Dopamine is not addictive (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/201701/no-dopamine-is-not-addictive <comment><USER2> In another life I was a research assistant in a lab studying drug addiction, and our operating assumption was that - like any other system in the brain - it's not as simple as saying "neurotransmitter X causes Y". But there does seem to be an awful lot of evidence (or at least there was a lot of evidence cerca 2008-2009) to suggest that dopamine is heavily involved in motivation and habit formation, which are easily linked to addiction.

<comment><USER3> Half-OT: I never understood this.

To me it seems random actions cause dopamin production.

Like, how does the body know that it should release more dopamin when I scroll HN than when I learn Rust, or ride my bike?

<comment><USER4> I think many folks here didn't actually read the article, which addresses some of these questions. Dopamine is a learning marker that is a precursor to rewards. The first time you get the big reward, there is no dopamine, but you also might not remember it particularly well. The next time you are engaged in a behavior the previously gave you a reward, you get a hit of dopamine which helps you pay extra attention to the details surrounding the reward hit.

That is, it _is_ the habit drug. It helps you remember the precise nature of recurrent rewards, and presumably is "intended" to help you get better are arriving at the reward.

<comment><USER5> So this is very insightful.

Is this why activities associated with bad 'dopamine habits' are so strongly correlated with said the bad habits that involved dopamine?

After having quit smoking, I find myself desperately wanting to do the 'break thing' whereby you stop what you're doing, take 5 minutes to just stand, relax and and enjoy the moment for a second while ignoring the stress.

I honestly don't even think I want the cigarette, just everything else about that experience.

<comment><USER6> I think that's adjacency rather than dopamine specifically. Unfortunately for you the "break thing" is adjacent to "cigarette". For whatever time you did the "break thing" with a cigarette you encoded a lot of behavioral and environmental memories together. So even after the chemical addition to the nicotine fades you're still associating the desirable "break thing" aspects with a cigarette.

Parallel universe you (possibly with a goatee) that did the "break thing" but never smoked during a break will want to take a break but has no association with cigarettes or smoking. Their desire for a break remains, maybe with the same strength, but with no desire for a cigarette.

<comment><USER7> On a related note, this just reminded me that back in college, whenever I felt like taking a break from working, I would suggest to my smoker friends that we take a "smoke break" despite that I've never smoked a cigarette in my life.

(In hindsight I probably shouldn't have been encouraging a harmful drug addiction, but it was more tongue-in-cheek than anything.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I suppose more succinctly, claiming that dopamine causes addiction is like claiming that the cam shaft is what makes a car go. Addiction is a phenomena that involves what appears to be a lot of factors and components; dopamine appears to be one of them. I think this is the misapprehension the article is trying to rectify, but I am not sure that the way the article pursues the case it makes really simplifies things.

In biological, let alone neurological systems, the notion of cause is far less discrete than it is in a reductive area such as basic physics. Many of the long term effects in these kinds of systems arise in circumstances where there are clearly feedback loops and many of them overlapping. One component may be involved in the dynamics of addiction, regulating motor functions, and learning, and each of these phenomena involve many components. The neurotrash that pushes the message that dopamine is somehow the causal component in the process of addiction appeals to the reductive interest in seeing every effect as the consequence of a straightforward cause.

This kind of thinking in public perception also might be the consequence of the pharma industry pushing a narrative of "chemical imbalances" being at the root of behavioral and psychological problems, discharging from this picture factors on many other levels such as past experiences, mental associations, social and familial conditions, economic circumstances, etc... all of which can contribute to addiction as a phenomena.

</comment><comment><USER9> The author tries to argue that dopamine is not addictive by talking about how the absence of dopamine can affect critical bodily functions but never sufficiently disproves the well researched claim that dopamine when given in artificially large amounts, which is crucial point when talking about dopamine addiction, is indeed addictive. At best the author is making a technical distinction that for the most part is inconsequential.

<comment><USER10> The article's point is not that dopamine isn't involved in addiction. It's that knowing that dopamine is involved isn't enlightening. What's enlightening is to understand why you get addicted to things that are bad for you. And for that you have to look at the specifics of the situation, not just at the chemical.

It's a little bit like saying, hey, I took a road and I went to the wrong destination. Let me look at the road and understand this process. It is paved with asphalt, so maybe asphalt is the problem. Maybe the road surface is too good and easily drivable. Which doesn't make sense, because (a) roads that take you to good destinations are also paved with asphalt and (b) you ended up at a bad destination because of a wrong turn rather than because of the road conditions.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if this can be generalized along the lines of: problems with processes tend to be dynamic issues, but people want to look for static issues.

Like, if something is wrong with your car, it would be nice if there was some magic elixir you can add to fix it, and indeed any auto parts store has dozens. They have fuel injector cleaner, engine stabilizer, stop leak, no smoke additive... But if there is a real problem, it probably requires doing something to fix the way moving parts are interacting, not just adding a little fluid.

Which seems to me suggestive of an analogy with how people* talking about adjusting the levels of brain chemicals, when surely it's got to be a dynamic process that isn't working right.

*as in, the people who write the patient info pamphlets for psychotropic drugs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's really important for everyone to understand the point of the middle of this article which can be summarized as: "dopamine is not a reward, it is the expectation of a reward".

However, this doesn't mean that one cannot be addicted to dopamine. Lab rats will submit themselves to physical harm to get more dopamine and humans given a dopamine button keep pressing it for more. This is explained in the book "The Willpower Instinct".

It's probably the case though that you would only see a psychologist like the author of this article for an addiction to a true reward chemical (like opioids). A dopamine addiction is more likely to be something like checking your phone for messages every few minutes.

The usefulness of dopamine is to provide motivation. So unfortunately the solution to a perceived dopamine problem isn't to broadly have less dopamine (then you won't want to get off the couch), but to somehow have less associated with the activity you don't want to do and more associated with the activity you do want to do.

<comment><USER13> If someone has what is ostensibly a "dopamine problem," they should consider changing one or more of the following, depending on the situation:

\- their environment (residence, city, state, country)

\- their job, career, or academic pursuit

\- their romantic life

\- their friends

People have completely transformed as a result of one move, with an example being someone from a small town in the Midwest moving to New York City. I think everyday productivity hacks, motivation hacks, anti-habits, etc...are marginally overrated. They could even be damaging if they keep you in an environment or circumstance that you are fundamentally incompatible with. Conversely, big structural life changes are underrated.

If someone reading this found the above to be true (or not) in their personal life, please weigh in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > mentioning neuroscience is a great way to convince people you are more > knowledgeable about something, and to make your arguments more convincing. > This effect was recently demonstrated by researchers from the University of > Pennsylvania, who showed that use of irrelevant references to brain science > was an effective way to lure people into thinking that complex phenomena are > simple,

Choice quote IMO.

<comment><USER15> Because the vocabulary and aesthetics of science have become very popular, I keep seeing public figures and people on social media using things that look or sound scientific to advance their own agenda, usually political or commercial. Charlatans like Simon Sinek rely on the audience's uncritical acceptance of their expertise and ignorance of the underlying field or the scientific process as a whole.

Whenever I see this sort of thing it makes me want to scream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ultimately, much of this argument feels pedantic. Yes, people are giving oversimplified descriptions of what's going on when they say dopamine is "addictive." That's because it's easier to describe than incentive salience - but ultimately, the end result is what they care about. It's the behavioral conditioning that people are upset about, which is experimentally proven to be both effective and intentionally leveraged by many industries with great "success."

I do agree with his statement that we need to talk more about the complex reasons for that behavior on top of behavioral conditioning, and that people caught in those cycles can and should leverage the means that we have at our disposal to undo that conditioning when it is harmful to them (with professional help as needed). But I think it is absolutely valid to talk about how behavioral conditioning is intentionally leveraged in the design of many products we use, in casinos, etc. And that it is _not_ something that people can or do consciously notice.

Before people can help themselves, they need to even realize there is a problem in the first place, and that is one of the dangerous things about behavioral conditioning. Conditioning is the very mechanism by which we learn new behaviors that become integrated into our life: and as such, it is very easy for a person to fall prey to operant conditioning and for it to just feel like "life as normal," even when the patterns in your life have actually changed dramatically.

In particular, I think it's important for us to be aware of behavioral conditioning _as_ an intentional design choice of the products we use and the entertainment we engage in. The more we are consciously aware of it, the more we can develop the sort of meta-cognition that allows us to notice when we fall into patterns of conditioning that are harming us more than helping us. (note that you can also be conditioned to engage in behaviors that are helpful too! So being aware of _what_ you are conditioning yourself for is as important as whether/when you are being conditioned)

</comment><comment><USER17> This popularization of neuroscience dumbed down to the point of losing the grain of truth is really upsetting.

90 billion neurons in our brain, interconnected in some combinatorial number of ways, but all our behavior and inner world boils down to the interaction of a few dozen neurotransmitters. Yup, sounds about right.

<comment> GuB-42 Why not? Psychoactive drugs are small molecules that can completely change your behavior by doing what your natural neurotransmitters do. You can call them the global variables of your brain, on which the billions of neurons rely.

Our brain "code" is messier than anything mad programmers could have produced. Global variables are generally not a good practice, so of course our brain has global variables. And of course they are reused for completely unrelated things, for example lactation and the immune system, because life is like that. Life never read about pure functions and design patterns and will happily use floating point numbers as pointers and jump between two instructions.

Back to the subject, I think it is just a case of circular reasoning. Dopamine is part of the reward system, and addictive stuff cause dopamine to be released. To limit addiction, limit things that cause dopamine to be released. So, to limit addiction, you have to limit things that are addictive.

<comment><USER18> > they are reused for completely unrelated things, for example lactation and > the immune system

Can you expand on this a bit more?

<comment> GuB-42 It is just from the Wikipedia article on dopamine, but it is not uncommon for neurotransmitters to have many unrelated purposes, both in the body and the brain.

Serotonin, the other "pleasurable" neurotransmitter does pretty much everything.

It makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. It is easier to repurpose a molecule we can already produce than to build an entirely new pathway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nearly all popular science journalism is either vastly oversimplified or outright trash. If you want the real story you have to study the actual science, which means reading papers or at least reading articles like this one written by actual practicing scientists or other professionals (doctors, engineers) very familiar with the science. Even then you should cross- reference and gather multiple opinions from the field.

Same goes for pop understandings of science. My favorite is "survival of the fittest" for Darwinian evolutionary theory, which is basically wrong as it's vastly oversimplified and prone to enormous misunderstandings. A more accurate and modern version would be "differential rates of reproduction of patterns of genetic information that influence the formation of phenotypes in proportion to those phenotypes' performance of said reproduction." Not as catchy, and much harder to use to rationalize popular cultural and political fads.

</comment><comment><USER20> The article talks about addiction, but doesn't talk about withdrawal. Is "dopamine withdrawal" a thing in medical science?

<comment><USER21> I don't know about that, but dopamine deficiency is certainly a thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> >No, X Is Not Y

This template seems like an extension of Betteridge's law of headlines

</comment><comment><USER23> It's basically a longform "guns don't kill people" argument for dopamine and addiction.

<comment><USER24> normally the X doesn't do Y (bad thing) argument is being made to push the cause of getting more X out there, or at least keeping the supply of X from getting limited.

Is there a movement to increase dopamine access in middle America I'm unaware of?

<comment><USER23> He's arguing that colloquial demonization of dopamine as the cause of addiction isn't fair because dopamine is necessary for normal cognitive functioning and isn't accurate because dopamine is not itself the feel-good hormone, then proceeds to tell that dopamine helps attribute reward to behaviour.</comment></comment></comment>


Will Baxter be the Model T of the robotics industry? - <AUTHOR> http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/09/will-baxter-be-model-t-of-robotics.html

<comment><USER2> As someone who watches far too much "How It's Made" and other engineering porn, one of the things you start to notice is the amount of 'human glue' logic in production processes.

Whenever there's a weird-shaped widget that needs to be inserted into a die at a funny angle, or some apparently trivial decision needs to be made, there's probably some poor bastard zoned into a hypnotic trance of 12 hour shifts putting tab A into slot B with the mild spice of danger that OSHA-minimum safety guards never really quells completely.

Of those jobs, it seems on casual inspection that a surprisingly high percentage exist because some process engineer has cranked the numbers, and it's cheaper to get a human to do it than put the dev + maint time into an automatic solution.

At USD22k, these things have got to be cheaper than even just wages for a single min-wage worker for a year, you might even throw 10-20k at consultants to customise it for you as well (and if there's a strong SDK/plugins market, plugin+custom is waaaay cheaper than full-custom)

This could end up being the Manufacturing equivalent of a CMS.

<comment><USER3> _"or some apparently trivial decision needs to be made"_

There be dragons. Those apparently trivial decisions, even if they are truly trivial for humans, can be Ph.D. subjects, or worse, to have them done by robots.

For example, suppose a batch of wrongly colored parts enters the system. A dumb robotic system probably would happily build red cars with yellow left front doors forever.

<comment><USER4> Or glass in a packet or crisps or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm actually much more interested in another trend, represented by MasterCAM's RobotMaster software, that allows CNC machinists/programmers to program robots in the way they do machine tools.

It's a very different approach, but it means that the end-user (machinist) has the ability to know/control his whole stack to a far greater degree than the black-box & magic approach that ReThink is taking with Baxter. For industries that pride themselves on optimizing details - I think the RobotMaster is quite interesting.

<http://www.robotmaster.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I've seen a couple Baxter videos now and it seems that the robot works very slowly. I understand that it has built in safety to slow down when it sees that there are people around, but I'd love to see it doing something useful at full speed to see how efficient it is. Surely they've tested that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Speed isn't the main aim of this. Industrial robotics has an arms race in speed and precision but this is instead a beginning of an arms race in "common sense" abilities, robots that can do the work of humans without specialized programming. It already seems to operate at human worker speed.

<comment><USER7> It probably depends on the task, but from the videos I've seen Baxter seems an order of magnitude slower than a human worker. It looks like Baxter takes several seconds to manipulate an object, but the workers sorting fruit in this video, for example, are doing several manipulations per second.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6dKf8MZ- RM&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6dKf8MZ- RM&feature=player_detailpage#t=48s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, it comes with a proprietary firmware, which completely kills my interest.

</comment><comment><USER9> Tweet Rodney Brooks has been working in the field of robotics since the 1970s and is email ThisBlog this!share to TwitterShare to Facebook

That's how the first line looks to me.

Designing a web site template? Don't do that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This isn't getting enough attention. They'll be releasing an sdk in a few months and hoping to start an "app store" like industry. This could potentially be the Netscape moment for service robotics (robots that take over retail shelf stacking, fast food, parts of nursing). Web/App developers should consider learning computer vision/machine learning and get in on this.

<comment><USER10> This is more like the Apple II moment in Service Robotics rather than the Netscape moment. Baxter is a really cool robot, his end effectors are more limited so that will constrain his ability to add value. That said, like the Apple II which opened up computing to a whole lot of folks who would not have considered it something "they" could do, I expect Baxter to open up pick-n- place type robotics to folks who would not have considered this level of automation. My 'stress test' for these robots are that they are cheap enough to separate recyclables accurately on a moving conveyor. In order to do that you need a certain threshold of dexterity and frequency response (speed), so things that can do that can do lots of interesting things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Will ____ be the Model T of the ____ industry?

Probably not.</comment>


Today I launched my solo project, Listry. Feedback/suggestions appreciated - <AUTHOR> http://www.listry.com/ <comment><USER2> Very nice. At first, I didn't really see the point of it - another voting/wiki type thing, sigh - but the interface is so _fast_ and compelling that it just drew me in.

I registered so I could vote on something, decided to see what creating an article was like, and it was so smooth it made me want to start more, and then eventually realize I have been looking for something like this.

I started a list of "Coffee shops in Cambridge, MA" because I remembered that I had been looking for just such a list the other day. I figured it's mostly HN users on there now, probably, and a fair amount of us are from here. I'm not positive what types of lists you're wanting, though, so I won't be hurt if you delete it!

Feature request: I would love to add some simple custom attribute to each list. For instance, with the coffee shops, it'd be nice if I could define an attribute for that list of "Free wifi?" and then each item could select either yes/no as it's created. An article on vim color themes could define an attribute of "Background?" with options "light, dark, both".

At some point in the future, then, you could filter and look at just the items in the list that match an attribute. E.g., I can look at the coffee shops and filter to look at only the ones that give free wifi.

Great work!

<comment><USER3> side note: losvedir, if you actually are interested in Cambridge Coffee Shops for startups, check out <http://hcombine.com/22/hcombine-start-up-coffee- shops/>

<comment><USER2> Hey, that looks great. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are votes really a 1-5 rating? I thought it was bit counterintuitive (I guess in my experience "votes" are typically binary). How about allowing just thumbs up/down?

<comment><AUTHOR> From this being the top comment, it seems everyone agrees. I'll add it to my to-do list :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Should I keep the 5 star rating control for rating articles, and change the voting on items to thumbs up/down? Or should I change both the voting on items and voting on articles to thumbs up/down?

<comment><USER5> I don't see why they should be different. Consistency conveys simplicity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the project I've been working on for the past 6 months. It combines the features of wikis with a voting system that determines the best parts of an article. There's still a lot of improvements I need to make, but I wanted to launch early and get feedback.

<comment><USER6> Awesome work really, like the concept and totally love the speed of the site. Are you working on this full time?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm glad people are noticing the speed, I spent a ton of time on that :). Yep, working on it full-time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congratulations with your launch! It looks like you've got a nice hybrid between HN/Reddit-style voting and Stackoverflow-topics, - personally haven't seen such a site before. It'll be interesting to see whether you'll succeed building a community around it. Any plan-of-attacks on gaining traction?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yea, building the community will be the tough part. I was planning on writing high quality articles on Listry and then hopefully some of the people that read the article would want to add their own input to the article and that's how they would get started contributing.

Any suggestions?

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure, - that could be a way, but only if you actually enjoy writing those articles.

Just thinking out loud, your time could also be spend editorially adding more and more subjects and quality lists. The whole problem with such a site is that you need to maintain some level of quality, which is best maintained by attracting people that care about that quality. If you have a lot of quality lists with quality subjects, the next thing you need to ensure is that Google (and other search engines) pick up on that.

If I search for "emacs color themes", for example, you want listry to be the #1 match in Google with a list of links to color themes.

That, and just balls: try to get some popular bloggers to cover your site. If they like the concept, they won't mind vouching for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Site looks great. This is pretty similar to an idea i had a few years back: <http://buyersvote.com/categories>

It has languished since and never took off, but the pieces were all there: user generated listed, votes, wiki style edits, comments etc.

I've had some time to think on why mine never took off and wanted to share a few ideas in case it helps.

\- critical mass is hard, StackOverflow (my inspiration for it) was able to launch with two massive blog posts from influencers

\- how to counteract this? either empower your users to create their own "sub- listries" and try to attract influencers

\- or do the bowling pin strategy <http://cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling- pin-strategy/>

\- or do the tripadvisor approach (read Founders At Work for this story) and spend massively to seed content for several years to reach critical mass on your own

Few other thoughts:

\- I think your design is better

\- Is "Articles" the right word here? Esp given your domain would "lists" work better?

Hope it helps!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your advice and compliments :)

I was debating between calling them "lists" or "articles", and decided on "articles" because my hope is that over time they will become full-fledged articles (true that my domain name makes that a bit confusing). Paul Graham's article on "the 18 mistakes that kill startups" (<http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html>) is the type of article I am shooting for with Listry. Where each item of the article has 1 or more in- depth paragraphs of explanation or details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> congrats on launching! why not eat your own dog food and start a [sticky] list for feature requests? i think it'd be a nice way to get early adopters get hooked up.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks quite nice. Please implement OpenID, or similar. I do not want yet another account. Cheers!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, okay. That'll be next on my TODO list :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried starting a list of "shops in india that would be of interest to Hackers and Makers": [http://www.listry.com/list/83050/list-of-shops-in-india- that...](http://www.listry.com/list/83050/list-of-shops-in-india-that-are- interesting-to-hackers-makers) on the lines of "Coffee shops in Cambridge, MA"... And I added two shops that I had painstaking discovered a few months ago for buying a few things I needed.

I was a bit annoyed that getting things you want from your own country(minimizes shipping and taxes) is still so hard in the era of google. So I wanted to share it with the world hoping that others would populate the list further and I could benefit from this. But it was voted -2. Now I have no complaints against that... Maybe such a list is unsuitable for this type of site. But I think it may be a smarter idea for you to make it more obvious as to what constitutes a bad list. Why "Coffee shops in Campridge" is kosher and why "Shops interesting for hackers in India" is not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi SudarshanP,

I voted you down because I thought it was spam, sorry. I've undone my vote now so you are back to 0. When I voted there was just one item with a link, and it looked like someone just wanted to advertise their online store.

Your article seems fine for the site. An optimum article would be more than just a list of links though.

Ideally, I want articles to become full-fledged, comprehensive articles. Like the article for "Reasons to Quit Smoking". In time, I hope that article can become a comprehensive resource of all the best reasons to quit smoking. Then someone who is trying to quit smoking can use that article as motivation to quit.

I'll be working on a commenting system so that in the future it'll be easier to discuss this type of thing on the actual article page.

Thanks for trying out the site and providing feedback! And sorry again for thinking it was spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Prepare some seed content yourself. Just "listphrase" existing similar sites. It will give a bit of realness to new visitor.

Cheers and best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER13> 1 little thing -> Your "Browse Popular Articles" and "Contribute to New Articles" buttons are not vertically centered. The white space above them is 6px less than the white space below. It looks like you wanted them to be the same in your css but the #mainbuttons is 65px in height and the buttons are 59px in height.

If you change #mainbuttons height to 59px and bump the margins a little bit more to 29 or 30px you get a nicer look I personally think. A little bit more white space separates the buttons from the top header and to me is easier on the eyes.

I really like the site thought. There's lots of these but yours is different, the content stands out more than the site, and to me that's what matters.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like its smoothness and workflow, like others have point out. Enjoy starting w/o forcing account creation as well.

After entering my abridged version of stackexchange's public web site checklist (<http://www.listry.com/list/96005/live-app-checklist>), I can see 2 features that I like to see:

\- Allow entering just the "details" part of an article Item. Current workflow restricts articles to be more of a sub-level categorization. For simple lists that the article title already describes the article, there's no reason to require an item title.

\- Allow option to auto insert list bullets/numbers into text that separated by empty lines.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice Site.

Feature request: For each list allow users to link to lists in the wild. For Eg there could be a 10 reasons to quit smoking on some magazine. The user may not want to recreate the list, but just provide a bookmark. You could even provide a "listify" bookmarklet. For Eg Paul Graham's list of reasons why startups fail and a lot of startup failure story post mortems could be Supplimentary materials for a list of the same name.

The list which begins life as a list of useful bookmarks to external lists about the same topic could over time be deduplicated by the community to create a Master list that would be much more useful than the external lists themselves.

</comment><comment><USER14> Congrats on the launch. I'm curious how your "popular" tab works.

If it is simply sorted by votes with no time-component then your going to have the same "self-fulfilling prophecy" problem that Stack Overflow had when they first launched.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Right now the popular tab sorts things based on the votes for the article, and also the votes for the items within the article. So an article with good items can rank higher than an article with more votes, but no items.

Right now there isn't any time-component to the popular articles. I was thinking of having sub-tabs for "popular this week", "popular this month", and "popular all time", and then having the default be "popular this month".

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> At least at this early stage with little content, the site seems very snappy. Looking at the blog, I'm assuming you're running on Google AppEngine? Can you give us an overview of how the site is implemented?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for noticing the speed :) I spent a lot of effort on that.

I built my own mini-framework for Google App Engine with a focus on speed. The main thing that makes it fast is that it utilizes public edge caching for most content, and the parts of the content that change from user to user are updated with javascript.

So with the home page, App Engine just serves a static page from it's edge cache, which is updated every 30 seconds, and the top bar of the site which is different if you are logged in is updated with javascript to show you different links if you are logged in.

<comment><USER16> God damn. The site really is fast. Well done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Congratulations on launching a Beta! The site is visually pleasing and the layout works.

I noticed one small detail that is jarring and it should be a simple style fix. The location of content contained in a div or span shifts when you change categories on the "New Articles" tab. You should be able to see what I mean by selecting "New Articles" then watching the Listry icon in the upper left move to the right (or left) after selecting another category from the list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :). I see what you are talking about, it's because the main page is long enough to have a scrollbar, and then when you choose a category, there isn't enough content to need to show a scrollbar, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Congrats on launching. From what I've seen in my brief tour of the site, it's a unique idea.

I agree with stingraycharles that it's a nice and unique hybrid b/w Reddit and StackOverflow.

Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER19> For some reason the proxy server at my work is blocking your website with the message "Virus detected and blocked" and McAfee reports it as having Medium risk: [http://www.mcafee.com/threat- intelligence/domain/default.asp...](http://www.mcafee.com/threat- intelligence/domain/default.aspx?domain=www.listry.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, thanks for the heads up, I'll have to look into that. I don't know what would be causing that.

<comment><USER19> Ya, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, I know this is the last thing you want to hear on launch day!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very interesting and - as far as I'm concerned - unique concept, clean design. I really like it so far. Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER21> Great so far! Very minimalistic and easy to navigate.

Notice that you're using Google App Engine to send your welcome emails, and I'd love to offer you PostageApp (<http://postageapp.com>) while you're in beta. We'd be happy to help you out with that. :)

Let me know, cheers!

</comment><comment><USER22> Nice app and congrats for the launch! I'm into list based services but there aren't too many around. One really similar that I came across about an year ago was <http://listiki.com/> I really like their wiki/fork-style approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

I've seen that site before. Mine's more about creating comprehensive articles rather than just a list. Something where each item of the article has paragraph(s) of detail.

Something like Paul Graham's article, "18 Mistakes that Kill Startups" (<http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html>) would be an ideal Listry article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nice and very fast. Could you give us more info on what stack did you use to develop/deploy this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

It's developed with the dynamic language Groovy, on Google App Engine. Here's a comment with some more details: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2916803>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Congratts! Great idea and implementation! Clean, quick, nice!

One design tweak I would do... Have the descriptions of the lists collapsable so the reader can skim the list and only get the full scroll effect if they need.

</comment><comment><USER25> Small tip: shrink the registration-barrier.

1\. Add those social login buttons (facebook, twitter)

2\. Make "e-mail address" the only input field, then mail me a password.

3\. Delay asking me for a display-name until I try an operation that needs it.

</comment><comment><USER26> Cool, I had a similar idea a while back, <http://lightsalad.com> it never took off, and I abandoned the project. Good luck

</comment><comment><USER27> This is a really cool application. How do you intend on keeping out crap article and malicious updates?

Either way, this is a nicely designed interface and great idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

For crap articles, people can vote them down, which will move them lower on the new articles tab and popular articles tab if they are voted low enough. Also, I can manually delete obviously crap articles, or close articles that don't fit the format.

For crap edits, they can be undone in the history tab of each article. I need to do a little work in making rollbacks easier though.

If I get a lot of traffic, I'll have to write some software to help identify malicious edits.

<comment><USER28> Oh man. You are going to get a lot of traffic. Please do something to block a spammer's ip. Have a flag button and do a soft delete it after a certain number of flags. Soft delete because you can review to make sure its actually crap and not the top item in your page :) Good luck

<comment><AUTHOR> I just felt the need for that a few minutes ago, a troll overwrote all of the articles with junk text, and I had no way to easily block his IP. I'll be working on that ASAP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Great idea Kyle. How are you going to clean up spams? I like that its open but if one person decides to spam you will have lot of clean ups to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Spam edits can be reverted in the history tab, there's still more work I need to do to make that easier though. Spam articles can be voted down, and that will take them off the front pages, and I can manually delete them. I'll probably need to have a "flag article" link down the road though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Nice idea and good implementation! The home page could look cleaner if you use less bold font-style and a smaller number of different font-sizes.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think you can get rid of the password confirm on the popup (you have their email after all for resets). Could make voting a bit more fluid.

</comment><comment><USER31> One thing I noticed was that under the 'best text editors' list, Vim shows up multiple times. Would be nice for it to know to combine or something.

Pretty!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that happened because a troll overwrote the entry for Vim with junk text, and then the people added vim because they didn't see it.

I've manually merged their entries with the main vim entry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm using firefox. For some reason when I'm on the text editor page, text navigation like space, pageup, pagedown and end don't work.

</comment><comment><USER33> Only problem I see is incentive to write on your website. People write on SOF or HN for reputation, why should they write on listry?

<comment><AUTHOR> One reason could be if you wished there was good resource on a topic.

For example, if you wanted to convince someone that they should develop for iOS instead of android, you could start an article on Listry titled "Reasons to develop for iOS". Then add a few reasons of your own to the article, and then other Listry users could add their reasons, everyone would vote on the best reasons, and then in the end you would have a good resource of all the best reasons to develop for iOS.

A reputation system would definitely be a good thing to have too. I was thinking about creating one, but decided to launch early, and then improve the site over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Kudos on a well implemented use of AppEngine - It's really zippy.

Do you have any plans to write a technical overview of your implementation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'll probably write about the implementation once I get some spare time. I got a lot of great feedback today that I'll be busy implementing for a while :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Looks like you are using Google custom search. Can you please provide your perspective on the service.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's very easy to set up, and it works alright. There is a delay for things to show up in the search results though. I think once app engine (which is what Listry runs on) implements full text search, I'll probably make my own solution using that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Do you have any plan to deal with non disjoint items... that would be an interesting problem to solve. eg, you have the following :

emacs 30

vim 20

vi 15

</comment><comment><USER37> Very good idea. At least each edit made to a story will have to be voted upon.

</comment><comment><USER38> hey man this is slick, congrats! btw just curiuos, what's your underlying tech stack, your website is lightning fast! (given the fact i live in SE asia where internet quality is crappy)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

It uses my own mini-framework for Google App Engine. This comment has more details: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2916803>

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm trying to subscribe to your blog but I cannot find a feed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, didn't implement that yet. I'll get to work on that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Blocked as "spam/suspicious".

</comment><comment><USER41> Yet another web app that solves #firstworldproblems…

<comment><USER42> yet another douchebag with nothing constructive at all to add or any real feedback in for a member who started this thread explicitly to obtain feedback from HN</comment></comment>


Shrew Soft VPN Client - mutin-sa https://www.shrew.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> Shrew has been a reliable client for me for years.</comment>


Ask HN: What project management software/service are you using? - <AUTHOR>

In short, I am looking for pros and cons to software that you have tried or use to help find a solution to my needs.  I feel like I have gone through a plethora of software to find what I need all to find out it just does not work right or I cannot justify the expense due to the lack of offerings.
I currently use Highrise for my own personal CRM, and I like it.  I also use Basecamp for projects, I almost love it.  The problem is, Highrise does not have an app and the two are not one.  I would love to have a provider that has everything in one, and preferably in app format as I need notifications for staff working on projects.
Other services I have tried consist of Podio (too clunky), Zoho (borderline too complicated and lacks features for PM), vTiget (just did not work) and Insightly (nothing seems to sync up for tasks).
I have a team of 7 who all work remote with tasks ranging from dev to social media.  Some of the projects will last for years (contracts) and some last just until they are complete.  Hopefully from what others share I will be able to find a single solution! <comment><USER2> at $work we're using redmine, it's not great, but it works and does 99% of everything we need.

for personal projects, i use trac, because it's easy to setup and works, although again it's not great. especially so if there's a team of people using it instead of 1.

my personal favourite would be bugzilla, although it's a pita to set up, and doesn't have repo integration (or didn't last time i looked) which is a shame.

i've also used basecamp before, was not a fan.

the thing to remember is, all project management stuff sucks, so find something that does most of what you want and work around the bits it doesn't do

<comment><USER3> We also use redmine at work and I swear I could write something better in a week with modern frameworks (react etc). But I never did so...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Been using Taiga for a couple of months and I'm a fan, still in beta but it's open source and it's certainly hit a usable level. Hated most other pm software.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hope this helps the discussion: [http://www.hackertoolbox.com/tags/project%20management](http://www.hackertoolbox.com/tags/project%20management)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is nice. I was introduced to "Producteev" by Jive yesterday, it seems to fit the bill (for me).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I personally use Trello. Two of my clients use JIRA.

I actually like both. They both are targeted at the Agile crowd, but you can use them however you want, as far as I can see.

</comment><comment><USER7> Taiga. It has everything JIRA has and is 100% free.</comment>


Doing science in the open - <AUTHOR> http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/38904 <comment><USER2> There are many things that make the analogies made in the article not applicable.

If I buy a Pokemon, I can crank out a review in probably 5 min after playing with it for a while. Contrast that to peer review: to write a careful review of an article takes me at least a full work day to make sure that I understand what's done, think about possible pitfalls and weaknesses, and then write a comprehensive and helpful review. No one will put in that amount of time to write a comment on a web page, so the only people that can offer substantial comments would be those that have taken the time to understand and think about the paper for other reasons (usually because it directly concerns their own work). The problem is then that even if these few people actually make comments, they are likely to be totally drowned out by people who make useless comments (either because they don't understand the paper or because they have no incentive to make an effort).

Regarding the shoe store, that's also a false analogy. A shoe store selling shoes is akin to a scientist publicizing their finished papers, they have nothing to lose by revealing their design because they already have them in the store. A better analogy would be to ask: if Nike's having some problem figuring out how to manufacture a shoe, do they ask Reebok for advice? Since Reebok works in the same field, they likely would have useful advice to give, but they don't because the danger of Reebok taking the design and running with it is too large. That's how it would be with scientists openly sharing their works in progress.

I'm not debating that the progress of science would be helped with more open sharing, but offering questionable analogies does not help in understanding the problem.

However, the problem of conflicting incentives is a very real one. As long as scientists are judged based on the numbers of published papers and numbers of citations, there's an incentive to hoarding data to squeeze every last possible paper out of them. Also, there really is little incentive to share tools with the community apart from gaining recognition. This is compounded by people being bad at citing papers describing tools, too, so you don't even get that reward.</comment>


What happens to my late husband's digital life now he's gone? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jul/04/what-happens-to-my-late-husbands-digital-life-now-hes-gone <comment><USER3> Apple (in England) copper-bottoms laws, and require too much documentation.

When a person dies their estate goes through probabte. You get official documents as a result. That documentarion is effectively a court order - <USER2> are good enough to get banks to release funds from the dead person's account to the executor of the will.

Apple sometimes do not recognise those documents and refuse to unlock devices that used to belong to dead people, even if the device is mentioned in the dead person's will.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26448158](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26448158)

Here they're not asking for access to the information - they just want the device to be unlocked. Apple recognised, after publication, that they'd made an error in this case, but they maintain that a court order is required for access to iCloud accounts. But they don't recognise grants of probate as valid court orders.

<comment><USER4> Unlock the devices? If the owner used fingerprint authentication or a passphrase, I would _hope_ Apple _can 't_ unlock those devices.

Also, I would imagine not everyone would want their devices unlocked by family members if they die say in an accident.

<comment><USER5> > Also, I would imagine not everyone would want their devices unlocked by > family members if they die say in an accident.

Why should the opinion of the dead be relevant in any way?

<comment><USER6> It should only matter to you if you think you or someone you care about will die some day.

<comment><USER5> > It should only matter to you if you think you or someone you care about will > die some day.

Why? When I'm dead, anything that anybody does will no affect me. (assuming I had an iPhone) Apple shouldn't not-unlock it because I might not want that. I want nothing, since I'm dead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've solved this the easy way. The only "online service" I use is an IMAP box and run that using inbox zero. Everything important is archived on disk in eml files. We share all our passwords in a single keepaas database and everything we have data-wise is in a shared folder on a shared computer. Backups are all in known locations. We regularly empty our phones an cameras and transcode everything into neutral formats.

The digital life is 22Gb of photos and videos spanning 13 years so far.

So there isn't a digital life as such, just a pool of electronic memories and information which we share. I couldn't use anything deeper after watching a friend go through the painful process of losing everything tied to an ecosystem of a software vendor.

Oh and I'll only use a system that respects my control for my data. Currently this is windows 8.1 but with the introduction of 10, it appears I'm not going to have to dump that due to the incoming app ecosystem and hit Linux.

If this all looks like a lot of effort, you're only doing the work up front. Retrospectively if you don't do this, you're deferring a world of pain.

<comment><USER8> Indeed, I think that having a shared keychain is very important. I have heard of people planned to do such a thing, but never did before it was too late. Sorting out the digital life off- and online will be a mess without it. Do it today.

We have also been moving stuff out of data silos and are moving back to plain old files where possible. E.g. administrative stuff we share using Bittorrent Sync (because it is peer to peer and encrypted) and we store photos in Dropbox (because they are easier to share with family that way). We considered doing everything with BTSync, but on iOS the interface is too difficult for non tech-savvy family.

<comment><USER7> I tried to sync for several years and it never worked. I tried everything. Eventually we just moved to using one computer and sharing it. Its not healthy to spend all the time on it anyway. Having a pooled machine has a number of social benefits as well.

So we have a single laptop, three smartphones (my oldest daughter has one as well) and they're all handed in weekly to me for data extraction and archival.

The laptop is a Lenovo X201 so it can go anywhere and we have a docking station and full desktop setup if you need anything a little more healthy to use.

<comment><USER9> Did you consider something like a Synology NAS, which has free mobile apps for syncing?

<comment><USER7> Yes. I had one. It died suddenly and left me with a £400 bill for a new one. Fortunately I backed up the NAS to an external disk but from this and other experiences, I've come to a general rule:

 _the reliability of a backup system is inversely proportional to the number of moving parts_

Hence why I use beyond compare to manually sync files to two physical mediums from the master copy on my laptop. One encrypted USB stick I carry on me at all times and one hard disk that lives in a fire safe.

<comment><USER10> Moving hard disks back and forth to my fire safe is a pain. A hardened usb disk that is itself fire-rated. That I would buy.

<comment><USER11> It's hard to make anything small fire-rated, due to thermal inertia (or rather, the lack thereof).

I'm surprised I haven't seen a NAS with the hard drive enclosure fire-rated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _" Facebook tends to "memorialise" their account – freeze them so they can be viewed, but providing no access to past messages. [...] Facebook also offended a fair number of bereaved people with its Year in Review clips [...] The problem was that for some, these were pictures of dead loved ones."_

Here is something I _really_ don't understand. For some reason it's apparently preferred, both by Facebook as well as people overall, to rub out a deceased person's digital existence - as opposed to preserving a bit of their life and writing for posterity.

To me, the "memorialization" of FB accounts looks like an almost cynical choice of words considering what it actually entails. Do we really prefer to pretend dead people never existed in the first place?

<comment><USER3> > Facebook also offended a fair number of bereaved people with its Year in > Review clips [...] The problem was that for some, these were pictures of > dead loved ones."

There was a recent ad on FB from a maker of teapods that said something like "share a cup of tea with your dad". Unfortunately, that ad was shown to people whose fathers were dead or abusive. My dad died before FB so I've never had any account in my friends list that an algorithm could consider to be my father. I'd link to it but I genuinely have no idea how to link to a Facebook post. :-/

[https://www.facebook.com/TassimoUK?pnref=story](https://www.facebook.com/TassimoUK?pnref=story) and the "Share a cuppa with your dad and show him how much you care this Father's Day #ChooseNotToChoose" which has about 500 comments of mostly people saying their father is dead.

<comment><USER13> > There was a recent ad on FB from a maker of teapods that said something like > "share a cup of tea with your dad". Unfortunately, that ad was shown to > people whose fathers were dead or abusive. My dad died before FB so I've > never had any account in my friends list that an algorithm could consider to > be my father. I'd link to it but I genuinely have no idea how to link to a > Facebook post. :-/

Is that really fair? How is that different from an ad on TV saying the same thing?

<comment><USER3> TV ads never claim to harvest my data to make ads "more relevant" to "my interests".

That's a thing that Facebook and most online add networks claim.

<comment><USER13> True, however the 'ad' in particular was just a generic (perhaps promoted?) status update to a #Brand page [https://www.facebook.com/TassimoUK](https://www.facebook.com/TassimoUK)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Skype is one of my most hated programs.

And a reason for that is the utter absurdity in regards to account deletion. You have to do fairly standard things like identify email, password and some contacts.... but you also have to know the EXACT month and year of which you signed up. And unless you got lucky and didn't delete your sign up email up there is no possible way to find out. When I first signed up, I had a ridiculous name like everyone else did back in the day, and I wanted to just move on. Not very serious, I know, but this issue can be for many circumstances.

I really wish that some legislation would be passed for a "Nuke" button standard on all digital platforms that allows you or a designed individual to erase profiles at will.

<comment><USER15> > And unless you got lucky and didn't delete your sign up email there is no > possible way to find out.

What, do people really delete read email?

<comment><USER16> I use a 503(c) service for email, the only thing is that they rely on dontations, so the more space I use the more it'll cost them. So out of being curteous to them, I delete any unwanted email. One other reason I delete email is because I like having a 'clean' inbox.

But despite all of that, it's really Skype's fault for assuming that a user will keep randomly chosen, arbitrary data like that. Not all of us have photographic memories, so the vast userbase, as a result, will have great difficulty in deleting their account. There's also a very high probability that it's done by Skype deliberately, to stop people deleting their accounts ( _Because data mining is 'phun'!_)

<comment><USER17> If you give that 503(c) $10, that will cover email _storage_ forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Relatively speaking those parents of mine are to pop their clogs one day (well, Burkenstock sandals, one day being many years hence). I would not be happy about deleting everything on their PC's, I would want stuff kept.

However...

With my own 'digital life' I would prefer people to just fdisk/powerwash my PC-style devices and send the things to the charity shop. There really would be nothing to see on any of my machines, the cloud can just be forgotten, nothing really matters. I don't know if others would see it that way though. My point being that 'what you would do' concerning your oh-so-precious online life is different to what you might think when it comes to someone else's digital life.

</comment><comment><USER19> The only digital life I'm worried about in the event of my untimely death is the few IRC channels I frequent. Just let those guys know I'm gone, put up a "He's dead, Jim, take what you want." on my GitHub and leave the rest to bit- rot. I don't think the cloud cares that I won't feed it data no more.

<comment><USER7> Write a dead man's switch script. You just have to remind it you're not dead once a month for example.

However don't do what a colleague of mine did back in the early 00s. after a motorcycle accident he was in hospital for three weeks. This was back in the days before ubiquitous internet access (horrible times!). His dead mans switch went off after two weeks and caused an email to be sent to his boss to call him a vacuous cunt. Obviously that didn't go down well at all.

<comment><USER20> Better to set it for two months.

<comment><USER21> Why not six or a year? It'll be very hard to screw that up and you can Hari Seldon your friends and relatives.

<comment><USER22> You also have to be sure the machine you're hosting this on won't be taken down if you really die and aren't around to manage/pay for it anymore. Server in your closet? The plug will be pulled long before 6 months pass after you're gone. Server in a data center? You can't be paying for that monthly, as chances are your credit card will be cancelled and your machine will be shut down for non-payment before your 6 month deadline. Also, hardware failure makes it a possibility that your server will not survive 6 months uptime anyway.

Basically, dead man's switch is not even remotely guaranteed to work.

<comment><USER21> Just put that server payment in your will and tell your executor to not reveal its existence. Alternatively, pay on an annual basis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A shared and synced 1password vault between family members is the best option I've seen so far. You can have your vault, a work vault, a family fault, etc which is kept in sync with separate permissions.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hopefully, our loved ones' digital lives will hang around forever. Storage is getting cheaper and cheaper, after all.

My half brother, who we just found in 2005, started a Facebook account before he died. He added me and never got around to adding anybody else. I can post things on his wall, but no one sees them.

Both my parents have passed away and pass by them in my contacts. I won't deleting them, ever. I did update my Dad's location, though, just so I can always use that for directions to their grave.

</comment><comment><USER24> I didn't read the article, but I get the drift. I knew a guy was in a very unhappy marriage. He didn't have a large online presence, but his posts and pictures were important to him. You couldn't tell he was in a unhappy marriage --unless you knew him. His wife was not in any of his pictures, nor did he talk about her.

Well he died in his sleep one night. The next day, all his accounts were taken down. I don't know who removed all his accounts, but they were gone. My point is unless you have an agreement, or the surviving spouse is slandered in some way; I think, in most cases, if the surviving spouse should just use the passwords to convey the obituary notice.

(I think I was bothered with just how quick his accounts vanished? All his accounts were on free sites. I didn't see any need to close them all down. Plus, after all the verbal abuse, and drama--his only enjoyment, or escapism was going online?)</comment>


"Thoughts and Prayers" in Greek Tragedy (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://daily.jstor.org/thoughts-and-prayers-in-greek-tragedy/ <comment><USER2> Two of my dearest friends–people who could not be more dissimilar otherwise–teach ethics using, in particular, Greek Tragedy. One is an Army ethicist, the other a Shakespeare scholar who teaches ethics to business undergrads. The latter convinced me to take an undergraduate course on the tragedies, and it was likely the most impactful class on my personal and professional life. I return to Aeschylus regularly to understand the world around me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd either simply been oblivious to the phenomenon, or had blocked it out, but Ricky Gervais' comment back in 2013-05 highlighted it:

"@MTVNews: Beyoncé, Rihanna & Katy Perry send prayers to #Oklahoma #PrayForOklahoma

"I feel like an idiot now...I only sent money."

Since then I've assumed everyone using the phrase was being ironic, or at least tacitly acknowledged the absurdity and insincerity of it.</comment>


The Legend of John von Neumann - <AUTHOR> http://stepanov.lk.net/mnemo/legende.html

<comment><USER2> My favorite von Neumann story involved a lecture he gave in German. At the end of the lecture David Hilbert's first question was, "That was very nice, but what are these 'Hilbert spaces'?"

<comment><USER3> I'm afraid I don't get it :(.

<comment><USER2> The point is that Hilbert spaces were named after David Hilbert by von Neumann. Which lead to the odd situation where Hilbert didn't know what Hilbert spaces were.

<comment><USER4> I also recall a talk about the diverse kinds of people in math. One (I hope I don't misremember) was Hilbert, held up as an example of someone who could seem frustratingly dense -- he'd ask many questions during a talk. But once he started wrapping his mind around things, he could see very profoundly.

In contrast, the other was a fast calculator like von Neumann; maybe it was von Neumann. The point of the talk was that there's no single type who does good mathematical work. And the moral was that you shouldn't feel bad if you feel confused and foggy while others seem quicker on the uptake. This could also describe Hilbert, Einstein and Grothendieck.

(I hope it's clear that my knowledge of famous mathematicians is very sketchy, based on half-listened talks and random snatches from books...)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Automating Browser Testing the Easy Way - <AUTHOR> http://eng.genius.com/blog/2009/07/14/automating-browser-testing-the-easy-way/

<comment><USER2> Selenium is really a great tool. it requires a little bit of JavaScript knowledge to identify DOM elements. Beginners can use the Firefox plugin to get an easy start.</comment>


Kickstarter's new team page - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/team?hn

<comment><USER2> HIPSTER OVERLOAD!!!!

(Seriously though, amazing work on the video implementation. I already thought the panorama idea was executed nicely, and then the people started moving. Big kudos here.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty much makes it impossible to add or remove people from the Team.

<comment><USER4> The video's chopped in shorter segments so as long as they fire 3-5 people at the same time, they are good.

<comment><USER5> Sucks to be in the segment with the office layabout

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It crashed my browser :( Firefox 16.0.1 on Ubuntu. My CPU went up to 100%, and stayed there for a minute until I just killed the process.

<comment><USER7> Same here. 16.0.1 Windows 7. CPU didn't max out but it was high and the browser was unusable. I managed to close the tab but the CPU was still high and browser was unresponsive. I had to kill the process.

<comment><USER8> BSOD'd my machine... Chrome Win 7

<comment><USER9> crashed my nvidia driver, chrome win 8 (win 7 bootcamp drivers)

<comment><USER10> Kickcrasher

*Crashstarter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It looks like their page could still use some work.

<http://puu.sh/1j15D>

</comment><comment><USER12> dear dude in the middle wearing the echo nest t-shirt -- WHO ARE YOU, we'll send you a later edition

<comment><USER13> (offtopic): I can attest that the current echonest t-shirts are the best startup shirts I've ever seen. Wear mine with some frequency.

<comment><USER14> Who's door do I have to beat down to get one?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> CPU went up 100% :) and internet radio stopped working :))) had to close it. Complete overkill, but very creative overkill! :)

</comment><comment><USER16> A passionate workplace full of young, attractive people. I'm sad to say that I've nearly forgotten such a place could exist.

</comment><comment><USER17> pretty cool. A bunch of video tags like below: <video id="video_1" width="770" height="600" poster="<https://ksr- assets.s3.amazonaws.com/team_still_1_alt.jpg> onended="this.play()" loop="loop" tabindex="0"> <source type="video/mp4" src="[https://ksr- assets.s3.amazonaws.com/team_vid_1_alt_2.mp4>...](https://ksr- assets.s3.amazonaws.com/team_vid_1_alt_2.mp4></source>); <source type="video/webm" src="[https://ksr- assets.s3.amazonaws.com/team_vid_1_alt_2.webm...](https://ksr- assets.s3.amazonaws.com/team_vid_1_alt_2.webm></source>); You need an HTML5 capable browser to view this video. </video>

Really excited for this to be commonplace and flash to disappear.

<comment><USER18> don't worry, PG will make sure Flash still gets some use, along with table tags -- <http://www.startupschool.org/2012/zuckerberg/>

<comment><USER19> And a center tag too :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> to me, this nicely portrays the difference between sv and ny.

<comment><USER21> In what way? And is that even a good or a bad difference?

I'm pretty sure both areas are filled with well-dressed 20-somethings capable of sitting still for extended periods of time.

<comment><USER22> For one thing, San Francisco has a lot more mustaches.

<comment><USER21> You have clearly not spent enough time in Williamsburg. Or you've spent just the right amount of time. Delete as appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's kind of cool and not slowing down too much my machine and what's best: they did not include sound !

Seriously I hate sound playing in my web browser, specially when it's ads :/

</comment><comment><USER24> hipster.. overload..

<comment><USER25> my exact thoughts. literally every single person is a hipster.

<comment><USER26> All I see is just a bunch of people in their 20s/30s...

<comment><USER27> Young person who dresses in a non-boring way = hipster, apparently.

<comment><USER3> You have to give the trend a name so you can refer to it after it becomes boring itself.

<comment><USER28> The trend has been named for at least a decade.

Oh, I see what you did there.

<comment><USER29> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_(1940s_subculture)>

<comment><USER28> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_(contemporary_subcultur...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_\(contemporary_subculture\))

<comment><USER29> The point is that the word "hipster" has been in continuous use to describe alternative youth culture since the Beats.

[http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hipster&yea...](http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hipster&year_start=1940&year_end=2020)

<comment><USER3> As wikipedia explains, the term has been used to describe the culture of 2 distinct decades, not the decades in between

<comment><USER29> Where does Wikipedia say that it wasn't used in the intervening decades? That's not true. Look at the ngram link I supplied – it clearly was in use. What do you think it meant?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Surprised by the lack of Asian and Black males. I thought they would have a more diverse team.

edit: totally forgot about the East Indians.

<comment><USER16> I'd be genuinely interested in knowing of which teams do have that kind of diversity.

Off the top of my head, the only one that comes to mind is Inkling [1].

1: <https://www.inkling.com/careers/>

<comment><USER30> Gojee also based in NYC is another, but they took down their team page for some reason, mostly Asian and Whites. My buddy's startup up Skim.me is another, but they are mostly Asian with a White CTO. I'm not trying to gather a posse against kickstarer, I just thought their would be more non-whites with the geography and focus in tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm really impressed with how smooth this is. No slowdowns on my 2009 MBP running Firefox 18.0a2 (Aurora).

</comment><comment><USER32> How do I find out who they all are?

<comment><USER7> They may not want to give names of everyone because it makes poaching employees by headhunters easier.

<comment><USER33> All the names are provided in text at the bottom of the page.

<comment><USER7> Ah, thanks. I was building on OP's comment. My browser crashed from the page so I couldn't check on my own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> They also have a very impressive Jobs page <http://www.kickstarter.com/jobs>, the last one in the list labeled "It's fun!" has a couple of cool things when you hover over the links.

</comment><comment><USER35> Great job. Everybody looks very happy.

How long is the video playing before it loops ?

<comment><USER21> If you look closely you can see it reverse. So I think it's in an infinite loop.

<comment><USER36> Yeah, just reversing back and forth is the poor man's version of cinematographs.

[http://technostreak.com/news/cinematographs-a-new- dimention-...](http://technostreak.com/news/cinematographs-a-new-dimention-on- gif-animation/)

I feel they could've done this better. Still an impeccable jobs. The best team page I've seen so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Firefox uses 150% CPU and freezes in Ubuntu 12.04, had to kill the process :(

</comment><comment><USER38> Two things: 1) Cool concept! (would feel more natural with sound). 2) Wow, I've been living in Asia for about two years and didn't realize facial hair was trendy now! Or is that a NY thing only?

</comment><comment><USER39> Just in case anyone missed it – you should be able to pan the image horizontally to see more people. (For some reason, this didn't work for me the first time I loaded the page.)

</comment><comment><USER40> Their jobs page is a blast to play with too: <http://www.kickstarter.com/jobs>

(roll over the links :])

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't know what it was, but my browser didn't like it.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Curious at who got to assign which props were held by whom - playing with the giant Nutella jar probably being the most coveted of all assignments.

</comment><comment><USER42> New Yorkers: too fidgety to sit still for a picture.

</comment><comment><USER43> So I'll see you guys all out at Barcade later then right?

</comment><comment><USER44> Didn't work in Firefox, Safari, or Chrome on OSX 10.6.8.

<comment><USER39> It works for me in all of those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Cool.

</comment><comment><USER46> Nice try but too many errors in the implementation; the asian girl with red shoes gets her elbow deformed by pixel repetition; also the going forwards and then backwards by every video block makes everyone look creepy, also there is a long pause to restart and the beginning/end does not match (this could be more of a Chrome issue).

It would have been better to use a "Fade In/Out" effect for lopping or move through the frames based on the absolute position of the mouse (or any other nice effect that doesn't require the videos to loop).</comment>


Ask HN: Share dilution - <AUTHOR>

Hi fellers,
I'm actually a business graduate but I'm not very familiar with share dilution and corporate structure in terms of screwing someone over. I understand that the basic premise behind share dilution is when the compnay issues new shares; thus lowering the value of previously issued shares.
In The Social Network, Eduardo was apparently screwed over through dilution of his share ownership, but no one else was affected. Why was this? Did he have a separate, special class of common stock different from everyone else? Early angel investors/VCs do things to protect themselves from future dilution; what do they do, and how?
Thanks <comment><USER2> I worked at a place where the original investors got royally screwed over time due to dilution. Basically, as was learned in the early 2000's, don't take a job for the options. And as an investor, assume that you might not always have the control and input you start off with when you make that major investment. It is fine to invest your time and energy into a company (and your money if you want to go that route), but know that any company is a gamble, and it is business, not personal. It's fine to be enthusiastic and love your work and your job, in fact that's the goal, but you'll eventually get burned if you think the people you work for really think of you as family, even if they tell that to you (unless they really are family).

<comment><USER3> _Basically, as was learned in the early 2000's, don't take a job for the options._

This is not good advice. Options can be -- and often are -- a great investment, amazing compensation for taking a risk with a job at a startup. Of course it's wrong to think that an option as money in the bank. It's equally wrong to think that they're worth nothing, to not carefully consider them as part of joining a new startup, etc.

<comment><USER2> You say it is not good advice, but then you say "Of course it's wrong to think that an option as money in the bank." As an employee, would you rather take money in the bank as salary, bonuses, and commission or would you rather risk your hard work on options where there is a very good chance (no matter how hard you work or how much you believe in the company) that the company will never make good on those options, and even if they do, they will have been significantly diluted by investors?

Just because you perhaps made money on options doesn't mean everyone would. I've never talked with a developer that was significantly happy in his/her choice of getting compensated for his/her work in options.

<comment><USER3> A 25% chance to receive $1 is worth something. A 1% chance for $2 is worth something too, as is a 100% chance of $0.01. Everyone here can work out which of these is worth more than others, even though there's a strong chance that any of these bets could "turn out" worthless.

The problem is that options are harder to value: there are many more result scenarios and the math is a little more complicated. As a result, many people opt out of doing the math entirely, and they think either "it's basically worthless" or "it's basically money in the bank."

The latter error is much worse than the former, but here are two consequences of the former: (1) one is less likely to work at a startup which might (in reality) be the best choice, and (2) if one is working at a startup, one's less likely to be nearly as alert to the risks and targets that may make the option worth less or more (at least as a probabilistic matter). The latter is why the options are a win-win for the company and employee.

By the way, I do understand that different people have different tolerances for risk and for different kinds of risk. But even if someone is biased very heavily towards low-risk situations (which is perfectly fine), it's best to do the math, understand the risk/reward profile of the option and then apply that against your own risk tolerance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/litigatio...](http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/litigation/news/mark- zuckerman-on-his-cofounder-just-take-the-lawsuitim-just-going-to-cut-him-out- and-then-settle-with-him/)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the link. One very notable part of the Facebook dilution is that Eduardo signed on to a shareholder agreement authorizing it, at least in part. We unfortunately don't have the agreement in question to see how it worked, though it seems that, by way of the agreement, Eduardo was not invested in the new entity as fully as he should have been.

The interesting question is if he ended up with roughly the same share he would have if Facebook had simply taken on the new investors and not tried any "dirty tricks."

IANYL, but I'd say this: if you're at the point where you have more than a basic agreement with co-founders, you want a thorough, diligent lawyer working with you on these issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd talk to a lawyer: they'll know the ways you can get screwed over and help protect you.</comment>


Uber Co-Founder Targets Private Jets Next - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/10/26/uber-private-jets-blackjet/

<comment><USER2> After the fiasco and temper tantrums over the NYC debacle, we'll see if they have learned any lessons on working within an existing framework of laws and regulations.</comment>


Hyper-Realistic CGI Is Killing Photographers, Thrilling Product Designers - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/design/2013/03/luxion-keyshot/

<comment><USER2> This reads a lot like a marketing page for KeyShot.

<comment><USER3> Especially since it doesn't provide any actual stats or data or back up the claim that photographers are being put out of work. There are no testimonials from either those who would hire photographers nor photographers themselves that this is happening.</comment></comment>