Scotland plans to make petrol and diesel cars obsolete by 2032 - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/05/scotland-petrol-diesel-phase-out-ev/ <comment><USER2> Obsolete is a pretty strong term, as is the date:

"Come 2032, not all cars will be ultra-low emission, but Scotland hopes that the majority will either be powered purely by electricity or have a hybrid option."

Good goal, bad headline.

<comment><USER3> Obsolete does not mean nonexistent.

If the goal as the article claims is to "phase out all petrol and diesel car sales", then obsolete seems about right.

<comment><USER2> Obsolete is defined as: "no longer produced or used; out of date."

No longer sold in Scotland does not equate to no longer produced or used, and even at that they do not actually plan to forbid sales of ICE vehicles by 2032.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does any manufacturer make 'simple' EVs? I mean that as in fewer computers. My current car is about 18 years old and besides the ECU there's not that much going on. No touchscreen controls, no telemetry. I hope that one day I'd be able to switch to an EV but I'm disappointed by most of them (and yes I understand I'm a minority in disliking smart everything)

<comment><USER5> You're not as alone as the media might lead you to think. There is a lot of hype and marketing going on with EVs to get people to adopt this change in technology that is consumer funded.

I agree with you, there are too many nice-to-have features in cars that add to the [unnecessary] complexity of these vehicles. Late 90 cars started with this, adding air-bag suspension and corner-leveling systems and it has since grown into automatic windscreen wipers when it rains, automatic lights when it gets dark (like you aren't sitting there looking out the big window), touch screens and gadgets. Some things are useful, for example electric mirrors, others not so much for example 5 different memory positions for the driver's seat where before you just pulled the lever under the seat to move it forward or back. IN case you think this is not a problem it can cause problems with other critical electronic components: I had a dealership's workshop turn off my electric seats in the BCU (BCU = body control unit, the PC of the car) and this meant that because the ABS is linked through the seat, something to do with collisions and the seat moving, the ABS warning light came on leading to a MOT/EU-control fail. I had to buy a code-reader machine to turn it back on myself. On models of this car without electric seats this is not a problem. So many other things I could mention like this example. Simplicity, as I a m sure HN coders and the like will agree, is best.

<comment><USER6> I also don't want tons of screens and so on in my car. But automatic headlights? Where I live, I see (or, well, don't) cars driving at night without their lights _all the time_. Automatically turning them on when it gets dark seems like a no-brainer. The worst thing that happens is the sensor breaks and then they become manual headlights...

<comment><USER5> I see the opposite problem where I live. Driving lights as they are referred to in Norway must be on during the day as well as at night. These are on the front of the car. On the back newer vehicles have the lights off by default and come on when they sense darkness. This means I have followed many cars in hard rain on dark/dusky days and you can't see them up ahead. The law is that rear lights have to be on in conditions where they are necessary, but ignorant drivers see light coming from the front of the car and don't think that people behind them travelling at 110km/h need t see them up ahead. Automation didn't solve any problem, cars used to have lights on front and back at all times, day and night (lots of tunnels in Norway), automation _created_ a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The real push for electric cars is coming from China, the world's largest. They are requiring 8% of cars next year need to be electric or plugin hybrid. They want to get that to 20% by 2025.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/renault-nissan-to-set-up- new...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/renault-nissan-to-set-up-new-china-jv- with-dongfeng-motor-for-electric-cars.html)

<comment><USER8> Oh man that will be glorious, I can't wait for future trips to Beijing without getting respiratory sickness. So far I'm like 7 for 7 on getting sick in Beijing.

<comment><USER9> So why do you keep going back? Family?

<comment><USER8> Family, have to fly to Beijing then take the train, but typically spend a few days in Beijing visiting friends who live there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> All the "plans to do stuff by 2050" are completely useless. The one who did the plan will not be in charge till that date, someone else will take over and change/destroy the plan (or worse, add +20 years), and in politics this is simply the way to go.

This is procastination at his finest and means "doing nothing now".

<comment><USER11> I see the point, but this doesn't necessarily mean its an empty gesture as there is a precedent. Back in 2005 the Scottish government aimed for 18% of electricity consumed to be generated by renewable sources by 2020 (later adjusted to 50%). This was met and exceeded in 2015 (59%). Granted this is a smaller timeline but there is real backing for renewables here, especially since the collapse of oil prices hit the local oil industry

<comment><USER12> In the case of electric vehicles, the long timeline means they can ease charging facilities in without having a massive spend - they just come in when infrastructure gets renewed. Visible charging facilities are one of the things that breaks the "chicken and egg" adoption problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A pragmatic money saving decision.

The price of batteries is falling steadily. EV prices are falling as a result. By 2022 a new EV will cost less to buy than an equivalent ICE car. It would be foolish to get to that point and have people wanting to buy the cheaper option but not feel able to do so due to lack of charging points etc.

Of course, if you take into account the lowered fuel costs and maintenance, then the EV car becomes cheaper even earlier (though it depends on exactly how far you drive and the relative costs of electricity and gasoline) but figures like 2020 are mentioned for the TCO to be lower on a new EV.

Of course that figure doesn't take into account costs/benefits like reducing pollution in cities, health impacts, higher imports of fuel, meeting carbon obligations, balancing grid electricity and other externalities, which is why governments are currently subsidizing EVs to make them cheaper than ICEs (and should probably continue to do so, even after they are cheaper than equivalent ICE cars pre-subsidy, though it probably makes more economic sense to further raise gasoline prices and introduce a carbon tax).

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm very much in favour of this, but the article alludes to one of the problems: the "long tail" of remote life.

The majority of the Scottish population lives in commuter range of Glasgow or Edinburgh. Here in Edinburgh we already have some hybrid buses so I can see a change to pure electric happening gradually as they become available. There's also no shortage of renewable energy to power the things.

But there are also some people who live remarkably remote lives in the Highlands and Islands. In the Highlands "range anxiety" is very real if your nearest large shop is 100 miles away. Whereas the islands may have limited generation capacity. I can see there being a range of exemptions for these circumstances, although once petrol cars start to become unusual the petrol pump prices will go up.

<comment><USER15> One immediate consequence of transportation revolutions of the past is that some regions that were considered un-inhabitable before suddenly became viable possibilities. It stands to reason that if in the future the 'energy budget' per person gets reduced to the point where vehicles that can do 800 Km un- interrupted are extremely expensive that such locations will only be affordable to the rich with poorer folks condemned to living in or around the cities.

<comment><USER14> > 800 Km un-interrupted

That's half the length of the UK! More realistically the longest journey required for a remote place to be habitable might be a round-trip from Durness near Cape Wrath to Inverness, which might require a 400km range. Or half that if you can rely on recharging. Much of that would be on the A9 which the article mentions will have chargers added to it.

Already you have the dynamic that much of the really hard poverty is urban. People already move to cities if possible to be where the support facilities are or, if all else fails, to beg on the streets.

What I expect we might see a bit more of is modern self-sufficiency and techno-crofting, where people's cash flow looks low but they grow their own food and don't have to pay rent. Already renewables are making this easier on islands. H&I also seems like a good place for medium-range air cargo drones; rather than send a van on a 100km trip round the mountains, send a drone 25km over them.

<comment><USER13> I can think of some potential benefits of an EV if you lived somewhere remote like that. Charging at home would be even more convenient if your nearest petrol station was some distance away, possibly wasn't open 24 hours, and had higher than usual prices due to the low traffic throughput. You'd also probably drive more miles than average, meaning the lower fuel costs and maintenance of an EV would add up faster. (I seem to recall a story about a rural delivery driver in the US that realised his per-mile reimbursements for fuel meant he could afford to buy and pay off a Tesla Model S with his fuel savings)

An EV with a range extender for those emergency unexpected long trips could be the best of both worlds, though a higher capacity EV may relatively soon be cheap enough to make that a poor choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's a weird headline. Governments can ban technology, but they can't make it obsolete.

<comment><USER17> Sounds like you're assuming a ban on combustion engines is the only thing a government can do, but they have plenty of other options. They could offer tax incentives for EVs, for example, or fund research into EV technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great to see the Scottish Government leading on renewable energy again. I was worried that adding over 30 million cars to the grid would cause problems but having looked into it it looks like it would add less than half a percentage point onto UK energy consumption at current utilisation rates.

I do wonder how it will affect the PCP market though as the future value of petrol and diesel cars will presumably become more difficult to predict?

</comment><comment><USER19> I've heard that these future 'bans' on ICEs are actually just bans on pure ICEs and apparently vehicles with even just stop-start technology are classed as 'Micro-Hybrids' which would be allowed after these 2032, 2040 dates.

</comment><comment><USER20> Pedantry - the UK government isn't the "English" government as it's referred to in the article. England isn't the same thing as the UK.

</comment><comment><USER21> ...by subsidizing with oil exports. Like Norway.

<comment><USER14> The revenue from the oil fields goes to the UK government, not the Scottish government, a subject of some controversy.

<comment><USER21> Thanks. No wonder they could not secede before.

<comment><USER14> Secession or "UDI" as some people keep talking up _would_ give the Scottish Government the oil revenue, as well as several billion other headaches and be a disaster.

The only viable route to independence is the legal one. Unless we get the "full collapse" Brexit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is that the same as the India deadline?

</comment><comment><USER23> The article didn't say what the source of the energy powering those charging stations will be in 2032. Presumably much of it will still be carbon-based.

<comment><USER24> Nah, less than 30% of their electricity is carbon based today. They won't have any problem decarbonizing entirely over the next 15 years. They actually just shuttered their last coal plant in 2016, so I'm curious what last year's generation numbers looked like.

[http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Business/TrendE...](http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Business/TrendElectricity)

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/24/longannet- power-station-closes-coal-power-scotland)

<comment><USER23> Cool, I didn't realize. Learned something new today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've decided to reduce the use of internal combustion engines by 90% worldwide in the next 50 years.

That's right. I'm setting this goal.

But then it's easy to set goals in the distant future when there are inevitable trends that will already make it happen.

<comment><USER26> A headline/goal is unlikely to come without practical, supporting actions which nudge people towards that goal. The headline is something though that spreads and is repeated frequently, getting more and more people thinking about their actions - collectively these things will get people to that goal.

I don't think it's without value.

<comment><USER25> The move away from ICEs is already well underway, in my opinion. Headlines aren't going to slow it down or accelerate it. Companies like Tesla make it happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Banning all FFs sounds like a worthy objective overall but it seems like bikeshedding to ban small ICEs yet trains, tractor trailers, farm and mining equipment, jet aircraft and industrial sources receive little regulation. Instead, the average person is taxed, penalized, inconvenienced and regulated for the tiny amount of pollution they produce in comparison to greater polluters.

<comment><USER28> > ...the tiny amount of pollution they produce in comparison to greater > polluters

A quick google search found this article with numbers pulled from a 2012 US Energy Information Administration (eia.gov) report: [https://www.c2es.org/energy/source/oil](https://www.c2es.org/energy/source/oil)

Transportation is the main consumer of petroleum, accounting for 70% of usage, of which 58% is light vehicles alone - so that's 40% of total - that's still far higher than "industrial" use of 25%. Tack on medium/heavy trucks which I assume includes F-150 trucks and giant off-road dump-trucks alike and it's more than half of total petroleum consumption.

So no - eliminating fossil-fuels from personal transport alone, while leaving industry alone, will still have a huge beneficial impact on greenhouse gas production.

But you forget the halo and knock-on effects: as the market adapts to service non-petrol consumers (e.g. fast EV chargers, battery-swap stations, etc) then industries will adapt to take advantage of them too - it wouldn't surprise me this meant the introduction of an EV John Deere tractor powered the same hot- swappable EV battery pack that might power a hypothetical Ford truck.

<comment><USER2> I think the problem is that you're eliminating the cleanest and most regulated segment of the market, so even if it's 40% of the FF used, it's a much smaller fraction of pollution produced.

<comment><USER24> Which is mostly irrelevant if carbon is your concern since CO2 emissions are fixed per unit of fuel.

<comment><USER28> > CO2 emissions are fixed per unit of fuel.

Is this true though? Does it matter on the grade of fuel, or petrol vs diesel? I think I read that leaded fuel emits less CO2 than unleaded fuel, but I'd definitely choose more CO2 than lead in the air, tyvm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If they have the desire to make this a priority and are willing to sink the money to pull it off then power to them.

IIRC CA had a similar target about electric cars for 2000ish and we all know how that worked out.

It's easy to dream big. That dirty thing called reality likes to get in the way. Being an early adopter is expensive.

<comment><USER28> I recommend watching "Who Killed the Electric Car?" \- it explains most of the history of EV cars in California. I disagree with its conclusion that battery technology was not to blame - I feel that range-anxiety is a real concern and the GM EV1's range of under 100 miles using bulk lead-acid or 140 miles using NiMH batteries was, and remains, inadequate. Compare to today's Telsa's S and X 250-300+ mile range.

That - and the program was open to easy sabotage.

<comment><USER30> 100-140 miles is inadequate for a lot of people however it is more than enough for others. Even if a multi-car family adopts 1 EV it makes a difference.

<comment><USER31> 100-140 miles is more than adequate for nearly all of the United States. While there are people who drive farther, the vast majority of the citizens of this country travel less than 40 miles for work, and I don't know anyone who would drive that far for groceries. People tend to want to buy a car for the largest trip they can imagine they'd take, even if that event may only happen a few times in the vehicle's lifetime.

<comment><USER32> You're assuming that you always start from a full charge (an assumption I used to make before I got an EV). That's not always the case. I live in a townhouse, so I'm in the process of getting a charging station installed (it's been six months so far and we're still in the paperwork stage ...) In the meantime, I charge where I can. That means I almost _never_ start my day with a full charge. Worse, there are only a few places I _can_ charge, and my best options add 20 miles of range in an hour. Say I start my day with 70 miles of range, which should be more than adequate for my ~45 miles of round trip commute. But an emergency comes up and I have to run an errand. It's just a short 10-mile trip, but now I'm coasting in to home with just 5 miles of range left ... if my meter is accurate (it's not), if traffic's not bad (it might be), etc. Charging stations are few and far between, which means the nearest one might be outside of my remaining range. Or, if I can get to one, it might be occupied. At a gas station I can just wait five minutes. At a charging station, I might have to wait _hours_ for someone who's trying to get a full charge.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Could you help me to build a database? - <AUTHOR> Recently, I am doing a Deep Learning project, which  related to the PRNU (which can be described as a fingerprint of the mobile camera). But we need a lots of training data (pictures and brands of devices), so I want to ask if you can help me to collect photo data.
All you need to do is installing a small app, take several photos then upload to our server. The application is totally open source, We will not collect any of your private data, you can checkout the source code. And, once the raw pictures database is established, it will be free for anybody to download.
I need your help, it only takes your very few minutes to finish, we appreciate your help, Thanks.
The project: https://github.com/CXXT-Projects/PhotoCollector
The APK: https://github.com/CXXT-Projects/PhotoCollector/releases/download/v1.0/PhotoCollector-v1.0-release.apk <comment><USER2> Is it 100% clear that all the photos will be publicly available for everyone in the planet?

Does it matter if most of the background if dark or light? How many photos do you need per device?

Are you going to filter porn, gore, ...? See "Running a Wall of Sheep in the Wild" [https://blog.rootshell.be/2018/10/26/post-brucon- experience-...](https://blog.rootshell.be/2018/10/26/post-brucon-experience- running-a-wall-of-sheep-in-the-wild/) HN discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18320334](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18320334) (47 points, 7 days ago, 46 comments)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We can only know your device information and the picture, whatever you took. The contents of picture are unnecessary.

Thank you for your understanding and help. Thanks!</comment>


Stone structures in Saudi Arabia may be among oldest monuments in world - <AUTHOR> https://www.livescience.com/mysterious-stone-structures-saudi-arabia-oldest.html <comment><USER2> The northwest area of Saudi mentioned in the article has been archaeology blindspot for a long time and it is only being surveyed properly by Archaelogists starting in 1981 [1]. It is also believed to be the alternative location for Mount Sinai (where Moses first received his revelations) mentioned in both Old Testament and Quran, instead of the more popular location of Mount Sinai claimed to be in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt.

The main basis of the claim is that the physical objects described in the holy books are clearly apparent in the alternative site instead of in the Sinai Peninsula[2]. The secondary basis is the fact (mentioned in both Old Testament and Quran) that Jethro (Arabic Shuaib) is believed to be the father-in-law of Moses when he went into hiding for many years in Midian (northwest Saudi Arabia) and got married there[3]. Fun facts, most of the 25 prophets well- known in Islam are of Jewish origin including Moses and Jesus, and Jethro/Shuaib and Muhammad are a few handful of Arabic prophets [4].

Also a little known fact is that city of Mecca in Saudi is referenced in both the Old Testament and Quran as Baka and Bakkah Valley, respectively [5]. In the 7th century Arabic it was common practice to interchange letter M and B.

[1][http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3224/1/1.pdf](http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3224/1/1.pdf)

[2][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjrxHqNy5CQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjrxHqNy5CQ)

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

[4][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophets_and_messengers_in_Isl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophets_and_messengers_in_Islam)

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

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> >Monumental landscapes of the Holocene humid period in Northern Arabia: The mustatil phenomenon

[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09596836209504...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0959683620950449)

</comment><comment><USER3> The Saudis used to destroy a lot of archaeological stuff out of specific religious drive, in Medina and Mecca. I don't know if that extends to prehistory.

<comment><USER4> I believe it's only things that would fall under the category of "idol" or "false god," for what it is worth. There are tons of prehistoric mounds and weird rock arrangements all around highways in the middle of nowhere.

I wouldn't be surprised if they simply plowed right throw such historic sites with cops indifference if it was in the way of a highway or oil field, however.

<comment><USER5> Yep, you are right about that. They only used to destroy idols or "false gods". Tbh I am not surprised about this, I have heard they have cities that are not visited anymore due to being connected to some form of destruction that came from God. So they must have a lot of historic sites preserved just due to the fact there is no human activity happening over there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The phrase _" used for religious rituals"_ is an archaeology euphemism

meaning _" we have absolutely no idea what these were used for"_.

<comment><USER7> Neither the linked article nor the paper mention religion or religious rituals. In fact, they do have some idea about what these were used for and explain it in the discussion section.

Back to your dismissal though. The thing about "ritual means we don't know" is that it's essentially an inside joke that got picked up by people who don't understand it and parrot some variation whenever they see the right keywords. The word 'ritual' is a pretty broad descriptor, but it has a fairly specific set of meanings that boil down to stating the activities being described have symbolic meaning, with overtones of being non-functional. It doesn't mean the activities described are religious in nature and it doesn't mean that we don't know what the physical activities were/are. The symbolic meaning is the part that's hardest to nail down and where the disagreements happen.</comment></comment>


A Complete List of .Gov Domains - <AUTHOR> https://18f.gsa.gov/2014/12/18/a-complete-list-of-gov-domains/

<comment><AUTHOR> For some extra clarification: this is the official list, as released by the General Services Administration, the part of the government that runs the registry.

Some of these -- the domains for the federal government's executive branch -- were already public. This includes the rest of the federal government (e.g. Congress, the courts), as well as all the .gov's in states, territories, counties, cities, and native tribes.

There's about 5,300 of them.

<comment><USER2> I can't imagine when I'll ever need this list but it will be nice to have it in my documents folder.

<comment><USER3> I can't imagine why you'd ever maintain such a large and arbitrary set of documents.

<comment><USER4> I'd imagine I'm pretty similar to grandparent post in this respect. If I find something interesting, I save it. Even if it's seemingly arbitrary or not immediately useful. With powerful search and tagging it's nice to run a query/update to a personal archive to refresh my memory, browse when bored, catalogue sources, wishfully think about future study, notice patterns in my interests over time, meta-analysis, etc.

More cynically, I've noticed that it's a relatively benign form of hoarding. i.e. I get the quick dopamine rush of "oh this is interesting, now I have it" without, say, crowding up my living space with trinkets. With an abundance of storage that is essentially invisible to me when I don't want to think about it, I can keep what I want, when I want; often while fully aware that I'll never look at most items individually again. I think of it as a kludgey form of external memory / internet butterfly collecting. The only downsides I've thought of are: time frittered revisiting archives, the (small) transaction cost of tagging and placing items into the archive, and the externalized costs of maintaining the hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me when I was toying with some grey hat SEO tactics 10 years ago or so, one of which consisted in finding .GOV and .MIL sites with a redirection page to an external site.

The trick was to find pages like somesite.gov/redirect.asp?target=[http://yoursite.com&text=Awesome+Site](http://yoursite.com&text=Awesome+Site) that would then display a link with custom anchor to your site, and supposedly getting benefit from the .GOV or .MIL Google juice.

It was quite trivial to set up dozens of those links (didn't really bothered to get real measure of the google juice benefit, though)

<comment> jon-wood I think "grey hat" is probably overstating how legitimate hijacking other people's redirectors to send Google juice to your site actually is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm actually surprised at this action with the recent rash of actions by cracker collectives like Anonymous aimed at local and national governments.

However, I do appreciate the transparency.

I guess some of the interesting things you might be able to do include analyzations like !) What states counties have more .gov websites for their municipal functions 2) What states counties have the most disparity in municipal function websites

There's probably some interesting things you could ascertain from this data set given a weekend and some drive.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are some real stinkers in that list, the ones so long that it's difficult to imagine you getting where you're trying to go:

WINNEMUCCAINDIANCOLONYOFNEVADA-NSN.GOV

FLORIDASORTHOTISTSPROSTHETISTS.GOV

PALMBEACHCOUNTYTAXCOLLECTOR-FL.GOV

The funny thing is, the last one redirects to "PBCTAX.COM", which makes me wonder why they bothered in the first place.

<comment><USER8> maybe they just bought it after a scamming/domain squatting used that name?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> it's also on github

[https://github.com/GSA/data/blob/gh-pages/dotgov- domains/201...](https://github.com/GSA/data/blob/gh-pages/dotgov- domains/2014-12-01-full.csv)

(you'll notice the fancy CSV viewing UI on github)

</comment><comment><USER10> I believe this document is the first public acknowledgement on the government side of the relationship that the Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the University of Maryland is an NSA facility. Even the agencies own NSA.gov domain is listed as controlled by the "Department of Defense."

<comment> vertex-four The second Google result for "Laboratory for Physical Sciences" for me is an NSA article stating that it's an NSA facility - it's hardly a secret.</comment></comment>


Support EFF: Move Your Domain Day 2014 - <AUTHOR> https://www.namecheap.com/campaigns/2014/moveyourdomainday-feb-5.aspx?t=0

<comment><AUTHOR> Also [http://moveyourdomainday.net/](http://moveyourdomainday.net/).</comment>


Code by Heart – Write better code by imagining it first - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kindofone/code-by-heart-e58092c1f250 <comment><USER2> This is just some nicely worded problem solving methodology.

There's no mind of an artist (by this I think author meant creative, but not logical).

You have a problem. You'll solve it using programming. Yes, there exists a problem solving methodology, and yes, it means you might put your pencil aside and think.

But it's much better to use very well written methodologies of problem solving instead of trying to come up with your mumbojumbobehappyifitworks.

Methodology is logical, it's an algorithm for problem solving that works really well on simple problems. On more complicated ones it helps you get closer to the solution but when all of the methods were tried then there's that creative jump you have to make, by either solving it after thinking (employing creativity) or inventing new methods that will bring you even closer to the solution (employing creativity, again).

It's quite easy for programmers to incorporate problem solving methodologies in their workflow because most of the time their problem can be defined in some way.

On the other hand, a painter, a musician, a writer, their problems are hardly defined if not non-existent. That's why it's hard to self-evaluate, it's hard to see if you are making any progress, and then when something successfully mainstream happens we cherish their remarkable creativity.

</comment><comment><USER3> Couple of years ago, someone from HN was trying to improve their imagination skills, based on the life of Nikola Tesla. Not sure what happened to that experiment. Anyone knows?

<comment><USER4> I believe the person doing this was ztratar. If you go to the original post ([http://www.zachtratar.com/tesla.html#.VjbLMY9Viko](http://www.zachtratar.com/tesla.html#.VjbLMY9Viko)) and look at the comments, you'll see he posted a 1-year update. It sounds like he got good results but found the result not worth the effort. If anyone's interested in potentially continuing with this experiment, please PM me. This is something i'm quite interested in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Exactly this is what i did and loved all my life.

But since i moved from home office to a 'normal' company with a 'normal' office, this doesn't work for me anymore. Getting into the zone is impossible in such environments, at least for me and many devs i know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. Especially open work spaces. I constantly see employees looking for their center, trying to focus, but it's a hard task for sure. I appreciate companies that create focus rooms, for just one person, and encourages employees to get some concentration there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is something I've been thinking about for a while. However, I approach it from the perspective of "Can we come up with a way that we can combine coding with meditation?"

I'd like something similar to soroban where coding can act as an entirely mental activity. My fascination with terse languages like J and K arise from this same ideal, being able to code only in your head.

I'd be curious to hear other people's thoughts on the desirability or feasibility of some form of algorithms or coding done entirely mentally, as I haven't discussed this with anyone to date.

<comment><USER6> I've always enjoyed going for a walk to ponder problems, and then coming back to my desk to "pour out" a solution I have in my head. Sometimes it works right the first time, and other times the process of making everything more explicit and typing it out reveals blind spots in my original thinking.

I started learning K nearly a year ago, and I've found it's much more amenable to coding in my head. Programs work on the first try more frequently. Very satisfying, once you get used to its primitives.</comment></comment>


Hacker Monthly April 2011 Issue - <AUTHOR> http://hackermonthly.com/issue-11.html

<comment><USER2> anyone else having problems with the pdf? it locks up anything I try to read it with past page 3.

\- OSX 10.6.6, using Safari (inline), Preview or Skim.

<comment><USER3> We've fixed it. Please try again (using the same download link sent to you). Let me know if it still doesn't work for you (sorry for the trouble).</comment></comment>


Why Time to Kill (TTK) in multiplayer games is so important - <AUTHOR> https://urscrubb.substack.com/p/time-to-kill-is-the-new-aim-assist <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

Thought the gamers in the HN crowd might be interested in this. I discussed how different TTK's make for very different feels in shooters like Halo and CoD, and how it's usually a bad sign when devs change TTK.</comment>


Dear Architects: Sound Matters - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/29/arts/design/sound-architecture.html <comment><USER2> It doesn't talk about it much but...Apartment noise from neighbors. Oh. My. Gosh.

I live in an area where many expensive, luxury apartments have been built in the last few years and every single one of them have complaints from "hearing the person above me set the toilet seat down" for example.

I now base what apartment I live in by the thickness and sound isolation of the walls and ceilings/floors.

I lived in a complex built in the 80's. It's dead silent. I can jump up and down on my floor and the neighbor below me will never hear. Now in a newer complex, I can't walk across my hardwood floored kitchen without knowing my neighbor will hear every footstep. I have to take the people above me a bottle of wine and ask them kindly to try and not make as much noise as it sounds like they are moving furniture ALL THE TIME. Even though it's not their fault...and they really aren't moving furniture every evening...They are just walking around...

Architects, engineers, whoever...please, please, please, stop skimping out on noise insulation in new construction. You are creating a whole generation of buildings that are awful to live in. My next apartment, I have no idea what I'm going to do...the tour ends right away for me when I hear thumps from above the second I walk into the room.

I seriously shouldn't and don't want to know every time the couple next to me has sex or the guys on the other side of me are watching a loud action movie.

I would pay so much more in rent per month for a place that had more sound insulation. Take note building developers. I WILL PAY MORE.

<comment><USER3> If you are ready to pay more, why not to soundproof your room? It's not expensive.

<comment><USER4> How can you after the fact effectively silence sound from below (floor) and above (ceiling)? Genuinely curious what's possible and not expensive.

<comment><USER5> "Expensive" is in the eye of the payer. Do you think a few thousand is expensive? A developer absolutely does. Also, it takes more space, so doing it after the fact may lower your ceiling more than you're comfortable with (assuming your landlord is even willing.)

We could solve this with code updates and strict enforcement. However, pro business types will complain that it increases rents (probably true in the short term) and drives down development (probably not actually true.) Also, better sound management generates more livable spaces that better support city growth in 10 or 20 years, which is also important from a sustainability point of view. But nobody wants to pay for that. That's "someone else's" problem.

<comment><USER6> Note: Ceiling heights are part of spec. Even losing 1" could put you out of spec.

As a renter you have very little power to do anything.

<comment><USER7> Where I live you're allowed to stick things on the ceiling as long as you take them off again when you leave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A friend forwarded this article to me about a half-hour ago. After reading the article a few times, my feelings are a little mixed.

Yes, sound matters. Sound can help to characterize an environment. But I read some of the quotes in the article ("We need reverberation", "The beauty of the high ceilings and big windows was amplified, and humanized, by the scratching of chairs and the clomp-clomp of boots on hardwood floors", "There can be privacy in a crowd" etc) and I hope that architects don't come away with the message "background noise is good, silence is bad" because that's not the case.

Look at the Grand Central terminal example - yes, the high ceilings and reverberant background helps to create an atmosphere of a "great metropolis." But it also hurts the intelligibility of conversations and the PA system. You're trading acoustic comfort for atmosphere. The non-native English speaker or hearing-impared patron is not going to appreciate the atmosphere when they miss their train because they couldn't understand the PA announcement that departure platform has changed.

Similarly, yes a room sounds very different when a window is open. Sometimes you need that background noise. I remember being in a bedroom that was so quiet I could hear the blood flowing through my ears. I had to open a window to let in the natural sound to I didn't go crazy. On the other hand, you may not want that sound of sirens coming in at 3am when you, or your newborn, is trying to get some sleep.

I guess my recommendation hasn't changed - hire an acoustician! :)

<comment><USER9> Honestly, that library reading room sounds terrible. I should not have to hear chairs on the floor. And like you, I don't want the terminal to reverberate, I want it to be functional and welcoming.

I'm not looking for the acoustic atmosphere of a place to reassure me that that place is high-status. I think that the author of TFA does have that need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Notice: a slight rant ahead.

I moved from a Dallas, TX suburb to a pretty "nice" place in Brooklyn, NY last June.

Holy shit, the things that people think of as normal and okay here are totally nuts.

I never heard a damn sound from anything in Dallas. Nothing. I could play my classical music pretty much as loud as I wanted whenever I wanted, and neighbors would never hear it.

Here in Brooklyn, I swear to god we live like animals, and people are okay with it.

I got a noise complaint with cops and everything the other day just having reasonably quiet sex with my girlfriend. Neither of us is noisy.

I can hear everything above and below and next to me. It's stupid. There's no central heat/ac. The building just turns on the heat when they feel like it, which is nuts. It's more than 80 degrees in my apt right now. I don't even like that temp ever. I have to open windows to let it cold air to bring the temp down to something reasonable.

There are no reasonable grocery store. If you want to cook a reasonable meal at home with your own cooking skills, you have to go to at least 5 different places, and there's nothing about a store that tells you what you can and can't get there. It's insane. And they don't tell you with a sign on the the door if they are or are not cash only.

I love the opportunities I've found in NYC, and am truly loving my job, but the tradeoffs are fucking terrible. Aside from public transportation, this is the worst, most idiotic city in the world.

Seriously, it's like living as an animal here.

And I live in one of the best parts of Brooklyn. This is just stupid, and I kind of hate it.

<comment><USER11> Reminds me very much of London, the prices are so high now that you're paying half your salary in rent and you'll very likely still end up in a shared "house" which has 8 bedrooms.

As you can imagine, a 4 bedroom house converted into an 8 bedroom house is not exactly quiet or peaceful.

When I decided I wanted to live alone (and bumped my rent to 74%~ of my salary) I was greeted with very serious road noise. Which seems to become an unidentifiable dull throb in your head after a while, rather than something you consciously hear.

I'm sure living in large cities is very bad for mental health.

Unless you're very well off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just want to say: that was the most beautiful article-reading experience I've ever had on a publisher's website.

No sidebars, suggestions, social buttons or anything...just quality content presented cleanly with just enough branding and functionality. The moving images with the sound was an excellent touch, and although it's specific to the purpose of this article, I love the idea of looping moving images that aren't obnoxious and add to the content.

I don't read the NYT very much, so I apologize if this is something that's been around for a while.

EDIT: I had loaded the site with Ad Block turned on...so I didn't see the social buttons. Frankly even those are done very elegantly, and if I were a user of those social networks, perhaps I'd even appreciate them.

<comment><USER13> Despite your glowing praise, I think this is actually an understatement. Every once in a while someone makes a point that is somehow simultaneously fresh and immediately obvious -- so obvious you can't believe you've never thought of it before. To me, this article did exactly that. Sometimes the design of things leaves element(s) that cause the user or experiencer pain, but we learn to stuff it in the back of our minds and forget it's even there. I've never even considered that the acoustic noise a place generates can contribute so much to the "feel" of it. Why don't we put more emphasis on this in our cities and working environments?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wish people spoke more about noise insulation in apartments.

If I don't have a baby, I don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night by crying babies. If I don't have any children, I don't want to hear them yelling all day long.

<comment><USER15> In my newly built house, I asked for the master bedroom wall to be soundproofed with rockwool and its inner door to be solid wood. It works incredibly well, and it makes the house appear bigger: If someone's watching TV in the living room, I can just go to the master bedroom and shut the door and there's incredible silence.

I did this because as a teenager I always struggled with privacy in my parent's house. Even though the house wasn't small, it was hard to have a conversation with my girlfriend without it being heard in the nearby rooms (my parents rarely watched TV, so there was no sound to mask my voice).

If I ever get the chance to build another house, I will specify rockwool insulation in all inner walls and all-around solid doors. In that way, I can have a small house with great privacy. Or I can study while someone else is watching a movie with surround sound in the adjacent room with no problem.

<comment><USER8> Rockwool (as a substitution for fiberglass or cellulose insulation) by itself shouldn't do all that much. Are the internal walls 2x4 or 2x6 construction? Do you know the thickness of the drywall panels?

<comment><USER15> 2x4s. I can't remember the specs, but I recall doing research and it was a pretty dense rockwool. I did ask for the drywall panels to be thicker than normal, but I don't recall how much. I found out about staggered 2x4s ([http://images.meredith.com/diy/images/2008/12/p_SCTC_100_04....](http://images.meredith.com/diy/images/2008/12/p_SCTC_100_04.jpg)) too late.

<comment><USER8> I have to agree with Domenic_S, it's probably the solid core doors (I'm guess the jambs and sill are well-sealed also) that's providing most of the benefit moreso than the rockwool.

Staggered studs are an option, resilient channel also works well, provided that it's installed correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The New York Times recently ran an article detailing the attention, expertise and cost it takes to properly sound-proof an apartment:

"The engineer tested the penthouse to find the problematic noise frequencies, then used accelerometers to measure the shaking. She determined which noises were airborne and which were from vibration. With that information she was able to specify materials and construction methods that would hush the rattle and hum.

Throughout the 3,500-square-foot apartment, pipes and ducts were wrapped in acoustic barrier insulation, walls and ceilings were hung on vibration- absorbing rails and floating floors were installed, at a total cost of about $200,000.

...

The solution is seldom as simple as adding insulation. Noise is insidious. No two room hums are exactly alike, and what silences one might make another worse. 'What a contractor did across town that worked 99 percent of the time might not work for you,' said Alan Fierstein, an acoustical consultant who owns a 39-year-old New York firm called Acoustilog."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/realestate/soundproofing-f...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/realestate/soundproofing- for-new-york-noise.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> I believe New York, or any other crowded big city, like Shanghai or Beijing is hardly the model of how things should sound.

After having lived in those cities I enjoy a lot living in places like Switzerland or Spain where there is silence or people in a much more natural way, like small buildings with pedestrian only streets.

All this background noises in big cities are just cars thermal engine vibration. I hate it. You go to savanna and you see 6 ton elephants that sound very weak because nature is efficient.

</comment><comment><USER18> Having been dealing with some sound problems lately: I have to observe that American cities are loud compared to most overseas cities in my experience. Everything about them is louder, and I'm not sure why or how it got that way, and why it isn't seen as something to remedy. Particularly when we want to encourage increased density and inner city living. While attacking the problem through better design and insulation is one way I also think we need to look at the amount of noise produced outside too.

<comment><USER17> It is obvious to me: American cities are designed around cars and only cars.

Old cities in Europe and Japan were designed around people walking around, basically because there was not anything else when those cities were created.

They had small streets, only some of them were demolished and started anew, like Lineal in Barcelona or Castellana in Madrid. Public transportation like subways improved the situation, but it was a problem at first. Now it is something that people are starting to value, walking(or public transport) for shopping, for work and to see friends.

Cities like Boston, Detroit, those were cities designed for cars. As a student I lived a year in Boston and was shocked on how much the city depended on cars. Let's not talk about L.A, even more.

<comment><USER19> > _Old cities in Europe and Japan were designed around people walking around, > basically because there was not anything else when those cities were > created._

This is romanticism. Old cities weren't just filled with pedestrian traffic. There were lots of carts and animals pulling them. Those lovely cobblestone streets in Europe were created for vehicle traffic. Pedestrian traffic doesn't need that kind of durable surface.

The old-world streets were (and are) smaller, but not because only pedestrians were using them.

<comment><USER20> Iron rimmed cart wheels would do it (you needed a lot of carts) along with all the _people_ you needed pre-combustion engine to carry stuff around.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVQiEJW7RWg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVQiEJW7RWg)

[http://www.victorianlondon.org/transport/traffic.htm](http://www.victorianlondon.org/transport/traffic.htm)

Clogs (wooden shoes worn routinely in earlier centuries) with nails in for gripping the slippery cobbles. Victorian London would have been seriously loud I imagine, at least in the main roads. Then you had _music_.

[http://vichist.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/sounds-of-victorian- lo...](http://vichist.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/sounds-of-victorian-london.html)

However, I think that the grandparent post may have a point: European cities do have dense cores, so cars tend in many cases to be routed around the edge of the core in a 'ring road' system.

As a practical example, Birmingham UK has extended the Metro into the very city centre, removing car traffic from a few main streets. It is noticeably quieter now in those streets compared to before the changes. When the system is fully operational, we will see how the acoustic footprint changes.

Once outside the main streets of the city, but still within the central core, you can find pockets of quiet - song thrush/nightingale quiet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A townhouse I used to live in had a two-story open area with a loft for working. It looked terrific, but sounded like a bus station, with awful echoes. Adding curtains helped some, but nothing could be done about all the flat drywall surfaces. I'm thinking that the houses of the 30's-50's, with all the built-ins, were better for this because they broke up the flat surfaces, and thus the echos.

<comment><USER5> You can hang a /lot/ of diffusors and add bass traps and the interior soundscape will change and feel more intimate (and your TV/stereo will magically sound better!)

But that doesn't change exterior noise transmission.

<comment><USER22> Do you have any product reccos?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not just Architecture, but Town Planning:

When I was studying Architecture I did a group research project around this very idea, but limited it to public space in cities (particularly the one I was in at the time).

We took many recordings in Parks, Retail heavy streets, Business centers (on the weekend), tourist areas etc... We asked people to listen to the recordings and rate things like "Does this space feel Cold or Warm"? As well as asking them to draw a diagram of what they imagined (which is a whole other area of interesting research that I can't remember the name of off the top of my head).

Going through the literature, and more scientific studies, the short history is it's thought we evolved to associate loud, bass sounds, (which are less directional and imply larger masses) with danger (eg, thunder, large earth movements), which can lead to an increased amount of cortisol expression in children. It's less pronounced in adults suggesting that we get used to it when we realise it's not a real threat (CBT).

One paper looked at school children near Heathrow Airport vs. in a similar urban area with no air-traffic. The former had much higher cortisol levels generally and performed worse academically after adjusting for other environmental factors. Another looked at offices and the effect of HVAC systems droning away 9-5 (ever noticed when the HVAC goes off at work?)

What we found in our limited study was what you would expect; Places with live background music rated much more favorably. The stand out was Circular Quay (this was Sydney), where there were a lot of buskers and performers interspersed with happy sounding chatter from passes by.

Outdoor areas that reverberate (Martin Place on the weekend with skateboarders) as you can imagine didn't rate too well.

Not really groundbreaking by any means, but designing space means designing for everything we experience; light, sound, tactility, temporality.

p.s One of the problems with traditional Architectural education is that it's hard to convey sound design through a visual-centric presentation style, so not many bother. Movement, whether implied or explicit, was always important to me in my designs and relatively easy to visually communicate (animation etc). If I ever go back to finish and become a real Architect, sound will probably be just as important, luckily VR is now at a stage with entry price and skill level where faithfully constructing the sonic profile of a space should be possible and easily communicable.

</comment><comment><USER24> Relating to background noise, in case anyone else finds these useful, my pair of Etymotic earphones [1] have been doing an excellent job of cutting out basically everything. The kids version is pretty cheap (for a mid-range earphone), and apparently differs only in that it's slightly smaller and has a higher impedance (so you may require an amplifier).

[1]: [http://www.etymotic.com/consumer/earphones.html](http://www.etymotic.com/consumer/earphones.html)

<comment><USER25> Two things that Etymotics earphones cannot block: the sounds of your own mouth (like chewing) which are greatly increased by plugging your ears, and the scratching sounds of the earphones own wires, especially on the ER4 with the twisted wires that rub together.

<comment><USER24> Aah, I can definitely see how twisted wires would make that friction noise worse. It's especially annoying when they scratch against a beard -- augh, just awful. That being said, I normally just clip 'em if they're making too much noise and take them out when eating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem is not architects. They know. The problem is buyers, who don't want to pay for good sound management.

And when public services in the US (NY subway, say) buy from the cheapest bidder, guess what's been compromised to lower cost?

The US is a hundred years behind the state of the art in sound management, just like most other public goods.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm reminded of newer Apple Store in Palo Alto, before they did some work to fix it: [http://fortune.com/2012/11/12/apples-new-palo-alto-store- is-...](http://fortune.com/2012/11/12/apples-new-palo-alto-store-is-way-too- loud/)

The level of amplification that space created was really quite impressive!

</comment><comment><USER27> Is it possible in browsers to turn off mouse events during scroll? This article uses it to good effect but in general the effect is very annoying. For instance on many websites when using the mousewheel to scroll you land up with the cursor over an element (lets say a map) and now suddenly you are scrolling the map instead without intending to.

</comment><comment><USER28> The architects of the Hong Kong airport paid a lot of attention to sound I think. The ceiling is very high but there are panels that are at various angles that help reduce reflections. The first time I visited I noticed it right away. As a result I've found the airport to be a very peaceful space. It's calming and relaxing.

</comment><comment><USER29> Reminds me of when I used to live in SF. moved into a building that was built in 2005; thought they'd factor in the 120+ dB measured on streets. I was wrong. Didn't really sleep for the first 2 months. Choppers grunting past, hobos fighting with chains. Fun.

</comment><comment><USER30> cool article and all, but in all honesty I was more excited just to hear some more binaural (3d) audio. It doesn't pop up too often.

</comment><comment><USER31> My dad is an architect, he once challenged me to find some area of study that architect's don't potentially need to know something about. I still haven't come up with one.

<comment><USER32> What counts as an area of study? Integrated circuit design? Astrobiology? Nuclear fusion? Veterinary medicine? History of warfare? Textile manufacturing? I'd definitely like to hear his some of his answers. Heck, this might even be the basis for a game. There is a deck of cards with professions (architect, banker, doctor, actor, etc.), and another deck with subject matters, and your goal is to try an come up with some tenuous reasons for why that profession needs to know about that subject. Maybe there is a timer, and there are two "professionals", and the other players judge which one had the most credible idea?

<comment><USER31> That would be an interesting game!

I think the basis of his argument generally stood on principle that most human activities involve or interact with architecture in some less-than cursory fashion. Most of the examples you gave require purpose-built architecture in their pursuit so somewhere along the line there was an architect that needed to understand the requirements of say, a IC chip factory, or a biology lab, or a history museum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This should also be targeted at the people that run technology companies:

\- You're playing music? Huh?

\- You have a dog in the office? _What?_ Yip yip yip yip.

</comment><comment><USER34> Here's an interesting interview with Julian Treasure from a week or so ago about sound design:

[https://youtu.be/_MORUgvdWTs?t=504](https://youtu.be/_MORUgvdWTs?t=504)

</comment><comment><USER35> After 15 years in Manhattan, I never want to live in a busy city again. Noise is a big part of why. Moving to the Boston suburbs was a revelation or me.

</comment><comment><USER36> In India it is always a concrete slab but still get above the floor furniture moves

</comment><comment><USER37> Beautiful writing

</comment><comment><USER38> I have never seen a webpage use "hover for sound". That is an amazing technique.

<comment><USER39> The New York Times has an excellent team of web developers/designers. It's one of a short list of websites that consistently amaze me with their presentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I can't stand the noise situation in my office building. It's full of glass walls and granite floors, so if there is a slight squeak in your shoe, the sound bounces around and amplifies to a comical degree. For some godawful reason the bathrooms are the quietest place in the whole building, the one place where you really really want background noise.</comment>


Wikipedia Down in Europe - <AUTHOR> http://sitemeer.com/#https://en.wikipedia.org <comment><USER2> Wikimedia Italy confirms it's a DDoS: [https://twitter.com/WikimediaItalia/status/11700615053096960...](https://twitter.com/WikimediaItalia/status/1170061505309696006)

</comment><comment><USER3> yes i can confirm. how can a site like wikipedia be offline in these times with all the security concepts in the it infrastructure.

<comment><USER4> I'm surprised that Wikimedia doesn't have links large enough to absorb common DDOS attacks.

[https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1365](https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1365)</comment></comment>


Readme Driven Development - <AUTHOR> http://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/08/23/readme-driven-development.html <comment><USER2> Seems that mojombo practices what he preaches. First commit by mojombo (from march 29, 2010) of Github's Gollum wiki reads "readme driven development!"

[http://github.com/github/gollum/commit/c7875704971be998a5399...](http://github.com/github/gollum/commit/c7875704971be998a5399ce83e66a5dada03aad4)

<comment><AUTHOR> You may also be interested to see how the Readme evolved over time as I implemented what I had specified.

<http://github.com/github/gollum/commits/master/README.md>

Writing your Readme first doesn't mean you should never change it. It should grow and become even more refined, comprehensive, and accurate as you write the code.

<comment><USER3> self-plug: [http://sr3d.github.com/GithubFinder/?user_id=github&repo...](http://sr3d.github.com/GithubFinder/?user_id=github&repo=gollum)

and click on README.md and you can diff to see how the README.md file changed overtime.

A nice Readme is a good way to help people engage in the project as well. A project with nice README and screenshots will get the attention of users better since it's a good and direct way to explain why this project matters, and why people should use and contribute to the project. Good readme should also include enough details to help a new user get started, e.g. how to compile, how to install, and how to start integrating.

Also, I watched a Google video of Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins, who developed Subversion, on how to defend open source projects from "poisonous". Their number one rule is "When you launch a project, carefully define your mission - and post that mission to a conspicuous web page." ([http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/30/google_open_source_t...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/30/google_open_source_talk/)) A readme can serve as a mission statement to define a clear path of the project.

If a project is like a book, the Readme file would be the cover with all the raves and hooks to get people to pick up the book. But as they say, "don't judge a book by its cover", "don't judge a project by its Readme file" either. But good readme will definitely help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So in a roundabout way, we're back to...design-driven design?

Writing a README early on (and figuring out your general project scope, etc.) is a good idea, sure. Fundamentally, though, it sounds like he's just saying that a Software Engineering Methodology(TM) is no replacement for common sense.

When people attempt to formalize (and, often, brand & market) common sense, it tends to substitute checklists for thought.

</comment><comment><USER5> This should be followed by an overview of what should be in a readme, as well as examples of good and bad readmes.

Still, good stuff. Just leaves a few questions.

<comment><USER6> A good readme is a lot like a good manpage: <http://rtomayko.github.com/ronn/>

<comment><USER7> I'm a huge fan of good man pages. A good man page contains a short overview, some detailed reference documentation, and (if you're lucky) some useful examples.

A good README, on the other hand, explains why the accompanying program is useful, shows some examples of how to use it, and points the user towards detailed documentation.

Now, perhaps the _ideal_ man page would also serve as a perfectly good README. But if you do a survey of merely _good_ manpages, and use them as a standard for writing READMEs, then you're probably going to get mediocre READMEs. Typical Unix and Linux manpages, even the good ones, don't spend enough time on high-level overviews and examples.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Naturally, Github showcases the README on the main project page and strongly encourages you to write one. I agree that it's a fantastic place to start.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> As an example of a project that was written with RDD in mind (I wrote this while I was writing this blog post), see <http://github.com/github/gollum>. This is my notion of the scope and specificity that a nice Readme should have.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have a hard time thinking seriously about this, because all I can think of right now are those repos on GitHub that have nothing but a README file.

<comment><USER10> They obviously haven't gotten to step two... writing the code.

<comment><USER4> sudo apt-get install readme-compiler

(declarative programming for the rest of us!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ah yes, does anybody else remember the glory days of shareware and freeware dominating, sold on magazine CDs and various collections? The good software always had an excellent, beautifully crafted readme, detailing features, install how-to, changelog, and other wonderful details! No need for google! Sometimes we forget there are people that operate without internet for documentation...

</comment><comment><USER12> Seems like we're just talking about writing a spec before the code, and README being a specific form/template/symbol for that. Starting to feel like we're moving full circle w.r.t. agile vs process/documentation heavy methodologies.

<comment><USER4> He mentioned in passing that writing a typical README requires just the right amount of planning upfront. It was tangential to his main point, about documentation, but I think it's a good observation.

It avoids both planning extremes: writing an incredibly detailed spec upfront without any feedback from prototyping (waterfall), and diving in without any planning and expecting tests to magically do your design for you (naive TDD).

It's good to having an articulate summary of your project, but for planning, the README is just a prop. It could just as well be "whiteboard-driven design" or whatever.

<comment><AUTHOR> The benefit of doing your design in a Readme over doing it on a whiteboard or elsewhere is that it becomes a nice piece of documentation sitting right there in the root of the project. The first place you look for an explanation of what the project does and how to use it. Everybody wins!

<comment><USER4> Oh, I don't disagree with that part at all, I just think that your aside about it encouraging just the right amount of design upfront deserves more thought.

I tend to do design brainstorming on scratch paper, Emacs scratch buffers, and in Prolog, but I'm already convinced about the merits of having a good README, and would write one regardless. (Just like I write tests anyway, whether or not I do them upfront.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _SCRUM ... all irrelevant unless the software we're building meets the needs of those that are using it._

That statement misses the entire point of Scrum. What are those short iterations for, if not to get feedback from those using the software? Why replan at the end of every sprint, if not to know how user needs have changed and been informed by the current software?

How is the readme so different from the sprint's user stories? Working from the desired end docs looks like another version of the currently fashionable "pull" methods. Not a bad one for a particular kind of project though.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would love to see some way to relate test cases with sections of the README. That way you could see code coverage of your README. It's difficult to retroactively write a README after you've written your code but it can also be difficult to write all the code described by your README.

The README shouldn't hold every detail of your implementation but it would be a good starting point for developers trying to find where described functionality is located in a library.

Also, it would provide the inverse: You can see what test cases you have that are not described in your documentation.

<comment><USER15> Docco (and its variants) do sort of what you describe:

<http://jashkenas.github.com/docco/>

I can see its usefulness in documenting test cases.

<comment><USER14> That's awesome how it shows the comments and code side-by-side. The only downside is that I have to describe the functionality while I'm writing code instead of beforehand. Thanks, adorton.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I recently used this approach to reinvigorate the development of an existing project that has flattened out. Writing out how stuff worked then gave indications of where we needed to improve our API and document our corner cases.

In the end the README didn't represent the status quo but instead became what we were aiming for. For the most part this succeeded, the main challenge I had was persuading my collaborator to actually review what i'd written.

</comment><comment><USER17> Low-tech literate programming. Personally, I use org-files.

<http://orgmode.org/>

<comment><USER18> Best thing about org files is they are just plain text so they work perfectly for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So true! I've also discovered for myself that keeping a one-page document, serving as red thread makes everything so much easier.

However at some point I wasn't satisfied with the options a regular REAMDE offers. I wanted to write such a document in a declarative style and eliminate the limitation of having just HTML as an output format. Luckily a friend of mine is working on a parser that reads markup (using as much natural language as possibe, inspired by Markdown et. al) and turns it into a data representation (JSON) rather than pre-rendered HTML.

Straight talking: I'm using it for documenting Unveil.js (<http://github.com/michael/unveil>), a graphic library sitting on top of HTML5 Canvas. It just turns this (<http://github.com/michael/unveil/blob/master/index.ndg>) into this (<http://docs.quasipartikel.at/documents/unveil>). The goal is to use it for on-the-fly documentation generation (along with sourcecode, or for regular documents), without the need for statically rendered HTML files.

Here's the (on-the-fly) rendered version: <http://docs.quasipartikel.at/#/unveil>

It's all at an early stage, but I'd love to have some discussion about such data-driven documentation. :)

\-- Michael

</comment><comment><USER20> Basically good advice, but it also depends on the project. Some projects are too experimental for this.

My approach is the following with my startup project (but not with my day-job project):

I start to write this: brainstorm.txt

In brainstorm.txt I don't have to be concrete and concise. I just write down all kind of ideas.

After a while I start to write this: design.txt This is very concrete (factual) and concise. It is not an essay, it is not written for other people. It is just for myself: to make a conceptual skeleton. It is not too structured, because it is impossible if it is about an innovative product. The only way I can avoid chaos is that I apply extreme minimalism. (Minimalist things are easier to structure, and don't need to be too structured.) Meanwhile I start to write code, mostly bottom-up. And I continuously refine design.txt.

The User's guide (I call the Readme User's Guide) is already a quite different story for me. It must be written for the user and not myself. I don't like fluffy user's guides, but still it should not be as concise and as abstract as my notes to myself. If I would have to start with the User's Guide than my brain would work in a 'user's guide writer mode'. For me 'engineer/hacker mode' is different.

</comment><comment><USER21> Some thoughts about READMEs in the context of open source projects:

There's no need for the README to excite me and make me want to dive deeper into the software if there are good blog posts about actual use cases. They would lead me to your repo where I could find out how to install it, what the dependencies are, what kind of things can be accomplished in just a few lines of code, and how to contribute.

But, as a developer, I don't necessarily start a new project with exactly those points in mind -- and why should I? Most of the time, I intuitively start somewhere in the middle and move up and down from there. It is only after some time that I recognize what this thing actually is that I'm building. From my point of view, that would be the appropriate time to write a README.

</comment><comment><USER22> Something similar for product development: Working Backwards - [http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2006/11/working_backward...](http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2006/11/working_backwards.html) Although, it has not _entirely_ worked for me.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think one big strength of RDoc over other documentation formats is that it gives the README a fairly prominent place. Seeing a few usage examples, high level thoughts makes using a new library _so much easier_.

</comment><comment><USER24> this is an excellent post and quite relevant. i have found this kind of epiphany as well while writing a python based framework at my company. i would extend the README driven approach to even suggest a developer blog driven design methodology, since it allows for a more dynamic way to clarify points and also add diary entries for 'thinking aloud' while you are building complicated libraries.

<comment><USER25> no. blogs are not a substitute for documentation.

ruby has been suffering this for too long.

blogs have several problems:

\- they don't get updated \- they don't get patched \- they don't ship with the software \- they break when the user dies / moves / leaves / changes software \- they have a lower signal to noise ratio

<comment><USER26> \- they accumulate Google juice over time, overpowering advice for newer versions of your framework.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Serious question: What does TDD, BDD, Extreme Programming, SCRUM, Standups and all the stuff in the first paragraph have to do with writing a library or app with proper documentation?

I'm completely lost as to how doing Extreme Programming means you don't have a good Readme for your Git-Powered wiki with sweet API?

<comment><AUTHOR> All of those things are approaches to crafting better software. It is my observation that a lot of projects developed with these methodologies still lack proper documentation. And I see documentation, especially in the form of a good Readme, as critical to the design, usability, and longevity of a project.

<comment><USER27> Do you consider projects like <http://erector.rubyforge.org/>, <http://pivotal.github.com/jasmine/user-guide.html>, or <http://github.com/pivotal/cedar> to have good documentation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. The documentation for those projects looks great!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Excellent concept. Very logical and seemingly effective way of writing a specification.

I will be trying this on my next project!

</comment><comment><USER29> next to a README there should be at least one line of documentation for every function longer then three lines of code.

I like documentation-driven design - when I'm to write a long and complex routine I always write in pseudo-code-comments what I am to do.

This pseudo code usually ends up as the documentation of the routine (little grammar/language update might be needed)

</comment><comment><USER30> readme driven development should be compared to mock driven web design

</comment><comment><USER31> It would be nice, if we dont consider the fact that nobody reads README at all.

"A perfect implementation of the wrong specification is worthless."

The point of BDD is exactly this: bring specification to the scene, give it a first class citizen status, it becomes a live entity in the system, more influential than before. I don't believe Readme or any other document can be as influential as a Cucumber feature, for instance.

<comment><USER6> From a "using stuff off of GitHub" perspective, the README file is front and center when you look at a project.

<comment><USER32> Yep. _Especially_ when using GitHub regularly, I'd argue that the README is the most important documentation file of the entire repository.</comment></comment></comment>


ASK HN: What is your main SEO Strategy? - <AUTHOR>

How to build more and more links?<p>Blog comment? Paid review? Paid links? Links exchange? Other service? <comment><USER2> Forget paid links, and even paid reviews, as well as link exchanges. All of them are either not scalable, or inefficient.

Blog comments can work (check out CommentLuv).

The most efficient way is to build a great product and build connections with bloggers/journalists before you need them. Talk to them about what interests them. Ask them compelling questions. Heck, feed their ego. And when the time comes, mention your site, and tell them to share it with anyone they think would want it.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not so easy to explain the whole SEO process in a comment. People wrote books for that. A good starting point is guides by seomoz.org. Blog comments, paid links are not recommended, from comments no link juice passes, and google already announced that the sites having paid links will be penalized. Reciprocal links are also not recommended, from homepage to homepage link exchange can be harmful, google spam team everyday reviews websites with that issue. Best way for the backlinks is having valuable content that people will link back without asking them.

</comment><comment><USER4> if at all possible, i'd say it's guest blogging / writing. this not only build high quality links but it spurs instant virality when done correctly.</comment>