How Logos are Remembered - <AUTHOR> https://www.signs.com/branded-in-memory/ <comment><USER2> Fascinating but it doesn't seem to prove anything besides we struggle to draw complex logos from memory therefore the complex logos of Starbucks and Footlocker are at the bottom and the simpler logos of Target and Ikea at the top.

I don't think anyone will struggle to recognise the Starbucks brand despite the difficulty in drawing mermaids. In someways its quite fitting - they want you to believe their coffee is so complex that its worth >$5 and forget that you could make it at home for $0.20.

<comment><USER3> Yeah this almost seems limited by drawing skill and effort. Like I wouldn't bother trying to put a bunch of detail into the starbucks logo because it would end up looking bad so I'd probably just draw a quick approximation and call it done.

<comment><USER4> IMO, for everybody apart from a few graphic designers, it's not drawing skill that limits accuracy of the Starbucks logo: it's that we never registered its exact geometry in the first place. The ideas of Gestalt perception are frequently used in logo design, and one of them is the "binary" figure/ground relationship that the two colours of the Starbucks logo create. It's complex, and almost everyone just sees a "Gestalt" and doesn't parse the arrangement of parts. Somebody with drafting skills could easily draw it based on textual instructions, but definitely not accurately from memory without a more careful study of the logo than (almost) anyone ever undertakes.

<comment><USER5> Some sketches are hard to draw even after minutes of watching. Without remembering "there is <n> <x>'s on <y> background with <z> outline ...", not many people can draw exactly what they've seen few seconds ago. Our perception and recalling works in very fuzzy way; you can be absolutely sure that logo is what you've drawn, but this is just false memory constructed by subconscious to fill the gaps. Our minds should contain fantastic amounts of these, retained and restructured there by side-effects of the thinking process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is seriously well done. I love great stats. I guess the real question here is how memorable is something versus how prolific it is? Could you have the most amazingly memorable logo, without it plastered on every inch of the earth? Likely not.

</comment><comment> mark-r They missed what I consider to be the best logo in history: McDonalds. The ability to draw that one from memory would undoubtedly be at the top.

<comment><USER7> Ditto for Nike.

<comment><USER8> For that matter, Logo of Apple and Audi are two things that are iconic and just floats on top of mind with no effort.

<comment><USER9> Car brand logos in general are pretty iconic, because you see them all over.

<comment> mark-r I think it's more than that. They tend to be simple and monochromatic, since they need to be displayed on the car itself - that helps them to be memorable.

My favorites are Infiniti and Toyota.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really fascinating as it draws really accurate to my experience learning Japanese Kanji.

I can study either recognition, where I can recognize a large amount of them in a short time period, or generation, where I can write them but then it's slower since I have to repeat writing each several times [1]. I find out that a combination of both is best for me at this stage and for my objectives.

[1] I use my own Anki alternative, [https://core.cards/](https://core.cards/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I liked the ending quiz too. Though the question about reddit is wrong. I answered orange and they said it's red. It's actually neither, it's orangered. That's literally what they call it themselves.

<comment><USER12> At the end, I couldn't figure out what the difference was meant to be with half of the choices. They had a bunch of pictures and I'm like "well, three of these are exactly the same."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's really interesting how many people remember the previous version of any given logo. I wonder if this means these logos were updated at the correct time, so when people see them they seem fresh and modern.

<comment><USER14> Some logos have changed from memorable, iconic, and well-designed into listless forgettable mailed-in husks intended to be more "modern," one of the worst offenders being Pepsi.

<comment><USER15> The Pepsi logo became super memorable in my mind when I pictured it as a rather rotund person wearing a red shirt and blue trousers leaning backwards

<comment><USER16> Like Strong Sad! [http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lEbPtIKmS_U/SaAuUZOmJrI/AAAAAAAABb...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lEbPtIKmS_U/SaAuUZOmJrI/AAAAAAAABb4/y0djH3Dyk6w/s400/pepsi_strong_sad.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The ability to draw a memorable thing from memory is entirely dependent on how much of an artist the drawer is. It has nothing to do with the memorability of the logo. We can all recognize the Pepsi or Coca-Cola logos, but only artists who have made mental notes of the shapes will be able to draw a likeness... And that doesn't even mean anything.

</comment><comment><USER18> As others say, this is recall vs recognition.

What would be an interesting next step would be to trial the cleaned up logos to see how well people recognised the correct ones and rejected the others

</comment><comment><USER19> Who can forget this memorable Logo?

[http://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/lisp/llogo.lisp](http://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/lisp/llogo.lisp)

<comment><USER20> Why is there a bunch of what looks like really old BASIC code at the bottom? Pretty sure most LISP processors will choke on that.

<comment><USER21> That's LOGO, not LISP.

The program at top is a LOGO interpreter, written in LISP.

<comment><USER20> Thanks, somehow I managed to grow up in the 80s without ever actually using Logo and getting LISP only in one programming course plus a little bit of Emacs (vi FTW!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> yeah but having someone be able to articulate the make up of a logo on a paper is a huge departure then you having an identifiable logo that can not be confused for another by the consumer.

</comment><comment><USER23> Idgi. Am I supposed to be surprised or maybe unimpressed that test subjects did not remember these miniscule details? Why did I get a sense the author expected a movement of heart?

Logo design is not concerned with trivia, but with symbolic association. If there is a goal, it is gross, unmediated communication of form and resulting symbol.

If anything, this study would be best used for these companies to know what to remove from the logos in their next redesign.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm really confused by the graphs. The axis are labeled exactly the same, so I don't understand how they're ordering these logos within them.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, they're ordered like the flow of text. Took me a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The author needs to put his site assets on a CDN.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm getting a 404, but Google's cache works for me: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QB_TwJ...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QB_TwJX3SdUJ:https://www.signs.com/branded- in-memory+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER28> Fun read.

Should companies use studies like this to recreate their logos? Is it a look into the subconscious of how we process symbols and icons?

</comment><comment><USER29> I hope the people who drew the least accurate ones are just unfamiliar with these companies, I have bad memory but these are hilariously bad. Also the Foot Locker man still looks like he's wearing a hat to me when I see the logo so I'm not sure that's a memory issue.

</comment><comment><USER30> I got a pretty good laugh out of the various intentionally incorrect logos. I think you're doing impressively well if somehow you manage to get people to remember even a single dominant feature and color of your logo.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder how well this correlates with brand recognition. For example, if people are better able to remember the logo, does that mean it's more recognizable?

It could be good for trying to design better logos.

<comment><USER32> Interesting question but I find it doubtful. Coca-Cola's logo is fairly complex.

<comment><USER23> It is complex in intricacy but simple in form.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Seeing so many timeless logos from the 60s and 70s make it look like that era was the golden age for logo design. OTOH, that might just be survivorship bias.

</comment><comment><USER34> Think it's funny that the person who drew the Pizza Hut logo for Domino's is considered more accurate than the person who drew a domino.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'd love more test logos.

Also, I'd be incapable of drawing BK logo. And even IKEA I would probably hesitate a bit.

</comment><comment><USER36> we just wasted 15 mins in our office giving ourselves this test on the whiteboard.

</comment><comment><USER37> Was it just me or are there duplicates of all of the images on that site?

</comment><comment><USER38> That Starbuck logo, is that a mermaid with two tails?

</comment><comment><USER39> My mind is blown at Apple's 1976 logo!

</comment><comment><USER40> the replacements for 7-11 are pretty great

</comment><comment><USER41> 503 error.

Hugged to death

</comment><comment><USER42> [https://imgur.com/a/eO2cp](https://imgur.com/a/eO2cp)

Cool website lol!</comment>


Ask HN: Travelling in South America - is there good Internet access? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN. I'd like to travel around South America but I was told that internet access is not great there. I still want to go but would need regular access for work.
I guess my question has two parts:
1. Where would you recommend going (ideally it has to be reasonably cheap)
2. What is access like from Hostels / Internet cafe's / Hotels? <comment><USER2> "Good" is subjective but in my experience you can usually always find a one megabit connection and "broadband" usually only means that. If your good involves Netflix or streaming HD movies on iTunes you're going to feel the pain.

In poorer countries you should be prepared for internet cafes that don't have wifi and in hostels and hotels the wifi often doesn't reach the rooms.

Generally the further you get from a major city the greater the chances of not having internet access.

</comment><comment><USER3> It varies wildly depending on exactly where you are and how much money you're spending, from "not available except via satellite" up to "widespread wifi."

Economic development is extremely uneven in South America compared to the US or Europe. If you're in a $2,000 a night luxury hotel in Buenos Aires, it's likely that it'll have adequate wifi hooked up to broadband. If you're in a $10 a night hostel in a rural area, you'll be lucky to be able to stand in line to check your e-mail on a shared 15 year old Dell with a CRT on a dialup modem.

Another complication is that even in many of the places with adequate broadband, access to locally hosted sites is reasonably fast, but there are very few overseas pipes leading out of the country. Hitting US or Europe based sites will usually be much slower than hitting an in-country site.

</comment><comment><USER4> For basic use, wifi is widespread enough, especially at gringo hostels. Not sure about working, but I was contemplating bringing my laptop on my next SA trip and getting work done. What I worry about is how much of an obviously wealthy person I would appear as(relative to locals)if I set up my laptop anywhere away from the hostel. I dont like overt displays of wealth because it makes me feel icky, but it would also make me a prime target to rob. Im curious what other people have to say though...

<comment><USER2> It really depends on where you go. There are places where it would be very foolish to take your laptop out of the hostel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can only comment in the context of playing videogames with people in South America, but you may find the information helpful.

I've been playing a lot of Counterstrike lately, and apparently the game is wildly popular in Brazil. The average player from Brazil appears to have 200-300ms of latency, and when playing with them, the game suffers intermittent lag spikes.

This doesn't really give you an idea of the availability, but it should give you an idea of what your connectivity is going to be like when you are trying to interact with services in the U.S.</comment>


Transcending Cultural Barriers: Context,  Relationships, and Time [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.library.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Transcending-Cultural-Barriers-LIexcerpt.pdf

<comment><USER2> Would Dunbar's number be lower in higher-context cultures?

It seems "obvious" that application of laws will always be lower-context than the culture those laws are being applied in. Thoughts? Counterexamples?

Teams tend to become more effective over time, as they get more used to working together. How much of this is due to moving towards higher-context interactions and less-structured / more polychronic time?

</comment><comment><USER3> We changed the url from [http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept- ctl/tomprof/posting.php?ID=255](http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept- ctl/tomprof/posting.php?ID=255) because the latter's formatting made the content difficult to read.</comment>


Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/e-gold/ <comment><USER2> E-Gold was Paypal... minus a few hundred million in VC funding and savvy.

Paypal actually spent a few hundred million on savvy -- in learning to defang fraud and abuse of the system. They also gave the finger to financial regulators for a few years, a decision which would probably have resulted in monitoring bracelets for all concerned if they had not been funded and then acquired. (If you have $200 million, you are ipso facto not a criminal enterprise, right? Even if money launderers happen to use your service.)

The protestations of ignorance on the part of e-gold are, ahem, a little rich. Crikey, I was in high school back when they launched and I understood they were a hive of scum and villainy with one look at the people advertising them -- how could they possibly _not_ have understood that?

</comment><comment><USER3> I once hacked together an automatic e-gold payment system for some guy in Egypt who had to do thousands of tiny payments in the next 24 hours (must have been some kind of pyramid scam or one of those 'high yield investment' schemes popular among a certain e-gold public - I didn't realize this when I took the job, I just saw the cool challenge). Of course I got paid $2000 through e-gold, all very hush hush.

<comment><USER4> you have been an accessory to commerce!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whoever controls currency, has the power. This fact alone assures that governments will never allow wholesale the wholesale success of any company that seeks to usurp state-governed currency models as the de-facto means of transactional debt payment. If it wasn't illegal in the first place and he had become successful, it would have been outlawed at some point.

<comment><USER6> To be fair: this wasn't a purely innocent web startup. Whether intended or not, it _was_ a money laundering operation for _real_ criminals. That's just not something that the economy or our governments should be expected to allow out of a sense of "justice" or "freedom".

For known operations, like banks, we have regulations limiting their behavior to curb exactly this kind of problem. Regulation couldn't act here because of the newness and complexity, so law enforcement had to. And law enforcement is ugly, and sometimes confused. And sometimes innocent* people get caught up, and we need to sort things out.

When that happens, we have things like grand jury indictments and jury trials that are intended to help out. And that process worked. He ultimately pled guilty and received what seems to me like a comparatively minor sentence (no jail time, 6 months house arrest, 36 month supervision).

Could thing have been handled better? No doubt. But, really: does anyone think that allowing E-Gold to continue to operate as-is was a better option?

* Innocent-ish, I guess. I have a hard time believing that this guy was a naive as the story paints him. I mean, how can you _not_ suspect criminal activity in an operation like this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Their more careful rival, GoldMoney, still exists.

<http://goldmoney.com/>

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

</comment><comment><USER8> _despite the consensus among professional economists that a gold-standard prevented governments from responding quickly to monetary crises; when an economy faltered, treasuries couldn't easily manufacture gold bars to stimulate it._

this is a feature not a bug. the economists who support government monetarism are shills.

<comment><USER9> No, the "shills" are the ones that don't agree with _me_.

(Which is the reason these topics get avoided here: like everywhere else on the internet, they turn smart people into name-callers)

<comment><USER8> random internet people are different from trained economists. the economists know better. go talk to an economics professor or a professional economic analyst. I have yet to encounter one who wouldn't call the major economic advisers political shills.

<comment><USER10> I've yet to encounter very many who actually like the gold standard, unless you're talking about self-trained "economists" who learned little more than a series of reasonable-sounding economic arguments for anarcho-capitalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Our rulers will never permit untraceable electronic currency to exist. This is not only because it would hinder taxation, but also because it would enable this:

<http://cryptome.info/ap.htm>

</comment><comment><USER12> > He maintains that he would have done what authorities now want him to do, if > they'd just worked with him to devise a plan, instead of treating him like a > criminal.

Given the depiction of this guy's persona, this statement seems accurate. Why would the Feds nail him like this?

<comment><USER13> To set an example?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> He really operates out of Florida? That seems kinda nuts.

The guys in Cryptonomicon did it better- at least it was in a jurisdiction where enough money buys a lot of immunity.

<comment><USER8> This story is a good example of naively believing that law is about justice. It doesn't matter whether or not you're technically breaking the law. If the powers that be take a dim view of your outfit something will be drummed up.

<comment><USER15> I think the worst part is that he was cooperating with them, and trying to do the right thing, but instead of them helping him to obey the law they were carrying out an investigation.

<comment><USER16> Really? I think the worst part is that he operated his business without regard to either government regulations or his user's TOS, and seemed to think it would all work out ok for him because he meant well.

I'm amazed the word "hubris" didn't come up in every second paragraph.

<comment><USER15> Agreed, breaking his TOS was wrong; but without regard to government regulation is how almost all businesses start & with its ever growing size it becomes harder and harder become and maintain compliance. I believe early paypal was also operating without regard to government regulations for quite a long time.

<comment><USER16> Call me old-fashioned, but operating without regard to government regulation is never a good idea, unless you don't mind ending up in prison. If this guy was taking that as a calculated risk, well, he lost. The fact that PayPal got away with it doesn't change things-- some folks get lucky, but luck is not a viable strategy.

<comment><USER17> _Call me old-fashioned, but operating without regard to government regulation is never a good idea_

You're old-fashioned.

Operating in _violation_ of government regulation is often a bad idea, but operating without regard to it is the only way you can start a business at all. No one has the money to do an exhaustive review to ensure their own compliance with all regulations, not least because after they did this, they'd be spending yet more money complying, while all their competitors sailed along in ignorance and made more money.

The first startup I was involved with was a competitor to e-gold, and one of the conditions of my relationship with them was that I had to move outside the US while I was involved on a day-to-day basis with their hardware and software, because they saw this coming (this was 2001). Of course, being so careful cost lots of extra money, and that helped sink them before they ever really became a noticeable competitor.

<comment><USER9> I think a lot of people might skirt or ignore 'the letter of the law' kinds of regulations, but ignoring the spirit of the law is more likely to be a dubious way to start a business, and often a good way to get in real trouble, rather than just harassed by bureaucrats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I did some reporting on another digital gold currency company called e-bullion that imploded after the cofounder's wife (who was the other cofounder) was murdered in Los Angeles last year:

[http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/08/22/e-bullions- lawyer...](http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/08/22/e-bullions-lawyer-calls- governments-actions-extreme)

A lot of people, ranging from participants in bogus HYIP schemes to gold bugs who want to invest in gold without physically handling bullion, got burned when the FBI and IRS raided e-bullion's offices and shut down the website.

The money is now being fought over by the cofounder, the estate of his wife, and the feds, who say they want to appoint a receiver to return the money to depositors.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wrote a piece on them last year which also had some good discussions on it on they HN page:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253569>

</comment><comment><USER20> the fall part wasn't that improbable.

</comment><comment><USER21> Too bad the laws aren't more clear on this issue. I wonder if at some point giving someone some coins in World of Warcraft will be considered unregulated money transfer.

</comment><comment><USER22> I knew a kid in high school who used to buy marijuana from Amsterdam over the internet using e-gold

</comment><comment><USER23> if you want anonymous payments, just use hawala :)</comment>


Make Ciabatta While Working from Home - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig6vqqHHulw <comment><AUTHOR> This is broken down into pomodoros where you do real work for 25 minutes, then tend to the dough during your 5 minute breaks!

Not sure why the first one got flagged. Reposting with a matching title.

<comment><USER2> I think the "while working" wording was a little too subtle. It is meant to be more literal than usual in this case.

I just made bread earlier today, so I'll have to save this for the next round in a couple days. Employing Pomodoro is an interesting way to keep productive structure going when it can be so easy to slack off as the world shuts down around you.

I even try to keep my sleep par usual, even though there isn't really anything stopping me from sleeping in otherwise. When we all get back to work, I don't want to have developed any more super lazy habits than I already have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, quite literal!

Ciabatta aligns quite nicely with the pomodoro, requiring being left alone for several 25 minute intervals of rise between folds.

Would love to see photos when you make it!

<comment><USER2> Video saved in Play Later. Of course I'll have to "hack" it to make it worthy. I've never made ciabatta before, but it is one of my favourites, so we'll see how it goes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why simple is better: people need to know what they are buying - <AUTHOR> http://istommydrunk.svbtle.com/why-simple-is-better-people-need-to-know-what-they-are-buying <comment><USER2> The author makes some very strong points...well worth a read...two caught my attention:

1} A solid performing "pared down" product is often more easily adopted by new consumers...simple intuitive use hastens understanding and speeds fluency...additional features can be added later, slowly... (e.g., Burban is pared down, becomes Instagram; Google focuses on becoming the most reliable search engine, it's pared down UI is simple and intuitive.)

2} Don't worry about pleasing everybody...app "home runs" are rare...work on pleasing a smaller niche crowd, establish a following by delivering a quality product...scaling comes later if you're lucky...

His advice on dating profiles is worth a read, but I won't spoil it by commenting...</comment>


Show HN: GoRef – slim profiler for Go applications - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mreithub/goref <comment><AUTHOR> GoRef is a small Go library I've built to better monitor a project of mine.

I'm using it to measure the execution time of all my HTTP routes (and other important code paths) to track down potential bottlenecks in the application (and it helped me detect a goroutine that didn't exit properly in a certain cases)

It's designed to have as little as possible overhead (as it's meant to be used in production code)

<comment><USER2> What are the advantages you see over using the `go pprof` toolchain?

[https://blog.golang.org/profiling-go- programs](https://blog.golang.org/profiling-go-programs) [https://golang.org/pkg/net/http/pprof/](https://golang.org/pkg/net/http/pprof/) [https://golang.org/pkg/runtime/pprof/](https://golang.org/pkg/runtime/pprof/)</comment></comment>


You've got to find what you love – Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://lnr.li/skRlx <comment><USER2> Find what you love and let it kill you - Charles Bukowski</comment>


Scraping made easy with jQuery and SelectorGadget (and Node.js!) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dtrejo.com/scraping-made-easy-with-jquery-and-selectorga

<comment><USER3> It's neat using jQuery for this but I've found the arduous part of scraping isn't in the actual parsing and extraction of data your target page, but rather in the post-processing, working around incomplete data on the page, handling errors gracefully, keeping on top of layout/URL/data changes to the target site, not hitting your target site too often, logging into the target site if necessary, respecting robots.txt, keeping users informed of scraping, sane parallelisation of requests, and general problems associated with long- running background process.

All tractable problems with standard solutions, but it's difficult to accept the claim that the idea of using jQuery—which is still pretty neat IMO—now makes scraping easy.

</comment><comment><USER4>
      perl -MLWP::UserAgent -e 'map { $_ =~ s/([^<]+)<\/a>([^<]+)<.+?]*>(\d+ points)/print "$1 $2 $3 $4\n" if($i++ < 3)/ge } LWP::UserAgent->new->get("http://news.ycombinator.com/")->content;'

<comment><USER5> It would be much difficult to write many more complex scrapers just using regexes, which is why methods like the one posted above scale well with complexity.

For example, if you wanted to scrape comments on HN and get a tree-like data structure, regexes would be much more difficult to write and maintain!

<comment><USER4> It scales. I ran WorkZoo.com (Time Mag top 50 website of 2005 - sold it the same year) and we scraped over 500 job boards and aggregated the jobs into a search engine. A team of devs developed and maintained the regex for each board and I managed them and I wrote the dev tools they used to develop the regex for each site we scraped. It was incredibly effective and maintainable.

Incidentally, the dev tools I wrote were in javascript and they created regex that we'd test in javascript and deploy in Perl. The regex engines are identical which is why it worked.

Scraper abstraction is for people too lazy to learn regex. Get a good book on regex, and learn how to use Perl's s/// regex with the 'e' modifier. It'll change your life.

<comment><USER6> ... and later you begin to discover different, much better ways to solve problems that you used to do with regexps, and your life will get back to normality and happiness. ;-)

For a solid scrapper in Perl I'd use HTML::TreeBuilder / HTML::Element. Perhaps slower than regexps, but does real parsing and understands tag-soup HTML.

<comment><USER7> These modules are very resource intensive and they become a bottleneck if you are scraping at high volume. I had to stop using these modules in one of my tools because of that reason. However, for smaller jobs they are awesome and much easier to use and understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I do a lot of scraping using perl. Web Scraper is an awesome tool: [http://search.cpan.org/~miyagawa/Web- Scraper-0.32/lib/Web/Sc...](http://search.cpan.org/~miyagawa/Web- Scraper-0.32/lib/Web/Scraper.pm)

</comment><comment><USER8> I also like this python scrape library: <http://arshaw.com/scrapemark/>

<comment><USER9> I use Scrapy: <http://scrapy.org/> another Python option: <http://twill.idyll.org/> for Rails: <http://nokogiri.org/> and perl: <http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Python's lxml can do CSS selectors. I've used lxml for scraping and find it quite nice.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've tried PHP scraping many different ways and settled on <http://simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net> . It uses jQuery style selectors as well.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been doing a _lot_ of scraping in node. I've had much better luck using YUI + jsdom than jquery +jsdom. Many pages would fail using jquery and it also leaked memory like crazy.

<comment><USER13> I suggest taking a look at node.io (<https://github.com/chriso/node.io>) - <USER2> scraping framework written for NodeJS. It uses htmlParser rather than jsdom and scales nicely. It also has support for handling timeouts, retries, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> People using clojure can get selector based scraping using Enlive instead of JQuery [1]. It also ends up doubling as a templating library. I use it for templating on my website and I use it to scrape Hacker News, though that project the scraping is for isn't ready for launch [2].

1: <https://github.com/cgrand/enlive>

2: <https://github.com/jColeChanged/mysite>

<comment><AUTHOR> And here's a truly awesome tutorial for enlive (swannodette is a regular here as well):

<http://github.com/swannodette/enlive-tutorial></comment></comment>


NHS England proposed action to cut sales of sugary drinks in hospitals - <AUTHOR> https://www.engage.england.nhs.uk/consultation/sugary-drinks/ <comment><USER2> I don't know how it is in Britain but in the US I always find it interesting that it's almost impossible to get any decent food in a hospital. The stuff they sell is the worst kind of fast food and the vending machines are full of junk.

<comment><USER3> It honestly depends on the hospital system.

Florida Hospital - Orlando (the largest hospital in the U.S. by bed count and revenue) has been doing a lot in recent years to address this concern. They started by making the largest soda you could buy a 16oz (bottled or fountain), and have slowly phased out some food groups (such as fried foods) and have introduced entire cafeterias that only serve fresh vegetarian dishes. They have brought in community coffee shops that only serve fair trade coffee, and are working on setting up a food court type area that will house local restaurants that serve only healthy foods.

Florida Hospital Orlando is the Flagship hospital for Adventist Health, which operates 46 hospitals in the US and 26 hospitals/67 clinics in another 21 countries. It is a model that is being scaled to this other institutions.

FH Orlando isn't a hospital that is known for it's innovative care like the Mayo Clinic or MassGen, but it's size makes it a model for operations that these leading institutions follow.

<comment><USER4> > by bed count and revenue

Someone please back me up here, it is fundamentally sick to rank hospitals by revenue, right?

<comment><USER5> That's a pretty standard practice even in countries with single payer systems.

Some hospitals do get higher funding, raise considerably more donations, and since even in the most "socialist" EU and other SPS countries state hospitals are still allowed to provide private healthcare services some also higher revenue through the private route simply by having better administration and more prestigious alumni and or patrons.

There is nothing sick about it, a hospital with better funding and revenue usually can provide better treatment, even the most bureaucratic healthcare systems are not immune to market forces, if nothing else than some hospitals will be better at attracting higher ranking doctors and surgeons and every country, region or large city has the "best" hospital for a specific condition.

At the end even the most equalized healthcare systems are still operating in a finite resource environment, even if the only finite resource is the availability of the best doctor in the country or region, this means that some will be better than the rest, ranking them by revenue usually is an easy way to find out which one it is simply because it's usually directly tied to the quality of the medical staff they can employ.

<comment><USER4> Standard practice or not, it still just seems _wrong_ to me - maybe that's just the part of me that believes that healthcare shouldn't be treated as a business.

<comment><USER5> Healthcare should very much be treated as a business since we have limited resources, you need to focus your resources where they would do the most good if not you will not like the results as everyone will walk around with perfect boobs and teeth but will die at 40.

You are more than welcomed to go and check into the lowest ranked hospitals in your country when you'll get ill, if not then it's a pointless argument at the end regardless of how well you think you equalize your system it will always have better and lesser hospitals.

In fact centralization of talent and resources has a positive outcome rather than a negative one since it doesn't have a major downside but a huge upside.

It's considerably better to have 90 average hospitals and 10 great ones than to have 100 average hospitals since in the 10% of the cases when a great hospital, doctor or surgeon is needed you will still have a place to go.

There is no real way of assembling an all star surgical team in every hospital in the city, not to mention a nation, so even if you would want to forcibly spread doctors (and there were a few countries that tried) and prevent private funds the only thing you get is a worse healthcare system not a better one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think there is a time and a place to nag people about changing their habits, and it is absolutely not when they are at their weakest and most vulnerable.

<comment><USER7> Which is why smoking in hospitals is OK?

<comment><USER8> That's restricted because it ruins the air of random bystanders, many of whom are in sensitive condition. The case for smoking bans in hospitals would be a lot weaker if people confined their smoking to a scuba apparatus (sorry, redundant). And the case for food restrictions would be a lot stronger if my consumption of soda at a hospital caused sugar to be injected into random bystanders' bloodstreams.

<comment><USER7> _the case for food restrictions would be a lot stronger if my consumption of soda at a hospital caused sugar to be injected_

There's no proposal here to restrict consumption. It's the hospital's choice what they want to sell at their own concessions. They can't sell every possible beverage, so it doesn't make sense to sell sugary ones at the expense of healthier alternatives.

Just like you need to bring your own cigarettes to the hospital if you want to smoke - don't expect the staff to provide them.

<comment><USER8> Sorry, I should have said "hospital menu policy restrictions".

(It seems like a pedantic point anyway; the fact that you're under no obligation to provide X does not imply that you don't have a policy restricting your provision of X. Plus, the comparison was to hospital smoking _bans_ not e.g. cigarette vending)

<comment><USER7> Last time I was at a hospital and wanted to buy a snack from the cafeteria, nearly all the options were loaded with sugar (coke, ice cream, etc). I'd say that non-sugary options are being subject to "hospital menu policy restrictions" at this point.

<comment><USER8> Hah! Very true!

There are probably several factors that influence what foods they offer and which results in their current general policies about what to stock. It probably makes more sense to first audit what those factors are and why they exist; otherwise, additional restrictions are more likely to force them into more expensive options since they'd have to obey the existing (probably ridiculous) constraints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drinks_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drinks_tax)

<comment><USER10> Yes, and not just that. All the industries raking billions every year while leaving the health system overwhelmed should be taxed.

Just like tobacco.

<comment><USER11> Meat eating diets(especially red meat) show increased risk of heart disease in so many studies it's a definite fact. Should we tax that as well?

The reality is that obesity is the cause of all of these food related diseases. Playing politics with which foods get taxed and which do not doesn't strike me as a winning game and will likely evolve into a battleground of special interest groups attempting to get their competition taxed.

<comment><USER7> _Meat eating diets(especially red meat) show increased risk of heart disease in so many studies it 's a definite fact._

You have a rather naive definition of "fact" my friend.

<comment><USER3> Cleveland Clinic seems to think that red meat diets lead to increased risk of heart disease [1]... And in a prior post someone else shared with you the Mayo Clinic article that also says red meats lead to increased risk of heart disease...

If two of the top hospitals in the world for cardiac care say it I'm willing to bet it's fact.

[1][https://health.clevelandclinic.org/2015/05/your-diet-and- hea...](https://health.clevelandclinic.org/2015/05/your-diet-and-heart- disease-rethinking-butter-beef-and-bacon/)

<comment><USER7> Studies indicating fat contributes to heart disease have been discredited because the effect actually comes from excess sugar intake.

[http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullart...](http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/1819573)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I loved in the UK for many years and loved it.

But I did not love the stuffy language occasionally found, such as the quote below from the"consultation document":

> Given due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment and > victimisation, to advance equality of opportunity, and to foster good > relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic (as > cited under the Equality Act 2010) and those who do not share it; and

To quote Samuel Jackson:

> English, motherfucker! Do you speak it?

<comment><USER13> You'll enjoy Gyles Brandreth's speech in Parliament about language: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpiCuSW3lrE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpiCuSW3lrE)

And potentially this discussion about the role of language in politics: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ha- PuJlgi0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ha-PuJlgi0)

<comment><USER14> > You'll enjoy Gyles Brandreth's speech in Parliament about language: > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpiCuSW3lrE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpiCuSW3lrE)

LOL Three minutes in, Dennis Skinner: "Have you read Maastricht?"

<comment><USER12> Brilliant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting.

You'd imagine if a cancer patient throwing up all the time wanted a Coke/Fanta, It'd great emotionally and health wise.

This, might be a small percent of patients and could be catered to in theory. If patients could chose their meals.

But certainly the hypocrisy you often see at cancer walks where they have sublet the catering to junk food providers can wear a bit thin.

</comment><comment><USER16> Never too late. I am wondering what other projects are out there like this one that a corporate lobby products and mass poison a large part of humanity for decades.

<comment><USER17> [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar- ind...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry- shifted-blame-to-fat.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> God forbid that a mother and father drink empty calories as their child is on death's doorstep

</comment><comment><USER19> "...plans to cut the sales of sugary drinks _sold in hospitals_ "

<comment><USER20> Plans to cut the sales elsewhere would be interesting. Maybe a ban on ads and a health campaign? I'm sure the likes of Coca Cola would lobby hard against though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think government has plans to introduce a SSB tax, on top of the 20% VAT, sometime in 2018. This is to encourage the industry to self regulate.

I hope it doesn't go the way of minimum unit pricing for alcohol, which was announced and then withdrawn.

<comment><USER21> It's at least still going ahead in Scotland, despite the objections of the Scotch Whisky Association: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- scotland-37725251](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-37725251)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "In hospitals" it seems. Title could be amended.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sugar consumption within normal population values is not a health risk given available evidence. We also don't know what consumers will substitute for sugary drinks if they are unavailable.

<comment><USER24> What made you post exactly the same content as a similarly-named, also new account? Is this some sort of sugar industry automated astroturfing gone awry?

<comment><USER25> Could it be a bot?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sugar consumption within normal population values is not a health risk given available evidence. We also don't know what consumers will substitute for sugary drinks if they are unavailable.

<comment><USER26> [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27001643](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27001643)

t The effects of added sugars on various chronic conditions are highly controversial. Some investigators have argued that added sugars increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. However, few randomized controlled trials are available to support these assertions. The literature is further complicated by animal studies, as well as studies which compare pure fructose to pure glucose (neither of which is consumed to any appreciable degree in the human diet) and studies where large doses of added sugars beyond normal levels of human consumption have been administered. Various scientific and public health organizations have offered disparate recommendations for upper limits of added sugar. In this article, we will review recent randomized controlled trials and prospective cohort studies. We conclude that the normal added sugars in the human diet (for example, sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup and isoglucose) when consumed within the normal range of normal human consumption or substituted isoenergetically for other carbohydrates, do not appear to cause a unique risk of obesity, diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

<comment><USER27> Now, do your real research and find out who funded this study, and what their sugar-industry connections are.

<comment><USER28> Actually, I think that part's on you. I attempted to do so, and got bored, realizing that it wasn't worth the effort for this particular thread. One thought I did have regarding the abstract was regarding the conclusion statement:

 _We conclude that the normal added sugars in the human diet (for example, sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup and isoglucose) when consumed within the normal range of normal human consumption or substituted isoenergetically for other carbohydrates, do not appear to cause a unique risk of obesity, diabetes or cardiovascular disease._

Which I believe can be interpreted as saying that looking at what's happening in the normal population doesn't show that _added_ sugars cause unique risk. This, I think, says nothing about the level of sugars that are being consumed as contributing to the increased levels of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease we're seeing. I don't think it says anything about cutting back on sugar wrt reducing health risk. Subtle point, and perhaps one that's contradicted in the article text itself, but I didn't read the article.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spark web server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rif/spark Little web server for emergencies <comment><USER3> As opposed to Spark, the microcontroller platform. As opposed to Spark, the resilient distributed data system. As opposed to Spark, the open source IM client.

<comment><USER4> Yep, should've gone with Zitser or Poppler.

<comment><USER5> You were probably being facetious, but Poppler is already used too (PDF rendering library).

<comment><USER6> Would've made more sense for a POP email library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it really that hard to add 5 lines of boilerplate to your nginx conf? You can probably just copy-paste an existing server{} block or sites-available file and change the root directory. As a bonus, you'll learn a bit about how to configure the same tool you'll use later in production.

Oh. It's written in Go. Got it.

<comment><USER8> I'm so sick of seeing this pattern of 1) person makes tool they find useful, 2) person releases tool publicly _for free_ , 3) other person comes across tool but doesn't find it useful, 4) other person publicly denigrates tool as being universally not-useful.

I just don't get it.

<comment><USER7> I don't think I said anything negative about the tool itself, or about the author of the tool, who seems perfectly happy with it.

You're right that I don't think it's useful to have a proliferation of tools that do one thing worse than a general-purpose tool.

I don't want an avocado peeler - I'll use a knife and I'll recommend using a knife to others.

<comment><USER9> Great. Good for you.

Your initial comment, however, is filled with a denigrating tone. It is that tone your parent is addressing. Not so much the content. The tone. It is unkind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You could achieve something similar using the simple HTTP server shipped with python: python -m SimpleHTTPServer

<comment><USER11> Which will melt with any sort of sustained traffic.

<comment><USER12> Except, that's not the use case for Spark so it's an apt comparison.

> Emergency web server

> For those occasions when your webserver is down and you want to display a > quick maintainance note. Or just want to quickly demo a static site. Or > whatever :)

<comment><USER13> Yes it is. The use case is when your site is down and you want to tell people that. If you have even a small amount of traffic `python -m http.server` is going to die, this isn't.

How is that not an apt comparison?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you just want a small httpd there's also gatling and fnord.

[0] [http://www.fefe.de/gatling/](http://www.fefe.de/gatling/) [1] [http://www.fefe.de/fnord/](http://www.fefe.de/fnord/)

<comment><AUTHOR> this one has 45 lines of code :)

<comment><USER15> Well, the binary contains a lot of go.

<comment><USER13> That's true of anything written in Go.

<comment><USER16> Yes, but, trivial c programs statically linked with glibc can be in the ballpark of 500KiB, trivial c programs statically linked with uclibc or similar can be in the ballpark of 100KiB, and trivial go programs (always statically compiled) can be 2-5 MiB. They're huge.

<comment><AUTHOR> The go team is aware of this and I think it will improve soon: [http://talks.golang.org/2014/go1.3.slide#1](http://talks.golang.org/2014/go1.3.slide#1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was wondering why I would want this, but being able to pass some HTML on the command line is pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER18> I can't see anywhere in the code so assume this returns a 200 code for requests. If was using this to show maintenance for my website would want it to return 503.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added a parameter to stet the desired status

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8080

Above will serve whatever files you have in $PWD

<comment><USER20> And be _insanely_ slow (not just the normal, python is slow comment - <USER2> are fast web servers in python; SimpleHTTPServer is not).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thanks! I have have been using "python -m SimpleHTTPServer" a lot, it is kind of a pain in the ass since it hangs sometimes in a weird way.

</comment><comment><USER22> Can someone explain this function signature? I can't grep it.

func (h bytesHandler) ServeHTTP(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request)

<comment><USER23> you have to get used to get go's backwards type declaration. This is defining a method on h which is a byteHandler struct called serve which takes a http.ResponseWriter and Request and returns nothing.

This is from the http.Handler interface, so defining this method causes byteHandler to conform to the http.Handler interface.

<comment><USER24> byteHandler is not a struct it's a byte slice. This is actually somewhat important since it highlights a nice feature of go where you can declare methods on any baseType by aliasing them to your own type.

There is no struct involved here and there doesn't need to be which is nice.

<comment><USER25> I've found that when discussing Go, the terms `struct` and `type` are usually used interchangeably. Yes it's factually incorrect, but the message is at least intelligible.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bownd. memories. together. Hottest Kickstarter project in November - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/formatt/bownd <comment><AUTHOR> Taking photobooks to the nest level by including text and email to contextualize the photos.</comment>


Amazon Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/business

<comment><USER2> Everyone is going to focus on the discounts thing, but I think this is the real USP (over a standard account):

> Create a single or multi-user business account, approve orders

I've been in a lot of companies where they want to offload buying (e.g. office supplies, computer equipment) but don't have a dedicated department to oversee it, and don't really want to be handing out the company credit card to every employee who might need it.

Amazon's new product has two benefits: You don't have to give other employees the company credit card (presumably) and the orders come back to management for final approval. It is like having your own buying department in terms of friction (as a lot of buying departments seek final approval from management anyway).

This mostly applies to small purchases. Big purchases (e.g. servers, furniture, etc) will likely remain invoiced by the normal means even if just for cashflow. But business I've worked in spend a lot more than you'd think on Amazon just buying "day to day" bits and pieces (that are often cheaper than Staples, or similar local places).

<comment><USER3> A multi-user business account is even bigger when you consider this is more than just the sale of physical products. It's also computing services via AWS, hiring remote workers via Mech Turk, and books+apps+other virtual goods via Kindle/App marketplace.

Amazon just launched local services too, so this could let an authorised employee hire contractors under a managed, audited, workflow.

(I don't know if all of those services are available now, but I bet they will be in the future.)

<comment><USER4> Source for AWS and MTurk?

<comment><USER5> AWS has had muti-user accounts for 5 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Based on Amazon's choice of clipart images (bulk janitorial supplies) and verbage (lab beakers, break room snacks) they chose to highlight this launch, it looks like AmazonBusiness is competing with companies like Global Industrial[1], ULINE[2], etc more so than Office Depot and Staples.

Most of the items (paper, pens, etc) people bought from Office Depot, they could get already get from the normal amazon.com/office.../ [3]

The integration they offer with businesses accounting systems' purchase order workflow may be another enticing feature.

[1][http://www.globalindustrial.com/](http://www.globalindustrial.com/)

[2][http://www.uline.com/](http://www.uline.com/)

[3][http://www.amazon.com/office-products-supplies- electronics-f...](http://www.amazon.com/office-products-supplies-electronics- furniture/b/ref=sd_allcat_op?ie=UTF8&node=1064954)

<comment><USER7> Unrelated, but have you looked at the high end (+$100) AmazonBasic items? Monitor swing arms, paper shredders, a fire pit, and a gas-powered patio heater. Tripods get an honorable mention at $80.

I'm not sure who these are being sold to, and why under the Basics label.

<comment><USER8> What's so unclear here? This is the store brand, and it is often times nicer than competition at the price. I have an AB branded camera bag, and it's great. I have also bought cables, and other small accessories from them and they have been of good quality. If I need a monitor arm and can get one for $100 from Amazon or $140 from another manufacturer I wouldn't think twice and just get the AB one.

<comment><USER7> Basics was launched to compete with the likes of Monoprice. And due to the pricing structure of FBA, it doesn't make much sense for 3rd parties to sell items through Amazon for under $10. The majority of Basics items are inexpensive to take advantage of this. Almost every item in the Basics catalog are items that a person will buy at least once a year.

How many copper fire pits do you think the average person buys per year?

<comment><USER9> My Basics purchases so far: mouse, bluetooth keyboard, capacitive stylus, travel case for a portable hard drive, HDMI cable, USB extension cable, USB hub.

Here's the first page of results if I search Amazon for "amazonbasics": "portable power bank", USB--Lightning cable (6 feet) (I assume this is for connecting an iPhone to a USB port?), 67-inch monopod, bluetooth "audio receiver", travel case for small electronics, dual monitors mounting arm, USB wall charger, laptop backpack, microUSB--Lightning adapter, 24 pack of microfiber cleaning cloths, 8-pack of AA rechargeable batteries, USB-- Lightning cable (3 feet), GoPro carrying case, double rod freestanding closet, large portable bluetooth speaker, 12 pairs of banana plugs (6 red, 6 black).

None of those, except possibly the cleaning cloths, are items I'd expect someone to buy once a year.

<comment><USER7> I'm not exactly a good data point because I hate buying things without a good reason and buy stuff as infrequently as possible. But I also keep good records of my purchases. On average every year despite being anti-consumerism* I will buy one set of rechargable batteries, one cable, one charger, one protective case, one adapter. (So far only one of my purchases have been from Basics.)

8 of 16 of the search results fit this (rather arbitrary) "once a year" description.

Anyway, on your own purchases. Stylus, case, cable, cable. Basics has only been around for six years. And you really need to count all of the _non- Basics_ purchases, because that is what Amazon is trying to capture.

* I don't feel this way, but multiple people have told me the economy would collapse if everyone acted the way I do.

<comment><USER9> But at one cable a year, you're not even close to buying each cable product every year, nor to buying each product _that you 're a customer for_ every year. If I fit the model you describe ("the items in the catalog are items that a person will buy at least once a year"), I wouldn't be buying one cable a year -- I'd be replacing every one of my cables every year. Instead, I never replace them at all, making them items that I bought once.

If you want to say "the items in the catalog fall into categories, and a customer will typically buy a single item from any given category once a year"... then you've descended into meaninglessness. You can categorize fire pits however you want. They'll fit that definition some ways and they won't fit other ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Unconstructive nitpick: the text quality in the images on that page is awful. Very aliased, and the letters seem kind of randomly sized and kerned. It's quite strange.

<comment><USER11> Seriously, look at the typographic alignment in the _very first word_ of this paragraph (which happens to be "Amazon"):

[http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/img15/amazon- busi...](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/img15/amazon- business/pages/landing-page/ambz_lp_solut._V306693268_.jpg)

It has always seemed freaky to me that Amazon still uses images for paragraphs of text. I have assumed it is because the real-world web is more broken than I know.

<comment><USER5> Amazon has an incredibly tightly packed homepage with images and text. that's an obscene challenge to layout without obscuring content or missing up proportions. The inside pages use regular layout and are more liberal

<comment><USER12> Luckily for us, their iOS app and mobile browser experience is really nice (only I can't see some comment metadata like up/downvotes).

Only time I visit Amazon on a desktop is when I happen to deep-link into a product page from a review site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a great idea. It's amazing how many businesses keep Office Depot and Staples (and other office supply companies) on life-support simply because they're setup to handle corporate accounts. So now there's almost no reason to go to either place unless you need to print off in volume (becoming less and less common) or need something absolutely right now this second.

<comment><USER14> Staples isn't on life support, it was the second largest online retailer in 2014 (more than Wal-Mart, Apple, etc etc). I'm sure they're concerned about this move though, but they have a nice advantage over Amazon for doing their own deliveries through their physical stores.

<comment><USER13> > they have a nice advantage over Amazon for doing their own deliveries > through their physical stores.

That is a nice point. Staples.com has been growing and is robust, while Staples Inc. stores have been shrinking (they're closing 225 stores by the end of 2015).

They don't break out brick & mortar from on-line in their earnings reports, so you have to infer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is replacing "Amazon Supply" which was the acquisition of smallparts.com , which was one of the best ways I knew to get a box of just the right bolts. But now they're closing that down and folding it in to this other thing? Does "Buy products available exclusively to Amazon Business customers" mean that those products get hidden behind some new special section of amazon? Do I have to get an "Amazon Business" account to buy bolts? Is the smallparts/amazonsupply portal going away and now I don't have a good way to browse bolts (for those times when I'm not sure if I want it made out of steel or brass or nylon)? In short, I miss smallparts.com

<comment><USER16> All of the fasteners I've bought on AmazonSupply have also been available on Amazon proper, they were just harder to find there. I really hope Amazon can improve their search interface for this stuff. While AmazonSupply was much better than Amazon itself or Grainger, McMaster still destroys everyone else in this space -- McMaster wins a _lot_ of business based on nothing more than the ease of finding products on their website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks like this is the new version of [http://www.amazonsupply.com/](http://www.amazonsupply.com/) which is now shutting down.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow. Images for the text on landing page? Seriously, Amazon?

<comment><USER19> And a table-based layout, and the navigation is a single image with maps. Pretty incredible to see in production on Amazon in 2015.

<comment><USER20> Amazon clearly knows that it is not the beauty of html behind the page that will make this initiative successful OR cause it to fail . At the end of the day, these images are used to get the message across and its Just doing that . That's what it is.. Nothing beyond it.

<comment><USER21> It's not just the behind-the-scenes stuff that's ugly. Whatever they used to render the text is much worse than what my browser does. And there's no mouse hover changes. And you can't copy/paste the text. Following best practices would have gotten them a long tail of benefits for free.

Sure, the page gets the message across, but I think even non-technical people are at least subliminally aware of the fact that there's something low-quality going on.

If some smaller website did this it wouldn't be as surprising. It's just that this seems like an amateur mistake from a company that we all assumed to have competence in web design.

<comment><USER5> Amazon is a store, not a website design luxury showcase. They aim to deliver the most products at the lowest prices with reliable delivery, and they aren't selling copy-pasteable ad copy. They rte quite competent in their web design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does Prime shipping still apply? It only says free 2-day shipping on orders over $49.

Edit: Found FAQ on that - If you have this in addition to prime, there's no order threshold. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=b2b_...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=b2b_faq_ot_pf?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201733090)

</comment><comment><USER23> A business is the perfect use case for the 1-click buy button Amazon introduced a few weeks ago, Amazon Dash.

<comment><USER4> By the printer, or the coffee in the break room... good thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Would be extremely awesome if university libraries could be hooked up and I could select a book on amazon and they'd approve it. The current ordering system here takes long and the books are usually more expensive, too.

Same goes for our procurement department. You find stuff on amazon (or other sites) and they just order it somewhere else for more money and it takes forever. I think I'll have a talk with them. They could essentially outsource the procurement to the employees (who'd gladly do it) and would only have to approve/deny stuff. The current process for standard stuff is pretty much "found it on amazon, sent a link, they ordered it somewhere else after x-time"

</comment><comment><USER25> What type of discounts are available beyond what you could buy traditionally / personally?

</comment><comment><USER26> At bizongo.in, we are already building something similar to tackle the problems and inefficiencies in the Indian B2B industry. Currently in its beta, it has multi-user accounts, not only for the buyer, but also for a supplier. We've built a nifty quotation generator, to respond to quotation requests in minutes. This is where having multiple team members on the portal helps, as anyone in the team can respond to quotations. We are also building approval workflows, for both buyers and suppliers, where quotations can be approved, and further orders can be purchased.

</comment><comment><USER27> So where does that leave Costco and Sam's Club?

<comment><USER28> Today? Fine.

In the future? Very possibly in the same unfortunate spot a lot of bookstores and then general B&M retail chains were put in due to Internet-shopping in general but Amazon particularly.

IMO they have a lot of reason to be worried mid to long term if they are paying attention, especially in light of Amazon's obvious push to get things delivered to you ridiculously fast if you opt for it (and this goes way beyond their whole drone PR).

<comment><USER12> Costco + Google Shopping Express for me beats Amazon Prime. Same day delivery is better than 2-day or even next day. Prices are better, and I can even order fruits.

If Google keeps expanding Express, Amazon may be in a position where they're playing catch-up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems like an offensive against AliBaba's plan. Good to see competition in this area.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've long wondered about the streamlining benefits of company Amazon accounts. Just shipping savings would be huge, especially to large foreign companies whose staff receive many packages a day.

</comment><comment><USER31> New business experience.</comment>


Ask HN: good designers that do html too? - <AUTHOR>

I really want to find some good designers that deliver html/css, not Photoshop. I regularly have design work and I've never been able to find anyone that's good. I'd love personal recommendations of freelance designers you've worked with :) <comment><USER2> Dunno what you call a good designer but here is what I did in Photoshop & THEN HTML (WordPress + THesis) <http://www.kingsidharth.com>

It has more links to more of my sites that I did. Just ping me if you like it. My mail: <http://scr.im/kingsidharth> (yah that's mail)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And as an example of a design that I like: <http://ohlife.com></comment>


The Story of the Fine Young Capitalists - <AUTHOR> http://apgnation.com/archives/2014/09/09/6977/truth-gaming-interview-fine-young-capitalists

<comment><AUTHOR> By the way, their harassment is still ongoing, someone is trying to hack into Matt's accounts

[https://twitter.com/TFYCapitalists/status/513048546858532864](https://twitter.com/TFYCapitalists/status/513048546858532864)</comment>


Introducing the new Snapchat - <AUTHOR> https://www.snap.com/en-US/news/post/introducing-the-new-snapchat/ <comment><USER2> Evan of Snapchat talks about "performing for your friends" as a strange "side effect" of Snapchat. But the instinct to perform is native to the Snapchat medium.

I think this is a problem.

I went to a concert a few weeks ago. The people beside me would stand still for 10 minutes and then someone would pull out Snapchat. The whole group would turn around, flash a smile and start dancing for the camera. 9 seconds later, they were back to watching the concert.

Performance is a cultural virus that affects our happiness and creates a kind of perfect self-consciousness. It's "instant replay" for all of life. And just like in American Football, when instant replay arrives, we start to (1) glorify the spectacular, (2) hyper-analyze every angle and (3) expect more moments worthy of instant replay.

Snapchat pushes us to create more of those "replay worthy" moments. We narrate our lives according to the expectations of our "fans." I hear 8-year-old kids yell "do it for the likes." They are quietly subverting their self while sublimating the value of the crowd. How do I have an identity when I consistently invite other people - often strangers - to affirm my experiences?

Those concert-goers felt the need to misrepresent their experience of the concert. The 8-year-olds adjusted their behavior to optimize for likes. When I was on Snapchat, I loved seeing _myself_ in other people's stories. It made me feel popular. I, too, adjusted my behavior to appear more likeable on camera.

Adjusting Snapchat's interface will do nothing to address the intrinsic ways that Snapchat reorients our relationships around performance.

Perhaps this is obvious, but family and friends should love me the way I am. Not some imaginary version of me. And Snapchat nudges me to fake it.

<comment><USER3> I don't know, isn't this the same as all social media? I remember reading something along the lines that playing golf is posted on Facebook twice as much as doing the dishes, yet people spend 5x more time doing the dishes.

And if we step back from social media, what about regular pictures? They're supposed to take candid moments of the real world, but even if we're having a bad day, we smile and act happy for pictures.

I agree that a divide between reality and ideal is happening here, just that it isn't really new.

<comment><USER4> >what about regular pictures? They're supposed to take candid moments of the real world

I'm not sure that is an accurate representation of photography as a medium, nor has it ever been.

<comment><USER5> I profoundly disagree, documentary photography is as ever-present and ever- useful as it has been.

<comment><USER6> What proportion of photographs are taken with that intent?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Teenagers, and for that matter, everyone yearns for smaller private spaces where they can share whatever they want with their closest friends — without any reservations of judgement from their parents, grandmas or uncles. I used to love Instagram, until Facebook decided to make it Facebook v2 by making my entire "friend" list follow me there as well. That means that until I invest a lot of time hiding my story from everyone but my closest friends (and of course no one has time for that), I'll just refrain from posting some of my true self there.

On the other hand, the tight knit and private nature of the Snapchat network is going to keep it more attractive to me. At least for me, the amount of time spent in an app is more correlated with the depth of my relationships with other nodes on that network, and not just with the size of my audience.

I've loved Snap as a company for a long time, and I like their pitch of using innovation as a moat: they have consistently innovated every year since their founding (Ephemerality, Stories, AR filters, Memories, Spectacles (although this has largely been a failure)), have a core set of users who really really love them, and are now playing to their strengths by positioning themselves well as the private space for you and your closest friends.

<comment><USER8> This is a great post to read in comparison with iambateman's [0]. You prefer Snapchat because it is a space where you are safe to be yourself, without worrying about parents/uncles/etc seeing you. But iambateman's point is that making videos for our friends is a performative event, and thus drives one to (a) be different from your actual self (more funny/interesting/alive) or, at the very least, to (b) act as you see yourself reflected in their eyes - to be that version of yourself that they expect to see. To go all philosophy 101 on it, this is more-or-less the basic question of existentialism, with Snapchat acting as a multiplier for temptations to inauthenticity.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15807728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15807728)

<comment><USER7> I totally see iambateman's point, and agree with it. As far as inauthenticity goes, I would say that it pervades all aspects of our lives, including real- life interactions, which we can assume to be most authentic, yet at some level inauthentic (almost everyone changes themselves a bit depending on who they're talking to).

On this spectrum, the Snapchat experience is a lot more authentic and closer to real-life interactions than Instagram/Facebook, which are a lot worse multipliers of inauthenticity.

<comment><USER9> > As far as inauthenticity goes, I would say that it pervades all aspects of > our lives, including real-life interactions, which we can assume to be most > authentic, yet at some level inauthentic (almost everyone changes themselves > a bit depending on who they're talking to).

An important and totally missed point! Nice one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Android's Camera API has existed for _literally years_ to take high-quality photos and these guys are still just taking a screenshot of the viewfinder and calling it a day. It's been like this forever and Snap has refused to fix this. I have yet to come across any other app on Android that utilizes the camera this way. The photos are complete garbage.

And here they are, trying to add more 'features' into an app where its main feature has been inherently broken since inception.

edit: this post kinda blew up. to see a real side-by-side comparison, [https://imgur.com/a/wuaZi](https://imgur.com/a/wuaZi)

<comment><USER11> As a near daily snapchat user, and someone who has developed an Android app that use's the camera, I prefer it this way. I'm not using SnapChat to take super high quality pictures, but to share moments quickly. The WYSIWYG works well for that, and a lot of Android devices are super slow to take pictures.

Dealing with Camera 1 vs Camera 2 Android APIs, and device specific issues is a mess, I don't blame them for taking the easier route. The iOS camera system is a lot easier to develop against, so I blame Android for this rather than Snapchat.

<comment><USER10> So you prefer gimping your photo quality because you're too lazy to learn how the API works, and assume that your users are OK with this as well?

<comment><USER12> Aren't the photos on Snapchat intended to be ephemeral? I'd be totally okay with potato quality if I was sharing something quickly because Snapchat isn't a photography app.

It's not as if Snapchat are a tiny company with nobody smart enough to notice there's a camera API, this is intentional.

If you want to send a quality photo to a friend, there are apps for that.

<comment><USER10> "snapchat isn't a photography app"

you literally take photos and send it to people

<comment><USER13> Snapchat is to photography as passing notes in class is to literature

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They still haven't moved to the `newer` (not new anymore. been here for 3yrs now) permission modals on Android. The moment I hit the Install button on Google Play it prompts me to give blanket access to 11 different APIs. No way I'm gonna let them have it.

Every app that I have on my Android device has been updated to this granular permission modal and for Facebook I manually turned off permissions after they started using the Storage permission to access my camera roll to display a carousel of photos that I've taken recently on my timeline.

</comment><comment><USER15> > The new Friends page to the left of the camera...

> The new Discover page to the right of the camera...

This reads like the manual to an early-90s text adventure.

<comment><USER16> As strange as Snapchat's UI is versus the standard mobile OS's UI guidelines, there's no denying their unorthodox UI has been wildly successful. There's definitely things to learn from their strategy.

<comment><USER17> Really? Every friend of mine complains about the UI. Just yesterday a group of friends (early 20's) were commiserating over how nothing in Snapchat made any sense and just doing something as simple as getting to your friends list was difficult and unintuitive, requiring a couple false starts where you use the wrong swipe and end up somewhere you didn't mean to.

<comment><USER18> What if I told you that was part of the genius design? This "frustrating design" forces curiosity out of users to discover the app for themselves and encourages them to share these features with friends further augmenting the network effect. Based on which semi-hidden features get shared/used the most, Snap can A/B test faster than you'd imagine.

<comment><USER19> While I don't think the author thinks it forms an academic quality taxonomy anymore, I do like the ideas in "Players who Suits MUDs": [http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm](http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm)

Especially the idea that lack of friendly ux leads to more communication and cooperation between players. I don't think it's completely unreasonable that forcing network effects in "Mealsgate" (how do I even install pokemon go) might help form stronger network effects - which in turn is what surveillance machines/skinner boxes like snapchat needs in order to spread.

<comment><USER18> Snap's game is changing from getting people in the door to keeping them inside. No longer do they need that network effect to get people in the door -- they've escaped orbit. In fact, they're probably discovering that what worked for getting people in is also driving people out, and they've probably got someone with too much influence that is unwilling to accept that churn.

Yes, they can change their design for retention; do not expect it to work.

<comment><USER17> I don't think you've provided any real evidence that it was specifically the design and UI that sold people on the app. I started using Snapchat right around their peak demo, 17/18, and I remember jumping on board because it was letting me do something other social media apps weren't, not because it was hard to use. The ephemeral nature of the content was exactly what I and my peers looked for in a landscape dominated by public-persona builders like Facebook, we didn't gravitate towards it because of the design.

You forget in your arguments about 'network' that literally every teenager uses the thing. There is no exclusivity, no special bond between users. Your entire high school would be plugged into the app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The anti-social-media stance they're taking is probably well informed given their target audience is growing a substantial aversion to oversharing on the long-lived-net and would rather overshare on the ephemeral-net.

Their stock isn't necessarily enjoying it as much as they'd probably hoped. I might speculatively buy in if it seems like it's not a Digg v4

<comment><USER21> I just bought some - I'm considering snap another case of what Facebook went through. Very well informed about their user, lots of talent working for them, tons of users. However, I think their success will need to come from tailored paid content (also read, they need to collect more data on their users).

Note: this is not investment advice.

<comment><USER20> Agreed.

Just to add clarity to my earlier post: I did pull the trigger and take a long position in snap. We'll see how it goes; I've still essentially written off the principal as a loss, but if there's an inflection point, I suspect it'll be here.

(likewise none of my commentary here is investment advice)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They realized that instagram's biggest enemy is the amount of advertising and fake-accounts there is pushed into your stream of photos and are using it to their advantage! clever :)

</comment><comment><USER23> There is an interesting article by Dan Kaplan on _" Why Snapchat is Losing To Facebook And The Strategy It Can Use To Win"_ [1]. It is an amazing read for anyone interested.

In the post, the author outlines a strategy which Snap can use to regain its relevance and importance in the social space. The author mentions how Snap can rebrand itself as a "self-expression company" that respects users' humanity.

Interesting to see Snap taking steps in this direction.

[1]: [https://exponents.co/snap-facebook-key-competitive- strategy/](https://exponents.co/snap-facebook-key-competitive-strategy/)

<comment><USER24> Definitely interesting. It's an especially strong proposition these days, when cybersecurity and privacy are so heavily emphasized. My main concern is that I am not convinced that this route can be monetized. Wish the author fleshed this out further.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is this thing still a total bandwidth hog and downloading all snaps in alphabetical order instead the videos I want to see? This app was unusable in countries with low bandwidth like e.g. the Philippines. This is why Instagram wins... Instagram is really really great engineering and testing. I would even say it's one of the best optimized mobile apps out there.

<comment><USER26> Go to settings->manage and toggle Travel Mode on.

<comment><USER27> Seconding this. Took snapchat to Sulawesi and had no issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wait, what's even different? Serious question.

<comment><USER29> I guess that under the hood there are modes the camera can operate in - lower- res "video" mode and a high-res "still" mode. When you're looking at the viewfinder it's kind of a video - so it'll be lower res and presumably will skip some corrections involved when a still is taken.

Edit: oops I thought this was in reply to a comment where someone complained that the photo was taken from a screenshot of the viewfinder instead of using the camera functionality. Been a long day :-)

<comment><USER30> Where are you getting this from? Unless I missed something all they're doing is moving around the menus a bit.

<comment><USER31> I think they replied to the wrong person, the story here is that the menus have changed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just a personal anecdote but I have tried installing Snapchat app on my iPhone about a year ago or so. I have spent about 20 minutes tapping and swiping around the app to try to figure out how to use it. I couldn't get how it works and was so frustrated that I have uninstalled it.

In addition to UI being most confusing and impossible for me to figure out, it was also super slow on a mobile network in Asia where I was at the time, near unresponsive.

If I, as 25-30 years old tech person cannot figure out how to use your mobile app, you got a problem. I completely understand why the user base growth has completely flatlined. I assume there are a lot of people similar to me.

I am very bearish on Snap.

<comment><USER33> If you go looking for the Snapchat S-1 SEC filing, it essentially has a user guide for the app inside. (So that potential investors could figure out what the hell it was all about.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This seems like a solid response to Instagram eating their market share, as Instagram suffers from exactly the problem described (of course, as intended because Facebook's entire business model thrives on it).

<comment><USER35> I absolutely abhor and detest the way Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter mess with my timeline. At least give me an option to sort everything in a reverse chronological order -- no "tweets I may have missed" \-- by default. I hope the left friends screen will not have this mess.

<comment><USER14> For Twitter you can flip a switch to go back to chronological order (at least on Android). The settings is called `Show me the best tweets first`.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wonder why they made the video like they did. Essentially filming a filming session. Like behind the scenes styled.

For a unique spin on it?

<comment><USER37> The same reason there are illustrations that appear on screen and there's music in the background. Fundamentally, it's a boring topic (we moved our menus around). So they spiced it up with some things that create interest.

</comment></comment><comment> V-eHGsd_ I'm certainly not in snap's demo, but

> You can think of it as a more sophisticated Best Friends algorithm that > makes it easier to find the friends you want to talk to, when you want to > talk to them.

I can't for the life of me understand why I'd need something like this to help me find my existing friends when I want to talk to them.

<comment><USER38> This is for mobile. The goal is quick access to the people you talk to often without having to search.

This passes the "subway test". You're walking out of a busy subway station and want to quickly take an action on the go - how fast can you get it done on a tiny mobile screen with so-so connectivity?

On desktop, this is less of a problem when you have all the time, connectivity, and physical dexterity in the world to perform searches rapidly.

<comment> V-eHGsd_ The default text message app has done this forever though, right? same with my phone contacts if I want to be a luddite and actually _call_ someone

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is a nice, pro-consumer move, although I wonder if they will lose advertising revenue as a result. One would have to imagine that one of their big sells to Discover advertisers would be that their content is shoved in your face whenever you try to view friends' Stories.

</comment><comment><USER40> Sounds like the old snapchat

</comment><comment><USER41> Good move. It seems like a pro-consumer move that is also, and for that reason, a savvy business move. Snap and Instagram as far as I can tell are are largely used by young people who don't like the noise, visibility, and clutter of Facebook. So this is an effective way for them to further distinguish themselves.

</comment><comment><USER42> There's going to be a nice little bump in their share prices. Not sure how long that will last though.

</comment><comment><USER43> How innovative! Older chat "apps": ICQ, IRC, talkd, WinPopup always separated "Publishers and Creators" and my friends! Furthermore, there was separate device for consuming "Publishers and Creators" called "TV".

</comment><comment><USER44> Nice, now I never need to swipe right. Wonder how they'll make money now.

</comment><comment><USER45> Ok... so the app looks the same as it has for the past year? Not sure what's new here.

</comment><comment><USER46> Introducing the new Snapchat: "Nothing's changed, except everything."

</comment><comment><USER47> New Snapchat - same complete lack of a business model.

<comment><USER31> Snap has multiple revenue streams, what are you talking about?

<comment><USER48> serious question, other than the glasses that no one is buying, the ads where google and facebook take up most of the space, what do they have?

<comment><USER31> They charge brands for special promotional filters.

They charge publisher brands to appear in Discover.

They charge users for geofilters for their own events ([https://www.snapchat.com/geofilters](https://www.snapchat.com/geofilters)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Will it fix their declining user base though?

</comment><comment><USER50> Sooooo it's exactly the same?

</comment><comment><USER51> This is weak</comment>