Meeting Ayn Rand on the Las Vegas Strip - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/meeting-ayn-rand-on-the-las-vegas-strip/383608/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> > _"There is nobody out there who can talk about self-esteem, about > individualism, and about capitalism with the moral certainty and the moral > fervor we can," Brook declared._

It is so telling that this guy thinks moral certainty and "fervor" are a good thing. A person who is 100% certain and unquestioning in his beliefs is a person who cannot be reasoned with. This avowed rationalist speaks with the language of religious fundamentalistism.

<comment><USER4> by definition you cannot support objectivism and at the same time be impervious to reason. [http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/reason.html](http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/reason.html)

<comment><USER5> Human beings are really, really good at constructing logical arguments for things they want to be true and ignoring or downplaying counter-arguments. Objectivism is no exception.

<comment><USER6> Further, any philosophy that includes axioms limits the value of logical reasoning.

If X (which is assumed to be true) and Y then Z. It might be logically valid, but it's still meaningless.

<comment><USER7> > Further, any philosophy that includes axioms limits the value of logical > reasoning.

On the contrary, as logical reasoning in any particular system of logic depends on the set of axioms defining that system of logic, any philosophy which _does not_ admit any axioms likewise does not admit logical reasoning, and any philosophy which only includes those axioms necessary to support a system of logic can't lead to any conclusions other than those that constitute the description of the system of logic. In order for a philosophy to have interesting consequences, it must have substantive axioms.

<comment><USER6> And that's a swing and a miss. Axioms might include input from observations. "If I observe X then the gods are pleased." Followed by a lot of meaningless but perfectly logical thought.

Side stepping that, from a pure logic standpoint you can reason about philosophies independent from reality. But, with nothing actually connecting them to physical reality the value of such effort is basically just aesthetic in nature. "TRUTH is ..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This story was killed by user flags. That was a bad use of flagging, so we've overridden it. The article is clearly substantive enough to pass the minimal bar for this site. Whether it's great or not, or even good or not, is a different question.

<comment><USER9> It is substantial, but it is not relevant. This article is clearly far enough afield from the topic of this site that it deserves to be flagkilled. Whether it's substantial or not is a different question.

Also, if you're going to override people's flags, you should also override all the upvotes, because there is no way to just downvote irrelevant crap like this, so political diatribes, Buzzfeed links and everything else that has a solid core of upvoters will dominate if we can't filter for relevance.

<comment><USER8> > This article is clearly far enough afield from the topic of this site

I'm afraid you have a misconception, and it's a crucial one. There is no "topic of this site". The axiom of Hacker News is intellectual curiosity, and intellectual curiosity does not limit itself to one set of things.

Of course we're not all curious about the same stuff. That's why we have voting—to express personal interest. But to flag an article like this one is to say it has no (or nearly no) potential for intellectual curiosity at all, and that seems clearly to be a bad call.

<comment><USER9> I think the guidelines suggest something a little less broad than "whatever you personally find interesting":

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic."

Let me elaborate: Should I start spamming links to long-winded vegan propaganda? _I_ would find it interesting, because it appeals to a viewpoint I happen to agree with. I also find Sailor Moon to be interesting. Should I start linking Sailor Moon content? Exactly how ridiculous and fluffy do my interests have to be before we can agree that there would be a better forum for the content?

Although they might be interesting to some particular hackers, vegan evangelism, libertarian politics and Sailor Moon are pretty far from the obvious intent of "things that good hackers would find interesting."

More than that, political content is poisonous to good discussion. The more you allow politics in, the more politics will consume everything, and the more comment threads you'll have that only gratify people's need to be outraged. I can understand that some political stories legitimately reflect a new trend that affects hackers and entrepreneurs, but allowing anything that interests anyone just allows far too much junk and hastens the site's decline.

<comment><USER8> It isn't whatever you find interesting, it's whatever you find _intellectually_ interesting. Intellectual interest is only one kind of interest. I think this answers the examples you raise—e.g. long-winded vegan propaganda wouldn't be intellectually interesting, but an article about the history of veganism might be.

The guidelines do say that most political stories are probably off-topic. But "note those words most and probably" [1]. They're not there by accident.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922304#up_4922426](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922304#up_4922426)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://wonkette.com/561974/john-oliver-presents-the- philosop...](http://wonkette.com/561974/john-oliver-presents-the-philosophy- of-ayn-rand-or-being-a-selfish-ahole-video)

<comment><USER11> Last Week Tonight is a great show, but this piece made me think about it... if he misrepresents Ayn Rand so blatantly, how accurate is he on other topics?

edit: fixed name of the show

<comment><USER10> What, exactly, is the segment misrepresenting? It was mostly video clips of Ayn Rand expressing her thoughts directly, with a voice-over (rightly) mocking conservatives for supporting her given the fact that she was both militantly atheist and militantly pro-choice.

<comment><USER11> You're right.

Also, the absurdity of expecting facts from a comedy show has been brought to my attention just recently. All in all, what a great first comment on this site ; )

Anyway, I'd argue there is an obvious atmosphere of disgust. The voice-over before the first interview segment states her philosophy amounts to being a selfish asshole. See the relevant part of the interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFy9A7WEzPA#t=104](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFy9A7WEzPA#t=104) from 1:45 to around 3:40.

The net result is the impression that everything she's saying is basically bullshit. It seems to me that it's considered unacceptable to refer to her ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I liked Atlas Shrugged when I read it. But I think if Dagny Taggart would see today's world she wouldn't be too happy as well. While capitalism won over communism the corruption of governments didn't die out it just became more clever.

I sometimes toy with the thought of writing a second ending to be Atlas Shrugged where old Dagny looks at our world and can't grasp what is wrong with it.

<comment><USER13> In Atlas Shrugged she didn't just rail at communism, but also at the use of political "pull" over merit to shape (distort) the economic landscape. That's still very relevant in many domains today, though I think the "Dagney's" of the world (and most hackers and other astute observers) just as easily grasp it then as now.

<comment><USER12> It's not only about the "pull" over merit as you state it but about politically established priorities that harm good businesses. Just as the US cloud business was harmed by the NSA when national security (and intl. espionage) was put above competitiveness.

Those political priorities still come from "Washington" and rule over NY (or Silicon Valley). Both cities are meant within context of the book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - <USER2> you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."

Source: Atlas Shrugged, Francisco's "Money Speech"

Anyone living and producing goods or services in a corrupt country will understand this. You need to experience several years in the society described in the quote to fully understand the implications.

<comment><USER14> > when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from > men who produce nothing

This part alone shows how much superficial BS this is.

You cannot produce anything without using the earth's resources. They do not naturally belong to any man.

So it's either "take what you want, by force, and fuck everyone else", or we find some peaceful way to share those resources amongst each other. Preferably without terminally destroying them for future generations.

Yes, the latter is done through a huge variety of intricate social constructs, and all of them are corrupt to some degree, because such is mankind.

But the only society in which you do not need permission from your fellow men is one in which the majority of the population has the status of serfs.

<comment><USER15> To put things into perspective for those not familiar with the book, the character Francisco is supposed to one of the world's richest men having inherited a mining fortune from his conquistador ancestors. According to Rand's back-story, it's all down to the family lineage passing on genius from one generation to another and nothing at all to do with working slaves to death, as _actually_ tended to happen in South American mines. It's not documented whether his ancestors asked permission from the indigenous population.

Atlas Shrugged is basically the _reductio ad absurdum_ version of saner arguments for capitalism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the biggest draw for Ayn Rand and her works is that there are very few "role models" for fiscal conservatives in today's political environment. Most Republicans are neo-conservative warhawks that only pay lip-service to fiscal conservatism. Very few of them represent the older, Eisenhower traditional- Republicanism, who feared the Military-Industrial complex and understood fiscal conservatism. Even the "tea party" conservatives are mostly anti- intellectual, anti-tax, social conservatives. Fiscal conservatives are usually intellectuals who have a wide range of social beliefs and do not fit in with that crowd.

Ayn Rand's Objectivism aligns well with fiscal conservatives and capitalists in a way that is hard to find elsewhere. I have met a lot of people who are pro-capitalism fiscal conservatives and they seem to have fallen through the political cracks. I see very few politicians or public-figure role models who appeal to Capitalists.

<comment><USER17> Agreed, in America the Goldwaters, Buckleys, and other intelligent conservatives died out in favor of the fox contingent. A shame really.

<comment><USER18> One reason: fiscal conservatism doesn't offer anyone any advantage, and politics is (sadly) mostly about competing over unfair advantage. The goal of a political campaign is to exercise your power over someone else (e.g. theocrats, PC fanatics), slant the law in your favor (regulatory capture), or directly access the treasury.

The second reason: Keynesian economics works, at least in the short to medium term. When a recession hits, real fiscal conservatives lose _big_. Democrats know this and play to it explicitly. Republicans also know it, and are masters at politically weaponized Keynesianism. They espouse fiscally conservative rhetoric while being ardent Keynesians in practice, usually through military spending and financial bubble-blowing.

<comment><USER19> > One reason: fiscal conservatism doesn't offer anyone any advantage...

I disagree. Fiscal conservatism means that I get to keep more of my money, instead of having the government take it. That's certainly an advantage to me.

But I think you meant "it's not an advantage of one person over another", which is true. And by extension, I think you meant "therefore it doesn't help one candidate get elected over another", which I think is false. Telling people that you're going to let them keep more of their money shouldn't be a very hard sell. (Now, true, most conservative candidates don't seem to be able to articulate such a message, but I think that's because most "conservative" candidates aren't fiscal conservatives at all.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What I learned from this discussion: Ayn Rand (and, to a lesser extent, Objectivism) is the highly electrified third rail of Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think one of the appealing things about Objectivism is that it's a complete top-to-bottom guide to how life should be lived for individuals, communities and nations. Most rival philosophies seem narrower. Christianity, for instance, has lots of advice for dealing with individuals but seems disconnected from politics. Something like Marxism talks about the organisation of industries and classes but not so much about personal situations. Mainstream political movements seem more like packages of stances (on things like abortion, welfare, immigration...) with no clear unifying principles. Then there's interesting philosophies like say Utilitarianism, that lots of people know about and write about but seemingly no one seriously adheres to as a way of life.

If you agree with the principles of Objectivism you can more or less follow it as a way of life, without doing anything drastic like abandoning all your worldly possessions, or feeling like a hypocrite.

<comment><USER22> Idk, is being wrong on multiple fronts that much better than being wrong only on one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "For eight days last summer, a new generation of Randians was indoctrinated in the auditoriums of The Venetian. Where better to absorb Atlas Shrugged 's teachings than in a city of extremes?"

Indoctrinatied? What a way to start but he sure makes his stance clear with that sentence.

As someone who really values Ayn Rands work (I am one of those who was influence by Atlas Shrugged), I find it difficult to get through this piece (as it is with things you disagree with). I find it very biased yet it never really gives any good arguments against objectivism.

Of course one should not treat Ayn Rand as a god and be dogmatic about her ideas, and certainly don't judge her by the people that do.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm reasonably sympathetic so some libertarian views. But I've never been able to motivate myself to read Ayn Rand. Can someone tell me how a fiction book can make a good argument for any political view? Is it just a thin layer of story-writing on top of actual, evidence-based argument? Or is it like I fear, just a long story where everything goes right for the guys with the right views? Because I'm pretty sure you could write a book where the righteous commies win.

Considering how big the book is, I'd like to know before I try to read it.

<comment><USER25> People often think Objectivism is right wing conservative. In some ways it is, but in others it is pretty far to the left as well. Rand spends quite a lot of time attacking crony "capitalism".

The book creates exaggerated scenarios in order to illustrate certain principles and beliefs.

Some of those beliefs are:

1) If you created value as a producer then you deserve to keep and use that wealth you created. Others don't have a right to it and must trade with you through voluntary win/win means.

2) There are devious individuals who will use their influence to make government force others to provide them with benefits and harm their competition.

3) Being competent and producing value is one of the highest moral virtues. It is what advances society forward and promotes the "common welfare".

4) Objective thought should be relied upon rather than the opinion of others. You don't need to have a title in order to have an opinion. You just need to be competent on the subject matter.

5) Society will try to make you feel guilt for your success. As long as you created wealth through moral means then you should be proud, not full of guilt.

<comment><USER3> > _People often think Objectivism is right wing conservative. In some ways it > is, but in others it is pretty far to the left as well._

If nothing else, Objectivism is a pretty convincing argument that the left/right political binary is bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Who should be the beneficiary of your actions? Answer that and all the rest follows.

</comment><comment><USER27> The only way to meet Rand now is by reading her books.

</comment><comment><USER28> In this thread: Randians downvoting all dissenting views so as not to disturb their carefully constructed echo chambers. Hi guys!

<comment><USER29> Umm, that's not what I see. It looks more like the Rand aficionados are getting downvoted, not that that is actually any more valid than what you hoped for would have been.

<comment><USER8> The downvote situation is always in flux. That's one of the reasons not to post comments about downvotes on HN: by the time people read the comment, it will probably be obsolete.

The greater reason not to post such comments, of course, is that they're inevitably off-topic and tedious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Regardless of your views on Ayn Rand, this journalist goes to a week long conference and writes about two talks? Click bait. Pass.

<comment><USER31> Umm. He's not a journalist. He's an academic. And he's hardly obliged to do blow-by-blow reportage of an entire event.

<comment><USER32> This article is more of a rambling tirade than anything else. The only things I learned from it are how much the author disdains Rand and Las Vegas.

I think the quote that demonstrates the author's slant is the following one about the Venetian hotel, and how "[o]nce inside, you have to follow the arcade of shops along a faux canal". This canal seems to conform to the dictionary definition of 'canal', and the author seems to be trying to exaggerate what he deems to be the flaws of Las Vegas.[1] There are numerous other instances in the article where similar hyperbole is used, and I will not bore you with a list, but they show that the writing is more sensationalist than journalistic or academic.

[1] [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/canal](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/canal)</comment></comment></comment>


Found: Blackhole 17 times our own Sun - <AUTHOR> http://www.techtimes.com/articles/147933/20160407/galaxy-ngc-1600-hosts-gigantic-black-hole-17-billion-times-more-massive-than-the-sun.htm <comment><USER2> The black hole they found has 17 _billion_ solar masses, not 17! That's a very large black hole and it was found in an unexpected place.</comment>


Show HN: Announce New Features to Your Users (with Pirates and Astronauts) - <AUTHOR> http://featurekit.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> Reposting today to ensure I don't miss out on Kevin's offer to review some of the Show HN posts. Thanks in advance (if you get to mine)!

<comment><USER2> I like your product, I think kevin would too since he mentioned a "product feature update" page was loved by wufoo customers.

It seems pretty straight forward both from an installation standpoint and for my users. My question is what is down the road?

Are you thinking maybe about maybe different UI options to display the "feature updates"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I think I learned a lot about product design from Wufoo.

When I originally mocked-up the interaction I imagined a second, slightly more minimal version ([http://codepen.io/kidGodzilla/full/qdLRzb/](http://codepen.io/kidGodzilla/full/qdLRzb/)), & the app generates a "dev blog" from your updates ([http://featurekit.featurekit.co](http://featurekit.featurekit.co)).

I also imagined it would be a bit like statuspage.io - You could definitely create it yourself, but would gladly take an off-the-shelf solution if it had good defaults.

I think I could probably keep adding equally-useful widgets if this gets some validation from users.

<comment><USER2> yeah i think your definitely on track with this, no sense in spending extra dev time if the different UI's are not asked for.

I'll keep playing with it this weekend. I'll ping you if I think of anything else :)

If you have 4mins mind giving me some quick UI/UX feedback on my project? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10062700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10062700)

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely. Thanks for your feedback!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fighting terrorism the Silicon Valley Way [video] - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/video/fighting-terrorism-the-silicon-valley-way/424BD389-E24B-4C54-950C-7AD050F6565C.html

<comment><USER2> This is the same submission that has been posted at least 5 times in the last 24 hours. Only difference is this time it's in video form.

ref:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=803968>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=803993>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=804681>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=805158>

<comment><AUTHOR> I used to work at Palantir (full disclosure). This is hardly spam. They're legit -- they've raised $30MM over four years and cracked a market they said a startup could NEVER crack: the government.

If this isn't a remarkable story, I don't know what is.

<comment><USER2> Startups crack government all the time. We just don't hear about it because it is usually insiders and companies that have ownership structures that give them special preference in the contracting process.

It could be an article promoting the American Cancer society that doesn't mean it needs to be reposted multiple times per day.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) If you don't like the article, don't upvote it. As for how newsworthy it is, this isn't some pork barrel IT project -- it's computer science being deployed to catch terrorists in the field.

2) This is one of the first pieces of mass media coverage Palantir has gotten -ever- -- they've been under wraps for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> From what I've heard, Palantir seems like a damn cool company tackling really interesting problems.

But the work ethic required does not appeal to me whatsoever. Does anyone work there? How do you do it?

<comment><USER4> I work there, in software development. I think I work hard, but certainly not death march hard, or any harder than someone working at another random startup might. Not fourty hours a week, but certainly not eighty, either.

<comment><USER5> So is it 45 or 79?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sounds like a damn cool place to work. A startup with government and supreme security divisions as clients is definitely something thing different and impressive.

It also impressive to know that they took the plunge to take technology, data analysis to steer a field like this instead of a more chalked out field like finance sector.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting that they're opening up a financial analysis arm to serve hedge funds. When they determine a terrorist attack is imminent, will they give the hedge funds a heads up before the markets crash?

(I doubt that's the intention, but somehow a conspiracy theory alert went off in my head, sorry.)

<comment><USER8> It's almost certainly for detecting fraud / money laundering networks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I found Palantr very interesting but the article uncovers The US agencies incompetency with zillion of dollars in Research?

</comment><comment><USER10> I know an even better way to save US lives in Afghanistan: _get out of Afghanistan_.</comment>


NOVA is a personal climbing wall that redefines training at home - <AUTHOR> http://nova.lunar-europe.com/Nova.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The concept looks interesting, it would probably be positive wall only but it would be awesome anyway.

Buy I can't see how they are going to make the white chalk marks on this look sexy.</comment>


Ask HN: Working within constraints of hospital IT? - <AUTHOR> Although I have extensive experience working on medical devices, most of the those have had little to no network connectivity functionality. Certainly none that venture outside of the internal hospital network.
I am currently planning a project that would involve a centralized cloud database, which gathers data from several hospitals. I know from experience that every hospital is different and that their IT departments range from strict to extremely strict (and we have to assume the worst here). With my little knowledge/experience in this area, my gut tells me the application will actually need a local database in each center, within the hospital network, which periodically replicates up to central cloud database. There is no immediate need for those databases to be consistent over a short period of time. We may also anonymise the data as it moves outside of the hospital. I am also aware of the HIPAA-compliant PAAS services out there and we may end up using one of those.
There's been a lot of talk about healthcare moving to the cloud, that I'm hoping there are some HN'ers with experience in this area. Am I right to assume that it's nearly impossible to set up a cloud database that is accessed directly from, say, the OR of a hospital? Please provide any personal experience or resources that may help me make more informed decisions. Thanks in advance. <comment><USER3> I'm currently working on a cloud-based healthcare idea also. My team and I have been wrangling with the compliant systems and services out there for handling this problem too. The crux really lies in the logistics of the HIPAA standard as every healthcare service storing or transmitting patient information must comply with _at least_ these regulations. Each hospital is liable to run their own EHR system which makes it extremely hard to integrate directly with them in a single broad stroke.

> Am I right to assume that it's nearly impossible to set up a cloud database > that is accessed directly from, say, the OR of a hospital?

It depends on you, the employees, and the hospital. HIPAA basically focuses on 3 factors for securing and storing sensitive data: (1) Physical data security, (2) Security of data in transit, and (3) Training of personnel with access to the data. Amazon has HIPAA services that handle (1), 3rd party services like you mentioned above or you can handle yourself for (2), and also 3rd party services or yourself can handle (3). Assuming you have (1) and (2) squared away, and assuming the employees in the OR have the proper training, there should be no compliance violation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the helpful response. There are a bunch of great resources out there for achieving HIPAA compliance and given those, I'm confident that we can achieve it. What is unclear to me is, if we build such a solution, and then go into the OR, open a browser and type in [http://<ourwebapp>.com](http://<ourwebapp>.com), I'd expect the odds of us actually reaching that web page are low (e.g. will be blocked by a firewall). Is making sure that channel works just a matter of reassuring and negotiating with the hospital IT so that they ensure such access?

<comment><USER3> IMO you are thinking too far down the rabbit hole. If you are at the point of being implemented by a hospital or healthcare system implies you have already negotiated your product, licenses, etc and have the green light for all facets of what you offer (ie. access in the OR) by the boss(es). Hospital IT will listen to whatever said boss tells them to do, such as allowing access to your app if necessary.

<comment><USER4> This is true. Once buy-in is achieved then IT will generally do what they need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to work in a hospital IT department :)

> I know from experience that every hospital is different ... my gut tells me > the application will actually need a local database in each center, within > the hospital network, which periodically replicates up to central cloud > database

What data are you trying to store? Pretty much every EMR/EHR system nowadays speaks HL7; if your goal is to integrate with those EMR systems, then your own application could circumvent a lot of issues by speaking HL7 as well. Of course, this only covers certain use cases, hence the question.

> their IT departments range from strict to extremely strict

Eeyup :)

> I am also aware of the HIPAA-compliant PAAS services out there and we may > end up using one of those.

You definitely should. Else, be prepared to deploy your own physical servers and provide similar assurances of HIPAA/HITECH compliance. Hospitals already tend to be wary of anything pertaining to patient data living beyond their own networks.

> There's been a lot of talk about healthcare moving to the cloud

For some small clinics, yes, this is somewhat attractive. Once you move into medium and large healthcare organizations, hospitals, etc., however, the desire is almost universally for things to be as self-hosted as possible if they involve PII. Most EMR vendors prioritize local/onsite deployments IIRC (with one notable exception in my experience: CPSI, or "say-pay-ess-eye", as it's more commonly known).

> Am I right to assume that it's nearly impossible to set up a cloud database > that is accessed directly from, say, the OR of a hospital?

Not impossible. Just excruciatingly difficult, with difficulty scaling exponentially with the size of the hospital. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Super helpful response. Thank you!

 _> What data are you trying to store?_

A couple of fields could be imported by integrating with existing EMR/EHR through HL7, but at this early stage I don't envision any integration and these fields will be input manually. The MVP works this way, for example (and has been used in a few hospitals).

 _> You definitely should. Else, be prepared to deploy your own physical servers_

Does this mean you've seen off-site hosted apps using these HIPAA PAAS providers being used by hospitals "in production" (so to speak)?

 _> Not impossible. Just excruciatingly difficult, with difficulty scaling exponentially with the size of the hospital. :)_

Is this regardless of using a HIPAA-compliant PAAS, or only in the case where we don't? I'm already dreading the answer ;)

<comment><USER5> > A couple of fields could be imported by integrating with existing EMR/EHR > through HL7, but at this early stage I don't envision any integration and > these fields will be input manually. The MVP works this way, for example > (and has been used in a few hospitals).

In that case, yeah, hospitals will tend to differ very significantly; once you go beyond the HL7 world, any hope of a standardized interface goes out the window. Expect hospitals to run their own copies of your database in that case, and expect them to be very strict about what access you get.

> Does this mean you've seen off-site hosted apps using these HIPAA PAAS > providers being used by hospitals "in production" (so to speak)?

I've yet to see a HIPAA-complaint PaaS vendor in use by an actual hospital, but it's worth mentioning that at least one such vendor - Catalyze - <USER2> Blue Shield and the VA hospitals as customers.

I _have_ , however, seen off-site EMRs in use by hospitals, particularly (as I mentioned previously) CPSI (though the hospital I worked for - which was, at the time, apparently CPSI's largest customer - eventually strongarmed them into providing support for an onsite server). Such EMRs are typically hosted on hardware owned and operated by the vendor.

Most hospital _districts_ , multi-facility providers, etc. will opt for a single installation of an EMR throughout all their locations. Usually this will be facilitated using a provider-wide VPN, so that'll probably help your particular usecase somewhat. In most cases, this is as close as you're going to get to "off-site" once you get to larger providers, though - again - deviations from this are not entirely unheard of.

> Is this regardless of using a HIPAA-compliant PAAS, or only in the case > where we don't? I'm already dreading the answer ;)

HIPAA-compliant PaaS products are pretty new, so this answer will undoubtedly change over time, but _currently_ , such a PaaS will only flatten that expontential curve to _maybe_ a linear one. Small hospitals and clinics will certainly be interested, since many of them dread having to manage any sort of IT infrastructure, to the point of even contracting out to their _competitors_ in some cases (as I witnessed firsthand) instead of trying to do anything themselves. Once they've gone forward with their own IT department, however, the chances of even a HIPAA-compliant PaaS being deemed suitable starts to dwindle, and emphasis on self-hosted solutions grows stronger and stronger.

<comment><USER4> A number of companies are hosted on Aptible that are not only in production, but doing well. The same goes for Catalyze.

In general, though, yes, whether or not the solutions will suffice comes down to the arbitrary decision of an administrator who probably doesn't understand the underlying tech issues. That will start changing soon though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd suggest working with one hospital to demo and test the idea first in their local environment. Getting buy in from multiple hospitals to try an idea out on an infrastructure you have not yet created is unlikely to be successful, unless there is a very clear ROI that you can model for them.

I would recommend Aptible for a simple HIPAA compliant app dev environment. They are fast and professional.

If you need integration-as-a-service and have some kind of budget, I would call Catalyze or my company, Fleet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the PAAS recommendations.

I agree one hospital and then upward would be the way to start, but we've got a bit of a different scenario.

We're coming into a project where the non-technical founders out-sourced the MVP (basic CRUD app) and it has been running in a hospital already (locally hosted within hospital). They now apparently have the go-ahead and buy-in to try this out in a dozen hospitals and need an app that can handle that deployment. Of course we will initially deploy in one hospital, but we've got the business buy-in to deploy in multiple centres. Same CRUD functionality, but with data eventually being pooled in a central cloud-based DB.

I guess one would say they need to find a team that has been there done that, but based on how scarce it would seem such solutions are, that doesn't seem easy, and of course I would like to rise to the challenge. It's just that there doesn't seem to be much information out there (beyond working with the hospitals themselves, and we have _some_ experience there). The information in this thread has been super helpful. I've learned a lot and it has also confirmed that most of my assumptions (which err on the side of caution) are not too far off from other people's experiences.

<comment><USER4> We provide API integration solutions along the lines of other companies. We have not been around as long as Catalyze (which does a very good job) but are experts in FHIR, and have an infrastructure that may be more multi-party friendly.

We have a pretty cool multi-tenant database solution that hospital parties could pool data into with highly granular authentication, access control, and auditability at both the db and API levels. No one else offers this yet, but it also may be more robust than the hospitals understand enough to care about.

Happy to discuss if you are interested at the commercial site listed in my profile. Also happy just to share our experiences in similar situations, or make recommendations for other more simple solutions on your own stack. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We offer a SAAS solution to hospitals that can be hosted by us or internally by hospitals (sort of like GitHub/GitHub Enterprise). What we have seen is a mix of both - some wanting to keep everything on their own permise and some wanting our cloud offering. Moving data out is a strict No-No for ones that need stuff inside their network - so unless you have a very compelling reason to move things to cloud you will find resistance at such places.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. This at least indicates that my gut feeling isn't too far off. Do you feel comfortable plugging your company? If not, feel free to ping me at the address in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some hospitals are moving to cloud based EHR systems, so its probably not impossible. And most hospitals now have at least one relationship with an HIE that is normally not self-hosted, so IT groups have experience with data exchange. As long as all the HIPAA stuff is in order, I think hospital IT groups are more open to cloud based services today than 5 years ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that things are moving in the right direction. The trouble is that when building a solution that should be expandable to more centers as the customer base grows, you almost have to build it for the lowest common denominator (in other words, the most restrictive hospital IT department). I have my doubts (but not a lot of experience) that a strict hospital would allow access to an external cloud web app / database that records PHI in the OR (without some lengthy re-assurances and testing).

I suppose this should be treated as an enterprise solution and there's no getting around the fact that the sales and deployment cycle will be long and costly (time and resources). Each hospital will have different requirements. I'm mostly curious as to whether we can get away with the app being completely based in the cloud and being accessed from the hospital, or whether we need a middle layer that resides in each medical center.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's also the HITECH act, with provisions for handling data and reporting breaches.

[http://www.hipaasurvivalguide.com/hitech-act- summary.php](http://www.hipaasurvivalguide.com/hitech-act-summary.php)</comment>


Spy Software Gets a Second Life on Wall Street - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/spy-software-gets-a-second-life-on-wall-street-1438541720 <comment><USER2> I love the part about the software being able to "predict" trouble at Enron when fed a bunch of email from that era. Just like everyone and their brother has come up with an algorithm that can "predict" past movements in the stock market, but every single one of them has trouble predicting the actual future. Folks on Wall Street, of all places, should be wary of people who present such "evidence" of their algorithm's efficacy.

<comment><USER3> Wall street has 2 parts. First, there's the efficient allocation of resources. There are a few people that consistently make money, like Warren Buffet. But they play on very small edges. Sorta like poker, they consistently come out a few percent ahead of the competition. But there's terrible variance. Is this likely to be a tool that gives real market insight? No.

The other part of Wall Street is like matthew mcconaughey in the wolf of wall street. It's getting people's money in the circus. Go around and around the ferris wheel again and again. This is the sort of thing that can convince people to invest.

I seriously doubt i'd put my own money in just because of this. But people like that exist, and really, they're probably better off with some money in stocks. They'll get a better return than a savings account. So, some people will do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

Of course, everyone needs to be cautious of pure snake oil, but a respectable company putting on a little sideshow from time to time is pretty reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Come on guys. So many negative quotes about wall street from people here who didn't even bother to read the article.

The article discusses the use of software to catch rouge employee's before they can do any harm and somehow this gets translated to anti wall street comments?

Having said that, the article itself is garbage, its a submarine piece for a Tennessee based ML company that doesn't really provide any real insight to this world and what they do.

<comment><USER5> Peoples' frustration has nothing to do with the actions of 'rogue employees'... to the contrary, it often seems that when a 'rogue' is trotted out as the culprit for malfeasance, many people with a brain to think come to conclusion that the 'rogue' is simply being scapegoated to paper over an systemic problem (viz LIBOR scandal, 2010 flash crash in US markets, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands Even in the midst of Enron rising so fast, there were a ton of people who knew something wasn't right and none of them did anything about it. And why was that?

Money and a LOT of it. Management didn't want to do anything because of they were getting rewarded for how well the company was doing. Why kill your own gravy train? Why would the auditors stop it? The same reason, they were making millions in consulting fees and had no reason to stop the train. Congress could have done something, but thwarted Arthur Levitt's proposed new rule barring accountants acting as consultants. The rule was shot down and the SEC was threatened with losing their funding if they did this by some 50 senators.

So even if this software predicts rouge traders, it can only alert the right people to do something about it. And even if it does, what are the odds those people have the morale compass to make the right decision? Probably less than 50/50 because of the money involved.

Having the software is only the first step in a long chain of decisions which are made by the weakest link in the chain, the human being.

<comment><USER6> If anyone cared to look, the troubles with Enron's accounting were right there in their SEC filings - long before the shit hit the fan.

In fact the reporter who broke the story did it by simply analyzing the SEC filings, as opposed to getting some insider information, or talking to a whistleblower.

<comment><USER7> can you recommend any resources to read more about this? I wasn't aware and it sounds incredibly interesting to me.

<comment><USER8> "The Smartest Guys in the Room" is a _fantastic_ documentary about the whole ordeal. It's not too information dense so you probably want other resources. It's a very good low-effort primer that will leave you with a "what the f*?!" look on your face for the rest of the week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So Wall Street has their own set of "threat indicators" now. Imagine what happens when CISA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing Act) passes, allowing them to share this data with military and police surveillance agencies. Suddenly, anyone who does "suspiciously" well on the stock market could have a federal investigation secretly launched against them.

<comment><USER8> > Suddenly, anyone who does "suspiciously" well on the stock market could have > a federal investigation secretly launched against them.

Do you not think that's the case today?

That's what the SEC _does_.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A lot of the impetus behind investment banks' interest in these types of products stems from the need to be able to demonstrate to regulators that they are doing something about past failings. Software is attractive because if you have a "system" to manage these risks, it means you don't have to hire (expensive) staff.

The problem I'm seeing is that the industry is so complex that software companies often don't fully understand the problems that financial services companies need to solve, so the solutions they're producing come up short. I reckon it's going to be a couple more years before these solutions evolve/develop to the point where they start delivering on their promise.

</comment><comment><USER10> What would be intereting is to feed it The Hacking Team emails [https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/](https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Surprise! Wall Street is all in on manipulation and abuse.

<comment><USER12> If you read the actual article, you'd see that financial firms are using this software to try and detect rogue traders and fraudulent activity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Bypass the paywall with Google's referrer:

[https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web...](https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QqQIwAGoVChMI_6fjl4qNxwIVSQqOCh0eMgCN&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fspy- software-gets-a-second-life-on-wall- street-1438541720&ei=u3S_Vb_eOcmUuASe5IDoCA&usg=AFQjCNEjbiOx7HMKRht0q-A7L7O0vktZZA&sig2=IofBBRwxv0_rzxcq7R2gfQ&bvm=bv.99261572,d.c2E)

<comment><USER14> Is bypassing paywalls illegal, like circumventing DRM?

<comment><USER15> Nope not at all.

And thanks for the link I appreciate it @witty_username

<comment><USER14> I doubt you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think there should be a "soft rule" against submitting content behind a paywall. "Soft" in the sense that there are known exceptions to the rule; unique story or voice, life changing story, etc.

I don't think "hacking team rehash + greedy wall street" is going to make the list of exceptions.

<comment><USER17> I agree. I get so much frustrated everytime I end up behind a paywall for an article I was genuinely interested to read. Plus, content behind paywalls is not something that should be acceptable in an open community like KN where no one should have exclusive access to knowledge shared on the platform</comment></comment>


Terrorist or pedophile? This startup says it can out secrets by analyzing faces - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/05/24/terrorist-or-pedophile-this-start-up-says-it-can-out-secrets-by-analyzing-faces/ <comment><USER2> Phrenology as a Service?</comment>


Critical PGP and S/MIME bugs can reveal encrypted e-mails - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/05/critical-pgp-and-smime-bugs-can-reveal-encrypted-e-mails-uninstall-now/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17063109](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17063109).

</comment><comment><USER3> My question is , why the FUD ?</comment>


Biohacker News - <AUTHOR> http://biohacker.io/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, I've been looking for something like this for years and even considered starting one myself a couple of years ago. I hope that there are more users/traction.

Any idea who runs the site or if there's an about page? I'd be interested in volunteering my services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, yes I run it. Just set it up a few days ago. I'd love any help you want to offer as far as getting the word out and getting it started - this is the hardest part.

Also if you are interested, I'm working on a few more related projects that I'd love to chat about and am looking for collaborators on. Wanna shoot me an email? firstname.lastname@example.com</comment></comment>


Up Yours, Brutus (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2014/03/up-yours-brutus.html <comment><USER2> The whole article reminded me of a segment on QI. You can tell that Fry would enjoy this fact and the rest joke about a snarky Caesar.

</comment><comment><USER3> Certainly a very different and eye catching title. Thanks, and in the spirit of the article, et tu, agronaut!</comment>


A typeface that helps dyslexics read (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20171204-the-typeface-that-helps-dyslexics-read <comment><USER2> A direct link to the font: [https://www.dyslexiefont.com/](https://www.dyslexiefont.com/)

It's not unusual for someone to post a list of 'previously discussed' HN links, but wow, there are a lot of them this time! [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dyslexie&sort=byPopularity&pre...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dyslexie&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

<comment><USER2> And to head off an inevitable comment: No, I'm not trying to say that it's inappropriate to repost. In fact, I think it's awesome that people are working to keep this front-of-mind, and that enough people agree to get it front-page.</comment></comment>


iPhone Sales Progress Report (updated) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.beetlebugsoftware.com/post/103977584/progress-report

<comment><USER2> I appreciate you taking the time to share this with the HN community. Would be great if you could run a few more programs like this in parallel for some additional income.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you using the daily Sales/Trend reports on iTunes connect to generate these graphs? or are you gathering the data some other way?

<comment><AUTHOR> Used AppViz to pull reports. Then used the sqlite database from AppViz to write some custom queries. Used that data to fill in a graph in iWorks Pages app. Tweaked the graphs by adding custom shapes to it. All relatively easy in Pages once you understand how it works.

<http://pastie.org/469387> <http://pastie.org/468282>

<comment><USER3> Thanks! will have to try it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What did you use to generate those graphs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Apple's iWorks Pages</comment></comment>


An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976) - <AUTHOR> http://cryptnet.net/mirrors/texts/gates1976.html <comment><USER3> Regarding the commercial BASIC project mentioned in this letter - <USER2> facilitated non-student Allen coming onto the Harvard campus, to use a computer they did not have permission to use for their commercial project. The computer they were using without authorization was one which was being used by the US military. Like Mark Zuckerberg in later years, Gates was called up before the Harvard Ad board for this.

From Paul Allen's book "Idea Man" -

"Returning to Aiken late one night after a fast-food run, we were stopped by the campus police and asked for our IDs...Harvard split the computer's maintenance costs with the U.S. Defense Department, based on usage. I'd relied on Bill's password account for my work on the simulator, which ate a lot of processor time. When the January bills came due, Harvard's share was up conspicuously, with one student the prime culprit: William Henry Gates III. (he appeared before the university's administrative board that summer...)"

<comment><USER4> At the time of that letter, how much of their software being sold was developed at Harvard? And did they specifically sell any software they developed while at Harvard (and on Harvard's dime)?

Gates of course has given Harvard tens of millions of dollars. Harvard got an amazing return on its computing bills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My software title "FileSearchEX" is so pirated that I can no longer continue to work on it full time. Indeed, search engines show more "free crack here" links than legitimate ones. Imagine going to the supermarket and having "free" eggs next to the $5 carton ... which would you choose? I know what 90% of them go with.

<comment><USER6> While it sucks to not be able to work on it full time any more, it boggles my mind that it'd be possible to earn enough from a tool like that to work on it full time for any amount of time in the first place. Not meant as a criticism of you - in fact if you've managed to do that, hats off, clearly you must have done something right with it.

<comment><USER7> There always have been, and continue to be, people making perfectly good money from this sort of software. I'm not sure why you're surprised, given that people make profitable fart apps for phones, and that it is apparently rational to bury people with money to run any number of fundamentally useless startups.

<comment><USER8> While we are at it, any advice of how to market such software? I mean, when there is more or less saturated market.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _> "Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?"_

Yes who can do professional interpreters for free. Guido van Rossum could not possible put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, and document his product for free.

This is after all what this letter is about. An interpreter for a programming language, and the complain is about hobbyist and other non-commercial entities using it without paying money for it.

<comment><USER10> I don't think anecdotes are that helpful at understanding Gates's message here. Yes, today there are open source versions of pretty much all developer tools (and that's something to celebrate, since I remember when a "cheap" C compiler was $500). But there's still plenty of software that has no open source equal; if we had a world where nobody paid for software, much of it wouldn't have ever been written.

<comment><USER9> When looking back at letters like this, its important to be at least aware of the context. I don't think ignoring the context of the letter is helpful at all in understanding why it was written by Bill Gates.

Taken outside the context, one can surely have a discussion about how much software would be made if developers can't use government help as basis for their business model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think that in the long run, Microsoft profited from piracy. My rationale is that piracy gave a market advantage to the OS with the widest selection of "free" software. So long as folks could copy MS-DOS and Windows software from their workplace, there was little incentive to consider any other OS.

<comment><USER12> It also cemented their file formats as the industry standard. The network effect is still strong even today.

<comment><USER13> This cannot be understated. Different company and a smaller niche, but proprietary file formats have plagued the GIS industry for decades. The most widely used format (shapefile) is about as terrible as it gets as far as functionality goes, but it is used everywhere. There has been a mounting effort to persuade governments to use open formats for publishing data, but it has been slow going.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From the letter:

*> Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share."

I'll have to dig around but I recall reading a few articles about 60%+ windows OS being pirated, this number is much lower in US and other developed markets, but is as high as 93% in some[0].

[0] [http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sof_pir_rat-crime- soft...](http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sof_pir_rat-crime-software- piracy-rate)

edit: site seems to be unavailable. Link @ archive.org:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20100316174220/http://www.cryptn...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100316174220/http://www.cryptnet.net/mirrors/texts/gates1976.html)

<comment><USER15> But it is not about windows OS. In 1976 there were no windows OS. It's about this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC)

<comment><USER14> I know.

Was just stating the problem that plagued them in 1976 is still persistent today.

Though on re-reading my previous comment I can see that I was not clear on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why was Gates hectoring the hobbyists?

1\. The hobbyists had a culture of freely sharing code, which Gates was trying to break up (now known as Linux, Github, C)

2\. Software was about 5 years away from Congress making software definitely copyrightable in the US [1] (there had been some court decisions)

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_copyright](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_copyright)

</comment><comment><USER17> Fascinating write-up which puts the economics of proprietary vs open source in full view. Gates was unhappy in the letter because it was hard to make money charging license fees in arrears. In my business, I charge for a lot of development up front.

The lesson I take away from this is that conventional software licensing, while it addresses a legitimate need in some areas of software (the need to diffuse development costs), means effectively not only shifting risk onto the developer but increasing it by orders of magnitude. The sort of risk that one has from investing in a feature for an open source project is far less than the risk that a software house takes in building the next version, because they take on all risk, centralize it, and then hope to make it back through control. This doesn't reduce risk for the end user though by very much.

</comment><comment><USER15> Bill Gates experienced in 76 what now is quite obvious: any content + computer = unlimited number of copies.

<comment><USER18> Photocopiers and books never stopped authors. It's all about the packaging and the full-service offered. A book is nice because it is bound, or comes with extra goodies. If your software is just software, well, step up your sales game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "stealing" You keep using that word...

<comment><USER20> Is there a better word for using non-free software without a license?

<comment><USER21> You're only losing opportunity cost. Not COGS. Meanwhile, the user who is pirating your software might be someone for whom the price is prohibitive or who would otherwise not be a user at all if there weren't a cracked alternative. So the the loss to this "theft" is actually much lower because (1) there was no price associated with materials for the software -- it costs you the same to produce one copy as it does a million and (2) the majority of cracked copies of the software wouldn't have resulted in a sale anyway.

<comment><USER22> (1) is debatable. The cost of living during development and the loss of potential savings count for price. If you estimate that as, say, 50k for a year-long project, then you need to do 50k of sales to break even on your investment. That shouldn't be a high number for a niche product that gets used, but I think it tends to be in software.

(2) I agree with. It doesn't matter what's best if your product doesn't sell. I think developers need publishing labels (read: app stores) to monetize. Users might pay not pay for note-keeping applet, but they might pay for a fork of it in their GitHub account that's been audited for security & privacy by a reputable publisher. Social P2P software can also be designed to exchange receipts of purchase on connection. Users would be able to disable it, but failing to publish a receipt for software would be awkward in business contexts.

<comment><USER21> Re: Your response to point (1). My statement stands. A development cost of $50k is a development cost of $50k regardless of how many copies are sold. Pirated copies do not cost the developer extra production expenses the way stolen physical merchandise would. If someone stole copies of Excel from a Best Buy, there would be costs associated with the packaging, DVD production, distribution, etc. that would need to be absorbed in order to replace the lost product. The only added cost per item online is the bandwidth cost, but that is absorbed by the person distributing cracked software rather than the original developer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So what the hell happened to 8080 and 6800 APL? That would have truly changed the landscape. It wasn't quite the low hanging fruit Basic was though.

</comment><comment><USER24> There was a good write up of the context surrounding this letter in Steven Levy's book, Hackers ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer...)).

It pissed off lots of people in the community and seemed to be against the spirit of what the hackers were doing at the time (writing and sharing code).

I recall another programmer being irritated by the letter and writing his own basic interpreter and asking $5 for it (which was far less than what Gates was asking).

Book is worth reading for the historical context of computing if you weren't around to see it.

####

Edit [Relevant part of wikipedia page]: Tiny BASIC: Altair BASIC was an interpreter that translated instructions from the BASIC programming language into assembly instructions that the Altair 8800 could understand. It was developed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the founders of Micro-soft, specifically for the Altair 8800 and it would fit in 4K of memory. Unlike previous hackers and against the Hacker Ethic, Micro-Soft and MITS felt that people should pay for BASIC just like they paid for any add-on card. Many hackers had in fact put in orders for BASIC, but still had to wait for the order to be shipped. During a show put up by MITS, someone got hold of and copied a paper tape containing Altair BASIC.

The tapes were duplicated and passed around freely before the commercial product was even shipped to customers. Gates and Allen did not appreciate this turn of events since they were actually paid commission for each copy of BASIC that MITS sold. Gates responded by writing an open letter titled "Open Letter to Hobbyists" that considered the sharing of software to be theft. Tiny BASIC was a similar interpreter that would fit in only 2K of memory as it supported a subset of the functionality of Micro-Soft BASIC (which itself was a subset of Dartmouth BASIC).

It was developed by Dick Whipple and John Arnold in Tyler, Texas and distributed freely in PCC magazine. Many more people sent in improvements and programs developed in Tiny BASIC to be published. This eventually led to the creation of Dr. Dobb's Journal edited by Jim Warren that distributed free or very inexpensive software in response to Gates' claims of theft. Tom Pittman was someone else who did not take kindly to Gates' words. He wrote a version of Tiny BASIC for the Motorola 6800 microprocessor.

Although he sold it to AMI for $3,500, he retained the rights to sell it to others and decided to charge only $5 for it. He received many orders and even money from people who had already gotten a copy and simply wanted to pay him for his efforts. Pittman also wrote the essay "Deus Ex Machina" on the AI and hardware hackers and what tied them together. Lee Felsenstein and Bob Marsh banded together to create a fully contained computer for an issue of Popular Electronics that they called SOL that sold for under a thousand dollars.

####

<comment><USER25> > _I recall another programmer being irritated by the letter and writing his > own basic interpreter and asking $5 for it (which was far less than what > Gates was asking)._

What price was Gates asking for?

I did a quick calculation using:

[http://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php](http://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php)

$5 in 1976 works out as just over $20 in 2013.

HNer _wmf_ has left a comment below:

> _Yes, today there are open source versions of pretty much all developer > tools (and that 's something to celebrate, since I remember when a "cheap" C > compiler was $500)._

If this was in 1976 - $2000 for a cheap C compiler. I had a quick look at the price of the Intel C/C++ compiler - $699, but the annual renewal fee is $249. In 1976, that would be roughly $175.

Her is an article with estimates of the development cost of the Linux kernel.

[http://www.linuxfoundation.org/sites/main/files/publications...](http://www.linuxfoundation.org/sites/main/files/publications/estimatinglinux.html)

I had a quick peek for an estimation of the cost of a compiler, but no luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It looks like he eventually got paid ;-)

</comment><comment><USER27> Damn. I read "to lobbyists".

<comment><USER17> me too, the first time... Such a sad state of the world....

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> For those who aren't familiar with this saga, Richard Stallman went on to found the Free Software Foundation about 10 years later and, in my opinion, has proven to Gates that you don't need to make software proprietary in order to make money.

<comment><USER29> Frankly, if I were choosing which of Richard Stallman and Bill Gates had demonstrated a more effective way to make money, I'd probably go the other way.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should users be made to fill a form before downloading? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I have a dilemma related to the free download version of the my startup's software (www.graphitecharts.com/download). We are a silverlight based charting library with an aim to support WPF and Windows Phone 7 in the near future. I know most people here hate plug-ins but our aim is to focus on intranet and extranet applications and sites, and eventually support sharepoint and possibly excel.
We launched on 22nd march 2011, that's the date I officially announced it on twitter and posted it to the visual studio gallery. We haven't had any sales yet, but we do get around 5-10 unique visitors a day from the visual studio gallery and google. 2 out of every 5 people who visit the site do download the free version. We have had around 50 downloads so far. The problem is I have no way to contact these people. I do not force them to fill any forms and but there is an optional comment form below. This setup stems from the fact that I personally get annoyed when I have to fill a form to try something out. I also hoped people who are genuinely interested will email us back on their own.
Problem is its not working. No one has filled the form and no has emailed us back. Its still early days but charting is hard (the first version has taken 1 year to build) and I would love feedback from users before I start working on the next version. So do you think I should force users to fill a form ? I will explicitly state there that we might contact you to ask for suggestions etc. in the future.
Any thoughts on this would be really helpful.
ps: I know the site needs a lot of work, so be gentle, but any feedback is welcome.
thanks, Anuj. <comment><USER2> Good work on skipping the forms; if you make me fill out a form before allowing me to download something I'm going to be mashing the keyboard with my palm.

Emailing people to solicit feedback seems a little bit weird. Just put a note somewhere (where it will be seen) reiterating that this is version one and you would really like any kind of feedback.

If that's not working, figure out some specific aspect you want feedback on and put the question out to a forum. For example I've seen some amazing UI design feedback come from cold-call requests on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that is one of the reasons I haven't put the form anyone can just fill it with gibberish just to get to the download. But I have asked a few people who have compulsory forms and all of them say that people fill them in and mostly accurately. So I don't know its confusing.

The note sounds like a good idea.

I'm hesitant to ask for specific feedback since its Silverlight and not Html 5 or something cooler. Most people will be instantly turned off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What kind of form....just email?

I would personally be very hesitant to fill out a form for free software (trial? full?), and be completely turned off by the prospect of having sales people contact me about it later.

Sometimes having nothing to say is a good thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> A form with just the persons name and email and optionally organization and how they plan to use the software. Something similar but much shorter from the optional one already on the download page.

Its the full version without any restrictions except it contains a watermark that links back to the site.

Even if I did put a compulsory form I would make it clear that you'll only be contacted for suggestions on product direction and never ever a sales pitch.</comment></comment>


The Dribbblisation of Design - <AUTHOR> http://insideintercom.io/the-dribbblisation-of-design/ <comment><USER2> As someone who went through a job hunt without a "Dribbblized" portfolio a couple years ago: Go with the Dribbble approach. At least if you're looking for anything resembling a design job.

That final layer of polish and execution is what gets you hired. If you don't have that, you get eliminated immediately. Nobody will ask about your process or your wireframes if your resume gets tossed in the trash bin. You'll never have a conversation about the organizational mission and how it relates to the product if you never get called back for an interview.

If you go in with Paul's first three steps (like I did) and you're lucky enough to talk to someone who doesn't eliminate based on that all-important fourth step of visual design, you'll find yourself in disagreement. There's 8,000 ways to build a product, and chances are your method simply won't line up with theirs.

Meanwhile, there's also 8,000 ways to make something look good, but all of those ways end up beautiful. It's hard to argue about solid visual design, even if it doesn't fit your particular style or tastes.

You can get away with subpar visual design skills at your own startup, like I did, but don't ever expect to get hired without developing those skills. They're more important than the other three combined.

<comment><USER3> As someone who has hired designers over the years for various startups, I agree.

The author seems to conflate UX with visual design or graphic design. They are not the same thing and often aren't done by the same person.

I've had fantastic UX designers who, frankly, can't get perfectly laid out pixel perfect work done or do eye candy. I've had UI/graphic designers who were awful at figuring out flow.

I've had people who are great at both. But one thing is certain, I want my products to be _intuitive_ AND _sexy_ because there is a certain subset of the market that will try your product just because it looks professionally designed and is on trend. There is a high overlap of those people with taste makers and I need those people using my product.

<comment><USER4> The author isn't conflating. That is what the words mean, and "UX" is the made up wank word. It's the "Web 2.0." of the design world.

I'm pretty sure "UX" was created as a term in response to the market getting flooded with stylists (interested amateurs) calling themselves "designers". I'm interested to see what you believe to be the distinction between "visual design" and "graphic design". Traditionally, Graphic design is about how it _works_ , with how it looks (what you call "eye candy") being secondary to (but still a part of) function. This is the sort of thing you can learn if you read books instead of just reading blog posts.

And clearly, the definition of "graphic design" has been watered down to the point of irrelevance, and replaced with "UX". sure, fine call yourself whatever you want. But what makes you think UX won't get similarly watered down? The problem isn't the word itself, it's that the culture as a whole doesn't value design, including "designers". (in your language, the culture doesn't value "UX")

Of course language is designed* by its users, and for the moment, it seems that we have indeed fully rotated our hierarchy words a notch down over the past 20 years. But please let us not be ignorant of history, and tradition, and what "graphic design" actually is (Or at least.. .used to be) and that the whole totem pole of design and designers is sliding on a downward trajectory. (I blame adobe for making it look easy. you could always look more convincingly like a skilled professional while operating a huge desk sized typesetting machine and laying out magazines by hand with paper, exacto blades, and photographic color separations)

But sure, maybe inventing new wank words will prop up our careers for 5 more years. It's good marketing. it's good design, to invent words, to sell ourselves. Inventing a new word for "design" is a very designery thing to do. You can make design seem interesting and exciting again by giving it a new flashy buzzword. That will only take you so far though, until the novelty wears off, and suddenly you find everyone believes "UX" means "interested amateur who can make eye candy in photoshop" again.

* see what I did there? "Design" being used to denote the decisions involved in how something works and is experienced, with no reference to how anything looks. Imagine that.

<comment><USER5> I can't tell if you're saying that visual/graphic designers are saying they are doing "UX", or if "UX" people are really just hand-waving visual designers?

I got lost around "wank word" and UX being the "Web 2.0 of the design world." Most UX people I know are focused on user research, usability, information architecture, and interaction design. I'd say maybe, 1 in 5 are visual designers, and maybe 1 in 3 have any passable graphic design skill at all.

Maybe you're saying that people will be just called "user researcher", "information architect", etc etc and not use the word UX. But I think "wank word" is a tad inaccurate.

<comment><USER4> I am saying that "Design" encompasses a lot of skills, many of which are "invisible" to most laymen- much in the same way that most of the code a developer writes is "invisible" making two pieces of software that outwardly appear to operate identically, can, in terms of code structure, maintainability, be vastly different in quality.

Most people in hiring positions couldn't give two shits that a designer is supposed to do more than just make things pretty- And so they hire people who call themselves "designers" that actually _are_ little more than glorified photoshop operators. Why? because these "designers" are cheaper than these other "designers" and it's not obvious why. The amateurs undercut the professionals.

This puts the real designers, the ones with educations, that actually know design principles, typography, psychology, etc, and have years of experience- in the difficult situation of having to distinguish themselves from these interested amateurs- these "stylists". So I believe, in a turn of marketing genius, some designers came up with the term "UX", and insist that it is NOT this lowly "design" thing, as you know it. It's this totally different thing that is /more/ than just making things look pretty.

Even though, all the things under the "UX" banner are familiar to people with design educations as "design".

That's what "Design" is. UX is just "Design". These are the normal things that you have to do to make a design work.

But how do you communicate that? How do you communicate that Javascript and HTML are capable of so much more now, than they were 5 years ago? You come up with a buzz word. Ajax. Web 2.0. HTML5. To experts who actually know their craft, these are obvious wank words. Meaningless checkboxes that accountants and recruiters can look for on resumes, designed to repackage skills that are decades old as something new and exciting.

But this is hacker news. We shouldn't have to use bullshit marketing terms here. That's for recruiters. That's for clients. Cut the shit, I say. Use the real words with their real meanings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article contains this gem: _...Redesigns of other people's work is pure folly e.g. the new Yahoo logo, iOS7, changes to Facebook, the New New Twitter, the American Airlines rebrand. People have no context for the decision making process involved in these projects, no knowledge of the requirements, constraints, organisational politics._

First, most of these redesigns are done in good fun, as a thought exercise for the designer. New thinking applied to familiar context.

But secondly, it's so important to understand that all brands and interfaces are ultimately judged by your customers, who have "no knowledge of [or patience for] the requirements, constraints, organisational politics." I've just heard that argument way too often used to prop up a poor design outcome. Good design remembers that the context of your product is in the hands of your consumer, not in the conference room of your headquarters.

If someone outside your company offers some free thoughts on your brand and identity, it's not a bad idea to look them over. They are relating to you as a customer. (And usually, a huge promoter.)

<comment><USER7> I upvoted you but I disagree. When designers do unsolicited "spec" redesigns of big brands, I don't think they are representing the customer.

You can't represent the customer without doing some real research with real customers. I can't remember ever seeing those sorts of results in a spec redesign post.

Instead, I think they are using the brand as a canvas to show off their own abilities. And they always pick a big popular brand, because then they can leverage that popularity to promote their work.

<comment><USER8> Andrew Kim has a great unsolicited redesign of the American Ballot system that considered users primarily and doesn't lean too heavy on using the brand as a canvas. [http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/america- elect](http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/america-elect)

Teensy bit bland for my tastes but it goes to show there are designer out there who do some quality redesigns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a designer on Dribbble. The work I present on Dribbble and the "actual" work I do for my clients are quite different most of the time. You can think of Dribbble as the "runway" of graphic/UI design - most of the stuff there are for showing off the designers' ability and/or are conceptual. They are fun and beautiful to look at, but not always designed for practical use, just like most people won't wear runway fashion everyday.

<comment><USER10> So it sounds to me like you agree with him – your Dribbble content is closer to "digital art" than "examples of your typical design work".

I wonder if there'd be an opportunity for a Dribbble-like site to showcase your "business goal articulation" or "optimised interaction flow"? I'm guessing not – partly because I don't think nearly as many people do that work for "fun" (in the way that many people _do_ create polished final renderings as an art/pastime), but mostly because I suspect there's significantly more business value in them – I'd expect to see that sort of higher-level business- strategic work showcased as whitepapers on a Digital Agency's website (or locked away behind NDAs or contractual/provacy agreements with the clients).

<comment><USER11> I mean... behance allows you to present your work in a way that's similar to a case study so people often do writeups and show sketches of their process.

<comment><USER10> Thanks, I hadn't seen Behance before, it seems interesting - I'll take a longer look later.

On a quick glance though, it's not quite what I was imagining, it's still _mostly_ focused on the final visuals. I was imagining something which'd stop well short of that (or at least downplay the final graphic styling), and instead highlight the problem discovery and solution process, the business goal articulation, the interaction design – perhaps everything upto the brief you'd then give to a designer. That'd fascinate me (but as I said upthread, that's quite probably considered significantly more valuable business intelligence or intellectual property by the people who're good at it than even highly polished visual designs – that's the stuff that makes a Razorfish or Mule Design job worth mid six figures, and why they're not competing with $5k or $25k "web design" firms).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you want designers to stop designing for Dribbble, stop hiring designers on the basis of their Dribbble profiles.

Right now, the evaluation and hiring process for designers in most companies is so shallow that cranking out eye-catching niblets is a HIGHLY rational move for designers looking to promote themselves.

<comment><USER13> I hired my logo designer off of Dribbble, with excellent results. It probably is less of a problem for logo design, than for something like UX or UI.

<comment><USER14> Out of interest, how do you measure excellent results?

<comment><USER13> It was a good process. My designer was quick, responsive, fairly priced, and came up with what I think is a great logo. I'm very happy with it, and I consistently get positive feedback ('cool robot'). What do you think: [http://www.predictobot.com/](http://www.predictobot.com/) ?

<comment><USER15> I'm going to use your logo as an example of what design should be and why the author is on the right track.

Your logo looks good. Visually, it's fine...

But what's the point of having dual colored shapes? Why is there a circle behind the antennas? What does the robot represent? Why orange? If you showed the logo to someone, would they be able to think of a word that coincides with a goal/mission of your company? Why is it looking down? If you're looking to predict (keywords: future, time, ready, etc.) then why not make it look forward?

These are the types of questions that struck me first looking at the logo. It feels like there was more focus on how it looked than to what it represents. That's how Dribble designs feel.

They look good and they get the job done (i.e. you have a logo, a client gets a site, etc.), but when you combine functionality with design, that's a real home run.

Using logo design as the example, the first goal of the designer should be to understand the company. What does it want to do? Why does it exist? Like a person, you want to get to know it before you can label it. Once you have the part of what you want to symbolize, what you want to communicate, you can start sketching. Start trying to really capture the soul of the company and present it in an aesthetic and still functional way.

Having aesthetics without much focus on function, that's what I feel the author is categorizing Dribble designers as.

Having functionality without aesthetic, well, we'll use an automobile for that example. A functional without aesthetic car would be a garbage truck.

Having aesthetics and function, you get brands like Porsche, Apple, Lego, OXO...

Sorry for going on a rant using your logo :-)

<comment><USER13> I appreciate what you're trying to say. People hire someone based on something shiny they see on Dribble, and they get something shallow and shiny as a result.

However, in my case, there was actually a lot more thought about the feel I wanted to the logo to project than you give us credit for. My company is about making predictive modeling easy, for people who are non-programmers. I wanted a look that was friendly, accessible, futuristic and high tech. I did spend a long time explaining to Ty Wilkins, my designer, what my business was about, and the feel I wanted to project.

We eventually decided that's we go with a mid-century "Tomorrowland" version of futuristic, as a way of combining the friendly with futuristic. The robot came out of that line of work. Since 50's robots were intelligent, it gets at prediction.

I think if you showed it to people they would come up with words like friendly. Eventually, I changed the name of the website to be Predictobot, to have a stronger tie in with the logo.

I did try hard not to be a back seat designer, since that's why I was hiring Ty. So the overall form of the robot is entirely his. The circle behind the antennas is to echo the '50's TV antennas. The orange is a warmer, friendlier color than more typical logo blues and greens.

So maybe I'm being naive, but I do think that we went through a good process of thought, that led to a solution that fit the brief. It wasn't just "give me something that looks good".

People do seem to connect with it. I don't hand out a single business card without getting a comment on how they like my logo. It represents what _I_ wanted to project for my one person business. And I found Ty on Dribbble ;-).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a designer, I totally, totally, totally agree with this statement:

> people say designers should code. Whether you agree with that or not, > designers certainly need to define the problem and solution not in pixels, > but in terms of describing what happens between components in a system ( > [http://insideintercom.io/the-dribbblisation-of- > design/](http://insideintercom.io/the-dribbblisation-of-design/))

My job isn't to make things pretty. Rather, it's to make things understandable. Only when aesthetic appeal makes something easier-to-use & understand does it make sense for me to incorporate it into my design.

In other words: A good designer won't just polish a turd.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Design starts at the top of a company with the company mission. Then the company vision. It's very hard to do great design in an organisation without a clear and actionable mission and vision. Don't underestimate the importance of this. If your company lacks a clear mission, make it your job to facilitate the creation of one."

This is so true. It's way to easy to get lost in creating beautiful designs, oohing and ahhing at little neat interactions, etc. But if it's not fulfilling the initial goal of what you're trying to accomplish it's sadly a waste of time and resources. That's not to say you can't accomplish both (beautiful design that also meets the goals of the app) - but it's a lot harder than it sounds. And very easy to get derailed. Setting up some periodic checkpoints along the way to keep checking back that you're still on target can definitely help.

</comment><comment><USER18> The author seems to incorrectly conflate UX and visual design.

Dribbble is purely for showcasing visual design (aka technical implementation). It's the price of admission for being a designer. Dribbble isn't for, nor should it be for, explaining UX decisions.

User experience design and interaction design are different skill sets within the design discipline.

If you are impressed with someone's dribbble, then arrange for a phone interview or an in-person white boarding session.

Design is problem solving just like engineering, just a different type of problem set. Treat it as such.

</comment><comment><USER19> Interesting point.

I recently started using dribbble and thought, "I wish there was more detail in how they came to that conclusion regarding design, layout, and some information architecture". There have few who actually do, but was dribbble founded with the OP main concern in mind? I have a background in research from working in a Research Lab, IT, and project management. Now I'm starting my career in UXD and UD. From my perspective it helps to start with a wireframe, documenting a sitemap, interview the clients, hell even have a case study (this one is usually over looked), call-to-actions, purpose of the created User Experience. I've met with a couple senior UXD people in the field (who are nice as well, btw) and always say mention people always are trapped in the color schemes, wow factor, and forget that main question: "Who is your user?".

<comment><USER20> I'm in the same boat (background in data/finance trying to eek into UX or prod mgmt). I've noticed it all just boils down to definition.

"Design" seems to be evolving from pure aesthetics (what's the first emotion evoked upon sight) to aesthetics+function (what's the first reaction, and how does this affect my audience). Maybe it's because 10 years ago "designer" was purely synonymous with fashion or pure photoshop/illustrator. Now it seems to represent anyone and everyone from graphics/visuals, to interaction and information, and even just product.

It makes me wonder though, if there were a dribbble of site flows, wireframes, and creative call-to-actions, would people flock to it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hire UI and UX designers. It is rather difficult to find someone who is truly adept at even one of those skills, let alone both. Throw in HTML/CSS skill, and now this big-picture-focused-thinking mindset, and I might as well go on an albino sasquatch hunt in Central Park. And if you work for a big company like me, you have to stick to a salary range set by HR department for a given position.

This article offers many solid advice for that talented albino sasquatch designer looking to differentiate himself in his job application for a well- funded start up.

But for the rest of us monkeys, having an extremely solid looking visual design skill (even at the expense of being a bit too trendy) will serve us well. These days, I have to go through about 30 resumes to see 1 that has fairly good design skill, and still not Dribbbbbble level.

</comment><comment><USER22> When I read this type of criticism, I always get the impression that everyone thinks they are better at what they do than everyone else.

<comment><USER23> How so? And what is "this type of criticism"? To me it looks like the design world has taken one concept and hyped and warped it, missing the point of the original goals.

I don't see this article as any different than the misuse of Hadoop article that was posted yesterday.

<comment><USER24> >> And what is "this type of criticism"?

Perhaps _gross generalisation_ is a fitting term? Basically it's somewhat insulting to insinuate that designers on Dribbble believe glamour shots are the be-all and end-all of design. I've heard several prominent Dribbblers interviewed on various web design podcasts, they know what it is and what it isn't.

>> To me it looks like the design world...

Whoah there, you can judge the collective opinion of 'the design world' from your desk?! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> While the author gives some great tips about product design, I don't think it's fair to say that Dribbble is belittling product design. You don't really get the full picture with each shot. You don't know what the designer's agenda is with that particular image, whether it's for fun or is going to be implemented in an actual product. I doubt that all designers on Dribbble go in head-first by only caring about the visuals. I can see where the author tried to go with this article, but I don't think that you can really place a single label on an entire community.

</comment><comment><USER26> I agree with this article, but who is to say the goal of Dribbble isn't to just showcase visual design? To join Dribbble, you must get an invite from a Dribbble user. Dribbble users invite people who have similar taste and design state-of-mind as they do. So in the end you get a gated community of designers who think and work alike.

The problem with this I see is that non-design people who wants to hire designers think that Dribbble is the "go to" standard of design, without thinking of usability problems their product[s] have that needs solving.

<comment><USER27> You nailed it. Dribbble excels at featuring and sharing solutions to visual design challenges. Icons. Logos. UI components that show effective affordance (as best you can tell from a small screenshot).

I think Dribbble is somewhat a victim of success; everyone wants in and uses it as they see fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I do not expect a company with a name that seems cribbed straight from the lyrics to "Here Comes Another Bubble" to remain a mainstay of standards in the design world for very long.

This, too, shall pass.

<comment><USER10> While I mostly agree with you, I bet the AltaVista team at Digital said the same thing about that stupidly named "Google" company started by those two academics with no business experience…

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This piece seems to me to inject just the right amount of formalism into this process. That is, I've seen other efforts in this direction build prodigious piles of abstraction, rules, and theory around this mission/vision device and around the equivalents of these four-layer and "jobs" models. Whereas, I can imagine any small group of decision-makers responding productively to this material.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think a company having a design language and identity is a powerful and wonderful thing. It makes decisions easier, it makes things so much more clear and improves what you do a lot.

At a higher level, having a vision, a framework, a filter by which you make choices and solve problems makes the whole process of doing these things easier.

</comment><comment><USER31> [http://creativebeatle.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/elements_o...](http://creativebeatle.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/elements_of_user_experience_design.jpg)

Referenced in the notes. Very useful.

</comment><comment><USER32> I always thought the point of Dribble was to have someplace to show off your greenfield pie-in-the-sky work to other designers, not to impress clients with how well you can work with their organization.

</comment><comment><USER33> It sounds like you could relate the same statement to using github has hiring criteria. And, I believe enough discussion around that, as an indicator of technical ability, has already happened to say that it is only an indicator of awareness, interest, and activity. I would be interested in knowing how other industries have handled the online portfolio trend. Has SoundCloud affected the hiring of musicians, or YouTube and acting auditions?

</comment><comment><USER34> I've actually been having trouble recommending people upgrade to (or purchase new) iOS7 (devices) for this exact reason, even I sometimes don't understand how to use it anymore, so I can't tell my Luddite F&F to use something that costs more and has become as hard to use, as say android.

I can only hope that Apple will learn the error of their ways and turn back to function over form.

</comment><comment><USER35> While I agree with the main sentiment of this article, I have a nitpick on the main caption image. For me there is a significant loss of information, when an app summarizes something as non-linear and hard-to-predict as weather into boolean statements. So I am not sure if the umbrella app is solving weather reporting problem correctly.

</comment><comment><USER36> _The web is with us all the time. It's already moving into our cars, into our clothes, into the things we own, into monitoring our health._

Is he using the word 'web' instead of 'Internet'? Does anyone know of the web moving into our clothes?

<comment><USER37> It's a very, very common synonym, short for world-wide web.

<comment><USER36> I'm aware. They shouldn't be used interchangeably.

<comment><USER34> Could you expand on that, I've heard people say this but I've never heard a good reason for why, they just assumed I understood it intuitively, when it wasn't too clear at all.

<comment><USER38> The web is the network of hypermedia documents, the internet is the network of computer networks. A "web page" is a node in the graph of the web. A "computer" is a node in the graph of the internet. For practical purposes, the "internet" is the things that link together using [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol) and the "web" is things that link together using URIs.

The web is content, the net is machinery.

When you are on Xbox and playing against someone else, you are playing over the internet but you are not playing over the web. Similarly, you can download web pages but you cannot download the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I agree Dribbble favors visual designers. But, there are some really great UX people on there too. Follow the right people and you will get a nice blend of UX and Visual Design.

</comment><comment><USER40> What are some resources/guides to design in a Dribbble style? There is obviously a consistent aesthetic (effects, shadows, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER41> I stopped reading the article when I saw the image of the Intercom product architecture. Who needs shitty documentation like that?

</comment><comment><USER42> If there is anything I hate more than the technique described in the OP, it are websites which don't center content.

</comment><comment><USER43> Product design != Graphic design. Theming an app != designing an app. Bye.

</comment><comment><USER44> Dribbble is to design what GitHub is to coding. Case closed.

<comment><USER45> If so, dribbble is like letting you post only the first 5 lines of a README.md without commit history. Not quite the same.

<comment><USER44> In design world, if you need more than 5 lines, you're doing it wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The problem is ego, Designers have a too much of it.

</comment><comment><USER47> The problem with this article is the author doesnt understand that

1/ People are not going to post briefs,diagrams, or product strategies of their clients. No business want these informations to be public. It's like sharing the source code of some proprietary app. Even during an interview you dont do that.

2/ Dribble is for static assets , png ,final results that can be made public, not some hidden documents on the why of the what.

3/ Redesign as an exercice is good,it is not art nor restyling. You have constraints set by the product it self.

4/ Yes, Dribbble is basically a showcase and an inspiration tool for designers ,there is nothing wrong with that.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. Dribbble is a canvas where you post whatever the fuck you want knowing that most likely you won't be able to use it anyway. It's a way to say, "look how cool it is", and move on.

It's not unlike posting a snippet of cool JS/CSS/whatever on HN and showcasing it. Yes it's not practical but it COULD be inspirational.

One reason why fashion shows exist is to give trickle inspiration to other fashion designers, not to be an exercise in practicality.</comment></comment>