Does being bored make us more creative? (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://fermatslibrary.com/s/does-being-bored-make-us-more-creative <comment><USER2> I feel like I experience two types of boredom. Regular boredom, which can foster creativity through daydreaming and finding new projects to work on, and what I usually call ennui, which is the type of boredom where I'm quite bored, but everything sounds terrible and I don't want to do anything. Ennui is not productive at all, and I hate it.

<comment><USER3> ennui sounds like depression to me? How is it different?

<comment><USER4> You can tell people that the cure for ennui doesn't involve mind-altering drugs (just exercise, diet, social/community involvement) without being sneered at. That's the difference.

<comment><USER5> To be clear, you can tell people that those things help clinical depression as well, without being sneered at. And for some people that _is_ enough (over time, particularly as clinical depression is often a symptom of other things and not a condition on its own).

The only reason they'd sneer at you is your "just" part. There's no "just" with a mental state that can leave people unable to even will themselves out of bed for days at a time (at my worst I could at least do that, but couldn't get out of the apartment without using up most of my mental and emotional strength). There are points where medication (mind-altering drugs) can be essential for people, and for others it may be something they need forever.

Why? Because there are different causes. Mine is a consequence of anxiety, addressing that essentially eliminated my depression. For others, their anxiety is worse than mine and rather than medication for _depression_ they need medication for _anxiety_ , and not just coping techniques. For other people, the depression is a condition on its own, with no or no apparent causal factors. Others, it may be a consequence of physical health (lack of sunlight, exercise, poor diet) and so those precise things can eliminate or significantly reduce their experience of depression.

It's all going to be case-by-case, and so there is no "just".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> John Cleese has a talk on this that's one of my favorite and most actionable for me.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g)

I go back to it over and over to remind me how to get into a state to be creative.

<comment><USER7> This was a fantastic talk, thanks for linking! One interesting takeaway: As you play create random juxtaposition of ideas and see if anyone makes sense. It's good that some of these are crazy. He talks about the concept of "intermediate impossibles" (related post: [https://medium.com/front-line- interaction-design/intermediat...](https://medium.com/front-line-interaction- design/intermediate-impossibles-d02f26bd9a74\)to) shake your mind loose and arrive at the actual solution. I found this idea similar to Zen koans.

<comment><USER8> I read something a long time ago that argued that highly creative people aren't creative because they have better ideas, but they have _more_ ideas than their peers of similar intelligence, and then they sift through those ideas to pick out the gems. (Of course it then requires a lot of work ethic and skills to generate quality inspiration and to covert those ideas into valuable creations).

<comment><USER9> Creativity correlates with openness to experience. Openness to experience means you're more likely to play with a new experience or idea in an open way - and perhaps generate new ideas from it - than to dismiss it out of hand because you find it boring and/or anxiety provoking.

[https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/the- number...](https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/the-number-one- predictor-of-creativity-openness-to-experience/)

You don't need a work ethic to be creative. IME creative people _have_ to be creative. It's not a choice.

You need a work ethic to turn creativity into value - which is a different problem, where you have to balance creative output with critical evaluation and conscious persistent development of relevant skills. (In addition to all the usual biz dev stuff.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I tend to use "bored states" to do all my planning tasks. In "deep work" or even deep work-adjacent states I am usually too focused on a problem to go back and find things that should be getting done, or to consider the more systemic roadblocks, or to wonder what is going on with other teams or new technologies. I am glad for the moments where I am not in a meeting or doing deep work, in a way, because they give space to ponder what should come next.

That said, the study is pretty flawed, because it asked individuals to self- select at two points (whether they found the task boring, and whether they daydreamed during it). I can find plenty of boring tasks I would daydream while doing over the course of an 8h workday, but finding a time-limited 15min task with zero difficulty so boring that you are daydreaming during it seems to me indicative of some kind of attention issue. I worry that it may be selecting for a personality type that is already more creative, because participants in the control conditions were not asked how often they daydreamed, and participants in the boredom condition were not tested on creativity before the boredom test.

</comment><comment><USER11> I used to think this. Then I was bored for so long that I got used to it, and found no creative thoughts flowing out of me anymore. It's a balance, unfortunately. I sometimes think that having a procrastinating undercurrent is almost a necessary requirement for creativity juice to start flowing (or maybe that's just the environment I've been creative in for so long that it's what I'm habituated to).

</comment><comment><USER12> Momentary boredom (for me) seems vital to creativity.

It took me a couple of years to map out the correlation, but having a smartphone seems to dramatically reduce the number of ideas I have.

I go for a walk, wait in line, sit in the train, and am consumed by a horrible feeling of impatient boredom.

The phone alleviates that.

What I realized is that feeling only lasts about 90 seconds and then I start having all sorts of inspired thoughts. The problem is I will use the device to solve the boredom before the creativity circuit engages.

<comment><USER13> You've inspired me to try it.

Next time I'm waiting for a train, I'm just going to stand there and see what happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a theory that boredom, and specifically long-term boredom, is a resource that gets depleted by being continuously busy. The day-to-day grind of a job can be conducive for productivity, but it can really limit creativity. To date, I think the most creative times in my life have been the long summer breaks off from school. To be sure, a lot of that time got wasted on Diablo 2, but it was also the time when I developed the programming chops that lead me to my current career.

I think it's understandable to look at this and think "what value does this have?", and yet we don't take into the account the costs (especially creatively) of constantly being busy. I think there would be a lot of benefits, certainly for individuals and possibly for companies, by developing some sort of a structured sabbatical program to give people space for alternate pursuits.

<comment><USER15> Gaming can be a useful appetizer for young folks looking to get into programming. Starcraft wasn't a waste for me. Granted, learning tons of specific build orders doesn't help now. However, Starcraft taught me to touch- type, it taught me finger-speed, and taught me some of the basics of programming when I created some custom maps with internal logic and triggers. Another friend was a map-hacker on WC3 dota, used to play Riki (permanently invis char) and use map hacks. He started coding for that purpose, for hacks and bots in WC3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's a relationship between boredom and motivation that's critical -- in my experience, bored && unmotivated == time-wasting activities (mindlessly surfing the internet, video games, etc).

Yet there's a kind of boredom that's relaxing, when you have a lot of work piled up but you've done enough for the day. In the words of Jerome K. Jerome, "It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do."

</comment><comment><USER17> I want to offer a counterpoint: it's restrictions that make us more creative. There's a reason why all of our most famous and ancient writers use some kind of line metric.

Being bored forces you to work within your restrictions to have fun. Just observe your toddler with a "dumb" toy versus and iPad.

</comment><comment><USER18> To me it is much more about having a clear mind and not feeling stressed out. In that situation I have room for more things and I am easily motivated to work on something new, just anything I feel like.

When I am bored, I just watch a bit of TV or reload that same webpage continuously.

</comment><comment><USER19> For me its a combination of boredom and laziness. I'm always looking for ways to do things easier, and it's when I'm driving long distances that the ideas come to me.

</comment><comment><USER20> wow, we base this conclusion on the result of a supposedly creative task after a boring activity? im gonna assume the boring activity was actually boring because those are easy to create but you most certainly cannot define what is creative for these people.

Aside from this study, I would say boredom is not good for creativity. and for an individual who is not bored, as long as he can relax, I believe he can boost the right amounts of creativity.

</comment><comment><USER21> Restrictions boost creativity.

</comment><comment><USER22> Being bored makes us open HN and read articles about being bored…

<comment><USER23> The cycle:

"I'm bored" > open HN > scroll > "I've read most of these articles/comments" > close HN > ~3 minutes pass > "I'm bored" > open HN... repeat.

<comment><USER24> Even worse: "I'm overwhelmed by what I am working on > open HN > scroll > find new technology promising to reduce said overwhelm > start researching said tech > apply new tech to previous overwhelming problem, but get stuck due to lack of familiarity > go back to old tech

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> nobody including me on this thread has read this article, welcome to HN.

<comment><USER26> No the article looks boring

<comment><USER27> But there was a link posted in the comments to a great John Cleese talk.

<comment><USER26> Seen that talk before :) really is a great talk too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> No</comment>


Amazon EC2 C5a Instances Powered by 2nd Gen AMD EPYC Processors Now Available - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-ec2-c5a-instances-powered-by-2nd-gen-amd-epyc-processors/ <comment><USER2> "Benchmarks Of 2nd Gen AMD EPYC On Amazon EC2 Against Intel Xeon, Graviton2"

[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=epyc- ec2...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=epyc- ec2-c5a&num=1)

<comment><USER3> interesting that the ARM processor cmae out fastest in at least three of the benchmarks. I knew ARM was good, but to beat Xeons and EPYC is fantastic.

<comment><USER4> Amazon defines one ARM vCPU as one core and one x86 vCPU as one SMT-thread of one core, so the Graviton 2 instances has twice as many cores as the x86 ones it's compared against, and as such it would be a kind of a failure if it wasn't faster in some of the most heavily threaded workloads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> AWS behind Azure, GCP, and even Oracle Cloud in this release. Azure had EPYC Rome available 6 months ago. Surprising, AWS had been among the fastest to roll out new hardware in the past few years.

<comment><USER6> Mostly Intel hardware though if I'm not mistaken?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, we'll have to see how quickly the various providers are able to get EPYC Milan GA'ed once it's available.

<comment><AUTHOR> Disclosure: I work for AWS building cloud infrastructure

My experience working at Amazon has changed my thinking about how to deliver great customer experiences. When we make a new EC2 instance available, customers expect to be able to use it at scale that is indistinguishable from limitless (which is a challenge in a world that has physical constraints in accordance to laws of physics), instantaneous availability, and high quality. This requires significant infrastructure deployment scale and careful design and management of supply chains. Not every provider has the same philosophy and approach in practices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even though the announcement says it's available in US-East, it seems like you can only launch in us-east-1a and us-east-1b. I wasn't able to launch c5a instances in other availability zones.

<comment><USER8> Something to be aware of, sub regions (a/b/c etc) do not map between accounts. Your a might be my c, etc.

<comment><USER9> That's a good point. They used to be the same across accounts, but then they had consistent capacity problems in us-east-1a so they introduced the shuffle which is determined on account creation.

You can actually look in the "Resource Access Manager" to determine which allocation you've got, it maps the names you see in the rest of the console to e.g. use1-az1, use1-az2, use1-az3, so you can use that information to "colocate" things if you really need to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there a timeline for _soon_ on the metal instances?

<comment><USER11> Do metal instances launch at the same time with Intel or is it normal to launch a little later?

<comment><AUTHOR> Disclosure: I work at AWS building cloud compute infrastructure

Historically we have both launched .metal instances at the same time as virtualized instances, and also launched them a little later. My goal is to launch them at the same time, but sometimes there are some final details to work through before we can make them available.</comment></comment></comment>


Quantum Theory Proves That Consciousness Moves to Another Universe After Death - <AUTHOR> http://www.learning-mind.com/quantum-theory-proves-that-consciousness-moves-to-another-universe-after-death/

<comment><USER2> No it doesn't. You're a liar and a fabulist, and your pseudo-scientific blog postings don't deserve recognition. Stop spamming crappy blogs on a technology site.</comment>


Web-based SSH for EC2 using a javascript VT emulator - <AUTHOR>

From your web browser, users can open multiple shells, execute and shared commands, upload files to EC2 instances (see links in comments) <comment><AUTHOR> Demo: [http://bit.ly/1dbOTI1](http://bit.ly/1dbOTI1)

Download: [http://bit.ly/12SK4xb](http://bit.ly/12SK4xb)</comment>


Goodbye for now - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/vidme/goodbye-for-now-120b40becafa <comment><USER2> I am very sad to see Vidme go. I loved the honesty of this blog post, it really shows that they are aware of the independent video scene and why it is almost impossible to compete with the giants (YouTube, and now to my knowledge, instagram).

I always wanted them to succeed, but there was always something telling me that success would be unlikely. YouTube is Google's big loss leader; they seem to exist to keep Google's large internet presence and to keep people connected to the Google ecosystem. If Google can't make YouTube profitable, it seems highly unlikely that a startup would be able to.

It's interesting how Vimeo is still in the game during all of this. They exist because they have a foothold onto the creative/indie/premium video scene. I'm sure vidme was looking for a similar foothold; an niche audience that YouTube/instagram/vimeo had not captured.

I hope the best for their new project. Also kudos to them for advertising those they are not taking onto the new project.

<comment><USER3> Calculations that youtube is an unprofitable loss leader make the assumption that google pays retail rates for bandwidth. Google is peered with virtually every transit network and ISP on earth, and pays (in relative terms) virtually nothing.

Its a near certainty that youtube is infact massively profitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Damnit, I liked Vidme and thought it could potentially become a decent competitor to YouTube.

However, with the business troubles related to a video site, I suspect there are only three plausible ways to compete here:

1\. Have the video sharing site treated as a loss making venture run purely out of a love for the community. This is unlikely to happen when a corporation is involved (unless the CEO is a deeply religious/political individual who thinks it helps their spiritual/social goals), but could happen if you had an extremely dedicated, semi wealthy individual whose entire life revolved around running a video sharing site for fun.

2\. Run the video site as a niche version, which is only open to a certain community and focuses heavily on a certain type of video. This was how Twitch took off, as well as how Discord originally marketed their chat service.

3\. Somehow make the service decentralised so no one pays all the costs. This is how BitChute functions.

Either way, it's unlikely a startup or general business venture is going to be what topples YouTube here.</comment>


Sublime Text Editor tricks for web developers - <AUTHOR> http://icoloma.blogspot.com.es/2012/09/sublime-text-editor-tips-and-tricks-for.html

<comment><USER2> Nice post, it's a pity I miss the talk at barcamp 2012. Next year I will be the first at the beer+networking :-)</comment>


How Spy Tech Firms Let Governments See Everything on a Smartphone - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/technology/nso-group-how-spy-tech-firms-let-governments-see-everything-on-a-smartphone.html <comment><USER2> I wrote some really effective data recovery software a decade ago. Before I knew it governments around the world were buying it up in droves. I then got pushed (not by the governments, but by my partner at the company I had) to write a special forensics edition, that does a byte-by-byte scan of the source disk rather than a block-by-block scan, which would extract embedded files out of a hard disk and basically ensure that nothing would be missed.

That code eventually got a big fancy "forensics" UI wrapped around it with a bunch of other functionality such as logging the process, and it got sold for $1k / copy. It would sell upwards of 80 copies at a time in a single batch. It was very profitable (though I personally did not see much of that profit).

I always felt very uneasy about it and I stopped developing that line of software even though at this point I could get ~50% of the profit if I were to continue it. I had no idea what it was actually being used for all of the time and I had no way to find out. I do know however that some of the time it was used for good, to catch people distributing child pornography and so forth, however I don't know what percentage of the time it was used for that kind of thing, and I'm also aware that that is the justification that is used for a lot of surveillance. Philosophically I believe in counter-survelliance more than surveillance, because I'm pro privacy and pro citizen empowerment rather than the other way around, I think the balance of power has gotten out of whack as this article nicely illustrates.

<comment><USER3> Just out of curiosity, if you don't mind, what is it called?

<comment><USER4> My money is on test????/photo???.

<comment><USER4> Not that I care for the karma but why is it being downvoted ?

<comment><USER5> As the sister comment says, it's because your comment doesn't make sense. What does "test????/photo????" mean?

<comment><USER6> It's an obfuscated reference to a popular open source data recovery toolset. I think the parent was trying to avoid potentially "outing" GP against their wishes, by making a vague reference that some might get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The moral issue aside, I can't even begin to fathom how their software would even work. How do you stealth install software to a random phone out in the wild? Social engineering, or purely technical?

<comment><USER8> The linked NYTimes article references 3 exploits dubbed the "Trident Exploit Chain" that are detailed in an excellent Lookout / Citizen Lab writeup [1] discussed on HN 8 days ago [2].

The target is sent an SMS containing a link to site that triggers the explot chain to remotely jailbreak the phone and clandestinely install the monitoring software.

Ahmed Mansoor, a UAE journalist, was recently targeted with one of these SMS messages and was immediately suspicious. Instead of clicking the link he contacted Citizen Lab researchers who connected it back to NSO group.

[1] [https://citizenlab.org/2016/08/million-dollar-dissident- ipho...](https://citizenlab.org/2016/08/million-dollar-dissident-iphone-zero- day-nso-group-uae/) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12360662](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12360662)

<comment><USER9> Anyone else think it's a bit of a joke that a $1M+ bug still relies on the user clicking a phishing sms to work?

<comment><USER10> I'd suspect there's a disconnect between the group selling/providing the tools, and the group using them.

A webkit 0day could've been delivered via a watering-hole attack or something even just a tiny bit more sophisticated (compromise a trusted contacts social media account, send the link from there) and succeeded.

Whoever put the effort/time/money into developing the exploit chain is likely pissed off it got burnt via such an amateur delivery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I you were high profile it would be a good reason for a dumb phone or a lesser known smartphone.

<comment><USER12> The most secure option would be not to carry a mobile phone at all. Otherwise, iOS is probably the most secure mobile operating system, simply based on the price of remote exploits: a remote exploit for iOS is worth several times more ($500K-1M) than the equivalent one for Android ($100K-200K).

<comment><USER13> that seems like a small difference in cost for high value data...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sickening. This company doesn't seem to have even a basic moral compass. Even when their tools are being used against human rights workers or journalist they have no qualms.

<comment><USER15> This is the disturbing thing about corporations, profit is their moral compass.

It takes people with power in the corporate structure to contradict that default.

<comment><USER16> No this is the thing about anything involving people, as soon as you have a group -- the moral .

Governments have done horrible things. Researchers have done horrible things. Religious Groups have done horrible things. NonProfits have done horrible things.

It's not about profits.

<comment><USER17> It's about motivations, or, in bad cases, necessity. About necessities (like not going bankrupt, or feeding a hungry tribe by claiming the land of your neighbor, etc) I'm not sure much can be done. But I do think it's about profits when it comes to corporations. Shareholders are often relatively passive and in it for the money, they aren't "mission driven" (being the best at one thing in your industry, spearheading a new way of transportation, etc). Their field or artisanship isn't their motivation, the profit is.

When you're designing a new engine, you might decide to use 10% more expensive parts to make it 20% more fuel efficient, but this additional cost might result in 10% lower sales, so the board decides against it since exhaust is just an externality. If those people were considered with ecology they might consider a lower rate of profit but instead take pride in the fact that they're helping humanity combat global warming while maintaining the standard of living.

It's easier to rationalize away "bad things" when making money is at the top of your value scale. I think it resembles the individualism of our age, people used to be more aware that they were a cog in the machinery of history, no one thinks like that anymore, it's all "be the best you can be" rather than "be the best we can be".

<comment><USER18> > It's easier to rationalize away "bad things" when making money is at the top > of your value scale.

I agree. The purist free market ideology, for lack of a better term (or maybe Objectivism?), is a convenient justification for not dealing with difficult issues. 'The ideology says I can/should only care about money, so I don't need to worry about all that.' If only life were so simple that we could rely on an ideology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is it me, or is the NYT suggesting that they have been victims of this Pegasus system?

</comment><comment><USER20> We need protection against governments. They are the mafia of today's world.

<comment><USER21> Ironically studies of mafia show that they win by providing government services to those without. Anarchy is desirable by no one and when government a not reach then we turn to any strongman to bring order and predictability - it is the essential definition of government.

Don't blame governments for being mafia, blame us for not forcing them to behave. We need a public debate on the meaning of privacy and the ownership of personal computing.

<comment><USER22> There is a school of thought in political science that government is simply the big, legitimate mafia.

<comment><USER23> (responding to the school of thought you are referencing) "might makes right" school of political realism never made sense for me in a domestic context.

the relationship of the state to the citizen at the citizen's birth is completely one directional: the state provides infrastructure, security, and economic activity while expecting nothing in return until much later in a person's life-- and if the person doesn't ever proffer anything in return to the state, that doesn't guarantee violence against the individual, nor exclusion from services.

if the platonic form of a state were that it has to be a mafia of sorts reliant on the threat of physical force, it'd quickly go extinct for lack of younger replacements. can't have the young replacing the old if they never make it to middle age due to a lack of investment and all.

that being said, the current governments of the west do have plenty of similarities with the various mafias... but in my opinion the issue of runaway government is a failure mode resulting from particular circumstances rather than a problem of government in the abstract.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Barnes & Noble Urges U.S. to Probe Microsoft on Patents - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-08/barnes-noble-urges-u-s-regulators-to-probe-microsoft-on-mobile-patents.html <comment><USER2> All true; probably all legal.

Microsoft has been doing this for as long as they've been around. Used to work at a hardware vendor (desktop boxes with a proprietary OS). We paid $12 to Microsoft for every box shipped, because they had Intel processors and might conceivably one-day run Excel (called Multiplan back then).

</comment><comment><USER3> It is indeed a new low for Microsoft to be patent trolling on an open source operating system which is based on the linux kernel.I wonder what Bill thinks about this.

Also I really dont understand how a company which has tens of thousands of engineers has to do cheap stuff like this to generate revenue.I know a lot of smart people who (unfortunately) chose to work for ms and I wonder why Microsoft is not using its talent pool.

<comment><USER4> In a [1991] memo to his senior executives, Bill Gates wrote, "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." Mr. Gates worried that "some large company will patent some obvious thing" and use the patent to "take as much of our profits as they want."

source: <https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/09/opinion/09lee.html></comment></comment>


Parallella Cluster: #parallac - <AUTHOR> http://www.parallac.org/

<comment><USER2> Cool, any use-case in mind?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, it is very expensive for me :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Vesper, a plug and play Ruby web framework (Sinatra + Rack + Plugins) - <AUTHOR> http://vesperapps.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> After building a lot of apps with Sinatra, I decided to pull out the code I always end up using (the framework) and package up the code I almost as often use (the plugins), then write generators for everything and wrap it up in a gem.

There are still a few plugins I'm writing now (DataMapper REST services, Stripe boilerplate, user accounts, URL based commenting, Linode stack script, etc.), but since the whole project is moving along nicely, even getting a decent amount of downloads, I thought I'd share.

It's my first gem and my first public project.

<comment><USER2> Looks interesting, but isn't Padrino already trying to be the "Sintra with more"? <http://www.padrinorb.com/>

What's wrong with Padrino? Why did you make this? Why is this better?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think there's anything wrong with Padrino.

I just wanted to use something a little more lightweight and unstructured. Without the plugins, Vesper is basically just a Sinatra app. You can organize it as MVC, or not. There's not much abstraction from adding code to a Sinatra app, and everything glues together nicely. Also, I really like developing plugins this way (put the code from an app into a git repo, and you're done).

<comment><USER3> (Wrong parent - this was intended to land in the other thread.)

I didn't understand it that way :).

Well, the thing is that I see your approach as equally "structured" as Padrino. If I want to use Vesper Plugins, I have to use Vesper. So your approach - in my eyes - is not "more unstructured", its more "a different kind of structure". As far as I can see it, you don't put a lot of weight into controller/routing-things, but have more emphasis on plugins, which Padrino mostly lacks.

But the fact that you didn't use Padrino and implemented your own structure on top of Sinatra shows that Padrino didn't fit your bill - so my curiosity just springs from the that fact. I always see this as a chance to find new needs and insprirations that Padrino can support and use. So, rant away :).

Aside from the asset-handling problem, bundler can easily support loading plugins from git(hub), as long as they are gems. Why didn't you just settle for that? Then, the only problem that remains is asset handling. There, I am quite in favor of not polluting the main project, but I also don't want to add a asset compilation toolchain just for that :/.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, I think more explanation is in order.

Aside from the plugins, the structure of Vesper is just Sinatra, Rack and Rake (/public, /views, config.ru, Gemfile, Rakefile, etc.) plus application and config directories. When the app is run, it does all the normal rackup stuff, and loads everything in /config and /application. There wasn't a need to do anything more.

That's where this whole thing started. I got tired of the routes file in Rails (my biggest Rails complaint), so I switched to Sinatra, and this is how I ended up writing a lot of apps.

Sidenote: /data and /tests are both generated by default plugins.

By unstructured, I just meant the MVC thing. Most frameworks I've used start off with the assumption that I want to use MVC directories. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Most of the time I want to use the concept of models and controllers, but instead of separating them into different directories and files, I want to group related models and controllers together - i.e. a users.rb file with the User class and the associated routes for sign in, profile editing, etc.

The plugins were extracted from code I use in a lot of apps, but not all. That's why a plugin is so similar to a full project, with a few extras thrown in, like hooks (they just run code are certain times during loading). I'm mixed as to polluting the main project with assets, so I just did both. A plugin's /application, gemfile and /tasks don't get moved into the main project. But sometimes it makes sense, such as DataMapper and a /data folder, and MiniTest and a /tests folder. It's really optional.

Now for gems: There's nothing stopping anyone from adding gems to a project. They should work just fine, and I do it all the time. But at the same time, I work with a lot of designers and just-getting-started programmers who have no idea how to write a gem, but still have code they reuse a lot. The 'plugins- as-a-repo-in-a-live-folder' allow for that, while not stopping them from using gems if they fit the bill. A few of the plugins are nothing more than wrappers for gems with a little config pre-written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Incidentally: for those wondering about the name and logo:

"Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesper_(cocktail)>

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha. That and I was watching Casino Royale at the time.

Glad someone caught it though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I definitely like it. As a Padrino developer, might I ask how your project compares to padrino, which seems to have similar goals? (Multiple Applications per project, superset of sinatra, flexible usage of rack, etc.)

We do use the Sinatra plugin system only, though...

<comment><AUTHOR> I just wanted to use something a little more lightweight and unstructured. Without the plugins, Vesper is basically just a Sinatra app. You can organize it as MVC, or not. There's not much abstraction from adding code to a Sinatra app, and everything glues together nicely. Also, I really like developing plugins this way (put the code from an app into a git repo, and you're done).

<comment><USER3> So your main complaint about Padrino is Padrino::Application as an extension to Sinatra? Because in every other regard, Padrino (padrino-core) is mostly a convention on how to load and organize code. I use it as a raw library on a regular basis.

I admit that we are a bit behind in regards of apps-as-libraries, but I would prefer to handle that in standardized ways (using gems as distribution format and copying assets using an asset compiler instead of an installation routine).

Also, Padrino encourages not developing any plugins for it - raw Sinatra plugins are very much preferred, but are not compatible to your format.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have a complaint against Padrino. I'm not out to replace it or anything, I've just been having a good time writing apps this way.

If Padrino encourages not developing plugins, then yes, that would be a big difference.

By Sinatra plugins, I'm guessing you're talking about extensions (<http://www.sinatrarb.com/extensions-wild.html>)? If so, how are they not compatible with Vesper?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What benefit do Vesper plugins have over plain gems?

<comment><AUTHOR> They're easier for non-programmers (I work with a lot of designers) to create and use. In fact, most of the plugins use gems and then add their own config and assets.

<comment><USER5> If these non-programmers are using Git and adding Gemfiles and such, is adding a dozen line gemspec to the repository that big a deal? And if it is, couldn't you fill out most of the gemspec automatically using a command line script?

<comment><AUTHOR> None of that would be particularly difficult. And nothing here is stopping that from happening, or replacing it. It's just another, fairly simple way, to organize and share code.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Best Data Science // Online Data Analysis Forums? - <AUTHOR> Hey, what kind of Data Science // Online Data Analysis forums do you browse and use - as a source of knowledge and/or useful information regarding to the topic? (Not interested in blogs, just forums, where everyone can participate.)
This is my list, but I want to expand it: - Data Science Subreddit - HackerNews by Ycombinator - Data Science Facebook Groups - GrowthHackers.com Data Science/Analytics Channels - Medium.com - related authors - Twitter - related people
+I go to a local Data Science Meetup monthly. Do you have anymore suggestions?
Thanks! <comment><USER3> [http://www.kdnuggets.com/](http://www.kdnuggets.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I know KDNuggets, but it's a news portal / blog, and not a forum - <USER2> am I missing something? : )</comment></comment>


Election Security - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/02/election_securi_2.html <comment><USER2> Voting should be mathematically immutable. We have the technology, and it can be made user friendly.

Most bank login forms are more secure than US elections (there is a password and KYC registration process.) Even credit card "enter your zipcode" entry level anti-fraud measures are more secure in my opinion.

What it takes to vote in most states: a mailing address, a signature, and a pledge that you are being honest.

It is sad how little hope I have for anything to come out of this bipartisan effort. (kudos to Schneier for participating, though) America's track record is of leadership being quite ambivalent about proven technological solutions to citizens' problems.

I want the titans of our industry to lobby hard for user friendly priv key crypto signatures, an irrevocable blockchain based solution, or both. Even a QR code on your registration card would be more secure than today, where you typically don't even need a card or ID to vote.

We are blind to trust our current process.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      America's track record is of leadership being quite ambivalent about proven technological solutions to citizens' problems.

It's hard to solve a problem that half of the officeholders don't _want_ solved.</comment>


Voronoi Diagrams – France, Reconstructed from Apparently Inadequate Data - <AUTHOR> http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/419-france-reconstructed-from-apparently-inadequate-data/ <comment><USER2> Not sure why this is labeled a Voronoi diagram, it might be for some set of points but none are there. The algorithm mentioned in the blurb is MDSCAL, googling around finds various references including this survey paper

[http://people.sabanciuniv.edu/berrin/cs512/reading/camastra-...](http://people.sabanciuniv.edu/berrin/cs512/reading/camastra- dimensionality.pdf)

<comment><USER3> It is labeled Voroni diagram because the actual map _is_ a Voroni diagramm of the points placed by the algorithm, clipped to some outline.</comment></comment>


Search "samsung disable ok Google" failed, so I removed Google from home screen - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com.tw/search?q=samsung+disable+ok+google&oq=samsung+disable+ok+google <comment><USER2> I followed that link, and it seemed to give good results. I did it from the US, so maybe your region is different. Can you explain the problem? Maybe you should make a blog post, or a Twitter thread, or a paste at Pastebin, and then post a link to that.</comment>


Startup Hiring: 6 Subtle Signs You Might Have A Winner - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/1506/Startup-Hiring-6-Subtle-Signs-You-Might-Have-A-Winner.aspx

<comment><USER2> Replace "hiring" with "dating" and the article still works. Replace the whole article with "establish rapport with" and it still works. People are good with judging people.

</comment><comment><USER3> Actual title: Startup Hiring: 6 Subtle Signs You Might Have A Winner

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _why Lisp doesn't really provide the startup advantage any more that Paul Graham might think it does_

Out of curiousity, what was the reason?

</comment><comment><USER5> Your comments are very good to hear for people like me who are looking to do something new. I'm in a job where I like the people, but I am trying to push things in a new direction but am getting nothing but resistance. Very tired of hearing "no" and "this is how we do things". I'm at the point where I either want to work for a startup or start my own.

</comment><comment><USER6> _Strong Opinions, Well Defended_

That's about it all: a person who holds to his/her opinions in an articulate, broad and open-minded way, _and is ready to change them when proved wrong by him/herself or by others_. That's whom I want to work with. Includes self- teaching and an interest for the world around them.</comment>


The IDE must move onto the server - <AUTHOR> http://emilian-bold.blogspot.com/2011/03/ide-must-move-onto-server.html

<comment><USER2> There's a big disconnect here; if you think there's some compelling use case for having shared state in a central location, then anything that gives your central service access to that shared state will meet that need. That does not mean this shared location is necessarily "the cloud", nor does it mean you "must" actually literally serve the IDE out of the cloud so it can live in the browser. That's just today's mantra, tomorrow's will be something else. You simply must have the state moved somewhere where it can be analyzed, or even simply shared P2P with no central node.

This is taking on an immense amount of pain for what sounds like gain that can be had for far cheaper in every conceivable way with a much simpler and less boil-the-ocean approach. Whatever benefit you think this is going to bring when it's done, why not prototype that _now_?

<comment><AUTHOR> >Whatever benefit you think this is going to bring when it's done, why not prototype that now?

The biggest benefit is removing the need for a configured, physically accesible, machine in order to do your work.

Imagine visiting the parents for a weekend and being able to fix a small but urgent bug and do a commit using either something you have with you (like your webkit-based device) or what they have there (low-powered machine). Using a browser seems the most natural.

<comment><USER3> Don't the various methods of attaching to a remote desktop work well enough? I sometimes work in an IDE remotely on Windows using the native RDC or just VNC. Works great, smooth and fast, I would be happy to work that way for a couple of days if I was without my own machine. I don't see a big upside to sinking huge time and effort into a Web IDE when remote desktops fill most of the important use cases.

Also, how many developers are you thinking will be sharing the server using a Web IDE? For any compiled language I see compilation steps as big CPU hogs, severely limiting shared usage. Even with interpreted languages I suspect there would be CPU-sharing problems. Again, remote desktop seems a better solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who is leaving my current job in large part because it forces me to work in a godawful web-based IDE, I think you need to think really, _really_ hard about your motivations here. What problem does an IDE webapp solve which can't be solved any other way? Also, what problem does an IDE webapp solve which is so terrible, such an impediment to progress that it justifies throwing out the decades worth of development tools and experience we have on the command line or in traditional IDEs?

Honestly I've yet to come across such a problem. And any such benefits my company's internal web-based IDE might provide are entirely outweighed by the loss in productivity that comes from no longer having access to diff and patch and Unix pipes and vim and Git and all the other tools I've become entirely accustomed to on the Unix command line. Honestly, a MindTerm applet and a Unix shell account on a remote server would be a more functional "web-based IDE" than any I've seen, and certainly more functional than the one I'm leaving.

Obviously given enough time all of those tools could be replicated in a web- based environment, but why even bother? What's the killer app here?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure I understand the value of this.

> The IDE must be accessed via a standard browser and > should be installable > (ie. your own startup should be > able put it on a dedicated server).

SSH is available on every reasonable development machine, I can SSH to some server and access Emacs, either via X forwarding or over the terminal, or I could use Tramp mode.

The other points could be done with a client-side application which talks to some server. Why put the whole experience in a browser?

edit: grammatical error

<comment><AUTHOR> Explaining the value of this is hard and I guess it boils down to the convenience of accessing everything via an URL. Of course everything you have in a browser may be done by applications talking to some server.

I'm basically hoping that an open-source cloud-based IDE will bring more to the table that just ssh x forwarding. What I've learned from a continuous integration server is that automation is important, but the test/build results are mostly separated from your IDE project -- integrating the two seems valuable.

Also, workspace configuration is a pain just as it is migrating to another machine. I'd rather just work as close to the (versioned) source code tree as possible.

It seems to me that having an offline IDE is odd when we are always connected, everything we produce goes back online (commit, emails) and we produce it usually by inspecting online resources (bugtracker, emails, google).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Heroku was originally a cloud based ruby text-editor/IDE of sorts. I bet there are good reasons they didn't stick to that.

</comment><comment><USER7> Did I just see a Java Applet? I thought we were past that stage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, applets are almost deprecated but there is no comparable Javascript- based editor.

<comment><USER8> Isn't Bespin/Skywriter/Cloud 9 HTML5?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. Last I looked their Java editor meant only a syntax highlighter. Without code completion and code folding it's not there yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> why would i want to use an ide that needs 14 seconds to open the editor after i click on a file?

<comment><USER9> also, how do i work on a train if all the code is in the cloud?

also, isn't that just that much more surface area for hacker(crackers whatever) to attack?

<comment><AUTHOR> What I've found is that I'm rarely offline when I'm working.

Regarding hackers, I guess the risk is about as much as having production servers online or using EC2 and github.

<comment><USER10> I would say I'm offline often. I was interviewed by a company who's tech lead required _everyone_ to program using VIM only on the server (production server). They didn't want any of the developers to have code on their machines for fear of them running off with it or something.

I won't even begin to enumerate the problems with that philosophy (developers editing code that was live and used the production DB - this was the biggest uh-oh) and other glaring issues of not trusting your programmers.

I promptly explained their silliness and walked out the door.

The most important feature of working-on-your-desktop, however, is to have mobility and isolation. I _never_ let anyone edit code through SSH on the live server. If something is brokedd, even if it is something big, it can wait an hour to be fixed, peer tested, unit tested and pushed to the server. Plus WHY IN THE WORLD would you have your VCS history on the production machine!?!?! I don't get that about some of these cloud services that have you clone your source repository!

Laptop + Emacs + local db + Mercurial + rsync + Fabric is flexible and expressive in a way that anyone arguing for on-server only editing can't argue against.

I make a edit, hit refresh on the browser and verify it works as I expect it to then I simply type in "fabric deploy" and it asks me if I'm pushing to the staging server or to the production server. If I tell it I'm pushing to the production server it runs _all of the unit tests_ for the project to make sure my edits didn't go f'up something else in the application I wasn't thinking about at the time. If the tests ALL pass it then rsyncs the files up with the server (using checksum not timestamp comparisons). If the tests fail, nothing happens.

[EDIT] Obviously I make batch edits - running unit tests for the whole project more than once a day would be ridiculous. But you get the idea.

It's the best process I've come up with so far and I've tried a lot of stuff. I've seen many horrors related to on-server editing.

Code on YOUR machine. Period.

<comment><AUTHOR> What you've said about using staging and production servers and never pushing directly to the production server is valid.

Of course an online IDE doesn't mean editing code on the production server! You would still need to run a deploy towards the test/live server, run tests, etc.

It's not about throwing away the best practices or existing methodology, just about bringing the IDE more up to date with the online centric nature of coding.

<comment><USER10> I don't mean to be an ass I just think your time spent working on this tool could be invaluable working on some sort of shared-state mode for Emacs or VIM. I wouldn't go from Emacs to an online editor, no matter how good it is, because I don't have complete control over the software and where the code is being edited. That is important to me and many other developers...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The IDE will move from the desktop to the web, but that's a loooong way off. I recently installed Cloud9 ( <http://cloud9ide.com/> and <https://github.com/ajaxorg/cloud9> ) and it is by far the most advanced open source web IDE available. Supports multiple languages, syntax highlighting, error detection, etc.

However, as solid a start as it is ... it isn't anywhere close to being acceptable. No advanced editing features such a multiple line indenting, duplication, moving, etc. No code completion. No integrated manuals for languages. Limited shortcuts (since the most basic are mapped to the browser). I can go on, but you get the idea. We're still quite a few years off. All of it is possible, the tech is here, it would just take a massive undertaking ... and most of the resources are being poured into traditional IDEs.

<comment><AUTHOR> >it would just take a massive undertaking ... and most of the resources are being poured into traditional IDEs

This is a big problem. As a mostly Java developer, the way I see it, none of the major three Java IDEs (Eclipse, NetBeans and IDEA) seem to move this way. Eclipse has announced Orion (<http://mmilinkov.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/introducing-orion/> ) but that's very incipient and I don't think they are putting a lot of weight behind it.

Cloud9 seem to 'get' the idea and I do hope they shake things up a bit but although they release the code, I think they are basically a for-profit entity, so I would feel much more confortable if some open-source community/foundation would start building something like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hope something like this takes off. I like eclipse but I never have the same installation between any two machines. Usually there is some kind of config bug that never gets sorted out and I just live with it. How different is this from what Heroku is doing in the RoR space?

</comment><comment><USER13> Yikes. I agree but this looks like a workflow that would get in my way, not help me code. Open tab, wait 15 seconds while it launches. It just reminds me how much I despise java applets in web pages.

</comment><comment><USER14> i almost exclusively ssh into remote server to use my "ide", bash vim ack rpl and a host of std unix cmds.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ditto on the java-applet comments - I was shocked. Haha.

In all seriousness, though, people have mentioned this before but I don't think anyone's really tackled any underpinning reason why an IDE should be in "the cloud" (::cringe:: yea, I went there).

If I think about it in terms of features such a setup could provide - cohesiveness btwn. client & serverside testing, development statistics in real-time, and highly integrated documentation & comm. - then perhaps it's kind of sexy. Seamless/buil-in pair-programming would seal the deal. It would be pretty awesome if it looked like Code Bubbles though...haha (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsPX0nElJ0k>)</comment>


End artificial scarcities to increase productivity - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/artificial-scarcity/ <comment><USER3> Bogus scarcities we've addressed at our office:

* Macbook power bricks (we were having arguments over them, because people would borrow them from other desks; now we have a stack of them).

* Macbook video dongles (same; note: it's not enough to just have one attached to every monitor, like the article says, because sometimes people need to take them out of the office)

* Whiteboards (everyone has one on their desk now)

* Hard disks (same deal; they're so cheap, we just buy new ones any time there's any storage issue, rather than have people scavenge for space on their existing drives)

* Books (everyone gets infinite free books, and to head off time-wasting discussions about who bought what book so they can borrow it, the policy is, you order the book & it's yours full stop; we have many copies of several key books in our office)

We're probably missing lots and lots of opportunities to trade small amounts of money for substantial amounts of time. What are other people buying? An obvious next example would be "soda", since people trek down to the convenience store to get bottles --- but I feel like stocking soda is also a bit unhealthy.

<comment><USER4> * In our conference tables, we have about a dozen Macbook magnetic plugs so we don't have to change out ours.

* Each TV in the conference room is hooked up to a computer, so you can quickly log in easily (and since pretty much everything is done via the web, we don't have to worry about hooking up our laptops).

* Whites boards are treated as RAM, not Storage. Your phones have cameras now, use them!

* Office supply stations are just filled with stuff. Lots of batteries, mice, keyboards, etc. It's rare we run out of stuff (to the point that I don't really know if it's happened).

* Also a big push to move everyone to laptops and Mac monitors, so we can easily move around.

\--

At home, I'm less successful. Mostly, with a 1 year old and a 3 year old, anything we put down has the potential to move. That being said, some simple things:

* Having the laundry room be in the second floor.

* Keep the vacuum cleaner parts for the carpet on the 2nd floor.

* Toilet paper distributed to every bathroom. We also have baskets with additional rolls next to each toilet within easy reach. That way, even if the roll runs out, we have 3 or 4 right there.

<comment><USER5> _Having the laundry room be in the second floor._

FYI, the main reason laundry rooms are usually in the basement is risk of flooding. In a basement with a concrete floor with a drain, flooding isn't much of a problem but on a higher floor it could cause very expensive damage to the surrounding space, the floor itself, and anything in the basement underneath.

I'm sure for some reason the tradeoff is in favour of the second-floor laundry room, but the basement laundry room certainly doesn't count as _artificial_.

<comment><USER6> I believe the building code says anything on a higher level needs the washing machine to be in a basin, with the basin connected to a drain. (At least that's what I've heard)

<comment><USER5> It's going to depend on which building code you're dealing with, of course, but that certainly sounds plausible.

I don't think I'd want to place any bets on how often that particular requirement actually gets satisfied, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this article would be stronger if it didn't open with its weakest example: The problem with whiteboard pens is that (a) they wear out over time as the ink dries, so you can't solve your problem by buying and distributing them in one large batch; you need to constantly and continuously resupply them over time; and (b) they can be instantly ruined by misusing them, e.g. by not capping one tightly when you put it down.

So I'd argue that whiteboard pens are frustratingly close to the category boundary between "things that are so cheap that you should just buy them in bulk and spread them all over the environment" and "precious personal tools, where the optimal strategy is to buy the best that you can afford, carry them around with you in a special holster, and never let anyone else touch them on pain of death". The latter category includes things like a chef's knife, a mechanic's micrometer, a microsurgeon's favorite tweezers, and your cellphone.

Whiteboard pens are legendarily annoying because they're not _clearly_ in one category or the other, so no matter whether you fanatically carry around a personal set or choose to rely on their ubiquity you're inevitably going to end up kicking yourself at one time or another.

<comment><USER8> I'm firmly in the ubiquity camp for this, but with a just-in-time delivery system rather than buying in one giant batch.

Every whiteboard should have a large stock of great pens. If I start to write with a balky pen, I throw it out instantly. (Please, HNers: if you ever see somebody put a bad pen back in the tray, smack them.) When we get down to a merely adequate number of markers in some room, I spend 60 seconds on Amazon and order a bunch more. Prime + One Click + purchase history search makes this a breeze.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's interesting to view how Google works in this light:

\- the micro-kitchens are restocked once or twice a day and have all manner of drinks and snacks;

\- micro-kitchens are only so far from every desk (they're in every building in MTV and on every floor in NYC);

\- stationery cabinets are also in close proximity. Take whatever pens, whiteboard markers, etc ou need;

\- tech stops are a little further away generally but have self-service for many things (power bricks, cables, mice, keyboards) although I wish the self- service was open out-of-hours;

\- you can file tickets for things and it just turns up at your desk;

\- you have a credit card you can expense things with (nobody likes keeping and submitting receipts for small items);

\- if you need a book just expense it;

\- all of the conference rooms have display adapters and power bricks (although there could be more of these);

\- whenever there is a mass desk move (it happens a lot) your labelled boxes and equipment gets moved on the weekend and at your new location there'll often be a triage station with cables, power bricks and the like; and

\- whiteboards are plentiful.

I'd always viewed this as not penny-pinching, which I guess it is (apart from the micro-kitchens, which I'm sure are a significant cost) but its interesting to view this in terms of reset and transit costs.

Another important part of this (IMHO) is not making people make decisions about stuff they don't care about, which has a cognitive cost.

Imagine if a company gave you a book budget of $X per year. Even if it's more than you would likely spend the very fact that you have a limit makes you think about what else ou might need later rather than just "do I need this now?"

<comment><USER10> Life at Google sounds like a fairy tale.

Things I've had to buy myself to work better at Amazon:

1\. A better chair (Steelcase Leap). They give us some shitty chair that's barely adjustable.

2\. A second monitor. Yup, they give us _one_ monitor.

3\. My own whiteboard markers.

4\. A better keyboard. (This hardly counts, though, since I have odd keyboard preferences, and the default keyboards are fine).

Things I've yet to buy but need to:

1\. A new & larger hard drive. I got a 140GB drive in my dev desktop. I regularly work with various data packages over 10GB in size, and I need multiple versions deployed at once. This quickly eats up my available space. Haven't done this yet because I'll lose a day or more to reimaging.

2\. More ram. They only give us 4GB.

We don't get a free Prime membership. No free kindles. No free AWS accounts for personal projects. Only $100 off per year at Amazon.com. And let's not forget the obscene cost of lunch in South Lake Union (around $10).

One of Amazon's core tenets is "frugality" but they're going to have to start spending more on equipment for devs or they won't be able to hire anyone. Hiring is hard enough as it is at Amazon, and we are going to lose good devs to organizations that value them more.

(I know, I know, First World Problems. My employer only gives me money instead of free things.)

Edit: Formatting

<comment><USER11> I used to be at Amazon, I hear you on all the frustration, and it's amazing how much more productive I am now when many of these pain points are removed.

I seriously have no idea where Amazon _finds_ their office chairs. Nobody's asking for Aerons, but the chairs Amazon puts in their offices are worse than my chair at home I got at IKEA. It's like someone went out there and _spent effort_ finding the worst, least comfortable, least adjustable chairs they could manage.

Where I'm working now there's a firm belief that if you need gear to do your job, just buy it and expense it. I've never been challenged on any tech expenditure, including a 30" Cinema display, something that would be the height of luxury (and entirely unheard of) at Amazon.

For those not familiar with Amazon, they _do_ provide whiteboard markers - <USER2> can fetch them from the copy room at any time, along with all manners of office supplies. For some reason though, nobody ever orders enough whiteboard markers, and pretty much whenever someone restocks the copy room the markers are gone in a matter of hours. It's a frustrating part of Amazon life to raid nearby conference rooms so you can actually have your meeting, or when someone else wants to jump in on the whiteboard you have to hunt around to find another color. This really is a pain point that shouldn't exist. It's a fucking whiteboard marker for crying out loud. Facilities also insists on stocking those rainbow-palette packs of whiteboard markers, which means every pack of markers you run across will be full of the colors nobody uses (yellow?!) and the black/blue/red will always be gone.

It's not really that frustrating while you're there, but in hindsight I'm not sure how I put up with that. It's such an unnecessary waste of engineering time.

> _"Things I've yet to buy but need to:"_

They just need to give devs new desktops. Before I left my dev desktop had a 140GB drive, with 4GB RAM, and a _Celeron_ CPU. A full build of my code base took 15 minutes when on any modern $700 desktop it'd be a small fraction of it. I'm pretty sure Amazon has lost enough money on my engineer-twiddling- thumbs-while-code-compiles lost time to buy a room full of top-end desktops. It's the most puzzling, absurd frugality strategy ever.

I've worked at a number of code shops before, and Amazon is the only place (and the largest company, puzzlingly) where the hardware was actively, and massively holding back my productivity as an engineer.

<comment><USER12> When I was at IBM, they gave us ~$200 to spend on office things (Buy on Demand, I think they called it). I ordered a $160 17" LCD to replace the 70 lb CRT that felt like it was giving me a sun tan. My manager called me into her office and explained that she was canceling my order, because if _I_ got that monitor, then everyone else would want one.

There was also the time my officemate decided to order supplies for the three of us. She was questioned for requisitioning 3 pens. Because she could only use one at a time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reading this recalled me that someone working at a big company once told me that he often had to look for a whiteboard pen for 5 to 15 minutes, and that it was ridiculous because 10 minutes of his salary cost his employer more whiteboard pens than he would ever need… Yet, small budget cuts which target this kind of cheap stuff seems very common.

<comment><USER13> I once worked at a very large American company that announced that as part of the effort to hit the quarterly profit goal they would stop buying office supplies. The CEO announced that he he told the same thing to the European branch when he flew over there earlier in the week in the company jet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When I read the heading, I expected this to be a rant about patents and the imposition of artificial scarcities to various industries like music, software and pharmaceuticals, where the marginal cost of production is negligible compared to how much they cost customers.

The article was a pleasant surprise; instead of arguing the trite, it made a point that was rarely made. For me though, I just write off these "wasted" minutes of walking up the stairs to get the scissors as "exercise."

</comment><comment><USER15> Another big productivity helper is to be less hesitant to discard a piece of hardware that is not working well. Repairs often take more time than you expect. It takes discipline to do this because as a tech person you tend to like to troubleshoot things. Examples are things like a router that needs to be restarted a lot or a keyboard with a sticky key. Sometimes it's just acknowledging that you spent money on something that never really worked well enough and you should just throw it out and buy something better. I find that often times I hold onto something because I know I paid a lot for it, not because it's working well.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's something I did recently to make my morning routine go faster and better. I labeled everything I need to do to get ready for work in the bathroom with a number. It helps me remember to do things I kept forgetting to do before: things like apply Rogaine :'( and take Resveratrol -- and it also has shortened the amount of time I take to get ready.

My friends joke that I'm OCD, but I argue that an OCD person wouldn't need the labels to nail down a routine. :)

<comment><USER12> I got rid of all my socks that I had bought over the years and bought 24 pairs of the same socks. Now I just grab any two socks and am guaranteed a match.

<comment><USER8> Yes! Socks are definitely best dealt with in batches. I keep two kinds (white athletic and black dress). When one sort is looking raggedy (or the count has fallen below the minimum) I ditch all of that kind and replace them.

This has made me especially happy with dress socks. If you buy them at different times, then they are each a subtly different shade of black, which made me insane whenever I tried to match them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Whenever I was missing a pen I was buying 10 or 20 cheapest ones and allowed them to dissipate around in my environment so that whenever I needed a pen, finding one would take me few seconds at most. It required no forethought and no organisation. Inefficiency due to low cost was negligible.

<comment><USER18> +100, i sprinkle shitty sunglasses and $5 phone chargers across all factors of my life ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I call this saturation - if I spend five minutes looking for the scissors, I've already spent more time than another pair of scissors is worth. So I increase the concentration of the scissors solution by buying another pair of scissors. Eventually I reach an equilibrium between known pairs of scissors and whatever process is removing them from the knowable - at that point, my scissors solution is saturated.

Repeat for all other items in the solution until you have a broth you can work in.

<comment><USER20> A sharp, pointy broth that you shouldn't run with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Reading the list, however, I get the feeling he likes to optimize for the sake of optimization. If you _factor in the rate of use_ , few items on his list are actually worth duplicating. Flashlights scattered around for power outages? Come on! Unless the outages come weekly, it's probably just a premature optimization. Or unless you're particularly accident-prone, you might get by with fewer first-aid kits and fewer towels and wipes.

However, laptop adapters I understand. They're a pain here, too, and laptops travel many times a day. And this thinking of his is good, in general. But mostly, he certainly goes off my scale in my world where the mere _cost of keeping is_ pretty high. I generally don't want anything unless I really, really need it and much less I want two or more copies of it! I'm quite sure that as soon as you have two or three copies of nearly anything you need more often than once a year, you'll will the same.

Instead of duplication, I often opt for keeping things in their places. For example, I don't need wrenches and screwdrivers every week but I certainly do few times a month. Thus, I don't mind walking to another room to pick one from my toolbox as long as I know they're in my toolbox and I don't have to search for what I want. Searching cost is often greater than the cost of fetching.

And accumulating the copies costs too, really. They cost in terms of taking space and in needing both physical and mental upkeep: mind them while cleaning, mind if one of your numerous stashes is running out of consumables. And the burden of ownership, and the burden of eventually requiring more space because you have copies of too many things. These cut down productivity, at least they would cut mine.

YMWV, of course.

</comment><comment><USER22> The central office printer example is one that I'm not sure about. Where I work, personal printers are banned on the basis of a "sustainability" policy that views them as energy- and resource-wasting. There is one shared printer that I admit is fantastic. Beautiful color, also scans to email or fax, it's fast, and it never seems to jam or break down (though it is nearly new). I don't print much, and I suspect many devs are the same. About the only time I print anything is when it's something needing a signature. In the past I would often print web articles that I wanted to read in depth but Readability has really helped me do that a lot less often.

So I really don't see a central printer per se as an example of an artificial scarcity. There would need to be some other shortcoming: it's old, slow, prints are full of artifacts, it jams a lot, wasting time, etc.

If I had a need to print dozens of documents a day and had to walk across the floor to get them, maybe I would see this differently.

</comment><comment><USER23> This post seems a little too narrow in focus. Sure, there are some hands down winners like white board markers and video dongles.

But your own printer? Coffee and soda at your doorstep? It's healthy to get up, stretch out and walk around a bit. Healthy to socialize in the copy room too.

Are the productivity gains really that great at the margin? I suspect the extra minute you save by not walking to a printer is just shifted to an extra minute on Twitter or Hacker News.

The general concept is a useful one to keep in mind, but as with all productivity pron, there are limits.

</comment><comment><USER24> In general this is good, but needs planning - ever walk into a place with multiple 'redundant' printers, and none take the same ink, half are out of color and the others out of black?

For example, there's a cost to having data in more than one place and keeping it coherent. Before version control reduced this friction, I kept having issues where my desktop and laptop would have newer versions of files in one place or the other, so I stopped using both and switched to just a laptop. I know people who keep everything on a USB drive for similar reasons.

But for something you just need to grab and use, and doesn't have data persistence, sure.

</comment><comment><USER25> Bicycles! I ride my mountain bike pretty hard any time I go out for fun, and sometimes come back with an out of true wheel, a screwed drive train, bent derailleurs/disc brakes/frame/etc. This got in the way of my daily commuting/exercising so I decided I needed to have a good road bike, and a spare cheap mountain bike to make sure I can still go out to have fun, even if my primary mtb is in the middle of surgery. Having three bikes also means that when friends are in town visiting, I can show them around the city without having to resort to expensive taxis/zipcars or public transit.

</comment><comment><USER26> I am reminded of Snow Crash where the government has turned into an hyper bureaucratic system. It describes in several tedious pages an addendum to the office rules for toilet paper an TP pooling. But fear not, productivity was not lost since employees were expected to read the new rule within a specified quick time.

</comment><comment><USER27> I do this at home, but my items are geared towards musicmaking. Every guitarist knows picks always go missing - buy hundreds and leave them around the house. Same goes for instrument cables: why should you EVER have to deal with running out? I try to facilitate creativity by making it as easy as possible for me to create. This also applies to your work area, the kitchen, etc.

Also, after getting a couple flat tires on my bike, I stocked up on tubes so that I wouldn't ever have to worry about that again.

</comment><comment><USER28> Also, sometimes it's important that there's a forcing function / mechanism of some kind that gets things to stay put.

Ex: Pens used at cash registers that are intentionally giant / ugly / unwieldy so you don't walk off with them. See here: [http://karentl.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/design-artifact- plas...](http://karentl.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/design-artifact-plastic- spoon-taped-to-pen/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Whoa, I wrote a post about pretty much the same thing two days ago: [http://kev.inburke.com/kevin/stop-worrying-about-shit- that-d...](http://kev.inburke.com/kevin/stop-worrying-about-shit-that-doesnt- matter-a-short-guide/)

<comment><USER12> Re: your laundry item -- does wash 'n fold fit the bill? The place I use is about 100 feet from the front of my apartment building, and it only takes about 1 minute longer to walk to it than it does the laundry room in the building.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> hahah. i buy my own stuff at work if its scarce. most notably kleenex; being sick is miserable, who wants to use cheap-ass sandpaper on their nose when they already feel like shit? thank you, i'll spend $4 for super-extra-soft tissues.

<comment><USER30> In that case surely you should be at home recuperating, rather than spreading germs to your coworkers?

<comment><USER31> If you have dedicated sick leave pay that's fine. However, sick leave is unheard of in some countries. Why would you force someone to take annual holiday time off to be sick or, worse, unpaid leave. Then they would be even more miserable than just being sick.

<comment><USER30> If your employer doesn't have dedicated sick pay, then why not? Perhaps they should? A few days where >50% of their employees are off sick due to the flu of the month going around ought to convince them otherwise.

This is why most countries (by "unheard of in some countries", I think you mean "unheard of in the US") have sick leave in some form -- it's both recuperation time _and_ voluntary quarantine.

<comment><USER31> Actually, by some countries I meant East Asia. I had a friend get fired after getting hit by a car and needing 2 months leave (because his office had no wheelchair access). Technically not legal but you can't exactly fight a well funded employer when you are broke from medical bills.

It is quite common to see very sick people working. People who probably should be in hospital, not just on leave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Fingernail clipper: I have 9 of them, yet only two are around at any given point

</comment><comment><USER33> Stupid things I've seen:

* Server space. We had a shared server where, for some reason, /home had been placed on a tiny partition. Someone must have thought this would encourage responsible use of space, but in practice it just prevented real work from getting done. It was a 2000's solution to a 1990's problem.

* Coffee. It's extremely valuable to have one or two varieties of coffee on hand, hot and fresh at all times. Assign someone this task. We had infighting over pots left empty, and angst over cold left-over coffee in the morning. All because the office manager thought it was beneath her to make coffee.

* Books. I have never worked at a company that had a book allowance. When asked, I was told it just wasn't in the budget. Meanwhile, I've been sent, along with coworkers, to awful, multi-day conferences for "training" (it wasn't training, it was a conference).

<comment><USER3> Another way around the coffee problem is just to set up an infrastructure for single-cup brewing, either with a bunch of pourovers or with Aeropress's (they're like $20 each).

We (unfortunately) also have a Keurig.

<comment><USER33> But then you end up with coffee queues before meetings, people who don't clean the machine when they're done, and (in the case of the Keurig) tons of noise.

<comment><USER3> It takes like a minute or two to do a pourover cup or an Aeropress cup, and if you're bottlenecking on that, just buy multiple pourovers and Aeropresses; they're cheap.

<comment><USER34> Aeropresses are awesome. They actually make better coffee than most coffee makers, it's always fresh, it's plenty fast and cleanup is a snap. I highly recommend it for anybody who's put off by the annoyance of normal coffee makers.

<comment><USER3> They burn through a _lot_ of coffee, which might be a downside.

<comment><USER34> Weird, I hadn't really noticed that. How many scoops do you use for a cup of coffee? I usually put one scoop (or two if I'm feeling tired), and I don't find I go through coffee noticeably faster than with a coffee machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> First world problems. (Is it so important that you may have to reach over to grab your toothpaste or do you keep two of them near both sinks?)

Reduce the clutter and spend some calories reaching for things man.

What you really need is a body slave so that you can be free to be maximally efficient.

<comment><USER36> It's about time management. Having to hunt for things is a waste of time, and those little time wasters add up to a lot of work not getting done, or a distraction that takes more time to get your brain back in gear.

<comment><USER37> I don't understand reddit_clone's specific example (are there bathrooms with 2 sinks?), but I think the article does mix ideas that are wins with others that are dubious.

Pens, chargers and AC adapters, toilet paper are cheap; running out of them is bothersome and there's a fixed overhead to retrieve them, so let's stock them and put them into the right places.

But buying and keeping 2 vacuum cleaners at home is arguably not in the same category. It only works if you assign a high enough cost to "getting up and down the stairs" or, equivalently, if the price of the cleaner plus the real estate is cheap enough for you. It's not like it will affect your "productivity", it's just a minor loss of leisure. In other words, it's a first-world-problem.

(taking the "first-world-problem" term literally: in the Third World, the problem above is "solved" by not being able to afford 2 vacuum-cleaners, or 2-story houses, if you're poor; or by hiring a maid if you're middle- or upper-class).

<comment><USER38> With things like vacuum cleaners, it depends how big your home is. I wouldn't buy a vacuum cleaner for upstairs: there'd be nowhere to put it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Moscow Conducts Large-Scale Nuclear Attack Drill: 4 long-range missiles launched - <AUTHOR> http://freebeacon.com/moscow-conducts-large-scale-nuclear-attack-drill/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a legitimate question: What scares you more, the NSA snooping or Russia's re-invigorated interest in ICBM's?

<comment><USER2> internet trolls that attempt to shape public opinion through false choice questions

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not a "troll".</comment></comment></comment>


IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing - <AUTHOR> http://statichtml.com/2011/ie6-countdown-a-wolf-in-sheeps-clothing.html

<comment><USER2> Do geeks always need something to bitch about? Microsoft is at least making an effort to do as most people wish, getting users to upgrade from IE6.

<comment><USER3> I want them to upgrade to a modern browser. IE8 aint one.

<comment><USER4> IE8 is leaps and bounds better than IE6. In IE8 you barely even need to tweak sites to get them to look right. I'd be tickled pink if IE8 was all I had to worry about. IE9 is going to be much better than IE8 -- by leaps and bounds -- but it's still in beta. At least the release candidate is out. Some people are never satisfied and always need something to complain about. I'm sure you'll find something else once IE9 is out (it doesn't work on their 10 year old operating system).

 _Edit:_ So much idealism in this thread and not enough people being realistic.

Here are the facts:

-Web developers hate IE. All versions of it.

-We live in a world with IE.

-Microsoft IS NOT going to suggest that people download Firefox or Chrome.

-It IS NOT in their interest to do so.

-The next best thing is for them to suggest IE8 and then IE9.

-It is in the users' best interest who don't know any better and it is in Web developers' best interest that people are _at least using something better than IE6 or IE7_

-Windows XP is 10 years old.

-The only thing that's going to be holding back users from upgrading to IE9 is refusal to upgrade their decade-old operating system.

-It would be like people being mad at Apple because the latest version of Safari isn't compatible with OS9.

<comment><USER3> Somehow the Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera teams manage to provide a modern browser on Windows XP.

This isn't about "finding something to complain about". I want a modern web, and I want Microsoft to get out of the way of that happening.

<comment><USER4> I think you're being a bit unreasonable here. IE9 relies on parts of Windows that just don't exist in XP. Windows XP is ancient by software standards. Sure, Chrome et al. work in all operating systems, but you're upset at Microsoft because they don't want to support an operating system that they want people off of already. It's their decision and I'm glad they want people to upgrade. People got mad because users didn't want to get off of Windows 98 because of how dated it had become but fewer people are upset at the "Windows XP is good for a lifetime" crowd.

IE9 is coming and it's much better. When the people holding back on upgrading finally upgrade then you'll have your better Web.

<comment><USER5> That's exactly the point- since they're holding off on upgrading their OS, potentially for a much longer time, they won't even have the option of updating their web browser. An OS upgrade is a much more monumental decision than a browser upgrade, and the inertia is much greater.

At any rate, the fact that IE9 can't backport parts of its OS dependencies is kind of an implementation detail. We're saying Webkit has no problems providing a self-contained modern browsing experience, so IE9 doesn't _have_ to be any different.

<comment><USER6> Webkit has no problems providing an experience that the IE team thinks is subpar (in particular, lacks full 2d graphics acceleration).

Similar for Gecko: it's doing compositing acceleration on WinXP, but not 2d acceleration.

Now maybe the argument is that IE9 should support such a mode of operation. But by the same argument, Firefox should still have a supported PPC version of Firefox 4 (even though it's JIT can't generate PPC code, so JS would be interpreted and hence very slow). Some people _are_ making that argument, by the way, but the general consensus is that this sort of decision about what sort of quality they're willing to put their name on is up to the Mozilla project. Why does the IE team not get the same courtesy?

I realize that you may disagree with their quality metrics (e.g. you may think that a modern JS JIT is a must-have requirement for a modern web browser but 2d graphics acceleration is not). But it's not clear to me that this is obvious, or that this will even be true in a year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sooo... Microsoft links people to Microsoft's browser. This counts as controversy? Shady behavior? Please.

<comment><USER8> The issue is less that they link to their own browser, and more that the likely outcome is that it will push the adoption of _another_ nearly obsolete browser.

<comment><USER9> Hey, I don't know if you've noticed the pattern over the past 15 years, but there's _always_ another "obsolete" browser. You can't "win", it's just about the progress. There is no point in the past 15 years where you've been able to just code to the latest beta of your favorite browser and nothing else.

<comment><USER10> That's true, but on the other hand, as TFA points out, IE8 is the latest that a WinXP user can ever get from Microsoft, which is two-years old and practically outdated now. Linking IE6 users to IE8 is progress, sure, but useless given that they could be running Chrome or Firefox, which are actually modern browsers.

<comment><USER11> And how old is Win XP?

<comment><USER12> Are you trying to say you think it's more effective to encourage users to buy Windows 7 (and most likely a new computer to support it) than to encourage them to install Firefox or Chrome for free?

<comment><USER13> I would rather encourage users to download an easy and newbie-friendly Linux distro and experiment with it.

Sure, XP is an obsolete OS. Modernizing the whole stack is a much better solution than adding a modern browser to an obsolete OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This banner is less ugly and has a choice of multiple browsers: <http://www.ie6nomore.com/>

<comment><USER15> Upvoted to get useful information above the bickering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> They're trying to get XP users to upgrade from IE6 to IE8. This is a problem because IE8 is already obsolete.

It would be preferable to encourage people to run pretty much any other browser on XP, because they are all being actively updated with new features.

The point, which doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft-bashing: _Don't run this banner on your site._

<comment><USER17> marginal improvement is still improvement. we could just chill out and accept that microsoft has the right to promote its product and we have the right not to put the banner on our sites.

<comment><USER18> The problem is that many people who don't know any better and don't read sites like HN will just go and use this banner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> To some extent, it is a good thing that the warning banner is ugly because it will annoy the users, increasing the chances that they'll do something (i.e. upgrade to a newer browser) to get rid of it.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Given that everyone using IE6 is, at best, running Windows XP, and given that Microsoft have stated that IE9 won't be available for pre-Vista SP2 OSs, the most recent version of Internet Explorer they could ever hope to upgrade to is IE8."

unless they upgrade Windows. Which they should.

<comment> mkr-hn I've got no real reason to. XP works fine, and it's secure enough. Java isn't installed, and flash is enabled on a case-by-case basis (<3 Flashblock). The odds of me suffering an exploit will go down as hacking efforts shift to the newer versions. This is after not suffering _any_ attack, malware or otherwise, in all the years since XP came out, so I'm not terribly concerned.

I'll probably have this laptop (and XP) for another year or so.

Now, try convincing someone who _doesn't_ know much about computers to upgrade. All these "everyone should upgrade" declarations I keep seeing won't do it.

<comment><USER21> > This is after not suffering _any_ attack, malware or otherwise, in all the > years since XP came out, so I'm not terribly concerned.

Just curious, how do you know you haven't suffered any attack?

<comment> mkr-hn Because it would have to come through a vector that I haven't completely walled off, and those are exceedingly rare (like the WMF thing ages ago). I keep up on vulnerabilities, and I'd do a paranoia reinstall if I suspected I were affected by one.

It would be one of these:

* Noscript exploit

* Simultaneous Flashblock + Flash exploit

* Image-based exploit

* Renderer exploit

And those are extremely rare. My software stack is also pretty stable, and it's all from trustworthy vendors/projects.

<comment><USER22> You are clearly the typical XP+IE6 user being targeted by this campaign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My bosses aren't the most tech-savy people on the planet, but even they realise that it costs them more to pay their developers to build with IE6 in mind than to simply supply people with IE6 a unstyled page to use.

Developers need to cut the nonsense and just stop supporting IE6 completely. Hell, our sales tripled (three purchases) from IE6 users when we unstyled their pages. In this day and age there is no need to support such out-of-date browsers.

<comment><USER24> I think that's a good point. You can still have a functional web page working in an older browser. Graceful degradation. I use a modern browser, but I turn off a lot of the functionality - so the web works for me. Accessible websites get a thumbs up from me - you are catering for more than just ie6, by doing so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The banner is supposed to be ugly - that way people will notice it and not mistake it for part of your beautiful site.

</comment><comment><USER26> > And while you're at it, find a designer friend to create a banner that wont > make your users want to poke their eyes out with a stick.

I think that's the idea - startle the IE6 user with a logo that is so atrocious that they give in ("Uncle, uncle, OK, I'll do it!!")

</comment><comment><USER27> Why do Microsoft have such a difficult time, to this day, developing a decent web-browser? With their near infinite financial resources, surely it is no accident that IE has so many issues, uses tons of proprietary code, and doesn't support, for example, the <canvas> tag until IE9.

Like a good capitalist you may argue that MS is not in the business of supporting standards, or it is not their job to make the lives of web developers easier. You'll argue that they are a business, and by locking in companies by using proprietary code, MS is being smart. To this I'd say that Google and Apple aren't exactly running charities yet they manage to produce web browsers that a truly first rate.

</comment><comment><USER28> I already do this on my own site. Visitors on IE6 get a big warning at the bottom telling them they're using a dangerously out-of-date browser, and provides a link to Firefox first, then IE8 second. Even if I can get just one person to use FF instead of IE, the world will be a better place.

</comment><comment><USER29> With Win7, using Chrome, the site offers IE9 only, not IE8.

I'm quite pleased to be seeing this from MS, no need to be snobby about it and put down IE overall. If it wasn't for the free availability of IE in Windows, we wouldn't be using the web 24 hours of every day.

<comment><USER30> Netscape Navigator was free to consumers, and was the fastest growing software product in history before Microsoft started bundling IE. We'd still be using the web anyway.

The free availability of IE bundled with Windows just stifled competition in the browser space, causing stagnation of the web until other companies with deep pockets financed alternatives. (Apple - Webkit and Safari, and Google - Firefox and Chrome)

If Microsoft had kept developing IE at the same rate as they did between IE3 and IE6, I doubt anyone would be putting them down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> How long until someone plays on this idea and makes one of these warnings that work on any outdated browser, including ie8, and points them to a choice of chrome, opera, firefox etc... has this already been done? I'd so use it on my sites.

</comment><comment><USER32> Its come to this. That its almost that a company is sorry that it ever made a piece or software like IE6. When people do insane things for a really long time. The next insane move starts to look really sane...

</comment><comment><USER33> _And while you're at it, find a designer friend to create a banner that wont make your users want to poke their eyes out with a stick._

Yeah, prettiness, that's what IE 6 users really care for.

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't design for tech impaired ducks, but if I would I'd refuse to suggest to them an upgrade from one pile of shit to another. Maybe pile of shit 9 will smell less, let's pray.

</comment><comment><USER35> Has anybody tested that the banner renders find in IE6 ;-)?

</comment><comment><USER36> There is a better way: simply develop your site without hacking it up to work in IE 6, and users will notice the difference eventually.

</comment><comment><USER37> Or you could just put this:

<http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/>

</comment><comment><USER38> That is sooooo Microsofty of them!

</comment><comment><USER39> Ugh, we all know 99% of English-speaking users on IE6 are forced to use it at their workplace. That's going to be so annoying.

Maybe those IE6 Business-users should get their user-agents changed to: "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) - YES I KNOW IE6 IS OLD, TELL MY BOSS"

</comment><comment><USER40> Microsoft agrees with IE6countdown.com - <http://twitter.com/Microsoft/status/43753653189885952>

<comment><USER41> ie6countdown.com is by MSFT...

<comment><USER40> Yes, I didn't notice that at first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is why I registered microsoftcountdown.com. It's not the browser the only thing we need to dump - we need to get rid of the whole company.

<comment><USER42> And replace it with what? Companies that will charge 30% of all the money for content that goes through their devices?

<comment><USER13> False dichotomy alert!

Getting rid of Microsoft doesn't imply going to Apple. You must realize that there are other entities in this market, frequently offering better products, often for free.

Getting rid of a company that despises fair competition, that promotes bogus standards in order to confuse the market instead of doing something it once did adequately: build products its users want, would be quite good for the market.

But you get some points for writing an answer. It seems others just opted to downvote what they don't like to read.

<comment><USER43> What market? It's damn hard finding PC's preinstalled with linux (that have normal sized screens), and it's not easy finding compatible devices for those PC's.

Sure, nerds always have choice, but for joe sixpack it's microsoft or apple. There is no other choice.

<comment><USER13> > It's damn hard finding PC's preinstalled with linux

I always wonder why things like these happen...

> and it's not easy finding compatible devices for those PC's.

Funny. Just about everything I plug into my Linux notebooks works flawlessly. Even my non-jailbroken iPod has no problem syncing with it.

The 90's called. They want their excuse back.

> Sure, nerds always have choice,

Sure we do. We, nerds, have choice and we can create choice where there is none. We nerds can jailbreak locked-up tablets, phones and videogames. But we also want to help Joe Sixpack get a better, safer computer, if, for no other reason, to stop the spam zombies.

Actually, we do things like these because we are generous. We want everybody to have cool toys.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>