Introducing the new Google+ - <AUTHOR> https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/introducing-new-google.html <comment><USER2> Google seem to keep making worse the thing that matters most to me. What I want is to conveniently read. I want to see content, from a variety of sources. I want density. I want to catch up and be aware.

It was like that in the earlier days. Every update kept reducing the amount of visible content, and severe reductions in density. Here is a screenshot of my screen - [http://i.imgur.com/fM2WIVf.png](http://i.imgur.com/fM2WIVf.png) (1920x1200) - almost two million pixels. There are a total of 7 (yes seven) sentences of article and 5 sentences of comments. I have to click and/or scroll to see anything more. (This is their densest layout - the single column version has a total of 4 sentences.)

With Reader they had a community of people who read a lot, and an interface design that worked well for doing that. They took that away. By not having access via an open standard like RSS for G+ streams, they don't even allow alternative interfaces that can address their problems.

I can only conclude that the people who persevere with G+ do so despite it, not because of it. They must also be very patient and do a heck of a lot of scrolling.

<comment><USER3> It's not just a Google thing. Recently there was a HN thread on devmag.io -- they have the same problem. I measured it: in the same space HN gives me 18 stories, Devmag.io gives me barely 2.

Unfortunately, I think Google people know and they just don't care. They don't want people who know what RSS is, people who care about information density; they are going after the Pinterest crowd, the sort of people who read Cosmopolitan, watch reality shows, and post drunken pics on Facebook.

<comment><USER4> The new reddit mobile page has the same problem. On the old [http://i.reddit.com](http://i.reddit.com) I usually get 1-3 more links per page than on the new [http://m.reddit.com](http://m.reddit.com)

Who actually thinks that all that padding and those stupid navbars are a good idea? On mobile my screen estate is very valuable and I don't want to waste it on unnecessary things.

<comment><USER5> Designers from San Francisco, that's who. Current design trends favor "negative space", so text has to be spaced widely, with huge margins and hairsbreadth-thin fonts.

<comment><USER6> You forgot to mention the very low cost, especially for font because we gotta hide that pesky content that we have to show after all.

<comment><USER7> Images (even small, low-quality ones) are far more costly than text, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Shame, the single anti-feature that prevents me from joining is still in place:

>Join Google+ by creating your public profile

I don't want a Public Profile. I don't need my gmail account to have a public profile. I don't need search engines, randos, nobodies, everybody to have access to my profile.

Why does Google mandate Public Profiles? I don't understand. Facebook does not mandate Public profiles (if you visit my Facebook page, it says 404 error page does not exist unless you are logged in and within friend of a friend distance to me).

One day Google will allow me to be apart of their network without mandating that I provide the public internet a profile.

And yes, I realize that aspects on the public profile can be manually disabled (it takes some 100-120 clicks to turn off every feature, one by one, even though the page itself remains public including your image and name).

<comment><USER9> There is a hidden option to create a totally private profile.

[https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/05/how-to-make-your-google- acc...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/05/how-to-make-your-google-account- completely-private/)

You have to set your audience settings to "No one".

<comment><USER8> This doesn't remove the public page, it simply adds a "restricted" message to still-public page that still contains information like name and photo.

On Facebook, if I restrict my page and send you the link you will see: 404 error, page not found

On G+ if I follow your advice and send you the link you will see: <MY NAME> <MY PHOTO> has restricted this page.

It's still a fully public profile which resolves as a URL and contains real personal information (name+photo) that cannot be disabled.

<comment><USER9> That's a reasonable point - although there's no obligation for you to use your real phone. You could be any one of a thousand Chris Rileys.

But, yeah, I agree that G+ is dreadful.

<comment><USER8> The only reason I'm willing to use any semblance of my name at all is because, as you point out, I am functionally anonymous with a generic name shared by major athletes and professionals.

For me, an anonymous white male, it's a small issue. But for a minority with an easily identified unique name, or a girl against whom someone would spend tons more effort to identify, a forced Public page including mandatory public information such as name and photo isn't just inconvenient, it's dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
        Charise Strandberg via Google+
        Daniel Brinneman shared this via Google+
        Antonio Valdés via Google+

I see Google+'s commenting is still drowned out by sharing notifications. Google, there's a reason everyone turned off trackbacks ten years ago. It's just noise for anyone reading that page to filter out.

<comment><USER11> It also happens with Tumblr, and just as bad. At least FB puts "<some people you know> and 1526 others shared this" instead of a long list of noise.

In Tumblr it sort of works because nobody reads the "comments", instead some people share the content adding a note and the "comment thread" is actually a nested quote.

<comment><USER12> I even wrote a script that goes through every note on a post and posts all the reblogs with comments. It's technically against Tumblr TOS, but as long as I only occasionally run it, it should be alright.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Collections is kind of like Pinterest. Communities is kind of like Reddit. Plus was kind of like Facebook. Buzz was kind of like Twitter.

They really need to stop imitating and start innovating. At this point I don't even think they know who they're targeting they're just trying to do a little bit of everything but they don't do it well enough for me to want to use it.

<comment><USER14> Pinterest is kind of like delicious, reddit is kind of like forums, facebook is kind of like myspace, twitter is kind of like irc. There's nothing new. Iteration on a good idea is not a bad thing.

<comment><USER13> The thing is, everything Google is doing is a lesser form of what it's copying so it's not an iteration. That and they're not just copying one thing they're trying to do everything. Why? All of your examples sought to improve upon one thing, do it well, and do it with focus.

My main point is that Google's social products are all over the place. They're firing on all cylinders but not aiming at anything.

<comment><USER15> I'm guessing they see the integration as an iteration. A lot of people would prefer to have a single sign-on, cross-linking etc. rather than having separate Facebook, Twitter, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does it still cross link comments from other Google properties like YouTube if you post a video for example? I liked using Google+ a lot as more of a blogging platform instead of a social network, but as soon as they integrated that, it completely killed it for me. Every time I made a post with a video embedded, it would add all the horrible racist, hateful, trash comments from YouTube making it seem like those commenters were actually in my social network. I just couldn't risk that someone in my professional network might be equating the terrible commenting with me personally, so I gave up on it.

<comment><USER17> They killed that a couple of months ago.

<comment><USER18> What they haven't fixed though is requiring your account to have Google+ to be able to comment or interact on YouTube. Until they fix that participating in YouTube in any other fashion other than upvoting videos and watching them is impossible for me. I do not want to create a Google+ account.

<comment><USER19> Not just the ability to comment, but modify videos to the playlist. Otherwise it's just read only if you remove the G+ account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Their layout of content still nixes it for me. I don't know where this idea of multiple columns of content without any horizontal sync with each other originated, but it does not work for me, not on any site. I read from left-to- right, top-to-bottom. I know other languages differ. But despite the age-old advice that people on the web do not read, they skim, this trend is too much of a disconnect for how I want to see information.

<comment><USER21> It seems more reminiscent of a market or a bazaar - they seem to be aiming for people who don't need to look over every stall in detail, but for the people who let their gaze wander until something catches their eye.

Which is fine, but I'm not that person, and that's not something I have a use for.

<comment><USER22> Totally agree with this analogy.

I would be surprised if one of the primary drivers of high CTR isn't the image, just like it is with other similar experiences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The only times I ever used Google+ was because of the Communities. They're well designed and implemented, and they were always Google+'s strongest selling point. It seems they're taking a more Communities-focused approach, which seems like the right path for them.

<comment><USER3> _> they were always Google+'s strongest selling point_

Uh? IMHO pictures were their strongest point. They emphasise and manage pics better than FB.

<comment><USER24> It appears Photos was strong enough to make it its own product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Seems like it's still drastically missing the mark on having a reason for being. Why would I use this? What would I put on there? Why there and not elsewhere?

<comment><USER26> Exactly. To most users, "we aren't facebook" is not an effective sales pitch.

As far as a comparison goes: both UI's leave me disappointed, but everyone i know is on facebook. I can think of 1 person who uses G+ with any regularity. By that measure, G+ loses every time.

<comment><USER27> A "don't be evil kind of Facebook" could've been appealing. Unfortunately they're decidedly not that, with their real name policy, forced integration with other services, public profiles, etc.

<comment><USER28> Google is as evil as Facebook, if not more.

<comment><USER27> Clearly. I never understood how anyone could take the "don't be evil" slogan seriously, actually. It's comic book level of ethics. We can disagree over whether they are actually being evil though, but what is clear to me is that there is a seriously worrying _potential_ for evil with the amount of information they control through being de-facto monopolies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Old Way: Two separate concepts called the same thing. Google+ (Unified profile/account/sharing system across services) and Google+ (Social network).

This backfired because what people made the natural inference that the purpose of the former was to force use of the later when the opposite was what Google was aiming for. The purpose of the social network was to promote the unified login, but instead it poisoned the well.

New way: Concept of a "Google+ account" has been folded into the main Google Account as a new cross-service "About Me" account [https://aboutme.google.com/](https://aboutme.google.com/) . Google+ (Social Network) is now just a client of the former, so the G+ website is shedding all the features related to its old dual system integrator role.

That's what I can make out, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER29> Good. Collections is the best feature of Google+ and a way better implementation of the circle feature. Communities is another strong point of the service, even though Collections alone would have been enough for me.

The mobile design on Android is disconcerting to say the least, according to the material spec, tabs are at the top. Putting them at the bottom allows one handed navigation BUT is way too close to the navigation bar and usually cause many false taps.

</comment><comment><USER30> Most irritating detail is the interaction where there is what looks like a select box (little down arrow and everything) but it expands when you hover over it after a small delay. The delay ends up being the most irritating thing because it is just enough time for me to accidentally click where the drop down _used_ to be and is now a home button!

It is small but this gets me every time and it is just such a gross usability fail. Maybe this is unfair but I have a hard time getting past it to give g+ a chance when my first explorations smacks me with an experience that is so poorly constructed and violates so many obvious usability best practices.

<comment><USER31> I always thought I was the only one who constantly misclicked those idiotic dropdowns. The same goes for the Circle button, which expands after a while and I always accidentally put people in the wrong circle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm not entirely sure what Google+ is anymore. Who is the target audience?

<comment><USER33> Googlers!

<comment><USER34> Googlers and Linux users!

Quite a few photographers there as well, though I haven't looked for a year or two...

<comment><USER35> I seriously want to ask Linus why he's so into G+.

<comment><USER36> This should answer your question:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaj6RLfIZIE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaj6RLfIZIE)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I just logged in and nothing looks any different to me at a first glance. And as much as I want to like G+, I can't get over the absolutely abysmal design with that single narrow column and all that empty space off to the sides. It just grates at my nerves for some reason. And the multi-column view is shit, which is why I turned it off in the first place.

Facebook, OTOH, has a design which is way too "busy". And never mind that both Facebook and G+ are walled-gardens anyway. I need to just convince more of my friends to join up with GNU Social.

<comment><USER38> You have to opt-in to the new interface.

<comment><USER37> Yeah, but I don't get any prompt to do so, and can't even find any mention of it. Maybe they're doing one of those Google "roll this out to different users at different times" things. _shrug_

<comment><USER39> Same here, even after logging out and back in, no opt-in for the "new" UI yet.

<comment><USER40> I got it when I opted into the new URL. I wonder if they can only carry one "opt-in" prompt at a time and this happened to overlap with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wonder why Google is unable to do what Microsoft has always done. MS generally never leads markets, but they usually can put together a passable product that gets at least double digit share on their third try.

Google seems to lead some charges (i.e. Android) but definitely don't have the third-time's-the-charm luck. Maybe these are mutually exclusive properties of different organizational principles.

</comment><comment><USER42> > _conversations around everything from Zombie Cats to Vintage Calculators_

Now they are trying to be a Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER43> I really don't like multi-column layouts. It's impossible to read. arstechnica is a really good example. There are three columns, each with blocks that are different sizes.

So, I end up reading all the headlines from the left column, scrolling back to the stop, reading the second column, then scrolling back up for the third column.

I've tried to use Google+ on my Android device and the experience is awful. You get a few words and a huge picture that doesn't tell you anything about the post.

<comment><USER44> FWIW, you can change the layout on arstechnica: \- Hover over Main Menu in the navigation \- in the upper right corner of the menu, there is a label "Layout" that has some icons you can click to adjust to a two column layout that is more top-to-bottom friendly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Please fix the Google Groups UI - I'm sure there is more engagement/activity in Groups than in Google+ communities. I always fear when clicking on a google group link in google results.

Add to this - recently some of the results go to a white-labeled community site: [https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/analytics/oSR...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/analytics/oSR62Ubf1tQ)

<comment><USER46> Don't worry, your Groups will be assimilated into a Community, and you'll have access to all that old content once you sign in with your YouTube account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I may be in the minority here but Reddit is MUCH more interesting to me than fb these days. My friends' content is simply not that interesting to me whereas I can find a SIG on Reddit that has what I want.

<comment><USER48> It's been that way for years...

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm confused as to why my google+ has almost 200,000 views, but it has zero posts and basically nobody in my circles. Is this counter broken for anyone else?

<comment><USER50> Are you really active in Gmail? It could be lots of people you correspond with clicking through to your profile, from the link that typically shows up in the right sidebar.

<comment><USER49> Nope, nobody contacts me personally through gmail. I kind of wish g+ had a similar stats tracker as youtube so I could check where all the traffic came from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Ironically, this blog post doesn't contain an actual link to Google+.

<comment><USER52> I followed the link to the 'read this to see how to enable google plus' and that didn't even work. I then realized I had no idea if the google plus page I was looking at was 'new' or not. I did notice that all of the random stories from people I didn't know dissapeared.

All I'm left with is the pages from companies that are active on Google Plus in the attempt to give Google a social signal and sway Google's page rank in their favor.

Edit: to add, those companies are friend's companies and current and former employers. These companies asked all their employees to add them and get pester their social networks to add them as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> My biggest gripe with google+ was and is that it lacks clear compartmentalization of information. There is just something about using a profile in a public way that also can potentially tie into an email, calendar, everything portal that just bugs me something fierce. Also, I know they finally revised it, but the real names policy and the wierd way they try to force you to merge youtube/gmail profiles into google+ really put me off as well. A similar gripe with logging into multiple accounts in a single browser session, I just want to be able to logoff and login as a different user, not merge 10 profiles!

That being said, I have found some communities on google+ that overwhelmed the negatives and I found myself using it anyway. There are some communities that aren't anywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER54> A stunning fact came from a Googler today: [https://plus.google.com/+IlyaGrigorik/posts/GzjRiVUED1S](https://plus.google.com/+IlyaGrigorik/posts/GzjRiVUED1S)

The previous Google+ site took an AVERAGE of 12 seconds to load, and was 22 MB when gzipped. This company, which once wrote a blog called "speed matters", where they announced they'd penalize sites for slow loading, had an average page load of 12 seconds on their social network. (For single-threaded browsers like Firefox, it'd actually freeze up the browser for about ten of those seconds.)

I'm not super fond of the design, but what I am super fond of, is that Google+ no longer crashes my web browser.

<comment><USER48> You mean an Alphabater?

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> There's a meta-level of this roll-out that I find quite striking.

1\. Google have previewed this as an _optional_ experience

2\. Which users can _roll back_ from. Unlike earlier major releases, it's not dumped all-at-once, and it's not a "if you try it there's no going back" option (as CoverPhotos were a few years back).

2\. The changes were undertaken with user-involvement. Google are loudly touting that they solicited input from users, even visiting them at home, to come up with the new design. Mind, I wasn't part of this, but that appears to be a striking change from previous roll-outs, which were very much "we know best" events.

Last December we saw a sneak preview of the New Google+ Development Process: a substantial change to the Notifications mechanism ... which was all but universally panned. I wrote a long and piquant post about how damned important G+'s Notifications mechanism was to the site (it's among the few parts of the service which are really quite compelling). Mucking with that is dangerous business.

In less than 24 hours, Google reversed the push.

I was absolutely stunned. Said so.

[https://plus.google.com/+BalajiSrinivasan/posts/Wntg5XoEHmb](https://plus.google.com/+BalajiSrinivasan/posts/Wntg5XoEHmb)

I'm not sure how the changes here will look, I'm using the Android client, not desktop, for the present. I suspect I'll have some sharp criticisms (I usually do). But I'm seeing some encouraging signs in the _process_.

</comment><comment><USER56> Still not sure who this is for and why they would want to use it. Google is at its best when they are fixing problems in a novel way, not trying to ape everyone else

</comment><comment><USER57> Good they are still working on Google plus but what's the difference between a community and a collection? And what happened to circles?

</comment><comment><USER58> I don't like the gif in the middle of the page. With a video I can easily pause or skip to the part I want to see. Even an image carousel for four static images would have the same effect.

As it is, I instead have to wait until it cycles around to look at any given image, which is rather frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER59> Google has trouble understanding that it was a Black Swan. That its initial success may not be replicable.

</comment><comment><USER60> The changes are OK, I suppose.

I read stuff on G+ a lot, my preference being on my Note 4 rather than on a laptop size browser. Maybe it just because I have a lot of interesting people in my circles, but in any case there is usually a lot of interesting (and even useful) information.

</comment><comment><USER61> A service that has no identity, which a bunch of copy of other services glued together. I didn't want to use Google+ , i'm not going to use Google ++ and get a different product every 2 years because it still doesn't know what it wants to be.

</comment><comment><USER62> They're still stuck on oversharing. Following a collection pops up a warning explaining that it's going to be public everywhere forever, with the options 'OK got it' and 'Cancel'... I wonder which option is more popular.

</comment><comment><USER63> How good are the discussions on Google+? I hesitate to share my identity and data with Google, but I'm also on a never-ending (that might turn out to be literally true) quest to find sophisticated, intelligent discussion of politics and policy.

<comment><USER55> It really depends on your specific interests and community. Total size is perhaps 1/3 - 1/4 FB, but there are zones of excellence.

If you want to find everyone, go to Facebook.

If you want discussion, Reddit.

Topics in depth, blogs.

High S/N: Metafilter.

This might be of interest: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Looks like G+ is still using the old Google logo.

</comment><comment><USER65> When is Google going to drop the dingy grey as a background color? It's so gross.

Google had things figured out with its crisp white aesthetic. Superfluous cards and shadows (thanks Material Design) has borked design at Google.

</comment><comment><USER66> > If you head over to Google+ today

I literally have no idea how I would even do that.

<comment><USER67> Go to your address bar and type this special and complex incantation: [https://plus.google.com](https://plus.google.com)

<comment><USER66> My point is that I've never done that, I've never heard of other people doing that much, and nowhere on the page does it explain how to do that.

But the general confusion that Google+ elicits in people is perhaps best reflected in one of the 'Collections' linked to from the blog post, wherein a woman has shared numerous messages about her personal life under a photo of a vintage calculator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> _> "Let's go"_

I'm not seeing it.

<comment><USER69> Me niether.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Everything is too big. Must zoom out. I bought this big screen to see more stuff, not because I'm blind. Also the animation should be optional--sluggish and annoying. It feels slow, like too much Javascript, bad coding. The "collections" looks like a copy of Pinterest. People tab is not working at all for me--it's just broken.

</comment><comment><USER71> Hopefully I can look forward to YouTube and every other fucking Google website encouraging me to sign in / join. Again.

</comment><comment><USER72> Wait wait wait...Google+ still exists?!

<comment><USER73> If you never define something concretely, no one can say whether the thing exists or not. "Google+" was never any specific service or technology or product, so the term is just a label that Google management can apply to whatever they want.

Google Reader was alive. It's now dead.

Google+? Impossible to say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> The right thing to do with Google+ is to drop it. Google should not aspire to build social products: they are an algorithm company. Their attempts to interact with humans historically have failed: see adsence publishers, support of Nexus phones, etc.

</comment><comment><USER75> Communities were front and center in Orkut, Google's old social network. For some reason it only made success in a few countries, but absolutely dominated in those (Brazil predominantly).

This literally feels like a rollback to their old social network.

</comment><comment><USER76> No, please just make it stop.

</comment><comment><USER77> Clicked on the link "Zombie Cats", started scrolling to the end of the posts, got "There was a problem completing this action. Please try again.".

Impressive demo.

</comment><comment><USER78> Is the plan still to force it onto users/victims? If they fixed that part then it's a massive improvement

</comment><comment><USER79> Time to short Google. It's clear they are out of ideas and their core business is under siege by ad blockers.

</comment><comment><USER80> Clicking "Profile" in the left menu reproduces a 500 HTTP error for me. Anybody else seeing this issue?

</comment><comment><USER81> Is it still possible to chat / hangout through google+? I cannot seem to figure out how to do it.

</comment><comment><USER82> Looks the same as before: rubbish.

</comment><comment><USER83> Google is a prime example. Money alone can not buy love, and can not buy success either.

</comment><comment><USER84> I can't seem to get prompted for the new version? Is it rolling out?

<comment><USER85> Same here

<comment><USER84> For the record, I just got it. Must have been rolling out at a certain pace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> I didn't know there were still people heading over to Google+...

<comment><USER87> Maybe they are hoping to impress both of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> So... a reddit-killer?

<comment><USER89> lol. just like google+ v1 was a facebook killer? ;)

<comment><USER90> Google+ was a Google Reader killer, and I'm still mad about it.

<comment><USER89> never really used reader when it was still alive. been using feedly for 6 months or so now and like it a lot, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> aren't they dropping google+? nobody uses that crap

</comment><comment><USER92> So they redesigned the web site to look like Windows 8?

<comment><USER93> So that's why that Google VP of Design hated Windows 10 so much. They had modeled this on the beautiful Windows 8.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> I like Google+ a lot and wish it gained more traction.

<comment><USER95> How do you use it? I am not even sure what it is...

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Google+ is back? This is like where Sigourney Weaver gets into her escape pod in Alien, only to find the alien there.

</comment><comment><USER97> UX is terrible for a re-do, It's confusing and the whole layout is out dated.

</comment><comment><USER98> How about that Youtube comment unbundle? Whats that? you lied? oh ...

</comment><comment><USER99> Does anyone know what the old google+ looked like?

</comment><comment><USER100> lovin the new G+ ...wayyy better than u know who...

also, looks like they've taken some of ello.co 's ideas to heart

<comment><USER55> Which of Ello's ideas?

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> No

</comment><comment><USER102> What's most noticeable about this post is the volume of snark that will go unchecked by the HN cops.

Be slightly critical of any YC company or any other pet subject and you will get downvoted to oblivion.

</comment><comment> enahs-sf I'm still not going to use it. sorry.</comment>


Windows Blue will be a free update named Windows 8.1 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/05/breaking-windows-blue-will-be-a-free-update-named-windows-8-1/ <comment><USER2> I don't know why Microsoft insists on putting a touch UI on a desktop OS. There have been similar, more successful attempts at convergence, such as OS X's, Chrome OS', or Ubuntu's approaches, that keep the traditional desktop metaphor in place while simultaneously adding convergence features, and adding options to remove them.

As a result of this obstinacy, we have a smattering of wacky Windows 8 "hybrids" that attempt to (poorly) solve a problem that shouldn't have existed in the first place. Touch, plus keyboard, mouse, and full-power CISC chip does not perfection make.

A more pressing question would be why would Microsoft make Windows 8 touch- oriented when they already were planning to ship Windows RT anyway. Why wouldn't Windows 8 be a fully desktop-oriented system, and RT the tablet OS?

At least Windows 7 is still on sale.

<comment><USER3> I am using Windows 8 on a non touch notebook for a time now (including the pre-versions). I find that the Modern UI in my daily work is irrelevant, I think of it as full-screen start menu.

I wouldn't change back to Windows 7 (and I loved Windows 7, because of the new features (Windows 8 boots and wakes up way faster). In addition, there IS a complete desktop UI in Windows 8 and so far, I can run every program that i was able to run in Windows 7.

Interestingly my Winodws 8 usage changed completely when I was reviewing the Lenovo Yoga and the Dell XPS. Both have an additional Tablet-Mode you can switch into. I did most of my work in the desktop mode, using mouse, keyboard etc (not even thinking about the touchscreen). When I surfed (you know, the typical couch scenario) I immediately switched to the modern ui and its apps an browsers, because it was just more comfortable.

I'm not sure if I'm the model for every user, but I really liked the idea of having the desktop and the tablet mode available when I need them. I wouldn't want to go back to the One-Size-Fits-All approach.

<comment><USER4> I've always found the Metro UI as a total waste. A lot of people argue that you can just ignore it, because the desktop is still obviously there. This is partially true. But given that you can't disable the hot corners, and the full screen start menu completely interrupts whatever is on the screen at the time you pressed start, I've found that I, personally, am less productive with it. Plus it totally trips my OCD.

I've resorted to just using the Windows 7 explorer on top of Windows 8. Speed improvements and latest software, without the unneeded touch mode that my desktop will never use.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Lisp as a first language? - <AUTHOR>

Hey all I decided to learn Lisp as my first language is this a good idea and can it be used to make games like pacman and space invader? <comment><USER2> You may want to give Racket a try, it is a LISP dialect and geared towards learning LISP [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_%28programming_language%...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_%28programming_language%29) . I wish I had learned LISP first it is so much different than the languages that get their linage from C or smalltalk. It frees you from the constrains of other languages and requires a lot of deprogramming to learn once you know another languadge. It's not going to be the easiest language to learn as a first languadge but there are a lot of advantages in doing so. Racket will help make it easier as it is designed as a teaching languadge.

<comment><AUTHOR> What makes you say that?

<comment><USER2> LISP is an expressive languadge and is very free form. JavaScript is very similar in their ability to manipulate even the core structures of the languadge and run time. As such they are very powerful. They give you freedom to do things that you just can't in other languages. They are free from the dogmatic constraints that other inventors choose for their systems such as OO or functional, etc. If ou want to write OO in LISP you build or download and OO framework, and you can do OO functional same thing. You can literally invent a sub platform within the run-time. This is also the reason that it becomes harder to learn, there is no OO standard or functional standard etc. and due to the nature of LISP developers there probably never will be one, as such it can make learning difficult. If it where not for Racket I would not recommend LISP as a first languadge.

Finally as a note to those that know LISP, I know that LISP has CLOS for Objects but for the subject of this discussion it is safe to say that LISP does not have a standard OO implementation CLOS is an object system but it is so different from say Java or SmallTalk that I don't think it is fair to call it OO to a person just learning as it is not the type OO that people think of when they talk about OO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are several lisp dialects. Some of them have even been used for comercial games. Common lisp and clojure(the two most popular dialects) can be used to write pretty much any kind of software. But as a first language, I don't know. Scheme(the third most popular lisp) was my second language, and i had no trouble with it, but i already had a year of python under my belt. i'd say learn python, ruby or javascript first.

<comment><AUTHOR> So then what is your suggestion for a first language and why is that your suggestion?

<comment><USER3> Doesn't matter too much. Any language that i listed will do the job. Just pick one and start writing code, any one of them will make learning lisp later easier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Internet of Snails (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/58/smith.php <comment><USER2> Going by the title I was expecting something like RFC 1149[1]: "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers".

[1]: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149)

<comment><USER3> Like actual snails? I was expecting IP over printed envelopes sent through postal delivery (aka snail mail).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are interested in arts and culture, I couldn't recommend Cabinet higher. For example, this article on photography's possible influence on (and definite interaction with) the Impressionists: [http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/54/worth.php](http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/54/worth.php).

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://onepiece.wikia.com/wiki/Den_Den_Mushi](http://onepiece.wikia.com/wiki/Den_Den_Mushi)</comment>


Truths, half-truths and Wikipedia: Journalists play with loose facts [2007] - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/15/tom_melly_wikipedia_comment/

<comment><AUTHOR> Today's XKCD (<http://xkcd.com/978/>) led me to this interesting and well- articulated blog post regarding the synthesis of "facts" via a Wikipedia-"reliable source" closed loop.</comment>


British Spy Agency Considers Journalists a Threat, Vacuums Up Their Emails - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/british-spy-agency-considers-journalists-threat-vacuums-their-emails <comment><USER2> To me, this all smacks of weakness. If they were not breaking the law (at least in spirit), they wouldn't fear journalists. If they were capable of preventing or at least showing the danger of the acts they claim to fight, they wouldn't fear journalists.

But because the danger is perhaps not as immediate or as severe as the political narrative might suggest, or because their intrusions into our privacy are not as necessary as they claim, their only true threat are people who can expose such.

<comment><USER3> So if the government weren't doing anything wrong, it wouldn't have anything to hide? ;)

You know, that logic might actually work in this case.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the nothing-to-hide-nothing-to-fear logic is reversed. Governments should be transparent to their people, not the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A free press being a bastion of a free society, it's pretty damn troubling that journalists are being targeted. I'd argue that the press is more important to the UK's freedom than GCHQ any day of the week.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's been _global_ rise in violence and legal pursuit of journalists. But as many of the issues outside the US get attention I've compiled material related to the US:

* The Obama Administration issued a secret surveillance operation against the Associated Press to break their sources [1]

* Journalists like Ibrahim Jassam [2], Laura Poitras [3], Glenn Greenwald [4], James Risen [5], many others are being prosecuted and persecuted

* States are heavily partnered with news media (e.g. Ken Dilanian [6], Judith Miller and Michael Gordon [7])

* Domestic news is manipulated by the state to achieve geopolitical goals (Zarqawi Psyop [8], Fallujah Psyop [9]) - this has recently been anonymously removed from Wikipedia: now [10] before [11]

* The state uses legal pressure to delay and suppress stories (e.g. Risen's NSA story 2004-05 [12])

* On key political issues controversial journalists are pulled (e.g. Ayman Mohyeldin [13])

* Journalism exclusion zones are used to corral media for purposes other than their safety - even at home where exclusion zones were used to stop coverage in Ferguson [14]

* Sources to journalists have had their lives and their families subjugated to death threats [15]

* The state reserves the right to imitate news media outlets [16]

* There is both historical [17] and current [18] use of international cables to manipulate the press

* The White House has been caught using fake journalists during press releases [19]

* The state has been caught buying coverage from journalists (e.g. Armstrong Williams [20], Gallagher and McManus [21])

* The US government has injected (hundreds of) unattributed fake news stories into local news channels by the US through the Office of Broadcasting Services on political issues [22]

* There is current legislation that would legally compel journalists to disclose their sources [23]

* The Army was caught in a scandal where they were sending fake letters from an imaginary soldier to media organizations [24]

* Hero stories are drummed up, attested to, and propelled by state officials when guests of the media (e.g. Jessica Lynch [25])

* Anti-propaganda law have been relaxed this year [26]

* Media outlets have been given evidence from coerced testimony on the grounds it is actionable, even when it is known to have been fabricated [27] [28]

* Propaganda intended for foreigners makes it to American audiences [29] and this has been used on purpose to circumvent anti-propaganda law [30]

* The government has a history of manipulating media and through the Cold War had over 800 American news networks and personel [31] (names you may know such as Austin Goodrich [32] and Frank Kearns [33])

* The United States hires [34] contractors [35] and has software [36] to manipulate social media [37]

* Agencies publish documents compelled of them by law at inconvenient times to discourage large press coverage [38]

* It is also true that the the now president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting Service Patricia Harrison testified before Congress that President Bush considered Office of Broadcasting Services (1/4 billion dollar) state sponsored propaganda powerful strategic tools for swaying public opinion [39]

<comment><USER7> There's been a _global_ rise in violence and legal pursuit of journalists so brits are apparently going to refuse to take responsibility and are going to point fingers at the US instead.

<comment><USER6> Are you implying I'm British? (I'm American.)

I don't really get your comment. It sounds important, could you say it again another way?

<comment><USER7> I was implying you are British, sorry for my mistake. It seemed like a macho British thing to do to try to deflect attention from this latest scandal by saying that the US is worse. (the UK is much worse).

<comment><USER8> My guess is that the UK is much worse than America based on their track record, history and handing of the Guardian documents. I don't live there or follow their politics as closely, so I don't have a list compiled for them.

It should also be said that there are many other countries that assuredly ARE worse than America with regard to the treatment of journalists. I have never been interested in 'lesser of two evil' false dilemmas, and don't find such comparisons very informative or important, but it should be said to make clear (if it was not) that this indictment of the Americas is similarly not a comparison with the British, with Egypt, with Belarus or anywhere else.

I would be _very_ interested to see heavily sourced lists like this for modern day Britian (or essentially anywhere else).

<comment><USER4> A bit OT: what is the connection between the various xnull _n_ guest accounts?

<comment><USER6> Apologies, just getting to this now.

The various accounts are a bit flippant of me. I tend to accumulate downvote brigades. After some time I'll notice that immediately after I post something (as in under 20 seconds) it will be downvoted several times or if a post has two digit 'karma' I will come back after some time with significantly less (though usually no new comments/discussion). In addition sometimes an account will "act oddly" \- like refuse to update comments even when it is witnin the correction window or my HN tab in Chrome will be subject to regular crashes, requiring me to edit comments elsewhere and post them into HN for fear of losing edits.

Real or perceived, so far rotating accounts has seemed to deal with it fairly well. I also don't link credentials across machines (well, I try) - so you sometimes see two accounts active during the same week (never simultaneously posting however).

I've been thinking a lot about this rotation policy (solving the problem another way). Dunno.

So far as I know nobody has ever tried impersonating one.

<comment><USER9> Please keep posting. I really enjoy your thoroughly sourced breakdowns and well thought out remarks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What can you expect from a country that still has a functioning monarchy. There's a reason America revolted against England, you can see many of the reasons listed in our Bill of Rights.

<comment><USER10> So the NSA isn't doing this also? They're totally above board?

<comment><USER11> Honestly, the GCHQ does seem a lot more brazenly nefarious than the NSA. A lot of the shit that comes out of the mouths of GCHQ spokespersons, shows open contempt and disdain for civil liberties and due process. At the NSA, it's more like they just don't respect those things, or think fighting terrorism/drug cartels/flavor of the month, is more important.

If I could choose to dismantle one or the other, I'd go with the NSA, but only because it has more capability. I definitely wouldn't want the sons-of-bitches in charge of the GCHQ, running the NSA.

<comment><USER12> They show contempt for civil liberties but claim to operate within the law. Since GCHQ is specifically mentioned (and pretty much exempted) in most surveilance related laws this seems plausible.

There is weakness in the oversight that GCHQ is supposed to have.

<comment><USER11> "We operate according to the law, because we are not governed by laws."

<comment><USER12> No, they are governed by laws and they appear to be obeying those laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> After all the stuff the Guardian published, and which has directly resulted in a massive reduction in Europe-wide security from terrorism, it's easy to see why.

The Paris terror attacks probably would have been stopped if Snowden/Guardian never happened or was better controlled in how the specific details were announced. UK's spy agency has more powers than the NSA can dream of; and is largely responsible for protecting not just the UK, but the rest of western Europe and even some of the USA.

<comment><USER14> > The Paris terror attacks probably would have been stopped if > Snowden/Guardian never happened or was better controlled in how the specific > details were announced.

Citation needed. What do you know of their electronic communications?

The thing is, even if it was true, which I frankly doubt... would it be worth it? The direction many US and EU politicians, especially David Cameron [1], want to go in, is a world without privacy, except for the governments (which means, in practice, a world where every government and cybercriminal can spy on your communications at any time). Even if it could prevent all terrorist attacks (which it won't, because drowning the security services in more data human analysts can process in a lifetime is a ridiculously bad idea...), this wouldn't be a society I would want to live in.

1: Who, at this point, appears to be either raving mad, a complete idiot, or O'Brien from _1984_ in disguise.

<comment><USER15> To add to this, the security services in France already knew about the threat from the Paris attackers and did nothing.</comment></comment></comment>


Joel Spolsky: Merging Season - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/

<comment><USER2> "Do we really need a site for each individual content management system?"

It's interesting that CMS specific sites were even proposed. In my experience (mostly with the Drupal community) CMS advocates tend to be pretty tribal and desire a narrow focus. A cross-CMS Stack Exchange site would probably seem like it was full of noise to everyone involved. What would deemed to be signal VS noise would depend entirely on one's CMS of choice.

<comment><USER3> My first reaction as well. If that's true though, how do we explain that Stack Overflow itself has done so well? People are at least as tribal about languages.

<comment><USER4> I program professionally in Ruby, Javascript, Erlang, and some Java. Add in the pieces of each, HAML, JQuery, GWT, and the languages I like reading about, such as Haskell and Lua, and thats a good % of SO. It would be much more annoying if it was separate sites.

Also, lots of info about most languages is useful, even to other languages. I imagine its much less so for CMSs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ugh, so now there is a Programmer StackExchange separate from StackOverflow? Were the off-topic, 'water cooler' posts really that bad?

<comment><USER6> I agree with "Ugh." There are way too many stack exchange sites. And moreover, the pedantic "on-topic/off-topic" debates work well with the programmer culture, but it gets tiresome really fast when you want to just ask a question about how to do something simple on a basic web app.

Hopefully the core team will make strides to eliminate the duplication and over-segmentation of all these Q&A sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps it's just me, but this sounds like Joel is trying to recreate a web- based, centralized Usenet.

<comment><USER8> Not sure that's a bad thing. Many innovations seem to be about recycling old communities for new mediums.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Quora is doing just fine with one big site only.

<comment><USER10> Yes, much better model imho - put it all under one roof, and make it easy to find and expose only topics you're interested in. Similar to Reddit's subreddits in that respect, both work well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting that he mentions "we made one big site for all programmers and told them to use tags and, lo and behold, it worked." One of the most frustrating things about using stackoverflow.com is finding a good question and having it be marked off topic or moved to another site to die.

I was recently trying to compare ereaders (with the iPad in mind) for technical PDF's. I thought stack overflow might have other programmers asking the same question, so I searched and found the page/question I was looking for. However, it was moved to superuser.com. Then, it was moved to some gadgets stack exchange. By the time it was on the gadget site, nobody was adding to it. Now, the gadget site is closed due to inactivity and I can't find the question's active URL (if there even is one anymore).

For reference, I think this was the original question on stack overflow:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3000902/e-readers-for- pdf...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3000902/e-readers-for-pdf-nook- kindle-ipad-etc-closed)

Overall, a very frustrating experience.

</comment><comment><USER12> I had high hopes for the SE platform back when you could pay to host your own. I've lost fascination with it now. StackOverflow is great but everything else ... Meh.

Browsed the cooking one and even submitted a question. Most of the best best answers are simply links out to other popular food sites/blogs. If that's going to be the case, it's doomed IMO. At least with SO you get solid answes with code _in the answer_.

</comment><comment><USER13> While scanning this article I was struck by an uncanny likeness of Spolsky's article to very old Philip Greenspun posts about photo.net and the ArsDigita system, complete with nice random photos of wolf-like dogs. In my awareness, and to my interest, frameworks to meet psycho-social challenges in software development are still so lacking. I'm glad that Spolsky and Atwood are working on this.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm really confused: after all that insightful discussion of social site size, why is there suddenly a "programmers" site, in addition to "stackoverflow"?

</comment><comment><USER15> Sweet wood floors.</comment>


How much adsense ad placements is too much on a website? - <AUTHOR>

Hi there!
I've been following Hacker News for quite some time now, and I figured this would be the best place to ask this. (edit: sorry for the duplicate posting, noticed that the first post only linked to the site and I was unable to remove the link)
I founded a small image sharing website with a friend of mine, around six months ago. About one month ago, it went totally viral, receiving 150 000 unique visitors on the first day and now averaging around 40 000 - 50 000 uniques per day with average of 3 - 5 pageviews per user.
As this happened, of course our bandwidth usage went through the roof, maxing at around 98 Mbits (more of it here http://stats.userpics.com/com/userpics.com/if_eth0.html), so to compensate this, I added some ads to our site.
After adding adsense banner on the top of the pages, I noticed a huge drop in pageviews (from 180 000 to 70 000 in one day), I've become somewhat of concerned that I might have gone overboard with the amount of ads displayed on my site.
All tips would be greatly appreciated.
You can check it out at http://userpics.com/ Most visitors never go to the frontpage, so basically what they are seeing is this view http://userpics.com/s2bgh.jpg
Too much ads? Too little?
Thanks for your time. <comment><USER2> You really need to look at your sources and see if there's something else that might have triggered it - maybe for a moment you were used on something very viral, now you're not and your traffic is receding?</comment>


High-quality Image Deblurring with Panchromatic Pixels   - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~thou/pan.htm

<comment><USER2> It's like rods and cones in our eyes. So very cool!</comment>


ShoeFitr: The company Amazon must buy immediately - <AUTHOR> http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/01/shoefitr-the-company-amazon-must-buy-immediately/ <comment><USER2> Considering that Amazon is currently looking to hire people for the sole purpose of trying on shoes... Yes, they need this tech.

[http://www.amazon.com/Careers-University- Recruiting/b/ref=gw...](http://www.amazon.com/Careers-University- Recruiting/b/ref=gw_m_b_careers?ie=UTF8&node=203348011)

Search for: 133938 (reference code)

> "Amazon.com is looking for a Women's Shoe Fit Model to try on our shoe > selection and provide fit feedback to help our customers make the best > purchasing decisions. The perfect Cinderella must have the perfect Size > 8..."

<comment><USER3> > for the sole purpose of trying on shoes

I see what you did there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If this works as advertised, it's a killer app for the on-line apparel industry.

I've had customers with consistent 60-70% return rates on footwear. It got so bad that customers would buy 3 sizes of the same shoe, planning to keep the best fitting pair and returning the other 2. They'd rather eat double shipping than go back and forth 2 or 3 times. The overhead from processing and restocking the returns consumed all their profit, but they had to keep the footwear to complete their product lines. This would have been great.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was initially confused by the demo.

Potential use cases

1\. I have a perfect fitting shoe, I'd like to buy another perfect fitting shoe of a different brand.

2\. I haven't found the perfect fitting shoe. I'd like to find one.

I assumed this would be solving problem #2, but it solves problem #1.

I thought I would tell it "I'm currently in shoe X, and it's the right length but chafes on the right side" or something of that nature, and it would tell me a better shoe.

<comment><USER6> This is actually pretty useful to a small but loyal group: runners. I know folks who run marathons and such, they are fanatical about the right fit and buy 3+ pairs when they find a good fit, because of rapid shoe model obsolescence/changes.

Perhaps with this small but profitable niche they can expand their technology into the mainstream for the likes of you and me.

I'm definitely going to suggest this site to my runner-friends and see what they think.

<comment><USER7> The founders are runners. Breck did the Boston Marathon in 2:29:36 this year... 73rd place overall.

Oh, and your running friends can already use this over at Running Warehouse, for example: <http://www.runningwarehouse.com/descpageMRS-ASKNS3M.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This pain point is one of the reasons I do not buy pants or shoes online.

This is amazing execution of the idea, and I hope they get bought out for the millions they deserve! Or, if they'd prefer to grow it organically, that too!

<comment><AUTHOR> They have a fantastic product. I was extremely impressed with how well it worked. To top it off, Matt seemed like a really great guy when I interviewed him.

<comment><USER9> You're right g0atbutt. I know the team personally all three of them are great guys who have been working REALLY hard to make this a reality for the past few years. I'm glad to see they are finally being recognized for their awesome product & technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would consider buying a new pair of shoes _today_ through these guys if they supported more than running shoes.

That said, what stops someone getting the size recommendation through ShoeFitr and then comparison shopping for the actual shoes? I don't think this stops them being valuable to Amazon, but it does seem like a weakness if they're independent.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes! I've been wanting someone to make this product for a long time.[1] So glad y'all did it.

The execution looks amazing. I can't wait for this to be ubiquitous.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1673722>

</comment><comment><USER12> Why is this dropping off the frontpage so fast? It's way uncharacteristically down. Is there some kind of hidden penalty at play? It's not spam, and has 50 points in 53 minutes, losing to posts with way less than that...

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure. Perhaps an HN admin thinks it's spam?

<comment><USER13> nope, they think it's a voting ring

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a bummer (and not true). These guys deserve a ton of attention. It was presented at Launch and SuperConf so maybe they're getting some false positive from people that were there?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Buying shoes online sucks. Sizing between brands (and sometimes even within brands) is different."

Zappos (who Amazon owns) does show whether shoes fit true to size or whether to size up. Is this really that much better?

<comment><USER15> This data seems to be based on reviews, and reviewers are typically morons that know nothing about shoes. I order by size, ignoring the reviews, and I've only had one pair of shoes from Zappos not fit well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I saw these guys present at SuperConf.net and what a fantastic idea backed by "patent pending" 3d imaging. Amazing stuff and someone is going to grab them quick for an easy 30 to 50 million.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm good friends with the ShoeFitr dudes, they're good guys. They have some serious tech, high reliability web stuff, and they even put up with it being in .NET!

</comment><comment><USER17> The problem is that the different dimensions to the products dont actually exist. Getting those measurements would come at a great cost. The question is would it be cheaper than shipping returns? Another question- China has industrialized- the next step is dealing in information. When will the suppliers realize they are losing out on a lot of money by not doing the photography and measurement at the factory?

</comment><comment><USER18> Cool idea to go along side would be an iPad app, which allows you to compare your actual foot to inside of the shoe. From the bottom, from the side, etc. Would also work for gloves.

EDIT: Hell, you even show it on a regular LCD screen. Or allow the user to print it out to compare.

<comment><USER6> I imagine the problem is that shoes are real things with 3 dimensions, and feet change shape when they're compressed... neither of which are addressed by a printout (sure a printout is better than nothing, but if it's not predictive enough it's not worth the trouble).

If a device could model what kind of shoe you should wear based on an interactive iPad foot print, that would be amazing tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Cool! A German retail site offers something in the same direction:

<http://www.mirapodo.de/groessen-kompass>

I've been working on a similar concept for dress shoes.

<http://sizeadvisors.com/>

<comment><USER20> Wow the German site asks you to measure your foot with a paper, pencil and a ruler. Although ShoeFitr must already have your shoe in their database, the huge win is there's nothing asked of the user besides what shoe they already like and you can find it from brand name and colors.

<comment><USER19> Correct. I didn't say it's better.

But it's possible to solve the other use case. 3D-foot-scanners are already out there for shoemakers, so taking measurements could become easier in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can check out their pitch at the Launch conference last Thursday here: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRRSdvlWd4E&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRRSdvlWd4E&feature=player_detailpage#t=2736s)

</comment><comment><USER21> Amazon acquired Zappos and created endless. This would certainly fit that part of their business strategy.

</comment><comment><USER22> Genius idea! I always take a stab at sizing online (I think men's foot sizes are more flexible than women's), but I still don't know if I'm a 10, a 10.5, or an 11!

</comment><comment><USER23> This reminds me of boo.com. The bubble must be about to burst. Again.

<comment><USER24> how is this like boo.com ? boo raised 200Million in capital if i recall correctly. shoefitr raised $125k + the $25k in prizes they won at superconf.

<comment><AUTHOR> And they are actually making money on a scalable business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Honestly, I would just like to get 3 sizes with each shipment, try them all on, and pick the best... but without having to advance them 3x the cost of a pair of shoes.

I don't find returning to be a big deal. You put the shoes back in the box they came in, print a label, and drop it off at the post office. Still easier than going to a store, and once you know your size for a given brand, you don't have to do this anymore.

I've also found that shoe sizes don't really vary all that much, in my experience. I wear size 11EE boots, 11EE running shoes, 11EE sneakers, and 11EE dress shoes. I think the problem that a lot of people have is that they order standard-width shoes even though they don't have standard-width feet. Then the fit comes down to how tight the laces are, etc.

But I digress. Zappos will probably not go out of business if they don't buy this company.

<comment><USER25> Brands don't have consistent sizes at all. You should watch their pitch from the Launch Conference because they explain this problem.

<comment><USER15> Good brands tell you which last they use for the specific pair of shoes, so you'll know how they'll fit in advance. New Balance does this, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A year ago I wrote up some notes for an idea that has elements of this. Funny enough, I sent it to Google and Amazon. I don't know why I bothered. I just wanted to tell someone, I suppose. I did not have a blog then... well I barely have one now. Also, The plan was not exactly something I could do on my own.

The idea was called Travel Packs. You're going to travel? Send your itinerary to Google and it will decide what you need/want to go into your luggage. Google will do all of this by using your itinerary, profile, body dimensions, weather, etc... The Travel Pack will then magically appear at your destination. When your done with your trip, just leave it behind.

Great things about this:

1) You no longer have to pack or bring luggage with you when traveling. 2) Companies have a new way to target consumers. Imagine all of the companies who will compete to have their products placed in these packs. 3) Consumers get to try out new things without having to buy them. How about letting consumers purchase items from the Travel Pack at discounts.

To make this work, the clothes will have to fit. To do that we probably need 3D scans, although that may not be necessary for first iterations. Google has shown the initiative to map the world, why not drive around and start mapping the people. Just think of what you could do with these data! Of course many people would be uncomfortable with these scans and discussion probably needs to happen about who would own these data.

Anyway, I was once pretty stoked about this. Now I don't really care. But I think it's something that someone will do. Actually, I think there is already a company trying to make a go at pre-packaged luggage though I don't know how intelligent it is.

<comment><USER27> Lesson to learn here: an idea is just an idea. It's all about execution.

I also had the idea, I'm sure Jeff Bezos has had the idea, Tony Hsieh, Nike execs...

Point is these guys delivered. The single greatest lesson any entrepreneur can learn.</comment></comment>


Cask: A Scala HTTP Micro-Framework Inspired by Python's Flask - <AUTHOR> http://www.lihaoyi.com/cask/ <comment><USER2> lihaoyi does incredible stuff.

Whether upickle, utest, mill, ammonite... The stuff is always great quality and easy to use.

<comment><USER3> agreed. Also the only person I've seen successfully live-code in a presentation without screwing up or boring the audience.</comment></comment>


Giant viruses may hold key to evolutionary mystery of eukaryotic nucleus - <AUTHOR> https://scitechdaily.com/in-ancient-giant-viruses-lies-the-truth-medusavirus-key-to-deciphering-evolutionary-mystery/ <comment><AUTHOR> >Medusavirus Ancestor in a Proto-Eukaryotic Cell: Updating the Hypothesis for the Viral Origin of the Nucleus

[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.5718...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.571831/full)</comment>


Human-flesh Search Engines in China - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Human-t.html?hp

<comment><USER2> Google's Human-flesh search engine:

<http://www.google.cn/intl/zh-CN/renrou/index.html>

Google translation (weak):

[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&langpair=zh-...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&langpair=zh- CN|en&u=http://www.google.cn/intl/zh-CN/renrou/index.html)

(btw if you search for anything, it informs you (in Chinese) that it's an April fools joke)

For translations of these kinds of forum discussions see <http://www.chinasmack.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> _"It's easy to denounce the tyranny of the online masses when you live in a country that has strong rule of law and institutions that address public corruption, but in China the human-flesh search engine is one of the only ways that ordinary citizens can try to go after corrupt local officials. Cases like the Lin Jiaxiang search, as imperfect as their outcomes may be, are examples of the human-flesh search as a potential mechanism for checking government excess."_

</comment><comment><USER4> There are lots of little communities that are good at this. 4Chan comes to mind. They made boxxy super popular, then subsequently killed her off lol.

Kind of scary when you give a mob mentality to a mob not constrained by numbers, location, or power.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anniyan>

</comment><comment><USER6> Did no one notice the fake chinese characters?

</comment><comment><USER7> Abrupt ending. Is page 7 missing?

<comment><USER8> I thought it was quite fitting.</comment></comment>


Meet a Teenager Who Says He's a Swatter - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/meet-a-teenager-who-says-hes-a-swatter-1686128721

<comment><USER2> The big of advice about calling your local police department if you stream is interesting.</comment>


Avoiding Depression While Not Running a $1B Company - <AUTHOR> http://smalldogsbigdogs.tumblr.com/post/23291496479/avoiding-depression-while-not-running-a-1b-company <comment><USER2> Said it before, and I'll say it again - much of the media we (hn-type readers) consume is 'tech porn'. Much like classic 'porn' reinforced a view of women as sexual objects, tech porn reinforces the myth that "just try harder and you'll be a billionaire!".

Yes, I'm oversimplifying a bit, but I don't think by much. I think the mental/emotional harm that this sort of fixation on 'startups' has on many people is understated - we mourn the loss of someone to suicide, but say "he had other problems already". No 'founders' are ever comfortable talking to anyone about any fears/doubts because they will lose all respect from staff and investors, so there's an emotional toll being taken on a small (but growing) group of people.

<comment><USER3> _Much like classic 'porn' reinforced a view of women as sexual objects, tech porn reinforces the myth that "just try harder and you'll be a billionaire!"._

Damnit, Kimsal, quit dashing my dreams!!! Take your cold, hard reality and pitch it somebody who wants it... I prefer living in a world where I _can_ be a billionaire someday.

As I've said numerous times.. I'd make a great billionaire playboy; if only I had a billion dollars. :-)

<comment><USER2> Quickest way to become a billionaire is to start off a mega-billionaire and then try your hand at investing...

FWIW, you _would_ make an awesome billionaire playboy. Even a decent _millionaire_ playboy someday. ;)

<comment><USER3> Aah, the "someday" bit is the rub. If "someday" isn't, like, next week or so, it's almost pointless. I'm getting old, man. What good is a 40+ millionaire (or billionaire) playboy?

<comment><USER4> Ask Felix Dennis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You might as well ignore Facebook and Instagram. If you want to be a billionaire, creating a social media company is probably the worst way to do it. Reading and obsessing over this kind of news is toxic for your brain.

If that kind of stuff gets to you, I would suggest the opposite of what the author did- don't read the news. These days there is very little valuable information because every media company is competing for eyeballs so they each try to out-do each other with sensational, deceptive and in some cases completely false headlines. I can't help but feel dumber every time I read Bloomberg news or the Wall Street Journal. Just don't do it. Go on a news diet for a week and see if you don't feel better and if you miss out on any important news.

<comment><USER6> That's what I wanted to say: don't read the news.

I've found out that I'm much happier when I don't read the news, in particular news about politics. On the other hand, news about science & technology sometimes do make me happy.

<comment><USER7> Humans are social animals, and awareness of a negative state of our community makes us sad or mad, which seems meant to drive us to action. Evolution appears to be mostly about the code (genes), not the client (mind) or machine (body). From pre-history to present, communities've been composed of genetically-similar members. Over time this has been less and less true, corresponding with the accelerating decrease of travel costs. Now data (memes) have emerged as another evolutionary layer, at a higher level of abstraction.

Contemporary "political news" is propaganda carefully crafted by concerned corporations to misinform the viewer, both targeted "reverse lobbying" on specific issues and general-purpose anti-participation tactics. The idea seems to be to get voters to act against their economic and/or ethical interests either by convincing them to mis-vote (compared to how they would if they were more informed) or not vote, via manufactured dissent, character assassination, blurring of issues and facts, and irrelevant/impossible campaign promises (e.g. archaic issues like gender and reproductive rights and "border control" that's thinly veiled racism (and won't happen because companies want the illegals and they pay better)).

Call it reverse advertising. We've gotten so good at PR techniques that they've become invisible. Everything stays the same, but we rebrand it and view the world through the lens of the internet, detached from empathy with the bitter natural world, in a cocoon suckling the nectar of porn-- over- processed information.

This is why startups have only yet caused negligible political change. Software, and by extension most programmers, are effectively "brains in a vat." Shows how machines have _already_ "taken over" the world, and haven't displaced us in the process. The singularity already happened, but we're still large, hairless bipedal rodents-- and computers are not. Human bodies need different stuff than machines, so we don't have to be competitive.

Likewise, hackers just want to have fun, and -- as this comment bears witness -- we just talk about it online instead of doing anything about it. Hackers aren't competitive with suits any more than computers are to biology. Suits want software, so nerds get paid, but then turn around and re-invest their money, move to Singapore and live it up, go on perma-vacation, etc. There are many brilliant hackers, many of them also more than charismatic and wealthy enough to get into national office. Instead they build the programming language they've always wanted, or take up cycling, or reconnect with nature.

When we do look beyond the bubble of hedonism, we're comparable to people who pray for things out of their control, i.e. asking for something, instead of either making adjustments to gain control or accepting that control is ultimately undesirable or impossible. Self-directed prayer (meditation), where one looks inward and develops a dialog with 'eir layers of consciousness, is something different, but other-directed prayer is the single-player version of "happy news" (porn), be it cat pictures or startup drama or gadget announcements or sports or esoteric programming language design.

<comment><USER8> Lighten up. We're not living in a literal 1984-meets-The-Matrix world just yet. Your perspective seems as narrow as you criticize others' for being.

Silicon Valley may yet reshape the world, even if some of us take scenic bike rides. (That was one of the bad things, if I'm keeping your argument straight, while empathy with the natural world in general is good. The problem with bike rides is they take time that could be spent running for president.)

I understand the point that many sectors of society could use some new life breathed into them, but I think the oxygen needs to come from where it will, and it will come.

<comment><USER7> No, but it is a Brave New World. We're the ones out on that island with the artists and scientists. We make tools of change, but sell them off so that we can go on bike rides. It's hedonism; this is the New Gilded Age.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This post made me think of the book Outliers by Gladwell -- the Zucks and Gates of this world are very much a result of hard work, but they're also a result of being in exactly the right place at the right time. But I've got some good news: Most of you are quite young here and tech is filled with cycles. Maybe you don't get to be the next Gates or Jobs, but you could still be the next Larry Ellison or Michael Dell. I'd also remind everyone that tech is a fickle mistress, and that only about twelve years ago Steve Case was the conquering hero when AOL merged with Time Warner. Don't be depressed -- stay hungry, stay foolish!

<comment><USER10> It's also good to realize that beyond about 50 million I doubt any person would even know what to do with that much money.... you basically end up donating a lot of it unless you are hellishly greedy

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems as humans we jump on any chance to beat ourselves up for not doing, being, or having something.

Oh, I don't have a $1B company, I've got to beat myself up about it. Oh, I'm older than So and So 20 year old who sold his company for $15M. Oh, I'm too young to have the right experience to really tap into this niche. Oh, I spent too much on college and now have all this debt and need to get a real job instead of starting my business. Oh, I didn't go to college and everyone else my age has great connections from it.

Just stop playing A you lose, B you lose.

<comment><USER12> A reminder I find useful: Code, not anger.

Find yourself annoyed about something "unfair?" Focus on a problem you can actually fix instead.

If you find yourself upset about kids who went to a $40k/year private high school winning the world, just re-focus your attention on what you can do now. Code. Fix. Help a real person. Get out of your own head for a while.

Success and growth are fueled by output. Running circles in your mind about our broken world only serves to make you more efficient at feeling angry. Use your limited conscious hours every day to make the world a quantitatively better place.

Alternatively, <http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/whipass/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a good companion piece to another recent HN post:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3991122>

I've found two axioms to hold true:

1) Don't compare your life to anyone's. Just don't. Comparing any two lives is fundamentally apples to oranges, because each life is its own thing.

2) Once you've got the bottom tier of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs covered well enough where you can feel assured that it'll stay covered, money doesn't buy much happiness.

</comment><comment><USER14> Great article and admittedly is how I feel sometimes as well. The day I heard of the $1B Instagram acquisition was a cloudy day for me since I also founded a photo social network over 4 years ago that is humming along slowly.

In Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman there is a section on media and how it mostly, and understandably, reports the more interesting edge cases. However a side effect of this causes the majority of people to believe car crashes are more common than heart attacks and often leads to poor judgements by utilization of the availability heuristic (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic>). The take home message for me is keep on keeping on.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not having a billion dollars is depressing for you?

This takes first world problems to a whole new level.

<comment><USER16> Money is simply a metric of how people value you. It is a little disheartening to know that nobody cares about what you are doing when you've poured in so much effort.

It's not that anyone actually needs billions of dollars, but if you are not making millions/billions of dollars, you start to question what is wrong with you that causes people to not care, when they obviously do care about these other people.

<comment><USER17> Flaw in your logic: They probably don't care about those people either. They only value the product. It is not the same thing.

<comment><USER16> It's not really logic though, just irrational human emotion. If we could look at it logically, we'd realize that $1B makes you no better than $1M, or $100K, or even less than that.

<comment><USER17> I don't agree. I am the type of person who thinks exactly like that. If I am doing badly at a videogame, clearly the game hates me. People like me probably invented gods/religion. I take things personally. Not everyone does. I had to explicitly explain this type of view to my oldest son. He views things in terms of cause and effect rather than "motive".

It is something on my mind a lot here lately. I have serious financial problems and have for quite a long time. A few months ago, I ended up homeless. The amount of money I need to clean up my financial mess is a drop in the bucket compared to what I am saving American tax payers by getting myself and my sons well. Saying that almost never gets me any support online. What seems to get some support is when I say my webites will cease to exist because I can't afford it. Donations have kept them online for three years.

In other words, people care about my work. But they mostly don't care about me personally. That has its good points and bad points but is counterintuitive for me. I'm a bleeding heart who cares too damn much about other people.

Edit: Let's a do a little experiment to make my point. I currently have 23 cents in the bank and I don't know how I and my sons will survive (as in get enough to eat) for the rest of the month. Do you and other people give a damn about me? Enough to donate money on my sites? (Call the goal of this experiment $500 this weekend.)

I am guessing the answer is a resounding "NO". I am guessing you will be the first person to prove me right and not give me one thin dime.

<comment><USER18> I'm not in debt(yet), but I'm also in the position of "haven't really earned" and it's definitely pinching me, although I'm failing less each time, which is keeping me motivated.

But your guess is accurate. People want to be hands-on, social, and specific, so "I am poor and need money to survive" is a extremely truthful, realistic story that markets poorly. The story they like is the one where it has a dialogue with more specific, concrete elements: "I liked this site so much, I gave money to help keep it running..." They also adore having a foe to fight against or a person who becomes some kind of representative of a cause.

All the techniques of fiction could be employed to make the work you already have(which clearly has some value) feel like something people should contribute further to - nothing actually fake or untruthful is necessary, it just means finding a certain way in which to tell the story. At the end of it, people become inclined to give a donation, fund the writing of a book, etc. The product itself often isn't at the core of motivation to buy, so much as "I want to finish the story being told."

<comment><USER17> The thing that most annoys me about the situation is that I am saving American tax payers potentially millions and cannot find a means to cover a few 10k in debts. I was a military wife for two decades. Although I am divorced, as long as I do not remarry, I am entitled to essentially free medical care through the military. But I have not seen a doctor in nearly six years and it feels like I am basically being punished for doing the right thing even though this did not just benefit me and my kids but is clearly significantly benefitting society. Further, being homeless and mired in trying to just survive is an active obstacle to trying to further develop my sites. American tax payers could benefit millions more if I could get backing/assistance.

I am not a "charity case" -- I.e. just a waste of money. I have something of significant value to offer the world but I need help to make it happen. Unfortunately, it looks and sounds like I am a charity case, simply because what I pulled off fell outside the paradigms currently in use and the assistance I need does not fit neatly into a VC/ startup investment type model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I especially agree with the part about going for walks. I work from home a lot, and I walk to CVS to buy something almost every day, just so I can get out of the house. Amazing what 15 minutes without a screen in your face can do for your mental clarity.

<comment><USER20> Having just got to the end of a frustrating couple of days and realising I haven't left the house since Tuesday, I totally endorse this.

And on that note, I'm going out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I know how that feels. Last year when I was a single founder, I went to a startup-founder "health" event at 500 Startups, and one of the speakers (ex- Zynga corp dev guy, Bret) gave a talk. Since he's the one acquiring companies, he mentioned how sometimes founders made money still found a way to be unhappy. Going from $0 to $10M is huuuuuge, but after a short while they're depressed that it isn't $100M.

It sounded like he has went through a lot himself, and he recommended the audience a book, which I bought, read, re-read, and still read a few pages a day today - and it really helps. Don't let the cover fool you, this has nothing to do with preaching about religion (I remain agnostic). I can't recommend it enough: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062512943?ie=UTF8&tag=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062512943?ie=UTF8&tag=sunjaytimes-20&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393185&creativeASIN=0062512943)

</comment><comment><USER22> You need this:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLjyo51qmrI>

</comment><comment><USER23> I learned a long time ago that you should never be jealous of anyone else's life and was reminded of this again (in a sad way) with the passing of Steve Jobs last year.

<comment><USER24> Very true. Have you read his biography? One of the things that also struck me the most in there is how often Steve seemed depressed even with all the "success". He seemed to be crying in so many stories. Even after every revolutionary thing he had accomplished, the launch of the iPad 1 made him depressed, because it just couldn't match his expectations.

Another reminder that no matter how much you achieve or obtain, all of us have a sense of ambition that can easily ruin our happiness if we don't keep it in proper control.

<comment><USER23> I haven't but I'm not too surprised. I don't think the ambition ever goes away. The reward of having as much of an impact as he did must be tangible. The money, probably not so much, after a certain point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Next on Hacker News: Avoiding Depression While Actually Running a $1B Company

<comment><USER26> If only...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The problem is that there seems to be only one definition for success (lots of money and being talked about in the news) and we tend to compare ourselves and others against that measure of success. Running a lifestyle business and creating a handful of jobs, taking care of your family and friends, helping the needed, being an excellent teacher, having an healthy lifestyle, (insert here what makes you get up in the morning) are also huge successes, they just don't make the news.

</comment><comment><USER28> Depends if you want the fame and kudos (and stress!) that comes with leading one of these companies. I know the feeling you're describing but have come to realize I'd _much_ rather have, say, a $5m/year revenue doing something I love in peace than to be running some giant megacorp. Of course, still quite a way to go on that one for me.. ;-)

<comment><USER29> My thoughts exactly :) Even, $5m/y is far above my threshold.

<comment><USER28> Well yeah, I just pulled that number out of nowhere ;-) Thinking about it more seriously, it'd be closer to one!

<comment><USER30> Yes it would be hard to get by with less than $1 million/yr.

<comment><USER28> We're in a thread talking about personal success and ambition, not what we _need_ to survive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> As the 37signals guys put it: "What happened to building million dollar companies? It's all about making a billion dollar companies these days". So, seriously. If my company made a million a year I'd be the happiest bloke in the world!

<comment><USER32> You say that now. Not so easy to say once your company has been making a million a year for a while.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, but if your company is making a million dollars per year and you aren't happy, then making a billion dollars a year wouldn't make you happy either. At that point, you're well past the point where money buys happiness.

<comment><USER34> A million is not a lot of money.

<comment><USER33> Yes it is, but it's not a grotesque amount of money.

Anyway, the whole point is that having enough money that money is not a major point of stress in your life will help you to be happy, but beyond that it starts to anticorrelate. If you have founded a company that is making a million a year (I'm assuming we're talking about profit and not revenue), and money is a major point of stress in your life, your best bet (in terms of personal happiness) is to change your lifestyle so that you're living within those means.

Keep in mind, 99% of individuals in the world make less than $50k/year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I have mixed feelings about this post. The advice is good, but the tone is negative. Ironically, I'd suggest the advice be relied upon if one became wealthy.

On the one hand is the hubris of it all. Dejected over not being a billionaire? More so than money, what one needs in that context is perspective.

I have colleagues, friends and business partners who fall in the category of highly financially successful. Extreme wealth comes with more trouble than one might expect. Anonymity? Good luck with that. Jealousy from friends? A lot. Thrill quotient goes way, way WAY up? Like clockwork. Your personality changes? Big time. Still feel unfulfilled? Almost guaranteed. Biggie was right -- mo money, mo problems.

On the other hand is dealing with your goals, and whether or not you have attained them. If your goal is to acquire a billion dollars...well, shoot for higher ground (not higher dollars.) Financial happiness and comfort is one thing, but a specific number has more to do with ego. Money, as a goal, just doesn't equate to feelings of accomplishment. Instead, set your goals to non- financial things; it's the only way one can ever really satisfy those feelings of reward.

BTW, all those I've know who generated their own wealth did so without a primary focus of acquiring wealth -- it was a byproduct of their actions. They were driven by something else, the money was just a consequence.

</comment><comment><USER17> In some ways, this post really hits a nerve for me. In other ways, I cannot relate at all.

On the one hand, the crap in my head is literally worth billions (annual medical care costs for the 30,000 people with cystic fibrosis is roughly $3 billion a year by my best guestimate or about $1.5 billion a year if you accept the low ball estimate of some article I read). Yet I am currently deeply in debt and homeless.

Am I depressed? Not really, because I and my sons are healthy when that is not supposed to be possible. And that alone is worth millions, even if no one else benefits. But I am frothing at the mouth frustrated that a) I can't resolve my financial problems even though they are a drop in the bucket compared to what the medical expenses alone "should" be and b) I cannot seem to make much headway towards spreading the word.

Yet, I also wrestle with valid concerns about self protection. Revealing myself tends to get strong reactions from people, both positive and negative. Those strong reactions can be potentially dangerous.

Still trying to work it all out, in my head and in practical terms.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is a great and much-needed article. Before I moved to SF, I lived in Seattle and had to make an effort to get more involved in tech. In SF, things are reversed: with a roommate in YC, another at Getaround, and a startup of my own, it takes _work_ to escape it.

As a community, I think we should discuss this (mental health in the echo chamber) a lot more.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think it helps to remember that the most influential (or smartest, etc.) people in history didn't have a whole lot of resources. Compare Shakespeare and Nietzsche to Vanderbilt and Rockefeller. Will anyone care about the latter two in 100 years? If you're chasing fame or "impact", building Google might not be the answer.

<comment><USER3> _Compare Shakespeare and Nietzsche to Vanderbilt and Rockefeller._

In what regards? If the metric is "who got laid more?" then I'm guessing Vanderbilt and Rockefeller win. If it's "who left more of a mark on history," then sure, Nietzsche and Shakespeare, hands down. So the question is, what's your priority?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Thanks for the post. You put it into perspective for me really. Been feeling abit down over the past few days obsessing about how I should've worked harder instead of fooling around with my time. I have a full-time job and I take school part-time but I'm still trying to push myself in hopes of bootstrapping a startup.

</comment><comment><USER39> "A couple of years ago, I realized that I was not the material of which great artists are made and that I was rather glad I wasn't. And since then I have been happier simply to do the work and to take the reward at the end of every day that is given for a day of honest work." - John Steinbeck in August 1933

</comment><comment><USER40> To be quite honest, those valuations are probably way WAY to high. After all, Facebook just went public so that 100 billion dollar valuation is probably stretching it since companies are starting realize that Facebook adds generate little value.

Its good that you have a sense of perspective about this and you don't let the money aspect go to your head. After all, I find it enormously grotesque that these Internet companies are valued so high since one change of management or one new thing can make you become obsolete (MySpace and Yahoo are good examples).

Don't let it get to you, the whole point is that you have your own business and its still there. You can also just think of it as $100 billion of inflated currency. (21.8% to be exact when Facebook was created in 2004 to now).

<comment><USER41> Instagram and Pinterest are looking like the peak right now. Neither of them would get that valuation next week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Honestly don't like billion being mentioned too many times on this page (perhaps it is because the article itself says it).

I am reminded of what Derek Sivers said sometime after the movie 'Social Network' came out. 'A billion dollars is not cool, you know what's cool ... A million dollars'. (can't find in which video he said that)

I believe nobody can plan to be a billionaire. But people can plan to be millionaires. And I think the blog post does articulate a healthy way of doing it. But I wonder, why would a person feel depressed at all about not being a billionaire. I think its foolish to even dream about it, really.

But, if you just find yourself being one anyway, good then, deal with it. Else, try to be a millionaire, and then take it as it comes.

</comment><comment><USER43> Just tweeted this to the author and thought I cross-post it here as well: Wonderful piece, I just had those same thoughts in the midst of all this facebook IPO frenzy... stay hungry, humble, and healthy! (Hmm, I can call it the three H's :))

</comment><comment><USER44> It seems strange that a good data prediction company (Inkling) couldn't become a huge growth company with a $1 billion+ valuation. Obviously this is an arm chair opinion but it seems like the author would like to be in the position of these other companies, so presumably the reason for not is due to some combination of business, market, etc.. Which is the part I don't entirely agree on. Inkling seems like a great idea in a market that people and companies would pay big bucks for if you're good at it, am I wrong?

</comment><comment><USER45> I can highly recommend NOT following the "Read the newspaper" and applying the same for TV/Radio. Most of what is broadcasted is negative news. I rather live in a happy fun place.

</comment><comment><USER46> Is beeing rich the only goal of an entrepreneur ? It that was true the world would be full of depressed people. I would suggest to pick a goal that is achievable to avoid a persistant frustration later.

Another point is that the impression to be _trapped_ in an unsatisfying situation can also lead to depression. Anticipate a way out. Build a company that doesn't depend on you to run it and that leaves you free time to try other ideas. You won't be trapped.

</comment><comment><USER47> Thanks for posting this. I kind of needed it. Recent projects are getting pretty tough, to the point of looking for a supplementary job, and the job search itself isn't any easier.

I'm not in any kind of "bad spot" mentally, but it is reassuring to know that I'm not the only one who feels somewhat unaccomplished in light of the incessant tech news chaos.

<comment><USER48> I'll tell you what I came here to tell the author of the post. You should read "Fooled by Randomness" by Nicholas Nassim Taleb. One of the major points of the book is that wealth that comes fast usually leaves fast, and wealth that is built slowly is usually harder to lose. This is a natural consequence of the "hidden histories"—the probabilities in play.

It's not sexy, but building your wealth slowly is a better way to live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Or stated in another way: just do something you love and aim high.

The author lists a lot of good points but it boils down to "keeping it real" and keeping your friends, family, and personal life at arm's reach.

"Avoiding Depression While Not Running a $1B Company" just sounds a bit extreme.

</comment><comment><USER50> I know that I just can't compete. So I focus on working.

$1B? I can't even fathom that much money.

</comment><comment><USER51> Dude. It is ok. The huge valuation these guys had for their flippant startup in 2012 will be of little importance in the long run, and when we are on our deathbeds.

</comment><comment><USER52> Or just try not to do it for the money and/or fame. But that of course is easier said than done for many out there already.

</comment><comment><USER53> Love this post! Needed to be said and resaid, as many times as we hear 'Go $1B or Kill Yourself!'</comment>