Javascript secrets of Bret Victor's homepage - <AUTHOR> http://www.arcfn.com/2011/12/javascript-secrets-of-worrydreamcom.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Bret Victor seems to be the sort of guy who makes things for the sheer joy of it. They may not always work brilliantly, but you have to respect the creativity and effort that went into them. When I saw his page I was surprised by how it was achieved without Flash. I think that was the point of him making it: to show that surprising things could be done.

This harks back to those showoff pages at the dawn of the Web, which showed surfers things that surprised and intrigued, and did it without adhering to common design conventions. The sort of page that you raised your eyebrows at and bookmarked right away, because that sure was some genius and artistry behind it there. It's nice to come across these things, especially today when mostly everyone uses major platforms, templates, plugins, and conventions.

</comment><comment><USER2> Not related to the article. Seems Bret doesn't care much about us Windows users. It's more or less impossible to scroll with your scroll-wheel with that custom scroller. Personally I think he's trying too hard with worrydream.com. I feel it's hard to navigate, with bad responsiveness and clunky, even on Chrome. I believe the bad UX comes from the skeuomorphic design. I've never seen such design work good for a software UI.

That aside, Bret Victor is a genius and I love most of is work. He's a great inspiration to me, and should be to anyone involved in any form of software development.

<comment><USER3> This is more of a show of expression that creating a usable site.

Again this reminds me of the Flash days, where people were doing things because they could rather than because they should. CSS text rotation is a great example of this.

Still I think sites like this are a great playground, and show what can be done.

<comment><USER4> More so, in stark contrast to Flash, his site is accessible to screen readers, search engines and older browsers.

<comment><USER3> As others have said most flash sites of this kind did the exact same hack and provided an HTML fallback that used JS to replace the fallback div with the correct Object/embed for the browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a couple quibbles with the article, notably:

> _Special support for Ajax URLs_

being raised as an industry standard and a best practice, whereas it's a Google hack of a solution.

HTML5 history.pushState[0] is the proper standard solution, with a nice polyfill[1]

[0]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/DOM/Manipulating_th...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/DOM/Manipulating_the_browser_history)

[1]: <https://github.com/balupton/history.js>

</comment><comment><USER6> If I remember correctly the website is actually implemented via openlazlo (<http://www.openlaszlo.org/>). I remember coming across Bret's site as an example while working through openlaszlo documentation.

</comment><comment><USER7> I really like his articles but the website is awful. Everything is blurry and the scrolling is broken. On HN when I scroll down once, it goes to the next comment, on this site it literally scrolls 1 pixel down.

</comment><comment><USER8> To everyone complaining about UX on his site: please don't. Don't even look at the effects, don't think about how it _looks_ , it's irrelevant. Instead, go read the code. And if you want to complain about how it's written, it's ok - paste example snippets and talk about them. Show how you'd optimize this or that transition, what you'd do better. I find your complaints - without these snippets and rationale - annoying and missing the point.

<comment><USER9> Wait, what?

 _Don't even look at the effects, don't think about how it looks, it's irrelevant._

No, it's not. On the contrary, it's not only relevant, it's the central issue. Otherwise he wouldn't have made the site look like that.

 _I find your complaints - without these snippets and rationale - annoying and missing the point._

The site is awfully slow to scroll on my machine. I can't use the keyboard to scroll it, either. Right clicking on one of those icon thingies behaves the same as left clicking, which surprised the heck out of me. So did the fact that you can scroll the site by dragging the background, with left or right click; you can imagine what that did for my mouse gestures.

If you think I have to present snippets of code to validate these complaints, then you're the one missing the point.

Just in case: the point is that while the site is behaves like a nifty tablet app, it breaks both the widespread _expectations_ of how to interact with a web site and several significant interaction _mechanisms_ that a lot of people rely on. To distill the point even further, it would be a pretty nice mobile app, but as a site it's about as nice as using blink and marquee tags was back in the day.

<comment><USER8> > No, it's not. On the contrary, it's not only relevant, it's the central > issue.

Ok, I'm sorry, I presented my point of view and shouldn't have expected others to think the same.

As for me, I'm not exactly touched by visuals. My ideal UI and UX is CLI and this has not changed for over twenty years now. Anything more than this is an annoyance for me and I would probably consider much of really good designs as ugly overkill. Probably, because I have no way to say which design is good and which is not, I lack the skill to care.

However, I'm a programmer. I'm easily excited by what someone coded, especially if this something reaches the limits of technology. I am a kind of guy that's going to be amazed with a simple, bug ridden, slow and visually ugly proof-of-concept, just because it's cleverly coded.

I didn't had the time to read through the source yet. I don't know if it's enough to make me smile. Maybe it's not, maybe it is. And that's the point: I'm a programmer. Not a business person. I don't care about a product. I don't care about UX. I'm in love with code, and that's why I still work as a programmer, am not burnt out and not going to go into management.

If Bret was product-centric he'd use Flash to do this. It would be faster, both in development and execution times. It would be cross-platform, at least as much as Flash itself is. It would be prettier and much more usable. It would take fraction of work that went into coding this in JavaScript.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding him, but the fact that he did this in JavaScript suggests, for me, that he didn't treat it as a "product", that needs to be "shipped". I think he took a journey into unknown, beyond the limits of current JavaScript technology, and documented this journey in the form of code. That's why I'm going to read his notes, his code, and learn from him. Because I'm a programmer, because what I care about is code.

You are entitled to be primarily concerned with how usable the site is. When I said that you're missing the point, I thought that maybe - maybe - Bret didn't even think about usability of _this particular site_ , maybe he wanted to show programmers that coding something like this is possible. Maybe I'm wrong, this is pure speculation - Bret himself should say what he intended.

<comment><USER9> I'm not that different from you. I also love coding and I love cleverness in coding. However, I also care about "product".

That doesn't mean I expect everything to be a "product". If you tell me, "Hey, look at this clever concept/technique/trick/idea/spike/prototype that I cobbled together", I'm not going to tell you "Damn, why is it so ugly/slow/buggy" (unless the idea was specifically to be pretty/fast/bug- free).

You and I basically disagree about the assumed purpose of Bret's site. If his site were a game, then I would be the dude who's disappointed because it's Quake III and not Dragon Age ;)

PS: Caring about "product" and UX doesn't mean you'll get burned out or go into management ;) I know you weren't generalizing, but talking about your specific case instead, but I just wanted to mention that caring about code and caring about users are things that don't work against each other.

<comment><USER8> > You and I basically disagree about the assumed purpose of Bret's site.

Fair enough :) I think we should wait for Bret's comment on this, only he will be able to tell us what he really intended to achieve with his site.

> Caring about "product" and UX doesn't mean you'll get burned out or go into > management ;) I know you weren't generalizing,

I wasn't generalizing, but I certainly was exaggerating... a bit. Sure I like my code to be used, and that it feels nice to have users that are happy to work with something I created. It's just that my focus is primarily in code and I feel a bit frustrated here, because it seems like I'm in minority. There are many people here commenting on cool, clever, technical hacks, but I feel that there is more of those who only `itertools.cycle(["product", "business value", "product", "customers", "product", "shipping", "product"])`... I don't think it's wrong, just that I don't feel that way and would like to be recognized as someone of value (not necessarily business value) too :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The homepage is unusably slow on Firefox.

<comment><USER11> Almost unusably slow here also, this is a bad example of a website, because the web/html works better the more one designs for the least common denominator, not pushing it to its limits. Fundamental misunderstanding, mismatch.

<comment><USER12> > the web/html works better the more one designs for the least common > denominator, not pushing it to its limits

The only way to move the least common denominator forward (aka. progress) is to have people pushing the tech to the limits.

<comment><USER11> No, a site for public consumption should behave consistent in current browsers. Otherwise, the author demonstrates merely his misunderstanding of the web.

<comment><USER12> No, it shouldn't. Not in every case. If you're building a company site and care about every customer, then yes, make everything compatibile back to IE6. Your aim is to earn money via web, which is only a tool for that; not to make progress happen. But even then you might want to enable some more advanced features for people with better browsers.

On the other hand, when you're building a personal site you can do whatever you want, especially if you want to make a statement, and especially if you are specialized in information and interaction design. You push the status quo and lead by example.

The web is not a static organism. It needs to evolve, it needs to be pushed to it's limits and beyond. If you don't want to innovate (in this particular area), than by all means stay with least common denominator. But don't stop those who want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For anyone who hasn't seen Bret Victor's mind-blowing talk, here it is:

<http://vimeo.com/36579366>

</comment><comment><USER14> UX aside, a lot of thought went into this and I applaud the experimentation done in 2011!

</comment><comment><USER15> He's amazing..I was stunned while looking at his work. Especially learnable programming.</comment>


France announces action on Libya - <AUTHOR> http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2011/03/2011319132058782326.html

<comment><USER2> Did La France actually do a better job defending freedom than the U.S.? Whoa, the world has changed... that's like the U.S. leading France in croissants and afternoon sex.</comment>


Need an investment with an ROI of over 100% each year? SF bay housing [pics] - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/1fRtc <comment><AUTHOR> It's like DiCaprio is running this ish...</comment>


Ludwig Wittgenstein - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/wittgenstein.html <comment><USER2> My college abstract algebra professor, who was fond of grilling us in class, once asked me to define an "isomorphism". I said something to the effect that an isomorphism is when you have two structures that though technically different, share an essential similarity. To which he quipped "that's the Time Magazine definition of an isomorphism, I want you to tell me how you really define it, mathematically."

This article, I submit, is the Time Magazine definition of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Read at your own peril.

(Peter Hacker is the only academic I know who really seems to get Wittgenstein. You're probably best off ignoring the secondary sources on Wittgenstein altogether, but if you must, I recommend you read Hacker---please not Daniel Dennet.)

<comment><USER3> I'll second Hacker and recommend his _Wittgenstein's Place in 20th Century Analytic Philsophy_ as a reasonably accessible starting point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This recent new yorker article gives some interesting background on wittgenstein's extremely neurotic (and intersting, of course) family. Apparently three of his four brothers committed suicide, as did one of his sister's husband. I personally didn't understand his books - I guess a lot of what was revolutionary in his ideas (language games?) had already been absorbed and taken for granted by the time I was born.

[http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/04/06/09040...](http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/04/06/090406crbo_books_gottlieb)

<comment><USER5> I don't think that Wittgenstein's observations on "language games" has been absorbed and taken for granted. His interest in games was part of his exposition of the nature of universals (forms, essences). Considering that for at least 25 years students in the humanities (social sciences, media studies, literary studies) have been force-fed a simplistic 'anti-essentialism' as a political doctrine, I'd say that's proof that Wittgenstein's work is almost completely unknown outside of Philosophy Departments.

Sadly most of philosophy is unknown outside those walls. Ludwig may not have found that so sad - he saw philosophy as a kind of mental disability, and himself as the doctor.

Probably the best introduction to Wittgenstein is Janik and Toulmin's "Wittgenstein's Vienna". Even if one decides that philosophy is a fly in a bottle, there's fascinating stuff in that book on forgotten greats like Karl Kraus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Spam from me (I know the author of this book) about a recent book on LW:

[http://www.amazon.com/Wittgenstein-Flies-Kite-Story- Models/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Wittgenstein-Flies-Kite-Story- Models/dp/0131499971)

</comment><comment><USER7> Daniel Dennett, himself a contemporary caricature of a philosopher, opens by asking whether a philosopher would be happier to become so successful as to strike down philosophy completely, or rather to become popular and read forever. Wittgenstein, says Dennet, aimed for the former, but achieved the latter.

To my mind, though, Wittgenstein did, in fact, succeeded in shooting down philosophy as we knew it. He did so by demonstrating with his own unique story and bizarre writing that (if to paraphrase Clemenceau) philosophy is far too important to be left to the philosophers. Wittgenstein's generation was the first one in which Philosophy as an academic and literary endeavour has contributed virtually nothing to our understanding of the world.

<comment><USER8> I disagree with you. Wittgenstein's generation of philosophers did contribute something crucial to the twentieth century thought. At least Karl Popper (1902-1994) should be mentioned in this context. His arguments against the political philosophies that emphasise metaphysics are traces of the world that resulted in communism and fascism.

The German philosophers before Wittgenstein (Hegel especially) created a philosophical atmosphere in which it was acceptable to create large metaphysical constructions such as the proletarian state or the third Reich. Popper among the other liberal thinkers devoted significant part of their academic work to show that communism and fascism were founded on metaphysical constructions that could not deliver the dream they promised.

<comment><USER7> You are right about Popper (other commentators mention him too), but he's the exception

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think I agree with the author of this TIMES article. I think a philosopher deep down inside definitely wants to be right over read.

<comment><USER10> Isn't that the point he was trying to make? Most philosophers want to be read over and over. Wittgenstein was less concerned with his legacy of writings (only the Tractatus was published during his lifetime, and that was little more than his journal) and more concerned with solving problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. -- Wittgenstein

</comment><comment><USER12> time.com - a good example of a badly put together website.

It looks awful and finding stuff is virtually impossible. How wide exactly is that text column where I am supposed to read from ? 300px ?

<shudder>

</comment><comment><USER13> This just in: Daniel Dennett cites Ludwig Wittgenstein as one of the 100 most important people of the century. And coming up later on the 11:00 news: Heisenberg admits, "I never could have done it without Bohr."

<comment><USER14> Actually, I would say that Dennett's philosophy owes far more to Alan Turing than Wittgenstein, which is why I was surprised that he suggests that Wittgenstein's legacy may prove more valuable than Turing's. Pretty high praise considering Turing gave us the theoretical basis for computers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wittgenstein was a terrible person who hit children, hard, on the head:

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

> His severe disciplinary methods (often involving corporal punishment, not > unusual at the time)—as well as a general suspicion amongst the villagers > that he was somewhat mad—led to a long series of bitter disagreements with > some of his students' parents, and eventually culminated in April 1926 in > the collapse of an eleven-year-old boy whom Wittgenstein had struck on the > head.[29] The boy's father attempted to have Wittgenstein arrested, and > despite being cleared of misconduct, he resigned his position and returned > to Vienna, feeling that he had failed as a school teacher.

But Wittgenstein was a much worse philosopher. He wrote, for example, confusing/obscure attacks on the value of philosophy itself. Not having any philosophical problems one is interested in or finds fruitful is completely understandable. And of course a person in that situation won't make any useful contributions to solving philosophical problems. The weird thing is why he's considered a philosopher, let alone a good one, by anyone.

<comment><USER16> > Wittgenstein was a terrible person who hit children, hard, on the head:

That old bugbear - horrible as he might have been in person, his philosophy is distinct from this side of him. We might as well insinuate that Feynmann's work is worthless because he was a womanizer.

> Not having any philosophical problems one is interested in or finds fruitful > is completely understandable

How is reasoning about the problems of philosophy itself not an interesting philosophical problem? You are entitled to your own opinion, but when you slate someone who was considered by other big philosophers as a giant, you need to make a stronger point than that.

<comment><USER15> Whether "reasoning about the problems of philosophy" is interesting depends on what you think they are, and whether you manage to come up with any useful answers.

What sort of stronger point do you want? I have an explanation of what Wittgenstein was (a person without philosophical problems) which accounts for all evidence of Wittgenstein known to me. I think it can account for everything you know about Wittgenstein too, if you think about it.

Did you want me to pick several examples -- which you can then accuse of being cherry picked -- and show how it fits? And I should do this in addition to offering my general explanation, even though you've offered neither an explanation of Witt nor brought up any examples for or against mine?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What company allows developer to use Linux (not vm) - <AUTHOR> Wondering what companies allow you to use Linux as the primary OS on the corporate machine. <comment><USER2> In NYC and I've always just brought along my Linux laptop - no one's ever told me it's not allowed. Disclaimer: I use Linux because of the philosophy, hate mega-corps and will turn down any job offer if the offering company runs an Exchange server.

The MBP I'm usually given is left at the office. I use it strictly for iOS/macOS testing and the occasional Sketch/AI/PSD file.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a sysadmin/DevOps since last 5 years, I'd converted lots of beginner windows dev/user to Ubuntu/Linux as I'll not allow Micro$hit in our work ;)

Also, I'd rejected lots of offer which are using Exchange Email or work only with Windows system.

After 5 years of my career in India as a sysadmin I'm happy I'd not handled any Microsoft Shit.

</comment><comment><USER4> The only place I've worked where the developers ran Linux on the dev boxes is Google, which used Goobuntu.

Couchbase gives us Macs but most servers we run for dev and test purposes are Linux, often CentOS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea I only see windows with Linux vm or Mac os.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Windows is a red flag(i wont apply or join if you are using windows)... after my first job i've never seen windows again

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Can anyone name a large company that let's devs use Linux as the OS on the corporate pc?</comment>


Tableau Software from the Early Days: Tableau's First Intern Reflects - <AUTHOR> https://www.trifacta.com/blog/tableau-software-early-days-tableaus-first-intern-reflects <comment><USER2> I misread this as Soleau:

[http://www.soleau.com/dosgame.html](http://www.soleau.com/dosgame.html)</comment>


How Julia Enthoven Built a $9k/Month Meme and Video Editing App - <AUTHOR> https://launchbasket.com/how-julia-enthoven-built-a-9k-month-meme-and-video-editing-app-an-interview-with-kapwing-cofounder-and-ceo/ <comment><USER2> > During the launch phase, did you maintain a full-time job? (or even > currently)

 _No – my co-founder and I worked full-time on Kapwing._

\----

Seems like they're glossing over a relevant and important part there.</comment>


China and California sign deal to work on climate change without Trump - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/07/china-and-california-sign-deal-to-work-on-climate-change-without-trump <comment><USER2> Not that I don't support this move but doesn't this violate the Constitution ("No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation")?

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

<comment><USER3> Yes it is. Even for agreements, not treaties, with foreign powers, the states need Congress' approval.

I think it is merely symbolic, as California can accomplish its climate targets voluntarily without any agreements.

This meeting was just to give the finger to the Trump administration and show them that the power is local.

<comment><USER4> does it give a finger to the trump administration? to me it means we can accomplish things without a symbolic accords that will cost the US 3 billion.

<comment><USER5> So we're pulling out because of 3 Billion dollars? That's nothing on the global scale.

<comment><USER3> 2 billion. Obama already paid 1bn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm amazed how China has now become the leader of the green movement. Times change.

<comment><USER7> Don't let yourself be fooled. China is not being high-minded or altruistic. The Paris Accord was economically beneficial to the Chinese because it explicitly allowed them to increase emissions, to continue their high growth rate and "catch up" to Western economies. Of course they want to tie the hands of their major economic competitors. And now they also see an opportunity to rehabilitate their public image in the minds of Western liberals, all while they keep throwing political dissidents in jail and oppressing religious minorities. And burning more dirty coal anyway too.

I'm not making an argument for or against the Paris Accord here--it's reasonable to argue that it's only fair to allow developing countries more flexibility under it. But please don't let yourself fall for Chinese propaganda that tries to paint them as altruistic or taking a moral high ground, or most absurdly, as the new "leaders" of the green movement.

<comment><USER8> OP is impressed by the shift in public perception, not in the causes itself. If America was ever the leader of the green movement, it also had its own sinister roots.

<comment><USER9> Are you sure about that? I didn't read it at all like that.

But it's easy for China to cheer on the Paris Accord, at least for now. Even though they already produce more emissions per capita than the EU average, they get to increase their emissions without a set limit, while competing European countries axe their emissions in half – and Europe pays China for all this while industry flees into Asia of the ever increasing costs of operation. To me it doesn't sound like a good deal at all with us being in recession for most part of the last decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good. The states need to step up when the federal government isn't doing what they want.

<comment><USER11> US Constitution. Article 1, Section 10.

<comment><USER10> Don't see how that's relevant here

<comment><USER12> FTA:

> Brown later held a closed-door meeting with the Chinese president, Xi > Jinping, during which the two pledged to expand trade between California and > China with an emphasis on so-called green technologies that could help > address climate change, Brown said.

From the Constitution, article 1 section 10:

> No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, > keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or > Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, > unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of > delay.

<comment><USER13> _"...or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay."_

There's the out. It may (and will) be argued that climate change is an imminent Danger that will not admit of delay. The associativity of the clauses is just ambiguous enough that the last one can be paired with any of the others, not just engaging in war. And, I am confident there are people in California willing to take that argument to the Supreme Court.

<comment><USER7> I see we are reaching new heights of sophistry in our disregard for the Constitution. It's clearly not an response to an "imminent Danger that will not admit of delay" if the agreement in question takes no urgent and effective action. Or if the danger in question is something on the scale of decades away, where action starting today is just about as effective (or ineffective) as action starting a year or two years from now.

<comment><USER14> Commerce that remains internal to a state also shouldn't be regulated by the interstate commerce clause, yet that's been done for almost a century. There are no new heights of sophistry here, US history is littered with examples of convoluted logic to find constitutional grounds for whatever those in (various levels of) power want to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What an interesting move. Pretty much leaves the federal government no choice but to respond though. The implications of a state contacting a foreign government for policy sets a bad precedence. Regardless of how noble the cause is. In this case it's green energy, but it could have just as easily been fossil fuels.

</comment><comment><USER16> I really wish California would engage Trump rather than just slam the door shut. There's room for a deal and there's common ground to be found if people actually try. This needless childish behavior is screwing us all over.

<comment><USER17> Does Trump really seem like the sort of person who can be engaged productively? The needless childish behavior here is coming from the top; routing around the damage appears to be the most productive way of making progress.

Yes, there's room for a deal; that's why California just made one, with China!

<comment><USER16> I guess I'll ask for an example when California has engaged Trump in respectful conversation... I'm not defending him, I'm just saying I don't see anything happening.

<comment><USER18> I guess I'll ask for an example of when Trump has ever engaged anyone in respectful conversation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Wonder of Quasars - <AUTHOR> http://www.intelligentlifemagazine.com/the-music-of-science/the-wonder-of-quasars <comment><USER2> An interesting historical byline was the debate over the distance of quasars in the 1960s. What made quasars so unusual was that their spectrum resembled absolutely nothing that had been seen before. A typical quasar spectrum has a broad continuum with a number of emission lines on top of it. This should have made it fairly easy to identify the composition of quasars since the emission lines tell you what elements are nearby, but the observed emission lines matched up with no known elements. Maarten Schmidt realized that the most prominent emission lines could be those of hydrogen if the recessional velocity was about 15% of the speed of light.

This sparked a big debate in astronomy because whether you believed Schmidt or not, something crazy had to be going on. If Schmidt was right, these objects would have to extremely far away --- much further than anything that had ever been observed before. And if they were that distant and that bright, that would imply that they would have to be extraordinarily luminous. The timescale of the variability of the spectrum implied that whatever the source was, it had to be less than the size of Solar System. Yet if they were really that far away, something of that volume had to outshine an entire galaxy!

On the other hand, if Schmidt was wrong and the quasars were really local, you still had to explain just what exactly they were. One plausible explanation was that the emission lines were generated deep in a gravitational well (i.e., there was gravitational redshift rather than cosmological redshift). But no known objects could stably produce emission at such specific gravitational redshifts.

Ultimately the cosmological view of quasars prevailed because theorists could show that accretion of gas onto a supermassive black hole could produce the required luminosity in the required volume, whereas there was no good explanation for how you could produce a non-cosmological quasar.

The story of non-cosmological quasars turns out to be an excellent example of science progressing one funeral at a time. Even when most of the field had moved on by the late 1970s and 1980s, a small cadre of vocal astronomers continued to insist on the non-cosmological quasar model even into the 1990s until they started to die. Halton Arp was the most well known of these (he is better known for the Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies) and even published a book in 1987 arguing in favor of the non-cosmological model.

<comment><USER3> Great response. Makes the articles even more amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's nothing that boggles my mind like astronomy. Nothing delivers the same mix of terror, awe, and resigned bewilderment.

<comment><USER5> I agree, that's a great way of putting it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had no idea that GPS was based upon the locations of quasars. Fascinating.

<comment><USER7> Here's a bit more info on that[http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2009/icrf2...](http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2009/icrf2.html)

<comment><USER8> I wonder why pulsars where not chosen. Are they too nearby for the purpose? Shouldn't they be easier to distinguish than quasars?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A fascinating read. Such articles make me enthusiastic like Feynman. Thanks for sharing.</comment>


Dennis Ritchie has died - <AUTHOR> http://pythonmeister.blogspot.com/2011/10/dennis-ritchie-has-died.html Just a few thought - and a big thank you <comment><USER2> > _His spirit will survive longer, than we all can imagine. Man is driven to > create. He created. And everyone wants to create something that lasts._

</comment><comment><USER3> he made, all kinds of programming possible, a world without C is truly impossible.</comment>


Are Designers Crazy? - <AUTHOR> http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/01/are-designers-crazy/ <comment><USER2> No, designers aren't crazy. You just don't understand a very fundamental concept of design. It even applies to engineering. It's okay—many people have the same frustrations as you do.

But those who care about the details achieve truly high quality results overall. It extends to all areas of the design, not just to the parts you can't see.

In the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," there's a scene in a dark room where Roger Rabbit (an animated character) flies across the room, knocks a hanging lamp around, and the lighting becomes so dynamic that all the shadows move around _including the animated character's shadow._ Here's the scene in question: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EUPwsD64GI>

This was such a small detail that it would have been forgivable if the animators had left it out entirely: if they had not moved the lamp, kept the shadow steady, no one would have really noticed the difference. It would have been 100 times easier to animate and the effect wouldn't really have been that different.

But they did it anyway. The term was later coined, and "bump the lamp" is used throughout Disney (and probably other organizations) to mean something akin to "go the extra mile"—but I see it as having a special significance to design.

You're right, most people won't notice. By that logic, you could cut corners a lot of other places too. You could be lax about button colors matching exactly, or per-pixel sharpness on the map and buttons. No one would probably notice.

But if you go for every detail like it was the most important detail, you have the possibility of reaching a level of design quality that is superlative, and _some people will notice._ Others will not notice directly, but will see that the piece exudes style and quality subconsciously, due to the attention to small details. If you carry this into other areas of your work—programming, customer service, market strategy, marketing, and more—then you have a chance to create something of true quality.

If you don't pay attention to detail at that level, well, you might have the chance to actually get something done. Yes, it's a balance, like everything else. But you have to know that it won't be quite as good, and understand that yes, you are sacrificing something, even if you can't see it.

<comment><USER3> I see where you're coming from, but to me all you're writing is an excuse for unlimited perfectionism. Perfectionism rocks of you're among the lucky few who're in a situation where you can get away with it. In most circumstances, however, there's a product to ship, with the end of the money in sight.

I mean, in terms of the 80/20 rule (the last 20% of quality costs 80% of the time), we're not talking about turning an 80% thing (i.e. typical in-house enterprise software) into a 90% thing here. Hell, even going for 95% is something I believe we should all go for, and fight our colleagues, bosses and project managers, and customers for. But the OP's example is more like turning 99.5% into 99.8%.

<comment><USER4> For what it's worth, I, as a programmer, am happiest when working with designers who strive for this kind of excellence.

<comment><USER5> I feel the same way. When you have a designer who strives for perfection, they seem to think of the edge cases. And when they push you for pixel perfection, it only makes you that much better. Makes me remember how it is not to be "the best" or the one who cares the most in the office

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's easy to pick extreme examples to make it seems like designer obsess over unimportant details. But a designer that cares about the exact shade of blue or creating different versions of assets for each sizes will also care about making sure that your brand is used the right way or that your user interface makes sense.

Of course, with experience also comes the knowledge of which things are more important, and which can be sacrificed for the sake of saving time.

But it's often hard to tell the difference. A lot of details that seemed superfluous at first turn out to be crucial. So if you can afford to, it's safer to bring the maximum level of care to everything you do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's the best I've heard it expressed. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A plea to designers.... Read the original piece carefully and try to avoid being defensive. This is an important post for all of you. I've been a defender of Design and designers for 2 decades now. But you all are your own worst enemies. This post should serve as a chance for all of you to learn why you are often Balkanized in business decisions and business structures. It should serve as a chance for you all to show that you actually understand business realities and can propose rational arguments.

Instead, reading through these comments I see pretty much nothing but personal opinion, vigorous hand-waving, very poor and stretched-to-breaking analogies and the usual "because it means this to me" and "because I say so" and "because... Apple" arguments.

I'd suggest reading again with the mindset of "this is the way non designers think about us" and then come back and (with facts this time) explain your perspective.

And remember... this is Hacker News. We work at Start-ups. We believe in shipping early, shipping often, and iterating to improve. Your answers and perspective MUST work within this construct or we will ignore you (and you will thus teach all of us that designers are, in fact, crazy).

Ball's in your court.

<comment><USER8> > _This post should serve as a chance for all of you to learn why you are > often Balkanized in business decisions and business structures. It should > serve as a chance for you all to show that you actually understand business > realities and can propose rational arguments._

Heh. Because "business decisions" are always so rational, demonstrating a genuine understanding of the product and what the people that actually are going to use it will want from it?

> _And remember... this is Hacker News. We work at Start-ups. We believe in > shipping early, shipping often, and iterating to improve. Your answers and > perspective MUST work within this construct or we will ignore you (and you > will thus teach all of us that designers are, in fact, crazy)._

Sigh. Some of us want to ship genuinely high-quality products, not ship whatever we manage to shit out every other day.

If my users are noticing my bugs (or design faults), that adds up to an aggregate middling opinion of my product. One thing you got right -- I _do_ want to be Apple, not Time Warner Cable.

> _Ball's in your court._

Not really. You sound like someone that will willingly produce mediocre products, and I don't really know why anyone interested in excellence (and the rewards that it brings) would want to work with you. So this becomes a self- fulfilling prophesy for yourself.

<comment><USER9> You sound like someone who ships a mediocre product because you run out of time trying to perfect everything and end up having to leave stuff unfinished because of deadlines.

Most products have a budget and deadlines. Your job as a designer is to do the best job you can given the time and money allotted. There are very few projects that have unlimited time and unlimited money.

I've been on too many projects where designers didn't get that and given the promises to distributors, retailers and advertisers we had to ship a worse product than we wanted to because the designers spent to much time perfecting certain elements and not giving enough time to others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've worked with quite a few designers. (Mostly I have hired them for my projects.)

And many of them just lack pragmatism. There's a point where stuff is $good_enough and a user wouldn't ever notice that it's not optimal - but still many designer tend not to accept this. They strive for perfection. (Which might be fine if they weren't burning my money.)

But that's not confined to designers. Lack of pragmatism is generally a problem. Many engineers I know won't let a problem go until their solution would work for every possible edge case - even if it's impossible for said edge case to happen with the current project.

<comment><USER11> Totally agree; been guilty of it myself in the past. Getting the perfect modular golden-ratio-derived grid is less important than shipping, but being excellent is better than being _good_.

Designer culture in startups is still relatively new; most of us are still relatively recent imports from graphic design & advertising agencies where things are totally different.

But I've seen programmers exhibit the same deadly perfectionism in startups (namely, premature optimization. overly-ambitious architecture for week-long MVPs, and writing hundreds of lines of Rspec tests for code that is _designed_ to be thrown out after an experiment).

<comment><USER10> > But I've seen programmers exhibit the same deadly perfectionism in startups

Yeah, programmers are not immune to that. When I was younger I wanted to be a game developer. So I made games ... well, I rather designed game engines, threw them away as I came up with 'better' designs and threw those away too because I dreamt up an even better system.

In the end I didn't ship even one game in my 6 years of being an aspiring game programmer :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12>
       "Ok... Now I see some differences. On one, the
       buttons are slightly larger, the colours slightly
       more nuanced, the shading is subtly different. If
       I zoom to an extreme level, the font on "ebay"
       in slightly smoother."

I understand the above is frustrating, however, you are missing the main reason the image needed some extra love.

The main difference is pixel fitting [1]. The fuzzy border lines on the buttons are like "nails on a chalkboard" to me. "Nails on a chalk board" don't actually bother me that much but I notice it. For many cases I would just ignore it. However, if I am shipping a product that I am hoping will get free advertising from people talking about how beautifully it is designed, I am going to pixel fit the damn thing.

In this case, the designer is not being crazy, he is looking out for the the bottom line. Free word of mouth advertising and free blog articles written about the beauty of the pixels contribute to the bottom line much more than the cost of doing a little pixel fitting.

Look at the Hulu example below

[1] <http://dcurt.is/pixel-fitting>

<comment><USER13> Makes me wonder - is it possible to make an algorithm that does automatic pixel fitting?

<comment><USER14> Font hinting is precisely that, and it works quite well, at least for body text. I'm sure that more critical applications like logo design still require some hands-on work to get the best results.

As with any vector rasterization, you do trade _accuracy_ for pixel fitting, but for things like small body text you almost always want that. For example, if the 1 pixel wide vertical stem of a "b" is supposed to be between two columns of pixels, the hinting algorithm can push the stem either left or right so it is rendered as a single black column of pixels, rather than two gray columns of pixels. This will look less fuzzy, but it will technically cause the "b" to be closer than it should be to an adjacent character.

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

<comment><USER13> Yes, after I wrote that it hit me: font hinting would qualify as automatic pixel fitting.

I was thinking about something more elaborate, like an algorithm that takes distances between neighboring elements, proportions and other factors into account (and which can be tuned to include/exclude factors).

An example "smart" rule would be: If a group of elements are aligned, the same size and the same distance, they must remain aligned, the same size and the same distance after the processing

Ideally it would be a plugin for a vector graphics application which could then allow the designer to add finishing touches to the places where the algorithm got it wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just as crazy as programmers are for caring about their indentation or doing things "right". There are times when you need to rush a little and you can't do things perfectly, but it feels good to finish something and know you did it "properly" - whatever that may mean to you.

If you have seen Jony Ive's tribute to Steve Jobs, you may recall the part where he talks about "giving a damn". I think that is very relevant here.

<comment><USER16> Writing "good code" is always preferable, especially when you do things "right" the first time.

But what happens when you want to refactor something when 1) it's not strictly necessary in terms of functionality and 2) it will cost the client some non- zero amount of money. You easily slip into a gray area that this visual example illustrates well. Sure there are differences but are they material to the overall design goals? It's hard to say yes.

There's no such thing as "giving a damn" in an absolute sense. It's hard to say that any software product is ever done. If that's the case then it's the programmer's / artist's responsibility to say when something is good enough for the project's current goals.

<comment><USER2> If you had unlimited time and money, what would you do?

The higher quality thing is still higher quality, regardless of time or value constraints. If you choose a lower quality path while acknowledging you're balancing time and money, you're still choosing lower quality.

Realistically you can't achieve perfection (sometimes even completion) because you don't have unlimited time or money, and there are always new variables. But it is important to strive for that high quality as an ideal, even if you can never reach it. You know it is still better in some absolute sense. It's always out there as an intangible goal, and if you reach for it, you can understand and center on that balance beam even better.

<comment><USER17> Perfection is unobtainable by it's very nature. If you froze the world and left the designer alone for centuries what came out would not be perfection. Don't kid yourself that it would be otherwise.

<comment><USER2> I never said it was even real. All I'm saying is that some things are higher quality than others, and the higher quality things are _better._ It's a simple tautology.

I did say, "realistically you can't achieve perfection" which would appear to indicate that I'm not kidding myself here.

Understanding quality in both the realistic obtainable realm, as well as the unobtainable more-pefect level allows you to differentiate the two, and make conscious decisions about the level of quality you're targeting as well as your ability to do so in reality. The higher unobtainable level of quality doesn't even have to be close to the _perfect_ you're talking about—if you have time and money constraints, that unobtainable level of quality might be a _lot_ lower than perfect.

If you dismiss all levels of quality above a certain level as being this mythical unobtainable thing before even attempting to think about them in the abstract, then you've cut yourself off from a true understanding of the balance and compromise involved.

Of course you can't achieve it, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be aware of it.

At some point this idea becomes a philosophical discussion and ceases to be useful. Just as at some point, your perfectionism becomes a philosophical endeavor and ceases to be useful. There is a balance where the pursuit is useful and complete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Design is about empathy.

When I design, I am placing myself in the viewer/users shoes and thinking about what it is they are trying to do/understand. The subtile differences may not be critical when viewed at first glance but the designer thought it affected the experience enough when they were thinking about it from the end- user/viewer's perspective, that he/she thought it needed to be slightly different.

Sometimes it is just insanity. Yes, I admit it is a bit crazy to spend 30 minutes on something that no one will really look at twice and I'm completely guilty of it. And as a designer, sometimes we can't help ourselves... because "it just doesn't look right." I can't explain what "right" is but I'll know it when I see it... so I'll experiment with a numer of different approaches.

Sometimes however, it's a genuine care for the experience and the cumulative effect of sweating the small things showcase a level of polish and care that Apple is/was famous for. You just have to decide whether it matters to you (as a company) or not.

Some of the design choices made for the two versions seem like just an evolution in the style for the app that weren't back-ported to the older version. For example, the different colors of orange for the button, gradient shading, etc. Other changes are adjustments that, from his eyes, seemed necessary to make the experience better/acceptable on the 2x version, such as the sizing of the Search button, border bevel, etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> Having literally bruised my fingers trying to appease a visual designer who wanted browser rendering to look exactly like Photoshop (for instance, the CSS-drawn gradients didn't meet her approval, so we had to lard the interface with background graphics), I'm now in the "Put designers in straitjackets until they learn the fundamentals of modern Web application design" camp.

It's the year 2013, and your competition is using frameworks like Bootstrap or Foundation to release something while your dev team is fussing over bespoke line-heights specified in points. Maybe your app looks better, but how many users are waiting for that placed-just-so button image to download?

<comment><USER20> Disclaimer: I work on Operations at SeatGeek

We take design very seriously, and thats because better designs have been quantifiably proven to have a meaningful impact on our bottom line. That means sometimes we try and polish something for the first release, but we always set a limit to that - if it's not in production, it's not shipped, and we will forget about it amongst the 23524 other things going on in a given week. Therefore, we usually set at least some internal goal of "good enough" and then ship. It just so happens one of our founders really likes digging into design.

Also note, this is an iPhone app, not a web application. Very different rules apply here, so you can't just slap Bootstrap on your UI and hope for the best :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> You seem to be describing, basically, overengineering applied to visual design.

For a developer, an example of equivalent behaviour is being overzealous about a specific programming paradigm. Things that can't be directly quantified in business terms (unlike "response time").

IMHO, it's about pragmatism and business sensibility versus artistic perfection. And it applies for both worlds.

An argument from a more business-oriented visual designer could be, for example, about how some button color can affect conversion rate.

</comment><comment><USER22> The example about Google engineers "thinking like designers" is actually an example of "engineers thinking like engineers thinking about engineering a color choice" which the author is calling design. This is embarrassing. Engineers shouldn't think about design. Remember Douglas Bowman? <http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html>

People want to use things - i.e. products, digital or otherwise - with style and performance. People, real people, don't give a rats ass about computer science or design - they just want the product to do something for them and they want to look cool doing it. With their expectations of performance aside for the moment, there is nothing cool about engineers "optimizing" style.

<comment><USER23> "Engineers shouldn't think about design."

In my experience engineers who think a little bit about design work better with designers than those who don't.

<comment><USER2> In my experience, multi-disciplinary people of any kind work better than those who aren't. Such a rare and precious thing to understand the boundaries between fields and how connected they really are...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Currently dealing with design and usability experts that are spending a lot of time building things instead of shipping and trying out different approached.

There seems to be an aversion to A/B testing because that would clearly challenge their title of "experts".

<comment><USER2> There's something to be said for both strategies.

Once you get down to a functional and complete design, it's useful to A/B test details to optimize.

But it's nearly impossible to design something using an A/B test. Design simply does not work that way—it is not an evolutionary process on three variables, initially whether you believe in it or not, it is an art and as such takes in thousands of variables in thousands of forms and outputs something that works. That's the job of the expert—at the beginning, they are using their internal A/B test to produce something they know will be successful in the grand scheme. Give them a chance, please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Although these changes may seem like an unnecessary level of attention to detail, its important to keep in mind that this would be a very minor change to make design and engineering-wise. We're not talking about moving around elements or re-doing the entire design, just changing some colors/gradients. In my opinion, the little bit of extra effort required to put this level of polish on a product is completely worth it.

Most problems with perfectionism in design and engineering come from people making bad decisions early on in the design/development process and not realizing that something is fundamentally wrong until much later on--when its much harder to fix.

</comment><comment><USER26> The flip-back-and-forth example given in the post: [http://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Design- Di...](http://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Design- Difference.gif)

Notice how the edges are now fuzzy? On the buttons, on the edge just below the map, on the cog. That sticks out to me personally on this monitor here, and I tend to find differences like becoming even _more_ noticeable when looking at the phone with it's hi-res "Retina" display.

They may not be crazy; they just notice different things. :)

<comment><USER27> Those two versions are certainly different, but _better_ is a difficult call to make.

Of course, I still watch analog NTSC on a CRT TV, so what do I know about image quality?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28>
        > *"A design can be wrong. The entire thing can be wrong, parts can be
        > wrong, or even a tiny, 10x10 pixel area can be wrong. Not, "I think it's
        > good but it needs improvement" but flat-out wrong. 1 + 1 = 3 wrong. A
        > spelling mistake in a book wrong. A syntax error in a code file wrong.
        > It's not an opinion, it's not a matter of subjectivity, it's a fact: a
        > design can be wrong."*

[http://flyosity.com/application-design/your-design-is- wrong-...](http://flyosity.com/application-design/your-design-is-wrong-and- heres-why.php)

The buttons with numbers in his example are such.

There's still the question of whether fixing it is worth it or not though...

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not a visual designer, but I do see the difference in crispness between the two stadium images, and I think the improvement in the sharper one is non- trivial.

However, I'm frustrated with designers who associate thoroughness with being "pixel-perfect". Pixels should not be the focus. We live in a multi-res world; different people have differing visual acuity and varying ppi screens that they hold at varying distances. Being user-centered means accounting for all that variation, not optimizing individual pixels for your super-designer- vision. Just use vector art instead.

I hoped that the retina iStuff would finally break designers of their pixel- focus, but it seems that it's just become a way to obsess even more about pixels.

<comment><USER30> That's because pixels are important. The non-trivial blurring you see is the result of the edge of the image not being aligned with the edge of the pixel. the screen has to anti-alias it onto the subpixel, and it looks shitty. High PPI screens mitigate this somewhat, and i'm sure every designer would love to get away from using pixels but the results just aren't good when you do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Well, on mobile it can be hard to quantify and connect design to value. On the web it's a different story.

There's nothing wrong with beautiful design as long as you are willing to accept the fact that at one point it is serving art and not business needs. And that's OK.

If the requirement is to strictly serve business needs, then you have to A/B test, generate numbers and go with what optimizes conversions or whatever you are after. People react to what they see in amazingly different ways. I don't think anyone has a canonical "manual" for what will please most people or what will compel most people to take a given action. I mean, look at Craigslist!

</comment><comment><USER32> as a designer, i wholeheartedly agree with his points on the obsessive strive for pixel perfection. no one cares besides designers. or at least no non- designer i've ever asked.

it's becoming a problem. look at dribbble. countless designers would be more likely to obsess over a single misaligned pixel rather than focusing on far more impactful improvements to the user experience.

a pixel perfect button in the wrong spot will always perform worse than a misaligned button in the right spot.

<comment><USER33> I write C++ code as a hobby. I have no idea of color palettes or similar design stuff.

I will notice pixel perfection every time. So thank you all for the attention to detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> aren't both of these sample images scaled down? Unless one sees the actual raw screenshots (640x960 and 320x480) one can't really tell if there are inaccuracies or not.

Also, if the @2x version has 1px features then these will definitely become blurry when scaled.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the point is both are displayed as 320x480 but one is designed specifically for that resolution whereas the other is just shrunk.

Even so, when held at arm's length I'm doubtful of how noticeable the differences are.

<comment><USER35> > Even so, when held at arm's length I'm doubtful of how noticeable the > differences are.

I know of no-one, tech or non-tech, that holds their phone at arm's length. Most hold their phones much closer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe I am the crazy one, but it feels like the real issue is that design practices are just less practical (mature?) than software engineering ones. We both strive for perfection and idealize great work. The difference is that few places allow for that kind of waste in their software departments because history has shown us that endless supplies of time and money just result in waste and churn, not significant changes in quality.

</comment><comment><USER36> This may have been said before, but I am posting anyways since there's so many comments here and I don't have time to read them all.

I think I have a way to explain why pixel perfection is a very good optimization that caters to more of a a developer mindset like yourself; it comes down to image compression, and specifically PNG compression.

When it comes to UI elements, the fewer colors you use, the better. This means avoiding things like gradients, or unnecessary colors can have a major impact on file size. It's also the 'art of design' to manage to create a beautiful design without a lot of crappy and needless 'veneer'.

I don't know the specifics of the PNG algorithm, but it can do an amazing job at compressing an image if it's made up of few and often repeating colors (typically it's terrible at photographs, however).

When you apply a scaling algorithm (as exemplified by the post) other than nearest neighbor, it tends to create a lot of intermediary colors that end up hurting the size of the image.

Looking closely at the borders of those buttons, that blur is going to end up adding to the file size because it adds colors that didn't exist before. If you properly 'scale' (which sometimes requires a redraw at a smaller size to get it right), it can have a huge impact (sometimes as much as 2x or 3x).

Oftentimes you can get away with it from a 1/2x scale fairly easily, but you have to remember there are many android devices at a 1.5x scale, and that can sometimes require completely new rounded corners that take advantage of that pixel density.

This is of course anecdotal, but it's not as simple as 'looks' even though I could immediately see the differences between the properly and unproperly scaled images.

</comment><comment><USER37> Interesting screed. I've observed that some folks "see" more than others (my daughter for example notices very minute details in things I completely miss) which may explain most of the observed 'crazyness'.

There seems to be something similar to the 'uncanny valley' where something nearly complete becomes more obviously incomplete before being complete. (I know how crazy does _that_ sound!) But an example might help, if you straighten up a room, it goes from fully chaotic to less and less messy until the 'organized' parts start dominating the scene with respect to the messy parts. Than as you approach completely organized a small bit of chaos sticks out more and more. Until that is eliminated and everything is in its place.

Different folks have different tolerances (I know, Doh! right?) People who consider themselves designers have worked hard on being able to see where something can be improved visually, so they are much more likely to see issues that detract. Non-designers just don't see things the same way.

</comment><comment><USER38> I 100% agree that rescaled bitmap will almost always be an ugly bitmap and certainly needs to be fixed, but IMO it is a crazy idea to fix such problem with manual pixel-wise tuning. This something machines should do while rendering vector input, otherwise it will be a pure waste of energy that will never scale.

<comment><USER39> You won't get away from tuning of some sort so it's not like vector images are a panacea. Fonts require "hints" to scale. [http://www.pushing- pixels.org/2011/11/04/about-those-vector-...](http://www.pushing- pixels.org/2011/11/04/about-those-vector-icons.html)

<comment><USER38> Precisely; hinted, procedural vector graphics are this panacea (see SVG's shape-rendering and media queries). There is significant initial cost to create a library of widgets and icons, but they are perfectly reusable and thus overtake a designer pixel-perfecting every screen to all target devices fast.

<comment><USER2> No designer worth his salt would object to a method such as that, as long as it produced good results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This really hits close to home because I do often wonder if it does "matter". When the audience do not appreciate the three hours I spent on the title's kerning or decision on the thickness of the boarder or the difference between ultramarine to navy, I do feel a sort of defeat that can result in a "why do I bother" attitude. But the next time, I would still put in the effort because as insignificant as it is, I do notice it and I believe it does make an impact in the viewer's pleasure. Design is a lot of the time a struggle between satisfying the employer and holding onto the designer's own concerns. And even though most, like the author, might not see a difference or even undermine what the designers hold dear, there are people who will notice, if not appreciate the details.

</comment><comment><USER41> YES some designers are crazy divas, rigid, and unwilling to compromise or see the big picture.

<comment><USER42> I think this is the real crux of the article

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> These types of optimizations can be crazy only if they are relevant to a _SINGLE INSTANCE_.

If the designer figured out a better way of scaling an image, that he will use _EVERY TIME_ moving forward, he has just improved himself and/or his trade.

<comment><USER2> Many designers use repetitive methods and don't capture their processes for re-use.

It doesn't make them crazy necessarily, it just makes them _not programmers._

<comment><USER43> Even if they don't "capture" the process in an obvious way, they will often capture it in the form of experience.

In the rare case that it does not lead to a better process or experience AND is not noticed by the end-user AND is not noticed by the employer, then you can argue that it is indeed 'crazy'.

Or you can call it self-satisfaction, pride, etc... :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Not crazy, just deluded.

The 'scaling problem' and 'aspect ratio problem' are both ancient and well solved - I can't take anyone seriously complaining about iPhone form factors - its just a new problem for them because they are utterly inexperienced and new.

What I find interesting is that the example you give has many more ugly design problems than the minuscule changes from compensating for the scaling. Look at how poorly the text is arranged in the buttons for instance... I also hope the colour banding is an image compression artefact and not in the actual app...

</comment><comment><USER45> Think about it as code formatting. In order for your code to be extensible and readable you need to make sure that you are using the right fundamental indentatation, naming convention etc.

Where you look at the buttons individually, the designer looks at the style. The sum of all the items styled in a certain way.

The real question is not whether designers go too much into details but rather when they should and when they shouldn't.

</comment><comment><USER46> perfection is the enemy of doneness. I agree that Obsessing over every pixel achieves the highest quality of work, but it carries a high risk of the work never getting finished. I think both designers and developers can obsess over stuff like this Ad infinitum, and if they have the budget to do so, good for them. I however, would much prefer having a project that's finished rather than perfect.

</comment><comment><USER47> I haven't read anyone noticing that developers lose countless hours fighting with badly crafted PSDs like the one shown in the article, just to extract proper assets that keep their code tight. Think pixel fitting, but also dimensions consistency, color consistency, etc. Off-by one/three/eleven pixels are a plague. Save money on the design: you may well increase your development costs.

</comment><comment><USER48> Sure understanding the relationship between good design and how it applies to different technologies takes time. Whether that be resolution independence or color correction, but once you've got your head around the "working out", there's no reason why you shouldn't strive for perfection.

Achieving pixel perfect design nowadays doesn't mean you have to go insane in the process.

</comment><comment><USER49> It's about perception. The slightest imperfection can be glaringly obvious to one type of person, while another will never notice.

I am not sure if that kind of "eye" can be trained or not, but I know I have it, and that the slightest misalignment or aliasing will jump out at me and I have to fix it (if I can help it).

</comment><comment><USER50> But that's not design. That's technical details. Let's out it this way...we didn't learn how to smooth pixels at my art school which is jsyt about the best place you can go for a degree in graphic design in the country.

<comment><USER51> There are a lot of things you learn on the job that you'll never learn from a university.

Retina Design is brand spanking new. You're not going to find it being taught in a university anytime soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are people who think designers are crazy, crazy? Not to be a dick but the other day with the WP-Svbtle thing you demonstrated you don't understand principles of design. That's cool; you don't have to.

But this is just trolling man.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm not a designer but I think that the left one has been scaled down. The borders of the buttons are less crisp than in the right image, that have become pretty blurry. Not a big difference, but it's there.

<comment><USER32> the main problem in this example is that the designer is worrying about the scaling of the graphics, rather than the fact that the stadium map and ticket listing are severely lacking any sort of visual association.

"pixel perfection" trumped actual ux improvements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> For me this is not a matter of perfectionism but knowledge. If you know something, you would like to apply this knowledge. If you don't, you wouldn't care that much or will think that is irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER54> Yes - designers are crazy

</comment><comment><USER55> Some designers are crazy.

</comment><comment><USER56> The quality of _both_ images in the animated flipping version is greatly reduced from the original, making it not a really fair comparison.

</comment><comment><USER57> While I have some disagreements, I think it's great you bring this up. You're addressing an elephant in the room.

</comment><comment><USER58> Envy.. This rant obviously shows that the author doesn't get along with his artistic inabilities.

</comment><comment><USER59> There are things they cannot ignore once they figure out that they can actually be noticed :)

</comment><comment><USER55> How can you not notice the brighter orange? It draws your attention / jumps out at you / causes you to notice it - when before it was equally as bland as the other colours. The brightness of it comparatively causes you to notice it, note it as more importance, as you skim down to see what action options you have on screen.

<comment><USER60> "Ok, one button is orange - but that's it.".

Try again.

<comment><USER55> Indeed. I should have just stated the importance of colour ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> The article uses a good example of _designing things for other designers_. The difference doesn't improve the product in a way that benefits the user. It's why I fail to understand designers sometimes.

On the other hand, I'm sure designers would say the same complaints about source code optimizations. But I hope we can agree it's about personal satisfaction, and that there's not necessarily anything "crazy" about it, it's just the sort of passion that results in quality.

<comment><USER4> The examples in the article do benefit the user by reducing fatigue.

<comment><USER62> Fatigue in the short period that the user will have the app open? They'll open it only while they're doing the specific task they opened it for. This app isn't for the gawping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> The funniest part to me about this is that it's a free app at the end of the day:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/seatgeek-tickets- concerts/id...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/seatgeek-tickets- concerts/id582790430?ls=1&mt=8)

<comment><USER20> Our site - <http://seatgeek.com> \- is free to use as well ;)

<comment><USER63> I mean no offense! You guys are doing great work! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Applying Betteridge's Law of Headlines, _no_.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_law_of_headlines></comment>


Learning Japanese with Neuroscience - <AUTHOR> http://www.rm2kdev.net/2014/10/learn-hiragana-katakana-week-science/

<comment><USER2> It sounds like a form of spaced-repitition. It works for some things, but not otherd</comment>


Indian Outsourcing Firms Prep for Curbs on H-1B Visa Workers Under Trump - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/indian-outsourcing-firms-fear-curbs-on-h-1b-visa-workers-under-trump-1484820031 <comment><USER2> Good. H-1B was intended to bring in top talent, not simply used as a profit padder while hurting incoming immigrant talent by keeping them under their thumb.

<comment><USER3> You can switch jobs on and H-1B easier than you could in the past. The notion they are endentured to the employer who first brought them over isn't true.

<comment><USER4> It still is because the consequences of losing a job are far worse for an H1B candidate than others. Not to mention those stuck in green card processing limbo who are put in bad spots by employers that can shift them around and reset their process.

<comment><USER3> I should reword my comment a bit. I don't mean to say there are no strings but sometimes it is presented as H1-B's have no freedom to leave or power to get higher wages.

<comment><USER5> I don't think you're aware of the abuses that happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There'll be lots of support for reducing H1Bs (including me) or more accurately allocating them (auction, etc).

Wondering if there is a valid reason to keep the high H1B count?

<comment><USER7> Reducing them? The original law was from the 60's when America had only half of the population...

<comment><USER8> Who had the other half? :)

<comment><USER9> Grammar Nazis

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Before people start complaining that the article is paywalled, here's how to read the article:

* Click on the "web" link at the top of this page

* It takes you to a google search results page

* Click on the link to the article and you can read it

* If it still does not work, open an incognito/private and repeat, it always works

If you're wondering why this works, it's because Google is is the referrer.

<comment><USER11> This did not work for me. Still paywalled.

<comment><USER10> I edited my comment, open a private window and repeat.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why does Paypal still exist? - <AUTHOR> They nearly charge 5% of the transaction on an average. Sometimes it's more than the wire transfer charges. There has been always this promise of low cost international transactions but no one seems to  dethrone Paypal (or is it just my bias? ).<p>Extra: What goes into building a international payments service like Paypal? <comment><USER2> Because nobody else has a "buy now" button that is so simple to be plopped onto a static site and doesn't have a monthly fee. Stripe requires a back end and a fee. Shopify has a monthly fee. If you're doing low volume, that fee adds up.

<comment><USER3> there are a few "buy me a coffee" websites that basically act as a middle man for stripe that take 2-3% fee.

<comment><USER2> On top of stripes 2.9 percent fee?

<comment><USER3> These guys charge 5%, which I think includes the stripe fee, but no monthly fees.

[https://www.buymeacoffee.com/faq](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/faq)

I have seen other people post similar products with lower fees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Because in the "Third World" countries, PayPal may and sometimes is the only way to get foreign payments OR it's the only supported integration in many SAAS and apps. Many WordPress integrations has Stripe and PayPal as the only options. I'd love to pay less than 5% but in a cruel world I'd also rather pay 5% and get global income than to settle for less and no global option.

For instance here in South Africa, Stripe is not supported. As much as I would love to rather use Stripe it's just not an option for me unless I incorporated my business in the US with Atlas, which brings other headaches.

As CyberFonic has mentioned, building relationships with banks and credit card providers is a big undertaking. Which is probably why companies like Stripe opted for an Atlas-powered alternative for unsupported countries.

<comment><USER5> In Malaysia, can confirm we use PayPal and Braintree, just because Stripe hasn't entered. There are local startups that do payments better and cheaper, but they're limited to the country and can't take international payment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Paypal provides an effective dispute resolution process and enables customers to pay for stuff by explicitly authorizing a payment and without giving away their payment info to unknown third-parties.

<comment><USER7> I once saw a pdf which listed all the third parties that PayPal shares its information with. It was more than 30 pages.

<comment><USER8> >> Paypal provides an effective dispute resolution process and enables customers to pay for stuff by explicitly authorizing a payment and without giving away their payment info to unknown third-parties.

> I once saw a pdf which listed all the third parties that PayPal shares its > information with. It was more than 30 pages.

What kind of info do they share with those third parties?

I think the GP's point stands, since the "unknown third-part[y]" that customers are usually _most_ concerned about is _the merchant_ , which Paypal definitely doesn't share payment info with (like CC numbers).

<comment><USER9> Offtopic: PayPal shares more than we think it does. I've had issues where certain merchants asked me to confirm identity by sending copy of utility bill for address I had on PayPal account. I thought my address is private so sent a bill for my siblings house where I also paid the bills for internet, but they reported that address is not same with PayPal, so I argued a bit but eventually had to send one for correct address. I think that, PayPal doesn't share CVV but merchants can view all personal info attached to my PayPal account.

<comment><USER8> That doesn't seem too weird to me. Wouldn't most merchants necessarily have your address in order to provide services to you (shipping would definitely require it, for instance).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> PayPal are enjoying the "first mover" advantage. A lot of sites allow you to use PayPal so it becomes convenient. Personally, I am rather wary of providing my credit card details to any random site's shopping cart.

Having said that, I don't use PayPal when transacting with parties that I trust. In financial terms PayPal only captures about 15% or my business.

To answer your last question: It is a very large workload to establish relationships with banks and credit card companies in order to create a viable alternative to PayPal and then you still need to build up the user base. It can be done, but will take considerable resources and time to accomplish.

</comment><comment><USER11> As a paypal user, the problem you describe is not my problem. Paypal is useful for settling up among friends by transferring small amounts of money around with minimal friction, enabling us to coordinate group activities without needing to waste a bunch of time meeting up physically and collecting cash. I believe that Paypal simply eats the transaction cost for such interactions in order to keep us involved with their service, which seems fair. Additionally, Paypal is useful for making occasional purchases from small vendors I don't trust to maintain effective information security. The more places I enter my billing credentials, the more likely they are to get leaked and exploited, and then I have a hassle to deal with. I'd prefer to avoid that. I use paypal instead so that managing these risks is their problem. They charge the vendor a percentage, which is again reasonable because paypal's service is making it more likely that I will be comfortable doing business with the vendor in the first place. If paypal were not an option, a good fraction of the time I would just choose not to make the purchase or to buy locally; taking a 5% cut on the transaction is not unreasonable if the transaction would not otherwise be happening and all the other parties are getting their needs met.

</comment><comment><USER12> >They nearly charge 5% of the transaction on an average.

It's great for small business owners that aren't doing a lot of volume, especially if you aren't running a cart system and just want to sell things on a basic website, sell stuff like art, sell stuff in person, buy stuff from people on reddit, ebay etc.

If you go a more traditional route you are going to have to have to apply to a credit card merchant, cough up an up-front fee that's probably 100$ or more, an annual fee, a per transaction set rate and then pay 2-5% of each transaction, end up getting slammed with 25-75$ (or more) chargeback fee and risk your rates going up if someone does a chargeback (instead of PayPal's dispute process) etc.

PayPal friends & family gets used like crazy in my office, we're far removed from Silicon Valley and I don't think anyone has ever even heard of Venmo here. We use it all the time to pay each other for lunch runs.

</comment><comment><USER13> Ease of use for the end users? If you have auto login enabled in your browser you can pay without even typing your password. After checkout you get redirected through Paypal, you are logged in automatically, you click 'OK' and get redirected to the 'thank you'-page. It's seamless.

Secure? That can be debated. But it is the fastest way to pay for your online purchases. I know you're coming from a different standpoint ('Why do e-commerce businesses still use Paypal?' would have been a better title in that case) but a lot of end users probably won't switch because it's easy to use.

<comment><USER14> Ease of use goes a bit against security. For example in Poland there's a popular intermediary przelewy24.pl, but it is just that - an intermediary. You do not create any additional account there, instead when you make a payment they redirect you to your bank's webpage, so you need to authorize directly against your own bank. Much better IMO than having the intermediary interact with my bank all by themselves.

<comment><USER13> Ease of use and security seldom go hand in hand...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The fee is paid by businesses, not the end-user customers who use PayPal. Thus it doesn't even enter the equation when users choose PayPal.

I personally like PayPal because then I only have to update my card info in one place as opposed to 50 different websites. Also when some random website gets hacked, I can be sure that my card info isn't getting leaked.

In addition, some sites only accept cards that have been issued in a certain country, usually the US. When they also support PayPal, I can usually bypass this restriction.

<comment><USER16> guess, to whom the business is passing these 5%?

<comment><USER15> Paying with a card may cut down the fees for the business, but it won't cut down the amount that the end user has to pay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > What goes into building a international payments service like Paypal?

A LOT of bizdev and treasury work, a.k.a. doing things that's hard to scale. Let's take for example: paying out USD to NGN or IDR.

To be able to pay out in Nigeria/Indonesia in a reasonable time, you'd have to buy a lot NGN/IDR and keep that money in a bank account somewhere. You can't expect to keep wiring out USD to Nigeria because if you do, you're at the mercy of Wire Transfers and fees, it wouldn't be sustainable.

Now depending on the payout, what if they wanted to pay out on a different bank? You have to maintain balance on that different bank too. The money stuck in a country is called "float". If you're lucky, their banks are interconnected and you transfer easily, but if not, you're going to have a harder time.

That's why there's always a "3-5 banking days on withdrawal", it's not because of wiring out your actual cash, companies like Paypal are trying to manage their "float".

Here's what actually happens when someone issues a NGN Withdrawal on your app: depending on the bank on the said country, if they have online banking, you'll have to actually login on your bank account and transfer manually. Believe me, there are only a handful of banks that has Transfer APIs. For some, to even access them, you'd have to be licensed, regulated and have a good relationship.

What if the NGN withdrawal on your app was a cash pickup location? You'd be pressed to also maintain a relationship or talk with local payout providers. Not every popular bank or cash pickup company has an API. Sometimes you'll have to email them a spreadsheet of the "Withdrawals". They'll reply back and you'd have to update the "Withdrawal" status manually or build something that parses emails/CSV to update them.

Now you might be wondering 'I want to lessen stuck capital so that I can offer lower fees'. Depending on the country; you'd have to look for local providers called "Aggregators". These guys can be remittance, money transfer companies that handle local payouts for you. Bonus points: they're usually tech savvy and might provide an API. You maintain balance with them and they take care of the 'Last Mile' of paying out and are fully licensed (hopefully). They charge a fee, and depending on Paypal, they pass it unto you or bake it in with their margins. A side note USDNGN has a black market rate that's way better than the banks, maintaining balance with a bank might be less competitive vs finding an aggregator that can offer you USDNGN black market rates.

That's the basic gist for the treasury work. Legal work mainly is to actually open a bank account and keeping in line with a country's AMLA and KYC regulations are another cost. Otherwise they'll shutdown your bank accounts. Depending on the speed/red-tape of the government processes, you'd have to bake in legal fees and months of back and forth with government agencies.

I have just described Withdrawals. I haven't even begun to describe the hardship of "Deposits", because you're actually in-line with being a quasi- bank, which has another set of licenses, permits and fees.

This is just for 1 country. Every country has it's own quirks, what you did for Nigeria cannot be replicated to say, paying out in KRW or IDR. They will have different licenses, legal fees, aggregators and banks, cash pickups, bank account limits/thresholds, that you'll have to sort and scope out. Not to mention the amount of local competition. You'll also have to keep tabs of changes in regulation, national holidays or changes in a bank/aggregator's policies.

Hopefully this outlines why Paypal cannot be dethroned easily. Stripe is getting there, but otherwise you'd have to embed yourself and have enough float in 100+ countries to even match them or Western Union.

Source: I work as a senior engineer at a remittance startup.

<comment><USER10> A huge thank-you! Your detailed explanation is an excellent example of how a simple concept gets bogged down by the reality of the implementation, aka "non-functional requirements".

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Because every time a viable competitor arises (e.g. Braintree), Paypal buys them.

</comment><comment><USER19> It might be interesting to split out Paypal the company from Paypal the product. Here's some armchair quarterbacking:

Paypal the company (PayPal Holdings, Inc., NYSE: PYPL) has done well in recent years, where I think they've executed well on their inorganic growth strategy, where they've acquired 19 companies in the last 10 years, probably valued north of $10B. Venmo, Xoom, iZettle, and others are strong businesses in their own right, and Paypal hasn't done much to mess with them.

It would be interesting to see the growth of their primary "Paypal" product. From their 2017 Annual Report[1]:

 _> PayPal continues to drive the majority of our total P2P volumes, enabling both domestic and international P2P transfers across our Payments Platform. Our Venmo app in the U.S. is a leading mobile application used to move money between friends and family. Xoom is an international money transfer service that enables our customers to send money to, pay bills for and send prepaid mobile phone reloads for family and friends around the world in a secure, fast and cost-effective way, using their mobile device or personal computers._

They don't offer detailed financials, but it may well be that "PayPal continues to drive the majority of our total P2P volumes" because it started out so large. This is the "first-mover advantage" mentioned elsewhere in this comment chain.

I'm surprised as a consumer that Paypal hasn't done more to leverage the strength of their component brands (e.g., Venmo) with the strength of their network.

[1] [https://investor.paypal-corp.com/node/8556/html](https://investor.paypal- corp.com/node/8556/html)

</comment><comment><USER20> PayPal let's people pay directly with their bank accounts and also exists in way more countries, so it can be a firm of cheap or easy writing. This advantage may not last forever, but for now they allow exchanging money in s few more ways or a few more places depending on the use case.

</comment><comment><USER21> I use PayPal for subscriptions only. It has a nice dashboard that lets me see, monitor, and cancel subscriptions with the click of a button. No dark patterns. I dont have to find the email I used. I don't have to answer any questions. It just works.

</comment><comment><USER22> PayPal charges the same 2.9% + $0.30 as Stripe, and 2.7% flat for swiped in- person transactions. They support more countries than any other online payment service. Why would anyone want PayPal to not exist? As for why nobody "dethrones" PayPal, it's because being licensed and regulated in over 200 separate territories, having to become a chartered and fully regulated -bank- in some of them to process payments, is beyond daunting. It requires big backers, big money, a HUGE regulatory compliance staff, and work and processes that take many years to establish.

</comment><comment><USER23> As a buyer, it cost the same whether I pay with PayPal or directly to the vendors website, and having been a user of PayPal for 15-20 years now, I would actually congratulate them on their recent UI and UX improvements. The new PayPal is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not sure about your first question, but the second involves your typical very difficult marketplace building.

You need merchants that use the service; you need customers that use the service. Paypal was the first to build those.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's a trusted name and the user doesn't see any of the fees.

</comment><comment><USER26> Because it still does a lot of things small businesses want for free. Invoicing for example that is usually a cost add-on service elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm really really hoping TransferWise will take over all this stuff PayPal does

</comment><comment><USER28> Stripe is not supported in my country.

</comment><comment><USER29> people don't wanna hear this on HN but...Bitcoin

</comment><comment><USER30> regulations

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't know. I trust PayPal. I am a client and I know if there's a problem they will always have my back even if I'm in the wrong.</comment>


Open-source security tools for cloud and container applications - <AUTHOR> http://techgenix.com/open-source-security-tools/ <comment><USER2> It's odd they don't list OPA Gatekeeper, which is probably the best tool for enforcing security and other best practices in Kubernetes clusters.

List of CNCF open source security projects without the blog post: [https://landscape.cncf.io/category=security- compliance&forma...](https://landscape.cncf.io/category=security- compliance&format=card-mode&grouping=category&license=open-source)

<comment><USER3> It's interesting that OPA doesn't show up in cardmode on CNCF either, but it's there on the landscape view.

<comment><USER4> OPA is shown under card view: [https://landscape.cncf.io/format=card- mode&project=hosted&se...](https://landscape.cncf.io/format=card- mode&project=hosted&selected=open-policy-agent-opa)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ironically that website has no TLS. But the tools in the article are a good collection. Too bad CoreOS got eaten by RH/IBM because that level of integration will probably not be replicated in Fedora. And that in turn might cause Clair to get less development or integration, which is bad for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've had good success with Anchore in the past, and yeah, missing Gatekeeper is bizarre.</comment>


Show HN: Note taking on steroids, for devs - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/218024604 <comment><USER2> Looks cool, some things I would add:

\- Increase vertical scroll after adding a widget.

\- Add code detection from title to save some time:

      - In the video you set the title to "Ruby Methods Example".

      - Loop through the languages and change on match.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comments, vertical scroll is already there and auto language detection is in the plans

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the clean UI. Can you search for links, notes etc.? For me that's the most important thing. Bookmarks are worthless if I can't search them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback and concerning links, yes you can

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks beautiful. Did you use any css framework ? And is it usable on mobile ?

EDIT: Added mobile question

<comment><AUTHOR> Not any particular css framework, just React.js . And I'm aiming for making it usable on mobile for the official release but if not, it's certainly in the plans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> ready for product hunt! good luck</comment>


How do I sell a general-purpose tool?  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/sell-general-purpose-tool.html

<comment><USER2> tldr: They already have a general-purpose tool, called gcc (or more likely, Excel). What they want is a tool that solves their problem.</comment>


Show HN: Criticl – Altruistic Publishing Platform and Grassroots Journalism App - <AUTHOR> https://criticl.me

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm here to answer any questions about Criticl, we love feedback!!

<comment><USER2> I like it and will probably sign up for it. I wonder how are you going to avoid herding behavior? If we imagine debates on a polarizing subject like politics, a slight bias among the early users might end up leading to an echo chamber phenomenon where a large prevailing majority votes down opposing points of view consistently.</comment></comment>