The Messy Art Of UX Sketching - <AUTHOR> http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/12/13/messy-art-ux-sketching/ <comment><USER2> Related: When working out a UI idea, I work REALLY low-fi and REALLY fast. Quick thumbnail sketches of just the overall layout of elements, or the way an interaction works, done in < 2mins.

The trick is to explore the problem space quickly before even getting to the level of sketching the full UI in context.

Here's a good article explaining the process:

[http://designshack.net/articles/inspiration/close- photoshop-...](http://designshack.net/articles/inspiration/close-photoshop- and-grab-a-pencil-the-lost-art-of-thumbnail-sketches/)

 _trying to upload some sketches of mine but the szx airport wifi is oddly not giving me any upload bandwidth..._

</comment><comment><USER3> I used pencil & paper for wireframing for years. Scissors, photocopying, etc., exactly as the article explains.

I struggled off and on with various replacements: Visio, Photoshop, Powerpoint. All of these gave me to much control over the final product, and I inevitably spent too much time trying to get things pixel-perfect, choosing the right colors, finding the right icons, and more - things that my graphic designer peers should be doing, not me.

Then, I discovered Balsamiq mockups, which I've been using nonstop now since early 2009. No longer using pencil & paper.

</comment><comment><USER4> Once you involve a photocopier in your "sketching" process you've officially jumped the shark. I am a big advocate of sketching wireframes before moving to the computer, but that means paper, ball point pen, and a minute or less per sketch. What he is creating is hand-crafted design - it looks beautiful, it communicates ideas very well, but it is totally inefficient in reaching the end goal of a usable, functional product.

<comment><USER5> "but it is totally inefficient in reaching the end goal of a usable, functional product."

Why? Inefficient, yes your opinion but this does not prove this process would not yield a usable product.

Your comment makes me wonder how we ever got to where we are today with computers.

<comment><USER4> It's definitely possible to design a great product with a very manual design process, but you can also write a great novel using pen and paper. Computers make a lot of things a lot easier, and you should leverage them when they make sense. (like for instantly making exact copies of designs you make, or even better making slight variations along the way.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice! I like sketching so much that I devoted a big part of my portfolio to talking about my prototyping process:

<http://alabut.com/work.html>

Pro tip: buy a sketchbook that has both a 24 column grid and browser chrome, so it'll feel more like the final product and give you a better sense of proportion. But don't be afraid to chuck it for something even more low fidelity, like butcher paper and sharpies.

Here's the one I've been using - it has tear-away pages and alternates between full-width and 2-on-a-page layouts:

<http://appsketchbook.com/products/ux-sketchbook>

Best $12 I ever spent. I also a fan of the double-ended art markers by Prismacolor - they're basically like highlighters but in a variety of colors, like a subtle gray. I like adding shading with those instead of dealing with the messiness of pencils and erasers. That's how I make sketches like these:

<http://dribbble.com/shots/230767-Stats-Page-For-iOS-App>

<http://dribbble.com/shots/230717-Dev-Dashboard>

<comment><USER7> That UX Sketchbook looks neat, but I wonder why no landscape orientation. Most people I know have the browser maximised and there are still a lot of laptops and desktops out there.

<comment><USER6> The limiting factor is reading habits, not browser size. Just because you can design in a landscape orientation doesn't mean you should and wider isn't necessarily better. It's not like magazines are 3 feet across because paper's cheap, right?

<comment><USER7> I wholly agree (and ended up buying a tablet precisely because I got sick of reading blogs with vast swathes of empty space at the side), but not everything is necessarily better in portrait. I was going to forward the sketchbook link to Mrs Browl, who is redesigning the UX for her firm's browser-based product right now, but then I reflected that that application involves a lot of tabular data and records management and that many uses of the product in a portrait orientation would be terribly frustrating. She is interested in bringing it to tablets, and portrait orientation would be appropriate for many use cases, but not all.

I do think the UX sketchbook is very neat - the squared paper inside the broswer frame is genius. It just seems perverse to only offer a single orientation in 2 different sizes. If it had portrait on one side and landscape on the other I'd buy it in a second (he hinted, in case the makers are reading).

<comment><USER6> That's a fair point - just because the portrait orientation works for most sites doesn't mean it works for _all_ sites.

So have I got a tip for you, friend. In case your wife hasn't found the right paper for her project yet, the best thing I can think of is to get a giant 11"x17" pad of Edward Tufte's grid paper. Scroll to the bottom of his shop page here:

<http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters>

Not only is it large and easily usable in landscape mode, it uses what he calls a "ghost grid", where the grid is printed with a barely noticeable light ink so that it's visually less dominant and it fades into the background compared to the ink drawings you make on top of it.

I used nothing but Tufte's paper for years and was deliriously happy with it. It was so big that I could use it for all kinds of stuff, whether site flows or detailed UIs, whatever. The only reason I switched away is that not every project needed that much real estate and it's not the easiest thing to carry around. It's like having to tote around a whiteboard.

If she wants something smaller and more portable, there's the dot grid book by Behance:

<http://www.creativesoutfitter.com/product/34/dot-grid-book>

Hope that helps...

<comment><USER7> Wow - thanks for those links. I shall be adding a dot grid book to the gift list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I sketch UIs a lot, but all in pencil. I wonder why he doesn't even mention them. They automatically let you vary your line value, and you can actually erase them, among other benefits. It tends not to copy well, but a good scanner should be fine and if it's just a prototype then you were going to recreate it on the computer anyway.

</comment><comment><USER9> Always refreshing to see someone advocating paper prototyping. There is nothing better than starting with an unbiased blank canvas when trying to brain storm the best user experience possible.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been a huge fan of Konigi pads for a couple years now: <http://konigi.com/tools/graph-paper>

</comment><comment><USER11> This looks a lot more like drawing than what I would consider sketching. To me, sketching would use a single pen/pencil/marker and look much uglier.

<comment><USER8> Eh, it's a continuum. It's definitely on the refined side of sketching. Really, sketching is a subset of drawing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 37signals suggested that by making a sketch less precise (more messy), people tend to not consider the precise pixel alignment of a button (for example), but whether to have that button at all.

They used wider lines for this - I think gray lines would also convey it. Some kind of "spray" effect, with precision tapering off at the edge might be ideal, say with charcoal. Though charcoal is messy indeed.

<comment><USER6> That was before they hired their first real creative director, Jamie Dihiansan, and now they have a variety of sketching styles, from rough and quick to clean and organized:

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1880-the-different-sketch- sty...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1880-the-different-sketch-styles-of- the-designers-at-37signals)

He came from Crate & Barrel and it looks like he's got the most chops on the team for pure visual design, not that he does only that. Jamie's added dimensionality and color to what was a previously flat and boxy vibe in their work.

I can't find the link (it might've been in a podcast) but I remember Jamie talking about differences in process and said that he stays in paper a bit longer than the rest because there's usually a few more things he wants to try out. That makes sense, since he's been responsible for upgrading the overall look and feel of the 37S branding and extending their visual vocabulary, starting with their marketing pages and email newsletters. I've heard both Ryan and Jason say that their roles are more like product managers now.

So use the right type of sketching for what you're trying to do. Trying to cycle through concepts or overall flow? Quick and dirty with sharpies. Want to try out a new visual treatment to an existing UI, maybe play with ribbons or a stack of photos or whatever new visual trick you saw somewhere? Use grid paper and a pen, maybe even bust out a fine-tipped architectural pen and a metal ruler.

<comment><USER13> Hi I'm Jamie.

To clarify: I did come from Crate. All designers here are way better than me in many ways. You could say we all have design chops. I'm not a creative director. I'm a designer. I prefer to be called an employee (only). Ryan and Jason still design. They are intimately involved in all design. Scott Upton, Jason Zimdars, and Jonas Downey are also part of the design team. They are all very awesome.

<comment><USER6> Cool, sounds like a fun gang. I didn't say anyone's not awesome, just that each is different and that the natural variation in types of skills also seems to carry over to sketching styles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One of the things I love most about sketching is the pure level of focus that can be attained when there are no Growl pop-ups or notifications of any kind.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've started using iMockup on my iPad for this. I've never had a good hand, so if I draw, I spend too much time worrying about those mechanics. The iPad gets me away from my desktop and puts me into much the same mode as a notebook would.

That said, I'm not a great designer (more of a product generalist: I can start with an idea and end with a complete product). I have to optimize for that path. :)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is definitely a great way to focus on the actual layout and UI elements. Starting with photoshop can often lead to designers block, going to paper keeps its simple and allows you to start at the lightest detail and build on top of that. btw, nice video.

</comment><comment><USER17> Though I personally haven't used this, I know many people who do and use it very well. It seems like a great tool for UX proofing.

<http://www.balsamiq.com/>

</comment><comment><USER18> For software tools along these lines I adore foreui - the skinning feature is great for placating pointy-haired bosses^H^H^H^H^H^H customers</comment>


Rocket: A hybrid approach to real-time cloud applications - <AUTHOR> http://rocket.github.io

<comment><AUTHOR> Mattt the author of this spec is in the position of being able to work from both sides of server & client on this issue, on the app developer side he creates the most popular iOS library for networking (1) and it will be included by default in a lot of people's code. He's also in this interesting position in that his work at heroku has meant he has created a server side collection of tools that can _really_ save a lot of time if you want to make your own backend for your apps (2).

Personally (as an iOS dev), I've been seeing streaming APIs from a few different hosts and there's been no attempt at standardising them, and I think this could be what people are looking for.

(1) [http://cocoadocs.org/docsets/AFNetworking/](http://cocoadocs.org/docsets/AFNetworking/)

(2) [http://helios.io](http://helios.io)

</comment><comment><USER2> Caveat: I've had about 2 secs to skim the proposal.

Looks interesting. JSON Patch was new to me, and potentially very useful for work we're doing right now in Myna.

 _However_ there seems to be the assumption there is one client and one server. This isn't going to cut it if you want to do the fast or the reliable, in which case you want multiple data centre deployment, or if the client has device(s) that they might operate offline.

In this case you have eventually consistent data, so you need some way to merge it, and this normally means you need some versioning scheme. I'm most of the way through this paper which seems to offer the best solution to CRDTs (a way of handing eventually consistent data) I've read so far:

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.3207](http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.3207)

Monoids for ever!

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a bad-looking spec. I'm a big fan of SSE. There are implementations of JSON patch available [1].

1 [https://github.com/Starcounter-Jack/JSON- Patch](https://github.com/Starcounter-Jack/JSON-Patch)</comment>


Reddit, Imgur and Boing Boing launch anti-NSA-surveillance campaign - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/02/reddit-imgur-boing-boing-reset-the-net-campaign-nsa-surveillance-privacy <comment><USER2> This is a good thing, but none of these sites deal in person-to-person communication, and their social networks are, at best, relatively weak, and don't have a conjunction with real-time communication, so they are not well- suited to facilitating key exchange.

It would be great to see a major internet portal, with data storage and communications products, join this effort and really put our data and communications streams completely out of reach of anyone - the NSA, the FBI, hackers, the Chinese - who does not have an individual's private key.

That said, if imgur offered key exchange and end-to-end encrypted exchange of images, that would be a great first step.</comment>


Is Anonymous Social Media the Answer to Cyberbullying? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/10/31/whisper/

<comment><USER2> Isn't this essentially the point behind 4chan?

<comment><AUTHOR> 4chan is not heavily moderated...</comment></comment>


Maven builds are an infinite cycle of despair - <AUTHOR> http://kent.spillner.org/blog/work/2009/11/14/java-build-tools.html <comment><USER2> I've had a go at Maven a few times, hoping to make it work but I always run into the same issues:

1\. It is very difficult to configure a hermetic Maven build that doesn't rely on external resources. There are third-party repository managers, but none of them worked well enough to replace the 'dependencies in SVN' model.

2\. Maven artifacts were often far out of date. RedHat has its own Hibernate- focused repository now, but this wasn't always the case. I'd find myself trying to get the latest version of dbcp or another commons project to get a bugfix and finding that it wasn't packaged.

3\. Support for multiple source-based projects that depend on each other felt bolted on. I can't remember the details, but you couldn't build more than one project from source without specifying a link to a parent project from each child project, which then referenced each of its children.

I've written and rewritten countless build systems (from batch files last millenium to Ant/NAnt/MSBuild) and they always end up being simple wrappers over javac/junit that manage transitive dependencies and build cycle ordering. The tricky part is ensuring that your IDE's dependencies match those in your build system.

I recommend Ivy as an alternative to straight Ant or Maven that does dependencies and ordering well, but doesn't require you to buy in to any special build philosophy: <http://ant.apache.org/ivy/>

Quick addendum: Ivy has its own quirks and is far too complex under the hood for my taste, but does the job well if you stick to straight dependency management. If you can avoid using anything on top of pure Ant scripts to build your project it'll make your life way easier.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maven sucks, yes. But, right now, Maven is the best solution for Java projects. This is why:

If you use it right you end up with 1 source of truth for your build. Most Java IDEs support maven as a project model, and therefore you don't have to maintain two separate builds: one for the IDE and one for the build system-- something that always leads to integration pain.

Ant as a tool isn't capable of this, since it doesn't really represent an project object model. Certainly IDEs can invoke Ant targets, but their non- standard nature make tight integration with the IDE hard, if not impossible.

There are several things that Maven could do to make the experience better. I suspect many of them will be addressed in 3.0; however, Maven as an experience has always sucked and I suspect will always suck. The broad based acceptance of the tool will give it a certain inertia that is likely going to be hard to overcome.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maven sucks and everyone hates it, but uses it anyway because tragically there is no better alternative for large projects.

For me, the M2 plugin for Eclipse seals the deal as it makes the build files double as the IDE project files. One place for dependencies, one build cycle, this is how things should be.

I hate Maven with a passion, and use Ant any chance I get, but for very large multi-module projects, the strong points outweigh the negatives (although by an uncomfortably slim margin).

<comment><USER5> buildr combines the advantages of maven with the advantages of being built on top of rake and scales to managing multiple projects. Groovy's Grails build system and Scala's sbt also both look good to me, although I have not yet taken the time to try them. The only reason I can think of why systems like buildr aren't more popular than maven is that most Java developers appear too unwilling to learn a separate programming language and would instead rather torture themselves coding in painful XML-based DSL's like Maven.

<comment><USER6> I'm sorry to disagree with you but some people would rather invest their time to learn how to use Maven more effectively than to learn another programming language _and_ a new build system altogether.

Breadth vs Depth I suppose.

<comment><USER5> Check out this page: <http://buildr.apache.org/quick_start.html>. I will paste the most relevant text below.

"No knowledge of Ruby is assumed. Buildr is designed to be a very intuitive, very easy-to-use tool. You can create buildfiles which describe incredibly intricate projects, write custom tasks which do things far beyond Ant, and still never need to pick up more than a smattering of Ruby syntax."

Also, learning a new programming language isn't exactly a waste of time. When I learned Ruby it made me a far better Java programmer, for instance.

<comment><USER6> I think it depends. Is learning a new programming language a waste of time compare to getting better with the current programming language that you knew already?

While I'm learning Ruby, it did not make me a better Java programmer. I still suck at Java programming.

Reading books like Code Complete, Pragmatic Programmer, Clean Code, and reading Zen of Python (import this) help me to become a better programmer; but learning Python does not help me to become a better developer. Reading better code (other people's or projects's) do make me know more.

I finally understand what does it mean with the phrase "no matter what they tell you, it's always a people problem.". Languages have nothing to do with it.

<comment><USER5> Ruby introduced me to the ideas of first class functions, closures, and higher order functions and the design patterns that can be easily implemented using them. These same patterns can be implemented in Java, albeit with a much more verbose syntax. Most Java programmers are unaware of even these basic functional concepts and it shows because they end up copy-pasting a lot of code they don't have to and writing silly functions that can be easily implemented in terms of functions like map, filter, and reduce.

Yes, learning a new language can and does make you a better programmer if it introduces new concepts you can apply to other languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm interested if anyone at HN has good things to say about Maven. I've only scratched the surface of it, but my initial impressions have been:

* slow (even with -o to stop it downloading the internet every time)

* incredibly verbose, in both configuration and output during builds

* inflexible (but I've not really looked into plugins or advanced configuration)

* opaque and thinly documented even for basic needs

I did a fair amount with ant a few years ago and found it a much more pleasant experience. Maven seems to me stereotypical "enterprisey" software: a mediocre, moderately complex solution to an extremely complex problem.

<comment><USER7> I've found maven to be useful.

It standardizes the layout for the majority of java based projects.

It also lets me deal with dependencies in a decent manner. Maven should not be downloading dependencies on every build unless you are using SNAPSHOT versions.

There is a free book available: [http://www.sonatype.com/products/maven/documentation/book- de...](http://www.sonatype.com/products/maven/documentation/book-defguide)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much for linking to the book - that will be very useful.

(I know Maven doesn't actually redownload everything each time, but it does seem to do _something_ on the internet every time I build without -o; and even with -o, it still seems slow to get going. Might be project-specific / PEBCAK error though.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The primary advantage of maven is that it gives a common structure to a project and it's dependencies. When working with multiple development teams, it gets very difficult to comprehend different projects when:

Project A has the source in /java/src Project B has the source in /main/src/java Project C has the source split in two different dirs: /src/test/java /src/main/java

worse yet, compile targets are called: project A -> compile project B -> build (note, the build target in project A will deploy the software to a stage server... good luck the first time you accidentally figure that out) project C -> go

and to maintain the version number of your package: Project A uses a file called /resources/projectA.properties with a key of "verno" Project B uses a file called /main/project.version Project C uses a property set in /build/build.properties

Maven, when used in a way to avoid the above mentioned problems, will typically have the source code structured the same way for every project.

Yes, it's java-centric yes, configuration can be a mess yes, documentation is redunkuluously poor

But it sure beats wracking your brain trying to figure out how to build a project when every new developer does it a different way.

PS. I've never experienced any of the performance/download problems other folks have mentioned. I think they might be doing something wrong.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes, Maven sucks, but for large projects the dependency management is rather nice. Java as a language is terribly dependency crazy, and being able to add three lines to your pom and get a new library in along with all its dependencies is a good thing. Though I'll now get flamed for not fully understanding every library dependency I'm importing in, which is fair, but hasn't been an issue for me for the three years I've been using Maven on various projects.

But that said, Maven has a build tool absolutely fucking sucks.. I much much prefer ant, and totally agree that mvn can be completely retarded and suck away a half day randomly.

If there was an ant alternative to deal with the library dependency problem then I'd be all for it. It seems that now that ibiblio exists, there should be ample opportunity to do this, basically rewrite mvn but use the existing repos.

But really, this single command makes mvn worth the trouble for me: % mvn -DdownloadSources=true -DdownloadJavadocs=true eclipse::eclipse

Give me another tool that does the same thing by me just specifying all my direct dependencies and version numbers and we can talk.

-Nic

<comment><USER10> There are at least two:

1) The Maven Ant tasks: <http://maven.apache.org/ant-tasks/index.html> 2) Ivy (now part of the Ant project): <http://ant.apache.org/ivy/>

We use Ant+Ivy, and although it has some quirks Ivy works well enough for dependencies.

<comment><USER9> Do either one of those actually pull down the appropriate sources and javadocs, and update my Eclipse classpath to include them with one command? I'm actually asking, not being snarky, as it doesn't look built in with Ivy and the few little projects claiming to do it don't look very active, what has been your experience?

As I said, that is the one big carrot still keeping me in mvn camp.

<comment><USER11> I've worked with ivy on a project a few years ago and the integration with eclipse worked fine for the classpath and sources. I didn't check about the javadocs.

Ivy is mainly a tool to work with ant, so it makes some sense that IDE integration is not in the same project, but as far as I could see, ivy and the eclipse plugin are written by the same people.

The eclipse plugin was actually one of the reasons for choosing ivy over maven, because at the time maven was moving to 2.0 and its eclipse plugin was not yet available or stable. The other reason was the documentation. At the time there seemed to be more documentation about ivy than about all functionalities of maven together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The java build world is perverse. Maven and Ant are imperative, highly limited, domain specific languages using XML for syntax.

If that doesn't set off just about every warning bell in your head, consider that Ant performs character set decoding and re-encoding when copying files. By default it will decode every file with your system's default character encoding and then re-encode it with the very same format. As far as I can tell all this can possibly do is introduce errors. When copying a binary file the best-case scenario is that your JVM throws a runtime error, but it's more likely that ant will silently corrupt the copy.

The Ant team's solution for this problem? You might reasonably expect that they would provide an option for binary files which does a byte by byte copy. Instead they suggest that you change an environment variable to an encoding which "does not seem to contain illegal character sequences."

<comment><USER13> _The java build world is perverse. Maven and Ant are imperative, highly limited, domain specific languages using XML for syntax._

Maven is declarative, not imperative.

Ant is broken in many respects, but your provided example is _not true_. Ant only attempts re-encoding of a file if you specify text filters (aka variable/string replacement). It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that string replacement breaks on binary files.

<comment><USER12> Interesting, thanks for setting me straight, it's good to know that the world is saner than it appeared. I recall some images being corrupted with the copy task in ant and that was the explanation that I received.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems like the typical reaction seen over and over. People love to hate maven. It always goes like this:

1) try maven but don't bother to RTFM 2) run away with your hair on fire and back to cave-man tools like Make, Rake & Ant 3) ignore dependency management 4) re-invent the build script for _EVERY_ project you start. 5) ??? 6) profit!!!

You only ever hear rants like this from people who don't spend the time to learn maven. It's not that hard. This is just rants.

<comment><USER15> It sounds like the author has had quite a bit of experience with Maven and most likely has RTFM.

<comment><USER16> Sounds much more like a rant to me. The complaint about the war file size is a prime example. There are several quick / easy ways to analyze this and fix it / force it to generate exactly what you want. None of that is particularly advanced mvn black magic.

It sounds like he chose to just give up on the tool, spend a lot of time ranting about it on a blog, and go back to what he was familiar with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish the author had been more specific about how Maven had failed him, especially regarding the "convoluted hackery" he mentions with the pom file...

So far, I haven't had much trouble with Maven. I've only done fairly straightforward web programming, with Spring, Struts 2, and Hibernate. It was a hassle to get it all set up, but I blame Spring for that, not Maven. The conventions seem to work very well, since you can just follow a standard directory structure.

I've found it particularly easy to use mvn war:war to create a war file, which is why I wish the author had elaborated a bit on why he needed to "reconfigure the conventions".

I have no argument with the author's preference for rake (and rails, for that matter), which is a far more pleasant environment than maven, spring, struts 2 (or something else), and hibernate, but of all this, Maven (I'm talking about Maven 2 here) was by far the most pleasant part of the stack for me.

One last thing - I promise I'm not being glib, feigning misunderstanding where I actually disagree. I'm pretty sure the author is a good programmer who has a legitimate gripe, and all I've done is basic CRUD programming with the stack I mentioned... but I definitely would like to hear some details.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sure it not perfect

\- very handy when starting new projects \- easy to generate project files for Idea, Eclipse etc.

I used ant in the past, maybe it is more flexible, but also requires more work to set up initial build file. I find Maven just easier to use.

What I liked the most is consistency across project files, project structure.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Automatically downloading unresolved dependencies makes your build process > nondeterministic!

This. You need to be able to check in your build tools, and use them as they were to precisely repeat any build you've ever done, or you're risking bit rot. Ant is sort of painful but it works for this.

And if I want my dependencies to be preinstalled rather than checked in and bundled, I'd rather use yum so the rest of the world can reuse them too. Does Maven even support dependencies upon native (non-JVM) apps and libraries which are available for a given platform?

<comment><USER13> _This. You need to be able to check in your build tools, and use them as they were to precisely repeat any build you've ever done, or you're risking bit rot._

It's not non-deterministic if your dependencies include an explicit version. You should not be using unversioned -SNAPSHOT dependencies for release builds.

 _And if I want my dependencies to be preinstalled rather than checked in and bundled, I'd rather use yum so the rest of the world can reuse them too. Does Maven even support dependencies upon native (non-JVM) apps and libraries which are available for a given platform?_

No. Maven is intended to support easy-to-use bundled code dependencies, not to operate as a complete replacement UNIX packaging system.

<comment><USER20> I think you're right that in principle one can make a maven build deterministic, but in practice I have yet to see it done. Of course, that could just be a statement about the crowd I hang out with, but I think there are more fundamental problems. Wouldn't you have to specify explicit version numbers for not only your immediate dependencies, but also all transitive dependencies? Not that that's necessarily a bad thing in itself--regardless of what build system you use, if you want a reproducible build, one way or another you have to specify particular versions of all dependencies. But if you have to provide a configuration file that explicitly lists all direct and indirect dependencies, then what's the point of all the sophisticated transitive dependency management functionality we hear so much about?

Also, you didn't address the gp's complaint that the build tool will spontaneously update not only the project dependencies, but also itself. Some maven plugin developer out there can release a new version, and a project that compiled fine yesterday suddenly won't compile anymore. I'm sure there's a way to force it to use particular versions of the plugins as well, but by the time you explicitly list every transitive dependency and every plugin used in every phase of the lifecycle, you've got a really big configuration file, especially for a tool whose motto is "convention over configuration." Not to mention that if you accidentally forget to specify a version number for one of these potentially dozens of packages, maven will happily default to using the latest version, which makes your build secretly nondeterministic.

<comment><USER16> What you're missing here is sort of described in the RTFM. There are a couple very good, free books on maven that describe this, but in essence:

1) You absolutely should have your own local repository (e.g. Archiva). 2) You should use <dependencyManagement> and <pluginManagement> tags to force all projects to have the same versions o all deps and plugins. 3) Don't even try using snapshots unless you know what you are doing.

<comment><USER20> A local repository doesn't address the problems I mentioned above, it addresses a separate problem, namely the nondeterminism that comes from relying on external repositories that might not always be available. As for the <dependencyManagement> and <pluginManagement> tags, you didn't address my complaints: (1) if you have to explicitly list every dependency, including indirect ones, doesn't that negate the benefit of maven's transitive dependency management? [Edit: ok, not entirely, because it takes care of downloading the dependencies automatically. But one of the supposed arguments for maven is this: if your project depends on foo, and foo depends on bar and baz, you can just specify foo in the pom, and bar and baz will be pulled in automatically. But that's disingenuous: if you want your build to be deterministic, and of course you do, you still have to specify bar and baz explicitly.] And (2) if you forget to specify a version number for one of the dependencies, doesn't maven just default to the latest version at build time, thus becoming nondeterministic?

<comment><USER13> _... if you forget to specify a version number for one of the dependencies, doesn't maven just default to the latest version at build time, thus becoming nondeterministic?_

No.

 _... if you want your build to be deterministic, and of course you do, you still have to specify bar and baz explicitly_

If you declare a dependency on non-snapshot foo, then it will also declare a dependency on non-snapshot bar, ergo, reproducible build.

Your comments seem to be the standard "I don't understand Maven, but I hear that it's broken."

<comment><USER19> The original complaint was

> the far more likely scenario is your project depends on a specific version > of some other project which in turn depends on the LATEST version of some > other project, so you still get hosed even when downstream providers do > remember to bump versions!

so are you saying this is impossible (non-snapshot artifacts are somehow forbidden from depending on snapshot artifacts, which is not what was claimed), or that _every author_ has to understand this and package their artifacts perfectly to prevent this from becoming an actual problem?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Obligatory, the maven adoption curve:

<http://tech.puredanger.com/2009/01/28/maven-adoption-curve>

</comment><comment><USER22> I am doing solo part time development (1 day/week) on a very large orphaned enterprise system. The builds are done using maven. The build takes about 15 minutes because maven is going off to various sites looking for no longer supported versions. I removed the dependencies; not much improvement. I tried mvn -o and the build dropped to 3 minutes. But war file was broken in mysterious ways. The currently irreducible step is 6 minutes to make a war out of a half-dozen project wars. So tossing maven is an urgent item on my plate.

The attractive part of maven is that it manages all the version dependencies for a large development team. For a solo developer it is way too much pain.

<comment><USER13> You don't need to toss out maven, you need to spend the effort learning a system with which you're unfamiliar to actually understand why your build is misconfigured and failing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If the author doesn't want me to use it, why does he have 50 links to it in the text of his article?

<comment><USER15> To show that he is familiar with it and isn't just shooting from the hip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> .. and the maven logo also looks horrible.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maven mixes many programming tools in one program: project building (make), dependency management(apt/yum), project management, etc.

I replaced maven by ant+RPM+yum+Hudson in one large project, and everybody is happy.</comment>


How old: deep learning age estimator from Japan - <AUTHOR> http://how-old.asia/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if the accuracy varies based on ethnicity. The results have been suboptimal for all the asians I tried. My 80 year old grandma showed up as 55. My 6 year old son is categorized as 20.

Perhaps the OP should consider asking for feedback to to correct the model.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, there were quite a few errors for me too. I uploaded that recent meme (Dam Son kid) and it said he was a 16 year old female.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It guessed correct for me, 40. I'm 38. I'm Indian.

Incorrect for a picture of my mother who's 62. It guessed 34. And the picture is of decent quality.

</comment><comment><USER5> For half year old baby (girl) it guessed 12yo male :)

</comment><comment><USER6> A picture of me from when I was 28 comes out as 41.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's fun to test it together with In20Years.com

</comment><comment><USER8> According to it I'm 42 years old, I am 25, :-(

<comment><USER9> For me how-old.net says (correctly) 23 and how-old.asia claims 34

<comment><USER10> Well Asians look younger than other races, so that kind of makes sense.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Calculating Destination-based Sales Tax Rates by Zip Code - <AUTHOR>

Have any of you guys experienced a similar headache as what I'm dealing with today...?
I'm trying to put together a database such that I can calculate sales/use tax rates for customer orders, based on the destination zip code of the ship-to recipient.
I have found services online that maintain these tax rates for each state/county/city and provide the data through a web service look-up tool (for a fee per lookup).  However what I really want is just an excel sheet of every zipcode (or zipcode range) and the associated sales tax for that region.  I'll then code my own tool to look up the associated tax rate.  I don't mind if the data is not 100% accurate or if it's a bit outdated.
Anyone have a database like this and willing to help out a fellow startup? <comment><USER2> As a small ecommerce player, I can't see why you would even bother doing this in any state other than the one in which you operate. I don't think Newegg does this, for example.

BTW, I live in a zipcode with 2 cities that have different sales tax rates.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> To further clarify, only need data on USA zip codes. Thanks in advance.</comment>


D.C.'s Kinetic Tech Czar - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401235.html?hpid=moreheadlines

<comment><USER2> """ "I don't want to buy technology the old way," he said. "Three years ago, D.C. schools spent $25 million to deploy a human resources software program. It failed, and not a single person was fired," Kundra said as he rushed between meetings. "And they had the audacity to ask for more money. How is that an intelligent use of taxpayer money?" """

I wonder if he's ever fired anyone or if he is just talking a good game.</comment>


Like Amazon's DRM-free Music Downloads?  Thank Apple. - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2007/09/drm_part_one

<comment><USER2> Did Jobs know he was forcing the music companies to abandon DRM by refusing to license FairPlay? Or was it just a happy accident?

<comment><USER3> I don't think Steve Jobs does a whole lot by accident and if he did he would probably take credit for it anyways.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you use ADT or Android Studio? - <AUTHOR>

What do you prefer for Android development? Why? <comment><USER2> ADT. When I have used Android Studio, I spend too much time working around Android Studio bugs. I haven't tried it in a couple of months--it may have improved since then.</comment>


Discovery of nitrogen-fixing corn variety could reduce need for added fertilizer - <AUTHOR> https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/grow-food-crops-without-fertilizer <comment><USER3> This is a very big deal. Scientists have been looking for five decades for corn in the wild that fixed its own nitrogen. Commercial nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas using the Haber process:

[http://guichon-valves.com/faqs/nitrogen-fertilizers- manufact...](http://guichon-valves.com/faqs/nitrogen-fertilizers- manufacturing-process-of-nitrogen-fertilizers/)

Now it may take a decade or more for corn breeders to create a new variety of this corn that produces commercially viable yields but it will change not just the fertilizer industry but farming overall when it happens.

<comment><USER4> I was watching a lecture by vaclav smil talking about the the importance of the Haber process. Without that invention 40% of the world could not exist - there just isn't enough nitrogen in the soil to support our consumption. And it's guys like Steve jobs that get called innovators! Absolute nonsense!

<comment><USER5> It's worth noting that Fritz Haber is also credited with the development of chemical warfare, being one of the leaders in the deployment of chlorine gas during the 1st world war. His life is an interesting read: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber)

He was reported on by Radiolab in an episode about the good and bad that people do: [https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/180092-the-bad- show/](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/180092-the-bad-show/)

<comment><USER6> There is a good book called the Alchemy of Air that goes into this quite a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is great! Our company sells seed and fertilizer to smallholder farmers, and so I feel pretty comfortable saying that under application of Nitrogen on crops in the developing world is one of the biggest causes of poor yields and also an incredibly difficult problem to solve. (We do an incredible amount to make distributing fertilizer in 100kg increments and it's still a logistical nightmare.)

It's a 9 month variety instead of a 3 month variet, and so if I was making a rough guess, I'd say that the most likely outcome is that this leads to a ~20-25% reduction in fertilizer use after it's bred into main crop lines (at least initially.) Honestly though, now that this trait is around, it's going to be a _lot_ easier for big seed companies to breed improvements into this. This is huge, and incredibly exciting.

</comment><comment><USER8> The corn is feeding sugars to the microbes that do the nitrogen-fixing, this has to mean some energy cost to the corn itself. Can anyone comment if this makes a notable dent in the yield of the corn, compared to a situation when the corn gets the nitrogen for free from fertilizers? Or perhaps the extra energy expenditure is so small that it doesn't matter in practice?

Of course, in situations when a farmer simply cannot afford to buy nitrogen fertilizers, the potentially lower yield doesn't matter, because the only alternative is no yield at all.

<comment><USER9> [https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/plants-repeatedly- go...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/plants-repeatedly-got-rid-of- their-ability-to-obtain-their-own-nitrogen/)

So, yes, it is an energy intensive, demanding process, but we NEED to make the corn plants do it. Every plant would rather pass the buck to another plant species (or our species) and not have to deal with the trouble of making their own nitrogen. But when we provide nitrogen, in the form of fertilizer, for the plants, the environmental impact is immense. The fertilizer washes off into the nearby stagnant bodies of water, creating huge algal blooms that can suffocate whatever was trying to live in that water.

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

<comment><USER10> I'm thinking Algal Blooms could be a potential solution to carbon sequestration

<comment><USER11> Phytoplankton are basically algae, and they're a huge natural carbon sink when they die and fall to the bottom of the ocean.

It's just that we're overwhelming this sequestration mechanism by digging up and burning dead phytoplankton much faster than new ones grow to replace them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pivot Bio ([http://pivotbio.com/](http://pivotbio.com/)) is testing nitrogen- fixing microbes on corn this year.

And we are hiring: [http://pivotbio.com/careers](http://pivotbio.com/careers)

</comment><comment><USER13> Don't get too excited.

Beans also partner with nitrogen-fixers, but farmers fertilize them with nitrogen anyway. Why? Higher yield. And then the beans stop partnering with the nitrogen-fixers because they're already getting nitrogen for _free_ without having to feed and house the microbes.

So this is great for people who don't have access to fertilizer (as the article notes!) but it will do nothing to solve the overapplication of fertilizer in industrial agriculture.

(Those "roots" look hella cool, though.)

UPDATE: I may have been mistaken about the exact relationship -- it's possible this could reduce nitrogen inputs somewhat for industrial ag, but maybe only if the soil isn't already saturated with N. Need to go back and look at sources... [https://igrow.org/agronomy/soybeans/application-of- nitrogen-...](https://igrow.org/agronomy/soybeans/application-of-nitrogen- fertilizer-in-soybeans/) has some of the info.

</comment><comment><USER14> Am important note that no one has raised yet: this is NOT a discovery, this has been a very long running project, run between scientists and native peoples. The headline steamrolls the fact that this is absolutely not an accident, but the payoff on over a decade of research and hard work.

Shame on you, U.C.Davis. Your own article literally explains this, why the disingenuous headline?

<comment><USER15> I think "discovery" is commonly used both for serendipitous discoveries and for successful research efforts (though sometimes it may have a connotation more of the former). (There's also the metaphysical and marketing question about things being invented vs. discovered.)

<comment><USER13> Without having looked at the article, I interpreted it as "we found something in the wild or already in cultivation, not already known to us", not "we made dis".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The majority of corn is used for Ethanol production:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/austinfrerick/2018/08/06/10etha...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/austinfrerick/2018/08/06/10ethanol/#264ee0b5780f)

Which has negligible environmental benefit, and is a pointless long-term strategy given that the vehicle fleet is becoming increasingly electrified.

Its a shame that political solutions to more effectively use the Earth's resources are more difficult than bioengineering corn.

<comment><USER17> Not technically true that the majority of corn is used for ethanol (other uses combine to make it a plurality, rather than majority), but still, amazingly true that ethanol is now the leading use of corn acreage planted (which I did not know and is why you get the upvote).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very interesting. Also interesting to see how tall corn can grow near the tropics! Roots in the air, all that is interesting. I noticed that corn in Ohio seems taller this year. I call it monster corn, but I've never seen corn quite as gigantic as mexican corn. We have a saying "knee high by july" but for the last 10 years or more it is more like knee high by the first week of june or better.

<comment><USER19> Another ahaian here. I like to say corn as high as an elephants eye by the forth of July to get an eye roll out of my wife, but for the last few years I'm not that far off the mark.

<comment><USER18> hey go bucks! and all that..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jour...](http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2006352)

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the link to the paper. This is potentially very exciting news - <USER2> benefits of Three Sisters agriculture with one of our staple crops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's great that this was found and that the locals hadn't gone for growing the standard varieties that are used elsewhere. It's striking when in South America how many varieties of farmed plants are grown. Local markets are selling tens of varieties of potatoes and corn in a rainbow of colours. A local told me it was partly done as an insurance policy against disease. It makes you wonder what else is out there.

</comment><comment><USER22> Kind of interesting that Mars, the candy company, is funding this. Good for them. The world needs more competition in the agricultural business with the Monsanto/Bayer merger. It's nice that they are pursuing traditional hybridization instead of GMO everything.

</comment><comment><USER23> These are very exciting news. The most interesting part:

 _The study found the Sierra Mixe corn obtains 28 to 82 percent of its nitrogen from the atmosphere. To do this, the corn grows a series of aerial roots. Unlike conventional corn, which has one or two groups of aerial roots near its base, the nitrogen-fixing corn develops eight to ten thick aerial roots that never touch the ground.

During certain times of the year, these roots secrete a gel-like substance, or mucilage. The mucilage provides the low-oxygen and sugar-rich environment required to attract bacteria that can transform nitrogen from the air into a form the corn can use._

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow, in-species nitrogen fixation. Shame of the recent EU ruling on CRISPR (considering it GMO). Now we can't grow this in Europe.

<comment><USER25> Seems fairly clear that a CRISPR-modified plant would indeed be a GMO. What's a real shame is blanket banning GMO crops. I admit a great deal of ignorance in this realm, but from what I understand, a ban on over-use of pesticides (which appear to be the cause of most/all harm attributed to GMOs) would make more sense than a ban on GMOs, which can be for plenty of things besides pesticide tolerance (like nitrogen fixation!)

<comment><USER26> GMOs and pesticides are complicated. Some GMOs increase the use of pesticides, some decrease it. Overall the effect appears to be negative.

[http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600850](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600850)

[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21645698.2016.1...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21645698.2016.1192754)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have been hoping that we could use CRISPR or something like that to make perennial nitrogen fixing wheat. Making cereals into a perennial and fix their own nitrogen could be huge.

I also presume it may not happen for a very long time as most of the big seed companies would be presumably very against it.

<comment><USER28> Seed companies would love it assuming they can get it. Fertilizer companies would hate it. A company that produces both might suffer some kind of breakdown.

<comment><USER29> Many of the seed companies now _are_ fertilizer (and pesticide/herbicide) companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just another reason for big Agriculture to create more GMOs. /s

This would really be amazing. Honest concern... How does the fertilizer industry fight this? There are billions of dollars a year at stake here. Nobody faces billions of lost revenue without a fight.

<comment><USER31> My guess: it's shaping up similarly to the solar/wind <\--> coal fight.

At some point, there's not enough money you can lobby with compared to the real world needs and competing lobbies (here: food/nmonsanto etc) and the balance shifts. Also, in non-US countries people might take a more pragmatic approach, giving new tech a leg up.

E.g., China, India might not care so much about the US fertilizer lobby.

<comment><USER30> The only way to really fight something like this is to make GMO's and the people who produce these plant varieties into some sort of boogeyman, no? We see this happen all over the world, not just in the US. The current level of misinformation about the safety of GMOs is already very overblown in the world. Don't get me wrong, GMOs are being weaponized for monetary purposes in, what I believe, are very unethical ways. But those arguments are not what you see most when arguments against them are made.

I just don't see any other angle to attack nitrogen fixing corn other than to make some sort of GMO boogeyman out of it. It is really amazing the amount of misinformation that is populating the world for the purpose of protecting cash cows.

 _sidenote_ Thanks for the downvotes :) apparently my sarcasm hit a nerve.

<comment><USER31> That's an interesting point. I think there is some truth to that in the US and Europe.

I have a hard time believing that this will become a huge problem in China and India particularly. The gov there isn't interested in giving these storylines a leg up, and people have other problems, such as Melamine-contaminated baby formula (or having food shortages)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Office Space turns 20: How the film changed the way we work - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20190205-office-space-turns-20-how-the-film-changed-work <comment><USER2> > _" Instead of personality-stripping cubicles, organisations would go on to > favour open-air office plans..._"

Absolutely nothing fundamental has changed. I feel like if "Office Space" were being re-made today, open floor plans would be one of the horrors that it would lampoon.

Not so much the open floor plans themselves, mind you. But rather the surreal absurdism of which they're just an example. Twenty years ago, we understood that "Hawaiian Shirt Day" was superficially supposed to be a morale booster, but was actually a morale sink in practice. Today, open floor plans were initially pitched as "collaboration" aids, but most people have to come to realize that they're really about cost savings, and are counter-productive to actually getting focused work done.

Most white collar humor comes from shining a cynical spotlight on the disconnect between what business leaders say, and what business workers actually experience. And the Kafkaesque situation of most people feeling this way, yet us not being able to openly say so in the workplace itself.

The superficial examples may change, but that underlying theme is still central to white collar office work. Perhaps it always will be.

<comment><USER3> I rarely see a comment on HN whose assessment and opinion are more foreign to my personal experience than this one.

Open plans are _much_ better than cubicles. The transition to open plans and standing desks _has_ been a boon for social interaction in teams, more role- crossover, and just more physical movement in general.

Office Space is a timeless and incredible film, but one aspect of it that seems almost like fantasy is the idea that people primarily working on software might sit down in cramped cubicles and prefer fake privacy to real social interaction.

edit: Look, I know that some people like cubicles. If you do, that's fine. But if you actually seriously like small, cramped, stuffed cubicles in Office Space (or The Matrix) - which absolutely existed in the late 90s and early 2000s in IT and seem to have largely disappeared - I'd really like to hear why. If you do like cubicles: how do you _move_? Do you really have the discipline to get up and walk around every once in a while? Or do you end up having much less body movement than open plan participants?

<comment><USER4> If you're an extravert. I'm not; I hate open plans. Give me a cubicle any day.

<comment><USER5> You can be an extrovert and also hate open plans because they are incredibly distracting 90% of the time.

<comment><USER6> You can also be an introvert with good "distraction management" skills who prefers an open office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I worked for a small tech company that, like many, was valued extremely highly in 1999, but the owner didn't listen to advisors and so we fell down the cliff with the other tech companies. He was dejected, along with most of the company, for most of 2000/2001\. The company still had steady revenue from government stuff, though, and those of us left kinda did what we want for several months with no guidance. I watched Office Space nearly daily (the owners stayed home watching whatever and rarely showed up) during that time. It was a weird, shared misery. I wasn't the only one. We even ordered some red staplers and had them floating around for a while. We also, for whatever reason, printed out tons of Jeff Goldblum face shots and hid them all around the company. 10 years later and the owner was still swearing whenever he'd find one.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd certainly give credit to Mike Judge for "Office Space" and "Silicon Valley" but he well and truly hit the nail on the head with the prescient "Idiocracy".

<comment><USER9> I've wondered about its premise, actually. Anecdotally where I live (the Netherlands) I don't feel that "smarter" people get fewer kids than "dumber" people do. Is there any data about this? Say, #kids vs education level?

<comment><USER10> Lots of interesting reading here - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence) I believe long-term fertility is largely eugenic, favoring those with desirable genes. Whether or not intelligence is viewed as desirable long-term, or if there is a shift, or short-term course-correction; that's going to take many generations to discern. In the US at least there is a perception that in the short term fertility and intelligence are negatively correlated. This is likely due to them erroneously viewing poverty as a proxy for intelligence, and there is a positive correlation between poverty and birth rate - [https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by- fam...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family- income-in-the-us/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I fail to see how the "nah-gonna-work-here-anyway" joke is a racist microaggression. Being unable to pronounce a name and making a joke about it could happen just as easily with a name like "Tom Snuffaluffagus." I see a distinct difference between joking about a difficult name and joking about the physical attributes or ethnic history of a person of color.

<comment><USER12> I think you're asking a genuine question so I'll give a genuine answer - because people do not control their names _, just as they don 't control their physical features or ethnic history. The names that are "easy" are typically names that stem from the English language.

Just as saying you feel "uncomfortable" around a person of color or someone wearing religious headgear is a microaggression, so is making fun of someone's name because you find it difficult to pronounce. It is likely easy to pronounce in that person's culture, just not for you. And they've probably heard a million jokes about it so are unlikely to find it funny. Therefore your "joke" provides humor to you and others who feel like you, at that person's expense.

_ Yes, you can legally change your name but it takes a lot of time and effort and could cause you a lot of grief with your family and professional confusion.

<comment><USER13> > Yes, you can legally change your name but it takes a lot of time and effort > and could cause you a lot of grief with your family and professional > confusion.

It took me 45 minutes at the Births/Deaths/Marriages office. If I recall, it cost $60.

<comment><USER14> And it took me 3 months, $180, and being ordered to publish a notice in the local newspaper who was really uninterested in following through and then charged me another $170 for it.

It's different everywhere and it's usually not easy.

<comment><USER15> Did you publish your name change in the Diarrhea Times?

[https://sludgefeed.com/full-first-issue-diarrhea-times- natha...](https://sludgefeed.com/full-first-issue-diarrhea-times-nathan/)

<comment><USER14> okay what

And if I had gotten to choose the newspaper, I would have chosen one that is more friendly and more representative of the local community than the glorified blog operated out of another state that I was ordered to use

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It does seem like one could make a plausible case that Office Space has had the biggest impact on real world life of any movie of all time. Just skimming down the list, it doesn't look like there's anything on the AFI or BFI top 100 even comes close. Maybe 12 angry men has had a real influence on juries in some unseen way, or maybe The Social Network has also had a big influence on what careers people choose, but there's nothing that immediately seems super obvious as surpassing it.

<comment><USER17> Just today read an article on The Social Network being nearly 10 years old now. Of course it's a Sorkin script (with the commentary that's to be expected) _, but the article mentions how much more sleazy Facebook is perceived today than it was even at that time. How much different would the script be in the light of what we know now? Can 't find the link

_I like Sorkin's work and even tend to agree with his points, he just gets a bit self-righteous and preachy in some of it.

<comment><USER16> Ten years ago everyone criticized Facebook for being a walled garden. Today everyone is criticizing Facebook because the walls around its garden aren't high enough. Go figure.

<comment><USER18> What? I don't buy that. Apple is criticised for being a walled garden, I don't think I've ever seen strong criticism toward Facebook for that; I assume you're conflating them somehow.

Facebook was criticised for a few things; constantly changing the UI, selling personal data (although this was mostly opaque and treated as a rumour that wouldn't harm _you_ really) and being a monopoly.

Now it's criticised for aggressive targetted advertising, which may have had a hand in polarising people and even allowing some companies to highten fear and aggression to the point where it subverted democracy in some nations.

It's also criticised for stifling free speech and siding with governments de jour in heavily censored countries like Iran.

I mean. I was an adult using Facebook before "the social network" movie came out; but maybe I misremember?

<comment><USER19> I can see the analogy: in the early days Facebook was invite only and at some point a lot of people were curious and wanted to get in. Now we want it to stop spilling out onto us.

<comment><USER20> Was it really still invite-only in 2009? I thought it opened up well before that.

<comment><USER21> It became available to the public in late 2006. [https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/welcome-to- facebook-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/welcome-to-facebook- everyone/2210227130/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A coworker at a previous company had a red Swingline stapler on his desk. He told me that at one point, the company was giving them out to any employee who had to change desks more than some number of times in a single year.

They eventually stopped this practice when they moved so many people that they ran out of stapler budget. (But they didn't run out of moving budget!)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm a little disappointed that the piece highlights unusual work environments like Google and Facebook and cites them as examples that things have changed in the last twenty years. A big part of what made the film work for me was that it took on the common case, not the exceptional. I understand that a lot of developers work for these top-tier companies but I suspect the majority work in environments that, even today, still look a lot like Office Space.

The gist of the article is that little has changed and I am tempted to agree. My work environment is better, but not everyones. My partner reports to an ineffective manager and a VP who emails over the weekend, expecting to see work product early the next Monday morning; there is a clear implication they should be working during the weekend. A friend of mine was complaining recently about a manager asking them if it was "good for the company" to be upgrading various software products on a schedule or if it was more about making their own job easier. And so on.

</comment><comment><USER24> The thing I remember most about Office Space is how the questions asked in Contextual Inquiries sound exactly the same as the questions asked by "the two Bobs".

In the winter of 2008 (the real estate crash) I was in charge of designing a new UI. I sent a UI/UX team to do a contextual inquiry of our biggest users. Unfortunately our Finance customers freaked out at the contextual inquiries because they thought we were getting rid of their jobs!

You tell me if this sounds like a Contextual Inquiry: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkmuI5W694o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkmuI5W694o)

<comment><USER25> One time I proposed shadowing one of my company's data analysts to get a better handle on what their job is so I could write code with better knowledge of how the software is actually used.

The business analyst, whose job it was to bring the requirements from the DAs to the software engineers, started acting very threatened...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's a great between-the-lines take in this movie. Bill Lumbergh is dating Peter's girlfriend on the Saturday. That's why he forces him into work ... and why the girlfriend also leaves a message.

<comment><USER27> Wasn't it a different Bill Lumbergh that she had actually seen?

<comment><USER28> Yeah, there was another Lumbergh at a similarly named company. Intertrode?

<comment><USER26> Not Jennifer Anniston's character. The original girlfriend whom he went to the hypnotist with. She was cheating on him.

<comment><USER28> Right you are!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Office Space is similar to Dilbert in how well it describes certain aspects of cubicle life. I'm lucky to work for a good company, but they all have aspects of these worlds that describe them too well.

<comment><USER30> Frankly, open plan offices exhibit far worse versions of all the same things found in cubicle life. Really it's just companies that respect basic human needs enough to foot the bill for private offices.. and everyone else who either engages in rationalized cost cutting or cargo cult bandwagoning.

<comment><USER29> My buddy recently left for another job where they have offices and it looks so much nicer. I'm sure he can concentrate much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "How the film changed the way we work" \-- Printers don't use the error message "PC LOAD LETTER" anymore? ;)

<comment><USER32> It's actually a great example of a user-unfriendly UI. Most people still don't know what it means. PC does not stand for Personal Computer.

The error message comprises three parts. "PC" is an abbreviation for "paper cassette", the tray which holds blank paper for the printer to use. These two- character codes are a legacy feature carried over from the first LaserJet printers, which could only use a two-character display for all printer status and error messages. "Load", in this context, is an instruction to refill the paper tray. "Letter" is the standard paper size (8.5 × 11 in.) used in the United States and Canada. Thus, the error is instructing the user to refill the paper tray with letter-sized paper. Variants are "PC LOAD LEGAL", meaning that the printer needs more legal size (8.5 × 14 in.) paper, and "MP LOAD [paper size]" meaning the printer needs paper in the "MP" (multi-purpose) tray, and "[paper size]" is the name of the size of paper specified for the print job.

<comment><USER33> We discovered these displays could be updated via a curl command at one of my previous jobs and they quickly started saying things like "FEED ME KITTENS".

<comment><USER34> I had a boss that absolutely freaked out when he saw that the printer was set to scroll "SELF DESTRUCT IN", "3...", "2...", "1...", "MAYBE NEXT TIME!" every few minutes. I had a cron job set up to run a Python script every minute with a 1:10 chance of displaying it.

He stood there watching it for probably an hour, before running to his office and making a panicked call to PC Services about how our network had been hacked.

I messaged a friend in that department and owned up to it. He later told me he logged an hour "solving" that problem and requested a copy of my script.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> >"inept managers, mind-numbing bureaucracy, forced office parties, repetitive busywork and jargon-filled memos read by none."

till date, I have to read jargon-filled memos and watch mind numbing training videos. Nothing has changed.

<comment><USER36> I've actively avoided learning and using my current employer's jargin/TLAs/etc. Every review I get high praise for communication, how well I work with teams of different skillsets/expertise. I can't help but believe that I'm considered a good communicator because I use "real" words to describe things instead of the made up nonsensical "official" terminology.

<comment><USER37> At my wife's job a manager uses the word "efforting", for example: "We are are efforting a change to last night's ..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Jira. Even though the movie predates it, I feel like it should have been in there.

<comment><USER39> In the new modern version of Office Space, we'll take Jira into the field with a baseball bat...

<comment><USER40> what if jira bring the grasshopper plugin? grasshopper? field? grass? hopper? you're kind of f'd

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > "But as a piece of commentary, the film's damning portrayal of bad > management and inefficient workplaces holds up today."

I'd say that tech workplaces have gotten worse in many ways after this movie's time. Office plans are now usually not very conducive to getting work done without a noise canceling headset (which many companies won't pay for), and the greed at the CxO levels for higher pay/compensation for themselves at the cost of thousands or even hundreds of thousands below their levels could be appalling in many larger companies.

If anything, we need an Office Space 2.0 to be made with contemporary observations and critiques.

<comment><USER42> > noise canceling headset (which many companies won't pay for)

I'm trapped in an open-office dystopia too - by the end of the day, my ears hurt from wearing these damned headphones all day. And I have some really expensive ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I was going into college around when this film came out. I loved the movie, but it also made me adamant that I never wanted to work in a work environment depicted in the movie.

This movie was definitely a part of the reason why I never majored in Comp Sci even though I loved the subject in high school. I assumed all tech employees would inevitably live the life of a cynical corporate drone in IT overwhelmed by bureaucracy and office politics.

Fortunately many different companies emerged since then which had different approaches to work culture, but this movie probably changed my life!

<comment><USER44> What did you major in, and how did that turn out for you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> > personality-stripping cubicles

Oh, if only we could have cubicles! Now tech companies are instead taking after boiler room call centers.

They didn't know how good they had it.

</comment><comment><USER46> I remember reading a comment on youtube about the ending of the movie. Supposedly who ever wrote the script wanted something to happen where Peter would detest his new job in construction. The director didn't want it and so the ending is a happy one.

<comment><USER47> Mike Judge was both the director and sole screenwriter of _Office Space_.

<comment><USER46> It might have been whoever was funding the movie then. found the ending: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK43Ureuiqc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK43Ureuiqc)

<comment><USER48> That does seem to fit with the "all bosses are idiots" theme of the movie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Another interesting part of that movie is the salami slicing plot line. Salami slicing is the name for collecting factional cents off thousands of transactions to accumulate a big payout without people noticing. It's featured in a bunch of movies:

\- Superman III

\- Hackers

\- I love you Philip Morris

\- Office Space

I mention it in my talk about how to program database systems safely when handling money to avoid situations like that. It can also happen by accident when converting between floats and Decimals incorrectly while programming.

[https://github.com/pirate/django-concurrency- talk](https://github.com/pirate/django-concurrency-talk)

</comment><comment><USER50> I always felt that there should have been a sequel where Peter, Michael and Samir eventually reunited and started that company Penetrode.

</comment><comment><USER51> Funny story: I had just started working at a SV-based startup with mandatory surfing lessons and a fivefinger-wearing transhumanist CEO when Silicon Valley started.

Watching it was very painful, to say the least. Having to go through it is one thing, having your nose rubbed in it another.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm surprised that neither the article nor comments here to date point out that the original setting was the cartoon shorts series "Milton"[0], where Milton and Lumbergh are the central characters. The film's climax with Milton's breakdown is foreshadowed in the Milton series ("I could put strychnine in the guacamole...")

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_(cartoon)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_\(cartoon\))

I think Gary Cole was underrated; he was awesome in "American Gothic".

</comment><comment><USER53> This movie had a big effect on my personally. I quit my job of 5 years in no small part because of watching it.

<comment><USER54> How did that turn out?

<comment><USER53> At the time it made me deliriously happy. After I was at my new job for a month I amused my new coworkers by commenting "It still feels like I'm on vacation from my previous job. I just can't get it in to my head that I don't have to go back there!"

Looking back on it 20 years later, still one of the best moves I've ever done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Notice there are no open plan offices in the movie.

<comment><USER56> Only because it was made before open plan offices were really a thing.

<comment><USER57> And the "cube farms" as we called them back them were almost as bad. Worse in some ways. They gave a false sense of privacy and people could be louder than they otherwise might have been because they thought those fake 3" walls were sound proof somehow. I remember one co-worker drumming his desk in his cube opposite me all day. It was unbelievably distracting.

<comment><USER55> Yes, those were horrible. Filled with some kind of tissue paper or just air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Mike Judge is a prescient person.

</comment><comment><USER59> True story. I know a company that did a major layoff in by showing office space. As the movie progressed, HR walked around and tapped people on the shoulder. If you were still there for the end of the movie, you were still there...

<comment><USER60> I spent 15 months as "the glitch".

Started on a 3 month contract to cover someone on maternity leave. After 3 months nothing was said, after 6 months the woman on leave came back and nothing was said, after 12 months still nothing. Eventually after 18 months they told me they would not be renewing my non-existent 12 month contract.

<comment><USER61> I spent 12 months as "the glitch" myself. It was my first office job, in data entry, at a business office for Verizon. Me and two other people were hired as temps for a project that was just supposed to last three months.

Those three months pass, and my supervisor didn't hear anything about letting us go, and wanted to keep us as long as possible, so he just had us keep filling out our timesheets. 12 months after our job was supposed to have ended, someone finally realized it and he let us know he had to end our contract.

It was also a wake-up call that people that work in these offices can really struggle with working with proprietary enterprise systems. I was practically a star in the office because I could work around all the various bugs that some enterprise Java application had so we could order all the things we needed to for other business units (I had to do some seriously janky stuff to get it to work, like close and reopen windows at certain points to keep it from crashing, choose unintuitive options, interpret what weird and unexplained acronyms mean, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> If Office Space were remade today it would be all about hyper-sensitivity, worship of popular developers by name, walk outs, and Dunning-Kruger people. Unfortunately, a key target audience would likely take this as a serious personal attack.

<comment><USER63> And Code-Bro Libertarians. Don't forget those.

<comment><USER64> I don't know what code bro mean, but what's wrong with believing in liberty?

<comment><USER65> Some people believe their personal liberty gives them the right to infringe on _other people 's_ personal liberty. Those people sometimes call themselves "libertarians" in the US, when in reality they are anarcho-capitalists.

<comment><USER64> I think that's a gross misrepresentation of what they believe. I have talked to several of them and this is false.

I lean more towards the socialist libertarian side, so I disagree with them on some things but your kind of discourse I don't think is very helpful.

<comment><USER65> I think the problem is people in the US co-opted the term Libertarianism from its traditional use for those on the "left" end of the political spectrum. Please see what I mean here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Prominent_curre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Prominent_currents)

In my experience, libertarians in the US are of the "right" variety, and not so much the "left"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Log, inspect and debug HTTP/HTTPS requests and webhooks the easy way - <AUTHOR> https://log.ao.gl <comment><USER2> Vulnerable to very simple XSS:

        curl https://log.ao.gl/?log=3402343388 \
        -X POST -d '<script>alert(1)</script>'

<comment><AUTHOR> ..not anymore ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I sent a request but the timestamp shows it was sent 5 hours ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> What timezone are you in? I think it shows according to UTC at the moment. I'll make a note to adjust that ;)

<comment><USER3> EST. Apologies for the delay</comment></comment></comment>


A Gentle Intro to Go - <AUTHOR> http://fredalger.net/gentlego

<comment><USER2> I've really started to love Go. There are some great tidbits in here.</comment>


The dark side of eventual consistency and how to triumph over it - <AUTHOR> handling eventual consistency<p>https://medium.com/swlh/handling-eventual-consistency-11324324aec4 <comment><USER2> this article is behind a paywall that not even archive.is seems to know how to get around...</comment>


Dead Man's Switch - version 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.deadmansswitch.net/

<comment><USER2> I like it, but I don't understand what you are saying about encryption:

"These emails are encrypted with military-grade algorithms, so you can be sure that no-one except the intended recipient will ever read them."

Aren't you able to read these messages? Aren't you going to be mailing my recipients plaintext? Aren't I sending all of these forms to you in plaintext (over http)?</comment>


Interview of Andrew Warner (Mixergy) on creating money-making interview content - <AUTHOR> http://blog.interviewincome.com/creating-money-making-interview-content-andrew-warner-of-mixergy-com-part-1/ <comment><AUTHOR> Part 2: [http://blog.interviewincome.com/creating-money-making- interv...](http://blog.interviewincome.com/creating-money-making-interview- contentandrew-warner-of-mixergy-com-part-2/)

Part 3: [http://blog.interviewincome.com/creating-money-making- interv...](http://blog.interviewincome.com/creating-money-making-interview- contentandrew-warner-of-mixergy-com-part-3-of-4/)</comment>


Ask HN: do you need a responsive site if you also have Android and iOS apps? - <AUTHOR> We've just finished the development of our Android app (we already have a great iOS app) and I've been wondering what gain would we get from having a responsive site at this point. It certainly adds to the cost of development and QA, so does it make any sense whatsoever to keep investing in responsive for the 7% of mobile users[1] who aren't on Android or iOS?
1. https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8&qpcustomd=1
Is there an intrinsic value to responsive that our users can't get from a native mobile app? Before making that decision, I want to make sure I'm not missing something.
Thanks HN. <comment><USER2> You need to be more specific. If your page is as complex as Facebook, you need a responsive site. If occasional use on a mobile device works, you don't need a first-class experience for the Web on mobile devices.

There are a lot of downsides to most "responsive" implementations, like zoom not working on things that you want to zoom in on. Even if it is a step up from your regular Web UI in some ways, it will never be as good as an app. If you want to have one less implementation, this is the one to leave out.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not as complex as Facebook but I don't see the causal link between complexity and having to have a responsive site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Needs more background. Is your product an app? Are you asking if you need a "web" version of your app?

Or is your product an website, and you've created an app that serves the same content?

Generally speaking, you're talking about two separate things. An app does not replace a responsive website - however there are too many considerations to make a blanket statement.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is the latter, it started as a web site but now we have full featured iOS and Adroid apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some of us don't like to download an app for each and every site we visit.

<comment><USER3> If this is the case, I can't agree more. If I'm browsing the web on my mobile and it prompts to download an app (that serves the same content) I opt out every time.

Common offenders include forums, and magazine websites. Their apps are usually horribly executed, and provide no benefit over the web.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's more like the case with LinkedIn. The mobile apps have more features/capability than the responsive site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> \+ Google Page Rank, for having a mobile website.</comment>


Interactive map on US troop levels around the world since 1950 - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/military-maps/

<comment><USER2> Man, we need to start hyping our stuff more. <http://www.uuorld.com>

<comment><USER3> nice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not that impressive, as a visualization. The zooming in and zooming out doesn't work that well.

Nor does it, at a glance, seem to much support the political point which I assume they're trying to make -- that US troop levels around the world have been significantly increasing. I assume the sudden appearance of a drop shadow around everything in the last frame is some kind of semi-deliberate attempt to make it look more menacing?

<comment><USER5> _that US troop levels around the world have been significantly increasing_

But that's simply not true; in 1969 the US had 2.4M service personnel, now it's 1.4M. 750,000 in East Asia then, how many now? The US has permanently withdrawn ground troops from Taiwan, for example.

What the figures show is that the military has been getting smaller and also that troop deployments have been getting smaller too (compare number of personnel in Vietnam then to number in Iraq today).

<comment><USER4> Ah, once again a couple of sentences with actual numbers tells the story far better than a fancy visualisation.

And yes, the fact that a half-million-man army deployed to South Vietnam looks, on the map, less significant than twenty embassy guards deployed to China is a problem.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, its one thing to conduct a joint-training exercise and its another to enter with force.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This would be more informative if it were layered with some other data; some metric for geopolitical instability, trade deficit, local currency valued in $, oil production in barrels, similarity of votes in the U.N....etc.

You know, anything to see if the troop placements were good investments.

<comment><USER8> I sure hope you chick is firmly stuck in your tongue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Our tour schedule is exhaustive, not one country has been without a show.</comment>


Microsoft yanks Docs.com search after complaints of exposed sensitive files - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-yanks-docs-com-search-after-complaints-of-exposed-sensitive-files/ <comment><USER2> Apparently it is back up and still serving sensitive files.</comment>


Erlang at Facebook: Chat Architecture - <AUTHOR> http://www.erlang-factory.com/upload/presentations/31/EugeneLetuchy-ErlangatFacebook.pdf <comment><USER2> Does anyone have the associated talk (I'm assuming this slide deck was for a speech)? I'm really interesting in hearing more details about the design.

<comment><USER2> Sweet [found them](<http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=51412338919>). There's four videos linked in the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very cool to see these aspects of Erlang being used in real world practical developement tasks. I've felt that other functional programming languages tended to be focused more towards academia, but it seems like the design of Erlang lends itself well to concurrent problems.

</comment><comment><USER4> I did some UI work with the guys who made Qunu. They used similar techniques for in-browser chat: Erlang, "binding" via AJAX long polling. It was pretty advanced stuff at the time (3-4 years ago) - I believe other in-browser chat services like Meebo used polling.

<comment><USER2> I worked on a project similar to these and did a bit of research on existing solutions. If I remember correctly (I'm trying to find the document) Meebo uses a custom lighthttpd and does long polling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think that Facebook chat is one of the more audacious software engienering projects of recent time, simply because of the technical difficulty and almost simultaneous rollout to hundreds of millions of users.</comment>


How CraneAi uses Artificial Intelligence to help teams build apps faster - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/craneai/how-craneai-uses-artificial-intelligence-to-help-teams-build-apps-faster-b7acd4c56c8a <comment><USER2> > _Whenever there is missing links in the flow CraneAi highlights them to help > teams uncover roadblocks that break software._

I can't see how the graph illustrates this.

<comment><AUTHOR> sign up for our beta and take the tool for a stroll. You will see in context how the recommendations are made and handled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> WoW !! This saves lot of time and effort for me and my team. how do i get started ?

</comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome! Where can I find this tool?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you visit [http://crane.ai](http://crane.ai) you can sign up and get access to the beta.</comment></comment>


Code Review Comments Generator - <AUTHOR> https://codereviewcomments.com <comment><USER2> Does your mom know that you ping your c# constants?

Ha, this is great.</comment>


First symptoms of psychosis evident in 12-year-olds - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news191850989.html

<comment><USER2> Be sure to catch the last paragraph: "While the incidence of psychotic symptoms in this study was around 5 or 6 percent, the adult incidence of schizophrenia is believed to be about 1 percent, Keefe added. There are some recent findings however, that many more people experience hallucinations and delusions without being diagnosed as psychotic, he said."

So this seems to have a 500% false positive rate, but some of that is mitigated by under diagnosis in adults.

I wonder if hearing voices in your youth and such is a psychotic symptom how that relates to religious experiences and prayer. Famously, George Bush said he was told by god to end the tyranny in Iraq: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa> .

And if it is OK for adults world leaders to exhibit that sort of behaviour how can we fault 12 year olds for the same and label them as potentially ill?

<comment><USER3> Not very relevant but: in fact a Palestinian politician claimed that Bush said that. I really doubt Bush actually said those words (for one, I don't believe he's as stupid as people make him to be), but even if he did it could be mere rhetoric rather than "psychosis".

<comment><USER2> > a Palestinian politician claimed that Bush said that

Yes, but I'm not aware of Bush countering him that he didn't say that, the Palestinian is on the record about it and was fairly clear.

If it is just rhetoric then that's one thing but he could have said that easily and has never done so as far as I'm aware.

I'd prefer world leaders not to be hearing little voices in their heads.

Obama seems to be susceptible to this too:

[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/05/obama- can...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/05/obama-cancels- national-prayer-day-service.html)

"Prayer is something that the president does every day," explained White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, adding that Obama will sign a proclamation to recognize the day. "I think the president understands, in his own life and in his family's life, the role that prayer plays."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think most children see and hear things that aren't there.

<comment><USER5> Seems a little early to start pigeonholing kids for that type of stuff. I would rather pick it up from grades and such. And put yourself in an environment your not used to and most everyone will see and hear things that aren't there too.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One problem with the reporting in this story is that psychosis (a symptom) is assumed to be associated mostly with schizophrenia (just one of several mental disorders that can have psychotic symptoms). Not all psychosis results from schizophrenia.</comment>


Security for everyone? Apple Store edition (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://jessysaurusrex.com/2015/11/18/security-for-everyone-apple-store-edition/ <comment><USER2> This is painful to read. After working in IT for five years, I am convinced that for the majority of "normal" people, computers are actually too powerful. Apple tries hard to make "appliance" computers, but it's all too easy to break even OS X.

iOS is much better. I am convinced that for the set of "normal people", the iPad is the ideal home computer. (Especially the Pro, where the stylus is an intuitive replacement for the mouse, and there is a pretty good external keyboard.)

<comment><USER3> ios is by _far_ the most secure environment accessible to the vast majority of people.

My brother owns 4 restaurants. Five years ago, he almost had several hundred thousand dollars stolen from his business bank account because he got spyware installed on his laptop. The solution was buy a separate computer just for banking.

Now, the solution available to nearly everyone is buy an ios device, and never access your bank, investment, or credit card accounts through anything else. The locked down app store where users are entirely unable to install non- validated software is perfect for at least 99.9% of users.

And I know people here are upset you can't run any software you want. That does suck! But we've tried letting users do that for going on 40 years now, and it's been an unmitigated security disaster.

<comment><USER2> You actually can run any software you want on iOS - you just have to compile it yourself with XCode and sideload it. And this is a sufficiently high barrier to entry that it serves to protect the clueless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's basically Chromebooks for most people, and incidentally they just started outselling Macs.

Most of us "power users" will never be using one, but they're designed for people who aren't going to be personally maintaining their computer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love the idea behind ChromeOS, but the actual implementation is lacking in a lot of ways. Fundamentally being tied essentially exclusively to Google services just doesn't work for a lot of use cases.

It's probably fine for a lot of individuals in the US, and for K-12, but it's not great in a lot of overseas markets (Google services being blocked, etc.), and probably never a viable option for medium/large businesses.

(of course, "trust Google to run the infrastructure behind it" makes a lot more sense than "trust Asus or Samsung or Acer or HP or ...", or worse, "trust your carrier.")

<comment><USER5> I keep looking at them as they do look attractive. My kids and their teacher would probably do well with them in the classroom. But I just cannot sanction forcing them to use Google like that. My girls are 8 and 10, and it's already very hard to pushback against apps and privacy. I fear that, even if Google is OK today, giving them something like that would show them that it is OK to give up privacy, which sets a bad precedent.

But I know I'm fighting a losing battle and most people wouldn't even notice or care.

<comment><USER4> At least developer mode is easily accessible on most of the machines, allowing you to substitute Google's services if you wish. Though I would still prefer a native method of switching out the "root provider" to one of your own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sorry if this is naive but what does Taylor Swift have to do with this story? I'm talking about her tweets. Not being fussy, I just generally don't know what the author means by the tweets.

<comment><USER7> [https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity](https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity)

<comment><USER8> Threatbutt is much more interesting than a line inside of some apple fix me store. [http://threatbutt.com/map/](http://threatbutt.com/map/)</comment></comment></comment>


Why we chose not to use WordPress for our new website - <AUTHOR> https://array.ie/blog/tech/why-we-chose-not-to-use-wordpress/

<comment><AUTHOR> Spoiler - because we liked Jekyll better.</comment>


New iPad Appeals More to Emotion Than Reason - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/technology/personaltech/10pogue.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print <comment><AUTHOR> 'You attach this single sheet by drawing it across the iPad's face as though you're making a bed. With a satisfying clicking sound, hidden magnets anchor the thing solidly to the iPad's face.

"But Dad," my 6-year-old son pointed out, "you're supposed to keep magnets away from electronics!"

"I know," I replied sagely. "But this is Apple."

And then I showed him how opening the cover turns the iPad on automatically, and closing it again puts the thing back to sleep."'</comment>