A year with Go - <AUTHOR> http://vagabond.github.io/rants/2015/06/05/a-year-with-go/ <comment><USER2> Today, I got a request for a secure message passing service from our CTO. My group, which is a small team of 2 *nix geeks in a company with ~20 mostly c# developers, has become a bit of a skunkworks operation as we have been responding to external constraints and forced to move quickly.

I was able to implement the service per the provided spec in 179 lines of Go in about ~2 hours. Stress tests passed. The job is done. We march on.

Could I have written this service in C++? Absolutely, but it would have taken me 20 hours to get to the same level of confidence. Maybe some could do it on 2 hours; I'm admittedly not a great C++ developer or frequent user.

Could I have written it in Python? Sure, but I would have had to scale and put it behind a load balancer, adding complexity to get equivalent performance.

From what I've seen of Rust, I like it and plan to give it more time now that it is stable. I haven't spent time with D. I played with Erlang. I don't care for Haskell for anything remotely related to "work", but I don't dispute that it has a place in computer science.

In my 2 years with Go, this is not my first positive experience. I have found that Go works well for cranking out high fidelity, snappy services like this. I think this is the result of the language's constraints enforcing simple patterns. Unlike C++ and Python, there are not a huge number of ways to accomplish tasks (at least not ways that feel natural).

Take it or leave it, but I like Go (for certain things).

<comment><USER3> I don't understand what I am supposed to take away from this though. If you were a strong C, C++, Java, Scala, Clojure etc developer you could equally deliver a highly scalable solution in 2 hours. I haven't seen anything yet to show why Go is fundamentally easier to deliver solutions except for single binary development which isn't really an issue for server side development.

<comment><USER4>
        > If you were a strong C, C++, Java, Scala, Clojure etc
        > developer you could equally deliver a highly scalable
        > solution in 2 hours.

I guess the point is, no, you couldn't. An equivalent solution would be less robust/reliable or take (much) longer. Or both.

<comment><USER5> With some of this languages it would have been much faster AND much more reliable.

<comment><USER4>
        > With some of this languages it would have been much
        > faster AND much more reliable.

I don't think that statement is validated out by the body of evidence we have about Go. But, this is all hypothetical, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > I also, apparently, don't understand Go's pointers (C pointers I understand > fine). I've literally had cases where just dropping a * in front of > something has made it magically work (but it compiled without one). Why the > heck is Go making me care about pointers at all if it is a GC'd language?

Well, sorry, but if that's your level of understanding after _one year_ of Go, I'm furious I wasted time to read your article up to that point.

<comment><USER7> As I understand it, GO makes it so you can use both a pointer or the object itself to access it methods.

And when you define an object method (or I don't know how it's called when you do this:)

func (*string) uppercase(){

        // make uppercase

}

Then by saying you use a pointer means you will modify the value when you do this: mystring.uppercase()

So it's not really pointers, it's more an idea of pointers.

<comment><USER8> Things get ugly when your code grows. I had cases where I started with passing pointers to structs around directly, but at some decided that having dedicated interfaces would be better.

But as soon as you're talking interface, pointers don't work as expected anymore, because Go (at least that's how I'm explaining it in my head) passes _magic interface values_ to functions. So you can't just change `func foo(s _MyStruct)` to `func foo(s_ MyInterface)`, but rather you probably want `func foo(s MyInterface)`. Even though you are still explicitely passing a pointer when calling foo() and whatever you're doing with s inside of foo() is working on a pointer -- which your own function declaration doesn't even tell you anymore.

This is one of the things that confuses the hell out of me when using Go.

<comment><USER9> One of the most unhelpful things about Go's pointer syntax is that it collides with HN's italics syntax. Hence, in your second paragraph, i see declarations which differ only in the slope of the type. Really, does nobody think of this when designing a language?

<comment><USER10> Are you seriously suggesting language designers should care about every sort of markdown syntax that exists when determining how a language looks syntactically?

Take a step back and think about your statement...

<comment><USER9> For the avoidance of doubt, my comment was intended as a humorous way to point out to the parent that they had got their code snippets mangled, and i am not seriously advocating Markdown-compatibility as a language feature.

I'm curious, though, as to how you could _possibly_ think i was being serious. Do you spend a lot of time interacting with people with insane ideas?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _Adding proper mutexes to some of our code in production slowed things down > so much it was actually better to just run the service under daemontools and > let the service crash /restart._

Can the author explain this bit some more? If adding mutexes slows down your code to the point where you would rather just deal with data corruption/races it seems to me that there are issues with your code, not the language.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, that seems weird. A properly implemented mutex is one atomic instruction in the uncontended path to lock and one more to unlock. And if you remove the mutex, you're turning "the contended path" into "the path that blows up your program". Atomic instructions can be painful on, for example, ARM (where they turn into load linked/store conditional loop + memory barrier) but they shouldn't be too bad on x86 servers.

(I have no idea how Go implements mutexes, though.)

<comment><USER13> It is not unprecedented, e.g. see:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash- only_software](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash-only_software)

Martin Rinard at MIT has done a lot of work in this area. It can be safe if you can rollback to a good state to avoid data corruption.

Glitch, my current project, does not bother with reader locks for multi-core execution; instead it can rollback and retry when a write-after-read is detected effects are logged (dependencies are traced so write-after-reads can be detected). It has performance benefits if you can amortize the book keeping overhead, and we need to do it anyways to support live programming (see: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/people/smcdirm/managedti...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/people/smcdirm/managedtime.aspx)).

<comment><USER11> I'm aware of crash only software (isn't this how Erlang/OTP does things?), however this doesn't seem to be what the OP intended. Running your code without caring about data races means your data can be corrupted and program might not crash.

<comment><USER13> It actually depends on what the code does, we don't get much context on what the code is actually doing. It is completely possible that data corruption is not a concern because nothing is being written, or there are checksums or whatever...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's amazing how Go caught on.

It's not well designed -- lots of special cases reserved just for the compiler, some bizarro decisions, etc.

It's not modern (with the possitive associates of modern, not fadish, and modern being "the last 30 years of experience" which is still like a millenium in IT years).

It's implementation is not great either. Not a very good compiler, not a very good GC, not good tooling.

My theory is it caught on for 4 reasons:

1) It came from Google, and with some famous names to top. This got it initial publicity in programming sites and media, and Google then coughed for conferences, a spot on I/O etc -- so it caught lots of eyeballs, something independent languages don't have a chance to do.

2) It produces static binaries and this was a real need for lots of use cases.

3) It's easy to get started with, and made converts from scripting languages feel empowered, as if they were "real programmers" writing C, what with "pointers" and static types.

4) It makes writing parallel code for some uses cases easy, which is a good fit for some infrastructure/services apps.

(I don't think most teams outside of Google and some C++ or Scala shops have had any beef with "long compile times" for that to have been a major factor. Though it played to the hype of it being "just like a scripting language").

<comment><USER14> > It's easy to get started with, and made converts from scripting languages > feel empowered, as if they were "real programmers" writing C, what with > "pointers" and static types.

What is wrong with this? Exposing people to pointers and static types might give them confidence when writing or reading in "real programmers" code in C

I find the level of sneery nose turning in this thread quite abhorrent to be honest.

<comment><USER15> There seems to be an idea that some ways of telling your computer what to do are too foppish and that if you are serious about it you use a language from 40 years ago. Of course that's probably what the assembly programmers said about C and there aren't many of those left anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the author gets closest to the mark in the Conclusion, but still falls short. Go is very attractive as an "upgrade" from Ruby/Python or Java. It's a good replacement for the interpreted languages when speed/performance matters and it makes the async paradigm feel much more accessible. And compared to Java, the fact that Go compiles to a native binary is a huge benefit. It's not a replacement for C or a good "teaching" language, nor would anyone call it "mature" at this point, but it does fill a niche and fills it pretty well.

[http://blog.disqus.com/post/51155103801/trying-out-this- go-t...](http://blog.disqus.com/post/51155103801/trying-out-this-go-thing)

<comment><USER9> > And compared to Java, the fact that Go compiles to a native binary is a huge > benefit.

I'm baffled by this. I've been deploying Java applications for years, and this has literally never been a problem. You build a WAR (or EAR, or uberjar, or distzip, or whatever). You install a JRE on the machine. You deploy. You're done. It's never been a problem for me, and it's not something that's talked about as a problem in the Java community, which suggests it's not a problem for other people.

When i see someone suggesting that Go has a significant advantage over Java in terms of deployment, i assume that they don't actually have experience of deploying Java apps, they're just regurgitating the standard Go talking points.

<comment><USER17> > You deploy. You're done.

Then you set your memory parameters. Then you tweak them, to make it more performant. Then you increase them some more to make the GC work less. Then you hook up to the JMX port so you can profile what's going wrong, and identify some XML library as allocating megabytes of strings when it then dumps. Then...

Yeah.

<comment><USER18> Yeah. But you don't have to, you're literally complaint that the user has options. It's not like Go doesn't have a GC either.

<comment><USER19> Exactly, and Go's GC is years behind the JVM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I could be wrong, but I feel like when people talk about how great the Golang tooling is, what they're really saying is "the compiles are instantaneous". I'm sure he's right that the coverage tool isn't 100% perfect, or even 60% perfect. OK. Fine. _The compiles are instantaneous_. Write a better one!

Golang is not an especially impressive programming language --- as a language. But it seems to me like it is an undeniably impressive programming _tool_.

<comment><USER5> > _I 'm sure he's right that the coverage tool isn't 100% perfect, or even 60% > perfect. OK. Fine. The compiles are instantaneous._

Since when was compile time an interesting aspect to judge a programming language? More in the "nice to have" category, especially if your program is not 1 million lines and/or your language's compiler doesn't provide some modularity in this regard.

<comment><USER20> Have you ever worked on a large-scale C++ project?

<comment><USER12> Actually, the biggest problems with large-scale C++ projects for me have been "long compile times _for fully optimized builds_ " and "long linking times", neither of which Go 6g/8g solves.

Put another way, much of the problem is "modern compiler optimization takes a long time". Go's solution was "remove the modern optimizer". That doesn't actually solve my problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Funny how HN was on the Go bandwagon just a few years ago, and now an article like this is almost unanimously upvoted (without much contrarian discussion(!)).

I contributed to Go in the early phases and I really enjoyed using it and learning it, but I found myself going to either Java if I wanted to write something for production or Node if I wanted to write something as a prototype. Unfortunately, I haven't used it almost at all for the past couple of years :(

<comment><USER22> HN was the same about Node too. In a year we will see the same articles about Rust.

<comment><USER23> See also: AngularJS, Rails, etc. A lot of this is just because things that a technology makes convenient fade into the background after awhile because you know longer feel the pain you felt before you had them, but you are actively reminded of the things that annoy you about a technology multiple times a day. For example, with Go, fast static compilation and "just works" deployment fade, while the copy-paste-tweak pattern for generic behavior continues to bite. For Angular, you start to forget how much easier it made defining modular view components and having up-to-date data everywhere, while actively finding complexity and performance frustrating.

I'm sure you're right about Rust, and that people will be down on lifetime annotation burden, painful compilation times, painful data structure nesting, the complexity of unsafe code, and other things, while forgetting all the times things are actually easier, more performant, and safer due to all that language support.

I see it as a natural damping curve: at first things seem peachier than they really are, then they seem much more frustrating than they need to be, then you come to terms with their unique trade-off of strengths and weaknesses. What I _would_ like to know – if anyone here has discovered such a thing – is a way to skip to the last step more quickly.

<comment><USER24> As I get older and I gain more perspective, I can't stress enough how true this is. Listening to younger programmers bemoan Ruby and Rails is humorous to me because they don't remember the world of Java web dev before Rails. Miles of XML configs everywhere, factories, impls, proxies, beans. So. Much. Boilerplate.

It's easy to bitch about things the way they are now, but understand there are people and technologies who were around before you arrived on the scene and in general, things are consistently getting "better", for all subjective interpretations of "better".

<comment><USER25> Now I'm confused. I've heard that we should learn and appreciate that nothing is new under the sun and most interesting concepts and technologies have already been invented in the past and not newly by newer technologies. Now you're saying that newer technology consistently _improve_ things? I'm getting confused as to how the older hive mind is telling me to feel.

<comment><USER26> Concept and implementation are not the same thing. The _concept_ of LISP hasn't changed in 50+ years, but the implementations have been constantly improving the whole time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > if I wanted a language built around concurrency I'd use Erlang or Haskell.

And if you wanted a concurrent language that wasn't a functional language what would you use?

<comment><USER28> Or just a practical concurrent language with strong libraries that lets you be productive quickly. I'm aware of many of the theoretical benefits of Erlang and Haskell over Go. But Go is still a much better choice for getting things done.

<comment><USER29> As someone who used Go in the past for work and now uses Haskell, I can say that the advantages of Haskell over Go are more than "just theoretical".

In my day job I use Haskell to "just get shit done". However when it comes time to refactor I can do it much faster and safer in Haskell.

The ease of refactoring creates an incentive to improve code.

<comment><USER28> My experience is the exact opposite. Maybe we work on very different kinds of problems, or maybe it's just because we're different people.

<comment><USER29> > Maybe we work on very different kinds of problems, or maybe it's just > because we're different people.

In the interest in figuring out which, what problems do you work with and what are your principles/beliefs/guiding principles in software? :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The point isn't about learning something new. It's about trying to apply those things into a language they think is easier to work with.

<comment><USER28> I'd argue the point is the opposite of learning new things. As the Go team themselves say, Go is an engineering project. It's about sticking to well understood, well defined ideas that allow large teams of typical skill to develop and maintain good software. Go is boring compared to some other languages that push the envelope and try new things. But that can be a good thing if you start thinking like the business owner instead of a code monkey.

<comment><USER31> Most people won't see it this way, but not pushing the envelope _is_ a new thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> If backend programming was epic fiction, then right now, the world is divided into the following countries: The Kingdom of Java, The United Languages of .Net, and the Confederacy of the Scripting Tongue (where racial tensions are crackle under the temporary truce between Ruby, Python, Javascript, Lua, etc.). For the past decade, these three kingdoms constantly struggled against each other for the most precious resource of all: developer mind-share.

But what they didn't know and couldn't prevent, was that their world would soon become (neigh, has already become) the battle ground of 3 ultra-advanced warring alien species: Go, Rust, and Elixir. Backed by unimaginably powerful forces (except Elixir, which is just open-source by Poland's own Jose Valim), the upstart alien languages threaten to herald in a terrifying future for the current 3 powerhouses.

OP's article, and the fact that lots of people are agreeing, is a sign that one of the invading aliens is weakening.

<comment><USER33> I want to watch this movie.

What about Pony?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What's confusing about Go, in comparing it to other languages, is that it's a minimum orthogonal refactor of a language. It was born out smart engineers observing the web and other languages for decades and thinking that they needed something low level but high level enough. It's built staring precisely at the past two decades.

C, C++, Java, Python, and an appreciation of formal specs over frameworks form Go.

Most languages to perform professionally in you have to know what not to do (not use C++ templates too much, not give into verbosity in hierarchies in Java, not use the GIL, etc.). In Go, because it is a relatively clean refactor, you don't have to worry about this.

But you do have to invent your own smaller libraries for what you want to do sometimes. Because it's a younger language. This is good though if you like programming and stacking lego pieces on you way to stacking paper.

</comment><comment><USER35> > Good languages help evolve your approach to programming

Go certainly taught me quite a bit about closures and programming to an interface.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think a lot of us miss the Go point.

There is nothing special about Go. It's simple and just works.

Every time I used Go for a project it just worked. No fuss. With very little effort. And that's the point.

<comment><USER37> But that doesn't answer any of the (very valid) points raised in the article?

Go is interesting as a replacement for a scripting language, perhaps. But it seems very lacking in many other areas. All of the points in the article, plus what libraries are available.

I think some of it could be explained by it being a young language, but if that's the case, why is it getting the adoption it has so far? Just because it came from Google?

<comment><USER38> Because it has allowed so many of us to significantly raise the ratio "Amount of time I care about my project"/"Amount of time I care about something other than my project (typically, the language itself)".

Go is the poster child for Worse is Better. It's ugly, inconsistent, feels naughty at times (all those copy-pastes ! It's so un-DRY !) but it gets shit done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've had a keen interest in go but haven't used it for anything serious. My impression of it is that its a great replacement for languages like Python and is great at getting things running fast but I have to agree that it doesn't feel like the kind language I wouldn't want to write a large code base in. My huge interest in it is around the single binary deployment and its concurrency model. The language itself I find a bit quirky in some places (some data structures are passed by ref while other by value) and I like my languages concise and elegant.

This post got me to have a second look at Elixir and I spent the whole day going though its documentation and prototyping an idea I wanted to implement in go, specifically because of go's concurrency model. And frankly ELixir is exactly the right fit for me, not only for this case but generally as a language with the kind of elegance and expressiveness I'm drawn to.

</comment><comment><USER40> I always find it's difficult to navigate Go repositories on GitHub. Because there can be several source files under a package it's difficult to look for an implementation of a function or method. For Java, I can easily guess where the methods are by looking at import statements.

<comment><USER41> I friend of mine wrote a tool to fix that. See [http://gotools.org/github.com/kjk/fofou](http://gotools.org/github.com/kjk/fofou) for example (just prepend [http://gotools.org/](http://gotools.org/) to any Go import path).

Then you can use Ctrl-f (Cmd-F on mac) search built-in browser to look for things.

It doesn't work for large repositories but most of them aren't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > "I just don't understand the point of Go. If I wanted a systems language, > I'd use C/D/Rust, if I wanted a language built around concurrency I'd use > Erlang or Haskell."

Agreed. C and Rust are systems langauges, Go is not particlarly great in that category. That is okay.

I will say, I hope you have fun getting an average CS graduate to properly write and maintain a Haskell or Erlang program with concurrency. Go is stupid easy to pick up for anyone who has worked with C/C++/C#/Java/Python/Ruby, which, by no exaggeration, probably encompasses every programmer alive.

Meanwhile, Haskell and Erlang look like gibberish to most programmers. And I'll admit, that's a lacking argument. Functional languages cannot be said to be bad just because most people don't understand the functional paradigm.

But the fact remains, an average programmer can sit down today with no knowledge of Go, and by the end of the day create a concurrent program using Go. And given the lack of flair in go, it's _the_ langauge that lends itself to being maintainable. You won't see anything like in python or perl where you're almost expected to abuse the langauge internals (see this awesome example in python [0]). That's completely by design. [1][2] (scroll up to see the quote by Rob Pike)

If you have a team of a dozen guys working on a project with thousands of lines, your priority is not just performance (Go is quick enough [3]). It's probably not elegance either.

It's software that documents itself.

I used to work as a systems administrator for my schools engineering department. We would deal with fixing perl scripts dating back to the 90's. As students came and went, the result was hack jobs on top of hack jobs by students who are now in their 30's. I hated it. I would commonly have to rewrite scripts because over the years the basic flow of the program became completely asinine.

That's exactly where go does well. Go is a langauge for people who don't want to have to deal with abuses of the language that their coworkers put in place. Go is a language that understands that for programmers, maintaining code means fixing bugs and fixing bugs tends to boil down to hacky solutions. Go ensures that those quick fixes aren't hacks.

> "The only place I can see Go shining is for stuff like portable command line > utilities where you want to ship a static binary that Just Works(tm). For > interactive tasks I think it would be fine, I just don't think it is > particularly well suited to long-running servery things."

I really don't understand why he feels that way. I don't see the distinction.

> "It also probably looks attractive to Ruby/Python/Java developers, which is > where I think a lot of Go programmers come from. Speaking of Java, I > wouldn't be surprised to see Go end up as the 'new Java' given the easier > deploy story and the similar sort of vibe I get from the language. If you're > just looking for a 'better' Ruby/Python/Java, Go might be for you, but I > would encourage you to look further afield."

This reminds me of The Story of Mel [4].

If you're someone who enjoys programming and are writing the code for fun, I agree. Find the most unique language and do it in the most elegant way. Programming is almost an art, and if you're trying to be artistic, unique langauges are great for it.

But not all software is artistic.

> "Good languages help evolve your approach to programming; LISP shows you the > idea of code as data, C teaches you about working with the machine at a > lower level, Ruby teaches you about message passing & lambdas, Erlang > teaches you about concurrency and fault tolerance, Haskell teaches you about > real type systems and purity, Rust presumably teaches you about sharing > memory in a concurrent environment. I just don't think I got much from > learning Go."

I don't think that all langauges need to be learning experiences. Sometimes you just need to get shit done.

[0]: [https://benkurtovic.com/2014/06/01/obfuscating-hello- world.h...](https://benkurtovic.com/2014/06/01/obfuscating-hello-world.html)

[1]: [https://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article](https://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article)

[2]: [http://nomad.so/2015/03/why-gos-design-is-a-disservice-to- in...](http://nomad.so/2015/03/why-gos-design-is-a-disservice-to-intelligent- programmers/#fn-601-1)

[3]: [https://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/go.html](https://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/go.html)

[4]: [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of- mel.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html)

<comment><USER43> > But the fact remains, an average programmer can sit down today with no > knowledge of Go, and by the end of the day create a concurrent program using > Go.

If there's any benchmark more pointless than the alioth benchmarks game, it's the 'what can a novice programmer do with the language in the course of 8 hours' benchmark.

There are zero businesses that operate by giving novice programmers 8-hour tasks in unfamiliar languages.

<comment><USER24> The first company I was at prided itself on the "sink or swim" method of hiring. You'd be surprised how many developers out there judge new hires by how quickly they show they can start shipping code.

<comment><USER44> It's the wrong approach, but it does happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> When I use Rust I am constantly annoyed by how limiting traits are in comparison to interfaces. I much prefer interfaces, which are a single type, as opposed to traits, which are sets of types.

<comment><USER46> I don't see how traits are limited.

Traits are types, though you need to put them behind a pointer (Box<Trait> or &Trait) if you want to use them as types; and this is dynamic dispatch.

You can use them in static dispatch (generics) too, and in general you should try to do that whenever possible. Plus there are loads of things you can do with them that Go can't (static trait methods, associated items, generics, etc)

The only feature that Go interfaces have that Rust traits don't is auto- implementation, and that's a misfeature IMO. It works okay for Go, but in Rust it makes more sense to explicitly say that you are implementing a trait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> > Why the heck is Go making me care about pointers at all if it is a GC'd > language?

Apparently, the author doesn't understand how pointers work in Golang. He should read this article: [http://openmymind.net/Things-I-Wish-Someone-Had- Told-Me-Abou...](http://openmymind.net/Things-I-Wish-Someone-Had-Told-Me- About-Go/) . In short, golang pointer is neither c pointer nor java reference.

</comment><comment><USER48> Go is great and all, but I'm really only using it until Rust is ready.

<comment><USER49> Rust 1.0 came out recently. What are you waiting for?

<comment><USER50> Complete, stable and mature standard lib.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Sweet, I'll stick to learning Elixir with some (Erlang)!</comment>


Behind the scenes of a book launch - <AUTHOR> http://leananalyticsbook.com/behind-the-scenes-of-a-book-launch/

<comment><USER2> That's actually fairly sophisticated (bordering on overkill, but then again it is overkill with a marketing purpose given that they're analytics folks...)

If I were going to do it:

1) Is my book about sadomasochism? If "no", I would reconsider "Submit" as button copy. People like "Get My Free X" a lot more, which leads into...

2) "Join the conversation" sounds like something that only a marketing person would love. If you want to offer something to convince people to join your list -- and you do! -- promise them immediate value from it. There _has_ to be an early chapter you can give away for free. If your publishers are too 19th century to cotton to that, a) they should be fired but b) you can produce something short & actionable which is spiritually aligned with the book and then give _that_ away.

3) Microcopy to the general effect of "We won't spam you" pretty much invariably works. It's also a good idea to set expectations as to what kind of email they'll be getting and how frequently.

<comment><USER3> Took me a few beats to get #1, but point well expressed :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, it's overkill because the book is about this stuff. Normally this much analysis is narcissism. We even left some stuff out (like the Facebook page traffic and ramp-up.)

Agree completely about getting the button wording right. We'll try some different buttons; the 37Signals example (where they changed from "buy" to "see plans and pricing" and doubled conversions) shows this is something to spend a lot of time on. Candidly, we had only a few days to get things live, so they're still rough around the edges.

Our publishers are O'Reilly, so they're delightfully open (encouraging, even) about sharing all kinds of content. And there's simply too much for the book to hold. Great point that we should make some content just for list subscribers.

We're in the middle of interviews with a bunch of big tech companies about the metrics they watched in the early days, and we should probably put some of that aside just for subscribers.

Thanks for the feedback.</comment>


Doin' the startup, sans Y Combinator, Techstars, etc. - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, after a long and arduous day at school, I came home to a nice letter from Techstars informing me of my rejection from their program. After about an hour or so of contemplation and in a slump of discouragement, it soon dawned on me that I might/will probably receive a similar answer from Y Combinator. However, I am still extremely confident in my idea(s). So, instead of banking on such programs to help me springboard my ideas into production, I'm probably going to have to do this alone.

I've read many of Paul's articles and others about starting startups, however many of them deal with the conceptual do's and don't's, and don't provide a methodical guide of how to go about getting things in motion.

I am a 20yr. old undergrad university student, so the entire startup scene is relatively new. However, do not mistake this for me having a lack of dedication. I have the drive and desires to do this.

It would be greatly appreciated if you guy could post helpful articles, your suggestions, advice, etc. of how to go about doing this alone.

<comment><USER2> If you believe in your idea and it really has potential, then you can do it on your own!

<comment><USER3> There aren't too much articles with step-by-step guides on launching start-ups because there is no recipe. The best recipe is get on your feet and do it. Don't wait for dos and donts. This is what all the articles and experienced people recommend. So, start doing it and have fun while doing it.</comment></comment></comment>


Are E.T. and Star Wars in the same universe? - <AUTHOR> http://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/6558

<comment><USER2> I've always been intrigued with how many people treat IPs as "real".

For my part, I'm always in the mindset of "Whatever. If something in fiction isn't conclusive, then the existence of an answer is _simply not there_ and completely irrelevant."

Meanwhile, I see a lot of people whose wording implies they think questions about fictional details are entirely consequential (to their lives.)

Merely some musing as a result of some of the answers the question got.

<comment><USER3> Well, people love what they love. And love thinking, talking and discussing what they love. Is this any different from the sports fan who talk about old team lineups, why such and such tactic was wrong in a game, why they lost a game because of bad luck/refereeing.

Think also about common programming discussions: dynamic vs static typing, goto is the root of all evil, etc.

We love this IP. Having nothing more to explore about it, we start dissecting it to find more stuff. And finding easter egg and little details like this show us that the creator really had a lot of love for it's creation. This helps us acknowledge that our love is well deserved.

And, in the end, it's fun! Why would we do this if it weren't fun?

<comment><USER4> No, this is like a literary critic finding a baseball score, let's say 3-0, mentioned casually in dialog in a Hemmingway short story that does not have a date or mention of teams, and, _then_ talking about what the team must have been (okay, let's say we can guess). And the season. Let's say they can guess. Okay, and _then_ talking about the lineup, tactics, what the innings must have looked like, and whetehr there was any bad luck or refereeing or questionable ump calls involved. You know, based on the fact that score _was_ 3-0, and, you know, it seemed important enough for the character to mention. Maybe due to some bad ump calls. Probably. I mean, it's pure rank speculation but why else would the character mention it??

You see the difference? The only true answer is because, f--, hemmingway liked baseball and he needed some dialogue. there's no play by play action behind it, absolutely nothing for us to guess about because it just didn't happen. :)

<comment><USER3> The author isn't the point. Maybe he thought more about the game than he put in the story. Maybe not. But in the universe of that story, the game existed! And that's what matters.

In fiction, especially fantasy and science fiction, the universe is as much important as the main narrative. And we like exploring the "how do they"'s and "how can it"'s of these universes.

I understand your position. I have people in my family that don't read/watch fantasy or science fiction because "it doesn't have real stuff" and some only read historical novels or "based in real events" books because "if it isn't true, it's not worth it".

I, on the other hand, can't read historical novels, because I don't know what is "real" and what is "not real". If I want a story, I get fiction. If I want to know stuff, I buy a technical book about it. And if I'm reading for a great story, I might as well read one set in a fictional universe. Two for the price of one! I mostly read fantasy and sci-fi nowadays.

To end it all, you have to see that fantasy/sci-fi/comic book/etc fans love exploring these worlds. And in a corner of our minds, they're almost as real as our world.

<comment><USER4> There is a third route between made-up and technical: real stories without any 'novel' or fictive aspects. You are making a serious conflation when you say " Is this any different from the sports fan who talk about old team lineups, why such and such tactic was wrong in a game, why they lost a game because of bad luck/refereeing[?]"

I am saying: yes, it's _very_ different! It's like the difference between discussing Napoleon and discussing Darth Vader. One is not a discussion about a made-up world, but the real world. Instead of speculation about the made-up world, we can examine real facts. Likewise, for real games that actually happened, we can look at real facts.

I also consider lots of made-up stories to be very interesting. On the other hand, I am also interested to an extent in real stories as well, without any creative aspects other than the author's (and scoiety's) interpretation, the order in which events are told, what events are told, etc.

Imaginative realities are certainly interesting - but don't for a minute confuse them for being similar to real events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Eh if there's no reference in the original 3 movies (The only ones I acknowledge as star wars) it's not a good enough link for me!

<comment><USER6> ET has a kid in a Yoda costume, and the Yoda/Force leitmotif is quoted in the ET score at that point. There's your SW:OT connection -- the extra references written into the new episodes are just overkill.

<comment><USER5> I don't actually have a comment regarding E.T. ... to be honest I just wanted to complain about the new star wars

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hacker News: News for nerds, stuff that matters

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice find.</comment>


Uber air taxi maker Embraer floats a "simple" new design for its flying SUV - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90361756/uber-air-taxi-maker-embraer-has-a-simple-new-design-for-its-flying-suv <comment><USER2> it had better be electric...</comment>


Rick Perry: The Pros Of Tesla Selling Direct To Customers Outweigh The Cons - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconbeat.com/2014/03/24/texas-gov-rick-perry-the-pros-of-allowing-tesla-to-sell-direct-to-customers-outweigh-the-cons/ <comment><USER2> I personally find it absurd that there are such laws protecting car dealerships, but then again given the history of the industry, there does need to be some regulation. Where it seems to go wrong is the idea that a company couldn't sell their product direct to consumer. It's sort of like saying that Apple stores can't exist and Apple has to sell everything via Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart. Somehow, it seems that is how the car dealership racket has been legislated.

There is probably some kind of middle ground where Tesla should be able to sell direct, while there should probably be a possibility of dealerships trying to cut a deal with Tesla.

The real quagmire of unintended consequences here seems to be in how trading 6500 factory jobs for however many thousand dealership jobs. I don't know how it shakes out on either the jobs or tax income end for Texas, but whenever you are talking large change like this, the unintended consequences are usually worse than predicted in one direction or another.

<comment><USER3> Is it not possible for Tesla to somehow create a non-profit(?) they have no stake in that just goes around these states setting up Tesla friendly dealerships that basically mimic Tesla's own showrooms?

<comment><USER4> I'm sure 6-12 months down the road - there'd be a scathing expose about how Tesla is abusing a non-profit status to steal business from legitimate neighborhood dealerships.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Texas makes tesla direct sales illegal. Tesla bribes Texas governor with factory in Texas. Texas governor decides to change law. Perry runs for president in 2016 as a "job creator".

Good old American corruption

<comment><USER6> I'll take the "corruption" that leads to economic efficiency any day.

<comment><USER5> If a small company trying something disruptive needs to do favors to the government or face restrictions, that's a large barrier to entry and less economic efficiency.

Opening a car factory is not cheap. For an auto startup one mistake like this can destroy the company. Texas of course stands to gain millions in tax revenue + good press.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _Asked to detail the pros of Tesla selling direct to consumers, Governor Perry answered without hesitation, "Commerce, Education and Energy."_

</comment><comment><USER7> Brave thing to say when the Texas state legislature isn't in session to actually do something about this...

<comment><USER8> Rick Perry always has a lot of brave things to say when the legislature isn't in session. Funny that the only time he has come out in support of an environmentally friendly industry is when he stands to gain a 6500 job windfall at the end of his term...

<comment><USER9> Theoretically he could still sign a bill relating to Tesla, even in regular session. The next meeting of the Legislature starts on 13 Jan 2015 and his term ends on 20 Jan 2015. Though expecting anything to get past 1st, 2nd, and 3rd reading in both the House and Senate in under 6 days is almost certainly a doomed expectation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> the headline should really be: "politicians willing to do or say anything to get a few middle class jobs"

<comment><USER11> What's wrong with that? Would you rather Texas leave the ban in place and not employ anyone at all?

<comment><USER12> Nothing wrong ... in the short term. Will perform indecent act for every potential employer while bending over backwards - that mentality does not create a stable foundation for future growth and prosperity.

You should have policies first, deals second and not change the policy to get the deal.</comment></comment></comment>


Trafficking industry hit as 'sex worker' chatbots fool thousands - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Did you mean to link to this? [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/13/sex- worker-c...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/13/sex-worker- chatbots-fool-thousands-to-hit-trafficking-industry)</comment>


Verizon AS701 blocking Tor consensus server tor26 (22.214.171.124) - <AUTHOR> https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2018-May/015218.html <comment><USER2> I don't believe Verizon would "discourage" Tor. It would either block it completely, or continue to allow it.

The tiny percentage of Tor users don't concern Verizon. The miniscule loss of advertising revenue isn't as big of an issue as the bad publicity that messing with TOR would get them from media.

VPN users might be a thing they get concerned about, at some point, but I'd expect them to come out with a VPN service if that was the case.

So I expect this will be traced to some kind of incompetence or error, not a deliberate effort.

<comment><USER3> Hanlon's razor

<comment><USER4> Grey's law [1]:

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"

1- [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws)

<comment><USER5> This should be Elsevier's corporate motto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pfft. This was almost certainly blocked because someone thought it was a malware C&C.

The indicator lists released by DHS and various snake oil peddlers regularly contain IP addresses like this because they observed malware samples connecting to the IP.

This isn't a new thing and has precisely nothing to do with net neutrality, you could probably get this fixed in a couple of hours with a NANOG post.

<comment><USER7> > This isn't a new thing and has precisely nothing to do with net neutrality

Wouldn't a net neutrality proponent say that blocking traffic to/from an IP is non-neutral regardless of reason?

<comment><USER8> I hope most net neutrality proponents would not say that it implies that all providers must allow _all_ traffic through their network, regardless of whether it is malicious or not. If they do believe that then it turns out I'm against net neutrality.

<comment><USER7> > malicious

Careful, that's a subjective term. Not that I disagree w/ ISPs protecting their own networks, but we often can't have it both ways unless it's more clear what malicious means. Tor traffic can appear malicious as was probably the case here.

<comment><USER8> Of course it is - unless we're going by the relevant RFC, in which case we can simply define it as traffic with the evil bit set ;) But net neutrality is, in its essence, a subjective term. At the end of the day, it would be down to the courts as the final arbiters of what is malicious or not, should it come to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmmmm, maybe ask on NANOG or something?

Unfortunately there's apparently no AS701 looking glass.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, getting a contact via NANOG or Outages is the right venue for this. There are a lot of automated/low-level paths to these kinds of blockages that have nothing to do with elaborate hypothesized malice (of course, once that has been eliminated, then you can start hypothesizing all you like).

<comment><USER11> Antispam responses are one such automated path.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For what it's worth, I can ping 188.8.131.52 when tethered on my Verizon phone.

<comment><USER13> Via Tor?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Without return traceroutes from tor26 this guy can't prove his claim at all. No proof that the problem is even within 701.</comment>


Show HN: APIxChange A marketplace for custom API integration.  - <AUTHOR> http://apixchange.com

<comment><USER2> Congrats on the launch Jeromy and the APIXchange team!!

Balanced ([https://www.balancedpayments.com](https://www.balancedpayments.com)) is happy to be working with you as a vendor and a customer :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've had to do salesforce integrations in the past, and they were not very fun. I could definitely see this being useful for integrations with rather complicated apis.

<comment><AUTHOR> Salesforce is probably the most common request we get :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats, this is a great concept and we are ([https://getAmbassador.com](https://getAmbassador.com)) happy to be one of the launch partners!

</comment><comment><USER5> How can I get certified as a developer? I've done a few disqus projects before.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there!

Just sign up as a developer, and during the signup process it'll ask what API you want to request certification in.

<comment><USER5> How long does it take to get verified?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's pretty easy. Just provide your info and if you can point to a project you've done in the past on your github it's relatively quick.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: iDesign –  Preview Your Design of App Icon and UI Quickly - <AUTHOR> As a mobile designer,you always need to preview your icon and ui on the mobile phone. iDesign is the right one for mobile app designer to Preview so Easy and Fast!<p>https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1159615776 <comment><USER2> Previewing is always a very frequent work, I just try it, can save my time every time. Good work!

</comment><comment><USER3> need it</comment>


Startups Like Uber and Airbnb Will Continue to Disrupt Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wingham-rowan/user-airbnb-jobs_b_5761216.html <comment><USER2> And so they should. These companies are going after markets that have been resisting IT for years, never trully taking advantage of any innovation for higher efficiency and consumer benefits and therefore are just sitting ducks for startups coming in and disrupting their economies and processes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are these actually undermining jobs and workers, or the management structures over those jobs that make them low-paying?

It seems the fundamental labor of taxi driving and accomodation are only marginally affected, but the distribution of the revenue is much more, uh, democratic.

These are great startups for the economy IMO.</comment>


Thomas Jefferson used Encryption - <AUTHOR> http://lfb.org/thomas-jefferson-used-encryption/

<comment><USER2> From the subject line I guessed that the article would be about the "Jefferson disk"[1], but it's apparently not. It says that Jefferson corresponded in code, but doesn't provide details.

Still, it's an interesting history lesson.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_disk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_disk)</comment>


Show HN: pyhn search engine with tags for hn - <AUTHOR> http://pyhn.gnocchi.dotcloud.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

This is my first post on HN. I've been a regular reader for quit a while. Is it possible to have any feedback?

This site was submitted with the hn contest (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2672793>)

Thanks</comment>


Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-amtrak-sea-level/ <comment><USER3> > _The report's authors estimated the initial cost of protecting the study > area to be $78 million, based on the premise that water levels around > Wilmington would rise 2 feet by 2050._

That's a drop in the bucket compared to Amtrak's $38 billion maintenance backlog or the $13 billion Hudson tunnel project.

Out of all the potential effects of climate change, this seems like one of the least worrisome -- we even know how to fix it already!

<comment><USER4> >this seems like one of the least worrisome -- we even know how to fix it already!

The biggest struggle with climate change (in the US at least) is trying to convince businesses that they're going to be impacted financially. If anything we need more industry-specific reporting to try to show companies how ignoring climate change will impact their bottom line.

<comment><USER5> > "convince businesses that they're going to be impacted financially"

Yes and no. My take is this: there's too much time and energy being put into why and who does or doesn't believe (it's human-made), and not enough focus is on "solutions" (to the higher waters). Often this distraction seems to be generated by politicians.

I wish I had $10 for every time I've seen an article misuse the phrase "climate-change deniers" My sense those people are very few. That is, flat out deniers are few. Most everyone else sees it coming. The debate is why it's happening (human vs natural).

Even if we settle on why (which we won't), it seems to me Amtrak, etc. are still going to be impacted. At some point we need to focus on the ends, and let the means go.

Note: I realize that __if__ we settle on human-made there is, at least in theory, opportunity to slow the change. I understand that. My faith breaks down on ever being able to agree on why. It's as if the building is on fire and we're so busy debating why the fire started that we've forgotten we still need to do something about the fire.

<comment><USER6> There's a team of guys with flamethrowers running around the house lighting everything on fire, and some of the inhabitants are saying "well you can't discount the possibility that the fires started themselves, and having a house on fire isn't really so bad, and we probably can't do anything to fix it anyway."

And now you are standing up for them.

Our problems cannot be summarized as "higher waters". We are talking about not just sea-level rise displacing hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people, but also lethal heat waves every summer in many parts of the world, permanent severe drought in some places, raging wildfires, severe storms, collapse of many ecosystems, collapse of agriculture in many places, etc.

<comment><USER7> Funny :)

But we're _all_ running around with flamethrowers. And we can't imagine life without them. That's the hard part.

<comment><USER8> Not just that: The rest of the world are running around with matches and lighters, are watching us, thinking "Damn, I want one of those" and have started building their own flamethrowers.

Now we're telling them to stop building flamethrowers while we keep insisting that we keep our own.

<comment><USER7> Just so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Water levels around Wilmington would rise 2 feet by 2050. That reflects the > median of possible warming scenarios

2 feet is the median!? And things continue to accelerate?

I thought I followed climate change issues but somehow did not know that in most people's lifetimes sea levels will rise multiple feet. I would've thought folks would be more... concerned? The maps of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut look like they are going to cost us billions to trillions to mitigate between now and 2100.

<comment><USER10> I have no idea why people aren't more concerned. I think the desire to avoid sounding "apocalyptic" has led to people not emphasizing the expected damage if we keep using CO2.

Anyone with a child born this year can expect that child to live past 2100. A future grandchild will live well past 2100. Even most people reading this can probably expect to live past 2050.

It's not an abstract issue that will affect future generations. It will affect us and our direct descendants.

<comment><USER11> Well, that is because things _aren 't_ literally apocalyptic.

The science says that sea levels will rise by a meter or so over the next hundred years. That won't end the world.

The science says that climate change will cause trillions of dollars of damages, over the next hundred years.

Trillions of dollars in damages is bad. But it is on the same scale of "badness" as another iraq war.

I'd want to prevent a third Iraq war, but I am not going to pretend that it would put billions of lives in danger.

<comment><USER10> Science can't predict the economic effects of such a change over a 100 year period. Economic forecasting just isn't that good.

That's also not the right way to look at Iraq war costs. A lot of the war cost is just "shuffling".

Eg pay $1,000,000 in soldier salaries, the money is moved from taxpayers to soldiers. Then the soldiers spend the money. What was lost?

The real cost is the alternative work the soldiers could have done. The private sector could presumably have put them to better use. This would be more acute if the economy had full employment.

Bombs and munitions are worse, as there is real destruction of material. But much of the money is still recycled back into the domestic economy.

By contrast, a trillion simply _lost_ from a catastrophe is just lost. It's a loss of real infrastructure. It's a loss of whole cities such as Miami, etc

To speak of "science" in this context is to misuse the term.

<comment><USER12> But a lot of the catastrophe cost is just "shuffling".

Eg pay $1,000,000 in construction worker salaries, the money is moved from taxpayers to workers. Then the workers spend the money. What was lost?

The comment about alternative work still applies, but much of the money is still recycled back into the domestic economy.

So it's not a trillion simply _lost_.

All in all, I think the comparison to war is very apt.

<comment><USER10> Real resources go into the building of those buildings though. You could have built other things, but instead you must rebuild new york.

Whereas, soldiers probably weren't doing much economically productive in the first place. And as long as there is spare capacity in the labour force, moving people from "unemployed" to "soldier" isn't a massive misallocation of resources.

It's not nothing - taxpayers could habe spent the money better had they kept it. But it's not the same as if you levelled a city.

Further, the vast bulk of costs associated with the iraq war are interest on debt. That is really just shuffling money around. Especially if the debt is held by americans.

Money is just a unit of exchange. It isn't synonymous with wealth itself. Climate change will actually directly destroy wealth: it will level capital stock, it will lower crop yields, etc.

This is very different from movements of money back and forth that leave the physical economy untouched.

Iraq suffered destruction of capital during the Iraq war. Not sure if a dollar figure was attached to it, but that would be a more comparable situation.

Iraq's economy is $200 billion per year. I'm guessing the dollar loss to them was much less than 2.4 trillion. And yet I'm sure the real hardship caused by capital loss is greater than americans feel from their financial loss - <USER2> if you account for population size differences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is nothing compared to the estimated $3.5 billion to redirect the tracks underground in San Diego. Coastal bluff failures are occurring within several feet of the tracks on a regular basis. I spend time at this beach and I don't know how this track will be viable in a couple years, with or without rising sea levels. Once it is deemed unsafe, San Diego will be completely cut off by rail.

[https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sd-del-mar- bluf...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sd-del-mar- bluffs-20181216-story.html)

<comment><USER14> Given HN's general policy of disallowing paywalled links maybe we should also consider disalling GDPR-walled links. Sure, proxies and VPN's exist but it's a PITA just to read an LATimes article.

And SD will still have the trolley from TJ at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Even a decade ago, some long stretches through connecticut reminded me a lot of the tramway sequence in _Spirited Away_ : [https://vimeo.com/91985775](https://vimeo.com/91985775)

<comment><USER16> The train I get along the Fife coast on the way into Edinburgh is so close to the sea I often find myself wondering if you could jump from the train into the sea...

<comment><USER17> Probably could between Aberdour and Burntisland, as you pass silver sands

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The US east coast has post-glacial rebound and Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown to compound their sea-level problems. But most the rise is nothing special compared the rest of the world, which is the worst part of this.

<comment><USER18> Won't post-glacial rebound _counteract_ rising sea levels?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately no, not here. The metaphor I've heard is continent as couch cushion: the glacier was "sitting" on the upper part of North America, pushing up the edges. Now that weight is gone, the coasts are dropping slightly.

<comment><USER18> Ah, that's interesting and believable. Do you know where you heard that?

I found this article, which talks about a slightly different effect: If Antarctic ice melts more quickly than arctic ice, then the Antarctic land rebound will shove southern-hemisphere water north, raising sea levels in the northern hemisphere. The opposite effect happens if arctic ice melts before Antarctic ice.

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/01/cities...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/01/cities- sink-sea-first-earth-submerge-coastline)

<comment><USER19> The article doesn't even mention the effect of gravity, which is also significant. Ocean water is currently gravitationally attracted to the ice caps, and when an ice cap disappears, all that "bunched up" water will spread around the globe. This effect reduces sea level rise in a large area around the ice cap, and increases it everywhere else.

This other article in The Guardian does mention it: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng- interactive/2018/...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng- interactive/2018/sep/12/greenland-antarctic-ice-sheet-sea-level-rise-science- climate)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Misleading title: should be 'will drown.' Not once in the article was any current drowning of the infrastructure mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER21> "More than a year and a half later, Amtrak, a private company _whose stock is primarily owned by the federal government and which depends on congressional funding to operate_ , has yet to repeat its analysis for the network as a whole."

So, _not_ a private company.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/2015/03/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/2015/03/09/dd125130-c691-11e4-aa1a-86135599fb0f_story.html)

(From 2015 – Supreme Court says Amtrak is more like a public entity than a private firm)

"" All the justices agreed to overturn the lower-court ruling in which the Association of American Railroads had prevailed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit: that Amtrak was a strictly private entity and as such Congress was wrong in 2008 to set up a system that allowed it to issue regulations.

The lower court had based the decision on Congress's command that Amtrak "is not a department, agency or instrumentality of the United States Government."

But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said saying so does not necessarily make it so.

The government puts all sorts of demands on Amtrak — maintaining service between Louisiana and Florida, for instance, or offering reduced fares for elderly or disabled passengers — not to mention giving it subsidies of about $1 billion a year, Kennedy said.

"Amtrak was created by the Government, is controlled by the Government, and operates for the Government's benefit," Kennedy wrote. Thus, in working with the Federal Railroad Administration to issue the "metrics and standards" for performance, "Amtrak acted as a governmental entity for purposes of the Constitution's separation of powers provisions." ""

In Ireland we call entities like this _semi-state_ companies: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State- sponsored_bodies_of_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State- sponsored_bodies_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland)

</comment><comment><USER22> I was on a road trip throughout a lot of different parts of America last month. A park ranger in Big Bend told me that a tributary creek of the Rio Grande was a hundred feet wide, when normally you can just jump over it. A lakeside highway rest area in North Carolina was flooded up to a permanently mounted bench and trash can.

<comment><USER23> Huh? Big bend is nowhere near sea level..

<comment><USER24> Rising temperatures melting glacial/mountain ice more dramatically contributing to river water carry? I'm not saying that's specifically the case, just throwing out a possible hypothesis. Plenty of others exist (bad rainy season, tributary re-routing due to industry, removal of forested areas that would have previously soaked up water, etc).

Could be a global warming thing, could be a seasonal thing, could be anything really.

<comment><USER20> As a general rule, higher temperatures lead to atrophied snowmelt rivers because there's not as much accumulation. That's one of the contributing factors for water problems in a lot of Western (U.S.) areas.

<comment><USER24> Good point, but OP didn't mention if this was an isolated incident (the hot summer that burns off more cap snow which will never get replenished) or a sustained thing (this used to be a 4 foot stream, but for the last 5 years it's been 100 feet wide instead). Who knows what's actually going on in this story.

I'm not saying it's anything one way or the other since this is a hyper- empirical piece of data to be working off of. Based on context I'm assuming OP meant to imply that this is a sign of rising water levels, but I was just posting some alternate theories.

<comment><USER22> Yes, hyper-empirical is exactly right. I totally don't know what caused the bigger creek in Big Bend or how that relates to the larger climate. I was hoping Hacker News would chime in with exactly this kind of analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Blessing in disguise here for Amtrack and a great opportunity to do an overhaul of a subset of the one of the oldest railroad infrastructure in the USA. Many lessons we can learn from European counterparts.

<comment><USER26> It's not easy to move a rail line. It's politically and economically infeasible. Amtrak hugs the coast in the northeast in part because that land is useless for anything else. Much like the subways, bridges, tunnels, roads, and every other piece of transit infrastructure in the northeast, the rail problems are systemic and it's a huge effort just to keep things moving at all. This isn't a blessing; it's a snapshot of one of dozens of problems that are just as urgently in need of investment.

<comment><USER25> "politically and economically" this is the problem right there. When people graciously justify (and subconsciously) roadblock to any advancement and progress economical and political issues.

If Amtrack pauses its service segment-by-segment so they get to focus on re- building infrastructure then I believe It will not have that much of a negative impact on travelers, at least. People can always resort to other traveling alternatives(buses, cars, planes). Heck, it is economical to travel from NYC to DC by bus vs train. Train gets you in 3 hours for $200 and bus gets you in 4 hours for $19. For me, $200 is worth paying if I get to DC in an hour!

Yes there will be job displacements while the overhaul is underway. But for numbers sake, more job will be created as part of the overhaul.

By politics I assume you meant unions. It is a rabbit-hole debate but I will say this that unions have done more damage to the infrastructure progress than any other political entity in northeast USA.

<comment><USER27> Northeast airspace is overcrowded, as is I-95. Not to mention that Amtrak mostly gets money for NEC from the fares, so pausing it is a non-starter without serious government cash infusions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Should we talk about JFK being under water as well? see NY map.

</comment><comment><USER29> Rather than thinking like a train company, wondering how to protect or move the tracks, what if they thought like a transportation company, and figured out how to move the same and projected number of people?

Although if climate inaction generally prevails, eventually the area won't be viable for that many people to live, work and commute. Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER30> Speaking of Amtrack with such fast news cycle, did they find out the cause of two recent crashes (I believe New Jersey /Connecticuit) ? Ine over some oassage-bridge. I cant find anything on it anymore.

</comment><comment><USER31> This might be a good opportunity to rebuild the whole thing. It has always been slow because of basic problems anyway.

</comment><comment><USER32> It will be interesting to see how fast Boring company progresses and if that will be a scalable solution. If there is going to be a large capital investment, it would be great if it also sped up travel times.

</comment><comment><USER33> As a very frequent Amtrak rider, I'm pretty conflicted here. On one hand, climate change is bad. On the other hand, giving the Amtrak fleet a bath, or altogether destroying it sounds pretty good to me.

<comment><USER34> > _On the other hand, giving the Amtrak fleet a bath, or altogether destroying > it sounds pretty good to me._

Why?

<comment><USER35> Amtrak is hands-down the worst passenger rail service I've ever used, out of services in four different countries. I will say I've never used Amtrak in the Northeast which I understand is somewhat better than the rest of the country, but that's not saying much.

<comment><USER36> I've only used it on the west coast, but it seems like the service, cleanliness, etc. are comparable to European and Asian trains, but because the Amtrak trains are super slow and the distances here are so much greater, riding anywhere on it is a terrible experience. Not to mention the fact that it's almost as expensive as flying. (Just checked and it would cost me $79 to fly to Portland from Seattle and $53 to take the train. Kind of a no-brainer.)

<comment><USER37> Why is that a no-brainer? In Seattle, first you have to get to the airport. Sea-Tac isn't exactly _in_ Seattle. Depending on where you're coming from, King Street may be easier to reach.

Then there's the bit about arriving at the airport 2 hours before, in order to pass through security. Yeah, you can probably cheat on the two hours, depending on how long security lines tend to be at Sea-Tac. Still, it's a chunk of time you don't have to spend when you take the train.

Roll all that together, and I'm not sure that the train is much slower. And it costs less, and the scenery is better. So from where I sit, it doesn't look like a no-brainer at all.

Have I missed something?

<comment><USER38> One major downside is that the schedule is very unpredictable between Portland and Seattle, due to right of way being preempted by freight traffic. It's not uncommon to have to pull into a siding and sit for 10-20 minutes several times.

That said the comfort between train and air travel is night and day, you get much more space, plenty of outlets, room to get up and move around, purchase food and drinks, even if the food is worse than airline food.

<comment><USER39> How can the food be worse than airline food? I haven't been on a flight in years that had anything other than prepackaged snacks available at any price.

<comment><USER40> I have eaten one Amtrak meal.

It was a burger in a plastic wrap, which was microwaved to heat it.

I've had bad airline food, like British Airways ten years back, and food from British trains, but Amtrak's offering was easily the worst. Hopefully they've improved by now.

The best meal was on a Swiss train (in Germany). That was also the cheapest Swiss food I've ever had.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Foursquare May Be Buying Thing Labs (Brizzly) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.louisgray.com/2010/07/independence-day-speculation-is.html

<comment><USER2> While I don't really have an opinion on wether they should or shouldn't buy Brizzly, I think it's quite interesting that (for some of us) our lives have become so public that it's fairly easy to find the pieces for this blogpost. Just 5 years ago this would have been so much harder.

</comment><comment><USER3> I went to Brizzly's site, and to me it looks like another FriendFeed.

What am I missing?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For the record, all parties have declined this is happening. A nice rumor, nothing more.</comment>


HP releases iPhone versions of classic calculators - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/141364/2009/06/hpcalcapps.html?lsrc=rss_main

<comment><USER2> When do I get an iPhone TI-85 app, so that I can play tetris like back in calculus class?

<comment><USER3> You can't. It can run third-party program code, and so violates the AppStore ToS.

<comment><USER4> So does that mean you can't program these HP emulators? I see the [R/S] key right there in the screenshots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's really funny. The HP-12C is still extremely popular at work. I could never bring myself to get used to it -- I still use my TI-89 from college -- and I get a lot of flak from the rest of the office.

</comment><comment><USER6> Tapping into the nostalgic geek market? As much as I like the HP 15C, I'm not spending $30 for an iPhone version of it. They need to re-evaluate their price.

<comment><USER7> I think their price is more-or-less reasonable in terms of the value provided and in comparison to application pricing for other mobile platforms:

[http://www.berryreview.com/2008/04/22/review-calculator- apps...](http://www.berryreview.com/2008/04/22/review-calculator-apps- part-2-bizmathica/)

[http://www.berryreview.com/2008/07/31/calculator-apps- part-5...](http://www.berryreview.com/2008/07/31/calculator-apps- part-5-powerone/)

iPhone application prices are unsustainably low. I find the $30 price point to be a very encouraging sign.

<comment><USER8> Just curious- in what respect are the prices unsustainable? Couldn't one as easily argue that the Blackberry app prices are unsustainably high?

<comment><USER7> Unless you produce one of the very few 'hits', you'll lose money developing a $1.99 application.

<comment><USER9> you lose even more money developing an application that costs more than $2.99 - because nobody buys them.

<comment><USER7> If that's the case, then the market is unsustainable. Players will fail, causing scarcity, raising the value of applications, and conditioning users to expect to pay more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The noise it makes when you push the keys is repellent but it is very close otherwise to the HPs I remember. I really want a 41CX, tho.

</comment><comment><USER11> For me, the ultimate HP calculator was the HP41CX. You could even hack it using a technique called "synthetic" programming.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-41>

I even had the magnetic card reader so I could store programs.

In my opinion, RPN gave me a big speed advantage at school during exams.

</comment><comment><USER12> hpcalc has been a project on google code since 2008. (Yes, you need a developer's license to build and install it - or know a developer who can build you an ad hoc distribution copy)

<http://code.google.com/p/hpcalc-iphone/>

</comment><comment><USER13> what good is that? I don't want a virtual HP-11C. I want real buttons (hint, hint).

<comment><AUTHOR> So far nobody's invented a device that's capable of shape-shifting, so replicating the interface via touch is as good as you can get without actually buying the calculator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> OMFG I WAS ABOUT TO SAY "BEST DAY EVER" and then I realized the 48g with RPN wasn't there ;(</comment>


"Did We Create This Monster?" How Twitter Turned Toxic - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40547818/did-we-create-this-monster-how-twitter-turned-toxic <comment><USER2> The iron law of the internet is that, in the absence of constant high-quality moderation, all discourse eventually becomes toxic. This has been true since the days of usenet.

<comment><USER3> Would forcing users to verify their identities and post with their full names have any effect on the toxicity? What if filters were used to prevent the most egregious words of hatred? My questions are driving towards this: is it at all possible to have something like twitter that isn't as toxic, given the right features?

<comment><USER4> If Nextdoor is any indication, posting your name and verified home address next to your comments still won't stop toxicity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When wasn't Twitter toxic?

It is designed and implemented to breed toxicity. It is optimized for engagement, but people don't just engage when they are happy and want to share the joy they also engage when they are angry, upset, want to argue and debate. So they end up arguing in 140 character short quips and sarcastic remarks. Which gets other people angry and they respond with more short sarcastic remarks. How often has anyone said in such an exchange "Oh your witty remark and calling me an fucking idiot gave me pause, I went back, reevaluated my position and now I agree with you".

But engagement goes up, and why bother removing bots, they just add more activity and users. "Oh look we have 330M active monthly users" they can say to the shareholders. Buy more shares!

There is no mention how they went to RT, a Russian state propaganda outlet and offered them deals and access to US voters ahead of the 2016 election. [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/26/twitter-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/26/twitter- bans-ads-from-russia-today-and-sputnik-over-election-interference) . Forgot what Twitter's response was, something like "we do not comment on private pitch decks". Which pretty much acknowledges it. So they breed and encourage toxicity then turn around and blast PR how they want more civility and are protecting democracy.

</comment><comment><USER6> So Twitter doesn't censor enough, dunno how much more time or money Twitter could have spent trying to control the narrative. So the lesson here is that it's never enough. If you had Twitter completely sanitized there'd be people who don't understand 'changing the channel' complaining about too many meat- eaters on the platform.

<comment><USER7> censorship basically allowed for trolls, memelords, bots, eggs and shitposters to thrive because of how they censored wrong-thinkers willing to have a rational discussion. only those who have nothing to lose are left in the conversation.

<comment><USER8> The article argues that it wasn't so much censorship as _poorly-implemented_ censorship.

For example:

> Internally, Costolo complained that the "abuse economics" were "backward." > It took just seconds to create an account to harass someone, but reporting > that abuse required filling out a time-consuming form.

And of course the larger story of a vigilante censor being blocked. Twitter doesn't want outside forces policing it, but that means it has to police itself, which it has failed to do at critical moments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Twitter could start at home by doing something about the sewer that is "Moments". It ignores words in the "muted" list; it's full of celebrity crap and the sort of click-bait stuff I loathe.

The whole thing seems to set the tone for the sort of garbage that they talk about wanting to eliminate.

</comment><comment><USER10> >Contentiousness grew common: Bhatnagar's team would want to suspend users it found abusive, only to be overruled by Gadde and Harvey. "That drove Tina crazy," says a source familiar with the dynamic. "She'd go looking for Jack, but Jack would be at Square, so the next day he'd listen and take notes on his phone and say, 'Let me think about it.'

Is it feasible for one person to be an effective CEO of two companies at the same time? Particular ones that are at the stages Twitter and Square are at?

<comment><USER3> I'd say this is an example of poor workflow. If you have millions of users of your product, the CEO must be abstracted far above such mundane decisions. With someone like Elon Musk, you have a nitty-gritty focused CEO who wants to get onto the engineering/production floor and tackle the toughest bottlenecks. If you don't have a dual CEO at his level of expertise, though, I think you're setting yourself up for problems, especially with aforementioned crappy workflow.

<comment><USER11> I don't agree. This was about censorship, an issue absolutely vital to the core Twitter experience. Choosing how/what to censor is absolutely not mundane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Im trying to pinpoint when it started going wrong. I think it was when they changed the third party API usages etc which lead to solutions by others being cut off - they had to do everything themselves.

But I also think it was the move towards threads and conversations. For a few years Twitter was mostly one directional . You would post your status, similar to how you would update your instant messaging away status. Twitter became a way to follow everyone's posts. Threads didn't exist and replying was not built in.

After these two changes the company became blind drunk with growth and celebrity. Oprah moment.

<comment><USER10> I like your second theory. I'm thinking about how you can easily avoid absurd alt-right conspiracy drivel by, for example, never reading Breitbart. But because NBC articles have a comment section, all the bullshit finds its way through anyway.

Somebody could make an echo chamber argument at me I guess, but I should be allowed to filter out absolute falsehoods without being called "unfair and unbalanced."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> With free speech, come idiots that abuse it and say hateful things.

These are sacrifices necessary in order to live in a free society.

You can't just take freedom of speech from the people you don't like to listen to; you would be taking it away from everyone.

<comment><USER14> Sure, but you don't have to design your platform to incentivize making people angrier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> One problem is for people to be noticed they have to offer something compelling, maybe novel, but most of all something which will cause nods or outrage,

Since most people have nothing significant to say (notable discovery) they signal which ever way they can. So they dig up nonsense molehills and let their friends build it into a mountain.

Oh, look, this restaurant is sourcing from this place that my friend just told me secretly underpays their workers-- most foul. Don't patronize the restaurant, boycott! (No, I didn't confirm, I don't know if it's true, but boycott , for justice NAU!!! (Oh I feel a righteous human now))

</comment><comment><USER16> Twitter was designed to be toxic and all of the incentives driving product development led them inexorably to that goal. (Hint: what do flamewars and harassment look like to your engagement metrics?)

</comment><comment><USER17> It's just human nature, people are awful in general, and the internet allows them to bring it to the masses easily, with very few repercussions.

<comment><USER18> I hear this argument a lot, and let me just make one point:

Human nature is really shapeable — and we (as a former product manager in this space) designed algorithms and product experiences to maximize certain outcomes that benefit social network bottom lines. Regardless of how good or bad human nature is, the algorithms prize engagement however they can get it — I personally believe it surfaces a certain side of humanity, and pushes people in a certain direction.

If you're a news editor, you actually have a choice to sensationalize all day because it maximizes short-term profits. After bad things happened (see yellow journalism, the newspaper circulation wars) — newspapers did cut back a fair bit. (We can debate whether that was the risk of regulation, or their own respect for the role they had)

This clearly isn't the social networks' fault alone, but their product choices do partially influence on how we all behave. On HN, you hear a lot of anger at journalists for being so click-baity, and the sad part is that every incentive many journalists face encourages this (from user behavior to profit)

There are tons of examples how bad incentives can warp how people behave, far beyond "humanity is good" or "humanity is bad". For example, see Hannah Arendt's Banality of Evil or the Stanford Prison Experiment. More regularly, see architecture, urban planning, or product management in the Valley, as disciplines that think deeply about the outcomes they want to encourage.

A more accurate statement I would say is: humanity has certain predilections, and design choices can influence these dramatically.

(And now I will shill my media literacy for engineers guide — contributions welcome: [https://github.com/nemild/hack-an- engineer](https://github.com/nemild/hack-an-engineer) )

<comment><USER19> True in general, but the only thing I see about how Twitter is designed, that has any significant effect of shaping behavior in a negative direction, is the anonymity, which it inherits from the internet itself. It's no Stanford Prison Experiment though. _Maaaayyybe_ it's the guards' mirrored sunglasses if you want to make the analogy. But since the same feature is available to everyone, including as a protective feature for any would-be "prisoner" or victim, even that analogy breaks down. I'm just not seeing any power-unbalancing features that are _inherent_. As with most things, its best features are its worst.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why did this person expect anything else? That's what happens when you connect everyone in the world and let them shout at each other. It's the reason that Usenet readers had kill-files since the 1980s. He had the solution right in his hands:

> "For the most part I found them rather laughable and easily ignored," he > says.

</comment><comment><USER7> censorship happened and the platform taking sides with one side made the other side even more nasty and cryptic in their actions.

<comment><USER21> Probably the best explanation. Besides, our youth is getting used to censorship workarounds. Most people have two accounts per network. It really reminds me of a friend from Iran telling me about the underground bar culture in his country. It's worrying that we have so much a problem with the opinions of others that our teenagers routinely rely on Iran-level techniques to navigate their world.

<comment><USER22> Can we learn more about the Iran underground bar culture? Or does putting that here violate that culture? Just curious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think the architecture of social media spaces affects their culture. I wrote up some observations here:

'Twitter, Reddit, and Conway's Law'

[https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com/social-media- architect...](https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com/social-media-architecture- and-conway-s-law)

</comment><comment> L-four If you allow the unwashed masses to communicate with you, you'll be communicating with the unwashed masses.

</comment><comment><USER24> No, its toxic by design.

All the big social networks exist to serve advertisers. They sell users attention to marketers. This means that their profit is directly dependent on how much attention they can harvest. So the systems that emerge (consciously or not) propagate attention grabbing content. This means that trolling and toxicity which exist to get a reaction get systematically supported. It also means that the novel and affirming fake news get magnified. It also means that the lowest common denominator cruelty does best (hey Logan Paul and your 'prankster' cadre).

None of this changes if you want tech and services paid for by your attention and mind-share. If users actually become customers then the question becomes what might they spend money on, not just what can we get them to pay attention to. And that can lead to much more sophisticated behavior. Behavior that actually reflects our conscious choices as opposed to subconscious impulses.

Check out oalrus.com for my proposal to implement something like that.

</comment><comment><USER25> For me, twitter is the least toxic and 'monstrous' of all social platforms that I've been on.

I'd say the trend of articles on news sites using hyperbole and inflammatory language in every other headline to bait people into clicking is a far more serious issue. People on twitter do as they please - journalists need a hard look in the mirror before throwing stones at entire platforms.

<comment><USER26> For me it's the most toxic. I quit before they expanded the character limit, but the limited format almost completely annihilates the ability to express nuance. Combine that with everybody else assuming bad faith, it just devolves into people screaming at each other, often even when they agree.

<comment><USER27> Having the ability to build a whole thread of tweets now would go a long way towards providing the nuance that has so far been missing, but almost nobody even knows it's there, never mind uses it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Let this be a lesson to others, the more censorship and the more draconic your allowed speech rules are, the worse you're off. The quality of overall discussion is negatively correlated with the amount of censorship.

<comment><USER29> HN is the most moderated platform I currently use, but despite its rules and frequent mod intervention, it seems to have a higher overall quality of discussion compared to what I can find on Reddit or Twitter.

<comment><USER30> There is definitely a hive mind that is reinforced by the mods here. Reddit is far worse, but realize that Ycombinator has certain goals as an organization and if your comments stray into direct opposition, they will delete things. I don't think this is an indictment of HN, just highlighting that there is an implicit bias in every discussion forum.

Discussion is of high quality as long as it remains aligned, which is true 99% of the time.

<comment><USER31> > Reddit is far worse,

I would re-characterize it as "some Reddit subreddits are far worse" \- because your experience can vary widely. All the subreddits I subscribe to (hobby and interest related, not news/politics) are actually self-policed very well. I tend to think the toxic subreddits are actually in the minority even though they get all the attention.

<comment><USER28> Reddit is far worse in reinforcing subconscious self-moderation to adhere to the majority opinion. It's present on Hacker News too, since most people use the downvote as a "I disagree" button.

<comment><USER31> I think it depends on the subreddit. The ones I subscribe to aren't that bad with respect to downvotes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't get the "Imposter Buster" thing. Does Twitter verify the user images somehow? If not, then what extra responsibility do they have to police pictures over equally misleading text?

Spam is spam. If they were actually spamming then Twitter had every right and obligation to shut their operation down. Spamming for a good cause does not make it right.

In general, Joe jobbing against race only works against racists. Who cares about racists anyway?

<comment><USER33> They change the conversation, driving division and influencing opinion. Propaganda is very powerful, especially when a message appears to be coming from dozens/thousands of voices.

Look at any controversial tweet these days and the reply thread is full of inflammatory comments from users with numeric usernames (@Joe154354), blurry photos (that can't be reverse image searched) and that seem to ONLY post about political topics and retweet similar voices. Heuristically they are highly likely to be bots or provocateurs but it's hard to prove as Twitter doesn't expose much information.

Twitter has a serious bot/troll problem that they are choosing to ignore, and it is making the discourse on there toxic and untrustworthy. I find myself avoiding the platform these days as it just leaves me feeling stressed and sad.

<comment><USER32> >Propaganda is very powerful, especially when a message appears to be coming from dozens/thousands of voices.

Well it shouldn't be on an anonymous forum. The only things that count in such a environment are ideas. Only the first one counts. The same ideas over and over again just count as a poor signal to noise ratio (which would be the root problem).

I suspect that we are in some sort of eternal september[1] phase here where people are being exposed to such environments for the first time. If this sort of thing is going to be a social problem perhaps we need to teach anonymous forums in school.

I personally have no interest in Twitter because I have passed the phase in my life where such a thing would be interesting. That doesn't mean that I think it is worthless but it seems that there are people who are taking it more seriously than it deserves.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)</comment></comment></comment>


Introducing the people widget - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/introducing-people-widget.html <comment><USER2> Obviously this is competing at least somewhat with Rapportive. I wonder if this will actually consume users of Rapportive because it's good enough, or if it will boost Rapportive's coverage and use because of the competition.

If I were to make a guess, however, I'd guess this is "good enough" to steal a large number of users from Rapportive, or rather people will just stop installing the Rapportive add-on.

<comment><USER3> I doubt they care if a single user is stolen from rapportive. There are a massive number of gmail accounts and all of those people that have never heard of rapportive will now have a new feature they may benefit from in some way. For the small percentage of gmail users that have heard of rapportive and have chosen not to use it for whatever reason (trust/security) we also may see some rapportive like benefit. While this is clearly inspired by rapportive I can't imagine the goal was to steal users from them.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I don't think their intent was to steal users from Rapportive, I was just speculating on how this feature would affect Rapportive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it's really stupid to announce this stuff before people can actually use it. It's one thing to have a feature in your product. That's great. But if no one uses it, it's worth way less. It's not helping your word of mouth, and it's not helping people stick.

Google, Twitter, Facebook post stuff like this all the time, and I think "wow, that's cool. I'd like to try that." And I fire up my mail, or my FB or my tweets and it's not there. And I think "oh well, I'll see it eventually."

But I often don't. This happened last week, but I've forgotten entirely what the feature was, which product it was, or even what company. One of those three. They could've got me using the new feature, but now I may never discover it.

Lost opportunity. Impotent press.

</comment><comment><USER5> I love that the image has a status message saying "I'm hosting game night tomorrow night" and that the message was posted "five days ago." How useful!

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess this is a staged rollout, as I can't see it on any of my accounts? (Including a corporate one)

Also, how does this affect the positioning of adverts that currently fill this space?

<comment><USER7> From the article: "which is why over the next two weeks we're rolling out a new people widget located on the right hand side of your messages."

<comment><USER6> Thanks. That was superseded in my mind by "you can now see contextual information".</comment></comment></comment>


LG Sounds Tablet Market Retreat After Microsoft Surface Announcement - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=24962

<comment><USER2> I don't know much about LG's intended strategy, however the market would be better of if only the partners that are very invested in this technology would actually make the tablets, and not just anyone that thinks they could profit off of it. LG pulling out would make me believe they hadn't planned on being invested enough to make something great.

Setting the bar high was definitely part of Microsoft's strategy I believe. Good job.</comment>