iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://neosmart.net/blog/2018/imessage-for-windows/ <comment><USER2> Ok, so a comment on the actual content of the article rather than iMessage in general: I do the kinds of things that the author describes in the article (digging into private implementations of things) and I while I believe all of iMessage is a bit obfuscatory it's not nearly as bad as the author has described it. Really, it's one of the places where Hanlon's razor actually applies: the AppleScript bridge sucks because AppleScript in general sucks, as Apple has let it decay until it stops working entirely. The iMessage team for macOS is already kinda eh, and it shows in the app's architecture and lack of new features for years, as well as its fairly strange usage of a web view (actually the long-deprecated one…) for the main content. The rest of the stuff about private frameworks…I mean, I don't really know what to say. They're not meant to be linked against, they're undocumented, they change and disappear between releases…you really cannot complain about them. They're not Apple making it harder for you, they are just a side effect of how Apple writes its applications and the fact that the entire OS is proprietary. Some do venture into that realm (such as the author and I) and find meaning, but I disagree with the characterization that Apple is fighting against reverse engineers by making you dig through class-dump output and figure out how to marshal your arguments through the right function to make it do what you want.

<comment><USER3> I've been developing for Mac and iOS before the App Store was released, and have experience the author names - in broad strokes, your argument is valid, but it's not correct - errors slip in when describing the Applescript interface as just a reflection of Applescript sucking, describing his issue with Apple having _fragile_ private APIs when his conclusion is the problem is _private_ APIs, and reducing the problems inherent in the walled garden as "making you dig through class-dump output"

<comment><USER4> Why do people act like having "private APIs" is something evil? The entire purpose of having published public APIs is that they should be something that doesn't change without a deprecation schedule or warning while the underlying implementation can change without notice. This is software engineering 101.

<comment><USER5> I don't know about evil, but it's _hostile_ because Apple is intentionally preventing a non-AppleOS version from existing. The details of how they do it are of merely scientific interest.

<comment><USER4> It's not hostile that you build a system with a public API that doesn't change and private methods that you make no guarantees about. This is how software engineering has always worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For anyone who is interested in making an iMessage proxy and has time to spend: There is a legitimate way to interact with the iMessage system with a standard protocol. It requires you to have a host iPhone (no jailbreaking needed).

What you need to have is a Bluetooth adapter with MAP (Message Access Profile) support. Your iPhone will treat all messages from the MAP protocol as if they are from the Messages app. This means it will automatically route your SMS as iMessage if possible (you have no say on what the iPhone decides to do, however). As a bonus, you can also use email addresses as recipients with MAP.

A good place to start probing is the WT32 or WT41u module from Silicon Laboratories. It supports MAP, although it looks like the module supports receive-only [1]. I do not know whether you can hack blueZ to support MAP. I've tried to look at it and I don't think the MAP support for blueZ is complete but I could as well be very wrong. A Raspberry Pi 0 as a bluetooth middleman is very sweet, regardless.

Once that Bluetooth middleman is set up, you can use a public server to relay your messages. The scheme will look something like this:

iPhone <\--bluetooth--> (WT41+ESP32)|(Pi0+BlueZ) <\--wifi--> MQTT broker <\--wifi--> your device of choice.

I am relatively confident that this scheme will work. I just don't have time in my hands to do it. So I figured I could share here. Hopefully, some good hacker will do it and publish it. Happy hacking!

1: [https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/application- notes/AN...](https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/application- notes/AN994.pdf)

<comment><USER2> > What you need to have is a Bluetooth adapter with MAP (Message Access > Profile) support. When you send a message from the MAP protocol, then your > iPhone will treat all messages as if they are sent from the Messages app.

What is the "legitimate" reason for this? Bluetooth accessories that can send messages, ideally from the MFI program?

<comment><USER7> Common use cases include car dashboards that read your SMS out loud and smartwatches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an iMessage user, I'm happy with a closed ecosystem. I know that's a controversial opinion.

I have dozens of channels of communication, and iMessage is the only one I don't get spam on. I really, really like that. Anyone without iMessage can still contact me the same way, via SMS, and they're all grouped in the same place. But I love that in 10+ years of using iMessage, I've never gotten a single unwanted blue message.

<comment><USER9> Are you implying that a closed ecosystem eliminates spam?

> I've never gotten a single unwanted blue message.

This has not been my experience. While rare I have gotten a few spam messages.

<comment><USER10> It's trivial to use software to automate spam on more open web-based platforms, such as Facebook Messenger. This is a lot tricker with iMessage, where only authenticated Apple devices, with a unique identifier, can connect to the service. Buying truckloads of Apple equipment to spam iMessage is obviously uneconomical(and totally ineffective, given that Apple will swiftly ban any spamming devices), and software hacks to be exploited by spammers are either hard to come by or non-existant, and can quickly be patched by Apple

Again, not saying spam on iMessage is impossible, but it's clearly very difficult given the relative lack of spammers on the platform.

<comment><USER11> I thought Facebook Messenger was very strict about assigning page-specific user IDs to avoid this. Last I checked there was no way to send a message to a Facebook user using their profile ID.

<comment><USER12> Facebook Messenger (and similar) can be spammed through UI interaction automation (on Android) or even manually with cheap labor in third-world countries.

iMessage is more resistant to this attack because the _device_ is your credentials to the network (instead of an account) which makes such an attack very expensive if you need to replace banned iPhones every day.

I've actually seen spam on iMessage (a friend's Apple account was compromised and she started seeing the spam messages sent by someone else thanks to iMessages's iCloud sync) but I'm not too concerned because I assume the offending devices will be banned relatively quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is really interesting to see the difference between countries, I travel between Asia and Europe and I knew that iMessage existed, but I thought people dropped it like SMS, years ago. Interesting to see that in a globalized world some differences still persist. I have asked around me to Iphone owners if they used iMessage and they almost never use it. It must be something specific to the US.

Please do not downvote me for not living in the US :)

<comment><USER14> So people don't use SMS outside the US? I knew WhatsApp was big in other countries, but didn't realize no one even uses SMS not iMessage.

What do people use in Europe?

<comment><USER15> In Europe: WhatsApp, no one uses SMS anymore because WhatsApp started getting popular when people still had to pay for each SMS sent.

I currently live in South America, same story: Nobody uses iMessage, everybody is on WhatsApp. Even businesses prefer WhatsApp over phone calls.

The biggest difference between Whatsapp users in Europe and South America that I observed has to be the crazy amount of people using voice messages to communicate. Why don't you call and speed up the conversation by 50%?

<comment><USER13> It is asynchronous communication, like emails, the recipient can listen to it when they are available, but you don't need both to be available in the same time.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but here voice messages are used for synchronous communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "The looming demise of macOS as a developer platform".

There's some sentiment these days on HN about this but personally I think it's hogwash. No platform is perfect, but macOS to me is as close as you can get to a developer's dream workstation / laptop.

Remember all those years when we dreamed of a Unix with a proper UI? Well, it exists. Windows doesn't even come close.

I'd rather go Linux before Windows as a developer and hacker.

I know this varies based on industry and countries, but about 95% of developers I work with on a daily basis use Macs. These are everything from Go devs, JS devs to people working on ancient Java EE codebases.

A disclaimer; I haven't actually tried Catalina yet, all my Macs are still on Mojave.

<comment><USER17> > Remember all those years when we dreamed of a Unix with a proper UI? Well, > it exists. Windows doesn't even come close.

You should reconsider Windows. A full Linux kernel and apt-get is way better than Homebrew will ever be.

<comment><USER18> Personally, I find windows to be much more intrusive than macOS out of the box.

sudo spctl --master-disable is usually enough for macOS to keep quiet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I came across this article[1] and this thread quoted[0] in article some time ago. I don't think of iMessage as a walled garden, it is almost like a low fence you can see across with a sign that "you must be this cool to participate".

iMessage is literally the only reason I have not tried an android phone because I don't want to deal with the fallout of all of my chat threads going back to 2011(?) getting disrupted. I don't think I can come up with a better example of vendor lock-in.

[0] [https://twitter.com/BenBajarin/status/1162048581299163136](https://twitter.com/BenBajarin/status/1162048581299163136)

[1] [https://www.fastcompany.com/90391587/why-we-dont-want-you- an...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90391587/why-we-dont-want-you-and-your- android-green-bubbles-in-our-imessage-chat)

<comment><USER10> Vendor lock is real, but would that not be rendered moot of other players could offer a superior user experience? Especially when you consider that Facebook, Google and others have a far larger base of potential users than iMessage. As far as I understand, the only iMessage feature that competitors couldn't emulate due to first-party entitlements is the SMS fallback functionality, which while nice, is definitely a feature that people could live without.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, every other messaging app I've used just has't lived up to the UX provided by iMessage. Spam is a major issue on all non-iMessage messaging platforms I've used. No messaging app I've used on any platform has performance as fast and fluid as iMessage on iOS. Competing products are often full with ads and useless features that clutter the user interface and degrade performance. And these platforms often have annoying restrictions on media quality. Facebook Messenger, for instance, has garbage quality images and video compression, while iMessage appears to apply no further compression on media files. Using any other messaging app, either on iOS or Android, has consistently been way more of a headache than its worth for me.

<comment><USER19> Google and Facebook may have a larger user base but it is not the in the same realm, e.g. I use iMessage to talk to my family, my close friends, parents from my daughter's preschool, co-workers, people I've only interacted with professionally - vendors etc - all it takes to connect is a phone number which is universal, and like you say it falls back to SMS. Compare that to Facebook where you have to add someone as a friend - which I don't do often because it just feels odd, or Google where messaging ecosystem is a bit fragmented with Allo, Duo, Hangout, Hangout Chat etc. Signal and WhatsApp are actually viable options but compared to iMessage feel heavy and not native, however I do use them both.

And like you mentioned - spam - I have yet to receive an iMessage spam message. That is pretty amazing.

<comment><USER20> How about all the iMessage created "Liked", "Loved", "Emoji" messages? Each and every one of those creates a message alert on non-iPhones. It is by far the most spammy type of message one receives on an Android device (in the USA at least).

<comment><USER2> Anecdotally, any iPhone users don't know they're doing that ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Funny, I've actually spent a good amount of time tearing apart the iMessage database back in 2016-2017. The queries you end up with are hilarious. Here's one from my website's sample code

```

INNER JOIN chat_message_join ON message.ROWID = chat_message_join.message_id INNER JOIN chat ON chat.ROWID = chat_message_join.chat_id INNER JOIN chat_handle_join ON chat.ROWID = chat_handle_join.chat_id INNER JOIN handle ON handle.ROWID = chat_handle_join.handle_id LEFT JOIN message_attachment_join ON message.ROWID = message_attachment_join.message_id LEFT JOIN attachment ON attachment.ROWID = message_attachment_join.attachment_id ...

```

But it really wasn't that hard. I was able to programmatically send and receive iMessages. The problem (as the author pointed out) was that this changed, and didn't really work for the long. Although, I'm sure it could still be reveng'd – it's a pain in the ass, and (for me) not really worth it... =/

<comment><USER22> I've been working on a new version of [my iMessage bot]([https://github.com/inculi/Sue](https://github.com/inculi/Sue)) recently. Previously it was using Applescript handlers on Sierra, now sqlite calls to iMessage's chat.db (I have to give credit to another bot, [Jared]([https://github.com/ZekeSnider/Jared](https://github.com/ZekeSnider/Jared)) for help in this area).

I get latest messages with:

```

SELECT handle.id, handle.person_centric_id, message.cache_has_attachments, message.text, message.ROWID, message.cache_roomnames, message.is_from_me, message.date/1000000000 + strftime("%s", "2001-01-01") AS utc_date FROM message INNER JOIN handle ON message.handle_id = handle.ROWID WHERE message.ROWID > #{rowid};

```

and their attachments with:

```

SELECT attachment.ROWID AS a_id, message_attachment_join.message_id AS m_id, attachment.filename, attachment.mime_type, attachment.total_bytes FROM attachment INNER JOIN message_attachment_join ON attachment.ROWID == message_attachment_join.attachment_id WHERE message_attachment_join.message_id >= #{rowid};

```

where rowid is the max rowid from the previous search, and attachments with null mime_types get ignored (YouTube previews, etc). Sending through Applescript still.

<comment><USER21> Nice job. I'll take a look at your project and see if I can contrib

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Oh man. Apple has us by the nuts. I love my iMessage. I've been on a macbook for ~10 years, but I just started working at Microsoft and thus have been spending a lot of time in Windows. Multiple times per day I think of something I want to send my wife, like a link to something I'm reading or something, and I look for the iMessage on the dock and of course there is no dock and no iMessage. I want iMessage for Windows. and Linux.

<comment><USER24> I was in exactly this same boat for a long time. I bought maybe a dozen iPhones through the years to upgrade friends and partners from Android just so I could iMessage them.

Turns out, most of iCloud is _not_ e2e encrypted, critically, notes and pictures and contacts and backups. Apple (and by extension, US military intelligence and FBI/DHS) can read your private notes and see your nudes, and review your address book and message history. I knew I was going to need to switch eventually.

* iCloud device backup is on by default. This syncs all of your _unencrypted_ iMessage history to Apple. It also syncs all of your conversation partners' message histories, from their phones, to Apple. It is not e2e encrypted so it suffers from the Zoom Problem: Apple has the keys and can decrypt it, for themselves or the government via the illegal PRISM program.

* iMessage (despite being e2e) can be arbitrarily wiretapped by injecting a surveillance key because the client trusts the key list from the server blindly, with no UI notifications for the sender on key changes/amendments.

* I can't run the client on half of my computers

* Signal works on ios/android and has desktop clients for all major platforms... and critically now supports iPads. It also has the nice property of being e2e without implicit trust in the server, although hopefully the TOFU model can be improved.

I switched. I am now signed out of iMessage on all my computers, and it's great.

If I can do it, anyone can. I was in as far as one can go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Meanwhile, [https://airmessage.org/](https://airmessage.org/) seems to have existed for quite some time now...?

<comment><USER26> This software requires a server component to be run on a mac. It's not self- contained.

<comment><USER27> So does the one in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> SendBlue will be launching soon. They support sending iMessages at scale, similar to Twilio's SMS service.

Not sure how they're doing it.

[https://sendblue.co/](https://sendblue.co/)

<comment><USER29> I'm curious if they have a farm of iPhones somewhere to host this off of. They are sending the iMessages from phone numbers -- not email addresses, which means they didn't just get a bunch of Mac Minis and do it the (probably easier) way.

Jailbroken iPhones where you can automate the UI and (maybe?) access any private Messaging API Apple left laying around would make this scalable though.

<comment><USER28> The phone farm has to be the approach. I don't see any other way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > For example, hackintosh PCs that act identical to genuine Mac hardware can > use all macOS features except iMessage, which has been locked – so far as we > can tell – to only allow network activation on devices that have "blessed" > NICs that officially shipped with Apple hardware.

This isn't true! The computer I'm typing on right now can send and receive iMessages just fine, and I'm _not_ using a donor MLB. You just need to get all of various parameters right, so Apple's servers are presented with logical information.

<comment><AUTHOR> The information was circa 2017, I do believe the kexts and bootloaders for hackintosh configurations have since improved significantly.

<comment><USER30> Not in this regard. I don't think there was any point at which iMessage on Hackintosh was impossible without a donor, but I've personally been using it since ~2015.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe you got lucky with your hardware? I can't remember all the exact details but these posts are all from the same 2017-2018 window and the solutions all resolve around network hardware: [https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sa=N&hl=en- us&q=...](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sa=N&hl=en- us&q=%22hackintosh%22+an+error+occurred+during+activation+imessage&ved=2ahUKEwiK5-ix8unpAhVXK80KHbC_D4U4ChDm3gIwBHoECAYQCA&biw=414&bih=719&dpr=2)

It's been too long for me to remember more than this, but I did have iMessage on a hackintosh circa 2013 or so but wasn't able to get that to happen when I tried in 2017/2018.

<comment><USER30> It's not luck! :) [https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/303073-pattern-of- ml...](https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/303073-pattern-of-mlb-main- logic-board/)

Notably, you need to get this right on the first try (or at minimum the first try), or Apple appears to get suspicious for requests from your IP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Much as I applaud the effort and ideal to make something open, I guess you acknowledge that it's crazy to think Apple will ever cooperate.

iMessage, plus pressure on your friends to not break the text thread with green non-Apple bubbles, Facetime, tie-ins to the Apple hardware, Find my Friends, etc. are among the most important loyalty factors and moats against people leaving the Apple ecosystem.

Especially with people getting (as you admit) less satisfied with the hardware, they would be fools to open this up and let people leave.

</comment><comment><USER32> > the pure simplicity and sheer genius of iMessage's "SMS backwards- > compatibility" approach that upgrades iPhone-to-iPhone communications to > iMessage while transparently falling back to SMS or MMS where iMessage was > not an option.

This "simplicity" comes with a price. If your primary SMS device is non-Apple and you sign into iMessage from an Apple device, iMessage will start eating your SMSes from anyone texting you from an Apple device.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. I temporarily switched from an iPhone to an Android BlackBerry when the one with the slide-out keyboard first came out and I did not receive SMS messages from iOS users for the entire duration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I found training a bunch of birds to take notes to people for me to be much easier. I am in the process of training them how to use the printer and scanner too so i can text people who on my computer too.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what happened to "Business Chat". It was announced on WWDC in 2018 and I have seen no progress since. It's a shame. The potential of it is huge I believe, but Apple has a different focus it seems.

<comment><USER35> It exists for some retailers, like Home Depot. It doesn't work like I would expect though, in HD's case it looked like it was routed through a Salesforce extension.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> iMessage is like 90% the reason I am invested in the Apple ecosystem

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm personally looking forward to the Your Phone making its way to ios. [https://www.cultofmac.com/546617/microsoft-your-phone- timeli...](https://www.cultofmac.com/546617/microsoft-your-phone-timeline- iphone-ipad-build-2018/)

<comment><USER38> I tried this but it seemed to not work with Signal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Would something like [https://github.com/matrix-hacks/matrix-puppet- imessage](https://github.com/matrix-hacks/matrix-puppet-imessage) have not worked?

I'm almost certain I've seen other implementations too, but I can't find them now.

Edit: Oh, here was another one: [https://github.com/RomanScott/weMessage](https://github.com/RomanScott/weMessage) It's for Android, but you could presumably reuse the server implementation to create a Windows version.

Edit2: And yet another one, fwiw, but this time it's Android-only _and_ closed source so less useful. [https://airmessage.org/](https://airmessage.org/)

</comment><comment><USER39> I feel like there was probably a way to publish this. Maybe the author couldn't brand it with their name, logo and other identifying information, and clearly that's a compromise they weren't comfortable with. That is, of course, their choice, but the large number of screenshots of the resulting application felt like a bit much. This work could increase accessibility to iMessage e.g. for those with physical or other disabilities were there a way to use it, and the post just ended up feeling like an exercise in navel-gazing to me.

</comment><comment><USER40> > As someone that has never embraced the mobile craze, I sorely missed the > ability of texting (or "iMessaging") from my PC, and came to absolutely > despise having to drag my phone out of my pocket and text from its cramped > display, constantly fighting autoincorrect and embarrassing myself with > typos and misspellings.

An alternative solution is to use a Bluetooth keyboard, possibly with multi- device support and device switching shortcuts, attached to an iPhone or iPad sitting on a stand.

<comment><USER41> As someone who learned to properly type on a physical (PC) keyboard, it's mind blowing to me how so many people swipe so many letters on screens.

Ignorance is bliss I suppose.

First I had Blackberry Blend around 2014 (SMS and BBM messaging through PC), now there's Signal for Desktop and the Your Phone Microsoft thing.

The wheel keeps getting reinvented.

I wonder when peer2peer messaging will become popular again. It's how Skype started out and became big back in 2003. Offered way better call quality and privacy, because: no server and peer2peer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Extremely well written piece.

Btw, I expect Google, Microsoft, Facebook or Amazon to offer you their new Chief of Messaging Infrastructure role in 4 days.

</comment><comment><USER43> I feel his pain.

I run a whole MacOS VM _exclusively_ for iMessage.

<comment><USER44> Woah, that's a thing?

<comment><USER43> Yes, works fine. It's a bit silly to run an entire VM for a single application, but it does the trick.

[https://github.com/foxlet/macOS-Simple-KVM](https://github.com/foxlet/macOS- Simple-KVM)

<comment><USER45> It's like running a copy of entire complex web browser just to draw pretty chat GUI. Oh wait... :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Anyone know the reason why there's no iMessage for windows? Is it supposed to act as some kind of gateway drug into the Mac ecosystem?

Apple seems to have quite a few of these 'unspoken unfeatures'. Perhaps someone can tell me why there are no web browsers allowed on AppleTV devices?

<comment><USER47> Its because they use peer pressure to get you to buy an apple device. You can invite an android user to an imessage group but it apparently downgrades the feature set of the group for everyone, they also color messages from android users differently. Its all designed to discourage talking to android users so they eventually buy an iphone.

<comment><USER48> SMS is colored differently (green) than iMessage (blue), regardless of the device on the receiving end. I'm not sure how they would even know the recipient is on Android.

If I send an iMessage to a friend's iPhone when they do not have service it automatically downgrades to SMS from iMessage. My brother didn't run iMessage for years so group chats that include his iPhone were still SMS based.

In a group chat with non-iMessage users everyone gets downgraded to SMS. I'm not sure how else it would even work?

It doesn't discourage talking to users with an Android or any other phone. I do that all the time, it's all in the same app. If they wanted to put up barriers they could do that but instead it's totally seamless.

<comment><USER49> > _In a group chat with non-iMessage users everyone gets downgraded to SMS. I > 'm not sure how else it would even work?_

I was thinking that there might be a way around it: send iMessages to people who are iMessage capable, and send MMS to people who aren't. The people who have to send MMS will just send their replies to everyone in the group over MMS, and the messages app on the iPhone would just figure out that the messages belong to the correct group.

But then I realized that I don't think there's an analog to the "reply-to" header for MMS. So there might not be a way to send that group message to the single MMS recipient without sending it to all recipients over MMS. In order to get replies to go to the entire group, each group member has to be in the "to" field for the MMS-using phone to know all the group members.

It's a shame, because my understanding is that the MMS protocol is actually pretty similar to email in some ways... and yet they apparently left out "reply-to".

<comment><USER48> Ok but why go through all of that complication? Right now I just type a bunch of names in a box and send a message, job done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Having had this problem myself, my first thought was VLC or some other kind of Remote Desktop solution. Surely I can 'stream' a window from my OSX host and not care about the implementation or boobytraps?

In the end Windows was a complete fail for me so I never pursued it.

</comment><comment><USER51> « A year and a half ago, I heeded the growing warning signs that indicated the looming demise of macOS, née OS X, as a platform for developer and true computer enthusiasts, and set about trying to find a new ecosystem.» The power of synthesis

</comment><comment><USER52> It's weird to see a project you've thought about for so long actually completed. I've toyed with it a little, but I only dug as far as AppleScript.

This gives me a bit of hope, I might take another crack at it sometime.

</comment><comment><USER53> If there was an easy way to get iMessages in Windows 10 I guess it would just increase the number of people who consider switching from Mac? Maybe Apple can't fit that into their business model?

</comment><comment><USER54> I have been a Windows user and an Android user for a long time, and I never seem to have the need to venture into the Apple ecosystem. I actually did have an Apple phone for several months and it was okay. No complaints. But there's just not an ecosystem that I need. I have everything I need without the Apple ecosystem. There's nothing that gives me passion to use something that is exclusively an Apple product. In a way it's kind of weird. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here. But I'm sure there's other people like me.

</comment><comment><USER55> Who the heck uses SMS for messaging in 2020, USA?

</comment><comment><USER56> So, I may be missing something, but...

You can get imessage for windows with way less effort and full functionality. Just have a VNC window to a mac with imessage on it. There you go, every functionality of imessage on windows. All it requires is a mac mini.

<comment><USER57> That's _not_ iMessage for Windows.

"You can get Adobe Photoshop for Linux, just run a Windows machine and use RDP to connect to it. All it requires is another machine entirely and for you to be on the same network."

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> If ever Apple needed to open source server and client code for a public good it is with imessages. Yes it has clear limits with a centralized server, but it is realistically how a lot of "secure" messaging happens and it's very difficult to endorse being tied to expensive hardware.

You can say the same about facetime: it is clearly higher quality than competitors in every experiment I've tried, but their refusal to interact with the wider software community means we all use zoom or skype instead for personal chatting. These are tools; they should be effectively free and universal.

<comment><USER59> iMessage motivates people to people buy iPhones instead of Android when everyone else in a social circle has it. Why should Apple give up on that? What will Apple gain from making it ubiquitous? It would in fact disappoint many people as now they can't use their phone to distance themselves from the people who don't have that blue circle.

Note that I'm arguing from Apple's perspective here. From my own I believe they should absolutely open it up.

<comment><USER49> > _iMessage motivates people to people buy iPhones instead of Android_

Why, though? Does your average iPhone user actually care if the bubbles they see in their chats are blue or green? If so, why?

Note that I'm talking about _average_ users. Sure, there are likely a bunch of privacy-conscious users who believe in Apple's commitment to security and privacy and prefer iMessage on those grounds. But otherwise, why?

> _It would in fact disappoint many people as now they can 't use their phone > to distance themselves from the people who don't have that blue circle._

If that's truly the case, I don't think I'd want to be friends with people who place importance on such superficial, trivial things.

Full disclosure: I've been an Android user for 10 years and the closest I ever got to owning an iPhone was an iPod Touch I stopped using in 2012 or so. SMS is fine for my needs most of the time, though MMS for group texting is ridiculously unreliable so I try to funnel people to Signal or WhatsApp for those use-cases.

I guess I just don't see a closed iMessage as that huge of a competitive advantage for Apple. But presumably they know better as to what drives sales.

<comment><USER60> > Why, though? Does your average iPhone user actually care if the bubbles they > see in their chats are blue or green? If so, why?

They definitely do. Not sure what your age or demographic is, but young folks do care a lot about higher social status which is tied to blue bubble because of iPhone prices. It has nothing to do with privacy though.

<comment><USER61> I'm 22 and live in a mid-sized city, and I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles" \- and really, I'm not exaggerating. And not from rich people who have the latest iPhone either.

In addition, I have been in friend groups that would exclude Android users because if you have even 1 Android user in a group chat on iMessage, you lose tons of features, like the ability to name the group chat (I'm being completely serious here; this was considered an important thing). The work around was "we'll take you out of this chat, and if something important happens someone will send you a text" \- of course, it's not very easy to always remember to send that person an SMS, so they end up _very_ left out of things. This has also happened with middle-class people.

<comment><USER62> High school senior here; I can second the prevalence of this experience starting in middle school.

Oh and texting an i phone user sucks because those reactions come through like: Loved "blah blah blah"

Please when texting us android plebians don't use those reaction things.

<comment><USER12> To be fair I am an iOS user and found the reactions an unnecessary and annoying gimmick.

It's faster to just type the "laughing with tears" emoji and press send than to use the equivalent reaction.

<comment><USER2> I really like the "Liked" reaction after a former boss used it to signify "+1".

<comment><USER63> I've found that, in my social groups, "Liked" gets used as an acknowledgement for anything that doesn't require further discussion. Seems to clear up group chats of endless OKs back and forth, so I'm all for it.

<comment><USER2> Yup, exactly. I think that by itself makes it my most used reaction by an order of magnitude.

<comment><USER63> That, "ha ha", and "?" are probably about tied for my most used. I find that they are all useful ways to acknowledge or question something without cluttering chats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Steve said iMessage would be an open standard way back in the 2000s. Still waiting.

<comment><USER65> IIRC, it was Facetime he said that about. I believe it ended up there were legal obstacles (plus he allegedly made the statement off the cuff), but I could be wrong.

<comment><USER64> You probably are. He was on stage during a presentation so no 'off the cuff' pretense occurred.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> >A year and a half ago, I heeded the growing warning signs that indicated the looming demise of macOS, née OS X, as a platform for developer and true computer enthusiasts,

I stopped reading there.</comment>


Unshaky: Software mitigation for Apple laptop butterfly keyboard double press - <AUTHOR> https://unshaky.nestederror.com/ <comment><USER2> This tool is extremely helpful while you wait for Apple to fix your laptop under warranty (and they should fix it under warranty). I'm glad to see Apple is moving away from the flawed design in newer products. I really liked the keyboard on my 2013 MBP. Can't stand the new keyboard design and absolutely despise the touch bar.

Related: [https://joecreager.com/the-keyboard-on-my-2007-macbook- still...](https://joecreager.com/the-keyboard-on-my-2007-macbook-still-works/)</comment>


Fresh look at mysterious Nasca lines in Peru - <AUTHOR> https://www.global.hokudai.ac.jp/blog/fresh-look-at-mysterious-nasca-lines-in-peru <comment><USER2> I dont recall where i read it but i found it interesting.

Using walkable paths and chanting while walking to memorize facts/stories. Great for groups of people to share the knowledge of one person with the rest of the group. One chants, the others repeat.

I also personally used this method to learn botanical names of plants. Walking rhythmically through a botanical garden and chanting the names rhythmically as a group was a great way to memorize them.

So each Figure could be a walkable memorizing pathway for future generations?

<comment><USER3> It would be so cool if the Native Americans independently discovered the Method of Loci (or something similar)! If so, I wonder if they also developed the same rules of thumb as the Greeks/Romans, like: space your loci apart, always view your loci from the same angle, store a fixed number of items at each loci, etc.

I'm aware of one interesting example where someone created a memory palace around an object that's not a building (or a route along a street). IIRC a person became blind and wanted to write a book, so s/he stored plot points at different parts of an intricate vase s/he was familiar with. (In medieval Europe, the fingers of the left hand were also used for memory purposes.)

Using a stylized bird gives you readily apparent loci: the beak, the head, each of the three feathers of each wing, etc.

Magnifying the bird and turning it into a path is clever, since your sense of place, amount of fatigue while walking, and on which side the sun hits you, would all help cement the route in your memory.

<comment><USER4> Memory Palace, as in used for memorization, is covered in Moonwalking with Einstein (a book). It's certainly an interesting way to memorize things, in this case competitions for memorizing a deck of cards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd you're wondering what a hermit bird looks like:

[http://www.peruaves.org/trochilidae/black-throated-hermit- ph...](http://www.peruaves.org/trochilidae/black-throated-hermit-phaethornis- atrimentalis/)

So that does make sense.

I'm wondering if the drawings on the desert plains could have been some kind of manifestation ritual, i.e. "let's get some beautiful jungle up in here, everybody get drawing." When there aren't any super grounded or practical ideas as to how to do a thing, it seems like this is one of those ideas to which human psychology likes to attach.

<comment><USER6> My terrible interpretation is that this is a sense of identity or proto- national borders. "This is who we are, our people are spread far, extended to as far away as where this bird lives." Beyond that it's all ritual.

If only they had a kangaroo too, the ancient aliens crowd would go nuts. Alas, I guess I'll have to watch tv, another identity ritual.

<comment><USER7> ... The crop inside the limits of the hummingbird figure is for being offered to the hummingbird good or the hummingbird tribe. This other crop inside pelican bird is for being filled by the coastal villages. This maize inside the sun is for taxes for the solar god and those tomatoes inside the polygon saying netflix are for our targarian lords.

Maybe is just a taxing system. Fill this triangle completely with avocados or I will you next year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> People from Nasca also built a wind-powered aqueduct system.

[https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate- weather/blogs/myst...](https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate- weather/blogs/mystery-ancient-nazca-spiral-wells-solved)

</comment><comment><USER7> > re-classified a previously identified hummingbird (Geoglyph No. PV68A-CF1) > as a hermit

As Hermit here is referred to a type of Hummingbird, re-classified does not look like the right word for this. Would be like saying that a previously identified bovine has been re-classified now as a cow.

</comment><comment><USER9> My one regret is not visiting these lines while I was in Peru. Due to climate change, there is danger that increased heavy rains in the region may wash the lines away that has persisted for over two thousand years...

<comment><USER10> I decided to skip them when I was in Peru too. Didn't see how I'd get much more benefit seeing them from several thousand feet in a plane than I would looking at photos of them.

Same can't be said for Machu Picchu, photos really don't do that place justice.

<comment><USER11> "Several thousand feet" isn't quite the right way to describe the Nazca tourist flights. "Dozens of feet" hits a little closer. And always at 60 degrees of bank, so that you get a good look.

It's really cool for a while. But there comes a point where you really wish the guy would stop circling that monkey at four gees, and how about we just stipulate that that next one is a bird, without the death spiral.

It's the rare experience where you're happy to have them cut a few minutes off your hour. Definitely give it a go if you're passing by!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I realize this is proposing that the birds depicted are not endemic to Peru.

However, on the topic of birds endemic to Peru , the Marvelous Spatuletail is just amazing and stunning.

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

<comment><USER13> For a second, I thought you were going to talk about the Rupicola Peruviana:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Rupicola...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Rupicola_peruviana_%28male%29_-San_Diego_Zoo-8a.jpg)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZbxFGeNzqw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZbxFGeNzqw)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andean_cock-of-the- rock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andean_cock-of-the-rock)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Considering their digit-counting to identify the hermit, I am curious what they think about this one:

[https://i.imgur.com/1wvFATq.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/1wvFATq.jpg)

<comment><USER14> I am going to leave it because it's interesting. But think that the above is a photoshop. I didn't notice at first, but since I learned that the lady, Maria Reiche, who was an early champion of the nazca lines, had 9 fingers; having lost one to a cactus. [http://enperublog.com/2008/12/01/nine-fingered-destiny- of-ma...](http://enperublog.com/2008/12/01/nine-fingered-destiny-of-maria- reiche/)

<comment><USER15> Search for 'nazca lines hands' on Google Images and you'll find dozens of other pictures of this figure...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I assume this is ignoring the ones greenpeace dragged a protest sign through?

<comment><USER17> No, that one is the main subject of the article. Are you suggesting that any amount of damage invalidates the figures' historical status?</comment></comment>


Little brother, if I had to go to college again - atom-morgan http://blog.atommorgan.com/little-brother-if-i-had-to-do-college-again <comment><AUTHOR> >>> Look attentive in class even if you aren't paying attention

I'd go just a tiny step further. We're at a juncture where we don't exactly know the relative merits of classroom versus online education, but if you happen to be in a classroom, then make the best possible use of it.

In addition to networking, the other use of classroom time is observing and emulating the teaching styles of your teachers, on the way to developing your own style. The value is that -- teaching careers aside -- almost anything you might like to do in life beyond your cubicle will involve something analogous to teaching.

<comment><USER2> Wow, such great advice. I'll take it another tiny step further - learn how to teach from great teachers and learn how to learn from less great teachers. It turns out that regardless of what you do in life, teaching and learning are often more important than doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> With the amount of debt that seems to be involved in college in the US these days I'm not surprised it's all very business-like. What happened to 'socialise, grow, have fun (but also learn) ?'

What's with the 'minor' thing? Here in the UK university is basically the time you concentrate on your one specialisation. You've had your schooling, your degree is the time for a deep dive into a single thing.

<comment><USER4> To me, a "deep dive into a single thing" is a more apt description of a PhD.

A minor indicates a small concentration of coursework in a field separate (but possibly related) from your major.

Many students also double major, which effectively results in graduating with two degrees. Frequently, these majors are related (like, CS & Math), but sometimes they are unrelated (I know someone that did CS & PolySci).

It's hard to quantify the benefits of a minor or a double major. Presumably, it looks better to perspective employers and may give you a wider range of employment opportunities depending on which fields you selected.

<comment><USER3> To me a PhD is original research rather than deep study. I'm not a PhD type of guy - I'll absorb and apply absolutely everything you can throw at me on a topic, but I'm damned if I can come up with something new I want to investigate.

But thanks for the reply, it's more context :)

<comment><USER4> I'm a PhD drop out. Certainly, original research is part of it. But what is required to do original research? A deep dive into a single thing. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To the article: Starting a side-gig is dependent on major and minor. If you take psych, I imagine at most schools you have time to minor and make some extra dough. If you Chemical engineering, I don't imagine you have that mind of time. Personally, I worked as a janitor, took a physics BS, and did a thesis in a lab writing papers.

I like the author's suggestions of non-conventional routes, as mine were pretty conventional. Thank you for the tips.

As to college:

Stay in 1 Friday a month to study. It will put you ahead of most of the class.

In the dorms pull your bed a little away from the wall, enough to hide a beer there when you need to.

OFFICE HOURS. Go to them regularly, even if you think you know it all.

Buy a flashlight, fire-extinguisher, and plunger.

If you don't know what to do, go to the place you will learn the most. Stretch yourself.

Don't let school get in the way of 'college.' Study hard, and make sure to have fun too. The alternative is true. Do not leave school with a taste for bad beer and jazz. Do something. Write a rock-opera, plan the framing for a house, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great advice. Starting a business is difficult work, though. My advice is always to get an internship at a big tech company that you respect. Learn from the masters in your industry. There is so much to being a developer that is not taught in CS curriculum: tools, teamwork, managing a large codebase, dealing with ambiguous specs and constraints, etc.

More and more I have come to believe that while knowing the fundamental CS theory is important, software engineering is a craft that is best learned through apprenticeship. Sure, you can learn the theory in school, then try a bunch of things and figure it out on your own, but the best developers I've met are those that have studied under great mentors for the first few years of their careers. Once you have that basic training, you are much better equipped to venture off on your own.

<comment><USER7> While it is true that apprenticeship can be very fulfilling and meaningful, it can only do so if the individual is ready for it. The linked text mentions the blasé type people for whom nothing seems important enough -- these would learn or develop much under a mentor.

I'm intrigued by your suggestion, as somebody who learned the trade on my own, got a job with very poor terms (which nobody would tell me, because hey wow it's a programming job, amazing) -- and then I woke up, realized where I was, and started pursuing a degree in computer science instead. Best decision I ever made.

I think my story isn't very uncommon, but my question is: how would you approach getting a mentor?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I hear you. My first jobs out of college were also not as inspired as they could have been, partially because I didn't have a great mentor to guide me through the process.

My advice for finding a mentor is to look for a job at a company with people you respect and look up to. You want to work with engineers who are better than you and can teach you things. It sounds like you're in school right now, but if this is an option for you: start interviewing at tech companies and see what you find. There are many mediocre companies but also many great ones. If you're in SF (or willing to move here) send me an email and I can help out.

If you're not able to get a new job, you can still learn a lot from people around you. I have mentored a few people off and on over the past few years. Some people I've met through friends or through formal mentorship programs like HackBright. I think you'll find that there are a lot of engineers out there willing to meet up and help you learn.

And if you're currently in school: well, that's what school is for ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _If you look like you're paying attention, teachers will like you even if you never talk to them. This is exactly how I got my job as a teaching assistant for programming classes and I only remember talking to the teacher once or twice all semester. This job ended up being the reason why I got a job interview with every company I submitted my resume to. It doesn't take much to get a significant advantage over everyone else in college._

This is a great point. And also everything that's wrong with both university education and "the interview process" condensed into a single paragraph: non- functional behaviour, selective disclosure, cognitive bias, and path- dependency....etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have asked the question in tech interviews "what do you do to stay on top of things?" and you'd be disappointed to know how many people say "well, nothing really". What you do to stay informed is the #1 thing that separates top engineers from the rest.

</comment><comment><USER10> I started and sold a business in college. It was quite stressful and I missed out on a lot of great social and networking opportunities. I wouldn't do it unless it is a simple side business.

The only thing i regret is not studying abroad.

<comment><USER11> Agree. College is too expensive and unique to get distracted by taking on a lot of other commitments. I don't know what kind of college the OP attended, but if it's not hard enough to be genuinely challenging and demand your full attention, honestly I think you're doing it wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What about "Be involved with a core group of friends, go to parties, and have a good time"?

<comment> atom-morgan I figured he's already doing that :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Always Be Closing – Pull Request Management Service - <AUTHOR> https://www.thoughtdealership.com/post/beta-testers-wanted <comment><USER2> This should really be a GitHub feature that is on be default on every repo: [https://www.thoughtdealership.com/post/delete- comments/](https://www.thoughtdealership.com/post/delete-comments/)

> Delete Reaction Comments is an Always Be Closing (ABC) feature that deletes > comments from pull requests that are better expressed as GitHub reactions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. Recently (past half year) GitHub enabled a feature where duplicate comments are automatically edited to be hidden comments. I think it's a continuation of the GitHub feature that allows repository owners to hide a comment. Two caveats: (1) you can't hide a comment using the GitHub API; (2) I haven't tested whether duplicate comments trigger an email notification. Ideally they would not trigger notification.</comment></comment>


Not for sale - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2233-not-for-sale <comment><USER2> I like 37 Signals. I like Joel Spolsky. I like Paul Graham. I occasionally even read Techcrunch. However, I believe all of these people (and many others) tend to occasionally overstate and undersupport their positions. I can't blame them for it. After all, shoddy generalization provokes snarky rebuttal, which leads to counter-rebuttal, which leads to increased exposure. It's a great play for the writers; unfortunately, while the writers are busy racking up traffic, readers are unwittingly pissing away the hours spectating a geekier version of Jerry Springer.

I would pay good money to obtain access to a stream of intrinsically interesting content without any of this overstated, undersupported crap.

Edit: My (overstated? undersupported?) assertion that this article is overstated, undersupported crap is now the top comment. The irony is disturbing. I hope someone builds a product that eliminates these frustrations for me (and others) in the future.

<comment><USER3> I agree. If you're getting sick of reading our overstated and undersupported crap, I suggest getting a puppy. During the first few months of his life you'll be too busy to surf the internet.

I barely have time for one or two HN stories a day, now, and I haven't been to Reddit since picking Taco up at the airport.

<comment><USER2> Hi, Joel. I've learned a lot from your stuff.

I guess I'm just frustrated that the current structure of web has created all sorts of malincentives around the exchange of knowledge. Trollish content attracts more attention, so well-meaning creators of worthwhile content are incentivized to wrap legitimate ideas in trollish presentation in order to reach a larger audience.

I wish this weren't the case. I hope it changes in the future.

<comment><USER4> That's the same problem that TV and radio "news" has had for a long time. I don't think the problem has to do with the structure of the web. I think the problem has to do with human beings. And given that this keeps repeating itself, I wouldn't call it a "problem," more just "reality." I agree it sucks though, but presumably the low cost of spreading information on the web will allow niche information sources to flourish. HN itself is an example of getting closer to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Steve Jobs _was_ a serial entrepreneur—starting Apple, then Pixar, then NeXT, then returning to transform Apple. Maybe he didn't want to be at the time, but in his Stanford commencement speech he said (with the benefit of retrospect) that getting fired from Apple was one of the most important events in his life. Here's what he said:

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

Now, Steve didn't flip Apple, he didn't sell out. But the point is that he did start over from scratch. 37signals are right that building a business for the principal purpose of flipping it is probably a perverse goal. But being a serial entrepreneur is not a bad thing, and Jobs is precisely an example of why it's not a bad thing.

<comment><USER6> I was going to say the same thing but you beet me to it.

I'd also add that Warren Buffett isn't an entrepruer in the same sense that someone running a tech startup is.

<comment><USER7> I'm curious what you mean with the Warren Buffet comment. Running a tech startup and running Berkshire are completely different, so I'm not sure what sort of comparison you are making.

<comment><USER6> "Running a tech startup and running Berkshire are completely different,"

Exactly, it's rather silly to expect a tech entrepreneur to follow the same career path as Warren Buffett.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> success is a great thing, but this constant "we're the only ones that are doing it right" attitude is getting old.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I agree. 37s have become a slight parody of themselves. They used to point and laugh about how web business was done in an 'enterprisey' way by their example company Enormicon (I think it was called).

Now we have a set of cliches for a small funky online company should act.

It is all about subverting the dominant X paradigm where X is anything that you don't like or don't use or don't understand.

\- Only use Apple computers to subvert the dominant Windows OS paradigm

\- Only use Rails to subvert the dominant PHP/Java paradigm

\- Only use Textmate for editing to subvert the dominant Vim/Emacs/Notepad/Eclipse paradigm

\- Use swear words in your presentations to subvert the dominant politeness- to-people-who-pay-into-conferences paradigm

I could go on. I am generalising here too! But sooner or later 37s may wake up and realise that they are the new mainstream amongst the web dev crowd.

They have slayed the monster of PHP/Java.

Perhaps its is time to stop playing the hip outsider?

<comment><USER10> What's wrong with that paradigm? If you believe that your technology or philosophy is better than the status quo, why wouldn't you argue for that? Why wouldn't you want to convince others to do the same? The progress of the world demands on the spreading of good ideas.

Also, there are still many, many, many more PHP and Java developers and shops out there than there are Rails. That shift is far from done.

Once the good ideas have become mainstream, the work on those are done, but by then I'm sure even better ideas are available and the process starts anew.

This is not bad, this is healthy.

<comment><USER9> The contradictions of success!

Don't get me wrong, I have worked with Rails - I admire what 37s have done and a good rate of churn in new ideas in any profession can be healthy and welcome thing.

I just wonder if 37s have gone from being the underdogs? What do you rebel against when you are the status quo - at least among the opinion formers and alpha geeks?

It is like when a renegade leftfield music act become mainstream. Look at Rage Against the Machine (with their leftist anti-capitalist music) becoming millionaires after signing up to one of the biggest capitalist music corporations on the planet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Egads. There is nothing wrong with selling. Imagine this scenario: You sell your _first_ company, perhaps you've bootstrapped it and perhaps you sell it for 8 digits. Then you can create a _second_ company (yes, people, it IS possible to create TWO companies unless your fist company was a fluke and you're unable to come up with a second company idea). Starting a second company with serious money in the bank gives one a level of freedom you cannot possibly imagine today. The 37Signals gurus always express their ideas relative to having only a single company in one's lifetime (because that's what they know). I've started and sold two companies to date and I couldn't be happier with the outcome (that's an understatement). I am having more fun than I ever had in my life and had I not sold, I would have never met my fiance -- she's the true passion in my life and startups don't hold a candle to her!

And my next company will be something wayyy out there -- probably so far out that I can't get funding because it's too risky. The only reason I can do that is because I sold my first two companies very early on and I have just enough financial wiggle room to where I can, for now, take some risks. I see companies like 37Signals making safe, predictable product bets and leaning on their brand and existing customer base for income, and that's fine. But the world needs risk takers, too. And taking risk requires capital and if that means selling a couple of companies before they turn into empires, then count me in! If I were to do it all over, I wouldn't change a thing.

</comment><comment><USER12> First off, almost everything is for sale at the right price. If someone offered 37signals one trillion dollars would the sell? Of course.

Also, there are other reasons to sell than "some sucker is willing to pay x". Maybe you are burnt out, want to spend more time with your family, try something new, take some risk off the table.

There is a nugget of truth in much of what 37signals says, but it is always stated in such absolute terms that it becomes off-putting.

<comment><USER13> > Almost everything is for sale at the right price. If someone offered > 37signals one trillion dollars would the sell? Of course.

The fact is, nobody is offering 37Signals a trillion dollars with no strings attached. Actual offers would involve non-competes, possibly demands the founders stay on for a year or more, the right to fire employees, the right to raise prices or otherwise make things unpleasant for customers the founders like, and so on.

We can't say "Everyone's soul is for sale at the right price," get a yes, and then come back to reality and pull out a two hundred page term sheet and demand that they consider it since "We've established that they're for sale."

This is roughly akin to asking me if I would work for Microsoft if given a million dollar signing bonus. Does that mean I'm open to working for Micosoft? Or can I stick to my assertion that I'm not interested in working for Micosoft now or in the foreseeable future?

<comment><USER14> Out of curiosity, why not Microsoft specifically?

<comment><USER13> Here's a question: _Why_ work for Microsoft? A friend went to work there recently, and he made a very good point: In Micosoft's "First Great Age," they had a mission everyone could understand: A computer on every desktop and in every household. This is not one of those craptastic missions CEO's write on their corporate retreats full off synergies and leverages, it's clear, direct, and best of all it's objective, it's measurable.

What's the mission now that there is a computer on every desktop and in every household? Is it as clear? Is it as direct? Will it last for a decade or more? Is it meaningful to every employee?

All I need is someone to answer that question for me and I'll be ready to change my mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've never seen a company announce so incessantly that they are not for sale.

<comment><USER16> Calacanis hammered dhh pretty hard about it when he was on TWIST last Friday [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2219-jason-calacanis-vs- david...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2219-jason-calacanis-vs-david- heinemeier-hansson-on-this-week-in-startups)

<comment><USER17> hammered? really?

<comment><USER16> Well, "hammered" meaning he asked probably 5 or 6 variations of "Would you ever sell?", "What if someone offered you 10x revenue, would you sell?", "What would it take to get you to sell?", etc, even after dhh gave the same answer every time.

<comment><USER18> <cheney>I bet if we injected him with sodium pentathol and water-boarded that boy we'd get the truth out of him</cheney>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 37Signals pushes people to ask _WHY_. A lot of entrepreneurs are only in it for the end game -- money, fame, et al -- they demand that you do something you care about. Too many people view startups as a means to an end so it's a welcome message.

It just so happens these same people ultimately have the most success because it gives them the endurance to stick with it.

<comment><USER20> To be fair: they also got really lucky. There are 37signals outcomes wherein they would not be writing cocky posts about never wanting to sell.

<comment><USER21> Lucky in what way? These guys executed their tails off for a decade to get to this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I personally always liked that Chris Rock monologue for the exhortation to build capital rather than frivolously consuming status symbols. Probably true in tech, too. (I don't know what our rims are, exactly, but I'm sure we've got a couple options...)

<comment><USER20> Can we work something about jquery-ui and "clear heels" into this bit, too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not to nitpick, but the other reason acquisitions sometimes make sense is that a bigger "parent" might open doors that it would take a smaller company a long time to get to, particularly in terms of scaling. In a sense, getting bought by a big parent can (in some cases!) be equivalent to taking VC - funding, yes, but also advice and connections (traded for a measure of control!)

Now, the benefits are often illusory (see: pretty much anything Conde Nast has acquired). But sometimes it's actually true - particularly when there are economies of scale or actual (I hate this word) synergies.

This is pretty much the Google promise, isn't it? "Get bought by Google, get access to infrastructure you could never afford on your own!" This makes sense for some businesses, not so much for others (FWIW, 37s is probably in the latter category).

<comment><USER24> Facebook was the former (they could've benefited a lot from Google's infrastructure and knowledge). Google could've also benefited from Microsoft's experience and infrastructure.

Who's the sucker now?

The biggest disadvantage is that big companies that are willing to buy aren't risk takers ... they'll either dilute your idea, or kill your project. Google is my kind of company, but they've killed at least a couple of startups they've bought already.

Of course, I wouldn't place 37signals in the same league. But he does have a point ... if your company can handle the growth without external resources, than why sell?

<comment><USER17> if your business can't grow without a parent then it's probably charity, not a business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So it's OK to be an acquirer of companies (Apple, MS, Oracle, Berkshire), but it's not OK to sell out to one?

<comment><USER20> Yes. That is what he is saying. What's the problem with that logic?

<comment><USER18> 1\. In order for there to be a market, there have to be both buyers and sellers, so being a seller creates value and is a good thing.

2\. He is saying that if you are a buyer then you are doing it "for the vision", but if you are a seller then you are doing it just for "a quick flip". I doubt that very much.

<comment><USER25> There doesn't have to be a market in startups. What is a startup trying to sell, their product or their shares? The lines can blur a bit, but ultimately it's the buyer that's going to take the product forward in the market and generate the value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> An interesting perspective, I guess. He seems to be saying that he's in it for the fame and the glory, which I guess is fine if that's his preference. Practicality suggests taking a good payout when it appears, but of course every circumstance is different and requires individual consideration.

For the record, many of the listed business leaders have sold businesses, and considered selling their flagship businesses but felt the offers were too low. I remember reading this specifically about Google, but don't want to find a source (searching "google acquisition" isn't really helpful these days). Jobs sold NeXT; I think he would have sold NeXT even if Apple was not the buyer. etc.

Buffet et al are driven by practicality. Dynastic ambitions are an obstruction on the way to Buffet's status.

<comment><USER10> Oh, make no mistake. I'm in it for the money too. But I think there's more money to be made owning my own company for the next twenty years than there is selling it for 10-15 times today profits (the realistic, going price for profitable software companies).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> We need more people building Empires.

<comment><USER28> Yes, because without Empires, there would be no need for Jedi and then where would we be?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think DHH on Jason's Twist show left an opening that could make him do an about-turn at any time.

First, he says he would never sell the company, not for 150 million dollars, because he's not in it for the money. So, ok, he won't sell the company.

However, he also said, you should always be working on your best idea. If you're not working on your best idea, then you're doing it wrong.

He says that 37 signals and its products are his best ideas.

Ok, following me? If one day, he came up with some idea out of the blue, out of inspiration, out of some life-changing event, out of...wherever.... and that turned out to be a better idea than 37 signals....ummmm then what?

Then he should sell his company to go work on that "best idea". No?

<comment><USER17> 1\. they already have quite a few products at 37signals

2\. he addressed that - at least this idea works for them right now and had for past 10 years

3\. starting from scratch now will not yield answer to whether new idea was better in next 10 years

<comment><USER29> I'm not talking about an idea that can fall under the 37signals brand. I'm talking about an idea completely out of left field. For example, what if he suddenly was enlightened with how he could solve world hunger? Or a completely new form of alternative energy that could be easily and quickly distributed?

You wouldn't exactly have a 37 signals homepage that showcases Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, Campfire, and now introducing World Feed, the solution to World Hunger!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> _Selling your company only makes sense if you think they can do a better job than you can._

There's nothing wrong with that. The person who's consistently able to spot talent may not be good at nurturing said talent. That's why some people are headhunters and others are coaches. It has nothing to do with meekness.

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't know - I guess if you want to sell, sell, if you don't want to sell, don't sell? Why does it even concern other people?

</comment><comment><USER31> This post is way off.

Each of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet have created 3+ billion dollar businesses each. Steve and Warren have sold multiple companies when the prices rose above 1 billion. Larry treats sailing and real estate like a startup designed to flip as well.

</comment><comment><USER32> For the record, _anything_ I own is "for sale" at the right price. (And no, I don't consider that I "own" my wife or daughter :-))

</comment><comment><USER33> Chris Rock is wrong: Shaq is wealthy.

<comment><USER34> I looked this up. Shaq's net worth is $130 million. The Cavs owner, Dan Gilbert is worth about $1 Billion.</comment></comment>


Misuse of the term "Engineer" in job ads - <AUTHOR>

I've noticed an anti-pattern in job adverts of the mis-labelling of the job position of a "programmer" as a "software engineer". There are major differences between the two so why do job adverts do it? <comment><USER2> Technically, it's illegal in most states to represent one's self as an 'engineer' unless you hold an RPE license.

</comment><comment><USER3> Guess what a janitor is in New York? A custodial ENGINEER</comment>


Tiny Keyboard Experiment: Living with the 'Minivan' – ExtremeTech - <AUTHOR> https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/255783-tiny-keyboard-experiment-living-minivan <comment><USER2> I don't get these mechanical keyboards. Maybe it's a reaction to all those shallow laptop keyboards, which i as a thinkpad user have not encountered...

Or maybe its a gamer thing?

<comment><USER3> It's like beauty, it is mostly in the eye of the beholder.

As an example, you will have to pry my IBM model M out of my cold, dead, hand (and I am not at all a gamer).

And I am not the only non-gamer loving it:

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/why-i- use-a-20-year-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/why-i- use-a-20-year-old-ibm-model-m-keyboard/)

The feeling (tactile feedback besides the acoustic one) of pressing a key and being 110% sure that you have pressed it (same thing happens on good ol' HP calculators, such as the HP 28 C that you'll have to pry out of my other cold, dead hand ;)).

Still a lot of people believe that the M keyboard is way too loud.

Anyway, even if someone is a fan of long travel, clicky keyboards, from that to spending US$ 250 on a kit (+ 115 US$ to buy the actual keys) in order to have a keyboard where you won't find the Enter key where it should be there is a huge gap, however.

That's (besides the time and labour, that can be considered "fun") it's 365 US$ + shipping for a nice, little keyboard, frankly it is IMHO simply too much money for the "privilege".

Clickity, ckickity, click ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> $250, you have to assemble it yourself, no numbers row.</comment>


Clicky: How does an upstart fee-driven service beat a giant like Google? - <AUTHOR> http://returncontrol.com/how-clicky-beats-google-analytics-20

<comment><USER2> been looking at giving clicky a shot, anyone else have experience using them?</comment>


The Internet Industry Is on a Cloud -- Whatever That May Mean  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123802623665542725.html

<comment><USER2> "It's really just complete gibberish. What is it?" He added: "When is this idiocy going to stop?"

And I wonder why Orcale is struggeling?

It's also funny how the previous Marc Benioff worked for Oracle before, left, and started one of the biggest "Cloud" success stories. ie Salesforce.com

</comment><comment><USER3> What does it say about "the cloud" when the Wall Street Journal is just now covering it? It feels like my mom discovering Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER4> Unfortunately, nobody can be told what the [cloud] is. You have to see it for yourself.</comment>


Go HTTP routing benchmark. Round 2 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gin-gonic/go-http-routing-benchmark/blob/master/round2.md

<comment><USER2> Great job you guys. I am using gin to build out a site right now. I like the performance. I initially tried using the pongo2 template system you mention in the docs, but I ended up switching to the html/template as I found there was more documentation and the use case was easier for me. I plan on switching over to gorazor once I settle on final html. What do you recommend for json to get the best performance out of a json rest api built on gin? I came across ffjson but I have not tested it yet.</comment>


Rising Insulin Prices Compel Woman to Buy Medicine on Craigslist - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/health/Rising-Insulin-Prices-Compel-Woman-to-Buy-Medicine-on-Craigslist-490807341.html <comment><AUTHOR> "A recent study from Yale University found 1 in 4 patients admitted to cutting back and rationing their insulin because of the hike in prices."</comment>


Show HN: SVG 3D Builder – Build 3D Models with SVG - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/captainwz/svg-3d-builder <comment><USER2> If you think this is cool you might think AFrame is cool:

[https://aframe.io/docs/0.8.0/introduction/](https://aframe.io/docs/0.8.0/introduction/)

<comment><USER3> Aframe is awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's unbelievably slow. I'm confident it's not the developer's fault. It serves as a good warning. It just goes to show that Web technology still has a long way to go.

SVG (and to a lesser extent Canvas) are trainwrecks in terms of performance. It's really a sad story that HTML5 has been evangelized so strongly, yet even ten years later it can't hold a candle to Flash in many regards.

<comment><USER5> It's slow because it's abusing what SVG can deliver. It's only a good warning in regards to avoid using the wrong tool for the job. If you want want 3D in the browser, then go WebGL.

> It's really a sad story that HTML5 has been evangelized so strongly, yet > even ten years later it can't hold a candle to Flash in many regards.

Not sad at all. It needs to be evangelized more since it's clear that other solutions did not work. By other solutions I mean a private company design something and forces it on the world. (Flash, Java applets, Real Player, Shockwave...)

We have all the features flash had now (and had it for many years now)

<comment><USER6> Java was open source and Sun wanted Netscape to embed Java in their browser. According to Brendan Eich, Netscape considered having both JS and Java along with a canvas element both could draw on, but time constraints dictated otherwise. So Java ended up being used as a plugin.

<comment><USER7> Was java ever truly free though? Oracle's shenanigans indicate otherwise.

<comment><USER8> > _Was java ever truly free though? Oracle 's shenanigans indicate otherwise._

It probably could have been, pre-Oracle.

<comment><USER9> No, Sun was not looking to open it up and even got in a spat with Microsoft over Java. MS responded by pulling Java out of Windows, which broke Outlook Web Access and required fast work to implement the first XMLHttpRequest Active X implementation of that now-standard XHR (=> Fetch) API as replacement for the Java async-io class that OWA used while Java was in Windows.

<comment><USER8> I meant that Oracle is less amenable to fixing the social issues they create surrounding their products, which hamper their usefulness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm reminded of vrml. That was in the 90s. Back then I expected more by now.

<comment><USER11> We did get more. And less. Many of the innovations of VRML-97 have been forgotten, ready to be rediscovered. But progress on other fronts has been amazing.

Mostly the notion of treating your entire app as a simulation, just like games do. VRML-97's event loop, warts and all, made things a lot easier.

VRML-97 also had a true prototype/instance class system, way more like David Unger's Self language than what we have today. (Ironically, JavaScript is moving away from prototypes and more towards classes each iteration. Too bad.)

Scene graphs, of course. Really just a DSL for describing object graphs. Very succinct & powerful.

A few things deflected VRML-97.

Sun placed their bets on Java3D and ignored OpenGL. In addition to scene graphs, Java3D had the notion of live (active) objects, sending messages to each other. It was the 90s, people still bought into OO. It was an idea worth exploring that didn't pan out. No shame in trying.

The bigger mistake was the VRML steering committee went all in for XML and switched to Web3D. Completely stopped all the hard earned momentum. Classic example of Joel Spolsky's "Don't Rewrite" rule. This idea was not worth exploring.

Source: Implemented VRML-97 browser, wrote some games and authoring tools, coauthored the original JavaGL bindings with "Alligator Descartes", lobbied Sun & SGI for years to drop Java3D and promote JavaGL (which they eventually did, but too late).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> three.js has an SVG renderer that does a decent job - [https://threejs.org/examples/#svg_sandbox](https://threejs.org/examples/#svg_sandbox)

<comment><USER4> Dude, this is the kind of stuff I could run in realtime on an Amiga. Maybe not at the same resolution, but the resolution isn't the bottleneck in this demo either, I'm struggling to hit 40Hz at any scale.

<comment><USER8> On the Amiga, you didn't go the stupid way around and represent your object as a series of text path strings which need to be parsed into objects and _then_ finally displayed for each frame.

You can get your Amiga performance with canvas; and you can get way better with WebGL. This is just a case of wrong-tool-for-wrong-job.

<comment><USER4> Do you realize that in Canvas colors are represented as a "series of text strings" that need to be parsed?

Did you know that drawing paths requires a ton of pretty expensive Javascript calls or _alternatively_ passing "a series of text strings"? Maybe the string way is actually faster, I haven't tested it because it isn't supported everywhere.

Were you aware that vector rendering is not usually done on GPUs, mainly because of the high overhead of state changes when using a graphics API, especially one like WebGL?

I guess you could do all your rendering in software in Javascript (which for these purposes is nowhere close to what you can get with C/C++) to a byte buffer and then do the final transfer to Canvas. Even in that case, you might be surprised how much overhead that final transfer has...

<comment><USER13> > Were you aware that vector rendering is not usually done on GPUs, mainly > because of the high overhead of state changes when using a graphics API, > especially one like WebGL?

But it's actually worse than that, isn't it? It's not only that I can't render a complex SVG path on the GPU, but I can't even apply a GPU accelerated transform on existing child nodes of an SVG.

Why is it that <div> can get a GPU-accelerated transform but <g> can't?

<comment><USER8> > _Why is it that <div> can get a GPU-accelerated transform but <g> can't?_

Something that could either be called laziness or difficulty, depending on your perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, I actually built this exact thing, a long long time ago, for Adobe when they were building their browser plugin. Mine was a 3D molecule viewer.

I had almost the exact same math in there and it performed about the same until I showed it to an old-school guy I worked with who used to do game programming at sega. He goes "try this" and proceeds to replace a couple screens of trig with:

        d = 0.001;
        x = x + d * y;
        y = y - d * x;

This rotates an object around the z axis with enough fidelity to spin on the screen for days. Making d smaller makes it turn less, but is more accurate. You can repeat this with x and z to rotate around y, or y and z to go around x.

It took me a lot longer than I'd care to admit to understand why that works, but it does. Maybe this will help you. I also tried doing solid models, but the layering was difficult enough that I lost interest and focused on wireframes. If you'd like I can try to find my old source for this.

</comment><comment><USER15> Would it be possible to embed the JS within the SVG itself?</comment>


Goodbye Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/id/183180/page/1 <comment><USER2> When I broke up with my girlfriend, I de-activated from Facebook. Honestly, the experience was incredible. I felt like I had my life back. I ended up calling my friends and talking to them instead of writing stupid wall posts. I felt so self-aware of my free time that I actually started exercising more. I didn't have to fear that I would get in trouble at work for not working, nor did I have to delete inappropriate tags/pictures/comments. AND because I wasn't stalking anyone, I actually developed a healthy relationship with my ex.

I came back to Facebook though...eventually. My friends cried foul. I gave in. But as my social groups dissociate and morph, I'm feeling the need to leave again. Some things in life are just better off forgetting. You keep in touch with the friends you want to see and those that make an actual effort back. Poking doesn't cut it.

Thats how life should be lived. I want it back.

<comment><USER3> I had a similar experience in college when I cut off AIM and TV for 3 months. I felt like I had 30 hour days-it was great. Like you said, it really helps you distill your group of friends. You lose contact with the occasional friends and build deeper friendships with your core group. I still don't instant message much but TV crept back in pretty quickly.

<comment><USER4> I got tired of reprogramming my remote when the batteries died and haven't had a working one for about 2 months. I HIGHLY recommend tossing your remote, it really helps you evaluate your TV habits. You can still watch something if you really want to, but you have to actually plan for it and know what you want to see (activates executive brain function) as a result I am much more likely to simply forgo TV and do something constructive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it facebook that is the problem or the use of facebook?

I log into facebook about once a week (slightly more recently but hey I'm inbetween jobs). I check my messages respond, see if there is anything of intrest. Beyond that the only time I respond on facebook is when I get an email about it.

I do find facebook useful to send a message to that girl I was best friends with in Middle School, or that dude that I hung out with in High School.

If you limit your use of facebook then it does not control your life. This sounds more like a case of an addiction than something wrong with the platform (though there are things wrong with the platform imho).

<comment><USER6> This. This this this.

I check Facebook a lot. Possibly too much. Partly it's because I'm in college and it's winter and so I spend most of my time sitting in front of the computer as-is, partly it's because I'm sure I do have a bit of an addiction problem. But for the last 6 months I've used it with only 50 or so friends: people who are close to me. One friend is in Argentina. Some friends are across the country. We keep in touch and tell each other things using Facebook. It's faster than using email, and it's less awkward than calling. (I hate the sound of a person over the phone, and some people I just don't talk to.)

But it doesn't turn you into a monster unless you let it. You don't have to poke or use applications. You don't have to incessantly update your status. Facebook doesn't force it. In fact, it punishes you a bit in that it adds clutter to the interface.

I find it kind of sad that this is the tripe Newsweek sees fit to print nowadays. I stopped reading their paper magazine over the summer, because I was astonished at how, in the two years I read it, it had gone from a pretty decent magazine to a publication interested in sensationalism and petty stories. It seems the trend has continued.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Note the link at the bottom of the page to share the story ... on Facebook.

<comment><USER8> Found that ironic, and for "spite" used it to post to my FaceBook

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Only interesting thing about this article is that it may be part of a larger reversal of sentiment toward Facebook by the main stream media.

But I have felt for a while that the way you share on Facebook is geared toward kids & college students. Once you're grown up, the distinction between colleague, friend, and boss can get much blurrier.

I want to be able share some things with old friends from childhood, and other things with friends from work, etc.

I'm more sensitive to the fact that every email I send someone is an imposition, and had better be worth their time, because every email I get is yet another thing to deal with. I want a way to share things with people in a way that isn't "push".

I think a "Facebook for grownups" site that took these ideas into account could get a lot of traction. (Maybe such a thing already exists, but I haven't encountered it.)

<comment><USER10> LinkedIn?

<comment><USER9> Focused on professional networking, not creative sharing.

<comment><USER11> FriendFeed?

<comment><USER9> I want to be able to share some stuff with group A (e.g. old friends), other stuff group B (e.g. project collaborators), with the option of having stuff I post to group A being invisible to group B (and vice-versa).

I don't think FriendFeed can do this, but I'd be interested to learn if I'm wrong.

[edit:

related thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=451491>

]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As someone who doesn't use Facebook or anything similar, I have to ask: does Facebook get you laid or get you good friends? Why do people use it?

<comment><USER13> Legitimate question. From <http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html>: "Your 'use case' should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?"

Ah, but if he's prone to computer addiction, the software needs to shove him outside to interact with real people, or shove him out of his chair to enjoy his girlfriend/boyfriend/pet(?!) in the next room. Perhaps Facebook needs the various noprocrast features HN has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't know why but i laugh really hard at

"Instead of scouring my friends' friends' photos for other possible friends, I could have been raising money for Darfur relief"

One way for facebook to be a bit useful is to gain 1000s of "friends" and create a group or app to raise awareness or money for your cause.

I only have a handful of real friend so I don't feel ashamed of marketing to fb friends especially if it is for a good cause.

</comment><comment><USER15> I use facebook for keeping in touch with the weak links in my network ... the strong ones you will (hopefully) be in touch with in "real life"

</comment><comment><USER16> I use Facebook much like I use LinkedIn: as a way for people to find me (and sometimes to find people I have lost touch with).

To keep my Facebook profile somewhat "alive", I have my Twitter account set to automatically update my Facebook status and I use the Wordbook plugin for WordPress to automatically post my latest blog posts to my Facebook Wall. Email alerts on Facebook are configured to notify me of the rare events when someone requests friendship or responds to my Facebook status, so I rarely even need to login.

<comment><USER12> Googling your name doesn't return your personal web site?

<comment><USER16> Yes it does. Try it. Google "raamdev" or "Raam Dev".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For me, facebook just enables a faster way to keep connections with people in the interim between actually doing things with them in person. I can see how it can be destructive to sit on FB for hours on end and not actually go spend time with people, but like anything else, it can be used for good or for ill -it's all about balance.

</comment><comment><USER17> Someone should write a book that outlines the appropriate boundaries for FaceBook.

<comment><USER6> I can do that right now, in quick blurb format.

* Don't accept a friend request from somebody you're not interested in as a person.

* Keep friends with the people that have cameras. Memories are wonderful things to have, and your friends may have more pictures than you do.

* Don't update your status unless you've got something interesting to say.

* If you poke somebody, ask them out later that week. Do not poke somebody you've been friends with for longer than a month.

* Tag people in notes sparingly. Don't tag people who aren't fans of "pass it along" notes.

* Only add applications that add value to your experience.

* If you see a news story in your feed from somebody you aren't interested in, unfriend them. Possibly write them an apology if they're somebody you think you might friend again later.

* If you're friends with Scoble, ignore all these, tag in as many notes as possible, tag photos of your pets with his name so he sees them, and poke, SuperPoke, and Poke-a-mon him to your heart's desire.

Any publishers interested? ;-)

<comment><USER18> Re: step 3, A few million twitter users would beg to differ.

<comment><USER6> The difference is that Twitter is one-way. On Facebook, if you want to use it you have to consciously maintain the friends you've got, because in theory they see everything you do.</comment></comment></comment></comment>