Google Instant Proves Google's Design Process is Broken - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662273/google-equates-design-with-endless-testing-theyre-wrong <comment><USER2> The central point of the article is that certain people (designers, for lack of a precise term) can use their intuition to get better results than actually testing alternatives; to quote the article:

"Testing can only tell you so much -- and it often only reveals that people only like things that are similar to what they've had before. But brilliant design solutions convert people over time, because they're both subtle and ground breaking."

The article provides no evidence to support its claim. For all the anecdotes, not a single one describes a situation where the intuitions of "designers" outperformed a solution based on testing alternatives.

However, the pro-designer propaganda flies thick and fast, repeatedly implying designers would have made a better solution, or seen the solution as obvious without the need for testing:

\- "While that solution seems obvious and not particularly elegant"

\- "Is it just us who find our eyeballs spinning in their sockets...?"

\- "Obviously, none of these (prototypes) were going to work"

\- "A little design know-how would have made that obvious"

\- "(They eventually settled on a blue that is basically the average of all the blues used in hyperlinks across the web. Duh.)"

\- "Google's 'solution' to providing instant results still seems so primitive and ugly"

\- "But brilliant design solutions convert people over time, because they're both subtle and ground breaking."

\- "testing artificially limits the worldview of the people"

\- "has your G-mail or Google Reader gotten any easier to use, or less stressful on your eyes? Have either of them become a pleasure to look at or play with? No."

The author isn't interested in making a coherent argument. The author's interest lies in unashamedly gratifying the readers' sense of importance. It is a website for designers, after all.

<comment><USER3> I felt that the central point the article was trying to make, and I thought made it well, is that design is not about testing a set of obvious solutions and then declaring X the winner because it was tested well.

Firstly that often results in horrid UX experiences, as Google Instant is. It is also, weak for the following reasons:

1\. No innovation happens (which is why Apple came up with the smartphone touch UI and Google just copies it)

2\. People don't like change, so will favour things close to what they had before

You have fallen straight into the same odd thinking dominating Google, that UI is incremental, testable and easily measurable.

You want precise and measurable. That's not design. Jonathan Ives is worth his weight in gold for his design skills as much as Linus Torvalds is worth his weight in gold as a programmer. And we as engineers have to accept that.

Google will never come up with a great design with the way it approaches the problem. While I love their products, none of them have ever blown me away because of their elegance or coherence. They only know how to do simplicity and are beginning to forget how to do that too.

<comment><USER2> If Jonathan Ives submitted a design for Google Instant, and his design was better than the "obvious solutions", then it would test well. If a better solution tests badly then, by definition of the word "test", you're not testing it properly. Whether or not the test candidates are "obvious solutions" or created by designers has no impact on whether testing is good or bad. Maybe someone can test whether testing tests better than not testing :)

I'm not saying that designers' intuition can be replaced by testing, I'm only saying that testing can not be replaced by designers intuition as the article implies. A designers' intuition, after all, hopefully comes from the experiences of informally testing out designs in real life.

What really annoyed me about the article was the attitude of "We designers come up with brilliantly ground-breaking yet subtle designs, and if testing says there is a problem, then ignore the tests because we are always right. Isn't that right, boys? YEAH! WE RULE!"

<comment><USER4> "If Jonathan Ives submitted a design for Google Instant, and his design was better than the "obvious solutions", then it would test well. If a better solution tests badly then, by definition of the word "test", you're not testing it properly."

Innovative products rarely test well, overall. If you test it to a group of visionaries who are comfortable thinking outside the box, then yes, it'll test well. But if you test with a group of regular / casual computer users, non- techies and the like, many innovative or important design decisions may not test well.

Take, for example, USB. The technology came out and was sparsely added to new computers, but always in addition to COM and Parallel ports. Apple saw that USB was the future, so they made the iMac which—gasp!—only contained USB ports. No COM, no Parallel, just USB.

You think that decision would have tested well with users?

"I can't use my existing printer?! That's stupid!"

Except… it was this very decision that made USB successful in the market, because it forced all peripheral manufacturers to make USB devices if they wanted to sell to Mac customers (a large enough market to be worthwhile for virtually all of them).

And so, USB succeeded in the market. But it wouldn't have if Apple had used Google's test-driven approach, because that decision would have tested quite poorly.

<comment><USER5> Hang on, Apple also did the same with firewire and it died even though it was a technically better solution. Its error was it was expensive to manufacture a firewire device as it needed a hardware layer on the device side. USB didn't, so USB devices were cheaper and they won the war once USB 2 came out and the speed difference was negligible.

So not all Apple decisions work, like PC's over Macs. Apple lost that war as the open standard won.

And then sometimes it is the better design, like iPods and iPhones over their competition that wins.

My point is I'm not sure your argument holds in general, sometimes its this, sometimes its the other thing that works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A great example of begging the question. The basic assumption is that Google's UIs are unpopular without any evidence that this is true; given the wide popularity among the people I know (even the designers) I think it'd be more accurate to say that Google is successfully producing clean, functional designs and not even attempting web design contest entries.

UI is more than looking pretty - gmail is popular because it stays out of the way and lets you focus on content, which it handles quite well; in contrast, iTunes increasingly feels like a train-wreck because they swap icons without fixing any of the quirky behaviours and non-standard interface conventions which users must memorize. It was also a confusing comparison because a UI for managing a tightly-curated, highly-structured list containing on average a few thousand items pre-selected by the user isn't obviously relevant to arbitrarily searching across billions of unknown items.

<comment><USER7> Hi there---Thanks for reading. Actually wasn't begging the question at all, or even contesting the results of the testing. Obviously UI is about more than looking pretty, but I was arguing the the Google Instant experience is a good example of testing producing a result that's far from optimal (and which could be a lot better).

As for iTunes, obviously, if you read the piece, I wasn't comparing it to Google. I was comparing the _process_ that produced it -- and how Apple has always gotten better in UI, with each generation, while adding complexity. I don't think Google can really say that for themselves, as the profusion of Google products shows.

<comment><USER8> I just read the article. In it, you assume the product could be better, as you just repeated here ("could be a lot better"). Please explain how that's not begging the question.

<comment><USER7> That was a premise of the article, that the Instant experience was a failure. Obvs, you can disagree, but that's a starting point, for an article that's mostly concerned with answering "Why"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9>
      "has your G-mail or Google Reader gotten any easier to use, or less stressful on your eyes? ... No. Just look at the music listings in new, redesigned iTunes."

Actually, yes I do find gmail and reader easier to use - actually quote preferable. In contrast, iTunes is one of the most confusing pieces of software I have to use on a daily basis - second only to Lotus Notes. All that is Apple is not great.

<comment><USER10> I've wanted to expel this rant for a while: when you pick it apart, iTunes is basically as great as it _can_ be while still running on Windows as well as OSX (not to say that it's great in any absolute sense.) It has to be monolithic to be multi-platform, and it has to be multi-platform to serve as a life-support system for all the iConsumerElectronics on Windows.

If iTunes was OSX-only, it could spray itself all around OSX as a bunch of cute one-screen utilities with clever integration hooks:

1\. The App Store would become part of Software Update (which would thus become a general Mac App Store and App Update manager—hopefully buying out AppFresh and giving MacPorts a GUI);

2\. Contacts, Bookmarks, Notes, etc., and the transfer of media to the iConsumerElectronics in a friendly, GUIful manner, would all be a part of the iSync utility (yes, that exists—it's the ghetto for synching phones that aren't made by Apple);

3\. Podcasts would just be a client program that relies on the same background-downloading daemon that System Updates do, with a modification to read arbitrary feeds, and extract enclosed media files (or torrents!); once downloaded, iSync would just see them and sync them;

4\. iTMS would just be a website, which would expose special content types that Safari would know what to do with (audio/x-apple-ringtone = save to the Music/Ringtones folder, etc.);

5\. and iTunes would be left to be a music library, consisting in its entirety of Playlists, Genius, and perhaps the Radio (and hooks to send events to Ping, if it likes.)

If iTunes was OSX-only, it wouldn't need to know how to burn CDs; it could just allow you to export a playlist as a folder of MP3s, and then integrate audio-CD burning as an option in the OSX Burn Folder menu.

If iTunes was OSX-only, it wouldn't need to have sections for TV Shows, Movies, Books, Ringtones; those would just be folders on your hard drive, which iTMS (through Safari) would write to, and iSync would read from.

There's a thousand other ways it could be better and slimmer—but, if you'll notice, none of these things could work given the restriction that they have to work on Windows as well.

<comment><USER6> Even when iTunes was OS X only it felt awkward and unlike most other OS X programs. The problem is that they bought an OS 9 MP3 player (SoundJam) and have been hacking at it for years without doing the rewrite needed to get things like platform-standard UI, non-blocking I/O, etc. Any time you see a modal dialog, remember it started out on an OS which barely multitasked. Cross platform isn't an issue - Windows has equivalents for every single thing on your list, whether native or something they already ship like Apple Software Update.

As far as package management goes, the problem here is that Apple simply does not care. The Mac sysadmin community has been asking for better solutions for years but it's just not a priority for Apple - even App Store updates, which theoretically are more important, have been broken[1] for something like the last 4 major iTunes releases but since it's merely clumsy and doesn't prevent sales it obviously hasn't been as important as a new version of some non- standard window controls.

[1] The process is now: click on Apps. Click on "Get Updates". Click on "Get All Updates". Wait. Dismiss erroneous "The information on this page is outdated and must be refreshed" dialog. Click on Apps. Click on "Get Updates". Click on "Get All Updates". This from a UI powerhouse? The phone almost gets it right except for the gratuitous password nag.

<comment><USER10> Indeed, it did start out as a part of OS9. However, I think the Principle of Charity applies here—Apple _generally_ employs good engineers, and they got everything _else_ native-ized, standardized, POSIXized, etc. for 10.0. There must have been a particular reason for iTunes being the one thing that got left out of HIG-ification in 10.0 _and every update since_ , and I propose that that particular reason is Windows support.

Yes, Windows does have hooks to add functionality—but hooks aren't enough. The reason Apple could remove components from iTunes was that it could, itself, integrate them into all shipping copies of OSX. Apple doesn't decide what drivers and plug-ins get shipped with Windows, so anything they'd install would be third-party and after-the-fact (which is what already happens: e.g. the CD burner driver bundled into the Windows iTunes installer.) You can't slim down Windows iTunes because you have to ship all the programs that make up the functionality of iTunes, whether modularly or monolithically. However, you _can_ slim down OSX iTunes if you just start saying "this will be an OS feature, not an iTunes feature."

Also, on a completely unrelated note:

> The phone almost gets it right except for the gratuitous password nag.

I've always taken that to be a sudo escalation prompt. You don't want your kids picking up your phone and buying things on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "A second might matter tremendously to an engineer... that's kind of a silly way of thinking about it."

I remember a study done by Google that showed that by shaving off something like 1 second from their load times, they were able to increase the number searches people did substantially, which for Google = millions of dollars in extra revenue from ad clicks. Seconds still matter.

<comment><USER12> Totally agree, this author is missing a critical point: shaving a second of a search doesn't just mean that Google feels faster - it also means that _everything else suddenly feels slower_ in comparison.

<comment><USER13> I'm less interested in how fast Google can return a result. (That should be as fast as possible...)

What really matters to me is how quickly can I find what I'm looking for and go on my way. This is the only metric that really matters.

Total time = search result + visual scanning/deciding

Right now, for me, the total time has increased because the time it takes for me to scan the page and figure out if I want to click a link has increased. Also, because you're being bombarded with extra links as you type, I'm more apprehensive about clicking a link, because I'm wondering if there was a better choice using a different variation of the query.

I loved the older method of as you type updating the query box, but this is information overload.

<comment><USER14> I just open the links in a new tab, then once I have several open I check to see if they are what I want. If they are not I close them and go back to the search tab to refine what I am looking for.

Slightly different topic, but I like Wonder Wheel for searching as well. I start with something intentionally vague if I don't know the exact phrase I want for describing something. Then I select the best choice from the Wonder Wheel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While Google Instant is somewhat annoying to me, and therefore turned off, on my Mac (because of the interaction between it and Safari), I think that the process of throwing any old idea against the wall and seeing if it sticks is a sound one in the usual case. The argument the article is making seems to be that theory is better than experiment; I think this would only be true in the case where experiment has shown over and over to be in line with theory, but UI design is such a young field that I'm strongly skeptical of that claim. Surely there have been enough recent accidental or surprising improvements that experiment with unusual ideas is still worthwhile?

</comment><comment><USER16> I guess I'm in the minority, but I totally agree w/ the OP. I think instant works for me about half the time, the other half it's just confusing and messy.

I'm hoping that future iterations of instant can bring some polish to the UX, because right now it seems messy and unnecessary. If I was to continue to work as rapidly as it does now I want some more context to the results it's spitting out, like in the 1st design iteration they show....

I feel like they could have hit it out of the park with some real magic, but instead they (b)punted and put out the ugly untested beta.

This is the search design for the people who use google to get to their facebook login, and not for those who are truly searching for information.

<comment><USER17> "This is the search design for the people who use google to get to their facebook login"

Do you personally even encounter 'Google Instant'?

If I'm not using my browser's search bar, I've got my personalized iGoogle page open.

They've made changes to the vanilla Google homepage which is most likely, predominantly visited by the sort of people who use Google to get to their facebook login anyway.

<comment><USER16> I do this sometimes too, which is usually when google instant works for me, like when I've visited a page a bunch of times, but I can't be bothered to bookmark it or save the search in some other way, and I know it will come up easily in the first page of results- I just want to get to a page super fast, and it's not a url per se, but something specific I searched for and need again.

I'd say most times I search through my chrome bar, but sometimes I do end up on the google page for whatever reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey all---I'm the original author of the post, and I wanted to thank you for starting a feisty debate. Really thrilled to see both supporters and critics of my view. One thing I do want to point out tho: The post was really meant to show one, alternative way of thinking. I actually believe that the best results come from some kind of blend of the two approaches. That is what I think Apple is really good at -- and not just making pretty boxes for circuit boards.

Also, in the comments I made about a second mattering, it was exactly my point that while seconds are important to engineers, they may or may not be to _users_. And a focus on actual user stresses is the essence of design.

Anyway, thanks for reading and commenting!

<comment><USER18> Cliff,

I totally disagree with your premise. If I put it in the nicest possible way, you are suggesting that engineers can hit some sort of local maxima for their design decisions with testing, but that 'professional' designers can get them out of that with bold, intuitive changes.

It's nice to think so. It's certainly a possible difficulty in design: many designers have made their names reworking a tired design into something iconic and revolutionary. (This article about Tag Heuer's digital stopwatch is a great example: <http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/?p=3748>).

In this case though, I think you're missing it. If you believe design's God is usability, that is that design is about providing function to actual users of the design, then you're on the wrong side of this conversation: the side with only your opinion, arguing against the side with billions of datapoints.

Since search is the only way Google makes money, let me ask you a rhetorical question: how long do you think Google Instant will stay turned on if it worsens the user experience? By worsens, I mean that empirically users demonstrate less advertising engagement, or show that they are getting worse search results?

So on the seconds conversation: seconds matter to USERS. Seconds only matter to google's ass-kicking advertising engineering team because they matter to users. Google is accidentally leaking some proprietary search information to you in those videos -- they're telling you: ultra-ultra-fast search makes Google more money because users like it better.

Where good design is less easy to statistically evaluate, say with Google Buzz or News, this approach falters, but I think picking on Google Instant/Homepage search is choosing exactly the wrong section of the company to complain about: these guys are the absolute best in the business in the search results / advertising world, it's their bread and butter, and they test the hell out of stuff like this before it launches.

As to the matter of personal speed preferences, a counterpoint: speed matters to me a lot, and I want to use a search engine like it's an extension of my brain. Case in point: one of the computers on my desktop uses duckduckgo for its search bar. It's noticeably slower than google for searches. Maybe .2 or .3 seconds vs .05 seconds. That's annoying. I notice it every time I search with DDG; it takes me out of the flow of whatever I'm doing that required some searchable information. I would guess that I'm not alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is just very different mentality between thinking as a designer vs thinking as an engineer.

Google in particular is a data driven company. Most decisions are made by results from experiments. Google is able to do this because the economies of scale. They have tons of data. As a matter of fact, the "experimental traffic" is higher than 100%, indicating multiple levels of experiments are conducted in every search (on average). I remember the quote from a session "A/B testing is for marketers. Engineers run multivariate experiments."

In terms of traditional designers: their process is more of an art than science. They think, and trust their instincts. They traditionally operate in a setting that can't afford this kind of experiments.

The reality is people are weird and unpredictable. It's statistics and hard science when it's backed by data.

The challenge, of course, is that it is easy to iterate incrementally using measurement data. But for disruptive changes, although you could measure it, the change itself (the alternatives) is often not obvious.

<comment><USER20> You cannot measure everything. You cannot A/B test frustration, or confusion, or discomfort. You cannot measure slight changes in the way your brand or site is perceived. You can vaguely measure of proxies but they're just that, proxies. The danger of a culture built around worshiping data to the point of ignoring everything else is that you forget that you cannot measure everything, including many of the things that matter most.

<comment><USER21> Partially true. While you can't directly test for frustration or confusion, what you can test for is the important (to your business) _effects_ of that frustration or confusion.

Higher bounce rates, lower conversion, changes in dominant navigation path, lower average order value, etc. can be determined from A/B or multi-variate testing, and a lot of companies are much less interested in whether a user is confused than they are in whether any potential confusion is causing a reduction in CR% or AOV.

If the article's rant had argued "A/B or MV testing is a hill-climb and incremental changes backed only by test data virtually assures you'll find a local maxima, but only a daring design decision is capable of moving you to a different, higher, hill," I'd be more inclined to agree.

As it stands, it reads to me like a designer who is frustrated by not being able to scratch his own personal itches, without regard to the underlying business results: <http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/140/>

<comment><USER20> But if you're measuring via proxies you lose causation. Have those gradual changes that immediately increased conversion or upsell by 2% over the last 3 months cheapened the brand and site, causing long-term damage to its perception in the market place? Has the move to weekly newsletters, that brought that burst of business started to make people think of you as irritating and spammy? A/B testing isn't going to tell you that but those blessed metrics are going to start going south down the road and you aren't going to be able to A/B test your way out of it. Perceptions last, brands are ephemeral and empirical, careful testing indicated New Coke should have been a massive hit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I found the article a good read and would have found it somewhat convincing, if it wasn't on a page loaded with everything from a giant photograph to different horizontal bars to all rainbow colors at the bottom, directly under a pink bar.

</comment><comment><USER23> The Google News changes introduced earlier this year proved this to me. You'd be challenged to find a single person on the internet who prefers the new Google News format. It took months for the design team to grant even the slightest hint of a concession, letting people switch back to an (albeit uglier and less efficient) two-column format.

<comment><USER24> I also think their new image search is a disaster. I like the infinite scroll bar (which bing did before them) but I hate how the images pop in and out. The whole experience is jarring.

<comment><USER25> I love the new image search, and find the image popout quite useful when I want to see a image in more detail without the jarring experience of actually going to the page, and not having to click next again to see more images. I don't hover around images unless i want to see detail, i press down on my keyboard to see more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Your entire post seems to be a rant on google testing designs that would be "obvious" for most designers. I am a designer I don't think I agree that some of the things you say are obvious are that obvious. I also believe that line of attack completely ignores all the gold google runs into in the form of non- obvious optimal solutions. So while a majority of tests might return the obvious solution as the optimal one, a minority may return non-obvious optimal solutions. You completely ignore that possibility.

With that said, I agree, I hate google Instant. It's a shiny object that may have limited shelf-life.

</comment><comment><USER27> Fortunately Google Instant has Google Classic built in. You just have to type in a search term and then hit RETURN. I use it this way most of the time out of habit.

Personally I think Google Instant is great, and this guy's design suggestions for making it more readable pretty much gut it.

But hey, I'm an engineer, so I like efficiency.

<comment><USER13> It would be Google Classic if the bottom half of the screen would stop changing as I'm typing. Right now, I hate using Google proper... it hurts my eyes. Then again, I pretty much just use the location bar in Chrome to do Google searches, so I'm not affected much, but Instant is a big difference over Classic.

I'm all for efficiency, but I prefer clarity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It seems like his complaint is really that Google Instant isn't incremental enough for him. It "tests poorly" with him in exactly the way that a really innovative design should: it requires him to adjust how he uses it.

</comment><comment><USER29> Google instant is the reason why my NoScript whitelist no longer contains an allow javascript rule for google. No javascript, no instant. No instant, no distractions while I'm typing in my search string.

The single most important factor Google should be concentrating upon is the quality of the search. If the search returns exactly what I'm looking for at the top of the first page, then I'm happy. I don't care if it took Google 3 seconds longer to produce that quality result. In fact, if by taking 3 seconds longer, the search result quality were to jump by 2x or 3x, that would be much better than trying to flash results in front of me as I type.

<comment><USER30> This approach does not massage one's nerd G-spot as effectively, but you can disable it like a normal person by clicking the link to the right of the search bar.

<comment><USER29> Except that I also don't allow google to set cookies either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Before Google Instant, probably the most infamous example of Google's design- by-testing approach was the "41 Blues" --- Google's engineers apparently couldn't decide on two shades of blue for showing search results, so they tested 41 of them to see which attracted the most clicks. (They eventually settled on a blue that is basically the average of all the blues used in hyperlinks across the web. Duh.)"

I don't see why this would be subject of cricism. User testing is the one and only validator for good design decisions. Every designer knows this, especially when the decisions closely pertain to User Experience.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's broken only in the sense that they approach design as an engineering problem instead of 'hire a designer and do whatever he says'.

<comment><USER33> That's a nice looking strawman you've got there.

A better approach would be "hire a professional designer, and generate some significant ideas, and then take an engineering approach to testing those ideas."

In other words: who should come up with the B's for those A/B tests-- engineers, or designers? (Or both?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Funny that the website where this is published has such a crappy design.

* Vertical scrollbar at width of 800.

* The dotted gray border right to the text is annoying (it flickers on my TFT).

* At lot of vertical space wasted on the left.

* I don't find it very pretty at a whole. (But that is of course subjective.)

</comment><comment><USER35> What a boring rant. Almost every single point I look at, he's wrong on.

</comment><comment><USER36> If Apple tested a version of the iPhone that had four buttons on the front, it probably would have tested better because one button was unfamiliar to users and would have seemed inadequate. The point here is that sometimes good design requires challenging and educating users - doing the right thing instead of the easy thing. Apple's delight of their users is often when the user realizes he didnt actually need something he thought he did. Of course, I am describing a process involving risk, which can be mitigated through some testing, but will always be somewhat correlated with reward.

<comment><USER37> I'm going to wager that the choice of a single button on the iPhone is bad design, esp having experienced both single button and multi-button designs (Android phones).

I've designed apps for iPhone and Android and what ends up happening on iPhone apps is that you have to put additional buttons in your app to compensate for the lack of buttons on the iPhone.

Take the virtually omnipresent back button in iPhone apps. Most applications need a back button. Hence on the iPhone, they draw this button on the top left corner. I much prefer the Android phones' hard back button, not only because it makes single-handed operation possible, but also because sometimes soft back buttons don't cut it - what do you do when you want to switch to the last app or what if your app lost focus to another app because of some unsolicited event and you want to go back? Same for search button.

Now I'm not saying Android got all things right. In fact Android UI, UX is nowhere as pleasant as iPhone's. But, I don't agree that a single button on iPhone was a good decision. I'd like to know if there have been any real-life studies or empirical data on this.

<comment><USER36> Not every application needs a back button. Virtual interfaces allow the interface to tailor to the need of the application, instead of the other way around.

I agree sometimes a back button seems like it would help, but after using iOS products for a long time (this is on an iPad, I don't miss hardware buttons much.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Petition: Increase page width for app developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/facebook-petition-more-developer-space

<comment><USER2> Asking them to remove their main source of revenue? That's going to fly...</comment>


The Amazon-Ification of Whole Foods - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/whole-foods-two-hour-delivery-amazon/552821/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Whole Foods gave Amazon a high-end, nationwide, yet arguably "mainstream" grocery store to enter into the US grocery market. It's an aspirational brand, yet not so specialty to be ostentatious. It's a nationwide chain, unlike other top-rated grocery stores -- Wegmans and Publix come to mind. And it's a store that, through savvy and market timing, has located its sites in areas that are experiencing growth in upper-middle-class households: Amazon's preferred demographic.

They can likely cut Whole Foods' margins on many items and, through the magic of the warehouse club nature of Prime, offer further discounts to Prime members, incentivizing the choice of Amazon over their competitors. Not all people will we swayed, but some will.

This will shake up the grocery market in many metros, where margins are tight and incumbents are often saddled with tight margins, concerns about real estate, and preexisting debt. Some will spend more to retain customers with extra features like free at-store pickup or cheap delivery, but they won't be able to outmatch Amazon's warchest. The most vulnerable among their competition will fold, allowing customer bases to re-align.

<comment><USER3> There aren't enough of these stores to impact any major metro area. Aldi tends to have more storefronts and their impact hasn't been that great. What did smack the old school grocers was when Wal Mart got into the business years ago and to a point Target.

example, there less than ten Whole Foods stores in Metropolitan Atlanta. There are probably that many competing grocery chains in the same area, with sixty plus of each of the larger ones.

<comment><USER4> In Detroit, a "food desert", they could potentially take over the majority of the downtown/midtown upper middle class grocery market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I was a kid, mom would do the grocery shipping once every 2 weeks. She'd load the five kids into the van and we'd trek over and fill 2 shopping carts with 10 boxes of breakfast cereal, 2 gallons of milk, 2 pounds of bacon, 8 pounds of hamburger, 24 cans of Campbell's soup...

Flash forward to 2018 and my wife is buying things online to the point that we're getting 4-6 items delivered per week. I'd guess that's not exceptional.

With 'free delivery' for under $35, I can see her increasing that to on average one delivery item per day.

Kind of like the milk man used to do.

What concerns me is that the amount of energy that goes into getting all that stuff into my home seems to have substantially increased, and, will continue to increase as more businesses incorporate low cost or free delivery.

So it makes me wonder where this ends. It seems we'll wind up with delivery trucks, perhaps autonomous electric vehicles, combing the suburbs throughout the day.

I keep contemplating the extremes: 149 items acquired in one trip the way my mom used to operate, vs.149 items delivered to my home one at a time over a 2 week period. What are the trade-offs?

<comment><USER6> > What concerns me is that the amount of energy that goes into getting all > that stuff into my home seems to have substantially increased, and, will > continue to increase as more businesses incorporate low cost or free > delivery. > > I keep contemplating the extremes: 149 items acquired in one > trip the way my mom used to operate, vs.149 items delivered to my home one > at a time over a 2 week period. What are the trade-offs?

Energy-wise, you present a fallacy that all those deliveries serve just your home.

50 houses getting deliveries every day from the same truck for 2 weeks = 14 trips. Those 50 houses all going to the store once every 2 weeks = 50 trips. Not to mention all the land wasted for building parking around said store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If Amazon is smart, they will keep their brand out of Whole Foods, at least until they rehabilitate it some. Neither media or public sentiment towards Amazon is great right now for a variety of reasons, many of which have been posted on HN. Some people are getting disturbed that it seems like they can only get important goods from one company; indeed, this is basically the monopoly future that Amazon wants. Personally, I don't want to feel like I'm being stalked or "optimized" by Amazon at my local Whole Foods.

I don't think we've seen the end of non-Amazon retail yet. When almost every transaction is conducted through Skinnerian workflows developed by MBAs in Seattle and neural networks running in Virginia data centers, doing all your shopping at Walmart is an act of radical physicality.

<comment><USER8> > I don't think we've seen the end of non-Amazon retail yet.

Amazon is less than 3% of US retail. Walmart's retail business is three times the size of Amazon's retail business. And that's before we count the fact that half of Amazon's retail business, isn't Amazon at all.

Amazon is not going to actually dominate all of retail. Amazon is not going to become a retail monopoly. Amazon is not going to build a retail business dramatically larger than Walmart's retail business. The shrieks to the contrary are strictly emotionalism rather than fact-based, just as they were 12 or 15 years ago when Walmart was going to destroy everything in retail and monopolize everything. It's just as silly and absurd to pretend Amazon is going to do the same thing. What Amazon has is an early lead in online retail, because they were an aggressive first mover. Only ~10-12% of US retail has moved online. As that percentage dramatically increases in the next 20 years, Amazon's total share of online commerce will fall accordingly. They're not going to be doing $3 trillion in annual sales in 15 years. It'll be extremely impressive if they can manage to one day catch up to Walmart's retail size.

> Neither media or public sentiment towards Amazon is great right now

Public sentiment towards Amazon is extraordinarily high. They typically have the highest, or one of the highest rated brands and consumer experiences. Their customer service is routinely voted as among the best of any company.

What opinion pieces in the NY Times say about Amazon, are not at all representative of how the majority of people feel about Amazon. That's a classic echo chamber premise.

<comment><USER9> > They're not going to be doing $3 trillion in annual sales in 15 years.

Actually, they will hit that in 9 years if they can sustain their current growth rate. It'll take 15 years at half their current growth rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's sort of funny. Amazon now does is doing the same thing Walmart did back in the day.

If you were a supplier for Walmart, you _had_ to adopt their business practices in order to stay competitive in the market. They would demand that so you could constantly lower prices.

Amazon is sort of the same in that if they enter a vertical shopping market, if you don't provide the same level of service, you're kind of sunk. And to get to that level of service, the insidious thing is that you either let them take care of logistics and pay them a cut, or you adopt their business practices which have been honed for years.

I don't think Amazon-Ification is necessarily a bad thing. Amazon runs a tight ship and companies would do well to learn.

</comment><comment><USER11> They recently stopped roasting fresh coffee every day. Cost cutting coffee is so wrong...

<comment><USER12> Really? In all locations or just some of them? I'm kind of surprised I can't find anything about this change, though there are lots of older blog posts and reddit threads etc. about how they roast fresh beans daily.

<comment><USER13> WF coffee is overpriced for the quality. Coffee roasting is a skill, skill WF employees do not have and are unlikely to have in future.

Absolutely excellent coffee roasted by small bean producers that built small empires can be had at the same or sometimes cheaper prices than Whole Foods coffee.

<comment><USER14> Whole Foods Allegro roasting Asustin downtown is on par at $10-14/lb vs $20-25/lb for small roasters.

<comment><USER13> $10-$14/lb is La Colombe/Brooklyn Roast price, both of which blow WF out of the water.

It has to do with volume. The reason why small batch producers that know what they are doing are so much better is because they are small batch. It is impossible to source enough identical beans to get the identical result, which is why larger operations generate at best very decent but not anywhere close to excellent roasts. They know that they are inferior to small batch producers so they price themselves accordingly. WF is a large producer that prices itself at the level of small batch where its roasts are sharing the category with Dunkin and Trader Joes.

Coffee is like wine. If you need to produce a lot, you may get a boat loads of Merlot and blend it together producing a quite drinkable wine but you will lose to a bottle of St Emillion as yours would be too washed out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Over the last couple of years I've been shopping at Whole Foods less as the quality of their produce has gone downhill. As one who cooks almost every night I like to personally select the produce I'll be using. Delivery drivers on a tight timeline will never be able to meet the expectations of others like myself. I simply don't see driving to the store as a problem, I see it as an enjoyable experience(and I have small kids). All of the free delivery in the world won't keep me from driving to my local organic Co-op to choose the best vegetables, fruit and cuts of meat.

Point being that Amazon's impact on the grocery business will likely be far short of transformational.

<comment><USER16> There's plenty of room to be transformational short of your extremely niche use-case.

<comment><USER17> "People who don't mind going to the store" is not "extremely niche".

<comment><USER18> I'd say they're in the same league as people who say they love flying on airplanes. Once the novelty wears off it's a pretty joyless, tiring experience.

<comment><USER19> So your experience is the correct one, and others just haven't gotten it yet?

<comment><USER20> I believe that's what everyone in this thread is saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Amazon Prime Now... Is that the thing where delivery is "free" but where we are supposed to "tip" the driver ?

<comment><USER22> I've ordered from Prime Now about 3 to 4 times per week for the past 7 months. It's incredibly helpful for me. Mostly because I don't have a car and prefer to shop from Sprouts (which is similar to Whole Foods) and I'm able to do so with Prime Now. I usually leave a tip to the delivery person because they carry all my heavy groceries up to my apartment, and they've told me it helps them a lot (which is unfortunate in that way, that I'm subsidizing their wage). I literally depend on Prime Now.

<comment><USER23> Your situation is ok, because you want to tip. I don't think it is ok to automatically fill out the tipping field.

<comment><USER24> Then seek out an equivalent service that pays their delivery folks more and doesn't require a tip. We have those here in Boston; Peapod's delivery drivers can be tipped and they've said that it's a major part of their income but Roche Bros.'s drivers have literally laughed and said "we don't accept tips, we actually get paid." (I had a $10 in hand--he turned it down. Peapod has a big huge field _on the invoice_ and charges it to the card. Skinflints.)

Or accept that, yes, obligatory tipping is part of the culture, and while you may not like it (I sure don't) it is incumbent upon us to do right by the people whose services we are buying.

<comment><USER25> It's not immoral to not tip.

<comment><USER24> It's immoral not to treat people who are performing services for you fairly and well. If that means tipping, because their employer--who you chose to do business with--doesn't pay them a livable wage, then guess what? You tip. If, _at the same time and in no way exclusive to the former_ , you would like to campaign for better worker rights and wage floors that make tipping unnecessary (or, hell, even _illegal_ ), then I will join you in that.

You might not like tipping. (Again: I don't.) The person you're rationalizing the stiffing of probably doesn't like having to work for tips. Capitalism kinda sucks and the person-to-person patching is something that more fortunate folks just plain _get to do_. Sorry.

<comment><USER26> I find strange how you call him immoral for not tip while is the employer who do not pay them a _liveable_ wage.

<comment><USER27> They are both immoral.

In a situation with 3 parties, there can be any number of immoral people from 0 to about 9 billion, so I don't know why you immediately assume that because the commenter is immoral that doesn't mean the company isn't also behaving immorally.

<comment><USER28> Specifically, the company is providing a service which depends on _charity_ of the people receiving it to continue. Remember that charity is supposed to be voluntary. This fact is not documented anywhere. "Customary" is code word for non transparent and exploitative.

If the company wants to incentive good quality of service, they can do so explicitly with direct ratings instead of some unclear way of tips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I used to use Instacart, but it was a hassle to manage the people doing the shopping. They would get bad produce. They would mistake zucchini for cucumber. They would make nonsensical replacements. Constant screw-ups. Sure if you're buying toilet paper or some other generic commodity then it's fine, but you can already do that with Amazon.

<comment><USER30> I was trying out Instacart a few days ago and thinking whether I should purchase their Express program. This is what I realized:

\- You pay them $150 a year. \- On every order, they add a 10% service fee _that helps them keep the service running_. This is optional, but you have to remove it every time. \- The delivery guy expects his tip.

I am wondering if this is cost-effective this way or not.

<comment><USER31> I haven't used them in ages so I didn't believe this. It seemed too ludicrous. I logged in to check and actually laughed out loud when I saw it. How much trouble must this company be in?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Datapoint: Prime Now in Los Angeles has quite a few Whole Foods branded products already (just got some coconut milk this morning!), although it's not part of this launch.

Prime Now is really a fantastic service, but it seems like not many people really know about it; Amazon seems to never promote it on their site.

If Amazon buys IKEA, my life will be complete.

<comment><USER33> I've tried Prime now a few times (Bay Area) and its frequently out of stock of really standard items (ex a 1/2 gallon of whole milk, non-organic) or you'll add some celery to your cart and then by the time you order its out of stock. Prices don't seem to be particularly great either. I can order from wholefoods via instacart and it might be cheaper depending on the items you get. Last time I went to order they didn't have enough drivers and had no delivery slots available, I had to wait a day and then schedule it again for the following day...

<comment><USER22> I've had stellar experience with it in Los Angeles... perhaps it's their flagship at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > when a dad says to the smart speaker on his counter, "Alexa, I need brown > rice and pork," the product that arrives is an Amazon-branded box containing > Amazon–Whole Foods–branded rice and pork.

I question whether the author here has ever cooked a meal, much less shopped for ingredients. There's no way this style of interaction can produce the desired result here.

<comment><USER35> Actually, in this brave new world the home AI system - Alexa - asks the dad what dinner is going to be this evening. The dad says that he fancies risotto with some herb tasting sausages and maybe some side salad. Alexa does not magically do the cooking but will establish that ingredients will be needed. The contents of the fridge and general provision levels will be known, plus an existing house way of doing things, e.g. mixing brown rice in with the risotto rice and hand making the sausages from whatever pork is available.

Alexa will also be able to know what you like from what stays and what goes out to recycling. So that tin of prunes in the cupboard won't become a dozen tins for programming error reasons.

It will be a bit like living with someone that stays at home all day and has time to go out and do the shopping, you might do all the cooking as part of the relationship with a fair expectation that everything needed for agreed meal plans is purchased.

Alexa could also know how to optimise inventory, so if it makes sense to buy a 25 Kg bag of brown rice due to so much of it being eaten by such a large family with such a large house that have been customers at that address for such a long time, then so be it.

If the home cupboards and fridge are a 'cache' in this food network then the AI would also know of favourites and have things on hand. So there may be a variable selection of ice creams that could be on hand if the main course needed a dessert without one being specially requested. Favourite main meals could also be 'cached', this could be learned to suit the lifestyle, so if you do have a dozen people needing feeding at ad-hoc dinner parties or if you actually never have friends visit, the AI should get it.

<comment><USER36> And Alexa will happily sell every detail of your household consumption for the rest of you and your children's lives.

<comment><USER37> Nope, for the same reason Google doesn't. The data is worth more to Amazon if they keep it to themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I live in the Virginia Beach metro, which alongside Austin, Dallas, and Cincinnati, is one of the four test locations announced for their new Whole Foods Prime delivery service. My theory is that the Virginia Beach location was chosen as their "stress test", as it's the one where this service is most likely to fail. If it can work there, it can probably work anywhere.

The metro has some positive attributes: high proportion and large number of military families who are mostly concentrated in the suburbs. But it also has many complicating factors:

\- A difficult metro for logistics. It's essentially a routing cul-de-sac: not enough local demand to serve as a large distribution node, and it's ~100 miles from the Richmond metro that's typically used for this instead. Getting product in by rail is easier, but difficult to do just-in-time, and most rail freight traffic flows the other way: out.

\- Low growth. Incomes in the metro grew slower than the US average [1]. Employment growth has been well below US average [2]. The region isn't quite stagnant, but recovery after the recession has been markedly slower than Northern Virginia, Raleigh-Durham, or the region's arch-rival Richmond. Most population growth that is occurring [3] in Virginia Beach's vicinity is in suburban areas beyond the single Whole Foods' delivery range [4].

\- Grocery saturation. In the past year, German-style chains Aldi and Lidl have expanded, Publix has been rumored to be eyeing the area, and Wegmans has been confirmed to be coming [5]. This is in addition to local incumbents owned by Supervalu, Kroger, and Ahold Delhaize. Local press and commentators have been noting that the area seems to now be overprovisioned with grocery stores [6].

Meanwhile, Cincinnati is close to major trucking corridors and is adjacent to Amazon's old freight hub in Ohio and its new one at Cincinnati's Kentucky airport. Dallas and Austin are both major markets with high levels of growth.

[1] [https://www.bea.gov/regional/bearfacts/pdf.cfm?fips=47260&ar...](https://www.bea.gov/regional/bearfacts/pdf.cfm?fips=47260&areatype=MSA&geotype=4) [2] [https://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/news- release/areaem...](https://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/news- release/areaemployment_virginiabeach.htm) [3] [https://pilotonline.com/news/local/article_8e17f21e-2180-5c1...](https://pilotonline.com/news/local/article_8e17f21e-2180-5c14-beae-80ce3a8b97c9.html) [4] [https://pilotonline.com/business/consumer/article_db7fe221-4...](https://pilotonline.com/business/consumer/article_db7fe221-4b4b-5b63-8255-f722c8e434df.html) [5] [https://pilotonline.com/business/consumer/article_610b32b7-6...](https://pilotonline.com/business/consumer/article_610b32b7-6cf7-5050-9b07-26516cd75120.html) [6] [https://pilotonline.com/business/consumer/article_8b636301-f...](https://pilotonline.com/business/consumer/article_8b636301-ffd0-5750-9793-15d63fda8f0b.html)

<comment><USER38> Austin is also the home of Whole Foods HQ. The HQ store downtown has often been their pilot site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've been living in Austin for the past two years, and shopping mostly at the Whole Foods world headquarters. I'm not sure what the big deal is about this place - overpriced for the quality, service is ho-hum, prepared foods are nothing special, etc.

Wegmans absolutely crushes it.

<comment><USER40> there is a wegmans in austin? So jealous.

Also there is a wegmans musical: [http://www.telegram.com/article/20120502/TOWNNEWS/120509938/...](http://www.telegram.com/article/20120502/TOWNNEWS/120509938/0/business)

<comment><USER41> There certainly isn't a Wegmans in Austin that I know of. I don't think there is one within 1000 miles.

<comment><USER36> But you have Rudy's. Don't get greedy. ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who is using Meteor in production? - <AUTHOR> Would you recommend it for 2019 onward or they are dropping it in favor of Apollo and friends (some rumors I heard) <comment><USER2> As someone who used to use Meteor, I'd recommend not using it at all.

Meteor is amazing and great... until it isn't. The power of Meteor is the amount of bare metal things already implemented for you (DB management, for instance)

But the moment you need to do something a little weird or want to do things different, it becomes almost impossible.

Use something, anything (besides I guess RoR) besides Meteor in my opinion. It locks your code in and becomes impossible to leave without re-writing everything.

</comment><comment><USER3> We use Meteor for our production products. I've personally been using it for 3 years and love how easy it is to get up and going. With all the changes made in 1.7 and 1.8 its been really great to use. Scaling is a bit of a pain in the ass but with Heroku and Mongo Atlas its eased that burden. Meteor just simply provides so much out of the box and has great community support. You can extend Meteor pretty far.

As for 2019 and onwards, I would recommend it personally, very quick to get it up and running and putting things into production. Its the community that keeps Meteor alive so I wouldn't depend on MDG for your opinion cause they more or less already shifted their focus on Apollo.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use it for a client's project, although it's managed by another dev, who introduced it to me.

I haven't dug deep into it, but I like the opinionated choices and the "batteries included" approach. It allowed us to move very fast in the early design steps. But it will probably require a rewrite for scale, time will tell..

In that rapid prototyping / MVP approach, I haven't yet reached the point where it's more in my way than helping out as @madamelic mentioned.</comment>


Ask HN: What are you afraid of? - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a little project about the logic of fear.  I'd say that, on the whole, this  is a pretty logical group of people, so I'd be really interested to hear what you're afraid of.
It could be a full-on phobia or just a nagging, uncomfortable feeling that you get when something crosses your mind.
If you don't have it in your profile, a little blurb about what you do would also be appreciated, but not totally necessary.
Thanks.
Edit:  Also, what, if any steps have you taken to confront/overcome said fear. <comment><USER2> I really hate confrontations, to the point where it might be called fear.

For instance, a friend of my neighbor was considering buying my old 240sx. It's got a JDM RB20 but doesn't start, so I let him take it to a mechanic to diagnose it and complete our negotiation with more information.

After a few regular status updates, I haven't heard from him in a weeks. I keep putting off calling him about it.

My other fear is of cessation of consciousness; sort of an extrapolated fear of death. I really don't want to die; I don't quite like the idea of cryonics even if I'm revivable; I don't even really like general anaesthesia. If the brain processes that make me aware I'm me go away, where am I?

<comment><USER3> >My other fear is of cessation of consciousness; sort of an extrapolated fear of death. I really don't want to die; I don't quite like the idea of cryonics even if I'm revivable; I don't even really like general anaesthesia. If the brain processes that make me aware I'm me go away, where am I?

Do you have a hierarchical view of degrees of consciousness? For instance, do you consider general anesthesia worse than a nights sleep? Do you consider brain-rot-death worse than a year-long coma?

I do have the same fear as you. I have a medical condition that has caused me to lose consciousness around 20 times in my life and it has caused me terrible fear. I don't like the idea of cryonics either but I do plan on having my brain frozen because the alternative, in my view, is worse.

I don't like sketchy rope bridges across a chasm, but if I am being chased by pirates, I will sure as heck cross it.

<comment><USER2> It's certainly hierarchical for me, too. I plan to sign up for cryonics, and I'd even use a disintegrate-and-reassemble transporter if it were the only way to avoid complete, irreversible death--but I certainly won't be joining Starfleet just for the fun and adventure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Im scared of spiders. Less so now (simply through will power) but anything beyond a house spider will give me chills (and I cant look at tarantulas on screen). No other bugs though: which seems illogical to me.

I also get that clutching, tight-chested thing when I think about my death (in the old-age future rather than in the now). Conversely when in an immediately dangerous situation (either physically or mentally) I find it exhilarating: the potential of "death" in those situations is exciting.

What kind of fear are you interested in though? The most interesting clash of fear/logic for me is travel. People will jump in a car without a seconds thought but conversely are uncomfortable in aeroplanes. Despite the latter being leaps and bounds safer than road travel. Gut overrules the logic in Head and decides being up at 20,000 feet is "NOT SAFE" :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well the idea is that fear is often times hyperbole - an unnecessary exaggeration of a natural and healthy response to a legitimate threat. So if you're mountain climbing or skydiving, a fear-adrenaline response mechanism is natural. A fear of death defying stunts isn't really what I'm looking into.

What I'm more interested in is if you were unreasonably afraid of spiders, for instance, and you read everything there was to read about spiders, and you saw a spider that you knew for certain posed no threat, but your logical understanding was overpowered by emotional fear. It's the difference between finding a Brown Recluse in your tent versus a St. Andrew's Cross in your shower.

And I've thought about the travel fear paradox quite a bit and it actually makes quite a bit of sense. One thing I've noticed is that it's really difficult to affect our fears with social adaptations, but logic is easily overcome by recurring social or cultural situations.

<comment><USER4> In terms of the travel paradox and similar fears driven by society I _highly_ recommend a book called "Risk: The Science of Politics and Fear". I reviewed it a few days ago here on HN. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=673955>

The travel paradox does make sense because our "primal" brain knows whats "less natural": in the face of that the intelligent brains statistics are meaningless.

In terms of spiders: I'd say I am unreasonably scared of them. I mean I know fairly large spiders here in the UK are perfectly safer. But I still leave the room till they are gone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> spiders, centipedes and pretty much most bugs bigger than an ant, had trouble killing them even with a paper towel. Hell used to get afraid looking at them in pictures.

To overcome it, I built a "weapon" to kill them with. Pretty much took one of those post office poster rolls, and attached some paper towels to it. This way I could kill them at a distance.

Now, have no problem getting upclose and personal and killing them with a paper towel. Can now watch them online without any problems(i.e. one of those giant centipedes eating a rabbit)

I dunno if it's something I overcame on my own, or if its something I just grew into. i.e. I used to be scared shitless of the Alien and the Predator movies, and now I more or less consider the series as an action movie, instead of a horror flick.

</comment><comment><USER3> Death. Walking up to a girl and asking her out. Failure. That the economy will get worse. New social situations. Spiders.

I've recognized each fear and I know how to handle myself to confront those fears. They don't dominate me, but they are still present.

I am an Oracle DBA.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm afraid of not having enough money in my savings account should I need to use it. I'm a college student with a part time job, and I have some money in savings, but if my car's transmission went out, I'm hosed. I have no idea how I would fix my car and keep paying for rent/utilities/food without going into debt.

I guess you could say I'm afraid of going into debt and not being able to get out of it because of circumstances just out of my control.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm afraid of socializing. I'm in the process of social skydiving to over come it and I'm blogging about it publicly to keep me honest and motivated.

This is the blog in case you want more info: <http://socialskydivingwithjustin.posterous.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's really cool, I've talked to psych people and publicly logging your progress when dealing with an anxiety problem is a really good way to keep you on track. From my perspective, I love the insight into the process - especially because it is such a uniquely individual experience for each person.

<comment><USER7> wow I never realized that. thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Too late to edit, but I realized I should be prepared to provide a comparably personal answer to such a personal question, and I've done so on my blog, if you're interested: <http://mohrslaws.blogspot.com/2009/07/fear.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> A lot of fellow arachnophobes on HN - interesante.

Mine: Spiders, settling, not achieving the goals I make for myself.

</comment><comment><USER9> Dying alone.

</comment><comment><USER10> No one's going to think my startup idea is useful after I put out the proto.

</comment><comment><USER11> The number 13

</comment><comment><USER12> What if I come into a situation where I have to choose between 'going with the flow' or staying a decent person, and I know if I stay up for the good they will kill me or worse torture me? Will I be strong enough? And if yes: what a life.

These days you can easily get picked by the CIA for some stupid reason. Actually I am a bit uneasy about US-customs for that reason.</comment>


EdenSCM – A cross-platform, scalable source control management system - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebookexperimental/eden <comment><USER2> Facebook rewrote Mercurial, while Microsoft has essentially expanded git with their own virtual file system VFSforGit [0] and a bunch of performance improvements.

0 - [https://vfsforgit.org/](https://vfsforgit.org/)

<comment><USER3> Curious why facebook went for mercurial?

<comment><USER4> They explain it here: [https://engineering.fb.com/core-data/scaling-mercurial- at-fa...](https://engineering.fb.com/core-data/scaling-mercurial-at-facebook/)

The official reason is that the "internals of Git" weren't conduce to the kinds of invasive changes they needed/wanted. But I think the truth is closer to being that it was going to be too hard/slow to get those invasive changes past the Git mailing list.

Here's an example of a FB eng reaching out to the mailing list: [http://git.661346.n2.nabble.com/Git-performance-results- on-a...](http://git.661346.n2.nabble.com/Git-performance-results-on-a-large- repository-td7250867.html)

<comment><USER5> This was a super fun read, thanks for sharing.

The mailing list piece is from 2012, and describes how git is very slow on a synthetic repo with millions of files and commits. Today, my current place of work has a monorepo that's approaching the size described in this mailing list, but git _seems_ to be holding up just fine. If you checkout a branch that's far enough away from master it takes a minute, but add, rebase, commit, status and blame are all negligibly impacted speed-wise. The only issue we run into is rejected non-conflicting pushes to master during peak hours, with maybe several dozens of engineers trying to merge and push master simultaneously.

Does anybody have any insight into what's changed in git internally since 2012 to support bigger repos?

<comment><USER6> I don't think there is one single change that made a huge difference. I follow the changelogs posted on the mailing list, and of the performance related changes, it's often "we got 3-5% speed up on this benchmark on this fs without making things worse on others".

Over 8 years and tens of those changes, it adds up to a significant performance improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> BTW : with so many smart and connected people interested in source control management in one place, does anyone know what happened to veracity scm ([http://veracity-scm.com](http://veracity-scm.com))?

It was very promising but the suddenly stopped updating and then (more or less intentionally it seemed) links stopped working, but the site is still up 7 years later...

<comment><USER8> The developers went on to work on other things: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130915093113/veracity- scm.com/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130915093113/veracity- scm.com/qa/questions/1935/is-veracity-still-under-development)

<comment><USER7> ah, thanks, I tried to figure out for years because I felt they got so much right ux wise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is more tooling needed in general - just one recursive grep will populate the entire EdenFS.

I suppose FB has better tools. But I won't touch this until the ecosystem is sufficient (and also, because git and hg are perfectly sufficient for the monorepo I oversee)

<comment><USER4> The file system, the VCS, and the ability to index/grep the repo are just the tip of the iceberg. Pretty much everything that needs to access the filesystem or which depends on the contents/structure of the repo in some way needs to be re-built from scratch or otherwise dramatically customized to operate in this new landscape. That means a long catalog of tools and many years of effort.

This was already starting to become true even before FB switched to Eden, and before it switched to Mercurial (grepping, for example, was already back in the Git days being served by a custom grep service).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting. This might be a step in the direction of being able to store big files in repositories without hassle.

However, perhaps OS level support would be preferred. Imagine you have a type of symbolic link that is not just followed, but executed when you access it. That would be really powerful and would allow this kind of optimization. And you wouldn't even need to install or run anything.

<comment><USER10> Sounds a lot like FUSE?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does this work together with a build cache? My dream setup for dealing with building huge code bases is a file system integrated with the version control system to only download files when they are accessed (which sounds like what this does) but also employing a build cache and module system, so it doesn't even need to download and compile any module that has not been touched, it just downloads the result from the build cache instead.

<comment><USER12> Seems like they can be separated systems. For example, Google's Bazel supports build caches.

[https://docs.bazel.build/versions/master/remote- caching.html](https://docs.bazel.build/versions/master/remote-caching.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > A virtual filesystem for speeding up the performance of source control > checkouts.

To describe it as a filesystem matches my thinking [0]: "It already resembles a network file system, so it should provide an interface nearly as easy to use."

If it really takes off as an Open Source project, we might be able to "mount" repostories eventually.

[0] [http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/monorepo_vcs.html](http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/monorepo_vcs.html)

<comment><USER14> > we might be able to "mount" repostories eventually.

a) [https://github.com/presslabs/gitfs](https://github.com/presslabs/gitfs)

b) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ClearCase#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ClearCase#History)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If I were going to try something other than git, it would be fossil => [https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki](https://fossil- scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki)

<comment><USER16> Fossil is awesome, but (currently) would not scale to Facebook-size repos. It seems to be fine with long histories (lots of commits), but bogs down on lots of files (based on discussions surrounding a large repo considering moving to fossil).

For personal projects, it's absolutely the bees knees. I can have multiple checkouts of the same repo, ask fossil about every single repo I have, has a really pleasant CLI, has a web-interface (which I personally hardly use anymore), manages tickets, ... sort of github in-a-box, but more pleasant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the one big differentiator for this is:

"EdenSCM is not a distributed source control system. In order to support massive repositories, not all repository data is downloaded to the client system when checking out a repository"</comment>


Enhance OSX Finder - <AUTHOR> http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2012/05/enhance-osx-finder/

<comment><USER2> Wow - small world. I wrote the second hint on OS X hints over a decade ago and had forgotten about it myself, and now here I am reading it on HN!

Incidentally, you can do the inverse (open a Finder window for the current Terminal directory) with:

       open .

Nice article - thanks for reminding me, and for the other tip. :)

<comment><USER3> Since this is super handy, I will go off-topic and post the Windows equivalent:

        start .

You can even type something like:

        start mypicture.jpg

To open it in the default picture viewer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love TotalFinder, <http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/> , which adds Chrome tabs to finder, dual folder view and other nice things.

<comment><USER2> I'd love to use that, and a few years ago I did use something like it, but found it was't very stable.

Do you find TotalFinder stable / memory friendly?

<comment><USER5> I use TotalFinder, but it is quite unstable in my experience. I probably restart it weekly, just due to some drag and drop nonsense that it didn't know how to handle. Don't get me wrong: I really like TotalFinder, but the stability is improving too slowly to make me really happy with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Alternatively, you can hold Cmd and double click a folder to open in a new window.

In addition, i find adding your editor of choice to the finder toolbar quite handy (open current folder in editor). Here is the applescript i use to open in sublime text - <https://gist.github.com/1541764>

You can easily modify the above to fit your editor of choice.

</comment><comment><USER7> Regarding the second hint in the OP, namely,

>create a button that open a new terminal shell at the current finder location

as of Lion, another way to do it (a way that does not require creating a button) is to drag the folder icon in the Finder's title bar onto Terminal's dock icon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hate that sort of UI that combines safe operations with operations that cause changes. To wit: if you accidentally drop the folder on your way to the dock, you just moved it to the desktop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is fantastic. I use better touch tool which allows you to create keyboard shortcuts, so in finder I can hit command+t to open a terminal in the current finder folder. I love it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've tried a few Finder replacements over the course of several years, and stuck with <http://cocoatech.com/pathfinder/></comment>


List of things I still can't do in November 2014 - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/frkrueger/posts/10154867033210444

<comment><USER2> A lot of these things you still can't do for good reasons, like : "10\. Get investors for my startup by advertising the stock offering on the web and selling shares directly."

and some of them you've been able to do for years and years like

"26\. Be able to sell my advice online. It's worth something and I should have some way to monetize it."

(altho based on this pose I disagree with the premise) and some of them are deep into what-the-fuck-land like

"27\. Be able to see a list of all single people in LA right now and efficiently sort through this data, with two way opt-in, to find an ideal match"

ESPECIALLY in the light of "11\. Get a quick, binding divorce online."</comment>


You might not need to transpile your JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.org/you-might-not-need-to-transpile-your-javascript-4d5e0a438ca <comment><USER2> But you should. I started using Typescript with TsLint a month ago. As I was refactoring a ~15k LoC project I found hundreds of bugs. Many were easy to replicate once I knew what would trigger them.

The list was astounding and enough for our architect to order that zero new code was to be written in plain JavaScript.

JavaScript is a minefield with shiny new objects in it. Without protection you're asking for trouble.</comment>


Is There Such A Thing As A Blue Chip Stock Anymore? - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/02/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-blue-chip-stock-anymore.html <comment><USER2> You can't throw out the idea that "blue chip" stocks are a safe haven based on 9 months of underperformance.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wrong question, I think. The right one is "Is there even a such thing as a 'blue chip' stock?"

Which immediately leads into, "What timeframe are we talking about?" I might believe in a blue-chip classification on the time frame of five years as long as it isn't absolute, but there isn't a single company in existence anywhere (or anywhen) that I would guarantee will exist in fifty.

I think the entire idea of "blue chip" only works in a worldview raised not just before the 21st century, but in the earlier part of the 20th century (and before) where things generally moved more slowly and even a behemoth could take decades to fall. That's just not as true as it used to be, if for no other reason than in the 21st century said behemoth was likely to be leveraged to the hilt....

</comment><comment><USER4> Stock prices are a function of future expectations on earnings. Not too much should be extrapolated. Depressions are rather defined by sorrier things: Selling hard assets for food, becoming migrant workers for food, surrendering morals for food, etc.

Modern efficiency being what it is, real depressions are probably impossible. Again, I recommend to anyone interested:

[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9022016584178907197...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9022016584178907197&ei=Ll6qSbC4LZGgqgKl5-XxDw&q=grapes+of+wrath+)

</comment><comment><USER5> I think what we're seeing is a combination of over-leveraging/under- capitalization in addition to the usual resistance to change that happens naturally.

All businesses get accustomed to paying certain costs and acting in certain ways (just like people do) and it takes a cold splash of water for anything to change. It's not necessarily that their businesses are fundamentally flawed. It can simply be that they've built up cruft - like the $5 daily coffee and $150/mo cable bill that many of my friends racked up during fat years. In many cases, getting back to basics would release a lot of the pressure.

But there's also the unique situation of over-leverage. Businesses haven't been conservative with their capital - rather, hoping that they could provide better returns for increased risk and sometimes even just spending money on projects without enough regard to the value of those projects. In fact, management has often been criticized for acting conservatively in recent years since it leads to lower returns (at least in the short-run).

Warren Buffet once wrote, "I've never believed in risking what my family and friends have and need in order to pursue what they don't have and don't need." Businesses should make money - they good and services they produce advance our standard of living. However, it's a little clear that they need to concentrate on their foundations a little more so that bad times become lost potential and not lost businesses.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really, really hate charts of the DJIA (or anything else, really) that make it look like we've just stumbled into the Great Depression by the simple expedient of not showing any of the Y axis below today's close.

"Stocks down 2% from last week" not sexy enough of a headline for you? Start the chart last week, end it today, rescale the Y axis -- CALAMITY STRIKES WALL STREET.</comment>


Keybase.io storing secret pgp keys - <AUTHOR>

Is there a thread discussing the ins and outs of transmitting and storing your secret pgp key in keybase.io ? <comment><AUTHOR> Now I see going to threads-->Search-->keybase

there are a number of articles links to websites detailing his topic.

One three titled: "On Keybase.io and encrypted private key uploading" [https://blog.filippo.io/on-keybase-dot-io-and-encrypted- priv...](https://blog.filippo.io/on-keybase-dot-io-and-encrypted-private-key- sharing/) has a link to the users website where he displays his secret key and explains why it is safe to store private key online.

If you are aware of a security bug (or have a proposal/implemention of a "zero day" attack), notifying keyless admins privately is in the interest of all users. They can then discuss it post-mortem. To reach Admins privately, please get their public keys here:

[https://keybase.io/max](https://keybase.io/max) [https://keybase.io/chris](https://keybase.io/chris)</comment>


innerHTML vs. appendNode vs. DocumentFragment, for mobile - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mikie.iki.fi/2014/05/innerhtml-vs-appendnode-vs.html

<comment><USER2> hint: jsperf.com

[http://jsperf.com/appendchild-vs-documentfragment-vs- innerht...](http://jsperf.com/appendchild-vs-documentfragment-vs-innerhtml/37) (scroll down for the comparison chart!)

<comment><USER3> JsPerf is really well known, but unfortunately, it also very poorly suited for this kind of performance comparison:

1\. JSperf doesn't encourage any kind of validation that the various snippets actually do the same thing. I'm not kidding when I say that almost all jsperfs I read are buggy. This one is too; it reuses the same pre-cached nodes without cloning them, and those aren't semantics you want and aren't comparable with innerHTML.

2\. JSperf's scaling is terrible. It's showing ops/sec rather than sec/ops, when the latter is much more interesting. Almost always you're interested in keeping UI latency low, not in somehow repeating as many operations per second; the ops/sec display emphasizes tiny differences that don't matter over very large differences that do. A difference in 0.01s vs 0.011s will appear just as large as (say) 0.1s vs. 1s, and that's not helpful. A logarithmic scale might be nice too.

3\. JSperf's semantics are surprising enough to cause bugs. For instance, the benchmark setup/teardown aren't called for every test, nor are they merely called before the first and after the last test - but something utterly useless in between. Tests aren't isolated from each other, so cruft left from one test can impact a later test easily. Actually, tests are run in the jsperf document itself, so trivial stuff like how many comments or versions a benchmark has could conceivably impact DOM performance.

It can still be a useful tool - but be aware that most jsperfs out there are quite misleading because they don't test what they claim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What everyone should do: stick to standards, and let browsers evolve.

...unless you fall into second delays because of this. but if that is the case, you are doing lots of things wrong. Lots.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's always useful to check last edit date on StackOverflow—some answers are so upvoted they stay on top forever even when they get irrelevant, since whoever finds them today upvotes them again.

On a side note, why does Blogger have such terrible UX and why won't they fix it? On the desktop, they show spinning wheels while loading a simple text blog entry, on the mobile they override swipe left/right, completely screwing native browser navigation gestures.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, at least in iOS, the edge swipe wasn't implemented until iOS 7. Imgur has the same problem, annoying as hell, but that might be a reason to why they haven't fixed it. (Even though iOS 7 is soon a year old)

<comment><USER7> I'm running iOS 6 and it is insanely infuriating here as well: I keep ending up moving between articles while trying to look at the graphs, as I end up scrolling left/right "too far" expecting it to rubberband. (Note that when using iOS 7 I have no trouble navigating Safari with the new native gestures.)</comment></comment></comment>


Hardship on Mexico's farms, a bounty for U.S. tables - <AUTHOR> http://graphics.latimes.com/product-of-mexico-camps <comment><USER2> Strange article for the normally Libertarian crowd here.

Why would a worker work at one of these farms? Because it's better, or they think it's better, than their best alternative. The same reason that many Chinese workers work at factories now instead of farms.

As Krugman would say "Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all". [http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/19...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/1997/03/in_praise_of_cheap_labor.html)

Before you think I'm an asshole, I am very much looking forward to the time when everyone has the standard of living that we enjoy in "the West", but you don't get there by charity or boycotts.

The main problem is that they probably get lied to, so think it's better than their best alternative, when it's not.

What can HN readers do about that? Off the top of my head, you could contact the reporter, and make a website (in Spanish) with the good farms, and the bad ones, so at least a few farmers could avoid the bad ones. Or let the farmers post reviews and ratings. Yelp for Mexican farms. Support cheap internet in Mexico. Support the Mexican equivalent of the ACLU.

Better information is the answer.

<comment><USER3> Information can't solve a supply-demand imbalance.

<comment><USER4> what's this supply-demand problem of which you speak?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This injustice is not only happening in Mexico and not only on farms. The same stories exist in every 'non-western' country which produces stuff for the western world. Farms, clothing, mining, electronics...

Stuff that we throw away once we get bored of it. There's nothing particularly special about us in the western world, our only merit is having been born here.

And all this is because we've created and maintain a culture of hedonistic pleasure seeking on a massive scale. We've made 'luxury' the primary object of desire in our society, the path to happiness (it's not, but that's a different story).

A 'consumer' is a nice word for 'a person transforming natural resources into garbage'.

That's why those people are living through hardship - so we can take the resources and turn them into garbage, while obtaining some amount of pleasure (or comfort) in the process.

A person is 'successful' if he can have access to the most exclusive resources. To be successful, you have to be thinking positively, aka. learn to ignore the injustice and destruction that's happening in the world.

I know this is very unpopular, I usually get downvoted fast for talking about this, but it's the truth.

Our strive for 'success' creates major suffering around the world and we've pretty much fucked up the planet in the process.

So what should we do about it ? There's very little that can be done, really, it's the consequence of what we call 'human nature'. The only path is a radical change in our philosophy of life, in which we think as 'we' instead of 'I', some variation of the Open Source philosophy for every aspect of the economy, but I don't see that happening any time soon. And time is a resource that this planet doesn't have too much of.

<comment><USER6> If all Westerners were exterminated these farmers lives would likely be worse. Leftist claptrap is great for self loathing. I am sorry your parents tried to make a better life for you and made you complicit in the oppression.

<comment><USER5> > If all Westerners were exterminated these farmers lives would likely be > worse.

Good theory. The fact is that their lives are like they are right now and it's as bad as it can be. With supreme arrogance we think that by 'offering' those people slave jobs, we're somehow saving them from certain death. Has it occurred to you that these people could harvest all that food for themselves ? They have to work in those farms only because corporations own all the land and they have no other choice ?

> I am sorry your parents tried to make a better life for you and made you > complicit in the oppression.

They tried, doesn't mean they succeeded. Yes, we have more possibilities to 'enjoy life' than ever, but we've destroyed the planet in the process. And this will have dire consequences on everyone. Especially on our children and grandchildren.

Global war and famine is not far away and people feel that.

And that's neither leftist or rightist, just survival instinct.

<comment><USER6> >Global war and famine is not far away

Bullshit. Human suffering has never been less than it is now. This is the best time to be alive and more so in the future. We will walk on Mars, cure diseases and you will be miserable for no good reason. Why do people wish for doom facts be damned?

<comment><USER5> > Human suffering has never been less than it is now. This is the best time to > be alive and more so in the future.

Hold your horses, my friend. 80% of the world's population lives on less than $10/day. Of those, 3 billion live on less that $2.5 per day. Go tell them that.

In the last 50 years or so virtually all the planet's ecosystems have been disrupted, polluted or destroyed entirely. Most depletion graphs look like hockey sticks, that is geometric progression with very short doubling times and still accelerating.

Storms, hurricanes, flooding and droughts have become daily news, not 'freak' events like they used to be. I won't even touch on the global financial system and what a hack that is.

Being in denial is convenient, but it doesn't stop the processes set in motion.

And if we're talking about 'never ever', then it's worth mentioning that humanity has never ever had as many weapons, including nuclear, as it has now. Not even 1% of the destructive power that awaits to be unleashed. And humanity has never ever stopped waging war.

I'm happy that 'we' will walk on Mars, but that doesn't solve any of our current issues. Maybe the offsprings of the very few who will travel to the distant, cold desert which is Mars will be able to turn it into a paradise, similar to... Earth, who knows.

However, the way things are going, it seems we will turn Earth into Mars much sooner than vice-versa.

As a parent, I really hope I'm wrong and you're right, because I want my children to live a happy life and not have to deal with the consequences of our ignorant and wasteful lifestyle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "They want us to take such great care of the tomatoes, but they don't take > care of us,"

Wow, I am appalled at how the workers are treated. Quite an eyeopening article :O

<comment><USER8> You really have to be willfully ignorant to not notice that it mathematically impossible to deliver food at the prices we pay while paying a decent wage.

<comment><USER9> The fruit I and friends picked and packed during a gap year in New Zealand for minimum wage (at that time around 6€) are sold here in Europe for 2€/kg. (And the place basically gave us a free place to live and free access to the fields for food.) It might not have been the most amazing job ever, but it was ok enough.

For a small and non-poor economy like New Zealand and Australia I find it a good compromise to take the adventure-minded youths of rich countries and have them work a few months of their lives, since there is no shortage of those and less people do the job all their lives or try to raise a family on it.

It's also interesting to see there was labour travel of poorer countries such as Chile and China. A few people came over, basically to have an opportunity to see the world (most surplus of earning was eaten by higher costs and travel), and they didn't even know English. I still admire them.

TL;DR: If you buy New Zealand fruit - most has been picked by some priviledged kid from a rich country (for fun and acceptable pay).

<comment><USER10> To support your point, the Netherlands is the world's second largest exporter of agricultural produce [1], and, to draw a direct parallel with the article under discussion, the worlds largest exporter of tomatoes [2].

There is no way that agricultural workers in the Netherlands are treated as badly as those described in the OP.

[1] [http://www.iamexpat.nl/read-and-discuss/expat- page/news/dutc...](http://www.iamexpat.nl/read-and-discuss/expat- page/news/dutch-agricultural-sector-worlds-second-largest)

[2] [http://www.hollandtrade.com/media/news/?bstnum=5351](http://www.hollandtrade.com/media/news/?bstnum=5351)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is where the US should be sending drones out to liberate the populace. Really gives the lie to "Western values" and America as "leader of the free world". This is American Empire.

<comment><USER11> Given the track record the USA has with liberating people (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libia) I'd say thanks but no thanks.

From my point of view it doesn't really look that the USA is trying to liberate anybody. Just an empire looking out for its interests and masquerading it as something benevolent to fool its own population while at the same time totally screwing the people it is trying to liberate and leaving them worse off.

<comment><USER12> I think you kind of missed the sarcasm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Basically the same treatment as cotten pickers got back in the day.</comment>


"No More Smoke and Mirrors": The Internet Isn't for Investing Anymore - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/314790/%22No-More-Smoke-and-Mirrors%22-The-Internet-Isn%27t-for-Investing-Anymore tsk, tsk. <comment><USER2> Because these are obviously the best web companies around.</comment>