Yes, Master (The Only Brand Strategy for Startups) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.weatherby.net/2009/02/yes-master.html

<comment><USER2> It seems pretty cliche to quote a book in response to an article, but this article was pretty light on details and heavy on opinion.

A book I highly recommend to entrepreneurs is the 22 immutable laws of branding. He cites a lot of statistics, and explains a lot of phenomenon that I have observed over the years. Perhaps it just fits my biases but it is the best explanation of branding I've ever read.

Anyway, specifically in that book he principally discusses highly specific branded products versus this "master brand" idea. The problem with master branding strategies is that people make up their mind about a product based on the brand, and they don't change that if it's for a new product. A for instance is the tradition Chevy / Ford / Dodge debate. Most people seem to be drawn to one of these brand, and they generally don't switch between them. So even if Chevrolet introduces a brand new car that would solve someone's needs, if they are loyal to Ford, they won't cross that line. Oddly, with a sub-brand like Corvette, it's positioned outside of that battle so people don't feel like they are crossing the picket line.

Other examples include Pepsi / Coke, Mac / Windows / Linux, etc. Food companies have known this for a long time and don't prominently feature their company brand name on their food products. Instead they focus on the brand of the product.

So what is the theory that underpins this belief? Most people associate a brand name with one thing. Quick off the top of your head, where do you buy your home electronics? How about computers? Where do you buy your Garden Supplies? What about your books? Did you know that Amazon sells all of those things? Most people associate Amazon with books, and while they do sell those other things, the bulk of their revenue still comes from books.

The article claims a sub brand approach is more expensive, yet everything I've ever seen shows differently. It's much more expensive to try to build a brand than to market the specific benefits of a given product. Particularly for a startup, the best way to enter into a market is with a highly focused niche in an industry. Focusing on a master brand makes that extremely difficult to do.

Sorry, kind of a long rant, but I really think that article is misguided.

<comment><USER3> The best for a startup to enter a market is indeed a highly targeted way. But when it comes to branding the best route for a startup is a master branding strategy.

When I started EarthLink's mobile business I actually met with Al and Laura Ries the authors of "The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding". Their advice. Call it EarthLink Wireless.

I have been involved with over 500 startups over the years. I have never seen a sub-branding strategy work for a technology startup. What prompted me to write the article was one of the companies that I am working with (Flux Media) is changing their company name to their product name (Centrafuse) because the use of the two different brands was creating confusion to their potential partners.

YC companies Omnisio, Reddit, Xobni, Scribd, Loopt, Dropbox, Tipjoy, and Justin.tv to name a few all use a master brand strategy. My guess is that nearly all of them do. Perhaps we should ask HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would it say, startup normally have just one product that means there are differences between master and sub-brand strategies. The Google example is a bad one in my opinion, because google has a brand for search and nobody care about google what so ever. And by the way google was not a startup when they started side activities.

<comment><USER3> Exactly.

No startup should start side activities until they have the one thing they are focusing on completely in hand.

Disqus is blog a blog commenting system. One they get that figured out they can go and do something else. Disqus "the name of our second product function."

<comment><USER5> I would argue that the Google strategy is a mess, and the Apple strategy works. Are Apple users more loyal to their brand, or are Google users more loyal to their brand? Part of this is the whole side activities thing that Google did. The Google brand didn't really help these side activities did it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> NyxWulf -- You should consider the size of the companies you referenced in your message. Nary a startup in the bunch.

For startups, a Divide & Conquer strategy turns into a Divide & Fail result. Startups need laser focus on a single product/service.

As the startup grows, sub-brands can be incorporated. Quite easily, actually.

Reason being, the startup isn't a national/global player that has pigeon-holed itself into a single niche. The sub-brands are equated with the growth/expansion.</comment>


Bing revamps its search page with much cleaner design - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/01/bing-redesigned-search-results/

<comment><USER2> It's funny, I've noticed myself using the links in the "cluttered left rail" an awful lot lately. Particularly the "past month" / "past year" links; for so much tech stuff anything over a year old is just not useful. It pertains to previous versions of software/hardware, or to services that have changed their feature set in the meantime.

<comment><USER3> A couple questions:

1) Do you click the sponsored links in search results? 2) Do you run adblock?

Maybe you and I (and anyone else reading this board) are not the target market for Bing. I don't watch Wheel of Fortune either, but that seems to have a strong market.

The less links/buttons on a page to confuse my mother the more likely I'll send her to that page. As long as she can easily find what she is looking for (and is less likely to install _another_ browser toolbar)

Here are some searches that worked perfectly fine for me in Bing and didn't need any sidebar filters:

<http://www.bing.com/search?q=celtics+score> (shows the box score)

<http://www.bing.com/search?q=newton%2C+ma+taxi> (same map/list of taxi companies as google)

<http://www.bing.com/search?q=who+won+american+idol> (I think Bing has better results than Google for this)

<http://www.bing.com/search?q=movie+times> (fandango outranked Bing's list of movies, while Google puts their list ahead of all search results)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's the problem with using a not-Google search engine: any time I have trouble finding something, I feel compelled to switch back to Google to make absolutely sure that it really is that hard to find. So while I've tried to use other search engines by default, it just ends up being more efficient to start with Google.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow. A couple of side-by-side searches, and I've switched to Bing to try it out for the next few days.

I've got really tired of Google's cruft, and tried DuckDuckGo several times, but the results were just never as good (and I missed integrated image and news searches, both of which I use heavily). Bing's results seem much closer to what I expect.

<comment><USER6> That would be really bad, because DDG is a search engine on top of the Bing API.

<comment><USER5> Well, boy do I feel dumb.

<comment><USER7> It's not just Bing results. They use their results instead of running their own content crawlers, but they use some own algorithms for ranking, spam filtering and so on. Also, Bing is not their only source, if I'm not mistaken.

<comment><USER8> I wonder what percentage of ddg results come from bing, is this information public?

<comment><USER9> I wonder how DDG are going to respond to the proposed changes to the Bing API pricing

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Am I the only one who is bothered by how similar the Bing results look to Google results?

To illustrate my point, one of these is Bing and one is Google: <http://d.pr/i/4KA5>

Does this not cross an ethical line?

<comment><USER11> Your UI is not generally the thing you should be innovating with. The purpose of a UI is to be intuitive. The most intuitive thing for a user is the thing they already know.

I work in game development, and this kind of thing comes up a lot. For example, if your going to make a console FPS, you should make damn sure your controls are as similar as possible to Call of Duty and when people make the user interface for an MMO these days, they should probably start with whatever WoW's UI is doing.

When you are looking at a decision like "What colour should I make these item rarities" you might think it's a good idea to change them just to be different from a competitor, but why change for the sake of change?

UI improvements can certainly be made, but you have to balance them against familiarity, which is a huge factor that shouldn't be discounted. Remember that in any product, the UI is a means to an end, not the thing itself. If Bing wants to innovate, they should do so by providing better search results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I noticed this tonight as well. I never thought Bing would be the "clean, simple" result page, while Google was overcome with cruft. Absolutely amazing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is it just me or is this better than anything Google's ever had? (both before and after Search Plus Your World)

If Bing can do a better job with long tail queries, I could definitely see myself recommending to family to use Bing.

</comment><comment><USER14> "cluttered left rail" ... sure, cluttered with things that get a helluva lot of use & happen to be located in a very convenient place.

<comment><USER15> And those options don't exist _anywhere_ on Bing... unless you have to be logged or something strange.

<comment><USER14> not sure if this was intended as sarcasm, so I logged in just to check, no they dont,

they have related searches (in bold), search history & narrow by region down the left...

all but the last go in the "cruft" category imho,

google have the different search types, location, region, chronological stuff then "more", no idea how much customisation they do though ... i'm not a google-fanboy but at least they are all useful _to me_ & better designed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bing seems to be becoming more and more like the clean and simple Google I liked.

<comment><USER17> I can see on the UI side definitely! dejavu Google a few years back ... but how about search quality? I have tried using Bing, but 99.9% I'll be back on Google after a few iterations of using different keywords.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Actually the Tech crunch screenshot does not do much justice. The new bing search result page is really clean and appealing (in addition to search results).

</comment><comment><USER17> A friend of mine who runs what I suspect is nothing other than a content farm, told me last year that he doesn't do SEO for Bing - simply because it doesn't fetch him money. More precisely, his clients want SEO for google ... I suspect the reality is much different, as many IE users would stick to using it. Does anyone know how lucrative Bing is on the SEO market, and how Bing handles such efforts?

<comment><USER19> It's not lucrative, but for most people, optimizing for Google = optimizing for Bing and most other search engines as well. There's really not much difference - maybe you need to come up with a different sitemap, but that's it.

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Nice redesign but the results just aren't good enough. For some searches they match Google but for just as many they fail.

e.g. I searched for a GitHub repo I created. On Bing I got one results. A blog post I wrote about it. On Google I got 77 results including the GitHub project, GitHub Wiki, blog post, and tweets about it. I've also noticed in using Bing that when I type in programming questions I get blog posts. On Google I get StackOverflow which is what I'm usually looking for. I think I'm going to give Bing a try for a few days though exclusively and see how it really compares.

Competing on design is great especially as Google's search has got so cluttered but the results are still the most important thing.

<comment><USER20> Look at github.com/robots.txt and you'll see there is no bingbot listed there. I'm not sure if this affects the result in your query, but it might well just be a case of bing respecting a robots.txt file.

<comment><USER21> Actually, it has msnbot listed, and according to this [http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive...](http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2010/06/28/bing- crawler-bingbot-on-the-horizon.aspx)

The bingbot will respect msnbot permissions when it doesn't see bingbot, unless of course github has explicitly blocked unrecognized user agents too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I had not used Bing for a while so I tried a simple search for "hacker news" to compare the results with Google.

Bing: [http://www.bing.com/search?q=hacker+news&go=&qs=n...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=hacker+news&go=&qs=n&form=QBLH&pq=hacker+news&sc=8-2&sp=-1&sk=)

Google: [https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...
I guess I will stick with Google... I like the redesign though.

</comment><comment><USER23> On one hand people complain that google does to much guessing to what you mean with your query, in the other people complain when they get to much control via the left bar..

</comment><comment><USER24> Have Microsoft revamped bing to prepare it for sale?

<comment><USER25> Bingo! I heard a rumour it might be Facebook.

<comment><USER24> It's strange that Microsoft would want to off load Bing. I know Facebook supposedly have some decent search capability already. Maybe Bing would complement a Facebook type OS?

<comment><USER17> And Facebook seems close with Baidu too - phone or launching fb in China, whatever it is. Would be surprised if Facebook buys it actually ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The two look almost identical. In fact bing now looks more like google, minus a left rail. I actually find google left menu pretty useful.

</comment><comment><USER26> Seems bloat and clutter AdBlock filter for Bing looks like this now,

      |http://db3.api.bing.com
      |http://c.bing.com/c.gif
      |http://www.bing.com/az/*
      |http://www.bing.com/fd/hpk2/*
      |http://www.bing.com/fd/s/a/*.png
      |http://www.bing.com/favicon.ico
      |http://www.bing.com/s/wlflag.ico
      |http://www.bing.com/fd/ls/GLinkPing*

    .

</comment><comment><USER27> Bing is good. But few things I really really miss in them are convenient searches like:

55 f in c

1200 USD in JPY

25 liters in gallons

etc

In Google these give me the answer. In Bing they give me links.

<comment><USER21> Hm...maybe these answers aren't enabled in your country/region. All those searches gave me answers on Bing set to en-us

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It seems it doesn't work in India. It works if you set your country to US.

</comment><comment><USER29> I am going to give Bing a try, as I noticed that loading a Google page puts an extra ~10% CPU usage on Firefox ever since they integrated that Google+ crap.

</comment><comment><USER30> Anyone from Bing team to explain the shift, why focus on these particular set (changes)?

</comment><comment><USER15> 1\. We're choosing search engines now because of appearance?

2\. User styles.

3\. If you don't like the options Google gives you or it annoys you to see them on the side, okay. But blaming it on social search is disingenuous. Social search added a single toggle button that is off in the corner away from results.

The left search bar stuff is standard fare and has been there for ages.

<comment><USER31> Appearance is _everything_ in information graphic design - and that's what a search engine results page _is_. It's an interface between the raw data and my brain, feeding it with information. A better design increases bandwidth and decreases latency. Both of those make the viewer subjectively happier for a wide variety of reasons.

So yes, appearance is an extremely good reason to switch search engines.

<comment><USER15> I'm flabbergasted at this. Either one of two things are happening here:

1\. The results returned by Google and Bing are equally good, and so the only thing remaining is the "noise" on the page.

2\. The "noise" in the column is so distracting that you are willing to go elsewhere regardless of the quality of the content that you are... "able" to see?

The search results themselves are formatted, basically _identically_. The only difference is Google has a bit more stuff up top and on the left side on Google. Just set the origin of your vision to be the div containing the search results.

Or take 10 seconds and install a user style. It will take a fraction of the time you spent flipping back to Google to redo a search. (At least that's been my own experience with trying to switch).

Additionally, in regards to visual bandwidth, the Google results are tighter (yet still comfortable), don't have "Related Links" shoved into the middle of search results, and the site (map) links under the result don't take up an enormous space like they do in Bing (they more than double the vertical height of the result).

(as a side note, it appears to be completely impossible to do an "advanced" (date/language-constrained) search with Bing. If you guys don't use these options on Google, you absolutely must try them. They are invaluable when doing any non-trivial query)</comment></comment></comment>


Why Microsoft's reorganization is a bad idea - <AUTHOR> http://stratechery.com/2013/why-microsofts-reorganization-is-a-bad-idea/

<comment><USER2> Not a bad idea if they want to change strategy and push the company in new directions.</comment>


Magnetico: A Personal Torrent Search Engine That Can't Be Shut Down - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/magnetico-a-personal-torrent-search-engine-that-cant-be-shut-down-170409/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion about Magnetico:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14018877](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14018877) (6 days ago, 36 comments)

</comment><comment><USER3> If this can be achieved in the browser as an extension it would be a game changer.

</comment><comment><USER4> How do you match peers without server?</comment>


Staring into the Soundless Dark: On the Trouble Lurking in Poets' Bedrooms - <AUTHOR> http://www.themillions.com/2017/01/staring-into-the-soundless-dark-on-the-trouble-lurking-in-poets-bedrooms.html <comment><USER2> > An animal-lover and vegetarian, Byron also kept a pet bear, Bruin, while a > student at Cambridge, and according to some accounts the bear lived with him > in his lodgings, a sentry while he slept.

uh, ok, heck, I'd like to know the line of reasoning that led to that idea and its subsequent execution

<comment> _-__--- we weren't event allowed octopus lamps, but bears have been shown to be effective fire prevention measures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Byron said that nobody in Venice fought duels over women, at least not with their husbands. I am interested to learn that he was a vegetarian.

As for Ruskin, he had been a medical student, so shock over pubic hair seems unlikely.</comment>


Congress Match - Does your Representative (or Senator) represent you? - <AUTHOR> http://www.popvox.com/blog/2012/announcing-popvox-congress-match-does-your-represe/

<comment><USER2> Seems kind of useless to put it behind a paywall. Has anyone made something similar that anyone can use?

<comment><USER3> It's not a paywall. It's free.

Here's how it works: you use PopVox to communicate with Congress, sending support or oppose messages which are publicly tallied so all can see which way any given Congresscritter's distric was leaning. This tool then shows you, bill by bill, whether your two senators and congressperson voted the way you told them to through PopVox.

If you contact them some other way, PopVox can't possibly know that (nor can anyone but your congresscritter, so there's no accountability), so it's useless without an account.

<comment><USER4> Its a paywall. Just I have to pay with info rather than money. It is not free.

To accomplish the goal of knowing how my congresscritter (really?) matches with me, I should not need an account. If I wanted you to contact them for me then OK but to call the site useless without an account just makes it so.

<comment><USER3> I don't work for PopVox, so I'm gonna stick with "Congresscritter" :)

Anyway, I guess you were expecting one of those hokey quizzes news sites have that never really cover the bases properly. _shrug_ PV's actual purpose is to enhance constituent communications. That means your messages to Congress route through them so they can sprinkle on loads of metadata and make it easier for the Congressional aids to sort through while at the same time providing public accountability. This personalized bill-by-bill member-by-member thing is newly added on top of that larger main goal.

I use it because I like that accountability thing (transparency, woo!), and I have enough friends that used to have to sort through paper letters to the offices they worked in who have warned me that I will make staffers hate me if I send paper letters ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pay-wall business model is broken and thus I don't think this site in this form will ever be successful. The thing to do would be to compile all the publicly available information pulling out relevant information via filter for particular topics, groups, and interests. The way to pay for it all is to charge representatives, senators, presidential candidates, etc. money to have an 'official from them' page on the page that describes what they do and who their interests are. The public should never have to fork over any money, or information to these congresspeople, unless they specifically create an account to ask directed questions to congresspeople who are paying money to be on the site. Should charge $25k per year to each state representative ( at a federal level ) and $50k per year for each senator. CA and other state legislators should have to pay $5-10k per year depending on their level. Presidential hopefuls should pay something like $1m per cycle. Most to all of these people are millionaires, and their campaign funds should be allowed to be used on this site. It should also give information about effectiveness of voting technologies, etc.

disclaimer, I wrote up a site like this, but haven't coded/launched because success is dependent on design skills and the ability to implement them, not in quality/quantity of info. Until ordinary citizens are using it, no rep is going to pay for it as a platform for access, and it needs really great design to get ordinary people to use it. If I become rich this is the first site I'm going to throw money at because I think we really need something like this.

</comment><comment><USER6> Voted on a few of these things and the percent of support surprised me. I wonder what group of people keep skewing these polls. I know online polls aren't anywhere near accurate, but the percents still surprised me.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, seems pretty skewed right/conservative in the few bills I voted on. I have seen this phenomenon before, for example in Votizen, where a lot of well organized Ron Paul supporters are some of the earliest adopters of online political tools.

<comment><USER3> So get your preferred groups to make use of the handy widgets PopVox makes available for easily contacting Congress on whatever their important-bill-of- the-moment is. <https://www.popvox.com/services/widgets>

(You can embed them in your personal homepage too. It's free. I've got an anti-SOPA one on my homepage.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "tocomment" - what do you mean? there's no paywall.

<comment><USER9> I also run smack-dab into a 'create a popvox account' box. Nothing on bugmenot, and definitely not something i'd bother to create an account for.

<comment><USER3> If you and ten other people shared a BugMeNot account, that'd mean your opinions and those ten others would all be grouped as one user, meaning it wouldn't ACTUALLY represent your views. Also, Congress requires your REAL name and your REAL address to contact them, otherwise the Congresscritters' online forms reject the email as being not from their constituent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> seems kind of simple, the answer would always be NO!</comment>


Hacking radars: Why Syria's Air Defenses Failed to Detect Israelis - <AUTHOR> http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post:2710d024-5eda-416c-b117-ae6d649146cd&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest <comment><USER2> Not the first time IIF has had to be sneaky.

One example is in the War of Attrition (post 6-Day War in '67) ~ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Air_Force#War_of_Attri...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Air_Force#War_of_Attrition) while the other was in '81, Operation Opera where the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor was destroyed using similiar techniques ~ [http://op- for.com/2006/07/the_genesis_of_a_deep_penetrat.htm...](http://op- for.com/2006/07/the_genesis_of_a_deep_penetrat.html) and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Opera#The_attack>

</comment><comment><USER3> Syria responded, "Don't tase me, bro".

...

So long karma.

</comment><comment><USER4> Russian military equipment has a very bad name these days. It is cheap, but it often fails in confrontations with the west. I think StrategyPage had a bit on it recently.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very comforting information.</comment>


We almost demolished teen smoking, and JUUL reintroduced it back - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/themehakvohra/status/1076433054099492864 <comment><USER2> Ok,pleae explain to me why smoking marijuana and legalizing it so awesome but Vaping is terrible. Or am I missing something? Marijuna legalization is celebrated but I see vaping ads equating it to Cigarettes.

<comment><USER3> I'm not 100% pro-legalization, but the main argument there is that the laws on the books are draconian and variably enforced. We probably don't want that for consuming anything relatively harmless, like vaping or weed.

I think the jury is out on how addictive any of these substances can be, and since the legal age for smoking is 18 there's a significant worry that vaping is affecting the health of our kids (almost definitely true). The same is possibly true for marijuana, it's just less well studied (and these health studies are new).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe there should be a third line added to the graph showing alcohol consumption or some other "vices". Perhaps something else more damning to children has declined. I'm not one to applaud getting "hooked" on anything but kids will be kids and if their not using nicotine it will probably be something else. It is up to the parents to educate them not blame a corporation for making money.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm old and don't know anything about vaping. Is there anyone who can help cut through the noise here - is vaping actually equivalent to/less than/worse than smoking cigarettes? Have any large pieces of epidemiological research been done?

<comment><USER6> Totally anecdotal, but I'm a former-smoker and I'm pretty sure everyone I know who has switched from combustion to vaporization would tell you that the acute effects are significantly lower. Less coughing, less shortness of breath, shorter recovery when battling a cold, lower blood pressure, fewer instances of bronchitis. I can't imagine that vaping is even in the same ballpark of potential harm as cigarettes.

Am I addicted to nicotine? Obviously. Has JUUL made quitting all nicotine any easier? No. But I feel a lot better than I did when I smoked.

<comment><USER7> I think compared to smoking, vaping is definitely healthier (or rather, less unhealthy). However the concern is that there are people vaping who wouldn't be smoking cigarettes. Anecdotally this seems to be the case, especially with people in their teens and 20s.

<comment><USER8> There is a recent research paper estimating vaping to be about 95% better for you than smoking. Even if people who wouldn't have smoked at all vape, it appears to be an overall net positive.

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180111141600.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180111141600.htm)

"Studies show that if most current American smokers switched to vaping e-cigarettes over the next 10 years, there could be as many as 6.6 million fewer premature deaths and 86.7 million fewer life years would be lost," said David Abrams, PhD, professor of social and behavioral sciences at NYU College of Global Public Health and the article's lead author.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have never understood the attraction of something like nicotine which is for all practical purposes only useful for getting addicted to. If you are a teen and get hooked hard you have just voluntarily made yourself the bitch of whoever can provide you with nicotine. You will be paying them for the rest of your life.

Why not pledge to contribute to a charity for the rest of your life instead? Do heroin and have a pleasant/uncomplicated/short life. What is so special about nicotine that people happily give themselves to it as opposed to all the other things one could get pointlessly addicted to?

<comment><USER2> Nicotine helps witu stress and feel calmer. Why do you compare it to heroin? I mean seriously,is JUUL more harmful than fastfood?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What candidate management system (software or otherwise) do you use? - <AUTHOR>

I am the person in our small company who is, amongst other things, currently responsible for managing the hiring of devs. I've done this before quite a few times, and had managed applicants with a spreadsheet. It worked, but it was always a bit clunky.<p>Now, as we're growing, the number of open positions is too, and the spreadsheet isn't going to cut it anymore. I could write a custom service pretty handily, as our requirements aren't that complex, but I'm wondering if this is a solved problem already. So, HN, please tell me your system for managing job candidates? <comment><USER2> Our product TaskPutty.com should work well for this.

You draw the steps in your hiring process, and then candidates are visualized as cards flowing through this diagram.

You can also drag&drop your own custom reports, and create automated rules. A form designer allows you to capture all the right fields that you need.

Single User mode is FREE. There-after pricing starts at $3 per user/month.

While we are marketing it mainly as a CRM, it works well for any process where you wish to track entities (sales, potential hires, support requests) through a process consisting of various steps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, Andries, thanks for taking the time to reply to me.

I like the idea of Task Putty and your pricing is great, so hopefully you'll let me provide some constructive criticism. As it stands, your website has none of the information that I would require to consider using Task Putty. There's no company name, address, or registration number. There's no cookie policy, privacy statement, or terms & conditions.

When we store candidate data (at least in the E.U.), we are responsible for storing it securely, keeping it for several years (for F.O.I. reasons) but no longer, and ensuring that it is used only for the recruitment purposes that it was provide to us for. We are responsible for vetting the services we use, and at a minimum, we would require the above. It's a liability issue for us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://applybin.com/](https://applybin.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> They seem very good, but their SSL cert is a few months out-of-date and there's no company information. They might be defunct?</comment></comment>


Web Alphabet Set to Change - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125664117322309953.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories <comment><USER2> I'm extremely in favor of internationalizing the web as much as possible.

But this is a mistake. Just like air traffic control, there needs to be some minimal set of language standards web administrators should have. English had become the de facto standard, and while not optimal (maybe), at least it was working.

Do you know how many international characters look alike but aren't? How difficult it's going to be to debug domain names by sight? You'd be better going back to hex.

Maybe I'm not up to speed on the tooling, but I think this is going to be a mess in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER3> See also:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=903276>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=904143>

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone have any details? Is ICANN declaring a single true text-encoding for URLs? There isn't much room in them for metainfo.

</comment><comment><USER5> uh, surely all this involves is extending DNS to be unicode compliant? not really a big deal is it?

<comment><USER6> For current latin-alphabet DNS, domains are case-insensitive. Will that still be true? Will Google have to buy gooGle.com separately? How do you do "case- insensitive" Japanese - don't they have 3 separate character sets for different situations? How do you distinguish among identical-looking characters? It's technologically simple, but there's more than technology involved.

<comment><USER7> Domain spoofing will be one major issue you can for example have 'google' with the two 'o' being greek omicrons, interesting times are coming:)</comment></comment></comment>


When is your maintenance window? - <AUTHOR>

When is your maintenance window?
Ours is Saturday 11pm to Sunday 7am. Some of the teams are advocating for weekday updates for the application layers as they say they want to know if users are having any problems right away instead of Monday morning.
I'm curious when your windows are and why. <comment><USER2> Any time, multiple code and data launches per day. With redundant hardware it's assumed that you can always take one server out for, e.g. a kernel update. The extra capital investment is tiny compared to engineer salaries. The approach of having a huge test suite and test servers lucky started when the company was founded 10 years.

I think management values engineer's time (well happyness) over the (very rare) event of a rollback. In fact the strictest maintenance window is for upgrading the office, e.g. new router or VPN: after work hours.

</comment><comment><USER3> We can do maintenance after 5pm any day of the week as long as it isn't disruptive.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some bad developer habits? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> \- Wrong level of abstraction (too high level, too low level) either in verbal communication or coding.

\- Intellectual violence (agressivness to people in meetings because they know the details someone else might not know)

\- Hoarding knowledge - Incorrectly assuming it makes them more valuable rather than seeing the big picture that there's an infinite amount of knowledge out there and we are better to spread it as far as possible.

\- Refusal to learn new tools and using the same old stack over and over again, even if it's an inappropriate choice

\- Always leaning new tools, and never finishing / shipping

\- Softare engineering anti-patterns [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti- pattern#Software_engineer...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti- pattern#Software_engineering)

\- No README or build instructions. Not testing to make sure builds work off their personal machine

\- Looking down on others that dont know X, even though they didn't know X 5 minutes ago.

\- Getting defensive about the codebase rather than remembering we are all on the same team.

\- Leaving the code in a worse state than they found it in.

\- Championing a new technology choice because it's the new hotness, then refusing to take responsibility for it when it turns out to be unstable or problematic

\- Never admitting fault or that they might be wrong

\- Willful blindness to policy or ethical violations

\- Sanctifying the code / sunk cost fallacy -- thinking that code is somehow sacred or deserves special treatment because it took them a while and effort to write : sometimes you have to just throw it away, rather than keep pushing resources into something that isn't working and refusing to give up because you've already put so much effort in.

</comment><comment><USER3> \- Going into details when the discussion is on a way higher level. Our mind tries to solve those puzzles instantly.

\- Trying to create a solution which can be used in x different ways later even if there is no indication this will be ever needed.

\- Overthinking IDE's and keyboards and monitors and editor themes and stuff.

\- Forgetting that often the customer doesn't 100% know what they need, it is our job to help them getting there and not just blindly implement what they ask.

</comment><comment><USER4> Writing code. More specifically, thinking of themselves as code writers rather than feature deliverers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Assuming that stated requirements are stable, thinking they are meant as interpreted, and that we understand the ramifications, imagining a simple solution (missing exceptions and edge cases), giving an estimate based on preceding without even taking into account validation/testing and deployment process.

</comment><comment><USER6> \- acting like the ticket is done when it's pushed to code review (not taking review, QA, release, etc. into account). This implies a lot of miscommunication, think daily: "I'll finish this ticket today" -> ticket released 5 days later

\- in case of communication, assuming that doing anything (usually one message in a convenient way - face to face, email, Slack) is the best they can do. No. In communication, you're actually responsible for the outcome.

\- focusing on technical knowledge rather than soft skills (not to mention good sleep, diet and exercise)

\- doing convenient job; not asking "What's important NOW?"

</comment><comment><USER7> When business states the requirements or tech lead states requirements or some constraints and the programmer does not write them down.

I see this very often and the programmer either makes mistakes or comes back later asking for the same information

</comment><comment><USER8> Browsing HN instead of working during work-time.

</comment><comment><USER9> Eating too much during lunch and then taking a nap immediately afterwards and slacking on the job.

</comment><comment><USER10> \- Not writing tests

\- Writing giant methods or functions

\- Write "smarter" code instead of legible code

</comment><comment><USER11> Continuous checking the hackernews.

</comment><comment><USER12> Writing tests _after_ the code they will test

Ignoring Interface segregation

Assuming instead of asking

<comment><USER13> > Writing tests after the code they will test

I hate TDD, to be honest. It's not enjoyable and it's not how my mind intuitively works.

I like to quickly prototype first and then mould solutions iteratively towards the final form. Then I cover the really important bits with tests for confidence.

<comment><USER14> Absolutely. Why waste time writing tests for a class you'll end up throwing away? Just write the tests once you are done, but keep testing in mind when writing code.</comment></comment></comment>


On Stanford's new logo typeface - <AUTHOR> http://www.rioleo.org/on-stanfords-new-logo-typeface.php

<comment><USER2> the font featured in the example gallery is clearly not source _sans_ pro

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. I've amended the piece.</comment></comment>


Ranger: CLI File Manager - <AUTHOR> http://www.rosipov.com/blog/ranger-the-cli-file-manager/

<comment><USER2> Wow this is really helpful. Nice find!</comment>


Ask HN: How secure is my PHP script? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DieTapete/restricted-area

<comment><USER2> I didn't go through the whole thing in detail, so please correct me if I got anything wrong, but I think I understand enough of the structure.

There are some acute problems that could be solved in code, for example the use of str_replace() in download.php should be replaced by urldecode(), and you should be aware that the following couple of lines after that do exactly nothing to prevent access to arbitrary files on your server. I don't mean this in a rude way, but it looks like you still have a ton of reading to do on how webservers work until you can tackle any of these problems with confidence. So no, it's not remotely secure, and maybe something that focuses on security is not the best project to get started in the first place.

Besides the security aspects, the problem I see is that the script doesn't fulfill its own core promise: to regulate file access. You can just circumvent it by taking the filename sent as an argument to download.php and use that to access the thing in the files/ folder directly if indeed .htaccess isn't used (which would automatically apply to, say, any NginX server and which is indeed a scenario you explicitly advertise). If you want to prevent that, you have to either store the files in a place that isn't browser-addressable, or at least store them in a way so their names can't be guessed.

The problem with PHP is that it's deceptively easy to make something that looks like it works, but in reality doesn't. It's an environment that makes it very effortless to shoot yourself in the foot. Personally, I love working with it (as opposed to many other programmers), but it _requires_ that you _really_ know what you're doing. I don't want to discourage you from using it, but it's something you have to be aware of - and if you plan on doing only casual web development, I would highly recommend going with a framework instead.

<comment><USER3> I also don't quite understand why there's an apache htaccess file inside `files/`, when the readme says:

        [...] without the need for a database or a .htaccess file.

<comment><USER4> The implication is that there is no need for a .htaccess per user/folder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I created this small script to easily create password protected areas on a server without databases or .htaccess files. The problem is, i am not that involved in PHP and backend programming in general. So i guess there are a few flaws. Can you help me find them?

<comment><USER5> Try asking this on

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP](http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, will do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure you will get lots of help if you just dump the code on people like that. Maybe you should update your readme and explain up front how your arquitecture is supposed to work. When it comes to security its often the case that vulnerabilities come from a bad arquitecture and notjust from sloppy coding and bugs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I updated the README with a 'How does it work' part.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Don't Break The Chain App. Improve Your Habits, One Day At A Time. - <AUTHOR> https://chains.cc/

<comment><USER2> very nice graphics and an interesting idea</comment>


Dolphins Call Each Other By Name - <AUTHOR> http://news.discovery.com/animals/whales-dolphins/dolphins-call-each-other-by-name-130219.htm <comment><USER3> They are also known to build difficult to make toys (air bubble vortex rings) to entertain themselves.

They have to _discover_ how to make it. Sometimes they can be quite possessive, they would break the toy if someone not so knowledgeable wants to play with it. Once a dolphin figures it out how to make one, his/her peers eventually figure it out too. So it kind of spreads within a group like fashion. This behavior has been observed both in captivity and in the wild.

<https://www.google.com/search?q=dolphin+vortex+ring> (a time sink right here)

They also have what appears to be fratricide were they bludgeon another to death targeting vital organs (I dont have a reference to this, but I recall reading it on BBC).

I have seen dumber people on and around TV.

I am sure there are HN'ers who are divers and have first had experience with dolphins, we would love to hear the stories.

<comment><USER4> _> They also have what appears to be fratricide were they bludgeon another to death targeting vital organs_

Apparently Orcas have developed this Kung-fu like thing, where they can kill a shark _by just holding it_.

[http://worldtourwhilediving.com/2012/01/13/orca-flips- over-g...](http://worldtourwhilediving.com/2012/01/13/orca-flips-over-great- white-shark-dinner-is-served-for-willys-family/)

<comment><USER5> This is a form of "tonic immobility" in sharks (chickens have the same reaction if held whilst looking at a line drawn away from them)

It's an attempt to feign death / stand immobile whilst danger passes.

Its effective in sharks as they need water passing over their gills so if they stop swimming they are dependant on current.

Of course orcas are big enough to turn a shark over - your average guy in a chain mail suit tries this with Jaws' older brother and it's three months of trying to get steel rings out of your teeth

<comment><USER6> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_death>

"With tiger sharks 3–4 metres (10 to 15 feet) in length, tonic immobility may be achieved by placing hands lightly on the sides of the animal's snout approximate to the general area surrounding its eyes."

Nah, that sounds easy.. ^^

<comment><USER5> I have a plan - we post the above link on Reddit then we put a hundred bucks on what the next Darwin Award winner dies of

:-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any thread on dolphins is not complete without a link to the 1992 NYT article on dolphins: [[http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/18/science/dolphin- courtship-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/18/science/dolphin-courtship- brutal-cunning-and-complex.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)]

Here's the sad part: none of this is new. 1992. 1992. Over twenty years ago.

As children they make a best friend for life, they form complicated alliances for mutual benefit, they form _political_ alliances/gangs, they help each other out both tit-for-tat and "pro-bono" while keep score of debts (I help you today, you will owe me _at some undefined point in the future_ ), they group together to accomplish tasks (sometimes/often at the expense of other dolphins, for instance a female they are trying to get with).

Another important study was done to research the presence (or lack thereof) of a universal dolphin "language" (EDIT: found source! [[http://wakeup- world.com/2011/11/28/the-discovery-of-dolphin-...](http://wakeup- world.com/2011/11/28/the-discovery-of-dolphin-language/)] but not peer reviewed research). It involved showing dolphins in one aquarium a sequence of objects (red ball, green box, etc.) and recording the sounds made, then travelling to another aquarium _with dolphins that have never been in contact with the first_ and playing back the sounds made, then watching the dolphins "locate" or "identify" the object the sounds were made in response to. They achieved an astonishing (if memory serves!) 86% accuracy rate implying audible descriptions of objects, much in the same manner that a "bee dance" can be universally understood across hives/colonies except it's based on actual sounds rather than movements.</cannot find source>

Regardless of whether or not you feel dolphins deserve the title of "non-human sentient beings" (whatever "sentient" means, it's such a non-word), I think anyone involved in the mass slaughter of dolphins in an attempt to ransom money should be imprisoned for being a killer (Reference: 900 dolphins killed in Solomon Islands as black mail for raise in pay negotiations. Sorry, but f __* them [[http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10861279) ])

<comment><USER8> Any thread on dolphins teeming with the usual tripe about their intelligence, playfulness, peacefulness, and near parity (if not outright superiority) with humanity is not complete without mentioning their tendency to commit infanticide and kill other marine mammals for fun:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3323070/Killer- do...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3323070/Killer-dolphins- baffle-marine-experts.html)

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1689180/>

<comment><USER9> I'm confused, you use the term tripe, as to say it's misleading about their intellect or parity, and yet give two more examples on how similar they are to humans.

We, as humans, are peaceful, playful, intelligent, and vicious and sadistic murderers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars, and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons." -- Douglas Adams

<comment><USER11> So long, and thanks for all the fish!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Dolphins are exactly why I feel SETI is such a misguided (in a sweet way) effort.

Here we are, searching for extraterrestrial intelligence while we can't even communicate with the other intelligent species on our own planet.

Glad to see we're making progress though!

<comment><USER13> SETI is not misguided. We've known for a long time that Earth was hospitable to intelligent life (us). That there are other species with similar levels of intelligent just makes Earth more awesome.

But it would be a complete _mindfuck_ if we found other intelligent life in space, where before there were mainly only stars, rocks, and interesting formations of liquid and gas somewhere in between. It would change everything.

<comment><USER14> The thing about SETI is that it is not really a search for intelligent life, it's a search for "intelligent life that broadcasts radio waves of a frequency and power that we can detect in a pattern and on a timescale similar enough to our own communications that we can recognize it".

Fermi's paradox basically boils down to: if intelligent life is at all common, it should be everywhere we look, and yet we don't see any. The traditional position is that therefore if we don't see intelligent life, it must be because it's too rare, or communication across interstellar distances is impossible. But the other possible answer is that intelligent life is everywhere, and we just don't understand or even recognize it as such.

The fact that we've been living with dolphins for millions of years and actively studying them for decades and have only just worked out a pretty basic fact -- they have names for each other -- despite the fact that they share most of their genes with us and live under the same environmental conditions exactly, suggests that we are probably _really really bad_ at recognizing intelligent life that isn't exactly like our own.

<comment><USER15> It is also possible that we haven't found intelligent life yet because we define both intelligence and life in very specific ways that we as humans can relate to. For example, there can be an intelligent microorganism species out there where each individual microorganism leads a life as complex as a human. They may have invented all sorts of things in the micro scale, but chances are we might never find them simply because we are not looking for intelligent life in such a micro context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I went through a Cetacean and cephalopods obsession last year.

What really freaks me out is what Dolphins looked like when they were still land animals:

<http://understanddolphins.tripod.com/dolphinevolution.html>

Also the perceptual systems of octopus and squid are amazing. Cuttlefish can perceive the polarization of light. This helps for contrast and edge detection. Many Cephalopods (octopuses, squid, cuttlefish) can see with their arms and then replay the image on the other side like a video screen.

Dolphins can tell the difference between a quarter and a dime from 100m away using sonar. The click generating system emanates from the top of their head, in the area of the third chakra.

We have a very limited sense of space and an all too focused sense of self. But we have a lot of oil and we can dig shit up and drive around real fast and think we are really important.

<comment><USER17> > We have a very limited sense of space and an all too focused sense of self. > But we have a lot of oil and we can dig shit up and drive around real fast > and think we are really important.

We can also appreciate these things as no other species on Earth can, to the best of our knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I referred to this NGM article in another sub-parent comment here, but I think it contains very relevant on-topic animal intelligence language-related insights, so posting a link and a couple of short excerpts from it here:

      Under Pepperberg's patient tutelage, Alex [a parrot] learned how to use his vocal tract to imitate almost one hundred English words, including the sounds for all of these foods, although he calls an apple a "banerry."

      "Apples taste a little bit like bananas to him, and they look a little bit like cherries, so Alex made up that word for them," Pepperberg said.

      [...]

      [...] because Alex was able to produce a close approximation of the sounds of some English words, Pepperberg could ask him questions about a bird's basic understanding of the world. She couldn't ask him what he was thinking about, but she could ask him about his knowledge of numbers, shapes, and colors. To demonstrate, Pepperberg carried Alex on her arm to a tall wooden perch in the middle of the room. She then retrieved a green key and a small green cup from a basket on a shelf. She held up the two items to Alex's eye.

      "What's same?" she asked.

      Without hesitation, Alex's beak opened: "Co-lor."

      "What's different?" Pepperberg asked.

      "Shape," Alex said.

Article: [http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal- minds...](http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal- minds/virginia-morell-text)

<comment><USER19> From that excerpt, all the parrot can tell is if two objects are the same color or not.

<comment><USER18> Not really: the parrot must have an internal representation of 'color' as something (a concept / quality) that can be _had_ and _shared_ between things. It (hm, s/he) must therefore understand that it is (it must represent it as) an abstract quality in the sense that it can be had by different things (likewise with 'shape').

Well so what? This entails (I would argue) that it has the capacity to store and operate on abstract things (more or less the definition of 'symbol') - <USER2> in this very sense, the parrot has the faculty for symbolic processing/operations. Not only does it extract properties from sensory data and generalize them into concepts (things can be wibbly-wobbly-in-way-A, or wibbly-wobbly-in-way-B (first order of abstraction (well, n+1 really)) => things have wibbliness, and some things have the same kind of wibbliness (second order (or n+2))), but also, it may operate on these concepts and use them in assertion/negation propositions: some objects have the same color but not the same shape. (I use the term proposition in the more general logical sense, not necessarily as in 'a linguistic assertion'; but when asked, the parrot provides an answer that can be put in a truth-table so to speak.)

Interestingly, that's one of the ways to actually define 'semantic content': something which provides truth-conditions (e.g. some language-formalizing systems would say that the proposition "The present King of France is bald" has no semantic content / has no meaning because it is neither true nor false (presently there is no King in France, and the reference fails) (though Russell would disagree ('how can it be neither true nor false?') (if interested: "On Denoting", 1905.))

So what #2? Well, one could argue that symbolic apparatus + semantics (a set of truth-functions / grounds for constructing them) => 'language', so it's kind of a big thing, I'd say. (At the very least, evidence towards abstract thought in animals is always somehow very interesting for me.) Again: symbols (abstracting from properties => projecting these abstracts back onto sensory data) + symbolic processing (basically, ability to ascribe truth/falsity to/via them) => darn interesting. There's a whole hot debate how/whether this can be achieved 'bottom-up' from neural networks (Connectionism) (is 'symbolic processing' the proper way of reduction? Even if cognition is 'symbolic' in the end, perhaps it is best to model this starting bottom-up and arriving at 'symb.processing' as an emergent/epiphenomenal capacity?) - or, whether you need 'innate capacity' for symbolic processing / language ('language genes') - top-bottom language faculties (that all add up to those same neural networks, but simply, you won't get much by starting bottom-up) (Classicism / Nativism (not really interchangeable, using loosely / generalizing, etc.))

(<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/#ConDeb> , [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/connectionism/#ShaConBetCo...](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/connectionism/#ShaConBetConCla) , etc.)

</convoluted comment>

 _edit_ fixed and added even more confusing stuff.

<comment><USER19> Let's go back to the scenario:

> The parrot sees a green key, and a green cup, and answers "color" to "what's > same?" and "shape" to "what's different".

For all I know, the parrot recognizes both objects having the same color, and I assume that "shape" means nothing more than "equality" and does _not_ imply attribution of concept or quality, until the parrot can _also_ tell the difference between for example something wet and something dry. In my skepticism, the only meaningful ability of the parrot is to say out loud if the color matches.

Which, IMHO, does not imply as much as you say. There must definitely be _some_ internal model of the world for this to happen. You _might_ be right when you say that there is attribution of quality, concepts, objects, and they share qualities - but I remain skeptic. For instance, an ant will recognize a sugar and react to it, and react differently to for ex. something noxious, but we know that ants are not capable of any complex internal models.

All in all, TY for the reply!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Someone should define a canonical way to transform dolphins' whistles into syllables. Then we could at least sort of refer to them by their names.

<comment><USER21> Apparently, dolphin trainers have the ability to whistle their names:

"Her name was really Cathy. Well, not really. Her real name was [whistles]."[1]

[1] [http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_t...](http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_try_to_save_dolphins)

<comment><USER22> 54:33

<comment><USER23> Thank you.

<comment><USER21> Maybe it wasn't entirely obvious, but there is a transcript at the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> John Lilly, who spent years working with dolphins, believed that they were smart enough to be cute and friendly to humans because they understood how dangerous we were.

<comment><USER25> Not necessarily.

Most of the time the people think about how cute is a dolphin is misunderstanding the animal. If a Lion shows you the teeth, you don't think is a cute kitty, is angry!, but, hey, this dolphin that show us the teeth "is smiling"!. This "smile" is in fact an agressive display in the wild.

Being faster, well armed, and better fitted for water, a dolphin can avoid dangerous humans in the water any time he wants. In fact a lot of alone exemplars search for company, actively, even if is from humans, and are curious. Some dolphins simply like the human company, or the benefits derived of this, other not... at all.

<comment><USER26> On the other hand, animals that are domesticated become "cuter." Look at the Russian fox domestication program (and the mirror aggressiveness program). <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox>

These foxes actually share a good number of features with dogs and humans: it may be that, because dolphins are such social creatures, we perceive them as cute because they are more or less domesticated.

<comment><USER27> A suspected reason why domesticated animals cuter is the ideal that traits that are typically selected are traits found in youth. The general term for this is neoteny [1], which is where youthful traits are held on to into adult life.

Typical traits selected for are reduced aggression and increased docility. The hypothesis is that the animals that displayed these traits likely also had a variety of other relatively child-like traits, such as larger heads, larger foreheads (I guess this might be why dolphins look so darn cute), larger eyes, floppy ears, and etc - on the basis that the set of genes that control the development of adult traits are typically linked together.

The result being that as we selected for the tamest animals, we also selected those that were cuter. It's kind of circular in that traits that make things cute are typically those that are found as young - the young form of most animals sharing the same general 'cute' features.

One thing of note is that the concept of neoteny is often invoked to explain how humans diverged so rapidly from the other primates. If you accept that explanation, and take the idea a bit further, then you end up with a somewhat bizarre and perhaps disturbing idea that humans are actually the result of self-domesticating primates (obviously a gross over simplification... but kind of a fun thought to play around with).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny>

<comment><USER25> Yes but dolphins are not selectively breeded for domestication. At all. They are anti-domesticated in fact.

If a killer whale attacks or kills a people in a zoo, (and this accidents happen) this whale is not killed and is maintained in breeding programs, as its sons. Too much expensive animal to lose its genes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Hey everybody! I'm an adult healthy male named George, and I mean you no harm!"

That would be more like "Hey everyone, I'm George". Humans also 'encode' information in that sense - from that introduction you could probably tell age, general health and friendliness.

The day we can talk to any stranger dolphin and have a real conversation will be alike to contacting alien life.

<comment><USER29> Very true. On that topic, "...these communications consist of whistles, not words." Not to suggest that they're actually speaking a language, but a language consisting of whistles could still easily contain words. It would just have a different set of sounds.

<comment><USER30> It's not like it would be a new concept to humankind:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistle_language>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> After some rabbit hole googling related to my 'Seaquarium' digression below, I encountered this 2010 transcript[1] of an ex-Flipper trainer:

"Flipper was a wild animal that lived in Biscayne Bay before we captured her and dragged her, kicking and screaming, to the Miami Seaquarium and put her in a tank and gave her a stage name, Flipper. Her name was really Cathy. Well, not really. Her real name was [whistles]. Dolphins have a signature whistle that their mother gives them." - Ric O'Barry

So it seems like this research proves what dolphin trainers have known, ostensibly, for many years?

[1] [http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_t...](http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_try_to_save_dolphins)

</comment><comment> OT:

> The researchers also intensely studied four captive adult male dolphins > housed at _The Seas Aquarium_ , also in Florida.

Made me giggle. Don't they mean, the [Miami] Seaquarium? If so, Flipper[1][2] is part of the study!

[1] <http://miamiseaquarium.com/Shows/Flipper-Dolphin>

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipper_(1964_TV_series)#Filmin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipper_\(1964_TV_series\)#Filming_locations)

</comment><comment><USER4> _> Bottlenose dolphins call out the specific names of loved ones when they become separated, a study finds._

...Holy, f^~kin crap! We've been in the presence of other sentients this whole time. Enslaved them. Killed them while gathering food. Holy, f^~kin crap!

<comment><USER31> Its an uneasy thought to have that sentience might not be a binary function that humans have and other species lack. It might be a continuum. Some animals are far more sentient than others. Its followed closely by the even more uncomfortable thought that this might vary greatly _inside_ the species. Finally this eerie train of thought pulls into the last station and you think that if the above is true than its almost certain that some _humans_ are less sentient than others. There be dragons.

<comment><USER32> Well, you _could_ take that as "less sentient humans should be treated like animals and abused/treated like property/eaten." On the other hand, you _could_ take it as:

\- Maybe I shouldn't eat all / some animals.

\- Maybe some / all animals should have more rights and not be treated as objects, but living beings.

[Not to mention the Christian fundamentalists that will refer to the Bible stating that God gave man domain over animals, so things like lighting cats on fire for fun are ok.]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The full paper is available for free from the Royal Society B:

Vocal copying of individually distinctive signature whistles in bottlenose dolphins

[http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1757/2013...](http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1757/20130053.full)

The orginal press release is here: <http://www.smru.st- and.ac.uk/newsItem.aspx?ni=1611>

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east- fife-21...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east- fife-21507301)

</comment><comment><USER34> I will wager money that their names translate to things like:

       Big nose
       Funny tail
       Horny boy
       Big mamma
       Deep swimmer

Not just amusing, but also useful. By correlating individual behaviors and physical features with names, we might be able to unlock dolphin language! Which would be incredible!

<comment><USER35> Great idea. We humans were named after many characteristics. Jobs, what we see when the child is born, what kinds of personality we want our children to have, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Last year around this time, I had the opportunity to interact with two dolphins in captivity. Being with them, they felt so present and warm, like being around a perceptive old friend. I had never had that experience with an animal before, except fellow humans. It's something I will never forget.

<comment><USER37> I take it that you are not a dog person?

<comment><USER36> Recently my family got a dog. Love him. But his presence and awareness is very different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Growing up, I was lucky enough to occasionally join a group of scientists aboard a research vessel off the northern tip of the Bahamas. We would spend hours a day and up to two weeks at a time on the open ocean swimming with them and making visual and audio recordings of their behavior. The species they study are Atlantic Spotted Dolphins (Stenella frontalis). One of the things that has always struck me about them is how social they are – they have social circles and "cliques", similar to humans. We would observe these social networks and monitor how they change over the years. This research project is unique because they've been following this same group of just a few hundred dolphins in the wild for over 25 years. Having watched video and high frequency audio recordings of them interacting with one another in the wild, it comes as no surprise that they have "names" for one another.

Relatedly, Denise Herzing, the founder of that organization (the Wild Dolphin Project) will be speaking at TED this year (see Session 8, "Coded Meaning"): <http://conferences.ted.com/TED2013/program/guide.php>

Here's their site: <http://www.wilddolphinproject.org/about-us/mission- vision/>

</comment><comment><USER39> That is an interesting result. Some birds mimic other bird's songs but I don't know of an example in the bird family where an individual had a unique song.

<comment><USER40> How about Emperor Penguins? When one of a pair returns from feeding, it finds the other by recognizing its unique calls.

<comment><USER41> I think the finding here is not that dolphin A has a unique call, but that dolphin B calls out to A using A's unique call in order to find A. This is as opposed to B simply listening for A's call.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Unbelievable that humans still kill these amazing animals

<http://www.seashepherd.org/cove-guardians/>

<comment><USER43> Well, people kill people, too. But I agree with the underlying sentiment that we should be taking their place in the world much more seriously than we do most other animals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Because I ended up doing a bit of reading about dolphins earlier this week, I thought I'd share a bit of trivia in this thread: dolphins also have prehensile penises. (Like an elephant's nose) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1l9V6Lfe2uE)

And they're also not-very-nice (Tongue firmly in cheek here. Of course animals do not possess human qualities like "nice" or "asinine") [http://deepseanews.com/2013/02/10-reasons-why-dolphins- are-a...](http://deepseanews.com/2013/02/10-reasons-why-dolphins-are-aholes/)

Now that we know they have names and are able to make tools, this has to make them one of the most unique species on the planet aside from man. Wonder what would have happened had they just invented some form of writing?

<comment><USER45> I think we eat them not the other way around only because underwater is a crappy place to develop multi-generational culture. You need surfaces you can draw your symbols on and appendages that can manipulate things while looking at them.

I don't feel that I'm member of the best species on earth. Just the one that is ahead in the race but only by a very thin margin. Fortunately we reached "writing" and "science" checkpoints first which means that we effectively won.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> As far as I know Royal Penguins also can call each other by name. And can distinguish a call from afar in the noise of hundreds of other penguins calling each other. There must be a lot of redundancy in the call, I guess.

Also penguins sound totally like one of these old 14400 baud modems ;)

</comment><comment><USER47> Dolphin language is similar to human language.

[http://www.tusker.com/tusker-trips/eclipse- trips/archaeo/art...](http://www.tusker.com/tusker-trips/eclipse- trips/archaeo/art.SetiNews.cfm)

</comment><comment><USER48> I think it's a mistake to say that they call each other by "name," because that implies the ability to form concepts/speak a language, and there is absolutely zero evidence for that. Even the article is careful to point that out:

 _While researchers often hesitate to apply the "l word" -- language -- to non-human communications, bottlenose dolphins and possibly other dolphin species clearly have a very complex and sophisticated communication system._

<comment><USER18> Depends on your definition of 'name' and your system/formalization of the act of reference and/or semantics.

In this case, 'name' seems to mean 'proper name', and there are systems explaining proper names as symbols used to _refer_ , but not to carry semantic charge (whatever that would entail). For example in my native tongue many town names are named after rivers large and small that do - or - only used to flow next to / past those towns. Yet we don't suddenly change the proper name: the _reference_ still works, but we do not need to cognize the semantic contents (originally associated with the name, if that was the case anyway; if you know where Baroomghtown is, I can use the term to refer to it and my reference will succeed as it were).

That was a mouthful. My (insignificant) point: perhaps they would only need cognitive machinery for referring to (in some simple(?) sense) / distinguishing between themselves. That is: (1) usage of proper names does not (necessarily) imply ability to speak a language (perhaps that's all I meant; talk about nitpicking..); (2) there's quite a lot of research showing that animals form concepts left and right (could dig something up, but googling under those keywords would yield enough). Consider this interesting report:

      Under Pepperberg's patient tutelage, Alex [a parrot] learned how to use his vocal tract to imitate almost one hundred English words, including the sounds for all of these foods, although he calls an apple a "banerry."

      "Apples taste a little bit like bananas to him, and they look a little bit like cherries, so Alex made up that word for them," Pepperberg said.

(NGM, 2008: [http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal- minds...](http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal- minds/virginia-morell-text) (a curious article))

So it might be possible to conceive of a schema such that [arbitrary symbols (sequences of syllables, etc.)] + [concepts] => proper names; and those would indeed be what we are used to calling 'proper names', a subset of the category denoted by 'names', not something else.

However, I agree completely with the sentiments re: fears of (over-)anthropomorphizing and projecting our own 'theories of mind' onto other life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I bet there would be economic opportunity in developing commercial dolphin- human communication software and interfaces. Imagine how much benefit to deep sea construction and exploration there would be if training and employing dolphins using natural language was possible. Or to shipping, fishing etc.

<comment><USER50> Dolphin-based sitcoms where the dolphin says "it's a living" and shrugs his dolphin shoulders.

<comment><USER51> When we uplift them, we'll have to remember to give them shoulders. And eyebrows. Good comedy depends on eyebrows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Did you know that dolphins love to rape each other and some have tried to rape a human?!

Check out this list of interesting facts...

[http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-6-badass-facts- you...](http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-6-badass-facts-you-never- knew-about-dolphins)

<comment><USER52> It's amazing how similar they are to humans in many respects.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is. Highly intelligent, playful, social, strategic, sexual, and with bursts of aggression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I wonder, if there is any public repository of dolphin audio recordings.

</comment><comment><USER54> Have they tried testing this on dogs, too? I assume they don't do that, but it would be interesting if they did the test on dogs, too.

<comment><USER28> And ferrets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Like in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams :) Dolphins will govern...

</comment><comment><USER56> Did anyone else's pulse race when they saw the phrase "encodes other information"?</comment>


Show HN: My HTML5 Etch A Sketch - <AUTHOR> http://gkoberger.net/etch

<comment><USER2> That is really cool, gkoberger. Thanks for sharing. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, I haven't gotten any better at Etch-a-Sketch in the last 15-20 years, but this is very cool. Thanks for sharing, and nice work :)</comment>


Show HN: A layer on top of Google maps for lockdown-related adjustments - <AUTHOR> https://openduringcov.id/?hn <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hackers,

I've started to build opendurincov.id as I've found that for me and those around me:

1\. It's difficult to keep track of the changes in how food and retail shops near us operate (updated opening times, takeaway only, etc.) 2\. Our opinions on the place we like to go to are changing depending on a variety of factors. Is there a long queue? Is hygiene respected? etc.

So I basically get user location, then fetch data from the google Places API. I pull from my own db containing contributions and comments from locals, and voila!

I hope it can be useful to you and those around you and if it is, please contribute and comment on the web app! :)</comment>


Media tried to trample us, but instad helped us reach users and make money - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/media-tried-to-trample-us-but-only-helped-us-reach-out-to-1-000-000-users-and-make-money-fb39a90fd0fa <comment><USER2> GANs are scary as hell. let's build a technology that can generate fakes at practically unbounded precision.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best podcasts about startups/entrepreneurship? - <AUTHOR>

I remember listening to a great podcast a couple of years ago that Stanford was producing, but other than that I haven't had great success finding educational podcasts about the startup world. Since I have an hour-long commute and am a recent owner of an iPod FM transmitter, I'm looking for programs like this that might be interesting. <comment><USER2> Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders <http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts.html>

Mixergy (HN @AndrewWarner) <http://www.mixergy.com/>

This Week In Venture Capital (HN @msuster) <http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin- venture-capital/>

This Week in Startups (HN @jasonmcalacanis) <http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin- startups/>

Some good stuff on TechCrunchTV <http://techcrunch.tv/>

<comment><USER3> +1 for Mixergy. You could literally listen to Andrew's archives for days -- it's like a treasure trove.

<comment><USER4> I like Mixergy as well, although to be honest, I haven't sprung for the subscription. This Week in Startups is high quality with great back-and-forth and a lot of variety. I'm also an avid This Week in Venture Capital viewer. Don't miss an episode of either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TechZing is one of my favorites. It's semi-educational though retains an informal, discussion format in the main (that is, it's not just lectures): <http://techzinglive.com/>

<comment><USER6> Peter, you beat me to it! Thanks so much for the recommendation. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 5by5.tv

they have a variety of shows that talk about different topics, with a few of them focusing on startups and entrepreneurship.

great question too. i travel to nashville from about an hour and a half frequently, so i love listening to podcasts.

oh, and even though its not about startups and such (although a few of the episodes are), npr's planet money is really well done podcast on economics. highly recommended.

<comment><USER8> Specifically, "The Conversation" is frequently (though not always) a great source of news for startups and entrepreneurs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> TAE (the american entrepreneur) radio is a great show that I along with some friends have been listening to for a # of years. What I like best is the show's host is an entrepreneur that adds his experiences to interviews like no other host can. They've really kicked it up a notch lately with bigger name guests: Jason Fried, Steve Wozniak, Craig Newmark, Tony Hsieh to name a few.

I've listened to many other shows on Stitcher Radio, but have found most of them have boring hosts and/or are inconsistent. Try this one you may find yourself a long time listener like myself. <http://taeradio.com/>

<comment><USER10> Yea, the host is quite a character. I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone on HN post anything about it yet. The show is a good mix of been-there-done-that with startups as well as good digressions into tech / politics / philosophy. Definitely worth a listen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've found that there is a significant lack of quality, tech business startup podcasts. I think a lot of it has to do with folks just being so busy.

I've tried to get into This Week In Startups but I usually just pick-and- choose the good guests to download once in a while.

I've often thought that I'd like to make a podcast where every week, a new topic is outlined. From accounting to HR to ideas and well beyond, pick one topic every week and assemble conference segments that revolve around the topic. Licensing and distribution rights would certainly be a challenge, but imagine having a cross-conference view of a single topic. Build episodes into a linear "course" of startup topics and I bet you'd really have something.

I listen to these regularly. I think they're all quite good. Generally, I don't listen to podcasts to solve a problem. I use them to expand my knowledge and open my mind to new ideas. With that in mind, here is my list:

Harvard Business Review IdeaCast <http://feeds.harvardbusiness.org/harvardbusiness/ideacast>

TedTalks <http://feeds.feedburner.com/TEDTalks_video>

The 37Signals Podcast <http://feeds.feedburner.com/37signals_podcast>

Help! My Business Sucks (give this upbeat Brit a chance, he has some good ideas) <http://helpmybusiness.com/feed/>

They took down the Apple Podcast, but you can stream Brain Brew Radio: <http://brainbrewradio.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> If you are looking for real world advice from a down-to-earth guy who also happens to have started over a dozen businesses over the past 40+ years,and started Duquesne's entrepreneurial studies program-here's the site to load the ipod up at <http://taeradio.com/episodes/.Ive> been listening to Ron Morris on The American Entrepreneur for over 10 years on 1360AM in Pittsburgh,but he's available to everyone via .com, podcast, ustream, and Talkshoe.He is truly a man who has worked long and hard to make his own millions(and his fair share of mistakes) and is looking to give back,unlike so many out there who are just talking heads in love with their own voices and looking to cash in on today's economic and business climate.He's live on weekdays 3-6PM EST and Saturdays from9-noon,but from the link above you can download past shows anytime.He covers all the concerns for start-ups,talking to accountants,insurance experts,bankers and lawyers who specialize in helping everyday people trying to realize their dreams.I wish this kind of advice had been around when I started my business,but the advice from the show still helps me save and make $$ after being at it for 30 years. He also has many successful internationally known businessmen on his show and they share their start-up experiences with him.If you're looking for real "in the trenches" info check it out-GEOD

</comment><comment><USER13> They're hard to find, that's for sure. Even if I manage to land on an interesting episode or two, I often lose interest as the rest of the shows seem to fall short of that initial first impression.

One exception for me has been The American Entrepreneur, which is hosted by Ron Morris. It's actually a radio show out of Pittsburgh, but I access it via iTunes as I live in the Chicago area. Lots of content, tons of interviews, interesting topics, and very helpful, practical information. He's also very easy to listen to, which for me is a must as I listen to the podcasts when I'm out for a run. And the show is on 6 days a week, so there's no running out of episodes.

Here's the website: <http://taeradio.com/>

Hope this helps, Evamarie Pilipuf www.TheFlexibilityCoach.com

</comment><comment><USER14> The Lifestyle Business Podcast is an absolutely awesome podcast about modern business. They have decided to take payments for the first 30 episodes, but it's so damn worth it!

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

</comment><comment><USER6> Give TechZing (<http://www.techzinglive.com>) a try. It's a mix of discussions and interviews with founders, investors and coders (Derek Sivers, Gabriel Weinberg, etc). Disclaimer: I'm a co-host. ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> The Startup Success podcast - <http://startuppodcast.wordpress.com/>

37signals podcast - <http://37signals.com/podcast>

Startups for the Rest of Us - <http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/>

Traction by Gabriel Weinberg (DuckDuckGo) - <http://traction.blip.tv/>

</comment><comment><USER16> I enjoy hearing The American Entrepreneur for sound business advice. The host, Ron Morris, brings hands on, real world experience to the show and often has great guests to add insight and variety to the mix.

As a consultant to small businesses I make The American Entrepreneur a part of my daily routine because I learn something from every show and am entertained by Mr. Morris, a serial entrepreneur.

Donn Nemchick Veterans Program Manager Riverside Center for Innovation

</comment><comment><USER17> TAE (The American Entrepreneur) radio show is a very entertaining and informative method of learning about startups and business in general.

The host, Ron Morris, a successful entrepreneur, always asks the right questions to convey to listeners the key points that make or break a business.

<http://taeradio.com>

</comment><comment><USER18> Andrew Warner has excellent material on Mixergy.com! Great interviews, roughly 1-hour in length... and he asks the tough questions (revenue, models, etc.), too!

</comment><comment><USER19> The ThinkVitamin Radio podcast is top notch.

<http://thinkvitamin.com/podcast/>

</comment><comment><USER20> iamstarting - <http://iamstarting.com/?cat=3></comment>