Learn from my misery: Don't buy a nook. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fsck.com/2010/01/dont-buy-a-nook.html

<comment><USER2> I have one word for you my friend: chargeback. Call your credit card issuer and state that you a retail outlet made a sale, made some promises on that sale, and charged you $278.

This is the easiest action you can do to deal the most damage. Anyone who processes payments knows that chargeback hurt a lot. Chargebacks are a consumer protection, so they are easy to do.

If a company makes a promise to give you X, Y, & Z at a certain price, they have to follow through. You have a few options, but chargebacks can be the simplest way to get there.

<comment><USER3> To add to this, threatening to chargeback can be an excellent way to get decent customer service out of some places. Most customer service associates are trained to go way out of their way to avoid it.

<comment><USER4> You can also avoid the call center by looking up your favorite source of executive information, finding the name and address of someone like a VP of Customer Relations or what have you, and writing them a polite, businesslike letter on dead tree explaining what happened and what they need to do to make it right for you. This will get read by their secretary, who will call the switchboard, ask to be transferred to the person in charge, and say "The Boss wants this handled now." And that is about all it takes. (Well, apparently the VP in this case was not great, either, but you could have shaved two months off the resolution time by contacting her earlier.)

I've had to do this to a bank or two which was under the mistaken impression that I owed them money. Incidentally: a tact I particularly like, since I own shares of essentially any publicly traded stock by dint of owning broad index funds, is to send the letter to Investor Relations. Just say you're a shareholder (you are certainly not the most convoluted situation that results in getting invited to their shareholder meeting) and that you've had a problem, blah blah blah, please fix at your earliest convenience.

<comment><USER5> _Today is January 22nd. Tiffany called me back about an hour ago and told me that Melanie Doty, Barnes & Noble's Vice President of Customer Care had instructed her to tell me that, despite repeated assurances to the contrary, Barnes & Noble wasn't going to be able to honor their promise to me because their computers showed that my order had been cancelled._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The ex-CS drone in me winced just reading that.

Granted, I think we're probably getting half the story -- my experience with customers that type subject lines like "Help! multiple nook delays and broken promises" is that they are not always the most pain-free to deal with. (The easiest customers to support are the ones who treat it like it is all business. Incidentally, taking this tact has helped me with a megacorp or six over the years.)

However, the fact that something even remotely close to that story could happen shows broken CS policies. At my previous employer where I was a CS drone, I could have resolved the issue on any call: "Oh, we promised you a $100 gift card? I'm terribly sorry you haven't received it, sir. Can I make it up to you by issuing a $100 refund to your credit card, which will show on your bank statement within one to three business days?" Or at ANY point in the circus they could have said "I'm sending you a new Nook. It will ship from our warehouse within the hour and be hand delivered by FedEx tomorrow morning. When the first one arrives in a few days, do us a favor and just tell the delivery guy to take it back. Don't worry about the cost: we'll cover all the charges. We're serious about making you happy."

Obviously you don't want $8 an hour CS drones making that decision too often, but you can always just trust-but-verify their judgments. (I got flagged by the computer twice for being overly generous. My manager came over to talk to me about it. I said "A customer was unhappy. I resolved the situation." and got a pat on my shoulder. This was in a business with margins so thin you could shave with them, too, rather than high-end electronics which lock people into your purchasing system for life. Crikey, you think they'd fall over themselves trying to get that in his hands.)

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure of the etiquette but: _tact_ should be _tack_ , it's an old nautical reference. Only mentioned since you used it twice.

<comment><USER4> Thanks! I've apparently been misusing that my entire life.

<comment><USER7> Tact is also a word. It means being sensitive to the situation.

Tack is the direction you are going.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This was entirely a rant about customer service and delivery issues. I got my nook a week before they promised delivery and I've been perfectly happy with it ever since. I even called customer service once while waiting for it and they answered all my questions.

The Nook itself is still a little rough around the edges - it just feels like it was a rushed job to get it to market, which it probably was. The good news is that most of the problems I've experienced with it seem to be software related. Biggest annoyances are not being able to go to a page (?) and the sluggishness of the LCD touchscreen. It's crashed a couple times formatting a book the first time in.

OTOH, the paging speed is good, the PDF support is adequate, and I've spent a fair amount of time reading on it without issue.

<comment><USER9> The paging speed is good? Wow, your expectations are super low - I can almost read the pages faster than the nook can turn them!

<comment><USER10> The Kindle is no better. Flash, flash, flash, flash, ok we've finally loaded your next page. I would have hoped that an electronic book reader could turn pages faster than I can by hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What I still don't get is after stories like this and my own experiences dealing with customer service is why they don't just put _one_ person at the call center who actually has the power to do something. If there was someone there that could make an autonomous decision without needing to ask the computer for permission and physically put a Nook and a $100 gift card on a truck to your house, then we wouldn't have these problems. But no one can. I get the impression that all the people you dealt with were being completely honest. They sympathized but literally couldn't do anything about it, at least not without getting fired. Customer service people who can't do anything are as good as no customer service people at all. I don't understand companies not trusting and giving real power to their customer service agents.

<comment><USER12> customer service reps with the power to send out goodies = scam target.

<comment><USER13> It seems to me that is not always true. It is well-documented that all Zappos customer reps have to ability to hand out goodies as they see fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This has nothing to do with the nook itself but rather the process about acquiring one through the holidays. I expected an article about the actual hardware itself.

<comment><USER15> This is true, but if their customer service for acquiring the device is anything like their customer service if something goes wrong and they already have your money, this is a bad sign. Not only that, but he's spent so much time (~2months) dealing with this that it has jaded him entirely on the entire thing. What was supposed to be a good experience (who doesn't like a new gadget?) was ruined by B&N customer service. True, this was their first big foray into consumer electronics... but that's no excuse for bad service. Even if they had said in December "it's on backorder, and we have no idea when it will ship", that would have been 100X better for this guy.

If you promise something, you must follow through. This is something that most companies just don't get: details matter. How you're treated on the phone matters. The ordering process matters. The pre-purchase information (web page) matters. Hell, even the box and shipping process matters.

And this is all _before_ you even get to use the device. Imagine if you've gone through all of that. How could you possibly write a non-biased review? You can't, because all of the stuff leading up to the device showing up at your door completely ruined the experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I own a nook myself now. And, used to have kindle.

From my experience, kindle is a lot better than nook with just two reasons:

1\. Amazon offers more books(especially programming books) than B&N.

2\. Amazon offers cheaper books and it doesn't require you to join the Amazon book club. You have to join the B&N Book Club to get cheaper price which is always the same price that you get from Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER17> That reminds me an anecdote when I moved to Paris. I wanted to get DSL, the standard over there with quite many operators to choose from. I choosed Free, because they are cheap (30€ for ~18 Mbps at the time if I remember correctly, TV and phone), and the most innovative player. They also have a reputation of extremely bad customer service...

Since I didn't have a phone line (yet), and the previous tenant didn't have a phone line either, the process seemed to be a tad more complicated than usual (for them). Anyway I ended up on the phone with one of their sale rep (obviously not French, my guess would be someone based in Marocco), who told me that it was going to take roughly 4 to 6 weeks to setup the phone line, and then everything would be fine. That's a very long time... but what do you want, they are cheap, and it's France, never expect anything to come fast.

2 months later nothing, not an email, not a phone call, nothing at all. Considering their completely useless customer service abroad, I decided to just forget about them (without canceling anything) and called one of their competitor (Orange, formerly known as France Telecom) : the most expensive, but 1 week later I had phone, TV and 8 Mbps internet for 44€ euros a month. 14€ more than Free, 10 Mbps slower, but at last I could stop "borrowing" my neighbor connection.

I never heard about Free again until one year and a half later, when I received an email roughly stating that "there had been an issue and consequently I won't get DSL from them". I will never know what went wrong, but I'm amazed that they reacted after such a long time.

I mean, one year and a half... I wonder. After such a long time they should have guessed that I don't care anymore ? What were they thinking ? It was way too late not to look completely ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense to me.

</comment><comment><USER18> >We recently received an email from you. However, the email did not include a text message. Kindly re-send your inquiry with a text message so that we may respond to your request.

I'm going to remember that one. It was pretty good.

<comment><USER19> I see something like this and can't but think of how in the world it could happen.

I really can't see a person doing this; there must be some wonky code that filters mail. All to make things more efficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's sad hearing stories of companies being complete idiots towards customers like in this case. I can't believe that this still happening in this day and age.

</comment><comment><USER21> This should be a case study for recruiting. Sounds like Barnes & Noble's hiring practices need a serious overhaul. Find some passionate people and they could turn around their business in no time.

<comment><USER22> I'm not so sure this was a hiring problem. It sounds like everyone he came into contact with treated him well, while he was in contact with them. The individuals who promised to get back were probably in chaos, and/or told to say exactly that and then take the next call. And the next. But they were probably doing their job very well, within the system they found themselves in.

It sounds to me like a large part of fulfillment was outsourced (not so unusual) and there was very little involvement from BN during the "channel design" (don't know what you call that, I'm not in the biz) and channel operation. Basically, some vendor was allowed by BN to screw BN and its customers.

The VP who denied the $100 gift card was probably staunching a hemorrhage of gift cards.

None of this is an excuse. But it sounds like BN actually hired well, at the point of customer contact.

<comment><USER21> I see your point, it probably has more to do with culture than hiring. The employees (at all levels) do appear to have done what was required of them with a friendly tone.

Where I think this becomes a hiring problem is that I would expect that somewhere along the way that Barnes & Noble would have hired somebody who would actually do what they were hired to do - Customer Service. In my opinion, this issue was never resolved and therefore every representative who worked on this case did NOT actually do their job.

No representative (regardless of the process) should promise a call back if they don't actually intend to follow through. If Barnes & Noble had hired correctly, the system wouldn't have failed this miserably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I bought a BeBook, which is a rebranded Hanlin. Why? Because it's an open platform: I run OpenInkpot on it, and I even could write my own software for it if I wanted to. It doesn't have wifi, but I don't miss it; I copy ebooks and texts on it using the USB cable. It displays flat plain text files fast and well. As for readability on portable electronic devices, nothing can beat an e-Ink display in the bright sun ;-)

<comment><USER24> But where do you get complete books to read on it?

<comment><USER25> I use Project Gutenberg to get free ebooks.

<http://www.gutenberg.org>

<comment><USER26> That's great if you're fine with not reading anything written while we were alive.

<comment><USER25> I can't vouch for the service, but there's ebooks.com .

Personally, I prefer formats more flexible than PDFs, like plain text files.

DRM issues. Pricing issues. Platform issues. And, apparently, customer service issues. The ebook has a little more maturing to do, so for contemporary books I'd still stick with physical copies.

<comment><USER27> How is a plain text file more flexible than a PDF? It's trivial programatically to extract plain text from a PDF so it's as least as good as .txt?

<comment><USER28> Actually, it is not trivial to programmatically extract plain text from a PDF in a consistent format. In many cases it is easy, but the PDF format is visual first and content second, resulting in plenty of opportunities for Captcha- like problems.

Despite that, PDF, especially PDF-A, is the superior format for preserving published content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can't help but thinking the Amazon affiliate link to the Kindle is tacky and lame. It's hidden by a URL redirector, and only disclosed at the end (the second time it's used).

I also can't help but thinking that this is not a friendly warning to others, but simply one more attempt to finally get something out of B&N by causing a public fuss.

Call me Mr. Cynical.

<comment><USER30> The link says "buy a kindle". It's pretty obvious where the link goes. Why would you care if he gets commission on it?

<comment><USER31> Principally, you care because you might have been manipulated into reading an article with a catchy name just so the author can make some sales.

That said, most likely this particular post is a genuine complaint plus an opportunistic idea.

<comment><USER32> _Principally, you care because you might have been manipulated into reading an article with a catchy name just so the author can make some sales._

If it weren't someone that we all know, then that might be an issue. But Jesse has been around the hacker and entrepreneurial community for a long time, and has a reputation to uphold. If you've been to OSCON, YAPC, etc. you've probably seen him speak and possibly met him. He's not some random dude trying to cash in on this new-fangled Internet thing.

<comment><USER31> Certainly. In a previous life (10 years ago) I've been a user (and a hacker) of RT. So I know the guy, which is why I said this is most likely genuine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Long story short, early adoption invites a lot of problems.

Not to discount the OP's valid issues, but shipping and customer service problems have been evident with most every new hardware release that I can remember.

edit: plus at the end of 2009 i noticed that while the local B&N has a big Nook sales kiosk right when you walk in, staffed by a salesperson, when you go to buy a book the big Nook banners behind the sales desk have small 'sold out' banners taped across. obviously a bad sign.

</comment><comment><USER34> Sad story but not at all unexpected.

</comment><comment><USER35> But doesn't misery love company?

</comment><comment><USER25> Barnes and Noble: "We canceled your order. Fuck you."

<comment><USER25> I can understand why my comment has been downvoted, but to clarify and save face a little bit. . . .

I would feel insulted if, after corresponding with a company with that much effort, the result was a big fat nothing.

To me, the 100 dollars would be trivial. I have an interest in keeping a good relationship with everybody, even companies. It doesn't feel good for a situation to have an outcome like this.</comment></comment>


The world's most charismatic mathematician - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/john-horton-conway-the-most-charismatic-mathematician-in-the-world?CMP=share_btn_fb <comment><USER2> Still on the front page:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9963670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9963670)</comment>


Show HN: A ToDo list that you manage manage inside Slack - <AUTHOR> https://slack.com/apps/A0HBTUUPK--todo <comment><USER2> This is nice, but I'm afraid people will start rewriting all command line apps ever written in Slack.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it could happen, this was just to get my feet wet in their platform and was actually a really good experience

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> nice. if you like this you might also be interested in Devarist's integration with Slack. Devarist is a daily journal for developers. [https://devarist.com/slack/learn](https://devarist.com/slack/learn)</comment>


Rotating your AWS access keys as a distributed team - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mrkmcknz/rotating-aws-access-keys-as-a-distributed-team-b5968ed76a82 <comment><AUTHOR> Quick post on how we solved the issue of rotating AWS access keys with a pretty distributed team. Interested to hear what other solutions people have adopted to solve this issue.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! If you are relying on developers to rotate their keys, perhaps you also need a centralized periodic check (lambda function perhaps) that verifies that keys are being rotated. I.e., verify that no one is using a key older than N days.</comment></comment>


Britain Should Not Have Fought in the First World War - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqO5CnnKLtA <comment><USER2> Niall Ferguson makes a detailed case for this in The Pity of War.

[https://www.amazon.com/Pity-War-Explaining- World/dp/04650571...](https://www.amazon.com/Pity-War-Explaining- World/dp/0465057128)</comment>


Martin Fowler: Is it worth it to design software well? - <AUTHOR> http://martinfowler.com/bliki/DesignStaminaHypothesis.html

<comment><USER2> Summary: There is a design pay-off line - having little software design may get you to market faster but then hampers you downstream; having too much design slows you down for no additional payoff.

I call this the "less talk more code" point. Of course the trick is figuring out where that point is without the benefit of hindsight. In my experience it really helps to know what the shelf-life of the product is, and the length of the future development cycles, which is not always clear in advance. I have called "less talk more code" on a project thinking we would only need the software for 3-5 years before having more time to refactor; if I had known we would have been still using it 10 years later in its original state, my determination of where the payoff line might have been different.

<comment><USER3> That seems like a common problem. You gather requirements which suggest that the software will be used once or for a limited time, so you cut corners in order to get it done quickly and then years later the software is still being used and everyone is complaining about the cut corners without understanding the circumstances by which they came to exist.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you, though I am not necessarily talking about "cutting corners", which to me implies slopiness. It's just that you can optimise for a certain environment of use, but if you don't realise that the software will be used 10 years from now, you don't worry about how the usage environment will change.

This isn't sloppiness, it's optimisation - as the old saying goes, the perfect race car is the one that falls apart 10 yards past the finishing line; if it lasts for longer it was overengineered. It's just that in software we don't know where the finish line _is_ \- or even if there is one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I sort of agree with this but I also think it fails to mention the problem of over-design: anticipating requirements that will never materialize or any kind of thinking that goes too far ahead causes enormous cost. There's one thing worse than no design, and that's the _wrong design_ (even if, when created, it was a "good" design).

</comment><comment><USER5> Design and project execution should be about taking on the key risks in your project.

If you're a startup, the biggest risk might be 'is there a market for this?'. In this case, yeah, maybe skip a lot of the design, get something rough-and- ready to the market.

If you're a bank, your biggest risks are probably around reputation, security, compliance, etc. In this case, you might do a lot of design around scalability and reliability.

So I'm an advocate of always doing design - just make sure you focus on the parts that count.</comment>


Did StackOverFlow just lose it to MetaOptimize? And is it good or bad? - <AUTHOR> http://www.r-statistics.com/2010/07/statistical-analysis-qa-website-did-stackoverflow-just-lose-it-to-metaoptimize-and-is-it-good-or-bad/

<comment><AUTHOR> The main reason I launched my Q+A site is because, if Area 51 had their druthers, they would have fragmented the community into five niches:

machine learning ([http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7607/machine- learn...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7607/machine-learning))

NLP ([http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2761/natural- langu...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2761/natural-language- processing-and-computational-linguistics-nlp-cl))

statistical analysis ([http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical- ana...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical-analysis))

data mining (<http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4229/data-mining>)

AI ([http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial- in...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial- intelligence))

This niching is completely wrongheaded. As I wrote in a comment on this blog post, the last thing we need is for ML people, NLP practitioners, and statisticians to communicate less. _The fact that these groups attend different conferences is a BUG not a feature._ My site was designed so that these adjacent fields can crosspolinate information.

As we've learned from StackOverflow, it's better to pick a broad topic and have a lot of experts in one place, communicating and helping with each other's problems.

<comment><USER2> I don't think that it's a foregone conclusion that Area51 generates niche sites, just because it generates niche site _proposals_. I for one believe that it's the big blockbuster stackoverflow-size sites that will actually make it to the end of the Area 51 process and will actually get created.

And, if I were a betting man, I wouldn't bet against StackOverflow's monthly 7 million users. In fact I would be betting on the statistics Stack Exchange site launching in the next couple of weeks and getting critical mass very very quickly.

<comment><USER3> Not without an existing community to build off of you won't. You'll fail miserably. The people in the Area51 proposals are generally meeting there for the first time — they didn't know each other already.

MetaOptimize is building on top of an existing well-targeted community like MathOverflow did. Really, just like you did originally with your and Jeff's blog communities. AskMetafilter is successful because it was an outlet for an existing community — it wasn't attempt to start a new one.

Area51 is scavenging small clumps of people that happen to overlap with your existing main sites. That your sites are so QA-focused makes it very difficult for an actual community to grow within it — there's no outlet for chat and friend-making, for fucks sake even your moderation site is the same QA format! At least you've integrated it a bit more so that Meta isn't a completely separate community with it's own account system…

<comment><USER4> I also wonder when will they incorporate more "social network" features into SO. I feel how it is needed...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I do believe that the stackoverflow people have (much) more experience in > handling such websites then Joseph. I can very easily trust them to do > regular database backups

Except, you know, for that time when the stack overflow guys lost everything on their blog due to "catastrophic data loss" and also subsequently found out that their backups were toast, too. :P

I kid, I kid...

Just use the site that is currently operational, this isn't really a life- altering decision. (Right now I am agonizing if I should submit this comment to hacker news or reddit.)

EDIT: On an unrelated note, my IP appears to be banned from StackOverflow.com. I have never used/abused the site (I don't even have an account there) outside of browsing a few times. It has been banned for at least half a year. Very annoying. Even the big guys get stuff wrong sometimes.

<comment><USER6> I believe the data loss was on Jeff Atwood's personal blog codinghorror.com, not Stack Overflow, and it was due to outsourcing the hosting/backup to an (incompetent) third party.

<comment><USER7> It wasn't just Coding Horror that got hit. The StackOverflow blog was also gone for days. StackOverflow (meaning the QA site itself) wasn't affected.

Also, the point still stands that Jeff should have had his own backups as well, rather than assuming his provider had it properly covered.

Part of a good backup strategy is testing recovery which is apparently nobody associated with StackOverflow had bothered to try before that incident.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having listened to Joel and Jeff go on about the new StackOverflow ideas on their podcast, as well as in blog posts, it seems they're being utopian with the whole "people don't care about money or control, they just want to help" bit.

Running your own site and having control over how it works is important for a lot of people. If it weren't, geeks wouldn't self host WordPress for their personal blogs - they'd use Blogger or WordPress.com.

I'm glad that pg developed HN as a new, separate thing instead of rolling it out on Ning or whatever system was flavor of the day 1300 days ago. Likewise, it seems good that _someone_ has a deep enough passion to set up MetaOptimize as a separate site, because they might actually bother to keep it up to date whereas SO might become the next Ning or Blogger over time.

No matter how bouncy SO's castle may be, true geeks like to build their own castles, even if they're not quite as shiny.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd be rather offended if I designed Stack Overflow. I've had my work carefully copied in the past, and even aside from the economics, it's not a good feeling.

This site needs to step back and decide which of the design decisions they made were because "we're duplicating stack overflow" and which are simply the straightforward way to accomplish whatever. It has the exact same layout, the same format, the visual similarity. Even the footer. Come on... at least design your own footer.

<comment><USER4> I get what you are saying. I do wonder if they ever responded to that...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> probably not given that MetaOptimze has a whopping 300 users, submitting 59 questions and 129 answers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which is just slightly shy of the 360 that are "committed" to the statistical analysis Area 51 site: [http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical- ana...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical-analysis)

and is far more than 69 for AI ([http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial- in...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial- intelligence)), 40 for ML ([http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7607/machine- learn...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7607/machine-learning)), 16 for NLP ([http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2761/natural- langu...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2761/natural-language- processing-and-computational-linguistics-nlp-cl)), 5 for data mining (<http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4229/data-mining>).

(The original blog author means Area 51, not StackOverflow per se.)

<comment><USER11> And this is the crux of the biscuit.

A large measure of StackOverflow's success-- perhaps the most significant factor-- was the immediate traction that came from readers of Joel and Jeff's blogs. SO had a ready-made audience, due to the notability of its sponsors.

It's not at all clear to me that this is scalable via the Area51 model.

Clearly, it takes more than 360 people to make a site successful. The question is: who is in the best position to attract the attention of the prospective users quickly and effectively? Time will tell, I suppose.

<comment><USER12> I think you are mixing up the fact that IT has a large userbase, while ML, NLP, etc; are more niche (relatively speaking). 360 users IS immediate traction for this area.

> Clearly, it takes more than 360 people to make a site successful.

Successful for it's founders, yes. But for me, the reader, I'm quite happy to have only the few thousand most-active researchers and professors and their students of Machine Learning, NLP, etc; post on metaoptimize.com. Otherwise, I might as well go to Yahoo Answers for generic, watered-down responses.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I dunno if this area is pretty going to be successful for the SO guys, it makes a lot more sense for the community to run their own not for profit system.

One of the problems with the area51 process is that most of the people participating are from the current SO sites, meaning that it is always going to be very biased towards tech based setups without looking at what could also be mainstream successful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> UPDATE: After email exchanges with me, Tal (the author of the post) updated it to include a more balanced discussion, and posted some quotes by me explaining my side.

</comment><comment><USER14> r-statistics.com needs to turn their text to black.

There is zero contrast with light grey text on white!

<comment><USER4> Thanks, you are the first to note me to that. I fixed it (hit SHIFT+refresh if you don't see the update).

<comment><USER15> Please also do not overlay a grey "JavaScript for Mobile Safari is currently turned off" layer that you cannot remove without Javascript. The site seems to render readable in the background. I am using Opera and only enable Javascript if necessary for crucial things.

<comment><USER4> I am not sure how to do that. I'll look into it in the near future. Thanks again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Probably not given that precious, precious StackOverFlow karma is nontransferable :p

<comment><USER17> I know it's not on-topic, but karma and SO's structure and design makes SO the PHP of help sites.

Make of that what you will.

<comment><USER18> c'mon dude, SO is pretty amazing. Poor answers are usually pushed to the bottom (though I have seen a fair few basic questions on SO with odd answers that no-one's bothered correcting).

The equivalent of php is dodgy bulletin boards that still doggedly come top of some google searches. And boy do a lot of them have the entirely wrong solution.

I'm starting to get to the point now where I ask SO first and then google, apart from Html questions.

<comment><USER19> You can ask <http://www.duckduckgo.com> first now and get the best of both IMHO, since it started to integrate SO answers into its zero-click area.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Boris Johnson proposes a 22-mile bridge across the Channel - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/19/boris-johnson-proposes-22-mile-bridge-across-the-channel <comment><USER2> At least Boris is fixated on absurd bridges that will never be built, not walls.

A brief response from a structural engineer:

[https://theconversation.com/boris-johnsons-english- channel-b...](https://theconversation.com/boris-johnsons-english-channel- bridge-an-engineering-experts-view-90409)

<comment><USER3> Can someone explain to me why a wall _can 't_ be built?

I know people say it shouldn't be built - but I don't understand why people say we "can't" build it when they've been built before, and we've done endlessly more complex things - rockets, going to the moon, et (all while China is building artificial islands and the like).

In comparison to some of those feats, a wall seems trivial.

<comment><USER4> Cross-post: [http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a- surprising-...](http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising- amount-of-detail)

Let's consider some of these details. Something I think people don't consider is that there are a non-trivial number of land animal species that migrate across the border. They have no concept of nation-states, and for some, our xenophobic electorate is basically passing a death sentence. The wall would devastate several important ecosystems, especially in the Rio Grande Valley.

Walls also need to be maintained, like any other piece of infrastructure. Have you ever visited the great state of Michigan? We can't even handle roads. How will the federal government, which doesn't have the best track record with maintaining infrastructure, deal with a 2,000+ mile-long wall?

Another issue is surveillance. Who will watch the entire thing? Who will make sure someone isn't chipping away at the other side with a spoon or trying to dig under it? You can't watch thousands of miles of wall very easily.

There are all kinds of issues with this (oh, funding is a big one too), and this just scratches the surface. If you Google "Trump border wall problems", plenty of articles have already been written that go into much more detail.

<comment><USER5> There are wall prototypes that allow for small/medium size animal passage, but not humans. Also, the entire southern border won be walled. If there is a natural border, mountainous terrain, etc, the wall won't be built there. While the area may be unsuitable for human crossing animals may not have a problem with it.

Roads have different material and structural requirements than walls. Maintenance will obviously cost money, but it serves a purpose. 450,000 people were caught in 2016 trying to illegally cross the southern border. Now imagine how many made it through. I assume you will not find this argument very convincing if you are the kind of person that believes that illegal immigrants make money for the state they illegally live in.

CBP border agents monitor the wall. And again, it isn't just 2000 miles of wall. It is "smart wall", where it will have the most impact to prevent crossings

<comment><USER6> So wait, we're going to have people just stare south for 8 hours a day? How is this not 'government waste'?

<comment><USER5> Well, hundreds of thousands of people try to cross the southern us border every year. It is only wasteful if they aren't accomplishing anything. And, these days we have video cameras, so one person can monitor multiple miles of the wall from an operations center

<comment><USER6> Then why do we need a wall if we're just going to use cameras anyway? It'll slow them down, yeah, but just by the amount of time that it takes to climb a ladder, cut some wire, whatever. Maybe 2 minutes max?

<comment><USER5> The cameras aren't going to be directly on the wall, and they won't be easily accessible.

<comment><USER6> I'm confused. Are there going to be cameras? If they aren't on the wall, where are they? Hidden in some cactus or in a drone? Still, why a giant wall then if all it ends up being is a concrete hurdle?

<comment><USER5> Yes, but the camera won't be easily accessible at all, let alone from the Mexican side.

The wall is so people can't just mosey across the border. Even if you had cameras there, sending out a team once you see someone crossing would be very difficult to find them. With the wall, it will be passable but will take work and a fair amount of material like ladders, ropes, etc which will all take time, and allow for security to arrive with a greater chance of catching people.

<comment><USER6> But that's like a 3 minute delay, max.

<comment><USER5> How do you know how much time it takes to get from the closest dispatch center to the furthest possible point before the next dispatch center?

<comment><USER6> Ok, so napkin math time:

Assume you need 3 people to drive out to apprehend illegal crossings for officer safety. You also then need 3 others to watch while others are out apprehending and then be able to respond for other illegal crossings.

Assume 3 minutes to cross over the barriers per person.

Assume it takes you no time to see the crossing happen, you can tell the second a ladder is put up.

Assume the roads are dirt, but in good and dry conditions. So you can travel about 40 mph on them on average, including the time to accelerate from 0mph at the remote watch tower station and then back down to 0 to apprehend people. 40mph is 2/3 miles per minute, btw.

So, the minimum distance at 3 minutes to cross would then be _2 miles_. Meaning you'd need about 6 guys every 2 miles. So about 12,000 people for the 2,000 mile border.

Now you can play with the numbers, and talk about capturing people that scatter into the interior, but you're still at about 1 officer per 1 mile (ish), not 1 officer per 10 miles or 100 miles of border, with significant downtime per officer per day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> <sighs> the man practically defined the 'dead cat strategy': [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy) thats all this is, thats all he ever does.

</comment><comment><USER8>
        Johnson has previously promoted the idea of another Channel Tunnel but is now said to think a bridge could also be possible, telling aides that such feats of engineering have been achieved in Japan.

The 20 mile bridge he seems to be alluding to is in China, ladies and gentlemen. The longest bridge in Japan is 2.4 miles long.

(That Japanese bridge has the longest suspension span, but I don't see how he would call that solved)

</comment><comment><USER9> 'Building a huge concrete structure in the middle of the world's busiest shipping lane might come with some challenges.' [https://twitter.com/ukshipping/status/954132391127339008](https://twitter.com/ukshipping/status/954132391127339008)

I'm not against major infrastructure projects but there must be 100 more suitable ideas for improving links within the UK, never mind Europe.

<comment><USER10> There are tall bridges designed to allow large ships to pass underneath. I'm not sure how that affects the cost, though.

There's one in Saint-Nazaire, France (which has a large ship building industry) which crosses the Loire river. It looks pretty cool. [https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A1jl:Pont- Mindin.jpg](https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A1jl:Pont-Mindin.jpg)

<comment><USER11> you don't need the entire bridge to be tall either, the San Mateo Bridge is eight and a half miles long and only raises up high enough for ships to pass for a short portion on the western side where I believe the water is deepest.

<comment><USER12> > the San Mateo Bridge is eight and a half miles long and only raises up high > enough for ships to pass for a short portion

> (the channel is) the world's busiest shipping lane

> the biggest ships on the ocean.

Spot the problem with the "short portion" idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a little surprised that a road link didn't get at least slightly more serious consideration when the existing tunnel was planned.

Certainly, in light of recent politics, I can't help thinking that a road link would make "middle England" feel connected to Europe in a way no amount of rail traffic can.

<comment><USER14> Plans for a long bridge were considered, eg:

[https://youtu.be/r_HN26VVXAk?t=9m15s](https://youtu.be/r_HN26VVXAk?t=9m15s)

I also remember at the time a (pretty crazy) plan for a partial road bridge going out for a few miles from each side that then turned into a tunnel by way of a long corkscrew-style descent under the sea. I can't imagine that would have been practical ...

Edit: Wikipedia has the details. Apparently the bridge plan was called "Eurobridge", and I wasn't imagining the bridge/tunnel hybrid either, it was called "Euroroute". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel#Initiation_of_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel#Initiation_of_project)

Edit #2: Euroroute video: [https://amisduvieuxcalais.com/index.php/calais- video/calais-...](https://amisduvieuxcalais.com/index.php/calais-video/calais- en-video)

<comment><USER15> Apparently the combination of bridge and tunnel to cross a body of water has been used quite successfully in several places:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge%E2%80%93tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge%E2%80%93tunnel)

I don't know if it would have been helpful in this case, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Attention grabbing fool

<comment><USER17> Yes, although I wouldn't completely dismiss the idea just because it came from him.

<comment><USER12> But you can dismiss the idea because you can already take your car across the channel. OK, it goes into a train that goes in a tunnel under the channel, but this scheme has the virtue of being real and usable today.

It I am told that it's running at around 54% percent capacity. It's approximately half-empty. There's competition from ferries too.

And that's before Brexit lowers demand.

There is no economic case for another highly expensive crossing. Funding the channel tunnel more would be easier and produce faster results.

[https://twitter.com/Ben_e_lux/status/954467087975673857](https://twitter.com/Ben_e_lux/status/954467087975673857)

<comment><USER17> _And that 's before Brexit lowers demand._

We don't really know that, Eurotunnel have stated they don't think it will have an effect.

 _There is no economic case for another highly expensive crossing._

We don't really know that either, there is a time cost to using the tunnel, perhaps demand would go up if it was easier.

<comment><USER12> > there is a time cost to using the tunnel, perhaps demand would go up if it > was easier.

There's a time cost to everything. The trains in the tunnel travel up to "160 kilometres per hour (99 mph)" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel)

Is there a reasonable suggestion that other options would be faster between equivalent points?

<comment><USER17> Have you travelled on it, because you can't just drive up and get straight on.

<comment><USER12> > Have you travelled on it,

Yes, more times than I can count on fingers. As a seated passenger and on a vehicle.

As a seated passenger: if you find Kings Cross easy to get to, it's very convenient, and much faster and more relaxing than all the attendant faff of a short flight from an airport.

In a vehicle: I get that there are onloading / offloading delays, which is why I'd like to see numbers before I form an opinion on which would be faster, the existing tunnel or hypothetical bridge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Im not a Boris fan but this was one of the options proposed when the channel tunnel was built, so I don't know why people think it's absurd</comment>


IsEdwardSnowdenDeadYet? - <AUTHOR> http://isedwardsnowdendeadyet.info

<comment><USER2> This is wrong on so many levels.

No matter what anyone thinks of him, this is not helping. Anyone. If he is "right", than he is hero and this is demeaning. If he is "wrong" than let him be caught and brought to justice.

But in any case, his life (or being dead) is not a subject for trying to be funny (or whatever) page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will he be less of a hero if he's assassinated? No, it's not intended to be funny.

<comment><USER2> And what purpose does the web serve?

It's simply that both the man and situation around him are very tense. In that light this web really looks like a cheap attempt to catch attention.

<comment><AUTHOR> Um... you got me there. That is in fact 60% of the reason I made this site.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Interested in free video formats? We need your help  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/interested-in-free-video-formats-we-need-your-help

<comment><USER2> The task described here is no harder than clicking this link: <http://www.mirovideoconverter.com>

<comment><USER3> Or simply using the great ffmpeg2theora: <http://v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/></comment></comment>


In defense of Excel - <AUTHOR> http://dangoldin.com/2013/09/20/in-defense-of-excel/ <comment><USER2> My problem with excel is that it is not conducive to making well-documented systems. The formulas are hidden and there's no way to comment them. The ability to name your variables is clumsy and pushed away from the main UI so most users are unaware of it and tend to use anonymous variables. The default UI for creating formulas binds them to a fixed range of cells instead of the entire column, which is absurd.

It's _intensely_ powerful (my boss can do spectacular things with pivot tables and teaches all the business people to do this as a means to doing their own analysis of our reports) but the high-power features have a positively nasty UI compared to the corresponding SQL query.

I'd love to see an Excel designed-from-scratch that scratches the same itches of approachability and user-friendliness but with an awareness of Excel's failings and _without_ obsessing over the spreadsheet metaphor. Something in- between Excel and Access.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting idea. It's such a difficult usability problem that it's tough to solve it for everyone. I had a job where I was responsible for getting business folk the data they needed and kept on trying to come up with a way for them to extract data from the database without having them to write queries. I got this nugget from the CTO: "To get the expressiveness of SQL you will be writing SQL"

Just need to figure out where the tradeoffs are and I think Excel made a pretty good one. I think Excel shouldn't be used for recurring jobs but for the one off it can't be beat.

<comment><USER2> Heh, at one smaller group I worked we ended up just creating some query-only SQL accounts for some select technically-inclined business folks and installing Toad on their machines, and let them hit the production database. It worked shockingly well, in spite of the 9000 reasons that this is a terrible idea. For more complicated stuff, we often could handle their service requests just by emailing out a query that they'd just save to the desktop.

It was obviously a really crude approach, but it worked... i've worked at a lot of places with more mature and sophisticated approaches to ad-hoc reporting requests but they were all way more of a headache in terms of IT workload.

Of course, it didn't hurt that one of the VPs quickly became a SQL select- statement guru within the exec team.

<comment><AUTHOR> We had that going for a while too and it worked well. Someone with a SQL knowledge would write the query and then hand it off to the people with the read only SQL accounts. The issue we ended up running into is that the schema ended up evolving quite a bit so the queries became outdated and gave incorrect results. Then we had to have a process to centralize the queries and turn them into maintained views that could then be used as a the bases for the queries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Excel needs no defense: it is a rock-solid product which gives non-programmers lots of power. People have tried for decades to build alternatives with little success.

EDIT: My favorite example is [http://carywalkin.ca/download-arena- xlsm/](http://carywalkin.ca/download-arena-xlsm/)

<comment><USER4> Also: [http://www.geocities.jp/nchikada/pac/](http://www.geocities.jp/nchikada/pac/) Pacman in Excel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think that Excel was ever in need to be defended. It's one of the best analytic tools for tasks of proper scope. It was also the first tool that we had to learn and master in bioinformatics class before writing even a single line of code.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, in my experience Excel is an excellent tool for beginners and advanced users. I don't think it has too much to worry about from "tableau"...

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I'm in the wrong circles but many of the "hardcore" quant folk will belittle it. That's why I decided to write something up. I don't think Excel's the right tool for every job but it's a lot more powerful than many people give it credit for.

<comment><USER7> I belittle it. A lot. And rightfully so.

It's fine if you want to keep a small budget or a quick bit of work with numbers, but it's awful for dealing even modest amounts of data and here's why:

Nothing you do is captured and everything is destructive.

Any time someone edits their spreadsheet they are irreparably altering the data without real documentation. Excel encourages moving, shaping, dragging, and futzing that may be easier, but ultimately can cause major problems because there's no audit trail. Ever try and replicate something modestly sophisticated that was done in Excel? Good freaking luck.

There's nothing wrong with Excel for some basic graphs and calculations. The problem is when people start to use Excel as a data base or as a serious tool for analytics (like some of those business folks).

<comment><USER8> What's needed is a "serious tool" that's as easy for people to get into and understand as Excel is.

Excel is as ubiquitous as it is because the mental model of a spreadsheet is very simple and easy to wrap one's brain around. Here's a grid of cells, type stuff into them. Boom, you're an Excel user. (It can do a lot more than that, of course, but many many many people never realize that and still get lots of value out of it. Which is kind of remarkable, really.)

Proper databases are much more powerful, but none of them present the user with an interface whose basic metaphors are as immediately obvious as Excel's. You have to learn about tables, data types, relations, etc. to get anything done in them. Most of that stuff comes up with Excel too, but you don't _need_ to know it to get started. The Excel user's first baby steps are much smaller than the database user's are.

Given a choice between a flawed tool that's immediately understandable and a perfect tool that requires learning, people will always choose the flawed-but- understandable tool. So they go with Excel.

<comment><USER9> I don't think we should necessarily aim to make "serious tools" easy for people to get into. I am not saying that the UI shouldn't be intuitive, but rather that making something 'too easy' results in low barriers to entry and you end up with the wrong types of people using that tool. Excel is very useful (I use it much in the same way the OP does), but it has it's limitations. Because it is so easy to get into, it's easy for individuals lacking the proper experience to over extend themselves.

I think much of the explosion in data science jobs these last few years isn't really about "big data", but rather the fact that your typical corporate analyst does not have the experience to tackle mid range data analysis jobs because the only tool they have under their belts is Excel. What really is needed is a larger number of people with experience in statistics, scientific computing (Python, R etc..), and database systems. The current tools we have are fine, they just need to be used properly (well, we should always strive to improve our tools, but you get the idea).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Excel can be an excellent tool - I think the problem is in creating something that buries key calculations or is heavily prone to human error so major mistakes are made. Some of these things (recently reported in the news) move markets and made / lost billions. You should definitely check your math!

Tableau is great for visualizations but if you want to do anything on your own servers it is prohibitively expensive and there are other alternatives out there. Not sure it provides the same capability as Excel for analysis.

<comment><USER11> This is my biggest gripe. There have been several well-publicised studies where calculations were in error.

88% Of excel spreadsheets have errors - I couldn't find the actual study after a quick googling. [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/88-of-spreadsheets-have- err...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/88-of-spreadsheets-have- errors-2013-04-17)

Recent national debt study found to contain erroneous calculations; [http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/researchers-finally- rep...](http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/researchers-finally-replicated- reinhart-rogoff-and-there-are-serious-problems)

<comment><USER12> If 88% of spreadsheets have errors, what's the likelihood that the figure of 88% is correct?

<comment><USER13> That figure was calculated using R.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm currently attempting to write a roguelike using nothing other than Excel formulae (no macros etc.). It's going surprisingly well so far, although the limitations are obviously frustrating - not least the inability to correctly lock-in random numbers, although I think that can be worked around by linking the data from another workbook.

Obviously this is not a serious project, but it's kind of fun. I think this is where Excel gets dangerous. To a certain type of mind (perhaps like mine), the enjoyment from forcing a non-compliant system to do your bidding is greater than the enjoyment of using the proper tool to do the job quickly and effectively.

I still don't use pivot tables. Those are too practical.

<comment><USER15> > I think this is where Excel gets dangerous. To a certain type of mind > (perhaps like mine), the enjoyment from forcing a non-compliant system to do > your bidding is greater than the enjoyment of using the proper tool to do > the job quickly and effectively.

You're hacking around with something for fun.

Other people? Not so much. EG, the guy who used MS Works spreadsheet (which was not loadable by anything else) for _everything_ , including word processing. He'd open a spreadsheet, and type text in, and get "nicely" laid out documents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I recently had to develop a little reporting system for my company's sales team and I have to say, Excel has some excellent interfaces on Windows. The little app I built is a GUI that lets someone choose a spreadsheet tied to a remote MySQL database via ODBC, refresh the data in that spreadsheet and email it at scheduled intervals. It literally took like a few days.

Also, coming from a Java background but doing all my recent work in Ruby (about which I feel ambivalent), coding in C# was a real pleasure. I'm more of a text-editor type, but I was also profoundly impressed with VisualStudio. Microsoft ain't all bad.

</comment><comment><USER15> I agree, Excel (and other spreadsheet software) is easy and fun.

But people are bad with numbers and spreadsheets give them the power to be bad with lots of numbers very quickly.

Spreadsheets are tricky to audit, and often they're not audited because they're just a tool that some guy uses without anyone knowing.

I've mention the EU SPreadsheet Risk Interest Group before, but here's the link for people who haven't seen it ([http://www.eusprig.org/](http://www.eusprig.org/))

Panko has a nice website with some information about human error and the things that people do with spreadsheets ([http://panko.shidler.hawaii.edu/SSR/Mypapers/whatknow.htm](http://panko.shidler.hawaii.edu/SSR/Mypapers/whatknow.htm))

If you like Excel and pivot tables you might like PowerPivot, a free addon from MS. Here's some information about it: ([http://www.powerpivotpro.com/what-is- powerpivot/](http://www.powerpivotpro.com/what-is-powerpivot/))

EDIT: I like some of the horror stories here ([http://www.eusprig.org/horror- stories.htm](http://www.eusprig.org/horror-stories.htm)), eg

> _The London 2012 organising committee (Locog) confirmed on Wednesday that a > decidedly unsynchronised error in its ticketing process had led to four > synchronised swimming sessions being oversold by 10,000 tickets._

[...]

> _Locog said the error occurred in the summer, between the first and second > round of ticket sales, when a member of staff made a single keystroke > mistake and entered '20,000' into a spreadsheet rather than the correct > figure of 10,000 remaining tickets. The error was discovered when Locog > reconciled the number of tickets sold against the final layouts and seating > configurations for venues, and began contacting ticket holders before > Christmas._

<comment><USER17> Isn't it a bit silly to blame Excel for a user's typing 20,000 instead of 10,000? Computers can't magically come up with the right answer from wrong input. You could argue that there should have been error handling or data validation, but most custom software doesn't do that either.

<comment><USER15> I'm not singling out one spreadsheet package.

I'm not even singling out spreadsheets - thus the link to Panko and "human errors".

But fat-finger errors are very easy to make with spreadsheets, and very hard to find. This error, (20,000 instead of 10,000) was only found when LOCOG realised they didn't have enough seats for all the tickets they'd sold.

Spreadsheets are particularly tricky because people scatter input data among all those cells; Sometimes data is manually copied and pasted (which can either update automatically with outher changes, or not, depending how it's cut and pasted); they then manipulate those cells with formulas (sometimes across multiple sheets) and then they spit out a number. Or sometimes not even a number but a bar on a chart. Few people bother looking at the input or at the formulas used, they just see the output and sometimes apply a brief sanity check.

> You could argue that there should have been error handling or data > validation, but most custom software doesn't do that either.

Most people don't write custom software. Spreadsheets give people a very powerful tool. Most people don't have the skills to protect themselves from that power - they don't know about error handling or data validation and spreadsheets make it hard to provide those sanitation and checking tools.

<comment><USER17> My point about custom software might have been unclear. Here's what I meant. A one-off ticketing app is a classic example of software that would normally get developed either in a spreadsheet _or_ as some custom app that a team would build for the occasion. Such custom apps are typically bad at data validation and error handling, so it's plausible that the same typo would have had the same effect outside of Excel.

When I read that Eusprig literature on spreadsheet errors a few years ago, it seemed to me of rather low quality. Certainly many spreadsheets contain errors, but what are we comparing this to? Software in general contains errors. Custom app software—the only alternative to spreadsheets in most cases—tends to be of poor quality and is very expensive compared to spreadsheets. So it's far from clear that spreadsheets are a bad tradeoff.

Programmers take it for granted that "proper" software is better than spreadsheets, but I think that is mostly bias. Intellectually and technically, spreadsheets are low-status. Among users, on the other hand, they're high- status, for very good and deep reasons.

I'm also biased. I think that these problems need to be solved by innovation within the spreadsheet space itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The biggest problem with Excel is version control, because a spreadsheet is just a file (.xls are binary, .xlsx are XML but not human-readable), and people share it as an e-mail attachment. This is what makes it a horrible, unmaintainable mess.

This is also the advantage that Google Docs Spreadsheets have over Excel. The data is cloud-hosted and automatically keeps a revision history, allowing non- technical users to collaboratively edit without having to learn about version control.

But most companies don't allow their employees to upload company data into Google Docs, and with good reason, especially in light of the NSA spying scandal.

<comment><USER12> It's really not the NSA or GCHQ that most companies are concerned about, at least in this regard. They're concerned that confidential information will be become available to competitors, the public etc. Companies are generally much more afraid of Anonymous and Lulzsec than the NSA.

The concern with the NSA, if they have one, is usually the perception that customer/client information that they hold internally being abused.

<comment><USER18> Right, anyway the point being that cloud-hosting the spreadsheets resolves the biggest problem with Excel, which is version control, but it introduces a new problem, which is data security on servers that you don't control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sarbane Oxley will take a big bite out of MS Office licenses. The law is 10 years old, but there was a lot of lock in in 2003.

The JP whale provides a great just-so story for regulators who want to take powerful, flexible tools like excel out of analysts hands. Give it another 10 years, Excel will not have the ubiquity it enjoys today in financial institutions.

</comment><comment><USER20> I just computed summary statistics from something in my Hadoop cluster and I made the plots with Excel rather than R because it was a lot quicker.

If I had to generate these plots every week then I could script it easily with R, but in a fast-paced environment excel has its place

</comment><comment><USER21> It would have been nice if this article had explained the shortcomings Google Spreadsheets have compared to Excel. As someone who has never actually run into a significant difference in practice, I would have found that interesting.

</comment><comment><USER22> Gnumeric is so much more pleasurable… and LibreOffice so much more compatible…

</comment><comment><USER23> [http://blog.docmunch.com/blog/2013/re-in-defense-of- excel](http://blog.docmunch.com/blog/2013/re-in-defense-of-excel)</comment>


Cool Google Chrome hacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/10-really-cool-google-chrome-hacks-501492

<comment><USER2> Half of these are bookmarklets, which will work on any browser that supports Javascript.</comment>


Encryption, AI, and the Myth of Incompatibility: Privacy + AI != Oil and Water - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hamzaharkous/encryption-ai-and-the-myth-of-incompatibility-9afca1ca115#.lq8apjsxi <comment><USER2> Title is currently editorialized.</comment>


The Coronavirus Epicenter Is Past Peak; It's Time to End the Shutdowns - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/05/10/the-coronavirus-epicenter-is-past-peak-its-time-to-end-the-lockdowns/#30f402f6551c <comment><USER2> Despite dramatic differences in how things are portrayed, it seems like the actual advice for day-to-day living is starting to converge on a consensus. Which sounds pretty reasonable to me.</comment>


Vincent van Gogh was murdered - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/14/60minutes/main20120760.shtml?tag=currentVideoInfo;videoMetaInfo

<comment><USER2> Firstly, they don't contend he was murdered per se, but rather the victim of manslaughter by two guys who were basically playing with a gun. Second, they say that van Gogh accepted responsibility in order to protect the boys from further prosecution, which makes the choice of "murder" even more extreme. Thirdly, experts are as yet unconvinced, making the flat statement in the headline somewhat hyperbolic.

The BBC article is much shorter if you'd like a quick overview: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15328583></comment>


My speculations writing a coding platform in 8 weeks as a highschooler - <AUTHOR> For context, DomeCode ( https://domecode.com ) is a platform that I built for people to learn to code, practice, discuss stuff on the Forum, take notes, plan out tasks, even conveniently listen to music right within a single platform. Since I don't really have any funding for this project yet and I'm still in high school trying to save for university, it's a little hard.
Over these 8 weeks, the codebase transformed from a single Django app to 3 Django apps to 8 Django apps within the platform and managing it became a little difficult but well, I still need to manage it, right? (P.S. Some of those apps are made open-source on my [Github](https://github.com/arthtyagi). So I ended up using these technologies for mostly maintaining my code :
1. CodeScene which is great for predictive analysis for technical debt and risks. 2. Codebeat for proper code review. 3. HoneyBadger.io for tracking any errors in the deployment. 4. LambdaTest to manage inaccuracies in the UI 5. TravisCI for Continuous Integration 6. SOFY for automated testing
And I really got to say that using these technologies has for sure made the whole process easier for me to some extent.
One final question though, why does Load-Balancing is charged extra starting at $10/month on DigitalOcean whereas provided by default on AWS Elastic Beanstalk? Since I haven't used Load-Balancers on my application before ( Heroku pre-integrates them ) manually, does one choose their own load balancing technique ( like Round-Robin, Least-Connection, Weighted Round-Robin, etc. ) or is there a fixed technique provided by default in the load balancers that users choose on AWS and Digital Ocean?
Btw, I'm planning on using Celery to make some tasks asynchronous and if anyone's got any warnings or tips about that, please let me know, that'd be great help.
This is my platform by the way - https://domecode.com :) <comment><USER2> Great job!!!

In regards to DigitalOcean's load balancing other providers often have a free tier so they have to have a version of load balancing (or routing) built out to direct requests to containers that are spun up to execute your code. With DigitalOcean it's for running deployment apps and we currently do not have a free tier. As such the load balancing there is really meant to distribute load either for redundancy or because a single Droplet is no longer efficient at handling the level of traffic you are receiving.

So that $10/mo load balancer gets you a dedicated pair of DigitalOcean load balancer droplets that are just yours and no one else's and can be configured for load balancing. You need a pair, because if one goes down, that is where your traffic is routed so your site would be offline. So by having two you get redundancy immediately.

I would say that unless you have a significant amount of traffic load balancing isn't really necessary.

And while redundancy is great, remember that anything you add, adds technical complexity, and also introduces other failure states. So while it does at redundancy it also adds overhead of management as other services can now fail.</comment>


Reports of gunman inside MIT unfounded - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013/02/23/reports-gunman-inside-mit-unfounded/c568YLIB1fnW2XOhDqXIXO/story.html

<comment><USER2> Can someone change the title to indicate there's a registration required?

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> To read the article? I read it without registering.</comment></comment>


Highway Will Recharge Your Batteries as You Drive - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/british-highway-will-recharge-your-batteries-as-you-drive <comment><USER2> The article suggests that mitigating range anxiety is the primary benefit. But such systems could allow EVs to have much smaller batteries which would lower their cost and increase their efficiency (due to lower weight).

</comment><comment><USER3> It's wireless charging just like in the old snes game fzero!

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm very much looking forward to the future of transportation. Here in NYC traffic can be awful. And of course the smell of the gas, vehicle fatalities, lack of parking, and the emissions which cause increased rates of cancer near toll free bridges and heavily trafficked roads are ever present.

Autonomous electric vehicles can offer a solution to all of those issues and they can also allow this city to reclaim a tremendous amount of the space currently used to park vehicles which are just sitting and doing nothing. I like to imagine more bike lanes, more trees, wider sidewalks, and trash piles farther from pedestrians. Ahh, and with air so clean, it shall be a wonderful new beginning for the city if it is executed properly and implemented well with a focus on improving pedestrian life.

A technology like this could mean that autonomous cars would rarely have to leave the road, making them even more useful. Perhaps here in NYC it could just be main drags which can wirelessly recharge the vehicles as they drive over.

As a side note, if they kept the roads green like in the concept picture, that'd be awesome too.

<comment><USER5> Is there really a measurable increase in cancer rates at toll free bridges versus tolled bridges?

<comment><USER4> I've heard it before (with a map). I'm having trouble locating that same map but I suppose it'd be possible to come to a conclusion based on a map of high traffic areas in NYC and the rates of cancer using the cancer maps provided by NYS [0].

Unfortunately, I'm at work so that 30 minutes isn't readily available at the moment.

[0] - [https://apps.health.ny.gov/statistics/cancer/environmental_f...](https://apps.health.ny.gov/statistics/cancer/environmental_facilities/mapping/map/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A concern about a rapid increase in EV usage that I see a lot is of having the infrastructure to cope with the increased electricity usage. To that end, wouldn't this be creating even more of a problem?

While 75% efficiency (I assume that's only under optimal conditions) sounds pretty good, that's still a lot of wasted energy. And wouldn't there be some overhead for running these roads while no EV vehicles are on it? Seems like a lot of wasted energy to promote use of something that is supposed to be more environment/energy conscious.

</comment><comment><USER7> This would only work for bus lanes, but normal cars driving to work are best loaded either at home or better at work, where the energy company can extract energy during the peak times. These charging lanes are way too expensive, and the charger too heavy.

</comment><comment><USER8> I feel like the next big thing is creating energy out of things we use everyday. Like stairs, doors, floors (especially rooms with children) and overns. We waste energy but this won't happen till we get the efficiency percentages higher and higher.

<comment><USER9> Carnot had a lot to say about theoretical efficiency WRT input and output temps.

For example if I did the math in my head correctly, the peak Carnot heat engine efficiency of an oven cooling down would be 30%, dropping to 0% as it hit room temp. Only way to boost the theoretical Carnot limit would be to boost the temp... sear more steak, bake less bread, etc.

So if pessimistically it took a tenth of a kilowatt hour to heat up a kitchen oven, you'd get maybe a hundredth of a KWH out of a cooling engine (the rest goes to waste heat). Its going to be hard to environmentally amortize the cost of the heat engine. Spending the resources on better insulation would have a much higher payoff. Similar problem with the structure, you could collect energy off the hydraulic door closer, but it would be way better for the environment overall to dial up the weather stripping and door insulation than to gather a watt or two.

<comment><USER10> And then the things you are trying to get energy out of need to be used frequently enough to recoup the cost and energy demands of refining and building a more efficient device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This mentions 75% efficiency, but doesn't say anything about energy transfer rate. How quickly could this charge a vehicle?

<comment><USER12> One of the linked articles talks about a prototype delivering 100kW to a bus, so it should be in the feasible range.

<comment><USER9> So that would imply thirty or so KW of heat at 75% efficiency and a hundred delivered. I suppose road icing and snow accumulation would not be much of an issue at those levels.

On hot summer days, during traffic jams, a slowly rolling 30 KW heat source might cause road softness issues, something to think about.

<comment><USER13> If it's rolling slowly then it won't need anywhere near 30kW, though. Power consumption varies roughly by the third power of speed.

<comment><USER11> Unless the vehicle is already fully charged, I'd expect it to draw as much power as it can for charging, regardless of its current power consumption.

<comment><USER13> Even if it does that (and if this is a problem then you could simply design the system to only deliver enough power to sustain travel) then the car won't be charging for very long before it becomes full.

<comment><USER11> > Even if it does that (and if this is a problem then you could simply design > the system to only deliver enough power to sustain travel)

That seems far less useful; "your charge won't go down in this lane" means the lanes would need to go everywhere, while "your charge will slowly go up in this lane" would mean the lanes could sustain travel over a wide area even if they only appear on major highways.

Also, different EVs require different amounts of power to sustain travel.

> then the car won't be charging for very long before it becomes full.

Depends heavily on the charging rate. Considering that many EVs can take hours to charge with a _wired_ charger...

<comment><USER13> Right now, EVs are fine for short-distance travel but most EVs have trouble with long-distance travel. An EV's battery will be fine with getting you to and from the highway, and you'll charge wherever you park as well.

Your emphasis on "wired" is kind of out of place here. These wireless chargers will necessarily be able to provide substantially more power than a typical wired charger. A typical wired charger is 10kW or less, while highway inductive charging will need to provide 20-30kW just to sustain highway speeds.

Let's say you draw 30kW no matter what until the battery is full. If you're in a traffic jam, you might be consuming 2kW or so on average, leaving 28kW available to charge the battery. If you're in a LEAF and your battery is completely empty, your battery will be full in less than an hour. And your battery is likely to be well above empty.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IE Market Share: Down Nearly 12 Percent in Two Years - <AUTHOR> http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20090102/ie-market-share-down-nearly-12-percent-in-two-years/ <comment><USER2> > In January of 2007, IE held nearly 80 percent market share; now it holds > 68.15.

That is a 14.8 percent decline, not 'nearly 12 percent' [alternatively: a 12 percentage point decline <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentage_point>]

Also interesting: <http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp> (the site has a more technically interested audience, but the trend is pretty evident nevertheless)

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it funny that pretty much everyone with an opinion on the matter wishes IE would just die already, yet the thousands of companies who still use it won't do anything to help make that happen. I guess most corporations are just masochistic or something.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use Goodreads? If so, why? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Passionate about reading, love having the books that i love so dearly all in one place with relevant stats and reviews that i can share with others. Also, i find that i enjoy talking to others about my favorite books and goodreads is a great way of connecting those dots. it helps that they have a high quality app.

happy to discuss in greater detail if you want.</comment>


Google Checkout fees to increase 5th May 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2009/03/google-checkout-fees-in-2009.html

<comment><USER2> This sucks, hard. They've been 2% + 20c for years, and now they'll be identical to PayPal's usury.

On top of that, they got rid of the fee waiving for AdWords spenders.</comment>


Why Left Search Buttons are Faster for Users - <AUTHOR> http://uxmovement.com/design-articles/why-left-search-buttons-are-faster-for-users

<comment><USER2> Without data of any kind, this is merely a hypothesis. I do not buy it; it assumes all mental processing is serial rather than parallel, and takes no account of the fact that as someone types L-R in a text field, the momentum of rightward-moving attention is quite different from scanning static UI elements. Also, it's not hard to see a text field and search button as a compound single UI element, obviating the need to visually navigate it each time.

I might feel differently if I used my left hand to operate the mouse, but then again I might be used to it by now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Or, have the search box say "Search" in it and the button say submit/go/send, then L-R ordering is maintained without requiring any additional visual fixations (shouldn't there be a third fixation for some users in their revised version when the user returns their gaze to the submit button?).

</comment><comment><USER4> It seems even more useful to simply do away with the button (as many interfaces do). For instance, Apple's "rounded field" is synonymous with search from its shape alone, though it usually also includes a magnifying glass symbol on the left.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your favorite open-source, self-hosted project management tool? - <AUTHOR> Which tool do you use to manage your team efficiently? Which management method? <comment><USER2> Here are some tools that meet the open-source criteria.

* Taiga.io || [https://taiga.io/](https://taiga.io/)

* The Trac Project || [https://trac.edgewall.org/](https://trac.edgewall.org/)

* Overview - Redmine || [http://www.redmine.org/](http://www.redmine.org/)

* Mantis Bug Tracker || [https://mantisbt.org/index.php](https://mantisbt.org/index.php)

* Home :: Bugzilla :: bugzilla.org || [https://www.bugzilla.org/](https://www.bugzilla.org/)

But you have to make the call on what's more valuable: the cost of having tools that just work as expected, or your time dinking around with open-source knockoffs of those establishd tools. While I think highly of the above tools, I don't think any of them are "the best" tool out there. I get frustrated when I have to use them for different clients because the truth is good software takes dedication and teamwork. Open-source projects seldom have the resources to provide for great functionality, UX, visual design, integrations... etc.

A lot of small businesses are like, "I'm so smart, and GitHub Enterprise is such a ripoff at $21 a month per user... I'll just roll my own. This is so easy, why would any one pay?" Until you have an outage, or until you get stuck writing custom code to hook your time tracking software to the API, or you name it. You have to decide how to spend your dev hours. Are you a company that makes product management tools? If not, my advice is to use a service that that comes with an SLA.

I like GitHub. Relatively cheap, well designed, well maintained, easy integrations with everything. I hook in ZenHub for a Kanban Board, I hook in Marker for easy bug reporting, I hook in Harvest for time tracking, I hook in Sentry for application monitoring... hook in CircleCI or CodeShip... you get the idea. You don't get that level of integration with the self-hosted tools.

* ZenHub - Agile GitHub Project Management Software || [https://www.zenhub.com/](https://www.zenhub.com/)

* Marker - Annotated Screenshots Sent to any Bug Tracking Tool || [https://getmarker.io/](https://getmarker.io/)

* Introducing Harvest for GitHub: Track Time on Issues and Pull Requests - Harvest || [https://www.getharvest.com/blog/2015/07/introducing-harvest-...](https://www.getharvest.com/blog/2015/07/introducing-harvest-for-github-track-time-on-issues-and-pull-requests/)</comment>


Vdara hotel 'death ray' claiming victims in the Las Vegas Strip -- Engadget - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/29/vdara-hotel-death-ray-claiming-victims-in-the-las-vegas-strip/ <comment><USER2> I am looking forward to the inevitable dome and the nearly as inevitable _Logan's Run_ style dystopia taking hold in what's left of Vegas as the water runs out. Death rays from the sun just make my nightmarish fantasy ALL THE MORE REAL.</comment>


A massive fractal in days, not years [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.jcgt.org/published/0009/02/02/paper.pdf <comment><USER2> Co-authored by Tom Duff, originator of Duff's device!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff's_device](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff's_device)

</comment><comment><USER3> Really feels like an exercise in making a bad solution fly (Generating a huge triangle mesh before rendering it). If you use distance functions(SDF) to your Julia set then with raymarching you can compute the surface directly without taking the detour via a huge mesh, dunno exactly what Julia set they are using here but other sets have been directly rendered for the last 10 year in realtime (adding pathtracing would probably set back the perf a tad but still be faster than this detour).

[https://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/juliasets3d/juliaset...](https://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/juliasets3d/juliasets3d.htm) (There are links to youtube recordings of the realtime renders as well as actual code samples on shadertoy)

<comment><USER4> They say in the article that while there are distance estimation functions for normal quadratic Julia sets, such functions are not known for these higher- order rational Julia-like functions.

<comment><USER3> So the day after writing this i noticed that Inigo went ahead and made a raymarching rendering of the bunny on _CPU_ in a _MINUTE_, seems there was problems with the GPU variation that probably would have been interactive.

[https://twitter.com/iquilezles/status/1295932323242811393?p=...](https://twitter.com/iquilezles/status/1295932323242811393?p=p)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > the scalability of the technique was limited because it used high-order > rationals requiring 80 bits of precision. We address the sources of > numerical difficulty and allow the same computation to be performed using 64 > bits. Crucially, this enables computation on the GPU, and computing a > 10-billion-triangle model now takes 17 days instead of 10 years.

While improving numerical stability is interesting and useful work, a GPU isn't strictly limited to 64 bit math. You can glue two 64-bit floats together to act like a much more precise float. It will be a big hit to efficiency, but nowhere near a 200x hit!

<comment><USER4> How do you propose glueing together two floating-point numbers? Concatenating the exponents and mantissas sounds good, but isn't implementable using the existing floating-point hardware because the operations are now intrinsically coupled between the two primitive numbers.

<comment><USER6> Maybe the parent poster is talking about double-double arithmetic:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadruple- precision_floating-p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadruple- precision_floating-point_format#Double-double_arithmetic)

Paper:

[http://web.mit.edu/tabbott/Public/quaddouble- debian/qd-2.3.4...](http://web.mit.edu/tabbott/Public/quaddouble- debian/qd-2.3.4-old/docs/qd.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Double-double and quad-double arithmetic have even been implemented for the GPU as research prototype libraries (gpuprec [0,1] and campary [2,3] among other).

[0] [https://github.com/lumianph/gpuprec](https://github.com/lumianph/gpuprec) [1] [https://event.cwi.nl/damon2010/gpuprecision.pdf](https://event.cwi.nl/damon2010/gpuprecision.pdf) [2] [https://homepages.laas.fr/mmjoldes/campary/](https://homepages.laas.fr/mmjoldes/campary/) [3] [https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-01312858/document](https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-01312858/document)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Time to ponder J... wonder if what could benefit from some array-focused libraries.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Title should be "A _Massive_ Fractal in Days, Not Years".

</comment><comment><USER9> "Such an algorithm is useful, because ever since "A Bug's Life" in 1998, there is usually at least one scene in each Pixar movie that exceeds the capacity of even the most memory-rich node in the render farm. The scene usually appears well after R&D has concluded, so ad hoc solutions must then be employed, e.g., manually trimming the scene until it barely fits in-core."

Reminds me of Hofstadter's Law.</comment>