Today you, tomorrow me  - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/elal2/have_you_ever_picked_up_a_hitchhiker/c18z0z2 <comment><USER3> Funny, as I read this post I thought, "Not hacker news." Then I read all the comments (42 as of this writing) and still thought, "Not hacker news."

Then I realized, "Perfect hacker news." Let me explain...

I try to approach my business just as the Mexicans in the story did. Not to make money, not to change the world, not to build cool stuff (well maybe just a little), but to genuinely help people. For a business person, this thinking is difficult and counter-intuitive.

Why do I do this? Because of my first mentor (and co-founder).

He was relentless in everything he did. I learned to stay up all night, keep calling on customers, and stay with tasks until we got somewhere with them. I remember many nights with thousands of invoices spread across the carpet, watching the graveyard shift run their machines, or scanning reports on-line, looking for clues. He wouldn't quit and the reason was always the same, "These people need help and we can help them. So we do. Don't worry about how hard it is or how much time we spend, it'll all work out in the end."

Sometimes I think that this is the attitude very successful people must have. It's too easy to give up when it's for ourselves, but much harder when we know that someone else needs us to get the thing done.

The Mexicans in the story reminded me of my mentor. A great lesson for anyone in business (or not). Thank you, OP.

<comment><USER4> I appreciate the sentiment, but "it'll all work out in the end" seems like a warning sign of wishful (poor) thinking.

<comment><USER3> Who am I going to listen to, the man who taught me more than I ever could ever imagine (and is now retired and giving away his millions) or some stranger who thinks he knows better?

I often share thoughts like this in the OP's spirit of "pass it on" so that it may benefit someone else.

Take it or leave it. But doubting it, commenting on what it "seems", or downvoting it only makes you look like a fool.

[Sorry for the negative tone, but this is a perfect example of the one thing about hn that really bugs me: people talking when they should be listening.]

<comment><USER4> Of course you're free to listen to whomever you like; I wish you would take my comment more as an alternative viewpoint than as an insult. I do appreciate the sentiment of your story, that people should help others, but personally I think the attitude "it'll all work out in the end" ruins more lives than it saves.

<comment><USER5> "it'll all work out" is an effective tool to deal with irrational or counterproductive anxiety (irrational== fear of flying, fear of social settings, etc., counterproductive==survival situations, situations with no other reasonable extrication than through, i.e. you need to swim to safety, you're stuck in a cave, you have a huge presentation to do tomorrow). It's entirely a bad idea to use in lieu of rational decisionmaking (i.e. "Ill enter into this horrible business deal, itll all work out!").

If you have generally negligible amounts of anxiety in life, the attitude is probably useless. For those of us that have tons, the judicious usage of this attitude is definitely a lifesaver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you live in the UK you will surely know Dave Gorman [1]. He did a TV show called American Unchained [2] where he attempted to get across America without using chain stores. In that series I saw an America that I recognise from the Americans I know and have worked with (I've never visited America). Americans are some of the most friendly, optimistic and outgoing people in the known universe. In the show he experienced many Americans going out of their way to help him, many for little or no financial gain and many lamented the decline of offline, small time, service with a smile, mom and pop America.

If I may be so bold as to offer some advice to Americans: Be careful not to lose this side of your culture, sure you've got the biggest army, the biggest economy and more burger stores than any country would ever need but what has been your real strength for the last 100 years has been your welcoming, trusting and honest nature.

good luck.

[1] - <http://www.davegorman.com/> [2] - <http://www.davegorman.com/projects_america_unchained.html>

<comment><USER7> On. The complete opposite end of the spectrum check out Top Gear's show where they visited the American South. Obviously it was meant to provoke but it does bring up a few good points. I'd link you but I'm on my phone.

<comment><USER8> Yea, and I also learned how to become a doctor by watching House and ER, fish for Alaskan crab by watching Deadliest Catch, and learned all about how to have relationships by closely studying Friends and Entourage!

So no, that episode of Top Gear does not bring up any "good points" to draw legitimate conclusions about the American South. All it shows is that if you insult the average person enough, they'll get pissed off enough to deliver a few minutes of good footage. Meanwhile, back here in reality (not in TV land) -- if you visited down South you'd find that, given a broad sampling, Southerners are far kinder and warmer than us from New England. (p.s. I'm not from the South).

It gives me great concern that we as Americans assume so much truth from our 30 minute highlight reels.

<comment><USER9> Weird. I had a two friends get spat on their first day in the South, and it went downhill from there. They were an interracial couple. The local sheriff asked them when they planned on leaving, as if they were the problem. This was 2010, not 1950.

I'm sure the South is more welcoming for some people, but I wouldn't assume it to be the case for everybody. And I'm sure it depends on what areas of the south you go to (its still one of the most segregated areas in the US).

<comment><USER10> You ever been with someone with a strong southern accent in the north? I heard them called "hick" and "redneck" any number of times, and a black man said (direct quote) "I ain't helping no racist" when he was asked (politely) for directions.

<comment><USER11> Reminds me of the time I was visiting South Carolina from Montreal. I was in a gas station waiting to pay when I overheard two guys talking in the thickest southern accents imaginable. I couldn't hear what they were saying and I chuckled to myself at how much they sounded like dumb hicks.

It was only when they got closer did I hear that they were talking about nuclear physics.

It was a good reminder about judging books by covers, etc.

<comment><USER12> I was in a shop when I heard the lilting strains of a woman with an Irish accent at the next table over.

Being quite partial to an Irish accent, I decided to eavesdrop and sate my desire.

The first words I heard her say once I 'tuned in' - and I swear this is true - were "potato potato potato". I had to leave the shop quite quickly for fear of losing my composure :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For some reason, half way through this great story I suddenly found myself contrasting it with that less great story that did the rounds last July 4: the Sun-Times' Terry Savage's "There is no free lemonade" (original article expired probably with good reason, but here's a copy I found: <http://bit.ly/eqIMNe>) wherein author recounts her horror at finding a lemonade stand manned by two girls giving away their product for free. Despite attempts to instill an entrepreneurial spirit into the fledgling tycoons - <USER2> that day of all days - they still refuse to charge for it, whereupon she drives away disgusted and thirsty.

Is $15 for a gas can unreasonable when there is quite clearly a market? In theory a $20 labour and parts charge handed to the poor Mexican family should make both parties happy and the economy stronger (barring somewhat awkward questions of tax, right to work etc). In practice the removal of money from a human transaction created an intangible wealth, a bonding of strangers and a transfer of values that has travelled far beyond that stretch of tarmac.

<comment><USER14> Thank you for intimating that wealth should be measured in more than currency. Too often discussions of the economy focus only on measures like GDP, roughly, how much money is flying around. Clearly, measuring our wealth and the health of the economy involves much more than this.

What terrifies me is that, where capitilism has all but become the religion, people act like being selfish is somehow doing the right thing.

<comment><USER15> We should remember that the core measurement of economics is utility, not money. Money's just an easy way to measure utility for most means, but not by any means complete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the first times I stopped to help what appeared to be a person with a flat, I got a good long (loud) lecture about how just because she was a woman, she wasn't helpless... how men should just ... if we'd all just... call the police if I don't ...

Honestly, I couldn't tell by sight at 5 feet is she was male or female. To say this response caught me by surprise is an understatement. Over the long haul, this experience did not deter me from stopping to help, I'm just a little more careful not to go bounding up like an over-excited Labrador puppy with my offers of assistance.

This is probably good advice from a security standpoint as well. Stop to help, but be situationally aware.

<comment><USER17> I am European as well, and although I completely agree that American people are the best part of the American experience (INS officials being an exceptions, because they are not humans, of course), there was this one exception the first week I came first time in my life to Boston. I was rushing to the revolving door and I saw a lady obviously some kind of professional who was rushing to the same doors. I have opened the door and hold it for her. I couldn't believe when I was slapped on my face and told she didn't need a help from a sexist pig. Fortunately, I have not gave up on being courteous and I have never repeated this experience, but this was surely weird situation.

Greetings over the Pond!

<comment><USER18> You should have filed assault charges on the bitch. She doesn't need help from a sexist pig, yet she slaps you across the face because it's okay for a woman to slap a man.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The original Spanish expression is "Hoy por ti, mañana por mi", and I find the Golden Rule to be the closest direct application of the concept in a single expression. Interestingly, the three suggested translations of the expression I found were: "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours", "What goes around, comes around", and "Tit for tat" ([http://www.proz.com/kudoz/spanish_to_english/idioms_maxims_s...](http://www.proz.com/kudoz/spanish_to_english/idioms_maxims_sayings/855832-hoy_por_ti_ma%C3%B1ana_por_mi.html)). However, none of those seem to accurately convey the sentiment/ideal expressed in the original phrase.

<comment><USER20> There's a similar phrase that doesn't occur in your set of translations but accurately conveys the meaning: "Pay it forward".

<comment><USER21> [Pay it forward] was rediscovered and described by Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Benjamin Webb dated April 22, 1784:

 _I do not pretend to give such a Sum; I only lend it to you. When you [...] meet with another honest Man in similar Distress, you must pay me by lending this Sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the Debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with another opportunity. I hope it may thus go thro' many hands, before it meets with a Knave that will stop its Progress._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Last time I picked up a hitchhiker I was driving across the buttes of Platte County, Wyoming. I noticed a middle aged guy standing outside of his conversion van with what looked like an empty plastic gas can in his hand. But what made me stop was the NY tags (I'm from the northeast US). In that part of Wyoming, if you see a gas station anywhere you'd better stop and fill up if you're at half a tank or less.

Sure enough, I stop to take him to where I knew the nearest station was, and in perfect Brooklynese he says, "Am I _evah_ glad to see you!"

</comment><comment><USER23> When I was a teenager I worked at a local ski area parking cars. Every weekend I drove my '92 Blazer to the ski hill at 5am, clocked in, parked cars in the freezing cold, then drove a shuttle bus until the afternoon shift came on. I also worked on Christmas and New Year's Day since those tend to be big ski days.

One Christmas, I got off work around 2pm. I was driving home to open presents, have dinner, etc. when I came across a delivery van on the side of the road, hopelessly spinning its wheels in about 2 feet of heavy snow. It looked as if they had pulled over to get out of the way or check their map and gotten stuck.

I turned around and pulled up across the highway from them. "Need some help?" I shouted. The dirty, scruffy driver who was digging at the wheels with his foot glared at me, "No dammit! We're fine."

I got back in my car and sat and watched for a minute. He jumped in the van and took some anger out on the gas pedal, digging himself even deeper in. I calmly turned around, backed my car up to about 15 feet in front of his van, stepped out, and stood there with a tow-strap in my hand watching him.

Finally, he got out, gruffly accepted the other end of the strap from me, and hooked it up to his van. I got in my Blazer, set it to 4-Lo and pulled him out of the snow and onto the pavement in about 2 seconds flat.

"Thanks," he said. "No problem. Merry Christmas." I said as I rolled the snatch strap back up. Then he reached into his pocket, "Here. Take this.

"No way," I said. "It's Christmas. Get home safe."

"Absolutely not! It's wear and tear on your vehicle." he growled. Figuring I had probably hurt this guy's pride enough already, I just took what was in his hand, wished him a Merry Christmas again, and got back in my car. I threw the money on the seat next to me: three one-dollar bills.

I smiled and laughed all the way home. I made sure to drop those three dollar bills into the next donation box I saw.

<comment><USER24> We need more people like you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I always stop to help someone, partially because I know I've sure needed it myself a few times.

Even simple things can make a person's day. I saw a guy pushing a low cc 1970's Honda motorcycle down the sidewalk in Cambridge a few months ago. I pulled over immediately and ran up to him- it looked like he was having a bad day. He said it wouldn't start after he stalled it. I'd been riding and repairing vintage Honda's myself for about a year at that point, so I was hopeful. Turns out it was just that his battery was dead and he didn't know how to use the kickstarter as he'd just started riding it. A few quick kicks and he was ready to go and now knew how to start his bike without a good battery.

When I have a non-motorcycle I try to always keep a fairly large set of tools in the trunk and anything else I could think to use. My pickup was stocked like a fallout/survival shelter. My motorcycles obviously carry less, but I always try to keep a first aid kit and a blowout kit to get someone to safety.

</comment><comment><USER26> Hitchhiking is unfortunately one of those things that has been completely ruined by a few bad apples. It only takes 0.00001% of the hitchhikers being serial killers or rapists to sour everyone against picking up hitchikers. So few people hitchike because it is a hassle, and now it increases the likelyhood that the person hitchiking is a derelict, a postive feedback loop of national proportions.

</comment><comment><USER27> And as for slighly offtopic comment: have you noticed how hard it is to get various road side assistance companies to actually do something useful?

Few weeks ago slightly aged tire on my not so slightly aged car not only went flat but essentially disappeared on highway (in ~150 kph). As my car was recently broken into I did't have a spare (you are not required to carry spare in Czech Republic, but you are legally required to have some way of fixing broken tires, be it spare, quick-fix-kit or road side assistance subscription). So I correctly assumed that quick-fix kit is of no use when you don't have an actual tire to fix and tried to call road side assistance company which I subscribe to that even offers help with tire replacement. They told me that they cannot do anything else than tow my car somewhere (for like an 2 EUR per km, times two, which was out of question assuming I was like 400km from home) and fix the tire in 2 business days, so I canceled my subscription and went to get spare tire by some other means. In the end my girlfriend called her parents who got me spare tire by some networking and fast talking means in like half an hour, you simply got to like rural areas and people who are always ready to help.

<comment><USER28> I remember when we were in Mongolia, an axis of our minibus broke. At three in the morning. Our local guides drove around in the second car, and managed to acquire one in an hour or so; the third guy they asked had an axis to spare. The first two guys had some pointers for finding the third guy in the first place.

And Mongolia has almost no population density.

<comment><USER29> That's just how it works out there, their ability to fix anything astounded me. We had a new exhaust bracket made by our chef, using an old tire, his kitchen knife, and the poker out of the fire!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interestingly, Richard Feynman tells a similar story. I think it's in "Why do you care what other people think?" It also is depicted in Matthew Broderick's movie "Infinity."

He was working at Los Alamos on the bomb, and his wife was dying in hospital. He had to make long drives back and forth to visit his wife. He picks up a hitchhiker, a Mexican who speaks no English. IIRC, he rambles on and tells the Mexican about his wife and how she's sick, but the Mexican can't understand him. The crux of the story is when they break down. They aren't in danger of dying in the desert, they get to a gas station, where the Mexican suddenly speaks perfect English and explains how to fix the car so that Feynman can make it to see his wife in time.

Feynman deduces that the Mexican pretending to speak no English is actually a spy, and asks him why he broke his cover. The Mexican answers that he was moved by Richard's plight.

<comment><USER31> _My wife, Arlene, was ill with tuberculosis--very ill indeed. It looked as if something might happen at any minute, so I arranged ahead of time with a friend of mine in the dormitory to borrow his car in an emergency so I could get to Albuquerque quickly. His name was Klaus Fuchs. He was the spy, and he used his automobile to take the atomic secrets away from Los Alamos down to Santa Fe. But nobody knew that.

The emergency arrived. I borrowed Fuchs's car and picked up a couple of hitchhikers, in case something happened with the car on the way to Albuquerque. Sure enough, just as we were driving into Santa Fe, we got a flat tire. The two guys helped me change the tire, and just as we were leaving Santa Fe, another tire went flat. We pushed the car into a nearby gas station.

The gas station guy was repairing somebody else's car, and it was going to take a while before he could help us. I didn't even think to say anything, but the two hitchhikers went over to the gas station man and told him the situation. Soon we had a new tire (but no spare--tires were hard to get during the war). About thirty miles outside Albuquerque a third tire went flat, so I left the car on the road and we hitchhiked the rest of the way. I phoned a garage to go out and get the car while I went to the hospital to see my wife.

Arlene died a few hours after I got there._

<comment><USER30> Man, that's not even close to how I remembered the story. I need to watch Infinity again, maybe that version took liberties with the original by merging the hitchhikers with Fuchs, and that's what I remembered...

<comment><USER32> I like your version better.

<comment><USER30> I'm going to watch "Infinity" again over the holidays. If that's the version, the credit goes to Matthew Broderick's mom. She wrote the script.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Earlier this year, I lived in Guatemala studying Spanish, climbing volcanos and motorcycling around. At one point a friend of mine visited me from Mexico for a couple weeks and we decided we'd rent a car and drive around the country. It's much safer than the busses, and way more freedom.

We were going between villages in the mountains that were -- to say the least -- rural. Most of them probably had thirty or forty people living in them and the only access was a single-lane dirt road barely passable by even four-wheel drive vehicles. The workers in the villages rely on hitchhiking or private "taxis" to get to work. Those with trucks generally pick up anyone on the side of the road who's going in the same direction and flags them down.

Having been the hiker myself on some similar Guatemalan roads previously, I discovered that it's customary to ask the driver how much you owed them for the trip at the end and then pay them (depending on the length of the trip) maybe 5 or 10 quetzales -- I think at the time that was about $1.00 - $1.20 USD or so.

My friend and I got in the habit of picking up everyone we saw and dropping them off at their location; por gratis. Most of them didn't speak Spanish (this was rural enough that nearly everyone spoke some mayan dialect) so it was always a bit of a silly experiment trying to explain that I didn't them to pay.

I like to think that maybe we made a couple people's days and they were able to put a little more food on their table (or heck, beer in their belly).

More generally, I make a point to pick up hitchhikers when I have time -- which sadly is less and less frequent these days. Even if it's a risky proposal, I've been on the other side of the equation one too many times in my life not to try and return the favor.

</comment><comment><USER34> That story reminded me of my life a while back. Hope you guys don't mind me sharing.

I was in a peculiar situation with regard of my H1-B (this is long time ago) visa. I was not legal to work, but I was legal to stay. I was in this situation for more than a year.

I lost everything, literally. I ran out of savings. No programming shops would take me, not even Chinese restaurants would take me.

Guess who gave me a job? I worked for this mom-and-pop car shop run by Mexican family. I changed air filters, brake pads, electronic window motors until my visa resolved itself. They paid $1 above minimum wage, they feed me lunch (their home-made salsa was delicious) and in return I maintained their Windows PC.

When my visa resolved, the dad just bought a new warehouse as part of expanding his business. It was a great year for both of us.

</comment><comment><USER35> Perhaps my favorite good act to do is to help people push their car when they need it. It's dumb, really, but having grown up in the south, people are just hospitable that way.

It generally doesn't take much to do, it helps traffic, and at least for me, it makes me feel good about myself. Besides, it always irks me when I see someone trying to push their car out of traffic and nobody else is helping. Especially considering the traffic implications around here, when somebody in the road makes an already bad situation worse.

I've been late because of it, but to date, I've never had anybody hold it against me that I was late because I helped somebody move a car.

<comment><USER4> Once, my car died near an intersection; as I jumped out to push, two guys appeared out of nowhere alongside me to help push. It took about 15 seconds, and they waved off my thanks and were gone again. It was shocking how unexpectedly helpful they were... I tend to expect no help in a situation like that.

<comment><USER35> Exactly. It's one of those things that is generally interpreted as generous. Being nice to people can often back fire; Complimenting the barista on her earrings might be seen as a come-on. Applauding someone's work ethic is often seen as sarcasm. It's not something to worry about, generally, but I've withheld a generous comment before based on how it might have been perceived.

Helping somebody push a car (so long as you don't ask for payment after, or something) is hard to misinterpret, and has to completely make the recipient's day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> You can see this in action almost every day in New York City. On a crowded subway car, if a pregnant woman or very old person gets on the car it is almost always a Hispanic male who jumps up to offer their seat, even if it means standing up for the rest of a long commute.

As a middle aged person who grew up in Houston, I can remember having these basic values (golden rule/help other people) drilled into me by parents/teachers in the 70's.

Somewhere along the way urban life seems to have washed those values away.

</comment><comment><USER37> In Malaysia, many cases where ppl stopped to help but end up having their cars and money robbed!

<comment><USER38> I don't see why you got downvoted: this just happens, too, and it doesn't make the reddit comment less touching. It's in fact quite related: people exploiting the natural willingness of other people to help, which in turns makes people less helpful with others.

It's a classic even in some occidental countries (either that, or requesting help on malls parking).

This doesn't mean I won't help someone - but I'm definitely careful when I do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've had a very similar experience, its uncanny. I was in my 20s at the time and I was trying to fix a charging problem on this old truck I had. I decided to take it for a test ride to see if the problem is fixed. Of course it isn't and the battery dies while I am in the middle of an intersection. I have jumper cables so I pop the hood and I am standing there holding the cables trying to get someone to stop. I got people flipping me off, honking their horns, etc, no one stops. A Mexican guy stops, family in the car, pops his hood and gives me a jump. I didn't get a chance to talk to him because I had to get the truck out of the road, but I did say thanks. Ever since that incident I have been paying it forward. I've probably helped dozens of people since then who were broke down because that guy chose to help me. It's nice to see there are others out there paying it forward as well.

</comment><comment><USER40> I try to give rides to hitchhikers when it's especially dark and lonely and cold out. I ride a motorcycle, and people usually aren't interested in a ride with no helmet unless it's really dark, lonely and cold.

Used to help people on the side of the road a lot, but a childhood friend was hit by a truck & killed just recently while helping someone change a flat and I almost broke my ankle in the dark another night when I pulled over to help, and couldn't walk right for months. I haven't been pulling over as much since. :(

On a tangent, things like that ankle injury that really remind me how fragile we are. There was a while there I thought I had permanently injured it.

<comment><USER41> That's the problem in a lot of places. The highway I use most often is the 401 in the greater toronto area -- the busiest highway in north america. Stopping on the side of the road is extremely dangerous at the best of times, and walking along it, even worse.

However, I have called 911 on occasion. It always amazes me how few people call in collisions and accidents. On a recent road trip to the US, I was travelling North from Indianapolis to Chicago, when I see a huge cloud of dust appear ahead of me. As I drive towards it, there's a car flipped upside down in the center ditch. 4-5 cars had already stopped, but I stopped as well, as fast as I could, and called 911.

I was the first that called, out of nearly 10 people on scene.

Please, people, don't assume someone else has called 911, ever.

<comment><USER42> People in groups tend to look at each other for signals instead of acting; this is explained in "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Cialdini.

<comment><USER43> For people wanting a link, this is called the bystander effect:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This story is touching. If you want to do something worthwhile today, take a second and call your Senator and tell them to support the dream act. It's a big issue for all immigrants, not just Mexicans.

The vote is most likely this week and every call counts.

[http://reformimmigrationforamerica.org/blog/make-dream-a- rea...](http://reformimmigrationforamerica.org/blog/make-dream-a-reality/)

To tie it back to Hacker News, you'll also be using my company's technology to complete the call.

<comment><USER45> I don't believe the federal government should be bribing illegal immigrants in order to increase its size and scope. We don't need a bigger military.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> When I was a teenager in the 70's I used to hitchhike around town whenever I got tired of waiting for the bus. Hard to imagine today. Invariably the guys (never a woman) who would pick me up had been in military service, and had to hitch a ride into town whenever they got base leave. Sympathy requires understanding, a little wealth can breed ignorance.

<comment><USER47> I still hitch hike when travelling, and a few of my friends do as well. It can be sometimes difficult to catch rides, so it's best done if you're not in a rush. The people you meet, however, are usually stellar. I got picked up by a grandmother, her daugher, and grand-daughter-- who were a fantastically sweet trio. They gave me apples when they dropped me off! Vietnam vets have also been common, as well as Mexican workers. An Indian programmer once drove me 100 miles out of his way (I think he was lonely for conversation, which I was happy to provide).

Hitch hiking has transformed my view of America/Americans and made me really enthusiastic about my country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Back when I was an intern at IBM in upstate NY, I often drove between Boston and NY late at night. There was no cars in sight in the early hours of the night for certain parts of hwy 84 and 684. No cell phones back then either.

I periodically saw people whose cars had broken down on the side of the road, and stopped each and every time to offer help. One time, I drove a woman and her young son to a nearby gas station to make phone calls. Another time, I drove another couple to a nearby town.

It turned out that for one such time, I happened to help the daughter of a researcher who also worked in the same IBM research lab I was working at. The next morning, the father looked me up and took me out to coffee to thank me. That was sweet.

Nowadays, I no longer have to drive late at night, but I still look for the opportunity to help. It has always brought me peace to know that I can get someone out of a jam when needed.

</comment><comment><USER49> If you live in IA, MN, ND etc. (I'm sure other places, but these are the places I've lived), this story won't seem very out of the ordinary.

Once when I was in college, I flew to Arizona for Thanksgiving, then back to ND on a Monday to go to class. When I got back, it was one of the worst snowstorms of the year. It was horrible. The school was closed, the roads _had_ been closed that night, snow seemed to just be materializing out of nowhere; it was the type of storm you only experience when you live in the frozen, frozen north.

Well I hadn't slept more than about an hour on the plane, and driving down a 4 lane sheet of ice with no sleep in a two wheel drive little sporty coupe when the visibility is measured in numbers of feet that are less than 100 is a nearly suicidal idea, so I pulled off to the side of the road.

I pulled up the offramp, then back about 50 feet _down_ on-ramp so that the trucks getting on the freeway wouldn't kill me. I [very, very stupidly] left the car idling for the heater, set my phone for a 15 minute nap, and went to sleep.

Halfway through my nap, I hear _BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM_ on the window, which did more to wake me up than the nap ever could have. It was a girl, probably 17, who had seen me stopped on the side of the road, and wanted to make sure I was okay. A high school aged girl that got out of her car in the freezing freezing cold during a horrible snowstorm to run up to some completely random car on the side of the freeway and make sure that the driver didn't need a ride.

I've lived in Phoenix for about 5 years now. This sort of thing would never, ever happen here. In fact, Phoenix has had the opportunity [on several occasions] to prove me wrong about this, and has failed every single time. One summer, our family had a boat, and we were out having fun on Lake Pleasant. At what was probably the worst possible time, which was when we were near 100s of other boats, the fuel pump gave up on us. Not only did this mean that we were going to be floating towards the other boats (and the rocks, this lake is made of all rock), it meant that we didn't have any cell service (this area of the lake is in a cliff). Our boat, obviously disabled, was floating towards the other boats. Somebody is waving the orange flag we have around to let them know we're in trouble, my sisters and I are all in the water with ski ropes trying to pull the thing to safety and...nobody is helping. People are looking at us like "What the _hell_ are you doing get out of OUR WAY!"

Disgusting.

We eventually got the motor running (limping, really) and made it out of the cove and into the main lake-almost-when the fuel pump died again. This time, we were in a narrow passage between a couple of rock outcroppings. Maybe 50-75 meters wide. Again, orange flag us up, sisters and I are in the water trying to keep the boat from hitting the rocks and...people are flying past us in the cigarette boats giving us the finger because we're in their way.

Disgusting.

I like this, "Today you...tomorrow me". A lot. There was a time when some completely lost kids on their way to a music festival walked past my house as I was unloading some lumber from the jeep. "HEY! Do you know where Kiwanis Park is!?"

"Yeah, about 4 miles south of here."

"What, seriously?"

"Yeah, seriously, are you guys going to earth-dance?"

"Yeah."

"Well come over here and help me unload the rest of this wood and I'll give you a ride."

There was another time when somebody came up to me to ask if I knew the bus schedule...

"Why? Where are you going?"

"Oh, well...North Phoenix." (about a 40 minute drive from where we were)

"Huh, well I'll make you a deal. If you promise to do something nice for somebody tomorrow, I'll give you a ride there. Get in."

The latest trend seems to be "rejection therapy". If this helps people, good, but I _hate_ this. Can we instead please make the next trend "Make somebody's day every day for 30 days therapy"?

<comment><USER50> This sums up why I've had so much culture shock moving from the UK to Phoenix. People don't get it when I say that selfishness is what really hurts me here, not the heat or any of the other factors.

That said, it's all of our fault. Every day, in this place, I feel myself getting a little more like everyone else here. Thanks for reminding me that I need to do better.

<comment><USER49> There are good people in Phoenix, it's just that the jerks are yelling so _so_ loudly that sometimes it can be hard to hear them.

Out of curiosity, do you go to gangplank? Heatsync?

<comment><USER50> Yes, there are, and I've found a bunch of them. I used to go to gangplank alot, but now I only get there about once or twice a month since I went from self-employment to normal employment.

I've not been involved in Heatsync other than to see some of the cool things they do. I was lucky enough to meet a bunch of the founding people on the day they came into Gangplank 2 to start their collaboration, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Having read the story and read a lot of the posts and discussion in this thread, a few thoughts come to mind:

1) I once had a flat tire that a homeless person offered to change. Yes, he was hoping to make a few bucks. I was still very ill at the time and desperately needed to get something to eat. Having him change it meant it got done faster than if I had tried to call someone, which mattered because every minute counts when my blood sugar is low. We talked while he worked and I found out he had been staying in a cheap dive of a hotel and was trying to come up with enough to sleep there that night instead of the streets. I gave him $60. I later found out it would have cost less to call someone. I didn't care. It was worth it to me to get to an eatery a few minutes faster. My blood sugar was low and I was really in crisis. I had a "middle class" lifestyle but in some sense was in no less need than the homeless man.

2) I think the whole generosity thing is typical of successful business people because creating something of value is what makes them successful. "Business people" who are little more than con artists and are doing their best to separate you from your money without really creating something of value often land in jail or just go out of business when folks realize it isn't worth what they spent. It isn't always obvious in the short run, but in the long run creating something of real value is the only way to stay in business and make money. It seems to be counterintuitive to many, yet "pay it forward" and similar philosophies are rooted in that same idea/value/orientation of doing something of real value in the world.

3) I tend to live by the idea that if you want to live in a better world, the best way to make sure you do is roll your sleeves up and get to work on it. So in some sense, I am generous to other people out of selfishness, though I can't quite think how to explain that. <shrug>

</comment><comment><USER52> I know it's too late in this article's life for this comment to be read by many people, but I just wanted to add for the record that I think at least some of the aversion to helping people comes from the fear mongering of the media and some parts of the government. When everyone could be a terrorist, anything out of the ordinary is terrifying.

Fortunately it isn't always like that; for example, when my rear-wheel-drive car's traction control failed during a blizzard (due to being turned off for a brief second as a foolish experiment), and I found myself stuck off the side of a rural road, at least six different people stopped to ask if I needed help before my tow arrived, one of them even getting out of her car.

</comment><comment><USER53> This actually makes much more sense than a rich family stopping. I think its got to do with our psychology. We support each other because one day we'll need the support ourselves.

The richer folk see less need in stopping to help because they feel like they're self sufficient; in other words, if they themselves run into car in the future, AAA and cash will bail them out.

This more humble family however knew that if something like this occurred to them, they would definitely appreciate the help. Thus they were more inclined to stop. So I don't know why people here were so surprised...

Hell, the guy himself states all I just said in four simple words. Still, it was quite a touching story.

</comment><comment><USER54> Since moving to Utah, I have never waited more than 5 minutes on the side of the road for somebody to pull over and help me. It's a different world here; everybody feels it their duty to help. Very cool stuff. Thanks for the story!

</comment><comment><USER55> The $15 gas can is exactly why I picked one up for $3 and keep it in the car.

It's been transfered over three cars now and I've never used it but one day will. Some stations might not even have one to loan. Same thing for jumper cables (which I've used twice in two decades for myself, and another couple times to help others).

But there's a 180 degree different perspective here too as a woman, there will always be a few people who stop, but I rarely trust any of them. This is why I carry two different kinds of old cellphones in my car (one sprint, one GSM) since they can still call 911 or I can call AAA on my regular phone.

</comment><comment><USER56> I've never seen a hitchhiker while driving, but maybe that's because I live in the middle of Pittsburgh.

<comment><USER39> You have to get out of the the city a little bit. The last hitchhiker I picked up was on Rt 422 north of Pittsburgh. It was cold, dark and raining so I stopped to pick him up. We got to talking and he told me his story on why he was hitching. Seems his buddy was having a bachelor party and he wanted to go. His wife hid the keys and said he couldn't go so he hitchhiked to the party and back. I dropped him off at his house and I can only imagine the hell he got from his wife when he got home...

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I've backpacked around Mexico a couple of times in the last decade, and I found the people to be almost universally warm and friendly. One instance that comes to mind occurred at a bus station. I had just arrived (can't recall where now), and tried to arrange for a taxi. However, this station had a system I had not encountered elsewhere in Mexico or any other country: you have to buy a voucher at a kiosk inside the station and hand that to a driver outside. Somehow between leaving the kiosk and finding a taxi the voucher slipped from my hand. I climbed into the taxi and handed the driver the receipt instead, which I mistook for the voucher itself. The driver was upset and went to find the station managers.

By this point I had studied Spanish for a couple of years; I was by no means fluent, but usually knew enough to get by. However, under the stress of the situation, what ability I did have was completely gone; I started to become angry, inarticulate and flustered. A small group of employees encircled me and tried to speak to me in broken English, while I tried to respond in broken Spanish. After a few minutes, another driver entered the group and announced he had found the voucher. He easily could have pocketed it and collected the money as pure profit, but instead turned it in. I was impressed, and relieved.

</comment><comment><USER58> This seemed very appropriate for Reddit, and it's a touching story.

I don't quite get the Hacker angle, but maybe I'm missing something.

<comment><USER59> Get used to seeing more and more of these types of submissions as the HN user base grows. Digg and Reddit both used to be great sources of tech news, but are now filled with these sentimental posts, countless memes, and tons of left wing politics.

<comment><USER60> You forgot complaints.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> A story like this still doesn't make me want to pick up hitchhikers.

I used to live in the metro-Detroit area and there have been at least 3 or 4 cases in the past year where people have been robbed at gunpoint by alleged hitchhikers. This is what makes me think that this country has gone to hell.

<comment><USER62> The sources of information you place value in purposely use that narrative in order to capture your attention long enough to sell their advertising partners' products. Fear is the most powerful attention mechanism available.

<comment><USER61> "The sources of information you place value in purposely use that narrative in order to capture your attention long enough to sell their advertising partners' products. Fear is the most powerful attention mechanism available."

Haha. You mean documented evidence of crime and real people that have been robbed? You're right. I should just ignore it and chock it up to "fear".

The story linked here tries to get me with sympathy instead of fear. You shouldn't fall victim either.

<comment><USER62> What about the three hundred million others that _didn't_ get robbed this week? You can take precautions, but to let anxiety consume you, or to change the way you treat people because of these news stories is simply a pitiful demonstration of weak-mindedness.

<comment><USER63> The question is how many people in metro Detroit _picked up a hitchhiker_ and didn't get robbed. The answer is not 300 million. Suppose it's three? That would make the odds 50:50. Would you still not change the way you treat people?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> The story is great, but the tile (and supposedly the moral of the story) is wrong. We should not do good deeds for some expected (or hoped-for) compensation or reward - on this world, or the other world. We should just do it.

<comment><USER65> "Hoy por tí, mañana por mí" is about empathy, not about literally expecting future reciprocation. In more practical terms, it's a polite way to refuse being rewarded for something done out of kindness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Man, very rarely do I get water in my eyes!

<comment><USER67> I'm with you there.

It's not often that so much can be wrapped up in just 4 words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> In wealthier societies, people don't need others as much to get by. They tend to view others first as competition, and then freeloaders, trying to steal their hard earned dollar.

In places where there is less material wealth, people need more cooperation to get by. There's a lot more give for the sake of giving.

I could be wrong though. Thats just my experience.

</comment><comment><USER69> The author is in a big jeep and is too tight to call a breakdown service.

When someone does stop he breaks their tire iron, lets them buy a new one, accepts their food and water, and offers a token $20 dollars as compensation?

Maybe today you, tomorrow me was said with a hint or sarcasm (although in a daytime TV movie script like this I dount it).

</comment><comment><USER70> The uncertainty of tomorrow is really the point. If things are going well today, why not be generous and lend a hand to someone else today whilst you can. Things go round and come round, and a good deed one day inevitably becomes pay back for the good samaritan on the morrow.

</comment><comment><USER71> This reminds me directly of the song from the musical Rent: "Today for you, tomorrow for me".

</comment><comment><USER59> I really see no excuse why people don't carry a cell phone with them in their car. It doesn't even need to be activated, all cell phones call 911 for free. I don't stop and help people because 99% of the time I see them on their cell phones.

</comment><comment><USER72> I believe that there is a universal law of compensation. You get what you give. You help somebody - then some time in the future somebody will help you. This "universal law" is what makes open source work.

<comment><USER65> I think it's more like you give what you get. Especially in the case of open source. Altruistic trends are kickstarted by idealistic or exceptionally kind souls, and then many people join in inspired by the example, or sometimes just conforming to expectations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Too late - someone already registered the domain. Rightfully pointing to the story. <http://todayyoutomorrowme.com>

</comment><comment><USER74> Seriously, over 1000 points? I don't remember ever seeing any article on hacker news gather so much karma. Not even those related to, you know... hacking.

</comment><comment><USER75> Hell, someone should have put NSFW tag out there! :'(

</comment><comment><USER76> Great story, and a very logical one, immigrants depend on other people (especially illegal immigrants) to get their troubles resolved so they know the value of helping others.

We habitually rely on institutions or the government to save our bacon, something an immigrant likely has no desire for interacting with.

About 5 years ago I planned to visit friends in Texas by car from a little place called Richards Landing in Ontario. That's a pretty long trip and even though we had two stops planned it still was going to take a lot of time on unfamiliar roads, plenty of the driving at night.

Somewhere in Iowa, about 45 minutes past Decorah a deer teleported out of nowhere in front of the car and we hit it hard enough that the deer was probably mortally wounded (it _still_ managed to run off!) and the bonnet lock had crushed all the way in to the valve cover.

The car looked an absolute mess and it didn't look like we were going to reach our destination.

We limped in to some sleepy town (2:30 am), some gas station right off the highway wondering what to do next.

Before we could even ask the guy that ran the garage came out and said he's already called his brother in law and he was underway. We didn't really get what was going on but since we couldn't really go anywhere we just hung out, 5 minutes later a pick-up rolled in to the gas station with a sleepy looking guy in it. He jumped out, walked around our minivan, asked if it still moved or of we needed a tow. The car still ran (but made some pretty scary sounds) so he told us to follow him.

After a few minutes we got to an industrial area of the small town, he rolled up a huge garage door and we were welcomed to his car repair service.

In the space of 4 hours he took the front of the car apart, straightened out the pieces that had taken the brunt of the impact, fixed the valve cover with some of the most impressive epoxy that I've ever seen, found ways to get each and every one of the problems the car had to be fixed in a temporary but very serviceable way.

Little by little the car looked like it was going to be a reliable vehicle again and at the end the only tell-tales were the dent in the hood and two tie down straps running across it to hold it down (the lock had gone beyond repair).

So, when all was done we aked how much we owed him, the answer was simple: "Nothing. Could have happened to me just the same, and I'm sure you folks would have helped me out as much as you could too."

Whatever we did he refused payment, so in the end we bade our goodbyes and continued to Texas, from there to Fort Collins, Colorado and from there back to Canada, the 'temporary' fixes held as good as could be expected and when we turned the car in for a proper repair it was in a way a weird feeling because we'd gotten used to seeing the orange stripes across the hood :)

There are lots of nice people in this world.

<comment><USER77> That's an amazing story, almost unbelievable. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Pay it forward

</comment><comment><USER79> Pay it forward.

</comment><comment><USER80> That's a good story but a little over the top. If the author had dispensed with the $20 bill in the tamale the suspension of belief would have been a little more effective.

<comment><USER81> I think you're getting downvoted for snarkiness (as perceived by the downvoter), but there is a point to be made by your comment. That is, how is automatic disbelief in a story like this any less arbitrary than automatic belief? It's interesting to me that the majority of users on both reddit and HN choose to believe.

<comment><USER12> If you haven't encountered people like the ones in the story in your life, you need to get out more. They're as common as muck - absolutely zero disbelief is required.

While I don't personally help everyone I've come across, I have done exactly as in the story, as have many of my friends: helped someone, accepted a reward to stop them from making a big issue of it, then secretly returned the reward because it wasn't the point of helping in the first place. Sometimes the most fun part of the story is the acrobatics required in returning the reward before you part ways.

Requirement for suspension of disbelief: zero.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Whenever I see a comment with 1000s of upmods, I'm usually expecting a good story, but there was literally nothing there. Lots of people have had car trouble pal. I mean, there are probably a full million people in the world right now with car trouble. Why is his anecdote special?

<comment><USER83> Seriously, did you read the anecdote?

The point isn't the car trouble. The point is that nobody stopped to help him....except the poor, Mexican family, who had all the best reasons for not wanting to stop, who refused payment for their help, and then sent him on his way with a lesson about social responsibility.

<comment><USER84> It's a bit cheesy for my tastes, though.

<comment><USER12> So ask for a tamale with less cheese.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> What a great story - I shortened it with v.gd for an IM status message, thought I'd share the link: <http://v.gd/todayyou></comment>


Debian worldwide mirror sites - <AUTHOR> https://www.debian.org/mirror/list <comment><USER2> And this is of interest to HN why?</comment>


Show HN: Quick JavaScript Tetris – Based on Yesterday's Show HN - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sacert/Quick-Tetris <comment><AUTHOR> After seeing yesterday's Show HN about building a Tetris game on a game, I decided to take a crack at it and build it within a short time frame before I went back to studying for my midterm. I rarely code in JavaScript so it added to the challenge. Several features are missing but I am satisfied with what I accomplished during my coding session.

<comment><USER2> Nice

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I experienced a bug where the game suddenly stops after a few minutes of playing. I'm using Firefox ESR 45.4.0 on RHEL if it helps. Otherwise, great job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing it out, I'll look into it.

<comment><USER4> Seconding that, Firefox 49 on Windows7.

<comment><USER5> Thirded w/ Chrome 54.0.2840.87 (64-bit) on OS X 10.11.6. Stopped about 15 pieces in the first time so I thought it was just an abbreviated demo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could you make it work on mobile (esp. touch screens)? Something where arrows are swipes?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is quite interesting, I didn't really think about mobile capabilities while making this but it would be a fun thing to add. I'll look into it after my exam tomorrow!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Love these short 1 file code things.

C [https://gist.github.com/spaceexperiment/4d6b116ef577a2971259...](https://gist.github.com/spaceexperiment/4d6b116ef577a29712593c41747bd092)

Tcl [https://gist.github.com/nickbarth/cba8cc9996cc3ebe8427726fae...](https://gist.github.com/nickbarth/cba8cc9996cc3ebe8427726faede9956)

</comment><comment><USER8> >I set my deadline as the time before I had to start studying for my midterm

Ah, procrastination ;)

</comment><comment><USER9> Super nice. I had to look in the code to find this:

      Up arrow to rotate!

<comment><USER10> Fine idea, but it needs to cancel the default event because otherwise the page scrolls up when you rotate a piece.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I just implemented a fix for that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love Tetris! Played it for a few minutes. Time to attach to blocks shouldn't be instant and I had the top and right game borders start flashing after a while but otherwise pretty cool!

</comment><comment><USER12> Consider wrapping your code in a closure so that all the variables and functions aren't globals. It's good performance-wise and for not polluting the global namespace.

Otherwise looks good. :)

</comment><comment><USER13> It would be nice to see what the next block is going to be.

</comment><comment><USER14> I feel like delay you get when rotating the blocks is too short. I often ended up over-rotating it. Might just be me.

Other than that good job.

</comment><comment><USER15> The playing field is higher than the client area of my browser. (768px pix screen)

<comment><AUTHOR> Valid point, just added a resizing function so it should be fine now.</comment></comment>


I stopped using Intercom - <AUTHOR> https://blog.gingerlime.com/2019/why-i-stopped-using-intercom/ <comment><USER2> We actually had to stop using Intercom because of their pricing. We had a custom plan for years that accommodated our needs greatly. We were very happy and sang their praises all the time. A couple of months back they announced that they would be changing their pricing, so our $300/month price would become $2000/month. We started a long discussion with a sales person back and forth and they just wouldn't help us. We got copy and pasted responses that were not at all answers to our concerns.

It ended with them charging us $1800 even though we explicitly said we just wanted the "Chat" option for $100 per month a couple of times. After a stressful evening they refunded us. It really did leave a bitter taste in our mouth.

I agree completely with the article. Intercom was a crutch for us to deal with the failings of our own product.

<comment><USER3> Could they be as bad as NewRelic sales people?

<comment><USER2> Heh, I tried getting started with New Relic. I didn't want to give up my name (over chat mind you, not a signup form) and phone number so I never got that account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I realize this article is one data point but I'd offer that I have a completely opposite data point.

1\. We accidentally turned off our main Intercom in-trial campaign for a segment of users during an AB test and were surprised how much lower the conversion was. We re-ran the test ensuring both sides had our Intercom in- trial campaign on. It increased in-trial conversion by 25%.

2\. We do pay a lot for Intercom (10 person support team, tens of thousands of users, hundreds of thousands of leads) but we also use it a god damn ton for new customer campaigns, activation, churn prevention, reactivation, etc and by in-app, email, and mobile notifications. Replacing all of this would not be cheap.

3\. Intercom can definitely be a crutch for bad UX. But you'll only know of those problems if you're actually getting this feedback. It's then on you to have the internal process for addressing common questions or requests in order to reduce the volume of help requests for specific topics.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hate these things, in the same way I dislike a sales person rushing up to me immediately I set foot in a store. It's much worse on a web page, simultaneously creepy like I'm being watched checking out the site and useless knowing it's not actually a real person.

<comment><USER6> You're being watched. Some of these tools (in the merchant's UI) have a list of users browsing the website with an option to show in real-time what you're doing, what page you're viewing, typing, and how you're moving your mouse cursor.

They'd probably show your webcam and mic feed, if they could without being obvious, too.

<comment><USER7> _message pops up_

"Hey, can I help? You look confused."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He last used Intercom 3 years ago but is just writing about it now. A LOT has changed in 3 years.

I've used the product on multiple projects over the years and it's matured a lot over time. We use it as a support tool and a way to identify qualified leads. It's also handles our targeted email campaigns. Their support staff is incredibly on point as well. I personally think it's a fantastic way to engage customers. Seeing that little bubble in the corner of every site kinda drives me crazy, but I know where to go if I have a question.

<comment><USER9> They specifically say that it's not about the product itself but the concept of these on-page assistants.

> It's mostly about intercom as a concept, rather than a specific > implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> At my current startup, we sell a rather pricy physical product and have been using Intercom to nurture leads. It's been very useful, as we have lots of leads that have specific questions that they want a human to answer.

We found that conversational engagement works the best for these leads, but Drift does a far better job than Intercom at this. Currently planning on migrating.

<comment><USER11> We are in the medical / research field - also selling a physical product. We are using chatbot to answer sometimes really narrow questions about customer- specific cases (they just would not fit the Help/FAQ page). LiveChat is where most of our leads come from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does Intercom still do that really annoying bleep when it automatically pings you with some guff? I stopped using Intercom myself (as a user)

Every damn site seemed to have it installed, ended up adblocking all of its domains.

</comment><comment><USER13> Anyone have a recommendation for the simplest, easiest solution to solve for "As a user, I'd like to express some concern, frustration, feedback, or questions about your product". Intercom seems like the most well known, but there's _a lot_ in that tool that we just may not need or use and I'm not sure we're looking for something so "robust"... Then again, just slapping a support email alias throughout the product and expecting users to find it and use it doesn't quite solve the problem and it's not scalable. I intend to check out Crisp, Intercom, Drift, hubspot, smooch, pipedrive, and Tawk judging by responses below, but wondering if anyone can help cut through the noise with some personal anecdotes. Just want to make sure users have a way of reaching out and feeling that their voices are being _heard_

<comment><USER14> For a Web app where I wanted as much feedback as possible, I embedded a 2-line expandable text input box (and submit button) in the footer of every page.

At different times, the surrounding copy was something like "Question? Suggestion? We're at your service." or "How can we improve this page? We'd love to know."

It worked great and I'd do it again for any new app. People brought up issues large and small. The goal wasn't to "engage" or "nurture" or whatever. We just wanted to respect visitors' time, which meant being as easy to reach as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been using Crisp for a while on my own project where users can click ito start a chat (it doesn't pop-up with a message initially). I don't have any hard data but I've found it really valuable in terms of being a solo developer:

\- For support problems, resolving over chat is much quicker and personable. I think this leads to happier customers. Composing well thought out and well written emails back and forth eats up a huge amount of time in comparison.

\- It's way easier to get to know your customers more with chat. You can quickly ask them a series of related questions and get an answer, whereas with email it's much more effort on both sides e.g. a series of question/answers like "What kind of website are you checking with the tool? Oh, so how many websites do you have? Would you find it more helpful if...?" is painful over email and they'd probably stop replying.

I looked at the free chat offerings from Crisp, Intercom, Drift and Tawk recently. I think until you're getting large numbers of chat users per day there's not a lot to decide between them. I mostly prefer Crisp because the admin interface responds quickly and settings are easy to find. It's pretty crazy how many features and settings they all have.

<comment><USER16> +1 for Crisp. It's the bit of Intercom most people want, and nothing else. Highly recommend it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > The short, simple, and most crucial reason: it didn't work. How do I know? > We A/B tested it. Over a fairly long time and a large number of people.

I'd love to see the actual numbers. The screenshot OP posted suggests they've been running A/B tests with 115 + 108 users, which is just not a big enough sample to derive any conclusions.

IMO Intercom's plans are too pricey once you've more than a few users, and its specialized competitors are usually better. But methinks it's a sane choice regardless for most early stage startups: you get a good enough version of just about every tool you need.

As to the other complaint (popup is too familiar) they might have been doing it wrong -- as in like a sales in a retail store showing up asking "can I help you?". Only show the popup when something interesting _that you 're digging into_ happens. And man the fort, to make sure there's someone answering at the other end when an actual user replies; else it's pointless.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here.

> I'd love to see the actual numbers. The screenshot OP posted suggests > they've been running A/B tests with 115 + 108 users, which is just not a big > enough sample to derive any conclusions.

The screenshot is from the intercom.com website. Not related to our own experiment, which was run outside intercom.

I'm having trouble finding the actual raw experiment results, but I would imagine it covered 10s of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of participants, running for a month.

Regarding the other comments: yes, maybe we were doing it wrong. But we've given it way more attention and though than "hey, can I help you?" and really tried to target specific events etc. And also, we're a B2C so volumes are high but customer lifetime value is relatively low, which increases the acquisition costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a list of minor complaints from three years ago. Intercom has had several big updates and pricing changes since then. I don't think it's fair to post this (you have the right, of course) without seeing what's changed since then.

I'm not a huge fan either, and I helped two startups move OFF Intercom just recently. But my issues with it today probably won't be relevant three years from now.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Yes, there are some minor complaints, and I do imagine some things have changed (happy to hear about pricing, because it was truly horrible in my opinion).

But I think the fundamentals aren't minor. The end-user experience isn't drastically different now than 2 years ago. And our A/B test back then is likely to produce similar results today (although we're unlikely to test it again). I still feel that it's a crutch. And I think intercom is a victim of its own success, even more so today than a couple of years ago.

<comment><USER18> If you take out the complaint about pricing, then what remains is a general take on live-chat solutions. It's a valid complaint--and, from my experience, correct for most cases--but shouldn't be aimed solely at Intercom. I've tested live chats from Intercom, Drift, HubSpot, Smooch, and others, and they're all equally underwhelming.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I also addressed that on my post. My personal experience was with intercom though.

> Of course, intercom.io isn't the only one now, and there are a few > competitors in this space. The principle is pretty similar though. I think > intercom was the most successful company doing this, or the first, or both. > But it's not really important. It's mostly about intercom as a concept, > rather than a specific implementation.

<comment><USER18> Fair enough. I must've skimmed past that in my first reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Intercom is a good tool for support, but we have run into a lot of bugs using deeper features.

Their support is great, they allways get back to you.

We started using intercom for all outgoing communications especially email campaigns and ran into reporting bugs, built in templates not showing on outlook, events being not usable in mails ect.

You can only create a company via the API, which by the way loves to duplicate your contacts from time to time.

As a support tool, it is great our users are used to using the bubble to chat to us but we have moved the our mailing and crm elsewhere.

I think about intercom being very useful if you sell a low value product to a lot of clients, so large user base at $5 each.

</comment><comment><USER20> "The friendly bubble is just everywhere… So from a novelty thing, it becomes "oh. that bubble again".

This. Exactly this. It's just like banner ad blindness. Sure, it'll work in the first year or so, but after that, people will start to turn blind to it.

</comment><comment><USER21> The pricing of these services is outrageous. GitHub, for example, gives a lot more value, does a lot more, and charges a lot less per user. When you add all those different services a startup or small nonprofit needs, it ends up being a lump sum.

</comment><comment><USER22> We tried using Intercom as a "all in one" tool for support, leads, CRM, and it just wasn't good enough.

We ended up getting Pipedrive for the CRM. Then we hooked up the new Pipedrive integration which is one click to generate a new user, and deal after they show interest with our bot or with us.

For support, we love it and so do our customers. I know there are a lot of chat solutions but it feels the best to me. The bonus is it is integrated with our Help Center (also Intercom) so it is very easy to send embedded articles right in the chat. Our customers love this :)

We are a small team and we were able to reduce the amount of support phone calls (they wanted a phone call to ask the simplist things) by answering quickly on live chat. This allowed us to be able to serve multiple customers at once in a async fashion.

<comment><USER8> We use Intercom for support and push SQL's into Pipedrive. It works great. It keeps Pipedrive clean and our Sales people focused on real opportunities. We use Intercom a lot for its "segments", and do a lot of personal mail from there. For example, we hosted a drink-up in Copenhagen one day and was able to quickly shoot an email to all customers living there in about 2 minutes. I used a filter to identify who hasn't used the app in a while, remembered their names, and inquired when I met them. I dig it for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Intercom is a shadow CRM that tries to do everything but ultimately fails to do anything well.

IMHO, Intercom has excellent fit for early stage go-to-markets, but gets ripped out by specialized tools, purpose built and sold to line function (marketing, sales, support, etc)

</comment><comment><USER24> We used to use Intercom and were frustrated that they charged us a random amount every month.

They also don't have tools for lead gen or making calls to customers. It was a big pain having our calls go through skype. We'd have to take manual notes on the call and there was no good way to schedule follow ups so we ended up using a mish-mash of systems to do this.

Shameless plug: In the end, we started a competing product, MomentCRM, which has simple, predictable pricing, and spans the entire lifecycle of your user. No more data silos or "integration engineers"! I'm one of the founders, and I will move mountains to make sure you're happy if you decide to try it :)

</comment><comment><USER25> The problem with most of the cool toys like intercom is that they don't scale for freemium SAAS companies unless you've got a ton of investor cash to burn through.

We trialed freshchat/desk for few months but their app was very buggy and in one instance actually broke our (kwiksurveys) angular backend when their site went down due to some dodgy event hijack code if I recall.

We then found helpscout which I highly recommend as a low cost intercom alternative. The helpscout UI is great and the support team was faultless. It doesn't have any of the automation of intercom so we pair it with activecampaign until I can find something better.

On a related note we're about to sign up with chargebee as chargify / recurly want to bill 6x as much for a near identical if not worse product. If it's two things I hate it's a turnover tax, and having to have a 30 minute chat with a sales consultant.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm missing a nice open-source self-hosted alternative to Intercom and alikes. For early startups and small projects it's not realistic to pay such a monthly amount when you have few users and no funding. In my case I don't need all that sales and CRM stuff. A good support solution would be a great start.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's way too expensive for what it delivers.

</comment><comment><USER28> I mostly stopped using it because it's so expensive and we didn't get a lot of benefit out of it. Just people asking questions that can be answered by reading the first line of the page they're on.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if 'Intercom makes no difference in conversion' is the rule or the exception. I wish there was a meta study. Also, it's worthwhile to mention that there are 100% free really good Intercom alternatives, like [https://www.bitrix24.com/tools/contact_center/](https://www.bitrix24.com/tools/contact_center/) and [https://www.tawk.to/features/](https://www.tawk.to/features/)

<comment><USER30> While a meta study might be helpful directionally, it's really something that every product should consider testing. Different customers/users want different things and it's probably worth doing your own test if you're curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I add this to my /etc/hosts file. Could not be happier 0.0.0.0 nexus- websocket-b.intercom.io

</comment><comment><USER32> any open source solutions for intercom? (chat piece)

</comment><comment><USER33> Spot on. Great for support, played for lead gen.

</comment><comment><USER34> If you can't use a high touch interaction to increase conversion, then you've got something very wrong going on that's bigger than intercom.

<comment><USER18> Disagree. I've tried other live chat solutions and they don't help. The issue is that in order for the overhead to be worthwhile (ie, the time and attention of operating the chats), the conversion improvement has to be massive. It never has been, for me.

<comment><USER35> Intercom solution can increase your customer acquisition cost with more onboarding support costs so you need a higher lifetime value of the customer to compensate.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Gamepad over IP? - <AUTHOR> Is there an application and protocol that simply sends button and axis states to some remote HTTP or websocket server? I have a game I want to try to control this way, and since the server has no peripherals at all this sounds like some small fun project to me. <comment><USER2> I don't know, although HTTP seems the wrong protocol to do this. MIDI might be suitable (I have considered using MIDI for game controls and some other stuff actually).</comment>


Fortnite is crushing the rest of the gaming business - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/06/investing/fortnite-electronic-arts-take-two-interactive/index.html <comment><USER2> In the case of EA specifically It's not just fortnite, it's gamers frustrated with their handling of multiple IP's. Battlefield, Battlefront (Star Wars), combined with the anti lootbox backlash that's starting to hurt them. Almost every major title they released was on sale within three weeks of launch for more than 30% off. That's crazy.</comment>


Top 57 Cryptocurrency Books - <AUTHOR> https://readthistwice.com/lists/best-cryptocurrency-books?s=hn <comment><AUTHOR> American Kingpin by Nick Bilton

The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

Mastering Ethereum by Andreas M. Antonopoulos

The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin

Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas M. Antonopoulos

The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous

Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper

The Internet of Money by Andreas M. Antonopoulos

Creating the Twentieth Century by Vaclav Smil

Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas M. Antonopoulos

Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier

Blockchain Bubble or Revolution by Neel Mehta

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies by Arvind Narayanan

Inventing Bitcoin by Yan Pritzker

The Little Bitcoin Book by Bitcoin Collective

Serious Cryptography by Jean-Philippe Aumasson

An Altcoin Trader's Handbook by Nik Patel

The Price of Tomorrow by Jeff Booth

Programming Bitcoin by Jimmy Song

Bitcoin by Knut Svanholm

The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains by Antony Lewis

Bitcoin & Black America by Isaiah Jackson

Mastering Monero by SerHack

Grokking Bitcoin by Kalle Rosenbaum

Why Buy Bitcoin by Andy Edstrom

The Book of Satoshi by Phil Champagne

This Book Will Save You Time by Misir Mahmudov

Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital by Carlota Perez

Bitcoin by Knut Svanholm

Cryptocurrency Investing For Dummies by Kiana Danial

The Dreams of Reason by Heinz R. Pagels

21 Lessons by Gigi

Bitcoin Clarity by Kiara Bickers

Rethinking Money by Bernard Lietaer

From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond by John H. Clippinger

The Bitcoin Revolution by Dominick Barbato

The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance by Brett Scott

How Money Got Free by Brian Patrick Eha

Handbook of Digital Currency by David LEE Kuo Chuen

Blockchain Technology Explained by Alan T. Norman

Cryptoassets by Chris Burniske

Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain by David Gerard

Bitcoin Billionaires by Ben Mezrich

Code by Lawrence Lessig

Blockchain and the Law by Primavera De Filippi

Bitcoin by Dominic Frisby

Blockchain by Mark Gates

The Age of Cryptocurrency by Paul Vigna

Bitcoin For Dummies by Prypto

The Truth Machine by Paul Vigna

Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott

Blockchain by Melanie Swan

Digital Cash by Finn Brunton

Introducing Ethereum and Solidity by Chris Dannen

Building Blockchain Projects by Narayan Prusty

Investing in Ethereum by Oscar Flynt</comment>


About yesterday's Pingdom outage - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pingdom.com/2011/06/22/about-yesterday%E2%80%99s-pingdom-outage/

<comment><USER2> Wow - they only had one location handling sending out alerts??

Message and alert functionality in an application is one of the biggest low- hanging fruits for moving to a more distributed architecture. To the point where it's almost a textbook example.

This is most disappointing.</comment>


Tensorflow 1.5.0 release canidate includes "eager execution" - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/releases/tag/v1.5.0-rc0 <comment><USER2> Good to see it, been running tf-nightly, cuda 9.1 nvidia gpu drivers with cuda 8. The entire dependency issues between drivers/apps/libraries have been incredibly annoying.

<comment><USER3> Some Linux distro package modern versions of tensorflow, cuda, cudnn and nvidia which all work in tandem which makes this a whole lot less annoying to deal with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good news for me: "Starting from 1.6 release, our prebuilt binaries will use AVX instructions. This may break TF on older CPUs."

I just this morning gave up trying to compile Tensorflow from sources with AVX. I'm sure I could do it given the time but after 5 minutes it was clearly a more complicated project. Shame it may break older CPUs though, I wonder what the challenge is in releasing two versions?

<comment><USER5> Here is how I build architecture optimized TensorFlow 1.4 binaries for specific AWS instance types:

[https://gist.github.com/daniel- j-h/b410dd21d4949a54c83d0c386...](https://gist.github.com/daniel- j-h/b410dd21d4949a54c83d0c3864437f0c)

The build script needs slight adaptions between major TensorFlow releases; otherwise works great for me so far.

During boot time you can then figure out the instance architecture you are and fetch the appropriate wheel. Hope it helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is eager execution?

<comment><USER7> [https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/r1.5/tensorflo...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/r1.5/tensorflow/contrib/eager)

> Eager execution is an experimental interface to TensorFlow that provides an > imperative programming style (à la NumPy). When you enable eager execution, > TensorFlow operations execute immediately; you do not execute a pre- > constructed graph with Session.run().

<comment><USER8> This sounds like it would make mucking about with TensorFlow in the REPL far easier.

<comment><USER9> And debuging. Usually with tensorflow project I found my self at debuging hell where I really dont have any clue where the buggy line is.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CSS3 Cheatsheet - <AUTHOR> http://sencha.com/css3cheatsheet <comment><USER2> Nice. No disrespect to the author because yeah it looks handy, but 2.7 megs for 1 page of text? Give me a break. We've got limited download quotas here.</comment>


Show HN: Fatnest, easy collaborative tweeting - <AUTHOR> http://fatnest.com

<comment><USER2> Neatly executed ! & a nice idea! Few suggestions:

1\. Actions seem to lead user across several pages ; IMO, they could be done in a single page (for example, managing an already-added-twitter-account).

2\. When I invite someone, you seem to auto-create an ID for their email id. Am not sure if (a) this might end up creating a lot of unused/spam Fatnest accounts, (b) the user (who is invited by email) may not really like it, because he/she might or might not 'actually want' to sign up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good ideas. I'm thinking a mailto/registration link that'll automatically link the user to the delegated twitter account would probably remove the abuse vector. Thanks for the suggestions!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I made this in my free time because there wasn't really anything that let me delegate tweeting access without all the other junk to people. I envisioned it as something quick and handy for accepting submissions, etc.

<comment><USER3> I built the similar <http://TweetFavor.com>, which Twitter promptly shut down once people started using it, post-mortem/rant here: [http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/26144987502/im- done-...](http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/26144987502/im-done- developing-for-twitter)

Hopefully you don't suffer the same fate, but Twitter's API policies just aren't friendly for fun little projects like these :/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's rough. I hope there are open competitors that gain traction and are worth relocating to in the future. But for now I still like the platform over forced bidirectional communication platforms like Facebook. At the very least it's for fun, while it lasts.

<comment><USER3> Checkout <http://app.net> if you haven't. FatNest/TweetFavor would likely be useful in that context, I hope it gains traction!

At any rate, developers, developers, developers! :) I love our people :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this about birds?</comment>


National Zoo Animals React to the Earthquake - <AUTHOR> http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Publications/PressMaterials/PressReleases/NZP/2011/earthquake.cfm

<comment><USER2> I refuse to believe that a large number of _other_ animals know when earthquakes are coming shortly before they arrive, but that we somehow mysteriously managed to lose this (very occasionally slightly useful) trait.

I am amused by the fact that the pandas didn't react to the earthquake at all.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I saw this and noted that one set of animals appeared to become agitated as soon as 15 minutes before the quake. Given the number of sensors that mankind has produced, from audio to seismic, I find it hard that we have yet to figure out what exactly these animals were sensing and build a sensor package out of it.

Something somewhere must have picked up some unusual sensor data 15 minutes prior that we can correlate to this.</comment>


Steve Huffman on Lessons Learned at Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://carsonified.com/blog/dev/steve-huffman-on-lessons-learned-at-reddit/

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I'm an indie Facebook developer. My most popular app has over 8 million monthly uniques and 350 million pageviews. I didn't realize how substantial said traffic was until reading this article. I scaled my app to that size on my own over the course of 12 months. I know of other FB devs who scaled bigger apps working solo. If average hackers like us can do it, anyone can. The hard part is building a popular app. Articles about scaling are a means for founders to brag about their success without giving away useful information about what made their app popular in the first place.

<comment><USER3> Alexis Ohanian has talked about what made Reddit successful many times. Steve Huffman is talking about the technical side of things. It doesn't come off as bragging to me at all.

<comment><USER2> Bragging is the wrong word, but it is the first that came to mind. And I was excited to brag about the size of my app when I first read his article.

I just think we spend too much time talking about scaling and not enough time discussing virality.

<comment><USER4> Scalability stories are generally interesting, as they're about solving problems that out-of-the-box commercial software doesn't. They're interesting to hackers, not all of whom are entrepreneurs.

If you'd like to share a story, however, on using statistical techniques to measure and act on virality, doing multi-variate testing, et al that would be _very_ interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The approach he recommends - no scheme, extreme denormalization, lots of redundancy - is a strong case for nosql.

<comment><USER6> Shouldn't lots of redundancy be a fundamental part of which ever db you are using.

As to extreme do-normalization, colour me sceptical, why not parallelise and throw more hardware at the problem?

<comment><USER7> Because it's more cost effective to de-normalize then to parallelise in this instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Let's see:

\- crash and let a supervisor restart you

\- isolate components via specialist processes and systems

\- keep schema/types flexible

\- be stateless

\- cache & denormalize

\- be redundant

\- let other processes handle non-realtime tasks in the background

Sounds like he spent a long time learning the hard way that reddit should have been written in Erlang in the first place :)

<comment><USER9> Well, they use (or used to use) RabbitMQ, which is written in Erlang.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> a note for Mixergy: this is how you provide a video transcript.

<comment><USER11> Checking it out now.

Thanks Mark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Their strong usage of both Memcached and Memcachedb makes me think of my favorite 'all-in-one' solution: Redis.

<comment><USER13> Cassandra (which they moved to in the end) is also an excellent all-in-one solution. It even supports Hadoop since 0.6.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So many lectures on scaling are full of best-practices that are somewhat removed from reality and time/budget constraints. This lecture on the other hand has a lot of common-sense advice and solutions that may be obvious to some, but I must admit, this is going to help me (if I could get the traffic to worry about scaling...).

</comment><comment><USER15> Direct link to an iPhone watchable video: <http://vimeo.com/channels/carsonifiedtv#10506751>

</comment><comment><USER16> Joe Stump gave a similar talk at EuroDjangoCon last year (the topic is officially: dealing with a fuckload of data, but a lot of the same lessons). Unfortunately I have no idea what became of the recordings.

<comment><USER17> There's also _Scaling your Python application on EC2_ from PyCon 2010: <http://pycon.blip.tv/file/3257303/>

</comment></comment><comment> jim-greer Did they say what forced them into emergency read-only mode this week?

<comment><USER18> He says (transcript is below the video) that he left Reddit in the Fall of 2007 but continued working as a contractor until the Fall of 2009 so he doesn't really address the current events of Reddit.

<comment><USER19> That transcript is misleading. Steve stayed with reddit until Fall of 2009 when our contracts ended. He didn't leave to work as a contractor.

One thing I should also mention is that our deal was structured in such a way that either one of us could've left reddit before our contract ended without too much pain (missing some carrots, granted) but we were still rather attached to reddit, the community, and our friends (team reddit). Personally, I did also feel a compulsion to fulfill my side of the contract and make sure Condé Nast got its money's worth. That may make me a tool in the eyes of most Hacker News folks, but so be it.

<comment><USER20> When you sold the site to Condé Nast they became your customer. Looking after your customers is the number one priority of any business. So it is totally correct that you made sure they received a good product and got the best from it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pentagonal Ice Discovered: Could Be Used To Modify Weather - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090407075344.htm <comment><USER2> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine>

<comment><USER3> Beat me to it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you bookmarking? - <AUTHOR>

I am curious about differente bookmarking tecniques.I am losing control of my bookmarks between dead lager articles, tutorials and useful sites. I can't fine any Hood enough service or tecnique. Nerd help HN!! <comment><USER2> I've searched high and low, all over the place for a bookmarking service that satisfies and works well. I've even thought of developing my own, or improving a now defunct service. However, I've recently started using Pinboard. So far, it's certainly the best I've come across. It allows for good organization, takes away the "social" aspect of many of the other bookmarking services - I'm not really looking for my bookmarks to be "your" bookmarks.

My biggest issue was finding something that would allow me to begin to approach the task of organizing the some ~7,000 bookmarks I already had hoarded over my numerous browsers. Pinboard has at least allowed me to begin the daunting task. I'll see where it takes me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Evernote's Web Clipper. Select the info you really need to remember or the entire article/page, and it'll be saved along with the link and any notes/tags/whatever you add. Lets you store more data than standard bookmarks, and takes away the risk of link rot since the important info is saved on your computer. Plus it works practically anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried in the last, bit when the number of bookmarks rises,it,s feel that it is noto a "native" solution

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dragdis seemed to be a great solution for a while for me. Until they decided to drop every browsing platform except for Chrome. So if you're using Chrome - you're still in luck.

Just register, install the plugin. You can create folders for various stuff. Drag n droping opens the plugin on the side and you can drop it to any folder you want.

Still sad about them dropping Firefox.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used to love Dragdis, but the development is slow and not functional on lot of devices!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Currently I just use the in-built Firefox bookmarking features. I put everything I bookmark in the bookmark toolbar either directly or in a folder. For sites I use commonly I add the bookmark directly but delete the name so only the favicon shows (to save space). I then use folders for everything else.

</comment><comment><USER6> Currently I just save it to my firefox bookmarks, maybe adding into a folder for organization. After that I forget about it and never see it again as it gets lost into the abyss of other bookmarks.

</comment><comment><USER7> Pinboard plus a Pinboard extension for Alfred ([https://github.com/spamwax/alfred- pinboard](https://github.com/spamwax/alfred-pinboard)). It makes bookmarking and tagging almost instantaneous.

</comment><comment><USER8> I store them under revision control, and that allows me to share them across devices and browsers:

[https://github.com/skx/bookmarks.public](https://github.com/skx/bookmarks.public)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea. Even if I would prefer have it online. BTW I am thinking that I could build my personal system

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use twitter as a bookmarking service

<comment><AUTHOR> In which way?

<comment><USER9> When I find a link I like, or would like to read later I just tweet it on my account

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> delicious. talks of it's death were greatly exaggerated.

<comment><AUTHOR> In my experience delicious is slow...really slow.

<comment><USER11> It's better now they some to have fixed some of the issues. I've used a mix of delicious(when I only want the link) evernote and pocket. Pocket for 2 reason, 1- quick consumption and I bookmark to evernote if I found the article usefull 2- Feedly free doesn't allow to clip rssfeed to evernote but allow pocket</comment></comment></comment>


MasterCard: The World is Not Quite Ready for Mobile Payments - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/05/the-world-is-not-quite-ready-for-mobile-payments-according-to-mastercard.php <comment><USER2> Translation: "We are totally not ready for mobile payments. And we're willing to spend a lot of money on a study that's carefully designed to try and convince you of that, in order to try and keep Google from eating our lunch before we can get to it."

<comment><USER3> That reminds of a pro-Kodak report, claiming digital cameras won't matter much, years ago.</comment></comment>


Why Recruiters Like Facebook More Than LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/10/09/recruiters-prefer-facebook/

<comment><USER2> Isn't there a risk for employers to get discrimination law suits from looking through potential employee facebooks?

<comment><USER3> If so, then employers might as well stop screening candidates and hire everyone who applies.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough. I was just interested because I know for a while LinkedIn didn't have profile pictures for a similar logic.</comment></comment></comment>


NanoPi NEO kit lets you build your own NAS system for about $30 - <AUTHOR> https://liliputing.com/2017/04/nanopi-neo-kit-lets-you-build-your-own-network-attached-storage-system-for-about-30-plus-the-price-of-a-hard-drive.html <comment><USER2> Good design, but with one disk it isn't going to be a particularly useful NAS; neither a cheap one, considering the cost of a UPS unit.</comment>


A Quiet War Rages Over Who Can Make Money Online - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/quiet-war-rages-who-can-make-money-online/ <comment><USER2> There's some interesting math/statistics at work here.

Whatever group you want to identify with, given a large enough group size, will display very bad behavior in some individuals.

The tendency is to ignore that behavior in the groups you are a member of (After all, aren't we all mostly right? There are just a few bad apples.) and emphasize that bad behavior in groups you are not a member of. (All of those folks are crazy/evil/dangerous/etc!)

Social media companies are caught directly in the middle of all of this.

I don't want to get into who is the _real_ villain, what to do, or any of that. The general principle holds no matter what the groups are. So even if you ban groups A, B, and C, it won't go away. In fact, my gut tells me you'd just make matters worse, cramming more and more unhinged and unpleasant people into larger and larger groups.

For that reason, punishing the group for the actions of the members isn't going to work.

</comment><comment><USER3> > The MGTOW community—a more extreme offshoot of the incel movement whose > adherents consider women subhuman—

That's some fine journalism there.

It's always fun to read parallels made between platform removing people for political reasons and platforms removing people because they did not adhere by their usage policy.

<comment><USER4> Get enough crusaders with differing viewpoints in the same room (or internet) and you have scorched earth.

My only anger comes from the new definition of the word "thot" \- which I had been using for decades as a substitute for the word "thought."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why don't paypal etc allow payment for sex-related stuff?

<comment><USER6> And why sex-workers and porn industry (I'm talking about legal stuff here) have not created their own paypal all these years?

Note: For the most part I agree with the sentiment of the article and I am allergic to all harassment but the "financial domination" thing rings other bells. The people having a taste for it seem to me akin to gambling addicts and in need of protection.

<comment><USER7> I'm guessing that it's because of the larger cut that these 'high risk' platforms and processors take or a bunch of other restrictions we are not aware of?

<comment><USER6> Hm - not sure I get why the risk in porn industry is higher. If anything I'd bet that it's the most stable industry ever catering for a real need that won't go away as long as people care about sex. Dunno but I feel that there are a lot of business opportunities here and a huge market that has been sloppily served for anyone that cares to look at it seriously.

<comment><USER3> I'd bet on a lot more charge-back demands.

> No honey, I never used this service. Our card must have been stolen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just the first paragraph is depressing, what a world we live in.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is why systems like Bitcoin are essential.

Middlemen in payment systems hold far too much power.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's not a war over who can make money online, it's the personal vendetta of a bunch of right wing sexless misogynists.</comment>