Tracking the mood of a #hashtag  - <AUTHOR> http://moodpanda.tumblr.com/post/11910887734/tracking-mood-hashtag

<comment><AUTHOR> Moodpanda.com is a mood and Sentiment tracking site so when the user posts "I Love #coke" or "#coke is sick" it is attached to there chosen mood number (1-10) so they can get a exact rating of how the person feels about the product or brand etc. It is direct Sentiment analysis and does not fall foul of the normal issues with Sentiment analysis e.g. is the word "sick" good or bad? Different ways of phrasing etc. are not an issue for moodpanda.com

</comment><comment><USER2> I'd like to know how they measure the mood. Sentiment analysis is a bit of a black box.</comment>


Disrupting the Liquor Inventory Industry with Meteor and React - <AUTHOR> http://info.meteor.com/blog/disrupting-the-liquor-inventory-industry-with-meteor-and-react <comment><AUTHOR> Chanj FLOW is a mobile app designed to solve liquor inventory for bars and nightclubs. Frustrated with the existing liquor inventory systems for nightlife venues, we sought to create a new solution that was simpler, more efficient, and affordable. The app is available for download on the iTunes App Store. In this post, I'll talk about the technical decisions we made while developing the app, why we chose to build it with Meteor and React, and how Meteor's 1.4's recent updates have delivered even more value.</comment>


5 Tips for Running Redis over AWS - <AUTHOR> http://redislabs.com/blog/5-tips-for-running-redis-over-aws

<comment><USER2> Nice Article, hope you do these for other providers as well such as Softlayer, Rackspace and Digital Ocean -- all have thier quirks!

-Scott @InstantAPI

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly, but some of the pains here are common to these and the rest.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Find It Fast - <AUTHOR> http://news.fiddlewax.com/post/87691133229/find-it-fast-staying-motivated-to-keep-a

<comment><AUTHOR> Just curious, is it wrong to ask for a HackerNews upvote at the end of an write-up?</comment>


Show HN: Habit Loop – a PWA habit tracker - <AUTHOR> https://habit-loop.com <comment><AUTHOR> Habit Loop is a free app to help you form good habits. It helps to remind you when you need to achieve your goals, and lets you track your progress over time.

Built as an offline first, cross browser PWA using LitElement and Firebase in a web worker. 100% Lighthouse score and reliable even on slow/flakey connections.</comment>


Ask HN: Entrepreneurially-minded phd? - <AUTHOR>

Hey, I'm making a decision whether to leave my current employer to start a phd in machine learning in the fall. I'm curious to hear from people who have gone through phds and later started companies - was it worth it?<p>Curious about thoughts on the networks you guys built up, the usefulness of your research, and the general time-worthiness of the thing. <comment><USER2> As someone with a PhD, I'd recommend against it. I haven't started a company yet but it is a deep burning life ambition for me. A PhD takes a long time to finish and gives you a very narrow set of skills. I did a PhD in Systems. When I started my program, it seemed to be a golden ticket (just like ML looks today). Today, after a PhD and 5 years of research experience, I would not get hired as a CTO. I have zero real-world deployment/operations experience or management experience.

If I could give my younger self advice, I'd tell myself to do an MBA instead.</comment>


Does subliminal advertising actually work? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30878843

<comment><USER2> Ah the dear BBC, it's almost as if Betteridge used your website as his data set.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr Subliminal advertising may be based on a kernel of scientific truth, but in practice it's a devilishly tricky thing to pull off.</comment>


Ask HN: Simple experiments to demonstrate the "greenhouse effect" - <AUTHOR> My thinking on the subject of global warming recently has been like this:
It seems there is too much "special interest" skepticism in the way on both sides of the argument (understatement of the century?) to think any individual is going to feel they can make any progress by simply arguing the points / counter-points of the argument.  It just makes people angry and is almost always counter-productive.
If one wanted to demonstrate in a cheap, relatively quick, imperfect but sufficient fashion that the "greenhouse effect" is a real thing, how would they go about doing that?
I'm thinking if elementary, middle, or high schools (after school programs?) could reproduce this simple experiment for small classes it could be a catalyst for changing the opinions of the masses on climate change.
PS.  My hope is this comment thread can remain civil.  ;) <comment><USER2> Here's my gedanken experiment (caveat: I'm not an environmental scientist or engineer!): suppose you have a large box (closed system) with a large number of light bulb sockets and an infinite power source. Let a light bulb represent the amount of energy required by a person (i.e. home electricity, gasoline for travel, food for consumption, etc.). As the number of light bulbs increase within the box, the temperature rises. Regardless of other factors (e.g., CO2 emissions, energy sources) the transformation of fuel to energy, and energy to work, is not 100% and so there will always be waste heat produced.

One may use more energy efficient bulbs to maintain (or slightly decrease) the temperature within the box while increasing the number of bulbs. But savings from energy efficiency will be quickly spent as we add additional bulbs to the box.

I'll let the reader (experimenter?) draw her own conclusions about this thought exercise.

<comment><USER3> The effect of all our waste heat on earth's climate is insignificant -- thousandths of a degree. The greenhouse effect works in a completely different way, by CO2 reflecting infrared radiation that would otherwise transfer heat from the surface into space.

It's dangerous to promote incorrect ideas about how global warming works. For example, if global warming was just a problem of waste heat, we could shut everything off and things would be back to normal in a few days. But because it's caused by CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere, once we release CO2 it takes a long time (hundreds of years) for it to be re-absorbed by forests. People who saw these light-bulbs in a box might think that a quick solution is possible if warming gets out of hand.

<comment><USER4> > If global warming was just a problem of waste heat, we could shut everything > off and things would be back to normal in a few days.

Regardless of cause, the law of conservation of energy says otherwise. Also this isn't the type of law that congress can change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Climate change must be felt to be understood.

Depends what you're trying to demonstrate. I think the greenhouse effect is cool. Carbon dioxide is useful, it's just not in the right place.

How might we build a bunch of rooms with different amounts of carbon dioxide in them. And big lamps. In the rooms with low carbon dioxide, it's cool. With rooms with lots of carbon dioxide, it getd hotter and hotter.

Even a simple physicics simulator app would be cool, different ppm of carbon dioxide, and showing the change/temperature stability. I remember fooling around with a physics simulator as a kid, springs and boxes, then you hit go and they all move with gravity. Power it with data from the open climate API at [http://carbondoomsday.com](http://carbondoomsday.com)

Keep the ideas coming!

</comment><comment><USER6> i imagine you need to convey a few important things: (1) effect of CO2 on atmosphere per what tlb said below and (2) magnitude of CO2 emissions (like telling people 1 part per billion is a eyedrop of water into a swimming pool, etc.)</comment>


Japan's zero-gravity space drone sends first pictures from ISS - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-40640039 <comment><USER2> Of course it is zero-gravity — it is in space! BBC's headline writer definitely spiced this one up.</comment>


Show HN: React Dragtastic – Frustration-Free Drag and Drop for React JS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/chrisjpatty/react-dragtastic#v2 <comment><USER2> How would you compare your project to Dragula's React wrapper?

<comment><AUTHOR> So Dragtastic came out of my own difficulty finding a React drag and drop library that was both easy to setup and easily extensible. Dragula was one that I looked at during that process. I only briefly looked into Dragula, so I can't say that I have a full breadth of knowledge about the differences, but from what I can tell the overall paradigm is somewhat different. Where some DND libraries attempt to abstract most of the rendering away from you as the developer, dragtastic uses the "function-as-child" rendering method to allow the developer full control over the rendering of their components. It's similar in a way to how Kent Dodd's Downshift library operates [https://github.com/paypal/downshift](https://github.com/paypal/downshift).

Essentially Dragtastic manages all the events and state required for cross- browser drag and drop interactions, but instead of rendering your components for you, you provide a function in which Dragtastic injects all the state and events you need to hookup your own components. Hopefully that answers your question.

 _Edit:_ I should mention as well that Dragula and other similar more-mature libraries have more complete APIs. I'm continually adding more features to Dragtastic, so for developers requiring a complete API may want to look elsewhere for now or consider contributing. ;)

<comment><USER2> Very helpful, thanks, that does sound quite different from Dragula which makes a big point of how it automatically manages rendering of the being-dragged components.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which there's definitely a good use-case for. Sometimes you need something that just works without much configuration. React-dnd comes to mind as a package that goes the other direction and is super customizable, but not very easy to just drop in and start using. With dragtastic I've tried to strike a happy medium between the two. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zapier (YC S12) Raises $1.2M Seed Round - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/31/zapier-raises-1-2m-seed-round/

<comment><USER2> This article ended up pretty light on details, but a lot more information about us here: [https://zapier.com/blog/2012/10/31/zapier-100-connected- serv...](https://zapier.com/blog/2012/10/31/zapier-100-connected-services- year-review/) via <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4723588>

<comment><USER3> Fantastic story, and I was initially excited for, and promoting Zapier. But then a simple request for single folder Dropbox access, seemed to fall on deaf ears.

I don't have a personal agenda other than good citizenship and concern for best practices that affect the community.

 _If you're dumping a file to my Dropbox, why do you need full read access to all folders?_

 _If you adding a note to Evernote, why do you need full r/w access to my entire note store?_

 _etc_ _etc_

The simple answer is often it's not needed. For example, Wappwolf gets it right in this case (<http://i.imgur.com/Ug5Fi.png>), by allowing the freedom to choose.

Sure it's simply easier and less hassle for a startup to deal with things like users privacy concerns.

However, if anything, it's an opportunity for you guys to be leading and setting the example in restricted, 'only what you require', SaaS security model.

This idea of giving exponentially more startups, _complete access_ to your increasingly critical online services, does not seem wise at all.

Apologies for a bit of a rant, just rather passionate about this issue, and hope you guys will take it seriously :)

<comment><USER2> More nuanced scope settings are definitely something we'd like to do. Put simply, we just haven't had a chance to get to it quite yet, but we're definitely hearing more requests for it and we want to honor those requests. We're working on it!

<comment><USER3> Good stuff :)

Actually wasn't concerned with timelines, but rather a principle statement of agreement or disagreement. Of course there are pragmatic issues, but also its very easy for startups in public diplomatic relations to say "yup sure" and have little interest in following through. (not saying that is necessarily the case here of course)

Hence why I was raising the question at the principle level, rather than a specific feature level to be slotted in with all the other todo's.

Like I said before.. I have personally nothing to gain from this implementation. But if it takes more users to request it then so be it for you to notice then so be it. I will continue to raise awareness of the greater issue here. (Beyond Zapier as well)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Zapier is great, I use them to integrate DropBox with HipChat, and it was no trouble at all to set up. And that's what I'm looking for in a product, solves a problem, no trouble to set up. One of the founders was also happy to chat with me about the DropBox integration, which is nice - sign of good customer service to come.

I also integrate GitHub with HipChat, but don't need Zapier for that. Anyone else do any integrations with HipChat they find useful?

<comment><USER2> Hey Andrew, we have a few things we do with HipChat (or Highrise or whatever), I'll list my favorites from usefulness to "just for fun":

        * churns in Stripe trigger a message in the chat room, we always try to
          follow up immediately and figure out why
        * specific support requests or emails also trigger in the chat room
        * Google alert RSS feeds for Zapier also dump mentions of Zapier across
          the web into the chat room
        * we have another chat account called the ZapBot. he's a bit foul mouthed,
          but anyone can control him through a Gtalk->HipChat zap we set up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is another article from a Silicon Prairie News which also has more details: [http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2012/10/zapier- raises-1-2m...](http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2012/10/zapier- raises-1-2m-seed-round-hires-first-employee)

<comment><USER6> Congrats guys!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nicely done guys! Once you made that spinner, the rest was inevitable :p

<comment><USER5> Someone noticed the spinner! Every time someone manually clicks "spin", we log it (we do not log the automated first spin):

<http://i.imgur.com/LCFu6.png>

<comment><USER8> It's a great gimmick that shows endless possibilities for your service.

Great idea and execution, and actually a startup I like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So happy for these guys! Wade and his team are a great bunch who have a passion for helping business owners streamline their processes. Excited to see them continue to grow.

</comment><comment><USER10> I use Zapier to send me text message digests of certain kinds of tweets. For something so easy to use, it's incredibly powerful.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice job guys, this is going to be a big industry.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well done. I'd love to give this a whirl on a client project, great idea.

Please post some technical details on how on earth you connected all this stuff (in general terms without divulging any secret sauce).

</comment><comment><USER13> Woo woo! I love to see Shopify Apps like these grow up :D

</comment><comment><USER14> Well deserved, and way overdue!

</comment><comment><USER15> Glad to see a Startup Weekend company ROCKING it. :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Way to hustle! Keep on building.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice work!

Any chance Zoho Creator is coming soon?

</comment><comment><USER18> Good job guys!

</comment><comment><USER19> Good job guys!</comment>


When will the iPad Pro be a laptop replacement? - <AUTHOR> After spending $1700 on it and using it for a while I am still using my computer too much. <comment><USER2> As long as iOS is a "walled garden computing" OS, iPad Pro won't be a laptop replacement.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a laptop replacement, but great for reading papers.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not until Xcode is available in the app store.

<comment><USER5> Yeah that's a basic issue, currently ios is not self-hosting you absolutely have to have a mac if you want to write apps for ios.</comment></comment>


Ex-Solus Dev Is Now Creating a Truly Modern Linux Distribution Called Serpent L - <AUTHOR> https://itsfoss.com/serpent-os-announcement/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. Keep seeing a lot of new independent distributions use musl as there libc implementation. Hopefully this brings musl into the mainstream.

</comment><comment><USER3> Now there are N + 1 competing distros, where N is the total number of active Linux distros.</comment>


5 Best URL Shrinkers - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5068945/five-best-url-shrinkers

<comment><USER2> BTW, one more service: BudURL.com Its awesome. Actually its got all the features that cli.gs (the best of 5 you have reported) has, and on the top, it lets you create custom URL like budurl.com/ycombinator than a random letters. 2nd big advantage is: its a decent domain name, than cli.gs - I can tell that to someone over phoe without them asking 'What?', 'Can yo spell that?'

</comment><comment><USER2> Most of these services create a permalink, but they should offer a choice. Sometimes I create a temp link, which I don't need afterwards. Why can't they let me reuse the same URL and or just let me delete it? I don't want something of no use to any living being in the world occupying some space in a database, and in turn making the URL fetch somewhat slower.

</comment><comment><USER3> URL shrinking is a funny little business. With the right implementation, your product only gets worse as it gets popular (and the URL's get longer).

If I were running one of these, I would focus on buying as many short domains as possible and getting people distributed across them to counter the effect.

</comment><comment><USER2> One more point: Found out today that, you can redirect using some service (bit.ly for one) and get your traffic tracked! And one of them (decenturl.com) make a meaningful url instead of tinyurl.com/sUw7_gKj. I think these are nice value additions.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use mostly is.gd, haven't had any problems yet. It's also the shortest :)</comment>


The ancient computers in the Boeing 737 Max are holding up a fix - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/9/21197162/boeing-737-max-software-hardware-computer-fcc-crash <comment><USER2> This is a rather poorly researched rehash of the same claims and arguments making the rounds on on the interweb over the last year, with very little if anything new to say... nor does this article make any coherent point that ties back to the title.

Consider the title: ancient computers on the 737. Does the article explain why the computers are ancient? Does the article explore, at any depth, the world of safety critical avionics engineering? Does the article discuss how Boeing and regulators are working to solve the problem, with new or useful information to share that hasn't been shared before? No, no, and no.

For those interested in the world of avionics software and why old CPUs are prevalent in modern aircraft, I suggest googling DO-178C, DO-254, and the to- date necessity of single-order-execution environments for safety critical flight systems.</comment>


Second Dutch teenager arrested for WikiLeaks-related DDoS attacks - <AUTHOR> http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2010/12/12/second-dutch-arrest-wikileaks-ddos-attacks/

<comment><USER2> Good. They've stopped the paypal for my business in its tracks. Show them that there are consequences for their actions.</comment>


How a TV Sitcom Triggered the Downfall of Western Civilization (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/s/story/how-a-tv-sitcom-triggered-the-downfall-of-western-civilization-336e8ccf7dd0 <comment><USER2> By the sheer number of aligned 'co-incidences' at the time, the show merely reflected, and at most mildly accelerated a dip.

Similarly, "Big Bang" is riding/lifting the current importance of tech.

</comment><comment><USER3> Friends was cutting edge for its time.

It tackled a lot of taboo topics.

One gets tired of people looking back with 2018 eyes on 1990s shows and acting all superior.

"Big Bang" everyone is a Ross and still going strong.

<comment><USER4> I would argue that Big Bang Theory continues the negative trend of "nerds" being a laughing stock for the "normal people". Sure it is a success, but that tells us nothing except that it is successful in appealing to audience. I watched only a few episodes and although it introduces people to some aspects of the "nerd culture", overall I still found its mocking tone personally unappealing. I've even experienced and witnessed people using the tropes from the show to mock "nerds". Yes, it might be funny due to the over exaggeration of the stereotypes and honestly I don't mind, but when it comes to the issues that were describe in the article it isn't helping.

I don't know much about friends (never could watch it as I find pretty much all of the characters insufferable), but in regards to the article it is pointing out just one thing of a much larger story. I think other things played much larger role in the anti-intellectual/anti-reason movement that the article is lamenting.

<comment><USER5> Someone smarter once said :

"Big bang theory, is a dumb show about smart people, and Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a smart show about dumb people"

<comment><USER6> I heard that said about Community when it was on... i.e. s/IASIP/Community</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Unified GAN for Image-to-Image translation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yunjey/StarGAN <comment><USER2> Is it possible to download a pre-trained model?

<comment><USER3> Yes. There are many pre-trained model. You can then use transfer learning to build on a pre-trained model to benefit from the existing computational effort.

<comment><USER4> Where are the pre-trained models?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the examples, the source images are very very uniform (Caucasian, young, healthy).

Does this work with other images? Can it age photos of people who are already over 50 for example? Or non-whites? Or children? Etc.

<comment><USER6> I wish researchers showed a random mix of results, not just their best results ...

<comment><USER7> Some do - they show failure modes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this (or something like this) can be used as a way to transmit a video chat on a very low bandwidth (think tens of bytes/second) level.

<comment><USER4> You're talking about an animated avatar that just happens to be of an actual person? And only in 2D?

<comment><USER8> For a start, yes. A proof of pricinple would be nice. Would probably look very shitty, but would use very little bandwidth.

I read about a fictional system like this in "A fire upon the deep" by Vernor Vinge a long time ago but never thought it would be feasible. There a scene of an entire room of people interacting was being deconstructed/reconstructed for a video chat using low bandwidth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool as hell. Is this flexible enough that it could realistically be applied to generic selfies and not just these very uniform photos?

Make this into an app and you could have the next Prisma!

<comment><USER10> You mean FaceApp?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is fantastic! Great work! Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, this is horrifying. Thank you. Now everyone that has one photo of me to match against now has several of them.

<comment><USER13> The article doesn't point this out, but in GANs, the parameters actually move on a continuous range. In other words, they don't just have several of your pictures, they've got all sorts of movies :

A movie where your face starts out "neutral" and becomes angry. A movie where you start out angry, go to surprised and end happy. And so on.

Excellent progress, I must say.

<comment><USER14> > they've got all sorts of movies

Here it is: one glorious hour of walk through the latent space of faces. You can "feel" the geometry of the latent space and its meanderings. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36lE9tV9vm0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36lE9tV9vm0)

Generated with Progressive GAN in high resolution. The quality is mind blowing, highest ever attained in any GAN. Author: NVIDIA

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is so awesome, thank you. Can't wait to play around with it

</comment><comment><USER16> racial bias in computer vision strikes again!</comment>


Choosing a Content Management System (CMS) - Kentico CMS Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.dotnetcurry.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=582

<comment><USER2> Nice Ad! This is a sales-pitch for a CMS that costs huge$$ when you can get the same thing from Joomla ect for free with a massive selection of free and commercial extensions.</comment>


ARM Mac Part Deux: Less Confusion - <AUTHOR> https://mondaynote.com/arm-mac-part-deux-less-confusion-40ee2c780bc6 <comment><USER2> To me the fundamental difference between a PC and a tablet is the software ecosystem: can you install any program/OS or must you install only those approved by the platform owner; can programs access system resources liberally (including a shared storage namespace) or are they tightly sandboxed; how much of the underlying infrastructure is visible to and manipulable by the end user. Compared to this difference the question of whether the device has an integrated keyboard or not seems minor to me.

Moving from a PC like ecosystem to a tablet like one is a net loss in my opinion. People are willing to absorb this loss and enter into a walled garden because right now building iPad-like hardware is not easy. I hope it doesn't continue to be so in the future.

<comment><USER3> _Moving from a PC like ecosystem to a tablet like one is a net loss in my opinion. People are willing to absorb this loss and enter into a walled garden because right now building iPad-like hardware is not easy._

Can you go more into why the difficulty of creating the hardware leads to willing adoption by users that most likely will never see "how the sausage is made"? I would think it would be the opposite (commodity hardware and easy app creation would lead to wider spread adoption by the hobbyist crowd).

I think it will mostly boil down to what you grew up with. I'm 41, I came of age building my own PCs, getting excited about an OS (Win95), the tools of creation (the PC) differing from the tools of consumption (the smartphone/iPad). My son and daughter (3 and <1 yrs) will be exposed to PCs due to my job, but I bet a lot of their friends in daycare will see a tablet as "the way computing has been and always will be". (Honestly my kids may think that too, daddy just hasn't accepted how much of a dinosaur he is yet).

<comment><USER2> Just like in our generation there will be people in our kids' generation who will want to know how the sausage is made and it will be a tragedy if the only way to do so would be to grow up, join a big firm and sign a NDA.

Even for the others, an open platform means a greater variety of software for end users. Creating toll gates on the way to software development or suppressing software which reduces the platform owners's profit is not good for end users. Many people who will never touch a command line still benefit because a Finnish computer science student could decide to start writing a PC operating system of his own and that OS now powers their phone or allows others to provide online services on servers that runs that OS.

If building iPad clones with an open hardware specification like the PC's becomes possible for multiple vendors I'm sure we will see a software ecosystem that will easily beat the walled gardens. The problem is that currently the number of firms that can build the hardware is small enough that they find it in their self interest to use closed specifications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Offtopic, it's fun to see french idioms creep in to Gassee's writing. "Gas refinery" is a direct and ill-fitting translation of the french idiom "usine a gaz", which refers to something over-engineered and inefficient. Like a factory that's only producing hot air.

Edit: and it's likely Gassee knew exactly what he was doing by using that term, since that article includes a paragraph about domain-optimizations that don't translate well to others, specifically calling out certain foreign words that have no direct translation. Whoosh to me...

</comment><comment><USER5> The "cars" vs "trucks" analogy is interesting, considering that in US, SUV's (a category that itself includes a sort of hybrid car/truck) outsell cars with many saying the "sedan" is dying [0]

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-01-16/why- the-a...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-01-16/why-the-american- sedan-is-marked-for-death)

<comment><USER6> I believe that jobs was referring to a 'real' truck like a semi truck.

<comment><USER7> More likely a pickup. Still, that's a small % of the overall market, which is mostly headed in the direction of hatchbacks, crossovers, and SUVs. The reason Ford is staying in the truck market but greatly de-emphasizing it's sedans is that their trucks are generally considered to be the best you can get, and with their sedans its the opposite. It would be a major investment for them to try and compete with everyone in that segment even if it weren't shrinking. Although for what it's worth, their newest crossover, the EcoSport, is basically just a taller Fiesta (arguably their best sedan/hatchback despite it being the cheapest).

Anyways, in many regards the growing segment of the market is more like sedans/hatchbacks on stilts than it is like trucks.

<comment><USER8> Also, pickups most probably wont ever be "designed" to be self driving cars. They may have that has an option in the distant future. But given they are (supposed) to be farm/woodland/workhorses vehicles, they will stay mostly as they are for a very, very long time and give Ford a century to adapt (or milk the cow, kill the cow, eat the cow and close shop). The US/Canada is full of thousand of miles of woodland tracks and farmland unpaved tracks self driving vehicle will never be able to map. So unless they can drive fully on instruments including snow and very close trees. People really do live at the end of these tracks (at least in the Appalachians) and owns pickup trucks just to get home (and the status symbol thing).

As for the pickups as "status symbol", it's irrelevant because the very symbol is the offroad "real work, real duty, real matcho mens" factor. Given Ford seems (as an outside observer) not to care about electric and self driving, focusing on bigger Lincolns and the F-series makes total sense as a business plan.

1) Let the other spend their billions developing their hipster tech

2) Use reliable incomes that will outlive any trend

3) Get mature technology on the cheap once it's commonplace.

4) Ignore "carmaker has a service" because it's not their core competence and there will be profitless races to the bottom by the "data warehouse" players (rather than profit for the carmakers)

5) Profit

<comment><USER9> Almost all trucks are used like cars in the same environments 99.9% of the time with the added ability to haul things.

The use case you describe is best served by having a manual override button and retaining a traditional steering wheel as opposed to having a different more manual product

<comment><USER8> True, but that's not the marketing they want. And the market segment that buys these things are very sensitive to this mythical image. "True" trucks is a selling point, not a liability for that crowd.

When they sell a pickup to someone who doesn't need one (>85% of the sales), they sell the myth and the social status. So, as my last paragraph pointed out, they will but "not self driving" as a "status symbol" and they will sell like hotcakes.

Plus, the advantages of self driving for cars you own, considering the current price premium, wont be worth it for many, many years. For cars you /rent/ fine, they will "work" 24/7, but spending 15k-25k on LiDAR and sensors and data and engineers and (carmaker) insurances isn't worth it yet for a car that spends 98% of it's useful life parked.

<comment><USER9> 25k worth of lidar makes it worthless for most market segments I think. Lacking self driving features will ensure that the insurance costs 3 times as much ultimately. It will eventually be cheaper to have self driving capability than pay premiums.

<comment><USER10> Do you expect accident rates among manually-driven cars to substantially increase? If not, why do you expect insurance premiums to substantially increase?

<comment><USER9> I expect accident rates to fall due to safety features but ultimately expect almost everyone to stop driving their car and pay relative to now much less for insurance. As the safety of the majority rests largely on getting the remaining idiots off the road i expect them to pay punitive insurance rates not dissimilar to sin taxes discouraging behaviors that are disadvantageous to society.

Im short a small group of people requires a greater cost to profitably insure plus sin taxes for insisting on endangering your fellow citizens vs falling rates for everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I actually really liked Apple's iPad Pro keyboard.

It's a heck of a lot better than the MacBook Pro one which really has to be Apple's worst technological innovation in the last 20 years.

<comment><USER12> This is so crazy to me because I love the MacBook Pro keyboard (assuming you mean the one on with the Touch Bar). I know it's personal opinion and there are tons of people that don't like it but I seriously have no issues with it and feel like typing on it is just a joy. It's best keyboard (save for my mechanical Ducky) that I've typed on. It's definitely my favorite laptop keyboard, even more so than my 2011 MBP and 2013 MBP.

<comment><USER13> Agreed. Have learned to love the very short travel keyboard of my Touch Bar MacBook Pro. I note that my typing is more effortless now somehow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My bet is they will revive the iBook brand.

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting to note the author's role in the Newton: [https://gizmodo.com/5452193/the-story-behind-apples- newton](https://gizmodo.com/5452193/the-story-behind-apples-newton)</comment>


Chrome new tab console message – SW registered, what is it? - <AUTHOR> Today one of my colleague pointed that when you open the new tab on Chrome and check the console, there is message - SW registered (newtab?ie=UTF-8:8)<p>What is it about? <comment><USER2> I think, it has something to do with Service Workers.

To see more, go (in your DevTools) to "Application" -> "Service Workers". There you find the "new tab service worker" and which version it's running.</comment>


FoI Request: Theresa May's Internet History - <AUTHOR> http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/theresa_mays_internet_history

<comment><USER2> Canada has a similar request for information provision in its Act. (1) Though its an outdated process that requires the submitter to print and mail by post, it may produce the same results.

NB: A 2011 study of like countries placed Canada "dead last" in terms of freedom-of-information laws. (2)

(1) <http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/tbsf-fsct/350-57-eng.asp>

(2) [http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/918732--study- ran...](http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/918732--study-ranks-canada- s-freedom-of-information-laws-dead-last)</comment>


Libsixel: The new standard of SIXEL development – graphics in the terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel <comment><USER2> This is really neat, but isn't it super inefficient? The color quality is pretty poor and I'm fairly certain it can't take advantage of hardware acceleration.

It's neat to put graphics on your old DEC terminals, it's cool to have as a hack. But re-implementing it into new tech?

I dunno. I'd really like to see an mmap'd YUV or RGB buffer in the terminal being read from a pipe/file/memory area, because I feel like that might be a little more efficient. Or, hell, what if we got a straight up GL context? That could seriously be interesting.

<comment><USER3> With pixel graphics, we're kinda back in blit/Oberon territory and with vector graphics, you'd basically be doing Tektronix 2.0.

The latter had some merits because your whole system was a terminal, but I don't quite get what this gets us in a system where you can have as many graphics contexts as you want anyway. Especially if the rest of the window where this graphics is embedded is ancient constrained technology.

I'm not a big fan of the Bell school of tech, but I definitely understand Rob Pike's source of pride in testifying that he never wrote a cursor-controlled terminal app...

<comment><USER4> Do you also wonder what it gets us to be able to inline pictures in webpages?

Because that is the main benefit: Being able to _inline_ graphics in an otherwise mostly textual interface.

There are a great many situations where I want to work on the command line, and I mostly want to work on text, but occasionally would like to output graphics. X forwarding is great and lets me opt to spawn an image viewer instead, but it's awfully limiting. For starters, it means you have text one place and the image somewhere else, which is fine if they are fully separate, but annoying if the image and text are providing context to each other and especially if you want multiple images. Being able to augment tool output with simple graphics, to me, is of similar utility to syntax highlighting and other colour use in the terminal.

E.g. consider being able to easily list a directory on a remote server and inline thumbnails without having to start a file manager via X forwarding.

I'd loathe for people to start writing graphics heavy applications as terminal apps with graphics, or for people to start requiring a pointing device for them, but there's a lot of small uses that can make the command line a lot more pleasant.

<comment><USER3> > Do you also wonder what it gets us to be able to inline pictures in > webpages?

Back when Geocities was a thing, I often regretted that fact, yes.

But at least the rest of the web page isn't as limited. In the context of an advanced layout engine, images make much more sense. You also have more options for interactivity, like e.g. resizing/zooming.

In an Oberon-ish interface where the image would be a more general object, an "image" teletype could probably propser better than if you just squeeze pixels into a character raster. Which always reminds me of some of the hacks one did with 8 bit computers.

And yeah, I've played with terminal emulators that could do this. In a shell session, "cat"-ing an image is only rarely enough, so I'll have to go to the image viewer anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Related old discussion on Rich Command Shells [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8436309](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8436309)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The real home page: [http://saitoha.github.io/libsixel/](http://saitoha.github.io/libsixel/)

Wikipedia on Sixels: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel)

<comment><USER6> Why not go farther back in time, to BBN BitGraph? :-) There's a DVI previewer and netpbm converter for it, gnuplot supports those as well -- [http://www.ctan.org/pkg/dvibit](http://www.ctan.org/pkg/dvibit), [http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/doc/pbmtobbnbg.html](http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/doc/pbmtobbnbg.html) and [http://www.gnuplot.info/docs_4.2/node423.html](http://www.gnuplot.info/docs_4.2/node423.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool and even more confidential technology ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is partially related - support of RGB colors (True Colors, 24bit colors) in various terminals: [https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728](https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728)

</comment><comment><USER8> Regretfully, iTerm doesn't support this, and it's bitmap support hasn't made it out of beta yet.

(also, I can't run the new betas, probably because they're not properly signed)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's very exciting to see inline plots in terminal but I doubt it will ever get mainstream popularity since it's not supported by most terminals.

<comment><USER10> If you only need to display a simple graph you could try Unicode's Braille characters: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7776112](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7776112)

That should be supported by more terminals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> so, could I use this with my linode?

<comment><USER12> Yes, but there are relatively few use cases where it wouldn't be better to run X over NX or VNC or Spice, all of which you should be able to do easily.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there room for a Balsamiq competitor targeting iphone mockups? - <AUTHOR>

It seems like Balsamiq and mockingbird are pretty good for quickly prototyping ideas, but they aren't great at producing professional looking mockups, especially for the iphone / ipad.<p>Is there room in the market for a competitor in this space? <comment><USER2> Keep in mind that Balsamiq prototypes look like rough sketches instead of "professional looking mockups" _on purpose_.

When you show a customer a mockup that is "just a sketch" (or looks like one) you can get their feedback on the layout and content.

When you give them a realistic looking mockup, the conversation can get bogged down in minutea like in "Can you make the background less blue? Maybe like Bob's shirt?" or "I don't like that font, can you...?" At which point you have to explain that it's only a mockup, not the actual product and politely try to steer them back to what you asked them in the first place.

Also, when they see a what looks like a finished product they think the work is mostly done which sets unreasonable expectations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that sounds like good advice, chris.

What if you could streamline the process and cover both the wireframing and mockup phases? The tool I'm thinking about building is very similar to other prototyping tools (like Balsamiq), but would basically take your wires and "upgrade them" to a more pro-looking mockup (after all, it's just a matter of switching out images).

<comment><USER3> They already have that covered.

[http://support.balsamiq.com/customer/portal/articles/135659#...](http://support.balsamiq.com/customer/portal/articles/135659#exporting)

<comment><AUTHOR> Which link specifically were you referring to?

I'm thinking that a bunch of the iphone mockups that I've seen end up with the same shared components - toolbars, tab bars, status bars, etc. Those standard components are really the same objects, just in a more hi fidelity fashion.

Also, AFAIK with those tools, once you export, there is no way to keep the wires and mocks in sync, right?

I've experienced times in a consulting shop where both the mocks + wires are being iterated on simultaenously (mostly because the product guy would use omnigraffle where the designer would use photoshop) - leading to mocks + wires that just didn't jive with each other. This created confusion among the dev, design, and product teams about what _specifically_ we were building, leading to increased time to market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keynotopia is a pretty good mockup alternative for iPhone and iPad apps. It's not an application per se, but it's a set of templates for Keynote (or PowerPoint or Open Office). You export the result as a clickable PDF which works in a variety of viewers like GoodReader.

<http://keynotopia.com/>

You can get pretty nice results that are somewhat interactive on the device itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm - yeah, that's a really interesting concept.

Seems like the market is really fragmented - everything from traditional photo/vector graphics software (photoshop, illustrator), traditional wireframing (omnigraffle, etc), online wireframing (balsamiq) and even presentation software (keynote and powerpoint!)

Keynotopia seems like a smart move for those who tend to lean to the presentation side of things - though I'd find it hard to believe that a designer who likes (or is used to) working in illustrator or photoshop would want to start using keynote!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's always room for competition. You just need to find the right audience and pricing structure. BTW there is an iPad based app for mockups that does iPad/iPhone mockups - iMockups.

</comment><comment><USER6> If there's one successful company making something that nobody else makes yet many people want, it seems like there has to be space. I'd go for it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Try, if you can do a better jon there defenitly is! :)</comment>


The modern 'post' relationship - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/relationships/articles/2010/02/04/posting_on_facebook_a_new_relationship_issue/

<comment><USER2> > ''It's nice to know the lies are still coming,'' read one post. ''Is it > really worth it?'' read another.

The relationship issue here has nothing to do with differing opinions on privacy, it's that someone is being passive-aggressive.</comment>


How hack password on facebook (jpeg) - <AUTHOR> http://habreffect.ru/files/d66/299f8579e/RsuPK.jpg

<comment><USER2> <http://bash.org/?244321>

</comment><comment><USER3> This is as old as BBSes. There is always someone who humors newbs and pretends to type his password.

</comment><comment><USER4> i literally laughed out loud ... inevitably someone is going to be the idiot to try it lol</comment>


Elliptic orbits explained by Albert Baez (1959) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qpKhCa64Eo <comment><USER2> Per the comments, and verified by a casual Wikipedia search, the speaker, Albert Baez is the father of Joan Baez, the well known American singer/songwriter.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Baez#Early_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Baez#Early_life)

<comment><USER3> and John Baez the well known American mathematician [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Baez](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Baez)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great!

An example of an earth satellite with highly elliptical orbits is Molniya orbits mentioned here [https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OrbitsCatalog](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OrbitsCatalog)

</comment><comment><USER5> Fabulous.</comment>


US economy shrinks by USD1.3T - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/11/news/economy/Americans_wealth_drops/index.htm?section=money_topstories

<comment><USER2> Most of this "decimated" wealth never existed in the first place. Why do people pretend otherwise? So they can throw around big numbers in a silly article?

<comment><USER3> While the number does represent "paper" wealth, it is a fair measure of purchasing potential. For example if you have $1m in stocks, at that point in time you can sell the stocks and buy $1m worth of goods. If that number drops to $500k then you only have the ability to purchase that value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lets not post links to cnn anymore. They tend to be misleading, and rarely involve more than surface analysis of the situation. The statistics involved are often either inaccurate, irrelevant, or both. The methodology used to create the statistics is rarely (if ever) stated. I'm sure we can find a better source for economic news.

</comment><comment><USER5> The title of this post is misleading. It implies GDP has falled by 1.3T whereas wealth in this case has fallen 1.3T.</comment>


Impressive JPEG Recompression - <AUTHOR> http://www.jpegmini.com/main/shrink_photo <comment><USER2> I once worked somewhere where we had a need to store and transmit lots of camera created jpegs in as efficient a manner as possible.

When working on this problem, I noticed that all digital cameras create jpeg with 422 sampling. This might be a religious topic for some, but I cannot see any visual difference between 4:2:2 and 4:2:0, even with high magnification or on physical prints as large as 30 inch height. Simply sub-sampling to 4:2:0 along with subtle tweaks to quantization tables and with little effort we'd bring a typical jpeg from 1-2MB down to 300-400KB.

We even did a series of experiments with people who look at photo prints all day and they could not reliably pick the 'recompressed' images.

The only reason I think people really hold on to 422 or even 444 is that when subsampling you can get nasty amplified errors if you are using two tools that sampling with different algorithms or from different siting (i.e. imaging if one tool picked odd lines and one picked even). Although the spec specifies siting, I think there are still people who do it wrong, not to mention there is still leeway for interpretation on how pixels are averaged for siting that is not on a pixel boundary.

Bottom line is that if you know exactly what you are going to do with the photo in the future you can compress a lot and quite easily with little risk. If you have a lot of unknown processing in the future, things can get dicey.

<comment><USER3> For those wondering about the differences between 4:2:2 and 4:2:0, check out <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling#4:2:0>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I started with this image: <http://c.ourdoings.net/td/kg/7cj8d5l.jpg>

It shrunk it 1.5x. I downloaded the _mini version and could see more artifacts in the rendering of some of the smooth surfaces.

Then I re-uploaded the _mini version to jpegmini. _It shrunk it 1.3x._ This shows that they are reducing quality, not just optimizing.

<comment><USER5> Given that they claim to perform perceptual optimization, I would expect this. Human perception wouldn't come into play if they were just optimizing the image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've successfully converted 99% quality image which became 4.4 times smaller in size (identify shows 72% quality) after that I've converted same original image to 72% quality with imagemagick and I've got similar compression. Artifacts are look similar to jpegmini algorithm.

More interesting would be blind comparison experiment with with imagemagick compressed images with similar compression ratio. I'd be surprised if they could get 25-50% better compression with similar quality images.

</comment><comment><USER7> "So far, 14 patent applications have been submitted for various technologies included in JPEGmini"

14 patents for one algorithm??? Somebody lost their mind, I worked on a camera lens that had 10 elements and less patents than that. Craziness.

<comment><USER8> I suspect those patents are designed to serve as a deterrent for anyone to enter the "JPEG optimization market".

Also, the service itself is underwhelming - it does next to nothing on JPEGs that are already optimized.

<comment><USER4> That will work. Even just the possibility of patents has served to keep people out of that market:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000#Legal_issues>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A comment from reddit:

<http://web_design.reddit.com/comments/jdo4v/_/c2balp2>

> barfolomew 13 points 20 days ago

> In my experience, one should stay away from Israeli tech startups. They're > often very aggressive and fly-by-night operations. The culture clash between > a north american firm is hard to deal with.

Is this really the case?

<comment><USER10> Fight generalization with generalization! When one encounters, "one should stay away from <race or ethnic group>", always proceed with caution.

<comment><USER11> While that is a reasonable policy, the statement in question is one of _regional_ culture. Compare "silicon valley startups".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Please add a non-flash alternative uploader.

I run as little flash as possible these days, security, tracking etc.

Aha! Look what I discovered:

<http://www.jpegmini.com/main/shrink_photo?no_flash=1>

There have been a dozen jpeg reduction attempts over the years, curious to play with this one. Lossless jpeg cropping fascinates me more though.

<comment><USER13> Is such sorcery possible?

<comment><USER14> You can crop and rotate JPEGs losslessly:

<http://jpegclub.org/jpegtran/>

<comment><USER15> Doesn't cropping have to be within a certain size, though?

EDIT: Yep, looks like you can only crop it along the DCT block boundaries:

<http://www.ben.com/jpeg/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you want recompression _without_ quality loss, try jpgcrush: <http://akuvian.org/src/jpgcrush.tar.gz>

It does some quite evil things with progressive Huffman coding that most people didn't even realize was possible.

<comment><USER17> I'd be interested in seeing how this works (source, docs, etc.), but unfortunately I can neither get jpgcrush nor jpegrescan to output anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This introduces noticeable artifacting for me. jpegtran -- run via the wonderful imgopt (<http://lyncd.com/2009/03/imgopt-lossless-optimize-png- jpeg/>) script -- did a better job with the image I uploaded, with no quality loss.

<comment><USER19> If you're looking for something similar but in GUI form, I made <http://trimage.org> for that, installable in Ubuntu via _apt-get install trimage_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another site from Sharon Carmel (the author based on WHOIS info)

<http://iloop.co.il/>

He/She is BeInSync founder and VP R&D

<http://iloop.co.il/main_page/2009/9/14/we-have-a-dream.html>

<http://www.israelinnovation20.com/tag/sharon-carmel/>

<comment><USER14> Someone with that name posted to the WebP list about Jpegmini, they came across as a bit of a kook (though it could have been a language issue I suppose):

[https://groups.google.com/a/webmproject.org/group/webp- discu...](https://groups.google.com/a/webmproject.org/group/webp- discuss/browse_thread/thread/48f1ab16bd7af7e1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well the quality seems quite a bit worse for the picture I tried. Original: <http://postimage.org/image/94ol50ck/>, compressed: <http://postimage.org/image/14712qgjo/> The resulting image has way less detail in higher frequencies.

<comment><USER9> Looks like the compressed version is a bit sharper to me.

<comment><USER21> If the compressed version is apparently sharper than the original file, that's an artifact surely? It might be pleasing in some contexts but it's not an accurate representation of the original file in that aspect.

<comment><USER9> I mean, vytis claimed that

> The resulting image has way less detail in higher frequencies.

But the compressed version actually exposes more detail.

<comment><USER22> _But the compressed version actually exposes more detail._

No. It really doesn't.

It adds a couple of visual filters (brightening, sharpening) before recompressing, but these don't "expose more detail", but rather all three steps actually introduce additional errors. Errors that trick they eye into seeing a "better" image, but errors nonetheless.

<comment><USER23> JPEGmini does not apply any filters on the photo, no pre processing whatsoever. JPEGmini went through BT.500 certification, the result was that given 2 images 1. source 2. recompressed, the tester could not tell which is the source and which is the recompressed. Enjoy.

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure what BT.500 certification is, but I can certainly tell the difference on some (not all) images, when recomposed.

Are you attached to JPEGmini? If so, would you be willing to bet that I cannot tell if a photo of my choice has gone through your system and been compressed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Custom quantization tables and chroma subsampling, with a bit of hype

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow, the Dropbox sample photo Costa Rican Frog was reduced 4.6x and actually looks sharper than the original. The detail in the middle of the back appears to have more contrast in the minified version. Other than some sharpness and some minor artifacts in the eye, the before and after images look identical. Except the original is 346KB and the JPEGmini version is 75KB.

<comment><USER27> _looks sharper than the original ... more contrast in the minified version_

That's not a good thing, to my way of thinking. When I'm processing my photos, I'm choosing very carefully the amount of sharpness and especially contrast in the image. I'd be very unhappy with a tool that alters these.

<comment><USER26> It looks to be a per-image effect and not intentional. Most images I tried, there was no apparent difference. Then again, most images had only about a 30% savings. For an almost 80% savings, I'm not surprised if there's no free lunch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's impressive, indeed! I guess they use some feedback loop when recompressing, because there doesn't appear to be no quality loss, even on the smallest details. I've tried one file of 1.4MB of an Australian nature landscape. Recompressed went under 400KB. I wonder if there isn't an offline tool available. For free if possible :)

<comment><USER29>
      > there doesn't appear to be no quality loss, even
      > on the smallest details

I do not think that means what you think it means.

<comment><USER30> inconceivable!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> two relevant papers

<http://spie.org/x648.html?product_id=872231>

<http://spie.org/x648.html?product_id=872230>

from SPIE Electronic Imaging 2011 conference in San Francisco

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow it looks like they've caught on to something. I've tried a few ~1.2 MB scans of film negatives and it shrunk the sizes 5x and 6x with no differences that I can see. When I tried smaller files however the difference got down to ~1.5x with some more obvious noise removal so I think it's just exploiting inefficiencies in how large jpg's are encoded.

I also love the sense of humor. _"SEEMS YOUR PHOTO LOST SOME WEIGHT!"_

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't see the point. I upload a jpeg that is 51% progressive compressed in Photoshop and Jpegmini can reduce the size 1.2x.

Isn't really worth the effort.

</comment><comment><USER33> This would be interesting if it was not web service. I would like to have an executable with command line access, in order to run batch commands. I don't want my images stored/processed on their server. Surely they can think of a license price.

</comment><comment><USER34> A more web-ish example: a static jpg banner with 900x400 was 46KB and got compressed into 35KB (reduction of 1.3x). Another similiar banner with 43KB resulted in a compressed 29KB (1.5x smaller). This is very good!

</comment><comment><USER35> Does what it says. Took a 1MB image and took it down to about 300kB. Only complaint is that you have to sign in (using Facebook/Google) or create an account to do batch uploads.

</comment><comment><USER36> Every jpg image I try fails. This happening to anyone else?

<comment><USER37> No. I tried Windows7 Chrysanthemum.jpg under Sample Pictures folder, it works, impressively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Whoa! 1.15mb jpeg | 1.1mb imageoptim | 422 kb jpegmini

</comment><comment><USER39> _So far, 14 patent applications have been submitted for various technologies included in JPEGmini_

Must be a good chunk of change behind it.

<comment><USER12> I wonder if one could figure out the algorithm by making a specially crafted image and recycling it through their service several times to see what it does where.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is great, shaved ~20% off my splash image, 100kb to 80kb with no noticeable loss of quality.

Good job!

</comment><comment><USER41> Ratio display needs to be fixed:

99k -> 71k is not usefully presented as 1.4x, but better as ~30%

<comment><USER42> Or 70% the size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Tried it. It just saves it with worse compression, resulting in more artifacts. Not impressed.

All these posts "whoa I compressed my 1MB image to 400KB" are laughable. It's not like it's lossless.

<comment><USER44> You are very right, rorrr</comment></comment>


Chrome OS Release Coming Soon? Stable Channel Now Available - <AUTHOR> http://www.thechromesource.com/chrome-os-release-coming-soon-stable-channel-now-available/ <comment><USER2> After my attempt at compiling ChromeOS ended in failure I installed a Hexxeh vanilla release on a 2yr old Intel Atom based PC. And I have to admit, I liked it, a lot more than I thought I would. Here are some of my thoughts:

\- It irks me quite lot that I need to use a Google account to log into the OS. If they remove that restriction it'll go a long way to alleviating the Google-creepiness.

\- In the Hexxeh release I used Flash was not enabled by default, I had to click a warning message to use Flash on every page, I assume this is fixed by now

\- There is no user-exposed filesystem and no way to install apps (without hacking in a console). There is no software, desktop, icons, home folders... nothing. You totally get this feeling of using an Operating System-Free computer.

\- The version of Chrome browser that gets installed maybe wasn't the latest but it certainly does feel fast enough to use, especially on a slow system. Chrome browser on ChromeOS is significantly faster than IE on Windows on the same system.

\- HackerNews displays with a serif font presumably because PG doesn't have a 'sans-serif' alternative font in the HN codebase.

\- I have a very strong urge to minimize the browser and see the desktop.

\- The browser does not have a full-screen mode. If you want to watch a youtube video, there is no way to maximize the video, the tabs and URL bar are always visible. I found this to be extremely annoying and hopefully gets added.

\- The browser needs to have a tab split-screen mode. I need to be able to look at 2 or more windows simultaneously, and the modal restriction gets on my nerves.

\- To my surprise both audio and my webcam worked, although I had some boot up issues when the webcam was plugged into the USB port, but I could plug it in once it was booted up

There are some major usability problems here, but if they get addressed it could become quite cool. I would totally enjoy having this built into my next television or monitor.

<comment><USER3> Full-screen works. F11. You can also Alt+Tab to different windows (of Chrome).

<comment><USER2> Not on my system, I just updated to the latest Hexxeh release and F11 doesn't go fullscreen and there is no menu option either. But I was mistaken, flash can go fullscreen.

<comment><USER2> Oops I was mistaken, there is now a fullscreen menu item in the tools section. Anyways they are certainly making some good improvements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On the ChromeOS notebook (and presumably devices that will launch), everything works. Flash requires a click because I want it that way, and full screen works fine (but the screen still dims on a timer, boo). It's actually perfect for web browsing... but that's it. I still need a real computer for music, Amazon VOD, video conferencing with family, and of course work.

Had I not been given one for free I wouldn't get one. It might work for certain people in my family, but so would an iPad, with which it can't really compete.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was incredibly excited for Chrome OS and got one of the free CR-48s from Google. I like the OS, but thought it was too slow to actually use. I web browse a little harder than most people, and the CR-48 regularly bogged down not only on flash, but on complex javascript like Google Docs. It was just too slow for me to be comfortable on it -- and at the time, my other computer was a laptop running Windows with a Pentium M 1.5 GHz.

<comment><USER6> My impression is that the CR-48 is a reference for the absolutely lowest minimum spec. I can't imagine Google seriously believe that anyone will sell a machine with Chrome OS on a machine that struggles on huge consumer sites like YouTube.</comment></comment>


Preview of bootstrap 3 - <AUTHOR> http://rnikitin.github.io/bootstrap

<comment><USER2> Allow me to pre-empt the inevitable question:

'Are the buttons going to remain flat?' - no. [https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/pull/6342#issuecomment-...](https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/pull/6342#issuecomment-12332378)

<comment><USER3> That is from 3 months ago, I find it odd that no apparent work has been done on buttons since then. If this is the final preview, I'm getting the hint that the final release is not off by much -- are they going to put together their efforts on button-designs just in these last few days?

<comment><USER2> The months-old official Bootstrap 3 preview website was called 'RC' even though it clearly wasn't a release candidate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello, guys.

Found today, that Bootstrap Team is very close to finish Bootstrap 3(<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/pull/6342>), but docs for bootstrap 3 doesn't work (<http://rc.getbootstrap.com/>), so I forked the repo and built it to watch for new features.

Enjoy!

<comment><USER4> @mdo asked to not host it anywhere for now ([https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/pull/6342#issuecomment-...](https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/pull/6342#issuecomment-15408647))

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops... But I think a lot of people are want see whats new.

I think, I will turn it down after a while...

<comment><USER5> Please be a little more respectful. I've flagged this submission and furthermore ask that you take it down. You'll cause way more harm than good.

Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> that post was 3 weeks ago.

Btw, I've asked @mdo's opinion. Waiting for the answer.

<comment><USER6> They've always asked that others not host development documentation. Lots of us keep a local copy either for playing around or helping improve them, but you've clearly posted this as a preview of Bootstrap 3 without any permission from Mark.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's open-source, man. I did not changed any copyrights or licenses.

Btw, I was impressed with what I saw today morning and just wanted to share my impression with other guys.

<comment><USER5> _It's open-source, man._

Which also means there are some informal rules to follow, such as listening to the wishes and requests of those who ultimately maintain the repos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The "Small device grid" will be the biggest feature for me as bootstrap 2.x gave me some headaches implementing a simple 2 column grid on low resolutions.

Comments like my own are probably the reason @mdo would not like the docs made available to everybody as it spreads potential mis-information and sets expectations that every feature will be in the final product.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there an option to keep that flat kind of theme? Maybe it's just me, but I think it's better looking than the default theme.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think, you could try this: <http://designmodo.github.io/Flat-UI/>

<comment><USER9> I don't know if I goofed up, or chrome went mental, or something else. But I tried to use their bootstrap theme(?) and Chrome started churning through CPU and memory, stopped rendering things, and generally stopped working.

Removed the flatui bootstrap theme, and everything went back to normal.

<comment><AUTHOR> But when you open their demo site - all ok?

Maybe you should try profile this page to understand what's going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Am I the only one who is put of by the inconsistency of the red header and (old) purple images?

Even if it is supposed to be just an example of what is possible. At least make it feel as consistent as before.

</comment><comment><USER11> The Glyphicons are now font icons. Very welcome change!

</comment><comment><USER12> i've been using bootstrap a lot for the last ~half a year, initially i was like "wow, so much components".

now i think that the styles are not very clean written, you have a lot of work changing standard behavior ...

foundation is much lighter ( of course therefore it lacks a lot of elements, i.e. you have to add icons by yourself ) but also cleaner.

</comment><comment><USER13> So, as a guy not using bootstrap that much, what's new?

<comment><AUTHOR> The main differences - all layout now responsive so no need to include bootstrap-responsive.css and use row-fluid, container-fluid. All stuff already always fluid now.

Second main point - the framework now mobile ready - that mean a lot of mobile optimisations and widgets for mobile devices.

<comment><USER14> Foundation was made to support as many screen sizes as possible with minimal fuzz and they're using Sass with Compass. They released version 4 about 5 weeks ago and it is mobile-first. See <http://foundation.zurb.com/> .

<comment><AUTHOR> OK.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please review my demo video for group photosharing (the anti-COLOR.com) - <AUTHOR> http://flicsy.posterous.com/flicsy-demo

<comment><USER2> Seeing as you're a photo sharing site, I'd recommend using photos rather than drawings to get the point across.

You show a map of cuba, a bunch of smily faces, a bunch of cameras, and then the numbers for your math of 5000+ photos.

That could be done much better with a photo of cuba, photos of the friends, photos of the friends taking pictures together (or photos of a bunch of friends together), groups of photos in a disorganized mess.

I wouldn't bring up other photosharing sites. you're a photo sharing site. What makes you so special compared to the others. What photo sharing site causes you to pay?

I'd get rid of the slide about other photosharing sites, usb, or email. I don't think you need to say 'here are your options, we're better'. You can probably get away with just saying 'we're the best way to get all your photos in one place'.

You can also get rid of the 'that's why we created flicsy bit' it doesn't really add anything to your video.

when you get into describing your product and how it works, you've started using photos (good), but you've got horrible looking power-point arrows and labels. You should be able to get the point across without the labels and arrows. Either doing a bit of stop-action animation of moving the pictures, or something like that.

The slides aren't on screen long enough for the viewer to read the labels anyway.

On the 'One big shared album' screen, show me a screenshot. that is what you are actually selling. Show what that 'one big shared album' looks like, as that is possibly a conceptual piece that viewers won't relate to. Is it just a folder somewhere? Is it in album format with a bunch of photos on a page? Is it just one photo on each page that I can scroll through? etc. etc. Show IT!

You could probably break up your 'from there' into multiple slides for favorites, fb/flickr, download and photobooks. Again, show images.

Then you say 'so the next time'... don't use drawings, go for images. Those things should be really easy to display in an image.

hope that helps. I'm building a demo video for my newest project right now, so I'm at a similar stage as you and have been thinking about this a lot lately.

Not sure what you're using for your editing, but I've just started using iMovie, and am going to use some "Ken Burns" effects on photos for zooming in and out of an image to highlight areas. Thought that might be useful for you.</comment>


Keyboarding vs Mousing: what's better, what's faster? Apple's Bruce Tognazzini weighs in on the $50 million dollar question. - <AUTHOR> http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html

<comment><USER2> [citation needed] for everything this article says.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you ever been really, really puzzled by someone's stupidity? I have...

Just now.

Fact: Every command that has the potential to be used in a repetitious way MUST HAVE A SHORTCUT KEY. No exceptions.

Ctrl-W that one.</comment>


That Time 2 Bots Were Talking, and Bank of America Butted In - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/that-time-2-bots-were-talking-and-bank-of-america-butted-in/374023/ <comment><USER2> It occurs to me that some people who create bots may assume or require that the communicator on the other end is a human who can bring the interaction back on point.

What happens when the security liaison bots for two super powers get into it?</comment>


Busy do Anglii - <AUTHOR> https://przewozydoanglii.pl <comment><USER2> Fucking spammer. And you don't even use English.</comment>


Ask HN: Possible to Become a Part-Time Manager? (Project or Product) - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
In short: Is there any way to become a part-time PM (or similar)?
You helped me tremendously getting my first properly paid and interesting full-time PM job at a bigger company (and luckily with little overtime, but part-time is probably no option).¹ I plan to do this job for at least a year (for vita, experience and money), but ultimately I want to work part-time.
I could easily live on my current salary (just with less savings) and want to have more free time for side-projects and a generally better work/life balance.
All I have right now is vague plans on how to find something part-time: I will stay on the lookout on job-offers, hoping for startups that can't afford full-time positions. Alternatively I thought of freelancing, but here the generalist qualities of a PM (project or product) might make it a bit harder to sell myself and I'm not the very best at networking either. And freelancing is never part-time, right? Should I apply for full-time positions and try to convince them of doing part-time?
With product management, or more precisely writing concepts and non-technical requirements I could imagine contract work. But I don't really know if this is a thing.
About me: 30yo; in Germany; OK with leaving the country for a while; with a slightly off masters degree;
If you got any ideas or took a similar path in the past, let me know! Thanks you :)
¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13409239 (thank you so much for all the answers here) <comment><USER2> We have 4 "part time" product managers. Essentially, each one splits their time, roughly 50/50 between their discipline (marketing, fashion styling, warehouse optimisation, development) and being the product manager for the software we write for those areas in our company. They are not just stakeholders, they are PMs (in title and training). This has worked very well for us.

I actually think having a fully part time PM could be a very good thing for lots of very small startups (< 10 employees). I think many companies at that size don't fully realise the benefits of having a member of the team with those sorts of responsibilities, and in fact, might not have enough other people to saturate a PM's time.

The main downside I can foresee is that, as a developer, I often need to contact my PMs in order to clarify requirements or discuss issues that come up during implementation. This communication would be limited by a PM working part time, but a tendency to "over-communicate" as many do in fully remote companies could help to overcome this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply! I mostly agree. Saturating peoples time in a small team is usually quite easy though :).

How do you manage oversight over the different PMs at your company? Someone has to split development resources among the stakeholders and their requirements, no?

<comment><USER2> The PMs meet weekly to figure out resource allocation. Developers and designers mostly work in "pods" assigned to an area of the business (or a metric) for a few months so that they aren't shifting a lot, and so most of the resource allocation happens at that level rather than at the weekly level. We've only recently got to the size where that made sense though, while smaller we definitely needed to be able to shift dev time around more with more granularity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My experience is mostly tied to programmers, but this isn't necessarily that different.

1\. I have heard rumors that in Germany you can pretty much force your existing employer to to give you part time job: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7oye95/how_to_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7oye95/how_to_become_a_parttime_programmer_an_interview/dsdbu1j/)

2\. Best place to negotiate different working conditions is your current job. They know you and you have credibility, and you're more valuable and harder to replace since you have lots of job-specific knowledge. So I'd start with just trying to negotiate at your current job.

3\. Once you have 32 hours/week, negotiating your next job is easier, since you can say "and look I did just fine." Trick is to apply without mentioning your extra conditions, get offer, and _then_ say "I only want 32 hours /week."

Programmer-specific resources which probably are still helpful:

* Interview with someone who hasn't worked full time in 15 years: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer/)

* My book, The Programmer's Guide to a Sane Workweek: [https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/](https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/)

Just got a reader write in to say he'd negotiated a 32 hour workweek at a new job; it's definitely possible!

<comment><USER4> > Trick is to apply without mentioning your extra conditions, get offer, and > then say "I only want 32 hours /week."

This will often result in a big waste of time for both sides. You might not care about the company waste (fair enough), but as someone who values their own time, you might prefer to find out up-front in 15 minutes that your requirements cannot be met rather than after spending a day or more on it.

Same with salary. I don't go 15 minutes into a call with a headhunter without understanding whether we're in the same zip code on comp. I'd rather not waste my time.

<comment><USER3> Definitely want to do some research up front to rule out places where it will never fly. But- negotiating shorter workweek is different than negotiating salary (in most countries, anyway).

My experience, as well as others I've heard from, is that if you say upfront "I want fewer hours" companies will just say "no". This is not as much an issue with salary, because there's diversity of salaries, but pretty much no companies will hire you for 4 days without extra negotiation. So: if you ask for 4 day workweek upfront the vast majority of companies will just walk away.

On the other hand, if you keep your mouth shut, once you have an offer already you're in a different situation. Worked for me, as well as person I interviewed who has done this way more than I have. The company has decided they like you, you've impressed them, now they're in "what do we do to hire this person" mode. So if you ask at that point they're much more likely to say "yes".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Short answer: Yes, it is possible.

Source: It's exactly what I do (0.6 FTE job + part-time MSc).

From personal experience, I would say it's harder to find something part-time up front. Telling your current employer that you want to reduce your hours, for the reasons you describe, is what worked for me. You need to be in a position where they are happy with your work, and you need to clear any doubts about this change having any negative effect on your team.

From my perspective, being part-time greatly discourages me from micro- managing: I just don't have the free time that might lead me down that negative path.

Finally, my employer gets way more than 0.6 FTE of work from me (and I don't do extra hours). IMO they get more "bang for their buck": I concentrate on what's important, and work through things more efficiently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, good to hear :)

I have no fear over micromanaging... my plate is usually full enough not to waste time on that. However I find it much harder to let employees grow in areas they are not sufficiently autonomous yet. Giving the freedom to take a more responsibility for things beyond the narrow focus of what they usually do often results in things not getting done at all or not very well.

I definitely agree on the "bang for the buck". I can't offer the amount of energy I can put in to each of 3 days for 5 days in a row.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> From a few impressions in Berlin, I'd say it's possible and also not that unusual.

At a startup I worked in the past, a now-friend of mine came in as a freelance-PM for a few months and also helped setting up the PM process. The time he was there probably the most productive period at that startup feature- wise. If that is also something you can provide I would say that there are a lot of potential startups out there which just raised a Series A which could be interested.

At a digital agency I freelanced for I think about half the PMs were parttime PMs (some freelance, some employed). From what I've gathered from friends the situation at a lot of digital agencies is similar. Not sure how they got to that position though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agencies without much overtime? But I'm glad to hear you know of such places. Maybe I should move to Berlin to find some start-up to work for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't have an answer for you, but I 100% support your journey. I've made the move from full time gigs to 20~ hours a week upper bound of consulting / freelancing and I couldn't ever see myself going back. Good luck!

<comment><USER8> Is that 20 hours the amount of time you're billing weekly, or your total work time? I aspire to freelance one day, perhaps soon, and I've heard that non- billable work can easily add up to a full time job. Things like marketing yourself, connecting with clients, possibly administrative things to do with your business.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A little question on the side: How common is it for companies to exclude breaks from working hours? In germany you have to take a 30 minute break after 6h. Now for most companies here this makes 9to5 a 9to5:30 (a 42.5h week) and the extra 30m are unpaid.

I feel like it would be much nicer for everyone to just price those minutes in and leave after 8h (no good work happens in those extra 30m I bet).

</comment><comment><USER9> Your question didn't talk about your career aspirations, as those items would influence the type of PM position that you are seeking and the level of commitment that you would make to it. I'm also assuming that this is software PM.

Let me provide some of my background and our philosophy on PM, maybe some of these perspectives will alter your point of view.

I am currently CEO of WSO2, #1 integration OSS company and #7 OSS software company. We will do around $50M in sales this year, most of that being subscriptions which are growing roughly 60%. We are profitable and cash flow positive. We have 400 people in technology roles, and at any point in time we have 4 full time PMs and another 15 people acting in PM roles.

Prior to my job at WSO2, I was CEO / Founder of Codenvy, which was bought by Red Hat last year, and we grew to just under 50 people. And prior to that, I had spent roughly 10 years working in various PM roles on software products related to Java, .NET, systems management, virtualization and containers - essentially, devops and middleware are concentrations.

Software is a creative industry - much like the moving industry. Every release of a software product is an opportunity to redefine your company's position within a marketplace. Engineers are like actors, and PMs are like directors. And the PMs work with a wide range of supporting individuals to make each release of the software as successful as possible. The movie process is similar.

Since software is a creative activity, it can be argued that the success of software products are tied to the passion and commitment that their leaders attribute to their fashioning. Many software products are the result of a passion, commitment, vision, and love that are born from the inner values and beliefs of the product's leaders, which usually the PM is a strong voice.

In this regard, if the company you work for is a for profit software company, or the software project you would inherit has ambitious objectives around market share or penetration, success of the product is measured by results that require abnormal commitments from their leaders. Those commitments are increasingly hard to measure in time allocation or time slicing.

At WSO2, when one of our leaders takes on a PM role assigned to a product, it is a position of prestige. It comes usually with higher pay, more recognition, and more responsibilities. We ask our leaders to take a competitive position and to pursue victory, and then allow them to have access to broad resources and budget that they can deploy to facilitate their goals. When they take on this role, we allow them to allocate their time as they see fit, but quarterly they must stand up in front of the company during quarterly reviews to elaborate upon their results, the results of the competition, and what's next.

This type of PM is not for everyone - but the benefits can be tremendous. It was doing this sort of work that got me introduced to doing investments and acquisitions, because while at Quest, it was PMs that were the strategic drivers of potential partner / build / buy scenarios (and we did a lot of acquisitions). It also opened up opportunities for me to angle invest and join Toba Capital as a partner, for which I was able to lead investments in Codenvy, Sauce Labs, and WSO2 (for which now I am its CEO). And my CEO positions were never pushed or encouraged by the investors - in both cases, the companies looked at my PM background and asked me to get steadily more involved in the company execution.

I got serious about PM just about the age that you are now. I hope your journey proves worthwhile...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the long reply!

How much do your PMs work on average than? I find there is always something to improve and to work on. I can't see where I could find a reasonable line to draw on what gets done and what not. Or is the role of the PM narrow enough that the teams throughput is the bottleneck?

Your answer actually presses on a core motive for why I want to go part-time. Bluntly said: I'm mostly in it for the money and just enough to comfortably get by (I'm still enthusiastic about any arising challenges and I think I'm seen as a motivated employee, too). There are two reasons for this:

1\. I want to have room to educate myself further. I e.g. find it hard to research and learn at the job, where _urgent_ much too often gets prioritized before _important_. Within my responsibilities I can of course set the focus my way, but in the bigger picture it's much harder to convince upper management to focus on _important, not urgent_. I'm sure though, there are companies that have a better culture here than my current employer.

2\. My areas of interest are either notoriously under-payed, work-intensive to get in to or both (science, music, art, etc.). Doing any of these for a living also means compromising on the kind of science or culture you produce.

I therefore decided to find work that is intellectually stimulating at least, but not in my core interests and make room for interests, personal growth and variety on the side.

If the chance arises to combine interests and work better I will definitely take it (maybe in science there is a niche for me), but I see less of a chance there, so I don't focus on this path.

I also might find a profitable side-project that could one day replace my employment. That's another path I would like to keep open (I really like the early start-up phase and starting with a side-project doesn't require a huge financial risk or money for runway).

<comment><USER9> It's hard for me to speculate how much our PMs are working. No one in our company is micro managing the PMs and their day to day work. But usually, what happens with PMs is that they become accountable for some revenue targets, a set of releases, and a set of customers. These are all things that get scheduled or have targets which have a certain obligation / commitment that must be met. And the PMs just go on about doing that work.

When dealing with incredibly technical products that you are a PM for, almost all of the PMs have a strong passion for the area that they are involved. So there is a blending with personal growth and the products that they are responsible for. I personally am one of a couple PMs on one of our new initiatives at WSO2 where we have 150 engineers. I'm doing it because the technology area is in a domain that excites me, so it does border on being a hobby almost, and therefore I do not count the hours or dollar for dollar pay as much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes if the role is small enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> PM is usually quite central I fear.

<comment><USER10> My thought process if I've seen great product managers oversee several products full time. Usually there's some kind of connection between them. If any one of them said, "Can you pay me a third just to oversee one of them" their boss would easily say Yes. But it helps to have the track record first.

Similarly, if a company (or product line) only has 2 or 3 engineers, who already know the problem domain, product management doesn't have to be huge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now I understand. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Almost no one is buying Google smart speakers anymore - <AUTHOR> https://bgr.com/2019/11/15/amazon-vs-google-smart-speaker-market-share-data-third-quarter/ <comment><USER2> Wasn't Q3 when the new Nest-branded lineup with additional features was announced as imminent but not yet released? Sales drops before announced releases of major upgrades aren't an unknown phenomenon.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is interesting, because Google clearly has the smartest speakers. Alexa clearly has the most apps, by comparison. It's the (current) example of ecosystem > quality in tech.

<comment><USER4> It's usefulness > smartness.</comment></comment>


How Aziz Ansari Tests Jokes With Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcolabs.com/3013485/ <comment><USER2> I would say that comedians have always been among the top professional A/B testers (long before the buzz around A/B testing). Their entire professional success or failure depends on constant small and large adjustments to their routines based on testing and feedback. And when it comes to being funny and staying funny, comedy is brutal and completely unforgiving.

Here's a great 50 minute segment, with Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Ricky Gervais and Louis CK, in which they discuss various aspects of their material and how they work with it (adding / discarding / making adjustments and so on):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAxoRh06XM4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAxoRh06XM4)

<comment><USER3> Where do you draw the line between "A/B testing" and "learning and improving", which nearly everyone does. Homeless people will figure out how to get better results from begging, chefs will learn how to cook food that tastes better, and these things have been going on for a long time - what sets comedians apart?

<comment><USER2> The extreme majority of homeless people don't do homelessness as a profession, they do it out of desperation. It's not a reasonable comparison (particularly given I referenced professional A/B testing).

Your typical homeless person does a form of A/B testing in trying out various schemes to stay alive (whether it comes to food, begging, shelter, etc).

A/B testing is applying a scientific method to learning, so I don't regard that you have to draw any distinctions there.

A good chef is absolutely a top notch A/B tester, but then I wasn't implying otherwise. It's not like comedians being good at it excludes chefs from being good at it.

I would say that there are a lot of working average and mediocre chefs in the world, given the number of restaurants of every type. There are radically fewer comedians earning a living at it. I would say that comedy is even less forgiving than food (and food is very unforgiving professionally compared to most things, as people are extremely picky about food).

You can get by being a bad chef, we have 600,000 restaurants in the US, and a huge number of them likely prove that every day. You cannot get by being a bad comedian for long. You're either funny or you're not. With food there is a _huge_ lower and middle ground - people eat mediocre mass food all the time, and go back for more (see: McDonalds or Denny's). People will tolerate eating mediocre food to survive; they won't willingly pay to go see what they know to be terrible comedians.

If we're talking challenging A/B systems, I would argue it's radically harder to succeed like a comedian, than to beg for change or flip a burger at Denny's. To make it a little more similar, a chef would need to make food surrounded by all the day's customers, while getting real time feedback with every burger flip.

Comedians have one of the fastest feedback systems available: instantaneous mass customer response, that they absorb and gauge in real time. Customers either laugh at a joke or they don't.

An average chef that gets no compliments can keep working. An average comedian that gets no laughs generally cannot. I think comedy requires positive feedback, whereas cooking does not _require_ it (it's ideal, but doesn't have to exist, just OK will do for most meals in America).

Your average chef at an average restaurant - nobody knows who you are, the customer never sees you, they're not going to attach your name to bad cooking, and the customers don't come to the restaurant because your name is on the board. This is often true even at nice restaurants. As a comedian, people know who you are, and they specifically will remember that (good or bad).

If you're Louis CK, you're competing with yourself every night, the audience likely knows your past material. If you're a high level chef, typically you don't throw out all of your best recipes and have to replace the entire menu every year. You can't go on YouTube and taste every recipe by Gordon Ramsay.

<comment><USER3> If begging is the way somebody earns enough money to live on, is that not pretty much the same thing - I know people with normal jobs who do it "out of desperation", not because they love the job but because they need money and can't find any other job.

But that's besides the point; I took two random examples not to highlight them but along the logic that everyone does this in all walks of life. Without putting any scientific thought into it, I have, whether purposefully or not, tried and improved my methods for cooking, for playing sports, for smoking cigarettes... anything.

> _I would say that comedians have always been among the top professional A /B > testers_

The logic behind this statement, in your later reply to me, being that it's much easier to be a mediocre chef than a mediocre comic, but that says nothing about the quality of the testing, all it says is that there is a much longer tail on the graph of quality in cooking. The fact that it is easier to be a mediocre chef than it is to be a mediocre comic really only speaks to the demand of both services, not how much testing they do or how good it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have no idea if this is at all related to the topic (and I realize this reads like typical HN smarter/hipper-than-thou criticism, so I apologize in advance) but while I find Aziz Ansari to be hilarious in roles (Parks & Rec, his small role in Flight of the Conchords, etc), I've seen a few of his standup shows and didn't find his own material to be particularly funny at all.

<comment><USER5> That's too bad, I'm a huge(huuuuuge) Parks and Rec fan, but I happen to also really enjoy some parts of his standup. I think some of his jokes suck, but some of them just crack me up. I watch a lot of standup and while I wouldn't put him at the top of my list, I definitely enjoy him.

Also he has mentioned on one of his AMA's that he loves standup more than acting/anything else so it's too bad that some folks don't like his standup. Oh well, to each their own!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a ton more to being a good comedian than just A/B testing a few jokes. (Good jokes are required but not sufficient?)

A good stand-up (like a good DJ) "feels the energy" in a room and subtly alters his delivery as well as the content to work the crowd.

</comment><comment><USER7> Steve Martin talked about his process making his comedy routine in his autobiography. His process was essentially A/B testing, although not as precise as this approach can be today.

</comment><comment><USER8> Getting statistically useful data out of this will be difficult. A/B tests can tell you which of a set if options performs better for a measurable metric, but not _why_ , and without no visibility into 'metrics' you _can 't_ easily measure -- of which there are a lot.</comment>


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