Things Developers Want More Than Money (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2006/10/31/nine-things-developers-want-more-than-money/

<comment><USER2> This is a false choice.

There are more choices in your professional life than:

A) Being 9-5 daily grinder (for some reason this is always implied as being a bad programmer -- why?)

or

B) Working your ass off for some schmuck for terrible pay who gives you free snapple and a (perceived) enjoyable project.

In either case: THE FINANCIAL REWARDS ARE NOT GOING TO YOU - (Drinkers of the VC kool-aid this means you too).

To every passionate developer out there I challenge you to milk your 9-5. Then go home and make what YOU want, and live and die by that effort.

Take both of these perceived benefits for everything you can. The security and stability of the 9-5, and the sense of enjoyment/accomplishment/financial reward from your independant work.

Do not work for other people except as a means to a guaranteed paycheck.

Do not let others enslave your passion and creativity.

<comment><USER3> Ehhh, you know what? I've done both (and I actually did work on my own projects in my own time while doing A).

B is actually better.

There is an indescribable psychic toll that working at a megacorp takes on you. Daily I would wish for the sweet release of death rather than deal with another god damned conference call.

Now I just get a little cranky when I've been working for too long or someone's being an asshole.

I suppose I could try doing my own startup, but that's terrifying.

<comment><USER2> Maybe it's an opnion thing than.

I've done both and am currently working on my own startup while keeping a 9 to 5. While the startup work moves along at a slower pace than I'd like, I wouldn't change it for anything.

<comment><USER3> How big is the 9 to 5 you're working at? That might have something to do with it. I was at a 200,000+ employee firm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _As Herzberg noticed, this scenario leads to employees viewing the job as little more than a paycheck, which is probably all right for companies like Countrywide and IndyMac._

Ha ha, probably not.

</comment><comment><USER5> Whenever I read articles like this, I wonder if there's some management conspiracy, especially amongst VC-backed firms, to keep tech salaries stagnant. A very successful conspiracy, seeing how programmers and systems administrators in San Francisco make roughly the same amount of money in 2010 that they did in 1999, without any inflationary adjustments (because they never got those adjustments).</comment>


Is there data on the quality of management decisions? - <AUTHOR> http://danluu.com/bad-decisions/ <comment><USER2> This is the same topic of Eliezer Yudkowsky's recent book "Inadequate Equilibria" [0], reviewed by Scott Aaronson here [1]. That book does a good job explaining why not every inefficiency can be eliminated - because getting out of a bad nash equilibrium requires coordinated changes, and for large enough groups you can't convince enough people to make a change at the same time.

0: [https://equilibriabook.com/toc/](https://equilibriabook.com/toc/) 1: [https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3535](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3535)

<comment><USER3> Or you could read short book on game theory, think for ten minutes about perverse incentives, and get to the same results without the conceptual diarrhea that Yudkowsky insists on. Why he had to try to drag a concept of free energy into it with no justification, I don't know.

<comment><USER4> "Read a short book on..." Is a pretty high bar for conceptual simplicity.

Why wouldn't those who have had exposure to the concept of free energy prefer that metaphor to yours? You may be biased having exposure to more game theory than free energy. One person's conceptual diarrhea is another person's cleanest explanation.

<comment><USER5> >"Read a short book on..." Is a pretty high bar for conceptual simplicity.

Take five minutes and read the wikipedia page on the prisoner's dilemma then.

Even in a two player game, it's clear why individually optimizing for personal gain leads to poor outcomes for everyone, yet if there was a way to force people to act in a particular way, the total outcome for everyone would be better for all.

<comment><USER6> Except that the one forcing people will inevitably force people to act in a way that maximizes his/her personal gain.

<comment><USER7> Which is fine if that is also a way which maximizes those peoples' personal gain as well.

<comment><USER6> But is rarely or never the case. See pretty much every dictatorship in history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "A statement I commonly hear in tech-utopian circles is that some seeming inefficiency can't actually be inefficient because the market is efficient and inefficiencies will quickly be eliminated."

There's equivocation in that statement; what market efficiency is and what people generally mean by efficiency are not the same thing. This is not an accusation of danluu, though, as I believe it is an accurate statement of an error made by a lot of people.

Market efficiency is really a rather boring statement about the difficulty of performing arbitrage in the long term. Plus, given that the market is not absolutely efficient we should expect errors to be made.

But we can do some numerical analysis here. Consider the range of possibilities. Suppose population X is paid 0% of what everyone else is paid in the market, for the same output. It would take an astonishingly-large, an implausibly large, countervailing force to prevent some company from swooping in and claiming that free labor. (Remember, even if 99.9% of the firms on the market choose not to, it just means that the .1% is going have that much easier of a time.) However, for group X to be paid 99.9% of what everyone else is paid on average doesn't take much at all; indeed, mere noise could produce that result. Rather than it being a question of "is or is not discrimination", this sort of analysis can put numbers on _how much_ , from which you can start analyzing things like the value of certain changes vs. their costs.

No conclusion; I'm just musing here. Except that I think that people generally do a lot of binary thinking here when quantitative might be more useful.

<comment><USER9> "There's equivocation in that statement; what market efficiency is and what people generally mean by efficiency are not the same thing"

True, but: it's no coincidence that the terms are used for different things. What we really care about as humans is "market efficiency" in the ordinary English sense of the word. That's really hard to define, though, so economists redefine it in a very precise, technical, and yes, 'boring' statement. Now it is easier to see if we have it, but also not very useful. However, it can still be used to argue that any intervention in the market will be a mistake. The confusion about what the term "market efficiency" means is not just a coincidence. Redefine it as something easily proven, and then let people mistake that for a proof of what they actually care about, and you get the same political/lobbying result as the (rather more difficult, perhaps impossible) task of proving that markets are efficient in the way we actually care about as humans, rather than just economists.

<comment><USER10> The definition is easy: by market efficiency, people mean time (labor market being the only market Adam Smith concerned himself and invisible hand being a reference to how the people themselves will tacitly protect their own interests).

And right now, the sense is that we're spending a lot of our time in jobs that overwhelmingly benefit a rich minority, which is not time spent well it.

When our ability to focus on self-preservation is being expropriated, people revolt

This interpretation isn't even up for debate, IMO. It's been investigated by biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, medical doctors, philosophers, logicians, mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists.

A curious omission: economists. Very few of re-known willfully admit their own field is being twisted into undermining the majority for the minority.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > A statement I commonly hear in tech-utopian circles is that some seeming > inefficiency can't actually be inefficient because the market is efficient > and inefficiencies will quickly be eliminated.

At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, I believe a similar statement can be made for stats-utopian circles and their belief in ability to quantify every thing.

As the post says:

> One nice thing about sports is that they often have detailed play-by-play > data and well-defined win criteria which lets us tell, on average, what the > expected value of a decision is.

So, using sports as a proxy is not the same as management decisions where there are no well-defined criteria or expected value.

<comment><USER12> > So, using sports as a proxy is not the same as management decisions where > there are no well-defined criteria or expected value.

Exactly. The biggest problem with quantifying efficiency in particular is that you have to define the inputs and outputs. Your biases are embedded in that definition rather than in the calculation _per se_. You can make some pretty awful processes "efficient" if you assign zero value to some of the inputs, and conversely some pretty great processes "inefficient" if you assign zero value to some of the outputs.

<comment><USER13> > _You can make some pretty awful processes "efficient" if you assign zero > value to some of the inputs, and conversely some pretty great processes > "inefficient" if you assign zero value to some of the outputs._

I'm halfway convinced that time-motion studies are some kind of demonic invention for exactly this reason. We can get 3% more productivity out of an assembly line, just by doubling the accident rate and giving every worker RSI!

Goodhart's Law is dangerous even when we're making management and business decisions in good faith, but when ideas like "long term injuries are irrelevant" are implicitly added it becomes monstrous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article is quite interesting for the isolated baseball analysis but is ultimately a long-winded discussion (which goes down a sports rabbit hole which ultimately doesn't contribute to the argument.) The TLDR is:

> If we want to look at the quality of decision making, it's too simplistic to > say that we expect a firm to make good decisions because they're exposed to > markets and there's economic value in making good decisions and people > within the firm will probably be rewarded greatly if they make good > decisions.

Is there actually anything a reader here can take from this writing other than the assertion I quoted above (which is the author's point of view and isn't proven in nearly as much rigour as the baseball analysis is.)

<comment><USER15> I think the argument holds up: it is that, even in a field where management decisions _can_ be clearly quantified, the data is collected, and people are doing the analysis, bad decisions persist (management makes bad decisions when they could make good decisions, and the market does not value good management decisions). So in a field where it is much less clearly quantified, why would we expect the market to ensure high-quality management decisions?

I don't think the post proves that the market fails to incentivize good decisions. That's a hard thing to prove. It does certainly give us serious reason to doubt the common claim that the market succeeds in incentivizing good decisions on a short timescale. (It might still be true, but we should have much less confidence in that statement being true than before we read this post.)

<comment><USER14> > It does certainly give us serious reason to doubt the common claim that the > market succeeds in incentivizing good decisions on a short timescale.

How does the article suggest this?

<comment><USER15> The claim "the market succeeds in incentivizing good decisions on a short timescale" is at odds with the article's demonstrated conclusion "the market fails to incentivize good decisions on a short timescale in the field of baseball". So you're left with two possible ways to resolve this: either baseball is unique and the market doesn't work properly there for reasons that don't generalize (but the article gives some reasons to believe that this isn't the right way to resolve the contradiction), or baseball isn't special and non-baseball markets very likely do similar things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This looks super interesting. Unfortunately, I couldn't follow the explanation beyond the few first paragraphs because of so much baseball terminology and logic, which is completely alien to me :( The intro is confusing enough, but then there are terms that aren't defined, such as "stealing" \- are readers supposed to be able to infer what this means just by context?

<comment><USER17> So the whole intro is to make the point that a certain type of play (base stealing) doesn't make sense, even for teams that do it well - and it took until 2012 to figure that out and get their players to stop doing that play.

<comment><USER18> Ceteris paribus, base stealing doesn't make sense. But baseball is a game played by humans and even if it weren't, there are a large number of variables that don't go into the simple analysis.

For example: The members of the defending team adopt fielding positions based on a maximum potential for fielding a hit ball. But if there is even a threat of a stolen base attempt, the defense must change their positioning accordingly, affecting their ability to field a ball put into play.

If a player does make an attempt to steal a base, at least one defender must begin to change their positioning before the hitter has even had a chance to hit the ball. If they do not, they will not make it to the base in time to receive the throw from the catcher and either the throw will not occur or it will go out into the outfield and the runner may advance another base. Alternatively, the hitter may actually hit the ball and the ball may go to an area that it is statistically likely to go, where a defender would have been but for the stolen base attempt. What was to be an out is now a hit and the runner, having a head start because of their stolen base attempt, is able to advance further than they normally would have been able to. Because the hitter hit the ball, this situation does not get recorded in the statistics as a stolen base attempt!

Baseball is really a fascinating game to think about!

<comment><USER19> > For example: The members of the defending team adopt fielding positions > based on a maximum potential for fielding a hit ball. But if there is even a > threat of a stolen base attempt, the defense must change their positioning > accordingly, affecting their ability to field a ball put into play.

Yeah, that was the biggest flaw I spotted in the analysis of base-stealing: it doesn't seem to capture effect of the _threat_ of base stealing on the defense's behavior, which is very probably non-zero and in favor of the offense. If you never, _ever_ steal, and the defense knows that (someone'll notice before long), they can play better defense against the batter. It may still work out that a never-steal rule still provides better outcomes (by a smaller margin), but I'm guessing "rarely steal" ends up being the better guideline, overall.

<comment><USER20> If that's true, then I believe it means that the defenders are overcompensating for stealing. As I understand it, in equilibrium you'll have the feature that the defense cannot benefit by guarding steals less closely in exchange for better fielding position.

If trying to steal loses bases, then the defense could spend less effort preventing steals, and more effort fielding.

This principle comes up a lot: if you get into every college/job you applied to, then you probably didn't apply to enough schools/jobs, unless 1) you didn't want to go to Harvard/AppAmaFaceGooSoft, 2) you got in to Harvard/AppAmaFaceGooSoft, 3) you couldn't afford the applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> An aside to the main point: the author claims that one can do a similar analysis to other sports. My intuition is that you can't do quite as accurate an analysis of, say, soccer, than you can baseball. As a sport, baseball is unusually discretized when compared to a much more continuous sport like soccer or hockey. Being discrete, it makes it much easier to represent as a state machine, which makes it easier to simulate, and easier to suss out cause and effect. American football, I think, may be somewhere inbetween. I know, of course, that other sports do significant statistical analysis, but my intuition is that it is harder to attribute cause and effect at the fine-grain level that one can with baseball.

</comment><comment><USER22> From what I can gather making good management decisions is a lot like making a good estimate for a software project. There are two ways to go about it: (A) do a lot of work to break down the problem to manageable parts, put a well- reasoned number on each part, then sum up the parts with the necessary tolerances and risk factors, or (B) just go with your gut.

I see a lot of (B). Hilarity ensues.

<comment><USER23> What is gut if not an accumulation of experiences? If an engineering-manager- with-10-years-experience's gut produces the same accuracy as a fresh grad's, then it's not of much use, and there's a good chance that the manager would generate a bad estimate even following (A). That's not to say that people shouldn't analyze. Just saying that gut is not random guesswork.

<comment><USER24> Mostly, it's answering a simpler question than was asked. See _Thinking, Fast and Slow._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> One issue with analysis like this is micro optimizations have more information than simplified abstractions. Consider, in the bottom of the 9th 1 or 2 runs may have identical value. So, reducing the total expected value of runs to increase your odds of a single run may be a very good trade off.

And that's assuming you want to optimize total wins. Increasing your odds of winning the playoffs may reduce your odds of getting into them by having more higher paid people, but a lower average player. Further, maximizing making money over time is yet another option, which may promote showmanship over success.

<comment><USER26> This is addressed in the article:

"But there are situations where the approximation isn't very good, such as when it's the 9th inning and the game is tied. In that case, a decision that increases the probability of scoring 1 run but decreases the probability of scoring multiple runs is actually the right choice."

I understood that the "full" model includes these considerations.

<comment><USER25> I was bringing up that edge case specifically because 'winning' is the obvious optimization, but not necessarily the correct one.

Bottom of the 9th bases are loaded and the guy at bat hit's a home run, that's the kind of thing that sticks with people and makes more money in the long run than a bunt that get 1 run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> All companies make both good and bad decisions. They don't fall apart when they make a single bad decision. They fall apart when he sum total of the impact of their bad decisions outweighs the sum total of the impact of their good decisions.

When this happens, the last bad decision usually takes the blame, however it is rarely the true cause.

</comment><comment><USER28> >A less contentious example is that when you see a big company doing something that seems bizarrely inefficient, __maybe it's not inefficient and you just lack the information necessary to understand why the decision was efficient __.

This pretty much sums up a lot of tech news and the associated comments on such news.

<comment><USER29> Indeed, and likewise when someone does something that seems irrational.

<comment><USER7> I've long said that if the way someone's behaving doesn't make sense, you don't understand their motivations.

Now, it may be that their motivations are all messed up and they're acting the way they are because sabotaging their relationships reaffirms their core belief that they're unlovable. But it does make sense once you understand the framework they're working in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The problem is externalities -- both positive and negative externalities affect the outcome and it is basically impossible to determine whether an outcome occurred due to management decision or due to an externality (eg: revenue growth due to successful execution or revenue growth due to changing business cycles).

<comment><USER31> Couldn't agree more. It's really hard to pinpoint the exact cause of such an outcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> There are three issues I have with this:

1\. "Quality" for management decisions are notoriously ill defined for the same reason that we never know if we did the right thing with the economy: the experiments can never be repeated.

2\. The example serves to explain what a decision is and what a good decision would be, but that is not the concept that needs explanation!

3\. "some seeming inefficiency can't actually be inefficient because the market is efficient and inefficiencies will quickly be eliminated." is not the right statement of efficient markets. Rather, the act of trying to make it more efficient is exactly what makes it efficient. So if you see an opportunity, someone exploits it and thus makes it more efficient.

<comment><USER33> 4\. Markets aren't actually efficient because they are stacked in favor of incumbents through their ability to lobby for anti-competitive legislation, as can be seen with the perversion of the copyright and patent systems.

<comment><USER34> The mistake you made in this example is attributing an action in the legislative system as a failure in the market.

<comment><USER33> I am saying the opposite: the market becomes less efficient as a result of legislative capture. But it is a feedback loop, so attributing the dynamics to simple cause and effect is not appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > we see that the average stolen base is worth -.467 runs and the average > successful steal is worth .175 runs.

First clause should be "average caught stealing"

</comment><comment><USER24> Tl;dr: Many organizations make decisions like a drunken madman whose seeing- eye dog just ate his hearing aid.

For reasons why, see _Thinking, Fast and Slow_ (just reading it now; it's quite good) and Thaler's _Misbehaving_.

</comment><comment><USER36> Betteridge's Law strikes again [0].

You could replace that entire post with "No. Unlike baseball."

Not that the post wasn't interesting, of course. To me, it leads to the inevitable conclusion that we need to record failures as well as wins in order to get accurate data on management decisions.

0: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

</comment><comment><USER37> Outstanding read.</comment>


USA's Toilet Paper Shortage - <AUTHOR> http://gaurabc.com/

<comment><USER2> This story has all the earmarks of an urban legend. Are there any other sources for this story?

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the average consumers access to information between now and then has massively changed. That isn't to say you can't have the same effect, just you need more talking heads to sell it. One person saying there is a shortage won't cause a swing. Several seemingly trustworthy sources may be enough though (imagine oprah or [insert news anchor here]).

<comment><USER4> In the UK we've had runs on petrol and bottled water in the last couple of years. Basically when a government spokesman says "don't panic the country isn't running out of X" then everyone rushes out and buys X immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What am I missing here? (Why is this on the front page?)

<comment><USER6> It's an interesting tidbit on economics and mass psychology. Also the effect is most likely is being used "hack" the economy.

<comment><USER5> There's almost no content here. The post consists of a personal anecdote that loosely segues into what sounds more like an urban legend than reality, not backed by a source; in other words, this really isn't newsworthy imo.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Most inspiring books? - <AUTHOR>

What was the most inspiring book you have ever read? <comment><USER2> 2 Books come to mind that have inspired me to be better.

1\. 4 Hour Body -by Tim Ferris. This is a popular book and it got me addicted to my health.

2\. The Motivation Hacker by Nick Winter. This is less popular than 4 Hour Body, but it's awesome and teaches you how to muster up unconscionable amounts of motivation.

<comment><USER3> Is there any way to get the _The Motivation Hacker_ on some other digital device? I looked in the Google Play store but wasn't able to find it and I don't own a Kindle.

<comment><USER4> It's available as an Epub file on the site: [http://www.nickwinter.net/the- motivation-hacker](http://www.nickwinter.net/the-motivation-hacker)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you are just starting out "Lead the Field" is good: [http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lead-the-field-earl- nighting...](http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lead-the-field-earl- nightingale/1004926403)

</comment><comment><USER3> The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

Its a super short read, and while it references God a few times don't let that stop you from reading it. There is so much more to this book and its a great little read.</comment>


PC makers aren't just losing to Apple. - <AUTHOR> http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/07/the-pc-looks-like-its-dying/?iid=F_Jump

<comment><USER2> Let's all pause for a moment and gain perspective.

Apple, who's been making computers since the 80s, has somewhere between 6 and 10% of the market.

If the users who buy Apple products are slightly less affected by the current economic slump than most of the market, good for them. They're likely a little better off than "average consumers".

I don't think it's everyone is buying iPads, because the numbers just don't line up. People are just holding on to laptops a little longer.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really don't think tablets have a lot to do with this slump. Software isn't driving hardware sales the way it did a few years ago. Personally, I haven't had to purchase a single upgrade in over 3 years. In the late 90s and early 00s, I was upgrading almost every year because new software and games ran poorly on older hardware. Once software pushes my current hardware, then I will have a good reason to upgrade.</comment>


AT&T replaces Google with Yahoo on Android phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/internet/98500/att-replaces-google-yahoo-android-phone <comment><USER2> What can google do? When you release under the open source license they did anyone can fork it and create whatever they want from it. This is what exactly what AT&T is doing.

<comment><USER3> They can push an update to Android and can switch the search provider to Google with/without user consent.

<comment><USER4> The updates to Android are pushed by the carrier, not Google.

<comment><USER5> Or sometimes by the user, if they're sneaky. Or tech savvy. Same thing most of the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a tribute to Android that this is possible.

<comment><USER7> And a head scratching mystery as to why AT&T would want to....

<comment><USER8> revenue. at&t can charge yahoo/bing as the default browser/search engine on their android handsets

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is exactly the same as OEM computers and Windows. Microsoft have such dominance in OSes that they can't object to manufacturers making their own deals to set default search engines in browsers. It's an anti-trust issue. OEM manufacturers get paid by Google, Yahoo, etc to set the default to them.

Google can't get into the Mobile space with a platform and then expect they can enforce that their platform maintains their dominance in search. It's not competitive, and I'm sure they were expecting this to happen.

Disclaimer: I work for Y! but not in search.

<comment><USER10> I could be wrong but I don't think this situation is the same as Microsoft's.

Apple has full control over whats installed on an iPhone. They openly admit that they block any applications that compete with theirs. Couldn't Google do the same?

<comment><USER9> But Google aren't making these devices. They are providing an OEM operating system which can be installed on a device made by another manufacturer and sold branded by yet another company.

It's exactly the same circumstance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When Google released the Nexus One it revealed another very important strategic imperative for offering Android free of charge. Google realized that all the smartphone manufacturers were scrambling to build/acquire mobile operating systems that would stack up to the iPhone OS. These handset manufacturers were vulnerable, in other words, to the kind of offer Google would present to them in the form of the open source Android OS. They needed what Android had to offer and the risks involved with sacrificing so much leverage over to Google (by relying on a third-party company for a key component of their product) did not outweigh the benefits of the collusion- like behavior all these manufacturers planned on partaking in by together building-out a large mobile app store that could champion iPhone's app store. Now that Google has released their very own handset, the Nexus One, it's obvious why Google wanted as many Android handsets in hands as possible: higher the market share, more developers willing to build apps, the more apps in the Android app store the better the Nexus One looks in light of iPhone's enormously successful app store, the more Nexus One handsets Google will sell.

Google has always explained that they give Android away because it will encourage more usage of their web services. But after Nexus One, it's obvious Google has more of a vested interest in Android than just "the more people on the internet, the more money Google makes".

</comment><comment><USER12> I think Google will do nothing about this. If the Yahoo users are not satisfied jwith the non-google experience they will install apps from then android market that do use Google or whatever they wish to use. It would be interesting to see what happens if the first distributor is closing their Android distribution so this is impossible for users. I hope the OHA forbids labeling such a closed system Android.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is going to probably become a branding nightmare for Google.

I know many of the Android phones have "with Google" printed somewhere on the casing (on my Eris it's on the battery door), and the Android brand has been fairly well associated with the concept of "Google Phone".

AT&T is presumably free to switch the services out as they wish - but I have to wonder if their replacement apps will provide a user experience that is at all tolerable. If things break, don't work as expected, etc. the assumption from the average user is going to be that Google is broken. They don't know or care that AT&T has replaced their services with Bing/Yahoo/etc.

On top of which, users who hear the Android name may expect certain things such as Google Voice, support for GMail, Google Calendar, etc. and be mighty upset when they aren't there.

<comment><USER14> "With Google" handsets such as the Motorola Droid or (obviously) the Nexus One are part of the "Google Experience" program where the handset maker and carrier have to agree to use Google's first-party version of Android bundled with the proprietary Google apps.

Other handsets that aren't part of the Google Experience program, such as ones from HTC that run the Sense UI or from Motorola that run the Blur frontend, can do whatever they want within the terms of the open-source license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google created the android platform to drive forward technology and openness on the mobile. As long as people can use Google search, access GMail, and most importantly view Google ads, I doubt it's a big deal to Google.

</comment><comment><USER15> Whats so bad about this they are still using android? I don't see this as a problem since google still gets to own the handset market by using their software.

</comment><comment><USER8> as far as I'm concerned this is exactly how it should be if windows os's in the EU gives user a choice of browser/search engine and does just push IE. The same should apply to smartphones. I dislike the fact that google products are so tied in into android. I should have the option to choose the apps I want even if they are from google.

<comment><USER6> You do realize that an OS is basically a kernel with a bunch of supporting applications that your vendor decides to ship with the kernel, right? If you're going to be uppity about "picking your own apps" you're going to need to be properly outraged about the vendor picking everything that makes your system run before you ever install a third-party app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This site doesn't load on Chrome 5.0.307.11 beta on x64 Linux with Adblock 1.3.30. All that loads are a search box and orange header/banner with the ITWorld logo on a grey gradient background.</comment>


Ember 1.0 RC2 - <AUTHOR> http://emberjs.com/blog/2013/03/30/ember-1-0-rc2.html

<comment><USER2> Is there a browser compatibility table for RC2? Would be interesting to know what IE versions are ok, or even what features to avoid in order to get it to work on IE X or Opera Y.

</comment><comment><USER3> While going 1.0 is neat, it bugs me that ember-data isn't considered a part of the core. It feels like an important chunk of the framework is missing.

<comment><USER4> Ember Data is overkill for many use cases.

It may seem counterintuitive, but because Ember's object model is so powerful, you don't need a lot of the model-specific sugar that other libraries provide you—it's baked into every object.

To see how easy it is to fetch records using the tools in Ember, see Robin Ward's blog post: <http://eviltrout.com/2013/03/23/ember-without-data.html>

<comment><USER3> Yes, but use cases still exist.

It seems you're suggesting to manage your data model and wrap it with ember. This is specifically something that makes me feel squeamish. I feel like this is a distinct job for a framework, an important one non-the-less. Without it, you need to do leg work, and projects done in ember will have different implementations, a framework should provide common grammer for common things. Lastly, a data model can provide powerful features and optimizations.

I'm probably just reiterating your wish list. Just keep on baking it. :)

Thanks for the link, I've read it before, but it was nice to revisit it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any idea about how to implement Adsense inside and ember app?</comment>


Guinea worm: Close to eradication? [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/lifelines/2014/04/guinea-worm-close-eradication-201443142217780153.html

<comment><AUTHOR> While horrifying, this was pretty interesting. The ability to interrupt the cycle of the worm with existing technology is inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER2> Guinea worm have been eradicated already from many developing countries for quite some time now. Eg: they were eradicated roughly in the 1970's from India.

Mostly only some African countries still have endemic of Guinea worm. Step wells contributed a large part to the propagation of disease.

</comment><comment><USER3> This has been a major goal of Jimmy Carter and his foundation. Further evidence that he's our best ex-president.

</comment><comment><USER4> They say eradication, but that's the same thing as extinction.

Is this worm being preserved in any way? Perhaps as frozen eggs?

<comment><USER5> There's an organization which offers to allow volunteers to serve as hosts in order to preserve the species: [http://www.deadlysins.com/guineaworm/preservers.htm](http://www.deadlysins.com/guineaworm/preservers.htm)

<comment><USER6> It's worth pointing out that Save the Guinea Worm Foundation is a joke site (and note that they specifically point out they're not accepting volunteers), while your parent comment appears, worryingly, to be serious.

[http://www.deadlysins.com/guineaworm/truth.htm](http://www.deadlysins.com/guineaworm/truth.htm)

<comment><USER4> I don't want this thing in the wild!! (Or in a human volunteer for that matter. Assuming that site wasn't a joke would someone actually be crazy enough to do it?)

But preserving eggs somehow in a lab seems worthwhile.

<comment><USER6> From Reason magazine's interview with Dave Barry ([http://reason.com/archives/1994/12/01/all-i-think-is-that- it...](http://reason.com/archives/1994/12/01/all-i-think-is-that-its- stupid/1)):

> Reason: You've written in your columns about the strategic helium reserve > the government keeps in case we have a sudden need for a fleet of > dirigibles.

> Barry: What bugs me when I write that is that I suspect 90 percent of my > readers think I made it up.

> Reason: What's something about the government that really pisses you off?

> Barry: Well, that helium thing does. That's real money. All the tax money > that I've ever, ever paid--and I've paid a lot of taxes--will not even begin > to pay for one year of the strategic helium reserve.

<comment><USER4> Just because Dave Barry can't think of any use for helium doesn't mean everyone has that problem. And in fact 20 years later people got very worried about the ability to keep MRI machines running due to a (potential) lack of Helium.

It's a good thing not everyone is as shortsighted as him.

No one can think of a use for guina worms right now, but that doesn't mean no one ever will.

<comment><USER7> The thing that bothers me is that, once you have the helium, it's not like it's a chore to maintain the stockpile.

How much does it cost to hermetically seal a noble gas inside a durable container, and stow it in a warehouse?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Complete Guide to Effective Job Hunting - <AUTHOR> https://www.startupjobstoronto.com/guides/the-complete-guide-to-effective-job-hunting <comment><USER2> "When I began composing the (sic) The Complete Guide to Effective Job Hunting, I was overwhelmed... Using that same word over and over again is a thing of the past."

No irony there.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Unlock the best of Startup Jobs Toronto when you create an account.

Classic email address capture. We wont spam you, promise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Trying to balance the amount of content visitors can access while enticing them to create an account; the core part of the website is free and visitors can browse all of the jobs without an account.

Creating an account is to access more free content in "the community". Thoughts?

<comment><USER3> > Thoughts?

Simply provide Massive Value first with free content. Add an opt-in at the bottom of the article.

Want more Helpful Articles Like This? Join our Free Newsletter.</comment></comment></comment>


Cheeky - It's Australian for Artificial Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobalmail.org/mobile/feature/cheeky-its-australian-for-artificial-intelligence/287/

<comment><USER3> Salon published in 2003 a great series of articles by John Sundman about the Loebner Prize. He describes a two-time winner, "ALICE," in a way that doesn't inspire awe for the creator's programming achievements:

"""Wallace's theory of A.I. is no theory at all. It's not that he doesn't believe in artificial intelligence, per se; rather, he doesn't much believe in intelligence, period. In a way that oddly befits a contest sponsored by a bunch of Skinnerians, Wallace's ALICE program is based strictly on a stimulus- response model. You type something in, if the program recognizes what you typed, it picks a clever, appropriate, "canned" answer. ... There is no representation of knowledge, no common-sense reasoning, no inference engine to mimic human thought. Just a very long list of canned answers, from which it picks the best option. Basically, it's Eliza on steroids. ... And this strategy works, Wallace says, because that's what people are: mindless robots who don't listen to each other but merely regurgitate canned answers."""

<http://www.salon.com/2003/02/26/loebner_part_one/>

<comment><USER4> I am by no means as smart as these people but I did recently made this observation myself while visiting Google+. I try to avoid political discussions but someone always finds a way to insert them. This time, as I glanced over one such discussion it made me realize... People don't think, they just repeat things that have been told to them, fact or not, as long as it sounds like a good fit. No one involved in these discussions is going to convince the other to change their mind. AIs should be this easy!

<comment><USER5> That is very true. Most of what I say is phrasing or idioms I've unconciously absorbed. However I obviously don't randomly repeat anything I hear. The things that I absorb are ideas that resonate with my existing world view, which has been crafted by original thought over a much longer time. So behind those memes and tired phrasing in the arguments you heard there is porbably a kernel of unique thought.

This is why I prefer online forums and other forms of asynchronous communication over face to face debates. The former allows me to form an opinion - which can often change as I try to articulate myself. The later relies on my initial reaction, which is always much less refined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it's a bit unfair to say he cheated. He didn't break any rules, even if his program wasn't really in the previous spirit of the competition - <USER2> it also sounds like they needed a bit of shaking up anyway.

From the Loebner Prize page: "The winner of the annual contest is the best entry relative to other entries that year, irrespective of how good it is in an absolute sense". Sounds like his entry certainly was deserving of the annual contest, even if it's not a general AI solution.

<comment><USER7> Personally, I would agree with you.

But Hutchens' own paper was called "How to Win the Turing Prize By Cheating" -- <http://www.csee.umbc.edu/471/papers/hutchens.pdf> \-- so I guess reasonable minds differ.

<comment><USER8> It's just his light-hearted way of calling out the Turing test, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To me the Loebner prize does a lot more to teach us about humans than about how to create AI. The success of ALICE showed us how much of our conversation is just based on regurgitating canned answers based on queues, just look at how drunk people converse. HeX showed us how much we think we communicate when we're just exchanging banter.

</comment><comment><USER10> This horizontal scrolling thing is a real bomb.

<comment><USER11> Isn't it? I was briefly using all of the space on my widescreen display while browsing. Certainly an improvement over vertically-scrolled websites where margins are often just blank space.

It looks like you still get vertical scrolling on mobile.

<comment><USER12> Why oh why do you browse with your browser maximized?

I could have viewed this page maximized and just about read the whole thing without scrolling at all, but how would that be preferable?

You might fit more text on the screen but you don't read the whole thing in parallel, you slowly read paragraph after paragraph and what you gain in not having to scroll you loose in having to move your eyes and head instead, running maximized you just _waste_ screen real estate.

I would have expected for this implementation to break down with different browser sizes but it reflowed well and seems to be well thought out. But I'm very skeptical towards such a radical change unless there is a real benefit to it. The benefit in this case is that you get reasonably sized columns (that are easy to read), which is kind of hard to achieve with vertical scrolling (I haven't seen a single implementation that works nearly as well as this one).

So I applaud their efforts, but there should be a manual fallback (couldn't find one), because I'm confident that it doesn't work as intended everywhere.

<comment><USER13> "Why oh why do you browse with your browser maximized?"

Because white space is great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article does use the word "cheat" and the winner himself said he cheated and hacked, but actually he didn't cheat at all.

Cheating would be using a human to generate the responses and pretend it is a computer.

</comment><comment><USER15> Reading the page with zoom is impossible, the page is inaccessible to me.

<comment><USER16> Jason Hutchens wrote a paper about his winning entry (linked in the OP), which is just as interesting as the OP. The relevant discussion starts from Chapter 7.

[http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/mindsandmachines/...](http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/mindsandmachines/Papers/hutchens96how.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Chris McKinstry was also fed up with the Loebner Prize, but instead of making a chat bot to break it, he invented a less subjective intelligence test, the Minimum Intelligent Signal Test (MIST) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_Intelligent_Signal_Tes...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_Intelligent_Signal_Test)

</comment><comment><USER18> It accords with my (disappointing) impression from my undergrad AI class, that while these systems are certainly "artificial", the "intelligence" tends to lie completely with their designers.</comment>


Ask HN: Book to learn about investment vocabulary? - <AUTHOR>

There must be a great book about this, it can't be true that we Europeans have to fly to the valley and "live the life" for a few weeks to learn what it all means. By following HN one might even come to assume that these terms are arbitrary, it certainly appears so from outside. (e.g when does a seed round become a Series A? (when the founders really want to hype?)) <comment><USER2> [http://www.investopedia.com/dictionary/](http://www.investopedia.com/dictionary/)

</comment><comment><USER3> \- This is a great start ~> [http://corp.bankofamerica.com/documents/16307/0/investmentte...](http://corp.bankofamerica.com/documents/16307/0/investmenttermsglossary.pdf)</comment>


How I got my side project's first 3500 users - <AUTHOR> http://ottoplay.tv/first3500

<comment><USER2> Please don't put "Show HN" on blog posts or follow-up posts.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, TIL. Sorry about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! Did you use a tool to generate that graph?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just Excel for the line graph, image-maps.com to avoid doing all the map <area>s by hand. I was actually wondering if there's some way to do this that's less... 90s.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3fs6kl/my_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3fs6kl/my_side_projects_first_3500_users_oc/ctrficx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well done for hitting 3500.

How do you plan to continue growing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. A big part of my strategy was to build up [http://reddit.com/r/ottoplay](http://reddit.com/r/ottoplay), which is up to 130 subscribers – I've been pushing it in all my posts so far. (At first it was just me talking to myself so there'd be something interesting for the first viewers to read.) I'd like to make that more of a self-sustaining community, to encourage people to stay involved and share it with their friends. Right now I'm working on a much-requested feature (customizing channels) – my plan is to roll that out with private beta invites to help keep people engaged.

Once that's rolling I'll try for another, bigger round of press coverage. Up until now things have largely not been in my control – the first two articles' authors approached me after my reddit posts, the later ones never bothered interviewing me, and it got Product Hunted by a power user who noticed my failed Show HN. (I actually didn't even realize it hit PH until the next day, took even longer to get commenting access.) But that's probably not going to last – I expect I'll have to do much more actively reaching out to journalists.

I'm starting to run out of new reddit communities to reach, but there's some smallish ones I still haven't hit. Maybe I'll try another Show HN. Mostly though, I think I need to focus on the core subreddits/communities that like this sort of thing, figure out exactly what they want and build a loyal following who'll bring it up when a tangential topic comes up. This already happens occasionally, which is beyond awesome: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/3fc0h0/netf...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/3fc0h0/netflix_needs_a_i_have_30_min_before_ill_fall/ctnp1f2?context=2)

Longer term, I'd love to get this on some sort of ChromiumOS stick. Nothing useful on the market for that yet, so I'm chatting with some manufacturers in China. Seems like a good product for a Kickstarter, hardware's more interesting than browser extensions, and it solves the real problem of the app being too hard to get onto a TV if you're not already used to HDMI cabling it.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Exclusive search engine for web apps - <AUTHOR> https://kaydo.com.au/cloud-apps <comment><AUTHOR> I've been working on this side project. It is a little search engine for indexing web apps/services ONLY. I keep going to blogs & forums to collect all web apps URL and put them together. If traditional search engines take you to the front-end of a website, this search engine will take you to the back-end. As a result, you will mostly end up in the login page of each app. Please try out and let me know your opinion!

<comment><USER3> Warning: in_array() expects parameter 2 to be array, null given in src/Kaydo/CloudAppsBundle/Controller/AngularController.php at line 103 500 Internal Server Error - <USER2>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting me know. It's fixed now.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What data do people/companies pay for in various industries? - <AUTHOR> So primarily do data engineering. Sourcing, ingest, pipelines, APIs, ETL, warehousing... all that stuff. But i have pretty much just been doing it for one industry.
I have seen a rise in popularity for data aggregators and data providers. It's something I know i enjoy doing and am good at it. I just don't know what data people in different fields want and would pay for.
I know, the obvious answer is go out there and talk to people etc. Well, right now it's a curiosity, I don't even know what specific industry I'd be most interested in. Also, quarantines and viruses obviously limit that avenue. So i am wondering what you folks have seen in various industries and whether this avenue really has promise.
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> I know people will pay a lot more for actionable, curated, and summarized data.

One company I know sells packages averaging in excess of 100k per year.</comment>


Marriage Proposal Thru an Android App - <AUTHOR> http://www.jonq.com/jq/proposal/

<comment><USER2> Very cute! The fact that it texted him her answer was an excellently nerdy touch. And full marks for coding the "unhappy path". I did note the marriage proposal didn't actually say who was proposing, mind you!

</comment><comment><USER3> The completionist in me would have gone back and tried the "No" route also :P

</comment><comment><USER4> Meh, on the final question I would have added a single button - "OK" :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Years ago I found a marriage proposal code in the 'After Dark' screen saver.

I've always wanted to know what the back story on that was.

</comment><comment><USER6> As the legend says, the creator of Magic: The Gathering once created a card called Proposal to propose marriage to his fiancée. The history: <http://howell.seattle.wa.us/games/mtg/Proposal.html>

The Android App is a great idea also.</comment>


What Is Serverless, and Is It Worth? A Function-as-a-Service Guide [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqk013ioclA <comment><AUTHOR> Hello all, original poster here,

I've just published an in-depth analysis of serverless (function-as-a- service). It goes into benefits and drawbacks of serverless along with a live example using Firebase Functions. If you want to check it out:

* YouTube (video with narrative + Firebase Functions example deployment): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqk013ioclA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqk013ioclA)

* Article: [https://quanticdev.com/articles/serverless](https://quanticdev.com/articles/serverless)

* Article source: [https://github.com/soygul/QuanticDev/blob/master/articles/se...](https://github.com/soygul/QuanticDev/blob/master/articles/serverless.md)

Outline of the video and the article: • Definition of Serverless (FaaS) • Live Example with Firebase Functions • Benefits of Serverless • Drawbacks of Serverless • Alternatives • Who Uses Serverless? • My Personal Experience • My Recommendation • Conclusion

Hope this helps you on your serverless journey. All feedback is welcome.</comment>


Ask HN: What's with the term 'Pinterest-like?' - <AUTHOR>

Yes there are clones out there, but why does everything with the masonry layout get tagged as "Pinterest-like" by tech bloggers? Can we just call it what it is?
If I didn't know any better I'd say it was a marketing ploy.
Hell, the first time I saw the layout in use was on knowyourmeme.
What's next? Patents on rounded corners? <comment><USER2> People are forgetting how many websites on the Internet are "inspired" or based on each other's design. Heck, pretty much every website has the basic structure of the very first websites, so in a way they are already copying those.

I understand saying something like this when it may be a complete rip-off, but people get up in arms these days even if something is 5% similar to something else. That really bothers me, as that world actually works like that. Everyone creates "new" stuff based or other people's work or inspired by them, so of course they will be at least somewhat similar. But they are acting as if the world doesn't work like that.

<comment><USER3> One of my favourite books is 'On Giants' Shoulders' by Melvyn Bragg, based on Sir Isaac Newton's quote "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". As you say, it goes to show we're all inspired by, and building upon, each other.

As for Pinterest, I guess they dominate references to the dynamic grid layout as they popularised it with the masses, so it's an identifiable reference for those who otherwise might not know what's meant by 'dynamic grid'.</comment></comment>


The Social Travel Guide – Tripblan - <AUTHOR> http://www.tripblan.com <comment><AUTHOR> Social Platform where everyone can share their travel stories and discover the stories of other users</comment>


Telescope: An open-source social news app built with Meteor - <AUTHOR> http://telesc.pe/2013/11/05/telescope-v07-ironscope/

<comment><USER2> Is it fair to call it a "Show HN" when the project did a Show HN a _year_ ago?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4840032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4840032)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it's a new version of a 1-year-old project. But I see your point, I'll remove the "Show HN" part.</comment></comment>


Downtown Mountain View has changed a lot in the last few days since I visited - <AUTHOR> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/364883/Screenshots/mountain-view-has-changed.png <comment><AUTHOR> Gotta go check it out again soon! :-)</comment>


All New Amazon Echo Dot - <AUTHOR> https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01DFKC2SO?ref_=pe_1840220_207574400_ods_Email_Home_DR_crm_EchoDotlaunch <comment><USER2> Will these be networked together? For instance, if my washer finishes can Alexa tell me? Or if I want to tell something to my wife up stairs, can I ask Alexa to tell her?

Also, I know it's not possible... but something I wish I could do in the SDK, I want to ask Alexa (which sits on my counter) to listen for my instant pot to beep, and than tell me. Sometimes I walk away, and don't hear it.

<comment><USER3> The ad-hoc instant intercom is also a HUGE win. In the 50s and 60s, all the fancy houses on TV had an intercom (didn't the Brady Bunch?). The intercom seemed to just fade away.

However, I would MUCH rather say "Alexia, tell upstairs that 'its time for dinner'", and it to be replayed upstairs. Rather than walking into the next room and yelling up the stairs like a neanderthal.

<comment><USER4> >However, I would MUCH rather say "Alexia, tell upstairs that 'its time for dinner'", and it to be replayed upstairs. Rather than walking into the next room and yelling up the stairs like a neanderthal.

I struggle to find to the words to express just how absurd this sounds to me. I must be getting old.

<comment><USER5> Not old enough. I live in a house with a dumbwaiter so late night snacks can easily be sent back to the kitchen with a click of a button.

Other things that were great, and I now miss---vaccum tubes in offices. Sure you don't need them to send messages, but if you want to send anything physical, however small, now you have to walk.

Oh and I certainly miss the bell system, where you could stand in the living room and ring a bell in any room in the house to tell the occupants that dinner was ready.

<comment><USER6> So what you are saying is you prefer a dumbwaiter over a smart home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well, I guess one of the most interesting things hidden in then Q&A section:

> Comes with 90 day warranty vs first gen had 1 year

> Optional 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year extended warranty available for U.S. > customers sold separately.

<comment><USER8> 90 day warranty is highway robbery. I have stopped buying electronics with anything but my AMEX because of these crap warranties.

<comment><USER9> At this point I buy everything with my American Express. The amount of extras they give you is just crazy. Between saving 6% on grocery, 3% on gas, extended warranties, credit on utility bills, and other random deals. It's basically a no-brainer. Assuming of course you're responsible, and pay it off every month.

<comment><USER10> I've been slowly switching everything over. I've been flying a lot too so getting a delta branded amex is really tempting for all the miles and such. Besides the extended warranties they give you, the travel aid is also a huge benefit. Instead of dealing with the airline I just give amex a call and they deal with it.

<comment><USER9> Like I said, if you're responsible with payments, its awesome. However the fees/interest rates will murder you otherwise.

<comment><USER11> Many AMEX cards are not credit cards, they are charge cards, and supposed to be paid in full every month. Get one of these. Won't prevent mistakes but will remove the association between credit and money that many people have.

<comment><USER12> What's the difference between a charge card and a debit card?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Integration with Domino's Pizza is a real win. If you're eating two to three deliveries a day, those few minutes of friction are costing you hours a year, never mind the overhead of the mental context switch. Buying this product is, in effect, adding quality years to your lifespan.

<comment><AUTHOR> But, it's not hard to see how this functionality can be extrapolated: One day you ask Alexa for items off Amazon and a drone drops them off on your doorstep.

Think about all the pieces involved in that: The hardware and software design of Echo/Alexa, Amazon's distribution network built out over years, FAA lobbying to get the drone flying.

If that doesn't impress you, nothing will.

<comment><USER14> I'm with you. When they launch, to demonstrate the functionality, they need some functions, which means partners. Obviously there are near infinite applications of "Alexa, ask X to do Y". Zapier and Iffft have made entire businesses out of a much more annoying way to do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would buy one of these in an instant if it could control a Roku without me having to my own server and could control my infrared TV/sound bar. I can't believe how I still have so many remotes.

<comment><USER16> Logitech harmony hub with ifttt might help. Checkout r/homeautomation for lots of different ideas

<comment><USER14> It does help. A lot. It's easily the best option out there. It's still just really frustrating to have to buy a $150 device that's more expensive than any of the disparate devices I am trying to control in the first place (save the TV). That said, given today's state of things, it's worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Amazon may just be the 800lb gorilla that has enough man-hours and computing power to finally integrate all the disparate APIs into a single platform. And their device doesn't cost very much

<comment><USER17> They're punting though. After a triggering phrase is said it hands off a string to the API associated with the phrase. So, no natural language processing unless the API does it. Users have to be trained to say particular triggering phrases.

<comment><USER18> The only trigger you have to say is "Alexa", just like Siri or Ok Google. Everything else is processed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Buy 5, Get 1 Free OR Buy 10, Get 2 Free

I'm no mathematician, but...

<comment><USER20> I hate this sort of thing!

Not only are "normal people" \- non HN-readers, that is - going to see through this anyway, but even if not, what's wrong with:

        1 FREE Dot for every 5 you buy!

How is that not a better UX?

It seems so obvious, and yet this happens repeatedly - even from a company like Amazon, which I imagine has this tagline run past a fair number of people before it goes live.

<comment><USER21> The power of suggestion.

If you see that if you buy 5 and get 1 free, you are now thinking about how great having 6 in your house would be.

What's this? Buy 10 get 2 free? Now you are thinking about getting 12. That's now putting your find on the 12 vs 6. So now you may think 12 is too many, but 6 is good.

So instead of buying 1, you just bought 5.

<comment><USER22> Another trick I see in grocery stores is a get 2 for $2 deal. This tells you nothing about the price of 1 but people assume getting 2 is some sort of deal and buy more than they need.

<comment><USER9> Just an fyi, it's ALWAYS 1 for $1 in those types of "deals".

<comment><USER23> Anecdote time! Had an incident at a shop with my SO where we did the math and realized that the 'Deal' price was more than buying 2x of the individual package (it was something small but I forget what it was) . Someone screwed up...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One aspect about this that did not sit well was that bluetooth speakers will not work if they use security as "Bluetooth speakers requiring PIN codes are not supported." an aspect that puts me off. For example a neighbor got a branded speaker with the usual extra's like mic and ability to work with phones and it had no PIN code and I demonstrated how anybody can connect and indeed record using that built in mic.

So I hope that improves though you can just use a wired speaker, which would be somewhat better anyhow.

</comment><comment><USER25> What's new about the 2nd generation, besides price?

One thing I'd really like is to be able to configure the Alexa voice to play back through both the speaker and aux output, since sometimes I turn my speakers off.

Also, if multiple Dots in the same household can work together as a Sonos-like system that would be awesome. ' At the very least if two Dots hear the same voice commands hopefully only one (the closer one?) will respond.

<comment><USER26> > _At the very least if two Dots hear the same voice commands hopefully only > one (the closer one?) will respond._

That's what the newly-announced "Spatial Perception" feature does.

In theory, it will detect which Echo or Dot is closest to you, and respond only on that device.

Happily, it's going to be rolled out to existing Echo/Dot devices as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> A 12 pack?

The Dots were created by Bezos. They rebelled. They evolved. There are many copies. And they have a plan.

</comment><comment><USER28> How did they manage to reduce price by half (AFAIK) ? Does Amazon subsidies echodot now?

<comment><USER29> As someone who bought the original dot at twice the price, I wondered the same thing.

They are cutting us a break, though:

"Something just for you As a customer who purchased the previous–generation Echo Dot, you can get a $10 Alexa Shopping credit when you order the All-New Echo Dot using Alexa Shopping. Order today through October 20 and a $10 Alexa Shopping credit will be applied to your account within one week after your new Echo Dot has shipped."

<comment><USER30> They aren't really cutting us a break though. In order to take advantage of the offer, we have to buy the new dot _and then_ purchase something else from them. They lose nothing, and gain everything. A break would be $10 off the new dot.

<comment><USER31> $10 off vs $10 credit is exactly the same thing unless you never buy anything from Amazon ever again.

<comment><USER30> > unless you never buy anything from Amazon ever again

Exactly my point. You _have_ to buy something else to take advantage of the offer. That's not a break - it's like a BOGO slap in the face for 1st gen owners.

Another thing I thought of: There are a lot of people who didn't know they were "early adopters" until yesterday. The 1st gen was marketed as "available until sold out", adding urgency to the purchase. It just keeps getting better and better (read worse and worse). I will very seriously consider further purchases of Amazon products, so they will definitely lose money over this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Alexa order 12 dots"

Getting a little ambitious

</comment><comment><USER33> Anyone have personal experience with either Triby [[https://www.amazon.com/Triby-portable-speaker-built-- Service...](https://www.amazon.com/Triby-portable-speaker-built-- Service/dp/B013DJSKKQ/)] or Nucleus [[https://www.amazon.com/Nucleus-Anywhere- Intercom-built--Serv...](https://www.amazon.com/Nucleus-Anywhere-Intercom- built--Service/dp/B01I5O5LCO/)]??

</comment><comment><USER34> My Alexa products would be _so much more useful_ if I could push things to them. Like even if you just gave me a way to subscribe my echo/dot to an SNS topic.

I could do so many awesome things when combined with all the AWS buttons that I've won.

Push a button, make the echo say "dinner is ready!". Put a button outside and when someone pushes it say "someone's at the door!"

</comment><comment><USER35> Echo Dot project should be renamed to NSA@Home.

<comment><USER34> People keep saying this, but you can actually see a log of everything that is sent to Amazon. And you can verify the log yourself by sniffing the traffic to Amazon. You can see that it most definitely does not send data unless the blue ring is lit.

Now, you may argue that it is recording all the time and then sending its recordings when you issue a command, but I'm willing to take the risk that Amazon is not willing to risk their entire reputation on helping the NSA like that.

<comment><USER35> I totally agree that Amazon would not "wish" to risk their reputation by snooping on their customers, however if they are forced to do so they might comply. Perhaps Echo is not installed in many homes for it to be any interest of NSA yet. But if it were installed in millions of homes I would imagine some agents knocking Mr. Bezos's door.

In terms of sending data, I would imagine they may optimize it by first matching the spoken keywords before they start extensive logging, or you have to be on some list to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Pretty interesting that their recommended Dot + Speaker combos are more than the cost of the Echo by like...50%.

<comment><USER37> For me this is a huge plus.

I got one of the first batch of Echos when they were sort of an invitation- only thing. I wasn't sure how the voice interaction would turn out, but I figured it would at least make a decent streaming music speaker.

Ugh. The sound quality of the Echo was its worst feature for me. Really not what I expected from a speaker, especially after seeing their fancy descriptions of how they worked so hard on the sound quality.

It's boomy and muddy, not at all what I'm looking for in a music speaker. Oddly enough, I didn't see a lot of complaints about it, so I guess that boomy muddy sound is what a lot of people like? In any case it's not for me.

So yeah, having the Alexa functionality but being able to connect higher- quality speakers - and stereo too? That works for me.

<comment><USER34> I'm pretty snobby about my music quality, but the muddy and boomy is "good enough" for me when I just want some background music while we eat or cook, which I can make happen with the power of my voice while holding the baby.

Mainly it is the fact that I can make it happen while holding the baby, I'm willing to forgive a lot of the sound issues.

<comment><USER37> Oh, I hear you! (Pun intended.) There can definitely be a tradeoff between convenience and quality.

In fact, right now I don't have _any_ really good speakers at home. If I want good sound quality I have to use my Yuin earbuds or maybe the old Sony E888's if I can find them.

Totally off topic, but since the earbuds came to mind I have a great hack for them. One problem with earbuds like the Yuins with a symmetric cord is that it's hard to tell the right from the left without looking closely. So I bought two of those bags of foamy covers that they have on Amazon for like $3-4 for a hundred of them - one bag of white covers and one of black. I put a black foamy on the left earbud and a white one on the right. Now I never get them mixed up!

Back to Echo, I think my disappointment with the sound quality had a bit to do with how they marketed it, claiming excellent sound and showing the cutaway drawings of how they achieved that, or claimed to. And then the actual sound wasn't nearly as good as what I'd expected from the marketing. A case of over- promising and under-delivering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some of the skills they list are pretty hilarious:

There's something called a Meat Butler.

</comment><comment><USER38> Has Apple made any moves suggesting it will get into this category? A Siri- enabled Beats speaker would be a decent start. Call it a "hobby" if concerned about low volume.

</comment><comment><USER39> Great innovation but at the same time amazon.in proudly sells a Chetan Bhagat book on their home page.

<comment><USER40> I'm not familiar with Indian current events, could you elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Are they ever going to release any of the Echo products outside of the US?

It feels

<comment><USER34> They just today announced that it will work in the UK and Germany.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Alexa, when does the world end?

</comment><comment><USER43> If you're interested in this tech, come work on something cooler with us at Asteria: [https://getasteria.com/](https://getasteria.com/) We're based out of San Francisco and have plenty of need for people interested in building the future with us.

[https://getasteria.com/careers](https://getasteria.com/careers)</comment>


Samsung Left Millions Vulnerable to Hackers Because It Forgot to Renew a Domain - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/samsung-left-millions-vulnerable-to-hackers-because-it-forgot-to-renew-a-domain <comment><USER2> So apparently it's not just ransomware creators making this sort of mistake.

Seriously though, this will be a problem for the Internet of Things as time goes on. When your service requires a specialised server to operate, then letting it lapse is either going to kill a lot of products altogether or leave them wide open to hackers in very similar ways.

<comment><USER3> TP-Link did it last year[1]

[1] [https://threatpost.com/top-router-maker-tp-link-loses- contro...](https://threatpost.com/top-router-maker-tp-link-loses-control-over- configuration-domain/119072/)</comment></comment>


What happens when VCs believe Alexa numbers - <AUTHOR> http://earlystagevc.typepad.com/earlystagevc/2007/03/web_20.html <comment><USER2> The title seems to imply the content of the post is incorrect because of the Alexa numbers, but the Alexa numbers are not really relied upon as a strong premise. (Actually, there isn't really a strong premise, he just sort of asserts his opinion)

Anyway, that doesn't mean he's totally wrong either. Although I admit there is still space in the "long tail" for more new web apps, it will be difficult to keep making web apps once every site has to battle existing players. Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/Cisco won't prop up the industry with constant acquisitions of unprofitable companies forever.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whaddayaknow, maybe Alexa is the problem! Compete.com shows exactly the opposite trends with increasing 2007 traffic to all the 2.0 sites mentioned. (<http://snapshot.compete.com/techcrunch.com+technorati.com+gigaom.com+)>

Is there any consensus on which of these sites (Alexa or Compete) is more reliable? Or at least...less unreliable?

<comment><USER4> I don't know much about Compete, but Alexa stinks. It's a small, self-selected group of users that in no way represents the Internet at large.

I'm not the only one who thinks so: <http://franticindustries.com/blog/2006/12/18/why-alexa-sucks/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Valleywag wrote about how he was fooled by bad Alexa data:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=5233></comment>


An experimental software development environment - <AUTHOR> https://isomorf.io/ <comment><USER2> I like the very detailed demo.

But please god, the UI is in iconese with many missing tooltips. I hate this trend in UIs. I have no idea what the buttons do, and I am scared to touch them. (and it's a webapp, so it will change in 6 months).

What does a half full beaker have to do with software development?

<comment><USER3> A half full beaker is usually for unit tests, right?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, we use the beaker to mean unit tests. We like the icons because they keep the layout dense, but if the meanings aren't clear that is good feedback for us

<comment><USER5> Props for accepting feedback!

A decent number of people's brains just don't assign meaning to images. I'm one of them. As an example, I've been using an iPhone for several years. I still routinely click on the Notes icon instead of the Reminders icon, as well as, the Maps icon instead of the Weather icon whenever I'm rushing and don't take time to read and say the app name in my head.

I'm not sure if it's tied into being an auditory learner, but I know I'm not alone.

<comment><USER4> Interesting, thanks! We will maybe make that an option in the future for those who prefer text vs icons.

<comment><USER6> Adding tooltips to all icons would go a long way.

<comment><USER4> Our old friend spiralganglion! Good to see you here. And thanks for the tip.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the pun :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really like where this is going! I've always been a great fan of adding more structural modeling to programming.

How do you see real applications being managed in this system? The tour doesn't touch on this. The included examples are quite abstract, perhaps even too much as they don't really engage me -- I can't imagine caring about how many times a "length" function is used globally. If anything, that example gave me an uncomfortable vibe of the Node.js "left-pad" drama... Sharing code in ridiculously small units just doesn't solve any productivity problems I've experienced.

The stuff about abstract types and function shapes is certainly intellectually interesting, but I'd encourage you think in terms of larger assemblies of code. (Maybe you already are -- I do understand that this is an early demo and you want to get the core right.)

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

In terms of applications, our initial work has been to export functions as microservices onto existing platforms (e.g., Lambda). We've also explored downloading code as either native artifacts (e.g., maven) or as command-line apps. We are also playing around with adding integrations for ReactJS to support web applications. Where we focus our deployment efforts is one of our current big questions, and one where we are most interested in community feedback.

In terms of the abstraction, you are quite right that the examples we've shown are very trivial, really just to convey the concepts. The more interesting work will probably be sharing much more complex functions, or sharing the built app/services themselves (which could be made transparent within the platform itself).

Definitely reach out if you have more thoughts or feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The exciting possibility isn't switching Python/Lisp/Java syntax (most people will pick one and stick with it), but being able to add language features and see your program immediately get more concise.

For example, Javascript added `bar${foo}`, but my code still has lots of 'bar' \+ foo. It'd be sweet to just click a checkbox and see my code get smaller on screen, without changing the underlying source code.

So what I really want is an editor that takes verbose languages and collapses common idioms into concise syntax.

<comment><USER9> This is called 'projectional editing', an idea that to my knowledge goes back to the 60s.

A projectional editor shows you both the original source code, and alternate representations (or, 'projections') of it. Given the right plugins and config, these alternate projections could happen to be more intuitive to grasp/edit than the original source code. One plugin could, for example, remove all the unnecessary semicolons. Another, could remove all the unnecessary punctuations and project the code in an indentation-significant way or vice-versa. Your idea to replace all the `'bar' \+ foo`s with ``bar{foo}``s would also be possible.

It's easy to imagine much more advanced use-cases. A sufficiently advanced editor could detect calls to FRP libraries, and project the data flow as a visual graph (picture all the `flatMaps()` and `scanLatest()s` as nodes on that graph). Or, given access to compile-time type info (via a typescript- style language-server), it could overlay the type of a value with the missing fields being shown as slots to be filled.

I can imagine such an editor to mostly "obsolete" the idea of a single syntax for each language in the first place. Like the language but not the syntax? Roll your own syntax! Just configure your own editor plugins. No one would have to know. No one would have to agree with your "taste." Not even your git repo [0]. (See /r/nosyntax/ for more ideas)

A projectional editor can also be implemented in the runtime, ala Smalltalk. In that case, the language itself is designed from the bottom up to accommodate such DX and opens many more possibilities.

A Clojure Conj talk called "... forgotten Lisp UX" explores the history of this idea in the context of lisp [1]. The author is also on Patreon doing exciting things in this field ([https://www.patreon.com/shaunlebron](https://www.patreon.com/shaunlebron)).

\---

[0] the editor may store some metadata next to the code that'd be committed to the repo, but the code itself would still be saved in the original syntax. [1] Inspiring a future Clojure editor with forgotten Lisp UX - Shaun Lebron [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Tsa3smr1w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Tsa3smr1w)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for such an insightful and educational comment, AriaMinaei! Really interesting stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have 60 seconds. I couldn't figure out what this was, so it's forgotten.

A few screenshots on the home page that gives an abstract idea would solve this.

EDIT: Found this by reading the comments. [https://blog.isomorf.io/what-is- isomorƒ-bdc50ce597ee](https://blog.isomorf.io/what-is-isomorƒ-bdc50ce597ee) In another 60 seconds I've learned that it's a way to program in a syntax- agnostic way with your mouse. I don't like using my mouse because of wrist fatigue, so I guess I wouldn't be interested.

<comment><USER12> > In another 60 seconds I've learned that it's a way to program in a syntax- > agnostic way with your mouse.

Oh wow I got like 5 minutes into the tour and didn't realize that until I read your comment. I gave up because it felt like I was just looking at an HTML IDE with some verbose Java. If the novel part of the product isn't showcased in the first few minutes of the tour you're going to lose a lot of interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of this great Gary Bernhardt talk [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/a-whole-new- world](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/a-whole-new-world)

This almost certainly won't catch on because inertia is very hard to overcome, but how amazing would it be to have computers do more of the heavy lifting for us?

(this is guided by my reaction to the product, where I saw the following:

* Syntax is a detail, you choose one you like without altering the semantics! It's a view layer.

* Static types (present in many other languages, less of a gamechanger)

* Analysis of dependencies of and users of code at-a-glance.

* in-IDE integration with social element of it

These were what struck me as the most novel bits, but I might have missed others)

</comment><comment><USER14> Beautifully done, but ergonomically "no way to code" for me.

Could be pretty neat if you focus on learners. Once mildly proficient, one'll want the speed and flow of _typing_ and freely operating on lines/blocks/selections _in an unconstrained text file_.

<comment><USER15> drilling into this a second -- and as someone who has been using vi for about 37 years -- why do you take this as a truth? Consider, e.g., intellij.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The landing page leaves everything to be desired if you have no idea what this is about in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nifty. Some thoughts...

General UX: "What will/did this button-with-no-tooltip do?" was a theme for me.

Tour UX: I felt trapped in chains of modal windows.

Perhaps add "clicking outside modal windows bails out of chain"; and in Overview, "clicking on numbered topic jumps to that step". These are perhaps low hanging fruit for restoring some user control of navigation?

I wonder if "tours" is the right objective. Perhaps topical examples? Eg [https://threejs.org/examples/](https://threejs.org/examples/) ? However... many use youtube videos to learn code far more than I would, so perhaps I'm just not the target audience for a video-like tour. Perhaps a label change to set expectations "Take a video-like tour"? But I expect to be able to jump around in videos. Screencast the tours for youtube?

Language: I wish the type system was richer. I'd happily accept "projections have structured comments describing unrepresentable semantics" for that. If I could express the type "thing with a partial order < and a +", then I'd have looked to sign up, intending to upload a bunch of algorithm code.

Functions are nice, but to win big, we need a better type system than is currently available. ADT's don't scale. Witness haskell's half-decade of heroic effort... just to insert Applicative. Anyone wants to make something like this with a type system that's a pushout lattice of theories, I am your slave. Figuratively.

Randomness: Projective editing might help with the Unicode!/Ascii! Agda/Idris rift, but the semantics would be a challenge, and the market small. Though its maybe a good population to attract if the type system were more of a focus. Fortress-style "projected to look like math" might appeal to Julia-is-the-new- FORTRAN folks? Using kate.com-style emacs/vi/etc plugins with a "sidebar" website window for value-add, might separate out the "switch to us as your editor" aspect from the "here's analysis and ecosystem" aspect.

XR changes the UX constraint space for this kind of thing. Perhaps startlingly soon and rapidly. So something to keep an eye on. The bite-sized functions, sidebar analysis, refactoring, fine-grain ecosystem, and type directed development and search, seem good matches for an XR UI.

<comment><USER18> > ADT's don't scale. Witness haskell's half-decade of heroic effort... just to > insert Applicative

Huh? Firstly that has nothing to do with ADTs. Applicative's a type class. Secondly it didn't take effort it just took an agreement to do it and enough warning and checks that everyone had done the minimal rewrites required. If anything taking five years was a sign that it wasn't desperately important, just housekeeping.

<comment><USER17> Easy? Minimal? Ok, yes, compared to... something. C++ standards committee. But consider mathematics. You hand someone an algorithm, valid exactly on some theory/algebra/structure, with its types/equality, operators, and laws. And that's it - that's everything. It doesn't matter what they're named, or in what order they were gathered, or where that structure happens to appear in the lattice of some prelude or another. There's no context, no cruft. If you want a language with the expressive power of mathematics, it needs to support the expressive power of mathematics.

> it didn't take effort [...] housekeeping

This description is not consistent with my limited observation of discussions among some involved.

<comment><USER18> > You hand someone an algorithm, valid exactly on some > theory/algebra/structure, with its types/equality, operators, and laws. And > that's it - that's everything. It doesn't matter what they're named, or in > what order they were gathered, or where that structure happens to appear in > the lattice of some prelude or another

This is also the case for algorithms in Haskell when the Applicative Monad Proposal was enacted. All existing implementations stayed unchanged. The benefit of the AMP was that some implementations could drop an Applicative constraint if they wanted.

> > it didn't take effort [...] housekeeping > > This description is not > consistent with my limited observation of discussions among some involved.

Then I suggest you ask for further clarification. There was a lot of discussion and debate to make sure we got a smooth transition. Basically no one opposed the proposal. The changes to code were absolutely minimal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there some text to read explaining what this is? Assuming that the visitor to the site prefers "hands on" learning is tantamount to assuming they have the intellect of a toddler in my book.

<comment><USER4> There are more thorough descriptions on our blog if that is a preferred medium: [https://blog.isomorf.io/](https://blog.isomorf.io/)

<comment><USER19> Those look great, thanks. Somehow I didn't recognize the "blog" link on the home page as being what I should click on to get a written docs/whitepaper style description.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Holy cow the site takes forever to load, the demo takes forever to load. I hope that's not representative of actual use, but I wasn't patient enough to wait and find out.

<comment><USER4> Sorry about that! We are experiencing significantly higher load than we are used to, but working on a fix presently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really like the idea of sharing snippets of code. I'm so tired of implementing common functions, especially the ones that are tricky to get right.

</comment><comment><USER22> I find this exciting and fascinating in all kinds of ways. There's a huge amount of potential here, and the kinds of IDE improvements I've wanted for years.

Unfortunately, I also found the UI so difficult that I gave up. When I got to the Sandbox (note: clicking the different tour stage links to jump ahead doesn't seem to work) I tried editing the "doubleMe" function, and deleted the expression "x * 2". Then I spent five minutes just trying to re-enter that expression in a way that Isomorf would like, but to no avail.

I understand the desire to establish unambiguous semantics at coding time, but it feels like you're forcing the user to do extra work for it. Perhaps if/when I get used to the editor, it'll save me time in the long run. Right now it feels like I'm hamstrung.

All that said, the overall concept still looks fascinating, and I hope it succeeds. Good luck!

<comment><USER23> I can definitely sympathize with your viscereal frustration with getting a trivia expression entered, especially for an already proficient coder. This tradeoff is actually part of the subject of the most recent blog post [1]. Any kind of tool that presents a non-text-based experience (be that VIM, Photoshop, or whatever) does unfortunately require a little time studying the commands and building some muscle memory.

You might also check out the post on general editing [2].

Thanks for the feedback!

[1] [https://medium.com/p/the-economics-of-semantic- coding-7e8fd1...](https://medium.com/p/the-economics-of-semantic- coding-7e8fd1b421e6) [2] [https://medium.com/p/an-experiment-in-structured- code-editin...](https://medium.com/p/an-experiment-in-structured-code- editing-68b917a9157c)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It would be really great if there are some real-world examples. Like, how would look code with side effects (i.e. network read/write)? Can I use Actor Model with Isofmorph and how? Is there any interoperability with existing frameworks?

<comment><USER4> Real-world examples are in the works! Side effects and integration use-cases will be a part of our beta release. If you have specific integrations you are interested in, let us know. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Thumbs up for the tour. I was able to navigate it on my 4.7" phone with Firefox.

I basically lost interest into the language when I run into the most verbose type declaration I ever saw, isomorf.number.Number (I couldn't copy it on the phone). There must be a better way to do it.

But the idea is cool even if maybe not very new. I've seen different languages compiled or interpreted into the same pcode, bytecode, etc. Maybe the translation here is deterministic.

<comment><USER26> I found the tour infuriating. I really do not have the desire to click 100 next buttons when 70% of them are obvious. I exited before I finished the tour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is it implemented in itself? :-)

<comment><USER28> I would not recommend this objective (at least not for a few years). The reason I actually think it is important to comment on this is that I've seen the pattern a lot where IDE or language devs strive too early to build their own product in their product. While in theory this is useful, in practice I think it's better to wait 5 to 10 years before doing that. Otherwise it's too much of a hard problem and leads to many premature optimizations and resource allocation while taking the focus off of solving other people's problems.

This tool seems to me like it would be fantastic for building and managing strongly typed, 100% code coverage, reliable bug-free microservices. Lots of other tools help you build microservices, but they help you build BUGGY microservices. I think solving the problem of building reliable microservices could be huge.

But this product itself is not a microservice, instead it's an advanced IDE and backend with a lot of different components. So while it would be cool to use isomorf to build parts of isomorf, I'd vote you delay going for this goal for a long while.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. Thanks for the feedback. I think you are probably right that it sounds cool and appealing as a dev, but it's likely not a great use of resources in the short term.

<comment><USER28> Or maybe another way to put it: lots of successful languages and IDEs are implemented in themselves, but lots of unsuccessful ones are too. I think I've seen some folks believe achieving that beautiful recursive milestone will be a silver bullet, but rarely (if ever) does it turn out that way. It's a nice thing to have and a great way to dogfood your product but not necessarily that important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Usability failure:

[https://imgur.com/a/FgB1r](https://imgur.com/a/FgB1r)

I can't click on next in the tour without triggering the chat feature.

<comment><USER4> Sorry about that. There should be a little X on the chat window that will close it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I can't tell what this is just by looking at the home page. After taking a tour and wading my way through all the frustrating "next" buttons I still have no idea what advantages this environment might offer me. As someone else mentioned the site was extremely slow. Feels like it's overly bloated. I'm out before I even tried it.

I've now gone back and tried the sandbox and I couldn't code like this. As such, I'm still left wondering what is the use case for this?

<comment><USER31> >I can't tell what this is just by looking at the home page. And when I tried the 'Python-inspired' tour, it just waits (presumably it's overloaded just now) and breaks my back button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Tour is not working in Chromium or Opera on Linux.

<comment><USER17> Curious - worked for me. Chromium 61.0.3163.100 running on Ubuntu 16.04. And FF. Overview tour.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can Charter Cable ($14B) buy Time Warner Cable ($39B)? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If by "how" you mean the mechanics of the financing, from yesterday's offer "Bank of America Corp., Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG and Goldman would provide the financing for a transaction"

If you're looking for an analogy, how does a guy with negative to very small net worth rent money from a bank to buy a $1M house?

If you're using "how" as a proxy for why, well who knows why. Or as a proxy for how come our economic system permits this kind of thing, long story.

One cornerstone of our economic system is bad money always chases out good money. If your competitors are leveraged up, you MUST leverage up, or you'll get bought out and levered up like everyone else. Much like one guy willing to take a subprime mortgage doesn't move the market, but if enough people do, then you must do so or not play.

So someone thinks they can pull enough cash flow and/or increase combined net worth enough to both pay off some banks AND make a modest profit for themselves. Well, given the remarkable lack of diversity at high levels, executive drones are all interchangeable with all other executive drones, so I personally find this an unlikely outcome, but at least that is the theory.

</comment><comment><USER3> From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveraged_buyout](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveraged_buyout):

 _A leveraged buyout (LBO) is when a company ... is purchased with a combination of equity and significant amounts of borrowed money, structured in such a way that the target 's cash flows or assets are used as the collateral (or "leverage") to secure and repay the money borrowed to purchase the target- company/asset. Since the debt ... has a lower cost of capital ... than the equity, the returns on the equity increase as the amount of borrowed money does until the perfect capital structure is reached._

In other words, you load up debt on the company that you're acquiring with the hopes that the amount you're going to make running that company is going to be more than the amount it's costing you to service the debt.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article provides a lot of insight. The idea is john malone's. He wants to create a cable cartel and has enough muscle to do it [http://blogs.denverpost.com/techknowbytes/2014/01/14/why- joh...](http://blogs.denverpost.com/techknowbytes/2014/01/14/why-john-malone- is-pushing-mega-cable-merger-between-charter-and-time-warner/12745/)</comment>


To Hustle or Not to Hustle - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/african-american-notes/850950a94ef

<comment><USER2> The other great thing about Frank Underwood is he's always playing the long game.

And really, I find the long game is what separates the real hustlers from the dog-paddlers and wishful thinkers. If you don't think big and ambitious, you'll never do more than break even. But if you never think about the short- term steps needed to get to your long-term goals, you'll never move. (Insert the hordes of "How do I get VC to fund my idea without stealing it from me?" questioners here)

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree. That level of foresight is crucial to actually moving towards those goals.</comment></comment>