Ask HN: Any Chemistry hackers here? - <AUTHOR>

There's a project I want to undertake. I want to do it out in the open. I've been inspired by a few Maker projects as of late. I keep hearing "you should file a patent right now" when I have shared this idea with close friends. Which is why I want to do the opposite.
I don't know enough about the specific domain for the crux move of the solution. I think the solution lies in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering, but I am not certain that the problem is solvable in a cost effective way. My gut tells me that it is.
The first step is for me to be able to ask some very specific questions about phase change temperatures and latent heat of fusion of different chemical compounds. Any takers? The background info is too much for an Ask HN post, but I ABSOLUTELY promise that as soon as this enters the realm of "yeah, that's probably solvable" I will start posting the whole project and living it the Maker way. <comment><USER2> You can give me a try. I am an amateur chemist. Edit: Email in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am looking to identify a material or compound that can dissipate heat generated by the human body. I want to use this for an athletic textile application. Specifically a cooling element that is to be placed against the skin along the forearm, or on the head.

Principle characteristics I need are light weight, self contained reaction, non-toxic, and can remain cool/cold for as long as possible while dissipating this heat. Reusable is ideal, but one time use is also OK.

<comment><USER3> Biotechnologist here....As I see it there are three options: 1\. Uptake of the thermic energy by an endothermic chemical reaction (like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_cold_pack](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_cold_pack)) 2\. Passive removal of the heat with a heat conducting material (you have to get rid of the heat somewhere else) 3\. Active removal of the heat (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_vest](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_vest))

I think thermoelectric cooling ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling)) would be suitable for your application. It is also compatible with Arduino technology I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, in doing my research the cooling vest was one of the first items I looked at. The biggest problem for my target customer (triathletes and runners) is the weight (>4 lbs), the lack of mass security (vests tend to move around a bit), and the heat blocking nature of the vest when cooling is depleted.

I have been experimenting with saline based solutions to test my theory of perception of heat reduction. They have worked for the most part, the challenge has been that they last about :30. I need longer. I have not experimented with any of the break+mix solutions from the wikipedia article, though am aware of them.

My preference for an endothermic reaction with a PCM is that in theory the mechanism is reusable, or easily replaceable, the weight penalty is low, and the complication of the solution (no pun intended) is also low).

There are some of these "cool materials" on the market right now, and they are somewhat interesting, though they are not operating as a heat dissipation level of the endorthermic reactions.

My vision for this product (at this point in time) is a sleeve that houses chambers with the endothermic reaction solution, and those chambers are either in an arm sleveve, or inside of a hat (think of the head band of a runner's hat).

Whether that solution is a one time use, and thus replaceable in the chamber, or multi use, and thus more permanent, is not really my challenge right now. A marathoner going to secure their Boston spot would pay $50-$100 for a hat that is guaranteed to keep them cool on a 90 degree day when their alternative is to keep throwing ice on themselves at aid stations, or stuffing cold sponges down their shirts. This is how it is handled today. Same for the age grouper triathlete who is getting ready for a sprint or Ironman. These folks are pretty obsessive about gear and kit, and aren't very price discriminating.

<comment><USER4> The trouble with most endothermic reactions is they involve far less energy absorbed per kg than exothermic reactions tend to emit (and their reaction rates much slower than you'd like). As a runner I'd not be too enthused about lugging around a 500g brick of goo that has the best possible endothermic heat absorption. You'd lose far more in heat dissipation potential than that brick could ever absorb, at least if it started at ambient. (Imagine how less popular ice would be if it never melted but stopped cooling).

A peltier cooler would be right out; they only work when they have an active cooling mechanism (heat sink and fan usually).

If you wanted to ditch the cooler and put together a hat or other appliance with a 3V case fan and ultrathin solar cells (CIGS probably), you'd get an excellent improvement in heat dissipation, and it would work indefinitely as long as it was daytime (probably a safe bet).

<comment><USER3> Correct me if I'm wrong, but from a thermodynamic point of view the major problem is the entropy. You can't just convert heat into any other form of energy (light) without also caring of the entropy. In the case of solving some salt in water, the entropy is going into the chaos of the solved ions (versus the low-entropy crystal). With all the other methods you need to get rid of the heat. With peltier coolers I could imaging "watercooling" the hot side.

On the other hand sweat (evaporation) is already a pretty good cooler and covering the skin with something else stops that effect. Additionally you enrich sweat inbetween which does not feel well. Completely absorbing the sweat also kills the cooling effect..

So maybe, as mchannon suggested, all you have to do is design a nice, flexible and good-looking sweatband with an integrated fan ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What popular startup advice is plain wrong? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-popular-startup-advice-is-plain-wrong

<comment><USER2> _> Some startups are successful after long periods of failure, but they are few and far between. @Jeremy Liew_

This is the only one to refer to evidence (even if not cite specifics).

 _> Bad advice: "It's already been done." If you think your idea brings something unique and of value to the market, it doesn't matter that's its been tried before. @Robert Pakter_

There are often so many variables in a business that your "different angle" will appeal to some people - and that can be enough, especially if you don't insist on massive success. Markets usually support more than one supplier. I made the mistake of thinking a competitor was the end of my business - but I made much more after than before. (Though it was far less fun...)

 _[ does quora really not have perma links into the list of answers? I mouse- overed all the links, and I had to view source to get the anchor names in the end... but they didn't work. ]_</comment>


YouTube Moving to Open Formats? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thechromesource.com/youtube-moving-to-open-formats/

<comment><USER2> I've just upgraded to FF3.5 and dailymotion.com was featured on the welcome page, I've checked the dailymotion.com and it was cool except one seemingly buggy video on the main gage (the one in which people are saying welcome to FF in their native languages) I must say,the results are very fine and promising, but I think the MOST important aspect of HTML 5 is not the end-results we see on web pages but the convenience it offers to the web app developers.

I firmly believe that HTML 5 is the only way to go for the web developers. It's like the declaration of independence from abuse-prone and CPU-eater Flash applications, finally.

</comment><comment><USER3> Still hoping Google's acquisition of On2 means the VP* series of codecs is coming to HTML 5 royalty free.

</comment><comment><USER4> The real question is: why?

Besides being free of Flash, there aren't a lot of benefits that will result in a better end-user experience or competitive advantage. The only thing I could think of is trying to get away from H264, which could present some licensing issues at the end of the year.

<comment><USER2> That's right: There will not be many benefits on the user experience side. But there will be a remarkable amount of benefit on the developer's side, I estimate. And it's not just the <video> I'm talking about. In the long run, the front-end as a whole will benefit greatly from the easy addibility of visual, audio and video elements into the web pages. It might offer competitive advantages to those who will make use of it efficiently. How many times have I heard that smart question: "hmm but can you make Flash apps?" Flash has been the only way to design the so called "rich Internet applications" and I've been rejecting to learn Flash for years with an expectation that something better would come up, and that thing has finally come up. JavaScript yes, ActionScript no, thanks.

<comment><USER4> Well yes and no. While you won't be locked into Flash, HTML5 still doesn't give you all the same benefits and features so you're stuck with a weird middle ground that benefits nobody. As a result, I think most developers will stick with Flash.</comment></comment></comment>


Tania – PHP-based free and open source farming management system - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Tanibox/tania <comment><USER2> The documentation is pretty sparse, and no links to a product page. What does this actually _do_?

<comment><USER3> The author of the software here. Basically, you can record when you start seedling the crops, when to harvest, record all your seeds inventory, and write to do lists.

This release has pretty basic functions, but it works for a small farm like mine. I'm still improving the features.

So sorry about the documentation. I need time to develop the website to accommodate the doc and the user guide.

<comment><USER4> > So sorry about the documentation.

Don't apologize for giving things away for free! Consider the GP's comment helpful feedback, not criticism. :-)

<comment><USER3> That's actually a valuable feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At the least Nice site for any one looking to see a symphony example. I don't use symphony and despite liking most of the code I still hate the idea developers hand typing routes and that's my main selling point for something barebones like code igniter or some other automated routing process like a json-rpc API that can figure out what controller to go to on it's own.

<comment><USER6> and when you need to rename a single route you do what, rename the whole controller and/or method?

<comment><USER7> I guess you can use a micro framework, I Use silex. They're much less opionated. It's built with a synfony components so it's very similar (I think it's the same people).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems like a cross between a GIS data system and farm inventory manager. Plus it has data layers for time based crops, water systems, etc.

<comment><USER2> Would be nice if they expounded on that; I'm not really sure what either of those things are (or rather, I have a hard time envisioning how they would improve the life of a farmer), and I grew up on a farm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What product is this competing against if any? I am guessing someone in the farming field may know more about what to do with the program but for the layman an explanation or some instructions as to how you use it would be awesome.

<comment><USER10> I'm a Drupal dev and I stumbled upon farmOS[0] awhile ago, it's pretty crazy what all this stuff can do. I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised about the amount of data that's useful to a farmer.

[0] [http://farmos.org/](http://farmos.org/)

<comment><USER11> OT: Why is Drupal 8 such a trainwreck? It's been out for quite some time now, had beta releases available since 2014 and so many modules are still unported or in early alpha status with many issues.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't say it's a trainwreck. I've used it on a handful of sites so far and it's been pretty great to use, but yeah you'll still have to wait for certain modules to get ported depending on the type of site you're doing.

You've got to remember that Drupal 7 has been out for six years, so that's a long time for the ecosystem to mature. The current way you'd build a site in D7 barely resembles the way you'd do it back in 2011. Also, it was a long time after it was released that you'd be able to pick it over D6, and I think we're in the same situation with D8.

I did launch a D8 site using a bunch of alpha/beta modules last summer and every time I do updates more and more of them have moved to stable. Lots of the big modules are using this as an opportunity to reevaluate how they are approaching things and that can take time to settle.

On top of that it's going to take some time for everyone to get used to OOP, DI, and all of the new ways of doing things. Personally I love it and have built a couple of modules so far and it's way nicer, but if this is a module maintainer's first exposure to OOP it's going to be a rough ride.

The audience has also shifted. D8 is more of a pro framework/CMS than say D6 was. If you're building a brochureware site or a blog you should just use WordPress or Squarespace. That type of site is certainly possible using D8 but it will be more complicated to set up and won't really show its strengths.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anybody have a dockerfile that will run this? I'm killing myself trying to build one.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is this focused on a particular farming nitch? Marijuana? The README.md should have more features/benefits and screenshots at the top, not just all technical doc.</comment>


7 must-read articles for every growth marketer [week of Sep. 19 '16] - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@LimorGH/7-must-read-articles-for-every-growth-marketer-week-of-sep-19-16-96be04498659#.t3rwea53h <comment><AUTHOR> a weekly recommended readings on growth, marketing and everything in between. This week's recommended reading includes growth hacking case-studies, finding hooks for rarely used products, using marketing chatbots for growth and more. __Originally posted in my members-only weekly newsletter (learn more here:[http://limorgoldhaber.co/why-join-the-private-email- list/](http://limorgoldhaber.co/why-join-the-private-email-list/)) Let me know which you find most interesting!:)</comment>


Finding Good API Developer Talent Is Hard - <AUTHOR> http://apievangelist.com/2014/03/04/finding-good-api-developer-talent-is-hard/ <comment><USER2> "Finding Good API Developer Talent Is Hard":

1\. Find an API you like. 2\. Contact developers on the team who made it. 3\. Offer 3x their current compensations.

See how easy it is? Otherwise title should be "Finding Good API Developer Talent For Cheap Is Hard".</comment>


Cutter: Open-source GUI disassembler, with Python plugins - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/radareorg/cutter/releases/tag/v1.8.0 <comment><USER2> People might be more interested if the title was kept the original from the Github repo:

A Qt and C++ GUI for radare2 reverse engineering framework

It's not a new disassembler, it's a GUI frontend to the excellent radare2.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't know at first glance what radare2 does, so this title was actually slightly more informative. Still nice to hear that it builds on previous work, though.

<comment><USER4> > _Still nice to hear that it builds on previous work, though._

This is the problem with the title. Cutter doesn't "[build] on previous work" with radare2, it is simply a shell around radare2, which is itself a reverse engineering framework.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Took me a moment to realize what I'm looking at. GUI disassembling sounded like cutting up a GUI somehow. _reaches for coffee_

<comment><USER6> I was wondering the same thing. Unfortunately I will have to wait on the coffee till I get to the office heh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've never really had much luck with Cutter. It's apparently all single-thread "by design", which causes it to hang indefinitely when analyzing larger binaries. Another unfortunate side effect of that "design" is that it also has to analyze everything in the foreground while you wait - unlike IDA or Ghidra's ability to do so in the background.

Radare2 is pretty decent for what it is - especially considering that it's "free as in beer" \- but I always found Cutter to be pretty frustratingly lackluster.

<comment><USER8> Why "free as in beer"? It's GPL2.

<comment><USER7> Honestly wasn't sure of the license - I just knew it was at least that type of free.

<comment><USER8> Ah, okay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cutter is a fantastic piece of software, and I use it for university coursework and CTFs on a regular basis. Obviously it isn't yet as feature complete as something like IDA, but it sure does look nicer when you're using it. The fact that it's running radare2 under the hood is great, because it supports so many different kinds of binaries. I hope that GHIDRA gets absorbed in part into r2 (I don't know if that's architectural possible), because a good FOSS piece of software to compete with IDA is sorely needed in this industry.

</comment><comment><USER10> As much as I enjoy using radare2, I can't help but feel that the release of GHIDRA has made it somewhat obsolete. Perhaps some components of it can be used in r2 in the future though.

<comment><USER11> Does GHIDRA actually do something that radare2 doesn't?

I'm asking seriously. To me, it seems like it deals with a subset of radare2 features only, and is slow + uses a shitload of ram, when it doesn't outright crash/100%cpu on a problem binary.

As for reusing code as r2 plugins components, I've heard about some efforts around r2's irc channel.

<comment><USER7> It's funny that you say that - I had the exact opposite experience.

I've run several binaries through Ghidra that Cutter locks up with. In fact, that's what made me look into Ghidra at all after having found Cutter a few months ago.

Just my anecdotal experience obviously.

What are specific Cutter features that Ghidra lacks?

<comment><USER11> >I've run several binaries through Ghidra that Cutter locks up with.

That's interesting. Please drop by the irc channel to report! I do suspect it's cutter-specific, and radare cli would work fine.

Pancake keeps a collection of past problematic binaries which are used for automatic regression testing. If my suspicion is right, it'd be worth auto- testing cutter too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Add support for listing and editing Anal Classes in ClassesWidget

A somewhat unfortunate abbreviation…

</comment><comment><USER13> I assume 32bit binaries will still be around for a long time, this project dropped support with this version, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> It can open 32bit binaries of course. Most of Windows installations are now 64bit.</comment></comment>


NSA Engaged In Financial Manipulation, Changing Money In Bank Accounts - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131218/14533925607/intelligence-task-force-hints-nsa-manipulating-financial-systems-changing-amounts-bank-accounts.shtml <comment><USER2> And _boom_ , there goes another pillar of trust crushed by the NSA. What a great service to their country.

But hey, maybe the US population finally decides that their whole system is totally brain-dead as more and more shit hits the fan. Not all hope is lost.</comment>


Work and Wives - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER3> Its a tradeoff one has to live with. All of us lead parallel lives. You needn't be the same person in both the worlds. You play different roles, at times they are totally tangential, hence the problem.

Someone said this to me once, "if your professional life kicks ass... u r taking a beating in the personal front." Its not a universal rule, but I am sure a lot of people can relate to it.

Rather than cribbing about having to make a compromise. I think the best bet is to involve your partners as much as possible in discussions about your venture so that they know how important this is for you and how it is in the best interests of the relationship. Go ahead and ask your spouse for suggestions/feedback and keep her in the loop, never leave her in the dark. Share your vision with her. If she does share your vision, then she is going to support you 100%. Then it becomes a non-issue. Its easier said than done, but definitely worth a shot. I am sure Guy would agree with this approach.

In short - "Try to establish a mutually benefitting connection between the two parallel lives."

<comment><USER4> Thats a great idea! My wife and I discussed my reasons for starting a startup and she is being very supportive from the outset, but sometimes gets frustrated that I don't "communicate my feelings" very well. She hardly sees me and doesn't have a clue about computers whereas I'm excited, stressed, anxious, and so focused on technical things for 12 hours a day, I sometimes struggle with the "How was your day darling?" type conversation in the evening. Without sounding trite, communication is vital in a marriage so working on a startup shouldn't be different to any other important decision you make. I'll take this involvment on board - thanks a lot...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've read a lot of stuff recently by startup founders about the reasons to start a company while your still young and single, but I have to say that I could not possibly be doing what I'm doing with my company if it were not for the support of my wife. Anyone have a similar experience?

<comment><USER5> I guess I have to take the dissenting opinion... ;)

It's not worth starting a startup when you're married.... especially when you've been marrired for less than 2 years and/or have young kids.

1) Too much risk. Why lose a mortgage (and your wife!) over a dream? If you're married and want to have a family, get a stable job, get a mortgage and take care of your family's future. Not having any money (or very little) for few years can be extremely stressful on a marriage... especially if you're not financially stable. If you're financially stable and have millions in the bank, well, then this does not apply to you and you can do whatever pleases you.

2) You won't have as much time since your wife will demand that you spend a lot of time with her. If you're in a startup, your startup will be your wife and your kid and your family for at least a year. You'll be competing against other teams which don't have time limitations and against people who are working 12-14 hr days. You simply won't be able to compete with them. If you start spending less time in a startup than your cofounders, there will be some serious tensions!

3) Do you have young kids? Spend your time with kids, not in a startup. You'll be glad you did later on. No matter how much money you make, you won't be able to buy back time!

Anyway, I speak from experience. I've been in a startup (I was an employee) in which one of the cofounders divorced after 6 months because his wife ended up cheating on him... since he was never around with her.

<comment><USER6> Give up your dreams and spend the rest of your life locked away in a cubicle? Maybe you should just get a new wife instead, one that isn't so high- maintenance :)

<comment><USER7> I agree wholeheartedly. What kind of woman would rather you spend decades of your life in a situation you find _miserable_ than sacrifice and suffer alongside you while you follow your dream?

For someone who feels like I do this is totally non-negotiable. I would have no problem losing a woman over this question because it would only filter out women that are worth losing anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For a marketing brochure I sought feedback from two professional writers and from my wife. The best advice of the three was my wife's. Moms are the main customer, but one of the professional writers is a mom too.

If you're racing with competitors to get the attention of people who live their lives on the web, having no other commitments is an advantage. That's not what I'm doing.

</comment><comment><USER9> My parents had a startup when I was a child. My mom was adventurous and worked with my dad in the business. As a little kid, I had no awareness that we were rich or poor, though we must have struggled because I remember different living situations were not as nice as others. Our family life was happiest during the building phase of the company - before success was surely won.

One thing I'm sure of is that my dad would have been miserable if he had a straight job and that would have affected our family a lot more than material instability.

There are many lessons that you can teach a child about resilience - <USER2> fortune's ups and downs and how to handle risk that are unavailable to those who put their lives on hold to rear a child. I wouldn't have had any other childhood. We had extreme fortune upheavals. At one point, the family lost everything. But dad started again and made a success. I still wound up attending an Ivy League school and hope to apply the lessons I've learned growing up to the startups I'll start.

<comment><USER10> Great life story, lee. My husband and I are bringing our children along for the journey as we work on our start-up.

We went through the start-up stage with another business before we had children, but we won't think of postponing this start-up because of our kids. It is hard work to combine starting up and parenting, but being parents while working a traditional 9-to-5 is hard work, too.

We have found that we are happier when we are being creative on our own, regardless of income level. When we're happy, the kids are happy, too.

They have adapted well to everything we've thrown at them so far. And we are encouraged by their go-with-the-flow attitude.

In the end we want them to understand that you make your own life. The best way we can teach them this is to actually do so ourselves....and that's what we are doing.

Sounds like that's what you are doing, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The reason to start a startup when you're young and single is because you have no commitments. Once you have kids, you can't afford to take that kind of chance with your life because you're also responsible for their lives. But a spouse/significant other who's genuinely supportive is like a partner in the company who's sharing your equity -- if you make it big, he or she makes it big too.

On the other hand, a spouse or significant other who's _not_ supportive -- or who means to be supportive but who doesn't actually offer much support, which is worse -- can put enough of a drag on things to make the company fail.

And as brlewis notes, a lot depends on the pace you're trying to run the company at. If you're using the traditional VC-funded web startup model and working 100-hour weeks in the hacking zone, your relationship with your spouse/SO is going to suffer. If you're using the consulting/micro-ISV model and expanding the business gradually, it's likely to put a lot less strain on the relationship.

<comment><USER12> "Once you have kids, you can't afford to take that kind of chance with your life because you're also responsible for their lives."

I agree to a point, but having kids does not relegate you to life in a cubicle, slowing building your 401 K, and complaining about not having enough Paid Time Off.

I think if you have a burning passion to start something and there is a significant potential pay-off down the road you are doing your family a dis- service by not pursuing an opportunity to make your lives better.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

<comment><USER13> Really well said. My wife and three year old son are on the team. We're enjoying the hell out of this because we're doing it together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I need help in this category. I'm currently doing consultant work full time to pay the bills (and keep the girlfriend happy) while working on my startup nights and weekends.

My girlfriend simply HATES computers and this makes it hard for her to understand what I am doing, why I am doing it and what it could mean later on. To her, it's not work, since it's currently not bringing any money.

Luckily she does let me spend some time on my startup, even though I could be spending it her. Going to take advantage of it while I can.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in the same boat as you as my wife doesn't like computers and doesn't know anything about them. But what she does know is how passionate I am for programming and for creating something that I can be proud of, and because of that she is insanely supportive about what I do. In return though I believe and expect that she wants the same support from me for the things she is passionate about. So thats my advice, show her why you enjoy it, and then support her in whatever she enjoys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> hehe lol, that's a good topic! I've been married for past 4 years (almost five, and I'll be at ycomb when we're 5 years - hopefully) and what I can say is:

My wife's paying the bills right now while iJigg is giving me 12 hours of work and big headaches :D

I'd not say you shouldn't try something being married, but for sure you need a good conversation with your wife before you start.

Tell her what are you going to do, the risks and the gifts you'll be able to give to her if you make it thru.

Tell her that you'll give her the first 3 months of incoming, that will help.

btw, my wife's pregnant and our incoming isn't enough anymore what tells me to rush even more on iJigg.

Dreams are priceless, but when married you're not alone anymore, you need to share everything with your wife!

</comment><comment><USER12> a good point, I think it can work both ways, but my wife is a great sounding board and brings a unique / non techie point of view to the discussion which is extremely valuable.

<comment><USER16> That's a good point too - my wife has zero understanding of the programming world and no desire to understand it at all. She's great for telling me when my ideas suck or when they might work.

Because of YCombinator's relocation requirement, I can't apply. I completely understand why they have that requirement and what's more - completely agree with it. Unfortunately, relocating is not an option for me as we have a 2 year old. Even though I live in Maine and Cambridge isn't that far away, it just wouldn't work.

My drive to found a startup is very strong - I'm not afraid of failure (god knows I'm good at it!) but I'm struggling with how to do start something up with a wife and a child. The whole micro-ISV, consulting thing is not something I want to do.

I know the conventional wisdom is "don't do it". But that's just not an acceptable answer for me.

Does anyone have any advice for me? I would absolutely appreciate it.

<comment><USER17> I have a wife and two small children. I have also successfully started a business using only "sweat capital" and know the stress it can put on a marriage. So I might qualify to give you some advice. I am also starting another company and willing to move to Cambridge.

I am fortunate to have a wife who is very supportive and sees the payoff of me staring a new venture. If I win, she wins. Also, I plan to move the wife and kids to Cambridge for the summer. They view it as an "extend vacation". Well, a vacation with no money, but at least it is new scenery (new playgrounds are always exciting for kids!).

I don't think the "don't do it" wisdom is always applicable. It wasn't in my case. As long as you make some time for your family and kids, and as long as they know the situation is pseudo-temporary, it can work.

Besides, being miserable at your current job is probably just as a negative on your wife and kids as a start up. It is hard to come home and be a good husband/father when you are bored/frustrated all day.

<comment><USER18> Great points! I could have written your same post. I've started a company before and am willing to move my wife and two kids to Cambridge for this. In addition however, my wife is co-founder of my start-up so she's completely on board ;-)

Either way, we're going to build our company. It would be nice to get a three month kick start though instead of having to work around my day job.

Building the company around my day job will actually be tougher on the family but we'll still be better off in the long run. A job for someone with a family isn't all it's cracked up to be. It isn't flexible. I have a long commute. I have fixed pay that doesn't really reflect my time and effort. Stability isn't everything and it isn't what makes a person or a family happy.

There are other ways to take risks with a family. There are extended families etc. Taking risk with a family isn't wrong, it's just something you should think through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't have a wife.. but I do beat my roommate nightly with a wooden chair to escape the stress of startup life.</comment>


Multimedia on Linux Command Line: wget, PdfTK, ffmpeg, flac, SoX - <AUTHOR> https://sandilands.info/sgordon/multimedia-on-linux-command-line <comment><USER3> You can capture your screen and microphone audio with ffmpeg only. No extra commend is needed. I use it all the time on Windows. I like being able to capture in a lossless format (x264 with -qp 0 and flac audio).

[https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Capture/Desktop](https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Capture/Desktop)

</comment><comment><USER4> I know I'm stating the obvious, but these aren't Linux specific.

<comment><USER5> I didn't get that that was implied.

<comment><USER4> It wasn't, but Linux was referenced specifically both in the article, it's title and another comment in here. My point was ffmpeg et al are available on other *nixes and even Windows too (I don't even mean Cygwin - they've been ported to vanilla Windows). So these are just command line tools - <USER2> platform agnostic. There's no need for Linux to be singled out.

I know I'm nitpicking, but sometimes I feel there's an unfair bias towards Linux when people discuss open source software or the command line. And considering some of the aforementioned runs natively on Windows too, it's not even like we're talking about POSIX specific tools.

<comment><USER5> > There's no need for Linux to be singled out.

But in this case, I think it's OK. I read the article as being of the sort, "If you're using Linux, and need to manipulate media, here's the command line programs you can use."

I think most people who are familiar with the command line on say, OS X, can easily figure out that these are available there as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And you can also play the music or video on the command line with VLC:

cvlc or vlc -Irc (remote control)

And if you want the video output to stay in the command line:

vlc -V caca (Colored AsCii Art :)

<comment><USER7> I prefer mpv for this use case (currently listening to music on the command line with it).

[https://mpv.io/](https://mpv.io/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love the rich assortment of command line tools available on Linux for media manipulation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice blog, this author has quite a few interesting articles on the site that I would like to read over time.

</comment><comment><USER9> cmus is a great CLI mp3 library player if you prefer these kinds of tools. It's robust but straight forward and very quick.

</comment><comment><USER10> really powerful when you can get past the arcane syntax!</comment>


Allergan Gives Drug Patent to Mohawk Tribe, Claims Sovereign Immunity - gingerbread-man https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/health/allergan-patent-tribe.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=11&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F09%2F08%2Fhealth%2Fallergan-patent-tribe.html&eventName=Watching-article-click&_r=0 <comment><AUTHOR> A couple recent discussions:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=allergan&sort=byDate&prefix&pa...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=allergan&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=pastWeek&type=story)

<comment><USER2> Right, plus this one: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206796).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So Allergan paid for the patent, and then paid to transfer so that government officials in the Mohawk Tribe do an administrative procedure in benefit of Allergan's business?

Thats nice, so hit Allergan with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

</comment><comment><USER4> No disrespect to the Times, but this is coverage from PatentlyO:

[https://patentlyo.com/patent/2017/09/tribal-immunity- challen...](https://patentlyo.com/patent/2017/09/tribal-immunity- challenge.html)

Stealing the article's thunder:

> _As the Supreme Court wrote, "without congressional authorization," the > "Indian Nations are exempt from suit."_

You've constructed this property right (patent) outside of the Mohawk Nation and then sold it into the Nation. This would sorta kind've mean that it can be used as a patent to sue but then it can't be challenged. That's just nuts.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand this logic. Because this native american tribe has sovereign immunity for historical reason, the patent they own cannot be patent-reviewed by US government?

Why this works? Can't US(and other coutries) nullified the patent for the their jurisdiction?

"Yeah, that patent is still valid. Only among your tribe though. All the outer world decline it's validity. Good luck with that."

</comment><comment><USER6> Does any country have to respect the patent rights of other countries ? I'm sure there are treaties in place but with those it would seem like transferring the patent to a sovereign would just mean there is no US patent

<comment><USER7> The US patent still exists. Ordinarily, you can sue anyone for anything. Even if the patent was transferred to a Canadian, the patent would still exist and it would still be possible to sue its owners in US court. One major exception to this are Indian Nations. US courts have no jurisdiction due to sovereign immunity.

I am not a lawyer.</comment></comment>


What works in e-commerce – A meta-analysis of online experiments [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.qubit.com/sites/default/files/pdf/qubit_meta_analysis.pdf <comment><USER2> If you want to see pretty much all the most effective measures in action, go to a ticket reseller like Viagogo and follow something through to the basket. It is both impressive and amazing the amount of psychological steers there are on the site.

<comment><USER3> Or flight/hotel/car rental booking websites. Google flights is a notable exception.

<comment><USER4> The easiest way to make me go somewhere else is to adopt these tactics. They make me feel like I'm locked in a battle of wits with an autistic con-artist, or maybe a suspicious Fed - if weird rituals are not faithfully observed under conditions of vast information asymmetry and artificial stress, I will suffer.

There's no hope of avoiding that with airlines for me - I don't fly enough to avoid the prole line. But literally any storefront where I can avoid that shit, I do, and it breeds not just dislike - it makes me want see them to fail.

<comment><USER5> The people with the knowledge of these tricks are so few that unfortunately in most cases the additional revenue is too much to keep the minority happy. It's fascinating to look at ecommerce storefronts and search for all of the subtle tactics they're trying to use on you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great research with lots of data and tangible results.

I'm missing 'authority' as way to improve conversion. Funny that they use it themselves in two ways: letting PWC check the results and, in a milder form, using a scientific way of communicating the results (LaTeX, article layout etc). The impact would have been less if it was just a blog post :-). I'm curious about results on authority, maybe someone from qubit can give us some insights on that?

At my company[0] we offer a solution to sites to implement these strategies through notifications/nudges. Having said that: we firmly believe in A/B testing but we believe even more in recognizing (we do that through machine learning) what technique works best on a personal level. This means that a site can have, for example, two strategies and that we apply none, either one or both on the visitor. That way you can reach higher uplifts.

[0] [https://www.conversify.com](https://www.conversify.com)

</comment><comment> joe-stanton This is a really useful article. It's a shame that so much development time is wasted on large numbers of fruitless optimisations just because they are "easy" (eg. tweaking the colour of a CTA).

That being said, I'm surprised many of the results are so negative. It would be great to also see the max uplift achieved for each category. A number of retailers I've worked with have been able to beat these uplifts by quite a bit. I wonder if it might be significantly skewed by the kind of clients Qubit has?

<comment><USER7> _It would be great to see the max uplift achieved for each category_

Indeed. What matters most with these kinds of experiments isn't really the average results, but what is possible and the distribution _among beneficial results only_. After all, the whole point of A/B testing is to try experiments and then either keep the changes if they improve results or stay with what you've already got if the changes didn't bring an improvement. Surely all the treatments that led to negative changes would just have been discarded in practice? It's still important to see the full picture as well, if only to guide decisions about which experiments are even worth trying, but I think there's another side that doesn't fully come through here.

<comment><USER8> > isn't really the average results, but what is possible and the distribution > among beneficial results only

No, the bad results also matter: you are still spending visitors and revenues in testing out bad variants, which is part of determining the costs and benefits. Even with a bandit approach, you incur logarithmic regret in the number of variants. And testing a bad variant is common: the best category, 'scarcity', has a 16% probability of the variant being harmful. A Value of Information calculation has to take into account the harm done while testing.

<comment><USER7> (Hence the final sentence of my previous comment.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, running a rudimentary eBay store you realize these things help pretty quickly, but it's good to have data.

However... Starting a new e-commerce property? Good luck finding traffic in anything profitable. Amazon and other Giants dominate search rankings so I'm not sure how you will find your traffic unless you create a new niche. Maybe you're a thought leader in a hobbyist space, that can work... But you're not going to be succeeding because of these tricks

<comment><USER10> That's simply false. There are always categories or "side"-categories that can be highly profitable and big stores only care about as a side business (small category in their store).

Being a small category for a huge store means they don't care about that category too much but it doesn't mean there isn't a lot of cash to be made.

I've helped several companies to build an online store that did exactly that and they are all doing 5 digit revenue month after month.

It's easy to rank higher in search engine for something you are 100% focused on compared to a big stores where it's only a small thing that they don't highlight.

<comment><USER11> Can you give any examples of small categories? I can't think of any, let alone get my brain round what kind of thing they would be.

<comment><USER12> I can think of plenty, but I'm not going to say... Tehehe sorry for the joshing, it's interesting that free shipping doesn't correlate into increased revenues, or at least as much as one would think (although I'd like to see this same test on merchant fullfilled Amazon listings)..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Inconsistencies to report.

Page 2:

        • scarcity (stock pointers) +2.9% uplift
        • urgency (countdown timers) +2.3% uplift
        • social proof (informing users of others' behaviour) +1.5% uplift

Page 6 table 2.2:

        scarcity 2.9%
        social proof 2.3%
        urgency 1.5%

<comment><AUTHOR> _facepalm_. The table is correct. Will correct this tomorrow. Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm surprised free shipping has a negative impact on revenue. Worst case I imagine would be that revenue would increase but with less or negative profit.

Likewise most GUI-related tweaks seem to have a negative effect (mobile friendliness, search, navigation). Assuming it gives a better mobile experience, why would anyone spend less - unless the goal is to get them off mobile and onto the desktop.

<comment><USER15> I think that the GUI-related tweaks must be on sites that are done properly and well established. For these guys the customers know what to expect so a change in design will be received negatively by people that are used to the old site. Although not in ecommerce, the redesign of the BBC site is like that, people want to cling on to the old site and instinctively don't like the new. In time they adjust or get a touchscreen computer and 'get' the changes and what the redesign is about.

Most people are working on sites other than the top ones. With these websites where customers are not regulars, change to the GUI is received differently. Sensible updates to the UX will convert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing some real data. It's always interesting to see.

I too am surprised to see the conclusions come out as negative as this over such a large overall data set. Just from our own experience, even making quite modest changes to small web sites, it's not _that_ unusual to see the kinds of change that came out with a negative mean in this report actually making a very noticeable positive difference.

I wonder whether this is partly a matter of interpretation and presentation. A lot of the treatments that had a slightly negative mean also had a lot of variance, which suggests that quite often those treatments do work but it's not reliable and requires experimentation to make sure you only keep the genuinely beneficial cases. It seems plausible that there were a few of the "75% improvement in our case study!" kinds of results lost in the long tails, but that what the data is telling us is that those really are outliers and don't happen nearly as often as we might wish.

</comment><comment><USER16> Lot's of interesting data and some findings I didn't expected. Thanks.

What I have missed in this paper is the impact of customer reviews (a 4.5 ranking has a higher uplift potential than a 5.0 star ranking - according to some studies). And the number of reviews has impact as well. Not enough studies around for a meta analysis?

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone who hangs out on Facebook group e-commerce forums basically have seen the outrageous claims the authors of this paper alludes to.

Nice to see an analysis like this for a change.

<comment><USER18> can you recommend good groups?

<comment><USER17> A lot of Shopify groups.

Search up anything Shopify or ecommerce mastermind.

Be aware that a lot of them are set up as groups that simply try to sell you stuff.

The best ecommerce folks are basically the best marketers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The PwC assurance report URL gives a 404: [http://www.qubit.com/sites/default/files/pdf/pwc-qubit- assur...](http://www.qubit.com/sites/default/files/pdf/pwc-qubit- assurance.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies : [http://www.qubit.com/sites/default/files/pdf/pwc-qubit- assur...](http://www.qubit.com/sites/default/files/pdf/pwc-qubit- assurance_0.pdf)

<comment><USER20> Now that's pretty bad. There is a modal that open _before_ the document is displayed.

"Chrome PDF Viewer

Click YES to accept the terms of the disclaimer on page 1 of this document.

If you click NO the document will close.

[OK] [CANCEL]"

Not only does this want me to agree to something before displaying it, the legally binding options (Yes / No) aren't even choices in the modal.

<comment><USER21> Thankfully, clicking CANCEL opens the PDF anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In my experience, the A/B tests that are most likely to win are the ones where you make UX changes designed to make it easier for visitors to do what you want them to do. These not only improve your conversion rates, they are also less spammy and intrusive as things like exit-intent modals. They are also the types of gains that do compound.

Want an easy win? Make mobile checkout better. It's generally the worst. I was on a fairly large, publicly traded, retailer's site over the weekend and had a goofy error that was extremely easy to make on their mobile checkout page. While I was alerted to the error, it also emptied my shopping cart and erased all the address and payment info I spent time typing in.

</comment><comment><USER23> Very interesting thanks for sharing. As someone working in e-commerce, I was smiling when I saw some of them but it is frustrating on how often these ineffective experiments are repeated.

I would have loved to see the cut of performance by industry/sector. My hunch is some of the things would work really well in travel but not as well in others especially low involvement categories and categories with lower average selling price. It would also be interesting to know the average duration of these A/B tests, I think some of things like scarcity and urgency will have larger effect in the shorter time duration vs others like UI changes which will take a while to produce substantial results, mostly because customers will have to learn new behaviours. Product recommendations is interesting because it is notoriously difficult to get them right and feel they tend to work better in long tail categories like media vs. head heavy categories like mobiles or laptops. They may also not work well in categories where brand influence is high and are generally high involvement and high cost.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's good to see an analysis, albeit most of this info was common knowledge, maybe except call to action buttons causing a decrease. I thought it was the opposite.

Sometimes factoring all variables when doing testing becomes impossible.

<comment><AUTHOR> This stuff is less common knowledge than you might expect. When bringing on new clients at Qubit (particularly smaller ones), we still find so many of them obsessing over tiny UI changes expecting it to make an impact. Much of the e-commerce industry has bought into the idea that the cosmetics of a site is the most important thing to get right.

<comment><USER25> I believe that the main focus of any ecommerce site should be pricing, availability and having the payment and delivery options your customers expects.

E-commerce sites want to "engage" with their customers, but fail to realise that the customers don't want a relationship. They just want whatever product you're selling as quickly and cheaply as possible. Most of you customers will be coming via price comparison sites or Google, so they aren't going to you directly (unless you're Amazon or eBay). For most e-commerce sites the customers aren't going to stay long enough to notice imperfections in the UI.

What you do need is a dead simple checkout (no signup required) and an equally easy return form. Everything else will be used by only a tiny percentage of your customers, often those you don't want to deal with anyway.

For some weird reason making the checkout to simply will result in a large number of purchases cancelled right after placement. In my experience customers are more likely to cancel within 15 minutes of placing the order than at any other time.

<comment><USER26> Two counterpoints:

I have done a/b tests where increasing the price of the product increased the conversion rate. The original price was to low and the customers thought this was a cheap non quality product.

Also I, and many people I know, are not shopping for the lowest price, but for the best overall package. (Reputation of seller, return policies, shipping duration, display of the product in the shop, filter and search abilities to find the right product in the shop, ...) There are of course many users who simply want the lowest price, but one important thing if you a/b test is: You don't have to go with the biggest group of users (in this case price sensitive), there are so many other oppurtunities if you understand your users. In e-commerce these oppurtunities open especially often, if the user is not exactly sure what product/brand he needs or wants to buy. Competing on price is really hard, competing on advice is often easier as a small shop.

<comment><USER27> Everyone is price sensitive once you've met the minimum threshold for those other things.

What you're selling sets the threshold for those things. Return policies, advice and reputation matter more for embroidered clothing than they do on bulk sales of nuts and bolts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wish they would have evaluated the effect of dynamic pricing. That is, showing different prices to different visitors for the same product. Perhaps not enough online retailers employ the practice, although it seems to be an important tool for retailers like Amazon[0].

0\. [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/05/how- onl...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/05/how-online- shopping-makes-suckers-of-us-all/521448/?single_page=true)

<comment><USER29> What you are describing is an A/B test of a price, not typically what industry calls "dynamic" or "variable" pricing. Amazon tried A/B testing prices and caught hell for it. They no longer do it, but they will do dynamic pricing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> A lot of these are brilliantly displayed with varying degrees of integration and success on airline pages. [1],[2]

[1] [http://sas.dk](http://sas.dk) (Search for e.g. Copenhagen -> London)

[2] [http://lufthansa.com](http://lufthansa.com) (Search for e.g. Frankfurt -> Copenhagen)

</comment><comment><USER31> I've done the countdown timer thing before, but not in a sleazy way like Viagogo. I've done limited-time sales where the item starts at a percentage off and gradually increases to full price. It seems to work well.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is interesting but I definitely question some of the results, for instance reporting a negative impact for changing search results. Many businesses have been built on improving conversion through search result optimization.

<comment><USER33> I interpreted this as them creating/improving on-site search. Not related to adwords or display optimization.

<comment><USER32> Sure, but what were the improvements to on-site search? More relevant results? Tweaking the display? I know from experience that improving search result relevance in e-commerce has a (sometimes drastic) improvement in conversion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This was really interesting. Thanks for posting it. Does anyone know of a place to find similar content? (Analysis of web trends and practices from a data driven perspective.)

<comment><USER35> Nielsen Norman Group ( [https://www.nngroup.com](https://www.nngroup.com) ) is a good place to look for somewhat similar content. NNG focuses more on user experience, and so their studies are usually based on direct observation of users, rather than large amounts of data gathered through analytics.

Still, it has proven a very valuable resource for me when trying to explain a decision I've made in a new website design. They have many free articles that offer some good insights, as well as some more in-depth reports about specific sectors that will cost a few hundred dollars each.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> tl;dr: The 3 items possibly statistically significant are:

\- Saying there are just a handful items left in stock (+2.9% revenue per client) \- Saying other people are watching this product (+2.3%) \- Time limited offer (+1.5%)

I did not see mention of combining these factors. I doubt the gains are cumulative.

My main takeaway is that most optimizations are not worthy if you have the opportunity to spend your time/money on something else to bring value to the consumer.

Also, I think #1 and #3 are dick moves and #2 needs some good crafting to not be. I doubt the cost in reputation is worth the increase in revenue.

<comment><USER37> Whether they're dick moves is all in how you handle them. In the nonprofit world, these things are well-known and tend to be handled with finesse and even grace.

1\. It's not just about items in stock. "Our SomeNonprofit membership program has just 10 places left at the platinum level, where you receive the following benefits..."

2\. Social proof is more than just what people are watching. "Fans of SomeNonprofit donate an average of $121 to SomeNonprofit every year." Or, "When we asked SomeNonprofit donors what they liked most, they said it was the way SomeNonprofit does SomeThing. If you like SomeThing, too, then donate to support SomeNonprofit." It's really just about demonstrating that others have done a thing so it's okay for you to do it, too.

3\. One nonprofit I'm involved with very successfully does a fundraising campaign for the last 24 hours of every year. It's an artificial time restraint in some ways, but it also capitalizes on being the very last day each year that tax-deductible donations count toward a year's taxes. It's a true time-constraint!

<comment><USER36> OK, agreed here. I need to specify it a bit more: 1 and 3 are dick moves when they are totally artificial, like saying only 3 left while the stock is around 300 or saying "only 2 hours left" when the time constraints are imaginary.

In your case they are not, so I agree that it is interesting to remind people of actually seeing these.</comment></comment></comment>


Kickstopped: Affordable 3D Printer Put on Hold - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/design/2012/10/pandabot-cancelled/

<comment><USER2> "Affordable" seems like a big word. It would be "less expensive of the others" but still expensive. If a business would wanted to buy a 3D printer they would buy something more "professional", so I suppose this is aimed to a broader public, but for that public is too expensive.

</comment><comment><USER3> Kickstarter: where young dreamers meet reality and there ain't someone else to blame.</comment>


Incrementing vectors - <AUTHOR> https://travisdowns.github.io/blog/2019/08/26/vector-inc.html <comment><USER2> Ugh. Aliasing rules in C/C++ are very unfortunate, but it's hard to tighten the rules after the fact.

Related: The Strict Aliasing Situation is Pretty Bad (2016) [https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1307](https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1307)

<comment><USER3> >but it's hard to tighten the rules after the fact.

Depends on what you mean by tighten the rules. If you tighten the rules for the optimizer by simply allowing everything to alias, that should not introduce bugs into currently well formed programs. (Except that they might be slower.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The essence:

> That means that writes through uint8_t pointers are treated as potentially > updating any memory of unknown provenance. So the compiler assumes that > every increment v[i]++ potentially modifies size() and hence must > recalculate size() every iteration.

However, I think that a _smart_ compiler would still be able to sort out that size() is not affected by such writes.

<comment><USER5> how, without whole program compilation?

edit: specifically for std vector, the implementer could somehow hardcode the knowledge that size can never alias with the buffer, but that would be ad hoc and won't extend to user defined containers, which seems suboptimal.

<comment><USER6> The compiler could generate both vectorized and non-vectorized variants and decide dynamically which one to use based on a simple aliasing check. That's an approach that would be more usual for JIT compilers than AOT compilers, but habits can change.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I came here to say this: I don't see a good way to prove this at compile time, but you could always do a dynamic check.

In general, compilers don't generate runtime checks like this. In the case of aliasing problems, however, they actually _do_ make such checks, but usually only in the case of possibly overlapping arrays. An example:

[https://godbolt.org/z/9vZfl_](https://godbolt.org/z/9vZfl_)

Both gcc and clang make a check to see if the x and y arrays overlap, and if they do they fall back to a scalar loop (instructions ending in ss: scalar single-precision) - but if there is no overlap they proceed with the vectorized approach (instructions ending in ps: packed single-precision).

So I guess these cases were important enough that they got specific handling in the compiler, but I haven't seen it for possible aliasing with a scalar, even though the same type of check could be used. Actually it's a bit trickier, because the compiler wants to know the array size to make this calculation, but the array size itself, which comes from size() is the thing subject to aliasing! So it takes a more complex analysis to show that it's safe.

<comment><USER5> If I'm reading the generated asm correctly (which I might well be not), the following function is vectorized conditional to a runtime alias check (the non vectorized case is completely removed if the pragma is uncommented). So even scalars seem to be handled:

      void inc(float* x, float*  c, size_t n)
      {
        //#pragma GCC ivdep
        for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i)
          x[i]+= *c;
      }

the issue really seems to be that the compiler just gives up very early if the iteration count is not a loop invariant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I read it the same as you: so alias checks can definitely happen even for single values.

It seems like it's not just the loop counts that's the problem: in the blog post even when size is a local, it fails to check to see if the vector array pointer itself can alias.

I.e., analogous to incB here:

[https://godbolt.org/z/ptQZcs](https://godbolt.org/z/ptQZcs)

incA is like your example: the possibly aliasing is between the array and the value added, and an alias check occurs. incB is like the v[i] example: possible aliasing is between the array and the pointer to the same array, no check and conservative code is generated.

Interesting...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm trying to see if rustc does the same thing: [https://godbolt.org/z/6WcYMf](https://godbolt.org/z/6WcYMf)

but I am not good at reading this sort of thing. It looks like it has the same issue, but I didn't think rust had the type ambiguity that C++ does around u8 / char?

<comment><USER8> Regardless of what exactly rustc does right now, in the future Rust's strict aliasing rules will basically ensure Rust does this optimization in every possible case, because Rust reasons at compile time to ensure no mutable references ever alias. Things have been held up for a while on this LLVM bug, though[0].

[0] [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/54878](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/issues/54878)

<comment><USER9> Last I heard there's a fair chance that this might be implemented at the MIR level instead, allowing it to be unblocked from the LLVM bug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh, its BeeOnRope. I was wondering who could have investigated this detail to such fine degree.

No comments really, your blogpost seems to answer all my questions. Excellent work!

</comment><comment><USER11> @BeeOnRope Regarding comments on the blog, have you considered using [https://utteranc.es/](https://utteranc.es/)? It stores them as GitHub issues. I think [https://staticman.net/](https://staticman.net/) does something similar.

</comment><comment><USER5> re Disappointment, the somewhat portable #pragma GCC ivdep in theory would help in a lot of cases.

In this specific case, the compiler should be able to assume that a previous write cannot affect the next read from the size field, but it seems that neither GCC nor clang take advantage of it.

<comment><USER12> In HPC, we use `#pragma omp simd`.

`#pragma omp imd` should force the vectorization, but maybe not the hoisting, I don't know. Could be nice to check.

Edit:

Clang fail: ``` <source>:5:5: warning: loop not vectorized: the optimizer was unable to perform the requested transformation; the transformation might be disabled or specified as part of an unsupported transformation ordering [-Wpass-failed=transform-warning]

        #pragma omp simd

        ^

1 warning generated. Compiler returned: 0 ```

But ICC seems happy with it.

<comment><USER5> it works on my test:

       https://godbolt.org/z/sSSdjw

where ivdep fails. Nice!

You do need -fopenmp of course.

edit:

strangely, it still fails to vectorize the original vector example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What about AVX? [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41086366/how-to- incremen...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41086366/how-to-increment-a- vector-in-avx-avx2)

`-mavx2`?

<comment><USER14> What about it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> More-so than the compiler, it depends on the design goals that are implemented in width and speed of the processor's registers, SIMD vector and conventional integer units. For x86, one could readily guess un/signed ints (32 & 64-bit) would be fast; un/signed 8/16-bit math is unlikely to be as fast. That hypothesis is backed-up by this article's data.

<comment><USER6> Did you read to the end? The final results show that in the end the computation on the vectors with 8-bit elements is 4x as fast (per element) as the computation on the vectors with 32-bit elements.

EDIT ignore the following, I was mistaken: Infuriatingly the article doesn't benchmark signed 8-bit vectors. If the issue is due to the special aliasing properties of pointers to _unsigned_ bytes, signed should just work really fast out of the box, without jumping through any hoops.

<comment><USER2> The issue is due to the special properties of C character types, which include char, signed char and unsigned char. uint8_t and int8_t are not required to be character types, but they're typically implemented as typedefs of the char types, so they pick up the same properties. Here's the GCC bug discussing this problem: [https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=66110](https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=66110)

<comment><USER6> Thanks. I misremembered C's rules as only unsigned char having this special property (as well as plain char if it's unsigned), but not signed char.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you are partly right.

My understanding is that the special aliasing rules apply only to `char` and `unsigned char` in C++, not to `signed char`. In C, however, I think it applies to all three.

AFAIK char is a distinct type from signed char and unsigned char, regardless of whether it is signed or not. In practice it will have the same representation as those but will not be the same _type_ :

[https://godbolt.org/z/D6ylkf](https://godbolt.org/z/D6ylkf)

So `signed char` would seem to be a way to get a strongly typed char not subject to the aliasing rules (even if bare char is signed), but compilers don't take advantage as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER2> Just to back you up, this post quotes both standards: [https://stackoverflow.com/a/51228315/331041](https://stackoverflow.com/a/51228315/331041)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Long copy isn't back - chestnut-tree http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2013/july/apple-long-copy-ads

<comment><AUTHOR> When I saw the ad on TV, I thought it was egregiously self-congratulatory. It should have never escaped the WWDC. It's something to show in-house to rally the troops. Out in the world, it's just self-flattery and has a smug tone.

<comment><USER2> I don't know if this applies or is true: but I once heard that soft (non- informative) car ads are run not to advertise their product, but to make people to recently bought or own that brand feel good about their decision.

Considering how many people own an Apple product, it's possible that the ads are just to make those people feel more loyal to the brand.

<comment><USER3> >I once heard that soft (non-informative) car ads are run not to advertise their product, but to make people to recently bought or own that brand feel good about their decision

Interesting concept, but couldn't you make ads that do both? I feel like the "Think small" ad [1] must have worked both for people who were looking to purchase a car at the time and those who'd already bought a Volkswagen.

[1] [http://www.creativereview.co.uk/images/uploads/2013/07/think...](http://www.creativereview.co.uk/images/uploads/2013/07/think_small_0.jpg)

<comment><USER4> It did, it's one of the most successful ads in existence. The trick is that the headline and picture grabbed your attention, and then they sold nothing but facts about the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll play devil's advocate and ask: how is this different from the celebrated "Here's to the crazy ones" ads? Granted, these ads are more bland and forgettable, but that's a difference of degree, not kind.

Compare:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjgtLSHhTPg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjgtLSHhTPg)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=170fh2mvog0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=170fh2mvog0)

Both are content-free, vague, feel good ads. I feel like all the criticism in the article would also apply to "Here's to the crazy ones", perhaps even more so - at least the new ads actually outline Apple's design philosophy, while the older ad really has nothing to do with... well, anything.

So I'll grant that the execution in the new ad falls somewhat short, but does that simply mean the ads don't go _far enough_ with vacuous feel-good stuff?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because the Crazy Ones was a salute to those people. This new ad sounds like Apple saluting itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is _great_. Step back from the Apple-specific nature of it and just read it as a "how-to" guide for writing content. Look at that Tesco ad! Really! I'm serious! I really mean it! The worst!

I hadn't paid any attention to the words in those Apple ads, and now I know why.

<comment><USER7> I actually felt the tesco ad was marginally better than the apple ad. It's still very vague but at least attempts to convince the reader they are doing something about the horse meat scandal, albeit, not particularly convincingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, i've read the term long copy about 5 times now, and still have no damn clue what the hell it is. Is it too much to ask for someone to have _some_ awareness of whether a domain-specific term they're using might be entirely unknown to the average public and spend at least one sentence explaining it? (Or, you know, this being the internet with hypertext and all that jazz invented in the 90s, link to an explanation they deem correct.)

<comment><USER9> long copy ad = ad that has a significant amount of text (i.e. where you actually need to stop and read at the text, vs. ads that only have 5 words that your brain parses with the rest of the ad)

<comment><USER10> Oh, so long copy = tl;dr?

I know marketing types will agonize over each line like poets imagining dramatic public approval, but most people will only see the words "Made by Apple in California", which brings about a "well, duh" moment, at least to me.

<comment><USER11> No long copy is the wall of text in a magazine ad. The exact opposite of tl;dr. It was more prevalent in the past, and you don't see it any more.

<comment><USER4> You still see it everywhere in advertising, think of informercials for example, or high quality ads in magazines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think long copy is due for a return. The reason it's dead has less to do with fashion and more with practical reasons. Today it's really easy to search out all the information you want to. It's not necessary to pack all that stuff into an ad.

(Another possible reason might be widespread testing of ads based on very simple metrics. I would imagine that less complex ads that have more space to show something other than just indistinct text might score better when it comes to recall and people linking the ad to the correct brand. Also, that wall of text might be a great benefit to the few people who are already really excited about the advertised company or product, but the rest – and what might be an overwhelming majority – will probably just ignore it. And so it gets real hard to see any impact – even though the impact might very well be there for those few who really engage with the copy. Or not. You would have to test that.)

<comment><USER4> Why would you want to lose your reader's attention by sending them to another page? That kills how much you sell with that ad. The prospect may choose to learn more about your ad, but you don't want to lose their attention like that.

Getting a half-sold prospect out of your page is just losing a customer.

Just look at an informercial for example, the copy can easily take over an hour of narration.

Also, widespread testing of ads has been done for a very long time, it's not like research in marketing has never been done before. Long-copy always sells more than short copy. The trick is to write long copy well, which is not something that everyone can do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are going to write long-copy, first make sure it's readable. This low- contrast stuff is just never going to work.

</comment><comment><USER13> The part the author picked out as vacuous was, to me, a main substantive theme of the piece:

 _If you are busy making everything, How can you perfect anything?

We don't believe in coincidence. Or dumb luck. There are a thousand "no's" For every "yes."_

That's an explanation for why Apple's product range is so small, and their product releases so comparatively infrequent. That philosophy is what other tech companies with their plethora of confusing, often poorly conceived products lack.

</comment><comment><USER14> If this is an Ad, what exactly is Apple trying to sell me?

I don't have a background in marketing, but I'm not sure how this is an effective ad? I feel like todays consumers have short attention spans, care about results over process, have an entire interent to get "facts" about products, and primarily value videos/photos/audio over over text.

<comment><USER15> It seems to me, if they're saying anything, it's this:

> We have put the trademarked phrase "Designed by Apple in California" on our > actual products. We work hard on them, we pick everything that goes into > them and arrange it very precisely, and then we put our marque on it to let > you know that this thing, this combination of parts, is something we approve > of.

> There are a lot of products coming out of China and elsewhere that seem, on > first glance, very similar to our stuff. But on closer inspection, they use > inferior parts, they don't arrange them the same way, and of course, they > don't use our software--you can only get that from us. Still, you might get > confused, especially on the things that don't even have an Apple logo on > them, like our tiny iPhone AC/USB adapters and so forth.

> Just look for "Designed by Apple in California." Like "Rolex" or any of > those other high-value brands, we can sue anyone who puts that phrase on a > product that isn't ours--so inevitably, it either won't be there on these > weak parody-products, or it'll be an odd faux-image: something like > "Designed by Appl in Cauliflower." † If you see that, put the product back > on the shelf: the Apple brand got the recognition it has because of our > commitment to perfection, and these products won't give you any of that.

...or, rather, that's what they _would_ probably say, if their PR-brand didn't have a distinct flavor that precludes saying things like that. Instead, they have to just remind people that their brand exists, and hope the subtext gets through, brand-marque recognition goes up, and counterfeit purchases go down.

† I actually have a third-party 35W iPhone AC charger that says just this. It works okay with my old 4th-gen iPod Nano; but somehow puts my iPhone 4 into a mode where it thinks it's already charged (not the same as the "not charging" mode when I plug it into an unpowered USB port on a hub, by the way.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a fair cop.

</comment><comment><USER17> Someone was definitely watching too much Mad Men.

</comment><comment><USER18> yet another example of Apple abusing short "sentences" and an overuse of arbitrary periods?</comment>


ShowHN: My first company – AdTemple - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,
AdTemple is an advertising platform that lets you create adverts using Mustache templates. Simple, unimaginative and hopefully useful.
AdTemple started because I liked the idea and thought I could build a MVP very quickly. Unfortunately things always take longer than intended and motivation dies as FUD kicks in. I struggle with anxiety like many developers and finishing a project becomes increasingly hard.
I have reached the point where the extra potential motivation gained from seeking customers/feedback has outweighed my fears of showing my product publicly. I have always been fully aware of finding customers before building a product and I guess this is my belated effort at doing so.
I would love to hear your thoughts on both my company idea and the execution of my sales page. I am eager to learn and welcome any and all feedback. My plan now is to look for critique followed by some paid advertising to see if I can hopefully engage some customers.
You can view my site at http://www.adtemple.net/ and contact me via firstname.lastname@example.com if you wish.
My Sincerest Thanks, Adam <comment><USER2> I signed up for your newsletter.

I might not be the typical user, but since you're trying to embrace an international market, you might want to add support for Bitcoin as a currency.

I see that this is a service that helps you create advertisements, but I don't see anything about where the advertisements go.

I'm a newb when it comes to the online advertising space. All the acronyms (PPC, CPC, etc) and economics that power the whole thing make me avoid placing any ads because I can never get an intuitive feel if my money is being wasted or not.

Edit: Some more thoughts... If you do add a section for site owners who are wanting to place advertisements on their page, make sure to focus on things like the ability to control the CSS of the ad so the fonts look good.

Does anyone know if Google might accidentally see ads like these as being linkspam?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Deftnerd,

Thanks for your feedback, it is greatly appreciated.

Bitcoin would certainly make things easier from a currency perspective and I imagine there are other benefits too. I will investigate it as an option.

The advertisements are just plain HTML and can be worked into your site anywhere you please. Perhaps it isn't super clear but the site owners are the ones who define the advertisements, not the advertisers. This means that the site owners fully control how the ads look and what information is collected.

Google linkspam isn't something I'd thought about, thank you for bringing it up. I'm not entirely familiar with how Google treats such things but I will look into it. If anyone has anything to suggest that would be fantastic.

<comment><USER3> It should be enough to place those links as "nofollow"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks trienthusiast, I will look into it further :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The site is cool, and the Idea is more cooler than that, but below are the views IMHO,

What your site does and how it works can be more informative.. 1) I have read it top to bottom three times but still unable to get a clear picture out of it.. A short video of how it works could be included...

2) Make the user's feel they will get more incentive for using the service..

3) create some extra pages, a blog would look good, and along with some pricing details would be more nice to have..

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi bluerail,

Thanks for taking time to reply! You are correct about it being hard to follow, I have had that come up a few times now. I hadn't thought about a video but I will investigate that option!

Your 2nd and 3rd points also make a lot of sense and I will work to include them.

Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like it.

I really like it.

Banner, video, graphic ads are annoying.

Many users intrinsically ignore them, others have ad-blocking software.

This will work.

Publishers will love it (if the CPM's are high enough).

User's will engage with it.

Websites will look less spammy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks factorialboy! I really appreciate the vote of confidence.</comment></comment>


Windows: Interface Guidelines (1995) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/courses/ICS104/course-notes/Microsoft_WindowsGuidelines.pdf <comment><USER2> Windows 95/98/2000 and Office 95/97/2000 is in many ways my "native interface", probably because those were the platforms I grew up using most during my late-teenager formative years in High School and in the early years of University.

I have to say that those interfaces are clunky in retrospect, but they are undeniably _clear_ and do not place form over function as many of the modern 'flat' and touch-orientated interfaces seem to.

The other two graphical interfaces I remember most fondly are NeXT's and BeOS', which are also, probably not coincidentally, OSes I used frequently over the same period of time.

(Just to give you some context, I remember avidly reading the _Windows 95 Resource Kit_ in the run-up to the Windows 95 release in August 1995 because I had no internet access and therefore had had no way of downloading and testing the many "Chicago" betas that everybody had been raving about... and therefore I know that radio buttons on the interface were originally intended to be diamond-shaped rather than round.)

<comment><USER3> In what way are those interfaces clunky?

<comment><USER4> I agree - I'd say _clean_ rather than _clunky_. The old and (by modern standards) spartan appearance of Windows 95 applications doesn't mean the UI design is no good. Similarly, command-line interfaces can be very effective, even if they lack GUI gloss.

Somewhat related: long live the FOX Toolkit and its hard-coded Windows 95 theme [http://fox-toolkit.org/screenshots.html](http://fox- toolkit.org/screenshots.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The 90s were definitely a time when people thought deeply about how to make computer applications more usable. Apple also had excellent guidelines. Problem was that back then the hardware and the operating systems sucked. Now it's the opposite. Hardware and OS are very stable now but applications are getting worse.

<comment><USER6> > _but applications are getting worse_

So many people say this but I fundamentally disagree.

Applications are _so_ much more complex today, supporting more combinations of OS and input method and data storage and accessibility and display modes and whatnot.

Applications are harder to use, yes, but because they do so much more. Your interface has to work and be responsive whether your file sits on a local disk or in the cloud, or maybe has to be synced. It needs to work with mouse and touch and a screenreader. And so on ad finitum.

Relative to their complexity, applications are doing just fine today I think. (Also don't forget there were so many terribly designed applications in the 90's. It's not like everybody was even _remotely_ following established UX guidelines.)

The same kind of clear UX standards just don't _exist_ anymore because there are _so many_ different apps that do so many different things, and there's no obvious best answer.

But the good news is that applications _do_ slowly converge on best practices. Think of how things like hamburger menus or swipe-to-refresh or pinch-to-zoom have become expected standards.

<comment><USER7> > Applications are harder to use, yes, but because they do so much more

I use Microsoft office 2000, because since then, no new features have been added to word or Excel that I care about. In fact, I couldn't even name a single feature added since then. What they did add, is the ribbon instead of the toolbar, which makes it impossible to find things you need, and a whole lot of bloat.

On modern machines, office 2000 opens faster than I can release my mouse button from clicking its icon.

That is to say, I entirely disagree with your statement.

<comment><USER8> Me too! With the exception of Outlook, I stick with Office 2003. I'm so much faster and more productive with it.

The problem with the ribbon is I find myself constantly having to click back and forth between different tabs. It's annoying, and takes twice as many clicks to get things done. Microsoft lost sight of the purpose of a toolbar: to make commonly used functions ONE click away.

When the rest of the industry followed suit and emulated them, the result was a tragic loss of precious vertical pixel space for the content I actually cared about: whatever I was working on.

I also miss the elegant discoverability of classic menu bars. I loved being able to open a program and quickly become familiar with what tools are available.

They did a great job surfacing keyboard shortcuts. Hints were right there beside the menu items, subtly advertised every time you clicked them. You naturally learned the ones you used most. I worked alongside a younger guy for a few months who was blown away by how quickly I navigated around my PC and got work done, for many sequences using like 90% keyboard and 10% mouse.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. Modern UX seems to split everything into two categories: things that happen automatically, and things that take ten times as many inputs as they did two decades ago. For example, it's nice that modern Windows automatically switches between wifi networks. It's not nice that instead of being a checkbox on a settings menu, turning off the superfluous Lock Screen requires creating registry keys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some good stuff in there! I really like this one:

Forgiveness

Users like to explore an interface and often learn by trial and error. An effective interface allows for interactive discovery. It provides only appropriate sets of choices and warns users about potential situations where they may damage the system or data, or better, makes actions reversible or recoverable.

<comment><USER11> Yes! And if software lets a user do something that lands them in an error condition, then there should be a way to recover from that condition _in the software_.

<comment><USER12> For me, undo is probably one of the greatest inventions in computing next to the compiler and the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of my fondest memories in learning to program as a kid in the late 90s, was writing windows 98 UI clone in QBasic.

I would screenshot the start menu, buttons, window borders, and various other UI components and try to recreate them in QBasic by zooming in and inspecting all the pixels.

I had subroutines to create windows, buttons, menues, various fonts, 255 colors and mouse support. It was coming together incredibly well given I had no idea how any of these were built. I had a working version of minesweeper and a text editor.

<comment><USER14> Did you build a gui toolkit or just hard-code everything? I remember creating a GUI paint program in Turbo Pascal (the only language I could get my mouse to work in) and I quickly got over my head as I didn't abstract anything out

<comment><USER13> It was abstracted out, but I don't know if it qualified as a GUI. I had subroutines for creating the various components and placing them anywhere on the screen. I don't remember how I handled the events. One of my biggest regrets is loosing all my work around that time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The best Windows UX, except one thing that to this day i never liked: minimized windows in MDI applications having a "button" form instead of an icon form. I always found Windows 3.1's approach of using icons much better. Though i guess they tried to mimic minimizing the top level windows to the taskbar, but a real inner taskbar would work better IMO - mIRC did it best there - and functionally closer to what most applications do nowadays with tabs (but without losing the functionality of also having unmaximized windows, like opening multiple views of an image side by side at different zoom levels in an image editor - or just having multiple documents visible at the same time in general instead of being forced to only view one).

<comment><USER16> Opera had pretty much the perfect MDI interface - with a tab bar mimicking taskbar, but otherwise all MDI features were still there, like resizable windows.

And hey, MDI is still there, and often still the easiest way to organize things in a desktop Windows app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> 90's era HCI research was so excellently focused on details. Apples Human Interface Guidelines from 1993 should also be mandatory reading for anyone building a human facing applications: [https://woofle.net/impdf/HIG.pdf](https://woofle.net/impdf/HIG.pdf)

<comment><USER18> Oh hey, that's my web site. :) Those PDFs were generated through a rather nasty process (print to PDF on a Mac OS 9 system), and the quality is a little uneven.

There's a nicer version of that PDF at:

[http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/doc...](http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/documentation/mac/pdf/HIGuidelines.pdf)

as well as a 1997 update for some newer interface elements:

[http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/doc...](http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/documentation/mac/pdf/HIGOS8Guidelines.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In some ways interfaces were richer at that time. I can't wait for the flat interface fad will go away and some old thing to reemerge.

<comment><USER20> Many seem to think like us on this front (at least, in the NH comments). Now, what can we do concretely besides implementing those concepts in our own apps?

<comment><USER21> Convince designers people will hire them if they see designs like that in their portfolios. AFAI can tell designers favor whichever design will produce screen shots likely to make their next job search easier, actual usability or cost of implementation be damned, which makes perfect sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I actually worked on the followup to this book for the release of Windows XP at Microsoft. You can find it on Amazon if you're interested. [https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Experience- Professi...](https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Experience-Professional- Editions/dp/0735605661)

It was written largely by Tandy Trower (inventor of Clippy) and has many similarities to Apple's original Human Interface Guidelines though very different too.

<comment><USER23> Yeah I've been consulting this a lot lately. Been writing a data-dense desktop application and trying to make it as good to use on keyboard-only users as it is for mouse-using users.

I figure the closer I get to that, the easier the port to gui.cs will be.

Another good UX book I found was "The Definitive Guide to the .NET Compact Framework" by Larry Roof and Dan Fergus. Yes, it had mostly back-end stuff, but the UX concepts taught the reader to consider his audience.

Is the person using your app likely to be using it in a dock hooked to a full keyboard like you, Mr. Dev?

No, he will be standing next to a cellphone tower wearing gloves and trying to get the Falcon x3 out of the sunlight enough to see what the screen is showing him.

Okay then, make the buttons big enough for a gloved finger to mash, use combo- boxes everywhere you can stand it. So what if its ugly - if its functional and the user never has to use the SIP, then fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think in some regards, classic GUI interfaces peaked in about 2002/2003 with KDE2. The influence of Win95/98/NT4 on KDE was definitely there, but they took it in its own unique direction. Definitely some inspirations from NeXT as well.

I had a really nice FreeBSD+xfree86+KDE setup at that time. The closest I can come now is something based on XFCE4.

<comment><USER25> KDE3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm mostly surprised by the number of pen input elements 95 had. I was still a kid at the time so I didn't have any exposure to more advanced hardware. How common was it?

<comment><USER5> Windows 95 was developed at a time when people thought that Pen computing would be the next big thing so they put in a lot of pen stuff that eventually was barely used. It always stayed a niche.

<comment><USER27> Maybe now is the time for it to come back? Windows 2-in-1 devices with a pen are magical these days, but there's far too little well-designed pen-oriented applications.

(I'm worried this won't improve until web folks fix the broken pointer events APIs, and even then it'll only lead to proliferation of pen-oriented Electron apps.)

<comment><USER16> It was used heavily on PDAs and similar devices until iPhone came to the scene and introduced "proper" touch.

Of course, those ran WinCE usually. But I don't think pen input code was any different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed- reality/about...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed- reality/about-this-design-guidance) interesting parallel 25 years later

</comment><comment><USER29> Wow, "user centered". It was a refreshing read. Something quite contrary to modern: it looks purty to me and if it is not functional the rest can go eff themselves.

</comment><comment><USER30> Now I see control panel icon is hammer and screwdriver and not cold and hot water tap as I always thought.

</comment><comment><USER31> Thank you for posting this! I grew up in this era of computing and I'm working on recreating it for myself.

This looks like a fantastically good resource for inspiration :)

</comment><comment><USER32> I realize I still have the hard copy of this book on my bookshelf for 25 years!

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't miss the child windows. It was so confusing.

</comment><comment><USER34> oh my. This looks like half research paper, not a design guideline :p

<comment><USER27> Back then HCI involved actual research, and not misinterpreting telemetry data to justify sales goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Best: Okay

Acceptable: OK

WTF: Ok</comment>


New Wundrbar Demo - <AUTHOR> http://www.wundrbar.com/static/media

<comment><USER2> QT = fail

YouTube it or something. Seriously.

Looks cool though. It made me want to use Wundrbar--but if I didn't like you guys I'd probably have skipped watching it since I had to wait for it to download first (Linux cannot stream QT without jumping through hoops that it would never cross my mind to jump through).

<comment><USER3> Definitely agree, there is a big reason all online video is now Flash -- it's just better than the alternatives.

<comment><USER4> thanks for the feedback -- we'll crank out Flash versions and post them soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sounds like a more friendly version of <http://yubnub.org/>

</comment><comment><USER6> very cool</comment>