HD 555 to HD 595 mod (or: how Sennheiser cripples cheaper headphones) - <AUTHOR> http://mikebeauchamp.com/misc/sennheiser-hd-555-to-hd-595-mod/ <comment><USER2> I understand that this raises eyebrows, but it's hardly _fraud_.

Do people actually think that retail price is a function of production/R&D cost? It's not, never has been. Dropbox charges 20$ for something that consumes marginally more ressources and incurs identical R&D costs when compared to the 10$ product. Chip manufacturers do this all the time. Discounts for electronics and groceries are fully artificial.

A much more realistic model is price as whatever the market can bear. I sincerely doubt that there is a moral obligation to set price points in any other way.

[This may be relevant: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html)]

<comment><USER3> I do think this is fraudulent, and I think the comparison falls down: A customer buying the 20$ dropbox account knows exactly what he is spending his extra 10$ to get, and it is worth it to him to do so. Even if objectively, 10$ may seem like excessive premium.

Sennheiser in this case is being fraudulent by claiming that there is an actual difference between the two models while in reality they are exactly identical apart from a tiny piece of foam clearly put there only to defraud customers that want better sound and are prepared to pay for it.

To quote the amazon page for the 595's:

"The HD 595 is the top-of-the-line headphone of the audiophile 500 series range, boasting a new level of comfort and sound quality. Features include our E.A.R. technology and a highly constant,compressed cellulose fleece to reduce total harmonic distortion. Velour ear pads and high-quality leatherette headband both provide outstanding comfort."

compared to the 555's:

"A comfortable, high-quality headphone system"

Don't you see how this is fraud at work? Nowhere in the description of the difference between these models is the piece of foam mentioned or hinted at. To the contrary, the description of the 595's indicates that they include ADDED technology to improve sound quality and comfort. Which is full-on lie.

No, pricing is not connected to incurred cost. That's not the issue.

<comment><USER4> _Don't you see how this is fraud at work? Nowhere in the description of the difference between these models is the piece of foam mentioned or hinted at. To the contrary, the description of the 595's indicates that they include ADDED technology to improve sound quality and comfort. Which is full-on lie._

Nowhere in the 595 description do I see wording to the effect "exclusive to this model". Nor do I see anything in the 555 description that says it is missing features of other headphones in the line up. So where is this full on lie?

<comment><USER5> It's more a lie of omission. The 555 headphone produces the frequencies desired, but the company withholds them from the customer with a piece of foam.

If there's something you're not telling someone, which would really piss off that someone, you may be guilty of a lie of omission.

<comment><USER4> How so? Since the 555 and 595 are in the same series of headphones they should be more similar than dissimilar. Much like processors or graphics cards in the same line, it starts off as a good way to sell defective high end parts as middle to low end parts. Then as the process gets established high end parts are crippled to keep up with demand for low end parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How long until we get a DMCA-like law preventing these kinds of blog posts? He'd be guilty of trafficking in technology which aids in the circumvention of profit-enhancing business practices.

<comment><USER7> I never realized plain foam can be an object of DMCA :)

It really doesn't matter how broken the security is, doesn't it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I see a lot of people reacting to this the wrong way.

Rather than getting angry at the company for segmenting its market, why not enjoy the fact that you can buy their top-of-the-line product for a fraction of the price? Rather than raise a stink and force them to do something about it, why not stay relatively quiet about it and let those of us in the know profit from it?

I'm still upset that Baush and Lomb got raked over the coals so publicly for packaging the exact same lenses as monthly, weekly, and daily wear at different prices. I would have been perfectly happy to wear my "daily" lenses for a month each, thus saving several hundred dollars a year. Instead, a witch hunt was raised and they were forced to actually develop a flimsy contact lens to sell cheaply.

It's a good thing, and now you know about it. Try not to ruin it for the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER9> You know what the most depressing thing about this article is for me? I no longer have the option of being an audiophile. :(

I toured professionally as a drummer with a tech metal band and played with a click track every night. I used Ultimate Ears (high-quality earbuds) with ProTools through a rack amp. I had guitar tracks going behind the click track (metronome) for reference and let's put it this way... the reference guitar tracks had to be louder than the actual live amplifiers/PA and the click track had to be even louder than that. On a scale of 1 to 10, relative to the loudness of the vast majority of electronic music players (computers/mp3 players/phones/etc.)... I'd say my click track was at least 17. It hurts my ears just thinking about it now... constant TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK for 30 (sometimes 45) minutes every night for weeks at a time! I don't wish that upon my worst enemy.

If it was another style of music there's no doubt I could have had it turned down to a fraction of what it was... but it was tech metal so it was always loud and heavy and all over the place. Most of the time I'm playing upwards of 300 bpm and the tempo and time signatures were always changing so the click track was necessary. I remember I tried turning it down a few times and it didn't work out so well haha... Bye bye hearing! I miss you.

<comment><USER10> That's astounding--the UE page says they provide up to 32db of sound reduction; and that wasn't enough to reduce the ambient sound from the speakers and other monitors to non-hearing-damaging levels?

I feel sorry for the patrons of the venues you played in. I do care about my own hearing, and I hate it when I forget to bring non-distorting attenuators of some sort to a place which makes a goal of preventing conversation even in shouts.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure if the UE model I used reduced sound by 32db but they definitely reduced it a LOT. That's actually why I bought them. I didn't buy the high-end though. At the time I needed them immediately and could only afford the $50 buds from Best Buy. The difference in sound when wearing the headphones was insane, but the click trick still had to be turned way up.

Now that I think about it iirc, it was actually mostly my drums (mostly cymbals) that I had to drown out... the guitar cabs/PA levels varied depending on the venue setup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I understand people defending the practice, but this nonetheless offends me. For me, it isn't about the 555 owners getting a crippled product, but that the 595 owners are paying a huge markup.

People are talking about market behavior and what not, but I don't feel like Sennheiser is behaving in good faith here. They are intentionally relying on opaque information (this is obviously news to almost everyone), and making price the only way consumers have to reliably differentiate between the products (you can't even test drive the products to tell). Also, with respect to the "luxury" part of the discussion, they are competing against themselves, the branding and "Sennheiser" name you get with the 595 or 555 is the same.

I've been considering getting 800's, I'm a huge Sennheiser fan. I think this has put me off though (even knowing that everyone else probably does the same thing).

<comment><USER12> If they didn't know about this, you could probably argue that they actually enjoyed paying a huge markup for little benefit. Considering most of them would probably not be able to tell the difference in a blind test between the two states of the cheaper headphone, the only possible difference is price and perceived value. They are paying more simply to pay more, not because they're actually getting better sound quality.

<comment><USER11> I totally hear what you are saying, but I honestly believe that most people are paying more, at least partially, to get a better product.

Even if they can't tell that the product is better (say, because they can't hear the difference), I think the difference is night and day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A related pricing quirk that I found interesting.

HD 555 MSRP in the States is $170, and you can buy it for $85 on amazon.com[1]. Right across the border, the MSRP is 200 CAD (202.5 USD) and you could get it for 180 CAD on amazon.ca[2]. In other words, the discounted price in Canada is higher than the nominal price in the States, which in turn is almost twice what consumers actually pay for these headphones.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD555-Professional- Headphon...](http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD555-Professional-Headphones- Channeling/dp/B0001FTVDQ) [2] [http://www.amazon.ca/Sennheiser-Open-Hi-Fi- Stereo-Headphone/...](http://www.amazon.ca/Sennheiser-Open-Hi-Fi-Stereo- Headphone/dp/B0001FTVDQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297647160&sr=1-1)

<comment><USER14> It's not just Sennheiser, all quality headphones seem to have a high markup in Canada. In addition, many companies refuse to ship them across the border (I suspect because the don't want to deal with customers who refuse to pay import tax).

<comment><USER15> The retailer may to agree not to ship internationally. A lot of outdoor gear companies require this so they can price independently in different countries, it seems at least plausible that these companies do the same.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps, but I've experienced this specifically for headphones. Companies that will ship other goods refuse to ship headphones. Maybe it applies to other electronics, but I've had no problem with getting electronics across the border in the past.

<comment><USER15> The retailer will ship other products by the same company? A lot of other electronics products have more equitable international pricing models and value that can be assessed more objectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article is good for Sennheiser, I just ordered a pair of the 555's from Amazon for $85

<comment><USER17> This could all be a diabolical marketing ploy to move a whole lot of HD555's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For what it's worth, I picked up a pair of HD595s back in early 2007 for $150, refurbed. They're still in absolutely perfect quality (despite more abuse than you can imagine) and by far the best headphones I've ever owned. Worth every cent, no questions asked.

<comment><USER19> Im going to agree. I have the HD555's and have given them a lot of abuse over 3 years or so of owning them. They are still in very good condition and sound the same as the first day I got them. Totally reccomend the 555 or the 595 as being the best quality affortable headphones I have ever come across.

<comment><USER20> Apparently I am more abusive to my headphones because I managed to break a plastic part on one side that connects the ear parts to the headband, mainly from them getting dropped on the floor countless times due to repeatedly tripping over the cord that's just a bit too long. I've kept them together with glue and tape in various combinations, since otherwise they still work fine.

<comment><USER21> This part is cracked on my pair too. It's a common failure with these headphones - you can search for people complaining about it...

<comment><USER22> I had a pair of my 555's sent for repair twice over 5 years. Once under warranty for a bad speaker module, and once for cracking.

Still it's lasted this long, one pair 6+ years, another going on 3 now, so I'm pretty satisfied with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Imagine you are kid and the other kid approaches you with mug you really like:

      - Take a look at this wonderful mug with Mickey Mouse. It's worth 20$
      - I'd love to buy that but I only have 5$
      - Would you pay 50$ for it if the mug didn't have handle?
      - Yes I need a mug, but handle is so convenient...
      - I can take 5$ (as he breaks of the mug handle)

Could you really buy this thing and not feel like he spat in your face?

It's not about market it's about psychology of human exchange. Someone destroys value with no purpose other than better conning his peers. How could that not infuriate specimen of social species?

<comment><USER23> Too late to edit

s/50/5/

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've got a better hack for you.

Buy a $20 pair of Koss KTXPRO1 <http://amazon.com/dp/B00007056H>

Read the reviews. They sound almost as good as $200 headphones.

I own a couple of Sennheiser, and I prefer the Koss unless I need closed cans for some reason.

<comment><USER25> Could you recommend a good cheap pair of over the ear headphones to a non audiophile like me?

<comment><USER26> Grado makes some really nice stuff. Their cheapest model (SR-60i) gets rave reviews as one of the audio world's very best values.

<http://www.gradolabs.com/frameset_main.htm>

I've used the same pair of Sony MDR-7506's on a professional, near daily basis for about seven years. They're very accurate, and more importantly, super solid. I mean, they're tools. And they work. About $100, and a really good value for money.

[http://www.amazon.com/Sony-MDR7506-Professional-Diaphragm- He...](http://www.amazon.com/Sony-MDR7506-Professional-Diaphragm- Headphone/dp/B000AJIF4E/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1297648596&sr=1-1)

<comment><USER27> I love the sound from my Grados, but they're not exactly the most comfortable headphones in the world. they can be somewhat painful if you're wearing glasses, since your ear tends to get some pressure on it.

My sennhausiers (585) are a lot more comfortable. A bit clearer sound, a touch less bass, and way less reliable cords.

I've had the Grados since the early 90s, and the Sennhausers since about 2000.

<comment><USER28> Which Grados are you talking about? The SR60i and SR80i's are about the most comfortable headphone I've ever worn. They're so light and unobtrusive you forget you're wearing them.

<comment><USER27> The SR60, which looks really similar to the current 60i model.

I've been through several different sets of foam, some better than others, but they're still not nearly as comfortable as the Sennheisers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> We had two pairs in the office and modded one and not the other. In a blind test two of three actually preferred the non-modded 555's. Our test wasn't great though, 10 seconds of a relatively low quality mp3 and none of us are audiophiles, though the one of us who is the closest to being an audiophile was the one who preferred the modded headphones so, take that fwiw.

If you're going to do it, I found that you have to pull hard, as in really, uncomfortably hard on the foam padding to get it off. It does come off though, and everything went back together fine.

<comment><USER22> My friends and I tested both the 555's and 595's in the shop to see which one we wanted to buy, and all of us agreed on the 555's because they sounded better to us.

I seem to recall something about not being so blatantly bass-ey and being able to hear the mid range more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> On Amazon, the headphones are closer in price... $85 for the HD555 and $150 for the HD595. Still paying $65 for one less piece of foam.

</comment><comment><USER7> Intel, AMD and Nvidia are also notorious for these kinds of practices.

<comment><USER31> Why do these types of market partitioning practices anger people so much? Isn't it a good thing that these companies are offering different price points for people to choose from?

<comment><USER32> Because it feels like your being cheated when you are sold something that the person that is selling it to you broke on purpose.

It doesn't really matter if the practice actually lets more people use a product, it just feels dirty.

<comment><USER33> I see a lot of Web 2.0 applications these days that have their own pieces of foam. It's really all the same code on the backend and theoretically it wouldn't cost them anymore to enable all features completely. They purposely disable features or put their own pieces of "digital" foam in between plans in order to provide different price points for users.

<comment><USER34> The difference is that people generally expect to _own_ the utilitarian physical goods that they pay for. Since information can't be owned in the same sense, it's understood that buying it is going to take the form of some sort of licensing arrangement with more arbitrary conditions.

In reality, the economics of the utilitarian physical goods business may sometimes resemble more those of the information business, but it's up to manufacturers to justify that to their customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The blog post doesn't mention all of the aesthetic differences--which, at the current Amazon price point, could justify the price difference for some--so I thought I would mention the others here:

-the headband is leather -cans have a Sennheiser logo on them -cans have a chrome ring around them -comes with a nifty headphone stand / mount

disclosure: I own some 555's, and will be trying this mod at the office on Monday.

<comment><USER35> FWIW, I did the mod, but I don't have an effective way to AB test. Tried one ear at a time, but could not detect the difference. Went ahead and removed the foam from the other, and the increased sound stage sounds great (though without an accurate test it's difficult to say how much of a change is placebo vs. noticeable).

<comment><USER36> Once the foam is removed, how did you access the driver assembly? Is the screwdriver used as a prying tool?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> While this is really neat, the 595s also feature some nicer padding on the headband. Probably not enough for the price difference, but I just wanted to note that the piece of foam is not the only difference between the two.

</comment><comment><USER38> Years ago, I recall reading (almost certainly on Usenet) a parable which involved a king who needed some bricks, but the cost of getting them could only be recouped by creating some artificial distinction between 'gold' and common bricks, to sell some at a low-price/high-volume and others at high- price/low-volume. In a contrived manner, it neatly illustrated the case that some arrangements that offend one's intuition are actually the best way to get certain things everyone wants financed.

Would love to find a link; it's stumped all my search attempts (including at Google Groups) ever since.

</comment><comment><USER39> Sounds similar to IBM's practice of inserting 'nops' into software of the AS-400s on otherwise identical hardware to create price gradations.

<comment><USER40> But is IBM's practice as easily circumvented? If they are literally inserting nops, then that sounds like something a quick binary conversion could erase.

<comment><USER41> My assembly-fu is weak, but wouldn't that invalidate all jump addresses and data pointers inside the program?

<comment><USER40> Yes, but that's not hard to fix either. For example, Google's binary deltas for Chrome updates would be huge if they couldn't easily fix those addresses; see [http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design- documents/software...](http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design- documents/software-updates-courgette)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> As for the mod itself. I just tried it on my 555 and I noticed only a subtle difference. As odd as it may be, I think I prefer the foam.

As for Sennheiser's strategy to cripple the product line to handle a different marketing segment; it reminded me of a Steve Blank's post. [http://steveblank.com/2009/04/16/supermac-war- story-7-buildi...](http://steveblank.com/2009/04/16/supermac-war- story-7-building-the-whole-product/)

</comment><comment><USER43> I just performed the mod. Was really easy and I hear an audible difference (even to my untrained, non-audiophile ears).

For the record, the practice does not offend me. This has been done for ages. R&D costs for creating the HD595's were no doubt great and to recoup some money they created a cheaper, crippled version. With headphones you aren't paying for the parts but for the engineering.

</comment><comment><USER44> So the plastic bag that supposedly contains the driver is labeled, "System with resonator left side". Is "System" what they call the driver?

I'm interested in seeing what Sennheiser's justification for this is. It seems odd to piss off buyers of high-end products, because they're the ones that do the research. You can't just go to Target and buy some HD5*5 cans; you have to order them from an audiophile-y place (or Amazon).

(The processor manufacturers make their price structure clear. They make the good ones, part of it is broken, so they turn off the broken part and sell it to you as a lower-end model. And if there is no demand for the fully-working ones, and they don't have enough broken ones to meet the demand for them, they just cripple the good ones. But like unscrewing the headphone and taking out foam, you can just change the multiplier and enjoy the increased performance. So why complain unless you already bought the high-end product?)

<comment><USER45> > So the plastic bag that supposedly contains the driver is labeled, "System > with resonator left side". Is "System" what they call the driver?

Well, the driver itself in those headphones is an integral part of a larger piece which includes some more acoustic parts. That's what you can see there, and it's not symmetrical, so it has left-hand and right-hand versions.

> I'm interested in seeing what Sennheiser's justification for this is. It > seems odd to piss off buyers of high-end products, because they're the ones > that do the research.

It's worth noting that the 595s have a better standard of finish and come with a few accessories such as a nifty desk-mounting hook. Not that that justifies it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> In case anyone is interested, I just did this mod for my hd555s and can confirm that it does seem to make the sound clearer although I can't really make a good comparison for obvious reasons.

<comment><USER20> I'm interested in trying it, mine are beat up as is. How do you get the ear pads off to be able to unscrew the parts shown in the pictures?

<comment><USER46> I just pulled them off. They are attached with small plastic clips but luckily not the nasty ones that break. The fabric mesh under those also comes off just by pulling. You should probably be careful with pulling the ear pads, they are glued to a plastic ring and apparently it is possible to just pull them off the glue (my friend did that to his ones).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Brilliant. Brought my HD-555 alive.

</comment><comment><USER48> FWIW, Sennheiser USA's CEO says the mod upgrade claim isn't accurate: <http://twitter.com/#!/SennheiserUSA/status/37092187850153984> ("Urban myth deserves no response. Read the specs; do the tests....all factual. Listen to both and you be the judge.")

I interpreted "urban myth" as a slam instead of a firm answer, but he confirmed that's their position: <http://twitter.com/#!/SennheiserUSA/status/37163867276574720> ("Urban Myth=Not True.")

I asked him to comment here, since I'd like to hear more than can fit in a tweet. With 170 comments in 16 hours, it should be in their interest to describe any manufacturing differences in more depth.

</comment><comment><USER49> According to Amazon, the HD595 is actually heavier by 10g than the HD555. Is the headband different?

<comment><USER35> Yes, the HD595's have a leather headband and some sort of chrome accents. Also, the 595's come with a headphone mount/clip you can attach to your desk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Sennheiser is a company I've always tried to steer clear of because of this. There's a lot of companies that take advantage of their branding (i.e. M-Audio, Monster cable, etc) to jack up the prices on mediocre hardware.

Once stuff hits guitar center and best buy, you're probably going to be getting ripped off somewhere. You can buy better quality Mogami mic cable from a pro-audio supplier than you can from Guitar Center for half the cost. The audiophile world (along with the "guitar aficionado") is a very strange place.

<comment><USER51> I think the key is to actually find out about what you're buying and get some word-of-mouth recommendations rather than relying on brand alone as a measure of quality. I think the pro-audio industry is small enough that nearly all big players expand into the consumer region eventually. That doesn't mean that all their stuff is crap. I still think my Sennheiser HD-25s are some of the very best DJ monitor headphones, but they are a world away from the Sennheiser consumer stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Great bargain. Additionally, the HD-555 can be had for about 100 on eBay. I've been buying my Sennheisers there for years, always the 570 model but that's a bit dated now.

</comment><comment><USER53> The added piece of foam has to cost them something. So, really, the "broken" headphones should be more expensive, right?

In any case, my friends and I have long held the belief that "If you can't open it, you don't really own it". If my toaster breaks, you can be sure I'll open it up and try to fix it before I think of buying a new one.

Though before anyone thinks of flaming, I'm ok with my iPad. I can make an exception for this type of tech!

<comment><USER54> And even then, you still have ifixit to fall back on to get it done should you want to. =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I just did this, and performed a very rough A/B test with one earpiece modded, while leaving the foam on the other. The bass (on a bass-heavy song) was _very noticeably_ more muted on the stock earpiece, sounding almost completely dead compared to the one without the foam. Needless to say, I quickly removed the other, and now they sound better than ever. Highly recommended!

<comment><USER56> how do you remove it properly? after removing the earpads I don't quite see how to pop out the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Actually, this is an article that'll make Steve Blank proud. His SuperMac cards were all the same, but tuned slower for the cheaper versions.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is called Product differentiation. Every company is doing it. And if not, they will likely lose to their competitors.

This is Marketing base knowledge: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_differentiation>

</comment><comment><USER59> Having tried this mod out about a year ago - there is a definite increase in sound quality.

However, it does turn your headphones into the most annoying things ever for people who are in the same room as you as they too can hear, quite loudly and clearly.

</comment><comment><USER60> It's pricing like this that leads people to just buy the cheapest offering available, without doing any research. If you already know you will be taken for a ride, why not just pay the least amount possible for the 'privilege'?

<comment><USER61> Er, no it isn't. People pay the least amount possible because they're tight.

Some people are actually offended when I tell them "you get what you pay for" - particularly for services rather than products. There's this weird consumer fantasy land where you get top quality for fire sale prices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> You manufacture your product and you intentionally damage part of the volume to sell it cheaper only to make the price of other part of the volume justifiable.

If that's not sign of pathology of free market than I don't know what is.

</comment><comment><USER62> Maybe I'm just cheap, but $200 for the _cheaper_ headphones sounds ridiculous to begin with, and well into "anyone paying that much probably deserves it" territory.

<comment><USER63> $200 isn't the actual market price for the HD555. You can get a pair from Amazon (US) for $85.

If you've only listened to your music with cheap earbuds, you haven't truly heard your music. Rediscovering your existing music collection, particularly if it's high-bitrate compressed or lossless, is a joy. Well worth the money if you enjoy music at all.

<comment><USER20> I agree on them being worth it. That said, the best sounding headphones I've head (better than my HD 555's) were some 30 dollar Sony G74 (or something) 'street' headphones that they don't make anymore. The trade-off was that they were easily the most uncomfortable headphones ever devised. It was literally too painful to wear them for extended amounts of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I just did this mod and posted a pic: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/colin_n/5451298732/>

</comment><comment><USER64> If only there were a mod to add an Apple headphone connector and a Zalman microphone to the sennheiser 555, that would be an amazing VOIP headset for the Mac.

<comment><USER65> Break out the soldering iron and duct tape, nothing's stopping you.

<comment><USER64> I was lying in bed last night think about how to do it. Im thinking of cutting the end off of old iPhone buds and then soldering the mic, and headset together with that on the end. Fun times! Thanks for the encouragement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> In case anyone is wondering, I just did this on my almost four-year old pair of HD555s and you can definitely tell the difference.

Sure glad I bought the cheaper pair now.

</comment><comment><USER67> looks like you can just pay $150 bucks for HD 595 on Amazon - [http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD595-High-Grade- Premiere-H...](http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD595-High-Grade-Premiere- Headphones/dp/B0001FTVE0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297662051&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER68> Man that is one expensive piece of foam.

<comment><USER69> Not at all, it's worth _negative $200_.

<comment><USER70> Anyone know where I could buy some of that?

<comment><USER71> [http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD555-Professional- Headphon...](http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD555-Professional-Headphones- Channeling/dp/B0001FTVDQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I'm not an audiophile, because audiophiles are the homeopathic suckers of the audio world. I do, however, like high-quality sound.

If you want a good over-the-ear headphone, the Sony MDR-V6 is quite nice. They sound decent, are built a tank, and have been in continuous production since the mid 80's. They're $90 on Amazon.

If you want in-ear, get Etymotic ER-4's. They're the only headphone I've ever found that can compete with my NHT 2.5i speakers. They should be available around $200.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you rate this site? How can it be made better? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys,
I bank at Natwest.com (http://natwest.com) and have been playing with other bank websites - some good, some not so good. I just wondered, in relation to your bank, how good is this site?
thanks <comment><USER2> its not bad but content needs to be centered. right now, it looks pushed towards left.

One site I like a lot for banking is <https://www.capitalone360.com>. Really like their UI/UX.

<comment><USER3> While my credit union also fails on this, I'm not a fan of drop-down menus for navigation. The gold standard for UX/UI as far as banking is concerned is Simple. <https://simple.com/>

<comment><USER2> This website fails completely in IE8. In fact, it gives error saying not supported and must use Google Chrome ? That could be fine for a new hotshot HTML5 app but if you are a bank, you better work with IE.

<comment><USER3> IE8 is at least a version behind, if not two when you consider Windows 8.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems same as my bank (<http://www.lloydstsb.com/>), why don't these websites centre?

<comment><USER3> Probably just for historical reasons. The size of the layout is small enough to fit on a 1024x768 display. When that was the primary resolution targeted by web developers, they tried to cram everything into the top left corner, as this does.

FWIW, my credit union's website isn't too bad. They've started to redesign and use newer web technologies and approaches. <https://www.americafirst.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> center, center, center...</comment>


Yahoo Mail global email flow visualization - <AUTHOR> http://www.visualize.yahoo.com/

<comment><USER2> Joe from Periscopic here (the company that developed this visualization). Thank you for submitting this, you beat me to it! We used HTML5, CSS3, SVG for this visualization. All of our previous work was made with Flash.

Insider tip: Make sure you check out the trending keywords stream-graph with the tab on the left side. You can see and compare spam words to non spam words for different parts of the world.

We love hearing any feedback (positive or negative) about our work. Comment here or find us on twitter (@Periscopic).

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is Nathan's feedback:

[http://flowingdata.com/2011/10/13/visualizing-yahoo-email- pr...](http://flowingdata.com/2011/10/13/visualizing-yahoo-email-processing- in-real-time/)

My feedback:

Impressive visualization. Can you make it play music? There is sound on mouseover but I wander if emails can generate a melody.

Thanks</comment></comment>


Show HN: Osapy - an API proxy to visualize HTTP request for debugging - <AUTHOR> https://osapy.com <comment><USER2> Today I use ngrok for this and it works brilliantly:

        $ ngrok http https://myapp

and then I can point my clients at <random domain>.ngrok.io and inspect the request contents locally. How does this compare to that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, It can do the same, but no installation or registration required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Hosted on AWS" is gonna backfire on you. This basically opens you up to people misusing it to drive traffic costs for you and you end up paying a lot of money for it.

Better to find a host where you're not paying for traffic and you can have a dedicated host.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah.. it's just to get started and see if anyone finds it useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is it different from [https://requestbin.com/](https://requestbin.com/) ?

<comment><USER5> ...or [https://hookbin.com](https://hookbin.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Is hookbin using websockets for live publishing of the requests? It says you need to refresh the website.

<comment><USER5> It does not, however I have zero problems hitting cmd+r when I've made the request.

<comment><AUTHOR> One aim of the tool is to make it as easy and simple as possible to use, but thank you for sharing the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're looking to be more professional with less work, I would suggest using [https://tailwindcss.com/](https://tailwindcss.com/) to spruce up the overall look! Site is nice btw, will use in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'll check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For client debugging I usually just use the network inspector or Charles ([https://www.charlesproxy.com/](https://www.charlesproxy.com/)). But I guess this might be useful for server to server API call debugging

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes Osapy is for server-server debugging AND you don't need to install anything

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've been frustrated with building API integrations and struggling to track down API call issues via Postman, e.g. what does a raw request really look like or where are my headers ending up. Interested to see if anyone finds this useful.

<comment><USER8> When I hit my private URL, I receive "Missing Authentication Token".

My URL ends with // so I wonder if I'm not getting my auth token? Total guess as to the URL structure here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hackernews is sending a lot of traffic my way and in your case the server shows that it's struggling. Need to fix tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can't you do exactly that by looking at the network inspector in any browser and then right click "Copy as curl"?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think depends on the use case. If you just want to test a backend API, e.g. to call ERP/SAP API or a Google API I'm not sure how you can do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> {"message":"Missing Authentication Token"}

<comment><AUTHOR> Which API are you trying to call ? This doesn't look like one of my error messages.

<comment><USER11> I assume the example numbersapi that is loaded by default.

I got the same thing. Leaves me wondering what to do next. It's not clear, then I figured I'll try this curl command, then an error and still nothing obvious to try next.</comment></comment></comment>


Sandboxing with Firejail - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/671534/ <comment><USER2> I had no idea it was so easy to use!

> The --net=none option will create a new network namespace without any > devices, so processes cannot communicate outside of the namespace.

No idea what a namespace is, does this mean the process will be unable to use any network? I want that as default for everything on my machine...

<comment><USER3> Linux namespaces isolate certain functionality for a group of processes. See more here: [http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man7/namespaces.7.html](http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man7/namespaces.7.html)

And yes, a blank new network namespace won't even have the loopback interface available. There is a program named unshare, which executes a program in another namespace.

<comment><USER4> Really wish there was a basic set of commands for manipulating namespaces. It seems we are reliant on support being baked into larger tools like systemd at present, and said tools may not allow the user/admin to manipulate namespaces directly.

<comment><USER5> The unshare tool [1] can be used along with ip-tools to create a namespace with networking support. Add a chroot or pivot root to it and you have a Linux container. It's quite easy to do. We have a guide on using namespaces directly and the various projects using it including Firejail here [2]

Linux namespaces were created to support containers. This is how userland container projects like LXC, Docker and Nspawn work, only they don't use the unshare tool but the underlying system calls clonens, setns and unshare [3].

[1] [http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man2/unshare.2.html](http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man2/unshare.2.html)

[2] [https://www.flockport.com/alternatives-to-docker-and- lxc/](https://www.flockport.com/alternatives-to-docker-and-lxc/)

[3] [https://lwn.net/Articles/531114/](https://lwn.net/Articles/531114/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just for the record: [http://www.sandboxie.com/](http://www.sandboxie.com/) is THE sandbox tool for Windows.

</comment><comment><USER7> Could Firejail be used as the isolation layer for an online IDE ?

<comment><USER8> Sorry off topic, but just wanted to check if I can reach you by email. I am building something on those lines, and wanted to see if we can exchange ideas. My email is on my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Previous: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8187534](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8187534)

<comment><USER10> That doesn't appear to be the same article - so this isn't a duplicate story - just a duplicate (but much more recent) mention of the technology in question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are there advantages for Ubuntu users over enabling the Firefox AppArmor profile? (And why doesn't that default to on, anyway?)

<comment><USER12> You can do both, there is no need to decide between MAC and firejail. (It may not work for some small quirks but they should be fixable, at least in theory)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pardon my ignorance as I am a long time Linux user now using OSX.. are there any good sandbox tools for OSX?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you measure residential ISP uptime? - <AUTHOR> Curious if people have already written tools out there they'd be willing to share. <comment><USER2> i ping 220.127.116.11 every 10 mins and log it if it cant connect. Nothing for speed though.</comment>


Go for the win-win situations - tomh- http://swombat.com/2011/3/11/go-for-the-win-win-situations

<comment><AUTHOR> In economics, this is called a Pareto improvement: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency>

The idea is that if there are inefficiencies in a system (or market), we can create win-win situations by reducing the inefficiencies.

A classic and useful example of this is comparative advantage and opportunity cost (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage>). Both parties can gain if they have different relative efficiencies, even if one party has an overall production advantage. (This is why countries will import goods and services they could produce domestically - it frees up resources to produce other stuff that they can produce more of.)

This is because it is inefficient to be good at everything you are good at all at once - the opportunity cost is too high relative to importing from someone else.

For instance, you may be better at coding (for instance, in Ruby or Python) and creating HTML/CSS from PSDs than anyone else, but since creating HTML/CSS from PSDs takes away time from coding, you can outsource the HTML/CSS creation to someone who may be slightly slower than you, but that's OK, since the opportunity cost for you is worth it: more time to code.

So - if you want to create a long-term win-win situation with another party - you should find out what you can produce for a relatively lower opportunity cost than they can, and then sell it to them. You will win, and they will win.

<comment><USER2> I was aware of the idea, but thanks for such a viscerally relevant example.</comment></comment>


Sign up in seconds...and then what? - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3168-sign-up-in-seconds-and-then-what

<comment><USER2> While I love the process outlined in the last sketch (and think many people will try it out), 37signals discovered back in 2009 that adding a similar tagline to their headline boosted signups by 30% so the confusion over its popularity surprises me: [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1525-writing- decisions-headli...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1525-writing-decisions- headline-tests-on-the-highrise-signup-page)

</comment><comment><USER3> "I'll bet that the time-to-signup isn't an important anxiety factor."

It is for me. When I'm looking to try out a product, I hate having to jump through hoops just to get to the download link. Fill in 5 pages of information (generally with fake data), making sure I'm not opted in to a mailing list, waiting for that confirmation email etc etc. What a pain in the butt when I'm not even sure I'll use the product for more than a few minutes.

I have skipped trying out a product on several occasions because I simply couldn't be bothered going through their signup process.

<comment><USER4> You have gave up your signup process because you were not excited enough.

What article suggest is to "clutter" your minimalistic sing-up form with useful information on what happens after you sign-up. Hopefully this will excite the user more. So that filling that extra field or confirming that e-mail will not be such a pain.

Basically if you are not exciting the visitor, then even a tiniest time-to- signup won't help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another kind of evil (but effective) approach is to allow the user to do all those post-signup activities (like set up a dashboard or create some content), and then say "now sign up" at the end.

They're already invested, so you get better conversion.

<comment><USER6> Can you explain to me why that is evil? I'm sincerely interested in hearing that thought process.

<comment><USER7> Deception. More verbosely, you allowed the user to assume something, yet contradicted this assumption. Somewhat similar when a woman strings a man along, then requests payment.

<comment><USER8> I would consider it deception if I was being told it was free the entire time until the sign up step told me it cost money. Allowing me to try this before registering is more likely to get me to sign up.

<comment><USER7> Failing to inform can be as deceptive as misinforming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wasn't 37 signals one of the first groups to evangelize saying "Sign up, it only takes 30 seconds" ?

</comment><comment><USER10> 'When's the last time you shopped for a software product under intense time pressure, where every second counts?'

Analytics could definitely be one of those times. If your site is being Slashdotted, your priority is going to be getting quick access to real-time data about traffic flows, and not messing about with Google Analytics (which until recently, didn't even cover real time).

I'm guessing the site in question is GoSquared (the sign up process matches, at least) - and I've worked on a couple of sites where I've installed GoSquared precisely because I knew how quick it was to install.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think Groupon kinda does this for new users (ie, you enter your email, hit next, it scrolls to the left, you pick your city, etc.)

One thing I've found is that if the purpose/value proposition of your product isn't already fairly obvious when a user comes to your site, you should spend more time in marketing the product and educating potential customers instead of trying to attract people who are pretty much clueless about what you do. On one of my web apps, having to sign up was the single most voiced complaint about the site, even though signup literally took less than five seconds.

</comment><comment><USER12> While there's some quality fodder there, I couldn't get beyond this line:

"I'll bet that the time-to-signup isn't an important anxiety factor."

This isn't the only reason that sign-ups have been pared down; the current trend of thought on the matter is that it also reduces barriers to conversion.

Engaging your audience without making them jump through numerous hoops is a great practice, even if that means the occasional company adopts the practice a little too quickly before the rest of their process is fleshed out. I'd certainly prefer that to the alternative, where I've invested a great deal of time with a long form, just to have the same end result, 'and then what?'

<comment><USER13> I don't claim that addressing anxiety is the only reason to say "Signup in 30 seconds." However, data about what converts better isn't a reason. Conversion data gives you correlations, not reasons for the correlations. I prefer to work from a theory of causality when I'm deciding what to put on the page.

<comment><USER12> That's an entirely valid point and for the most part, I agree. Where we seem to differ is where we feel the balance exists between correlation and causation. I feel the former still gives very strong contextual direction, and this shouldn't be ignored, especially when the proposed solution is the 'and then what' flow.

I'd actually love to see some studies of how that works in practice, especially given that screen real estate is so valuable around the signup call-to-action. You may be on to something!</comment></comment></comment>


Economies of Scala - <AUTHOR> http://blog.iterate.no/2013/04/18/economies-of-scala/

<comment><USER2> At the company I worked at previously, the case was often made that java should be used because it's easy to find java programmers. That sounds plausible, but in practice we found it very difficult to find _good_ java programmers. Perhaps to some extent it's even harder than with other languages, because a lot of really talented people are drawn to new shiny ecosystems -- not saying java folks aren't talented, but as a java programmer myself, I see many of the most driven/passionate people wanting to get away from java.

<comment><USER3> <http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html>

<comment><USER4> > if a company chooses to write its software in a comparatively esoteric > language, they'll be able to hire better programmers, because they'll > attract only those who cared enough to learn it.

I cant help but think of Jane Street Capital's use of OCaml when reading that line. From what I understand there are some extremely bright people writing fantastic code over there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I consider myself very fortunate to be coding in Scala. I know of many Java developers who code Java at work and wish that they could land a Scala job.

<comment><USER6> Just curious: As someone who is teaching himself Clojure at the moment, what are the advantages of Scala over Clojure?

<comment><USER7> The type system.

<comment><USER8> He asked for advantages ;)

<comment><USER9> The type system.

<comment><USER10> "I'm not against types, but I don't know of any type systems that aren't a complete pain, so I still like dynamic typing." -Alan Kay

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been working in a Scala shop for the last year. Once you've begun to take advantage of the type systems, monads, and writing in a functional manner, Scala becomes a extremely pleasant language to work with and significantly improves productivity.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting numbers. Why do you think that Java developers are the most likely to look for other languages?

<comment><USER13> Most probably because Java is verbose and does not support some simple concepts like functions.

<comment><USER14> Thats does not sound like the whole truth. I would guess that Java long ago lost its sexiness - now everybody and everything uses Java. The other problem is that now there is vast amount of legacy code. By choosing Scala you are actually eliminating that from the equation.

<comment><USER15> The fact that it failed to evolve for so long, unlike c#, doesn't help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> love the title of the article.. Very creative.

<comment><USER17> A more meaningful title - e.g. My Business Case For Scala - would probably have worked better, though.

<comment><USER18> It's a reference to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What resources would you recommend for studying with cell biology? - crypto-jeronimo What kind of resources would you recommend for getting up to speed with cell biology, modeling of DNA and the like for someone with a solid science background? <comment><AUTHOR> Read Molecular Biology of the Cell. It's an indispensable book for anyone studying or interested in cell biology and molecular genetics. It has been described as "the most influential cell biology textbook of its time."

[https://brucealberts.ucsf.edu/current-projects/molecular- bio...](https://brucealberts.ucsf.edu/current-projects/molecular-biology-of- the-cell/)

[https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Sixth-Bruce- Alberts...](https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Sixth-Bruce- Alberts/dp/0815344325/ref=dp_ob_image_bk)</comment>


Go error handling library eris v0.2.0 released after initial HN feedback. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rotisserie/eris <comment><USER2> We received a lot of valuable feedback on our first release of eris and recently released v0.2.0 with improvements (changelog: [https://github.com/rotisserie/eris/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md](https://github.com/rotisserie/eris/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md)).

      * Improved the stack trace for both local and global errors
      * Streamlined error formatting (it's now a single call: ToString or ToJSON)
      * Completely rewrote our documentation and added direct comparisons to pkg/errors
      * Added more examples (https://godoc.org/github.com/rotisserie/eris#pkg-examples)
      * Added Sentry support
      * Bug fixes

At this point, we're looking for more users and feedback so we can continue improving it!</comment>


Homemade CPUs on the way for local supercomputers - <AUTHOR> http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90881/7310152.html <comment><USER2> Wouldn't it be better if both China and the US stop all the protectionist and control measures and let the best ideas, products, and employees compete among say Intel, Longsoon, AMD, Motorola etc.?

<comment><USER3> If you let the best chips win, that means US chips win — probably forever, since Chinese companies can't afford to invest the required R&D to catch up unless they get government subsidies.

<comment><USER2> If you let all the barriers down, multinational teams win. These teams will have engineers from the US, EU, China, Japan, India, and other parts of the world, with many design and fab facilities in different regions and investors from many regions.</comment></comment></comment>


TurboTax Phishing Scam? - <AUTHOR>

http://i.imgur.com/AG9Q31r.png<p>I also received a similar email that made it past Gmail's spam detection. It's possible everything is a mistake, but it looks very suspicious so I wanted to post this somewhere. <comment><AUTHOR> ^ <http://i.imgur.com/AG9Q31r.png> link to screenshot</comment>


Cockblocked by Redistribution: A Pick-up Artist in Denmark - <AUTHOR> http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/cockblocked-by-redistribution <comment><USER2> As a Danish male Roosh's "Danish Experience" made me immensely proud.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an anti-masculinist hit piece written by a feminist: "Katie J.M. Baker is a staff writer at Jezebel."

Roosh is the anti-Jezebel. He is a one man antidote to toxic feminism and a prominent manosphere blogger. He has two primary sites: rooshv and Return of Kings. Read them before you make up your minds.

The Manosphere is a collection of dozens of blogs that support the notion that men are made to be masculine, and women feminine... what a dated notion.

<comment><USER4> I would say that by now the manosphere is substantially more complicated than your brief sketch, and has differentiated into various strains. An important strain are those who fight for men's human rights, as currently men are second-class citizens in regards to various dimensions (in many industrialised countries), such as: (1) men get punished harder for the same crime in comparison with women, (2) men dying several years earlier than women, (3) men commit suicide substantially more often than women, (4) male pension age is higher than female pension age (e.g. in the UK), (6) men working more than women, many more work-place deaths for men than for women, (7) paternity rights for men, (8) alimony and divorce rights is highly skewed against men, (9) sexual violence are men is trivialised and rarely persecuted, (10) false accusations of sexual and domistic violence against men is trivialised and rarely persecuted, (11) homelessness is mostly a male phenomenon.

The question of the pros and cons of traditional gender norms is a controversial, but insignificant in comparison to the aforementioned questions of justice and human rights.

<comment><USER3> Yes, you are correct. You have described the Men's Rights Activist (MRA) part of the Manosphere.

There are also the PUA and MGTOW parts of the sphere.

PUAs tend to be younger men who recognize that women enjoy sex as much as men, and (contrary to pervasive indoctrination) women are attracted to social status and natural masculinity.

MGTOWs (Men Going Their Own Way) have decided to avoid the snares of male- female relationships in the West by "going Galt." MGTOWs avoid marriage in order to avoid potential loss of income, assets, children, and freedom via frivorce (frivolous divorce) and divorce theft (the rapacious stripping of a man's life, encouraged and enabled by the divorce industry). MGTOWs also avoid live-in relationships.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess my question is this.. Why is not okay for 'Roosh' to talk about 'Pussy Flow', but perfectly okay for 99% of rap artists?</comment>


Modern Vim - <AUTHOR> http://modernvim.com <comment><USER2> After signing up: "Thanks! I'll send you an email once the book is released."

How about sharing vim tips every week as you are writing the book? If you write me one email 8 months from now, I'll probably forget who you are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, I don't want to be spammy, but this could be a good idea. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

<comment><USER3> People sign up to your list because they are interested in content you provide. No one will mind, and it will certainly improve your sales once you do launch.

I did this with my book. 0 unsubscribes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hate to be negative, but this is just marketing research, there's absolutely no content at the linked site.

</comment><comment><USER5> We don't need a book.

We need a vim installer that can do all those things which you will have to otherwise spend time and work endless hours customizing vim to do.

The reason why people move to modern GUI based editors is those editors do many things out of the box which you have to otherwise spend time learning and then do it.

<comment><USER6> I've been using the same vimrc (and gvimrc) for at least 4 years (minor tweaks when something breaks, of course). But 99% of the time, it's identical and set up exactly how I like it, versus the magical GUI IDEs that change where options are, or what they are called. I don't have time for that (and I use the same vimrc on windows, Mac and Linux).

Sure the initial set up is difficult. But once it's done, it's done.

<comment><USER7> >But once it's done, it's done.

And I think that right there is the reason such a tool will never truly catch on. (Nearly) everyone who currently uses Vim wouldn't use it. It is why things like Cream never caught on I think; there really is not as much demand as some people think.

<comment><USER8> Vim has become very popular recently and it seems that a lot of people want to use it right away. I REALLY think that it's a bad idea but, judging by the popularity of things like Janus, SPF13 or the many "ultimate vim configs" I would say there's a demand for turn key solutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Did you consider using the approach taken by <http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/>? In that case each chapter was put online as soon as it was written, and then rewritten after taking account of comments. Only when it was finished was the hard copy published.

In the end it made for a far better book, and I believe the author made as much money, possibly even more than if he had followed a more traditional process. In any case I don't suppose you were planning to retire on the proceeds of a book on Vim.

Best of luck, however you choose to write it. I look forward to reading it.

<comment><USER10> <http://designinghypermediaapis.com/>

This is one that I bought and enjoy. He also set up a mailing list so readers had a place to discuss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Love everything about Vim. I found "Vim Essentials" here on HN for free and was mostly bored reading it. This seems a bit more interesting.

How about a promise on the page not to share our email with any third parties?

<comment><AUTHOR> Will add that soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Will you include examples for configuring VIM as a language specific IDE, e.g. for Python or Clojure?

</comment><comment><USER13> Speaking of Vim, does anyone know when they might release the next version?

</comment><comment><USER14> Is this going to be in print or just as an ebook?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just an ebook to start. If there's enough interest, I'll see about doing a print edition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> When do you expect to launch the book?

</comment><comment><USER16> perhaps a sample chapter? Or details about the author?

</comment><comment><USER17> Very cool, looking forward to reading.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can't wait.</comment>


How to Write a Technical Paper [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/441f/ac7c2020e1c8f0d32adffca697bbb8a198a1.pdf <comment><USER2> Many years ago I picked up a nice idea on how to write abstracts that efficiently convey the idea of a paper. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read it, so I can't give proper credit.

The idea is that you should write your (first version of the) abstract using only four sentences:

Sentence 1: State the problem

Sentence 2: State the consequences of the problem

Sentence 3: State your solution

Sentence 4: State the consequences of the solution

This makes a very to-the-point abstract. Sometimes these work right away and sometimes they have to be refined through multiple iterations. If they need further iterations, the four-sentence abstract is a great starting point.

Examples:

Most hamburgers are larger than what can be held with one hand. This makes them hard to eat. We present a new type of hamburger, called the Hand Burger, that is small enough to hold in one hand. Experimental results show that the Hand Burger increases eating speed by up to 150%.

The node_modules directory of Node JS applications often contain multiple copies of the exact same file. This increases the size of the node_modules directory and decreases application startup speed. We have developed a caching scheme for Node JS modules that maintains a single copy of each unique file. This mechanism reduces the size of the node_modules directory by 75% for the most commonly used Node JS applications and increases startup speed by 25% on average.

Horse-drawn carriages have a hard time moving on land because of vegetation. This makes travel slow, or outright impossible. We present a novel concept that we call roads. Our measurements show that roads decrease travel time from years to days to reach the 20 most popular destinations throughout the Roman Empire.

<comment><USER3> That seem to be excellent advice. It touches on one of my pet peeves when reading articles. Why is it so hard for authors to provide examples? Many times they describe elaborate algorithms but do not describe how they would operate on real data so you have to try and decipher that. If you hadn't added the three examples to illustrate your point, I wouldn't have understood it. But since you added them I understood it perfectly!

<comment><USER4> I don't think this is limited to articles! I'll often read the documentation for some library or tool and I'll encounter a weird flag or option where I end up wondering: what is this for? When you're not incredibly familiarized with a problem domain it can be hard to figure out the purpose of a lot of things.

By providing real examples you also help the reader build up a mental index in case they ever have to deal with a similar problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have found the following articles quite useful in this regard:

* Konrad P Kording, Brett Mensh, "Ten simple rules for structuring papers", [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/23/088278](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/23/088278)

* Ian T Baldwin, "The Baldwin Formula for scientific writing: writing papers and reviews", [https://www.ice.mpg.de/ext/fileadmin/extranet/dept_itb/The_B...](https://www.ice.mpg.de/ext/fileadmin/extranet/dept_itb/The_Baldwin_Formula_for_writing_a_scientific_paper_and_reviewing_papers.pdf)

* O'Connor Timothy R. and Holmquist Gerald P., "Algorithm for writing a scientific manuscript,", [https://iubmb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bmb.2...](https://iubmb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bmb.20329)

<comment><USER6> I have been trying to rediscover "10 simple rules" since mid-2016. _thank you_.

<comment><USER5> I basically try to combine Baldwin's formula and the concise table from Kording's paper when I write.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Semantic Scholar is developed at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Just a remark that seems timely tonight.

</comment><comment><USER8> Also relevant: How to Read a Paper from Keshav Srinivasan from my uni (UWaterloo) [1]

[1] [http://blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca/keshav/home/Papers/data/07/p...](http://blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca/keshav/home/Papers/data/07/paper- reading.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> Back in the day, as I was beginning my career as a research scientist ([https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5DdrMc8AAAAJ&hl=en](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5DdrMc8AAAAJ&hl=en)), I had a revelation: write the paper first, and the abstract becomes trivial. Since any serious research aims to end not just with an abstract for presentation at a specialty meeting but also a published scientific paper, such an approach is far more efficient and makes one much more productive as a working scientist. Granted, it's far harder to write a paper than an abstract, but once you've bitten the bullet and done so, the ease and pleasure of pulling a sentence or two out of each part of the manuscript's Introduction/Methods/Results/Conclusion, packaging them neatly into a single paragraph, then submitting the product to an upcoming meeting, is sublime. Plus, this completely eliminates the tendency to stop with an abstract because the wall of the complete paper seems too high and formidable. So many of my fellow department members seemed to produce abstracts that never went any further because of the degree of difficulty of producing complete papers. Bonus: tenure committees reward published papers, not abstracts.

</comment><comment><USER6> A few years ago i found a great version of a similar piece that proposed something like a 'sandwich' model for each section, and the work as a whole. A sandwich layer was a hook (something interesting), the meat (what you actually did), and a summary.

I failed to save it and i haven't been able to dig it up again, but I liked the idea. The paper was written in the style it described, as well.

<comment><USER10> 5 paragraph essay? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five- paragraph_essay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-paragraph_essay)

> _The five-paragraph essay is a format of essay having five paragraphs: one > introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs with support and development, > and one concluding paragraph. Because of this structure, it is also known as > a hamburger essay, one three one, or a three-tier essay._

The digraph presented in the OP really is a great approach, IMHO:

## Introduction

## Related Work, System Model, Problem Statement

## Your Solution

## Analysis

## Simulation, Experimentation

## Conclusion

... "Elements of the scientific method" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#Elements_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#Elements_of_the_scientific_method)

<comment><USER6> no, it was on arxiv somewhere. It was written as a journal article.

edit: AH! it was linked upthread on bioarxiv.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> See also "How to write a great research paper" [0] by the great Simon Peyton Jones.

[0] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic- program/wr...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic- program/write-great-research-paper/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I've always been pointed towards Whitesides[0] for this, but found the advice overly specific for chemistry.

[0]: [https://intra.ece.ucr.edu/~rlake/Whitesides_writing_res_pape...](https://intra.ece.ucr.edu/~rlake/Whitesides_writing_res_paper.pdf)

EDIT: reading @adtac's reference, it also recommends "Writing Technical Articles"[1] as an additional reference (the URL in the paper is not copy- pasteable because of a unicode tilde)

[1]: [http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/etc/writing- style.html](http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/etc/writing-style.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> I just finished reading about Macaroons and found it to be an exemplary technical paper:

[https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public- publication-...](https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication- data/pdf/41892.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> Check [0] as well. It describes very well what questions the introduction should answer.

[0] [https://cs.stanford.edu/people/widom/paper- writing.html](https://cs.stanford.edu/people/widom/paper-writing.html) [2006]

</comment><comment><USER15> Very good read but I'm starting to wonder about formatting. Is the standard 2 column format still preferred when most reading is done on a screen? I frequently find myself scrolling up and down a single page when I zoom into something.

</comment><comment><USER16> A paper on how to write good papers should not start the abstract with a complex and wordy sentence. Indeed, the entire first paragraph of the abstract could be put more directly.

</comment><comment><USER17> s/formated/formatted

Thought I should point that out in a paper that serves as a guideline on how to write papers well :-/

</comment><comment><USER18> Very meta.</comment>