Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why. - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect

<comment><USER4> My take away from this is that, in addition to checklists, one low-cost intervention to improve healthcare would be to have the doctor spend a few minutes chatting the patient up and expressing cheery optimism about their prognosis. If the doctor's time is too valuable, find some unemployed psych grad with good people skills and put him in a lab coat.

<comment><USER5> Occam's razor suggests that Wired's explanation is complete bullshit. Let me give a far simpler explanation that would explain all the phenomena mentioned in the article:

We are seeing a rise in physical health problems due to increasing social isolation and other mental health risk factors.

As we replace the community barbeques with family grills we're losing more than a fun weekend activity, we're losing something that's evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to keep us mentally healthy. And more and more, scientists are learning that mental health is one of the greatest predictors (if not the greatest) of physical well being.

Why do you think ~50% of college students experience clinical depression? I'm sure that stress, poor diet, lack of sleep, and excessive alcohol consumption are all contributing factors, but at the end of the day these poor lifestyle "choices" aren't really choices at all; rather, they're triggered by specific design decisions made at the institutional and societal level.

Placebos aren't working better because people have more faith in medicine, they're working better because of the Hawthorne effect; people feel like they have someone who cares about them. That's why the effectiveness is radically different across populations, depending on the social environment, even though we're all exposed to the same media.

<comment><USER6> To be blunt: citations needed.

The article not only talks about conditions that are clearly mental (depression) and ones that are arguably mentally related (IBS), but also ones that you'd have a hard time attributing to "lifestyle 'choices' that aren't really choices at all" (Parkinson's).

> Placebos aren't working better because people have more faith in medicine, > they're working better because of the Hawthorne effect

The article talks about both effects and more (placebos working less well for conditions that are locally under-diagnosed, for example). The article presents a rich collection of causes for the rise of the placebo effect instead of a single cause. And I think Occam, who could appreciate the complexity of the brain and see that they've got data, would agree that it couldn't be as simple as you suggest.

(Also, across populations we don't all get exposed to the same media. Something tells me that there aren't constant erectile dysfunction commercials in Bangalore.)

<comment><USER5> The book Emotional Intelligence references a bunch of scientific studies about both the effect of mental health on physical health, and also about the placebo effect. The opening of Gladwell's new book is also about the effect of mental health on physical health.

There have been many studies done that show clear health benefits to joining civic organizations or participating in church. As the opportunities for civic participation decline, participating in medical studies may increasingly make people feel like they are giving back to society, which causes a change in brain chemistry that ameliorates the underlying physical symptoms.

Clearly both of my (related) hypotheses need testing, but at least they are falsifiable, unlike some of the dubious theories posed by the original article.

<comment><USER6> From your first post (and my real contention):

> Placebos aren't working better because people have more faith in medicine, > they're working better because of the Hawthorne effect; people feel like > they have someone who cares about them.

The problem isn't that placebos are working better, the problem is that they're working better relative to medications. If it was merely an issue of "someone who cares about [the patients]" then we'd expect that the actual drugs would benefit from the same effect too. As it stands, the problem is that placebos have been working better, while the same drugs have been basically steady. If Prozac couldn't beat placebos now, it tells us something, but doesn't tell us anything about how much better things were back in the old days when when we were participating more in civic organizations and church.

<comment><USER7> _If Prozac couldn't beat placebos now_

If I understand recent findings correctly, it's not that Prozac can't beat placebos now; it _never_ beat placebos and the studies showing this were simply suppressed. (I just posted about this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=784271>).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Theory: there isn't anything really all that wrong with most people; it's all in their minds, so the placebo works.

Watch the evening news on a network and count the number of advertisements you see for prescription drugs. I did this a couple of weeks ago watching the CBS Evening news, a half-hour program, and about 65 percent of the commercials were for pills of some sort: migraine pills, anti-depression pills, pills for seniors, etc.

The prescription drug industry in the US has got a slimy underbelly; it goes out of its way to convince people that there's something "wrong" with them, and then falls all over itself attempting to pat itself on the back for "curing" them.

<comment><USER9> Pharma advertising is something that always strikes me when I watch US TV feeds. Here in Canada, pharma advertising is very heavily regulated by the Federal government.

It can come in essentially two forms. One is the "for sale" form, in which case the ad is limited to the drug name, the amount, and the price - <USER2> description of what it's for, or any other information. The other is the "informational" form, in which case the ad can talk about a symptom, like "acid reflux is dangerous - here are some signs", but it can't mention the name of the drug or pharmaceutical company producing it, and it has to talk about alternative non-drug remedies.

The net result is that there are very few pharmaceutical ads on TV here, since they have so little value in what they're allowed to say.

<comment><USER10> > Here in Canada, pharma advertising is very heavily regulated by the Federal > government

"The United States is one of only two developed countries that allows direct- to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs. (The other country is New Zealand)."

[http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Direct-to- consume...](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Direct-to- consumer_advertising_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER11> I read this as only 2 countries in the world trust their citizens enough to make their own drug choices.

<comment><USER12> Except it's regulations on PRESCRIPTION drugs, so it's still up to the doctors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a theory as to why Placebos are getting _more_ effective; which is the real curiosity of this article.

Television. If as a child, you watch 10,000 hours of commercials telling you how effective drugs are. Is it any wonder that you are convinced enough that your body actually makes it true, even if you got the Obecal P instead of the real deal.

<comment><USER14> [http://www.slash7.com/articles/2009/8/25/oh-yeah-there-s- a-s...](http://www.slash7.com/articles/2009/8/25/oh-yeah-there-s-a-sugar-pill- for-that)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's been shown that antidepressants are no better clinically than placebos. The drug companies simply suppressed the trials that didn't yield the results they wanted and cherry-picked the ones that did in order to get FDA approval. This all came out a couple of years ago when a long-running Freedom of Information Act suit forced them to release all the trials.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/26/mentalhealth.m...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/26/mentalhealth.medicalresearch)

Edit: I just remembered that I posted about this to HN back when the study came out: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123575>. A commenter pointed out that the study was limited to SSRIs, the most widely used antidepressants.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've always thought you could make a killing on the late night infomercial market, selling "Placebo" to people.

Think of all the research out there on the well-documented Placebo Effect. Now you can benefit from this safe, effective, miracle cure. Order now and we'll throw in a second bottle of Placebo free of charge!

Considering the things that stupid people fall for, this would seem guaranteed to work.

<comment><USER16> They already do that, it's called a q-ray bracelet I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The book predictably irrational discusses the placebo effect on surgery. <http://www.predictablyirrational.com/pdfs/Placebo1.pdf> Very interesting results.

</comment><comment><USER18> The unsung hero in all this is the analytics data they used to debunk widely held assumptions about the placebo effect in clinical trials. Nothing like cold, hard data to inflict some cognitive dissonance on some "experts".

</comment><comment><USER19> This is an incredibly interesting article - one of the more effective ways of healing the body is to engage the brain to heal it for you. Placebo Effects, in many cases, are as powerful as the effects of the drug. Previously, the Pharma industry took this as in indication their drug's weren't effective. The central thesis of this article isn't that the drugs are ineffective, it's that the Placebo effect is a real, and sometimes _very_ effective mechanism for healing people.

From the article:

"one way that placebo aids recovery is by hacking the mind's ability to predict the future. We are constantly parsing the reactions of those around us—such as the tone a doctor uses to deliver a diagnosis—to generate more- accurate estimations of our fate. One of the most powerful placebogenic triggers is watching someone else experience the benefits of an alleged drug. Researchers call these social aspects of medicine the therapeutic ritual."

</comment><comment><USER20> If placebo works by helping the brain decide that we _should_ get better, causing it to release its own defensive chemicals then it stands to reason that other actions might also be able to induce the same response. The mechanisms involved pre-exist the entire concept of "drugs". Maybe the old- time "placebo" was going to the local healer who jumped up and down and proclaimed that you will get better.

Derren Brown's videos come to mind, especially his bit on the subway where he convincingly causes a man to become incapable of recalling where he is going, simply by commanding him to not remember.

If other people can cause such powerful changes in our brain function, then there should be ways to do it yourself.

<comment><USER21> I wouldn't put it past Derren Brown to have represented that situation on the subway somewhat differently than it actually happened - he is an entertainer after all (his program about faith healing and religious beliefs was amusing). Your point about influence still stands of course.

I found 'Meaning, Medicine and the Placebo Effect' to be rather good: <http://cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521000874>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My question: why do the pharms think this is bad news for them?

The placebo effect requires belief that the placebo is fixing the problem. Studies are double-blind so that the patient does have that belief. Without the expectation of being cured, there is no improvement.

For the placebo effect to be a significant influence in general health, the public needs to be convinced that it is receiving a legitimate fix. The best way to show people it's a real cure? Give them a real cure, and tell them all about how it works. The need for chemical compounds that change some aspect of body chemistry will not decrease because of the placebo effect; instead, these compounds become the placebo. It's another, more effective layer of manipulation.

But despite my wording, I see no problem with it. It might technically be a giant fraud, if the power of healing lies with the buyer all along. But if it happened in finance, who would complain? "Company convinces clients they have more money; buying power mysteriously increases" doesn't sound all that fraudulent to me.

Essentially, it's business as usual for pharms. Develop compounds that may or may not work, tell everyone they work, sell them, produce actual results. What's all the fuss about?

</comment><comment><USER23> IMO it's quite a simple explanation. You only have to watch 5 minutes of US advertising (I'm from the UK and living in Canada) to think you should have something wrong with you. If you think you should have something wrong with you for long enough, you will, it's called hypochondria and there's long been the suggestion of prescribing placebos to them until they're capable of getting access to a psychologist or psychiatrist.

You get the problem that when pills cure everything and you're sick and _not_ on a pill, you worry. This makes you feel worse, which makes you sicker. The sugar pill not only has a placebo effect, but it also stops you worrying so really its having two effects opposed to the usual one we've classically seen.

When stress is the leading form of disease in the western world, you're going to have to remove stressed people from the drug tests to get impartial results. It just happens to suck that most sick people are stressed out. I guess they'll have to give a placebo to the test and control group to relieve stress and then give a second to the control group pretending its actual medicine.

</comment><comment><USER24> The problem is the depression (clinical depression) is one of the most horrifyingly over-diagnosed diseases on the face of the planet.

 _EVERYONE_ gets depressed. If people didn't, we'd be living in Utopia. When you hand some person who is having a crappy day a pill and say something like "this is full of magic chemicals that are going to make you feel better", their outlook on life improves, and they aren't depressed anymore!

Clinical depression is different. Clinical depression is as much a real disease as anything else, and it cannot be treated with a placebo any more than a broken leg can. Real depression is not a psychological problem, it is a neurochemical one...

Clinical depression does not even always manifest itself as feeling sad or anxious. It can present itself as bad memory, poor focus, decreased creativity...These things, while psychologicacl problems, have neurological causes.

Yes, being sad does as well, but being sad is as easy to "cure" as being hungry.

This is why the placebo worked.

<comment><USER25> That's what the drug companies want people to think. But it's not actually true.

Even the type of depression you are talking about responds to placebos. And it responds very well to therapy, but barely at all to drugs - except that the drugs work well as placebos.

It is a real condition - don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it isn't. It's just that the drugs don't do as much as people think they do.

Most people when they first hear about placebos flatly refuse to believe they work as well as they do. But they do.

<comment><USER24> I'm sorry, but no. If you're depressed, a placebo may improve your outlook and this improved outlook may present itself as a decrease in symptoms which, like I said, manifest psycologically, but unless you've got something to increase the amount of seratonin in your brain (which is used as a neurotransmitter...this is why depression can present as poor short-term memory, and poor focus) then you're fixing a physical problem with a psychological solution.

If this makes somebody feel better, then fantastic for them! I'm sorry for being a bit combative about this...sever mania and depression is something that runs in my family, and debilitating depression and anxiety are something I've dealt with my entire life. Believe me, if there was a placebo-based solution to this, I would be the first person in line to get it...

I don't mean to take offense, I know you don't mean any, but saying what you're saying is a bit akin to telling a cancer patient that they need to just get over it.

<comment><USER25> > Believe me, if there was a placebo-based solution to this, I would be the > first person in line to get it...

If you are taking drugs for this, then you are in line already. Every one I have read about has studies showing it is only slightly more effective than placebos.

I really am not trying to say the problem is not real. I'm only saying that placebos are far more effective than you realize.

For example some quotes from wikipedia:

"Notably, however, a recent Cochrane review of the efficacy of the SSRIs concluded that they were only slightly more effective than placebo for the treatment of people with depression."

"A widely-reported meta-analysis combined 35 clinical trials submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before licensing of four newer antidepressants (including the SSRIs paroxetine and fluoxetine, and two non- SSRI antidepressants nefazodone and venlafaxine). The authors found that although the antidepressants were statistically superior to placebo they did not exceed the NICE criteria for a 'clinically significant' effect. In particular they found that the effect size was very small for moderate depression but increased with severity reaching 'clinical significance' for very severe depression. The relationship between severity and efficacy was attributed to a reduction of the placebo effect in severely depressed patients, rather than an increase in the effect of the medication."

(Especially note the last sentence.)

Please don't understand this in reverse and assume people should/can do nothing. My point is placebos work, and people should make more use of them.

Another thing: just because something is all in your head does not mean it's not real. People often assume that "since a placebo fixed it, it was not real to begin with". NO! That's is NOT the case. The problem was REAL, and the placebo fixed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fascinating article. But they didn't mention the obvious economic reason why placebo effects have been shunned or suppressed: placebos are free.

If the pharmaceutical industry gets clever about finding ways to make money off the placebo effect, as opposed to getting more devious about pushing drugs into people, that seems to me a good thing.

<comment><USER26> Homeopathy anyone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> They should just sell the placebo. No FDA issues, and if it does what tests show it does can you imagine the profit margin!

On a serious note, I'm enjoying keeping an eye on the US Health Care debate from afar (Australia, to be precise). Anybody think it will result in sustainable change for the better?

<comment><USER28> They do. It's called homeopathy or gingko balboa or any other number of items that can be found in natural foods stores and the like. It doesn't matter if they _work_ or not, what matters is people think they work.

<comment><USER25> Well they do work - that's the point.

True it's not because of what they are made off, but it doesn't matter. What matters is they work.

That's why so many people take them (they work), and why they always fail when tested against placebos - it's because they basically ARE placebos. And very effective ones too.

The typical response when hearing that is: get rid of them, they do nothing. But the correct response is use them, because placebos are very effective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's probably directly related to the number of people regularly taking medication for other conditions. More people have more faith in magic pills to solve all their problems. We have become a heavily medicated society.

</comment><comment><USER30> Well, the US govt took the prohibitions off drug advertising in the mid-90s and now it's a >6 billion-a-year industry. Just the ads and promotions, that is.

All those ads say that pills work for all range of problems (even imaginary ones that the drug makers made up to sell more pills - such as pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder, to sell renamed Prozac and renew their patent).

Those ads weren't there before. The ads still aren't shown in Europe, where the real drugs are beating the placebo effect (the article mentions trials in France and Italy where diazepam wins; in the US, diazepam fails against the placebo).

Drug advertising is simply not legal in most parts of the EU.

They don't think that has something to do with it? Ads affect belief - <USER3> nobody says "Oh, well now I believe xyz will cure me," because they pretend to be immune to advertising, but if you're surrounding by messaging that pill = cure, you are going to eventually believe it as it is absorbed as cultural knowledge. Just like low-fat = healthy has become a "fact" that "everyone knows."

I was shocked that the article barely even made a nod to this, and didn't follow it to the its conclusion.

I think it's hilarious that the drug co's went along thinking that they won big with that repeal of consumer protection laws, and that their own exploitation of known human weakness is causing their drugs to be less effective than sugar pills.

</comment><comment><USER31> A person is responsible for their own mental condition. Period.

That is what this placebo situation demonstrates, more than anything. YOU are responsible for YOUR condition.

<comment><USER32> I'll be sure to tell that to the homeless dude who digs through my garbage every night and has heated arguments with the fire hydrant..

<comment><USER31> Tell him. If he doesn't /take/ responsibility, it doesn't change the fact that his life is his own and whatever he is experiencing, belongs to him alone.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: AI service to sync audio transcriptions - <AUTHOR> Can someone suggest any service that do this? Also how would you build an AI to sync audio transcriptions? I input some audio and text and the AI outputs when each word starts <comment><USER2> Your query is not clear, what you exactly want? Did you ant that You input a sound(instri=umetal music only) and a text and AI techniques join both of them?

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the use case for this?</comment>


Apple reportedly testing 7.85-inch iPad prototype - <AUTHOR> http://www.bgr.com/2012/04/05/apple-reportedly-testing-7-85-inch-ipad-prototype/

<comment><USER2> If they want to bring out an ~9" iPad, they have to solve a very interesting design problem. I don't think is solvable and therefore am doubtful about a smaller iPad, but on the other hand Apple has more and better paid people working on this. The decision they are facing is basically:

 _A)_ Just shrinking down the existing viewport (like the article suggests). Problem: would break Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines regarding minimum sizes for text, touch targets, etc.

 _B)_ Just adding it as a new device format in the SDK like when the iPad came out. Problem: more Platform fragmentation.

I realize that Apple is in a position where they could choose to go along with the fragmentation, but it would seem strange. I am hoping for option C which only they know.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would totally buy a smaller iPad. My wife has an iPad but I ended up going with a Galaxy Tab 8.9 inch because it's the perfect size (the iPad felt a little too big for me). Though the Galaxy Tab kinda sucks.

<comment><USER4> I might get one as well. The main thing I don't like about the iPad (and other 10" tablets) is that I can't conveniently hold it in one hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> At 7.85 inches used at the iPhones viewing distance it will be very close to Retina if it has the iPad 3G resolution.</comment>


Goodbye SSH, Use AWS Session Manager Instead - <AUTHOR> https://cloudonaut.io/goodbye-ssh-use-aws-session-manager-instead/ <comment><USER2> One more mechanism for cloud lock-in</comment>


Je Suis Charlie (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/world/europe/charlie-hebdo-cartoons-trial-france.html <comment><AUTHOR> This was a homage to the 2015 killings when we all chose to be Charlie Hebado. Yes, it is a current story but it refers to a tragedy in 2015.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is a current story, not from 2015. So please remove the 2015 or replace with 2020.

They're going to republish them.</comment>


Apply HN: Turn your spreadsheets into a complete webapp in minutes - <AUTHOR> PROBLEM
Most businesses have important information registered in spreadsheets, those spreadsheets generate a lot of problems like loss of files, versioning, loss of information, lack of accountability in changes, etc. Some of those spreadsheets start as something small but end up being pretty important for its users. To substitute those files with custom software is difficult because in medium or big enterprises IT departments work on the most important things and can't develop software for "small things". On the other hand outsourcing that development can be difficult and/or costly. For smaller business without IT departments the problem is the cost of developing custom applications.
SOLUTION
Let users upload a spreadsheet to our platform and transform that into a custom web app, adding useful functionality like search, filtering, reports, security, users, permissions, etc.
BUSINESS MODEL
Basically we will have two products the hosted app (recurrent revenue) and the downloadable app to host on your own server (as a premium product). As a business strategy we need to have affordable prices so that medium management can approve the purchase.
Also our apps need to be functional, with good usability and good design (in that order).
VISION
In the long run we want to make great software for any kind of companiess. To do that we need to enter the market with smaller and less risky applications because "no one ever got fired for buying <big enterprise software company>"
MARKET
Every business that uses spreadsheets for long term work (need to work more on this)
TEAM
Right now it is only me, but I am looking for co-founders. I have a technical degree on software development and experience in various non-IT areas of a bank (first hand experience of what I call the "spreadsheet hell").
PROGRESS
I have a sketch of the application and am developing the first working prototype
Any kind of questions, opinions, etc. are welcome.
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> This seems like it would be a great idea if it can be done because the market for it would probably be very large.

However it seems to me that doing this would be very difficult for at least 2 main reasons.

First spreadsheets can be organized in essentially arbitrary ways and there is no standard way of defining the semantics of data in them. There can also be all sorts of references between data items and unlike SQL there is nothing to explicitly define the nature of these references. How could a program take an arbitrary collection of spreadsheets and transform them into a webapp that has significantly more functionality than just loading them into Google docs ?

Second spreadsheets often use macros and other programming constructs so I think you also have the problem of building a general translator from macros/VB/Excel functions to javascript/whatever backend language you're using. This again seems like a fairly difficult problem to tackle in general.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you that it is a difficult problem to tackle and I've been thinking partly on what you say.

About your first point there are two important things, first that we are going to start with simple spreadsheets and then evolve to more complex ones. And second that we are going to have some user interaction, because there is a lot of information that is in the user's head that we can't infer only from the data.

About the second point, the first "simple" spreadsheets are going to be (probably) without macros, etc. (anyway at the start we can do ThingsThatDontScale(TM)). I think that making a transpiler from excel functions to a programming language shouldn't be that difficult, but the macros are a totally different beast.

Thanks for your reply!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We already have Google spreadsheets and many more such apps/web apps. Why would someone jump to this?

I think you need to clarify more about your USP. Becoming more specific about your functionalities such as what kind of security or what kind of user permissions, etc. might help you gain more attention.

People already have such apps/web apps available. So, you need that one wow factor to make the users jump from one service and come and use yours. Try to think more from an user's perspective and try to redesign the way your web app is going to work or help companies/individuals in handling spreadsheets with ease. Good luck! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I didn't explained myself well or maybe I didn't understand your comment (or both :).

In other words the idea is that you upload a spreadsheet and we make a CRUD- like app for you with the information that you already have in your spreadsheet.

The purpose is not making spreadsheet management better, but make spreadsheets "obsolete" for some kind of uses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a problem I have that I thought was near to impossible. I have a nightmare test case for you. I am a property manager of 1000 units. We have 40 properties each of which we track vacancies with a spreadsheet. They've got all relative property data on them as well. Let me know if you are interested.

My solution was to build a web app for this completely out of spreadsheet land. But I've got some other things to tackle first. Either way good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> You will probably not be my first client :P but I love a nightmare test case.

I would love to see that spreadsheet (or a part of it with fake or no data obviously), my email is in profile, feel free to contact me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is already happening on a lot of fronts, I've built entire apps on zapier.

What are your thoughts on the following:

Flex.io zapier.com Blockspring Zoho Creator Domo

If you build this platform I think you have to start application first and not try to theorize it.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the apps you mention, except for zoho creator, I feel like are all developer oriented (I can be wrong).

In a way, what I want to do is to make apps using spreadsheets as the requirements for the app.

What do you mean by 'start application first and not try to theorize it'? Isn't that I don't agree but I didn't understand it well and it looks like somenthing interesting to take into account.

<comment><USER6> Have you looked at spreadsheetweb.com and calcfusion.com? The former seems mature, with plenty of real paying customers. The latter is new, and I guess they're still working on getting traction.

<comment><USER6> Here's two more: karmaplatform.com and kdcalc.com. This whole area of converting end user produced Excel solutions to scalable systems does seem very promising. But no one has nailed it yet, and I suspect there are at least two reasons. 1) Over technical solutions that require a .xls to be converted into some other technical deployable eg kdcalc.com producing a .jar 2) The diversity of Excel based solutions eg spreadsheet as DB vs. spreadsheet as calc engine vs spreadsheet as reporting dashboard.

So when you say "convert a spreadsheet into a web app", it means many things to many people. Which is a real expectation management challenge!

<comment><AUTHOR> The expectations management you mention is really important, I need to think how to communicate that clearly to customers.

In this case we are going to make it "cloud based" so there's no need to deploy anything. About the different kind of spreadsheet uses, the more use cases that we can found the better, also we are going to start with the more simple cases to reach a functioning product and then expand to the most complex ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can you provide a link to the sketch or anything showing what you've done so far?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've added a sketch of the user flow here: [https://email@example.com/KCTLq4WnAL/...](https://email@example.com/KCTLq4WnAL/view/page/ad2107be8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If it can be solved beautifully, it would be cash cow. like the others mentioned, translating UDF (user defined function) would be a challenge. also in bank, it usually load quant library xll. It would be impossible to host quant library as service. nowaday i see bank just use spreadsheet as front end. a lot of logic are wrapped in code and fully tested somewhere else

<comment><USER6> It's not impossible to host a quant library XLL as a service. I've done it with the QuantLib XLL. My HN profile has links that detail how it's done.

<comment><USER8> This is really cool. I tried a few c++ call as endpoint in a webservice. but i find it difficult to maintain state as you know market are in memory. I am also thinking to recreate dependency graph as futures in tornado but I gave up as it seems too difficult. eventually I just move xll out of excel process to make it s/s a bit light weighted and faster to run

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The sketch of the user flow for the first prototype can be seen here [https://email@example.com/KCTLq4WnAL/...](https://email@example.com/KCTLq4WnAL/view/page/ad2107be8)

Again, comments are welcomed :)

<comment><USER6> I took a look at the mock up, and I think you're aiming for the same space as Karma Platform; converting spreadsheet-as-db to web app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that is basically the idea for the first version, I will take a closer look to Karma Platform

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey there, I created an app called spreadsheet.io that did something similar (Google Refine + Fusion Tables). I have no bandwidth for dev, but am open to partnership.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would like to see what your app is about, but spreadsheet.io returns a 503 error, can I see something about it on another place?

<comment><USER9> Yea I took it offline. I'll update this thread with a link to details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hey lvp3, this sounds like a good case for Fieldbook (my startup): [https://fieldbook.com](https://fieldbook.com). It's as flexible as a spreadsheet, but with the power of a relational database.

We've had a few real estate offices and property managers use us; you wouldn't be the first! If you send me your spreadsheet I can even get it migrated for you as a demo. email@example.com

<comment><USER11> It feels disrespectful to hijack someone else's Apply HN application like this.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11458280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11458280) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER10> Oops, my apologies. I only mentioned it because other people were mentioning alternate solutions on the same sub-thread.

Promoting an app when it's relevant seems common on other threads, but I can see how it would be rude on an Apply thread. Won't do it again.</comment></comment></comment>


Just How Much Would It Cost to Buy Congress Back from Special Interests? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-would-it-cost-to-buy-congress-back-from-special-interests-2011-6 <comment><USER2> Click-bait title award winner for 2017.</comment>


A 48Khz digital music player for the Commodore 64 (2018) - <AUTHOR> http://brokenbytes.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-48khz-digital-music-player-for.html <comment><USER2> I don't understand why the `sidtable' conversion is done at run-time. It looks as if one could save quite a few cycles at no size cost by doing it when encoding.

<comment><USER3> The values in the table depend on the SID model. So on an older SID (6581) you have one table, and on newer SID (8580 or 6582) you have another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Meanwhile, the Atari computers had a "volume-only" mode that let you send a voltage directly to the audio output.

By setting the paddle ports to a high-speed sampling mode, you could easily build an audio sampler.

Great computers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16696246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16696246)

</comment><comment><USER6> Another trick is to put the replay routine in zero-page, so you can easily increment the pointer. It saves one cycle.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not just PCM playback, but also realtime decompression, vector quantization.

About 2 bits used per 8 bit sample.

About 7 bits of PCM resolution out of good old SID chip.</comment>


Virtual Clouds Could Prevent Data Centers Destroying the Planet - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23875/ <comment><AUTHOR> disclaimer: I am an author of the paper (but not the blog post). The title is a bit dramatic but the content conveys the idea relatively clearly. If you need more information, the paper is linked to at the bottom of the article.</comment>


Common Errors in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hackages.io/spot-the-mistake-daaa04f7e554 <comment><USER2> The article itself seems to contain an error.

The author states that the following:

typeof result !== 'number'

..returns "Boolean" because it's interpreted as:

typeof (result !== 'number')

I don't believe this is true. typeof has precedence over in/equality [0], so you don't need parantheses, as recommended in the article, like typeof(result). The original statement works as expected.

[0] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/Operator_Precedence)

<comment><USER2> I did enjoy reading the article though, so thank you for writing and posting it!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: For an app with Bitcoin wallets, is it okay to hedge users money? - <AUTHOR> I am not sure if I am using the term hedging correctly. What I mean to say is if someone adds some fixed amount of money from a bank to the bitcoin wallet, is it a good idea to keep the exact value in wallet and take the volatility bit out for the users. So no matter how the bitcoin exchange performs the wallet amount remains the same. If it goes down, we as a startup bear the losses or if it goes up, we earn the profits. <comment><USER2> As long as you make it perfectly clear to the user, this should be fine.

Not sure if anyone would be up for it though---I mean I certainly wouldn't. Sure it would remove the volatility but that volatility could give the user massive profits. Just look at the BTC price right now!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the issue. All the people I interacted with are generally afraid of putting their money in bitcoin because of the volatility. Sure, people with interests in bitcoin trading would definitely not like that, but for normal people it would be a no-brainer since they can get out the same amount of money they put in, as they do with banks.</comment></comment>


Singapore bus death triggers riot - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25294918

<comment><USER2> Humanity, you terrify me sometimes.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I come up with an idea? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently studying a mixed media university degree which focuses a lot on web design and development now that I am in my final year. We have to submit a major project which is pretty much what potential employers will judge us on.
I drew up a few ideas, one of which my tutor told me to go for (it was a google maps/flickr API mashup) as it would push my coding skills and set me up for a path to take me down a more developer or hybrid approach (which I've started on anyways with learning Rails and coming from a programming background before university).
Turned out that it was already done and exists as the explore section on Flickr pretty much.
I'm struggling to find an idea that will push my abilities, is reachable, interesting and doesn't exist exactly as I imagine it already.
Any tips on how you come up with an idea? <comment><USER3> Try thinking about things in life that you want to do but can't. Usually there's no reason, it's just the way things have always been.

You can disrupt these things. Look at the global fallout of the film and music industries. We did that. Us geeks.

The really, really hard problems are: governments; banks (finance in general); telcos. I'd avoid those until you've made your first billion. But they are great targets. They will fall one day. And someone will be responsible.

Here's a few. I moved house recently. I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to get rid of. I found that freecycle sucked -- at least in this part of the world. I wanted a freecycle replacement, but something much better.

For stuff I wanted to sell, there was no option but ebay. I have moral objections to ebay, lots of them, so I wanted something else. I didn't want an auction. Just a place to list and sell.

And on the list goes.

It's like the reverse of buying stocks, where you buy into the things that solve your problems.

Next time -- that'll be later today or tomorrow -- that you find yourself saying "ffs, it can't be that hard", go and fix it.

And don't worry if someone thinks that they are doing it already. Because you can do it better, if you just think about it.

<comment><USER4> _You can disrupt these things. Look at the global fallout of the film and music industries. We did that. Us geeks._

I can't upvote you enough. That's the single most inspiring thing I've ever read on HN. It's easy to take for granted, but it's everywhere. Newspapers. Manufacturing. Communications. Hell, even ask an old engineer how they did things in their field before CAD. (Engineers used to make a living wage _reducing logic expressions by hand._ )

 _We_ wrought this creative destruction, tearing this world down and building it back up again so it runs better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Try forcing yourself to write 10 answers to each of these questions (taken from a PG article):

* What do I find intolerable?

* What luxury can I turn into a commodity?

* What big companies solution could I make easier to use?

* What will kids in 10 years look back on and not believe about how difficult our lives were?

Also, here is an article I wrote on the subject a while back with some more ideas: [http://www.startbreakingfree.com/146/10-ways-to-come-up- with...](http://www.startbreakingfree.com/146/10-ways-to-come-up-with-a- million-dollar-business-idea/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I get the sense that I'm old school compared to a lot of hacker news folks. As such, the way I've done it may not help but what the heck, can't hurt.

I listen to people, especially customers and potential customers, and pattern match. Been doing it for years. I try and get them to tell what problem they want solved but they rarely do that, they tell me what they want to buy. It's up to me to work backwards to what problem it is they want solved. Key point: listen to them, but not to what they want, find the problem they want solved.

Once you work out the problem, just shove it in a mental hash indexed by problem name and yielding a counter. Each time you see a problem, bump the counter.

When you are looking for a problem to solve, look through the hash at the ones that have high counters. Pick the one that you think you might be able to solve, looks interesting, looks like people will pay for it.

Believe it or not, that has worked for me for years, extremely well. It's perhaps hard to see that if you are in school or new in the industry. I remember what that felt like, it felt like I didn't know what to do. I remember thinking I couldn't come up with a good idea for a PhD thesis. I went to Sun and within a year or three had literally dozens of ideas, any one of which would have made (IMO) a fantastic thesis.

I'm not sure how to apply this to today's world. It worked for me because I went to work for a large company that had lots of potential customers. Marketing figured out that I liked to talk to customers and customers liked to talk to me (I was in the kernel group at Sun). I learned to keep a clean shirt hanging on the back of my door because I'd get random calls saying "Hey, lm, ATT is at PAL-1, can we swing by and get a brain dump on the clustering stuff?" which would lead to wide ranging discussions of what they wanted us to build. Access to those customers was _huge_ , they were the source of the problems that needed to be fixed.

TL;DR summary - listen to customers, work backwards to the problem they need solved, build up a list of those, work on the one with the most hits.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've always found that my best ideas come with an open mind and by "doing" something. It doesn't really matter if there is existing competition - <USER2> just need to do it 50% better to be a success. Who knows, you might be part way into the project and realize that there is a truly killer idea for a new audience. Keep an open mind and _do_ something.

Here's a good idea as an example:

<http://www.lifesta.com/>

The folks who created this site were likely impressed with Groupon and asked themselves, "what happens if I don't use this coupon that I'm going to impulse buy?" Open to ideas while using the service, they created a marketplace not just for Groupons, but that could be used across all of the groupon clones. With some good press and improved functionality / polish, a good idea will go to great.

Beyond erroneously telling you to "do" things with an open mind, here are 2 things that I do when I'm looking for new ideas:

1) I disconnect completely from technology, change my scenery and think without distraction. Getting into a pattern is the key for this to work. I usually book off Tuesday and Thursday afternoons when I'm in idea mode and no matter what else is going on, I disconnect, go for a hike and relax while brainstorming. Often, I'll toss a digital audio recorder in my pocket so that I can spit out ideas without writing - but nothing else.

2) When I'm trying to think of ideas, I talk to people. Go to local geek meetups / conferences and use the room as a sounding board. While it's not incredibly honest, I find that confidently telling people that I'm already the CEO of my new project idea, judging their reaction and listening to their feedback / questions is a lot more valuable then a conversation based around the sentence "what do you think about this idea".

I hope that these things help you out.

<comment><USER8> That was eerily close to how we came up with the idea for Lifesta. We went through a period of brainstorming after a previous idea didn't go anywhere. We focused on marketplaces as a base for brainstorming though we came up with things that were completely unrelated. Finally, and frankly as a joke, my partner suggested a secondary market for groupon-style vouchers since we both liked them and knew people that bought but haven't used them. When we analyzed the idea, we actually liked it a lot...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you're looking for an idea for a mashup, one thing that works really well is thinking of two ridiculous and totally unrelated services and imagining what a combination of the two would look like. Try it a few times and you'll be surprised at what you might come up with.

I did this while working with Tom Coates back at Yahoo! in 2006 and we came up with a combination of News and Horoscopes: Astronewsology! <http://www.flickr.com/photos/simon/100449854/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I agree to some extent with everyone here stating that an idea doesn't need to be novel to develop your skills. However, I do think executing on an idea of your own versus reverse engineering something that exists does require much more from you. With a project that is entirely your own, you have nothing to fall back on. When you start at square one, you must design and implement _everything_.

So with that being said, I'd encourage you to check out a book called Thinkertoys[1]. Although it's a little elementary at times, it lays out specific techniques to get your creative juices flowing. Its great for analytical types because it provides a concrete framework for a very abstract activity (idea generation).

\--- [1] [http://www.amazon.com/Thinkertoys-Handbook-Creative- Thinking...](http://www.amazon.com/Thinkertoys-Handbook-Creative-Thinking- Techniques-2nd/dp/1580087736)

</comment><comment><USER11> The data visualization realm might be something for you. Take a look at Stamen Design for inspiration (<http://stamen.com>).

There is so much more interesting data than maps and Flickr photos out there, from government data to the data that New York City makes available, to Twitter streams or Facebooks social graph, etc. Take a look at this list of popular APIs on programmable web for some inspiration - <http://www.programmableweb.com/apis/directory/1?sort=mashups>

If you make a cool visualization that makes an interesting topic easy to understand, you can be sure that it will get some nice coverage, too.

Hope that helps.

</comment><comment><USER12> The most common advice is to think about pain points: what in your day to day life or the life of those around you is an annoyance and how could you code something to fix it? The main problem with this approach is that the fix might not be worth a significant amount of money to people. Assuming this is only for a school project that aspect shouldn't matter and you might find some great ideas. A couple resources that might help: [http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2010/08/05/how-to-get-good- ide...](http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2010/08/05/how-to-get-good-ideas-for- startups/) and <http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

</comment><comment><USER13> I've got the opposite problem, tons of ideas and not the coding skills to make them happen. I also have a knack for taking half-baked ideas and turning them into something viable.

That aside, my ideas come from observing things I and others do frequently (or want to do) that can be improved. Read rags, ask your peers what they do online,

Some examples from my list, I hope they spawn some ideas for you

My current attempt is for online book/paper editing spawned by my writing of a Security Handbook I want online and in deadtree format. Simple really: importing of documents (Word, ODF, RTF), browsable/readable display by chapter/section, WYSIWY{G,M} editor with revision/track changes, layout templates, exporting of content to to PS, ePUB, PDF. For monetization being tied in with publishers.

buying a house? tired of collecting addresses, realtor names and those MLS numbers? Geolocation + "bookmarking" and tie in to MLS database

"What is that song?" Recording song sample, identify unique artifacts (fingerprinting) and compare to database of known songs. Crowd sourcing would help here.

HTML5 Darknet. Websocket P2P network for a website, connect visitors and (selectively) allow chatting, sharing of bookmarks, play list, calendars

One more based on your question: a place for sharing of ideas that connects experienced developers to people with challenging ideas. :)

AS you can see, these come from common issues that people run into. Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER14> If you're interested in journalism, trends, government and information visualization / mashups and usability, shoot me an email.

I am still organizing the team while building the infrastructure, and I will add you to the mailing list to stay in the loop, maybe something for you after school :-)

For now here is an idea for you. After big political events, you usually have media coverage of opposing points of view using the same photo-set. After a Palestinian-Israeli peace summit, for example, you will see the same image with different headlines.

Scrape Google News for images pertaining to a keyword ("Obama" for example) and do a visualization showing one photo, along with every headline in a news article it has appeared in. You can use the TinEye API for that.

You will shock the world by laying rhetoric bare. In a future version you can add sentiment analysis to sort the articles in a two-column format, but that will require more programming (unless you opt for a crowd-sourced solution; two arrows "negative/positive", etc.)

If you like this, there is more where it came from :-)

Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER15> Don't look for ideas. Look for problems.

<comment><USER16> Have a look for something that interests you. After you've looked at several sites, you should find somethings that you would like to do but can't or are difficult to do well. Having identified a problem you have the idea for an improvement.

Just look at all the add-ons that Facebook, Yahoo, etc have attracted. Each of them addresses a specific short-coming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just because it's already done doesn't mean it can't push your abilities and isn't reachable.

Flickr would have had the resources to do anything they wanted with the project. You, as the only guy on it, will have to make tradeoffs and sacrifice features in order to get it done. What part of that isn't helpful in the real world?

</comment><comment><USER18> Have a conversation with somebody who is interested in discussing ideas with you. It can be anybody, really, even if they aren't interested in pursuing something like you are. Just the act of having a dialog with a person (vs. the internal dialog you have when it's just yourself) has helped me time and again to get through a problem, come up with better ways to do something, work through the details of new ideas, etc. My thought process goes in directions it wouldn't go on its own. There have been many times when I'm just running something by my girlfriend, and before she even says something back, I'm thinking in different ways just because I said it out loud.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think idea generation/ creativity is a competitve advantgage because it is a skill that a lot of people don't have and it is essentially the ability to create "possible" new value.

But as people mentioned they worthless if you do not execute.

I come up with good ideas all the time becasue I am naturally curious on how things work and love to solve problems. It is psychologically rewarding to me to solve complex problems and coming up with ideas and being correct. So if you are natually curious and can critically think you should be coming up with a lot of ideas.

</comment><comment><USER20> It comes from spending time in some domain, like wikipedia, photo sharing, forums, shopping etc... You don't just come up with an idea out of the blue, you do something long enough and you'll have an idea in that domain and have a few hunches on how to execute it well.

There was a TED talk about how people come up with ideas, can't remember what it's called. Basically ideas take time to develop just like everything else, they only seem like eureka moments because they sometimes come about when you're not focused.

</comment><comment><USER21> You might wanna watch this video titled 'Where good ideas come from'.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU>

</comment><comment><USER22> Stop thinking about new ideas and start getting deeper in the first thing that comes to your mind. Iterate through it, don't develop yet. Be at least one/two weeks thinking only about it, Can it be extrapolated to something else?, How would you do it?, Improve it in your mind, iterate few times, find which niche could fit. Start implementing it... and iterate again, and again.

After a few weeks you will get a deep understanding on it... ideas will flow.

</comment><comment><USER23> I would assume that you've already heard it some times, but I find this way of finding an idea to be very good:

Take a shower, and what your mind thinks about during the shower could lead you into some pretty interesting ideas. Of course, they have to be relevant to your study, but they may not immediately look like they are: That's usually how great ideas come to life.

<comment><USER24> That is a decent idea. Also, showering regularly to generate new ideas has some useful side effects. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Killer ideas generally come from personal experience within a field and look obvious to the person in question. You cannot create fire by banging rocks together unless you know what you're doing. What I'm getting at is you can't create a new never seen idea without having some background in that field but you can apply what you know to create something better.

</comment><comment><USER26> Start coding the flickr mashup and keep your mind open during the process. It'll morph - you'll see something you can do. Other advice in this thread is sound on the general idea creation process - I would also add talk to people! Talk to people with problems, talk to an underserved group, talk to your friends and family, etc.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think ideas come with life experience, so get out and experience the world.

Really take notice of your surroundings and the people in them, and then most importantly notice how the people interact with the surroundings. Then ask yourself, is there a better way to do this?

</comment><comment><USER28> Pick something you dislike about something you consume, and imagine how you would fix it.

</comment><comment><USER29> By asking questions, and putting answers in different contexts.

For instance, questions about the reality such as "what if?", "what makes it right?". Once there's the answer, try to find another space where it fits.

</comment><comment><USER30> If you're thinking along the lines of mash-ups, I'd Google search for a web 2.0 API list, and then pick a couple to put together that would be really slick.

</comment><comment><USER31> Ideas come with experience, you push something to the edge and you realize the next stage doesn't exist and it's up to you to create it if you want it to.

</comment><comment><USER32> A must read - <http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html>

</comment><comment><USER33> look for things around you. see which things you wish there was an app for to make it easier.

Think more about how you would want software to do it.

and go for it.

Dont worry if you dont reach your goal. You will learn a lot.

</comment><comment><USER34> Do it anyway, and find little things you can do differently or better.

</comment><comment><USER35> Some random thoughts:

1\. Good ideas are cheap. You sound like you're after a killer idea. There are very few killer ideas. Amazon was originally just buying booms online. Google? A search engine. eBay? An auction site.

2\. What matters is execution not the idea.

3\. Just because someone else is doing it doesn't mean it's already done. You can have a different (better) take or simply do it better.

4\. Pain points are a good starting point. Look at your life. What hires? What could be better?

5\. Software is a great starting point because a decade an onternet startup took $5 million whereas now it is as little as $20k.

6\. Don't get caught up in hype. For example social media is now (IMHO) hugely overhyped. You need to be somewhat contrarian.

7\. Realize when a field is "done". For example, location. You would need a veru different take at this point to compete in this very crowded market.

8\. Timing is everything. There was a video on demand startup or two every month before Youtube struck gold.

9\. Success will take longer than you think it will.

</comment><comment><USER36> Your idea doesn't need to be novel in order to develop yourself further as a developer. Do the flickr mashup if you want the experience.

A "Startup Idea" involves not just a feature, but something that is compelling enough to be a business. You should be in a position where you have more ideas than you can possibly do (this is my position- I get a new business idea every day, at least and a good one every week.)

So, I may not be able to relate to not being able to come up with ideas, but I would suggest if you're having trouble to think about the things that you see online and in the world, where there are problems, or inefficiencies that you can improve on. Great ideas are ones where it is a no-brainer to your customers and where what you're supplying them can be supplied at a very low cost relative to the value they are willing to pay for. Do try to look for things that are worth paying for- this sets the bar high enough, and means that you have something that can grow by itself without outside investment. IF you do get outside investment, a profitable business, is going to get better terms than one that bears higher risk.

Possibly more experience with engineering will help because it will help you identify areas where software can make peoples lives better.....

But do read a lot. Read entrepreneur books and blogs and understand that it will take awhile before you find the right idea and that it will take a lot of thinking about the possibilities of various ideas to understand what makes a good business for you to do. (Every entrepreneur is different and so their businesses will be different...find one that plays to your unique makeup.)</comment>


Creating Windows XP Icons (2001) - <AUTHOR> https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms997636.aspx <comment><USER2> Maybe this is just me, but does anyone else think the XP design is timeless? Maybe it's because I grew up with it, but looking at these icons....it's not _ugly_. The interface strikes a good balance between skeuomorphism and unique digital design that I feel is missing from all of today's UI designs.

I don't know. I think XP looks nice, even compared to today's standards.

<comment><USER3> Personally I hated the default look and feel back when it was released. It was screaming "plastic" all over, except for Luna Silver. Icons were less plasticky than the rest of it, but still meh.

IMO, the timeless Windows look is Win2K - it's when they got the original Win95 / WinNT4 look perfect. They adjusted the colors a little bit so it was less dark, and IIRC that was also the first version to have sky blue wallpaper background by default, and blue gradient title bars. It was also the first to switch from MS Sans Serif to Tahoma 8pt for the UI font, and Tahoma was pretty much pixel perfect at that size.

So the overall effect was that it looked more cheerful than Win9x, but not cartoonish.

[https://i.imgur.com/jwzJiSW.png](https://i.imgur.com/jwzJiSW.png)

<comment> V-2 I liked the non-standard, black Zune theme on XP. The default blue one is indeed timeless, but not in a positive sense, imho. It was a textbook case of the UI drawing attention to itself for the sake of it. When the dominating colour is so bright and jarring, how do you make the accents stand out?

<comment> V-2 [https://skatter.com/files/2006/11/windowszunetheme.png](https://skatter.com/files/2006/11/windowszunetheme.png) That's the one.

<comment><USER4> Is it just me or was this Start menu _much_ easier to navigate than the Win10 one?

<comment><USER5> Not just you, but I don't see how it's any easier. Most of the same stuff is on that start menu as is on as the Win10 version, they're just arranged _slightly_ differently.

People like what they like, you don't have to justify why. I hate carrots. Why? Doesn't matter, it's still a valid choice, same as start menus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That entire page is just one giant trip down the memory lane. Kind of hard to digest how much of an impact XP had on the desktop OS scene, it's truly the gold standard imo.

Vista's subsequent failure [0] only added to XP's rise.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLgRryt2ZtE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLgRryt2ZtE)

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems they were (at least partially) designed by IconFactory. They do cool icons to this day.

[https://design.iconfactory.com/microsoft-windows- xp/](https://design.iconfactory.com/microsoft-windows-xp/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Luna[0] looks pretty dated to my eyes, but I'd gladly switch back to the Windows XP icon style.

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

<comment><USER8> Ah Royal Noir! I remember those days, my friends were pimping their bikes and I was pimping my desktop. I had to find Royal Noir on the internet because it wasn't embedded with XP, and with each download, one virus gift :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Each Windows XP icon should contain these three color depths to support > different monitor display settings:

> 24-bit with 8-bit alpha (32-bit)

> 8-bit (256 colors) with 1-bit transparency

> 4-bit (16 colors) with 1-bit transparency

This has been bugging me for a few years: when (and why) did we switch from measuring color depth as a total of all channels to measuring color depth as a single channel? When people talk about image and video formats today, "8-bit" means 8 bits per channel (presumably meaning 32 bits per pixel), not 256 colors total.

<comment><USER10> We didn't switch at all. The problem is that people are confusing video cards with digital monitors and RAW image formats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish Microsoft would redo the icons on Windows 10.

I'm using the dark theme on Explorer, and the yellow folders just look odd.

</comment><comment><USER12> Back when themes we're actually good. I started on Windows 3.1 as a kid. Every update from 3.1 through 7 was an improvement on the theme. After that it went downhill.

</comment><comment><USER13> These are Mac icons, not Windows, but they're also small 32x32 pixel artwork.

[https://iconpush.github.io](https://iconpush.github.io)

</comment><comment><USER14> Man that 4-bit icon is legit!!!</comment>


RAID0 ephemeral storage on AWS EC2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/05/raid0-ephemeral-storage-on-aws-ec2.html

<comment><USER2> I've done thorough testing on random read/write performance of ephemeral vs EBS, and I can tell you that EBS is waaaay better in the case of random IO. I can attest to the accuracy of the random IO performance in one of the references from the post:

<http://victortrac.com/EC2_Ephemeral_Disks_vs_EBS_Volumes>

Amazon even says this on their page (also referenced by Gabriel).

Joe Stump's article might lead you to believe the ephemeral and EBS are equal for random IO, but Joe only tested on a RAID0 config with two EBS volumes.

In general, even with the best instances under the best circumstances, you won't crack 2K iops/sec on ephemeral RAID0 with four drives.

EBS, on the other hand, with 8 volumes configured in RAID0 will exceed 24K random reads/sec and 12K random writes/sec. The reads are so much higher because EBS is mirrored.

The downside with EBS is you can see worse performance when there are noisy neighbors. I've seen performance drop 50-70% for hours at a time on m1.large because of network card contention, but you can avoid this when on larger instances (m1.xlarge or m2.4xlarge do the trick).

Sequential IO is another matter. I haven't thoroughly compared, but I believe in this case things are more even.

Performance aside, there is something to be said for removing dependencies on a complex system like EBS. It also frees up network bandwidth and provides quite a bit of storage without the $0.10/GB cost of EBS. If iops isn't a problem and you plan on replicating, then ephemeral can be a big win.

</comment><comment><USER3> So I'm kinda confused. The instance goes down, you lose your data. That's the main reason why Amazon build EBS _(granted it has issues of its own)_

I'm not quite sure how, in production, this setup really helps you because you KNOW that you will loose your data.

<comment><USER4> Some examples where you might not care: HDFS has every block on three DataNodes around the cluster. Cassandra is similar and both will auto heal if a node goes down. Projects like drbd will do block level mirroring of a partition between a set of machines with only one master elected at a time.

Some usage patterns don't care if the data is lost, they just care that the I/O is fast. Consider a group of identical machines serving up read-only data round-robin'd via a load balancer. If one goes down, who cares? Only the load balancer does. A new machine gets provisioned and gets added back to the group. DuckDuckGo probably has a data lifecycle that pushes out a new read- only index set on a regular schedule. If the data is kept in S3 and pushed out to read-only nodes then this is a very good use case for only using the ephemeral drives.

Servers where writes occur are really the ones that need to be durable. Best case would be for the application to wait until the write was fsync'd on multiple machines if you're faced with node failure at any moment.

This topic is kind of a rabbit hole. If you're using ephemeral drives and can't stand to lose data since your last backup then you have to use some sort of multiple machine architecture. Once you do that you're at the mercy of the network. A set of postgres servers in master/slave replication will always have the possibility of losing writes since the slave replication is asynchronous. Cassandra and other quorum-write based systems can make it so that if you write to a single node, a quorum of nodes must agree upon the write before returning the "block written" signal to the client.

Really the CAP theorem[1] explains it all. Read the paxos wikipedia article[2] and the chubby paper[3] if you want to see how to keep a set of nodes in total agreement as to the current state of the system.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos_(computer_science)>

[3] <http://labs.google.com/papers/chubby.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why would anyone go with RAID 0 for a server? At least do RAID 10.

<comment><USER6> The article describes techniques for setting up RAID(0) against EC2 local ephemeral storage for performance gains. As there's no way to replace a failed drive RAID 10 wouldn't provide any benefit.

<comment><USER7> Well, you'd have complete data loss on RAID-0 if there's a single drive failure. With RAID-10, you can sustain at least one drive failure without data loss. That way, even though you can't replace a failed drive, you can at least get the data off to a new instance.

<comment><USER8> The whole instance can disappear at any time, so you can't rely on hardware redundancy. This means you _must_ back up your data off the ephemeral drive in some fashion already, in which case going for RAID-10 doesn't provide much benefit.

<comment><USER7> Ah, I see. I'm not an EC2 customer, but how often do instances disappear? This seems kind of odd on Amazon's end. What's the reason for instances disappearing?

<comment><USER9> Hardware failure.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


GOP Tech Platform: Give More Spectrum to AT&T and Verizon - <AUTHOR> http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/GOP-Tech-Platform-Give-More-Spectrum-to-ATT-and-Verizon-120985

<comment><USER2> Okay, I consider myself a conservative-leaning independant, but the GOP is really starting to piss me off lately. They lack any and all substance, saying one thing, but doing the oppposite (running on "liberty and freedom" while pushing censorship, loudly proclaiming the benefits of of competition while supporting monopolies, heralding lower taxes while actually raising them, etc.). Their dedication to rhetoric over policy can be seen in their nomination of Mitt Romney. John Huntsman Jr. would be a president that Romney could never hope to be in a million years. I would argue that he would rival Obama, if not to be slightly better.

<comment><USER3> > running on "liberty and freedom" while pushing censorship

The Democrats are usually paid more by Hollywood than Republicans. During the SOPA fiasco, the GOP was considering turning the bill into a wedge issue for the election.

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/throwing- hollywoo...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/throwing-hollywood- under-the-bus-could-pay-dividends-for-gop/)

If you're talking about their net neutrality stance, there are plenty of people skeptical of net neutrality who aren't just in it for Comcast to eat our souls.

<comment><USER4> In the interest of fairness, minority whip Palosi, Obama, and many other Democrats were against SOPA as well. It was Wyden (D. OR) that placed a Senate Hold on PIPA.

Ron Paul opposed all legislation... ever. (/s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazing how lazy wireless companies are. <http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/14/3/033001/article>

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you an RF engineer?

<comment><USER4> No. I have engineered wireless radios, and I've taken enough engineering to know that the "bandwidth problem" is a hoax made up by the wireless companies. Radio spectrum is not an issue, but they like to drum it up to prevent competition and camp other spectrum. AT&T and Verizon would rather have monopolies than deliver better services through research and investment.

<comment><AUTHOR> You sir, are correct. If you have an interest in disrupting telecom, let me know. I am part a start up looking to crush them.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the most popular libraries with the crappiest documentation? - <AUTHOR> By bad documentation I mean - improper structure, too cryptic for a beginner or not legible. <comment><USER2> Android when you go one level deeper than the most high-level api. It's easy to record a file with AudioRecord(), but getting the audio stream to handle some analysis yourself is way harder. I'm not the best android programmer and had to read the C code underneath to get to the stuff below the "MediaRecorder".

Oh and Android design standards and best practices... Nobody tells you which stuff is outdated and that you need to use compatibility stuff by default to keep things working on more devices etc... Also no technical description on how to implement Material Design at all and some quirky problems are really common (e.g. negative margin on a button, easy in html/css, but impossible that way in Android).

edit: my new favourite android fuck-up though is having the icons for horizontal and vertical layouts swapped: [http://i.imgur.com/xJ1ODI3.png](http://i.imgur.com/xJ1ODI3.png) "vertical" = child elements are underneath each other.

<comment><USER3> One recurring theme with Android documentation is also showing example usages for the absolutely simplest, most straightforward cases - once you try implementing this in a real app, it turns out things are way more complex

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OpenSSL is rather inscrutable. They've actually been doing great work on the code and I'd say it's pretty secure now. But the documentation is still a mess. I recently had to resort to inferring the correct way to do something with OpenSSL by looking at how OpenSSL itself deals with that particular task + extensive testing, because documentation on certain operations appeared to be absent. No bueno.

<comment><USER5> > They've actually been doing great work on the code

It still is nowhere near readable.

<comment><USER6> To this day I have no idea where the EVP factories are defined (the symbols aren't in the tree)... I suspect that they are probably automatically generated, but I haven't found a separate script that does it, so it might be some CPP stuff in some well-hidden file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The TensorFlow tutorials are terrible for a library this popular. Two specific instances that bit me this week:

* The RNN tutorial is just a code dump, with barely any comments. And since it implements some state-of-the-art network, it has several optimizations that are guaranteed to drive a beginner crazy.

* Their seq2seq tutorial doesn't run anymore due to API changes. Their official reply (for months now) is "we are writing a new tutorial, so wait until we are done".

I fought (and lost) for switching libraries based on how bad the tutorials are, which is literally the opposite of what you'd want a tutorial to achieve. You can't get worse than that.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe it's just me, but I never got around liking the jQuery documentation. Its not bad - but visually too heavy, not easy to navigate and the example code is often not very consistent. Counterexample: The lodash documentation.

Sidenote: A very nice project that aggregates many API documentations and puts them into a coherent style and nice UX is [http://devdocs.io/](http://devdocs.io/)

<comment><USER9> Was just talking to a colleague about how the visual presentation of docs affects my view of projects, and I bet it has an impact on many others as well. Poor visual/ux on docs probably turns me off using a project even more than _no_ docs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> WebRTC is very poorly documented, especially considering how well most of the other Web APIs are documented. There are lots of tutorials with example in the wild that are now outdated. The rare bit of up-to-date documentation only show the most basic usage. And nobody has any idea how to trap, handle, and recover from errors.

Samesies for every wireless communication protocol I've used. ZWave, Zigbee, Bluetooth. Anything written by electrical engineers tends to be completely inadequate for software.

I find Ember and Angular's documentation to be infuriating. Ember is so incomplete, and Angular is so infantile. React in comparison is so well documented, but then there isn't a lot to document.

<comment><USER11> WebRTC for the browser is poorly documented, but try their C++ library. The documentation is _literally_ "it's open source, to look st headers in the api/ directory".

Just look at this: [https://webrtc.org/native-code/native- apis/](https://webrtc.org/native-code/native-apis/) \- a couple of high level diagrams, and links to headers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> OpenCV, particularly the python bindings. Return values are not specified or only alluded to, a complete function listing is normally absent. You kind of have to piece it together from the (Only slightly better) c++ docs and the awfully written "tutorials".

<comment><USER13> This, absolutely. It's pretty dreadful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maven.

They've clearly gone to quite some effort to document it thoroughly. Yet whenever I have to read any of it my brain rebels and my eyes just slide off.

I think it may be a case of just too much jargon.

It's probably also because Maven problems are not the fun kind of problems, but rather the irritating kind. Whenever I'm trying to figure out how to make it do something it's because Maven has gotten in the way of the thing I actually want to be doing.

<comment><USER15> Yes, after using Maven for so many years, I also find it very hard to understand Maven documentation. In the end, I have to depend on code samples from tutorials and trial and error to figure out stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is not quite in the spirit of the question, but I want to vent anyway ;): I was working in LLVM a few months ago and it suffered from the most curiously amateur illegibility problem: every morning (which is the middle of the night in the US), the documentation was deleted and regenerated, which took several hours and meant that during my work day the docs were offline! Had they not thought to generate the docs in a new folder and swap a symlink when done? :)

I'm sure the docs were great, but I didn't get much chance to peruse them :)

<comment><USER17> Have you ever heard of this ridiculous idea of using _offline_ documentation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> All the AWS stuff.

<comment><USER19> Agreed, the AWS docs are terrible; they waffle on about inconsequential stuff, and insist on detailing every step and side tangent. Just tell me how to get postfix/php to use SES email without is failing silently!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The contents of this comment might be very outdated, but still... I remember working with the Dojo and Dijit JS libraries around 8 years ago. They were really great, high quality code, very well structured and designed... Except the documentation wasn't always clear, the examples online were for the older versions of the libraries (not fully compatible), and — my favorite and biggest pain — even the examples on Dijit page often didn't work. The code didn't work when you used it and the interactive demos threw an error as well. So getting it right was a matter of trial and error. And still I think the libraries as they were, were great.

<comment><USER21> Oh man, what a blast from the past. I remember those docs, they seemed so promising at first glance. But everything was just subtly slightly wrong.

Those libraries were fantastic, so far ahead of the rest of the pack at the time in terms of API design and code quality. I remember looking at it and being so happy to see that there was a js utility/cross-browser library written by _engineers_ thinking in terms of software rather than "scripts".

</comment></comment><comment> rsln-s A lot scientific libraries have virtually non-existent documentation (often just a bunch of html generated by Doxygen). NetworKit is one example, but it applies to way too many of them. Caffe is another example mentioned below

</comment><comment><USER22> Maybe not the most popular, but the Microsoft UCWA documentation is atrocious. Really, anything surrounding Lync/Skype for Business - so much of it is undocumented, and what is documented is often incorrect.

</comment><comment><USER23> Pick a JavaScript library. Odds are its documentation is going to be frustratingly inadequate. Some (e.g., Ramda) are quite nice. Many are crap.

<comment><USER24> Moment.js is good, I understood everything with basic JS knowledge and coming from python

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Jasmine [https://jasmine.github.io/2.0/introduction.html](https://jasmine.github.io/2.0/introduction.html) Documentation could be structured in a much better way making it the things you need easier to find. I always end up searching the whole page

</comment><comment><USER26> Socket.io.

Magic methods with aliases sprinkled everywhere. Configuration parameters passed here or there, no one knows where. Initialization in a million ways, through using 3rd party frameworks (like express).

And for all that, there's few small pages of documentation, very badly formatted.

<comment><USER27> I remember when their server documentation was down and

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Solr, and SolrJ in particular. Personally I find googling for 3rd party examples / tutorials / stackoverflow posts much more productive than reading the Solr documentation.

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash OpenCV could definitely use some work. If Stack Overflow didn't exist I don't know how anyone could go from the OpenCV documention to a project without a steep uphill climb.

</comment><comment><USER5> I remember having enormous difficulties developing an audio app with HTML5. I don't know if they made more progress but almost nothing was documented.

</comment><comment><USER29> I found Microsoft's Office JS API docs to be terrible and borderline unusable.

</comment><comment><USER30> On the flip side, does anyone you examples of projects with perfect documentation?

<comment><USER31> PostgreSQL has very thorough and well-written documentation.

<comment><USER32> Like with everything the PostgreSQL project creates, the documentation feels comprehensive, authoritative and solid. It's always my first port of call if I have a question.

The one thing I'd like to see is more examples. Sometimes a quick demo of a function is all that's required for basic use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Visual Basic for Applications.

</comment><comment><USER34> Caffe

</comment><comment><USER35> OpenSSL by far.

</comment><comment><USER36> boost

</comment><comment><USER37> Caffe

</comment><comment><USER38> The chances that you'd get responses to your question would be higher if you explained why you're asking the question.

Also, I doubt there are any popular libraries with ^crappy^ documentation. why even use such a strongly negative word?... Disagree that it is strongly negative? Well I think your question is crappy.</comment>


On Mocks and Mockist Testing - <AUTHOR> http://jamesgolick.com/2010/3/10/on-mocks-and-mockist-testing.html

<comment><USER2> It's nice to see an article about developer-centric test automation that's isn't obvious trolling.

The distinction he makes between statist and mockist tests is an important one (although I tend to use the terms "state-based" and "interaction-based" when I make that distinction myself). Knowing what your strategy is for confirming that the code under test actually works is too often overlooked by testing newbies.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please tell me if I'm wrong, but quickly skimming this it seems this only applies to dynamic laguages with no static typechecks what so ever at compile time (if there's even such a thing).

While I see the good stuff about dynamic, less strict languages, especially during the modelling & exploration phase, I still say that the fact that these kind of problems _cannot_ exist in a statically typed environment is still one of the reasons I don't feel like converting to more dynamic languages for any production-class code I write.

When even your tests can pass without revealing broken class-interface contracts, you are way beyond what I find reasonable to check for myself. Your dynamic freedom forces you to do checks which even with a decades old compiler you could have taken for granted.</comment>


Show HN: A simple CLI csv viewer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/evert/csv123 <comment><AUTHOR> I mostly started this to do a fun little prototype in an evening, but now I'm a bit excited about it and might add new features over time.

This just grew out of frustration that I couldn't find a simple CLI tool to view .csv files in a sane way.

When I grew up and my parents got their first 386 PC, my dad would always have Lotus 1-2-3 open while I would stare over his shoulder. I was 7 years old and completely obsessed about computers no matter how boring the task. So this is dedicated to him. Thanks for sparking the flame.

<comment><USER2> Could you write also Python-version of this script?

<comment><USER3> Checkout visidata.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Wordpress theme for dcurt.is or other Svbtle.com blogs - <AUTHOR>

Although creating self-coded and github-hosted blogs are pretty cool these days, Wordpress is still widely used among developers.<p>I'm looking for a WP theme which is imitation of blog of Dustin Curtis and other people on http://svbtle.com network. Any suggestions or anyone wants to open source such a work? <comment><USER2> I have no idea - but that is a cool theme for sure.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. Its got style.</comment></comment>