List of Websites not available in the EU because of GDPR - w-m https://data.verifiedjoseph.com/dataset/websites-not-available-eu-gdpr <comment><USER3> Meanwhile, visiting a large commercial website today involves:

1\. A pop-up notifying the visitor on the website's cookie policy (required by EU law).

2\. A pop-up asking the visitor to consent to its privacy policy (required by EU law).

3\. A pop-up asking the visitor if they'd like to subscribe to its newsletter.

4\. A pop-up telling the visitor that it's run out of "free articles", but that you can sign up at a premium.

5\. A pop-up asking the visitor to turn off the adblocker because the site's revenue depends on the ads.

6\. A pop-up asking the visitor to participate in an online survey.

7\. A pop-up telling the visitor about a unique way to earn money in your underwear.

None of the pop-ups will share UI for closing them, and some of the close buttons will be so hard to press that you accidentally change site instead.

 _(Clarification: It doesn 't have to be a pop-up, but it does have to be annoying.)_

<comment><USER4> I'm sure you know this, as you have included a bunch of pop-ups that aren't necessary but websites do anyway. But for other people who love to hate on the GDPR, 1 and 2 are not necessarialy required by EU law either. Just don't have cookies when you don't need them and don't save data the visitor hasn't agreed to.

<comment><USER5> > But for other people who love to hate on the GDPR, 1 and 2 are not > necessarialy required by EU law either. Just don't have cookies when you > don't need them and don't save data the visitor hasn't agreed to.

It's this simple, and yet everyone on the internet freaks out like having a GDPR-compliant general purpose website is some massive undertaking.

I can't fathom how people got so used to endless tracking that a non-tracking site now literally seems like a impossibility to them.

All in all, it's pretty sad.

<comment><USER6> So technologically the non-tracking website is very very simple.

Business wise, not so much. How do you monetize such a site? Even a simple commerce site needs to keep tracking of users, and to do any kind of marketing you need explicit user consent.

<comment><USER7> > Even a simple commerce site needs to keep tracking of users

Functional cookies like this are exempt from GDPR's opt-in requirement

<comment><USER8> Exactly. I've been running a few webshops where cookies were used only to keep the session/cart state. It never occurred to me I should irritate my users with cookie/GDPR notices. To quote the famous cookie law [1], the cookies exempt from consent were:

* user‑input cookies (session-id) such as first‑party cookies to keep track of the user's input when filling online forms, shopping carts, etc., for the duration of a session or persistent cookies limited to a few hours in some cases

* authentication cookies, to identify the user once he has logged in, for the duration of a session

* user‑centric security cookies, used to detect authentication abuses, for a limited persistent duration

* multimedia content player cookies, used to store technical data to play back video or audio content, for the duration of a session

* load‑balancing cookies, for the duration of session

* user‑interface customisation cookies such as language or font preferences, for the duration of a session (or slightly longer)

* third‑party social plug‑in content‑sharing cookies, for logged‑in members of a social network.

This means you could freely use cookies for normal operation. It's only when you start tracking people you needed to ask their consent.

[1] [http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm](http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> AKA: list of websites whose habits regarding your personal data are so shady, they're literally illegal in large swaths of the world.

<comment><USER10> Or maybe just revenue from eu < cost to comply

<comment><USER11> cost to comply is not to log data of the same users they are showing the blockade right now. I fail to see how that's so expensive to do.

<comment><USER12> Or perhaps they've been advised that because they have an email subscription, they'd need to hire a full time DPO, and their outside counsel quoted them several thousand dollars a year.

It's simple arithmetic to decide it's cheaper to block all EU visitors.

<comment><USER13> > they'd need to hire a full time DPO

They don't. They need to designate someone as the DPO, it doesn't have to be full time.

<comment><USER14> That's technically true but practically untrue.

The DPO is a major imposition and simply being required to comply with the DPO parts alone is sufficient to make the EU not worthwhile for many businesses.

1\. Whilst a DPO can theoretically be part time, a DPO is not allowed to have other roles in the firm that could create a "conflict of interest". This is so vague that in a company that works with data, almost any other role could be argued to create such a conflict of interest.

2\. The DPO position has a list of mandatory responsibilities and even qualifications that will be accepted. For example the EU has advised DPOs need "expertise in EU data protection law". Where will foreign websites find such a person?

3\. The DPO works for the firm but cannot be told how to do their job. They also cannot be fired or penalised for anything related to their job responsibilities.

In practice these rules mean it's very likely everyone will outsource the DPO role to third parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've ran into this a few times through 'normal usage', e.g. I search for something, click the link, and get told off for being in the EU (for the time being).

'Food Network' is one I've hit a few times searching for recipes; it seems several other domains are under its umbrella: [https://www.foodnetwork.com/not- available.html](https://www.foodnetwork.com/not-available.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> Currently a US citizen living in Spain, I hit these decently often looking up news articles that look interesting about things in the US, but stopped short by the notices about GDPR. I'd be curious if some of the newspapers eventually comply after several court cases defining some details on how it is treated-- seems disproportionately higher for newspapers; anyone know why? other than their audiences don't tend to be in Europe?

<comment><USER17> A lot of these sites are ostensibly local US news or media (e.g. WPTA - <AUTHOR> Wayne, IN), and it's hard to see how they fall under the GDPR.

So either it's a political statement, or they somehow are subject to the GDPR, e.g. they are owned by a multi-national conglomerate, or sell data to them.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, they don't fall under GDPR it's mostly a knee-jerk reaction (or, as you mentioned, they are owned by a bigger conglomerate)

<comment><USER19> IP addresses are specifically considered to be personal data, so even accepting a page view from an EU citizen and writing the IP to an Apache log file could subject them to it. Same with cookies and any kind of analytics or advertising partners (which most local news sites seem oddly heavy on).

Even if they somehow figured out that they were already completely compliant (and ignoring the work involved in discovering that), there are policies and procedures you need to write to document who you share their data with and respond to requests from EU citizens about their data and the features to support answering those.

<comment><USER5> > IP addresses are specifically considered to be personal data

Again. Knee jerk internet reactions divorced from reality.

Access logs are _not_ illegal under the GDPR. Stop spreading FUD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Such a lazy and stubborn approach to just ban EU users to protest GDPR.

<comment><USER21> Well, complying has costs, you know. Perhaps, in some cases, it's just a matter of not wanting/being able to justify that cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The majority of these websites appear to be US based local news outlets. They have very little motivation to comply with GDPR.

As a side note, a lot of the comments here suggest that few people are reviewing the list at all before offering their opinion. Yes GDPR is a great step forward for data privacy, but there is little reason to shame "The Pueblo Chieftain" for not complying with GDPR. What is more likely:

1) compliance doesn't matter to them or their audience 2) they are trying to exploit and monetize your data

<comment><USER23> They don't need to comply with GDPR. They're not doing business in the EU; they're not based in the EU; they're not targetting EU citizens. They're exempt from the regulations.

> but there is little reason to shame "The Pueblo Chieftain" for not complying > with GDPR.

People are complaining about the corrupt business model of massive misuse of personal data.

<comment><USER24> Its not that simple.

The may have a parent company that does have an EU presence making the parent company liable in the event of a violation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The GDPR stuff has opened my eyes to just how widespread data tracking and sharing has been.

I went to a small local news site to read a story, I think it was for "Wales Online" and got presented with the options box. After clicking through to look at their advertising 'partners' my data could be sent to, I found a list of probably 200 different entities.

Presumably, for being a local news thing, this means that they have used some sort of advertising and analytics framework that plugs into some middleware system and from there passes out what it knows to these other places. I can't imagine each one is individually in the codebase.

What it exposed was the massive extent of what's going on. To access just a few hundred words of text, my details and activity would be passed on to an unbelievable array of companies. I'm very glad the GDPR has come in.

</comment><comment><USER26> Thank you for this list of websites that I'll never use, even though I'm not in the EU.

</comment><comment><USER27> What I think would also be useful (or more useful) is a list of sites that blatantly don't comply in popular ways such as requiring tracking consent ("By continuing to use …") or assuming consent, often making it hard to opt out ("You need to enable third party cookies and visit these 95 places to opt out").

Right now ICOs can't even begin to hunt down all the small offenders, but once case law builds up and we have such a list bulk processes can be set up.

A browser extension could be used to ease reporting and even detect popular noncompliant solutions.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, all the website manufacturers seem to have severly misunderstood what "opt-in" means. I hope they get some hefty fines to make them comply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think we should rephrase, it's not "because of GDPR", it's "because of their incompetence".

I have made a few sites GDPR-compliant, and honestly unless your business practices are based on exploiting people's data, it's not that hard.

<comment><USER24> Unnecessarily harsh.

It often comes down to advertising. No one (and I include Google and others in this) has properly figured out GDPR compliant advertising IMHO.

The effort of disabling ads for EU visitors is higher than just blocking EU visitors if you don't have a lot of resources.

<comment><USER28> I think you're confused about what GDPR requires from companies.

The whole thing is simply about not collecting data you're not supposed to need in order to provide the service, and whatever you do it must be opt-in.

The only reason why a company needs to block a whole continent is that they've based their whole infrastructure on exploiting the user's data to such a level that they cannot provide their service without collecting and retain data they're not supposed to collect.

As for "a lot of resources", Instagram and the L.A. Times should have enough resources to become compliant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I haven't exactly done a scientific survey here, but what is interesting is to click the links and see what response comes back (I'm in the UK, still part of the EU). Here are some of them:

* Sorry, this content is not available in your region.

* The precondition on the request for the URL / evaluated to false.

* Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. "

* 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons

* Error code 16. This request was blocked by the security rules

* Apologies! The site you are trying to visit is not available in your area. Please note, to comply with GDPR we have purged our newsletter lists and databases for anyone located within the European Union. Thank you for your interest.

* 403 ERROR The request could not be satisfied.

* We're sorry you're not able to access the site at this time, but this is a temporary measure to ensure we can best protect your data under new privacy regulations. We value your support; thanks for your patience and we can't wait to have you back!

I find it interesting that some present the problem as a technical problem whereas others explicitly mention a region problem or even GDPR

I also found a couple of places where the sites are in fact accessible, e.g. instapaper.com

The vast majority of the sites seem to be US local news sites, so perhaps to them providing access for EU citizens isn't really a key goal

<comment><USER30> > _The vast majority of the sites seem to be US local news sites_

That's even more weird since they are explicitly not covered by GDPR, because their target audience is obviously not based in the EU (and they most probably don't do any business in the EU either, so are completely out of reach as well).

It seems to me like they are the very websites for which this exemption was intended.

<comment><USER5> > It seems to me like they are the very websites for which this exemption was > intended.

That doesn't help much when every US arm-chair lawyer (like the techies here on HN) spends all their time causing paranoia and telling everyone how even _access logs_ are illegal now under GDPR, and how they will be brought into bankruptcy by the EU.

Ofcourse the business-people are going to panic when all they hear are their techies are telling them that EU is going to shut them down.

Whatever crappy legal regime these US techies will be stuck with in the future, one thing is certain: they brought it onto themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Interesting that there are quite a few news websites in there. GDPR is better for users overall, but due to websites not willing to reduce their user tracking practices some news sources become less available.

<comment><USER24> Its not all about 'unwilling to reduce' its often a matter of not knowing how, or which ones are compliant and which ones are not.

<comment><USER31> Don't disagree! The reasons could be multiple. What is the reason to spend money to be compliant to european laws for a local californian newspaper?

What I find interesting is that they took the time to raise a location based 405, so they seem at least aware of it !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It'd be nice if there was an Alexa ranking column and sorted by that instead of alphabetic.

<comment><USER3> Yes, right now they are ordered by how little I care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Because of websites not willing to stop tracking users against their freely- given consent."

Fixed that for you.

<comment><USER34> I agree, it's really not the legislation that should be blamed, it's the crappy websites.

<comment><USER35> It's both. The legislation, while based on good intentions, isn't exactly a prime example of an easy-to-implement, consistent set of rules.

There's no excuse for larger players to not implement these rules. Many smaller players however, struggled and in some cases still struggle with this because some of the rules are rather vague (sometimes intentionally so in order to be future-proof) and hence open for interpretation.

There's the rub: While the law is clearly targeted at larger companies - <USER2> the extent some have called it Lex Facebook - it's the smaller companies and hobbyists, for whom implementing GDPR is more of a problem. I wouldn't be surprised if, in the long run, companies such as Facebook actually benefited from GDPR, at the expense of smaller competitors.

<comment><USER34> What part of it do you think is hard to do for small business exactly?

<comment><USER35> I described some of the issues small businesses are faced with in this comment on an earlier article about GDPR:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17099878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17099878)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> And nothing of value was lost.

</comment><comment><USER37> I can't figure out what i think about it. Most of those are of no use to me anyways as a European citizen.

However were i interested in US local news i'd be sad not to be able to access them.

From the websites point of view, i guess there's not enough money to be made from people located in the European union. They are certainly not targeting a global audience. In the end, they are free to choose.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why is this useful? I'd rather like to see a list of websites that someone _needed_ to visit but couldn't because of GDPR.

<comment><USER39> Clearly it is a list of website someone _tried_ to visit, judging if they actually _needed to_ is a tad police-state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> So, any chance to blacklist them from HN? Or at least offer an alternative for EU-members? There must be a couple millions on this platform, I guesstimate.

I'm still hoping for the "Outline it" link right after the "web" one.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why is it all mostly news websites?

<comment><USER42> Local and regional news media like newspapers are often owned by large conglomerates that hold dozens, if not hundreds, of titles. These are likely to follow a single guideline with regards to the GDPR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> There could be a browser extension which opens these pages via US proxies when blocked.

</comment><comment><USER44> I can access them and I'm in the EU...

By not available what do you mean?

<comment><USER45> Same. I clicked 5 of them at random and only 2 was blocked for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> i honestly like the fact these sites block access, for me its a sign they don't care about users privacy or are just too lazy to comply. I have several projects that need to comply with the GDPR, i did not feel it to be a big effort to comply.

I currently block sites with annoying pop ups or show failure to comply.

</comment><comment><USER42> Where can we submit pull requests? Plenty of crappy websites missing that do show up in search engine results.

</comment><comment><USER47> Random two I tried loaded for me. I'm in Switzerland, though. Maybe it makes a difference?

<comment><USER48> Well, for one thing, Switzerland isn't in the EU.

<comment><USER13> It's in the EEA ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area)), so GDPR still applies.

<comment><USER14> It's not in the EEA and your own wiki link shows that.

Switzerland is not under GDPR however, unfortunately many American sites assume EU = Europe. This is understandable because so many EU supporters insist on using the word "Europe" when what they actually mean is EU, in order to create this exact impression (and to confer on the EU the sense that it's as large and stable as a continent).

<comment><USER13> To-may-to, to-mah-to. They're in EFTA.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Free_Trade_Associatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Free_Trade_Association)

> They adopt almost all EU legislation related to the single market, except > laws on agriculture and fisheries.

[https://blog.kpmg.ch/eu-data-protection-regulation-also- conc...](https://blog.kpmg.ch/eu-data-protection-regulation-also-concerns- switzerland/)

> When the Swiss Federal Council has engaged the Federal Department of Justice > and Police to draft a revised DPA, which is expected by end of August 2016, > it was the decision of the Swiss Federal Council to draft the revision in > due consideration of the EU data protection regulation. The Swiss Federal > Council also outlined, that it is economically important for Switzerland to > be recognized as a country with an appropriate data protection level for the > EU. Hence, the revised DPA is likely to be influenced by GDPR's principles > and will likely include largely analogical rules and provisions. According > to the envisaged timeline, the revised DPA should be enacted around the same > period as the GDPR, which is beginning of 2018.

Switzerland is for most intents and purposes in the EU, minus a delay of several years of applying the EU acquis (EU body of laws concerning countries part of the single market).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> List of websites with despicable privacy practices

FTFY

</comment><comment><USER50> Good riddance.

</comment><comment><USER51> By the way, some of them are not accessible from Russia. :) But Russia is not in EU/GDPR. <sic>

</comment><comment><USER52> The number I am more interested in is how many websites don't comply with the GDPR but don't block EU residents from viewing. One website I use basically said "We're too small matter, nobody will care if we don't comply" and I imagine there are many other websites like that.</comment>


$10k Programming Challenge Issued by Vistaprint - <AUTHOR> http://lifeinvistaprint.com/technology/tech-challenge-2014/ <comment><USER2> huh? a "we need a better binpack solution" competition?

<comment><USER3> makes sense to me, they pay out 10k, they receive a solution that can save millions of dollars

<comment><USER4> They also get free advertising in the tech world and a list of great engineer that could be hired.

For $10k it seems like a pretty good deal for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everyone who enters will be carpet bombed with "incredible savings" on crappy business cards and other low quality swag until the end of time. Score!</comment>


Reddit clone in Bash/git in 14 seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/axl4u/reddit_clone_in_bashgit_in_14_seconds/

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry fellow hackers, just couldn't hold myself back. :-)</comment>


Almost half of tech workers worry about losing their jobs because of ageism - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconbeat.com/2017/10/19/survey-almost-half-of-tech-workers-worry-about-losing-their-jobs-because-of-ageism/ <comment><USER2> Employers can afford to be ageist when they can employ from a virtually unlimited international market. But of course the "talent isn't just there" and we need more H1Bs.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm moving into my 50s and have never had any issues yet with ageism, but I work in the mid-west.

A lot of guys and gals my age aren't helping themselves by letting their skills go stale and to continually skill up with skills relevant to the current environment.

One thing I've seen with peers my age is that they will get laid off due to their skills being out of date or maybe just stuck in a loop of doing the same things day in and day out.

IMO, if you are afraid of aging out or ageism start working a development plan every single remaining year of your life to remain relevant. Also, view your work as a career, not job. IMO, you can lose a job, but not a career.

</comment><comment><USER4> They should be. It's really happening.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have seen this happen to a lot of people that worked the same job for many years in the tech field. I'm sure ageism exists, but a lot of it is about how fast your skills become outdated.

I've always rode the bleeding edge of web tech for the fun of it. But if I don't make it into management track in another five years I'm moving to systems programming. There, I can learn my craft once and spend the rest of my career without recycling my skills every few years.

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://www.ycombinator.com/faq/#q42](http://www.ycombinator.com/faq/#q42)

<comment><USER7> This comment provides very little value by not having content.

Are you supporting low age founders, attempting to contradict it?

Additionally what does the age of a founder have to do with people losing their jobs as they age? Maybe you're answering it, but again it's not clear to me at all from your comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm 25 and got turned down by a start-up for being too old.

<comment><USER9> Did they put that in writing?

<comment><USER10> They could -- it's only illegal if you're over 40.</comment></comment></comment>


Half of US adults say dating has gotten harder in the last 10 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/08/20/nearly-half-of-u-s-adults-say-dating-has-gotten-harder-for-most-people-in-the-last-10-years/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty much coincidental with the rise of online dating. Who could have guessed that trusting the adtech industry with your love life was a bad idea?

<comment><USER3> Yet another instance of blaming societal ills on tech, instead of the supposedly freedom/agency loving _users_.

Read Houellebecq or any dating advice forum, for arguments on how excess _choice_ enabled by apps makes dating less egalitarian and ruins it for the "weaker" section.

<comment><USER2> I am not blaming _tech_ \- I doubt dating has become harder when everyone got mobile phones -, I am blaming _the adtech industry_ which is well-known for shady practices, dark patterns, and other UX/algorithmic shenanigans designed to maximize engagement on their apps, regardless of whether the app users derive personal happiness from it. It's not controversial, even on HN where half the demographics is on adtech jobs, to remind people that the goal of dating apps is to keep you on them, and if you find a fulfilling relationship, you won't stay on the apps, so they are incentivized to make sure you _don 't_ find a fulfilling relationship. Hence the headline: dating has become harder.

As for Houellebecq, his books are mostly about how gen X dudes feel empty inside - the crude prose and extremely plain writing style make for an interesting couple of books but there's very little beyond it. He also somehow makes the argument that men would be somehow _less_ frustrated in places where people have less agency in their dating choices, which is an interesting, if unproved assertion - it would be nice if any citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or Algeria, or Pakistan on HN could chime in and say if they agree with it.

<comment><USER4> Your first comment was too short to get your idea across and easy to misinterpret. Now that you have clarified your stance it's much easier to understand your argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could they have all aged by 10 years?

</comment><comment><USER6> Side rant

Reducing sexual encounters to normalizing consent forms is pretty ridiculous. A few creeps ruined it for all of us

I am a man and if a woman asked me to sign something prior to sex I would leave

<comment><USER7> Sure signing forms might kill the vibe but the move towards enthusiastic consent and actually asking 'What do you want to do?' is great imo.

<comment><USER8> Lol is it like ordering a sandwich - avacado Cheese and bacon are extra cost but mayo and mustard are complimentary

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have half of US adults got experience dating now and ten years ago? Seems doubtful?

<comment><USER10> Why?

<comment><USER9> For a start, half of US adults are married, so aren't dating anyone at the moment. So that by itself seems to prove it right off the bat.

But beyond that, half of US adults are over 38, so likely many of these aren't dating even if they aren't married.

So seems obvious that fewer than half of US adults are dating at all, and obviously the only a proportion of that group will have also been dating ten years ago, as they won't be that old, or will have been previously married.

So how can half of all adults have an informed opinion on this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Online dating give the illusion of endless choice

</comment><comment><USER12> Some men are joining the MGTOW movement. I'm sure that has some effect.

</comment><comment><USER13> Half of US adults are women.

Men, after aging for the last 10 years: "No, it hasn't gotten harder."

Women, after aging for the last 10 years: "Yes, it has gotten harder."

<comment><USER14> > single-and-looking men and women report equal levels of dissatisfaction with > their dating lives and the ease of finding people to date

The article is not long. Please don't make unfounded claims that are directly refuted by the article we're supposed to be discussing.

<comment><USER13> I carefully read it, determining that my claim was not directly refuted. The text you quoted is suggestive of that, but look at the actual numbers.</comment></comment></comment>


We've invented waterfall - <AUTHOR> http://epicenterconsulting.com/method <comment><USER4> Here's what I would like to see from a consulting company for once. Don't interview the stake holders of the company, they don't use the software like their employees do. They have a high level overview based on feedback from their employees. When you interview them, you're getting second hand information that will likely be missing key points that they forgot to mention or just simply think is obvious and doesn't require mentioning.

So here's what you should do. Over the shoulder review of a representative employee of each department. HR, AP, AR etc. Actively watch and understand the processes they go through. FOR AN ENTIRE 8 HOUR SHIFT.

No, seriously.

Now, you've got a good idea of how its done current.

Then do the stake holder interview to find out what they want to do differently.

Then plan, develop and deploy your software.

I seriously don't get why despite there being a recognized need for understanding the problem scope which everyone one will invest hours in meetings and conference calls talking about, no one actually invests any (significant) time doing, or reviewing the actual process. It's the fastest most efficient way to understand the problem. It would totally diminish months of back and forth "here's what you asked for" "no, that's not what I asked for" development review process that almost _always_ occurs with consultant projects.

/rant

<comment><USER5> Let me tell you why you don't see this happening more often.

I did this on a project a few years back. I replaced a paper workflow process that was taking up two people each in three departments with a web-based workflow that increased visibility, dropped turn-around time from days to minutes, increased accountability and accuracy and trimmed those 16 person hours of processing down to 1-2 per department.

Everyone who directly interacted with the new system loved it. Numerous edge cases that would have been lost in high-level review were caught and integrated from day 1 due to my actually watching people do the job for a day or two per department. The solution has been rock solid (minor maintenance only) for five years.

And I almost lost the job.

The people who sign the checks were furious. The balance of political power between departments were thrown for a loop. One head in particular treated the thing as a near-existential threat. His entire concept of his job revolved around being the authoritative interface for retrieving and maintaining pieces of data that were no longer exclusively under his control. Another flipped out because middle management saw the results as cause to reduce his headcount and budget, and thus importance.

These two departments fought for months, refusing to contribute their shares of budget that were pledged toward modernizing this system.

On a technical and practical level, it was the single best experience I've ever had as a consultant. On a personal and economic level, is was one of the worst. It was some of the hardest money I've ever tried to collect. It was some of the most time and energy I've put into the political and 'sales' side of a job (the part I treat as a necessary evil, but very much evil). The corporation has made out like a bandit in the long run. But I paid the price.

It's simply too easy and financially rewarding to allow a client's political nonsense to screw up every stage of a project. I have less stress, the people who pay me are happier and I bill far more hours.

As with most software, internally developed software included, you don't see better projects more often because the incentives are horribly perverted and stacked against it.

<comment><USER6> There is process called Contextual Design. Part of it talks about treating the tacit knowledge of a workplace like a very necessary requirement for your software. So that means including the _culture_ of the workplace in your reqs.

It sounds dumb at first but it makes perfect sense. What you did at that place was to apply a bandaid to a fracture where it really should have been a cast. But you didn't know it was a fracture because you didn't look past the swelling to the root cause of the pain. This is nothing new, consultants have been loathed for this very reason for a long time now.

That was me telling you how to do your job. If you wanna know more, google it. If ya got offended, have a nice day!

<comment><USER7> Interesting point until the twatty comment at the end.

<comment><USER8> I just love how much sound advice we discard because of our feelings towards someone/something.

Ever read Stuart Sutherland's Irrationality?

<comment><USER9> I agree with the sentiment, but how can you know to trust someone's advice if they're acting in a way that's obviously very socially stupid? (I'm not huge on excessive politeness, but I think it's quite stupid to be aggressive for no reason. What purpose does that serve? Why should I trust the advice of a person that acts that way?)

<comment><USER10> I assume by treating their argument in a rational non-emotional way...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Few seem to realize that source code is but the most thorough "blueprint" of the product. That compilation - to wit construction of the actual product from the blueprint - is nigh unto instant and free means everyone overlooks it as the actual construction process, akin to actually building a bridge from detailed plans (except you get one shot at building a bridge, while you can recompile every few minutes). Ergo, "analysis", at greatest detail, _is_ coding. That we iterate so much comes from the continued newness of the technology and the relative complexity of the products; bridges are well- understood and iterating the design of one is minimal.

To the site's point (or missing thereof), the notion of "don't start coding until the analysis is complete" is a gross misunderstanding that coding IS analysis.

The inanity of reinventing the waterfall model is obvious to HN readers.

<comment><USER12> It sounds like you're saying something similar to this: [http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/reeves_design.h...](http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/reeves_design.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Meh. This is hardly the most ridiculous thing I have seen on the internet. I am sure this methodology will work sometimes for some clients. Heck, I bet a lot of startups here on HackerNews are using similar methodologies - <USER2> without the early usability testing. If nothing else, at least this company are differentiating themselves. Haven't seen a lot of other consultancies get posted up here on HackerNews.

Every project is different. We should try and not be too dogmatic about these things.

<comment><USER12> This was posted on HN so that we can make fun of it, and I think we're right to do so. You can be as wishy washy as you like about different situations requiring different processes, but have you ever seen somebody successfully isolate software engineering from coding and put them in sequence?

<comment><USER14> Waterfall is actually considered the very best model for software development, when the requirements are known up front in excruciating detail.

An _average_ project experience around 25% change in requirements. Hence waterfall is highly unsuited for the majority of projects, since it does not handle requirement changes well.

However, in a few areas such as aeroplane control software, space shuttle software and similar, waterfall is indeed the optimal development process.

Different projects DO require different development processes. That's not wishy washy, it's the reality of software engineering.

Mindlessly applying your favourite development process to all projects, be it waterfall, scrum, evolutionary prototyping, spiral development or what have you, will very likely result in failure, if the process does not fit the project.

<comment><USER15> "Waterfall" was defined in a paper describing how NOT to do software development. The problem was that very few people at the time had any process at all with software so seeing this they gave it a try.

<comment><USER14> The paper you and "gujk" are referring to, I believe must be Winston Royce's paper.

It's wrong to say that the paper is a description of how _not_ to do software development. Rather, it's suggestions for a set of improvements to the process, while retaining the sequential nature. In the paper, Royce considers waterfall to be a good process, but with flaws which result in high risks. These flaws is what he addresses in his paper.

His suggested approach is derived from pure waterfall, and is very much similar. It falls into the "modified waterfall" category of life cycle models, together with a group of other similarly waterfall-derived models.

<comment><USER16> He said, and I'm quoting, that the pure waterfall method is a good concept "but is risky and invites failure." He described how it leads to massive cost and schedule overruns. It was definitely a process that he did not think you should use.

His proposed solutions that you call "modified waterfall" are modified _quite a bit_. (As an aside, he never used the word "waterfall.")

The paper is here: [http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/wate...](http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/waterfall.pdf)

<comment><USER14> I have read the paper multiple times over the years.

The quote "is risky and invites failure" is correct. However, another quote, even on the very same page:

"However, I believe the illustrated approach to be fundamentally sound. The remainder of this discussion presents five additional features that must be added to this basic approach to eliminate most of the development risks."

These suggestions are to 1) Add an additional (preliminary) design phase, after requirement analysis. 2) Much greater documentation. 3) Perform the entire sequential process twice (not x amount of iterations, just two times). 4) Additional activities and documentation during testing phase. 5) Involving the customer.

His diagrams require close scrutiny, as on first inspection it seems the process is markedly different, when it is really not. It is still an entirely sequential waterfall process, just with an extra phase (preliminary design).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Actually, this is refreshingly honest compared to the "agile" methodologies. Having worked with plenty of supposedly agile consultants I can tell you they basically do waterfall it's just their cascading stupidity starts with code and then wanders around writing unit tests until the client is tapped out. At least this is doing some actual user interface design and usability testing.

Then again, I doubt these guys do this since it's all marketing.

<comment><USER15> Really? Claiming to have invented the most well know and also the worst software development process is honest? It's a bold-faced lie written only to get clients.

One can only imagine what actually happens in communication once they have a client. If the marketing is a complete lie, then I can't imagine the company itself can be trusted.

<comment><USER17> >Claiming to have invented the most well know and also the worst software development process is honest?

They claim to have developed the best process, just like all the agile con artists out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Am I in the minority who uses both agile and waterfall methods?

The long and the short of it for me is this: There's two ways to solve problems. Agile helps immensely when you are figuring out how the solution would work. When you're solving a problem that might be solved in manual processes largely, Waterfall can help a lot, but not alone.

For unknown solutions, agile gives you a lot of iterative benefits.

For known solutions, waterfall with some agile feedback loops gives you incremental benefits.

What's the difference?

Sometimes, in a business, they have a great process already. It's in paper, or multiple systems, but they have their way of doing things that works. I believe it's called their competitive advantage.

Othertimes, a business is facing a problem for the first time, and wonder "how do we solve this". In this case, doing a big upfront design is a waste of time, starting small and staying flexible is most important.

For me, this mindset of doing both is critical, not one _or_ the other at all times. You simply miss out on too much if you don't use agile, and you run around too much if you ignore waterfall when a solution exists.

Waterfall works where it's a known process, like building a house. You can have agile loops in there when building a house and improve it as you go.

When you're trying to build a new building that's never been built before, an iterative, feedback-centric approach like Agile is a lot more beneficial.

If a company focuses on taking something like Waterfall and introducing feedback loops (agile) like this epicenter thing, is it not a bit clearer than the black-box voodoo out there? Maybe it's just me, but I applaud anyone trying to make software easier. It just shouldn't be a dogmatic, or religious dismissal.

0.02.

</comment><comment><USER19> Its really not quite as bad as it looks at first glance.

Step 2: "we design an interactive prototype" allows them to get the feedback that really makes more agile methods work. You don't need to constantly iterate during development if you iterate properly during prototyping. I certainly wouldn't advocate this method but its not a vanilla waterfall method.

<comment><USER20> If one reads the paper most commonly cited as the source of the waterfall methodology he or she will discover that the author of the paper recommends doing something akin to prototyping before designing the real program. The paper is actually a critique of the process now commonly referred to as waterfall and the author does not recommend using the process as first presented in the critique.

<comment><USER21> Royce's paper can be found here:

[http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/wate...](http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/waterfall.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sadly, I don't think this is a joke. Method as described: "Analysis We don't write a line of code until we know your business as well as the people who keep it running every day. " Method as implemented: "Analysis We never write any code"

</comment><comment><USER23> This doesn't look like a joke. Dangerous. Anyone who has done this methodology runs screaming for an exit after a failed project or two.

<comment><USER24> Not so fast. This isn't something new or strange at all. We are doing this for years with great success.

But maybe you know this method as these steps (which are the same): Concept -> Functional design -> Graphic design -> Building -> Testing -> Deploy.

Nothing strange about that. Take a look at the IBM Rational Unified Process <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Rational_Unified_Process>

I just think this is a hyped site trying to sell there book.

<comment><USER25> Or better yet: don't ever look at anything from Rational (now IBM).

Unless you are a consulting company the size of IBM. With the same business model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Waterfall isn't bad in all circumstances. Lockheed Martin isn't iterating a jet into the side of a mountain 100 times until they get it right.

<comment><USER21> Perhaps not.

But they're probably running a computer model of the jet (and its systems) under various simulated scenarios.

They're also probably building some full-scale mock-ups to test in wind tunnels.

And they also have test pilots to fly things which sometimes never make it into wide scale production.

So, I'd argue that there is some iteration going on there.

<comment><USER27> Which is also what the company is claiming to do. I.e. we will create a prototype and walk you through it before we start coding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I sent their Chief Architect a linkedin message to make him aware of this thread. Hopefully we'll hear from him.

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe they aren't aware of Waterfall. Pete Campbell on Mad Men had a great quote; "You know what? I have good ideas. In fact, I used to carry around a notebook and a pen, just to keep track. Direct marketing? I thought of that. It turned out it already existed, but I arrived at it independently."

<comment><USER30> If they are such experts, how would they not be aware of waterfall? Either they are idiots who have no clue about software development methodology, or they are just lying (either to their customers or themselves). It's not like it's hard to find a reference to waterfall if you bother to look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Unlike a traditional development process, ours establishes all the system's requirements before a line of code is written."

This is freakin' unbelievable. _ROFL_

<comment><USER32> Might explain why the "Code" part of their process seems so lacking in substantial details!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The site looks nice. Whether or not their methods are the best, I've worked for quite a few folks who would find their presentation very appealing. Because they've been burned by companies who wrote code for them that didn't meet their expectations, they're excited about a company that will actually listen to their expectations thoroughly before the process begins.

</comment><comment><USER34> We've invented the mobile un-friendly site! We are industry pioneers!

How are we missing the -

Paperback + Consultation for $250 Complete 45 page book (45 pages?) Ships within 2 days 1 hour 1-on-1 consultation Expert implementation advice

They sound like experts to me. 37signals book Rework only has 288 pages $11. Page count doesn't mean everything, but clearly 37sig is stuffed with fluff. All you need is 45 to change to the game up.

I'm a non-profit and small business owner, I'm sold!

</comment><comment> buff-a In an ideal world, Waterfall will lead to a worse product than an iterative one. We don't live in the real world, and I expect these guys deal with clients who regularly fall into the -from-hell[1] category. I would bet that many people posting here aren't running consultancies and don't have experience with such clients (or any clients).

In such a situation, it is in fact entirely rational to develop a lightweight, low cost UI that a non-technical person can commit to, i.e. sign a contract. The developer can then go off and implement it with a very clear legal case if the client then chooses not to pay because "its not what we wanted".

Its not what I do, and I know that many here take a more involved approach to their clients, but its undeniable that it is a successful business model, and in some cases I believe it can produce _some_ result where otherwise there might be none. Equally I'm sure it produces results that are ultimately not used, but where the company still gets paid.

[1] <http://clientsfromhell.net/>

</comment><comment><USER35> If you read the book's PDF ([http://epicenterconsulting.com/book_source/Obsessively- Thoro...](http://epicenterconsulting.com/book_source/Obsessively-Thorough- Software-Design-Preview.pdf)) you'll also note that:

"Hal was the first to introduce the concept of building an interactive demo as a key part of the software development process"

Really? I can't imagine that's true

<comment><USER36> Check out Hal's website with JavaScript disabled:

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

What's going on there? Hal Helms home helplessly hacked? Or just poor page design?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Did you notice how men in suits are left and right but not in the middle?

<comment><USER38> I wondered who the man with the clipboard was, micro-managing every step of the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Doesn't look as terrible as "true" waterfall, but I think this is just marketing fluff to win people over by telling them about your rock-solid practices.

If they have an arrow that looped from Beta Testing back into Interface Design/Usability/Engineering/Coding, you'd probably end up with what most shops do anyways, speaking in broad strokes.

</comment><comment><USER40> My founding business partner Ryan McMinn spoke at an open source conference in Toronto a few years ago. In the talk he explained how and why we built Unspace the way that we did.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIQIZ0NIkxk>

He talks extensively about the need to work directly with the end users of the system, instead of the management. The realization that specifications are usually nothing more than mutually assured destruction.

Pretty much the only thing that's changed in five years is that the scale of our company has grown, and now we do indeed have contracts with our clients to protect us from bad things.

Anyhow, I highly recommend the video if you're looking for an in-the-trenches perspective.

</comment><comment><USER41> I actually know Clark Valberg, the founder of Epicenter Consulting, and did some work with him a few years back; he's a great guy. You guys can criticize him all you want, but he actually cares.

We should direct our efforts towards the bloodsuckers, not the people giving blood.

<comment><USER42> We you say "he cares" I presume you mean "cares about slick marketing to clueless clients". Because Epicenter obviously doesn't give a damn about either the truth or software engineering.

I'm sorry, but the people who claim the one true method is keeping the programmers locked in the basement without real world input or feedback _are_ the bloodsuckers.

<comment><USER41> No, I mean that he cares about giving his clients a great product. He's not just in it to soak money out of people; he actually cares about the outcome, much like an artist cares about their paintings.

And look, I'm not Clark. I don't speak for Clark. This is just the experience I had working with him and getting to know him for a year and a half.

<comment><USER43> I can ditto this. I've known Clark for years. He is an honorable person, as is his coworker Ben Nadel. Fault them if you will for 'inventing' something that already existed, but this was - at worst - an innocent mistake. How many people here have reached out to them to try to help correct their mistake?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I love how each coder has a giant clock right in front of their face.

</comment><comment><USER45> How do you do usability testing without the real software having been written?

I never realized just how insane waterfall is until I saw this diagram. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER46> I've got a bone to pick with people that have a bone to pick with waterfall, especially when they don't realize that whatever competing newer workflow they swear by is actually waterfall in disguise.

Let's just ignore for a second that a waterfall process sent men to the moon and continues to build skyscrapers, with each project having _a set of stakeholders the size of a small city_ and all while adjusting to a shifting landscape of nearly infinite variables. Especially the first few moon missions, when no one had done it before. It's why all of the original astronauts were test pilots - not just because of their bravado but also their experience in co-designing unfinished machines along with the engineers to bring it to a workable finished state. The roots of the modern HCI and human factors industries comes from analyzing and optimizing the usability of cockpits. The astronauts even had their own usability jokes about a model of training jet that was so user-unfriendly that the emergency instructions for ejection were printed on the side of the canopy, which is nuts because step one was to blow the canopy (along with the rest of the instructions) up off into the sky.

These weren't dumb monkeys strapped to a giant tin can and blown into space, and neither were the engineers that sent them there. With waterfall.

So you use agile/xp/scrum/whatever and swear software is _way_ different than building bridges. I've worked on and with several of those teams, with varying levels of strictness, and guess what? It's still basically waterfall. But instead of PMs owning the process and spec'ing things out in advance, engineers own the process and the spec is written and re-written during development on a bunch of index cards with sharpies like a grade school art project (or the digital equivalent), designers get barely a week ahead of each sprint or run around like caffeinated janitors cleaning up after each sprint, and documentation gets written last or not at all.

And before anyone does ad hominem attacks on whether my teams were doing agile correctly, this is the same dynamic I witnessed at the most famous agile and rails development shop you can think of. You probably only need one guess to figure out who it is.

What matters then, if it's not process? It's called _expertise_ \- a broad collection of various techniques and the context-specific awareness of when to use each one. Instead of blindly following a process and trying to hammer it into every situation, take a tools-instead-of-rules approach to using whatever techniques are appropriate for each project.

For anyone interested in this kind of flexible thinking instead of linear GTD productivity tools that leave you stuck in robot mode, there's an excellent book called Pragmatic Thinking And Learning that goes into a lot more detail and pulls inspiration from how the nursing industry overhauled their education system in the 70's.

[http://pragprog.com/book/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and- learni...](http://pragprog.com/book/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-learning)

I know, from the book publisher that sells the pickaxe Rails book _and_ stuff on agile. Oh the irony!

<comment><USER47> I'm totally not getting why you're saying agile approaches are waterfall in disguise.

The essential difference to me is in length of feedback loops. Microsoft releases a new OS every few years; some place like Etsy releases new code many times a day. A developer or product manager at Etsy can know within a few hours whether some change is really a good idea; Microsoft not so much.

You seem to be saying that because there are the same sorts of people involved, and because one has a giant spec document while another has a stack of index cards that might be called a spec, then they're the same. Which isn't making any sense to me.

<comment><USER46> Nope, it has nothing to do with the commonalities in people or roles, sorry I wasn't clear. Let me try again.

It's a knock on all rigid processes and dogma, not agile in particular. I trimmed the rant down by taking out the sections that rip into UX firms, with their Big Upfront Design and cocky rockstar designer personas, but it could just as easily been about them. I only cut it because I thought the parallels were obvious with the diagram on the Epic Consulting website.

What I'm saying is that if waterfall means people are grouped together by specialty - programmers with programmers, designers with designers - <USER3> group is run by one dominant process suited to only one of the specializations, and each group tends to work in different stages, then both traditional UX design and agile development are run as de facto waterfall teams, whether by explicit hierarchies or simple stakeholder buy-in.

Consider this - what's the difference between:

1) a PM spec'ing things out in advance and basically telling everybody what to do and in which order.

2) an agile shop coding things up on the fly and telling the designers to run after them to clean up the visuals without making major changes, so they might as well be building to a spec.

3) a UX firm mapping out how the product works before handing off to peon engineers that can't make major changes and might as well be building to a spec.

To end on a positive note, there is one other solution to expertise, by the way. It's grouping teams by product, not role, and figuring out an interdisciplinary way to work together, rather than running the entire team by the methodology of one specialty. That way you're picking good ideas from across different processes and adapting to the company culture to boot. For example, TypeKit does daily stand ups at 10:05am every day and that's an aspect of agile that they've liked enough to use for the whole company, but I'd be surprised if their designers were checking their art assets into Pivotal Tracker or the programmers were writing up UX journey maps of each user persona.

Steve Jobs always liked to describe Apple as the biggest startup he knew and a more accurate description would be that it's a collection of startups, with each one focused on a single product. Seems to work pretty well for them.

EDIT: fixed a few formatting errors.

<comment><USER47> Yep! I get it now. Thanks for clarifying.

I agree that "agile" teams that group people by specialty are clueless. Done right, the teams are, as you suggest, cross-functional. That was the original intent for the people who coined the term Agile, but much of that has fallen by the wayside as larger organizations decided Agile was fashionable and consultants rushed in to sell them 3% dilutions of XP or Scrum.

I've written more about how that happened here, and a lot of the early Agile types I've talked to agree: [http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second- chasm-and-how...](http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second-chasm-and- how-we-fell-in/)

<comment><USER46> That's a great writeup! I know exactly how you feel except my disappointment was doubled, because I was a hybrid developer/designer for years before completing the switch from developer to designer and I lost the faith in both agile and UX at about the same time.

I wish I had the courage to write up my disappointment like you did, but I'm happy that I've moved on to a meta-process of borrowing from different techniques as needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Hilarious.

But all jokes aside, have you ever tried to explain to a self-described 'technical-enough-to-be-dangerous' corporate middle manager what an iterative and incremental process is?

</comment><comment><USER49> I thought the most bothersome thing on the entire page was the claim they put "business over code". Without working software you don't have a business.

</comment><comment><USER50> The sad part is, that most of their clients are probably buying into this and think what an excellent and innovative company they hired.

</comment><comment><USER51> Ok, I just invented a new methodology, I dub thee: "Agilefall"

First we meet and discuss the goals for the sprint. Then I design (usually some class diagrams on a sheet of paper or board), then I code and test it (unit tests of course) and finally check it in. Each 4 to 6 week sprint is internally structured as a waterfall. :)

</comment><comment><USER52> Is this a joke?

<comment><USER53> I honestly thought it was, but crawling the rest of the site it doesn't have an ounce of parody about it. I think these guys really think this is a new methodology...

<comment><USER53> For example, link to their "Chief Software Architect" linkedin profile: <http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=1613224>

<comment><USER54> Dude has a six year gap in his resume where he goes from being a web designer to chief architect? That might explain why he thinks waterfall is new.

<comment><USER55> Can we see a link to your LinkedIn profile?

<comment><USER54> Too lazy to figure out how to get a shareable link from LinkedIn, but feel free to look up Charles Randall who is currently at Ubisoft Toronto.

Not that I know what this proves, other than Linked In's shitty use of URLs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Some of these comments are missing the point. Their methodology isn't about how to build but on what to build. It's a problem many industries face. When the client is a non-technical person (the norm in making web apps) building the UI first makes good sense.

<comment> johnx123-up I agree. Most of the comments are overlooked. I suspect that the OP is competitor to the said company?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Epicenter is sending out some annoyed tweets while defending the AgileUX movement. They claim their process is nothing like waterfall as it focuses on iterative UX prototyping.

<https://twitter.com/epicenternyc>

</comment><comment><USER58> What I love best is this testimonial praising the book:

> Helms and Valberg lay out an innovative methodology that finally delivers on > the promise of Agile Development.

</comment><comment><USER59> The problem with both waterfall and agile is that we are missing the definition of "the Humble process" to develop software.

Unfortunately humility does not sell so well.

</comment><comment><USER60> I love the fact that the software engineers basically deliver UML diagrams to the coders. I'd shoot myself if that were all there was to my job.

</comment><comment><USER61> Thank you @JoshSusser for finding this diamond in the rough. What would we do without waterfall development!?

</comment><comment><USER62> I've invented "rock".

I don't talk to anyone.

I look at the crap you're using and make something new.

I give you the URL.

Figure it out on your own.

Invoice due on receipt.

</comment><comment><USER63> Would this help design a process to Balance the US gov budget?

</comment><comment><USER64> "We've invented cigarettes", come buy a pack... everything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger...</comment>


Which has more sales: a single long checkout form or a multi-step one? - <AUTHOR> https://capitalandgrowth.org/questions/2055/which-has-a-higher-conversion-rate-a-single-long-e.html <comment><USER2> I removed all registration and login components during checkout. Most people have an auto complete setup on their browser now and most of my sales are first time customers. Granted I have a small subset of return customers that ask for it, but I know from years past introducing registration opens up a whole set of barriers to the checkout process. Order confirmation pages are essentially a page they can return to at any point in the future without logging in.

I also removed the coupon code box completely from checkout. I used to get bombarded with requests for discount codes and people not getting their codes to work. In reality the way I used codes were in email promotions. I switched to instant redeeming clickable codes in emails and removed it all the boxes on the site. I also know it was a significant factor in checkout flow because I could google "mybrand.com " into google and google instantly starting adding in "mybrand.com coupon codes" "mybrand.com promo codes". People see the coupon code box and immediately head to Google to search for codes.

PayPal Express checkout is still a huge choice for customers. They can choose express checkout or standard checkout flow. Many people use it (30-40%). It removes the need to enter their address as well.

<comment><USER3> _People see the coupon code box and immediately head to Google to search for codes._

If your system would still benefit from a discount code and you're not selling low margin products, it's a good idea to "seed" those discount sites with permanent codes for very minor discounts (even just 4%, say). People feel like they've had a win even when the discount is minor.

<comment><USER2> I've experimented with this. It is difficult to measure if I'm giving away money unnecessarily or completing a sale I'd otherwise miss. Good point though.

<comment><USER4> It depends on your industry and customer base.

When I was working with one that was primarily female and cost-conscious, that trick worked great. The fact that a code existed helped drive organic referrals (the code alone was enough to route traffic to me instead of a competitor).

Don't make it permanent or you definitely are giving money away to Googling cheapskates. Change it often-- people are excited by novelty anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting for me is the amount of abandonment on for the "unexpected shipping costs" issue. I actually have this issue right now. I'm trying to buy cheesemaking cultures and because I'm half way around the world form most of the places that sell this stuff shipping can be more expensive than the thing I'm buying. It really bugs me that shipping calculation is usually _last_ in the multi-page cart layouts. I definitely abandon because I'm not willing to enter all of that detail before I know how much I'm going to be spending.

<comment><USER6> That's one of the first thing I look for on an website: the shipping policy and amount.

If it's not present (or too well hidden) I usually try another website.

I too hate the unpleasant surprise of high shipping costs

<comment><USER7> My number one complaint of shopify is that they require email first to see shipping, which means I'll get a "what's wrong? Forgot your cart?" Email later that day.

<comment><USER8> You want your own domain. I don't know how I'd cope with the mess the internet is without an infinite supply of disposable email addresses.

The next question I always get is about how annoying it is to go make an email address in the middle of checking out is. I personally always have a shell open - I'm a command line person. So I just run a script, `nem spammystore- com190621`, done. (And then `dem spammystorewhatever` when they start annoying me.)

I've fantasized about writing a browser plugin that scans the page for entered email addresses and shells out to create them on submit, but (a) I'm not even sure that's entirely possible anymore, and (b) wiring my browser up to something that runs sudo on remote machines seems like maybe not the best idea I've ever had.

<comment><USER9> I have a catch-all inbox on my domain so there's no setup. I can just enter <whatever_i_want>@example.com and I'll get the email in the catch-all inbox.

<comment><USER8> I did that for a while, but stopped probably a decade ago. A spam robot educated me about my mistake when it sent me many, many gigs of crap, using a dictionary of some sort to guess usernames. Surprise! they all "worked".

<comment><USER10> No need for the dictionary: I regularly get spam to addresses that are just random sequences of letters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They don't mention the winning one: A single short checkout. Purchase funnels are filled with account creations, newsletter sign-ups and other crap. I don't want an account, I want to give you money.

<comment><USER12> I always figured, why not leave that crap for an after-checkout form? Z% discount if you sign up, or whatever. It's worth something, after all.

<comment><USER13> On the after-checkout form I am already confronted with choosing which 3 of the discount vouchers of "partner" shops I want to pick up. But HURRY only 10 minutes remaining to claim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I remember doing A/B testing on this for a multinational multi-billion dollar company's website. The learning was to never surprise the customer. Show the sum total before they even get to the checkout process. And stay true to it.

What proved conclusively positive was adding a discount to the checkout process (a time-limited one did not prove successful). Just to make the customer feel that they're getting a good deal.

Once the customer was on the checkout form we'd display: "This product is almost out of stock," and when they for some reason come back to the product page or listing, we'd show: "43 people are looking at this product."

Which created a sense of urgency. This strategy wasn't legal in all countries, because it was 100% fake, but it worked wonders where it could be displayed.

Customer satisfaction skyrocketed, so... evil as it might be, it only created happy people.

<comment><USER15> >43 people are looking at this product.

Hotels.com and a couple other websites were doing that to me the other day. I had a feeling it was bogus.

You did have me at discount. I shop the same brands that I like and know. If I'm offered a discount I'll buy 90% of the time. If it's a brand I haven't heard of or bought previously it's much lower.

<comment><USER16> "I had a feeling it was bogus."

I've always ignored those sorts of things entirely, on the theory that I don't believe the entities in question are capable or willing to put the engineering effort to provide a number accurate to two significant digits at scale.

Also the numbers are often implausibly large. If there's "one" of an item left and "43 people" are "currently looking" at it, then the problem isn't that I need to hurry up and buy it, the problem is that you've utterly failed at one of your basic tasks, stocking correctly for demand. In general, businesses are actually _really good_ at that; it's literally life and death for them, so the idea that every single thing on their site is just on the verge of selling out unless you get it now is just absurd.

I've been trying to train myself to ignore "discounts" too, unless I can prove to myself that there really is a difference between the "real" price and the "discounted" price and there is some specific reason that I'm getting the latter. Or to put it another way, "customers in general" don't get discounts. You can get a discount if you are "a price discriminating customer willing to hunt for coupon codes", or "a friend of the proprietor", or something specific, but you are never just _handed_ a discount. Those discounts are discounts... they're just the price.

<comment><USER17> Yes, this boils down to just writing good copy or creating a sales page / environment that's honest.

Everything you do from start to finish in the sales process needs to be believable. Like in a sales page, if you admit that you screwed up and ordered 100,000 sunglasses instead of 10,000 and now you want to get rid of them at whole sale prices, suddenly if you sell $39 glasses for $14.99 it's believable that this really happened and it's a good deal, so the discount makes sense.

Now of course that could all be a lie and they cost $5 and they really wanted to sell them for $15 so they cooked up a total bullshit story but something like that is a lot more believable than trying to throw up a bunch of high pressure sales tactics based on scarcity. Picking out those lies really comes down to your reputation too, which is why sites that offer 24/7 discounts have no credibility.

Basically, just be honest and it's hard to go wrong.

<comment><USER18> Stores have gotten into trouble for not selling items at their list price. Kohls always has half their items on sale and half regular price - they know you won't buy the regular price item when the sale item is nearly identical. They rotate items in and out of sale every week just so they can prove in court there actually is a half off sales.

Depends on your country, but in the US you can't claim something has a regular price if the regular price is never charged for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is exactly the kind of post I come to HN to read. Thank you for posting this as it attempts to answer an interesting question I didn't even think to ask.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear this. Apparently, unfortunately, for many HN'ers, this is exactly the kind of post they don't want to see! There has been a movement clamoring for a pure tech HN without any marketing business-y type of stuff.

Only articles about the finer points of segment tuning and tweaking x86 assembly registers! Or all the reasons why classes can never really approach the elegance and terseness of classic K&R C structs. Or how Common Lisp and Scheme have this and that and the other but only that and no more :)

The former are really life skills that make even the most hardcore techies more effective human beings!

<comment><USER20> > Glad to hear this. Apparently, unfortunately, for many HN'ers, this is > exactly the kind of post they don't want to see! There has been a movement > clamoring for a pure tech HN without any marketing business-y type of stuff.

Or ... perhaps many HN folks just hate the concept of hacking the human brain to generate more sales.

<comment><USER19> True, but it seems knowing how I'm being hacked helps me avoid it. There are several comments in this thread that share devious methods for increasing conversion. Now I know some new things to look out for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I coming from school where single long checkout form suppose to be the best idea. Back quite a few years ago I sold onepagecheckout.com domain for a chunk of cash.

Just 2 days ago I purchased very expensive laptop via multi page checkout process which I really appreciated.

The key was to remind customer what he is buying, all options, warranty, shipping etc - make sure the complicated configuration is delivered in clear way.

Gigantic one page thing would be less welcome

<comment><USER22> I find from my AB testing is that mobile users are much sensitive to changes to checkout.

A big one page checkout could work on desktop machines since they have the real estate to work with. This can be a poor experience on mobile as you need lots of scrolling to access all the fields and options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would love to hear someone justify how multi-stage forms are ever good for the user. It seems to me like an honest site tells you all the information you're going to need to enter up-front, in one form so you can decide whether or not to fill out the form with complete knowledge of what you're going to be filling out, that is, informed consent.

Multistep forms trick the user whether it's intended or not: you're either collecting a little bit of information knowing the user might not complete the process, or you're pressuring the user into completing a process they wouldn't otherwise complete because they've already sunk so much time into it, when they wouldn't have ever embarked if they had known from the beginning all you were going to ask for.

There's a segment of HN that argues that market incentives will always lead to good results for consumers, but here's a clear example where people clearly only care about maximizing conversion and collecting the most data, with no concern for the consumer.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hardly any details about the experiment design or why we should believe the results should generalise outside of whatever they're doing on that website. I don't see the point of reading results if there is no reason to believe the experiment and methodology were sound.

</comment><comment><USER25> I like this.

I wonder how the 'create an account' problem is best solved. Some sites (like Bandcamp) explicitly don't require accounts, and just associate purchases with e-mail addresses until you create an account. Other sites sometimes will give you an account with _just_ an e-mail address, then allow either resetting password or 'magic links' (a la Slack) that log you in from an e-mail. I think for simplicity, it's probably best to abstract e-mails from accounts, so from a data model PoV, which thing do you ideally associate a purchase with, a phantom account or email addresses directly?

Side note: I worry that skipping the cart review mostly loses customers because they begin having second thoughts. While adding this step may reduce conversion, it may be more ethical to include it as it may improve user's decision making.

<comment><USER26> > Side note: I worry that skipping the cart review mostly loses customers > because they begin having second thoughts. While adding this step may reduce > conversion, it may be more ethical to include it as it may improve user's > decision making.

I've personally abandoned plans to purchase because it wasn't clear if I would get a chance to review at the end. Its especially important if its unclear what the final price will be, after applying shipping and such, since I live outside the US. Anecdotally, I'm much more likely to buy if its very clearly stated that there is a review step.

I know that more impatient people might be the opposite way around, though.

<comment><USER27> I don't personally care about an intermediate cart page. Just as long as there's at least a cart page or purchase page which shows the item name/title, item photo, and item price for each item, and the grand total (including taxes and shipping).

Most checkout pages I've seen have that information, so even if the confirm and pay steps are on the same page, I don't mind since it's still the same information anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Warning: bad statistics abound in the article. If you can't spot them, let me explain a bit why statistics do not work that way.

A _lot_ of data is necessary to call a result if the effect is relatively small. If not enough samples are taken, there will still be a "formal" result, but the level of certainty of it will be low. Of course, depending on how accessible that page is, it might take a very long time to achieve significance.

How much certainty do we need in the result? P-values are generally considered not a great measure, but they are standard, and they are what they are using (if I understand correctly). This can give you an idea of the numbers we'd like to see for that value: [https://xkcd.com/1478/](https://xkcd.com/1478/)

In other words, only the first A/B test has conclusive results: accordion is worse than wizard by 30% with 0.01 p-value. Of course, you can see that there's a significant result _because the effect is large_. Note that this gives us an idea of the _resolution_ of their test system (i.e., how many As and Bs they have and how much effect they can see with their test). So we know they see an effect of about 30% change.

Now: all the other results are wrongly reported. The next four are mistakenly reported as "no statistically significant difference in performance." This is a false statement. Having high p-values means that any effect is below the resolution achievable with those numbers. In other words, the correct statement would be either "the experiment was inconclusive" or "the effect, if any, is less than 30% change". This is quite different from claiming "no change."

The last result has 28%, and it has a p-value of 0.05. I would _not_ accept it at face value. Such a p-value means the result has 1-in-20 chances of being due to a random fluctuation of data. There are six such experiments just in the post, so it's not unthinkable that the effect could be a fluke. More info on this here: [https://www.xkcd.com/882/](https://www.xkcd.com/882/)

All in all, the only result found is that _in their case_ the wizard was much more effective than the accordion. The rest is not supported by the facts presented and furthermore any generalization of the result outside their particular case is unwarranted.

<comment><USER29> > The next four are mistakenly reported as "no statistically significant > difference in performance." This is a false statement. Having high p-values > means that any effect is below the resolution achievable with those numbers.

No...that's what "no statistically significant difference" _means_.

In these kinds of statistical tests, literally all you _can_ look for is a statistically significant difference. Either you find one, or you don't. Once you know that you've found one, you can say what size it is—a difference of 0.1% is still plenty statistically significant if your p-value is <0.001. It's just not very _practically_ significant.

There are a lot of different reasons you might not find a statistically significant difference, and simply knowing the p-values cannot tell you which ones are true here. That's why a lot of journals (at least in Psychology, the field I have some knowledge about) have been pushing for reporting additional tests and measures.

<comment><USER28> Sure, but "forgetting" that the significance level is a 30% effect is at the least misleading. A real 25% increase or decrease would not have been statistically significant.

<comment><USER29> I'm sorry; I don't follow. Could you clarify?

<comment><USER28> If the author's setup can only statistically determine effects of 30% or higher, saying "there's no significant change" means "there's no significant change of 30% or more".

Nothing can be said of changes of less than 30%, and that's a hell of a lot of uncertainty. One of the variants could give you 25% more results and yet, those experiments would not see such a result.

As such, it is clear that the experiment is simply not thorough enough to imply the two alternatives are equivalent. Not in the least.

<comment><USER29> Where do you get that the setup can only determine effects of 30% or higher? I didn't see anything about that in the article, though I admit I only skimmed it.

Simply saying that the statistically significant effect they found was 30% has absolutely no bearing on how large an effect they can detect...

<comment><USER28> I can't know what is the resolution but neither does anyone else, which is part of the problem. They only show 2 results at 30% (p 0.01) and 25% (p 0.05) which makes me suspect they have a very low resolution. I can't prove it, but I don't need to. They claim results without providing convincing evidence, not me.

<comment><USER29> Those numbers, by themselves, tell you nothing whatsoever about the resolution of the measures they're using. They tell you solely that for group A, they got a result of 30% with 99% confidence and for group B, they got a result of 25% with 95% confidence. That doesn't mean that they're approaching the limits of their measurable resolution—it most likely means that group B is smaller, or has more variability in it.

If group B had a result of 10% with the same confidence, that would also not indicate that their measures have a resolution of 10%—those things literally have nothing to do with each other. You are reading far too much into the very limited data presented—not merely more than you can prove, more than there can be any possible logical support for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find that most digital products that you buy require creating an account because typically the account you create is how you gain access to what you're buying.

I'm designing a checkout page right now where I planned to do a small 1 pager with an email address + minimal billing info required to make a transaction while minimizing CC fraud. Knowing the email (aka. account) before the checkout actually happens is essential because it would allow you to prevent someone from buying the same item twice. If you don't collect an email address pre-transaction, how would you do that for a digital item?

</comment><comment><USER30> It seems the site died due to HN's hug of death. You can still read the text here[0] but images are not loading.

\---

[0]: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190621031723/https://capitalan...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190621031723/https://capitalandgrowth.org/questions/2055/which- has-a-higher-conversion-rate-a-single-long-e.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> The site seems dead. Cached version here: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190621120031/https://capitalan...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190621120031/https://capitalandgrowth.org/questions/2055/which- has-a-higher-conversion-rate-a-single-long-e.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> Split tests are not generalizable. This "research" means almost nothing for your checkout process.

</comment><comment><USER33> How about selling something useful and worrying less about the cart design?

<comment><USER34> Yes, let's build something useful and not worry about how they are going to give us money for it.

<comment><USER33> All these online store studies sound like they honestly believe that design will improve sales more than the appeaal of the merchandise ;)

<comment><USER35> You're being downvoted but you do raise a valid point. I've been willing to fight with some pretty awful checkouts in the past to buy something I really want, or to buy _from someone_ I really want to do business with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> If there's no statistical difference between them, then the multi-step is the better choice. Capture their email early and follow up about cart abandonment.

<comment><USER37> Do something creepy like that to someone in the EU and you could well get a big fine!

EDIT: this is a clear GDPR violation - you can't store and use user data without a __lawful __basis. Marketing requires consent. Consent has to be given freely.

EDIT: even if you worm out of the fine people hate getting unsolicited email like this so some non zero percentage of potential customers will avoid your business in the future.

<comment><USER38> > Marketing requires consent. Consent has to be given freely.

That would exclude Remarketing services from GDPR-compliance, wouldn't it?

> even if you worm out of the fine people hate getting unsolicited email like > this so some non zero percentage of potential customers will avoid your > business in the future.

I'm not so sure about this. It may well be true for you and me and our peers, but I don't believe that companies send out annoying "newsletters" and marketing emails just to drive away business, annoy consumers and wake up regulators. They do work for a certain audience.

<comment><USER39> > They do work for a certain audience.

As an old school mail order pro once said "there is no such thing as junk mail, just a poorly targeted list". If McLaren (to name one of my favorite companies and website) started spamming me with the latest low-down on their hypercars I'd be in heaven... Paul Graham Essays, Jay Abraham ebooks; same deal--pure bliss.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Primer on Bézier Curves (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/ <comment><USER2> Wow, every time I see this site I am blown away by how well it is done.

I am going to put a couple of book titles out there in case somebody doesn't know about them and could benefit:

1.) "The NURBS book" \-- Anybody got this one on their bookshelf? (authors Les Piegl and Wayne Tiller) I can't recommend it enough, if you are into rolling your own traditional B-spline lib with expert help!

2.) Then, for a gentle intro to multiresolution (especially because it makes for a good jumping off point from traditional B-splines) there is "Wavelet's for Computer Graphics" by Eric Stollnitz, Tony DeRose, and David Salesin. Very good for a "matrix transform / projection-prolongation picture of splines, and related entities.

Anyway, these helped me on my (continuing) Spline/CAD journey. Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER3> This really shouldn't need the (2013) suffix - it's constantly getting updated, and the most recent update was from only a few days ago. (it's probably about 50 pages longer than it was back in 2013, if not more)

<comment><USER4> I didn't know it was under active development, but I use this reference a lot. Thank you!

What are you adding these days?

You know what's on my wish list? A simplified uniform B-spline treatment specific to cubic & quadratic curves. Everywhere I look online, the B-spline explanations are crazy long and complicated with recursive summation diagrams and math about knots and non-uniformity and N-degree evaluation all at once. An open uniform cubic B-spline, though, is really simple, and that's probably all I'd ever use in CG in practice. But it's difficult to distill from what's online right now. Converting a cubic B-spline to Bezier, for example, is a simple 4x4 matrix, and recently I needed it and went looking... it took a while to find.

<comment><USER3> That does sound useful to talk about, could I convince you to hit up the issue tracker to for that as a section request?

I just added a weirdly missing short section on plain rational beziers (not b-splines, just single beziers), and I'd like to still add a section on turning hand drawn paths into polybeziers.

<comment><USER5> >I just added a weirdly missing short section on plain rational beziers

That's great! Thanks for writing and maintaining this document over the years!

Coincidentally, I was referencing the section on offsetting [0] just last week and read the following,

>There is a small class of polynomials where the square root is also a polynomial, but they're utterly useless to us: any polynomial with unweighted binomial coefficients has a square root that is also a polynomial. ...We can already create offset curves for points, we call them circles, and they have much simpler functions than Bézier curves.

and thought, something like: "That's correct because Bézier curves in the context of this document, SVG, HTML canvas and fonts means polynomial (i.e non-rational) Bézier curves."

But if you're now considering rational Bézier curves as in-scope for the document that changes things doesn't it ? E.g Circles represented as rational Bézier quadratics, and Pythagorean Hodographs [1].

[0] [https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/#offsetting](https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/#offsetting)

[1] [http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/G1HermiteInterpolationWith...](http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/G1HermiteInterpolationWithPythagoreanHodographCubicCurves/)

<comment><USER3> Rational Beziers are no longer polynomials, though. If the basis value used for the division was a constant, then it would be, but instead it's a function of t.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I open sourced Bezie ([https://github.com/jperler/bezie](https://github.com/jperler/bezie)), a library I wrote three years ago for MIDI automation curves. It includes some good examples of how to interpolate cubic and quadratic bezier curves given drag points on the curves. I used Pomax's bezier write ups as a starting point, which really helped out a lot (thanks Pomax!). If anyone is interested, take a look in `bezie/app/utils`, specifically the `getControl` methods that allow you to derive control points.

<comment><USER3> Always cool to see what people end up making!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The bezier.js library associated with this is great

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I had to update it for the most recent update (it had no concept of rational bezier curves) so hopefully I can update its API page soon with a short bit on how to specify curve ratios and have that be available to everyone, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Previous discussion (2017): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14191577](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14191577)

<comment><USER9> People keep wanting to read stories about bezier curves. It's the law of spline demand.

<comment><USER10> Splines is short for "sparkling lines", which is the correct term when they don't come from the Bézier region of France

<comment> pure-awesome Beautiful! This joke has a very "XKCD" quality to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I enjoyed reading it, but I wouldn't call it a "primer", since I can hardly think of what else there is to know about Bezier curves! It's a rather comprehensive exposition.

Here's a primer on Bezier curves if you had to program them in 30 minutes. You won't need more than this:

1\. Bezier curves are just taking weighted averages, repeatedly. A weighted average of two points, A and B, is a linear combination _P(t) = (1-t)A + tB_. As _t_ goes from 0 to 1 with constant speed, _P(t)_ goes from A to B with constant speed.

A weighted average like this gives you _one_ point out of _two_. Now, say you have _four_ points, in order: A1, A2, A3, A4. For a number _t_ between 0 and 1, take weighted averages of consecutive points: A1 and A2, A2 and A3, A3 and A4. That gives you a sequence _three_ points. Repeat this procedure until you have only one point left. That's your Bezier curve defined by A1..A4 at time t. This is called a 3rd degree curve, and generalizes to sequences of any length (you can figure out how!).

2\. The above tells you how to draw this with a computer. Just pick, say, 100 values of _t_ between 0 and 1, and connect the dots with straight lines. That is, you converted a curve into a poly-line, consisting of straight segments. This can be used to compute intersections (just see if any one segment intersects any other), compute tangents (extend any segment to get a tangent at that point), normals (in 2D: rotate a segment by 90 degrees clockwise).

3\. Most importantly, _why_ you would want to do something like this: Bezier curves are easy for machines to trace, and for humans to understand. Here are some properties of a (cubic) Bezier curve given by points A1, A2, A3, A4:

-it starts at A1, and ends at A4

-it is tangent to segments A1A2 and A3A4 at endpoints

-by moving A2 and A3, it is easy to make a C- and S- shaped curve.

Beyond that, things aren't as intuitive. This is why _all_ graphics software gives you 3rd degree Bezier curves as a tool: it's flexible enough while easy enough.

In practice, Bezier curves came to replace the French Curve[1]. The irony is that there is little French about the French curve (nobody even knows why they're called that!), but Bezier curves are French through and trough: the two key people behind them, Paul de Casteljau and Pierre Bezier, have spent their entire lives in France, and came up with the curves for manufacturing at Citroen and Renault. Arguably, Bezier curves are the true French curves.

4\. Bonus. In Photoshop/Illustrator/etc: the UI for Bezier curves is this: click and drag to define A1 and A2 (A1 is is where you click, A2 is where you release). Consecutive click-drag-releases define three points: e.g. A3 on mouse down, A4 on mouse up, and A5 such that A4 is the midpoint of A3 and A5. The curve you get is a union of cubic Beziers defined by A1..A4, A4..A7, A7..A10, etc.

The curve is smooth because the UI forces the tangents to be aligned (unless you do a single click without dragging: this makes 2 tangents of length 0, i.e. a vertex).

When drawing curves using this UI, you really are drawing _tangents_ to the curve you want to get: draw _— to get an S, roughly.

That's it folks! For way, way more - read the article :) (Which is an interactive book, at this point).

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_curve)

<comment><USER12> > 2\. The above tells you how to draw this with a computer. Just pick, say, > 100 values of t between 0 and 1, and connect the dots with straight lines.

This is the obvious algorithm, but it has the problem that curvature is not uniform with respect to t - sometimes a straight line is a good approximation to a segment but sometimes it isn't. So instead you can draw a curve with a function that draws a straight line when that's good enough, and splits the curve in two then recurses on each half otherwise.

<comment><USER11> Good point! It's hard to make a call as to what to do include in a 5-minute overview, but your point fits in one sentence, and is easy to understand. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What a great contribution.

</comment><comment><USER14> Back in highschool I wrote a script using sagemath that could draw bezier curves when given the points and handles. It was really cool how simple the math behind it was.

</comment><comment><USER15> The expression of a Bezier curve involves t^i (in the summation). Both t and i acquire values of 0 at some point, so you get a 0^0 in the summation, which is undefined.

<comment><USER3> But also understood to be 1 here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very readable. A fantastic contribution.

<comment><USER3> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Measure Anything, Measure Everything - <AUTHOR> http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/02/15/measure-anything-measure-everything/ <comment><USER2> We were just talking about implementing something extremely similar for my company. So great to see Node's progress make everyone's lives better.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you aren't measuring something, how do you know when it's broken?

It's my opinion that you can never have too many stats.</comment>


Show HN: how our team at Google releases libraries - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/bcoe/how-my-team-releases-libraries-23el <comment><USER2> Meta: show HN is for people showing off projects and is treated a bit differently by the algorithm. You are encouraged to repost with the normal title.</comment>