Why I never design a site in Photoshop - <AUTHOR> http://christeso.com/why-i-never-design-a-site-in-photoshop

<comment><USER2> These constant articles and discussions about why not to use Photoshop for web design is starting to remind me of this Onion article: [http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly- mention...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning- he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/)

But in all seriousness…while Photoshop may not be the best tool for the job, mocking things up on paper, whiteboard, Illustrator, Omnigraffle, Fireworks, or whatever your visual weapon-of-choice is, is invaluable. You learn a lot more about what works and what doesn't when you're not worrying about whether or not that "float" you just put in to your third <section> column will properly align the element with the first two.

There is a real reason UX/UI and designers exist; please don't crap all over these professions just because you know your code better than you know design fundamentals.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not crapping on anyone. I came up as a designer, with fundamentals. Actually I was a print designer. Even more fundamental. I don't know code better than design. Nor do I know design better than code.

I wrote the post to relay the method I use to design, highlight it's efficiencies, express opinions on process, and hopefully inspire more to try it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I get kind of annoyed with these smug, pseudo-contrarian articles about, what boils down to personal preference.

The right answer is: Use the right tool for the right job.

* If it's a simple brochureware template, you might be able to knock it out in HTML from the start.

* If it's graphically complicated, with a lot of rich visuals, starting in Photoshop or Fireworks may be your best bet.

* If it is an application with numerous cases and a potentially complicated interface, starting with a clickable modeling tool, like Axure, might be the wisest approach.

* Roll your own approach for a particular interface problem. Axure sucks for modeling mobile application interfaces, but hey, some dude figured out how to make a usable wireframing model with Keynote.

I've used all three methods, and each has their advantages and tradeoffs. Personal preference often dictates how we work, but the project requirements may force us to re-evaluate these preferences in favor of a more efficient means of completing the project.

</comment><comment><USER4> Quora? Really?

I mean, look at this page, it has almost no graphic elements <http://www.quora.com/Joel-Lewenstein/Life-Without-Photoshop>

The whole site is one color header and bunch of comments.

Good luck designing one of those cssmania.com like sites (when your client ask you to) without Photoshop.

<comment><USER4> Here is random example i found on cssmania: <http://www.hungarianwinesociety.co.uk/>

I would like to hear how would you design this kind of site without PS?

<comment><USER5> > I would like to hear how would you design this kind of site without PS?

Not speaking for anyone else, but my usual design process goes something like this:

1\. Identify the structure, in pure information terms.

2\. Get a basic idea of the layout, often using just a pencil and paper, or a quick mock-up tool like Balsamiq.

3\. Implement the basic structure using HTML, typically as a set of divs nested in some reasonable way.

4\. Implement the basic layout using CSS, just enough to position the divs in the right sort of places.

5\. Add a bit of placeholder text/images and start styling the details as necessary.

The answer to your exact question, however, is "I wouldn't". I think the page you cited is horrible on just about every level, and if that's the kind of result you are looking for from using PS, you're welcome to it.

<comment><USER6> That is not really answering the question.

Are you also going to design your iPhone or iPad apps in objective-c?

It's easy to use code for structure and basic skinning but if you need details you are simply going to have to take it through some editor

<comment><USER5> Neither of my first two steps involves any production tools at all, so I don't think it matters what platform(s) we're aiming for at that stage. I use the same process whether I'm building a web front end, a mobile app, or a native app on a PC. Usually, by the time I'm firing up Photoshop or similar tools, I already have a pretty good idea of exactly what graphics I need and how they are going to fit together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you've spent 14 years designing and never even tried to design a site in Photoshop I can't possibly fathom how you could have an opinion of the process.

Agree or not, try new things. Try old things. Make an informed decision.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've tried. I just never finished. This is informed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I agree, and I do the same. I'm not a professional designer (or a very good one at all), and CSS is great over Photoshop because I don't know--and don't have the time to learn--how to use Photoshop's vast library of features. It's easier to just use a CSS reset, open up Firebug, adjust elements until I get to something that looks alright, and take it from there. And if I want to adjust something later, it's a simple matter of changing a property in Firebug and the entire site changes instantly. No messing with layers or what have you.

For super serious designers with lots of non-CSS-able elements, Photoshop is great. But for someone like me who wants something presentable done in a way that I'm already familiar with, HTML and CSS iteration is the way to go.

Edit: Downvotes? I'm not being sarcastic, I truly find this method useful.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure how _refactoring_ , as I understand it as a programmer, applies to a UX/UI design. Are you making changes to your design that have zero effect on your design's semantics? That's what it would mean for code refactoring -- a change that has no visible effect!

CSS/HTML/Javascript can be refactored in this sense, but I'm not sure refactoring a design can mean anything quite like what it means to refactor a program.

<comment><USER10> I think the author intended to say "iterating" instead, for example.

<comment><USER9> Well, it's not as if I stick with the academic definition of refactoring myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Actually, it seems to me that this post means we're missing something. Photoshop isn't doing every thing it could be for web designers.

Any time I've used Photoshop or another image app, I've been frustrated by the need to save my layered image, and then manually also export the final image into place to see it in the design. There should be something in place for that.

Of course, I could write a script that uses imagemajick or something, I suppose... If I did much design work. Actually, I'm already thinking about it now, even though I rarely do design. Could be a fun project.

<comment><USER5> Isn't that sort of thing more in the realm of Fireworks?

Photoshop has never really been designed to support web graphics. It just happens that many people are familiar enough with it to get decent results anyway.

<comment><USER11> Thanks. I'll have to look into Fireworks. I think I actually bought it in a bundle a while back, but haven't tried using it. (I'm not really a designer, so...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There was a big discussion about this on HN a couple of years ago when 37signals weighed in on the topic: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=828544> (worth reading)

</comment><comment><USER13> To those of us that know Photoshop really well, the process is more advanced than what the author suggests. For me, Photoshop is equivalent to pencil and paper -- I can see where things ought to be, how they actually might look on screen, and whether or not it is visually appealing.

I don't fault the author for having his own process, as it seems to be working for him, but having never done it the other way, I can't imagine how he can condemn it. The argument seems, at a glance, akin to a lifelong vegetarian railing against steak.

I don't work too dissimilarly, in that I will start a layout in Photoshop, start coding, then drop back into Photoshop when I need a new visual element, but when I need to plop a logo or button onto the page, I generally have it at least roughed out in Photoshop. My process works for me, generally, and I've done it both ways, but without prototyping the page in some way, I have a harder time envisioning what to code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good thoughtful response. And, we actually use the same process. I do use Photoshop for elements, buttons, logos etc as you do. To be clear, what I stated in the post is I don't do ui or ux or layout in PS.

<comment><USER13> Do you draw out your UI/UX first? Do you use paper? Balsamiq? Anything like that?

All I'm saying is that if you're comfortable in Photoshop, it makes a pretty good mockup tool. I forego pen and paper, and jump straight into Photoshop, and that's what works for me. Squares on a paper just doesn't give me a good picture of what I'm doing.

I'm impressed that you can visualize a site layout in code, but it doesn't work as well for me. To each their own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like Balsamiq to mockup site UIs.

</comment><comment><USER15> I write all my PDFs directly in PostScript instead of using InDesign or Illustrator, because that way it's breathing instead of catatonic or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER16> Photoshop is so lame:))) Draw your ux logic, than illustrate gui. Coding is not the way to think about design. Use prototyping tools. Cleat flow ideas. Than implement them in html/css. Use any graphic editor to illustrate. For gui stuff i prefer Fireworks. For illustration-painting, accent use sketchbook pro/artrage/pixelmator.

<comment><AUTHOR> I use omnigraffle for initial flows. I should have put that in the post.

I don't think Photoshop is lame. I love it for what I use it for.</comment></comment>


Physical and Mental Effects of Bathing: A Randomized Intervention Study - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29977318 <comment><USER2> I imagine roughly the same bodily and social impact goes for using a sauna, which my Finnish friends tell me is something integral to their way of life. It's not uncommon to have a small sauna in your apartment, and it touches on many aspects of their lives, from business, to family, to romantic relationships, to just relaxing after work.

I've started to go to the local sauna a few times a week after work with my girlfriend and I do notice it resets my mind, much like going for a long run. The rest of the evening seems much more dreamy and easy going.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure the trend will catch on in the UK, where I'm from, as we're generally pretty prude and uncomfortable with most of our clothes off!

<comment><USER3> One of the best parts of moving to Iceland for me was the copious hot water. The culture is more towards outdoor hot tubs (pots) than saunas though. Lots of great times sitting out in snowstorms. There's an extensive set of municipal pools as well which are great for my kids.

My own personal ritual is to spend Friday morning relaxing in solitude amongst the regular and assorted tourists.

In the UK I loved baths but renting very rarely found places with them and I actually prefer being around other people.

<comment> crooked-v I find myself wondering if there's any correlation between (a) enjoying being in a hot tub surrounded by snow and (b) preferring to sleep covered by a heavy blanket but with your feet sticking out.

<comment><USER4> I'll be a point in your anecdata. This describes me perfectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't speak to the quality of their study, but I strongly suspect there is validity to their conclusion.

Inspired by the bathing scene in My Neighbor Totoro (which admittedly seems a bit creepy by American standards), relaxing tub baths have become a regular ritual for my 4 year old daughter and I. The only difference is that we both wear swimsuits, because, well, it's America.

It certainly seems to do wonders for mental well being, if not physical.

<comment><USER6> _we both wear swimsuits, because, well, it 's America_

Yes, America, where they distract attention from their nakedness though oversized bathing trunks.

<comment><USER7> As an American, I've never understood why those god damn oversized bathing suits are such a thing.

Also I find it pretty funny that the parent comment is afraid to be naked in the bathtub with their 4 year-old. That seems...sorrowful, to put it lightly

<comment><USER5> Well for one, I'm a single dad in a contested custody situation.

But even if not...people are real quick to question things like that. It's the world we live in. And it's not a big hot tub, it's a regular tub, so she is often climbing on me etc. I mean, why go there when a swimsuit doesn't harm the enjoyment of bathing significantly?

I'm honestly curious....do you know of dads in America that bathe naked with 4 year old daughters? I'm guessing most just avoid the bath altogether, which I think is a shame. I don't avoid the bath, I just take a tiny measure to avoid anyone questioning it.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I know of dads that bathe naked with their 4 year old daughters.

It makes sense in the context of your situation, though.

<comment><USER5> Good to know. I've always felt like people were pretty weird about such things

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I must admit, a title that describes randomized intervention of bathing brings to mind the vision of smelly people being accosted with with buckets of soapy water.

Reality can be so disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm sure the marketing departments at hot tub companies across the US will latch onto this shortly, and add it to their stable of small sample "medical evidence" used to justify spending on their wares.

Hot Spring are particularly bad for this, at least at all their dealerships local to me.

<comment><USER10> I find hot tubs weird. A bath by myself or with a partner is OK but a hot tub with half a dozen people? Shudder.

<comment><USER5> You don't have to be naked.

<comment><USER11> I could be totally wrong, but I'm guessing that they're coming from a "stewing in a brew of other people's excreta and skin flakes, dirt and sebum," rather than a modesty angle.

<comment><USER5> I guess. I'm glad I don't dwell on such things. I wouldn't want to breathe the air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure how to feel about a study with sample size 38 in the current reproduction crisis.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like this short movie, Snow monkey in "Natural hot spring". [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPxrseYWfds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPxrseYWfds)

</comment><comment><USER14> My personal quality of life is enhanced by having a bathtub in the bathroom. I love long warm bath every other day, with plenty of cold water. It does wonder for my upper body!

I pondered purchasing a hot tub, but eventually decided against. It would anchor me to a home, while I often move every year.

Instead, I enjoy going to a Jjimjilbang at least once or twice a month. I spend a full day there, eating a Galbitang or whatever. Sometimes I bring a computer, sometimes an ebook, sometimes nothing at all. The days spend with no distraction are the most productive!

Unfortunately, in North America most Jjimjilbang do not let you sleep there anymore.

</comment><comment><USER15> Would similar results hold for a portable sauna, e.g. [1]?

[1] [https://www.amazon.in/Total-Sauna-Portable-Steam- Bath/dp/B00...](https://www.amazon.in/Total-Sauna-Portable-Steam- Bath/dp/B00K0I1CPE)

</comment><comment><USER16> Was anyone able to confirm if the 10min baths were taken daily?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a mostly worthless study. The sample size is too small, there is no blinding, the results are self-reported, and it's published in a quack alternative medicine journal.

</comment><comment><USER18> The outcome measure was whether the participants felt good. The authors dangle the _association_ of this with actual longevity, which of course means nothing whatsoever in the context of this very weak study in an irrelevant journal.</comment>


Storing unboxed trait objects in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://guiand.xyz/blog-posts/unboxed-trait-objects.html <comment><USER2> This post reminds me of a problem I've hit with my Objective-Rust project[1] (Rust code that's interoperable with Objective-C), to which I haven't found a good solution.

The closest analog to Objective-C's @protocols in Rust are traits. I would _love_ to be able to transliterate the following Objective-C:

      @protocol SomeProtocol
      // methods
      @end

      void demo() {
        // Just a demo of how to use SomeProtocol with a var:
        id<SomeProtocol> variable = nil;
      }

To the following Rust:

      #[objrs(protocol)]
      trait SomeProtocol {
        // methods
      }

      fn demo() {
        // Just a demo of how to use SomeProtocol with a var:
        let variable: *mut Id<SomeProtocol> = 0 as *mut _;
      }

      // The following is provided by objrs:
      struct Id<T: ?Sized>(core::marker::PhantomData<T>, Opaque);
      extern "C" {
        type Opaque;
      }

Unfortunately, RFC 255[2] breaks this. This fails because SomeProtocol is not object safe. Trait objects in Rust can be pretty frustrating in Rust, as this post illustrates.

I've had to workaround this in objrs by doing something like the following:

      #[objrs(protocol)]
      trait SomeProtocol {
        // methods
      }
      // The macro above generates stuff kinda like this:
      struct SomeProtocolId;
      impl SomeProtocol for SomeProtocolId {}
      impl<T: ?Sized + SomeProtocol> SomeProtocol for Id<T> {}

      fn demo() {
        // Now you have to know when to use SomeProtocol vs SomeProtocolId:
        let variable: *mut Id<SomeProtocolId> = 0 as *mut _;
      }

I'm going to see if there are some places where this blog post might simplify some things in my code... it's got some interesting ideas.

[1]: [https://gitlab.com/objrs/objrs](https://gitlab.com/objrs/objrs)

[2]: [https://github.com/rust- lang/rfcs/blob/master/text/0255-obje...](https://github.com/rust- lang/rfcs/blob/master/text/0255-object-safety.md)

<comment><USER3> Ideally you want `Id` to actually be parameterized on traits, not trait object types that happen to have the same syntax (now deprecated) as their corresponding traits. Of course, that's not currently possible. But you may be interested in this repo for planning an RFC to eventually add such functionality:

[https://github.com/Centril/rfc-trait-parametric- polymorphism...](https://github.com/Centril/rfc-trait-parametric- polymorphism/)

After being created 8 months ago, it's sort of inactive, but hopefully that'll change once the compiler's feature-implementation backlog starts catching up – in particular, once "chalk in rustc" becomes a reality.

<comment><USER2> Oh neat! I hadn't seen that one, but it's literally item #20 on my Rust wishlist. I'll have to file an issue to give some motivating examples. Thank you for pointing it out to me!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The /r/rust thread is worth reading: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/a68ydk/storing_unboxe...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/a68ydk/storing_unboxed_trait_objects_in_stable_rust/)

TL;DR this relies on unstable internal details; there's a proposal to add an API to let you do this kind of thing but it hasn't been accepted yet.

</comment><comment><USER5> _> Rust, not being an object-oriented language, doesn't quite do inheritence like the others. In C++ or Java, subclasses extend superclasses. In Rust, structs implement traits._

I wouldn't say that Rust isn't object oriented. It just takes a different approach to some things. Inheritance isn't really a strictly required feature of the object oriented code design. Many for instance pointed out, that composition is preferable:

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

<comment><USER6> Rust is clearly not object-oriented. It has very minimal support for late binding, and no support for reflection or dynamic libraries.

This isn't a critique, it's just a statement of fact. No Rust designer will say they set out to build a new object-oriented language.

<comment><USER5> C++ has no reflection either. Are you saying it's not object oriented?

Rust has late binding (also known as dynamic dispatch). Check trait objects. It's not really any worse than C++ virtual functions which is its form of dynamic dispatch.

See [https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch17-02-trait- objects.html](https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch17-02-trait-objects.html)

And Rust has dynamic linking as well: [https://doc.rust- lang.org/reference/linkage.html](https://doc.rust- lang.org/reference/linkage.html)

So IMHO Rust has enough features to be used in object oriented fashion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> IMHO, Rust just should take size of the largest implementation of Animal for `impl Animal`, and viola — we can make them static. No heap is good for embedded.

<comment><USER8> Note that it's quite possible for a trait to have infinitely many implementations in any given program. For example, Debug is implemented by u64, Box<u64>, Box<Box<u64>>, ..., and so on. While these happen to have the same size, it's not hard to imagine a situation where this is not the case.

<comment><USER9> Your situation is already sufficiently impossible because it shows that for a given trait, the set of implementors is often (countably) infinite.

<comment><USER3> However, the number of implementors actually instantiated in any given program is necessarily finite. You could write a program that would make it infinite, e.g.

        trait Foo { fn foo(); }

        impl<T> Foo for T {
            fn foo() {
                <Box<T> as Foo>::foo();
            }
        }

...but the compiler can't compile it: since Rust implements generics solely through monomorphization, that would require generating an infinitely large binary :)

<comment><USER10> > Rust implements generics solely through monomorphization

That doesn't sound right. Trait objects use dynamic dispatch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why boxed? just change to vec::<&dyn animal> and push reference of Dog to vec ,it should work. Isnot &dyn animal trait object?

<comment><USER12> It works, but the point of the article remains the same because &dyn Animal is also a fat pointer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very insightful I enjoyed this very much</comment>


Chrome: Not releasing unnecessary memory within tabs - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=25b8df92dab2d548&hl=en

<comment><AUTHOR> I noticed that if I open, say 20 tabs and later close all but one, there are still 20 processes, so I have to use taskkill /f /fi "imagename eq chrome.exe".

I searched to see if this was a known issue and found this discussion.

Someone even suggests that Google uses Chrome to use our computers to calculate index of cache in the background then send the results back to Google...

Don't be evil? What do you think?

<comment><USER2> "Someone even suggests that Google uses Chrome to use our computers to calculate index of cache in the background then send the results back to Google... Don't be evil? What do you think?"

Someone suggests it do they? Must be true then...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is an inaccurate (and edited) link title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, edited. I wrote the title with the problem I found in mind, which lead me to find that discussion. Anyway, in the discussion the problem of closed tabs' processes not being released is treated.</comment></comment>


Artifical intelligence publishes automatically generated books by the hour - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+EmereoNetPublishing/posts

<comment><AUTHOR> How long before the bot to human text ratio will make it hard to sift out the garbage? Older generations are already falling for some bot-generated products.

See this reddit thread:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2s2g1a/how_are_scam_p...](http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2s2g1a/how_are_scam_publishers_like_this_legal/)

The books are printed on demand, and seems to contain content at least somewhat related to the chosen topic.

Some have hilarious discrepancies, so i am curious to know how the process actually works. It seems there is no human oversight at all.

These books reminds me of several times i have searched for info on topics like health and nutrition. Sites like Livestrong seems to have articles in tame repetitious language on the most specific topics.

For example here i just tried some random health related words:

workout b12 : [http://www.livestrong.com/article/399325-vitamin-b12-exercis...](http://www.livestrong.com/article/399325-vitamin-b12-exercise/)

heart rate zinc: [http://www.livestrong.com/article/290078-zinc-overdose- heart...](http://www.livestrong.com/article/290078-zinc-overdose-heart-rate/)

tingling hands bananas: [http://www.livestrong.com/article/509505-tingling-in- hands-f...](http://www.livestrong.com/article/509505-tingling-in-hands-feet- high-potassium/)

Seems like the concept on Livestrong is somewhat related. I wonder if it datamines and then is quickly glanced through by cheap labor in the far east, or if the process is automatised like on Wolfram Alpha somehow.

Does anyone have other interesting examples of bots disguised as human authors?</comment>


Ask HN: What are the real drawbacks of an energy based currency? - <AUTHOR> Fiat currencies have tremendous issues but they also serve a general purpose of allowing governments unrestricted control of their economic growth (or at the very least, money supply which has tremendous impacts or rather should be reflections on economic growth). This was done with the intention of allowing governments to be able to pay their debts, bearing in mind that if they over inflate their money supply they will suffer inflationary consequences.
Here's the thing. I think it's bupkis. We live in a global economy. The fundamental unit of exchange in nature is energy. Energy is required to change the state of all matter (either it's consumed or released). Energy is what matters when all is said and done for human survival. Why isn't energy or rather energy back currency the global currency of the day? I know things like electricity contracts and other energy derivatives exist but really energy is required for everything. I think by also creating intelligent derivatives of energy this currency can also assess environmental impacts. Energy is fundamental to our survival from food, to electricity, to heating and cooling to all the energy required to make all the good we consume.
Even cryptocurrencies are fundamentally derivatives of energy...and they consume a hell of a lot of it.
The biggest thing I can think of is, how does energy measure human creativity and ingenuity. The answer I have is, honestly current money doesn't do a great job of that and we let the "market" decide that anyway.
There's lot's of flaws or shortcomings I haven't considered. At the risk of starting a brutal heavily opinion based flame war, please critique and discuss! <comment><USER2> Generic "energy" is not fungible. The use-value, storability, transportability, and exchange-value of a gigajoule differ _drastically_ depending on whether it's a gigajoule of enriched uranium, diesel fuel, electricity, sawdust, hot water, methane...

An "energy-based currency system" is either a barter system that barters various energy-related commodities, or it's just as arbitrary as the USD, with the arbitrariness being set by whoever dictates standard conversion rates between different forms of actual and potential energy.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you have a currency backed by some good, you need to be able to exchange the currency for the good. How would it work? There's no consistent price of energy, as it depends on the cost to get it to you and the local method of generation.

I suppose you could give them batteries, but now you're back to tying it to a physical good, one which has some irritating problems like toxicity and losing the charge over time. You're probably better off choosing some arbitrary material that's in demand, which is how gold and silver got into use.

<comment> UK-AL Except real currency has no real good backing it either.

<comment><USER3> Which is why I started that with "If you have a currency backed by some good".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> for a currency to make sense it needs to be worth >>> more than what is used to make it.</comment>


Robinhood goes down again, during another historic trading day - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/09/robinhood-app-down-again-during-another-historic-trading-day.html <comment><USER2> Previous related threads:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22480260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22480260)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22477567](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22477567)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22475019](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22475019)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22468361](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22468361)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22465178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22465178)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow... Being down once - OK, it was record-high volume, servers were strained. Twice - well, it was only a day after the first time and it takes time to fix these things. But a third time, nearly a week after the first incident (and once again on a volatile day where users stand to gain/lose a lot of money)? Really hard to think of any acceptable justification for that.

<comment><USER4> The simple answer is that the reason the system failed the first time wasn't easy to fix in the short term. Either they need to acquire more hardware resources or redesign some system so that it scales better. Not everything can be fixed overnight. Take a look at reddit - that's a website that collapsed repeatedly for months and months and months. Sometimes it's not something you can just 'fix'.

<comment><USER5> Robinhood is nothing like Reddit. It has a much bigger valuation, more resources, strict regulations to follow, and the responsibility of safely handling money for millions of people. This should be fixed within days even if it means redesigning the entire system.

The last blog post blamed overloaded DNS so it doesn't seem like a major architectural problem, which is why it's surprising that they're down again.

<comment><USER6> > This should be fixed within days even if it means redesigning the entire > system.

Please tell me you do not manage a team of software developers.

<comment><USER7> The last 20 years I have been working in heavily regulated environments; in cock-ups like this were your Retail clients got royally screwed (for a second time in such a short period), on a repeat issue, the hammer will fall HARD on their heads. Anyone wanted to sell to minimize losses has been severely damaged.

There are many ways to resolve these issues FAST. The easy way is to throw money at this. Go tomorrow (literally) and bypass all procurement controls and go to a mega big provider and scale this asap. Any financial services with a half decent IT has done the paper exercise to this scenario (at least for the purposes of BCP/DRP). The slow/better/mature way may be too slow, especially with the current market conditions.

The RH folks will definitely get a visit from SEC, their external auditor, and their external auditor will get a visit from SEC.(their auditor will be in the deepest of shits)(how come they failed to spot such a going concern issue?)(what the hell were they looking for on their audits?)(did they only send juniors over there?)

I feel sorry for the retail traders that got knocked down. I think that anyone locked in buying at 27-28k (US30) should wait 6 months to breakeven and after the US elections (irrespective of the winner) there will probably be a rally.

<comment><USER8> This is why you would use IB for a retail brokerage account versus the "cooler app" if you care about execution and uptime.

<comment><USER9> They aren't that fantastic either. They had issues today as well, I couldn't exit out of spreads, so I had to liquidate everything and that was failing too. It was a hot mess. Edit: I didn't actually want to liquidate all my holdings but it was better than staying in and risking everything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Matt Levine had some interesting (and funny!) insights the last time [0]

> It is well known that one of the best services a retail broker can provide > is not answering the phones during a crash. The market is down, the > customers panic, their timing is terrible, they want to sell at the bottom, > they call you up to say "sell everything," you say "we're sorry all our > representatives are assisting other customers, your call is important to > us," they hang up and get distracted, the market rallies, they forget about > selling, you have saved them a fortune, good work.

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-03/robinh...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-03/robinhood- picked-a-bad-day-to-break)

<comment><USER11> I just feel for the smart investors calling up because they want to BUY everything... and can't get through :P

<comment><USER12> Buying the dip always feels intelligent in a bull market. In a bear market, it's not so wise.

The future is unknown to all of us. In some cases, looks are not deceiving. When the market appears to be on the cusp of freefall, it can in fact accelerate downward.

<comment><USER13> There's also the saying though of "buy when there's blood in the streets, especially if it's your blood". All got to go up sometime. Just how much capital do you have to wait out the drop?

<comment><USER14> >All got to go up sometime.

Why?

<comment><USER15> I view it as such: do you believe we have achieved peak efficiency with regards to production of goods and providing services? If not, there's room for the economy to grow.

I am not an economist though, this is just my layman's view.

<comment><USER16> The actual question is whether the market thinks that future efficiency gains are on the way or not. If the market does, then that efficiency is already priced in and you can't make any money off of it.

What you actually have to figure out is: is there any unexpected future efficiency gains that the market doesn't expect. You have to know something that the market does not.

<comment><USER17> > The actual question is whether the market thinks that future efficiency > gains are on the way or not. If the market does, then that efficiency is > already priced in and you can't make any money off of it.

Isn't this ignoring opportunity cost, uncertainty, etc.? If the expectation of future gains is priced in, wouldn't treasury bonds sell for face value + remaining interest on the secondary market?

<comment><USER18> I guess they are assuming perfect knowledge.

<comment><USER17> I'm sure all the players are acting rationally as well!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> RIP RH.

Their target audience is casual investors. The kind of people easily influenced by reddit/twitter sentiment.

The fact that wallstreetbets made a PREEMPTIVE RH goes down thread [0] (2500 comments) is pretty conclusive proof that they're never living this one down.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/fftyri/pree...](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/fftyri/preemptive_robinhood_crash_thread_2_the_sequel/)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is a good reminder that all these new mobile(brokers|banks|&c.) are not as good as the historical systems that have been stress tested for decades. All is good when everything works as expected but as soon as the slightest issue arise you're in for a ride.

<comment><USER21> That's what I think of every time I see a post about some new VC backed startup that says they are going to disrupt an industry by creating a lean product that cuts out all of the unnecessary cruft and legacy systems. People need to learn that there's usually a reason something is done a certain way, and having barrels of VC money doesn't make you an expert in a field.

<comment><USER22> Ultimately, RH is backed by a legacy system somewhere. I believe they custom built their OMS (order management system) which was the previous bottleneck but somewhere between RH and the other side of the order is a legacy system that they can't disrupt.

<comment><USER23> To claim that RH would outscale NYSE, NASDAQ, and market makers like Citadel and Renaissance Technologies is absurd.

It's like saying Airbnb is taking down root level DNS servers.

<comment><USER24> > Renaissance Technologies

I didn't realize they were a big player in this game. Citadel definitely is, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's always been either completely down or having a huge lag in executing orders at market open for the last 6 business days. That leap year bug was a hoax. Robinhood just can't scale under heavy load.

I wonder if people will leave the platform en masse to alternatives as most brokers have no fees on trades these days.

<comment><USER26> Something tells me Robinhood users will abandon stocks altogether after this week.

<comment><USER27> I never understood the appeal of using a telephone to trade one's life savings anyway.

<comment><USER28> I don't see how it's worse to do it on a phone than your laptop, or over the phone with a broker via a voice call?

Most folks I know who use RH just use it as a fun little side gamble/game. Small-ish amounts of money, something they could afford to lose, with the rest in more stable funds or investments.

<comment><USER29> I agree, both that that's my experience and that it's the right way to use RH. But then that means this isn't exactly an existential crisis; if you can't run your side gamble during some periods of high market volatility, does it really matter?

<comment><USER28> On one hand, now is a fun/important time to be messing with your side gamble. It'd be like if a betting site went down the day of the Super Bowl. If you're just using RH to gamble and day-trade, periods of high volatility are some of the most fun times to be actively trading!

On the other hand, I don't really care. I'll be fine. Most of the folks I know who use RH are just joking about it being down. It's annoying, but no one's broken up about it. A lot of the folks casting their anger at RH seem to be folks who already dislike it and probably don't use it?

Professional or large-scaled investors with large sums invested probably aren't using RH for a lot of reasons even before you get to the downtime issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Merrill Lynch / Bank of America's trading platform is also down... so this isn't limited to Robin Hood. I was completely unable to place any trades or even check balances during the market opening this morning.

However, engineering HEADS SHOULD ROLL. In the era of on demand computing, near limitless cloud resources, etc, these engineering teams should have already had capacity planning ready to go for these trading platforms. I'm extremely disappointed - these engineers LIVE for this stuff, and they dropped the ball.

Again, heads should roll. This is not some data center that caught fire, this is capacity planning at its lowest common denominator.

<comment><USER31> The market hit a circuit breaker this morning when it was 7% down. No one could trade at the open, not even professionals, because the market was stopped.

<comment><USER32> That doesn't seem to be the reason Robinhood is having issues.

I don't know if it was the case for the two other platforms OP mentioned but Robinhood seems to have some issues handling the request volumes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have empathy for the engineers there. Here's hoping they get the resources and support they need.

After vents like this juniors turn into seniors, seniors into VPs, and VPs going on sabbatical.

<comment><USER34> The leap from senior developer to _vice president_ is a lot further than you're implying... _a lot_ further.

<comment><USER35> In most financial companies, the next step up from senior developer is VP.

<comment><USER36> What sort of VP, IT/Development?

<comment><USER37> It's just a weird financial thing. Everyone gets to be a VP. I was actually a bit embarrassed by having the title when I worked at BofA. It's not even a manager level. I was what would be a senior developer anywhere else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Robinhood blamed their DNS system being overloaded last time [1]. Also RH (and other brokers) only show quotes and forward orders with some basic calculations to their exchange partners. They should not be anywhere near the same load as the exchanges. All this points to major architectural problems at the company.

1\. [https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2020/3/3/an-update-from- robi...](https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2020/3/3/an-update-from-robinhoods- founders)

<comment><USER38> That was a pretty weak explanation, only a single sentence referencing the actual technical issue with some stuff about it causing some knock-on outages elsewhere:

> We now understand the cause of the outage was stress on our > infrastructure—which struggled with unprecedented load. That in turn led to > a "thundering herd" effect—triggering a failure of our DNS system.

I was planning to wait for the post-mortem because I dislike speculating and I'm not personally invested here, so I prefer to wait. I'm curious when they'll release the full one because it's going to be one of the most interesting ones in a while, given the large scale of the failure and potential implications... (ignoring today's outage)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'd be curious to know the root cause(s) of their outages. I presume they're using Kafka as an event bus, based on their Faust library[1]:

      Faust is a stream processing library, porting the ideas
      from Kafka Streams to Python.

      It is used at Robinhood to build high performance distributed systems and
      real-time data pipelines that process billions of events every day.

I did some evaluation of various Kafka ingestion methods a while back (including Faust), and didn't find Python to be a great fit, so I'd be curious to know if that has anything to do with it.

[1] [https://faust.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://faust.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

<comment><USER40> I had looked at their job board to see their technologies and saw heavy use of python. I know large systems can be built in python, but for financial services something more performant and safe probably would have been better. But who knows, maybe Robinhood would never have had the adoption its had thus far if it chose something else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is the 3rd system outage in the last week.

[https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/03/robinhood-outage- cause/](https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/03/robinhood-outage-cause/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Man, I picked a _hell_ of a time to dip my toe into the investment game. I picked up a couple of reasonably wide Vanguard ETFs that seemed to be doing fine at the end of last year. I'm currently down 12%, and down 15% in the last month.

I suppose that's what I get. I realize that I should be looking at yearly data and I've only had them for a couple of months, but it's a little hard to look at.

Not to mention with all of the other RobinHood issues I want to move to another platform I'm already on (I've got an account with Schwab for work stuff and they seem fine), but general wisdom says to hold and let this craziness ride out.

<comment><USER43> True, bad timing, but it doesn't matter, these are growth ETFs. You're gonna hold it for 30 years.

I say a 10% dip should be motivation for you to buy more of this ETF

<comment><USER17> +1

Word of warning though: Buying and holding for a few decades is excellent advice, but be sure to log in every once in awhile lest you get escheated[1] out of your nest egg!

[1] [https://www.npr.org/2020/02/13/805760508/when-your- abandoned...](https://www.npr.org/2020/02/13/805760508/when-your-abandoned- estate-is-possessed-by-a-state-thats-escheat)

<comment><USER18> Thanks for this. My jaw has dropped at such a ridiculous notion. This is straight up stealing. Kind of a low key asset forfeiture.

<comment><USER17> The bitterly hilarious part is that they only stole $8,000 (and were happy to return it). The gains since 2008 though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I just wrote a post about /r/Wallstreetbets reaction to this. I graphed out comments for several different brokers over time, and also mapped how many users were holding SPY puts and got trapped.

[https://topstonks.com/blog?post_id=robinhood_down_for_the_co...](https://topstonks.com/blog?post_id=robinhood_down_for_the_count)

Needless to say, people are definitely considering moving to other brokers.

</comment><comment><USER45> At this point, I think Robinhood has to be a dead brokerage walking. I cannot fathom any new potential customers looking at brokerage options today and deciding that Robinhood best suits their needs. Their largest competitive advantage was the free trades, and one can find that at most of their competitors now. Existing customers are also leaving (and possibly suing). The future looks pretty grim for Robinhood.

<comment><USER18> I thought that the other benefit would be easy account setup for options trading? The brokers I'm aware of 'interview' you before giving you the ability to trade options.

<comment><USER45> I am able to trade options on Merrill Edge after filling out a form. I think perhaps Robinhood allows people to trade smaller contracts than usual? I can only trade options in batches of 100, which means putting a fair bit of money on the line for any given trade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Feel bad for the engineers working there. Gotta be the most stressful work week of their lives.

</comment><comment><USER47> Being responsible for trading system uptime grows hair on your chest.

<comment><USER48> That's a pretty gendered statement.

<comment><USER49> We've already learned in the last couple years that there are no physical characteristics whatsoever that are associated with gender. And no mental characteristics either.

<comment><USER43> Would a "sexist statement" been a better use of terms?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Robinhood has served its purpose for me. They brought extreme pressure for brokers to offer zero-cost trades.

Now I can do free trades via my Merrill Lynch account and that works for me. There are many other options.

<comment><USER51> ok boomer

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> If a rise in the DOW was enough to shut it down due to load, a _massive fall_ can't be much better.

See replies to Robinhood's tweet: [https://twitter.com/AskRobinhood/status/1237016846282280961](https://twitter.com/AskRobinhood/status/1237016846282280961)

</comment><comment><USER53> Does anyone have a good path forward of how Robinhood can even survive after this? Other brokers are not going down, and also offer free trades. I don't even see the point of it anymore, especially if it is going down in some of the most important market moments.

<comment><USER4> I have a crazy strategy, but hear me out: They do nothing.

The vast majority of Robinhood's customers aren't day trading clamoring to get their daily dose of tendies. The proportion of RH's customers who are actually effected is probably quite minimal, and of those _some_ might change to another broker, but most will probably just put up with it. The market isn't going to be this active for long, and so once it calms down RH will put in place some fixes for its systems. This will be forgotten after a couple of weeks, it'll perform better next time and it'll have almost no impact on RH's value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> FWIW, Charles Schwab is also down, and is often down during heavy trading. There's a big reliability gap between straight consumer brokers, and the next tier up with interactive brokers et al.

<comment><USER55> For what it's worth, IB is down for me too. I can log in, but the stock lookup doesn't work at all.

<comment><USER56> yes, this. many other systems go down in explosive volatility, including IB, tda thinkorswim, etc and they all have their ass covered with electronic trading risk agreements but you dont hear anything about that on wsb because theyre all casual RH chunkers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> And this is what happens when you live wildly on the brink of tech fantasy and tech brilliance.

I believe this will be Robinhood's undoing and the company will likely just firesell itself (less than $1B) to Schwab/TD so they can acquire the younger demographic.

</comment><comment><USER58> This many incidents makes FINRA a joke. Time for some outside regulators to step in and require certain levels of availability with real consequences if not maintained.

See my earlier posts about staying away from RH.

</comment><comment> f-robinhood RH is another one of these trendy "we only hire the best" startups that discriminates against neuro-atypicals with poor social skills who are not good "culture fits"\--you know, the kind of people actually detail-oriented enough to make sure leap days are handled correctly.

I couldn't be happier to see them crash and burn.

</comment><comment><USER59> I _kind_ of expected this after last time. I wouldn't want to be working there right now :o

<comment><USER60> Why not? I think now would be the most interesting time to be working there, where you can learn the most in the smallest amount of time. You'd gain much more knowledge powering through the hard times rather than just coasting around for the easy ones.

<comment><USER61> Yeah but what you're learning is "how to not catastrophically fail your customers". In a better company that's a lesson you already learned. There is going to be a LOT of stress and tension, it's hardly a great learning environment.

<comment><USER62> >In a better company that's a lesson the _company_ already learned.

FTFY. Just because you work at a company doesn't mean you were around to experience what ever event provided some sort of "learning" experience. If you don't experience it personally, what ever systems the company has in place to protect itself from said events just look like bloat/legacy cruft ripe for a young upstart to disrupt away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> You figure they would have just turned the servers up to eleven.

At least in such a volatile time period.

<comment><USER64> It's pretty easy to find yourself creating bottlenecked points of failure in systems that expect consistency. There may not be the knobs necessary to scale up past a certain point.

A sufficiently bad positive feedback loop can also drive you into the ditch no matter how monstrous your hardware is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> It requires very good engineering, from software to hardware, from Webml to pricing to OMS to connectivity to trade large order volumes during a storm.

Robin Hood took market share by being cheaper than other brokers. Cheaper rarely means better (more robust, reliable, etc). That's the price you pay for not paying higher fees.

Full disclosure: I shop around for low fees. But that's because I buy and hold boring index funds. It makes no difference to me whether I can trade into or out of a position today or even this week. If you need to change positions quickly or die, for God's sake, don't pick the cheapest supplier.

</comment><comment><USER66> Did they move fast and growth hack ? There is an absolute culture in the valley now of showing quarterly results and ship something and inevitable trade-off is eng excellence. This culture needs to change dramatically

</comment><comment><USER67> On an already volatile day: [https://twitter.com/NYSE/status/1237009268181798913](https://twitter.com/NYSE/status/1237009268181798913)

<comment><USER68> Likely because of the volatility and the demand it caused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Wonder if it's the Python stream processing system that's bottlenecking:

[https://github.com/robinhood/faust](https://github.com/robinhood/faust)

<comment><USER70> Almost like you shouldnt write a trading platform using python!!! Maybe try an actually fast language like java?

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Also, Trade Republic (Germany's Robin Hood) was partially down today because of a partial outage at HSBC. Seems like a rough day for trading.

</comment><comment><USER72> Why do people keep using it?

<comment><USER73> I assume transferring all your stocks from one platform to another takes time.

<comment><USER74> It's about 5-10 business days by what I'm going through right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I ask this literally every time...

Explain-Like-I'm-Five: Why would you use Robin Hood instead of a normal brokerage like Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, etc that.. (1) _already_ have commission free trades, (2) an app to make those trades, and (3) don't charge any fee for transferring your holdings in-kind to another institution.

<comment><USER76> \- When I created my Robinhood account, none of those brokerages had commission free trades. Also, what about commissions and exercise fees associated with stock options? Also free? I doubt it.

\- Still today, the UX of all of those other apps/websites (that I've used) is horribly dated, clunky, and slow. Robinhood is amazing to use.

\- Robinhood has a Cash Management account that pays me 1.35% interest on all my non-invested cash. None of these other services come close to competing with this.

\- Robinhood started a progressive movement with the mission of making stock trading more accessible to the lower/middle class. I love this company and brand. Schwab is just another faceless corporation who only offers free commissions because they had to to stay relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> So not a "thundering herd" this time, eh?

[https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2020/3/3/an-update-from- robi...](https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2020/3/3/an-update-from-robinhoods- founders)

</comment><comment><USER78> "Robinhood - like AOL but for money"

Ugh. This is a tough issue to design for, and is expensive to run as well.

</comment><comment><USER79> Oh, is it 10:45 am on a Monday already? After the first two days, I downloaded another broker and determined to transfer, but it's kind of a pain. Guess I have to actually do it now.

</comment><comment><USER80> What's the appeal of Robinhood over, say, Fidelity? Is it for people who are making so many trades that the $7 or whatever commission is a big deal?

<comment><USER81> Not cool enough. In all seriousness, from the features/UI/etc.. Robihood seems to be aimed more at speculative trades as opposed to 'playing the long game'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> What an absolute trashpile of a company. The devops people, cto, and archetects should be ashamed of themselves.

</comment><comment><USER82> Not to don the tinfoil hat, but the simplest answer is that Robinhood can't afford to cover the consequences of a fire sale, so they take the app down and blame technical difficulties.

I have no faith that this company is operating in good faith.

<comment><USER83> In what universe is such a theory of vast conspiracy simpler than their servers being overloaded on a busy day?

When people sell stocks on RH (or anywhere else) it's not the broker paying the sales rate. So you're alleging something like RH having fraudulently sold customers' stock before?

And the market was moving the other way when RH also shut down last week. This would be the only broker in history that had its system set up in a way where they suffer with any trade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Just switched to TDAmeritrade as a result of this crap.

</comment><comment><USER85> Is it related to the forced shutdown?

<comment><USER86> It is not, was just confirmed on CNBC that Robinhood is experiencing system wide issues long after the market reopened... Frankly, if I am an user of this platform, I'll get my money out first thing after the fix the access... If the can't keep the system running straight for so many days, who knows what other bugs they have over there...

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Incredible that anyone is still using Robinhood! It's pretty obvious that it's a broker not long for this world.

</comment><comment><USER88> Again... WTF

</comment><comment><USER89> Hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER90> Good. Fuck that startup.

</comment><comment><USER91> chuckles in CICS

</comment><comment><USER92> Look, we've been shitting on Robinhood for almost a decade

They don't even come here to defend themselves and people still act surprised

</comment><comment><USER93> lol, how convenient.

</comment><comment><USER94> wallstreetbets called it

</comment><comment><USER95> All those leetcode engineers RobinHood hired came back to bite them. This isnt web development

</comment><comment><USER96> If their brokerage license isn't pulled after this, what does it take? C-Suite _literally_ setting customers' money on fire?

<comment><USER58> Isn't FINRA "self" regulatory in nature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Robinhood is one of the reasons there's a crash in the first place. People trading stocks on the bus etc.. Heyzeus. None of these people are adding information to the market, they're just piling in with money and randomness.

This is the same frothiness I remember from the .com when ETrade etc. just became big and all these zillions of people who thought they were investing plowed their money in.

<comment><USER98> All markets worldwide are crashing and the cause is.. US discount brokers? Not, like, the ongoing pandemic?

<comment><USER97> The pandemic is bursting the bubble, it's not the underlying cause of the problem. The conditions have been building for several years.

In 2001, the bubble was burst finally by big shift in interest rates from the Fed, and some insane valuations which cause the smart money to run, causing a stampede.

Most analysts have been raising red flags for a long time now. The market has been operating on hype and irrational good vibes for at least a few years.

Warren Buffet started hoarding cash some time ago - long before the Coronavirus.

Listen to Robert Shiller's interview earlier this year on the FT concerning 'narratives'. I don't think it's a new concept, rather just a modern articulation of it. The mania we're seeing is just a more extreme form of narrative.

<comment><USER98> I've been looking at the Shiller PE Ratio [1] with raised eyebrows as much as the next guy, I'm just not seeing how discount brokerages specifically are at fault.

So far the S&P 500 has lost just one year of gains. I havn't done deep analysis but to me that still seems consistent with expectations that the economy will slow down for months due to sickness and lockdowns all over the world caused by the pandemic (+ this weekend's oil price thing).

The PE ratio of the S&P 500 is still 20, so there is still some way down to go before I would call this the bubble busting .I don't have to hubris to predict how much more the market will fall tomorrow or in 3 months.

[1] [https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe](https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tacotron: A Fully End-to-End Text-To-Speech Synthesis Model - <AUTHOR> https://google.github.io/tacotron/ <comment><USER3> The stress and intonation examples are what puts this on the far side of the uncanny valley. I've not heard computer speech like this, where the voice seems understand the idea underneath the words.

<comment><USER4> It is without doubt very impressive, but on longer texts the lack of understanding will be apparent. Wrong semantic stresses, incorrect pronunciation of homographs, maybe inconsistent pronunciation of names, and so on.

Perfect speech synthesis from unannotated text will require much more complex system. It will need database of common knowledge in some form, ability to relate text to that database, ability to retain and use this semantic information to guide synthesis. That is, it should be a step closer to artificial general intelligence.

<comment><USER5> I'd say even in these samples there's still some errors. The intonation on "brown" in "quick brown fox" is still wrong. "AllHipHop" is not pronounced as a human would, though I'll grant you that's a made-up word so I wouldn't even expect a non-native human speaker to necessarily get that one right.

Still, the quality is such that I'm only observing this in the spirit of scientific analysis. It's some good quality.

<comment><USER6> I wonder whether it would have been more natural if it was written as "quick, brown fox" as would be customary English. Usually when adjectives don't have commas between them it's because the last adjective is coupled to the noun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No source code, as usual.

How difficult would it be to duplicate these results with TensorFlow? Would something like this require more than the building blocks that TF and other toolkits provide? I have zero experience with machine learning, so I'm just curious.

<comment><USER8> _No source code, as usual._

So why is it on Github?

<comment><USER9> To make the voice samples easily available. Preprint archives and scientific journals don't usually allow you to embed audio into your papers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Feels like we're getting breakthroughs every few months now. How close are we to the point yet that a mobile phone can generate speech in close to realtime that is reasonably pleasant to listen to for long periods?

<comment><USER11> Audio book piracy is gonna skyrocket when you can generate a pleasant track from text.

<comment><USER12> Huh? I would think, if anything, it would go down if, as an alternative to pirating an audio book, one can download the text from Gutenberg.org or pirate the _text_, and generate a decent audio book from it.

<comment><USER11> True, technically it's not "audiobook piracy", but I used that as shorthand for recording and distributing an audio version of a written book, which courts will surely find to be a form of piracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> can we eventually apply style transfer to speech? I'd like to hear all audio narration in the voice of David Attenborough.

<comment><USER14> Adobe VoCo does something like that. Demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3l4XLZ59iw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3l4XLZ59iw)

<comment><USER15> It was pointed out the last time I posted this that the demo is "fake" at least in as much as the inserted words aren't being synthesized but rather copy-pasted with existing intonation intact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Being able to pronounce Taleb Kweli is blowing my mind. Absolutely amazing, can't wait to see where this goes.

<comment><USER17> It doesn't, it's Tah-leb Kwah-lee, that sounds more Ta-Leb Kwell-ee

But damn, the rest of it is astounding

<comment><USER18> It sounds good to me. Not sure why you'd want to pronounce it as Tah-leb Kwah- lee?

If anything, it sounds like "quiley".

<comment><USER19> Not trying to sound snarky here, but that's how he actually pronounces his name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Paper link here: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.10135](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.10135)

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd love to see it take on this poem: [http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english- pronunciation/](http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english-pronunciation/)

<comment><USER22> That was a great poem, storying that one away for later. It truly shows the complexity of the English language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm totally new to tts, so please forgive the questions:

* Is this open source?

* What hardware would one need to run this?

* If specialist hardware is required (e.g. reasonably high end GPU) would that simply be for building and training the system or its operation?

<comment><USER24> From what I understand looking through the paper, this is only a research paper, without any source code. So right now it's not possible to say what the hardware requirement might be.

<comment><USER23> Thank you. It would have made more sense to me if the source code to generate the output examples which they posted. Oh well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would like an on-line version that can generate mp3 from supplied text. In English using a British accent. Female.

I have my reasons.

<comment><USER26> couple this with a system that transforms pictures of people into nude pictures of the same people. win $$$. watch civilization crumble to dust.

<comment><USER27> There's a reddit forum that has pictures of on/off. Maybe given enough of those as the training data, one could create such a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Question: why do people generate waveforms by neural networks?

Would it be easier for a neural network to "control" an emulated throat/mouth and train against the sound output?

Emitting and post-processing waveforms entirely in neural networks seems like putting a lot of responsibilities into neural networks.

<comment><USER29> The reason is, the only speech data that is available in high quality and large quantities is in audio form. There has been research for decades on measuring or estimating the properties of the speech organ (oral cavity geometry etc), but that is largely an unsolved model inversion problem. Existing physical speech synthesis models are pretty crude and sound quite robotic.

<comment><USER30> I like that you mentioned "inversion".

ML is strongly related to solving inverse problems but it does not tend to be emphasised enough, in my opinion.

In reality, speech organs (a relatively low dimensional system) generate high dimensional data (speech). This is an example of the so called curse of dimensionality.

What ML does is to invert this process and create a model of the generation process.

My favorite example is quantum mechanics. Physicists made lot of measurements and created a model (quantum mechanics) that reproduces those measurements (and even works on test data, not only on training data).

This is an example of a solution of an inverse problem. ML does the same.

So in one way or an other, every working TTS has a model that accurately describes the speech organs and how the brain uses them to create speech from text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'd really love this to mature completely and applied to Kindle Whispersync books. I've found that some readers of audiobooks make the book hard to comprehend or even distracting, especially if the sex of the person does not match the author or even remotely the sound of the author who I may be very familiar with from video interviews and what not. Ideally every author would be a great reader and create recordings for their own content, but if some synthetic means could achieve an approximate result that would be fantastic. Even better people could choose from a flavor of voices and settle upon the one that works for them.

</comment><comment><USER32> Unless all these fancy new text to speech engines are released as actual software instead of cloud services they're worthless. And we all know that isn't going to happen.

<comment><USER33> How is research worthless?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've been a long-time user for OS X's built in text-to-speech [0].

IMO, it actually performs pretty robustly on these examples. Is Apple still using just diphones, or are they post-processing in some way?

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlainTalk#Text-to- speech_in_Ma...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlainTalk#Text-to- speech_in_Mac_OS_X)

<comment><USER20> I'm using Alex to read articles and comments. I love the Alex voice but it sometimes makes stupid mistakes.

I hope we will have decent TTS for linux too.

<comment><USER35> Fyi they added newer, (imo) better quality voices since alex debuted in 10.5. My personal favorite is Kate (english UK voice) and Tessa (english - <USER2> africa)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is really awesome! Anyone has any resources on learning TTS synthesis?

<comment><USER37> These new models are replacing almost everything that's been developed for TTS in the last 30 years with neural nets. So you don't need to study TTS anymore. Study neural nets and then read this paper and you will understand the state of the art in TTS.

<comment><USER38> This is complete nonsense. You need to understand the problem you are addressing even if you plan to use deep learning methods for them.

Saying you don't need to know anything about TTS is like developing a self- driving car and saying you don't need to know anything about the rules of the road. For one thing, how are you supposed to know when you got it wrong? And what things it is important to get right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This model sounds so cool. Any idea of a high level software package where you can feed pairs of <text, audio> and build a TTS model as a result?

<comment><AUTHOR> This research just came out, quite literally, like today.

There will be a tensorflow implementation tomorrow though.

<comment><USER39> Do you have an update on this topic?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What would happen if trained on 2 or 3 voices for the same amount of time?

<comment><AUTHOR> The model is smart enough to not mix them together in the same sample. Different samples would have different voices, unless you put in a voice identifier as input to the model. Then you can control which voice to generate with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Where is the code?</comment>


Show HN: GrammarGrizzly – For Serious Spanish Learners - <AUTHOR> https://grammargrizzly.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! Grammar Grizzly ([http://grammargrizzly.com](http://grammargrizzly.com)) is a website that helps Spanish language learners, make sense of and simplify learning grammar by showing you what and when you need to learn or revise a grammar point with endless examples and explanations.

Learning a language takes a lot of time, effort and strategy, while also being pretty expensive. Most online resources focus on vocabulary and help you pick up a few sentences for particular situations. Which feels good when you first apply it, but leaves gaps in your grammar knowledge which are a pain to find and fill down the road.

We help you prevent those gaps in the first place, learn new grammar and also continuously review known grammar.

Key benefits:

* The grammar points introduced are accompanied by multiple example sentences that reinforce what you have previously learned. With almost endless examples.

* Each grammar point also includes links to other great free online resources to further your studies and cement what you have learned into memory.

* You also have the ability to review the grammar you have learned using a built-in SRS system. SRS stands for spaces out repetition system, that helps you review the grammar when you would have almost 'forgotten' it. An efficient and effective way to memorize things.

* The SRS system requires manual input to test your true understanding of the material.

* Start your grammar studies and track your study progress as you cover all of the grammar points from beginner to advanced. Currently there are only a few levels on the site but we will be adding several levels each week.

We are pretty early and are adding new grammar points, levels and features daily, so any us hard feedback you have on ways to improve would be greatly appreciated. Please drop us a line firstname.lastname@example.com

It is completely free to sign up and try, so why not take it for a test drive? You can learn more at [grammargrizzly.com]([http://grammargrizzly.com/](http://grammargrizzly.com/))

Thanks

Alex & Jake</comment>


How Not to Bomb a Job Offer - <AUTHOR> https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-not-to-bomb-your-offer-negotiation-c46bb9bc7dea/ <comment><USER2> While I appreciate the time put into the article this is all speculation. Reality is most companies simply look at the average industry salary and pick that number as an offer. If the candidate doesn't accept it、 companies simply look elsewhere. End of story. Most companies are not that miserable to find new employees even when there is a labor shortage.

The only exception I can think of is being an expert of a specific field. But then again、that specific experience cannot be generalized for the simple reason that it is a SPECIAL case.</comment>


USPS Site Exposed Data on 60M Users - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/11/usps-site-exposed-data-on-60-million-users/ <comment><USER2> Not a great month for USPS and security.

"U.S. Secret Service Warns ID Thieves are Abusing USPS's Mail Scanning Service"

[https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/11/u-s-secret-service- warns...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/11/u-s-secret-service-warns-id- thieves-are-abusing-uspss-mail-scanning-service/)</comment>