Focus on the high-expectation customer - <AUTHOR> https://uxdesign.cc/stop-designing-products-for-random-people-4734423cbfe6 <comment><USER2> Hallelujah! Maybe this will put a dent in the current _dumbification_ trend of all apps/UIs etc. that's probably due to 'designing for the lowest common denominator'.

Hint: _any app /tool/etc. that's "designed for the average user", will only help its user be(come) average and below average!_

Now try imagining selling a product with the slogan _" XYZ - Helping you stay mediocre, and even drop below the average! Use us every day, keep greatness away!_ ...if you're doing data-driven-product-design targeting the "average user", you're building just such a product!

<comment><USER3> That was my initial gut feeling as well but high-expectation doesn't necessarily mean "more features" or "more customization". It could mean "simply works without much trouble" and then the dumbification trend fits perfectly.

<comment><USER4> The article was pretty specific about what it meant. She meant 1) someone who benefited from the solution 2) already had a hacked-together solution, and 3) had other people looking up to them in their field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Funny story. My dad was a city planner for a small town who also ran the inspections department.

He would get frequent letters and calls from a particular citizen about inspection violations, who was kind of a pain in his ass.

So my dad hired him. And he became the best inspector he'd ever worked with.

<comment><USER6> I like working with people with high expectations because you learn the most from them but you can't let them dictate your self-worth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's also important to note that the high-expectation customer is not the high-frequency complainer that you will have in your customer base. Don't confuse the two, they are opposites.

In my experience with my own company, there were customers who would reach out very often with ideas, complaints, and questions.

I learned at some point that these customers often were just confused did not even really understand their own problems. Figuring out a solution to help someone in that position is a very ineffective way to think about the product.

In terms of the model presented by the article, those vocal customers often lacked the hacker spirit, they benefitted marginally and were never considered experts in their field.

Took me a while to understand that the volume of feedback is not correlated with meaningful gains of information.

<comment><USER8> For this reason, I'm not sure "high-expectation customer" is a good term.

It also doesn't capture this part well: "someone who will benefit the most from your product, whether they realise this yet or not". If they don't realise it, their expectations are zero.

Maybe 'high potential benefit' would be a better term ("HPB customers").

<comment><USER9> I would say "high performance customer". The one that is going to push your product to its limits, trying to make it do more than you thought it could. Those limits are where you need to add features so people don't have to hack around the limitations.

<comment><USER10> So, "power customer" (analogous to power user)?

<comment><USER7> I would invoke the "skin in the game" metaphor. Listen to customers who have a vested interest, for their own reasons (brand building, networking, the "expert" part) as well as for optimizing some part of their professional workflow, making your service a catalyst of their moneymaking abilities (the benefitter part). The hacker part to me is mostly a consequence of frustration or necessity, and that is different for every industry.

If a publicly outspoken professional uses your software, engage them. That has been very helpful for our company every single time. It resulted in great publicity, brand building and in almost all cases meaningful insight into the what and why of their actual business problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you take this advice, you'll run straight into the famous Innovators Dilemma ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma)).

And, I have personally experienced at least one counter-example to this advice. Your product can be pushed into a direction that meets only one person's needs, and confuses everyone else.

This is fine for a personal tool, and deadly to a tool that wants to be widely and frequently used.

Free advice is a risk-free way to get others to test your hypothesis for you.

<comment><USER12> Either I'm greatly misinterpreting your comment, or you mean something different than the innovators dilemma (maybe crossing the chasm?).

The innovators dilemma (and CC) refers to incumbents (established and huge) having issues handling disruptive /revolutionary innovation (in particular low value ones) due to issues with creating new markets due to not seeing enough size initially, path dependency, etc. This article seems to be targeted at startups.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but companies don't see that they are running into this problem unless they get outside their own bubble.

When they keep doing what worked for them yesterday, they run into trouble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is actually a very narrow way of looking at users. There are plenty of situations that the users aren't aware of their "problem" or "need". In other words, they are not aware, that they could do something more easily, comfortably, etc. Or maybe they are aware, but don't have a solution. These people never fulfil the "hacker" or "expert" condition.

I would even argue, that designing primarily for anyone who could be described as "hacker" or "expert", is a highway to hell. These people have significantly different mind and way of using products (especially tech products), than mass market. So picking up this particular segment is a bad choice for most (not all) products.

<comment><USER14> > These people have significantly different mind and way of using products > (especially tech products), than mass market.

I think the point the article is trying to make is the high-expectation customers have or quickly find a way that definitely works for them. Whereas the typical customer will poke at it, say it doesn't work, and move on.

From a design standpoint, you want to start with an overall system that definitely works with some motivation and then solve the problems that block other customers from using it.

And I think it's implicit in their argument that you won't solve these problems for everyone who could potentially use the product, and that's a business tradeoff you have to make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >Once you identify your benefiter, you need to understand how your product can help them get where they want to be.

How can you identify a benefiter of a product, without knowing the problem that the product is going to solve (help them where they want to be)?

>hacks are temporary fixes at best. They _(the high expectation customers)_ need a single solution that meets all their demands.

This isn't true, a hack doesn't imply that it's temporary, its longevity depends on the underlying problem and problem space. And even if they would be temporary, quick hacks can be more flexible and make it easier to react to a changing environment, so if that's important..

<comment><USER16> > How can you identify a benefiter of a product, without knowing the problem > that the product is going to solve (help them where they want to be)?

The two go hand in hand. You need to have an idea of where you want to be. However once you find the customer willing to spend money (if you are a business make sure they are willing to spend money!), you should chase the and ensure they are satisfied first. Don't make them regret giving you money by prioritizing features that they don't need over features they need. Make sure they are satisfied first, and use their satisfaction to drive more customers who are treated the same way.

Of course you need to be careful. If you want more than one customer you may eventually need to do a feature your customer doesn't need because future customers will, even at the expense of losing your one customer. This is a complex decision that you need to consider carefully - in part because how you treat your customer gets out and may drive away potential customers. There are a lot of products out there with exactly one customer, one more consideration. You need to figure out how this applies to your product yourself.

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't it be smarter to be the customer yourself, basically develop something for your own (business) progress or job to be done, and then sell it optionally to those in a similar situation?

The market first approach (developing a product for demand) only seems to really work with more generic products without high development cost, where the product advantages that result from deeper customer insights can't really play out. Where you don't run the risk of being outcompeted by a company that has those insights and customer trust from "wearing the same shoes" as their customers.

Market first could also work if you anticipate a future demand and it's a completely new market without any players yet, where you'd become the trusted choice over time because you're then seen as the original brand. But without funding it could be impossible to sustain to the point until you have enough customers.

<comment><USER16> Only if you are your own customer. There is a lot of need for software where the user is not a developer, and has better things to do with their time than write software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hm. I've always thought that building for the hacker/expert is a mistake, because it means building for someone who is willing to invest more time in figuring out what your software can do for them and figure out your UX (and has more skill at doing so) than many, and you're going to wind up with a UX that less expert non-hackers find confusing and too hard to figure out, and give up on without finding value.

The hacker/expert understands the problem domain better than most (expert), and is willing to invest more time in figuring out how to find value in the software (hacker) than most users. Unless you only want to target hackers/experts (which you can if you think there are enough of them), it seems dangerous to your UX to focus on them.

Am I wrong?

(Focus, at first anyway, on those who will get the most benefit from the product "whether they realise this yet or not" \-- seems unproblematic good advice to me).

</comment><comment><USER18> I have high expectations for free apps/services: They need to work immediately without a learning curve. See "hallway testing". They need to be competent but only modestly useful, if better alternatives are not available.

I have different high expectations for something I pay for. They need to be marketed to me, proving to me that they solve my real life problems competently. They can have a reasonable learning curve.

<comment><USER19> You could reject some very good free apps then. But I kinda agree with you. It's partly the phenomenon of attaching little value to something one gets for cheap/free. And conversely, people can bend over backwards to be impressed by something they pay a lot of money for.

<comment><USER20> I think the difference is that if it's a free app[1], the developer wants me to use it and I need to be convinced that it's worth my time.

If it's a paid app, I've already decided that it's worth money. If the app offers enough value for me to pay, then it offers enough value for me to learn what I need to learn.

[1] excluding open source - sure they want me to use it, but that's more like "here it is, use it if you want it". My expectations there are very different, particularly since I can often change things if it doesn't quite do what I want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great article. When you design in that niche in your mind, it gives you a different perspective. It is a similar approach to what feature to have in the product is equally important to what features not to have there.

<comment><USER22> > It is a similar approach to what feature to have in the product is equally > important to what features not to have there.

1000 times this. I used to work for a company that would add features if a customer asked for them and was willing to pay for them. Needless to say the product felt bloated, was hard to develop and maintain.

It was almost comical to see the Tech lead get incensed when a feature he'd lovingly crafted was completely and utterly unknown to the support team because no customer had used it, not even the customer that nominally had paid for it.

Unfortunately, this happened more than once.

edit:

I should add that our official day rate was comically low and sometimes would go lower to match what the sales person thought the customer would be willing to pay while nominally making a profit, I wish I were making this up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > You won't just end with a product that solves real problems, you will win > loyal customers who are vested in improving the product.

This is so true - but customers, especially the high expectations / nerd crowd, have grown incredibly tired of the industry trend that after product takeoff, sales/VC demand takes over and their (valuable) feedback is outright ignored. Just look how fucked up Twitter became over the years, the latest UI change is just another part of a string of shitload of management failures.

What this means: do not be sure this strategy will work out because customers have learned from other startups in history.

</comment><comment><USER24> I know this is bound to get modded to oblivion but, what about customers who want utility based on real engineers and hackers and not magic marketing fluff. My day job is a diesel engine mechanic so im sure as shit not a "benefiter" or a runner or any of that. I dont have any kefir cultures or micro-greens unless somethings turned bad in the fridge.

Example: I own a ramnode VM, and it lets me do 90% of the studying and hacking i like because the people who make it happen are probably really interested in Linux like me. ramnode gives me space to really, really screw up a lot and learn how to recover or learn how to push forward. I get a good back-door to un-screw whatever it was i thought was a good idea (last week it was dd)

why not listen to the sysadmins and the SRE?

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure I get your point. People creating products specifically for SRE and sysadmins definitely listen to them (or they should)

But not all products are for SRE or sysadmins (I'd venture to say most are not), so why would people listen to SRE and sysadmins specifically if they're not the target of the product ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> >A gig economy worker (startup founder, ...)

That made me chuckle a bit.

</comment><comment><USER19> The Blog has its own domain but is actually part of Medium.com? I don't think I've seen this before.

<comment><USER27> It's quite common, and unfortunately awful given there's extra redirects (to medium.com and then back to the custom domain) to make their auth work. This is quite slow on a less than perfect internet connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Such a strong way to think about problems and products. Way better than segments and personas.

</comment><comment><USER29> Writers: stop being so damned bossy.

The imperative title has had its run in the fussy etiquette pieces that so often pass as 'opinion' in newspapers. It wasn't any good there, and doesn't merit wider adoption.

<comment><USER30> > Writers: stop being so damned bossy.

Yes.

The article itself is very slightly more nuanced than its title, but it still describes a very targeted range of user ('hipster', 'geek'), that doesn't include 'employee' and 'tourist', for example.

> The imperative title has had its run in the fussy etiquette pieces

I agree that it is important to understand possible users, but the specific imperative of this title is not appropriate given the range of all the different types of possible users that developers may need to support.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Yet Another REST Client (JavaScript) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hiquest/yarc <comment><USER2> This already uses your product "name" \- not sure if it'll be a problem, but worth checking.

[https://yet-another-rest-client.com/](https://yet-another-rest-client.com/)</comment>


Relentlessly Simplify - <AUTHOR> https://den.dev/blog/relentlessly-simplify/ <comment><USER2> When I think about the successful, interesting people I have known in my life, I struggle to think of one that fitted this zen minimalist model. Most (all maybe?), have messy or at least full offices and houses. They have lots of interest in things, and have artefacts of those interests around them. Lots of half-finished/in progress projects, books, papers, tools, materials and so on.

What they have in common is relentless and flexible thinking about their subject(s) of interest, not, like, really nice sound systems.

That's not to say that minimalism doesn't work for some, but I don't think all this meta stuff matters much. And I'd like to see some evidence from sorts of people who write about how great minimalism is that it does.

<comment><USER3> When I was younger someone tried to sell me the idea that your desk reflects your head.

This bothered me briefly until I realized that if this was the case I'd rather have a messy desk than an empty desk ;-)

<comment><USER4> Minimalism sometimes is an economic class identifier. Maintaining a tidy and minimal living environment is much easier if you can outsource all housework, and upgrade to the absolute latest technology, and if you don't feel much need to hoard anything because you can afford to buy or rent exactly what you want precisely when you want it.

<comment><USER5> It's also sometimes not, though. In college I was a minimalist mostly out of necessity - it's not hard to keep tidy if you can only afford a $600/mo. bedroom and only own a laptop, bed, a desk, and some clothes.

<comment><USER4> I agree that it is not always an economic class thing. Of course, the stereotype is that college dorm rooms are notoriously messy. So it is sometimes just an extension of one's personality, habits, and aesthetics.

Other caveats include children and pets. With some kids and some pets, it doesn't matter how much money you have and how tidy you are by habit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Long down this road. More tips:

Routinizing your diet can bear more useful fruit than anything else. First prioritize ease of preparation, then taste and enjoyment, then health. Doing it in that order makes the subsequent steps a million times easier.

At work, I would go out to eat every day. They clean out the fridge every week and any time I'd start to get into a lunch routine, the fridge cleanout wrecked progress every time and I'd be back to eating out. Eventually I started bringing canned soups to work as they don't need refrigeration. With lunch no longer being subject to the dictates of the fridge schedule, I can start prioritizing taste and enjoyment. I got oil, vinegar, hot sauce, salt and pepper grinders to add to the soups. Canned chicken adds a lot to them as well, and just enough calories so that I don't get hungry again an hour later.

I have similar routines for dinner, which allows more flexibility due to a fridge I can control and a stove and utensils and all that. It's still limited by the fact that I can't cook every single night. So I compromise, building on frozen dinners, adding onions, peppers, seasonings, butter, protein, then saving half for the next day. Make things a little better each time while staying within your routine. Eventually it's all muscle memory and your mind focuses on what's new and it doesn't feel like drudgery.

Health comes in after you've finished the heavy lifting on the first two. I started noticing little differences in how I feel after meals, and adjusting how much I eat each time. Pounds have been coming off effortlessly, but I don't feel hungry very often unless I get off my routine for whatever reason.

Your computing life can be simplified the same way. Build on a foundation, in my case Ubuntu. Years ago I maintained a set of instructions, nowadays my scripts are reliable enough to get a brand new Ubuntu system from just installed to usable in some 10 minutes. I use them more often than you'd think.

You learn deeper concepts over time. I kept everything on Dropbox until I found Spacemacs and projectile, now I'm moving it all back to git. I used to keep complicated sync scripts in .bashrc, now I manually run a sync script as a matter of routine. Workflowy is giving way to orgmode. Ruby may never be dislodged from my life, but I've been adding in Crystal for use in keyboard macros. More power is slowly earned and the number of Sorcerer's Apprentice ordeals dwindles.

<comment><USER7> My optimization is OMAD... only focus on one meal per day, I try to keep it keto-ish. But not required. When food has less daily focus weight falls off. Lost 95 pounds last year. Hoping for another 95 in 2020.

<comment><USER6> I lost a ton of weight that way several years ago. Something about my mindset means I can't do the same thing twice though. I decided for my next push it would be a true lifestyle change. Meaning no temporary changes like eating different things than I'd normally eat, like keto or slow carb, nor forcing myself to be hungry. Neither of these tactics are sustainable over the long term.

I mean, if you can force yourself to eat once a day for the rest of your life, or never eat a donut ever again, well, more power to you. I'm not that disciplined. What I can do is pay close attention to how full I feel and eat only until then, never keep going until I'm stuffed. Even then it's only for the few times a week where I'm not eating one of my portioned out routine meals.

For awhile I was getting hungry during the day outside a meal so I keep pre- portioned 100 calorie snacks, usually nuts, for 3pm. As I slowly adjust my intake downwards, my need for these is slowly going away. I think when my current stash is gone, I may not need to re-up.

Now I can't even really imagine doing it significantly differently. If I drove to work I'd bring a week's worth of lunch from home and precook it, but since I walk I don't want to carry all that.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it's the only way that works for me... but I tend to do it in 6 month spurts. Then I go off. I think the biggest thing is I gave up reg. soda at the same time. So while I go off/on the plan, I haven't gained the weight back, though I do yo-yo 10 pounds or so depending on my sweet tooth. I also did crossfit, and need to get back into that to get to my next goal. I've got bad ADHD and am now on meds and feel I got things sort of in order, but I still feel there's not enough time in my life for everything I want to do... Fitness takes a back seat often over family events, and working on my 'mvps', and client work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a video of a slime mold finding food: [https://youtu.be/GwKuFREOgmo](https://youtu.be/GwKuFREOgmo)

It seems to be operating in something like 2 main phases: an initial exploratory phase in which it expands almost in every direction and then a second "optimization" (simplification) phase in which it just keeps the links between the food sources.

I think we operate in a similar way. We learn by exploring and then we optimize when "exploiting".

Everyone is different though, some like exploring more, others like optimizing more, and there's a big range in between. It also depends on the subject or activity.

I personally almost exclusively enjoy the exploration part (learning about things), and don't have much interest in the optimization part (executing repetitively the same thing for gain).

</comment><comment><USER9> "Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler." I have a Google Sheet that lets me track items as

calendared, with a priority increasing as the date approaches

"done at this time", with a repeat timeframe, and again ramping priority

Set priority project / reminder, so I can get to it when all the other priorities above them are clear

I've added some extra features on top of that (a column that lets me do a one time +/\- to the priority) and it just works the way I think now.

Plus Simple Notepad on my phone so i'm two clicks away from typing down anything that comes up.

</comment><comment><USER10> So just to re-iterate, here are the products you need to purchase to simplify your life

* A notebook

* Some phone apps like Flow

* Bulk toothpaste

* Duplicates of utilities like USB cables

* UNIQLO t-shirts

* A Sonos speaker system

* Ubiquity networking equipment

Gosh it sure seems expensive to live a simple life.

<comment><USER11> Except for the last two, the rest are cheap items. I feel like this is a canned response that is valid for some types of self help articles, but this is a personal blog, and the "article" is just a list of some cool stuff the author likes. Maybe the title is over the top for someone with a sonos setup, but again, it's a personal blog.

<comment><AUTHOR> [Author of blog post here] YMMV may vary - what works for me and saves me time is not necessarily something that will work for others, so very much spot on observation about this being a reflection on a personal approach that helped me. It's by no means a universal mantra.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been meaning to put some of the principles laid out here to practice in my personal life. I've always been the guy with the cluttered desk. Though I feel no compulsion to keep it tidy, I must admit that when I do decide to tidy it up, I feel a sense of ease and relief - like some invisible, slightly intangible burden has just been lifted off my shoulders.

I think this is the feeling that people get when they simplify things and try to adhere to minimalism. It's easy enough to focus first on your digital life, like the author noted. Get rid of all the unnecessary things on your phone. Then perhaps move to your computer - tidy and organize all those random links and shortcuts on your desktop and organize all those digital photos.

Then of course, applying the principles to your own life in physical reality. Automating monthly payments, getting recurring shipments of things you need (I get monthly shipments of coffee, but you could probably get things like toilet paper, soaps, etc.), tidying up your house or apartment. I believe we all heard the stories about how Steve Jobs had multiples of the same shirts/pants to simplify his decision making in the morning and free his mind. Personally, I went and got 10 pairs of the same socks and did away with most of my others (socks of various sizes, colors, lengths, etc.) - now, whenever a sock loses its pair, I can simply pair it up with another sock as they are, after all, the same.

Minimalism has quite a few benefits, how you can best implement it in your own life will vary depending on your routine and lifestyle.

<comment><USER13> I think that sense of relief, when you clean up a work area, is tangible and has a biological explanation.

As David Allen (Getting Things Done) observed, we maintain a __physical __memory palace in these workspaces. Each item on the workspace is a todo, an unfinished object, a project in progress, or a reference thing in case we ever need it again. The link is works both ways: either brain-to-desk or desk-to- brain. You can probably remember where in the pile a document for some project is.

There is tangible stress having all that stuff in your head.

The beauty of filing things away where they go, off your desk, is that you get it out of your head, trusting the system, and the stress is relieved! It doesn't really matter what system you use as long as you trust it and it gets it out of your head and off your workspace.

<comment><USER14> I wonder how this maps to the number of browser tabs a person keeps open. I'm a "less than 10" guy myself. Sometimes I see someone with like 100 tabs open, and it stresses me out.

I use a Chrome extension called OneTab that at the click of a button, collects your open tabs into an internal chrome extension page, from which you can reopen them if desired.

As you say, I find that this gets things "out of my head" into a system I can trust, and I can switch context more easily once I have done this.

<comment><USER12> I'm also one of those people you're referring to with '100 tabs open' (well, technically, I currently have 83 tabs spread across 5 browser windows). It can be kind of stressful sometimes, but my fear of not being able to find what I was looking for should I need a page again always seems worse.

Of course, I know there are native methods and browser extensions to mitigate the possibility of losing things, but old habits die hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've always sort of chafed at the "simplification" model of things, the term I like is "deliberateness". Have a lot of stuff or a litte, but make sure you're not just mindlessly accumulating or pushing away things.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's interesting the contrast between the Sonos soundbar piece and the networking setup - both are described as simple, but I think one is much more complicated to set up than the other. So I suppose it's about the end result being easier to reason about, versus the overall convenience?

Minimalism is good in both life and work. The best code is no code, and the next best is as little code as possible.

<comment><USER17> Simple != Easy

Like certain stuff looks simple in ie. golang, there's tons of opinionated design decision behind every nuance of the language. For some, simple would be more like Haskell, while for others bash (until they need to understand old code). Each eye of the beholder can argue either way.

So what is most simple? Compile linux kernel by hand, or automate it? Automation becomes "simpler" (more valuable) the more it is actually used.

The article talks about simplifying, though is more about discipline, something many find hard to find motivation and incentives for in this age of instant gratification!

<comment> ISO-morphism > Simple != Easy

> For some, simple would be more like Haskell, while for others bash (until > they need to understand old code). Each eye of the beholder can argue either > way.

Certainly simple != easy, but I think in the second part there "simple" should be replaced with "easy". Simple is objective, while easy is subjective [1]. Haskell may be easier for some as they've spent more time with it, similarly bash for others. However, their simplicity, i.e. how many concerns are intertwined, how much global context is required to reason about a program, can be more objectively analyzed.

> The article talks about simplifying, though is more about discipline, > something many find hard to find motivation and incentives for in this age > of instant gratification!

Indeed, it takes discipline to maintain simplicity. Simplicity is hard. Complexity is easy. "If I had more time to write, this letter would be shorter."

[1] [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made- Easy/](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Getting a 40-hour-a-week job and not having kids is my strategy. I don't have to relentlessly optimize my time management strategies.

<comment><USER19> Not having kids is BY FAR a simpler life. I wish these articles were bucketed into life's various phases and situations. Though most suggestions still apply, there's something about the time commitment and in-your-personal-space- ness that makes simplification more difficult.

<comment><AUTHOR> [Author of blog post here] Totally fair observation - the article I put together naively skips through some of the most complicated aspects of life. Someone that has kids, a different commute, a job that requires different effort, health-related concerns, etc. may not have an easy time at all with the approach of "simplifying" things around them. The post itself is not meant to be some sort of a universal, "you should do this and your life will be peachy" advice, but rather a reflection on what worked best for me personally, that will hopefully get people thinking about what works for them in their own stages of life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think that "simple" rather than "minimal" is an important distinction that is sometimes overlooked. Sometimes adding something new will let you reduce a lot of friction.

For example, a paper journal or a plain text to-do list is very minimal, but I've found that having a dedicated to-do app is the best way for me to simplify my workflow.

* I can dump in new tasks with a quick keystroke as they come up and manage them later

* I can set a date for upcoming things and get automatic reminders

* I can make recurring tasks repeat automatically

* I can keep a backlog of completed tasks out of sight until I need to refer to something

Or, when my room is messy that usually means things are left out where I use them and are usually within reach. When I tidy up and put things away, I need to spend effort thinking about where something is, go get it, and put it away again when I'm done with it. Messy can be simpler than clean.

</comment><comment><USER21> > hassle-free Sonos system at home instead of trying to fiddle with custom > soundbars, connectors, sub-par applications

I found this kind of funny, given my experience with the Sonos at work:

* it seemingly can't stay on the wifi

* the app crashes frequently, often mid song, leaving you with something that can't be controlled (without the buttons) for a few minutes while the app starts back and and lazily attempts to reconnect.

* both the app and the device apparently need to do updates all the time, and it will nag you relentlessly if you don't do the update before eventually not letting you use it at all.

* It doesn't appear to support airplay, but sometimes iTunes and Spotify can cast to it in a rickety kind of way?

* The app UI/UX is also downright horrible.

It's quite literally the opposite of what I'd consider simple.

<comment><AUTHOR> [Author of blog post here] I'd say it probably varies and depends on a lot of factors - sometimes I have issues with the Play One connecting over AirPlay, but overall it _significantly_ reduces friction compared to all other audio systems I've used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I first need to have the realisation that things have become wasteful or complicated in some aspect of my life. Simplifying things becomes clearer at that point. However, I still often need to go through that wasteful, trial and error process of figuring out that I need to simplify. I always admire those people that seem to have a kind of common sense or self awareness to realise that they don't need something in the first place. There's a kind of directness of thought and clarity of execution which seem totally natural.

</comment><comment><USER23> I love how almost nothing in his blog post seems simple... yet that's was his goals.

I guess it's "simple" for him, but then it would means it's learned and anything can become simple considering that.

To me that sounds more like, finding what's works for him, and has nothing to do with simplifying. He seems to get to the same conclusion at the end.

<comment><AUTHOR> [Author of blog post here] Bingo - this is a reflection on my own process. It's not a recipe for others to follow as much as it is food for thought and maybe a push to figure out what works for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> For a blog post about simplifying there sure are a lot of links embedded in the text to take your attention away.

<comment><AUTHOR> [Author of blog post here] Good feedback - thank you! Probably would be easier to include them as reference to the end of the post for those that want to dig into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> >there is no reason to preserve those beyond a couple of weeks or months

I find preserving TODOs to be an important part of yearly evaluation of work. I can quickly go over my notes for a year and see all of the items that I did over the year. If I didn't have a rolling todo list, I'd have to maintain a separate list of accomplishments, which is actually the TODO list.

<comment><AUTHOR> [Author of blog post here] To me those are different things. TODOs on a daily basis can contain mundane tasks - e.g. "Send a Christmas card to cousin Terry" doesn't strike me as something I need to keep a record of. For things that I've accomplished, e.g. launched a new site, reached some milestone, I can just keep it on a separate page/note.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if the author has stopped to examine the structural influences that make him feel that the onus is his to relentlessly simplify. Presumably the author eats alone at his desk every lunchtime. Hopefully his sex life has been spared from this austerity.

<comment><AUTHOR> [Author of blog post here] Appreciate your concerns, thank you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Which of the bolded points are not like the others here? Are you really gonna get a lot of mileage out of a better router vs removing distractions from your life? Cmon.

<comment><AUTHOR> [Author of blog post here] Depends on what causes friction in your life, so YMMV. To me, if I have a bad network at home, and I constantly have to fiddle with a router and reboot it whenever the ISP deploys some changes, that's time I can spend on other things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Left out the most important thing. ONE bank account, probably a brokerage account with bill paying, free transactions, checking.

</comment><comment><USER29> How about reducing the need to know a dozen programming languages leading to being a master of none?</comment>


Google Assistant launches official channel on IFTTT - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/10/27/google-assistant-channel-launches-ifttt/ <comment><USER2> Seems interesting</comment>


A small Chrome extension got the attention of a large media conglomerate - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@isiah_lloyd/how-a-small-chrome-extension-got-the-attention-of-a-large-media-conglomerate-and-not-in-a-good-2ae16dc3ef6d <comment><USER2> A recent US court decision may be of help: [https://thenextweb.com/security/2019/09/10/us-court-says- scr...](https://thenextweb.com/security/2019/09/10/us-court-says-scraping-a- site-without-permission-isnt-illegal/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually discuss this court case at the end of the post!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We need a legal precedent stating that programmatically accessing public data is not illegal nor considered copyright infringement. If a user can access the data directly (whether for free or by paying the original service and getting an account) then they should be allowed to delegate that task to software.</comment>


Ask HN: What were your most important lessons learned from building a MVP - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm currently in the first stage of gathering some data for a presentation on Minimal Viable Prototypes and I am looking for some input, specifically what were your most important lessons learned in a failed or successful MVP?
Any input or resources that helped you is greatly welcomed! <comment><USER2> Getting to the MVP is more about determining what are the riskiest propositions of your envisioned product first and overcoming them - an MVP is not just the minimal acceptable collection of features. Get the most difficult items out of the way first, don't just try and come up with a collection of easy features someone might buy.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a bad habit! I always want to do everything at once - but if you listen to the client it is better to do the most important thing for the client, but very well - and say a high price. In this way you will have the energy for further improvements.</comment>


Not every innovation deserves a patent - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21561888?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/pe/iphoneucopyisue

<comment><USER2> I agree with the overall tone of the article but is this really true?

> _The dispute between Apple and Samsung is less over how the devices work and > more over their look and feel._</comment>


Ask HN: Can/Should I make my site one size larger? - <AUTHOR>

Here's my site: http://www.b-labs.com
I find the fonts somewhat small, though coincidentally I see that oracle.com has very similar fonts, so it shouldn't be too wrong. What do you think?
Secondly if I press ctrl+ on my browser, everything looks much more readable. Is there an html directive to make my site larger like that? I know my questions are basic but I am looking for opinion and not just answers. <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://www.b-labs.com>

Yes the text is too small. It's also very high on the ginger factor, and it's hard to understand what it is you actually do.

"... specializing in embedded virtualization solutions."

What problem does it solve? What pain do I have that you will remove for me?

In short, I think you try to make it say too much, and the wrong things. You need to tell me what problem you solve for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, you should make the font size larger.

</comment><comment><USER4> site seems to be down? Too much traffic?

edit - now getting a 403

<comment><USER4> Site back now - but yes I'd push for one font size larger - you have a lot of text there, so always good to make it readable (if you want it read ;) )

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Would I have to redesign everything to make it look larger as a whole?

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't redesign just increase font size by one. and lose any unclear text and replace with direct explanations and facts. easier to take in, quicker and makes a site feel more honest. also more likely to contain terms people search for.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using hacker news to generate startup ideas - <AUTHOR>

How about you guys who have collectively a lot of ideas for startups but probably not the time to work on them, contribute your ideas for startups here? and we can rank them by the number of points the comment will get.Maybe the next bill gates will pick it up and do something great with it :-) <comment><USER2> I think this is one of those times when we, as a community, are perhaps too focused on ourselves.

Business ideas are _out there_ , in the real world, you won't find them here (generally). Yes, "scratch your own itch", "do what you know", etc. All of those are true, to a point, and there are plenty of smart people here...some of them are even working on businesses that will be a success (or already are). But, if you just ask a bunch of entrepreneurs, investors, and nerds what they want, it's easy to end up working in the very small and competitive field of "things ten other people are working on, and the entire market is measured in hundreds of dollars".

I'm unfortunately not exaggerating. I've met quite a few people at startup mixers and events and such who were working on clones of things that I'd never even heard of. So not only are they working on something where they have established (by some definition of established) competitors, but it's a field that nobody outside of a tiny set of web 2.0 early adopters has ever even heard about, and only a small segment of those even care about it.

And, of course, I would be remiss in my duties as a curmudgeon, and HN old- timer, if I didn't say this: Ideas are worthless.

<comment><USER3> True, but they could be a catalyst for someone who just needs a spark. Just talking about them here on your own time certainly isn't HURTING anyone.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps. I'm just advising folks to be careful about things they hear in the echo chamber that is our community (where communit==HN+blogs+web 2.0 industry+etc., I'm not singling out HN, in particular). Just because you hear a loud chorus doesn't mean there are actually a lot of people wishing for what the voices are suggesting--it could just be two or three really loud people who like the sound of their own voice (like me!). I suspect the better way to get ideas is to work in the real world. Maybe work as a contractor for a while, so you see how different businesses work, and more importantly, where and how they fail to work.

Is the discussion hurting anyone? No, probably not. As I mentioned most of the folks here are smart and interesting. Talking to smart and interesting people is generally good for you. But, don't imagine that it's the real thing, or that you'll find your business plan via discussion here--it takes research, customer interactions, and a helluva a lot of work, to formulate a viable business plan. And, talking on the Internet has the pernicious ability to make you feel like you're accomplishing something, when in fact, you're not actually doing anything.

And, honestly, I think that a big bunch of talent is currently being wasted on dumb ideas, and I suspect there is some sort of relationship with the kinds of things we reward in the Internet startup world with our validation, our blog posts, etc. That's not to say that executing on dumb ideas is time completely wasted...sometimes it can evolve into something wonderful (flickr from Game Neverending, or whatever it was called, for example). I think a lot of the dumbest ideas come from looking inward too much. "All the current todo lists can't remind me three times at randomized intervals throughout the day about important stuff, and I'm really bad at remembering to do stuff, so I will make a todo list that can totally do that!"

Just be careful how much stock you put in ideas you read on the Internet (including this one).

<comment><USER3> Yea I agree with you, I just think that overzealous "ideas are worthless" people are annoying. Sure, if you are trying to start a business on an idea that hasn't been implemented at all, that's not a great idea. But if you are just going to talk about ideas who cares?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mixing Tumblr and Paypal/Amazon to sell something straight from a blog post. Blogs are really the way of the future, and there are a ton of people out there who blog about their business or interests and sell things at the same time. Think of a band or someone who blogs about indie music. You can sell a new product easily from each post, without setting up a store.

Both Amazon and Paypal now have micropayment options (5% + $.05). Both have code you can easily copy and paste into a post to add a sell button and both have developer API's. Both are free to implement (no set-up or monthly fees), Amazon has cheap storage and bandwidth and you only pay for what you use. Tumblr and other blog systems are also free. Its time for a digital goods selling revolution!

All this great stuff is out there, but no good interface exists to make it easy for a non-developer to implement it. The current solutions available require monthly fees that usually overcharge you for bandwidth, storage, or transaction costs, or limit you in some way (e-junkie limits the amount of products you can have). And in typical e-commerce fashion they have gawful help desks and incomplete documentation.

One big thing missing is a way to instantly direct your users to a download after they purchase something. I'm a non-technical guy who's looked into it, and believe me, its impossible to do without using a service such as e-junkie. But the parts of the solution are in place to make it happen for everyone.

I think a lot of people out there want less of a website, more of a blog, less of an online store, but more of an easy way to sell digital or physical goods. Think musicians (or musical blogs), photographers, artists (a really great way to sell artwork as you make it). Monthly fees make it prohibitive to sell artwork, because you usually only make one, and there might be some time before you make another, but a blogstore is a great way to do it.

I like Tumblr, because its non-technical yet can be messed with if you really want to dive in. What this problem needs is also a non-technical solution that will allow people to get at the nuts and bolts if they need to.

Anyone want to have a go at it?

<comment><USER5> Conversion rates are low.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps because people are nervous about taking out their credit cards except when they are familiar with the reputation of the online vendor. It may be hard for blogger X to overcome that fear factor.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. I've formulated a theory of micropayment success. It requires:

1\. A credit card or payment method already in the system, OR, a trustworthy vendor;

2\. One click ordering or an Ajax style cart where you don't have to load a new webpage for every step of adding things to your cart and checking out.

3\. Large product base spanning multiple product offerings but only one central payment center.

Obviously, this theory was postulated by examining by the most successful micropayment vendor out there, Apple. They're really good at it. Think about it: you don't need to enter your credit card information twice;they have one click purchase; they have multiple product offerings, but all payment goes through them. There is only one person who needs to be trusted, them.

I think the one person to trust thing is really the key point. People don't have time to evaluate online vendors for trustworthyness. But if they're already comfortable, it doesn't matter, and $.99 cents becomes no hassle at all to spend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good idea for those with some extra time during the holiday break. Here's one I like that I've been saving for my blog (<http://www.astartupaday.com>) but I'll go ahead and post it here.

I'm predicting that over the next 1-3 years, we're going to start to see a major shift as users move from mouse+keyboard to touch as the primary input to their computing devices. However, today every mainstream website is optimized for the mouse+keyboard.

My idea is to get ahead of the curve and create user experiences for all the major mainstream web verticals (such as Email, social networking, news, search, etc..) that are designed primarily for use with touch. For verticals that have a high switching cost (such as mail and social networking), instead of trying to build from scratch, the focus should be on a front end that pulls from an existing service (i.e. pulls from gmail pop or Facebook connect). Users could choose the verticals that they use on a daily basis, and each service would be available from different tabs. The core UX elements would be consistent across all services, and would be optimized for use with a touch screen.

If anyone's interested in hearing more or maybe hacking out a prototype with me over break, feel free to contact me at kleneway@hotmail

<comment><USER8> I'm a bit skeptical that we'll see touch screens or Minority Report type UI's replace the keyboard and mouse. The keyboard and mouse are under appreciated. It's really hard to match the following benefits:

1) keyboards are an incredibly fast way to input human language into a computer system.

2) keyboard/mouse operate on flat surface while your arm is at rest. This makes it easy to use for 8 hours a day.

3) A small movement of a mouse creates a much larger movement on the screen. Yet, because the mouse is flat and at rest, it is easy to control.

4) Mice are far more precise at pointing than touch screens. Although perhaps that's a secret disadvantage, since it encouraged the use of small widgets. A good touch screen would most certainly not be able to use anything like our current UI widgets.

<comment><USER4> Picture this in your mind (or look at this sort of bad example: [http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/17/taito-introduces- surface-...](http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/17/taito-introduces-surface-like- arcade-game/))

You move the monitor down, and make it very large. Build it into the desk at a slight angle. Your arms rest on the entire surface, so its very comfortable. The entire display and its interface is oversized, sort of like a media center interface. An iPhone like keyboard pops up when you need it, sized exactly like a regular keyboard. But quick keys on either side of the monitor's face can also input commands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are plenty of opportunities in the enterprises. They're looking to cut costs and switching to interesting, powerful, cheap apps is one way. As a hacker you'll likely need to team up with a former enterprise insider, possibly someone recently laid off. They'll need to understand what tools are inefficient, what strange requirements enterprises have and how to sell to them. You'll need to price below the ceiling where middle managers can make spending decisions without committee oversight or prepare for long slow sales process.

One possible perspective.

Producing an ecosystem where normal 'sheeple' workers can be employed outside of the restraint of big companies is another opportunity. After these mass lay-offs people will see that working for one boss who can fire you is bad and that multiple bosses will produce more stability. These workers and the companies that use them will need sources of information[eg <http://freelanceswitch.com/>], tools to manage work and workers [basecamp] and ways of communicating with peers and customers[twitter].

</comment><comment><USER10> My startup idea is a web app that automatically generates startup ideas by randomly combining various inputs. I think this would be approximately as effective as throwing out ideas here and asking people to vote on them.

<comment><USER11> You mock, but there's something to be said for the idea of randomly combining unconnected ideas.. that's a hallmark of an original idea. There are many bad ones formed by such a process, naturally, but you can come up with some awesome ones too.

<comment><USER4> But has it ever succeeded when tried by non-humans? Its kind of like the monkeys at a keyboard theory. Yes, they can write a sentence every once in a while given enough time, but in actuallity, they're useless at writing.

Original ideas are combinations of other ideas, but they're ideas combined by humans.

<comment><USER11> It depends whether non-humans have a sense of creativity and then the ability to _recognize_ a good idea from the randomness. I don't think they do. We humans are, putting it mildly, ridiculously good pattern matchers..

If I were to pull some buzzwords from a single niche (let's say social networking) from a hat, say.. Twitter, music, friends, pictures, e-mail, profiles, voting. I could pull a lot of random ideas from joining some of them together:

\- a site that lets you specify the music artists you like, then it finds Twitter users who have mentioned all of those artists.. instant music buddies!

\- social profiles oriented around people's e-mail addresses

\- random MP3 sent to your e-mail each day as voted for by people on a Web site

\- voting on Twitter in elections

\- use song mentions on Twitter to establish the most popular songs for certain artists

I won't go on..! These are not really great ideas, but they're not nonsensical either.

You might argue that earlier I mentioned "unconnected" ideas, whereas "Twitter, music, friends, pictures, e-mail, profiles, voting" are from a niche of sorts. True, but when I said "unconnected" I guess I meant more that the ideas are not connected in any practical way, rather than sharing a common element. Random words would probably not cut it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I got this idea after building a specialized website for a particular local artisan, but I think the whole method could be generalized pretty easily.

Etsy provides a clean, centralized storefront for individual merchants / creators to sell their products -- taking over what used to be the significantly more decentralized and disorganized venues of eBay and Craigslist.

This site would be a similar such venue for people who are trying to sell _services._ A glance at the Craigslist "services" section shows plenty of people like this -- computer repairmen, graphic designers, programmers, housemaids, accountants, tutors, personal trainers, and many more. Each person would be able to personalize their "storefront" with a list of their services, some copy text and an image gallery, and a section for people to post reviews / testimonials of this person.

<comment><USER6> Just like skillwho. They get around 70K unique visitors a month so I would say that sounds like a good idea. I'm not a big fan of their design, mind you, so maybe that's something you could improve on.

<comment><USER12> You're right, that site is hideous. =P

I came across <http://www.workstir.com> recently too, which is a similar concept. But I have to wonder... do either of these sites actually have a _business model_?

I had some thoughts on how to possibly monetize this sort of traffic, so a couple other web sites in this niche doesn't really discourage me too much if these guys are just rolling on advertising.

<comment><USER6> Agreed - the existence of competition should not be a deterrent. Angie's List is kind of similar to these two and gets close to a million unique visitors per month.

<http://www.angieslist.com>

And, like you, they have a monetization plan. Something to check out if you haven't done so already. They received quite a lot of useful press coverage outside of the regular tech channels - no doubt that helped them build this level of traffic. Hopefully you have some connections at Martha Stewart Living too :)

<comment><USER12> This is great info, thanks for all these links.

Angie's List is interesting -- very high quality, I'm sure, with that "Consumer Reports" style business model. But they also lose a lot of traffic going subscribers-only. No doubt they're rolling in money, but I'm glad to see it's not the same monetization idea I had.

Seeing all these has inspired me to throw together a prototype. I'll post it on HN in a week or two when it's presentable. =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Two start-up ideas which are feasible but I decided against:

1) Alumni software which lets universities/companies manage alumni communication and also lets alumni network with each other. A few top-tier unis and companies have in-house stuff for this, but most don't. Facebook/Linked-In just don't work for alumni networking due to trying to be too many things at once.

2) Publisher driven ads service. Current ad systems suck for closed sites (i.e. non-public) or sites which know a lot about the user (dating sites, social networks). Most of the big sites in this category currently solve this by running their own networks but this obviously isn't feasible for many sites. You could probably build this as a CPA ad brokerage service and expand from there.

<comment><USER6> There's a ton of alumni networks on Facebook that seem to be operating sort of successfully. Are you talking about reducing the feature set?

As for the ads service, I'm not sure if you're talkinga about something like addiply, which is a UK-based attempt at hyperlocal advertising that avoids the Adsense model.

<http://www.twadservices.co.uk/cufc/taintro.php>

The guy who started it was profiled in this piece in Britain's Guardian newspaper:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2008/dec/04/startups- adv...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2008/dec/04/startups-advertising)

I would think you would need some kind of background in advertising and be the kind of person who doesn't mind knocking on a lot of doors to attempt this kind of venture.

Here's their self-description. Sounds like what you're talking about (let me know if I misunderstood):

"We empower both the local/niche publisher and the local/niche advertiser to source and place perfectly-targetted, digital advertising themselves without third party intervention."

I don't see why this would not work even better in the US but it remains to be seen whether Addiply will have any success - it seems like an uphill battle to me.

<comment><USER14> <http://www.paperg.com>

<comment><USER6> That seems more to the point, being that it's US-based. Thanks for the link. Here's Victor Wong, the Yale student who started paperg, talking about it in this article:

<http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/23170>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why not we form groups around ideas that people like to start hacking? We should form a collective to bang out prototypes before not too long.

<comment><USER16> I think that's great in principle, but I'd be wary of the communication overhead if you can't meet in person. Especially if this is something that you'd be spending only 5-10 hours per week on, it might be easier to just build a barebones protoype yourself & then see if people are interested in taking that further.

<comment><USER15> I think it's still worth a try or two. If anything, we can potentially organize a few real-life coding-oriented meetups to see if anything formalizes.</comment></comment></comment>


Inferno Operating System - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(operating_system) <comment><USER2> Back when I was in university we had a small course on Limbo/Inferno because of a connection my university (RIT) had to bell labs. I took the course in... 1998? and wrote a version of Tetris for limbo. The code was awful, but did find a bug in the Tk implementation. This lead me to my proudest/most embarrassing programming moment - apparently, my code ended up in front of Dennis Ritchie, who thought the code was terrible. Whatever, Dennis Ritchie looked at my code!

Anyways, here's the awful code: [https://github.com/adamf/limbotris](https://github.com/adamf/limbotris)

<comment><USER3> I find it impressive you still have code you wrote for a university class in '98!

<comment><USER4> My dad has a box of punchcards for code he wrote in his university class, well before '98. I think all of my own 90s era code was on floppy disks that may or may not still be readable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In reality, this was an attempt to turn Plan 9 into a commercial product.

Plan 9 despite it's crazy UI (the shell and editor have been ported to Linux so some people must have liked it) brought a lot of new ideas which eventually found their way into other projects such as Linux containers and Go (for obvious reasons).

One _really_ good idea that died with Plan 9 was transparent distribution of CPUs across the network. You could - the same way you mount a network drive today - mount a remote CPU and run your local software on it.

<comment><USER6> Transparently gluing boxes together over a low bandwidth fabric died as an active research area right around the time Plan9 was seeing its first development. By the late 80s shared bus SMP had demonstrated its practicality and quickly became the predominant architecture. Today we don't spawn processes on remote CPUs because the whole act of scheduling on multiple CPUs is entirely transparent to us, that's a competing architecture to the predecessor found in Plan 9

MOSIX is the only system from that era that I know is still around. It had a fork by the name of OpenMosix for some time, but according to Wikipedia ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSIX#openMosix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSIX#openMosix) ): "On July 15, 2007, Bar decided to end the openMosix project effective March 1, 2008, claiming that "the increasing power and availability of low cost multi-core processors is rapidly making single-system image (SSI) clustering less of a factor in computing"

(I admire the downvote, but please realize this is not a question of one's opinion!)

<comment><USER7> Although no downvote, there continued to be plenty of research and dollars in grid computing that did stuff like that on top of "distributed, shared memory" that did stuff like that. Then, all the research in HPC clusters that tried to create a "Single, System Image" running stuff across machines like it was one machine. The MOSIX quote doesn't change the fact that various researchers kept attempting this and making prototypes.

<comment><USER6> I think the keyword here is transparency -- later designs (even stuff like MPI) explicitly expose the topology of the available hardware. SMP is the closest thing we've ever got to true transparency, and then only for 80% of cases, and for those only because the compute nodes have very similar locality and e.g. memory bandwidth

Even SMP requires careful control if you want to get anything close to the actual performance of the underlying hardware, and the topology is once again very explicit

<comment><USER8> You better specify what "SMP" means. By definition, Symmetric Multi-Processing doesn't have locality concerns, but that's basically dead, and Shared Memory Programming does, indeed, typically require attention to topology and thread binding -- frequently ignored, of course. I don't know the MPI standard well, but I didn't think there was anything requiring topology to be exposed, and it won't be in the absence of something like netloc, which is still experimental.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are times when I wish Plan9 and/or Inferno took off and won some respectable market share. Having a laptop, smartphone, tablet, Synology storage at home, servers on DO, and remnant external HDD from prior era becomes frustrating because my files end up being everywhere and nowhere. There were times when I want to be able to start working on some code on my laptop, pause, then continue work on my tablet later on. At those moments it would have been wonderful if I had Plan9's ability to mount remote filesystems, sync across the network, and have consistent view however I access the data. Yes, SSHFS is available, and the same protocol from Plan9 is available in Linux nowadays, but setting them up isn't as simple as it was in Plan9 and being native to the OS.

That, in addition to the fixes it had (truly everything is a file) and the innovative features delivered (e.g. namespaces).

Can we revive them? Inferno's development seems to have slowed down to a halt.

<comment><USER10> > There were times when I want to be able to start working on some code on my > laptop, pause, then continue work on my tablet later on

In order to do these things 'cleanly' (with a truly unified view of the entire "system"), you need some sort of process migration infrastructure that even Plan9 and Inferno don't really give you, AFAICT. Projects like OpenMosix and OpenSSI attempted to provide this, but I'm not sure to what extent they were successful, given that they've all been abandoned and bitrotted. Today, one might try to do the same sort of thing while also taking advantage of the new kernel-based namespacing that Linux provides, which might make some things somewhat easier.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h CRIU should allow you to migrate a running process from one system to another, particularly in combination with a container (Docker or LXC/D).

<comment><USER11> Doesn't this work on about nothing in practice? Like nothing that has an open file, no gui apps etc.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Here is a writeup of using CRIU on openvpn: [https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/using-criu-upgrade-vpn- server...](https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/using-criu-upgrade-vpn-servers- kernel-without-dropping-connections)

So it seems to work. But I'm no expert and I've never done it, so I might well be missing something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have some sort of love/hate relationship with this project, regarding the Dis VM.

IMHO, having read the spec, I think the VM had a great design _for the nineties_ but was not future-proof enough. It's like it was designed with some specific CPUs of the time in mind, and that biased the design. Also, I find it too tied to the language used in the canonical implementation (obviously C).

In contrast, I find the JVM (contemporary to Dis) more generic and more easy to implement using other languajes than C.

BTW, a few years ago I wrote a (incomplete) Dis VM in C# [0] that I hope to finish^H^H^H^H^H^H rewrite some day...

[0] [https://bitbucket.org/luismedel/sixthcircle/src/default/](https://bitbucket.org/luismedel/sixthcircle/src/default/)

</comment><comment><USER13> 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876217)

2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801372](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801372)

2011: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3007069](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3007069)

<comment><USER14> And we won't stop posting until Glenda and her labs bread hoard have crushed all others!

<comment><USER13> There's nothing wrong with posting an interesting story after a year or two. Especially when the topic is as interesting as this one! The current thread is the best so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just a note for anyone who is looking to try this out: there are currently some fairly hard baked and thorny 32 bit dependencies in the Dis VM, so your system will need to be multilib to run it. There's currently a 64 bit porting effort going on in the form of Purgatorio, but that's still some time away from being complete (I recommend using it anyway because it's the most up to date version of the Inferno tree).

<comment><USER16> Source: [http://code.9front.org/hg/purgatorio/](http://code.9front.org/hg/purgatorio/)

Purgatorio 64-bit is a ways away, but is a goal.

It'll happen eventually, but the more eyes the better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Namespaces: a program 's view of the network is a single, coherent namespace that appears as a hierarchical file system but may represent physically separated (locally or remotely) resources

Standard communication protocol: a standard protocol, called Styx, is used to access all resources, both local and remote_

This looks similar to Qubes Air roadmap: [https://www.qubes- os.org/news/2018/01/22/qubes-air/](https://www.qubes- os.org/news/2018/01/22/qubes-air/)

<comment><USER18> Except that you cannot run a Qubes CPU server without a giant overhead.

<comment><USER17> As a happy Qubes user, the overhead in CPU is barely noticeable for Xen virtualization. One needs a lot of RAM though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice to see Inferno posted!

Some Inferno related stuff:

\- Limbo by Example: [https://github.com/henesy/limbobyexample](https://github.com/henesy/limbobyexample)

\- The Inferno Shell: [http://debu.gs/entries/inferno- part-1-shell](http://debu.gs/entries/inferno-part-1-shell)

\- Try Inferno in the browser: [http://tryinferno.rekka.io/](http://tryinferno.rekka.io/)

\- Cat-v Inferno resources: [http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno](http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno)

\- Experiments in Inferno/Limbo: [https://github.com/caerwynj/inferno- lab/](https://github.com/caerwynj/inferno-lab/)

\- Inferno Programming with Limbo: [https://web.archive.org/web/20160304092801/http://www.gemuse...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160304092801/http://www.gemusehaken.org/ipwl/) (also on cat-v)

\- Developing Limbo modules in C: [https://powerman.name/doc/Inferno/c_module_en](https://powerman.name/doc/Inferno/c_module_en)

\- Simple FS example in Limbo: [https://github.com/henesy/simplefs- limbo](https://github.com/henesy/simplefs-limbo)

\- Inferno client for Redis: [https://github.com/pete/iredis](https://github.com/pete/iredis)

\- Inferno for Nintendo DS: [https://bitbucket.org/mjl/inferno- ds/src/default/](https://bitbucket.org/mjl/inferno-ds/src/default/)

\- Inferno as an Android app: [https://github.com/bhgv/Inferno- OS_Android](https://github.com/bhgv/Inferno-OS_Android)

\- Inferno replacing Android (hellaphone): [https://bitbucket.org/floren/inferno/wiki/Home](https://bitbucket.org/floren/inferno/wiki/Home)

\- Porting Inferno to Raspberry Pi: [https://github.com/yshurik/inferno- rpi](https://github.com/yshurik/inferno-rpi)

<comment><USER16> It's a really early draft, but here's the base for an awesome-inferno repository: [https://github.com/henesy/awesome- inferno](https://github.com/henesy/awesome-inferno)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This OS doesn't require an MMU or protected memory. I wonder if a processor architecture that lacks those features could yield much higher performance due to less complexity, reduced memory latency or less cache miss penalty. Will it be enough to mitigate the perormance penalty of runing code in the Dis VM?

<comment><USER20> You'd have to compensate for the lack of memory protection by running all unprivileged code in a VM, which would very likely introduce its own class of complexities and performance penalties.

<comment><USER21> People always defend Java as if these penalties don't exist somehow.

<comment><USER19> The question was more about how the big the penalty is compared to running a MMU.

Also according to my (admittedly rather basic) tests the DIS VM performs far better than JVM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/historical_documents/website/in...](http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/historical_documents/website/infernojava)

</comment><comment><USER23> Would Plan9 fit in with applications like robotics? I feel like such an operating system would do well with the need to interoperate between a bunch of different types of sensors and hardware, and the need for sensor fusion. I'm not sure if Linux and device drivers are the right foundation for that kind of stuff.

<comment><USER16> This exists and to a pleasant effect!

[http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/4th_edition/styx-on-a- brick/](http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/4th_edition/styx-on-a-brick/)

The ev3dev project is partially inspired by everything is a file and I've used it in the past for educational purposes by making the business of controlling/using motors/sensors as trivial as read/write.

[https://www.ev3dev.org/](https://www.ev3dev.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This project had my favorite naming theme in all of computing.

<comment><USER25> Does it have the seven shells and a lake of boiling blood instead of the kernel?

<comment><USER26> With full compatibility with the latest version of your Seas of Ire

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> inferno is cool because it takes a lot of great ideas Ken and rob pike came up with for plan9 to address unfixable architectural flaws inherent to Unix's overall design, and basically makes an vm based portable OS/userland that is everybit what Java could have been.

And then of course Rob Pike, Russ Cox, Ken took what they learned from their background at Lucent and paired it with Robert Griesmers background in developing innovative VMs for Javascript and Java and they essentially put everything they learned to develop the Go programming language.

Which if you get into the architectural aspects of it. You know actually dig into how it's implemented deep down you will see a lot of code that is essentially derived from plan9 and inferno's code in many ways.

</comment><comment><USER28> I remember reading about this in a Danish PC mag 'PC Pro' (or 'Alt om Net') in ca 1998. From memory there was also a framework called 'Hades' as per the mythological river. Or am I wrong here?

</comment><comment><USER18> I actually tried the Android port once. It was... interesting.</comment>


'I'm Retiring,' Nintendo's Miyamoto Tells His Staff - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/12/miyamoto-interview/ <comment><USER2> Oh boy that's a misleading headline, as he is still going to be working at Nintendo.

He's stepping down from major title development (Think mainline Mario, Zelda) and will be downshifting to working on small titles with a small team.

"What I really want to do is be in the forefront of game development once again myself," Miyamoto said. "Probably working on a smaller project with even younger developers. Or I might be interested in making something that I can make myself, by myself. Something really small."

<comment><USER3> It's Miyimoto's quote that's misleading if anything. I don't think the headline is intentionally baiting. No more Zelda by Miyamotao? Pretty big deal.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, Aonuma has been head honcho for the last 4 games or so. It's still a pretty big deal that Miyamoto is leaving, but the transition was smooth.

<comment><USER5> Wasn't Aonuma also primarily responsible for Majora's Mask, one of the most unusual (and I think best) games in the series?

<comment><USER6> Yes he was.

I agree, that game was one of the best of the series, and that's a pretty strong statement considering Zelda could be considered the best gaming franchise of all time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There goes one of the greatest game-designer of our time. I remember his talk from E3 this year, where he - between the lines - criticized most of the modern game-design. Some of the points he made:

\- Gameplay is everything. Games are about gameplay, don't turn games into movies. I think the Mario & Zelda series show this rather well.

\- Always change something in a sequel. This was one of his strongest points, if you look at Nintendo, all they do is sequels of their existing IPs, but unlike - say Assassins Creed _cough_ \- they always make sure it's never just more of the same.

<comment><USER8> "Always change something in a sequel. This was one of his strongest points, if you look at Nintendo, all they do is sequels of their existing IPs, but unlike - say Assassins Creed cough - they always make sure it's never just more of the same."

While I love the games and the series, I think there is a decent case for Zelda games being "more of the same" (at least in regards to the 3D versions, not including the latest which I haven't played yet). Aside from Wind Waker, the 3D Zelda games were fairly similar. I guess Majora's Mask had the timer, but by slowing down time it was essentially a non-factor. I mean there were definitely differences, but the game was basically complete several temples while choosing between various forms (each with pros and cons) and using the same basic subset of weapons (arrows, sword, hookshot), building up to a final series of trials at the end where you have to use all the skills you learned to complete it.

<comment><USER9> I haven't played all of the new Zelda games (specifically, any after wind waker) but Majora's Mask definitely seems to be the most different. If you just play it straight through the standard zelda part (that is, just go dungeon to dungeon), its easy to miss how it was unique. However, when interacting with people, the ability to rewind time made some really interesting and totally different (from other zelda games) puzzles. The thing to focus on wasn't the form changes, or the "slow down time" ability but the "rewind to the beginning of the game and start over, but with knowledge of what you did last time". That game was unique in zelda games because one of the currencies the game used was player knowledge about what events happen when in the 3-day time frame of the game.

Zelda is a series that is established on certain traditions - you go from dungeon to dungeon, and in each one get a new piece of gear that lets you explore the world more. Looking just at that part of the game, every zelda game looks the same. But I think as a series it's generally good at varying a little bit from the formula.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nintendo issued an official statement, according to IGN, saying that he miscommunicated his intentions and priorities, and is actually not officially stepping down:

 _"Video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto's role at Nintendo is not changing. He will continue to be a driving force in Nintendo's development efforts. In discussing his priorities at Nintendo in a media interview, Mr. Miyamoto explained how he is encouraging the younger developers at the company to take more initiative and responsibility for developing software. He attempted to convey his priorities moving forward, inclusive of overseeing all video game development and ensuring the quality of all products. Mr. Miyamoto also discussed his desire to pursue fresh ideas and experiences of the kind that sparked his initial interest in video games."_

<http://wii.ign.com/articles/121/1214255p1.html>

<comment><USER10> Reuters has more details, stating that Nintendo is denying this:

 _"This is absolutely not true," said a spokeswoman for Nintendo. "There seems to have been a misunderstanding. He has said all along that he wants to train the younger generation.

"He has no intention of stepping down. Please do not be concerned."_

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/08/us-nintendo- idUSTR...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/08/us-nintendo- idUSTRE7B70C520111208)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a developer, I have prided myself on putting user experience and ease of use first. This was not something I was taught to do in college or from books on UI or watching keynote speeches.

I learned user experience from Shigeru Miyamoto via Super Mario Brothers and the Legend of Zelda.

When consoles started to gain more horsepower and graphics became a primary selling point in games, I was never seduced by polygon counts or FMV cut scenes. I wanted better controls. I wanted more immersive level design.

More than anyone that's had influence on me as a developer, Miyamoto has inspired me to make software for people.

As an aside, do you think there's any way we can get him to make an HTML 5 game? Or series of games on some sort of Miyamoto blog?

Forking anything that Miyamoto has made would be the highlight of my professional life.

<comment><USER12> Why do graphics and gameplay have to be a tradeoff? A game like Super Smash Bros. with 1080p graphics would be amazing!

<comment><USER13> Graphical fidelity increases immersion; gameplay typically tries to create some kind of puzzle-solving flow state in an action / reaction loop. A game can be good with mostly just one or the other, albeit quite different experiences, but the best games have both.

For example, Tetris has terrible "graphics" as such - the thing is entirely abstract, and is almost a pure expression of gameplay. But a game like Skyrim is rather the opposite; it's all about immersing yourself in a role via a character you've created and grown. Meanwhile, the actual tension-creating gameplay mechanics of Skyrim, combat and sneaking, the first is fairly poor, while the second ultimately is overpowered. But those things don't stop it from being a highly enjoyable experience.

Why is it a tradeoff? Because building immersion means emulating reality to a greater and greater extent, and that reality gets further and further away from the abstract core of what makes a gameplay mechanic work well, because reality is complicated and has too many details. You have to build the gameplay in such a way that it doesn't break the spell of immersion; instead of being abstract, it has to be made out of simulated reality components.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of feynman saying he had to start "playing" again.

> He realized then that his playful attitude towards theories and > constructions were what had driven his research. [leading to the "spinning > plate" observation]

[http://books.google.com.au/books?id=g7nWSs5k7V8C&lpg=PA1...](http://books.google.com.au/books?id=g7nWSs5k7V8C&lpg=PA105&ots=kR4rqiX99C&dq=feynman%20spinning%20plate%20%22play%22&pg=PA105#v=onepage&q=feynman%20spinning%20plate%20%22play%22&f=false) \--- [http://books.google.com.au/books?id=6ofHvL9T-k4C&lpg=PA2...](http://books.google.com.au/books?id=6ofHvL9T-k4C&lpg=PA23&ots=nY2VEkrvwI&dq=feynman%20spinning%20plate%20%22play%22&pg=PA23#v=onepage&q=feynman%20spinning%20plate%20%22play%22&f=false) (couldn't find the exact text; probably in one of his copyrighted books and not online)

<comment><USER15> Here it is: <http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html>

It is in Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Having grown up with Super Mario Bros and the Legend of Zelda, even just thinking about these games brings me back to the old times and gives me a warm shiver.

I still remember that christmas morning in 89 or 90 when I got my first Nintendo. It was snowing outside, which made it feel even more cozy inside. My friend and me had been playing Super Mario Bros almost all morning and had forgotten time in between. Suddenly it was lunchtime and my grandma came for visit. She correctly observed that I hadn't even touched her present yet (I forgot what it was). It was still at the same position where I put it after opening it. Super Mario Bros had me so hooked that I'd forgotten about the rest. After that, Miyamoto's creations always followed me around, be it on the GameBoy, the SNES, or the N64. Godspeed Miyamoto, you shaped my youth and I thank you for it.

</comment><comment><USER17> That is a misleading headline - hope it did not cause any gamers to commit suicide.

Shigeru Miyamoto came to the Angel Studio offices my first day working there (I was hired to do "game AI" but I also did a lot of other fun work.) He is an amazing talent, emphasizing making games fun.

<comment><USER18> >That is a misleading headline - hope it did not cause any gamers to commit suicide.

It might cause indie developers to. Miyamoto was a driving force behind saving the entire gaming industry after the Atari crash. If he's working on smaller(and presumably cheaper) games, that has to be the scariest competition ever for an indie dev.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This title is bit misleading, though reading through the comments on wired it seems the article may have said this at one point.

I'm very happy he's not retiring, but not at all happy that he didn't divulge where I could get myself one of those Zelda t-shirts. Damn you Miyamoto!

</comment><comment><USER20> God speed Miyamoto-san. Thank you for everything.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is this title chosen to sort out those who comment before reading the article?

</comment><comment><USER22> If you've never read his Wikipedia page, it's worth a read. This man has had one of the most impressive careers in any field of work that I can think of.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigeru_Miyamoto></comment>


Facebook Raising Another $100 Million to Fund Increasing Server Costs - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/03/26/facebook-raising-another-100-million-to-fund-increasing-server-costs/ <comment><USER2> My understanding is that Facebook is still not profitable. At this point, being several years old and claiming 175 million users, I'm growing more skeptical about their potential as a business.

I would think that by now, Facebook would have found the right methods of advertising, marketing data, or paid premium features to be self-sufficient. How much more growth can there be before revenue when you have 175 million users?

</comment><comment><USER3> Facebook seems to be doing a remarkably poor job (in my opinion) of drawing in users who post interesting content for all that investment in hardware infrastructure. That looks like a dangerous business model.</comment>


How to Hire When Your Startup Is in Stealth Mode - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3053277/hit-the-ground-running/how-to-hire-when-your-startup-is-in-stealth-mode <comment><USER2> How? first don't create a startup in """"stealth mode"""""</comment>


Wikipedia-IPFS: An exploration to host Wikipedia in IPFS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/santhoshtr/wikipedia-ipfs <comment><USER2> > Thousands of edits happens every day. New articles are created every time. > The pre-rendered HTML pages are not really a convenient representation of > knowledge, at least it is not convenient for computing

I don't see how this is true. The issue with Wikipedia is that they built their platform on SQL, but that doesn't make it more convenient for computing. In fact, in many cases it does the opposite. There is nothing stopping someone from building an alternative Wikipedia-type system that renders pages and publishes records on IPFS. It's just Wikipedia wasn't designed with it in mind.

<comment><USER3> I think you're on to something. IPFS needs to replace SQL somehow,the front end is a non-issue. You'll need authentication to validate everything if you want to have any levelnof moderation.

<comment><USER4> Why would IPFS replace SQL versus being a target for rendering _from_ SQL? SQL gives you all of the power of a relational, transactional data store while IPFS gives you addressing permanence. The power then lies in your rendering engine to do the heavy lifting.

<comment><USER3> Because SQL is not decentralized.</comment></comment></comment></comment>