Show HN: Make your iPhone app look beautiful - <AUTHOR> http://www.uipsd.co/circles

<comment><USER3> "No design skills required!" is not something you should read when making design decisions for your app. Period.

<comment><USER4> _"No design skills required!" is not something you should read when making design decisions for your app. Period._

So what's your alternative? Either investing a load of time in learning, or a load of money in hiring a designer?

If you don't have the time/money/talent, this solves a very real problem.

<comment><USER5> > _"Either investing a load of time in learning, or a load of money in hiring > a designer?"_

Yes.

The app store era has significantly raised the stakes - it's no longer enough to ship something functional, people demand that it also be beautiful and usable.

For every product niche worth tackling, there is a competing app that _has_ had the proper love of a designer. And it will win.

The success of a modern iOS app hinges heavily on ranking and featuring - <USER2> to the App Store right now and look at any of the featured lists. Are there _any_ lazily-designed apps there?

So in short, _there is no alternative_. Proper design is _not optional_ for success in the app store. The only exception here is if your app has some functionality that is so powerful, so utterly necessary for your users, _and_ so exclusive no one else can meaningfully copy it, that your users will live with your crappy out-of-box UI.

<comment><USER6> I'd say you're witnessing the rise of what seems to be WooThemes for iOS and calling it useless.

It's probably not for you, but I would be surprised if this isn't highly valuable to a lot of people.

<comment><USER7> As someone who's running a marketplace with hundreds of iOS components and templates, I can certainly say that there's a need for these kind of templates.

A lot of people will use these templates as a good base to get started and release a MVP, much like people use github bootstrap or a wordpress theme and customize it to reach the market faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks great. I'm quite tempted to buy this. But I have a few questions:

1) Is a tab bar included?

2) What other iOS controls have you styled and included in the kit?

3) I see some icons depicted in the screenshots. Are those included? If so, what other icons are available?

4) Any plans to target iPad?

<comment><USER9> +1 on all 4 points.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Use the 'hackernews' promo code to get a 29$ off on the Full UI + xCode project pack.

<comment><USER10> detailed screenshots needed. can you email me at hi at davidkatz dot me?

<comment><AUTHOR> Updated! Check out all the screens now here: www.uipsd.co/circles Thanks guys!

<comment><USER9> +1 for quick iteration!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Love the look of the site. A few remarks/questions:

* Is there a possibility to get PNGs in addition to PSDs?

* It's Xcode, not xCode.

* What exactly is in the Xcode project already? A storyboard? Any functionality?

<comment><USER12> I don't know the answer to number 1, since I haven't purchased, but expecting that everything is properly layered and labeled, Slicy [0] would be a good thing to have around. It really makes communicating with Photoshop a ton easier for both designers and developers. (Not affiliated with MacRabbit, but I love Slicy)

[0] <http://macrabbit.com/slicy/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Kind of like Twitter Bootstrap but you have to pay for it.

<comment><USER9> This is much nicer than bootstrap.

<comment><USER14> Actually it's not, it's just different and less common (for now).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > beautiful

For some values of beautiful that is.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you can't get the capitalization of Xcode's name right, can I trust your code?

<comment><USER17> You're right, that is definitely an indicator that his code is absolutely horrible. He should have spent more time obsessing over which letter to capitalize.

<comment><USER18> An important part about design is the attention to detail. Missing a fairly easily-caught detail that will be glaringly obvious to his target audience that he missed it isn't showing the proper attention to detail, and it makes it less likely that his target audience is going to use his product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm using Chrome on Windows and I'm noticing that when I have my Chrome window on one half of the screen, the responsive design breaks a bit. Basically, if I try to scroll to the right, about 1/4th of the "Ready-to-Code XCode" is cut off.

See: <http://imgur.com/JnOp2CE>

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not quite understanding this. How does getting handed a .psd template help me make the app? Is this simply one possible alternative to the stock UIKit skin that's been packaged up as an idea to reuse? (Like Bootstrap, if Bootstrap was just a Photoshop document instead of usable CSS/HTML?)

</comment><comment><USER21> A followup on the marketing effect of this post regarding visitors, sales, etc. would be useful.

</comment><comment><USER22> Kind of remind me of App Design Vault: <http://www.appdesignvault.com/>

Not associated to that site, simply got a few existing templates a few months back when there was a super promo discount.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd like to see a site that matches designers and artists up with mobile developers.

</comment><comment><USER24> So now the app store is going to be flooded with apps with all the same design. :-P

</comment><comment><USER25> The hamburger menu is a pretty bad anti-pattern in iOS design.

Worse, in the screen shot, there are only five items. They could fit in a conventional iOS tab bar, which is significantly less clunky to navigate.

</comment><comment><USER26> This looks very much like the capital one mobile app...

</comment><comment><USER9> This is actually pretty nice. Considering buying xcode version. Would be better with a video overview of working xcode project.

</comment><comment><USER27> This looks great. I love the flat design of the site. And I love the UI design. It looks very clean and minimal to me.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is really cool- I'd love to see a lot of different templates to choose from!

<comment><AUTHOR> As this first test was quite successful, I will be releasing new UI templates soon. Also will be working on different platforms such as Android and iPad.

<comment><USER28> That sounds awesome! Looking forward to it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How about an Android version?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, I wanted to "test the waters" before releasing other versions. But definitely will release an android version!

<comment><USER30> Have you considered creating this as a Xamarin theme component? <http://components.xamarin.com/> It could be an easy way to get the theme in front of more buyers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Looks cool. What exactly does the Xcode project consists of though?

</comment><comment><USER32> anyone who has purchased: care to comment on code quality?

<comment><USER32> Buyer beware. I bought the PSD and the font is Gotham Bold. Gotham isn't on iOS and doesn't have an interactive/UI licence so it's not even an option to buy it.

The developer's response: use Helvetica.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Xcode. Not xCode.</comment>


Apple may have finally gotten too big for its unusual corporate structure - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/11/27/13706776/apple-functional-divisional <comment><USER2> I with they'd start licensing OSX again.. even if it were tethered to a usb- interfaced hardware device for the license... charge $250 for said device and the OS and be done... let homebrew, and third parties install it internally, install the OS, and it just work (driver availability may vary)... add enough information for the hardware mfg's to release drivers for OSX... though this has been problematic for windows, a cleaner update/release model is much more possible with broader internet access... Apple can also "bless" certain hardware combinations and exit the desktop space (akeeping macbook/mbp lines).</comment>


Supported Features - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/619/

<comment><USER2> Flash plugin isn't developed by kernel developers. So why?

Other than that, it's 3/5 funny.

<comment><USER3> It's more of a poke at Linux users in general than the kernel development team. The lack of flash and video codec support are one of the main reasons the predicted "Linux on the Desktop" revolution never happened. At the same time, I don't understand why Adobe won't back Linux as it's in their best interest to weaken Microsoft.</comment></comment>


500 Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.500startups.com/

<comment><USER2> About once a month I find myself wishing there was a downvote button on articles. This is the perfect example.

It's a link to a page that contains nothing but a title. No, I'm not going to give you my email address in the hope that you tell me what you are. I'm leaving and making a mental note never to come back.

</comment><comment><USER3> what is it?

<comment><USER4> Found this. <http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/30/dave-mcclure-500-startups/></comment></comment>


What Is the Best VPN? - <AUTHOR> I had a very bad experience with NordVPN, slow internet, disconnection from servers and continuous problems. What is the best vpn? <comment><USER2> Check the previous discussions:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Ask%20hn%20vpn&sort=byDate&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER3> Same discussion from 4 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21680824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21680824)

Same discussion from 11 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21634704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21634704)

Using "vpn site:news.ycombinator.com" in Google will pop up even more prior discussions that will shed light.</comment>


With Facebook at 'War,' Zuckerberg Adopts More Aggressive Style - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-facebook-at-war-zuckerberg-adopts-more-aggressive-style-1542577980 <comment><USER2> The company is most comfortable being at war. That's the first thing I noticed when I started working there. People glorified the days when they were fighting head-to-head with Google or before that with the other social networks. They reminse with pride about the "lockdown" periods when everyone would not leave the office for days to fend off a competitor. It's kind of an intoxicating feeling when everyone around you is driven to win, and I liked it.

However, I don't think it's the best environment to be creative, that's why I think FB has to rely on acquisitions to keep the growth going (except that on the infrastructure side of Facebook it is very creative and has the time and space for innovation, hence all their awesome open source stuff).

<comment><USER3> > everyone would not leave the office for days to fend off a competitor. It's > kind of an intoxicating feeling when everyone around you is driven to win, > and I liked it.

This is such a Stockholm syndrome. How productive are you if you haven't slept for three days?

I really don't care about what Facebook does but these are just such blatant examples of mismanagement and I don't want them to spread.

<comment><USER4> Not leaving office != not sleeping

<comment><USER5> Even then it's a kind of perverse modern slavery.

<comment><USER6> Please don't trivialize the horrors of actual slavery by throwing around the term for 6-digit-salaried folks hustling for something they enjoy doing.

<comment><USER7> You're right, it's more like the formation of a cult. The money presented to them really doesn't matter very much, what we should consider is the mindset this sort of thing creates and whether or not it is a good thing to have it spreading to the rest of society. There's a real societal impact to having large companies getting more and more powerful and their employees being fanatically devoted to it's well-being.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > In October, Facebook hired former U.K. deputy prime minister Nick Clegg as > head of global policy and communications, the company's most high-profile > external hire since Ms. Sandberg joined from Google in 2008.

When Mr Clegg became deputy PM to the tory leadership he forever condemned the Lib-Dems to be classed as a poodle for the tory party. The Lib-Dems voters of 2010 deserted the party for this act of treachery which cost Clegg his constituency in 2017.

So if Facebook hope this failed politician can save them then it's going to be a tough way ahead for Zuck.

<comment><USER9> Just because he's politically unpopular doesn't mean he won't be valuable to them.

<comment><USER10> I don't think the point made was that he is unpopular. I think the point is he is incapable of making good decisions.

With some things like the failed alternate vote referendum I have read people blame Labour more than the Lib Dems. However, he clearly lacks charisma and skills in hindsight.

I don't think anyone at Facebook will force Nick Clegg to do or say anything but I'll be shocked if he has any serious decision-making power within Facebook. I'm trying to avoid saying he is a rubber stamp but it is difficult to say he is much more when even ex CSO Alex Stamos clearly had restrictions (if you read between the lines).

<comment><USER11> You're assuming that Clegg has expressed his true aims in public. Given his record of spectacular outright lies - such as the famous u-turn on tuition fees, or the way that he denied being a Young Conservative at Cambridge, in spite of the evidence - it's possible his affable victim-of-circumstance brand is just a cover for someone who is essentially manipulative and dishonest.

Given the successful spoiler/enabler role of the LibDems in UK politics, there's a good chance he doesn't think of his record as one of failure on any level.

Interesting, he has already deleted all of his tweets, including the anti- Brexit ones - not quite the action of the absolutely committed anti-Brexit campaigner he claimed to be.

(To say "FB wouldn't let him keep them" misses the point. Someone who was genuinely committed to stopping Brexit would never accept a job which might conflict with keeping them.)

<comment><USER10> > it's possible his affable victim-of-circumstance brand is just a cover for > someone who is essentially manipulative and dishonest

In that case, he has a long and productive career ahead at Facebook or perhaps at a company like British Petroleum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a Facebook smear campaign going on or people just love to pile on Zuckerberg? Facebook is an advertisement company and collects data, but so does everybody else. Gmail launched in 2004. Snowden leaks in 2013 were greeted with general apathy. But know it's the time to crucify Zuckerberg for what exatly? Make use of targeted advertisement? Or letting Facebook have user-generated content, that may or may not have influenced votes in the past?

Either way, the ongoing collection of all kinds of data has been obvious for many years now. And it's not going to stop, so some advice: Instead blaming this one actor, better get used to it.

Platforms also can't fully and completely be responsible for political views expressed by user-generated content.

<comment><USER13> This is a very good comment and I hope it rises to the top of the heap.

I wrote this post on an HN comment, but I wonder, "Is there an actual Facebook crisis, or media narrative about Facebook crisis?" [https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual- facebo...](https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebook- crisis-or-media-narrative-about-facebook-crisis)

It seems to me that Zuckerberg doesn't know that he's in a media scapegoating situation. When you've become the scapegoat, there is nothing you can do to stop it. You can observe the scapegoating mechanism, but even that will likely do very little to halt it in action.

The media cannot accept (or comprehensively address) its own culpability for the 2016 election. So let's put the blame on those guys, over there, instead of looking at ourselves.

<comment><USER14> It is not a good comment at all. I know its the go-to reaction for engineers in SV to empathize with a fellow engineer and portray him as a martyr in the altar of an east-coast elitist media. But please look at the facts and details of what NYT has uncovered.

> It seems to me that Zuckerberg doesn't know that he's in a media > scapegoating situation. When you've become the scapegoat, there is nothing > you can do to stop it. You can observe the scapegoating mechanism, but even > that will likely do very little to halt it in action.

He's much much smarter than you give him credit for. A lot of folks think of him as a clueless programming genius, but this is brilliant guy who understands politics a lot better than most engineers in SV. All the feel-good tours were not for his personal political ambition, but to create goodwill for his most precious, valuable child, Facebook. And he has done every thing in his power to cut the criticism, scapegoat critics and regulation.

> The media cannot accept (or comprehensively address) its own culpability for > the 2016 election. So let's put the blame on those guys, over there, instead > of looking at ourselves.

Certainly there is some aspect of that. But please lets look at the facts. Facebook did hire a PR firm that spread Soros-based conspiracy theories against its critics. They fired Stamos when he exposed the extent of Russian intervention and kept quiet or dismissed the magnitude of Russian activity until it became untenable for them to do so.

All the steps they have taken to become better, have been forced onto them ... by who? Its by the Media. The media uncovering _facts_ about the company. That's their job: to bring to light these facts. Let them do their job, and lets hope Facebook does its job as well.

<comment><USER15> I'm not hearing anyone dispute these facts. Media-driven fervor is rarely devoid of facts. Rather, with story choice and interspersed op-eds, the narrative becomes clear even if not untrue. For every fact-based article, there are dozens of opinion ones (happening with all big-web tech) and my flag-clicking finger grows weary. These digital opinion pieces sharing the same domain become much harder to differentiate than in print. Even if you're focusing on facts, many don't care about them or at least don't consider them or their consequences as damning as the coverage might deserve.

At this point, I'll take my bulleted lists of uncovered facts and eschew the rest of this crap. Sadly my peers, pitchforks in hand, can't do so and are hastily cheering on government oversight. Something none of us can ever recover from (a one way street in almost all instances).

<comment><USER14> I keep hearing about this fear of Government overreach. I won't go as far as to dismiss them, but I do think its important to recognize that regulations do have an important role to play in a Capitalist Economic system, to prevent the accumulation of power, as happened in the Gilded Age.

Your comment talks of fears of Government oversight but I haven't seen a better solution to the menace of Facebook. They have repeatedly failed to curtail bad actors in their platforms. Government oversight may help increase the penalties for bad behavior to an extent that forces them to think seriously about these issues.

<comment><USER15> Too often, discussion on nuance of a specific topic devolves to general politics. Fear of government oversight for me applies specifically to internet laws being bandied about.

> I haven't seen a better solution to the menace of Facebook

There doesn't have to be. Sometimes recognition that there is no winning move is acceptable. With open models like the internet, we must take the bad with the good. I don't see them as a menace, and they don't really affect my life at all. Many of the harms are either blindly assumed to have effect (i.e. political advertising) or are ones that are endemic to large amounts of humans in an open space.

I'll take the status quo. If media or others wants to help educate the populace on harms, awesome. If others such as myself just don't participate on some of these social sites, awesome. Most thought around FB harms centers around the uneducated masses and only if they knew what they were doing. A similar mindset many would say lost the last presidential election. What if I told you they do know, implicitly agree, and unlike this echo chamber we comment on, are content? Let's avoid legislating their wants in this case and also avoid the unintended consequences on the rest of us with internet businesses. The harm caused by this fly isn't worth pulling out the shotgun.

I get this deja vu... now it's big web tech (and the rich and immigrants but that's another topic), previously it was terrorists, before that druggies, before that communists, before that alcoholics, on and on. We've got to learn to face this hysteria with a pragmatic approach at some point.

<comment><USER14> I think you're conflating a lot of issues and trying to portray what we have today as inevitable and just the way things are. If we make a little more effort and isolate the issues, I think it makes a lot more sense to take actionable steps in this direction.

> There doesn't have to be. Sometimes recognition that there is no winning > move is acceptable. With open models like the internet, we must take the bad > with the good. I don't see them as a menace, and they don't really affect my > life at all. Many of the harms are either blindly assumed to have effect > (i.e. political advertising) or are ones that are endemic to large amounts > of humans in an open space.

There definitely can be better solutions. Throwing up your hands and saying: "Its just the way this system is" isn't an answer to the specific changes being recommended. Its in the nature of people to be addicted to tobacco; yet we do have regulations around tobacco to stop tobacco companies from advertising their products, to add disclaimers and health warnings to their product, to forbid them from advertising to children. We didn't just throw up our hands and accept it as a failure of the human nature.

> I'll take the status quo. If media or others wants to help educate the > populace on harms, awesome. If others such as myself just don't participate > on some of these social sites, awesome. Most thought around FB harms centers > around the uneducated masses and only if they knew what they were doing. A > similar mindset many would say lost the last presidential election. What if > I told you they do know, implicitly agree, and unlike this echo chamber we > comment on, are content? Let's avoid legislating their wants in this case > and also avoid the unintended consequences on the rest of us with internet > businesses. The harm caused by this fly isn't worth pulling out the shotgun.

Its not in the nature of the internet to act as an amplifier for conspiracy theories disguised as truth in respectable internet properties. We don't expect nytimes.com or the websites of any news organizations to peddle in conspiracy theories and we should expect the same from facebook.com; if not, we need to call them out for not being valid source of information and make them add that disclaimer to everything they show.

> I'll take the status quo. If media or others wants to help educate the > populace on harms, awesome. If others such as myself just don't participate > on some of these social sites, awesome. Most thought around FB harms centers > around the uneducated masses and only if they knew what they were doing. A > similar mindset many would say lost the last presidential election. What if > I told you they do know, implicitly agree, and unlike this echo chamber we > comment on, are content? Let's avoid legislating their wants in this case > and also avoid the unintended consequences on the rest of us with internet > businesses. The harm caused by this fly isn't worth pulling out the shotgun.

But that's not what the situation is at all. Instead of the uneducated masses being content with facebook, they're angry, so angry at: Immigrants for taking away their jobs and benefits, at liberals for taking away their privileges etc. This is exactly why we want to control the medium: apparently, they're not aware that the things they see aren't facts, they're conspiracy theories.

I'm sorry, I can't justify not doing anything just because it has the potential (not even proven what side effects it might have really) of ruining your next/current internet venture. We unleashed technological changes on American (and the World) society, and its about time we took responsibility for the harms that this technology can cause and place reasonable checks and controls.

> I get this deja vu... now it's big web tech (and the rich and immigrants but > that's another topic), previously it was terrorists, before that druggies, > before that communists, before that alcoholics, on and on. We've got to > learn to face this hysteria with a pragmatic approach at some point.

Every generation has to deal with the problems unique to it. I don't think we will ever run out of problems that need to be addressed. What is your point... that we just stop trying? Everything we try gives us more data into what works and what doesn't and we have to continue trying.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure we'll change each other's minds here. I'll just make one more quick point:

> There definitely can be better solutions.

I totally agree. I just divorce the ideal/utopian/theoretical from the actual and believe the societal cost/benefit to favor non-interference at the current time. At the very least, I hope we're very slow and measured as opposed to the hasty whims of those frothing at the mouths from these articles. We might never run out of problems that need to be addressed, but maybe we can become smarter about how we address them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Large companies often get stuck in analysis paralysis, so a decisive leader can be a good thing. I think the more important question is whether the decisiveness originates from core values the company projects our, or if it's just about defending turf. If it's the latter, Facebook is in its long slow decline phase as a company

</comment><comment><USER17> This article and others I've read depict Zuckerberg as angry. An angry CEO makes decisions based on emotion and ego and that is a recipe for disaster.

</comment><comment><USER18> Facebook needs a credible trustworthy leader at this point in time. I don't know who Zuck thinks trusts him. His rep is more a liability than anything else at this stage.

<comment><USER19> ...and something of a change in policy. They seem to keep making choices and decisions that are asking for criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The advantage of deploying a war metaphor is it resists leadership change. An at risk leader can always say "You don't change want to change horses in the middle of a river, do you?"

</comment><comment><USER21> Exactly the wrong tack. Firstly, Facebook is 100% in the wrong here, they did bad things (including helping to facilitate genocide) and there needs to be consequences for those. They need to accept that they have done wrong they need to accept that they need to accept responsibility and they need to accept that they need to make big changes. Instead they've been avoiding taking full responsibility and issuing wishy-washy press releases. It's going to catch up with them sooner than later and the public is going to stop giving them a pass for their awful behavior.

</comment><comment><USER22> So many articles written about a company that adds so little value to human life (at least in its current form).

If you spend just 1h/day on Facebook, over the course of 10 years, that's approx. 150 days or roughly half a year. I'm sure plenty of people spend more than 1h/day scrolling through their pointless feeds.

So my question to you is this: What could you achieve if you could spend half a year of your life, fully immersing yourself in something meaningful and of value?

<comment><USER23> There's a big difference between what you can accomplish with an hour here and an hour there vs contiguous, high quality focused time. I suspect that the average user's Facebook time is of the former, low quality kind.

<comment><USER24> This is a great point and too seldom raised when comparisons like this are made. I only have so much capacity for highly focused engagement in a given day, and even within those periods there is variability to my focus. That Facebook, or any other activity, occupies time that I am less engaged is not an indictment of those activities or the choice to spend that time in a less deliberate way; its just how most people work.

A better criticism in my mind would be to weigh Facebook and its value against actual competitors for people's attention in those time periods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Some might think becoming belligerent in the face of criticism would be a poor strategy, but it worked for Brett Kavanaugh...

<comment><USER26> It's the primary play in the modern conservative playbook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Paywall

<comment><USER28> [https://www.outline.com/86w5yw](https://www.outline.com/86w5yw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's getting boring.</comment>


Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why. - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/print/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect <comment><USER2> As I've said before, this article is incredibly wrong and quite misleading. If you ever wanted evidence that most Americans do not understand how medicines are developed or what the Placebo Effect is, this article (and the responses here) serve as ample evidence.

For a more rigorous refutation by a trained professional, please read: <http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=1248>

I'll pull the zinger quote from the article above for you:

>No, it's not like that at all. Perhaps the studies are just that well done, or maybe the drugs being developed suck, or maybe companies are studying more candidate drugs and screening for efficacy. Just about any explanation that doesn't involve aliens is better than "placebo is getting stronger".

<comment><USER3> It is really _so_ ridiculous to think that there is some drug such that:

* The drug provides a modest health improvement.

* That health improvement happens to be smaller than the health improvement do to the placebo effect?

I don't know what the typical magnitude of the placebo effect is. If it is substantial, then actually working, actually helpful drugs might be being denied to people. The very mechanisms for the placebo effect he hypothesizes (e.g. people taking care of their health when on a study) certainly seem like they might vary with our culture...

<comment><USER2> All I can say is, you do not know what the Placebo effect is. You don't understand why you cannot use it as a therapeutic invention. You do not understand why most drugs benefit from the placebo effect already.

Please, pleasepleaseplease go and read up on what it actually is.

<comment><USER3> Woah there tiger-- where do you get that I am suggesting using the placebo as a therapeutic invention!? (If it makes any difference, I meant to type "due to" rather than "do to"). I am suggesting that the following situation might exist:

1) Drug A is 5% effective

2) Placebo is 10% effective

3) No one ever gets the benefits of drug A, since its benefits are masked during trial.

<comment><USER4> A placebo gets used to determine the margin of error for a particular test. The drug being tested must show significant improvements over the placebo's measurements in order to prove that it is effective.

If your theoretical Drug A performs worse than the placebo, then the effectiveness that it had should be considered to be within the margin of error, and therefore not better than taking nothing at all.

<comment><USER3> Well... But since placebos can't be used therapeutically, and Drug A can, doesn't that make it better than nothing?

<comment><USER4> If the drug can't outperform the placebo, then it doesn't make it better than nothing because you're adding chemistry to your body without any assurance that it's going to actually _do_ anything.

<comment><USER3> But "the placebo" is not a static thing. If we designed experiments differently, the placebo effect might be able to be reduced (say to 3%), in which case drug A would now beat it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would speculate that when placebos appear to work, it is primarily because they don't do anything, besides possibly providing some increased hope to the patient, allowing the body to work without the "side" effects of drugs. The human body naturally tries to heal itself to the best of its ability.

Here's a very interesting example of placebos being administered on a routine basis, for years.

      Natural Hygiene, as it is today, can be traced back to Dr Isaac
      Jennings (of Oberlin, Ohio, USA) who, after practising medicine for 20
      years, began to ask questions when, during a fever outbreak in the
      summer of 1815, a patient who rested, drank water and did nothing,
      recovered in absolute record time compared to patients who had been
      medicated. Based on this, Dr Jennings noted similar results with many
      other patients.

      He then went on to treat many patients with what must have been one
      of the first placebo (dummy pill) treatments. In 1822 he gave up
      medical pills, plasters, powders and potions and treated patients with
      pills made from bread and vegetable-coloured water for the next 20
      years. This he only did to keep the patients' confidence in him. He
      would then advise his patients to correct their lifestyle and diet to
      a more natural approach. He then practised for a further 20 years the
      "do nothing mode of treating disease." He wrote three books, "Medicine
      Reform" (1847), "Philosophy of Human Life" (1852) and "Tree of Life"
      (1867).

      Natural hygiene was often referred to at this stage as Orthopathy
      meaning TRUE or RIGHT AFFECTION or BEHAVIOUR.

      Dr Jennings had a great influence upon Dr R T Trall, who went on to
      do more for the hygiene movement than any man, next to Dr Herbert
      Shelton.

<http://www.mary-anns.com/Natural%20Hygiene.htm>

I've read this account on other sites as well. The Jennings story can be verified by other sources online. His deliberate use of placebo for so many years is fascinating.

More information here on Jennings: <http://naturalhygienesociety.org/past2.html>

<comment><USER6> _I would speculate that when placebos appear to work, it is primarily because they don't do anything_

I like your argument but, amazingly, there's some research that seems to indicate that placebos affect a _physical_ change. In cases where heroin was used as a pain killer, a placebo could be blocked using the same chemical that blocks the effect of heroin.

Here's more: <http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7892>

<comment><USER7> And as a further consequence -- real naloxone blocks the effects of placebo morphine.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=567913>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps researchers are finding the placebo effect more successfully due to a sort of meta-placebo effect. They're expecting to observe it, so they do... ;)

</comment><comment><USER9> My theory concerning the increasing placebo effect is pharmaceutical advertising. We are increasingly hearing the message "pill X will cure problem Y"; this primes us for the placebo effect.

Just one of the positive effects of drug ads.

</comment><comment><USER10> When I read this article, I got hung up on the part about the scientists studying the biochemical pathways of the placebo effect. How interesting. It saddens me to think he doesn't get much funding.

And then I had this thought: What if he developed a pill that caused an artificial biochemical release of the chemicals responsible for the placebo response. A non-placebo that triggers a placebo response in your body. Hmmmm. How would you even a test such a pill?

</comment><comment><USER11> I just wonder if it would help some patients, if you could buy placebos. I mean branded placebos: "This is the placebo used in trial x and y and shown to have positive effect on z and w".

<comment><USER12> That might be an ethical way to sell placebos (homeopathy is at the moment demonstrating the unethical one) — I just don't know whether it would be as effective. Are placebos also effective when you know fully well that you take nothing more than a sugar pill? I don't think so.

<comment><USER11> You know you are taking a sugar pill with a demonstrated effect. That might do it.

How would you do a trial for that? Placebo placebo?

<comment><USER13> There have been trials of placebos against placebos. That's how it has been established that more placebos are more effective than fewer and also how the shape and colour of the tablets relates to their effectiveness. If you want some references on this, look up Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. It's a good read, btw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Previously <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=783912>

<comment><USER15> Yes, here the duplicate detector for this older article was beat by submitting the print version, which opened a printer dialog on my computer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> [http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/12/28/placebo- rebroadcas...](http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/12/28/placebo-rebroadcast/)

Very good episode of RadioLab about the same topic.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've not had a chance to read the article yet, will do so if I get a chance over lunchtime. However, the posting reminded me of an Radiolab story I listened to over the weekend that explores this topic as well and had some good observations about the power of mind over matter.

[http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/12/28/placebo- rebroadcas...](http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/12/28/placebo-rebroadcast/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if people think placebos are magically "getting more effective" because people in the US are actually taking way more drugs today than they actually need to? Out of all my friends back home in the states almost _all_ of them are on some kind of prescription for something. One couple pays over $2k per month for medication! Is all this _really_ necessary? In this couple's case, some of the drugs are apparently only needed to counter the effects of some of the others.

</comment><comment><USER19> _By the late '90s, for example, the classic antianxiety drug diazepam (also known as Valium) was still beating placebo in France and Belgium. But when the drug was tested in the US, it was likely to fail._

?

Really? Does this pass the smell test? I've never taken Valium [1], but I'm pretty sure its effects are strong and clear, to the point of creating serious addictions.

[1] On second thought, I probably have, as a pre-op, and yes the effects were obvious and unlikely to be replicated by a sugar pill.

<comment><USER20> What does "it was likely to fail" mean. But it didn't. ...witness, yes, countless addicts. I've worked professionally (as biofeedback therapist) with scores of users of valium (and its cousins), and the withdrawal can be tricky/agonizing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe it's the added sugar in the placebos that makes them so effective?

</comment><comment><USER22> I stopped reading this half way down. Is there anything in the article except blether?

The first half seemed to be saying 'Drugs companies do tests against placebos. Merck is short of drugs.' Can someone who took the trouble to plough through it summarise the second half?

<comment><USER23> If you read long enough (sigh, I gotta get a life), you will find the article has the likely answers to the question.

"But why would the placebo effect seem to be getting stronger worldwide? Part of the answer may be found in the drug industry's own success in marketing its products.

[...]

"Potential trial volunteers in the US have been deluged with ads for prescription medications since 1997, when the FDA amended its policy on direct-to-consumer advertising. The secret of running an effective campaign, Saatchi & Saatchi's Jim Joseph told a trade journal last year, is associating a particular brand-name medication with other aspects of life that promote peace of mind. [...] By evoking [...] uplifting associations, researchers say, the ads set up the kind of expectations that induce a formidable placebo response."

It also speculates that cultural differences (including the consequences of "outsourcing" testing) influence the placebo effect, and that psychiatric drugs are especially susceptible to the placebo effect ("...[a challenge] is to accurately define the nature of mental illness")

Lots of self-hoisting on petards going on in the drug business, otherwise known as the Law of Unintended Consequences. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequence>

<comment><USER22> Cool, thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


How a Darth Vader selfie showed the worst side of social media - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2015/05/11/darth-vader-selfie/

<comment><USER2> _Now the volatile nature of social media has come back to haunt the woman who posted the incorrect photo. She said she has received death threats after making a "stupid" mistake. She apologised for the pain she has caused the father and urged people with concerns about strangers to go to police, instead of using social media._

And the cycle is complete; the system works!</comment>


Why we can't have privacy on the internet (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2018/the_price_of_privacy.html <comment><USER3> _> Every online service costs money to provide. [...] Since most people are unwilling to pay for online services, the way to cover these costs is by advertising to the users._

Why does it follow that we should be okay with privacy intrusions?

Companies don't have a right to their business model. If we as a society decide to limit how companies can collect and use our data, and it forces some to start charging their users or go out of business, that's okay! Just because that's a sustainable way to run a business right now doesn't mean it should be.

<comment><USER4> The reason why consumers are unwilling to pay for service is because VCs have funded companies ability to give away tremendous value to achieve fast growth. Because of this consumers now have an expectation for free.

Previously when software was sold at retail, consumers had no qualms paying for software.

So maybe you are right and the root problem are the business models and specifically the funding behind those models.

<comment><USER5> > The reason why consumers are unwilling to pay for service is because VCs > have funded companies ability to give away tremendous value to achieve fast > growth. Because of this consumers now have an expectation for free.

> Previously when software was sold at retail, consumers had no qualms paying > for software.

When was this? I recall the warez, cracking and keygen scenes being huge years ago (before the rise of SaaS).

<comment><USER6> In this case 'people' does not mean 'every single person' but rather 'a significantly large enough amount of people as to represent a valid business model in many cases'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > There are bad actors out there - fraudsters/scammers, terrorists laundering > money, legal gun manufacturers moving money around, child pornographers, > people who believe in evolution (even among humans), people advocating > abandoning Islam, Russians posting Pepe memes, and journalists/revenge > pornographers revealing truthful information that people want kept hidden.

I can think of maybe two of these that are are "bad actors".

</comment><comment><USER8> I did some napkin math on ad revenues arpu for the big 5 ad supported tech companies and came to the conclusion that you could cover all of their revenues if you could charge $7-10/month for every user, which is netflix money for a set of services that are far more useful than netflix itself.

So I forsee something like 'setapp/netflix for privacy' that could cover it all for $10/month with enough scale.

Because honestly, paying $10 for each subservice quickly adds up to $100s/month

<comment><USER9> I strongly believe it's doable and there's a market - although small - <USER2> that. WhatsApp used to be $1 a year and it was profitable.

> [https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal- > finance/04091...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal- > finance/040915/how-whatsapp-makes-money.asp) The short answer used to be $1 > at a time. In some countries, the app used to cost about $1 to download; in > others, the first year is free, but each subsequent year costs $1 – in other > words, WhatsApp had a subscription model. At the peak under this model it > has about 700 million users worldwide; yearly revenue can be estimated at > $700 million per year at this time.

There's no reason we couldn't get a $10 a month budget that would give users mail, instant messaging, file sharing or hosting of some kind. But there wouldn't be any of the perspective of the spectacular kind of growth the adtech bubble is trying to sell or integrated software solutions à-la Google that monopolies like so much.

<comment><USER8> Most whatsapp users didn't pay the $1/year over several years I've heard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "People won't pay for privacy" is it, and it's really a subset of the larger truth that it's hard to get people or businesses to pay for security. (Privacy is a part of security.)

I worked with a serial entrepreneur once who refused to tell his tech people to spend any time on security. He said "no company ever failed because of bad security... nobody cares about anything except UX and price." I dont think he was 100% right but I do think he was like 98% right.

Privacy is like legroom on flights. Everyone complains about it being taken away but nobody will pay even a little bit for it. Price signals say nobody really cares.

Meanwhile advertisers, governments, and political propagandists will pay handsomely for user data. If anything the price signals say to minimize privacy and maximize surveillance surface area.

<comment><USER7> Many people will pay a premium for privacy if you bundle it with the other things, though: see Apple's market strategy.

<comment><USER11> So, in other words, they're not paying a premium for privacy, they're paying a premium for the other things you bundle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The only reason that private/censorship-free platforms end up filled with nazis, is that they have nowhere else to go. If _all_ the platforms are private/censorship-free, then the problem is mitigated.

</comment><comment><USER13> Classic fear mongering. The so called risks of these bad actors are part of life, and something we must accept. There will always be evil.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think this is because of the assumed level of risk. People don't think it'd happen to them.My colleague's house was nearly burgled. Once that happened, he invested in intrusion detection system and etc.So his level of assumed risk has gone off the charts. Some years ago I made a suggestion to the company owners that we should ramp up on security,at least starting with getting an antivirus. One said he'd use the insurance from the bank if we get robbed,while the other said it slows down his PC( an avid player)...While now we do have much more than just an antivirus, the assumed level of risk is still pretty low. People simply don't care...

<comment><USER15> Not sure exactly how to phrase this comment.

If I see a computer with an antivirus on it(besides the default windows defender thing), I assume it is less secure than something with an antivirus. Most often it was installed by someone who was either mislead about the benefits of an antivirus and/or tricked into installing it. Getting adblock is an massively better way of making a computer secure.

<comment><USER16> I admit, if I see a computer with anti-virus software running on it these days, my first assumption is that its the anti-virus software that's the scam/payload...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > If we built a privacy preserving payment network, it would be used for money > laundering, drug sales and ransomware.

Like cash!

> There are privacy preserving/censorship resistant social networks. They're > full of Nazis.

Oh crud, has anyone told Mastodon yet? This seems like the sort of thing they'd want to know.

I guess it's time to go back to safer, Nazi-free networks like Twitter.

<comment><USER18> Or the telephone network

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This article is drivel.

>how many of you pay at least 500rs/month for services that give you privacy

It's my understanding that's between $7.00 and $8.00; I pay less than half of that to have an entire server I use for things such as hosting my own email server for my personal use.

>Instead of paying for it, many of the people at the panel wanted the government to mandate it. Moreover, many people seemed to think it would somehow be free to provide.

I can understand why this would be looked down upon, but isn't this the manner of thing a government is intended to do? If we're going to pretend democracy is so great, then people wanting the government to outlaw certain business models is perfectly reasonable.

>Will you pay $20-50 a month to replace your free online services with privacy preserving ones?

I'll pay for a server and that's all. If I can no longer read some articles online because of a pay wall, then I won't, but I may if it's otherwise available to me gratis, but I still won't allow any JavaScript to run and so won't see any advertisements. If they dislike people not viewing advertisements, they should have a pay wall, but many of these organizations are aware people won't pay for what they offer.

>User tracking enables product managers/UI designers to figure out exactly what customers want, and give it to them.

They can go to Hell.

>A special case of fraud which also relates to the problem of paying for services with advertising is display network fraud. Here's how it works. I run "My Cool Awesome Website About Celebrities", and engage in all the trappings of a legitimate website - creating content, hiring editors, etc. Then I pay some kids in Ukraine to build bots that browse the site and click the ads. Instant money, at the expense of the advertisers.

This never ceases to amuse me, so far.

>To prevent this, the ad network demands the ability to spy on users in order to distinguish between bots and humans.

They can also go to Hell.

>Question: What does the government call a payment platform that provides privacy to it's users? >Answer: Money laundering.

Money laundering is a made-up crime, just as with jaywalking and copyright infringement.

>In many cases, censorship authorities require social networks and others to track and notify them about people posting illegal content (Nazi imagery, child pornography, Savita Bhabhi, anti-Islamic content).

Oh, so the government makes rules that make something illegal, so the illegal thing is bad. Yes, I can't run a service that transfers money and is unmoderated, because it's illegal. I'm American and I'm well aware this ''freedom'' I enjoy is a lie.

>This is a fundamental collective action problem, and no player in the game seems to have the ability change things.

Right, governments conspire against their citizens, but this is an intractable problem.

>There are bad actors out there - fraudsters/scammers, terrorists laundering money, legal gun manufacturers moving money around, child pornographers, people who believe in evolution (even among humans), people advocating abandoning Islam, Russians posting Pepe memes, and journalists/revenge pornographers revealing truthful information that people want kept hidden. Any privacy preserving network, at it's core, allows these people to engage in these actions without interference.

Many of these things aren't like the others.

What utter foolishness.

<comment><USER20> Is running a server really that cheap if you include the up front costs, maintenance, and your own time? What about the costs of having an offsite backup?

As someone who also has their own personal server, I can definitely say it's not cheap.

<comment><USER19> >Is running a server really that cheap if you include the up front costs, maintenance, and your own time?

It's annoying, but it's still cheap. What ''up front costs'' do you mean? Maintenance is mostly me struggling with software someone else wrote and wanting to replace it with my own; the smaller services I run, Gopher and Finger, use software I wrote so I need not configure some awful software written by someone else. My goal is to eventually only run services with server software I've written, such as for email and FTP and whatnot. I have spare time and knowing how to maintain a server is useful.

I'm clearly an advanced user, however. Still, I've offered others some things, not that they want them. I could host email for my family and whatnot if I needed to.

>What about the costs of having an offsite backup?

I use scp to transfer it to my machine. It's all measured in single digit megabytes.

>As someone who also has their own personal server, I can definitely say it's not cheap.

Okay. I don't know what you do with yours, but I run email, HTTP, Gopher, Finger, and I want to have FTP and Bittorrent available soon. The email server gives me the most problems, but that's mostly because of other email servers, as I didn't need to do much configuration and it's measured in hours rather than days. The HTTP is preconfigured and I've written the software I use for Gopher and Finger, although I want to replace it with better software I write, later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> When I see things like this, I just wish HN had a superupvote button. Definitely adding this to my "favorite, underappreciated articles that everyone should read" list. I think a solution to the problems outlined in the article is sneakily smuggling privacy with something else (Apple sort of does that) or making government resistant solutions. I mean systems that you don't even run, that you release to the world and you have no control over. Solutions that communicate in ways hard to detect, and have no central points of failure. Solutions that are hard to shut down, that never die unless the last two computers using them die. They must be tampering and censorship resistant, no matter if you call the censorship censorship, protection against terrorism or preventing copyright infringement. Yes, it is hard, especially that, for any hope of success, the solutions must be as good (or better) than centralized ones. If they are not (if their UX is not), people won't flock to them. That is our only hope of winning in this war. The fight will be hard. It laready is, but that's the only way forward, if we don't want to live in an Orwellian state in twenty years.</comment>


Google Just Made Big Data Expertise Much Tougher to Fake - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-06-27/google-just-made-big-data-expertise-much-tougher-to-fake

<comment><USER2> Bzzzztttt. Wrong, please try again.

"Hadoop" refers to a lot more than just Map/Reduce, and "Hadoop" as a buzzword that will attract a lot of attention on the job market isn't going to be going anywhere anytime soon. Hell, we're just at the beginning of the Hadoop bandwagon as far as that goes. Picture the graphic from "Crossing the Chasm"... The "mainstream" crowd are only now starting to use Hadoop (and other "big data") technologies.

Also, people have been using "Hadoop" to refer to the entire ecosystem of components that are used with/around Hadoop for some time. For the average CIO, "Impala" _is_ part of "Hadoop".

YARN de-couples Hadoop from the Map/Reduce paradigm anyway, so in no way is "the death of Map/Reduce" the same as "the death of Hadoop" even if "the death of Map/Reduce" comes to pass.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, Hadoop generally refers to the framework and the associated projects built around it. I've been looking into Impala of late, and it's still within the Hadoop ecosystem - the documentation discusses Impala / Hive / Pig interop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not _too_ bad, but a few things that I noticed were off (and to clarify: I've worked on Hadoop/HBase since 2011):

1\. Flume isn't really a Google solution, is it? Sounds like Google is just incorporating Apache Flume into Cloud Workflow.

2\. Even if Google abandoned MapReduce a while back (Urs' declaration about the same at IO seemed a bit ambivalent), IMHO Hadoop and its ecosystem are here to stay at least for a bit longer.

True, MapReduce isn't perfect, and the Hadoop implementation far less, but (again IMHO) there really isn't anything to replace it at the data scale at which these technologies operate.

I mean, there's a reason that Facebook and large non-Google companies still use the Hadoop ecosystem, yeah? :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Mindless journalism. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER6> Obviously the author doesn't really know the subject very well and this is very poor journalism.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was looking for an announcement that Google was switching its big data to Haskell (harder to fake).

</comment><comment><USER8> "the one with all the dudes"

Was that really necessary?

<comment><USER9> Everything about this article was cringe-inducing.</comment></comment>


Tesla Just Did Something Big in the Car World - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-20/tesla-just-did-something-big-in-the-car-world

<comment><USER2> The story was discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9904428](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9904428).

</comment><comment><USER3> No disrespect toward OP but shit do I hate titles like this.

I feel like the media collectively gathered in 2012 and decided they needed to get more clicks, no matter what. At this meeting someone complainied about a recent facebook post they read that drove them crazy. It said "I hate all horses and NO i dont want to talk about it". This individual was driven mad wondering why someone would hate horses with such passion.

A lightbulb appeared over the gathering. "That's it! We'll use shitpost titles from now on, nobody will be able to resist". And so it was.

<comment><USER2> > shit do I hate titles like this.

We all do.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP Here.

I chose not to change the title from the original article/URL.

The point that the writer is making is that with this new capability, you can buy a car that is faster to 60 mph than virtually all commercially available ICE cars. He felt this is significant because it is one of the last remaining reasons a buyer may have for purchasing an ICE over an electric car.

In order to buy a faster (in a straight line) car, you'd have to spend more than US$1,000,000.

Therefore, the writer speculates that ICE engines will be out of production entirely in 20 years.

There is no mention of this facet of the story in the original TechCrunch article, so I felt it was sufficiently interesting to post.</comment>


Ask PG: How could this article not be of interest to HN and hackers? - <AUTHOR>

This link was submitted yesterday (I found this out when I tried to submit the same link today) and much to my surprise there are 12 others who submitted, but no comments most likely because it never made it to the front page or was merely submitted at the wrong time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5619630
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/technology/how-big-data-is-playing-recruiter-for-specialized-workers.html?ref=business&_r=0
This makes me wonder how many other things aren't making it to HN and about the lack of transparency as far as how items get to the front page which clearly involves both votes, comments as well as a manual "approval" by admins. <comment><USER2> Timing is everything. This is why I look at the new page almost every time after I visit the main page of HN. But even at that, I miss a lot of submissions of good articles (which I often detect when I attempt to submit the same article later). That's just what happens when a site emphasizes "news," which means it emphasizes time stamps on submissions, but upvotes for articles occur by happenstance, as users go looking for articles. No one has time to read even all the good stuff here, much less every new submission exhaustively.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess part of what I am saying is that if there is a manual process involved in this (in addition to votes which might depend on time of day (which in itself varies depending on where you are located)) does it then make sense for someone who has the ability to put things on the 1st or 2nd page to review things that are posted at odd times?

Or better yet, why not take stories posted "x" hours ago and place them on either the 1st or 2nd page (sans "hours ago"[1] which makes it seem stale) to see if it gets any attention? Add: Similar to what is done with newly posted comments they spend some time at the top they don't go to the bottom.

[1] Less likely to read or comment on something that says "19 hours ago" and has 2 comments and is on the 2nd page for example. Why not bubble some things up randomly or maybe even depending on who submitted or by greping for certain keywords or?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Try submitting your question again later. To add some conspiracy sauce (and draw PG's attention), maybe Gild was a YC reject. Or even in a long term sense, YC's competitor. For what is to stop them from directing their algorithms at entrepreneurs instead of programmers? :)))))))

</comment><comment><USER4> (Cofounder of Gild here) - today we made the cover of the of the NYT paper edition with the same article: [https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ash4/399956_101015103...](https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ash4/399956_10101510379239725_2098054618_n.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER5> There is no manual approval. All links on the frontpage are there based on the amount of votes and time. <http://amix.dk/blog/post/19574>

<comment><AUTHOR> There may not be manual approval but there are things that end up sticky on the home page that clearly aren't there because of the algorithm. Just like there are threads that are killed manually or made dead.

<comment><USER6> Yes. I totally agree. It happened to me few times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> saturday is usually really slow over here.</comment>


TDD, BDD, and the tea tasting lady - <AUTHOR> http://blinkingcaret.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/tdd-bdd-add-every-other-method-that-promises-software-quality-here-and-the-tea-tasting-lady/

<comment><USER2> It's perhaps not rigorously scientific, but our red mine server is tied into our Jenkins continuous integration server, which also has a code coverage tool tied in. We've been doing this for a little while, and have the ability to visualize bug counts divided by severity along side test count, and code coverage percentage.

There is an order of magnitude difference from the projects that did not use TDD, and the projects that did. Another nice part of red mine is that I can also visualize how close we are at meeting our expectations for time estimates (they have this task tracking feature). Overall adding TDD has made development a bit slower in the front end, but a lot shorter in the back end (during QA). However when you look at the past, it would seem like something like 60% to 70% of our time was actually spent fixing issues found in QA, which was usually under estimated. So overall we're definitely seeing quantitative proof that TDD is a better methodology in comparison to our past process.

Anther cool tool for project management is we've built a set of tools that allow us to designate a requirement from our functional spec with a unit test, which runs every check in. So our project manager can get a near real time assessment of our progress. I also use that report and associate it with the code coverage report. Though this part of the system is newer, so I have no data on how effective it is.

<comment><USER3> Do you find linking unit tests to functional requirements useful? I've also been toying with visual traceability (requirementweaver.com) and it seems to have a lot of potential to speed up the traditionally slow 'quality process'

<comment><USER2> Like I said, its a really new thing for us so I don't have a lot of experience yet. The most immediate benefit i saw though was that we spent more time on the functional spec than we typically do making sure it was complete. That process yields a lot of benefits (its far easier to delete paragraphs, then code).

Beyond that though, its nice to see a bit more details on your progress as the development continues. We definitely have more productive status meetings. We used to sit down once a week, and go around the table asking people where they are, but now everyone knows the status all the time (we all can see it). That allows us to spend more time on discussing problem solutions. During development, developers keep track of their own progress with less work. As a lead, its useful for me to see areas of weakness so I can have more targeted code reviews.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem is one of cost. The tea tasting experiment is very easy to reproduce and very cheap to run. Reproducing, say, the development process of Myna is practically impossible not to mention the prohibitive cost of finding devs as awesome as Dave and I ;-)

To apply the scientific method to software development you need to apply methods from the social sciences. Now I don't know a great deal about these, but I do know you need lots of data which is very hard to find. The typical solution is test hypotheses on undergrad students, because that is what the experimenters have plentiful access to. The problem, which is also apparent in psychology, is generalising these results beyond this group. Are the experiences of 2nd year undergrads using Java for a 2 week project predictive of developers with 10+ years experience working on a year long project? One can reasonably argue they are not.

</comment><comment><USER5> There is a great book which teaches you statistics looking through its fascinating history.

The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106350.The_Lady_Tasting_T...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106350.The_Lady_Tasting_Tea)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's very difficult to perform a fair test.

If I test random programmers by getting them to do the same project either with TDD or without, TDD proponents might (justifiably) complain that the programmers didn't do TDD properly, since they didn't know how.

If I use TDD proponents to do the TDD side of the test, and TDD skeptics the non-TDD side, then one might claim that there is a bias in the quality of programmer (either people who like TDD make better programmers, or TDD skeptics make better programmers, depending on the results).

For every test you come up with, there's a potential bias that you cannot eliminate, since there will be some hypothetical correlation somewhere that doesn't correspond to TDD itself.

<comment><USER7> Do four tests - TDDers doing TDD, TDDers doing non-TDD, non-TDDers doing TDD and non-TDDers doing non-TDD. From this you can get a better idea of whether it's the method or the coder's skill affecting the results. Clearly if TDD is better the TDDers will do better than the non-TDDers when both doing TDD because they've more experience. Comparing the non-TDDers in TDD vs non-TDD will show you if the method alone is enough, or if other factors have affected it (e.g. learning curve of the new method, ability of programmers who chose that method). The TDDers doing non-TDD helps contribute to the question of are they just better programmers (i.e. do they do comparatively well in non-TDD / are they worse that those TDDers doing TDD).

Doing other tests with entirely randomly chosen programmers ensuring they're trained up in these techniques would be another way - though as you point out the training would have to ensure they got the techniques they were being tested against / you'd need to avoid bias of people having spent the last few weeks exclusively in an exclusively TDD environment due to the training.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been thinking about using a random process to guide bug seeding. In other words, putting in bugs in random locations and random "type" and then see how many are caught by the test suite.

<comment><USER9> This is called mutation testing. Here is an article I read recently that I thought was a good introduction to the idea:

[http://dev.theladders.com/2013/02/mutation-testing-with- pit-...](http://dev.theladders.com/2013/02/mutation-testing-with-pit-a-step- beyond-normal-code-coverage/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another thing to take into account is who's coding, what they're coding in, what they're building, how big their team is, how mature the team is (i.e. how long have they been working together) and how their environment's set up. As with most questions, context is everything, so should anyone experiment to find the best solution you'd want them to include those details in their conclusions, and ideally to alter and test against each of those variables and show the effects of BDD/TDD under those conditions.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd be genuinely interested in reading a paper on what impact these methodologies have on software development. Does anybody know of any research on this topic?

<comment><USER11> <http://evidencebasedse.com/> Collects papers on SE practices. They claim to have 33 papers on TDD and 40 on testing in general.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Your reaction (as mine was) is that it is impossible to tell the difference.

If you pour the milk into the tea, the first bit of milk will heat to nearly boiling, scalding it and changing its flavor. If you pour the tea into the milk, you don't have that problem.

<comment><USER13> And, according to some research[0], no matter which way you pour it, milk will make the tea worse.

(And as a personal note - if you need milk to make your tea taste good, maybe you just don't have good tea?)

[0] <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6241139.stm>

<comment><USER12> The health problem can be solved by using a non-dairy milk like almond milk (which is also objectively tastier). As far as snootiness, I really think it's just a matter of personal preference. I enjoy it either way, although it can certainly mask the flavor of bad tea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article talks about how to blind the tea tasting lady to make the results more accurate.

It's pretty hard to apply that same blinding to reading code with large or small methods. There are definitely ways to test it, but it's not quite as simple.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think that Uncle Bob and his ilk would dispute the idea that breaking a large function into smaller functions ever makes the original function less readable. They'd argue that each of the new, small functions is proven to be correct (since you'd fully unit-tested it), so its contents are of no consequence when reading the larger function.

How true that is I'm not really sure.

<comment><USER16> In an OO-world function extraction usually results in private methods to a class. You (generally) don't test those directly so it doesn't necessarily result in more specific unit tests.

<comment><USER17> Well you can extract methods into new object where they will be public.</comment></comment></comment>


Protect yourself from the hidden dangers of `curl  – sh` - <AUTHOR> http://www.djm.org.uk/protect-yourself-from-non-obvious-dangers-curl-url-pipe-sh/ <comment><USER2> I've seen this same argument time and time again and it's just silly. We preach that curl | sh is evil because of a potential lack of "transparency" but rarely does anyone denounce the evils of binary packages.

When you run third-party code on your system there is ALWAYS a risk of it doing nasty things, it doesn't matter if it's an easily readable bash script or a .deb you downloaded. The biggest argument I see about curl | sh that I can agree with is the issues that happens when your connection dies in the middle of the download. Just download the file, then run it.

<comment><USER3> It's a little worse because with curl | sh - you inhernetly aren't able to check a md5 hash or a signature to verify the file is actually what you wanted.

Now while even with binaries people might now actually do that often enough - it at least is still an option.

<comment><USER4> You need a secure channel like HTTPS to get that hash, in which case, does it really matter if you just run the script anyways?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are other risks besides malicious webservers. Even an accidental network glitch can be fatal, for example if the connection is dropped after the first "/" here:

rm -rf /tmp/myawesomeinstaller

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't curl return an error and break the pipe? (I haven't tried)

<comment><USER7> curl won't buffer the entire stream, since that would be silly, so if it is a big enough response then curl will have already passed parts of it along to the shell through the pipe.

Is this likely to cause a catastrophic failure? No. Is it possible? Absolutely.

<comment><USER8> But if there's no newline or EOF until the pipe breaks...

<comment><USER7> When curl gets the end of the input, it exits and the shell closes the pipe generating an EOF. You get a broken pipe _writing_ to one if the reader goes away, not _reading_ from it.

I verified this on OS X with the below "server":

      $ stty -icanon min 1 time 0
      $ nc -v -l 6666
      GET / HTTP/1.1
      User-Agent: curl/7.34.0
      Host: 127.0.0.1:6666
      Accept: */*

      HTTP/1.0 200 ok
      Content-Length: 1000

      echo foo
      echo bar^C

(^C is a control-C). Even with an explicit content-length so curl knows the response was truncated, and without a terminating newline, the shell executes both commands.

Again, quite unlikely to be a problem in real life. But it is still a bad habit to feed curl into sh directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand why you would go through all of this effort...

Just dump the data into a file:

curl > foobar

Read the file using any number of normal utilities

vim foobar

cat foobar

nano foobar

less foobar

Then if you like what you see execute the file

sh foobar

Linux/Unix utilities are meant to be used. Don't limit yourself to only knowing how to check the contents of a curl install if you have a curlsh function.

<comment><USER10> As programmers, our entire job revolves around removing unnecessary processes that can be automated. So I ask you, how does providing a shell function which does exactly what you just suggested limit somebody?

If they can't read it, they likely wouldn't even know how to install it.

Disclaimer: I wrote this article in Aug of last year.

<comment><USER11> It takes up precious mind space for an ad-hoc one-off feature, instead of utilizing simple well-established unix commands commonly available on servers and usable for multiple purposes. Plus I'd say it gives a false sense of security because a moderately determined attacker can easily obfuscate his exploit so as to slip through this casual review process.

<comment><USER12> The mind space argument breaks down because its generally an install process which means you are just typing what they wrote in their README.md file if it seems reasonable. Its not something you memorize.

<comment><USER13> I think the "mind space" is knowing how to handle data, run an editor, and chmod or run a shell with inputs (all useful, portable skills), versus having a limited-use hand-holding script.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd say apply the same level of scrutiny as you would other code, such as the code that your distribution allows you to install. That means:

        1) Find a source you trust (nominally)
        2) Get a gpg-key that you trust belong to that user
        3) Get the install.sh script
        4) Get the matching gpg signature (install.sh.asc)
        5) Verify that 4) is a valid signature of 3) under 2)
        6) Have a look at the script
        7) Run the script

If you can't establish 2), you'll just have to stick to 3) 6) and 7).

Seeing that something is on a https site, just means someone had the access to put it there. If someone got access to the private key behind 2) -- 1) is probably so compromised that there isn't anything other than 6) that might protect you -- and if the script is truly malicious (as opposed to just your average botched bash script) -- it's not guaranteed that it's obviously malicious.

Anyway, a gpg signature links some distributable the author has verified all the way back to wherever that file was authored -- while https only anchors trust on the web server. Web servers get compromised all the time. Prefer a proper signature as a means to anchor trust ("yes, this is probably what X _wanted_ to distribute. If you trust X, this is probably OK").

A https signature just means: "This is something someone/anyone managed to upload to this web server".

</comment><comment><USER15> If you don't want to bother with all this you can also just do a simple `wget [http://site.com/file.sh](http://site.com/file.sh) -O /tmp/script`, look through it in your editor, then run it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Another method to protect against malformed output due to the connection being cut short - "shell armour":

[http://drj11.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/piping-into-shell- may-...](http://drj11.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/piping-into-shell-may-be- harmful/)

      { echo { && curl https://thing && echo } ; } | sh

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this any different from downloading and running software without reading the source code?

</comment><comment><USER17> Is this really a "hidden" danger? It's pretty obvious that you shouldn't execute a script without reading it unless it's from a trusted source over https.

</comment><comment><USER18> Protect yourself by only using apt-get and packaging open source software yourself if isn't already packaged.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't see much reason for ever needing to do this. Should build packages to install software, and use config management for anything needed outside the package.

</comment><comment><USER8> Don't forget that you can't even copy and paste a url safely, because there might be hidden text halfway through.

<comment><USER20> curl [http://www.perfectly- safe.com/script.sh?whoops&rm""-rf""/""](http://www.perfectly- safe.com/script.sh?whoops&rm""-rf""/"")

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you can't install software to your box for whatever reason, just replace sh with cat or nano and read it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Protect yourself from the hidden dangers of `curl <url> | sh`

... by running this script i'm hosting on the internet.

<comment><USER10> Where? You mean the proof of concept?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any "risk" is canceled by simply using HTTPS.</comment>


Papers of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), mathematician - <AUTHOR> https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/library/wren-digital-library/modern-manuscripts/ramanujan/ <comment><USER2> It may be worth clarifying that this isn't "papers of" as in "scholarly publications in journals by", but as in "pieces of paper associated with"; these are nice high-resolution scans of a box of papers at Trinity College, Cambridge relating to Ramanujan. Letters between other mathematicians about Ramanujan's work; some handwritten manuscripts by Ramanujan himself (including the famous "Lost Notebook"); a passport photo of Ramanujan.

Definitely interesting for Ramanujan enthusiasts, but if you're looking for (say) his papers with Hardy about partitions, numbers of prime factors of "typical" numbers, etc., then this isn't the place to go.

<comment><USER3> It's a standard expression. Googling the phrase "papers of" brings up mostly hits for archives of documents with the description "Papers of <name>" where <name> is someone noteworthy.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately with mathematicians and scientists the term "paper" is overloaded because they write academic papers, which leads to ambiguity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Something that can't be said about very many people -- Ramanujan has an integer named after him: 1729.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_(number)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_\(number\))

This is hands-down my favorite math story:

 _It is known as the Hardy-Ramanujan number, after an anecdote of the British mathematician G. H. Hardy when he visited Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan in hospital. He related their conversation:_

 _I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."_

<comment><USER6> Remember _1729_ being referenced in the 2015 film _The Man Who Knew Infinity_ which was essentially a Hardy retrospective on his relationship with Ramanujan. YouTube actually has a 25 sec. clip of that scene from the movie

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n4y6uFdcOM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n4y6uFdcOM)

<comment><USER7> And the corresponding Numberphile video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzjaDKVC4iY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzjaDKVC4iY)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recently started working through his collected papers a few months ago and have a really nice hardcover. Wow they are so hard!! Also have read every volume of his lost notebooks back in college. Sometimes when I start a new paper I think: why would anyone ever think of that, who cares anyway, and what does that even mean.

It takes about 10 minutes to read one line. But its worth it cause he was able to create his own path and what he does with formal power series and summing divergent series is staggering to behold

</comment><comment><USER9> His life story is incredibly interesting. I also think that it is a lesson to us all that someone doesn't have to be formally trained in a field to make major contributions to it.

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

<comment><USER10> > I also think that it is a lesson to us all that someone doesn't have to be > formally trained in a field to make major contributions to it.

I don't think it serves that lesson at all but rather an extraordinary minority of very talented indidvuals can bypass such training/education in extremely rare circumstances. He's a Mozart and education and training is still necessary for the vast majority of people.

<comment><USER11> Mozart had extensive education and training????

<comment><USER10> Nope -- he was a prodigy from the earliest age. He was composing music at the age of 5.

Thats kindergarten. You might be thinking of other composers who are regarded as his equals -- Mozarts brain was just tuned for music in a way ours are not.

<comment><USER12> _He was composing music at the age of 5._

I would have been composing at 5 had my father been a musician/composer/teacher! (I did start piano at 4, in a not-particularly- musical household) As it was, I remember hearing that when I was about 9, and thought "Oh well, it's too late for me" \- which is a shame! But his first compositions weren't great. You write that like it's some super-human feat or something.

"he was a prodigy from the earliest age. ... Mozarts brain was just tuned for music in a way ours are not." I don't know why people talk like that. Maybe as an excuse for not achieving great things themselves, or even having to try.

There was a Hungarian guy who decided to train his 3 daughters to be chess players, to see just how good they could be given a proper training. The 2nd strongest sister became world champion. The strongest one never played in women-only events, she was too strong, and turned out to be the strongest woman chess player of all time, by a long way. (i.e. Susan and Judit Polgar) I don't think it was because their brains were 'tuned for it'. They just had the perfect environment.

<comment><USER10> Heres another way to test your hypothesis that Mozarts genius can be credited to his training and advantage of a musically literate family.

If we applied the same training and familial advantage to many kids would any of them turn out like Mozart?

I'd argue they probably wouldn't because his brain was fundamentally different and that made the difference.

If he didn't have those advantages would he have been discovered as a prodigy as quickly and as early? Maybe not.

<comment><USER13> Your proposal can't actually test the hypothesis because it can't (reasonably) be done. We don't know how many children were similarly situated and did not turn out like Mozart.

It could be that many musicians with a similar background were/are similarly as good as Mozart, and Mozart's music is especially famous for its cultural appeal and his father's aggressive "marketing" to royalty. There are many reasons one particular musician's musicical legacy can succeed aside from raw skill and creativity, much like the success of a company has a nontrivial luck component.

It could also be that he really was extraordinary above and beyond his family's musical background. Like most discussions about the nature versus nurture of genius, we can't really assert one thing or another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ramanujan was born too early. I wish he was alive in today's independent and richer india, he could have achieved so much more.

<comment><USER15> And yet, we are all born in just the right moment. Just by existing, Ramanujan opened eyes as to what people from "backward" (colonial) areas were capable of. While his own life might have been better if he had been born now, his existence helped improve many other lives. Just reading about him as a kid inspired me. And I'm just a white dude from the suburbs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I recommend reading "The Man Who Knew Infinity". It's really devastating the way he died.

It seems that a lot of math geniuses died premature. Eisenstein, Abel, Galois, Riemann..

I've read some of his work.. there are formulas appearing out of nowhere, like magic. He said that he saw them in his dreams.

He had access to 1 book, basically, a collection of math theorems and that's it. Only 900 pages (IIRC) and the rest of the stuff he discovered (and re- discovered in some cases) on his own.

Unparalleled genius!

</comment><comment><USER17> Before you make grand suggestions of what his genius could be, you would be well-afforded to read this

[http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/04/who-was- ramanujan/](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/04/who-was-ramanujan/)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is fantastic, I'm going to choose something that would make a nice large print to frame for a wall in my house.

A trend on home improvement shows is to print out old patent drawings and hang them as decoration. It always seemed so off putting necause most people never bothered to choose based on work that was intesterimg or meaningful to them, or even know what the patent was about.

For me this feels the opposite, so many personal connections...The subject matter, respect for his talent and contributions, the person, and in huge part the inspiration of being to achieve in the face of long odds and adversity.

</comment><comment><USER19> I actually just read a bit about him in Matt Parker's "Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension", which I highly recommend. I've always enjoyed math and long regretted not taking more math classes for fun at university, and this is a really fun tour to lots of aspects of math I haven't had occasion to think about much before, including some of Srinivasa's talents for number theory.

</comment><comment> happy-go-lucky Ramanujan did what made him happy. He was good at what he did. Maybe he was so absorbed in his work that he hadn't had time to think about his circumstances. He was a natural.

</comment><comment><USER20> There are millions of people who have done a lot of piano practice since they were young; how many of them are comparable talents to Mozart? The whole 10,000 hours thing is overhyped. For every Wayne Gretzky there's countless other kids just as obsessed with hockey who were not good enough for the NHL.

<comment><USER12> I didn't know anything about Wayne Gretzy so I looked him up.. Started at 2, trained with siblings by father on home hockey rink..

But sure, not everybody can be No. 1, it would be silly to expect millions of 'talents comparable to Mozart', there can't be countless people in the NHL etc.

So... you sound disappointed, maybe. Did you put in '10,000 hours' and it didn't work out? I don't know much about the '10,000 hours' theory, less about how you think it's overhyped. People often have an idea that it's an unpleasant ordeal, all that practice, but if it's what you love, it's a pleasure. (I enjoyed every minute) Sure, I believe people have different levels of.. _how far they can go_ , but its importance is vastly overrated. Like much more important to me seems _how much you enjoy practising_ , whether art, music, sport, anything, whether you love doing it more than anything, and do it for decades.

I've often thought that if I'd grown up living in a town, a popular kid etc I would have turned out 'untalented' in anything, except chatting and being popular; but I grew up fairly isolated on a farm, pre-internet, and so played piano a lot, read a lot etc. And I wasn't so happy, so playing piano was a great joy. Maybe if I'd been happy already, I wouldn't have 'needed' to play piano so much. I had very low self-esteem...thanks to bullying at home and at school, so...it was wonderful to escape to the beautiful world of music. I think factors like that, that influence how much you practice, how many hours you put in (though I never thought of it like that), how much you love doing it, are much more important than differences of natural ability.

<comment> saiya-jin It's a self-enhancing loop - you enjoy something because it comes naturally, be it sport or mental activity, so you keep doing it, find joy at improving yourself, competing with others etc. Now imagine the opposite, the results are exactly... opposite.

We all have high potential, most of us never come closer to reaching it 100%, but to think we are all equal in our skills from birth is a bit naive and definitely not true, as experienced by probably everybody during their lifetime.

Life ain't fair since the start, we can work hard at overcoming our limits, and that's all great. But so far if 2 people put in same amount of effort, the ones with better genes always wins.

<comment><USER20> Right... are there other people who could have run as fast as Usain Bolt if they'd devoted themselves to it? Certainly. Could _anyone_ have done so if they'd copied his routine? No.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Adobe Portfolio - <AUTHOR> https://www.myportfolio.com/ <comment><USER2> it says getting access to this service will get me access to photoshop too. That's a good deal as the service is just $10 per month.

but what confuses me is, on photoshop.com, it is still $20 per month.</comment>


Hacker Jobs Meets... Lee Coomber - LShift - <AUTHOR> http://hackerjobs.co.uk/blog/2012/5/22/hacker-jobs-meets-lee-coomber-lshift

<comment><AUTHOR> For the record, LShift are the creators of RabbitMQ among numerous other clever tools and products.</comment>


The iPad has been on the streets for a month now. Has it saved newspapers yet?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/business/106744/checking-newspapers-ipad <comment><USER2> Why would it save newspapers? I see it as a further mechanism to kill them.

<comment><USER3> Newspapers seem to think it's a chance to save them, hence the monthly charge to use apps to view their content or even an app per issue (not a newspaper but I believe I heard popular mechanics is going this route).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apple never managed to get agreement from the newspapers to create an iBooks for newspapers (or at least in time for launch).

Who knows, it might still arrive.

</comment><comment><USER5> "For a month now" is it enough? NO</comment>


It is absolutely fair and necessary to be critical of Zuckerbergs Philanthropy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@anildash/how-to-look-at-the-chan-zuckerberg-initiative-f357e5dd8c63#.88c8mz4xi <comment><USER2> highlighted: " The most valuable path may well be to simply invest this enormous pool of resources in the people and institutions that are already doing this work " this is exactly he conclusion that Warren Buffet arrived at some time ago, instead of creating a big ego non-profit institution to give to the specialists, he chose Gates' organization. [source: The Snowball]

</comment><comment><USER3> One way to look at this is that Zuckerberg just robbed the treasury of $45B. Part of that would have come in through capital gains taxes and the rest through the estate tax.

What they do with that money is up to them, not the state. It's a pretty sweeping end run around the taxation system.

Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll use the money to good end like Gates is doing. And maybe not.

This is a heck of a tax code we've got, it's trickle down on a grand scale.

<comment><USER4> He avoided to be robbed by the tax man.

This slave mentality of thinking someone owes the state due to their wealth is ridiculous.

Stealing is crime. It doesn't matter if by the tax man or by a pocket picker. In any case if you decide not to abide by their violent demands they might kill you (and it doesn't make a difference if it is by thugs with badges).

The Production of Security - Gustave de Molinari [https://mises.org/library/production- security-0](https://mises.org/library/production-security-0)

<comment><USER5> The tax man is a representative of the republic. The people have decided that the rich must pay taxes, and that is the price we pay for civilization.

If you don't want to entertain the tax man, please move yourself to a deserted island where there is no government to tax you. Or Mars.</comment></comment></comment>