Ask HN: Seriously, what's wrong with HTML tables? - <AUTHOR> I'm new to web development and am learning HTML/CSS, Rails, and jQuery as I put together a web app. I noticed it's much easier to use tables to create forms, but apparently this is bad practice.
Can anyone give specific reasons why it's unwise to use tables for anything other than displaying tabular data? <comment><USER2> This site sums it up pretty concisely:

<http://phrogz.net/CSS/WhyTablesAreBadForLayout.html>

Not that I agree with him entirely. In particular:

> 6\. Once you know CSS, table-based layouts usually take more time to > implement.

For a sizable site with layouts reused over multiple pages, yes. For a single page, or a site with differing layouts for each page, in my experience, no. Actually, I'd extend that first sentence of mine into a new reason: with CSS you can specify your layout _once_ , and not have to redo it for every page. Doesn't work with tables.

> 7\. Tables are semantically incorrect markup for layout.

My response: So what? (Yes, I know about the problems with screen readers, but that's a different reason, one I happen to agree with.)

And then, on the other hand, there are the things no one wants to say: the _advantages_ tables have over CSS. In particular, it's obvious to me that CSS was not designed with modern layouts in mind. The fact that it works at all is really just an accident: it turned out that you can make columns using floats (how 'bout that?). Yes, using tables for layout is a kind of jury-rig, but to be honest, so is using CSS. And at least tables have a mechanism for producing columns, that was designed with columns in mind.

And then there are the browser rendering inconsistencies. With modern browsers, these problems are fading, but for older ones, the inconsistencies with CSS seem to be much more troublesome than those with tables.

<comment><USER3>
      And then, on the other hand, there are the things no one
      wants to say: the advantages tables have over CSS. In
      particular, it's obvious to me that CSS was not designed
      with modern layouts in mind. The fact that it works at all
      is really just an accident: it turned out that you can make
      columns using floats (how 'bout that?).

Oh, come on. If some are still stuck with IE6 this does not mean that CSS is only capable that much. Time to learn some modern CSS, folks (hint: IE8+ supports display: table-*).

And anyone who thinks that tables are easier to deal with either did not work enough with CSS or did not care enough. In 1996-2003 I was building stuff tables way, in 2004 I went full CSS and never looked back.

<comment><USER4> IE6 still has a surprisingly large user base according to my analytics reports. some of my clients' sites are seeing above 30% still using IE6. hopefully IT departments will go to windows 7 or something, because seriously - what year is this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Comic sans, spec design, and tables: you just smile and nod when your designer friends start talking. Every tribe has its signaling mechanisms. This is his. Smile and nod.

<comment><USER6> what does that mean?

<comment><USER7> I think he means it's OK to use tables from a purely technical point of view, but from a social perspective you're probably better keeping this opinion private. The current approved attitude among designers is that HTML tables are evil, so by agreeing you gain social standing. If you adopt the technically arguable but socially inappropriate stance that there's a time and place for tables, you'll be treated similarly to a C programmer who defends 'goto': at best a relic, at worst a moron.

Nod and smile, then get back to work. Improve your toolset by learning how it's done in Haskell (Erlang, Lua, R, other up and coming language) on the side, but don't be worried about using the language you know to get the job done. Understand the potential advantages of CSS, but don't worry too much about a perfectly workable solution. Just realize that you'll be mocked for it in certain circles. But better to be mocked with a site that's up and running than to still be debating whether quotes should always be used even if not required by the spec.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This topic has been discussed to death elsewhere.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/83073/why-not-use- tables-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/83073/why-not-use-tables-for- layout-in-html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tangentially, if you are designing HTML email, tables and old-school HTML are _the_ way to go, still. This is due to an even sorrier state of affairs in email clients than web browsers. (Not the least of which: Outlook, which uses Microsoft Word (!) as its rendering engine.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Nothing.

Look at the source to amazon.com, netflix.com, google.com, bing.com. It's hard to find any big site that doesn't use tables for at least some layout tasks.

CSS is a really, really shitty method of doing layout. Fanboys will come out of the woodwork to try and prove that statement wrong, but in my opinion, it's true. I'm not sure how we ended up with such a terrible tool.

There are times when I have spent 10 hours trying to do some trivial bit of layout done with CSS, and finally resorting to a little table got it done instantly.

There are entire classes of things that you can't do with CSS, or you have to resort to bizarre hacks to get done (negative padding, etc).

I'm not claiming that tables solve every problem, but presented with the choice of spending hours figuring out some css hack and testing it in the dozens of browsers / mobile browsers that are out there now, and just making a table, I will just make the table and move on.

Edit: You should use CSS 90% of the time. Tables often let you do something easily that CSS has lots of trouble with, and I recommend resorting to them at that point.

<comment><USER11> Amazon.com and Google.com (at least) don't even serve valid pages.

Amazon doesn't declare a doctype or character encoding. They have 7 blocks of inline CSS, there page is a dog to load. They have nested tables for non- tabular data, the don't encode entities (&, etc), they use non-existent (in spec) attribute values, don't declare all script types, don't add all alt attributes, they use a mixture of XHTML and HTML (mixed use of self-closing tags and unclosed tags), etc., etc..

So I guess big sites just don't care about web standards.

I can't imagine how insane it would drive you trying to navigate Amazon's site with a screenreader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here are a couple reasons:

\- At one point the design becomes a nightmare to maintain. I've worked on some web apps, where we had pages with 15 levels deep tables in tables in tables ...

\- Separating the semantic information in .html from the design in .css. Can help with SEO, screen readers, cashing.

<comment><USER3> 15 level deep? That's nothing. Try <http://www.telsiai.lt/> I did not count the nesting level, but the total number of tables according to my bookmarklet is 348. Yep, we do have some wonderful CMS over there…

<comment><USER4> plenty of divs and spans out there on major sites that nest so far down it looks almost like a fractal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Purists consider it controversial, but using tables for forms is fine in my opinion if it gets you the layout behavior you want. CSS and tables just don't offer the same options when it comes to layout.

There are only two big uses for tables that I would avoid, and which are probably how this all started:

\- Don't put all your content in giant tables for multiple columns, etc. Browsers do have to go to some effort to calculate column widths and such, and may delay rendering the contents of the table, e.g. until all the dependencies like inline images are loaded.

\- Don't try to use big hairy pixel-precise tables for freeform layout, like when designers would carve up a mock in Photoshop, export the "slices" as 14 different images, and reassemble them using tables. This is a maintainability and usability nightmare and will come back to bite you.

People can get really dogmatic about not using tables. Perhaps you could find some forms you like and see what kind of mark-up they use.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's a tool and just like a hammer, a little experience will tell you when to use it and when not too. I personally think using them for forms is a reasonable case if it suits you, I prefer the lighter markup I get with simple divs in forms though. You will find eventually that the rigid structure of tables gets a little annoying.

In the past we've seen huge messes of tables nested upon tables which creates bloated, inflexible HTML. This is usually done by people who would create huge bloated messes of divs anyway. What you should really be focusing on is creating clean, valid markup written with a sense of style and care.

CSS frameworks like Blueprint can make getting started with layout a lot easier for you if don't mind having an argument about the abuse of CSS as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight, I appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Because in the past, people used to use tables for everything. Want to add some spacing? Create a table with invisible columns that contain 1-pixel gifs "spacer.gif".

Now adays these things can happen with CSS, and you should use css to get spacing and positioning done right.

However, for layout, I completely disagree with the mainstream idea that "divs and css are better than tables for layout".

#1 argument, they say, is that tables are semantically incorrect for layout.

Well then, are divs semantically correct for layout? Absolutely not. Actually, tables _are_ semantically correct for layout.

How else do you express stacking elements vertically and horizontally?

Floating divs to create layout is a horrible hack, and it's _not_ maintainable at all.

Use tables to get the basic layout, but do all the styling with css.

<comment><USER11> >Well then, are divs semantically correct for layout? Absolutely not.

Adding a div adds no semantic meaning to the page. Adding a table tells you that the elements in the different columns and rows relate to one another, that the rows or columns duplicate data types that the td have relationships with one another as data.

Tables are semantically correct for arranging data that is related correctly when presented in a table; but this is not "layout" in terms of visual appearance. The semantics of the data table aren't necessarily related to the layout - imagine a table of <name,image,date> tuples that you arrange as floating polaroid imges using some javascript.

>How else do you express stacking elements vertically and horizontally?

If ordering is important for the meaning of the data then use lists (ol) if 2D ordered data is being presented then you have a table and using the table element is expected.

The web is not print media and was designed to convey information (to myriad different UA) and not to give rigid print-like presentation of that same information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Honestly I just use them whenever I feel they're useful.

Tabular data goes in tables (including forms for the most part). Everything else goes in a DIV (or SPAN, I guess).

That being said, all of my tables are put inside of DIVs for layout.

(Also, I'm not a designer)

</comment><comment><USER17> Form data (which is what the original poster asked about) arguably _is_ tabular data, containing both header and data cells. I use the table header () tag for form labels and the table data () for form fields all the time. (Although it is marginally better not to do so, if your design allows it.)

The dogmatic view, that marking up your document with as few, strictly semantic tags as possible is ideal, has died down in recent years. I advocate the following approach: create your design and initial as-semantic-as-possible HTML. Starting doing the CSS, you run into problems that a table would help with? Either adapt the design, or just put in the table -- your guiding light should be semantic markup is great, but it isn't worth adding hard-to-maintain HTML/CSS hacks to your design in order to keep your markup perfect.

In otherwords, HTML/CSS hacks are worse than some bad markup here and there.

Always keep in mind that the HTML/CSS revolution was a _blogging_ movement. Usually keeping the markup strictly semantic is easy for a blog, as blogs are textual documents -- the type of data that and HTML/CSS were originally designed for.

I personally mainly work on web applications (think lots of buttons and forms), HTML/CSS perform far worse in this context. And I've wasted a lot of time extrapolating what is good advice for a blog to web applications were it can be terrible advice.

</comment><comment><USER18> Accessibility, SEO, and maintainability are the business reasons.

But the larger reason, the _why_ , is that its easier for a computer to parse. If you want to be part of the Semantic Web[1], you should make your pages as machine-readable as possible. Makers of screen readers will thank you too.

 means tabular data, not layout. But since no one follows that, parsers first have to determine which way you meant
. This is an unneeded complication. If everyone used the right tags (
 and  for layout, everything else is semantic), writing a parser would be insanely easy and we could spend our time on more interesting problems.

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

</comment><comment><USER19> There's nothing wrong with using tables for non-tabular reasons, just like there's nothing wrong with using an 'under construction' animated gif while you're building your site or having a nice midi file playing in the background.

I'm sure some day someone will come up with some sort of standard that allows a regular website to look good on multiple devices with multiple capabilities, perhaps some sort of file containing style information that could tell the browser how to structure different sections.

</comment><comment><USER20> You can't make a scalable layout with tables.

You can't easily change complex table-based layouts, because you get lost in the td-s and tr-s.

You can make forms even easier with some clever CSS.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's probably because you are only dealing with the simple situation right now where you have few elements to display. But once you get into a more advanced level of user interface design, you will regret using tables because there are so many blocks of elements needed to be fit in.

Or, imagine building Facebook/Twitter using

.

</comment><comment><USER22> Tables = Use to show tabular data and forms

Tables != Layout

</comment><comment><USER23> Before CSS became popular, tables where used heavily, not just to show data, but also to layout page. As people started to use CSS for layout tables become the enemy.

Tables became bad, and CSS became good. So much that some people where using divs to show data for a while just because they hated tables so much.

</comment><comment><USER24> Maintainability.

Same reason that, when you code, you want to include comments, have good variable names, use reasonably-sized functions, etc. It makes maintainability and future extension much easier.

Forget about semantic purity. CSS has survived all these years because it's been very useful in a very practical sense.

</comment><comment><USER25> The page you are looking at right now is full of tables.

<comment><USER26> ...and when you go to view it on e.g. a mobile device, it looks like shit and all the comments hang off the RHS of the screen. Which can be tricky to fix up in a table-based design. And a bit easier to fix in a well-designed CSS one (skip some DIV's, move them elsewhere on the page and so on)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Someone always points this out in these threads, but HN uses tables...and we all love this site. Theres no morality in web design, just results.

</comment><comment><USER28> From a purist/non purist perspective:

There is something inherently wrong with CSS tables for layout. There are also technological hurdles.

When using RAW CSS WITH NO FRAMEWORK laying shit out is hard at best. Which is why you should use one of a multitude of frameworks which give you css grid layouts. There are also frameworks which apply css 2 table cell properties to layout your page using tables without tables.

When using HTML Tables, you are guaranteeing that your site will NEVER scale gracefully with lower resolutions and mobile devices without CSS (dying). While sometimes you do want to say "Vertical" or "Horrizontal" box, on some devices neither helps. You need wrapping, text area resizing (and i dont mean textarea tags) etc.

So in the end of the day: Don't do Table-based layouts. BUT ALSO DON'T REINVENT THE WHEEL. I think it is an equal sin to hack up a new layout css for every page/project as it is to hack up a new webserver for every little 2-page static html server.

From a technological perspective, tables don't make for good layout containers. They don't respect their width/height properties like you hope they would. You need to account for the dreaded cellpadding and cellspacing defaults, child borders/margins, etc. Avoid it. Trust me, a bigger headache in the long run.

<comment><USER29> 960 and Blueprint are the most common grid frameworks (I think), but there are more that some googling for "css grid" will lead you to.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Software Deployment Strategies – Part 1 – Introduction - <AUTHOR> https://www.ykameshrao.com/post/software-deployment-strategies-part-1-introduction <comment><USER2> Interesting article, thanks. Not quite in the spirit of 'Show HN'. There is nothing to play with or try out. Probably should just be a regular post.</comment>


A used 2015 Retina MacBook Pro might be the best MacBook you can buy today - <AUTHOR> https://www.cultofmac.com/664886/used-2015-retina-macbook-pro/ <comment> daniel-cussen I believed this and that's exactly what I did, I bought a 2015 15" rMBP used. It went for $700, but you can get them for even less.

The most obvious part of the decision was the lack of magsafe connector. How could Apple have made such an obviously anti-Steve Jobs decision? Nobody gives a shit if all the connectors on the sides are uniform. You don't get points in real life for making them that way. It's a point against, not a point in favor, they should be heterogenous.

</comment><comment><USER2> I went out of my way two years ago to get a 15" 2015 MBP after coming to the same conclusion.

Last 'good' keyboard, replaceable storage, built like a tank , etc. And you don't need to calibrate the trackpad every time you open the damn thing.

It also happens to be the model/year I fixed the most at my uni's (super duper apple certified) repair shop, so I'm confident I can keep it alive for a while.

<comment><USER3> IN 2017, after going through my filters > 16GB RAM, 15 inch, and ease of use, *nix (have worked on Suse/Ubuntu for like 10 years), I settled on same. At that time new 12 inch MacBook was already out, but didn't like that touch thing at the top and seemed overpriced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Found a brand new/sealed 2015 MBP on eBay about 3 months ago.. top of the line i7, 32gb ram, 512gb SSD, still the best laptop that exists IMO.

<comment><USER5> Are you sure about 32gb ram? Max configs on Mid 2015 laptop: i7-4980 2.8Ghz, 1TB, 16gb ram.

<comment><USER6> That's not possible. The chip used in that model was limited to 16GB. I worked in IT at that time and DB admins begging me to get them a 15" at that time with 32GB of RAM. I told them the chip from Intel was the limiting factor. When Apple updated a year or two ago, they moved to the next version of the chip which allowed 32GB. So yeah, 32GB in 2015 was not possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Old MBPs are mentioned a lot on HN; I want to give a shout out to the MacBook Air.

At home I'm still using an 8GB, mid-2012 MBA, and it feels just as responsive as my brand new 16GB MBA at work. I'm obviously not doing much to push it, but I'm getting away with web dev (Docker, multiple containers), browsing, watching movies, playing music, multiple desktops, etc without a problem.

If this breaks before they fix the keyboard issue I'd seriously consider the last MBA with the classic keyboard, even if it's missing the retina display or Touch ID.

<comment><USER8> My 2012 Air feels, in many ways, a lot more performant than my 2016 Pro. The Air is the best computer Apple has made in over a decade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's what I have. Great laptop. Only recently it started to freeze for a few seconds a couple of times per week though.

<comment><USER10> I too have been having this issue as of late on my mid 2015.

<comment> fbi-director Me too, mbpro 2013 or 2015 I'm not sure. Music or video keeps playing, input freezes. Very rare, but not rare enough to not notice.

<comment><USER11> I've seen it on my Mac mini a couple of times. I thought it might have been a bluetooth issue as both the keyboard and mouse were unresponsive but perhaps there is something else going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The 2015 rMBP can do some light modern gaming. I was able to run Prey (2017) just fine, as well as the new Disco Elysium.

<comment><USER13> Can the battery, RAM, and hard drive be serviced by the end user easily?

<comment><USER14> RAM is soldered. SSD uses a proprietary connector - fortunately a low cost adapter is now available. Battery is glued to the chassis but there are removal kits available from iFixit which includes adhesive remover and new adhesive.

I've replaced my SSD with a new one using the adapter and it's working perfectly. It's about 2x as fast as the original drive.

It's not the best MacBook Pro by any stretch of the imaginative. I've also used a 2016 MBP and 2018 MBP both with Touch Bar and both are far superior.

Those were work devices and the 2015 is my personal device which I purchased due to cost. I've been very happy - it's running Catalina Beta perfectly and I've also run Window 10 using Bootcamp and recently have removed that and switched to Parallels running both W7 and W10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "no Touch Bar" is listed as a con. I consider physical keys to be a pro.

</comment><comment><USER16> Unless you want to use it on any flight, I've been flying a lot lately, with different airlines - every single one of them completely bans every 15" MacBook from 2015.

<comment><USER17> Do you actually own a 2015 and had it taken away?

I own a 2015 mbp and fly with it all the time - no issues. (flown probably 12 times since the ban, primarily United)

<comment><USER18> I can second this, I've brought my laptop on multiple flights after the ban and nobody cared. Amsterdam - Krakow with KLM and Dusseldorf - Moscow with Aeroflot and they all just accepted the laptop. Took it out of my bag at all airports except Amsterdam. (You don't have to take out your stuff from your bag anymore, you can also bring filled bottles of fluid)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you haven't done a fresh install since 2015, I highly recommend it. It will free up a lot of space and generally run better on a drive reformatted with APFS and fresh Mojave.

<comment><USER20> Yeah I haven't. Does this mean not to restore with Time Machine? Instead move things over temporarily somewhere else, reformat and reinstall Catalina (I don't have any issue with the 64 bit limit), then move data back?

<comment><USER19> That's what I ended up doing. I don't know Time Machine well enough to know if it would free up as much space on your drive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My friend and I swear by these MBPs, but we disagree on updates I reliably update the firmware because I'm terrified of viruses. He, OTOH, _never_ updates, because he's afraid of planned obsolescence gradually bricking his machine. P.O. is no longer a tin foil hat thing, it's proven. But is he going about it the right way?

</comment><comment><USER22> This article is utterly fucked on my phone. Content disappearing right off the edge of the viewport that you can't scroll to.

</comment><comment><USER23> Surprised - I thought it was going to be about MBPs that can run Mojava, the last good macOS. It's my understanding that new hardware isn't (generally) compatible with older OSes. Apple killing my legacy (32-bit) apps officially ended my love-affair with macOS - typing this on a Ubuntu laptop.

<comment><USER14> Your understand is incorrect. Catalina runs perfectly on my 2015 rMBP and can run on machines as old as MBA 2012.

Apple has been notifying developers for 3 macOS versions that 64bit applications would be deprecated. Do you really want to use software that a developer can't take the time to update it having several years notice?

In any event progress marches on. Apple isn't shy advancing their hardware and software deprecating old code. That's how the state of the art advances.

Funny that Apple is almost alway correct when they make these sorts of decisions.

<comment><USER24> >> Apple has been notifying developers for 3 macOS versions that 64bit applications would be deprecated.

And for 3 MacOS versions I've said when they enact this is when I jump ship.

>> Do you really want to use software that a developer can't take the time to update it having several years notice?

Yes, because I would like to use software I paid for.

Certain music plug-ins, utilities and games I have purchased won't work.

The update _removes_ value from the OS - greatly.

Your question effectively asks if you'd like to continue using something you paid for just because it's several years old. Let's say the company just went defunct so an update is out of the question, yes, if I paid for that software I'd still like to use it.

I will be hackintoshing, buying a Lenovo and gradually start my move to Ubuntu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A windows version of that is a Razer Blade 15.

<comment><USER26> If you don't need the GPU another good option is the Dell Latitude 5400 (2019). I am loving the hell out of my higher tier model (8565u, 32gb ram, 1tb nvme).

Yeah it's a business laptop and not very pretty but that just means you can literally repair any part on it with only one or two sized Phillips head screwdriver. No having to remove fragile ribbon cables to upgrade RAM like on the razer blade :|.</comment></comment>


Facebook is King, Other Networks Fight for Scraps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.naytev.com/facebook-is-king/ <comment><USER2> I have visited a local community center event website for 15 years. They recently moved over to Facebook. Their feed is public. If I don't have the FB app or am not logged into FB, it's almost as if there is an entire division of losers, sitting around at Facebook cooking up ways to make me login or install the app. From are you a robot unreadable captcha's, to denying the page exists, to limiting the number of posts, limiting readable post content, its ridiculous.

Whether they are king or not, all I am ever going to remember them for is taking a gigantic shit over what the Internet is supposed to mean.

<comment><USER3> I tried viewing the Facebook page for my local goban meetup recently to check on a schedule, and FB put a giant floating translucent white box over the bottom half of my screen with a single "login" button in the middle of it. So I could see there was content below but it was incredibly hard to read. There was not even an "X" button to close it. What it was saying was "join our website or get the hell out".

I understand enforcing login for write operations, since it's obviously required, but they really do seem to have no regard for the original ideals of the internet. They're not alone; Quora and others have done similarly stupid shit.

These companies are all supposedly started by hackers who love the internet and technology, but it's sad to see capitalism take hold in such an ugly way.

<comment><USER4> I've found Kill Sticky [1] to be an incredibly useful bookmarket lately. It finds any DOM element with "position: fixed" and deletes it. Wish I didn't need to use it so often, but here we are.

Sometimes for annoying popups covering content, sometimes for the sidebar of brightly colored floating social widgets, sometimes just the enormous fixed banner that continues to waste screen real estate after you've scrolled down.

I use it a lot on my laptop and haven't tried JS bookmarklets in mobile browsers, but I'd hope that they work by now?

[1] [https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky- headers/](https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/)

<comment><USER5> That is brilliant. For Mobile Safari, copy the bookmarklet source, create a "dummy" bookmark, then go back and edit it. Delete the URL and type in `javascript:` and paste the JS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The selection of websites listed is sort of weird. Buzzfeed I get but the others aren't high on my radar. I'm guessing the graphs would look different with different websites to analyze.

But more than that, this analysis sort of presents a tautology. Yes, Facebook is king of Facebook-style sharing. No one is surprised. What, you say Pinterest doesn't have a ton of National Geographic articles shared compared to Facebook? Not a surprise, given the nature of Pinterest. Twitter is also not the same sort of social network. LinkedIn? Google+? These are not the same sorts of sites at all.

Meanwhile, the article totally ignores Tumblr, Snapchat, and who knows what other sites I know nothing about.

In summary, Facebook has won at being Facebook. Other sites have different purposes, and their users use them differently.

<comment><USER7> I had the same thought. It was a bizarre selection of media companies and other "social" sites. It seems like either naive, amateur analysis, or else they cherry picked the data to make a popular perception of fb look as dramatically true as possible. I'm inclined to give their integrity the benefit of the doubt and assume they just didn't really think this one through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tell that to tweens and teens. Yes, they are on it, but they don't spend time browsing it. They are social in other apps.

<comment><USER9> As a person close to the "teen" demographic, I can tell you that teens still use Facebook. Thinking of social media as a zero sum game is a common mistake; each has its own use case. For instance, Facebook is usually used when chatting on desktop/laptop with friends, adding new people you met, or chatting with people who you aren't really close to. Also, Facebook is widely used for groups and events, which no other social media provides. Snapchat might have replaced some aspect of the Facebook newsfeed but people still post things on Facebook. When a teen says, "omg Facebook is like so old and no one ever uses it". They mean to say that they don't use it as much but they still use it for things I mentioned.

Edit: It is important to note that Facebook has the "identity" aspect down like no other.

<comment><USER10> Except that attention span _is_ a zero sum game.

Facebook's (et al) business model success is correlated with the amount of time you are under their umbrella.

<comment><USER9> People don't necessarily have to be "on" Facebook for Facebook to collect data about their user. Many apps connect to Facebook. So they can collect data even when people are not using Facebook. The more people use Facebook connected services, the more data Facebook collects about users. Which means better ads for the users & better data for businesses.

<comment><USER10> Right, being "on" Facebook isn't a prereq for being under their umbrella.

Snapchat, Vine, and other networks are not under that umbrella, meaning it's still a zero sum game. These companies are competing for your attention, for which there is limited supply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have trouble believing that G+ outstrips Twitter when it comes to social sharing. I think there is likely something at play other than that which isn't captured by this analysis. For instance, Twitter doesn't auto load articles the way G+ and FB do, so perhaps there is a distinction to be made there. At any rate, if G+ was this successful, I think we can all agree Google wouldn't have killed / pivoted it, which means the data is suspect in some way.

<comment><USER12> Honestly those numbers are most likely almost entirely automated bots. G+ is popular with content mills to get their page ranking up. Think about it for a moment, do you know ANYONE at all that uses G+ for anything?

<comment><USER13> It appears to me that G+ has found a different niche than Facebook. Facebook is for seeing posts from people you know (mostly people you know but don't see often or at all, like college friends or your aunt). G+ is for seeing posts from people you share interests with. Yes, FB has groups and pages for that kind of thing, but it just seems to have clicked better on G+.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's an interesting piece, but I'd be more interested in analysis looking at the why behind that. What is it about the audience on the site, and the way the sites are presenting their content that is driving the non-FB sharing? Obviously this would need to be done with more sites than just those here. However, for a quick analysis, I nosed around three...

Billboard have Facebook and Twitter sharing buttons on their articles, but not G+, so it's fair to assume that the G+ sharing is going on on the G+ platform, not from the site itself.

Similarly, hovering over any image on TipHero presents share buttons for Facebook and Pinterest, and the bottom of their articles present a huge Share on Facebook button. However, no Twitter share button means they're getting nothing from that, and presumably not interacting in any way on G+ either.

There's a similar story again with Bleacher Report, which has Facebook and Twitter buttons (but interestingly no Twitter shares - possibly the wrong audience?), the same for every image, and Facebook, Twitter and G+ share buttons at the base of each article.

I think the takeaways from this are, Facebook is massive and cannot be ignored if you're publishing content, whilst everything else is dependent on whether or not your audience is there. But even if they are, the numbers in terms of engagement is going to be vastly lower, so can't be a priority.

My concern with this would be that, given that that's the case, this becomes a dynamo for Facebook, as the more they become the dominant platform, the less time anyone will spend working to build an audience anywhere else. Possibly Twitter is an exception to this, depending on the publication, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Remember In-Q-Tel, the CIA's VC firm (let that sink in for a moment) was one of the earliest investors in Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER16> While measurement, methodology, and focus were different (my goal was seeking intelligent discussion online), the results may be of interest.

I ran Google searches across multiple domains representing major social media networks, publications, and a few other classes of sites including academic institutions, government, and various foreign TLDs.

Search terms were names from the _Foreign Policy_ Top 100 Global Thinkers list (selected as representative of more intellectual dicussion), the arbitrarily selected text string "Kim Kardashian" as negative indicator, and a search for the word "this" (a common English word) to get a proxy for total English- language content on a given site or domain.

Facebook dominated by total count, though s/n as represented by the FP:KK index (see link) was highest at Metafilter, with Reddit doing admirably. Blogs though had very nearly as much content as FB and generally far more length and relevance.

My read is that there's an untapped market for meaningful discussion on blogs from whoever manages to solve the problems of discoverability, discussion, relevance, reputation, and spam.

[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><USER17> Should add "in the English speaking world". Baidu, vkontakte, etc. have their own regional powers.

<comment><USER18> There's actually a few interesting stories there about how Facebook has been beating out quite a few of these regional networks in recent years. For example, they've unseated Mixi in Japan and Cyworld in South Korea:

[http://www.digitalintheround.com/japan-mixi- facebook/](http://www.digitalintheround.com/japan-mixi-facebook/)

[http://www.digitalintheround.com/south-korea-cyworld- faceboo...](http://www.digitalintheround.com/south-korea-cyworld-facebook/)

There are quite a few interesting stories like that, about how certain regionally popular services seem to be losing popularity compared to their international competitors.

<comment><USER19> > unseated Mixi in Japan

I think it is debatable whether it was Facebook or Line that unseated Mixi. Looking at how my Japanese friends use their phones I would say it was Line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> People underestimate how quickly Facebook could be overtaken. Look at Whatsapp and ask yourself what if Facebook hadn't purchased them when they did?

It is inevitable that someday something will fly under the radar or an owner will be unwilling to sell.

<comment><USER21> Like snapchat?

<comment><USER22> They need a desktop version

<comment><USER23> Why? If anything, Snapchat's success shows that they don't need a desktop version. Mobile usage in the U.S. now exceeds desktop usage. I'm having a hard time believing that anyone on the Snapchat team is stressing out about having a desktop version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think this kind of analysis is not worth much. Not that it was done badly (I'm not good enough to judge that). In every market you have two kinds of profitable companies: The market leader who owns the huge thing. And you have niches. Both of them can be very profitable but in different ways.

HN is certainly no social leader, but I would consider it a huge success. And while it may not even make money in a direct way, it's a huge part of the success of the brand YCombinator. Are these scraps? I don't think so. In fact, given the choice, I'd rather work at HN than at FB. I'd rather own shares of YC as well (in that regard YC may even be too big for what I like). And as you can see right now, I'd rather talk to people here than on FB as well.

</comment><comment><USER25> Facebook is still living mostly off its network effects. It's still not King in many Foregn markets, and I'm not even counting China since they are explicitly blocked there. So they don't necessarily have product superiority, just network effects.

<comment><USER26> Some would say the network is the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Side note: The conversion of the bar chart y-axis from linear to logarithmic made logarithmic graphs "click" for me. Goes to show you, you can learn something when you least expect it.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if such result might be a result of some methodological error (not representative sample, some metric calculations biases, click frauds, etc). Otherwise this is rather sad article :(

</comment><comment><USER29> The inability to monitor their whole network for scam advertising might cripple facebook's dominance as their main revenue source becomes less trusting but the scale of their operations relies on that consistent revenue:

More on the ad scams: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/sapna/say-no-to-the- dress](http://www.buzzfeed.com/sapna/say-no-to-the-dress)

<comment><USER30> I doubt if, if only because the entire web and even offline world is equally filled with ad scams too. Go look at anything advertised via taboola our outbrain. :-/

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> If nothing unexpected happens, Facebook will be dead by 2020 [1].

[1] [https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook)

<comment><USER32> Interesting. What is this based of off?

<comment><USER31> It's the normalized search volume for the term »facebook« on Google. It is not too straight forward to interpret but I thought about it for some time and I am still convinced it is a pretty good indicator for Facebook's future.

For example users switching from desktop browsers to apps will no longer go to facebook.com by searching for »facebook« in the address bar and therefore lower the search volume. On the other hand people searching for solutions for issues with Facebook should still track the size of the user base. The same holds for developers interested in Facebook APIs, authors researching Facebook for articles and so on.

You can almost always come up with explanations why the search volume should go down over time, developers already knowing the APIs, Facebook maturing and therefore causing less and less issues for users, users maturing and therefore being better able to deal with issues without searching and so on.

But if you look at similar cases like MySpace [1], Google+ [2], ICQ [3], the German StudiVZ and MeinVZ [4], the search volume on Google was always a really good indicator for the fate of those platforms and I don't have enough convincing arguments to believe that Facebook manages to counter this trend.

[1] [https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=myspace](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=myspace)

[2] [https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=google%2B](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=google%2B)

[3] [https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=icq](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=icq)

[4] [https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=studivz%2C%20meinvz](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=studivz%2C%20meinvz)

<comment><USER33> Well as people move towards using mobile and apps more and more, wouldn't they search Facebook on Google less and less?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> From an advertiser perpective, there's Google, there's Facebook, and there's everybody else. Ignoring everybody else doesn't seem to reduce sales.

</comment><comment><USER35> King, yes, for the time being maybe; yet I can't help but think Facebook's presence / dominance will wane eventually.

</comment><comment><USER36> This not true. Facebook is not king any more. Do a Google trends comparison and you will find that peak Facebook was in 2013.

[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0glpjll%2C%20...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0glpjll%2C%20%2Fm%2F0h3tm0f%2C%20%2Fm%2F0289n8t%2C%20%2Fm%2F02y1vz&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-2)

<comment><USER37> Remove Facebook, add WhatsApp.

[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0glpjll%2C%20...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0glpjll%2C%20%2Fm%2F0h3tm0f%2C%20%2Fm%2F0289n8t%2C%20%2Fm%2F0gwzvs1&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-2)

Both Instagram and WhatsApp belong to Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> There was a time when Twitter wanted to be king and Snapchat and well Fb sure dominated them all

</comment><comment><USER39> Seems remiss not to include reddit in this analysis no?

</comment><comment><USER40> Google is King.

\- Gmail 1bil users \- Youtube billions \- Search \- Android \- Self Driving cars

and the list goes on including an order of magnitude greater in revenue.

Facebook is the friendster, geocities the next AOL etc.

Google is a real technology company.

<comment><USER41> I don't like Facebook, nor do I have an account, but I disagree somewhat with them not being a "real technology company".

Facebook hired Simon Marlow, one of the creators of Haskell, and publishes a lot of research and open-source projects. Cassandra DB, HHVM, React, React- Native and Hack are just a couple examples.

They write blog posts about what scales and what does not, and employ a number of post-grad researchers. How are they not a "real" technology company?

<comment><USER42> I agree. It's not just software either. Their work on OpenCompute, which opensources datacenter designs and server designs, has also done really impressive work. Their interest in Occulus shows their appreciation of advances in IO hardware.

<comment><USER43> Facebook is where these techs go to die. Facebook has a lot of interest in these projects, and a lot of cool, smart, motivated people working there. But they have no cohesion, no direction, and no way to build on top of one another - Everyone at Facebook is constantly re-inventing the wheel.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google to invest $105,000 in Drupal - <AUTHOR> http://buytaert.net/google-to-invest-105000-usd-in-drupal

<comment><USER2> Investment is a slightly misleading term. It's more of a gift, since Google is presumably not taking any stake in Drupal as a result.

Yes, Google isn't purely benevolent, and recruiting engineers is probably a goal of this program. But still, Google is not investing in Drupal; it's part of their recruitment budget, essentially.</comment>


The Savory Collection: jazz treasure, restorers nightmare, copyright minefiled. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/arts/music/17jazz.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

<comment><AUTHOR> What's interesting to those who often ask "what does this have to do with HN?" is that these are 70+ year old recordings, some on acetate and aluminum that need to be painstakingly digitally restored. Also, the ugly copyright monster rears its head towards the end.</comment>


High Speed Rail Plan: Catch up with the Japanese? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=revolutionary-rail

<comment><USER2> Another SA story on high-speed trains in America. I've been reading these stories for 30 years.

I finally took the Osaka to Tokyo bullet train last weekend. It was very cool. The more interesting thing was they print your arrival time on the ticket, for whatever stop (eg Kyoto), and that's the exact time you arrive. With Amtrak, you can easily expect a 10 minute delay.

      Two weeks ago I waited 15 minutes for my girlfriend to arrive from her "45 minute" trip.  She was just sitting on A train outside the station waiting for a track to open.

So, we really have 2 problems. Slow trains and getting them to arrive on time.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Unlike Japan, France and other countries, the U.S. has no true high-speed train lines."

Unlike Japan, France and other countries, the U.S. is really big.</comment>


Vote for Narendra Modi as TIME's Person of the Year 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://poy.time.com/2013/11/25/vote-now-who-should-be-times-person-of-the-year/slide/narendra-modi/

<comment><USER2> Um, why? He is a nationalist and he wants to bring back the antiterrorism agenda as the prime issue. His economic "miracle" is controversial (as in increasing the -already huge- inequality). I would rather vote for Snowden.

Like it or not, what he did cost him a lot. And we now know much that were hidden from us because of his actions.

</comment><comment><USER3> You better vote for Snowden! [http://poy.time.com/2013/11/25/vote-now-who- should-be-times-...](http://poy.time.com/2013/11/25/vote-now-who-should-be- times-person-of-the-year/slide/edward-snowden/)

</comment><comment><USER4> No thanks. The public will not sit quiet. Many of his subordinates have been convicted. Yes he is innocent. And he doesn't have my vote either.</comment>


Digital 100, most valuable boot strapped company - <AUTHOR> http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/digital-100-most-valuable-boot-strapped-company/ <comment><USER2> It's sad that he still doesn't know how to use an apostrophe after all these years.

<comment><USER2> You learn apostrophes in elementary school. It's not asking that much, really. But thanks for the downvote.</comment></comment>


What development board to use - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2011/02/01/what-development-board-to-use/

<comment><USER2> The pandaboard is amazing. I mean, dual core A9 processor, 1080p video with a DSP, wlan, 3 usb ports, JTAG, expansion headers in a neat tiny package all for $175? Damn.

It could be a seedbox, NAS and dedicated video / music player all in one, or you could use it for your next robotics project to do on board processing on your quadcopter!

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that at least the $4.30 MSP430 does seem to have open-source support, e.g. <http://mspgcc.sourceforge.net/>,

<comment><USER4> Wow, can't go wrong for that price. Bonus, as it doesn't need a power supply, it uses the USB's.

They accept international orders so I've ordered one _with free shipping_ to Australia.

<comment><USER4> For anyone who comes back and reads this later, the package arrived two business days after placing the order. I'm still pretty amazed I got it, delivered to Australia, for $4.30.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FYI, If you want a full system, the Insignia Infocast, which is a Best Buy rebranded chumby, is in the $80-100 range. 8" touchscreen, 800Mhz ARM processor, and runs OE:

<http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=1435>

it's a nice starting point, if you're looking for an already mostly there system.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure why they always seem to be left out these days, but Microchip PIC micros are great for learning this kind of stuff. There are lots of cheap programmers available, most of the chips are available in DIP format to use with a breadboard, and they have the most generous sample program ever.</comment>


Would it be possible to launch an unmanned mission to retrieve Voyager I? - <AUTHOR> http://what-if.xkcd.com/38/

<comment><USER2> Anybody else disappointed by the rather descriptive title tags? I guess that 0.0005 FPS animation took some time ¬.¬

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I thought gravity assists were more complicated than the tennis ball/truck analogy?

Don't the spacecraft end up going faster than the planet they get the boost from? I never understood...

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder why one would want to retrieve Voyager.

1) I think Larry Niven (who, among other things, invented a race a spare- faring carnivores called the Kzinti) once described the Voyager plaque (the one with the naked man and woman) as a "galactic 'eat here' sign."

2) Prevent it from returning as V'ger.

3) Keep the Klingons from shooting it. Though it seems to me that in the 2200s it would still be deep in Federation space, where Klingon disruptor fire might be detectable and unwelcome. Of course, with FTL ships, it would have been trivial to recover once detected.</comment>


Comparison of GreenArrays Chips with TI Micropower Controllers (2010) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/WP003-100617-msp430.pdf <comment><USER3> At a minimum order of 10pcs at $20 a pop, I wish I could afford to play with the GA144, or even imagine using it in a design. You can get a single MSP430 for under $2 from TI.

Sure, I can understand why GA went with 144 cores. Because of their insistence on software defined i/o, you need them. Smarter move would have been GA4+I2C allowing any number of them to be glued using their asynchronous i/o.

Whatever. Their fate is not my problem. Would have loved for them to be insanely successful.

Computing is so ____ing boring these days.

<comment><USER4> You can purchase one gA144f18a with an easy-to-solder breakout board for 35 USD from Schmartboard:

[http://schmartboard.com/schmartboard-ez-qfn-88-pins-0-4mm- pi...](http://schmartboard.com/schmartboard-ez-qfn-88-pins-0-4mm- pitch-2-x-2-grid-bundled-with-a-greenarrays-ga144-ic-202-0048-02/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> People always complaining about the cost of the dev board or about how they can't think of a practical application. Maybe those are valid criticisms, but honestly we have something unique here, try not to dismiss it with vapid complaints. This computer and the engineering culture from which it comes is radically different. It's more efficient then anything else I've seen. Sure, it makes some things more complicated to program but makes many other things vastly simpler. It enables a level of software control that approaches the functionality of an FPGA yet retains the interactively of a fully software solution. And it's fun to program, and simple enough to understand everything about it. I wish we had more computers like them

<comment><USER6> Erlang is a high-level language ideally suited to concurrent ( _not_ parallel) computing on multiple cores.

Is there any kind of cross-over here, with GreenArrays processors? Is it feasible to have an Erlang VM running on a GA chip, and would it have any advantages over the current (typically x86) hardware?

(From the Erlang website ([http://erlang.org/faq/implementations.html](http://erlang.org/faq/implementations.html)): _" Getting Erlang to run on, say, an 8 bit CPU with 32kByte of RAM is not feasible. People successfully run the Ericsson implementation of Erlang on systems with as little as 16MByte of RAM. It is reasonably straightforward to fit Erlang itself into 2MByte of persistant storage (e.g. a flash disk)."_)

Another question: the computing demands of self-driving cars are somewhat self-defeating ([https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-11/driverles...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-11/driverless- cars-are-giving-engineers-a-fuel-economy-headache)). Isn't low-power computer vision a perfect match for GA chips...?

<comment><USER5> No chance of that, GreenArrays processors are arrays of f18a computers - <USER2> of which only has 64 18bit words of RAM. Orders of magnitude less then Erlang requires. I would start with the product briefs if you want to learn more: [http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/downindex.html](http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/downindex.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This comparison looks like bad content marketing at best. "The MSP430 family certainly includes peripheral options that current Green Array chips do not, such as flash memories and timers." => TI's 430 range peripherals is imo one of the primary use-cases.

MSP430's aren't trying to be energy efficient per operation - they are really bad at processing. What they are good at is running complex circuits/peripherals at a low total energy consumption over a long time.

The fact that they're running at 8Mhz is telling... that's far from the "low power" level. As far as I recall, you generally run using internal low- frequency RC oscillator for low power, and then just boot up the high speed crystal oscillator if you really need it.

<comment><USER5> I can't imagine the utility of low-power processors that "aren't trying to be energy efficient per operation" and are "really bad at processing" \- I thought that was the whole point!

These really are completely different type of computers - I believe if you can apply the MSP430 successfully to your application then the GA144 is probably the wrong chip to use.

But what if you need real-time nano-second reaction times on many separate pins? What if you need to process a 30 Mhz signal? While controlling a display and accepting input? All at the same time?

Then you might need the GA144, which can do all those things at the same time without needing to worry about interrupts or waking up from low power sleep modes or any of the other complex mechanism computers employ to minimize power loss.

<comment><USER8>
      I can't imagine the utility of low-power processors that
      "aren't trying to be energy efficient per operation"

Consider the Amazon Dash Button.

10 seconds a week running a WiFi radio, TCP/IP, SSL and all that. 604,790 seconds a week waiting for a button to be pressed. Battery powered.

If you can monitor a button on 1 microamp, and run WiFi on 60 milliamps, 50% of your battery capacity will go on sleeping and 50% on waking.

And wake-state power consumption is dominated by the radio module, so the best way to cut down on wake state power consumption is to make the wake as short as possible.

<comment><USER5> That's the other side of low power devices, and part of the the beauty of asynchronous logic, it does nothing better then anything else! Computers like the ga144 'sleep' mid instruction waiting for a pin (button) to change, consuming only gate leakage for as long as needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure I see where this is used.

It's way to expensive to put into a consumer product (adding another cell is way cheaper than shaving 100uA).

For niche products (can afford a $20 uC on the BOM), development cost is non- trivial, so the excellent MSP430 documentation and support negates any advantage the GreenArray product might have.

In essence, it's too expensive for the low and high end (albeit in different units of cost) so who do they go after?

If they want to fix #2, don't use a 10 chip MOQ ($200) and charge $450 for the demo board. Hand out a few at cost to some ECE departments or at a conference and let people do cool things with your tech. Their trials an tribulations are free publicity and support material.

<comment><USER10> > the excellent MSP430 documentation and support negates any advantage the > GreenArray product might have.

The advantage of the GA144 is not that it has slightly better specs. It is a completely new paradigm. This is basically a new zeppelin that can take you from one continent to another in a comparable time to a commercial flight, and you are complaining because the price of the ticket is much higher.

I do not think the point of these new chips is not make a dent in the market (either for consumer products or enthusiasts), but to show that radically different computing systems are possible. Maybe it is not directly profitable, but it surely is mind-opening.

<comment><USER9> I'm not trying to complain, and I don't disagree.

My wording is used.

If the GA144 can actually be better than existing solution, there's thousands of engineers who would happily try it. But until GreenArray can demonstrate a compelling use case, an unmet need, something — the product won't make it very far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Related, Chuck Moore's 2013 strangeloop talk on greenarrays: [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/power-144-chip](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/power-144-chip)

</comment><comment><USER12> MSP430: Has IDE and toolchain that's familiar for people

GreenArrays: You can use our chips if you unlearn EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE.

That said, it's amazing hardware

<comment><USER13> Can you please not use all caps for emphasis? It's basically yelling and the site guidelines ask everyone not to: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).</comment></comment>


Show HN: Layoutit – An interactive CSS Grid generator - <AUTHOR> http://layoutit.com/grid <comment><USER2> Very nice - I feel like I just learned CSS Grid in like 2 seconds. Also learned about fr units:

[https://alligator.io/css/css-grid-layout-fr- unit/](https://alligator.io/css/css-grid-layout-fr-unit/)

<comment><USER3> For Firefox users: the Firefox developer tools also have an excellent grid inspector [1] that is very helpful in understanding CSS Grid.

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspecto...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspector/How_to/Examine_grid_layouts)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lot of potential here to be the best CSS Grid visual editor, but there's some bugs to be ironed out for sure. Currently I can't finish my grid. I'm trying to increase the number of columns on my "Body" grid but when I hit the "Add" column button it's adding columns to my "Header" grid, despite my "Body" grid being selected. I also seem to be stuck in my "Body" grid and can't select other grids. Chrome 65 on Ubuntu.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have just pushed an update that should fix this and other issues!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're taking requests, a similar page for Flexbox would be the bee's knees.

<comment><USER6> Is there a case you would prefer Flexbox over Grid?

<comment><USER7> Flexbox generally is better if you have a dynamic number of elements. Grid isn't a replacement for flexbox.

<comment><USER8> Grid can also be amazing for dynamic number of elements! Check this out: [https://gridbyexample.com/examples/example17](https://gridbyexample.com/examples/example17) Grid has an amazing repeat feature: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/repeat](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/repeat) Very powerful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very helpful! I don't know much about css grid support but I played around with "Grid Gap" and got it working in your tool but when i exported it to a "CodePen" (awesome feature BTW) it didn't come over. The pen is [https://codepen.io/anon/pen/RBZOgv](https://codepen.io/anon/pen/RBZOgv). I had a Grid Gap of 10% for both rows and columns

<comment><USER10> You have to name the grid elements yourself. Check the article here to see what you do with those single periods.

[https://alligator.io/css/css-grid-layout-fr- unit/](https://alligator.io/css/css-grid-layout-fr-unit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is cool, but I'm having a lot of trouble reshaping the grids, and editing things that I've already created.

For example, I can't click on certain elements, dragging to make something bigger actually makes it smaller, etc. This will be a really nice tool once the UI is ironed out.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is pretty slick. Nice job on visualizing CSS grids and their properties.

There are some really nice touches, like when you drag a grid boundary, it highlights the changing properties in green. I'd love to see that expanded to also highlight when you have an area selected - highlight on the side what rows/columns it is participating in.

There are a few things that would be nice to touch up - when you have a grid area at the top, and you attempt to create a grid inside it, the 'tabs' at the top left and top right get obscured behind the top header. A concept of a document outline on the left might be nice, too, to understand which grid exactly you are editing, when there are nested grids.

This is very cool, though. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! We'll work on those those UI bugs, the nested grids are a challenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice tool, will take a proper look at this later this evening.

Reminds me of this offline tool: [https://cssgrid.cc/](https://cssgrid.cc/) which is also quite well rated

<comment><USER14> Do you actually use that tool?

It looks promising but I really don't like having to download software to make a web layout.

<comment><USER13> I agree I personally don't like to download offline tools for this sort of work. I haven't used it for anything serious - I just took an overall look at it after [https://wesbos.com/](https://wesbos.com/) gave it a shout out and like you - decided it looked promising.

Mainly just posted the link to share the knowledge :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is very helpful and hope you'll consider making a whole series of generators for the trickier parts of css for example: gradientit animatit transformtit flexboxtit box-shadowtit

</comment><comment><USER16> This is super cool! Only sort of related, I wonder how long they stared at that name and that it had `tit` in it before they decided to go all lowercase because they thought it was funny. I can't imagine that discussion didn't happen while planning to launch this.

What's weird is that my eye sees the word `tit` before the rest of the context. I'm not a weird pervert or anything as far as I know. It actually does cut through the signal to noise in internet promo.

<comment><USER17> I would've gone with "LayItOut". No rude implications, and it's catchier/actually makes sense as a verb phrase. Also, to "lay it out" means to tell the truth, and this is a WYSIWYG editor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It won't load for me :(

Loading failed for the <script> with source "[https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lodash.js/4.17.10/lod...](https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lodash.js/4.17.10/lodash.min.js").

<comment><AUTHOR> Try reloading without cache! That CDN should be working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This looks great! Extra kudos for it working on mobile (iOS 11 anyway). I'm usually checking HN on my phone and these things rarely work there.

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll be improving the mobile experience soon :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I used to really love the bootstrap layoutit tool. Used that heaps in the past. Can you guys please make one for design systems (like Prime React, Element, Vue Admin etc) in React/Vue so you can visually build using components from those systems? That would be beyond amazing.

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://codepen.io/werber/pen/oMGNQe](https://codepen.io/werber/pen/oMGNQe)

What I see in the editor is totally different than what comes over to codepen. Seems like this tool has some amazing potential!

<comment><AUTHOR> CSS doesn't allow selectors to begin with a number. We may add a warning or a workaround for this though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Would it be possible to build a simple layout with two columns and a footer consisting of one column below? It seems the footer will also have to columns, no matter how I do things.

<comment><USER23> I've used the tool [https://codepen.io/rofrol/pen/yqzrqa](https://codepen.io/rofrol/pen/yqzrqa)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Meh, I'll just stick with <table>, and a few frames.

 _tries it out_

Wow, that's amazing. I'm tempted to build a new gui right now to replace a rather long in the tooth linear divs.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's really slow, especially when you get to 40x40-ish. Does something like this need to be that slow? I'm curious if there are more optimized solutions.

<comment><USER26> I'm curious to know what sort of website layout requires a 40 x 40 grid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> whoa!!great to see these guys are still at it! I have kept an eye out for what you might come up with next as I am interested in possibly integrating it for Solvent:

[http://codesolvent.com/static-assets/gif-studio/ui- builder/s...](http://codesolvent.com/static-assets/gif-studio/ui- builder/shot.webm)

Kudos!!

</comment><comment><USER28> I like the export to codepen feature. Anyone know how that works?

<comment><USER29> right click the button and `inspect` in firefox or chrome, it simply submits the form immediately before the button markup using:

[https://blog.codepen.io/documentation/api/prefill/](https://blog.codepen.io/documentation/api/prefill/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does CSS grid support size transition animations?

<comment><USER31> > This does work but is so far only implemented in Firefox. Follow here for > other browser updates. [https://codepen.io/matuzo/post/animating-css-grid- > layout-pro...](https://codepen.io/matuzo/post/animating-css-grid-layout- > properties)

<comment><USER30> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just use SabreCMS :) You can set up your grid in much the same way, then build a full blown webshop or site directly on top of that.

<comment><USER33> I just want a grid, not a CMS

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Mixing in flexbox would be nice...

</comment><comment><USER35> very nice. very good click interactions for defining a grid area

</comment><comment><USER36> The site is great, but the name of the domain is unfortunate

<comment><USER37> Do you see it everywhere?

<comment><USER36> only when it's obvious: Lay-It-Out.com would have been a better domain name, 2001 style

<comment><USER37> lay what out?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Very nice tool!</comment>


The White House's Vision for High Speed Rail - <AUTHOR> http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/04/16/A-Vision-for-High-Speed-Rail/ <comment><USER2> Being from India (where the rail system is awesome, even though its not high speed), having extensive traveling experience in Europe and an avid hater of driving, I love the fact that something is happening in this area in US. When I came to US, I was surprised to see the only modes of traveling being driving or flying. My friends told me its because the auto lobbying in US is so powerful that they don't let any public transportation system to develop. I believed them. I am not saying it is true but I cannot figure out a reason why public transportation system across US sucks and even though this venture is highly cost intensive, IMO, it will be well worth it. Also, I dont understand people who prefer driving 8 hours, rather than sitting in a train, stress free and can actually use their time to work/read/socialize.

<comment><USER3> I far prefer driving to riding a train (or flying, except for the first and last 20 minutes). Sitting in a train is not stress-free, for one thing. There are all these people around you, who you can't just ignore completely, and yet with whom you are not friends. It's like being at a party where you know no one, and parties are hard enough to deal with even if you know everyone at them.

Secondly, there's not really enough room to work unless you can do your work on a phone; even if there were enough room for a decent-sized laptop between you and the seat in front, you'd still have to put everything away and get up whenever the people away from the aisle wanted out, which is every 15 minutes or so, seemingly. This problem also exists for reading.

Also, when you're driving, there's always the possibility of stopping at something that interests you, or taking a different route. You are in control of your own movement, in a way that you aren't at all in a train, where you can't realistically choose to do something differently. Even a comfortable jail is still jail (though Amtrak, at least, is no more comfortable than business-class flying), and while you might choose to put yourself in a traveling jail for 12 hours, the lack of freedom to choose differently halfway through will, of course, wear on you.

I took a train when I moved from Alabama to the DC metro area last year, and I quickly realized I should have flown. There was absolutely nothing to recommend the experience over flying, which is very similar, except much shorter and somewhat cheaper (and Amtrak, the train I took, is _subsidized_ , so a train that actually reflected its true cost in the ticket price would be, at current standards, an economy-class experience with a luxury-class price).

<comment><USER4> This seems completely backwards to me --- I've gotten real work done every time I've ridden the Acela, and I can't think of a single line of code I've ever written on a plane.

<comment><USER3> Well, my own trip was stressful, cramped, and otherwise uncomfortable, and I wouldn't bother to repeat it. If I really needed to spend that time coding and had no option but to do it while en route, I'd much rather spend it mostly in an airport. I've never actually done any coding while on a train or a plane, though I have while riding shotgun in a car across the West, while my wife-at- the-time drove. :)

<comment><USER4> It sounds like you took a legacy Amtrak train (does Acela go south of DC?). There is no comparison between Acela and standard Amtrak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bah; everyone knows Rails can't scale.

</comment><comment><USER4> There was a segment on NPR about this last weekend, centering on a husband/wife couple that lived in Belgium and commuted to Paris via high speed rail; 1.5 hours each direction made it feasible for them to work in a major metro without having to move there. So that's good.

On the other hand, the investment required to pull that off is staggering. Europe taxes heavily to pay for the infrastructure. The people involved in that infrastructure were interviewed saying to expect it to take 20-30 years to build.

Then on the other hand, we got the to moon and built the interstate highway system.

Then on the other hand, it's easier to link Brussels to Paris than it is to link Chicago to Houston.

<comment><USER6> _the investment required to pull that off is staggering. Europe taxes heavily to pay for the infrastructure._

The problem is, we (America) have been neglecting our infrastructure for far too long. As a country, we've been doing little more than keeping our existing infrastructure in working condition, and only upgrading where it was absolutely necessary. We should have been incrementally upgrading our infrastructure over the past 50 years, but we haven't been.

I always find it staggering how location locked much of the US population is. Finding middle aged people who have never been more than 20 miles from where they were born simply floors me. We are in desperate need of affordable mass transportation, and high-speed rail seems to be the best way to achieve that.

If the current administration can at least start the upgrades to our Transportation and Communication infrastructure that we need, at least enough to catch up to the rest of the industrialized world, I will consider it a massive success.

<comment><USER7> Not to be a dick, but I am hoping you can save me time. I have heard the assertion that Americans are more land locked than other (well, European) countries, but I have never seen anything more than anecdotes. Does anyone actually know of any serious comparisons?

It seems to me that a similar anecdote would be the "American's own more cars than any other group and are ridiculously mobile."

I would side with the latter anecdote.

<comment><USER6> _"American's own more cars than any other group and are ridiculously mobile."_

I don't have any hard, general statistics, but back in high school we did a rather informal survey, with a relatively small sample size (~50 students). Out of them roughly 80% had never left the state (Florida), of those that had, only 8% had left the country. There were also 20% of the students had never been outside of the county we were in (the ~20 miles from home I mentioned).

It certainly seems to me an inverse relationship between car ownership and mobility (on a large scale). While a car allows you massive mobility in a relatively short range, you have to be actively driving and paying attention the entire time, making it much harder to travel long distances. With mass transportation (train, place, bus, etc) you can get on and fall asleep for all that it matters to your mobility.

The lack of mass/public transportation seems to be the biggest hindrance to US mobility. Your choices are largely: Fly or Drive. If you Fly, you have to put up with the usual litany of plane complaints, and then you _have_ to rent a vehicle when you arrive at your destination, due to the lack of reasonably accessible public transportation in most areas. If you choose to drive, getting anywhere will usually take several days, and puts a massive amount of wear on your car and the driver. I'm not sure if you've ever gone on a sizable road trip, but two years ago I did 5k miles of driving for a family vacation. I have to tell you, it was rough. Long distance driving is vastly different from driving around the city, and much more difficult on the driver.

<comment><USER7> But isn't the issue regarding high speed rail service about commuting? That is what I meant by mobility and where I believe the claimed benefits lie. People can live in a comparatively remote area while still being employed in a regional city -- the benefit being they might have a more suitable employer.

If that is the case, I would hope to see reasonable evidence showing that high-speed commuter trains would increase the commuter mobility from the level it is at now or possibly raise productivity (e.g. the not actively driving issue).

<comment><USER6> I never thought of the High Speed Rail as a commuter exclusive option. While that may be the intent, looking at the routes that have been brought up so far I was under the impression that this was intended as a general attempt to make the US more interconnected.

That said, most of the routes are _not_ places that are terribly feasible to commute back and forth to by car. Just eyeballing the routes, most of them look to be in the 3-4 hour highway driving time. Like its been mentioned elsewhere, if they can do highway travel times, that becomes a feasible replacement for the short commuter flights. If they can run at a reasonably high speed, rather than having to slow down all the time (like the existing high speed rail in the US, which rarely reaches highway speed) it may become reasonable as a daily commute.

There are several people I work with (in Tampa, not a huge metro area at all, but with no real public transportation) who have close to hour long driving commutes. If you can do that and live ~100 miles away on the high speed rail, that would greatly increase the reasonable mobility for commuting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would refer the high-speed-rail types to James Kunstler's brilliant post 'financial crisis called off' where he reminds us...

We blather about high speed rail, but you can't even get from Cleveland to Cincinnati on a regular train - and what's more amazing, nobody is really interested in making this happen. All we really care about is finding some miracle method to keep all the cars running.

[http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/08/financial-crisis-called- off...](http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/08/financial-crisis-called-off.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> The Route Map is very interesting:

<http://www.fra.dot.gov/Downloads/RRdev/hsrmap-lv.pdf>

It seems odd you would be able to go from Boston to Houston on all high-speed but not New York to Chicago. I think they should add that Buffalo to Cleveland rout to the high-speed list. Of course it probably has to do with the condition of the existing rails and the terrain.

<comment><USER10> Southern senators need their pork. Logically the south is not the best place to put rail because they do not have the large population centers, but politically there has to be just as much rail in the south as in the northeast or the southern congresspeople will destroy any legislation.

This is one of the reasons Amtrak has been losing money, btw.

<comment><USER11> The South does have large population centers, it's just that they're rather far apart. The northeast, maybe extending into Chicago, is the one and only part of the US where a high-speed rail network would make sense, but it's silly to expect a government to do things just because they make sense.

<comment><USER4> SF-Sacramento-LA-SD

PHX-Tucson-ABQ-Vegas

DFW-Austin-Houston-San Antonio

Memphis-Little Rock-Jackson-Birmingham-Louisville-Atlanta

There's really only one place on the map that doesn't make sense for rail, and that's the inner northwest (bounded by but not including Wichita, Sioux Falls, Spokane, and SLC). Everywhere else on the map there are hugely valuable cliques.

The fully connected graph is a red herring. Until we properly invest in monorail technology (bona-fide electrified six-car monorail!), trains will never be the right way to get from NYC to LA.

But there is a whole universe of people I could hire --- people I can name right now --- if STL and MSP were wired to Chicago metro via high-speed rail. There are also clients who I could do 2-3x more work at, because we could staff on-site.

<comment><USER12> > The fully connected graph is a red herring. Until we properly invest in > monorail technology

Don't you mean maglev rather than monorail? Monorails aren't especially fast.

And even with expensive maglev techs, NYC to LA by train will still be long and painful. I don't expect that kind of travels to be worth doing by train (rather than plane) until we manage transcontinental vacuum-pressurized maglev tunnels.

<comment><USER4> No, I meant monorail.

Once again?

Monorail!

Was I sent here by the devil?

No, good sir. I'm on the level!

<comment><USER11> The ring came off my pudding can.

<comment><USER4> Take my penknife, my good man!

Ok. I'm done now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Paris to Brussels is 165 miles. 1.5 hours @ 110 mph Chicago to St. Louis is 298 miles. 1.5 hours @ 198 mph Chicago to Houston is 938 miles. 1.5 hours @ 625 mph

The upper limit for maglev trains in 2009 is ~312 mph. The reason high-speed is not in place in the USA has more to do with the problem we were trying to solve using air travel than it had to do with whether high-speed rail would work.

Here in Chicago, we have one of the nation's finest commuter rail systems (METRA). It works great, runs on time, defeats bad weather, etc. -- for distances <= 50 miles. Beyond that, the cost-benefit analysis get hazy.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why not try and get one high-speed rail link right before trying to build them all over the country?

The Acela Express can go up to 150mph, but it is prohibited from going that speed in a lot of areas, and from what I've read it isn't very reliable.

<http://is.gd/39PZO>

Of course, the Obama Administration will avoid any project where they can be expected to have made measurable progress in six months. It's much easier for them to just keep talking about what they're working on than it is to actually fix anything.

<comment><USER15> The Accela is an Amtrak train that sometimes goes highway speeds (as opposed to, with Amtrak, almost never) and costs three times as much.

Blerg.

<comment><USER16> Don't exaggerate; it's not "three times as much."

Amtrak NEC Service, New Haven (NHV) to Washington Union Station (WAS):

Train 175, Northeast Regional, 5'46", $139

Train 2173, Acela Express, 4'36", $213

So for $74 extra you get there roughly an hour and ten minutes faster, provided they both run on-time. (In my experience the Acelas tend to run on- time more often than the regionals, although they both run late more frequently than they should.) The Acela is also a business-class seat while the Regional is coach, and the Acela train is nicer overall.

Whether it's worth the extra money for the extra hour is a personal decision, of course, but I don't think the pricing is wholly inappropriate. It would be great if the Acela was faster because that would make the value equation that much better, but it's not a terrible ripoff as-is.

EDIT: These are fares for _today_ , the equivalent of a "Yankee-class" ticket on an airline. You could do better by buying with a 3-day advance, but I think the Acela/Regional delta would be about the same, percent-wise.

<comment><USER11> Wow, I had no idea the Acela was that expensive.

Alternatively, I just checked and you can fly from Boston to Baltimore (today, with no advance purchase) for $96, and it takes 1'24". (I admit this isn't quite your example, but it's a reasonable illustration of a similar route).

Or you could drive New Haven to DC, which is 306 miles, and google maps suggests 5 hours 30 mins (admittedly optimistic in traffic). If you drive alone in a gas-hogging 25 mpg car like mine that'll cost you about $40.

I'm starting to understand why nobody takes the Amtrak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Biden dreams of a wonderful new way to travel:

"Imagine boarding a train in the center of a city. No racing to an airport and across a terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes."

Now imagine that people actually start taking trains. Wouldn't you expect the TSA to start screening trains too?

<comment><USER9> There is much less danger on a train vs. a plane. A bomb would only destroy a section of a train and you can't really hi-jack a train and do much damage.

<comment><USER18> _you can't really hi-jack a train_

So true. You can try, though. Let me know how it goes :-)

For sure in Europe, there is no security screening for high-speed trains like there is for planes. You'd have to be paranoid to setup the same structure (or a big hater of trains).

<comment><USER19> I did have to quickly go through a metal detector (IIRC) to get on a train in Spain. But it was nothing like airport security.

This is a politics article though (hint: whitehouse). It should not be here.

<comment><USER4> This is not a politics article, David. It's about high speed rail, not about the politics of high speed rail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Won't this create more urban sprawl?

I'm also not convinced they won't have security screening for the high speed rail. I wonder if they do in Spain because of 911 + 912.

<comment><USER21> This is about linking major metropolitan areas together, not accommodating those who wish to suburbs. One of the central tenants of this plan is that these stations should be in the heart of the cities (as is done in Europe) rather than a major commute away.

Also, I just returned from backpacking in Europe, where we used rail as our primary mode of transport. Security is minimal; among my three trips on rail in Spain, we never had our passports checked and our bags were only scanned once in Barcelona.

<comment><USER22> This is exactly why there is a lot of opposition to high speed rail in the US. It primarily helps those who live inside major cities. When constituents feel like they are paying for something that they are not benefiting from they will oppose it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> FYI: <http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=6470>

Webcast at 12:00 today.

</comment><comment><USER23> The problem with many of the cities on this plan: no good public transit once you get off the city-to-city train.

</comment><comment><USER24> I heard there will be almost as fast as regular European trains.

</comment><comment> onreact-com When you take a look at the map you only can think: This can't be all of it. Some areas have no high speed rail at all and the areas that have are often isolated from each other.

In Germany we have high speed rail all over the place, in France it's similar. It has been there for years. Japan is best at building high speed railway systems.

<comment><USER11> Germany and Japan are tiny, though. Hell, Japan is virtually one-dimensional, which makes it a great place for building rail lines.</comment></comment>


Why Does Time Fly as We Get Older? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/2013/12/18/why-does-time-fly-as-we-get-older/

<comment><USER2> One experience I find amazing and frustrating at the same time: While on vacation or otherwise traveling and doing something fairly novel, each day feels long. The minute I am on the plane to fly back home the whole thing feels like it zipped by.

</comment><comment><USER3> I noticed this as a teenager. And came up with the "ratio" theory on my own.

For example, I was thinking, when I was young (say 7 years old), summers seemed to have dragged along forever. Summer vacation was a loooong time. By the time I was in the 8th grade, it seemed to fly by.

So the idea goes by like this:

* We measure time interval compared to the number of intervals we have already experienced.

* For one 1 year old each new month is a 1/12 of their life-time, so it seems like a pretty long time.

* For a 80 year old, 1 month is 1/960 of their lifetime. A new month, will fly by because it is a much shorter time.

* To have the same subjective experience of a month passing, an 80 year old would need to spend 6+ years or so (80/12)

* To have the same subjective experience as an 80 year old's month, a 1 year old would just wait for about half a day to pass by.

Totally bogus idea probably, but I was proud of myself for figuring it out on my own back then.

<comment><USER4> I had the exact same thought when i was like 10 y-o :)

<comment><USER5> Me too, not sure what age though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it's because we spend more time in our head. This might also explain why our body withers.

</comment><comment><USER7> The article's second bullet visualized in a clear/simple manner: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNILpXWNirY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNILpXWNirY)

</comment><comment><USER8> The way I have found to really get the most out of my minutes is to trick my brain into processing a new thing.

This really is fundamentally a new way of thinking, but if you do something different every day, you are tripping up the "caching" functions your brain optimizes your day with, giving you a tiring but rewarding memory of 24 hours rather than what seems like an echo of a previous experience.

<comment><USER5> I have read similar theories before, and I think there is some truth in it, but it depends how you define "different".

I noticed this when I started working for a well known mobile manufacturer a while back. We got handed new phones maybe every month. At first it was great, playing about with new features (this is almost ten years ago). Then eventually you realize that it is more of the same - you play with the new feature for ten minutes, get bored and never use it again. Just like Movies feel to me these days (occasionally one stands out but less than once a year). In fact many aspects of our consumer lifestyle, seems like we are getting something new / different, when it is just a novelty rehash of the same stuff.

I find this great for rejecting materialism to a large degree (I still enjoy new toys a bit. I don't get excited about the latest Samsung / iPhone launch - in fact I find it depressing that a phone will make the front pages of the news).

This doesn't help in making time seem to go faster or slower (well hopefully it will help me not make the assumption that something "novelty" is something "different"). I guess there is a subtlety in the language here. I find that certain things are "more of the same" and can bring about lasting memories. I enjoy whitewater kayaking, and when I do a memorable trip on a new river, or even the same river with more water (usually makes it more exciting) then I am far more likely to have good memories stored than from a new movie, or buying a new laptop. Sometimes just the circumstances on the day make for good memories. Looking back on consumer purchases, the memories are rarely up to much.

Not quite sure of the point I was making, ("novelty" and "different" are different things) but my rant certainly got me thinking......</comment></comment>