Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it? - <AUTHOR> When I encounter what I strongly believe to be indefensibly poor design, I get feelings of anger and depression; anger that such stupid decisions could be made and that I must deal with them, and depression that I am largely powerless to change the situation.  In particular, poor design that is part of public service (subways, signs, etc) really makes me feel as though I am getting exploited, and for some reason I almost actually feel they are personal attacks on me.
I currently try to justify why poor design decisions are made and to give the "system" the benefit of doubt. Perhaps there are cost constraints, time constraints, or perhaps the intended use case is not the one I am in -- but a lot of the time I arrive at this conclusion: "this design is simply indefensible -- had the creator, or anybody involved actually tried the design, just once, surely they would notice the problems and fix this".  Furthermore, the fixes are sometimes very obvious. So, I think to myself, is the whole world just lazy? Stupid? Apathetic? Why would somebody make this thing the way it is, and think it is acceptable?
I had listed examples, ranging from NYC subway gripes, double doors where one door is locked and the handles are ambiguous, cell phone gripes, google maps, windows, etc, but there is no space for it in this post. So, for the sake of helping me, please just assume that my assessments of certain designs are accurate, and that they are undeniably awful, and had the designer(s) attempted to use their design once they would have realize this -- and that it's not just me.
Lastly, and more to the point, I feel awful that such banalities can have such a profound effect on me. I realize that I may come off as whiny or arrogant or whatever -- I accept that. But it really, truly, pisses me off when I encounter bad user experience, and I honestly don't want it to. What can I do about this? <comment><USER2> Become an open source contributor.

OSS has some of the worst UX in the world. Look at Inkscape. Look at the GIMP - probably the only piece of software in existence where the name is bad UX in itself.

But because it's open source, you can fix it.

You won't be able to fix all the bad UX in the world. But you could make a massive difference by applying yourself to just one project like this.

<comment> open-source-ux _" But because it's open source, you can fix it."_

You can't fix it really because everyone (understandably) wants a say in the visual and interaction design of the software, but you can't design by committee. Having many participants contributing to source code can work well, but I don't think this model works well for design.

It sounds really undemocratic (why shouldn't everyone have their say?). And it undoubtedly contributes to the stereotype of the designer as diva or precious about their work. But can you think of an open source project praised for it's visual and interaction design that was collaboratively developed with dozens or more participants? If you can, it will be an exception, not the rule.

When there are too many participants in the design of a program, you end up with a project pulled in every direction and pleasing to no-one. But if you go the opposite route and limit design decisions to a dedicated UX team, you end up generating resentment from contributors or users who feel their input is being ignored.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sadly the most helpful comments will be voted to the bottom.

If the world around you is making you angry and depressed (regardless of reasons), then perhaps consider professional help for your mental health.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would say, try to see world from others eye. eg. If door nob is to low -> for children, Fonts too big--> For elderly, Website so dumb --> for accessibility reasons etc.

Change your perspective, Always ask why to your self like If you find something dumb and also in abundance, there must be reason why it is still being used. Walk in others shoes, make your product/daily decisions thinking the same way. It will not just work first time, Every day do meditation for 15-20 minutes and think for what you saw last day and repeat, you will have your answers. May be you get new business idea doing so ;). That would be the best way to handle it in my opinion.

<comment><USER5> Medium filled with ads and dark patterns - for management promotion

<comment><USER4> sorry, I did not understand. can you elaborate.

<comment><USER6> I think it was just sarcasm

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It can be a combination of multiple things.

It can be your environment, some places are designed by people who don't care. Some places even are adversarial.

It can be you, either from lack of something (sleep, magnesium, ...). It can be you missing some understanding. Or you just don't getting that most people either don't have your attention to details, don't care, or don't want to do anything to improve their environment. It can be you not being the intended audience. It can be you not putting yourself into the intended usage.

But either way, you can choose to accept it or change it and be proactive about it and don't whine as it reinforce learned helplessness. Pick your battles. The environment is dynamic. For example try littering and see what happens. Or you can make some improvements to it. Or you can point and shame on the internet.

Giving feedback in the real world is quite easy. You can carry a pen and a stack of stickers, or a spray paint can to mark things. For example you see ambiguous handles just mark one red sticker/dot on the handle which is closed and a green dot on the handle which is open, (or do the opposite and set-up a live twitch :) )

You can write letters to the mayor. You can also notice the positive small details left by people who care, and reward them.

</comment><comment><USER8> There's this story about the two shoe salesmen. The first one visited this hot climate country, and nobody was wearing any shoes. He got really depressed, said "Nobody is wearing any shoes here, goodbye" and left hurriedly with the next train. The other guy smiles arriving while looking excitedly around, and then exclaims: "Wow! Everyone is a potential customer. Nobody has even one shoe. I must set up shop immediately!"

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure about this parable; it reminds me of Chesterton's fence. Our optimistic salesman may be completely ignoring the fact that no one is wearing shoes _because no one needs or wants to_.

<comment><USER10> > Our optimistic salesman may be completely ignoring the fact that no one is > wearing shoes because no one needs or wants to.

Isn't that perspective represented by the first salesman? Both are seeing the same limited data and drawing a conclusion about business potential. The second salesman may be wrong, but their optimistic view is still a possible one.

Especially since we know shoes can be plenty useful in hot climates and are 99 percent about fashion anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ive sent a few emails to Website Support or Newspaper Editors when I see something that is bad and I can offer a constructive solution. In a brief message, stating the subject what's wrong and a short suggestion for improvement. (maybe with an example image or PDF. Rarely get feedback, sometimes I see the issue addressed. Either way, I can at least be satisfied knowing that I did _something_ to improve the situation.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not a UX person by any means but do appreciate good ergonomics and begrudgingly tolerate the bad.

My first thought is that you should create a website with the worst offenders found day-to-day and tag them with the manners in which they fail. It would be both fun and crowdsource the popular opinion of what really bugs people.

The second part is why it should affect you so personally. My guess would be that you have built a career on good UX and seeing examples of bad UX undermines its importance. For this I think getting some perspective is useful. In many cases bad UX is good enough. Unfortunately you are very attuned to good/great UX and see any deviations as gross misses. It's like someone with amazingly acute pitch hearing listening to what's imperceptibly off pitch for the rest of the population. In this sense, the hypersensitivity may actually be about you. Just my 0.02

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate your feedback, and you are mostly correct. I have actually thought of making a website to document "shitty" things.. from annoying graffiti, to terrible websites, to awful interfaces on popular products and software. It's an issue of time and commitment, both of which are in short supply lately.

> The second part is why it should affect you so personally.

When it's a public service where exorbitant amounts of money are spent on it, and where it needs to serve the public and fails miserably. One thing that comes to mind is NYC transit, which replaced giant paper maps on the platforms with small non-touch LCD TVs that show a blurry, barely legible map -- that is, when they are not showing advertisements, promotions, or what amounts to government propaganda. In the above example, I know the cost associated with this change was huge, and that it utterly fails at its design goal, and that had anybody loaded the image on the TV just once before deciding to spend millions replacing all of perfect usable paper maps they would have seen how awful it looks -- and yet there it is, in front of me, at every platform.

Again with the above example, I fully realize it may not even be the fault of the "designer", per se, given the budget, politics, time constraints, whatever. Maybe it's because they need to cut labor costs by having a way to update service announcements without having humans replace paper postings on every platform. Whatever the reason, though, the shitty LCD tvs are in front of me every time I'm on a subway platform. I cannot escape it, I pay to see it, and I cannot change it.

Another reason for the personal offense is difficult for me to describe, but imagine an injustice were to happen to you, and you ask the person in charge: "You know this is wrong, but why can't you fix it?" they reply: "that's just the way things are", or "well, life isn't fair".

<comment><USER12> I really feel for the position you're in. I've been in similar ones, but in smaller, more direct scopes (e.g. within a company) regarding technical issues other than UX.

This reminds me of "23 Minutes in Hell" which I've never read but was struck by the description of hell as 'annoying'. At first I thought that seemed lame, but then on further thought I realized at over eternity we could get used to many intense things. Annoying things no matter how annoying will always be annoying unless you can somehow psychologically reframe it.

Similarly, a girlfriend of mine used to always complain about a particular garage door which took forever to open. After hearing this many times and having shared her annoyance, I said that she should either do something about it or don't mention it as it will only linger in her mind amplifying it.

It's really unfortunate that these things are below the level where you're motivated to take action but elevated to the point of being intolerable. In hopes that you can get to the bottom of this, I'll just point out that you described this as 'an injustice that were happen to you' as where I would say that the injustice was inflicted on the public at large. I think it was something about you being hypersensitive to bad UX since you've come up with a plausible rational explanation of the situation but it doesn't lessen the experience. At least you don't also have an exceptional sense of smell. I'm always moving myself about in public transit to minimize my exposure to the wafting trails of former passengers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >So, I think to myself, is the whole world just lazy? Stupid? Apathetic? Why would somebody make this thing the way it is, and think it is acceptable?

In my personal opinion, yes, the designers probably don't care about your use case, or about the product at all.

The designers were probably happy to collect a check and go home.

<comment><USER14> How many designers? Who was removed during the project to work on something else? What was the budget and deadline, and how were they changed during the project? Were the designers professional, full-time designers or someone from another discipline pressed into the task? Were the design elements crafted for the task or adapted from a library? Was the design in-house, through an agency, through multiple agencies?

There is an excellent chance _a_ designer, maybe even _most_ designers, on the project were not happy with just collecting a check.

There is a good chance there was not a single designer who worked on or led the project from its start to its finish.

There is a not-insignificant chance that there were no designers "collecting a check" for the offending design at all.

<comment><USER13> There are tons of organizational challenges that can lead good designers to make crappy product. What I had in mind was more along the lines of fixed fee development in India and China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is relatable!

 _What can I do about this?_

1) search for alternatives (e.g another app, not always applicable) 2) report the issue. Contribute if open source. 3) maximize your chillness: learn stoicism, meditation, ASMR, music, social interactions, problem solving etc in order to better cope with your cynicism intake. 4) change humans/society, e.g by improving education or any other hard task (can be in intersection with effective altruism goals) 5) suffer.

This is mostly a disjonction of cases of what you can do about this :}

Edit: wow this is meta! As you can see, my numbers do not have newlines. While writing it I did inserted newlines but somehow because I'm on mobile, hackernews got it wrong. This is a beautiful example of common mediocrity that cause eternal avoidable "suffering" or at least needless suboptimalities in our daily lives.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd say you have to view it differently. You said, "So, for the sake of helping me, please just assume that my assessments of certain designs are accurate, and that they are undeniably awful, and had the designer(s) attempted to use their design once they would have realize this -- and that it's not just me." So, you'll have to enlarge your context on this. You can, perhaps, try to empathize with people not exposed to the notion of good design, or people that can't conceive of it, or live impoverished enough inner lives to have no concern for it at all. You should realize that you yourself certainly have equally large and glaring blind spots invisible to you, and sympathize with the human condition.

If you continue to view it as simply indefensible, you'll never solve anything. If you feel strongly about it, perhaps you can start teaching design, or raising awareness about design. But, in the end, you have this restricted circle of concern, this bad design _attacks you personally_ and you _cannot forgive it_.

This piece seems insightful about this point: [https://www.concordmonitor.com/Bertrand-Russell-conquest- of-...](https://www.concordmonitor.com/Bertrand-Russell-conquest-of-happiness- in-tough-times-3786493)

"I am persuaded that those who quite sincerely attribute their sorrows to their views about the universe are putting the cart before the horse: the truth is that they are unhappy for some reason of which they are not aware, and this unhappiness leads them to dwell upon the less agreeable characteristics of the world in which they live."

"Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to center my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection." - Obviously, you've already directed your attention outwardly, but in this case, I think you need to widen your perspective and circle of concern until these issues seem small. You get tunnel vision on them.

"The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile."

"The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about other things, or, if it is night, about nothing at all. . . . It is amazing how much both happiness and efficiency can be increased by the cultivation of an orderly mind, which thinks about a matter adequately at the right time rather than inadequately at all times."

Anyway, my $0.02

</comment><comment><USER17> Shouldn't you adjust your expectations as the evidence comes in? If you think something should have been done differently, next time don't expect so much?

By updating your priors as evidence comes in, your disappointment is reduced.

I see incompetence everywhere, but I don't feel angry and depressed.

One thing that I've found essential is to have a reservoir of people who are dependably competent. A few guys who can actually code, some who understand the topics I'm interested in, and some who know some fields I'm not so good at.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I see incompetence everywhere, but I don't feel angry and depressed.

Well, that's where you and I differ, I suppose. It upsets me that I'm often on the other end of this incompetence, and that I am powerless to change it. My only recourse is to endure it. It feels wrong, and it bothers me.

<comment><USER18> > It feels wrong, and it bothers me.

Nobody else is responsible for your feelings.

Nothing we experience is novel.

Many solutions to our inevitable suffering have been proposed and practiced for over two thousand years. Find one that fits. They're all pointing at the same things, but wear different clothes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not sure it will help but as reading this, I recalled that Tao Te Ching quote:

"What is a good man but a bad man's teacher? What is a bad man but a good man's job?"

more here: [https://cpb- us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/5/25851/files/2...](https://cpb- us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/5/25851/files/2016/02/taoteching-Stephen- Mitchell-translation-v9deoq.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER20> Have you built/coded/made/delivered things to other people? Being on the other side of the table, so to speak, may help - as receiving their criticisms (and knowing internally why you didn't think of making it better, or knew but didn't have time/funding/certainty) can give a window into what was going on when you see examples of poor design. In a way, it's narrowing the window of "indefensibility".

In the same vein, you could consider learning more about why the poor design decisions are the way they are. At all levels (from building and city UX to individual products), there are myriad uncertainties and trade-offs when building something.

Some commenters are gesturing at to mental health issues - I don't know you well enough to feel comfortable with making a judgment like that, but on some level, if this is bothering you deeply, anger and depression may be symptoms of a deeper mental health issue: this might help! [https://ncase.me/mental- health/#toc_4](https://ncase.me/mental-health/#toc_4)

</comment><comment><USER21> The more you look for these patterns the more you'll notice. It's how our brains work. I myself notice a lot of what you mention as well, and I do my best to file it away in a "mistakes to avoid when I get to be the one making decisions" folder in my brain. Not much more I can do beyond that, because so much of this is a byproduct of poor incentive structures, bureaucracy, or plain negligence. Attacking it all at once will feel like trying to boil the ocean.

And specifically, on the doors issue. Vox has a great video on this.

"It's not you. Bad doors are everywhere."

[https://www.vox.com/2016/2/26/11120236/bad-doors-human- cente...](https://www.vox.com/2016/2/26/11120236/bad-doors-human-centered- design)

</comment><comment><USER22> Television has bad UX. To fix it, I can suggest: Don't use the cursor movement function. Allow the numbers to be used to specify channels, input selection, timer for sleep timer and recording duration and others, and whatever else you might use it for. Allow commands to have optional numeric prefixes (like vi does). Don't add functions that will delay after the command is entered and then execute it; if the user has not finished entering it, then the user has not finished entering it. Allow OSD to be disabled. Don't use so much fancy UI animations and that stuff. Don't use virtual channel numbers.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you want to feel worse, take an interest in something in your neighbourhood that seems wrong. After a bit of research, you will find that it is indeed wrong, so you will get in touch with your local representatives to get this obvious stuff fixed. That's when you will realise that they don't give a damn, that they won't fix it even if it is their responsibility and duty to do it, that they don't give a damn about that either, and that they have done plenty of similar wrongs everywhere around and plenty of other wrongs too, once you start paying attention to it (and the more informed you get about a subject, the more wrongs you find). Then you understand that you can do whatever you want, you're never going to get them to fix them, even though they are obliged by law to do so, and you realise at the same time that you lived happier before you tried making stuff better or just normal.

</comment><comment> jarl-ragnar I'd suggest you explore the world of Stoicism. You could start with [https://twitter.com/dailystoic](https://twitter.com/dailystoic)

No point getting angry about things you cannot and never will be able to control. Focus on what you can control and take pride in that.

</comment><comment><USER24> If I were you I would work it from the inside

You should first treat those bad UXs as childplays:

\- Some of them might be working back then

\- Some of them were patched so to accomplish other thing but accidentally render them unusable

\- Some of them might be a result of rushed work due to pressure from higher ups

\- Some of them are simply lost in translation due to time

Being angry and depressed is frustrating but you should redirect those energy to something more worthwhile.

If you really want to contribute, broadcast your intent. Get close to someone having authority to those stuffs with bad UX, use subtle social approach to get things done, consult to people who could yields better UX becaus there must be a better person doing it™.

As a child I used to be angry if my personal drinking bottle isn't put on the table from an exact distance between two sides of the table.

I use that energy to develop instinct to design a well-architectured software, maximizing development speed and customer satisfaction at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER25> If this bothers you enough, you may want to seek out a therapist. I don't want to and can't diagnose you over the internet, but certain phrases you use suggest to me there are some elements that they may be able to help you with.

On the self-help front, you may want to pursue mindfulness studies, with an eye towards the sort that helps you interrogate your own mind about why you feel the way you do. You may be surprised where that leads. Studying stoicism or other philosophies around acceptance may also help.

However, let me both open and close with the suggestion that professional help may be worthwhile. I do not mean that in a bad way, but a helpful way. I am all about self-help and independence and learning things and doing my own thing, but there's a limit to how far that can reach and sometimes you need direct external help.

<comment><USER26> this is correct normal people don't get angry over little things like this

<comment><USER13> I think it depends on the topic and intensity. For example, significant anger over poor freeway design and traffic is extremely common and not a sight of a psychological disorder. Same with terrible UI on common apps

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I work in a public sector and I surely have pissed off people like you. I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt, that had you been tasked with creating a working thing with all sorts of budget and reglementary and scheduling constraints, that you would have succeeded at all.

</comment><comment><USER28> Good UX requires empathy. Your feelings are the understandable result of this, i.e. the lack thereof in products. In general, decision makers hardly care, even if they say they do. A good UX is expensive. Results are extremely difficult to quantize and good design is at best the promise to enhance the experience. Furthermore, the methods of the practically ubiquitous UCD are almost entirely focused on maximizing profits, not make good tools. If you want to learn or get insight how to make a difference with good tools (not products) take a look at activity theory-based interaction design.

</comment><comment><USER29> _I had listed examples, ranging from NYC subway gripes, double doors where one door is locked and the handles are ambiguous, cell phone gripes, google maps, windows, etc, but there is no space for it in this post._

You can add a complete list as a comment. Please?!

<comment> scott-smith_us Here are a few of mine:

\- Dialogs that display truncated information, but aren't resizable (looking at you, Windows).

\- File Open/Save dialogs that always open to the same default location, requiring the user to keep navigating to the same directory over and over.

\- Information displayed in non-selectable (thus, un-copy-paste-able) form. Generally this is seen more in desktop and mobile apps vs. the web.

\- Anything that changes what I type without my explicit OK. This includes IDEs with predictive completion, MS Word's on-by-default correction, and mobile devices that auto-capitalize email addresses and automatically add a space after a period...

\- "Secret Question" drop-downs where none of the questions remotely apply to me

\- Required fields that shouldn't be, e.g. "Company Name"

\- Short length limits for site passwords. If you're limiting passwords to (let's say) twelve characters, that strongly suggests that you're storing the password in plain text on your servers (you should be storing a hash).

\- Excluded punctuation characters for site passwords. This suggests that developer(s) decided "rather than expend the one-time effort to properly sanitize/escape our inputs, we thought we'd just dump the responsibility to exclude our arbitrary list of characters on the users for all time"

</comment></comment><comment> jerome-jh Whatever you _think_ is the reason, you are depressed. Against depression and known to work, there is: \- physical exercise \- contact with nature \- professional advice

BTW, SAP is hiring!

'hope that made you smile :)

</comment><comment> d--b Meditation helps compartmentalizing your thoughts, so if you meditate, you might still notice the problems and be angry at them, but you might be able to better control the anger and tame it.

Also, it sounds like you may be angered by something else, so you are on edge, and it's easier to be angered at a door than at someone or at some situation. Going to a shrink may help disentangle the anger.

And yeah I am with you: fuck google maps.

</comment><comment><USER30> People would suggest two main solutions:

1) Avoid things with bad design.

2) Find a way to accept bad design, so it doesn't affect your emotions.

The real solution is to fix the world so it has less bad design. This is about both making people act more intelligently in the present, and ensuring that at the very least, people do not become stupider in the far future (and, hopefully, become at least a little smarter).

This solution involves significant changes to the entire world.

<comment><USER18> > fix the world

I'd say "combat entropy", make it a more difficult and pernicious problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> One thing that's important, I think, is to recognize in the moment that you're getting upset, that in that moment right there, it's not the design itself that's causing you pain, but your reaction to it. It's not gonna be like a "AHA! Cured." sort of revelation, but practiced repeatedly you'll start asking yourself whether that's the ONLY option available to you, or maybe there is something you yourself can do so as to not to suffer.

The second thing, and this I learned from Yoga, is to actively look for what's okay. When it gets pretty uncomfortable, I try to do what my teacher once said, which was to focus on the bits that feel well. In your case, the door might be shitty, but the roof ain't leaking; the new maps may be crap, but the electricity is on; Google maps is rubbish, but the phone's screen is working alright. It's not that one good design compensates for bad design, it's that the poor design is enmeshed in a far bigger picture, in which there are good things, and it's your freedom, perhaps the greatest freedom, to choose where to direct the attention to.

Third, I've rarely seen a brilliant first iteration of anything. Every so often it happens, but more likely is to start with _something_ and get better. So the map replacement is one: the vision for these screens may be 1. As a revenue stream, 2. Help the visually impaired, 3. allow more functionality - like calling a staff member quickly (whatever, I don't live and NY, this is just examples). The implementation is rubbish, but if it's the first iteration, that was always ever going to be the case.

Finally, here's a bit of mirroring, do what you like with it: Clever people take great pride in their cleverness. They like that they're smart, and they like the sharpness in their brain. And so, this often creates a blind spot to how miserable that smart brain of theirs can make them. Like in your case, where you said: "oh, I don't think treatment can help, but if you could list some ways in which it might" etc - that's your proud clever brain speaking, entrenching you in a position where you're just angry all the time. But the rest of you recognizes this is a shitty way to be living, hence you posting to begin with.

So maybe there are some time when it's quite okay to tell yourself your clever brain is actually getting in the way, and use things that are not reason- based, like trust, and emotional monitoring, and get help from someone who worked their whole career at helping people deal with anxiety and anger.

</comment><comment><USER32> Must be nice to live such a privileged life where you worry about trivial imperfections.

</comment><comment><USER33> seek professional help

</comment><comment><USER34> Exercise

</comment><comment><USER35> Read a book on coping with narcissism.

</comment><comment><USER36> Go on a very long hike in a forested nature preserve.

<comment><USER37> wow thanks im cured</comment></comment>


The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1973) - <AUTHOR> https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm? <comment><USER2> My experience with this dynamic is that leaders and power structures emerge in "leaderless" organizations despite the best efforts of participants. This leads to a lack of accountability for the excercise of de facto authority because it supposedly does not exist, and rapidly creates toxic and exploitative environments with zero recourse for grievance.

<comment><USER3> Isn't the solution then to make authority (and thus also accountability) temporary and/or to spread it amongst many smaller areas?

For instance, every employee could take turn at non technical but honorific positions. Regarding technical tasks, each person could also rule absolutely over many small areas of expertise that they also take responsibility for?

I hope there is no need for a fixed arbitrary hierarchy for accountability.

<comment><USER4> The article mentions at the end some strategies. (points 3 and 4 seem relevant, 5 perhaps counters your argument)

1) Delegation [...]

2) [Responsibility]

3) Distribution of authority among as many people as is reasonably possible. [...]

4) Rotation of tasks among individuals. Responsibilities which are held too long by one person, formally or informally, come to be seen as that person's "property" and are not easily relinquished or controlled by the group. [...]

5) Allocation of tasks along rational criteria. [...] Ability, interest, and responsibility have got to be the major concerns in such selection. [...]

6) Diffusion of information [...]

7) Equal access to resources needed by the group.[...]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've seen flat organization work well at one organization, essentially a consulting firm where we worked on short-lived projects. Teams had to assemble and disassemble within a span of two or three years.

It really worked well, in retrospect. Our clients (from one branch of the military or another) came to us with actual clearly-defined problems, and gave us space to engineer real solutions.

I left because I didn't want to spend my time developing tech for the military, and I joined an industrial R&D lab. What a mess I walked into. Layers and layers of hierarchy, all decided by political in-fighting rather than merit, and every team is pushing mocked-up half-solutions to imaginary problems.

<comment><USER6> I'm curious how many of these applied:

"""

While working in this kind of group is a very heady experience, it is also rare and very hard to replicate. There are almost inevitably four conditions found in such a group;

1) It is task oriented. Its function is very narrow and very specific, like putting on a conference or putting out a newspaper. It is the task that basically structures the group. The task determines what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. It provides a guide by which people can judge their actions and make plans for future activity. 2) It is relatively small and homogeneous. Homogeneity is necessary to insure that participants have a "common language" for interaction. People from widely different backgrounds may provide richness to a consciousness-raising group where each can learn from the others' experience, but too great a diversity among members of a task-oriented group means only that they continually misunderstand each other. Such diverse people interpret words and actions differently. They have different expectations about each other's behavior and judge the results according to different criteria. If everyone knows everyone else well enough to understand the nuances, these can be accommodated. Usually, they only lead to confusion and endless hours spent straightening out conflicts no one ever thought would arise. 3) There is a high degree of communication. Information must be passed on to everyone, opinions checked, work divided up, and participation assured in the relevant decisions. This is only possible if the group is small and people practically live together for the most crucial phases of the task. Needless to say, the number of interactions necessary to involve everybody increases geometrically with the number of participants. This inevitably limits group participants to about five, or excludes some from some of the decisions. Successful groups can be as large as 10 or 15, but only when they are in fact composed of several smaller subgroups which perform specific parts of the task, and whose members overlap with each other so that knowledge of what the different subgroups are doing can be passed around easily. 4) There is a low degree of skill specialization. Not everyone has to be able to do everything, but everything must be able to be done by more than one person. Thus no one is indispensable. To a certain extent, people become interchangeable parts.

"""

<comment><USER5> #1 held: we defined the tasks required to solve the problem at hand, and focused in on them.

#2 held: the teams were fairly small and homogenous.

#3 held, mostly. The project lead would occasionally withhold potentially- useful information, which felt like some kind of egocentric power play, but overall communication was very good.

#4 didn't hold. We were all specialists in various areas. Fortunately, people rarely left mid-project.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for running your experience by these conditions.

#4 seems like almost everyone in the team was indispensable since they were all specialists, which might not contradict the point of the condition (no one believes they're less replaceable than their peers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One reason this has been discovered as of late in tech circles is Bitcoin.

Professor Arvind Narayanan at Princeton cited this in May 2015, as the Bitcoin community was having debates about decentralization and what it meant for governance.

See the fifth footnote in this blog post entitled "Bitcoin faces a crossroads, needs an effective decision-making process ":

[https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/05/11/bitcoin-faces-a- cro...](https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/05/11/bitcoin-faces-a-crossroads- needs-an-effective-decision-making-process/)

Also, this tweet:

[https://twitter.com/random_walker/status/1005151684807610368](https://twitter.com/random_walker/status/1005151684807610368)

</comment><comment><USER9> Great read for some ex-Valve employees.

</comment><comment><USER10> Meta/OT: Mods, please fix the missing 'p' in the title. Thanks.</comment>


Algorithm to determine if a video is running forward or backward - <AUTHOR> http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/can-we-see-arrow-of-time-0620

<comment><USER2> > with roughly 80 percent accuracy

Well considering random guesses would get them up to 50% it isn't particularly impressive</comment>


D3charts  - A higher-level charting library built on top of d3 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/idangazit/d3charts

<comment><AUTHOR> See the first example at : <http://bl.ocks.org/1564489></comment>


Show HN: Everything you need to build your own Turn Touch smart home remote - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@samuelclay/everything-you-need-to-build-your-own-turn-touch-smart-remote-1689da664d62#.s2dhuh7cp <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN! This is a ridiculously long but thorough guide to building your own hardware on a budget. Turn Touch is a small wood remote that controls your smart home.

I built it because I wanted it to exist and I was tired of waiting for somebody else to build it. And because I believe so heavily in open source, I wrote up detailed instructions on how to build each phase of the process: the PCB, CAD, wood machining, and laser cutting.

Turn Touch is also on Kickstarter, which is the culmination of 3 years of learning and work. I'm a solo indie developer and if I can learn to build this, so can anybody else.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/samuelclay/turn- touch-b...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/samuelclay/turn-touch- beautiful-control)

<comment><USER2> Thank you for this series of posts, it's full of practical advice on how to design things. I especially like how you've condensed what must be months of experimentation and experience in a few short paragraphs, with diagrams and everything.

Very useful, thanks again!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your kind words. I really tried hard to capture what was years of work into just the salient pain points and design lessons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> OP has been blatantly asking for upvotes in Twitter and attempting to bypass the voting ring detector using the /newest trick:

[http://imgur.com/4M1NNXz](http://imgur.com/4M1NNXz)

[http://imgur.com/DYnJOcB](http://imgur.com/DYnJOcB)

While this is a good submission and likely earned many upvotes legitimately, that doesn't justify gaming the system, which is why I am highlighting it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I mean come on. I'm asking friends to vote for my post. I wrote an enormous post that offers a guide for many people looking to build their own hardware. The least I could do is get it as widely seen as possible.

<comment><USER3> That's fine, but why advertise _the Hacker News submission_ instead of the post on Medium itself?

Moreover, why advertise upvoting _using a known exploit_ (that doesn't work) if you are trying to get authentic exposure?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice to see more wood cases for electronics. It should wear well with age, not just get scuffed and grubby like plastic.</comment>


I Will Teach You To Be Rich - The Myth of the Great Idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/the-myth-of-the-great-idea <comment><USER2> Thats similar to a chapter in the Felix Dennis book where he talks about how execution is more than an "idea".

<http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/minisites/howtogetrich/>

<comment><USER3> One of the best books I have read lately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always liked this post on the value of ideas: <http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/08/ideas_are_just_a_multiplier_of.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> cross reference this post/discussion in the "best" section: <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=638></comment>


Meet Snow, Snapchat's Competition in Asia - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/meet-snow-snapchats-competition-in-asia-2293365044.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam <comment><USER2> Interesting timing for this piece, what with Snap's IPO today. Wonder if this will prove to be another Uber/Didi situation.</comment>


When Everything That Counts Can't Be Counted - <AUTHOR> https://thereformedbroker.com/2019/06/13/when-everything-that-counts-cant-be-counted/ <comment><USER2> Keep in mind that this "free" money comes from somewhere.

It comes from the people who can't get a fixed rate home loan or HELOC that get screwed when the economy tanks and their interest rises above 7% and they lose their home.

It comes from the people paying 30% interest on credit cards or 400+% on payday loans.

It comes from workers in China and India that get paid pennies on the dollar and can't get a loan over $1000 so have to work themselves to death for the West's ambition.

To see the world's capital potential squandered on new locator/ride share/service apps with valuations larger than the industries they're replacing is..

OBSCENE

The only thing propping this mobile/social bubble up is that unemployment is so low that people are too busy to realize how badly they're getting screwed by Wall Street.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is not cheap money, this is dumb money. When powerful people make stupid decisions, most people will, nevertheless, copycat their wrong decision. One way or another, reality will smack us in the face and a reckoning will come. The sad part is that those stupid powerful people will be hit much less than the populus they enslave.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. Unfortunately. Imagine what we could accomplish if we just redirected some of this dumb money into "dumb" things...like education, infrastructure, health care, battling climate change. But nope, walls, drones, and tech bubbles.

<comment><USER5> == Higher taxes, more research to prove not "where" to spend the money, but "on what, specifically?".

Ever the problem with government and social science - government is dependent on social science to conduct studies that provide that tax dollars are well spent, and then also required to convince the electorate of the value of that expenditure. It's a tough problem with no easy answers. Effective politicians tend to create public sentiment and then find evidence. Effective outcomes would dictate the order be reversed.

<comment><USER4> > Effective politicians tend to create public sentiment and then find evidence

It's really stunning when you consider that blowing a trillion dollars on a new fighter jet needed essentially zero popular support, but funding education is somehow so loony that it requires a solid political majority to even think about.

<comment><USER5> Agree. Major difference between already having budget and getting budget allocated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When you get to be an old person you start to notice patterns.

Whenever people start sayin "what if [cyclical bad thing] actually never happens again and the happy times are permanent because of [tenuous reasoning]" loudly and in public then it's inevitable that we're about to see the problems currently being created in secret by people who've had that delusional point of view for awhile.

<comment><USER7> Yes. I saw a Fed Reserve big-wig say in a closed room that they'd conquered the business cycle ... just before the dotcom bust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well of course the thing that's been missing is the periodic reckoning, a recession or a bear market. Much like exploring away from the coast, if you're guaranteed to have nice weather you have more to gain by going further out.

</comment><comment><USER9> > This is why Uber is worth more than all of the auto makers and taxi > companies that own their own fleets of cars.

I think this is bullshit. Uber may be worth more than auto makers, but this is a bubble and will not last (unless uber manages to create an autonomous taxi service in the next few years). They were just lucky and intelligent enough to get around regulations, but regulations are catching them.

Uber's tech is simple and easily replicable. The moment they raise their prices, they loose their market share. There is no network effect in this market.

It is simply obvious that Uber provides much less added value than any automaker.

<comment> yoz-y > Uber's tech is simple and easily replicable. The moment they raise their > prices, they loose their market share. There is no network effect in this > market.

I disagree that there is no network effect. When one travels to another country it is much easier to use Uber rather than to find what local brew of 'carpooling' service is available, create an account, put in credit card info etc.

Their tech is easily replicable but their global presence is not.

<comment><USER10> That isn't so much a network effect as it is burning money on 6 continents. If Uber isn't the most cost effective solution at home there isn't much incentive to use it abroad either.

I've been in lots of places - pre Uber - where I didn't even speak the local language. Even then finding a taxi was not taxing. If Uber can't make a profit on local traffic it is going to be a mighty feat if they make money off non- local traffic.

<comment><USER11> Doesn't really match my experience at all visiting a city without Uber (Barcelona).

Driver took advantage of their complicated fare system to add supplement charges that didn't apply: charged us the baggage supplement for our backpacks that we carried in the car, and charged us a supplement for going _to_ the train station, which should only apply _from_ the train station.

The local taxi authority requires us to complain by post with an original receipt.

The postage costs of sending that with tracking defeats the purpose.

Most people wouldn't even realize they were overcharged, after all, we paid what was on the meter. And issuing receipts is only by request.

We don't have enough data to determine if the driver was excellently skilled or suicidal.

Meanwhile with Uber, you get a fancy receipt emailed to you listing route/charges, a sensible (if unregulated) complaints process, and ratings from other riders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _" If Ford Motor were a savvier marketer of their stock, which has changed hands at more or less the same price for twenty years, they'd be calling buyers of their cars a user base and the cars themselves would be rechristened "physical mobility apps."_

I don't think I would ever buy a car that was described as a "physical mobility app" as it would imply to me that the people running that company had forgotten what it was they were actually manufacturing.

<comment><USER13> If you want to sell cars, then sell cars. If you want to sell shares at an inflated valuation, sell a "physical mobility app", as the buzzwords will help you land the sort of investors that prefer hearing a story over fundamentals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> People were saying this 20 years ago during he dotcom boom, but they called it 'mind share' and 'the new economy'.

>Capital is Now Free, Have Fun

lol what. Credit card interest is higher than ever. Small business loans are still expensive. Yeah, maybe capital is cheap if you're a multinational or the us govt. but it's still expensive for most. Treasury bonds yields are not a proxy of how much business lending costs. Rather, a better estimate would be junk bond yields.

<comment><USER15> Capital is cheap for investors ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not familiar with this writer, but it sure reads like a giant troll and shill for tech stocks. He's right about one big thing though: there's too much money in circulation, and it causes asset bubbles in weird, useless shit like Uber stock and shitcoins; whatever has the PR megaphone. When the next collapse comes, I'm guessing before or shortly after the next US Presidential election, I'd rather hold value stocks. Actually, I'd rather hold foreign real estate.

Trend following is great; you have to sell at the right time though.

<comment><USER17> There's not "too much money in circulation." There's too much money in the hands of the wealthy who have nothing genuinely productive to do with it.

That same money in the hands of those who are currently barely scraping by—or not even scraping by, homeless or heading that way—would make a real difference in their lives, and would be spent on truly useful and absolutely mundane things.

<comment><USER16> All right: there's too much money going into asset bubbles instead of ordinary people. Same difference. Economists love it, as asset bubbles don't look like inflation, and deck shuffling counts towards GDP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 1999 called. It wants its bubble back...

</comment><comment><USER19> "This question is being answered on Wall Street every day, even if the participants are not aware of it."

This is basically the deal with MMT too. We talk about the defacto status quo reality like it's a hypothetical and not actually describing current unstated practice. "What happens" is _what 's happening_ right before our eyes. The question, as always, is for how long it will last. It's been >20 years of saying "this isn't normal," so when is it?

</comment><comment><USER20> The use of hyperbole in this article is a little bit cloying and unnecessary.

The author is asking "where is value [or asset] investing?". I think the question begging to be asked here is " how has the definition of _value_ changed?" We should instead be engaged in an investigation of how value and it's perception has changed.

</comment><comment><USER21> He's describing Whuffie - [https://www.amazon.com/Down-Magic-Kingdom-Cory- Doctorow/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Down-Magic-Kingdom-Cory- Doctorow/dp/076530953X)

</comment><comment><USER22> > "You don't go home to Greenwich from your Park Avenue office in a good mood > when the market makes it a point to remind you of how vestigial your skills > have become, day after day after day."

This is poetry.

</comment><comment><USER23> There is textbook investment strategy (turtles) and indicator that trades exactly the strategy this article says " _no_ textbook" recommends.

</comment><comment><USER24> Seems bubbly.

</comment><comment><USER25> wonderfull reading i'm sharing this with my friends</comment>


The Conclusion: A 6 Figure Business That Fell Apart When I Was 16 - <AUTHOR> http://www.sofamoolah.com/personal/the-conclusion-a-6-figure-business-that-fell-apart-when-i-was-16/ <comment><USER2> (A good read, thanks!)

It should be obvious to others who the "major business in the MP3 industry" was when you see the product he was re-selling: <http://www.sofamoolah.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/07/1p.jpg>

What's not clear to me is how you could (according to the final paragraph) "lose a lot of money" when you seem to have had minimal overheads and (according to part 1) you were making a profit of $40.75 per unit.

Naturally you had some unsaleable stock left over, but at $2100 shipped per lot of 500, did this really make much of a dent in your final profit from the venture?

<comment><USER3> I just posted the exact same question as a comment on the blog :)

<comment><USER4> Also why did he have to stop selling the usb drives?

<comment><USER2> I guess he was taking seriously the demand that he "couldn't even trade under the same name", and the USB drives do feature his brand rather prominently.

<comment><USER5> I don't see why trading under the same name would be an issue. Not that I'm educated in the area. But just because some lawyer told him he couldn't, doesn't mean it is fact. I think he should have kept going with the usb drives. And even if he did feel he needed to change names, he could've ....changed names! And still kept up with the import and sale of the usb drives. The article doesn't really explain why there was a complete halt to the business.

<comment><USER6> I'm guessing this was a case of big company doesn't really want to sue a 16-year-old entrepreneur, they just want him to cease all operations. Sure, he could have changed his company name and sold another product, but that product couldn't have been the USB drive given the rather prominent branding on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly, I would have liked to know at the beginning that he wasn't just selling MP3 players but blatant copies of the iPod shuffle. I was wondering who would pay $50 for some crappy Chinese MP3 player. Obviously kids will if it looks like something cool and that's a pretty significant insight into why he sold so many of them.

</comment><comment><USER8> What I really wonder, reading this story, is how he would have done if he'd gotten a product that didn't look like an iPod.

What percentage of his customers were thinking they were buying an iPod?

My nephew, one day, came to me excitedly telling me he was getting an iPhone and he showed me an ebay page with a "new in box" iPhone for $50. (he had $50 in birthday money to spend.) It was not an iPhone, but it looked like one. He's too young to understand, I think, the existence of knock off products.

<comment><USER5> Why would you think it was an iPod unless it said iPod in the description?

Did your nephew's page mention "new in box iPhone"? You left the quote out of the iPhone so I'm wondering if it actually said iPhone in the ad. If it did that's a completely different situation. If it didn't then your nephew would've gotten what he paid for. A "new in box"....something that looks like an iPhone.

<comment><USER5> Not sure why I'm being downvoted here. Is it normal to assume that a two blade razor is a Gillette two blade razor simply because they look the same? Unless it says "Gillette" somewhere you shouldn't assume it is such. I'm legitimately curious to know whether this person was selling phones under a false name. And moreso, whether the OP was selling his mp3 players under a false name.

<comment><USER9> Never forget, even smart people make stupid mistakes and it just gets worse from there. People often use brand names to fill in for categories. Ex: Kleenex for tissue, coke for soda etc. What's really odd is people will sometimes buy something like a box of tissues and think "Kleenex" even if it's not on the box. People reversing the category name with the brand name is a basic issue, but there are plenty of ways to encourage the effect.

What's really interesting IMO, is it's such a common effect that there have been a wide range of court cases based around how generic a brand has become and how people exploit it. Thus your packaging really can be too similar to competitors even if everything else is fairly unique.

<comment><USER6> The brand identity inherent in a product's packaging is called "Trade Dress", and it's a protected form of intellectual property just like trademarks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Question for the OP: Did anyone complain to you that he thought he was getting an ipod, but instead got a knock-off? I think that if nobody thought he was buying an ipod, it would be perfectly reasonable for you to sell your mp3 players. In my experience however, some sellers deliberately mislead customers on sites like ebay to buy cheap knock-off products.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What were you calling them in your ebay listings? Were you just calling them "mp3 players", or were you actually mentioning "ipod shuffle"? I find it hard to believe that enough people search ebay for "mp3 players" to get that many sales. People searching for an mp3 player would usually just search for an ipod.

<comment><AUTHOR> 2GB MP3 Player - Color - Fast Postage

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I the only one who is bothered by the comparison here of "I could be sued for" and "it's illegal for me to"? Just because someone can sue you for it doesn't mean it's illegal. In fact, if someone is suing you, it's likely that it's entirely legal for you to be doing it, otherwise, they would have just called the cops and saved on lawyers.

<comment><USER13> That just doesn't make sense. Maybe you don't know the difference between criminal and civil law?

The police are not anyone's personal force, and what they enforce are mostly crimes, while a suit over this MP3 player would be a civil action. Nobody's going to show up and cuff you for patent or trademark infringement. The State is not involved in civil actions unless the party you harmed happens to be a government.

<comment><USER12> That was exactly my point. Just because the Terms of Service of some place says something doesn't make doing that action illegal. The cops won't come to enforce someone's terms of service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Notes to people wanting to hustle and form a company/startup.

Note 1: Never underestimate the ability of the press and your fellow citizens to trash whatever you are doing. Because if you are providing value and making money, you are doing more than 99% of the people out there. They will punish you for this.

Note 2: Always expect a lawyer to call. The other 1% who are providing value have learned that the best way to keep making more and more money isn't to innovate; it's to use the political and legal system as a club to kill the little upstarts. Be ready for the club.

Note 3: People who end up making a lot of value usually don't think anybody would much want what they have. First sale comes as a nice surprise. People who have grandiose dreams of killing the market usually wander off into fantasyland and never produce anything anybody wants.

Note 4: It's all marketing and distribution. Know your customer and be able to get close to them. If you can do that, you can experiment with things until you find something that works. The market comes first, the product second.

<comment><USER15> Did you look at the product he was selling? It was a ripoff copy of the iPod Shuffle.

Kind of ironic that you're accusing the Apple lawyers of trying to stifle innovation, when the kid was making his money from what was essentially a pirated product.

<comment><USER16> Is it any more of a ripoff then any of the other MP3 players which were manufactured specifically to compete with Apple? Except those companies were big and had lawyers of their own.

<comment><USER17> > Is it any more of a ripoff then any of the other MP3 players which were > manufactured specifically to compete with Apple?

Yes, most of those did not look almost exactly like shuffles. TFAA was selling shuffle knockoffs: <http://imgur.com/s2v8A>

That's not the kind of "business models" which should be condoned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You don't owe _anyone_ an apology. You accomplished something _great_ and you're doing us a favor by giving us this case study. Thank you.

So, I think you should re-write the first paragraph...

\-----

FROM:

I really have to apologize for leaving you guys hanging on the first part of this story. I was undecided on whether or not to break the article up into 2's and after some feedback on Twitter I decided to. Below are the middle and the ending. Again, I was undecided on whether or not to break this part up but I left it whole. Theirs 23 paragraphs, double the original. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, this is the 2nd part on a story I posted yesterday. You can view the original here. By the way, this is the first time I've ever told this full story.

TO:

This is the second part of a 2 part series describing the rise and fall of my first business. _Click here for part 1_ where I describe how it all started.

\-----

I look forward to hearing about your next business. Please consider posting about it as you go along.

[edit to add]

... come to think of it, I think you're in a position to emulate patio11 here (if that interests you).... creating a series of these kind of killer blog posts to help drive interest in your next business. I kind of imagine you spinning it as "Scrappy young person running a microbusiness".

Some post ideas that come immediately to mind:

\- Go into detail about "I did research into growing markets and trends. I looked into manufacturing prices and retail prices"

\- Finding suppliers

\- Marketing research

\- The mindset of "I want to convert this exposure to money"

There seems to me like there's a lot of potential meat there. Especially since very few (if any) people are posting about starting businesses around _physical products_. Everyone's talking about web-based SaaS or B2B or whatever... there's a juicy niche there if you want it.

And you can use the street cred the OP article gives you to get the initial velocity.

Actually, you might want to look at polishing up the story into a 10 or 20 min presentation and seeing if you can do a talk at a small business conference. That gives you additional exposure, and organizers often let you attend for free if you're part of the show.

[One last Edit]

So your next business is "to document our journey of making money online while also showcasing interviews with other successful entrepreneurs, display case studies that work and also give out material that our users will find helpful.". So it looks like my comment wasn't really necessary. I'll leave my comment as-is though. Good luck, and I hope it works out for you guys.

<comment><USER19> I think that's just in response to the various complaints about unnecessary cliffhangers here and elsewhere.

While he doesn't _owe_ anyone an apology, I think it's nice that he's happy to give one anyway. Politeness is always admirable, especially on the internet, and politeness above and beyond the call of duty doubly so.

FWIW, I couldn't care less about 'cliffhangers,' provided they are not deployed in a cynical effort to garner underserved subscribers, which is clearly not the case here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The weird thing about this is most ports inspect goods and anything that isn't 'sanctioned' (most companies have regional distributors) gets put on hold, the company gets called and if it is a knock off the merchandise is destroyed and the receiver usually gets a visit by local police.

</comment><comment><USER21> Nice story, I enjoyed reading this ...

I find it very difficult to believe that they can feasibly force you to stop trading under the same name ...

was there any way you could have continued with different products?

</comment><comment><USER22> I think one of the biggest questions I have is:

What would you have done differently to make the business more successful/continue operating?

</comment><comment><USER23> >I came to the conclusion that I wasn't going to give up that easy and I went to see a lawyer. I figured I had enough money to present a decent battle – how wrong I was. I told the lawyer my story and what the situation was and the consensus was not good. Give up. I was told I could not win. Regardless of if I had a case or not, fighting a company this size was not worth it. Nowadays I can agree with what the guy was saying but being told to give up hit me hard.

Man, this sort of abuse of the legal system ought to be treated as a criminal activity, with prison time as an option for the execs involved.

<comment><USER11> Dude, it technically is illegal to sell replica mp3 players. So the company had every right to shut him down. He's lucky he didn't get sued anyway.

<comment><USER23> You could be right, 'cuz I don't know the legality of "selling an mp3 player that looks like that mp3 player some other guy sells" and certainly not in Australia. However, I mean the use of the legal system as intimidation instead of arbitration, which is what happened here.

<comment><USER24> You can be sued if your product looks too much like another product that has, in part, been trademarked or otherwise protected. You can also be sued for "passing off" under some trade practices laws.

If you look at the pictures, they look very similar indeed to the Major Manufacturer's product. In their position I'd do the same thing.

IANAL, TINLA, and in particular I never got around to studying this area of law.

<comment><USER25> You have to have a design patent to protect the "shape" of a product. They look a little like iPod nanos, but can Apple really protect ANY small rectangular metal music player?

<comment><USER26> If it could reasonably be mistaken for an iPod nano, then yes, a design patent covers it.

(I can't see the image of his player because it won't load for me)

<comment><USER17> > If it could reasonably be mistaken for an iPod nano

It looks like a shuffle, with buttons replacing the wheel (nano would need a screen and be far more expensive)

> (I can't see the image of his player because it won't load for me)

<http://imgur.com/s2v8A>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was in the same business in High School actually, selling bootleg mp3 players. I called them Dopples - an article of mine still ranks for the phrase "chipods".

</comment><comment><USER28> tl;dr: Apple.

<comment><USER29> tl;dr: An Australian teenager imported knock-off iPod shuffle and made some $ until Apple said stop. He did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Spoiler: Another Entrepreneurial person shot down by a law suit that he didn't deserve but had no chance of winning.

At this point I wouldn't mind just killing every single lawyer on the planet.

<comment><USER3> _"that he didn't deserve"_

Well, you don't know that. The images of the mp3 players he was selling basically look like a cheap knock off of the iPod shuffle. Apple spends a lot of money on their design and branding and it's their right to protect that investment, wouldn't you say?

This isn't the same as patent trolling.

<comment><USER31> In some cases with Asian factories the no-name product isn't even a "cheap knock-off", it's from the same factory with the same design.

Say MP3 Factory A gets an order for 1000 units/day but has capacity to do 1400/day. The factory still runs the extra 400/day and sells them as no-names.

Note: this is probably not the case any more with most proprietary electronics because competition is fierce enough that a factory would not want to lose a client. It does however flood the market with cheaper equivalents for all sorts of other products: clothes, shoes, wallets, etc.

<comment><USER19> Oh it definitely still goes on. Try buying some high-end headphones from ebay.

<comment><USER32> Is there a canonical list anywhere of products, or at least product categories, for which good label arbitrage opportunities exist on Ebay and elsewhere? I'll pay $0.99 for filet mignon in a McDonald's wrapper any day.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Humble Bundle Mojam 2 [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.humblebundle.com/?hn=1

<comment><USER2> This is badass. Best of luck to everyone.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good chance that one or two of these projects will be given a few continuing updates and evolve into a fairly respectable release - and the others will be fun little concepts, and you'll be supporting good devs.

If you're not convinced, go support an indie developer anyway!

<comment><USER4> Even better, it all goes to charity. I guess that could be bad if you wanted to support the devs, at least with money. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting that they are all programming in Windows, and all using IDEs.

<comment><AUTHOR> The vast majority of games are made in Windows using an IDE. It's completely unremarkable.

<comment><USER5> You're a friendly one.

Edit: Parent comment was a snarky elitist "doesn't everyone know that?" comment, and I'm getting downvotes (on -2 right now). There really is a lot elitist bullshit on this site.

<comment><USER6> In order to be more constructive, what would you have thought they would use? Notepad? nano? edit? TextPad?

<comment><USER5> I would not have been surprised if one of them was using Linux, for a start. Particularly given that the Humble Bundles make a big deal about the games being cross platform.

I'm not an expert on current gaming development, and it just struck me as interesting. Sorry I spoke.

<comment><USER7> One of the developers (Wolfire's David) is building his game using the Unity game engine, which exports to Linux but only runs on OS X and Windows. Other engines / development environments like Unreal and Flash are similarly unavailable on Linux. The same is true of most 3D modelling and image editing packages.

The tools simply aren't available to make Linux an attractive game development environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Will the "making of" videos be available to purchasers? That would be an incredible resource for anyone wanting to learn to make games...

<comment><USER9> <http://www.twitch.tv/mojang/videos?kind=past_broadcasts>

<comment><USER8> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I watched parts of the first Mojam, it was educational!

No Notch coding this time though?

<comment><USER11> Definitely educational. Sad I missed the start though. I'm hoping somebody caps it for watching later.

<comment><USER12> They are doing it like the last one, it will be preserved at <http://www.twitch.tv/mojang/videos?kind=past_broadcasts>. Unfortunately, still likely to have the pauses for thinking and other things.</comment></comment></comment>


Docker for Windows 17.11 with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update - <AUTHOR> https://blog.docker.com/2017/11/docker-for-windows-17-11/ <comment><USER2> Docker for Windows already runs Linux containers. This is an update: "The setup for running Linux containers with LCOW is a lot simpler than the previous architecture where a Hyper-V Linux VM runs a Linux Docker daemon, along with all your containers. With LCOW, the Docker daemon runs as a Windows process (same as when running Docker Windows containers), and every time you start a Linux container Docker launches a minimal Hyper-V hypervisor running a VM with a Linux kernel, runc and the container processes running on top."

<comment><USER3> any idea what host windows OS are supported? I suppose only those with hyper-v.

<comment><USER4> I'm looking for the same answer. I expect you are right, as the MS article linked does talk about some Hyper-V capabilities leveraged by LinuxKit (even though MobyLinux is no longer running as a HyperV VM).

<comment><AUTHOR> It is running as a Hyper-V VM. HV containers don't share the kernel with the host if they're running Linux; they are actual lightweight VMs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was expecting LCOW to not need Hyper-V at all and to use Windows' WSL.

I thought it was the whole point behind WSL -- to beta-test Linux containers support without the need for virtualization.

<comment><USER4> Hyper-V virtualization requirements are removed with this update. It does rely on Hyper-V isolation, which appears to have more in common with Linux namespaces than virtualization.

Virtualization isn't completely off the table. The article mentions a minimal, LinuxKit-based hypervisor. I may be off, but I'm imagining something more akin to what's happening on macOS via HyperKit.

<comment><USER6> Not quite. It doesn't use the existing Hyper-V management stack, but it does use the Hyper-V hypervisor and (trimmed down) virtual device stack.

<comment><USER7> Will the Hyper-V features need to be installed or will it be installed automatically?

I'm just curious because sometimes it messes with your video card driver.

<comment><USER6> You'll have to enable Hyper-V. If you're having video card issues with Hyper-V + Windows 10 you can email me and we can try to figure out what's going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So I have 2 questions still:

\- On a windows server can I run a Linux container?

\- On Windows server can I run a Windows container and a Linux container side by side?

<comment><USER4> From my read, the side-by-side feature is a soon but not quite yet (on Win10 or Server 2016). Looks like the groundwork is prepared though there are some features that aren't fully implemented yet.</comment></comment>


Why GTD sucks? - <AUTHOR> https://filipmolcan.com/blog/2013/11/6/something-is-wrong-with-gtd

<comment><USER2> Untrusted Connection, SSL Cert is for squarespace.com</comment>


Markup horrors of the ad blocker wars - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/aaronkbr/status/1071214578980261888 <comment><USER2> The silly thing about these kinds of tricks is that it shows they aren't even thinking about _why_ they're being blocked. If it was just some simple text or an img tag, no one would block it and the ad would work without tricky markup. Since the typical ad is an obnoxious piece of trash though, I reserve the right to _aggressively_ block anything I can. They will lose that war.</comment>


Coca-Cola Is Eyeing the Cannabis Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-17/coca-cola-eyes-cannabis-market-in-push-beyond-sluggish-sodas <comment><USER2> Cannabis market is now captivating the mainstream market and fortune 500 companies investors as they have known that most of all people nowadays are getting more and more open about cannabis industry. It's been a wild and lengthy debate but it is now paying off as more and more people are reaping the effects of the medicinal usage of the cannabis. This will surely open the eyes of many countries that will see the benefits of it instead of looking at it as causes of "drug addiction". It would also help many people that may need it and get big discounts from hospital treatment that cost them really big while a single oil from the plant can take care of the business. I just hope there comes a day that the purpose of it is to help people in need and not to monopolize the plant and take advantage on the people as it would take away the health and helpful benefit of the plant.</comment>


Ask HN: Help us validate an idea by completing this survey - <AUTHOR> http://surveys.polldaddy.com/s/44D8E4EB243BB2A0/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey- we're working on an idea and would like to get some more validation about it. Please help us out by completing this survey-- will really influence how we go about what we're doing :D

Thanks YC!

<comment><USER2> I realise I am the grumpiest survey taker on the planet, but:

1\. If you want me to fill this multiple times for multiple projects you had better give me a one page survey.

2\. Since I am not using whatever it is you are peddling, I need more context for the questions and/or the ability to tick more than one choice. For example "How often do you release" is a meaningless question without some context. If I release daily to one user group by a pushed installation, weekly to another via offer of rsync and monthly to the rest via traditional builds, which is the answer of interest?

3\. You should solicit email addresses seperately, otherwise it comes across like you are as interested in the email addresses as the answers, if not more.

I personally would be more responsive to something that said "we have a tool that does X and Y to help manage releases, do you think that would be useful to you - now tell us about yourself".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Should be: "Help us invalidate an idea." You're always going to think your ideas are awesome, so look for weaknesses, not strengths :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that you use the term "validate." What if the results of this poll don't sync with your expectations? Does that mean you change your game plan, drop your idea, or march forward?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you have to weigh up the impact. The YC crowd is particularly representative of the target market for this app, so it's definitely going to be very instructive. Fortunately the results have been echoing our assumption, so we're pretty happy. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Overall, I think the survey needs a bit more polish. Add another option each for Q4 ("less than monthly") and Q5 ("None"). Possibly have Q5 allow more than one answer. Perhaps rephrase Q7 to "How long do your branches typically last?" if that is really what you're asking.

I also agree with the others that the survey really could have fit on a single page.

</comment><comment><USER6> How long is the survey?

<comment><AUTHOR> 9 questions. :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also- please feel free to fill it out for as many projects as you care to tell us about: we're keen to learn about all kinds of styles!

</comment><comment><USER7> I've got to say, I can't handle polldaddy. The whole "multi-page wizard" feel is awfully corporate.

<comment><USER8> I agree, using google docs with forms - would've impressed me (frugal, professional)

<comment><USER7> Right, there was a HN survey a few days ago using google docs--it had palm trees in the background and everything!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Filled it out 3 times for the 3-ish different scm+teams I work with.

</comment><comment><USER10> are you willing to share the results with the community?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes- once we get started. :)</comment></comment>


I free fall from 40,000ft. How do I die? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/I-free-fall-from-40-000-feet-into-the-Atlantic-Ocean-How-do-I-die?share=1 <comment><USER2> The most interesting part of that quora discussion is the comment about the airline attendant[1] who fell from 33,000' without a parachute and survived.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87)</comment>


Meetups are Hard Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.ugtastic.com/meetups-hard-work/

<comment><AUTHOR> In response to Sean's article I wrote up "Meetups are Easy" [http://www.ugtastic.com/meetups-easy/](http://www.ugtastic.com/meetups-easy/)</comment>


Review HN: Ten Seconds of Happy - My Weekend Project - <AUTHOR> http://www.tensecondsofhappy.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I had built this over the weekend to relearn python and to get familiar with Google App Engine. No cross browser testing was really done, besides that I know it doesn't work in IE.

The javascript drawing widget was taken from Rafael Robayna (found it online). Everything else is mine on the backend.

It is a fun little "app." Me and my friend are trying to peddle happiness a little bit at a time.

</comment><comment><USER2> That looks like it was a fun weekend hack.

Kind of similar to oekaki applets: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oekaki#Oekaki_internet_forum>

</comment><comment><USER3> I like it, but mainly looking at the other drawings. There's something great about a doodle.

</comment><comment><USER4> haha it reminds me of Operation, because if you hit the edges the screen lights up in blue (in Chrome everything becomes selected) ;-)</comment>


Packaging now standard, dependency proxy next? - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2019/05/10/github-adds-package-registry/ <comment><USER2> I feel as though this announcement caught GitLab by surprise and it scrambled to put a strong message out there that it already had similar offerings in place. At the same time, however, I don't think their choice of phrasing is the most appropriate. It'd probably have been better handled more subtly.

But does it matter at all? If I host critical code somewhere, it has to be available, and GitLab's uptime history[0] is so much poorer compared to GitHub's[1], with service disruptions and degradations being more common, and far more severe. I don't understand why GitLab doesn't focus on improving the quality of their service. It's not like this is new.

Edit: I feel like I came across as very sour, and I am. But I do like GitLab. I've actually used its CI and Docker image repository in the past and prefer how everything is in one place. I've even written fairly a fairly comprehensive article outlining a deployment pipeline leveraging their tech, but I just don't like service disruptions, especially when they're normalized.

[0]: [https://status.gitlab.com/pages/history/5b36dc6502d06804c083...](https://status.gitlab.com/pages/history/5b36dc6502d06804c08349f7)

[1]: [https://www.githubstatus.com/history](https://www.githubstatus.com/history)

<comment><USER3> GitLab's primary focus is on selling a product, not GitHub-like services. The hosted instance at gitlab.com is incidental to this. The number of commenters on HN who don't seem to get this is weirdly high.

GitHub is competing for your attention and trying to convince you to use github.com similar to the way that Facebook wants you to use their site. GitLab is not.

If you don't want to use gitlab.com because of low uptime, GitLab doesn't care. GitLab cares about whether you want to buy a GitLab license. If you're not in the market for that, then you were never a potential customer, anyway. Expecting GitLab to care about what you think about the ops history for gitlab.com is like thinking that a car dealer cares about how satisfied the people are who come in to have a coffee, eat a cookie, and test drive a car from the showroom, and never intend to buy anything. That's what gitlab.com is: a showroom.

<comment><USER2> > GitLab's primary focus is on selling a product, not GitHub-like services ... > The number of commenters on HN who don't seem to get this is weirdly high.

You're mistaken. This was true at one point, but no longer. GitLab maintains a document comparing itself to GitHub[0], has mature pricing tiers that go up to $99 per user[1], encouraged users to switch during the Microsoft acquisition by giving discounts on their higher tiers[3], and has paid me $500 in a bug bounty for reporting business logic flaws that allowed free users to leverage APIs that they shouldn't have had access to according to their plans.

If you're actively pulling devs to your product, and even charging them. Make sure your product stays up.

Also, please don't scorn people that disagree with you. Some times it's not them that "don't seem to get" it.

[0]: [https://about.gitlab.com/devops-tools/github-vs- gitlab.html](https://about.gitlab.com/devops-tools/github-vs-gitlab.html)

[1]: [https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/](https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/)

[2]: [https://about.gitlab.com/2018/06/03/movingtogitlab/](https://about.gitlab.com/2018/06/03/movingtogitlab/)

[3]: The report is redacted, but you can see the bounty at my HackerOne profile: [https://hackerone.com/gilani](https://hackerone.com/gilani)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had no idea Gitlab already did this well before Github.

I think it's absolutely an appropriate response.

<comment><USER5> I use GitLab daily and for everything and I didn't know this. I know of the container registry and build artifacts, but they don't have an actual registry, do they? I can't point pip to something on GitLab and do "pip install mypackage" and it will work, correct?

<comment><USER6> It doesn't for python. It does for npm, java and docker though. I've been using the Docker one and it works fantastically well.

<comment><USER5> I use the Docker Registry as well, it does work great. Is there some special integration for npm/Java, or is it because you can just download the artifacts if you specify the URL?

<comment><USER6> There's an auth layer to implement + publishing APIs, I believe that's all there is though.

If only there was some standard for package hosting + publishing across all languages… _stares at The Update Framework_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Gitlab might want to rethink their PR strategy. Every knee jerk reaction they toss out there in response to things like this makes me want to try their tech less and less.

<comment><USER8> Your loss. At least they have a self-hosted open source version for you to try. That is way more than GitHub offers.

<comment><USER7> They are apples and oranges, really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure I get the point of this post. Is is to convey that Gitlab did it before GitHub did it? If it's not, then, I really don't get the point.

<comment><USER10> I'm in the same boat as you. I don't get the point either. Can someone help?

<comment><USER11> Now you know Gitlab has this feature

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Gitlab offers some compelling advantages, but I think they realize "we did it first" isn't a strong defensible position as Github chooses to offer the same features. (After all, Github offered the main feature first)

</comment><comment><USER13> It's really good to see GitHub embracing the work that GitLab has been doing for a while (more than 5 years) now. While its healthy competition, it also shows how Open Source companies/projects like GitLab are ahead of proprietary companies and in fact lead the industry with their innovation.

<comment><USER14> How GitLab is not proprietary? It is a private commercial company.

How GitLab is open source? It open sources a non-essential portion of its software, and so does GitHub.

<comment><USER6> Gitlab is like the most open source company out there. It sets examples in transparency that even Mozilla should learn from.

Calling what it open sources "non-essential" is so ridiculously misinformed that I'm really wondering what your goal is here.

<comment><USER12> I agree they open more than the non-essential parts. It's worth noting that what we are currently talking about isn't an open source innovation however. It's a proprietary offering by a company that does a lot of open source: in both cases. Github opened Atom, contributes significantly to Rails, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's somewhat rich for Gitlab to passive-aggressively complain about Github releasing a feature they released first.

</comment><comment><USER16> You can either love or hate Gitlab/Github, but this competition is always fantastic for their users.

<comment><USER17> It's a shame we lost BitBucket along the way. They were the first to spearhead the "all private repos free for individuals" model that the others eventually adopted.

<comment><USER18> Being a Bitbucket user is pretty distressing right now. We're invested quite heavily into it, but moving to Gitlab would really address some of our major pain points (having to run Sonatype Nexus, and some Bitbucket Pipelines restrictions).

I hope they can catch up before it becomes too tempting to bail.

<comment><USER19> They could start by adding syntax highlighting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Lol, if we are thinking that way, they stole their entire business idea from GitHub!!! They are upset GitHub copied a single feature! Unbelievable.

<comment><USER8> No they didn't. There were plenty of similar SCM's before GitHub. GitLab quickly outpaced them and added a lot of valuable unique features.

<comment><USER21> Please. In the earlier days, Gitlab was shameless about copying things from GitHub. At one point, they even styled their website to be almost indistinguishable from the GitHub Enterprise site. If I recall correctly, there may have even been some copying of HTML/CSS from the GitHub Enterprise site.

The reason those things were never widely known is because GitHub never made whiny passive aggressive blogs posts about it. That's one thing Gitlab should have copied from GitHub.

<comment><USER8> I think you're thinking of Gogs or Gitea. GitHub should have been building a self-hosted open source version and CI platform. Now they're well in the dust and still don't have an open source version.

<comment><USER21> I'm not. I'm thinking about Gitlab. There is a long history of Gitlab shamelessly copying things from GitHub, and GitHub taking the high road. I would be so much more likely to support them if they didn't act like complete tools any time GitHub releases a new feature, _especially_ considering their history.

> Now they're well in the dust and still don't have an open source version.

GitHub is massively larger than Gitlab. It's not even close. You're focussing on one relatively unimportant thing, and missing the bigger picture. I would wager a year from now, GitHub's lead in the market will have increased, not decreased.

<comment><USER8> What would you like to wager? I'll wager GitLab will be even further integrated into Kubernetes and the go to for open source CI/CD.

<comment><USER21> Why are you so hyper focused on products being open source? With a very very small number of exceptions, this has never mattered, and likely will never matter.

I wager GitHub will be a significantly larger company, with more users both free and paid, hosting a significantly larger portion of notable open source projects.

<comment><USER8> Because I care about innovation for distribution of social benefits and environmental improvement, as opposed to profit.

<comment><USER21> And I can understand why you like Gitlab the open source project. However, we're talking about Gitlab the for profit company. My criticisms apply only to the company, not the project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Are they upset Microsoft didn't buy them instead?

<comment><USER12> I'd expect Google or someone comparable to buy them (you know they are already having those conversations)</comment></comment>


Standing or Sitting while you read this, hopefully the former - <AUTHOR> http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/288333.php

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this link and I have been studying this subject for the past decade. I transitioned to a standing work environment six years ago an never looked back. The biggest misconception is that you need to be fit to stand all day, and that is simply not true, it is simply a matter of knowing how to transition. If anyone is interested in the plan I used, let me know! I am also curious as to how many followers have successfully transitioned to full work days standing.</comment>


Yet Another Hacker News Redesign - <AUTHOR>

I wanted to create a design that I could use, so instead of pie-in-the-sky, I modified the CSS as suggested by the 'A Better HN: Aligned' post using Stylebot (awesome tool!). While its just a visual skin and not a complete UX overhaul at least its functional and useful right now.
Screenshot: http://cl.ly/1E182J1r0V040M3H302J
CSS: http://pastebin.com/JHEUQjcq
My concern with the previous designs I saw on HN were they weren't too readable.
In my design, I am giving prominence to the article title - bold and contrasty.
The comments is what I personally like to see next and I went with a subdued orange/brown for these links.
I increased the line-spacing and generally have a bit more white-space without overdoing it (you see about 15 of 30 articles above the fold on a 13" MBP).
Additionally, I removed any distracting elements (such as the header or orange lines) except for the Y-Combinator logo. <comment><USER2> I have a userscript and zoom (twice) in Chrome to get the text larger. I like being inspired and made happy when I read through the titles, and I like Feedly's UI, so I made my version of HackerNews look exactly the same.

Some days, I just love being a programmer/designer. So much independence and control.

</comment><comment><USER3> I found extensively use of bold text very eye-sore. Maybe it's just me!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that was one decision I was unsure about, but I'm going to try it out and see how it feels after a few days.</comment></comment>


Why I don't like Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/why-i-dont-like-steve-jobs

<comment> Apple-Guy Nice post. Thankfully more people are now getting 'it'. That's why Apple became the top tech company by value.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the most malicious piece of JavaScript I can run on a web page? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It's technically possible to alter the state of DRAM with javascript. It's called bitflipping. As far as I know there's only been a single proof of concept, rowhammer.js.

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.06955](http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.06955)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the one I can think of:

      function sayBadWords(message)
      {
         alert(message);
      }
      sayBadWords("You scumbag and a^^hole, can't you use an older version of firefox?");

</comment><comment><USER4> Google Analytics

</comment><comment><USER5> Why do you want to know?

<comment><AUTHOR> For fun and profit.</comment></comment>


The Future Is Now - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/11/AR2008041103328.html?hpid=opinionsbox1 <comment><USER2> The author doesn't seem to realize that the Internet's name changed in about 1988. I suspect the WP has earlier references to it under its previous name, Arpanet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Kinda surprised there was no mention of anybots. I think the general populace is going to be shocked at how quick some major changes happen in the near future.

<comment><AUTHOR> It fits with the theme of the article that no one outside of this circle has heard of them. It takes people a while to notice huge progress.

I also think robotic cars are really going to sneak up on us.

<comment><USER3> Just reading the title, I thought "oh cool, an article on anybots". But, yup that was the point. No one knows.

hehe... yeah, a year ago I polled a couple of co-workers on when we would have self-driving cars. One said 50 years, one said never. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Highlights and shadows: the real color of transparent in CSS3 (with examples) - <AUTHOR> http://coderwall.com/p/s1d2rg

<comment><USER2> FWIW All the "demo" images look like this:

<http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/835/demosk.png/>

Using Opera 12.

<comment><USER3> Same in Firefox. Page must be broken.

<comment><USER4> All the examples are webkit only. And people wonder why opera and mozilla are a bit frustrated about the state of vendor prefixes and CSS.

<comment><USER2> As a rule of thumb I just don't use vendor prefixes... if my stuff breaks I just say I'm ahead of the times. 8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> tl;dr for this post: at least in Chrome transparent as a CSS color translates to rgba(0,0,0,0), which means that if you have a gradient from something that isn't fully transparent (alpha channel > 0) to transparent, there will be an awkward phase in the middle where black is visible (because the gradient is transition the alpha channel in lockstep with the color.)</comment>


Hackestimate – Open Source Tools for Hackathon Organizers - <AUTHOR> http://126.96.36.199:8000 This is a hackathon project that I worked on last weekend. It's a simple web tool for hackathon organizers to help them budget for their travel reimbursements. It helps them optimize number and quality of people they are providing reimbursements to. I am considering to continue on this project as an open source tool and add more features. What are people's (more specifically, hackathon organizers') thoughts on this tool.<p>Use this link to download the test data file as a CSV https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lTV4wx7yVtE3Ubs1-SejcXWplBf2boTEqEJ6YYN-rQ8/edit?usp=sharing <comment><USER2> This might make a good "Show HN".

Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>