter of one atomic nucleus across a 4km strip of laserbeam and mirror.

The phenomenon detected was the collision of two black holes. Using the world's most sophisticated detector, the scientists listened for 20 thousandths of a second as the two giant black holes, one 35 times the mass of the sun, the other slightly smaller, circled around each other.

At the beginning of the signal, their calculations told them how stars perish: the two objects had begun by circling each other 30 times a second. By the end of the 20 millisecond snatch of data, the two had accelerated to 250 times a second before the final collision and a dark, violent merger.

The observation signals the opening of a new window on to the universe.

A century of speculation, no wonder people are starving. Come on are u guys reading this? Are you just closing your eyes opening your mouth and letting them stick in what ever they want?tf? firstly i think there is bs going on but if i do accept this bs then we are way far behind in our spiritual growth. Dont forget what sting said... we are spirits in the material world....better get balanced soon or the world will do it for you. Or is that what you need?</comment>


Show HN: Resonance – a social network enabled music player (iOS App) - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/resonance-lets-resonate/id1462230598 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hackers,

We have been hacking on a social network enabled music player that makes it easy to discover and share music from friends and family - the idea here is that sourcing the music from people that you like to hang out with provides a differentiated music experience.

Any feedback is welcome

Thanks!</comment>


Microsoft paid NFL $400M to use Surface, announcers still call them iPads - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-nfl-surface-tablets-ipads-2015-9 <comment><USER2> Oh well, what can you do? It's like how the Kleenex name has become genericized whereby "the popularity of the product has led to the use of its name to refer to any facial tissue, regardless of the brand. Many dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster and Oxford, now include definitions in their publications defining it as such." \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleenex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleenex)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is very much a testament to how well apple advertises. "iPad" is what people think of when they see a tablet, even though current market share is around 25%. Though I'm sure the fact that they were early to the tablet market and used to have 70% market share also contributes to this current trend in misidentification

</comment><comment><USER4> Similar article from 2014: [http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/8/6120643/microsoft- surface-a...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/8/6120643/microsoft-surface-at- nfl-games-described-as-ipad-like)</comment>


A True Story (150 AD) - <AUTHOR> https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/wl2/wl211.htm <comment><USER2> [https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_True_Story](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_True_Story)

"A True Story" \- Lucian

 _It is the earliest known work of fiction to include travel to outer space, alien lifeforms, and interplanetary warfare. It has been described as "the first known text that could be called science fiction"_

<comment><USER3> >Additionally, they point out that A True Story was written in response to another work that also contained science fictional elements, that is Antonius Diogenes' lost Of the Wonderful Things Beyond Thule, whose protagonist also reached the Moon.

Well no, it's the earliest SURVIVING work. It's certainly interesting and a fascinating insight to how people have always looked to the stars.

Also, it was the one that got lucky and remains. I guess have to give it credit for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this the oldest "<submission title> (<year>)" submission on HN?

As an aside, if one does not enjoy the Fowlers' translation there is different translation done by A. M. Harmon (side-by-side with original Greek): [https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/true/tru00.htm](https://www.sacred- texts.com/cla/luc/true/tru00.htm)

<comment><USER5> Yes, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16442888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16442888)

<comment><USER6> I think that only works for stories where the text in brackets is a number, so "(150 AD)" or "(195 BCE)" won't show up. (And of course this submission hasn't crossed the threshold of 40 upvotes yet.)</comment></comment></comment>


App summary, discovery search for ios app - <AUTHOR> http://appsearch-1072.appspot.com/summ7.jsp?query=linux <comment><AUTHOR> it is the website help people to search ios app in summary, help people to faster get information.</comment>


Offer HN:  Are you a startup founder?  Want some free PR? - <AUTHOR>

I'm producing a webseries about Silicon Valley - it's basically Entourage, but based here in the Valley.  I'll be launching a Kickstarter fundraising project in the next few days, and as part of the fundraising I'm doing "30 Days of Startup Stories."  I will feature your story and you get to piggyback off the PR for the project.  What I'll need your best startup story to feature in my update.  I'll be asking for feedback on the stories, and the best ones will make it into the series itself - which would obviously get you even more exposure.  Remember this is drama - so it's not a product pitch - it's killer products, crazy founder stories, lust, betrayal, absurdity, coincidence, debauch, or whatever else you have experienced that will make people go "no...fricking...way."  Here are a couple I've gotten so far:<p>- fired my best friend - lost a $10mm deal because I was 10 minutes late - lost 3 girlfriends in 2 months<p>Your only commitment is a few sentences of text to get featured in 30 Days of Startups...easy!  Write to me at fernando at valleyseries dot com with 2-3 sentences on your startup and your story.  Or drop your story in comments if you'd like...I'm sure we'll get some doozies! <comment><USER2> If I were an Angel or VC, I'd check this list against my upcoming meetings and cancel meetings with any founders who would or could focus time on being the "entourage" of the valley. IMHO it shows a propensity for focusing on the notoriety as opposed to the process. I believe Ashton said it best when he spoke about shutting off as soon as founders were affected by thoughts of "the effect" as opposed to being focused on the problem they are trying to solve.

<comment><USER3> And yet Techstars NYC forced all its startups to be part of a similar show on Bloomberg.

<comment><USER4> The founders featured in the Bloomberg series agreed to the coverage. There were other TechStars NYC companies that did not agree.

<comment><USER3> Not exactly.

Bloomberg chose not to feature everyone, but all startups had to agree to be on the show or leave the Techstars program: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3133198>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ca-rl Not sure what this will do for the startup community as a whole... I personally wouldn't want to contribute to the "over hype" of start up life - people think it's all fun and games but often forget how much work goes behind building a successful business and product. Just my 2 cents.

</comment><comment><USER5> Dropping out of University of San Francisco before my startup even launches next month. Spending all my money to pay a couple developers for the prototype and hoping all goes well. I am very confident.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd probably need a bit more detail - but send me an email!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Story for you: I quit my corporate job and then had a co-founder bail on me 1 week later. So I had to ask my old boss to take me back. Luckily he agreed. I then quit 6 months later.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sign me up - send me your details via email. We might want to anonymize it :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > lost 3 girlfriends in 2 months

How do you even get 3 girlfriends in two months?

Surely anything shorter than a few months with someone is not considered a girlfriend!

<comment><USER8> It's not difficult if you meet and get friendly with a lot of women. Keep in mind boyfriend/girlfriend is just a title and you can actually have one for a day if you want.

Hell, Kim Kardashian had a marriage for 75 days, that's about the same time frame, no? #rimshot

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, the point of the story was that each of them was a "real" prospect that the founder was really into. But multiple stood up dates sent them packing!

<comment><USER7> how can you possibly be "really" into someone that many times in 2 months... it's like something out of High School Musical

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My friend and I were just discussing how awesome it would be to have a reality show/movie/drama series about some startups and founders in the valley–but mixed with a lot of what you described (lust, betrayal, absurdity, etc.).

Post your kickstarter project when it's live–I'll contribute.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! I'll do that. And the cool thing is that all sorts of people have THOUGHT of doing this - but no one really has,yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Call me crazy, but I'm kind of glad I don't have enough drama to make it on this show...

<comment><AUTHOR> Not crazy at all - and honestly I want to do a great job of showing how dreary and depressing it can get - the internal drama is real!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You might be interested in talking to this guy:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3221094>

<comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestion - will do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> We have cool stories, but we are based in Mexico City. Is that cool?

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course! Remember these are ideas that will form the basis for some fiction - I'd love to hear all about it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice idea, going to cause some trouble I think..

<comment><USER14> aren't all disruptive/new/exotic ideas causing some kind of trouble?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> do companies have to be in the valleys?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not for the little profiles I'm doing during fundraising - just an interesting story is great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> We're not based out of silicon valley, so I'm not sure if we qualify. That said:

"Cofounder: set up shop in grandma's living room and lived on the couch. Me: quit my prior startup, endured business partner's rage, dumped girlfriend, moved to a different state. Business: bootstrapped, profitable, growing."

Probably not dramatic enough, but there it is.</comment>


World of Warcraft discovers XSS - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/4rhrxu/some_weird_crazy_stuff_going_on_with_a_scam_that/ <comment><USER2> Someone discovered the default functions called on every chat message can be swapped out to process scripts remotely. I'm interested to see if Blizzard does anything to fix this and what the timeline will be for the resolution.

[http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20745644941?page=1](http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20745644941?page=1)

[https://gist.github.com/Sharparam/11a3cddeaa51aa11dde69b4690...](https://gist.github.com/Sharparam/11a3cddeaa51aa11dde69b46908bccd7)</comment>


As net neutrality dies, one man wants to make Verizon pay for its sins - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/9/16114530/net-neutrality-crusade-against-verizon-alex-nguyen-fcc <comment><USER2> The title is a bit clickbaity but it was a good read.

Edit: He's not doing this for his thesis.

However, here's his 117 page complaint he's filing with the FCC.

[https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/10726214500114/2016-07-26-compl...](https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/10726214500114/2016-07-26-complaint.pdf)

<comment><USER3> No, it says it "could have well been his Master's thesis."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why am I giving money to EFF and only this stranger files a complaint? How can I start paying him?</comment>


Show HN: Standup tool that works like Snapchat stories for remote teams - <AUTHOR> https://standups.io/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

I'm JP, founder of Standups.io. Last March, I resigned from my full-time iOS job with the idea of making a web/mobile app for async video standups. I did some traveling (China/Vietnam) while I started to work on the app, but eventually ended up back in Germany, escaping South Asia's rainy season :)

The idea of async video standups started to grow on me since last December when I was in the north of Brazil. I was there for some weeks doing remote work for my employer back in Germany, and I had to get up at 5 AM just to make it for the 10 AM standup back in Hamburg. This didn't feel right. Other team members were going through the same. So that's how it all started. Today I'm finally launching and I'm super excited to get your feedback. I'm solo founder, so it's been quite of a ride itself, but I'm looking forward to what's next :)

iOS and Android apps are coming next — in some more weeks, as I feel it's important to be able to post your standup update from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection.

I'd love to hear your feedback (feature requests, bugs, etc) and personal experiences when it comes to team standups and how you guys are running standups with team members that are not on-site / distributed, or maybe as a full-remote team. I'm eager to implement some more features that might help this kind of team setups better. You can try Standups for free here: [https://standups.io/register](https://standups.io/register)

Thank you so much!

JP

edit: typos

<comment><USER3> I like the concept but I do struggle with the price point for 1.5 minute videos per day.

<comment><USER4> so what's the price where you will sign up right now?

if I lower it to $3/user/month, will you sign up right now?

<comment><USER5> No. never lower your prices because of a comment here. There will _always_ be some cheapskate engineer here telling you your thing is too expensive.

That's fine. He is not your customer.

Your customer is businesses with money. Businesses that have seven dollars.

Those businesses, by the way, will just as happily spend $20/seat/month because that also rounds to zero for them. You can experiment with charging them that if you like. But whatever you do don't lower your prices. They're too cheap already.

<comment><USER4> Yes I already know that. I was trying to show brightball his comment about "price too high" is ridiculous

If $7 / month is too high, then any price below $7 is too high.

He should just outright say he wanted it for free, instead of complaining about price

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great idea, good luck with it!

A few small suggestions:

1) Often times, I find myself in a car or in an area with heavily limited internet (i.e., the subway). I think it would be beneficial to allow a "listen to the audio only mode", reducing bandwidth and/or ensuring I keep focusing on the drive (maybe like a "team podcast" :-) )

2) In a similar vein, speech could be converted to text to make it searchable. When I worked in a fully remote team, we had meetings where someone said something that turned out to be important later on. Sadly, looking through months of meeting footage is not something anyone of us wanted to do, speech- to-text could be handy here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello Levente. I'm super glad to see that you like the idea, really. Thanks for checking the app out.

To answer your questions: 1) Audio-only updates are coming soon. And with the iOS/Android apps is a great I idea to "listen" updates as you drive. Really cool, and will implement this soon when the audio-only support is coming (will work too by "listening" to videos as well).

2) Search is coming as well. You're idea is cool (specially for managers to be checking into a project), and I am already thinking on making a JIRA integration that puts all the associated/tagged standups into its related JIRA ticket on the sidebar, but this could also work via the search (advanced) section! Text-to-speech is also something cool, let's see how it all goes, as it's also easily implementable using Google's Cloud Speech-to-Text :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> From a Scrum Master PoV, I feel like this app sort of misses the point of stand-ups. Stand-ups are supposed to be daily interaction/live communication between team members—not a daily report. The point is to further inter-team communication in order to better overcome impediments. A pre-recorded update isn't very useful if other team members has comments or questions. Stand-up is also a great opportunity to ask if the rest of the team has any input on a problem you may be dealing with.

From the website:

> Often times we miss standups.

Sorry to be blunt but then you're doing it wrong, or maybe it could be worth reconsidering the choice of framework if it's not possible to implement the most basic features of Scrum.

> To avoid updates that are rather long, we implemented a timebox of 1.5 > minutes [...]

This seems oddly arbitrary. You don't necessarily need to limit each individual's speaking time. In e.g. a team of 4 people it's fine if each person speaks for 3 minutes as long as its relevant for stand-up.

If you're removing the conversational aspect of stand-up along with timeboxing people then it seems to me like doing stand-up over Twitter.

<comment><USER8> While I get where you are coming from to some extent and partially agree, as someone who's also a certified scrum master, if there are a lot of discussion going on in your stand ups, you are doing it wrong too. The point of standups is to be quick update, with follow up discussions if something needs more depth.

The best practice is for each person to answer the following three questions:

1) What did you accomplish since the last meeting?

2) What are you working on until the next meeting?

3) What is getting in your way or keeping you from doing your job?

Further, if your team is having discussions that aren't relevant to _everyone_ at the standup, then by definition you are doing standups wrong.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I agree, except "relevant to _everyone_ " is not accurate enough, I think. It should be "relevant to reaching the sprint goal", because it can be relevant to everyone on the team but completely irrelevant in relation to the sprint goal.

Our stand-ups are strictly about stuff relating to the sprint goal and hence the success of the team in the sprint. So the 3 points are all suffixed with "... to help the team meet the sprint goal". Sometimes we'll spend 3 minutes on our individual updates and 10 minutes on discussing an issue brought up in point 3 because it affects the whole team and threatens the sprint. Sometimes stand-up is over in just 3 minutes because there's nothing new and no issues.

The real-time feedback at stand-ups is super important, IMO. When doing point 2 from your list, there may be other team mates with valuable input. E.g. if someone is planning on working on X and someone else have worked on something related to that, then they may know of some gotchas and other stuff to be aware of, where they can simply interject that they should maybe talk a little about that after stand-up. We do that in my team all the time and it's saved us countless hours because we managed to catch problems long before they became actual problems and a a topic for point 3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Standups are awesome when done right... but unfortunately, given that my team works fairly independently, standups end up getting stretched because some member of the team prolongs his/her update to get a team opinion on either a design issue or a technical problem (or a product issue).

The simple way we time-box our stand ups is by planking [1] while giving standup updates. This ensures each person speaks for <1 min. All other issues are discussed at the end of the standup. Better core strength is an unintended benefit of the same! :-P

[1] [https://www.livestrong.com/article/538593-what-is-the- planki...](https://www.livestrong.com/article/538593-what-is-the-planking- exercise/)

<comment><USER10> Planking? SV culture is parodying itself at this point. That is truly ridiculous.

<comment><USER9> I love how you've automatically assumed we're based in Silicon Valley. Trademark HN armchair critiquing at it's finest!

<comment><USER11> To be fair, "SV culture" != "SV location".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The best SCRUM master I ever worked with had strong opinions about standups. Standups, he said, were an attempt to address the principle of constant communication. He said most places held to standups too literally and the updates weren't useful to most of the people in the room, which negated the whole purpose.

<comment><USER13> Yeah I concur wirh this. Apologies if I've for the intent of this wrong but stand ups are intended to be a team sync point where questions are asked, mutual understanding reached and I doing a 1way update seems counter to the intent of a stand up.

It definitely has its place to provide opportunity where you can't all meet together but it you'd to rely promote questions and discussions following this by all team members to avoid it being a box tick

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hi JP!

I´m a founder of a 20pp fully remote company, and I think your product could have a great impact! However seeing such a high (in my opinion) price per month per user is an issue for me. This product, while super useful, cover only a small portion of the remote dynamics we face each day, and that price per month per user in our case at least doesn´t justify it.

Loved the idea thought, so all the best!

<comment><AUTHOR> First off, thank so much for your feedback. I'm truly happy that you think it can make a great impact! :) On the other hand, pricing is something that I will definitely be taking a look into soon: for now, I just wanted to launch, so I made it per seat with 1 plan, no fencing of features at all. Entreprise/business (lots of seats) is on the roadmap, let's talk so we can workout a discount for now. Please send me an email at jp at standups.io Thanks :)

<comment><USER14> Will do! And great about just wanting to launch! Better err and correct than keep waiting till have a perfect plan (which will never come anyway :p)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really like the idea. I work in a partially remote team and organising the standup in the morning can be tricky. There're a lot of low tech solutions to this problem but what I like about this service is that it takes the simple "story" approach from Instagram and uses that to solve the standup problem. Nice. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER16> Created an account - UX is a little clunky:

have a + button to create a team.

Please have the ability to do a test/add a bot/test user.

Can I store the meeting? Get attendance reports? Notes?

If I create the meeting, but I dont attend/go on vacation what happens?

I can't see how to use it without having an actual other person to test it out with...

I should be able to take/store personal video-notes, then share those out with a team/create a meeting based on them perhaps?

For add member - please provide me a link I can just send to people to have them click and add themselves as a member.

What happens when the teams get quite large?

I love async/remote standup as an idea - but have yet to find the right tool for it. I'd love to help provide feedback...

\---

Sadly, I hope that you can sell - as I know that when it comes to /month pricing, this will be harder to sell in lots of companies (Gsuite is only $5/month per user for full email - which will have a higher-perceived value than standup subscription)

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice idea which will solve the connection issues during standup, enforce time bound update and save the team time trying to align a standup. The only issue I see is devs might not be bothered to watch it or follow up but it could be quite useful for leads and managers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello :) First off, glad you like the idea! You nailed it! One of the pains in my previous agile teams was exactly this, dropping audio / choppy videos, interrupting standups. Everybody still standing, waiting for our manager to make a new call. Opening a new app for the video call, etc. This would be happening way too often, and we'd be like "oh, man".

For the part of devs not bothered to watch it: soon audio will be coming, and maybe —depending on feedback— audio to text could come too. Also, "seen" flags are coming too, so the team manager and the submitter will be able to see who's watched the updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The 'hero' graphic/screenshot says 'Thrusday', heads up: [https://standups.io/static/media/app.130e8c9b.jpg](https://standups.io/static/media/app.130e8c9b.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe thanks a lot for spotting that. Just updated it! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Add a slack integration that reminds team members to post their standup story and you've got gold for remote teams

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comment. I've been seriously thinking about this, but I want to do it in a way that doesn't convert it into a chat/text-based bot :-) But like you say, as a reminder/notification via Slack it sounds nice, I dig it and will try to do this soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks great! Not sure if you're aware of it but Helpful ([https://www.helpful.com/](https://www.helpful.com/)) seems to be doing something similar.

</comment><comment><USER21> I haven't tried to use it, but in case it's helpful, these would be the features I would want: jot down notes before record, allow preview and then re-record, allow saving text notes with the video, allow tagging people if you need them to see a stand-up (ex. to ask for help), be able to see who has viewed your stand-up, and a minimum stand-up time. Slack integration would be great too, as each recorded message could pop into a slack channel when ready (I don't know how notifications work right now)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello Peter. Most of these features are there, a few coming (in the roadmap) like the seen flag.

Try it out with your team [https://standups.io/register](https://standups.io/register) and let me know how it worked for you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For enterprises you could consider adding an enterprise pricing option with on-prem hosting. Standups discuss IP and a lot of companies never let IP out of premise/DMZ. Especially not in stored format.

You needn't even have it yet, you can use the pricing option to see if you can catch a big fish who wants to pay for your development of it. (of course you bring that different but it works the same).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for mentioning this. I understand what you mean. I used to work for a 1000+ company that currently uses GitHub, JIRA, Confluence and Slack, all of them self-hosted. So yeah, and it's a German company, so they're extra worried about protecting their data. Self-hosted support is definitely on the roadmap. And will update the pricing page to explain this a little bit better. Thanks again for bringing it up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like it, but how does this solve the thing that I thought was the reason standups exist: to find out who needs help and to verify that the priorities are still right?

I see how this can be used for status reporting, but who really cares about that?

Note, I'm not trying to HN-diss this tool. I really want this tool - <USER2> it helps us actually use the standup for setting priorities and helping each other out.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hi JP, I love the website. Great job.

I'd start collecting email addresses at the bottom of blog articles to reengage with the visitors in the future. You can do it unobtrusively and actually it also helps users. For example, I would like to get an email update when you publish a new content but couldn't find any way for it.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello Sung. Thank you so much for the kuddos and the tips! I will be doing this soon, just added it to my backlog! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> What about closed captions for the hearing impaired ? I have a friend who works in tech in SF and he has trouble doing video interviews because of this. He is really good at lip reading but sometimes it's really hard to follow.

The closed captions generation doesn't have to work in real time.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are truly right and this is definitely something I personally would like to implement as soon as possible. Thank you so much for bringing it up.

I think that the solution would have to be just using Google Cloud Speech-to- Text to get a text transcript and be able to overlay it on the video.

Please contact me via jp at standups.io as I'd love to hear more details on how it'd a good way for your friend to easily use this feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ok, so I don't think I've ever worked in a company that fully implemented Agile effectively but in a previous job one team decided to just use an irc channel and at a set time everyone would post a short one line statement about what they're currently working on. Outside of our "standup" we used the irc channel as a general shout for help when we had problems and we didn't know who could help on. We didn't get a chance to run it for too long since the guy who set it up got laid off after a few months but I thought it was pretty straightforward idea.

</comment><comment><USER27> Pro tip: try Marco Polo. It's free. That's not to say yours isn't a good idea, and probably worth money if more specifically implemented for remote teams.

Disclosure: I work on this app, but the standup use case is an "off-label" use that we ourselves employ internally. The app itself is for friends/family to basically video text/walkie-talkie but it serves a use as asynchronous video communication for other purposes.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is a perfect use case for async video. Nice work!

What's the follow up look like? Can I comment on videos to ask questions or do you imagine that being done through existing channels?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your interest! Yes replies/follow-ups are on the roadmap and will come soon by eing able to reply video/audio/text (with tags).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'll be honest, I will never watch a standup video.

<comment><USER21> You might once your manager sees that you haven't watched the last 4 weeks worth of standups....

<comment><USER29> At a previous job I didn't listen to voicemails from my boss for 6 years. I'd hit delete immediately. Stand-ups are a waste of time, those videos would be equally so just like those voicemails were.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Great idea. From the screenshot the UI looks very sterile.

Would be great if the actual video content would get more screen estate to focus on the team and not on the UI controls.

Also, why is your app not advertised on the website? I think the app should be the main entry point to your tool and not a web dashboard.

<comment><USER31> FWIW I think the screenshots look great.

If someone's going to use this tool every day, you want to emphasize the videos and faces that change every day—not the buttons and links.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are totally right... I like that idea. Thank you! I'll be updating this soon and actually make a video to show the changing days with different videos. :-)

<comment><USER31> Looking forward to it!

Just to be clear though - I think your current design already does a good job at this :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Really like the idea. What about android and iOS version? It would make everything even more easier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello :) The apps are coming in the next few weeks. iOS is almost done at the moment, but still tweaking a few things.

</comment></comment><comment> trevor-e This looks very well done from the product side of things, but how is it better than having a slack channel for the team to post async standup updates in? Seems a lot simpler than using another service, and more flexible since you can add links or tag other people.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really didn't want to make another async chat/text-based bot. I wanted to bring a bit of the on-site feeling / face-time human contact to teams that are remote, specially those that are very distant, with a big timezone difference. Working remotely is amazing, but it also has some problems, and I just wanted to help solving the issue of loss of real human touch, (people's expressions/smiles, etc), so that teams get daily face-time regardless of location.

<comment><USER33> And aligning video thumbnails next to each other helps reduce the loss of human touch you think?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I like the idea, and it looks nice, but this is definitely one of those products that would benefit immensely from a video intro instead of static screenshots that don't convey nearly enough.

Also your free trial buttons are broken (visually, wrap and break) on small mobile screens.

<comment><AUTHOR> Footer CTAs are now fixed :) Thank you for letting me know.

<comment><USER34> Not just footer CTAs - they're still broken! These are the 'start your free trial' red buttons. I'm on an iPhone SE

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reporting back again about it. Now all CTAs are fixed, just tested on the iPhone SE simulator :) Have a great weekend!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hmm, it doesn't seem to work. Is it live/ready or still in development? I tried it just now and tried to send/record my message but it is not working. Just got a spinner.

<comment><AUTHOR> That seems odd, let me take a look into it. Could you please open the Live Chat (when logged in, go to the Help sidebar and on the dropdown menu click Live Chat Support, so I can help you more on this. Thank you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Tip: add a twitter card in your html head ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you Alex! Will try this out! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There must be an audio only version too. I'm pretty sure no one in my team wants to see my face.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for mentioning that because I've had audio on my mind since the beginning, and it's definitely gonna come soon! Please follow [https://twitter.com/@standupsHQ](https://twitter.com/@standupsHQ) for updates on this, and feel free to try it out :) I'll be happy to hear your feedback :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Really dig this idea. Love the time box aspect. Is that an editable feature (duration)?

Wish I was in a remote team to try this out.

GL!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm happy to hear you like it! Glad that I finally could launch.

Sure, timebox for now is fixed, but I will soon be pushing a change to make it toggleable and editable :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Love the idea. Faced this several times myself while traveling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great to hear that you also went through this and that Standups.io will hopefully help you on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> But you don't need standups:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17671464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17671464)</comment>


Joyent: free hosting for high-volume Python apps, if you give us customer info - <AUTHOR> http://www.joyeur.com/2008/04/09/joyents-garden-of-eden-for-python-web-applications

<comment><USER2> Seems like Joyent's stopped pretending to be a real company. Weak, unhinted at parody like this is something you'd expect from a blogger, maybe, but the fact that they don't care whether they confuse their customers or employees with this is odd.

But, I guess when your whole business is supposed to be storing people's data and instead you end up making it inaccessible for over a week (<http://tinyurl.com/2pt8g3>), you stop caring.

</comment><comment><USER3> This post and Joyent's last post (<http://tinyurl.com/6p49xk>) certainly make it seem as if they're scared of App Engine and what Google is doing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Late April Fools? I hope so. At least the customer info. part.

</comment><comment><USER5> hmmmm... i have been looking for a similar "sponsor" host for me and my hacker friends... we will be contributing for a dev house. the Joyent idea is great but not for everyone, we don't have 25K visitors/month :P

anyone interested in hosting some of our apps and our apps-to-be? PHP5, MySQL, RoR, etc... yes, this is a shameless plug because funding is out of the equation here, no Y Combinator or Launchbox since i am from cebu, philippines...

</comment><comment><USER6> And if you don't mind using their mutant Solaris...

<comment><USER7> What don't you like about their version of Solaris?

<comment><USER6> It's Solaris. ;)

I likes me a nice GNU environment, or at least a sane BSD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ha, the first comment is priceless "Is this for real!"

</comment><comment><USER9> i think they are secretly working on some high level AI stuff that requires lots of worldly data

</comment><comment><USER10> That already makes me incredibly suspicious of Joyent.

I'm.. not sure I will ever use them. I mean, what're they gonna DO with all that data?

<comment><USER11> They are using parody to criticize the very same terms that Google is offering for their App Engine (which people seem excited about).

<comment><USER12> ... And they are starting to look childish in the process.

<comment><USER11> I would agree, but only if they didn't actually give you those terms if you really wanted them. And I have every reason to believe that if you actually were to take them up on it, they would deliver.</comment></comment></comment></comment>