Ask HN: Recommendations for learning design (UI/UX)? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> [https://www.coursera.org/course/hciucsd](https://www.coursera.org/course/hciucsd)

[https://www.coursera.org/course/design](https://www.coursera.org/course/design)

[http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think- Usability/dp/032134...](http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think- Usability/dp/0321344758)

And, finally, if you want to do some usability experiments and testing:

[http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Usability-Testing-Conduct- Eff...](http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Usability-Testing-Conduct- Effective/dp/0470185481)

[http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Statistics-Stripping-Dread- Data/...](http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Statistics-Stripping-Dread- Data/dp/039334777X/)

</comment><comment><USER3> For UI design:

Look at a LOT of good designs & try to incorporate elements into your work. [https://dribbble.com/](https://dribbble.com/)

<comment><USER3> I'm actually thinking about putting together an ebook for developers to learn design. Would I be able to ask you some questions about this? If so, please send me your email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you want best practices on ecommerce on UX [http://ecommerceuxdesign.com](http://ecommerceuxdesign.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've built my experience mainly through exposure to native mobile. I find that the walled gardens and constraints you work within tend to help focus what you're creating. It's easier to tell when something looks or feels "wrong" when you're looking at apps that are built to match the OS's ecosystem, instead of the latest web trends.

When you work with a standardized set of UI elements on a canvas of limited size, you tend to start thinking about the interface in terms of modular actions and tasks, which you can repurpose later when scaling up to tablet or desktop web. You also have a good basis to simplify these tasks further when branching out to wearables and in-car devices.

\----

At this point, Google, Apple, and Microsoft each have pretty defined ideologies and UI — check out their guidelines:

[https://developer.android.com/design/material/index.html](https://developer.android.com/design/material/index.html)

[https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserEx...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/)

[http://dev.windows.com/en-us/design](http://dev.windows.com/en-us/design)

\----

Check out some of the sessions from WWDC and Google I/O too:

[https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/)

[https://www.google.com/events/io/io14videos](https://www.google.com/events/io/io14videos)

\----

There are also a lot of great blogs out there that have pinpointed info on different parts of interface design. Sometimes these info-morsels can be easier to digest than starting a full course in UX. This is definitely not a comprehensive list, so look around, and get your RSS client fired up.

[http://www.uxbooth.com](http://www.uxbooth.com)

[http://alistapart.com](http://alistapart.com)

[http://usabilitypost.com](http://usabilitypost.com)

[http://52weeksofux.com](http://52weeksofux.com)

[http://www.smashingmagazine.com](http://www.smashingmagazine.com)

[http://viget.com/inspire](http://viget.com/inspire)

[http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/](http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/)

[http://karenmcgrane.com](http://karenmcgrane.com)

[http://ustwo.com/blog/](http://ustwo.com/blog/)

\----

Luke W's notes from conferences are usually pretty informative, and he has articles going back to the early 2000's, for extra perspective.

[http://www.lukew.com/ff/](http://www.lukew.com/ff/)

\----

If you want info on actual implementation, at least in Photoshop, you can't do better than usTwo's Pixel Perfect Precision handbook and Marc Edwards' articles:

[http://ustwo.com/ppp/](http://ustwo.com/ppp/)

[http://bjango.com/articles/](http://bjango.com/articles/)</comment>


The other Schlegel - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/no-laughing/ <comment><USER2> This guy makes you feel really bad about you knowing only two languages (and a bit of Latin) in 2016.

Traveling to Paris to learn Sanskrit to translate Indian works to Latin. This would be really impressive even today.

Introducing Spanish plays to Goethe himself.

I wonder if those guys back then knew, that they were writing history.</comment>


The Internet as False Refuge - <AUTHOR> http://thomastberry.com/the-perils-of-internet-friendship/ <comment><USER2> I've been where the author is, but the truth is - even with that loneliness, Online friendships have improved the quality of my life tremendously. I've never really had more than 1-2 friends outside of family, and often have had zero. I'm pretty weird. Even when I can relate to people, they can't always relate to me. People aren't there any more or less with the distance, and I don't require meeting people to seal a bond. Some 8 years ago, I met my husband online, playing a silly little browser game, and 5 years later moved across an ocean after marrying him. I have people I talk to daily that I've never met, who are weirdly more there for me than most 'real' friends. I'm gladly not having to rely on telephone calls or paper letters to stay in touch with family in the States. For me to get the same sort of social freedom, I would have a life goal of living in a large city in a liberal area, but that is not so needed. I've known people to have some of the worst stuff happen to them. But just the same, people get into abusive and dishonest relationships without them being online. Some people just come and go, and to be fair, the author was only out there a month or so. That is hardly time to develop a 'real life' friendship, let alone the online sort. The sort of friendship doesn't fill many people's needs, especially if they truly have other sorts of options, and that is all ok, but to me, it is all worth it.</comment>


Could SpaceX's technology be used as components of a Space fountain? - <AUTHOR> Vacuum tubes and rockets capable of blasting down the tube with high precision could help make a Space Fountain in my opinion. <comment><USER2> One thing I've never understood: what, exactly, is the advantage of a space fountain over just lobbing stuff into space only when you need to?

<comment><AUTHOR> you're continually sending stuff into space at a fraction of the energy. so for going into space to be mainstream it'll quite handy.</comment></comment>


Duct Tape Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> http://stochasticgeometry.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/duct-tape-considered-harmful/

<comment><USER2> I have a bad feeling that this Spolsky post --- which I liked, for what it's worth --- is going to spark a very long, very boring testing vs. shipping controversy, in which both sides, by taking sides, are going to come off grating and sanctimonius.

<comment><USER3> I agree and I find that the people who are architecture astronauts as he refers to them, are very vocal and active on forums, twitter, and blogging.

I don't want to get into the whole testing debate, but I think you can read the whole article and remove the one point on testing and it still holds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I took from Spolsky article wasnt that you shouldn't touch X/Y/Z, but that you should approach new code in the simplest and quickest way you can.

I have often been guilty over engineering things to do them the "right way", to either end up throwing the feature out anyway or having to reengineer because I didnt know enough about the problem to fulfill its design from the outset anyway.

while prototype fast is a reasonably mundane point, Its still one we get wrong time and time again, and I think programmers pay lip service to it as an ideal, but when it comes to actually having to leave that nasty bit of code alone because it does its job, too often we go down the wrong path of making it "right"

<comment><USER5> "We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil." \--Knuth

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a friend who develops OpenGL drivers in C for various aerospace uses and his perspective on code quality was very interesting to hear.

As a web-developer I used to think of tests as frivolous wastes of time, whereas he saw them as an essential and necessary part of the development process.

Since I started implementing testing on all my projects I have noticed that my ability to change the code has actually gone _up_ , which in in stark contrast with my initial expectations. I think that having a sounds testing methodology definitely has benefits even in cases where financial/life loss due to software failure is an impossibility...

<comment><USER7> But the point was that the decision interacts with the market, though. Obviously testing is good and omitting testing completely is bad. But at the end of the day the someone or something needs to _pay_ for the software. Software vendors that ship late due to elaborate design and testing regimes get paid less, in practice, than the "duct tape" folks who beat them to market.

The video drivers you mention are a good example: an aerospace customer is almost certainly operating on a slower schedule, and probably has contracted the revenue already. The value of time to market here is less. And of course the value of code quality in a vehicle safety application is much higher than it is in a consumer web app.

So I'm not surprised at all that sane and smart people would make different testing decisions in the two regimes. They're _both_ right.

<comment><AUTHOR> "The market" was the motive behind the Ford Pinto memo as well, wasn't it?

<comment><USER8> When I was a child, my father got the Pinto. even though it is a unsafe car as we knew later. But in a then poor Taiwan, it is like a luxury and it helped him to do his job.

Here is an argument against Ford Pinto case [http://www.pointoflaw.com/articles/The_Myth_of_the_Ford_Pint...](http://www.pointoflaw.com/articles/The_Myth_of_the_Ford_Pinto_Case.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote "the ford pinto memo", not "the ford pinto".

The point wasn't whether the car was okay, it was about the amoral behaviour of the company. Ford crossed a line between wanting to produce something to a given spec; and depraved indifference to the damage the errors in the design would cause. It only sounds like a subtle difference.

<comment><USER8> Please read the article about the myth. The memo is not specially evil. Its decision is based on NHTSA. The company and the government agency are pretty rational. But it just tells us even we are rational, the complexity of the world is much more unpredictable.

Companies and governments should be amoral but rational. otherwise church and state will not be able to separated from each other. To me, moralistic companies/governments do more harm than welfare to humanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Considered Harmful" Essays Considered Harmful:

<http://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> Let's take a step back here. Joel's blog entry was about ONE chapter in Codes at Work. If the anti-duct bloggers were to read the entire book, they would see that TDD, C++, templates, pattern fever, OO oration, IDEs--don't get much credibility with the whole lot of them.

But there are self-interest forces at work in arguing against the duct-tape arguments--advocates of patterns, tdd and so on.

Two parties in this argument here have shipped real software in crunch mode. Perhaps others in this argument have not.

<comment><USER11> "Two parties in this argument here have shipped real software in crunch mode. Perhaps others in this argument have not."

This is a key point. Agile methodology vendors who wax loudest about TDD and other "core practices" have never shipped any significant software [1]. None of them ever built a software product or a startup. Neither do they _show_ us any decent body of code written with their superior approach [2] (vs talk interminable about how _our_ code will be better if we adopt their advice and pay them the big consulting $$).

After all the book is about _Coders_ At Work, not "Methodology Vendors at Work" (which might be an interesting book, in a very horrific fashion).

[1] How many of the creators of the Agile Manifesto have shipped any significant software or built a software company? Most (All?) of them are methodology consultants.

[2] Kent beck has JUnit. Robert Martin has Finesse. The rest of the agile gurus don't have anything. I leave it to the readers to decide if JUnit and Finesse are significantly superior, designwise, to other Open Source code bases, written without TDD.

<comment><USER12> You don't actually say that no _real developers_ use TDD, but you seem to imply that by focusing on the fact that the teachers, authors, consultants and trainers that promote it "loudest" are earning money via the teaching, authoring, consulting and training in which they loudly promote it. Bit of a catch-22 there, no? Since if their job involves communication about programming topics you automatically ignore the message and you'll only listen to those not trying to communicate.

Luckily, I just finished reading this article by one of the Twisted guys in relation to the recent release of Tornado which, in passing, sings the praises of TDD, basically calling it essential for the work they do: [http://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2009/09/diesel-case-study- in-...](http://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2009/09/diesel-case-study-in-that- thing-i-just_24.html)

<comment><USER11> "You don't actually say that no real developers use TDD, but you seem to imply that by focusing on the fact that the teachers, authors, consultants and trainers that promote it "loudest" are earning money via the teaching, authoring, consulting and training in which they loudly promote it."

No that isn't what I am saying. I am saying many of these people have _no_ programming experience worth a damn. If someone were to tell me how to program(which is what all these methodology sellers do), they would be much more credible if they actually had the programming chops to back it up.

Musashi writing a book on swordsmanship is one thing. If I (who couldn't wield a samurai sword to save his life) write a book that claims my "style" of swordsmanship is better than anything all the others existent today, I shouldn't be surprised if practicing swordsmen don't pay me much heed.

It is the juxtaposition of people with no demonstrated/demonstrable programming skills being loud and obnoxious about the superiority of their advice about programming which I pointed to.

I was also careful to distinguish between Beck and Martin (who at least walk the walk by putting out code developed using the methods they preach) from the other more "all hat no cattle" folks like Jeffries. so to answer your question,

"Bit of a catch-22 there, no? "

No, Not at all. :-). I don't have any problems with people telling me how to program. But I don't trust people who _demonstrate convincingly that they know nothing about programming_ (like Ron Jeffries does with his Sudoku code) who also claim to be "masters" of programming.

That would be like trying to learn fighting skills from a martial arts "master" you saw getting bashed around by a couple of punks at the bar last night, and ended up being taken to hospital and is still covered with bandages and walks with a limp! A master who wins fights would be much more convincing if he claimed he discovered a new martial art which makes existing ones obsolete.

I explicitly said

"None of them ever built a software product or a startup. Neither do they show us any decent body of code written with their superior approach (vs talk interminably about how _our_ code will be better if we adopt their advice and pay them the big consulting $$)."

I stand by this. These guys write books that are the programming equivalent of "Who Moved My Cheese"?. "Coders at Work" otoh, focusses on people who actually _are_ great programmers. Each interview contains more wisdom on programming than reams of "agile" (and these days "lean") textbooks.

FWIW, I did TDD almost exclusively for three years (when I worked at ThoughtWorks), but I don't do TDD anymore, though I still have unit tests.

<comment><USER12> It still seems excessively _ad hominem_ to me.

I don't know about the specific people named in swordmanship but generally in sport the best teachers, coaches and managers will not necessarily be the best at the actual sport. Maybe that doesn't apply in the martial arts though.

And that's at the top level. For ordinary folks I'd suggest that the advice given by a legend may be inspirational, but that pragmatic advice from a standard teacher which is aimed at their level (e.g. "walk away from bar fights if at all possible") may be more appropriate. So I have no problem with methodology suggestions provided by the less than _leet_.

Also, your reply suggests you unit test, you just don't write the tests first. Which means, compared with the average programmer, you're like Greenpeace complaining about PETA and while you see a big difference the 'average' person just lumps you in together under the general heading of "extremist weirdos".

<comment><USER11> "It still seems excessively ad hominem to me."

Fair Enough. You have a right to form your own opinions. Asking for proof of competence is not "ad hominem", especially in a context where that competence is what is under discussion. But yeah,, whatever.

I think most agile guru can't code for nuts. If you have difference of opinion, _show me_ some great code these agile gurus wrote that in your opinion gives them the "level" to teach us how to code. Or a wildly successful project they managed(No the original XP project at Chrysler that failed doesn't count! ;-)) to the point they can give us the rest of us lessons.

"So I have no problem with methodology suggestions provided by the less than leet."

I don't either. But I _do_ have problems with people who can't put one foot in front of the other _masquerading_ as martial arts teachers. A teacher should know _something_ beyond the students they purport to teach.

Shifting form martial arts to music, If someone doesn't know how to string a guitar and sets himself up as a "master guitarist" , should we all automatically respect him as a maestro just because he _calls_ himself one?

Programming like music depends on quality of the _output_ , not what title is on a visiting card. if someone can't sing "Jingle Bells" in tune, he is hardly a "musician" no matter what he calls himself or how much he blogs/tweets/writes self promoting pamphlets. Likewise for the programmatic equivalent of what (agile "guru" Ron Jeffries's attempts at TDDIng a Sudoku solver are. Please do a web search for "Ron Jeffries Sudoku Norvig" for the gory details).

A master musician is someone who can _play_ very well. A music teacher should play _much_ better than the untrained/untalented, if not at superhuman levels. There is a minimu,m bar of performance where it is criminal to let such a person "teach".

" your reply suggests you unit test, you just don't write the tests first."

I use what works.

But your vague Green peace/PETA analogy doesn't hold. You have your history mixed up.

You imply that anyone who uses unit tests is different from a an Agile Kool Aid drinking, propaganda spouting full time TDDer only as matter of degree. So Unit tests = agile to some degree !

Yeah Right :-).

Unit (and other) tests were used _much_ before the agile weirdos came on the scene and blew it up into some ultimate design method (which I don't believe in - I've stated what I believe in - I think the Agile movement is _largely_ inhabited and sustained by consultants and "scrum masters" and people who write books but no/very bad code.).

Using unit tests is not supporting Agile/XP/whatever. Drawing an occasional UML ish diagram on the whiteboard doesn't mean you support the RUP methodology salesmen.

FYI. I am done with this thread. I have no intention of going back and forth with you on a long and tedious thread. The PlinkPonk Thread Depth Alarm just went off. If you are really interested in discussing this offline, my email is in my profile. Else, well met and have a great day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The amount of false dichotomies and developer stereotypes Spolsky and Atwood manage to get spewed from ordinarily calm and logical people is astounding.</comment>


DEFCON 23 Uber Badge Replica - <AUTHOR> http://co9.io/post/149618051204/defcon-23-uber-badge-replica <comment><USER2> If anyone's wondering, the Korean text is translated to "yot jangsu" \- candy seller "mam dero" \- depends on the person. Yot Jangsu is a street vendor of the Korean traditional candy Yot. The seller cuts the candy from a larger block for each individual customer, so they have discretion on how much exactly to give each person. So essentially, how good or bad of a deal you get depends on who you are and how you treat the Yot Jangsu.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone explain this to someone not familiar with DEFCON. What's a badge challenge and what type of competition were they doing?

<comment> at-fates-hands This explains what the uber/black badge is and how people obtain it: [https://www.defcon.org/html/links/dc-bb- policy.html](https://www.defcon.org/html/links/dc-bb-policy.html)

Here's some blog posts about people who've run the gauntlet:

[http://potatohatsecurity.tumblr.com/post/126411303994/defcon...](http://potatohatsecurity.tumblr.com/post/126411303994/defcon-23-badge- challenge)

[http://elegin.com/dc21/](http://elegin.com/dc21/)

[https://1o57.wikispaces.com/DC20+Badge+Contest](https://1o57.wikispaces.com/DC20+Badge+Contest)

In hacking circles, this is kind of a big deal to get one of these. It gives you a lifetime free admission to any future DefCon conferences and you're entered into a Black Badge HOF and plenty of bragging rights.

[https://www.defcon.org/html/links/dc-black- badge.html](https://www.defcon.org/html/links/dc-black-badge.html)

<comment><USER4> The first link is a great read. The amount of work required to earn one of these is amazing. Well earned and certainly deserving of the amount of respect awarded by the community.</comment></comment></comment>


If You Drive the Right Speed, This Musical Highway Will Play You a Song - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/take-drive-down-americas-musical-highway-180958449/?no-ist <comment><USER2> Why does it only work "when cars are traveling at exactly 45 mph"? Wouldn't any constant speed work? You would simply play the song in a different key depending on the speed, like changing the speed of a record player.

<comment><USER3> There are many variables that do not vary linearly with the speed (e.g. rubber's stiffness) so it could be that the sound is indistinguishable at higher speed.

The goal is clearly to slow people down, so that would be really surprising if it would work the same way at higher speed, wouldn't it be? Maybe I'm just too naive..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a J G Ballard short story where roads of the future are sponsored by tire companies and if you don't have the right tires, you get an awful, noisy resonance through your vehicle. So you have to buy the tires du jour. But then another company gets the sponsorship, and so on..

</comment><comment><USER5> If I drive at 90 mph, I'll still hear the song, but up an octave, correct?

<comment><USER6> You can also hear a secret message if you go over it in the opposite direction.

<comment><USER7> "Tuurnn arround"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of a main street somewhere in France that rewards good drivers by giving them a non-stop flow of green lights if they drive at exactly the speed limit.

Speeding down that street is pointless, because you are guaranteed to hit a red light if you do.

<comment><USER9> San Francisco has a few of these, but they're keyed to bicycle speeds (13 mph or so).

On the other hand, there was an article here about something Portugal did about speeding. Basically, they would put a useless stoplight in the middle of nowhere. Normally it's green all the time, since it's not actually an intersection. If you approach it while speeding, however, it turns red.

<comment><USER10> Couldn't people just run the red, especially if there's no intersection?

<comment><USER11> Sounds like a perfect job for a red light camera though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Only works at _exactly_ 45 mph?

How dumb/gullible do you think your readers are, Smithsonian Mag?

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a minor plot point in "The Big Over Easy" by Jasper Fforde [0], which features a road that plays Jerusalem if you drive along the rumble strips at precisely twenty-nine miles per hour. Personally, I prefer the Stockhausen symphonies of the potholes on the M25.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Big-Over-Easy-Nursery- Crime/dp/0143037...](http://www.amazon.com/Big-Over-Easy-Nursery- Crime/dp/0143037234/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I was hoping for something a little more OK Go than this... Pity there's no real substance to the article, it would be interesting to see how speed alters the tune, I'm assuming that changing speed doesn't have a linear relationship, otherwise as said elsewhere, 90mph would mean an octave up and twice the tempo.

<comment><USER15> Multiply the speed by the 12th root of 2 (1.059...) to transpose up a semitone. Repeat for further semitones.

When you get to the 12/12 root of 2 you get a factor of 2, which gives you 12 semitones up at double the speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Drivers will drive 50,60,90 because playing it faster doesn't make it sound worse, and since it already sounds awful, due to bad acoustics, drivers will want to be off it ASAP

</comment><comment><USER17> That would be terrifying at night if you weren't aware of it and say you were a tourist lost and scared then your car starts making music.

</comment><comment><USER18> There is one in Lancaster, CA if you ever find yourself there. It was originally built for a Honda commercial but was moved a few miles out of town after nearby residents complained.

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122469915344259035](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122469915344259035)

</comment><comment><USER19> I prefer the tune at 90bpm as opposed to 45bpm.

<comment><USER20> Fun idea, but yea it seems like this could encourage some people to drive faster just to hear what it sounds like sped up.

<comment><USER21> At least it'll discourage people from crawling at 45mph in a highway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd hardly call it desolate, it's about 2 miles from the edge of Albuquerque and pretty busy most times.

Neat, though.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you speed, you will be forced to hear Justin Bieber at full blast.

That'll cut down speeding in no time.

</comment><comment><USER24> They don't mention why America the Beautiful was selected. I don't know that particular song, but Route 66 would surely have been preferable. A classic.

Could it be that RIAA would have been wanting to collect royalties on every "performance"?

</comment><comment><USER25> From the video: "I'm tempted to go 80 miles-per-hour to see what it sounds like... But I probably won't".

You know he totally did. Just saying that probably created an irresistible urge, he might have even done it _immediately_ afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER26> I experienced the musical highway (a segment of Route 66) last year while on a trip around the Four Corners area and enjoyed its rendition of "America The Beautiful". It was amusing and, sadly, short.

</comment><comment><USER27> That's cool but I still think it's just finding yet another way not to implement the actual solution for speeding - ANPRs powering automated ticketing and something like "three strikes and then your license get suspended". As long as drivers can easily get away with irresponsible road behaviour, they will be speeding.

<comment><USER18> I'm always amazed that they have speed cameras in Europe/Australia but not here. It seems like such a no-brainer for cities that have already landed on the "limited privacy" side of the spectrum and have things like red light cameras and license plate collectors.</comment></comment>


Americans Want Nasa to Focus More on Asteroid Impacts, Less on Getting to Mars - happy-go-lucky https://www.npr.org/2019/06/20/734311961/poll-americans-want-nasa-to-focus-more-on-asteroid-impacts-less-on-getting-to-ma <comment><AUTHOR> > "It would cost a lot of money to send somebody to Mars," she said, "and we > have roads and bridges that need repaired here."

The manned vs unmanned issue aside, what is it about space funding that switches survey respondents into believing money spent on space comes at the expense of ${MY_PREFERENCE}, and that if space expenditures were cut by X then ${MY_PREFERENCE} would get X more dollars? It never ever works out that way but the subject matter seems to inevitably trigger the zero sum fallacy.</comment>


PostgreSQL Streaming Replication in 10 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://hunleyd.github.io/PostgreSQL-Streaming-Replication-In-10-Minutes/ <comment><USER2> Getting replication running on PostgreSQL is fairly easy, but _monitoring_ it is a little more troublesome. Unfortunately, the amount of help out there for users is few and far between - half the time my Google searches turn up my own unanswered questions from a year ago.

Your best bet to see the current state of replication is on the master:

echo "select * from pg_stat_replication" | psql

That gives you a list of all the connected replicas, and where they are in the WAL process. It took me a lot of Googling to figure that one out and learn to interpret the output.</comment>


Is it just me or is AWS is a nightmare for beginners? (Reddit) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/comments/aa7v1p/is_it_just_me_or_is_aws_is_a_nightmare_for/ <comment><USER2> True.

I think getting the associate certificates with the help of acloud.guru gives one a good insight.

Solution Architect and Developer are a good start.

Also, I planned to create some higher-level learning resources next year, maybe a book or a video course called "MVPs with AWS".

Gonna iron out the details in January.

If someone is interested, wants to stay up-to-date on this project, or has some suggestions:

[https://goo.gl/forms/S66Z9sPTaJLbokHI3](https://goo.gl/forms/S66Z9sPTaJLbokHI3)

<comment><USER3> Its Oracle certification all over again.

<comment><USER2> I was on an AWS meetup and most people there weren't certified.

Especially employed devs didn't bother.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well to be fair, legos were a nightmare for me the first time as well. Obviously, LEGO doesn't charge a micro transaction but I'm sure you get my jam.</comment>


VC-produced movie shows H-1B visa holders in limbo waiting for Green Cards - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-31/silicon-valley-s-darkest-immigration-secret-hits-u-s-cinemas <comment><USER2> The reason for the Green Card backlog is that no single country can take more than 5% of the immigrant visas in a given year. The purpose of that is to ensure that no single country dominates US permanent immigration simply due to population size.

If we got rid of the country-level restriction, then we'd just be pushing other potential immigrants from other countries to the back of line.</comment>


Web body mulls halving HTTPS cert lifetimes [to 13 months] - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/13/site_certificate_lifetimes/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is just in the 'initial discussion' phase:

> _CA /Browser Forum – an industry body of web browser makers, software > developers, and security certificate issuers – is considering slashing the > lifetime of HTTPS certs from 27 months to 13 months._

> _The plan, floated at a meeting by Googler Ryan Sleevi earlier this year and > still in its draft stages, comes just one year after the lifetime maximum > for certificates was lowered from 39 months to 27 months. There is no word > yet on when a vote may take place._

Digicert is against it:

* [https://www.digicert.com/blog/how-reduced-tls-ssl-certificat...](https://www.digicert.com/blog/how-reduced-tls-ssl-certificate-lifetimes-to-one-year-would-affect-you/)</comment>


Ask HN: Can weird and wonderful alternate top level domain names be trusted? - <AUTHOR> What if the owning company of the TLD goes out of business?<p>Is it risky to build your business on an alternate TLD? <comment><USER2> The data is all escrowed so someone else could take it over if a registry went out of business. [https://icannwiki.org/Data_Escrow](https://icannwiki.org/Data_Escrow)</comment>


Sliced Bread, the best thing since... err? - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliced_bread

<comment><USER2> HN's guidelines ask you not to editorialize titles.

</comment><comment><USER3> i have just learned so much about sliced bread. this was a rather fun lunch time read. thanks for that.</comment>


The beginnings of TECO [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://tenex.opost.com/anhc-31-4-anec.pdf

<comment><USER2> That's the first I'd heard that RMS wrote the first TECO "scope" command. As I (quite possibly incorrectly) recall that was the "q" command and it updated the full-screen display on a smart terminal. I knew he had become the first curator of popular Edit MACroS but that he did that lower level stuff is interesting news to me.</comment>


Show HN: We brought back (enhanced) traffic graphs for your GitHub repos - <AUTHOR> https://bitdeli.com/free

<comment><AUTHOR> Bitdeli co-founder here. We have missed GitHub's traffic graphs ever since they were removed and we know we're not alone[1]. That's why we decided to offer a free Bitdeli account to anyone who wants to find out who is viewing their repos.

The free account also works as a "sandbox tier" since you can try out all our features for custom analytics with familiar data from your repos.

Thanks to everyone who suggested this earlier[2]!

[1] <https://twitter.com/mbostock/status/207871372746162176>

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4852490></comment>


Co-invest in overseas real estate, vetted by industry experts - <AUTHOR> https://www.realvantage.co/ <comment><USER2> Well this is interesting. Do you think they find opportunities in emerging or developing markets, too?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback! At this point of time, we are currently only operating in the Australia, UK markets for property acquisitions. We will be adding on more markets down the road - stay tuned!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Take home interview project – is this ok? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! First time post but long-time lurker.
How would you handle this situation?
About three weeks ago I applied for senior front-end developer job at a major global airline. I immediately got a response saying they liked my experience and wanted to interview. I was sent specifications for a take-home project to build a web application that would act as a test of my technical ability.
The project was relatively simple: A React-Redux app to search for and display data from a json dataset. That being said, there were "bonus" points for adding advanced functionality to the web app, and the recruiter repeatedly told me to take my time on the project to make it "perfect".
So I put my best foot forward [why would you not?], and spent ~40 hours producing a production-grade quality submission that ticked all the boxes, & some more.
A week later I got a response from the recruiter saying the interviewer was "very happy" with my submission and wanted to proceed with a final-stage, on-site interview. However, the interviewer's manager did could not approve for the budget and they would not be proceeding.
What is the appropriate response to this?
Should I be contacting someone's manager? Can I invoice the company for my time spent on the project? Was I stupid to accept a take-home project in the first place? Are take-home projects fundamentally unethical?
Honestly, I feel that I shouldn't have been asked to complete a take-home project and pushed to work extra hard on it only to be told the position does not exist.
If it matters, I've worked as a web developer for 5 years and 3 as a senior. <comment><USER2> If the interview project is obviously an exercise, and not something that will go into production for this enterprise, then it is fair game. They could have been a little more honest upfront telling you that the opportunity was closing for lack of budget, but nobody lost in the interaction, not even you: you got to perform an good programming exercise, and increased your own professional worth (granted only a small increase assumedly, but still). Or even, you could have fun doing it and that would be enough.

On the other hand, if you developped a feature that is not present in their product, that would fit (then you've got your hint), and if you see this feature appear in a couple of weeks or a few months in their product, then one would find indeed that you'd be justified to invoice them for the work done. Even if they made it do by hundreds of applicants and only selected the best one, it would still qualify as well as work, and they would have to pay everybody IMO. IANAL, so you know what to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it is a company you want to work for then keeping in touch with the recruiter might make sense -- with the caveat that the recruiter is a company employee not a third party. If the recruiter is a third party then the process smells like common recruiter waste your time horseshit at best and a potential scam at worst.

The waste your time horseshit with third party recruiters runs along the line of using a potential candidate as the basis for negotiating a contract for placing them that contains a nice fee. If the company does not agree (and that may be by policy based on having in-house staff or existing contracts with external recruiters) then the candidate is told they did not get the job (or the job was not funded).

There are good recruiters and the best of them get retained contracts (paid to search). The next best get contingency contracts (paid to place).

Most recruiters have no contract. They scan help wanted ads on the internet, email people based on their resumes, and then pitch various candidates for positions with the hope that a company will bite and agree to their fee. The business model is more or less the same as email spam: the low cost of making contact makes high volume feasible and the high volume makes low conversion profitable.

Again, if it was a first party recruiter and you want to work for the company, then keep in touch because something else is likely to come up. But in any event, the best advice I have is to move forward.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have less experience (~2 years), but I tend to use these projects to add to my projects page on my portfolio and I try to add something to each project that I don't already know, like Typescript or such.

That being said, I think they're a massive waste of time, especially positions that don't exist or that they already had decided against you. I've had two of them in the last two months both of which didn't lead to phone interviews.</comment>


Samsung just recalled 3M washing machines because they might explode - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/r-samsung-to-recall-28-mln-washing-machines-in-the-united-states-2016-11 <comment><USER2> Samsung really hasn't had a good year when it comes to consumer goods. I'm really curious to see what they'll do to repair their image.

<comment><USER3> Start up a munitions and mining explosives division.

<comment><USER4> Well, uh... [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/14/south_korean_gun_bo...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/14/south_korean_gun_bots/) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K9_Thunder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K9_Thunder)

<comment><USER5> The latter is battle tested, even...: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K9_Thunder#Operational_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K9_Thunder#Operational_history)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 'Explode' is linkbait. The top can come loose.

<comment><USER5> I thought so too, until they mentioned one of the events breaking someone's jaw. That puts it more into the land of permissible hyperbole, if you need riot gear level protection to safely approach one during its high energy stored spin cycle....

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this the kind of consumer recall that would normally fly under the radar, but is being coveted in press because of proximity to the Note problems?

<comment><USER8> Media coverage for a recall is often at least in part a public service, especially for a popular consumer product. The angle which it is reported on is where there's opportunity for bias and exploitation, but there are millions of people that need to know they bought a product from a trusted brand which could be dangerous.</comment></comment>


Getting serious about political ad transparency with Ad Analysis for Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2018/10/18/getting-serious-about-political-ad-transparency-with-ad-analysis-for-facebook/ <comment><USER2> So...how does it work?

<comment><USER3> Hi! My team developed the extension.

The Ad Analysis extension uses two data sources: 1\. It locally (on your machine) collects the ads you see as you see them on Facebok and analyzes and aggregates the targeting information for each of these ads. Your data is not sent anywhere. 2\. It contains a dataset (thanks in part to the New York Times and Propublica) that shows you who the top political advertisers are on Facebook, how they target their ads, and what those ads are. This means you can see ads that you would not normally be shown.

I hope this is helpful!</comment></comment>


Slack's XMPP gateway is broken, and they won't be fixing it - <AUTHOR> https://sourceforge.net/p/emacs-jabber/bugs/91/ <comment><AUTHOR> SF is temporarily down :(

tl;dr: Sourceforge's XMPP implementation is broken in such a way that prevents discovery of channels. Several people (myself included) have brought this to their attention, but they're refusing to fix it (because in fact they're not working on their gateways in any way).

Yet another reason not to use proprietary platforms, I guess :(</comment>


Show HN: Taaalk – A platform for public online conversations - <AUTHOR> https://taaalk.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I'm the founder and sole developer of Taaalk.

Taaalk is a platform for public, yet intimate, conversations (a bit like if your WhatsApp was made public). You control who is in the Taaalk (intimate), but everyone can read the conversation (public).

Why I built Taaalk?

I think we have all grown up in a digital world that is a bit awkward. In the real world you don't walk around shouting out random facts and opinions, instead you talk to people. And in the real world while you're talking, hundreds of random people don't jump into your conversation. The best chats have a healthy level of intimacy. Taaalk tries to recreate these real world properties online. Firstly, it is all about talking (taaalking); back and forths. This makes things feel a bit more natural than shouting out snip-its of thoughts and ideas. There's also no character limit and you can save drafts before you reply, so it's a place for deep conversations. My hope is that you enjoy Taaalking even if you have normally found yourself to be a bit too shy to fully enjoy other social platforms. Secondly, though anyone can read a Taaalk, only the people the "Taaalk Owner" (the person who started the Taaalk) chooses can join in the conversation. This keeps things intimate.

I think there is the potential for more knowledge to be shared. The world is filled with people who know so many interesting things and have had amazing experiences. When it comes to hearing about these people it normally happens in the form of an interview. Traditionally it's been the case that a journalist has to take an interest in what you do before you get one. That doesn't happen too often, so it's probably the case that the world is under- interviewed. Taaalk is here to change that. More interviews for more people = More knowledge shared.

The word "interview" doesn't really capture what Taaalk is about though. It's a bit too formal, and implies there is one person with all the knowledge (the interviewee) and another person getting it from them (the journalist/interviewer). Taaalk can be used more flexibly than that. Four people (a Taaalk can have any number of people) who know a lot about a subject can have an extremely detailed Taaalk about it. And three people who don't know too much about anything can blab away to each other, just because they enjoy blabbing.

You don't need to invite anyone to your Taaalk, if you want to write a poem every day, or share a continuous stream of thoughts about a subject of your choice, you can use Taaalk as a place to do that; monologues are encouraged on the platform.

Taaalk is built for you to be even more creative than that. You can invite yourself to your own Taaalk, change the second-you's details and have an imaginary conversation. You can invite yourself to a Taaalk any number of times, and even write a whole play made up of the dialogue of imaginary characters.

If you don't have anyone to Taaalk with today, you can leave your details (on the Start a Conversation page). This means someone looking to Taaalk can introduce themselves to you. And you can introduce yourself to someone else who has left their details.

What you say matters (and might embarrass you). Because of this I've tried to include features to make people feel safe sharing their thoughts on Taaalk. Firstly, even if you are not the Taaalk Owner, you can leave a Taaalk and delete all your messages at the same time. The Taaalk will still exist, but what you've written will not. If you are a Taaalk Owner you can delete your Taaalk at any time. You can delete your account, deleting all messages you've written on the Taaalk platform and all the Taaalks you've started at the same time. It's possible to edit or delete an individual message after you have written it. And because it's possible to edit a message after someone has responded to it, we flag up when a message has been edited, so if you are the responder, you don't have to worry about someone changing the question after you've written a response to it.

It's very early days for Taaalk so if you have any feedback or ideas, I'd love to hear them. Thank you for reading and checking out the site. If you want to be awesome, please try out starting a Taaalk or leave your details for someone else to Taaalk with you. Thank you!</comment>


Does HN need this kind of notriety? - <AUTHOR> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1872218&cid=34254096

<comment><AUTHOR> Submitter here.

The Slashdot comment was in reference to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1913102> which seems to have needlessly insinuated in the headlines and went againsn't HN's policies of titling posts.</comment>


Burn the Fucking System to the Ground - <AUTHOR> http://www.popehat.com/2013/12/23/burn-the-fucking-system-to-the-ground/ <comment><USER2> _Twenty years ago I was a libertarian. I thought the system could be reformed._

One does not imply the other.

 _The system is not fixable because it is not broken. It is working_

I think this is the thing that most people miss. It's not that the system is malfunctioning in terms of being self-inconsistent. It's working perfectly fine. So when people defend the various governmental abuses in the U.S. by saying "but we've decided that this is legal" they're right: we have decided that. And those things shouldn't be legal. So the system is being perfectly self-consistent. It just doesn't address the needs of the governed effectively anymore.

Governments, like every other manmade system involving people from development teams to civic groups, need to be refactored on a regular basis. There has to be some self-correction mechanism built-in, because the participants will actively game the system in hopes of gaining a slight advantage.

All we're really seeing is hundreds of years of this at work. Various participants have gamed the system to the degree that it's obviously way out of whack from where it started, even though many of the participants refuse to see it.

No need to burn it down. Politely supporting reforms in the primary process and 2-party-lock would probably do wonders in the U.S. There are lots of options open aside from the flame thrower. The important thing to remember is that the parts needing fixing are the auto-correcting parts, not all the other stuff like the high-court, low-court stuff. Focusing on that stuff is only a distraction -- and only serves to keep true reform from happening because it diverts needed reform energy elsewhere.

Having said that, the things that this author lists (and others) sure fret the hell out of me most days.

<comment><USER3> First thing to start with is getting public financing of campaigns because that's the source of influence aka corruption... the money. It's the biggest problem, by far.

<comment><USER4> Anywhere there is money there is corruption. The source doesn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An odd rant. The judge in question appears to be an alcoholic, and came to the court drunk. Surely this is professional misconduct (and to my mind warrants firing), but it really doesn't justify the author's charges of system-rigging. Seems to me that Clark is trying to mislead people into thinking that Pollack was under the influence of e.g heroin. Pretty despicable.

Also, the smallest bit of Googling shows that Pollack heads was responsible for the creation of some sort of special "marijuana court" which expressly sent users to rehab, not jail.

I don't know much about this Clark guy (girl?), and I agree with some of the points in the article, but he/she seems pretty close to a flat-out liar.

<comment><USER4> It reads like a classic stir-the-pot rant fueled by cherry-picking a few extreme examples of misconduct, which can always be found.

So he wants to burn it to the ground. Then what? What will replace it? How will it be better? Most revolutions produce tyrants. Only a few have produced anything arguably better than what was in place before.

<comment><USER6> "...burn it to the ground. Then what? What will replace it?"

This is what I keep coming back to. Even if he/she is 100% correct, suggesting we burn it down without offering suggestions for how to make it better afterwards is nothing more than a rant.

Which is fine, if they have something to get off their chest. But this should be recognized as such.

<comment><USER7> The alternative is very simple and was already tried in Ancient Greeks: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition)

<comment><USER8> How about campaign finance reform? At the moment it's like "one dollar, one vote".

There's also the issue that becoming a politician takes money, free time and a degree from somewhere where the College Republicans/Democrats have a really active chapter. I have no idea how to fix this problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Although I've got quibbles with some of his points and emphases, I can tell his heart is in the right place. So now what?

There's reforming the system, but we've been reforming the system for decades, and it's gotten worse consistently since the 1970s. We elect a professed civil libertarian as President, and he brings the State to unimaginable and exciting new heights of violence against individual liberty.

Burn the system to the ground? Okay, sure. But we all know how most revolutions turn out. Which is to say, in the usual and best case they fizzle out, despite the strong emotions of would-be revolutionaries. Worst case scenario: well, look up any revolution, and let me know if you've got a solution beyond "Well I'm a good guy, I wouldn't be like every other revolutionary!"

I've settled on something in the space that's occupied by ideas about "counterpower" or "dual power" (using a Left-frame) and Konkinite agorism (using a Right-frame). We need to build up alternative institutions to government power to rebuild the civil society. Many institutions--certainly all the major media, corporations, unions, nonprofits, and universities--are so closely integrated in the network of State power that attempts at reforming them are pointless. Instead we should development alternative, parallel structures that we can live and operate in, trying to limit the amount we interact with and serve the government.

Doing that, and figuring out how to do that, is the hard part that requires lots work. As technologists, I think we're in an ideal position, as the technological frontier is relatively unexplored compared to other ways of doing this. Research decentralized manufacturing: simpler supply chains and homogeneous production facilities means more fault-tolerant production, which means fewer opportunities for the State to exert control. Support open source: software is going to eat the world, and code that anyone can access disperses power from large entities incorporated by the State to anyone who's able to use it. Be thoughtful supporters of structures like Bitcoin: despite their flaws, they have the potential to make large portions of the economy illegible to the State.

This approach also doesn't ask us to relinquish the right to interact with the government if it suits our ends, particularly in legal cases and occasionally electorally.

<comment><USER10> I agree that we need new solutions that are distinct from the existing power structures. The idea of voting for "representatives" seems completely absurd when almost everyone is "connected" now - we could build systems which allow us to vote on issues directly, rather than people - and using distributed, anonymous cryptographic protocols with public ledgers, we could be sure there is no vote fraud. I'd envision a system where you can decide exactly how your tax money is distributed too, rather than a single central power structure, so we could literally put our money where our mouths are.

The big elephant is the existing tax system though. Alternative structures will never have anywhere near the resources governments have, and the government will always retain power for as long as it has the perceived legitimacy to tax by force. A new model would not be able to trump the government unless it makes the government seem illegitimate, or obsolete, to the point where people consciously decide where to put their money.

Pay-as-you-earn schemes are perhaps one of the biggest obstacles. Most earners have no control of where their money goes, so can not consciously object to state power without potentially losing their jobs and livelihoods. Most people would live on the breadline than take such risks, which is really the purpose of the welfare state - to ensure than the poverty threshold is just high enough for the majority of people to cope - because any lower would activate the switch people have, where they overcome that fear and say "enough".

Cryptocurrencies are very interesting, but I think we need to have stronger anonymity in transactions, and in the means of connecting into the network (via meshnets, or whatnot). This is the potential Achilles heel for the state, which is why they are building such vast surveillance and censorship platforms to try and prevent these from ever taking off.

Of course, we always have the problem that the existing government can simply declare any new structure we create as "illegal," with some poor propaganda spread through their MSM mouthpieces to justify those decisions, which will be effective while the majority of the population remains a bunch of gullible sycophants. Unless there is a big change in perception, and soon, it's more likely we'll have a bloody revolution, or boot stamping on our faces.

 _"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."_ \- R. Buckminster Fuller

<comment><USER11> >The idea of voting for "representatives" seems completely absurd when almost everyone is "connected" now

The classic counterexample is California's direct democracy. People constantly vote for spending and against raising revenue, driving the state government to financial ruin. At this point Congress doesn't seem to be doing any better, but there is something to be said for people who are at least _supposed_ to govern responsibly.

They're failing now, but that's a noteworthy failure. The masses will always behave like the masses and there's nothing you can do about it.

Not sure I agree with this line of argument, but "completely absurd" is a stretch.

<comment><USER10> Most people probably have no idea what they're voting for, which is a shame, but they are given the option to decide their own fates, and they can only blame themselves if things go to shit. Direct democracy can be self-correcting - if people realize things are going to shit they can change it - this can't happen with a government of rogue politicians taking bribes left and right, and where these elite groups live under a separate rule of law to the rest.

What I find absurd is the belief of some that we live in a _free_ or _equal_ society, when the whole concept is based on _" You're too stupid to decide for yourself, serf"_. The obvious undemocratic thing about our alleged democracies is the absence of "None of the above" on the ballot, or the failure to count non-votes as a legitimate position - of not supporting any party or person, but oneself.

I honestly don't expect many people to elect themselves are their own representative - most people will not have the time, nor the patience to do research (like any politician, really), in order to make informed decisions.

I'd expect instead, a system where one can delegate their own decision making power to some third-party representative they can trust will use those votes in a sane way, but the most important requirement for such delegation of voting power is revocation ability (effective immediately rather than in 4-5 years or through violence), so that if said representative is taking bribes, or backpedaling on their promises, they can switch to someone else. We could probably build something like this with public-key crypto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Burning the system to the ground is not very constructive (duh). In fact, this article - well, it's not clear what it advocates, but it sounds like it advocates some kind of violent "line the bastards against a wall and shoot them" revolution or civil war.

The "system" certainly is corrupt and flawed (particularly in the US), but I'll pick this flawed system any day if given the choice between it and a bloody revolution with millions of dead and wealth destruction on a gigantic scale.

<comment><USER13>
      > wealth destruction on a gigantic scale.

Who gives a damn about destroying the master's wealth if you're a slave? That's the problem.

To be clear, I'm not saying it's that bad, but things sure seem to be moving in that direction.

<comment><USER12> As others have pointed out, it's not just the master's wealth, but everyone's wealth.

If anything, I'd suspect the "masters" would be better at protecting their relative wealth in such a "burn it to the ground" scenario than the slaves. At least they have the wealth to move out of the country when it erupts. Most people don't, and would just lose everything - possessions, family, life...

Burning things to the ground doesn't leave much above the ground. Best be able to afford an airship.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. Wealth, if you're smart, see what's coming, and know how to prepare, brings you options others simply don't have. I'm not talking in the SHTF / survivalist sense, either, though it's true there, too ... simply stating that wealth allows you to do things you couldn't without it.

This is similar to how every time politicians salivate over some new scheme to "tax the rich", the rich - being smart, motivated, and having the option to do so - find ways to avoid paying more than they have to. The middle & lower class, on the other hand, are either no better off, or are actually screwed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The System better get wise because eventually enough "reasonable" people like me will start to agree with this sentiment and we'll have ourselves executions in the street because I'll be looking the other way because the solution is less worse than the problem.

Don't say it can't happen. Governments much more entrenched than the US have fallen due to mistreatment of their populace.

<comment><USER16> The system _can 't_ get right because it is fundamentally corrupt. It was carefully designed for this very purpose from the beginning. Too many smart and intelligent people are in charge for the system to get this fucked up by accident.

Just like mediocre software architectures, sometimes a full rewrite is the only way to go. No amount of refactoring will cleanse a self-corrupting system.

Just like a Windows installation after a while, nothing will help but a fresh reinstall with a blank slate.

However, it is the nature of our institutions to try and stay alive, even when they are outdated ideas, have been proven inneffective time and time again. Above all, they want to survive, even if the cost for this is a massively decreased quality of life for virtually everyone not holding the reins.

<comment><USER17> Most people dont realize the fact that every government collapses eventually. Every single one. You would think that gee maybe something is inherently wrong with the concept after so much epic fail.

<comment><USER16> Computing made this evident, decentralized systems are almost always superior to centralized ones.

The current government hierarchy is littered with single points of failures. I never believed the action of voting to be relevant in any way whatsoever. This is the biggest illusion of power to the people.

It's like having a faulty production system filling its error log where you can only blindly deploy a fix every four years and hope things get better. All while accumulating user complaints and deferring your customer service offshore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would comment on this, but I am afraid it would be brought up by a TSA agent when trying to enter the US.

<comment><USER19> I'm a TSA agent. After reading your comment, I'm commanding you to take off your clothes, wherever you are, and subject yourself to a full pat-down.

What, that legislation hasn't passed yet? Got my super-PAC on super-speed dial....

<comment><USER20> Turn on your cam, citizen.

<comment><USER21> ...Pick up that can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Text:

Burn the Fucking System to the Ground

Dec 23, 2013 By Clark. Effluvia "I'm a good judge" … said by government employee and judge Gisele Pollack who, it seems, sentenced people to jail because of their drug use…while she, herself, was high on drugs.

But, in her defense, "she's had some severe personal tragedy in her life".

And that's why, it seems, she's being allowed to check herself into rehab instead of being thrown in jail.

…because not a single poor person or non government employee who gets caught using drugs ever "had some severe personal tragedy in her life".

I'm reminded of something I read earlier today:

techdirt.com

We've discussed the whole "high court/low court" concept here a few times before — in that those who are powerful play by one set of rules, while the rest of us have to play by a very different set of rules.

…

The end result seems clear. If you're super high up in the political chain, you get the high court. Reveal classified info to filmmakers? No worries. Not only will you not be prosecuted or even lose your job, the inspectors will scrub your name from the report and, according to the article, the person in charge of the investigation will "slow roll" the eventual release of the report until you switch jobs.

But if you're just a worker bee and you leaked the unclassified draft report that names Panetta and Vickers? Well, you get the low court. A new investigation, including aggressive pursuit by the government, and interrogations of staffers to try to find out who leaked the report.

Twenty years ago I was a libertarian. I thought the system could be reformed. I thought that some parts of it "worked"… whatever that means. I thought that the goals were noble, even if not often achieved.

The older I get, the more I see, the more I read, the more clear it becomes to me that the entire game is rigged. The leftists and the rightists each see half of the fraud. The lefties correctly note that a poor kid caught with cocaine goes to jail, while a Bush can write it off as a youthful mistake (they somehow overlook the fact that their man Barrack hasn't granted clemency to any one of the people doing federal time for the same felonies he committed). The righties note that government subsidized windmills kill protected eagles with impunity while Joe Sixpack would be deep in the crap if he even picked up a dead eagle from the side of the road. The lefties note that no one was prosecuted over the financial meltdown. The righties note that the Obama administration rewrote bankruptcy law on the fly to loot value from GM stockholders and hand it to the unions. The lefties note that Republicans tweak export rules to give big corporations subsidies. Every now and then both sides join together to note that, hey! the government is spying on every one of us…or that, hey! the government stole a bunch of people's houses and gave them to Pfizer, because a privately owned for-profit corporation is apparently what the Constitution means by "public use".

What neither side seems to realize is that the system is not reformable. There are multiple classes of people, but it boils down to the connected, and the not connected. Just as in pre-Revolutionary France, there is a very strict class hierarchy, and the very idea that we are equal before the law is a laughable nonsequitr.

Jamal the $5 weed slinger, Shaneekwa the hair braider, and Loudmouth Bob in the 7-11 parking lot are at the bottom of the hierarchy. They can, literally, be killed with impunity … as long as the dash cam isn't running. And, hell, half the time they can be killed even if the dash cam is running. This isn't hyperbole, mother-fucker. This is literal. Question me and I'll throw 400 cites and 20 youtube clips at you.

Next up from Shaneekwa and Loudmouth Bob are us regular peons. We can have our balls squeezed at the airport, our rectums explored at the roadside, our cars searched because the cops got permission from a dog (I owe some Reason intern a drink for that one), our telephones tapped (because terrorism!), our bank accounts investigated (because FinCEN! and no expectation of privacy!). We don't own the house we live in, not if someone of a higher social class wants it. We don't own our own financial lives, because the education accreditation / student loan industry / legal triumvirate have declared that we can never escape – even through bankruptcy – our $200,000 debt that a bunch of adults convinced a can't-tell-his-ass-from-a-hole-in-the-ground 18 year old that (a) he was smart enough to make his own decisions, and (b) college is a time to explore your interests and broaden yourself). And if there's a "national security emergency" (defined as two idiots with a pressure cooker), then the constitution is suspended, martial law is declared, and people are hauled out of their homes.

Next up from the regular peons are the unionized, disciplined-voting-blocks. Not-much-brighter-than-a-box-of-crayolas teachers who work 180 days a year and get automatic raises. Firefighters who disproportionately retire on disability the very day they sub in for their bosses and get a paper cut.

A step up from the teachers and firefighters are the cops: all the same advantages of nobility of the previous group, but a few more in addition: the de facto power to murder someone as long as not too many cameras are rolling. The de facto power to confiscate cameras in case the murder wasn't well planned. A right to keep and bear arms that far exceeds that of the serf class: 50 state concealed carry for life, not just just for actual cops, but even for retired cops.

At the same level of privilege as cops, but slightly off to one side is different class of nobility: the judiciary and the prosecutors. Judges and prosecutors can't execute citizens in an alley, a parking lot, or their own homes ("he had a knife! …and I don't care what the lying video says."), but they can sentence people to decades in jail for things that any clear-minded reading of the Constitution and the 9th and 10th amendments make clear are not with in the purview of the government. They have effectively infinite resources. They orchestrate perp walks. They selectively leak information to shame defendants. They buy testimony from other defendants by promising them immunity. By exercising their discretion they make sure that the bad people are prosecuted while the good people (i.e. members of their own clan) are not.

Above the cops, the prosecutors, and the judiciary we have the true ruling class: the cabal of (most) politicians and (some) CEOs, conspiring both against their own competitors and the public at large. If the public is burdened with a $100 million debt to pay off a money losing stadium, that's a small price to pay if a politician gets reelected (and gets to hobnob with entertainers and sports heroes via free tickets and backstage passes). If new entrants into a market are hindered and the populace ends up overpaying for coffins, or Tesla cars, or wine that can't be mail ordered, then that's a small price to pay if a connected CEO can keep his firm profitable without doing any work to help the customer. If the Google founders want to agitate for Green laws that make Joe Sixpack's daily commute more expensive at the same time that they buy discount avgas for their private flying fuck palaces, then isn't that their right? They donated to Obama's campaign after all!

I could keep myself up all night and into tomorrow by listing different groups of royalty and the ways they scam the system.

…except "scam the system" is a misnomer. I am not listing defects in a perfectable system. I am describing the system.

It is corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. From Ted Kennedy who killed a woman and yet is toasted as a "lion of liberalism", to George Bush who did his share of party drugs (and my share, and your share, and your share…) while young yet let other youngsters rot in jail for the exact same excesses instead of waving his royal wand of pardoning, to thousand of well-paid NSA employees who put the Stasi to shame in their ruthless destruction of our rights, to the Silicon Valley CEOs who buy vacation houses with the money they make forging and selling chains to Fort Meade, to every single bastard at RSA who had a hand in taking the thirty pieces of silver, to the three star generals who routinely screw subordinates and get away with it (even as sergeants are given dishonorable discharges for the same thing), to the MIT cops and Massachusetts prosecutor who drove Aaron Swartz to suicide, to every drug court judge who sends 22 year olds to jail for pot…while high on Quaalude and vodka because she's got some fucking personal tragedy and no one understands her pain, to every cop who's anally raped a citizen under color of law, to every other cop who's intentionally triggered a "drug" dog because the guy looked guilty, to every politician who goes on moral crusades while barebacking prostitutes and money laundering the payments, to every teacher who retired at age 60 on 80% salary, to every cop who has 50 state concealed carry even while the serfs are disarmed, to every politician, judge, or editorial-writer who has ever used the phrase "first amendment zone" non-ironically: this is how the system is designed to work.

The system is not fixable because it is not broken. It is working, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to give the insiders their royal prerogatives, and to shove the regulations, the laws, and the debt up the asses of everyone else.

Burn it to the ground.

Burn it to the ground.

Burn it to the ground.

Merry Christmas.

<comment><USER22> Burn it to the ground and replace it with what?

<comment><USER23> If you have a growth and the doctor advises you to remove it, do you ask him what will he replace it with?

In any case, replace it with a system that doesn't do all that stuff.

<comment><USER24> If I have an unsalvageable organ and the doctor advises me to remove it, then I certainly will ask him what he will replace it with.

As messed up as the system is, it does work marginally better than anarchy.

<comment><USER25> Marginally ? Have you seen anarchy ? You get warlords, feudalism, that kind of stuff (see Somalia).

I'm assuming the writer lives in the US; I think he greatly exaggerates the issues; the system works; most people live with enough food, enough necessities and without the threat of violence; we CAN make it better, but I'd much rather improve on it than try to come up with a new one.

BTW, I haven't seen ANY system that works wholesale better than ours; have y'all ?

<comment><USER9> Low standards. The post Stalin Soviet Union also provided everything you mentioned. But I'm not happy to be a serf, even if a serf who is likely to have enough gruel for a comfortable existence.

What's better? I don't presume to be able to build a new society from the fount of my head. But relentless, diverse experimentation, and creating the space for that experimentation, seems like a solid approach to me.

<comment><USER22> _The post Stalin Soviet Union also provided everything you mentioned._

No, it didn't, at least not on its own. Even post-Stalin, the Soviet Union couldn't feed its people from its own resources; it relied on large food imports from other countries (including the US). And it still relied on violence to keep people in line, just not as overtly as Stalin did.

<comment><USER9> It couldn't feed people on its own, except by manufacturing goods and trading them for food? That's hardly damning of the USSR (though it certainly is worthy of damnation, for other reasons); other countries do the same thing now, for both agricultural and manufactured goods. The point is, people had enough food to survive, which is the point I was addressing. Similarly, you could avoid state violence by accepting the system without complaint. A terrible way to eke out an existence, but not a difficult one if you have low expectations of human dignity.

<comment><USER22> _It couldn 't feed people on its own, except by manufacturing goods and trading them for food?_

Where did I say it got food from the US (and other countries) by trading manufactured goods? How many Soviet manufactured goods do you remember seeing in Western countries?

What the Soviet Union actually "traded" for food was concessions on treaty issues like nuclear weapons. Which was particularly convenient for them since most of what they conceded was not actually verifiable, so the "concessions" amounted to making promises they had no intention of keeping, in exchange for actual stuff.

 _The point is, people had enough food to survive, which is the point I was addressing._

No, the point you were addressing was that the system in which the people lived was able to provide for them, which was not true of the Soviet Union. If the West had not agreed to play the USSR's con game of trading non-verifiable concessions for actual stuff for decades, the USSR would have collapsed a lot sooner than it did.

<comment><USER9> You have a very mistaken view of Soviet trade, if you think "we promise not to develop nuclear weapons, if you give us grain!" It's wishful thinking, akin to a leftist claims that the USA gets all its manufactured goods by enslaving developing countries.

The Soviet Union imported large amounts of grain due to a deeply broken agricultural system, which I believe we're in full agreement on. But this wasn't in exchange for merely making unverifiable promises to the West (why would the United States have agreed to that, even?). Much trade was with other socialist countries, for one. And although Western countries received few Soviet manufactured goods, they, then as now, imported large quantities of Soviet commodities, particularly oil and natural gas.

Indeed, its reliance on oil for hard cash is what led in part to its downfall, as oil prices collapsed in the 80s, putting significant strains on the system as the pie got much smaller while more and more resources were needed to satisfy rising consumer demands and ill-conceived land wars in Asia.

<comment><USER22> _It 's wishful thinking_

I'll admit such a view is simplistic, yes. However, I think it played more of a role than you appear to believe it did.

 _Much trade was with other socialist countries, for one._

I'm not sure this makes much difference, since those other countries were just as messed up. (I also have a hard time taking any numbers that can be found for this at face value anyway, just as I am skeptical of pretty much any numbers that were internally generated by Eastern Bloc countries. Not that Western countries' numbers are miracles of accuracy either, but at least they get a lot more independent checking because the underlying data is more easily available.)

 _And although Western countries received few Soviet manufactured goods_

In other words, you agree with me that this was not a significant factor. Ok.

 _they, then as now, imported large quantities of Soviet commodities, particularly oil and natural gas_

I agree that the West got large quantities of oil and natural gas from the USSR; the question is, at what prices? And at what prices did we sell them grain and other foodstuffs in return? I suspect that the respective answers are "high prices" and "low prices"; the trades were not ordinary free market trades because of the political factors involved.

<comment><USER26> I don't know what are you talking about (obviously not about the USSR), but I'd love to return to the Soviet Union if that was possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Regarding these issues specifically are we better off today then we were 100 years ago? 500 years ago? Sometimes I feel like society has increasingly less problems to worry about, and therefore more time to spend looking under the microscope.

<comment><USER28> A lesser evil is still evil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If popehat.com is still down, I was able to find it re-posted on this site: [http://www.occupylv.org/blogs/burn-fucking-system- ground](http://www.occupylv.org/blogs/burn-fucking-system-ground)

</comment><comment><USER30> An equivalent rant could be written about any system of government that has or does exist. Establishing such hierarchies of privilege is intrinsic to the governing class. Always has been and always will be.

</comment><comment><USER31> David Simon (creator of The Wire) also recently talked about our hell-in-a- handbasket situation, a bit less ragefully: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon- cap...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism- marx-two-americas-wire)

<comment><USER32> And even when The Wire was made:

"[The Wire] is a treatise on the end of the American empire and who we are as a people and what we've come to and why we can no longer solve or even seriously address our own problems." -– David Simon

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PVM0SXo...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PVM0SXowLx4J:www.popehat.com/2013/12/23/burn- the-fucking-system-to-the-ground/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)

</comment><comment><USER34> Is the "Error establishing a database connection" message that's currently showing an actual error message? Or is it just a play on the "Burn the Fucking System to the Ground" theme in the supposed article's title?

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm a popehat fan from long before most HN before heard of it, but this doesn't have anything to do with HN at all.

<comment><USER23> The thing about real hackers is that their thinking (and reading) is not compartamentalized.

<comment><USER32> Sadly, whenever something is remotely important, it seems to get killed... discussing the viabilities and alternatives of violent revolution is too real for some. Let's discuss font sizes!

History will have very unfriendly things to say about this: people swap temporary comfort for eternal shame, and they should at least be aware of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "All political problems can be solved by the correct application of power."

\- _Childhood 's End_ by Arthur C. Clarke

</comment><comment><USER37> We could all just move to Nigeria, but then there's a lot of things we'd lose out on.

</comment><comment><USER38> Site has stopped responding.

</comment><comment><USER39> Very relevant to hackernews </s>

</comment><comment><USER40> Used to be a libertarian? Still a right winger, though.

Obama rewrote the bankruptcy laws to help a union? Speaking of union's, firefighters are a problem now? Since when?

Ted Kennedy the murderer. The serfs are being disarmed? How about "cabal of (most) politicians and (some) CEOs"...because (to the right wing mind) it's more likely that politicians are pulling the strings than business people...they make are jerbs! Plus one drudge point for saying that the Google guys are hypocrites (shocking) that voted for Obama.

RSA, a company that makes money, took money from a customer to do something that benefited the customer? That doesn't rise to the level of tragedy as the problems in the justice system.

Let's see the NSA is the Stasi...he also mentioned pre-revolutionary France...the right wing mind loves dreaming that we might have a revolution...and then all the "serfs" that haven't been "disarmed" will throw off their shitty jobs and fight fer freedum!

Here's a gem: "to every politician who goes on moral crusades while barebacking prostitutes and money laundering the payments, to every teacher who retired at age 60 on 80% salary, "

Hypocritical politicians who commit crimes are like retired teachers? Fuck you. You wormy douchebag.

<comment><USER41> > firefighters are a problem now?

To some extent, yes.

The number of fires that need responding to is down significantly (almost 2x over the last 3 decades). Over the same time, number of firefighters is _not_ down significantly; in fact it's up by a factor of 1.4 or so. So now they're partially a solution looking for a problem (e.g. doing medical emergency first response using fire trucks, which is just daft).

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/07/fir...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/07/firefighters- dont-fight-fires.html) has some graphs, links to data, etc that you may want to look at.

This is not even entirely a US-specific problem; Toronto is having similar issues; see [http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/08/06/toronto_paramedic...](http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/08/06/toronto_paramedics_and_firefighters_at_odds_over_medical_calls.html)</comment></comment>


Morris.js: Pretty time-series line graphs - <AUTHOR> http://oesmith.github.com/morris.js/

<comment><USER2> I spent a good chunk of my sunday yesterday with my cofounder playing with g.raphael.js. After some frustration with raphael and concerns of a giant rabbit hole, we ended up planning to go with Highcharts. The $360 per developer license felt a little steep. We're still experimenting and Morris looks awesome.

Thanks for sharing. We may be forking and pull-requesting soon.

<comment><USER3> I think you'll be glad you went with a library instead of drawing by hand. You'll have a lot less code to maintain so you can focus on your product.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is my first (proper) open-source release. I'd be very grateful for feedback from HN!

<comment><USER4> Looks great for what it was designed to do! One question I'm trying to answer is how the overlays are generated. You mention they refer to an element tag, but that still leaves me confused. Is there a template that is filled in with values? Is it a DOM element that I can add event handlers to?

Have you thought about making more powerful features, say, realtime adjustment of the axes, zooming, etc?

Personally I'm interested in having things like this for analytics. One thing I'd like to see is some kind of interaction with D3.js in case i wanted to visualize the data in other ways. Any ideas on integrating this with that library?

<comment><AUTHOR> It uses Raphaël.js to insert an SVG (or VML on old IE) element into the container. There's definite potential for hooking into DOM events, although there's no code to support that at the moment.

Zooming/panning isn't something I've had a need for yet, the same for data bindings. There's no reason why they couldn't be integrated (although D3 could be a pretty serious job..)

<comment><USER4> I see. Have you considered rendering a Dom element in JavaScript instead of the SVG approach? As a developer I feel there is a lower barrier of entry for me because I pretty much don't need to understand SVG, or Raphael for that matter, to use your library otherwise, however I would like more control over the overlay elements.

In any case, great work!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ticking countdown for all the pedants from the other thread to come and yell at you for not naming it "Morris.coffee" ;)

Neat stuff -- I dig your defaults: [https://github.com/oesmith/morris.js/blob/master/morris.coff...](https://github.com/oesmith/morris.js/blob/master/morris.coffee#L19-52)

... and you may want to move some of the helper functions within "redraw" out into regular instance functions, for clarity, and since you're already using a class.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Refactoring redraw() is high up on my list of priorities now that other people can see the code ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there an option to turn off the curve smoothing? It causes some misleading effects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, but it'll be an easy fix.

<https://github.com/oesmith/morris.js/issues/12>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pet peeve: I really hate the "feature" of adding arbitrary (as in, not related to the data or any reasonable model of them) spline interpolation through data points to make them look "smooth", especially for these charts that really should be bar charts (i.e. represent quantities of items).

Anyway, this sort of thing can be helpful for quick one-offs, but for anyone who runs into the limits of what a tool like this one can do, and needs something more customizable or sophisticated, remember to take a look at D3. It really is neat. <http://mbostock.github.com/d3/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Your graph looks great!

We use jqplot, but are looking for an alternative that is also in JS, but more similar to the google analytics graphs. Your's comes close in looks. Any plans for:

a) Inline labels like google analytics, instead of under and to the left of the graph. Makes it so much more pretty, as the graph can have its edges match the rest of the interface.

b) Support for updating data for a live data stream, scrolling the graph?

c) Stacked area graphs (as in just filling in the backgrounds)

Anyone else know of a javacript graph that might suit our needs?

Thanks!

<comment><USER9> dygraphs can do (b) & (c): <http://dygraphs.com/tests/stacked.html> <http://dygraphs.com/tests/dynamic-update.html>

You could hack in (a), though it might be a bit of a challenge. If you have a lot of data, the other valuable thing that dygraphs gives you is the ability to pan/zoom your charts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm about to need something like this and I was thinking about using Google Charts[1]. What would I miss out? The thing is I don't want to introduce big requirement (jquery) if it is not necessary.

1\. <http://code.google.com/apis/chart/>

</comment><comment><USER11> I just used RGraph for some charts in an application I'm working on. The biggest pain for me has been plotting time-based data and I wish I had seen this first.

Does the graph handle hours/minutes/seconds or no?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you convert your emails to todo items? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for specifics on tools and workflows you might use.
I currently use Evernote to maintain my todos and tasks in a somewhat GTD way (I basically did this when it was on HN before http://ruudhein.com/evernote-gtd).
The problem is that I have two email solutions (gmail for personal and Outlook for work) and a lot of the emails I get become tasks.  I want to keep the context of the email, so ideally I want a way to keep the whole thread, including updates.
For gmail I can copy/paste a link to the thread.  I haven't found a good solution for Outlook yet (it should be noted that I can use any imap solution, so using another client is an option).
So, HN, how do you unify your email and tasks? <comment><USER2> I use a combination of ActiveInbox (<http://www.activeinboxhq.com/>) and the Multiple Inbox labs in GMail. I have 5 "multiple inbox" inboxes. I mark emails with a GTD style label that ActiveInbox creates (S/Action, S/Waiting On mostly) and have an inbox that only shows those. Those are my main tasks.

I also have an inbox for starred emails, which are longer term project or information rich emails I want handy. My "top" inbox is unread inbox emails and round it out with drafts and the standard email inbox at the bottom of the page.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are tools that support email integration. In PostFrenzy (<http://postfrenzy.com>), for example, you can take an email and forward it to the workspace you would like it to be placed in (the email address for a workspace can be seen at the top under its description). If you are looking to convert an email into a task you can click forward, enter the workspace's email address, edit the message (if necessary), then click send. If your workspace is already open in another tab in your browser it will automatically appear at the top of the list.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use a combination of Google's priority inbox and the 'mark as unread' feature. Anything marked as unread is a TODO. Woeful, I know - and it really doesn't work, but it's stuck..!

<comment><USER5> That's what I do as well.. in combination of Wunderlist. If anyone from Wunderlist is reading this - I would love to get a gmail integration + a little icon at the top bar like Fantastical.

</comment></comment><comment> why-el I have modified the important inbox section to show only starred email. (To be honest I consider all emails important, so I dont really need that feature). So when an incoming email has a task or needs further processing, I just star it and it shows up where the important emails would normally show up, and it stays there until I unstar it. Pretty convenient.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use RTM for task management. Emails can be forwarded to it, and converted to tasks, as described here: <http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/email/>

</comment><comment><USER7> You might already be aware of this but in Outlook you can drag an email to tasks on the left (or to calendar) and it will include the email thread in the body. Doesn't update though with new emails from the thread.

</comment><comment><USER8> In fact you can <http://asana> for todo list/items. its more for project management but good thing about that you can comment or list out once you are done with that item.

</comment><comment><USER9> When viewing an email in Gmail clicking More > Add to Tasks will add the email subject and a link to the given email to your Google Tasks list (I use this).

<comment><USER10> Shift + T adds a gmail to Google tasks via keyboard shortcut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I forward them to my fogbugz account which literally converts my email to a todo item.</comment>


Apple Won't Recall iPhone 4 - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704682604575369311876558240.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLESecondNews

<comment><USER2> _The mounting iPhone 4 controversy has hit a receptive ear in Washington, as Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D., N.Y.) Thursday wrote to Mr. Jobs urging Apple to come up with a "permanent fix" to the problem at no cost to customers. Mr. Schumer asked Apple to provide customers with a clearly written explanation of the cause of the iPhone 4's reception problem and "make a public commitment to remedy it free of charge."_

does this politician have nothing better to do?

<comment><USER3> I think the way Apple handled the antenna issue was dumb, but I think that Schumer's open letter is even more dumb. That being said, there is the (admittedly very slim) possibility that he is perhaps representing his constituents, rather than acting selfishly.

There are still about a bazillion more important things to get senatorial over though.

<comment><USER4> Or maybe just trying to get a piece of the media pie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think a large-scale recall is unlikely. True, in places where reception is already bad, touching the no-zone makes things worse. But overall call reliability and data throughput (especially 3G HSPA upload rates), even in poor reception areas, is far better on the iPhone 4 than on any previous iPhone.

If the reception issue were a dealbreaker on the iPhone 4, I think we should expect that people would be returning the phone on a massive scale. But they're not. People love their iPhone 4s.

If anything, I think they'll give out free bumpers. Or, perhaps, $100 at the Apple Store for all iPhone 4 owners - just like in 2007, after the original iPhone's launch. <http://www.apple.com/hotnews/openiphoneletter/>

<comment><USER6> > _is far better than on previous iPhones_

An Anandtech followup backs this up:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/3821/iphone-4-redux- analyzing-...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/3821/iphone-4-redux-analyzing- apples-ios-41-signal-fix/2)

1\. Reception in average conditions is sometimes significantly better on the iPhone 4 than on the 3GS.

2\. Signal strength is sometimes the same as or worse than the iPhone 3GS.

3\. The iPhone 4 is better at holding onto calls and data at very low signal levels.

The combination of these, it is reported, means Apple made a design trade off to achieve better calls in more low signal areas.

He calls innovating on antenna design in a way that works better most of the time but might be picky: "ballsy".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Headline:

 _"Apple Knew of iPhone Antenna Glitch"_

Body:

 _"Apple said, "We challenge Bloomberg BusinessWeek to produce anything beyond rumors to back this up. It's simply not true.""_

WSJ regurgitates Bloomberg, buries the rebuttal, and headlines the rebutted info with nothing to substantiate why the rebuttal should be dismissed.

<comment><USER7> This entire article reads like a gigantic copy/paste cluster-fuck of misinformation and hyperbole. The WSJ ought to be ashamed to call this journalism. It's as if every major media outlet has identified 'antennagate' as the next click-generating cash-cow and is riding it in to the sunset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "These people also said Apple's antenna woes go back years, through multiple versions of the iPhone and with repeated instances of design clashing with functionality. The first version had a back made of metal, which hampered the ability of wireless signals to penetrate to the antenna inside, engineers said.

Later versions, including the iPhone 3G that was launched in 2008 and the iPhone 3GS last year, also didn't hold a signal as well as other phones and experienced more dropped calls, people familiar with the matter said.

For at least two years, multiple iPhone carriers lodged complaints with the company that its phone doesn't work well in making calls and doesn't hold a wireless signal for a voice call as well as other devices, these people say."

Maybe after all these years, it wasn't the NETWORK but the PHONE!

</comment><comment><USER9> For what it's worth, Gruber thinks this is a controlled leak by Apple:

        Apple, adjusting expectations for tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm betting they give out a free bumper case to everyone. Or at the very least some duct tape.

</comment><comment><USER11> If they have shipped a faulty phone, which looks to be the case, then they should recall. It is a phone first and foremost, and the main function of a phone is to make calls. iPhone 4 cannot do that and therefore is faulty.

If Steve Jobs can ignore his own engineers when they bring up an antenna issue, then there is something seriously wrong at Apple. No one should have that much power or influence over a product, especially when you know it's going to sell millions.

If the solution tomorrow is free bumpers, then there is going to be uproar among users. How dare Apple put form over function.

<comment><USER11> Wow, downvotes. I'm not sure why. All I'm trying to point out here is that there are many people out there who have bought the iPhone 4 and can't hold it naturally and make calls. Now it turns out that was a potential issue known about as far back as a year ago at Apple, but it was ignored because the new design of the phone was liked at Apple.

Does no one else see something seriously wrong with that?

<comment><USER12> Why can't they just return it? I've returned products to an Apple Store and it's been completely painless. Is it different with the iPhone because of AT&T contracts or something?

<comment><USER13> _Why can't they just return it?_

From what I can tell, it's like being addicted to a drug. You know it's bad, but you can't resist. I have coworkers who have the reception problem who would rather alter the way they hold the phone than return it. Even though they loved their previous iPhones, somehow they can't go back now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No shit.</comment>