Press Me: The buttons that lie to you - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150415-the-buttons-that-do-nothing <comment><USER3> My personal belief is that designers of equipment and interfaces have a moral obligation to present the operation of the equipment in as simplistic and non- manipulative a manner as possible.

Yes, there are some social/mental benefits to lying to people. It's a very nuanced and complex topic, however, and I seriously doubt the people who make these things are thinking through all the ramifications. Instead I think they're just making stuff that causes the least amount of complaining.

But think about the endgame here. Do we really want semi-intelligent computers shading information in such a way to make us happier? Facebook already is doing its damnedest to keep all of us from insulting each other accidentally, thereby losing online "friendships". It's in Facebook's best interest that more people use the site and enjoy it. But it's in _my_ best interest to meet and socialize with people who may have widely divergent viewpoints -- even if it means stepping on some toes now and then.

Ever wonder why the world is more and more becoming an echo chamber for little niches of belief systems? Want more of that?

Society's interest to self-correct, to have difficult conversations. It's in manufacturer's interests to create things that make people happy. These interests are not aligned. More troublesome, the more we get what we want, the worse our self-correcting feedback loops breakdown. Not a good thing.

<comment><USER4> Divergent view points doesn't mean listening to someone constantly barging into your home yelling obscenities.

<comment><USER3> No, it does not. However history has shown us that we tend to view peaceful persuasion as folks being terribly rude and obscene -- especially when people are trying to persuade us of the wrongness of our ways.

This means that free speech is not optimized for the individual; it's optimized for the evolution of the society as a whole. Technology, on the other hand, _is_ optimized for the individual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I was growing up, we had lots of these. None of the pedestrian buttons did anything (neither sped up the light nor made noise/indications for the blind). The result was that people learned to ignore them.

Fast forward to now, when the city is trying to become less car-centric, and new buttons are being put up that actually work (when you press them, the pedestrian lane becomes the next in line for the green light, and if you don't press it then it only very rarely or never gets green).

The result is people become agitated at the how slow the pedestrian lights go, because of course noone presses the button when they've been trained not to.

These kinds of design patterns will come back to bite you. Make things transparent and don't try to manipulate people like this.

<comment><USER6> That might be why people don't press the button near my work. I am always confused why there are people standing at the red traffic light of a rather small street without seeing any cars and without pressing the button, willing to wait for 10 minutes without realizing that they have missed something. Pressing that specific button at least results in 10 seconds waiting time if there is no car, and the light will never switch without the button.

Btw. do you really have traffic light buttons that don't do anything? Here in Berlin many automatic traffic lights have something that looks like a button but actually isn't one. Underneath is vibrating button that will show blind people that it's green without a sound. Many many people don't see that this is not a button, and don't think a moment about the blind sign (yellow ground, three black dots) on top of it and press it anyway, hoping it has an effect.

<comment><USER7> > _willing to wait for 10 minutes_

Wtf? This kind of programmed helplessness deserves some studying too. I generally wait ~60 seconds or one light cycle, after which I ignore the broken light and proceed on my own. Traffic lights are there to mediate between people, not exert iron-clad control over them.

<comment><USER6> Nearly literally what I'm thinking seeing that every week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Weird, I can't think of a single such placebo button that I press in my everyday life. Maybe this technique isn't as widespread here. For example, if I don't press the button on pedestrian crossings, it'll never go green. If I don't press the button of the train door, it won't open or the train will even skip the station if nobody presses the button.

That being said, I hate the new trend of 'touch' buttons. I really like a tactile feedback, telling me that the mechanism registered my interaction. It feels more solid and reliable.

<comment><USER9> On the London Underground, every single "Open Door" button is a placebo. All of the doors open all of the time (unless the platform's too short). It's not the case on main line trains or the Docklands Light Railway.

<comment><USER10> They sometimes active the Open Door buttons at outdoor stations when it is very cold / snowing.

For example I've been on an underground train where this happened at Hendon station on the Northern Line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any thermostat with a placebo button is basically telling workers, we don't care if you are suffering in stuffy or shivering working conditions, because we know better. It's arrogant and condescending and manipulative, it speaks very badly of management, and I would be sorely tempted to smash it with a rock.

<comment><USER12> Don't smash it with a rock. Cover it, blow a fan over it or set a very hot laptop next to it, if you want changes in temperature.

<comment><USER13> Ah, yes. One winter bout 25 years ago we wondered why the thermostat seemed to have no relation to the temperature of the office. Then somebody noticed that there was a LaserJet immediately under it. Moving the printer worked nicely.

But there was no such easy fix one summer when the techies with a south window were cooking and the boss with a north window was just right. The boss resisted all efforts at a compromise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Although they may seem redundant, buttons on pedestrian crossings are vital for disabled people to know when it is safe to cross.

Most UK crossings beep when it's safe to cross (for the blind), and have small jagged cones[1] on the bottom that can be felt spinning around in your hand (for the deaf and blind).

[1] [http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/media/images/67872000/jpg/_...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/media/images/67872000/jpg/_67872106_xpdc_2603.jpg)

<comment><USER15> But don't they all beep/rotate the cone even when the button hasn't been pressed? The ones near me (in the UK) which are on a junction and operate cyclically (in conjunction with a couple of sets of traffic lights) certainly do. I've given up leaning over from my bike to push the button when I realised this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a classic experiment on pigeons on how to create superstitions behaviour, i.e. behaviour that the pigeons think produces the desired outcome but actually does nothing.

[http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Pigeon/](http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Pigeon/)

<comment> J-dawg Derren Brown did an interesting piece about the Skinner experiment: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-FuV8LB3gU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-FuV8LB3gU)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The tube train buttons do, in fact, work - but they only activate when the train is at an outdoors station and the driver has enabled them.

The London Overground functions exactly like this.

In addition in a previous life of actually programming pedestrian crossing systems, the button does in fact have an effect (or did). It sets a flag on the system which is checked after a predetermined set of time to see if the lights should stop traffic. Its all highly dependent on the road system, however.

</comment><comment><USER18> > A crossing in central London had programmed intervals for red and green > lights, for example. Pushing the button would only impact the length of > these intervals between midnight and 7am.

This is the same where I live. The crossing buttons do nothing during the day (walk symbols still come on for the same length of time), but at night they need to be used. I don't push it during the day, but of course most people still do :-)

<comment><USER19> > I don't push it during the day, but of course most people still do :-)

I always push the button at pedestrian crossings, even though I'm aware it often does nothing.

Is that because it "creates a sense of togetherness with strangers which might otherwise be absent"? Is it because "doing something is better than doing nothing"? Is it because my "attention is on the activity at hand"?

No, it's because at some crossings, at some times, it has an effect; and life's too short to construct a mental record of the reverse-engineered temporal programming of traffic lights.

<comment> andrey-p Plus, it gives you something to do while you wait. More socially acceptable than picking your nose if anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For the office's window automation systems there are buttons in our building, but they are always overwritten by automatic behaviour. So you open the blinds and while you do it the automation system thinks it would be better closed and starts closing it again, completely ignoring that you are currently pressing the button.

</comment><comment><USER20> I guess it depends where you are. I'm in the north of England and all the crossings I've come across won't go green until I've pressed the button to say I want to cross. Same with train doors, I've never come across a train where I've not had to press the button to open the door.

</comment><comment><USER21> Buttons at pedestrian crossings have a use beyond controlling the lights - <USER2> triggers the visual, physical and audio feedback for when it's safe to cross.

At work there is a crossing at some traffic lights that doesn't have a button. This means you have to crane your head awkwardly to try and watch the traffic lights for when they're red and it's safe to cross. It's even worse for the visually impaired, as there is no noise or cone. [1]

[1] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs- ouch-22706881](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-ouch-22706881)

<comment><USER15> As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the ones with buttons (at least near me) that operate (at least part of the time) automatically don't require the button be pushed to trigger the beep/cone. These happen when the pedestrian light goes green, regardless of if the button is pushed or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Whether or not the designers of pedestrian crossing technology took an > interest in our psyches is unclear, as no-one seems able to confirm when the > buttons were first made intermittently ineffective, at least in the UK.

I would be very surprised if these buttons were originally devised as placebos, then eventually connected up when someone decided that when someone uses a button that purports to indicate their desire to cross, it might be desirable for it to have an effect on the signals on that crossing.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Adar and his co-authors also describe how Skype phone calls today sometimes contain "fake static noise" because when users experience a completely noise free line, they are prone to thinking that the call has in fact dropped."

Cell phones have been doing this since the first GSM phones. Look up "comfort noise". It saves bandwidth by not actually transmitting low level background noise.

<comment><USER24> > Cell phones have been doing this since the first GSM phones. Look up > "comfort noise". It saves bandwidth by not actually transmitting low level > background noise.

It'd be nice if this could be disabled, in favor of a clearer call.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used to write code for Nortel, and heard all about "comfort noise". When I discussed it with senior engineers I understood it was only transmitted when the line would otherwise be quiet. It's not superimposed on existing noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Even though sometimes you look like a tpurise (on the London underground for example), in the London Overground you do need to press the button or your specific door will not open...

I think knowing which buttons are placebo, and which work does give you a happy sense of smugness similar to knowing exactly the door to get in and off the train when you need it.</comment>


Shen 1.7, successor to Qi II, released - <AUTHOR> http://www.lambdassociates.org/Download/download.htm

<comment><USER2> The license is so counterproductive that I, not being a license warrior, am very nearly convinced that it could destroy virtually any project:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ibqp1/meet_the_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ibqp1/meet_the_shen_project_the_typesafe_heir_of_lisp/c22insk)

It's one thing if one doesn't _want_ a collaborative project, but that goes against (at least the stated) goals listed on the license page.

<comment><USER3> Like Java, Shen is a The Right Thing vs. Worse is Better language. I think the concerns expressed in in the Reddit discussion are overblown, you have to assume (or not) a certain degree of good faith on the part of those responsible for maintaining the language's correctness.

Sure, the execution of the license is vague (and note we're talking about concerns for people doing ports, not those using a blessed port), but don't forget how explicit Sun's Java license was and how they simply refused to play ball with Apache.

And some of the explicit concerns (e.g. 10 vs. 12 bytes per int) are just plain silly, given that there are blessed existing and in progress ports to several versions of Scheme and to Javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be useful if the link actually told what Shen or Qi is, or why I should care about new release of it.

<comment><USER5> Qi is a lisp like language with a type system similar to Haskell, except that it's fully Turing Complete (the type system). Shen is the next version which was meant to be more accessible to regular users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Shen was designed to not only run on Common Lisps like Qi, but also on Javascript (released mid-October) and Scheme. Practically all Qi programs will run in Shen, but not all Shen programs will run in Qi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like this is jumping the gun a bit - 12AM GMT Sept 23rd is what was communicated on the Qi mailing list.

</comment><comment><USER7> The download buttons don't actually link to anything. The mailing list says 8PM EST tonight: [https://groups.google.com/group/qilang/browse_thread/thread/...](https://groups.google.com/group/qilang/browse_thread/thread/64531fe68aacca68?hl=en)</comment>


Introducing Trifecta, the first iPhone game to come out of the App Academy - <AUTHOR> http://krisallenfields.tumblr.com/post/37597373847/trifecta-blocks-challenge

<comment><USER2> The game is enjoyable; thanks for making it. Would you please change to using system-mutable sound that doesn't play when the phone is set to vibrate? You're using the un-mutable sound that is supposed to be for alarms, video and things like that.

From the Human Interface Guidelines[1]:

 _Users switch their devices to silent when they want to [...]_

 _\- Avoid hearing sounds that are the byproducts of user actions, such as keyboard or other feedback sounds, incidental sounds, or app startup sounds_

 _\- Avoid hearing game sounds that are not essential to using the game, such as incidental sounds and soundtracks_

[1] [http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userexp...](http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/TechnologyUsage/TechnologyUsage.html) ("Sounds")

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah. Good tip. We'll look into it and try to provide a fix in the first upgrade. For now you can press the mute button in the upper left hand of the screen. Your sound preference will be saved in the user defaults so you should only ever have to mute the game once.

<comment><USER3> Congrats!

I think The dialog after finishing a game would be better as "title screen" and "play again" directly on the buttons, or "play again?" should be more prominent.

Another thought: a lot of puzzle games have a way to "chain", which mastering is the most addictive element.

Wihout that element, this game has a little of the problem that randomly tapping is no less effective than playing "properly"... Good puzzle games are really tough to make, given that they rely on a sweet spot between entertaining and frustrating. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome suggestions. Thank you!

Randomly tapping won't get you very far actually. You get time bonuses for clearing more than 6 blocks at once. You really need to play patiently to keep the game going. Score bonuses are also a lot better when you clear a lot of blocks at once so again it pays to play strategically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really enjoy this game. I love a new take on the classic block game. Lumines is a personal favorite.

There is no music in this game and that would be fine if you could listen to iTunes or Spotify while playing it but that currently doesn't seem to work. Any plans on adding this feature? The gameplay does not need to "sync" to the music in any way, it's just that I would love to be able to listen to music in the background.

Once again, very well done. It's a visually appealing, fun game. I also like the animation on the info page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, and yeah, I think music of some sort will be added in the future. I don't know if we'll add in our own tracks, allow you to select from your own library, or both. But we will almost certainly add music sometime in the near future.

<comment><USER4> I think it's much harder to make music that will appeal to everyone that plays the game. If you get the music wrong it can be a detriment instead of a positive so that's why I suggest allowing players to use iTunes/Spotify.

If you do want to have your own music I have a good friend who specializes in audio for interactive media. He mostly works on games and would probably be very interested in this project. My email is in my profile if you'd like to discuss this more.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll talk to Ran and see how she wants to proceed regarding music. That ties in closely with design which was more her than me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice gameplay and story.

I found your earnings online which I found interesting. I'm thinking your poker career might resemble that of many other professional poker players: <http://www.pokerpages.com/player-profile/kris-fields.htm>

But data that isn't including the cost of buy ins to events.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! You're probably right. My poker career is a bit of a bell curve with the center being of the curve being the year before the UIGEA.

That's a good link but it leaves out a lot of information, like how many tournaments I entered but didn't cash in as well as online earnings. And it doesn't include the tournaments in the Bahamas where I had a great run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ahk, it's free? After reading the post, I expected the app to be a way to bring in additional income. What's the motive behind making it free?

Good story by the way, way to push yourself to accomplish things.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's more of a resume builder than anything else. The more downloads it gets, the better it'll sound to prospective employees and potential clients. If it did "take off", we'd then look at a way to monetize it - perhaps with an in app upgrade to a new game play type.

And thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the blog post.

<comment><USER7> nice way of going about it ... hope your career rocks !!! good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There seems to be a problem with the 'unlimited' mode. See <https://www.dropbox.com/s/rsg7xio42olllwr/trifecta.png>

If you can look at the left-most column, you'll see that the game ended because that column overflowed; however, no 3-block of the same colour was available in that column and its neighbour (and so forth), so eventually I had no possibility of being able to reduce that column and save the game. I'd consider that a level-generation problem. What do you think?

<comment><AUTHOR> Some tweaking could definitely be done, especially on unlimited. That being said, there shouldn't always be a 3-block combo to clear. If there were, the game would be too easy and would likely go on forever. Instead, the challenge is to be patient and think ahead. Ex. If I clear these 3 blocks now, how will it line up the others? Will it create more clearable blocks or less?

But even when you think ahead and play as strategic as possible, I think the unlimited mode is probably a bit too hard right now.

<comment><USER8> I hadn't thought of that: perhaps I'd cleared blocks before that I could have used for the left columns later.

How do you choose which colour block to insert next? Uniformly random?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but that might change in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I didn't read the story at first (tl;dr) I just scrolled down to the bottom to see what the game looked like. _Blocks game_ , so I rushed to try it out.

Two hours later, and officially being hooked on Trifecta, I had to come back to at least upvote. Glad I read the story this time. Thank you for sharing and thanks for the game!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm glad you enjoy it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good job! I love the simulation in the credits screen.

What's the pixel font? One of the '04b' series?

<comment><USER10> thanks kranner! yes the font is '04b03' in fact :)

<comment><USER8> Excellent. I recognized it because I use '04b03b' in my own iPhone game 'Alphabet Connection: Arukone' :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh cool. We'll have to check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You might want to do something to help users find you in the App Store more easily. I searched for "Trifecta" and was shown the game Trifecta. You were the sixth result, behind betting and other games. Just FYI!

<comment><AUTHOR> In retrospect, we probably should have changed our name to something else entirely. I wonder how many people have accidentally downloaded the wrong game already.

Going forward, we have two choices: we can still change the game's name or we can do a hard marketing push to get our game to be the first result for Trifecta. So far the latter has been our game plan. When Trifecta Blocks Challenge first launched, it was 14/14 for the term Trifecta. It's now 6/14 so it's definitely on the rise.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to the game: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trifecta-blocks- challenge/id...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trifecta-blocks- challenge/id584109240?ls=1&mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there any gameplay footage available? I don't have an iOS device handy.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no video footage as of right now. You can see a screen shot here:

<http://www.randklabs.com/trifecta/>

<comment><USER13> You should check out Kamcord: <http://kamcord.com>. It allows your users to record and share a video of their gameplay. If you have any questions, just get in touch with me: firstname.lastname@example.com

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, cool. I'll check it out. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great story! :)</comment>


Help foil the NSA by Encrypting Google Drive - <AUTHOR> http://www.syncdocs.com/keep-google-drive-files-private-with-syncdocs-encryption/

<comment><USER2> With the news that the NSA is tapping Google's internal fibre links, local encryption of Google is the way to go.

The problem is that it makes it harder to use, and to share, especially on multiple devices.

Perhaps the innocent days of the early Internet are over, and we now always need to consider that Big Brother is watching.

<comment><USER3> > Perhaps the innocent days of the early Internet are over, and we now always > need to consider that Big Brother is watching.

You have _always_ had to assume that your data is available to Big Brother.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, in the past, only if you were a tin-foil hat wearing paranoid.

We expected our government to uphold the law, specifically the 4th Amendment, which protects us from unlawful searches.

<comment><USER3> ECHELON was an open secret, with EU parliament reports. We knew how the 5 members avoided the legal problems of spying on their own citizens - A just hands B, C, D and E a list of names to spy on.

Here's a report from 2000 ([http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/820758.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/820758.stm))

Here's a report from 2001 ([http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/may/29/qanda.janeperro...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/may/29/qanda.janeperrone))

Risk assessment has always been part of cryptography.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shan, Shui: Procedurally generated Chinese landscape painting - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/LingDong-/shan-shui-inf <comment><USER2> The author has a lot of interesting projects on his page: [https://lingdong.works/](https://lingdong.works/) though I haven't checked all of them out (I have no desire to watch anyone's face decay).

As a geologist, I happen to think that all landscapes are procedurally generated, though it is in general a slower generation process than the computer simulations. Nonetheless I remain fascinated by both the Earth and computational representations of it, and I really enjoy looking at simulations and art depicting landscapes, envisioning what tectonic and erosional processes could have produced the scene.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for posting this. I might not have discovered his other works page without your comment.

One odd thing happened as I was trying to see the software in action. When I clicked on the link to show the software in action [https://lingdong-.github.io/shan-shui-inf/](https://lingdong-.github.io/shan- shui-inf/) I got a security warning from Firefox. The alternative link [https://shan-shui-inf.glitch.me/](https://shan-shui-inf.glitch.me/) did not produce an error. I don't know why.

<comment><USER4> It has something to do with Cloudflare, DNS, and/or Github.io links specifically, if I remember correctly. I read about it around a week or so ago on HN IIRC. May also involve Google Domains; likely some kind of edge-case bug combined with Google blocking some domains, and Cloudflare not allowing certain DNS settings for some domains or plans, if I'm reading between the lines correctly. Welcome any and all corrections to this info.

I think this is the thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23417046](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23417046)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really awesome! Author has a sense of humor - saw a "Pizza Hut" buried deep in the mountains, see it in the code also. Wish there was some comments in the code.

<comment><USER6> yhea i was also interested to sea how he did the outlining effect. I made something tile this once in OpenGL. But that took a lot of code to create. So yhea magic code with many magic numbers.

<comment><USER5> I've been trying to understand how it works, it looks like a lot of the math deals more with rotation and scaling. It appears there is a function for every object variation, and it looks like each one sets its own color, so I think you could change the colors of individual objects to see what they actually render. The object placement is too perfect, I'm betting the individual objects have a number of predefined places where other object would naturally be in relation, and then the the presence or variation of the object is randomized - and all the more impressive if something that simple yields such great results. I could just watch this scroll by for hours - nice alternative to watching fish tank videos while coding.

<comment><USER7> > The object placement is too perfect

Does not seem too perfect to me. I frequently came across the tiny trees placed in the water near the shore and also on the rock formations, something I have yet to have seen in the real world.

<comment><USER5> It's actually very common - trees will take root in the slightest crack or depression, can even cause large boulders to split over over time. Load up duck duck go and do an image search for "trees in rocks" and there are plenty of examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Would be awesome to get this on a wall inside an eInk display and a wooden frame. Kind of like a real watercolor painting but moving very slowly.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd love to see if this could be implemented with parallax scrolling. Then it would make a great background for a procedural platformer type game.

</comment><comment><USER10> That's incredible.

I'm not a guy who gets mad at the inevitable, but I can't help but think the robots are coming for the visual artists and illustrators, fast.

Set your clock because this is 2020, and 2030 will look much different.

<comment><USER11> I think this is true for (at least) one reason: robots can iterate a lot faster. Content generation is a human bottleneck.

<comment><USER12> [prediction] As robots improve to produce better and more art, the value of authentic human art will rise.

It will not matter if you can't tell the difference. The knowledge that a human produced it will be enough.

<comment><USER11> That's a curious thought. I would actually go the other way. Imagine if some AI art systems were truly better than others, and became exclusive? How fun!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This reminds of the Internet, particularly pre-social media, when it was interesting and people had personal sites and weird projects.

<comment><USER14> Take heart, nthnclrk. That side of the Web is not dead.

There are loads of people out there running wacky personal websites on every subject you can imagine. Mine[1], for instance, holds poetry, Chinese translations, a videogame, and an open call for Star Wars fan art.

If you want the real motherlode, go read Kicks Condor's "Href Hunt." [2] That drongo collects and catalogs people's personal websites, so you've got a whole evening of digital feasting ahead of you.

[1] [https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com](https://www.maxwelljoslyn.com)

[2] [https://www.kickscondor.com/hrefhunt/](https://www.kickscondor.com/hrefhunt/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The author has a vimeo page ([https://vimeo.com/321658453#at=1](https://vimeo.com/321658453#at=1))

And the first one, the doodle rig caught my attention. One draws a being, a skeleton is inferred and animation is also inferred. That's pretty cool

</comment><comment><USER16> I almost forgot you could generate images without neural nets!

</comment><comment><USER17> Great project, especially the svg aspect! On a fairly wide aside, it also gave me major nostalgia hit for Tiki Tiki Tembo, a book I haven't thought about since it was read to me as a very young kid .. also apparently a great example of cultural appropriation and reinforced negative stereotypes in print (though I'd argue it also engendered a deep awe for Chinese culture in a lot of kids, myself included).

</comment><comment><USER18> This would be pretty sweet if it could encode a few "hidden" objects, like a "Where's Waldo" type of image, but maybe with "Where's Xi" or "Where's the Emperor". Then one could generate a large set of new content which would also be fun to comb through as a game.

<comment><USER19> [https://github.com/LingDong-/shan-shui- inf/search?q=pizza&un...](https://github.com/LingDong-/shan-shui- inf/search?q=pizza&unscoped_q=pizza)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are those actually high tension power lines in the generated landscapes or are those supposed to represent a pagoda... ( Not sure if always appears but it's there in the one I generated...)

</comment><comment><USER21> For a senior in college this is incredibly impressive!

</comment><comment><USER22> Amazing! I wonder if there is any space for performance optimizations to enable the initial scroll rate to continue indefinitely?

<comment><USER9> Not sure, but the intuitive way to do this would be tiling, BUT since the generation is SVG, it would need overlapping tiles that are then rasterized and cropped to hide the line endings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> the author got many other brilliant repos: [https://github.com/wenyan- lang/wenyan](https://github.com/wenyan-lang/wenyan) [https://github.com/LingDong-/qiji-font](https://github.com/LingDong-/qiji- font)

</comment><comment><USER24> The translation of the name is likely:

{Mountain, Water} _

</comment><comment><USER25> Nice project.

It is strange that all the code is in index.html. I was expecting something like mountains.js, trees.js ...

It is also strange to see power towers in the drawings. Why did you add them? (I guess there s an interesting story in this detail.)

<comment><USER26> > It is strange that all the code is in index.html. I was expecting something > like mountains.js, trees.js ...

Why? It's about 4000 lines of JavaScript, which is manageable usable in any editor, and it makes it completely self contained. What would be gained by splitting it up into multiple files?

<comment><USER27> Readability, separation of concerns, extensibility, easier merging of pull requests, improved testability, modularity, and less mixing of html and Javascript in a single file.

<comment><USER28> All of these are often of little concern to artists, who prefer to get in the flow of actually getting stuff done. Organizing your project is fun and all, but there's A TON value in eliminating context switches and shortening your iteration loop. Source: I participate in game jams.

Obviously, it would be nice to follow this up with refactoring, but you could also spend this time on another project, of which the author has many (and likely thanks to this "fire and forget" attitude).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Richard Stallman - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-stallman <comment><USER2> Hmmm...the summary that claims GNU is "mistakenly" called Linux is a bit misleading as well.

There's no question that the OS named Linux takes a lot from the GNU project, and somehow GNU didn't receive much fanfare.

But, GNU is only an "operating system" with a complete kernel, and their planned kernel was called "Hurd". An OS released with the Linux kernel _is_ a different operating system, even if the bundled tools and libraries are otherwise the same as what was planned for GNU.

A more accurate summary would be that he leads a project whose components are integral to multiple Unix-like operating systems.</comment>


Japanese Whalers Killed 122 Pregnant Whales and 114 Babies Last Summer - <AUTHOR> https://www.livescience.com/62682-japanese-whalers-murdered-122-pregnant-whales.html <comment><USER2> How did it come to pass that only whales are untouchable among animals? In various countries, dogs, cows, pigs, and horses are seen in different lights. Why do we care so much about whales and not the above? Why isn't it like the other situations, where we choose not to eat dogs and horses, and leave those who do in other countries to their own devices? Because whales can't be bred, or because they're too smart, or something else? It's a curiosity for which I haven't arrived at an answer.

<comment><USER3> One asian species extinct 2007. A second species from USA will be extinct most probably before 2020. Maybe this year. We know currently that the Japanese sea has several cryptic species and a exclusive fauna shared with pacific countries. Japanese whale Eubalaena japonica is critically endangered, (around 50 animals remain in the planet if I'm not wrong).

So yes, we have solid reasons to do it. Hunting one common species will lead to collateral damage, honest mistakes or direct abuse against critically endangered species.

And when we wipe top predators very bad things happen typically, bad for humans.

<comment><USER4> If there is a clear evidence that killing some species of whales, such as minke whales will cause severe damage to the environment, just create a new international treaty and then the Japanese government will obey the rules. The Japanese government states that they are only killing the species that aren't endangered and also little amount that will not majorly affect the environment.

One thing to notice is that increasing of whales may also affect the environment. They eat large amount of fishes that may affect humans if the number increases. Increasing or decreasing both may affect the environment and the important thing is the balance of them.

<comment><USER3> The old rethoric. Not, this is not the japanese government, is a company, one of several, and the goal of private companies is to maximize the benefits, not to care for the environment. For example killing pregnant animals (Something that is normally forbiden in the laws that regulate hunting in most countries).

Of course all affects the environment.

<comment><USER4> The private companies which are killing the whales are just a proxy of the Japanese government, which are officially allowed by the government. They aren't allowed by the government to hunt as much as they want to maximize the benefits. To build a sustainable business in such regulated field, of course it is important to obey the laws and also care for the environment.

If the killings of 122 pregnant whales severely affect the environment and if there is a clear evidence to support such claim, the company should stop killing them. But if the company is obeying the laws and it's just an emotional thing, I consider it some other people's business.

<comment><USER3> Except that this species is not a property of the government of Japan, neither lives only in Japanese waters, nor are caught (only) in Japanese coast. So the "not your bussiness" claim is incorrect here.

<comment><USER4> I stated a precondition, "if the company is obeying the laws and it's just an emotional thing". So if that precondition is not true as you might consider, then your claim 'So the "not your business" claim is incorrect here' is incorrect.

<comment><USER3> Not. Your precondition was not that. It was more like "If the company is obeying the japanese government" or the "japanese law" then is fine for Japanese to hunt this whales

 _in Antarctic waters_

But is more complicated than that. Maybe you don't know that In 1994 the IWC (International Whaling Commission) created the SOWS (Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary). The countries in the IWC decided to forbid commercial whaling in those waters. Those are the summer feeding fields needed for a big percentage of the extant populations of big cetaceans to survive. Whales need to feed almost continuously without being disturbed in summer because they will fast later for several months when breeding. A zero catch quota for minke whales was stablished, only allowing to kill a small number for scientific purposes.

On March 2014 the International Court of Justice agreed with Australia that the number of Japanese scientific research publications were not proportionate to the number of animals killed (and sold as meat in the japanese market)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ocean_Whale_Sanctuary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ocean_Whale_Sanctuary)

"The research conducted in the Antarctic over the last two decades under Article VIII of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling has involved the killing of nearly 10000 minke whales and 13 fin whales. The majority of the IWC's Scientific Committee, and the Commission itself, have repeatedly said that this "scientific whaling" has contributed little or nothing either to information needed for proper management of any renewed whaling under Article V of the ICRW or to better scientific knowledge about whales in general. In particular, reviews carried out by the Scientific Committee have shown unequivocally that the JARPA (Japanese Whale Research Program under special permit in the Antarctic) programme has failed to attain any of its originally stated objectives"

Source: [https://www.asoc.org/advocacy/antarctic-wildlife- conservatio...](https://www.asoc.org/advocacy/antarctic-wildlife- conservation/southern-ocean-whale-sanctuary)

<comment><USER4> >Not. Your precondition was not that. It was more like "If the company is obeying the japanese government" or the "japanese law" then is fine for Japanese to hunt this whales

Again false. The precondition of the comment you said incorrect was never like that. Next time you post any comments, please read out loud and be more careful :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it normal to use baby about a whale calf in English, or is it only used in the title to trigger emotions?

<comment><USER6> Yes it is normal in fact for whales. English speakers use calf for the young, cow for female, and bull for males. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animal_names](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animal_names)

English speakers do the same for other sea mammals such as dolphins and walruses.

<comment><USER7> I could be wrong but I think you read the comment backwards.

<comment><USER5> You are right, for me calf is the natural word to use for a young whale. So using the word baby seems to be to trigger an emotion in readers to set a state for the rest of the text. Indicating that it is more wrong to kill a whale than to kill a cow

<comment><USER7> I think that's exactly why they called it a "baby".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Discover and get inspired by startups that are embracing transparency - <AUTHOR> http://www.transparentstartups.com <comment><AUTHOR> Feedback will be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!</comment>


Ask HN: Why haven't the social/mobile game companies moved offline? - <AUTHOR>

Been thinking about this for quite a while. Why haven't the social/mobile game companies focused on creating compelling brands and moving them offline into merchandising, tv, books, and possibly even film. They have proven properties and Hollywood is hugely risk adverse why not take advantage of it? Has no one tried this?<p>Seems like an opportunity. <comment><USER2> I heard on Bloomberg that Angry Birds is looking at a movie deal. Not sure what kind of movie it would be so there is one company looking in to it.

<http://www.bloomberg.com/video/72169010/></comment>


Inside a massive Chinese Bitcoin mine [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8kua5B5K3I#t=47

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly this upsets me. They are wasting power without any regard to energy, the entire place is a massive electrical fire just waiting to happen, and the workers are like slaves. Did you see the "resting" bed, it was filthy. Not to mention, all the wasted computer parts and power supplies they just throw away. It is any wonder why China's air quality is so poor. This is a zero sum game for them, but the quality of life in China is so poor it is sustainable.</comment>


Memeoirs Raises $300K To Turn Your Facebook Conversations Into A Book - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/18/memeoirs-raises-300k-to-turn-your-facebook-conversations-into-a-book/

<comment><USER2> Well, uh, nice, ok, but.... come on!

How about some REAL INNOVATION, PEOPLE?

Not this warmed-over, iterative solipsism. Our technology is circling the drain of self-perpetuating narcisism. Investors are a spineless bunch who shy away from anything actually "new and daring". What happened to the "V" in "Venture Capital"? You know the part where you are actually taking a RISK on something?

/rant

No offense intended to the Memeoirs guys personally.

"I saw the best minds of my generation, writing spam filters" -Neal Stephenson

<comment><AUTHOR> Memeoirs co-founder here.

I think I understand where this is coming from because I too sometimes feel the same. However, I also believe it's possible to create value with technology that is not a major innovation.

That said, the value Memeoirs creates is the perpetuation of people's "digital letters". We don't want to live in a world where there is no tangible written communication and we believe we are not alone.

I would also like to point out that this was not VP money. Our investor is an Italian printing group who does not usually invest in other companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe it's just me, but do many people have long, meaningful conversations with their loved ones over email and/or social media inboxes? Maybe I'm an old fart or something, but I don't see it.

I've been on Facebook since 2004, and met my wife shortly after that... We've been FB friends since we started dating, but I can honestly say we have barely any electronic correspondence. Certainly not enough to fill a book.

</comment><comment><USER4> Find the pain and you will have no problem with money coming your way. Turning my Facebook conversations into a book clearly solves one of my deepest, most painful issues I have today. There is no pain I feel greater right now than wishing my Facebook conversations were turned into a book.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great idea, excellent execution. Keep up the good work

</comment><comment><USER6> well done!</comment>


Jack Dorsey runs two multibillion-dollar companies without using a computer - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/work/1419973/jack-dorsey-doesnt-use-a-computer/ <comment><USER2> I can already imagine the inspiration videos on instatwitube that will be published quoting this.

"You don't even need a computer to get started. Jack Dorsey, CEO of two multi- billion companies, doesn't even own a computer, yet he is successful."

<comment><USER3> Your sentiments are close to my heart. The amount of "inspiration" peddled on youtube, linkedin, and other sites is nauseating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> (Posting as a throwaway)

Jack is one of those socially awkward people who you see on the street with their head glued to their smartphone. Is that actually better than being someone who uses a computer at a desk, and then completely disconnects the rest of the time?

Modern smartphones are more powerful computers than most capital-C Computers. This is far more of a semantics thing than anything else.

Great headline though.

</comment><comment><USER5> A smartphone is a computer.

<comment><USER6> I'm increasingly only using my phone for everything, with a Bluetooth mechanical keyboard for coding or typing. My PC is quickly becoming just a gaming console and will probably soon be put into a car sim style setup then my phone will be my only computer for everything else.

Nothing fancy phone wise, S7 Edge. It can take USB sticks, wireless keyboard and mouse, and almost everything I do is just in Firefox or Dropbox.

<comment><USER7> Surely you can't be reading all that code on such a small screen? I assume you must be hooking it up to an HDMI monitor as well?

(But if so, I'm with you. I was using a Samsung DeX with my S8 recently while my laptop was broken, and it's incredible how much it can do. I had my Focusrite 2i2 USB audio connecting my S8 to my studio monitors, and even that worked.)

<comment><USER6> Yes sorry I dock to a desktop monitor via HDMI for coding at a desk, but honestly I'd say more than half the time I'm fine just using the phone on its kickstand case or mounted to the top of the keyboard with a bracket I made.

My eyes thankfully haven't degraded as fast as my hearing so far.

Being a wireless 60% keyboard it's quite small, so I can use this setup anywhere I want just on my lap. It's very convenient.

<comment><USER8> What development environment do you use?

Edit - I realized you are probably using an online one.

<comment><USER6> Yup web editors and SSH with an Android app for server stuff or to do stuff in VIM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The most interesting thing about being in China is seeing how 99% of merchants power their business with a Wechat/Alipay QR code printed on a piece of paper. Not sure how Square missed that.

<comment><USER10> QR codes have been available for a while. Square helped do payments through credit cards. At that time payment via QR codes was cumbersome, and not adopted. But I think it depends more on the consumers and local economy. US was anyway using credit cards a lot. Asia preferred cash, for smaller transactions.

<comment><USER11> You can pay credit cards with QA codes. You just don't need the POS device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I bet he has a couple of assistants who use a computer for him.

<comment><USER13> Probably, but that's par for the course. Nothing wrong with that per se given his job responsibilities...

<comment><USER12> Absolutely nothing wrong, I agree, I'm just saying that there's still a computer somewhere along the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> village-idiot Seriously, who cares?

First, the idiosyncrasies of the rich and powerful are way less important than the amount of space given to them in the press, even for this extremely short article. Very few of these "Jack doesn't use a computer" and "Tim Cook wakes up at 4 o'clock" are actually useful, aside from the voyeur aspect. For all we know Jack has some pretty brutal RSI and Siri is the only way that he can actually type, or whatever.

It's pointless, is what I'm saying.

And with more snark: it's not like he's running all those companies _well_. Twitter is a garbage fire that's probably propped up by bots that Twitter is ignoring for their ad revenue. Everyone I know resents what Twitter does to their mental health and wants to spend less time on it and talking about it, myself certainly included.

<comment><USER14> Downvoted for writing a generally ill-considered response.

Regarding whether or not Jack Dorsey is running these companies well: Square is up a nice 5x over the last five years. That's a $32b market cap now. It's a big company. Their credit card readers are _everywhere_.

Twitter is more controversial, sure, but it's certainly been improved over the last two years. I actually quite like using it.

<comment><USER15> Edit: Two downvotes but no comments? Pretty lame downvoters today...

With regard to Twitter, what is being done to staunch the bleeding of users? I stopped using it in favor of Mastodon, which is starting to eat into my Reddit usage as of late. The ability to chat with interesting people who can hold a high caliber conversation reminds me of certain subreddits & IRC to a degree.

<comment><USER16> > today

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> CEOing is about making business decisions, not inventing and creating stuff, so why would you need a computer.

<comment><USER18> Because one day, someone will send you an excel sheet.

<comment><USER19> And someone will summarize it for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most work can now be done on an iPad Pro without much compromise (highlighting stuff is still annoying, but oh well). With a little creativity, even decent amount of coding can be done.

Note that with the iPad, Apple is doing everything they can to hamstring the ability to code or replace the Mac.

Now expand your field of vision to Surface and Pixel Slate, and now you have two fully featured computing devices that act like a tablet, but readily convert to full on productivity machines complete with nice keyboards and pointing devices. Both support external monitors (why on earth can I not use airplay like this?!).

This hasn't caught on yet, but for the average office user, and event many developers, these tablets with external keyboards provide more than enough computing power to get all of their work done.

For now I'm staying with my iPad, but Google has really made that choice a lot more difficult with the Pixel Slate. Had I been less bought into the Apple ecosystem, I'd be ordering it immediately.

EDIT: Forgot to mention eGPUs - if I could run a Thunderbolt3 eGPU on either Surface or Pixel Slate, probably would have switched by now.

<comment><USER21> especially since it can run linux apps. But, their ui was pretty laggy in the recent demos. You can't beat iOS in UI smoothness.

Edit: grammar

<comment><USER20> Yeah, iOS is definitely very polished. Haven't seen much lag though on ChromeOS.

<comment><USER21> I don't know about chromeos in general, I was specifically talking about the newly announced pixel slate. The hardware seems promising, not sure about the software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Steven Jobs ran a multibillion-dollar company wearing only black turtlenecks.

<comment> Jian-Yang To be fair, he did also wear jeans. Nobody will take you seriously hanging out in only turtle necks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I conduct so much business via my phone email, and have an assistant doing most computer tasks. Wonder what would need to change to get me off a computer fulltime

</comment><comment><USER24> This makes sense given his origin story had a bunch to do with his burning curiosity in dispatch systems coordinating across every level and permutation of org charts.

I doubt he expected ever bike cops talking to a street sweeper to both be carrying a laptop to make the dispatching work. So, between square and twitter, it seems less hipster and more like using his products to their apex intended purpose and the among the best way to find holes.

I can picture him thinking about their internal systems: "if a system like this can work for hurricanes and 911, it can probably handle kanye ranting or quitting twitter without me being chained to a laptop."

<comment><USER25> is this English?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> People have run companies without computers for _centuries_!

<comment><USER27> People have run billion dollar tech startups without computers for centuries? Tell me more, please.

<comment><USER28> I'm not sure why 'start-up' is significant, or even accurate.

Standard Oil hit a market cap of over $1 trillion without computers. Maybe it was a coal-industry-disruptor start-up...?

<comment><USER27> Things moved a lot more slowly back then. News cycles were in terms of days or weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I bet he uses multiple, including his mobile.</comment>


Is there any truth in truth serums? (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/stranger-than-fiction <comment><USER2> Several years ago, MIT Professor of Marketing Drazen Prelec proposed a "mathematical truth serum" which he claimed could help government agencies predict future terrorist events. The MIT Sloan School of Management and Draper Laboratory used his work to win a $12 million grant from IARPA under the ACE program. The only justification provided for using the mathematical truth serum (a trivial application of KL-divergence) was that it would "promote honesty" among intelligence analysts who may hold divergent opinions.

Unfortunately, honesty on the part of MIT and Draper Laboratory was in short supply during the bid and proposal process. Federal prosecutors were tipped off shortly after the program was funded, prompting IARPA to swiftly cancel the contract.

<comment><USER3> I think this is a fairly inaccurate mischaracterization of Prelec's work and BTS. If you search "bayesian truth serum" on Google scholar, you'll find that there are hundreds of papers from credible researchers based or inspired by Prelec's work. Just because the math is simple does not mean Prelec shouldn't be credited with having introduced it to economics and mechanism design. Also the core BTS papers were published in Science and AAAI, so they are pretty mainstream.

I hadn't heard of the deal/fraud you're describing and am curious to learn more, but you should include some citations before trashing influential, interesting work.

Paper from Science, worth reading: [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Drazen_Prelec/publicati...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Drazen_Prelec/publication/8231017_A_Bayesian_Truth_Serum_for_Subjective_Data/links/0deec51bb0d8741001000000/A-Bayesian- Truth-Serum-for-Subjective-Data.pdf)

<comment><USER2> _Just because the math is simple does not mean Prelec shouldn 't be credited with having introduced it to economics and mechanism design._

No one is saying that simple mathematics cannot have profound applications to the real world. One need look no further than Claude Shannon's fundamental work in information theory for an universally acknowledged example of this phenomenon.

 _Also the core BTS papers were published in Science and AAAI, so they are pretty mainstream._

That really doesn't prove anything either. Academia is full of brown-nosing "I'll cite your paper if you cite mine" types. After all, Prelec claims that one of his motivations for introducing a "truth serum" is that consensus opinion can't be trusted, because sometimes the experts have a reason to lie. Has he ever run his own research through the serum to see what comes out? And more importantly, would anyone else really care?

 _I hadn 't heard of the deal/fraud you're describing and am curious to learn more ..._

Don't really have that much more to add except that from what I understand, Prelec knowingly lent his name (and by extension, MIT's name) to a grant proposal that deliberately inflated the value of the work product described in the proposal by an estimated factor of 100 (according to an independent consulting firm with an extensive track record in performing this type of forensic accounting for law enforcement agencies).

The interesting question of course is why would Prelec do something this foolish ___after_ __securing tenure at the MIT Sloan School of Management?

It is true that there is a lot of pressure on academics to raise money to help support their bloated university administrations, even after receiving tenure. Perhaps this was part of the reason why Prelec turned his head the other way as Draper officials "larded" up the proposal with useless busywork merely designed to maximize the overhead which that organization's top-heavy administration would be eligible to collect on the same set of deliverables.

It is also possible, however, that Prelec was eager to move beyond the world of art critics and sexual promiscuity surveys into something with more prestige by associating his name, for example, with this country's national intelligence counter-terrorism program ... perhaps motivated in part by professional narcissism and/or delusions of grandeur.

 _Paper from Science, worth reading ..._

Thanks for sharing the link, but including a list of the most significant applications of Prelec's theory over the past 15 years would be even better!

<comment><USER3> You should check out his more recent work. Your reply is pretty ironic given that his focus has been studying the prevalence of "questionable research practices" and how to detect and avoid them.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22508865/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22508865/)

Here are some interesting papers in that direction at least partly inspired or building on Prelec's work.

[https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1958824.1958865](https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1958824.1958865)

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002251931...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519311001330)

[https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/AAAI/AAAI12/paper/viewPap...](https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/AAAI/AAAI12/paper/viewPaper/5096)

<comment><USER2> The first paper you mention (on measuring the prevalence of questionable research practices with incentives for truth telling) was especially timely since 2012 was one year after Drazen's program with Draper Laboratory was reported to federal prosecutors for misconduct.

By the way, not at all surprised that the paper found such a high rate of dishonesty in psychological research. After all, Drazen earned his PhD in the same department at Harvard University where now-disgraced evolutionary biologist Marc Hauser was forced to resign after admitting to fabricating data, manipulating experimental results, and publishing falsified findings.

Draper considered hiring Hauser as a consultant on a different problem (which ironically involved trying to detect lies ... this time by the CIA) not long before it was reported in the news that his office had been raided by authorities:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/education/14harvard.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/education/14harvard.html)

Draper unfortunately didn't act fast enough, because based on an investigation into that program, Hauser would have probably fit right in! Ironic too that Hauser was also the author of a popular best-seller entitled _Moral Minds: The Nature of Right and Wrong_ :)

At the time of the raid, Hauser was already well known to students on the Harvard campus on account of his support for this salacious Harvard first:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/feb/13/highereducatio...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/feb/13/highereducation.internationaleducationnews)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm an anesthesiologist so I frequently inject people with hypnotics and sedatives.

There's definitely a sweet spot where people will say things they probably otherwise wouldn't. Much like alcohol I guess but perhaps a bit more potent.

<comment><USER5> I had a spontaneous pneumothorax a couple times in highschool, so I ended up having a lung surgery to prevent them when I was 18. To this day my mom refuses to reveal the things I said to her while I was in recovery, and the following days when I was on Demerol. It drives me crazy because there is a lot I could have said, did I mention I was 18? I know she's probably doing me a favor, but it seems unfair.

I've since wondered if I have a big mouth when I'm dosed because that's who I really am underneath my impulse control, or if that's how everyone is.

<comment><USER6> Honestly being partially anesthetized and saying something horrific might be my biggest fear.

<comment><USER4> We are used to it. :-)

<comment><USER6> Of the people I'm worried about hearing my confessions or fantasies, people with whom I exclusively have a doctor/patient relationship are the bottom of the list. It's the early visitors I receive in recovery that scare me :)

<comment><USER4> Hehe understood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great Mind Field episode by VSauce where he injects himself with a truth serum and is still able to lie: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWoPI- VoFV0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWoPI-VoFV0)

<comment><USER8> Without having watched the link, a serum that prevented you from lying would be obviously impossible.

Truth serum is about increasing willingness to reveal things that you normally wouldn't. More of a blabbermouth serum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Years ago at university I participated as a subject in a memory study that involved the injection of scopolamine. I was familiar with it's reputation as a truth serum and very curious to feel the effect.

But it's utter nonsense. There was little more than an awfully dry mouth and a short-term memory so impaired I felt stuporous.

In my opinion any euphoriant will elicit more truth telling than scopolamine.

<comment><USER10> > short-term memory so impaired I felt stuporous

This in itself is really beneficial as a truth serum. By enquiring multiple times the victim can't remember their previous answer, so therefore reveals which parts of their story are true and which are fictitious.

<comment><USER11> There we have to distinguish between dishonesty and a lie. A deliberate construction on the spot might not survive multiple angles, this is the basis of interrogation rooms after all, anyone will trip themselves up repeating versions over and over again.

What won't necessarily find the light of day is deception, a pattern of behavior. A drug dealer might get caught up in where he was or who he was with at a given time on a given date, but he'd have to be intellectually impaired to admit he was a professional criminal for a living.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >As with alcohol, the results of hypnosis were never completely trusted; Sigmund Freud, for example, used the technique to uncover patients' repressed memories of sexual abuse but eventually admitted that most of the recollections were fantasies. "Such widespread perversion against children is scarcely probable," he concluded.

Memory can play funny tricks (except in court).

<comment><USER13> This is a side note...

There's no evidence that hypnosis is reliable, true.

But "widespread perversion against children" as we now know, is not just probable, it's reality.

28% of children according to one study. No one really knows though, since it's of course one of the most underreported crimes.

[https://victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child- sexual-a...](https://victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child-sexual- abuse/child-sexual-abuse-statistics)

<comment><USER14> I'd like to know the exact questions asked to determine whether someone was sexually abused or not, but I have a hard time finding the studies cited in your link. As I interpret the text from your link, a teenager voluntarily sending nudes to their partner would count as sexually abused because they participated in the creation of child pornography.

<comment><USER15> Although that _might_ be part of it, I don't find 28% to be a surprise.

One reason is that I've been told the age of consent in many places was 12 as recently as the Victorian era [0], and why would it be that low if there wasn't a _lot_ of people who wanted that? (It might just have been politicians who wanted that, but I fear that's merely unjustified optimism).

The other main reason is the number of women who tell me about traumatic experiences is high enough that it's plausible _all of them_ have been (there's no reason for me to know about everyone's history, so of course I believe I know someone who hasn't told me and never will).

Of course, this percentage does mean that the "think of the children" meme ought to put all children under 24-7 surveillance so that nobody can ever touch them. Side effects haven't slowed that meme down before, why would it now?

[0] I never cared to check, so I don't know how many or when any given jurisdiction changed

<comment><USER16> > and why would it be that low if there wasn't a lot of people who wanted > that?

Not to detract from your other points, which I agree with, but ... according to e.g. [0], and I've found similar data in other places, life expectancy for a girl in the victorian era was ~40. So you can't judge the number 12 by today's standards.

[0] [https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-life-expectancy-like- duri...](https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-life-expectancy-like-during- Victorian-England)

<comment><USER8> Life expectancy includes infant and child mortality and thus is commonly misunderstood. Given that you're already alive and healthy at age 12, your personal life expectancy is going to be higher than the population mean.

<comment><USER17> Yes, the post-childhood life expectancy in Victorian England was 73. For all the money spent on medicine and public health we've barely moved it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not quite truth serum, but if you feel more comfortable with someone, you are more like to be more open to them. If you've watched some police interrogations you might see that one of the things they try and do is build rapport with the person they are questioning for this reason.

So decreasing inhibitions so that you don't care about this, or increasing empathy so that you feel more trust in general can let people be much more truthful. For instance, alcohol or MDMA, or talking to a close friend compared to a stranger.

<comment><USER19> Even if we ignore the strong ethical, humanitarian, and strategic objections, using torture as a tool to extract information always seemed like the wrong tool for the job. Causing someone distress/pain obviously decreases the chance that they will tell you the information willingly and incentivizes simply making something up to make the torture stop. Instead, modern successful[1] methods of interrogation like the Reid technique[2][3] are designed around incentivizing the desired outcome. Very low (sub-psychadelic) doses of MDMA in a comfortable "social" or "party" setting might be very effective.

I don't know how true the story is, but I once heard an anecdote about this method working during WW2. The Allied soldiers took a German POW out for beers and just chatted with without trying to push any particular subject. Then they made a boasting claim about how German aircraft couldn't keep up with the latest American engineering, causing the POW to respond with an excited objection explaining their new airplane's capabilities (the information they wanted).

[1] Often dangerously successful - the Reid technique in particular is know for a very high rate of false positives. "Of the three hundred and eleven people exonerated through post-conviction DNA testing, more than a quarter had given false confessions"[2]

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique)

[3] The Babylon 5 episode "Intersections in Real Time" (S4E18) is almost entirely Sheridan being interrogated with the Reid technique.

<comment><USER15> > Often dangerously successful - the Reid technique in particular is know for > a very high rate of false positives.

I would argue that makes it _unsuccessful_ — and worse, that it's a case of Goodhart's law, optimising for the measure (convictions) rather than the much harder task of actually finding the guilty people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Entirely speculation, but governments will soon have (if they don't already) the ability to extract the answers to yes-no questions from subjects via fMRI or something similar.

It'll be interesting to see whether this capability moves out into the law enforcement community.

</comment><comment><USER21> Also read:

Drunk Talk Is Real Talk: The Science Behind What You Said Last Night: [https://www.elitedaily.com/life/culture/drunk-talk-real- talk...](https://www.elitedaily.com/life/culture/drunk-talk-real-talk/704272)

</comment><comment><USER22> Based on the anecdotes in the article, spiking cigarettes with marijuana extract actually had some success in getting some people talking.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting that it doesn't mention Kallocain. It's a dystopian novel based on a truth serum.

</comment><comment><USER24> Plato recommended getting people drunk to find out the truth in Laws.

</comment><comment><USER25> So about as useful as good as polygraphs then

</comment><comment><USER26> who needs expensive and hard to obtain truth serum when all you need is alcohol...</comment>


A great logo is recognizable in any form - <AUTHOR> http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_l9rpqtzaDC1qz6flco1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0RYTHV9YYQ4W5Q3HQMG2&Expires=1286966076&Signature=kS6kwiEiYz4w3Mm8E1D1TTjn1sk%3D <comment><USER2> At least give credit where credit is due.

Source: [http://designersgotoheaven.com/post/1242437663/changes-of- th...](http://designersgotoheaven.com/post/1242437663/changes-of-the-bat- symbol)

<comment><AUTHOR> No, thanks for this! I just found this image while poking around and I reposted it because I thought people would find it meaningful (every startup has to figure out its branding).

I had no idea it would go to the top of HN... Its only my second post.

<comment><USER2> No worries :) Saw this on Reddit yesterday and spent an hour looking through the rest of the posts on the blog; some interesting graphic work curated there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Surprisingly, this doesn't include the original Tim Burton logo (which is one of my favorite): <http://blogs.theage.com.au/schembri/batman.jpg>

No "shoulders", and "feet" on the tail.

<comment><USER4> The first time I saw that logo, on a text-free movie poster, I thought someone badly needed to see a dentist.

<comment><USER5> They say, it depends on personality. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Matt Groening figured this out a long time ago. He says that whenever he creates a new character, it has to be recognizable in silhouette. Look at all his characters. Bart, Homer, Leela, Bender, Fry. None of them need color.

</comment><comment><USER7> … but you should really stick to one form.

It's nice to have a logo everyone can draw from memory and that is then still recognizable. I don't think it's advisable for organizations to change the ductus of their logo all that often, though.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's an interesting point but I can't think of too many more examples. Anyone else come up with other similarly flexible logos?

<comment><USER9> Just a few off the top of my head: Apple, Android, Windows, Nike, WNF, Playboy, NBC.

EDIT: I didn't realize that all of these variations of Batman logos were actually used at one time, so I just thought of logos that _could_ be stretched and skewed while still being recognizable.

<comment><USER10> The Batman logo is something rare, I think. Most of the logos you list are bound by either color (NBC's peacock looks funny in monotone) or shape (Apple would have a hard time reshaping the apple, Nike can only make minor changes to the outline of the swoosh.) A bright orange batman logo would still evoke the same character. I'm not a graphic designer so I can't speak to why this works, but it's pretty neat.

<comment><USER8> I think part of it is that they've allowed it to change and evolve which is unusual for companies.

I remember working with Shell. They have three volumes of rules on how you can treat the pectern (the Shell logo). No colour changes, proportion changes, definite rules about handling it on different backgrounds, about it's use if different contexts, about use with text... On and on.

Ironically if DC had been like that they'd actually have a far weaker brand.

<comment><USER9> Fun fact: through the years, Royal Dutch Shell's logo has changed quite a bit. It started as a depiction of a mussel shell, the current scallop shell logo came as recent as 1971.

"the pecten symbol currently in use worldwide was designed in 1971 by loewy. the design and testing process completed by loewy's firm took more than four years. one of the tests involved hanging various prototype pectens on poles where they could be viewed by drivers passing on a nearby british motorway. drivers were later contacted for their opinions on the prototypes."

<http://www.designboom.com/portrait/loewy.html>

<comment><USER8> If we're doing fun facts: Salvador Dali designed the Chupa Chups logo (the little lollies, like Kojak used to suck) back in 1969.

Improbably but true. I'd link to their website but they've turned the whole thing into Flash so I can't. Their design has clearly been going downhill since 1969....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's a lot of truth in that.

This reminds me of an old interview with Linus saying that while he thought the Windows logo was ok (he might have said good, I don't remember), you can't really do anything with it, while you can do put Tux is all sort of situations. It was quite common to see him playing ice hockey or reading a book or whatever -- if you knew the logo (Tux) you knew it was Linux-related.

<comment><USER10> I disagree. The Windows logo is just a cross in a box with multi-colored panels. You can twist, turn, bend, or re-color it considerably before it's unrecognizable. When they've wanted to make their images more dynamic, they've curved the lines. When they've wanted to look more professional they've muted the colors and outlines. It's still clearly a divided four-panel window.

In contrast, Tux seems a bit stuck. It's going to be hard to make him anything but cute and cuddly. A more stylized penguin would look cold and sinister.

<comment><USER12> > In contrast, Tux seems a bit stuck. It's going to be hard to make him > anything but cute and cuddly.

I smell a photoshop contest.

<comment><USER13> No need to call a special one: <http://images.google.com/images?q=tux>

Whether this proves or disproves the point probably depends more on your personal definition of "cute and cuddly".

<comment><USER14> Interestingly, that image search shows the Crystal Tux designs (one shows up second in that search for me - it's shiny, rounder, and has unevenly sized eyes) is nearly as popular as the classic Larry Ewing design in adaptations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A question though: Is this a logo I am recognizing or just a black bat ; which if filled with black and projected at this angle can rarely be anything else than the Batman logo?

<comment><USER16> Um, isn't that the point?

<comment><USER15> I mean that in this logo example, there is little semantic noise in the recognition process:

Not many other logos using bats (because bats typically scare people maybe). Now, imagine your logo was a cow, or a bicycle, do you think the logo would be recognizable in any form? regardless of how well it was designed? I guess this statement is just not true in every case. It's just like Apple's design philosophy: There is just room for one Apple in every industry (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1762682>). Maybe there is also just room enough for one black bat logo in the world...

Unfortunately, the freedom enjoyed by entertainment logo designers with regards the choice of their iconographies is nothing like the constraints of say, designing a logo for one more enterprise software startup for for one more ISP.

<comment><USER16> _Now, imagine your logo was a cow, or a bicycle, do you think the logo would be recognizable in any form? regardless of how well it was designed?_

Your logo is supposed to create an association between an image and your company. If your logo is a generic something that gets lost in the noise of all the other similar logos, it is pretty much by definition not well designed.

If anyone could just pull a fantastic, iconic logo out of their ass on a whim, this story wouldn't have gotten any upvotes. You seem to be saying "gosh, I can't blindly apply this to crank out my own logos, so it's not useful", but that's wrong - it's useful _precisely because_ it's so rare, because it becomes an ideal to aspire to.

<comment><USER15> If anyone could just pull a fantastic, iconic logo out of _their ass on a whim, this story wouldn't have gotten any upvotes. You seem to be saying "gosh, I can't blindly apply this to crank out my own logos, so it's not useful", but that's wrong_

No, I guess You misunderstood me. I am just saying that while this might be an ideal logo to aspire to, it is something most designers should not worry about achieving in order to satisfy their bosses or clients. I love the bat nonetheless!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wait, no one else thought that these are variations of the Bacardi logo first? I must be drinking too much...

</comment><comment><USER18> I think this is a very extreme case, but it's interesting how the logo in this case becomes more of a concept than an actual design. Indeed if I asked you to draw the batman logo most people would probably design a different one because there isn't only one.

</comment><comment><USER19> It seems that the logos with the most mileage (ie. you can bend, squeeze, stretch or distort in many ways before it becoming unrecognisable) are the ones that have a simple silhouette outline or are made up of a few geometric shapes and colours.

* Batman logo

* Windows logo

* Pepsi logo

* Coke curve

* Addidas stripes

Are just a few that come to immediate mind.

[EDIT: Formatting]

<comment><USER20> Nike Swoosh

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Or...

It's recognizable because it's a bat.

<comment><USER22> Yeah... it's kind of like putting two dozen pictures of human faces next to each other and saying, "Look! They're different, but they're all clearly human faces!"

I mean--that _is_ kind of amazing, but I think it has more to do with faces-- and bats--being _symbols_ than well-designed logos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If no one has read or heard of "The Brand Gap" I would recommend it. There is a part of the book that covers this and another example of a good logo is the MTV logo.

<comment><USER24> Not to be confused with "the Gap brand".

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> When the logo becomes this generic and in this many styles, you're probably going to have a hard time maintaining a trademark on it.

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't have the source off the top of my head, but the original coke bottles were designed to be reconizable even after they broke.

<comment><USER27> I found it referenced on wikipedia[1], but the source given[2] in the article does not mention broken bottles. The documents in the collection may.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola#Contour_bottle_design> [2] [http://www.vigo.lib.in.us/vcplarchive/inventories/business/d...](http://www.vigo.lib.in.us/vcplarchive/inventories/business/dean.asp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Some of those would not be recognizable as the batman logo if presented alone.

</comment><comment><USER29> Similar: I would recognize a variation of the Reddit alien anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER30> not sure i agree.

its not the logo which makes it instantly recognizable - it's the hundreds of millions of dollars of branding and advertising</comment>


Random Chat Me - <AUTHOR> http://www.randomchat.me

<comment><AUTHOR> I have just finished the site. We are working on more things to differentiate us from chat roulette and sites alike. Any Feedback would be awesome!</comment>


HiOperator (YC S16) Provides Customer Support as a Service - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/hioperator-yc-s16-provides-customer-support-as-a-service/ <comment><USER4> Somewhat tangential to what you're doing here, but I was a Technical Lead at Support.com for 5 years. We did general support and malware-specific support but we also had contracts where we would troubleshoot a specific product or brand. We, like you intend to, had a large, distributed workforce.

While the business development team there (along with their head of training, Mary Waltuch) are largely responsible for the constant failure of that company, I think that SPRT's experiences proves unequivocally that this business model does not work at any reasonable scale.

Your clients are strongly incentivized to demand your service at a significantly lower rate come contract renewal regardless of what your cost to deliver is. Your competitors, like Support.com and Sutherland, among others, will happily underbid you. Aggressively. While I worked there, I had my salary and benefits _cut_ at least once a year.

You'll cut costs by moving some operations to places like the Philippines while not learning the lessons of others who have done the same. One bad monsoon season and none of your workforce will show up for weeks/months. Support.com learned this one the hard way, despite my warnings.

Maybe you'll show some backbone in negotiations, not bend over and take shitty contract terms from "huge brands" like our bizdev did at SPRT. This is more critical to your success than you can imagine. We sure did love hiring bizdev people whose experience was at failed companies (RadioShack, Circuit City and a bunch of people from Intuit who got sacked).

Best of luck to you. I really hope that you succeed...there isn't really good service from anyone in this market segment right now; the training is poor and it's a race to the bottom on price. Consumers need this to be good. Don't f' it up.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for commenting - it's good to get your take on things. We'd love to chat further if you'd like - ping us at email@example.com .

A few quick thoughts though. We are committed to keeping support local - <USER2> this case in the US. We're not trying to be the lowest cost option, nor are we trying to handle the long tail of customer support. We focus on 80/20\. And there is plenty of 80 to be had, even at scale.

There are a few specifics to how we're organized and how we incentivize our agents that we're seeing help align incentives a bit better.

<comment><USER6> I knew a few who worked at influx.com , similar story. This business is a race to the bottom , clients want it cheap or they can just do it in house otherwise

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi there! This is Liz from HiOperator. We set out earlier this year to build a scalable US-based customer service solution that we would have used as startup founders ourselves.

Would love your thoughts! Happy to answer any questions and tell you more.

<comment><USER7> I would love to hear some more detail about how you tackle onboarding / knowledge transfer. How do you handle a more complicated business that may have a lot of different edge cases? Do you just build up exhaustive documentation?

Also, I know you're just starting, but I got to your site and wanted to read a LOT more about your service than the information that was available on the single page site. I was thinking: Tell me way more about how it all works, but there was no where else to click! :)

<comment><USER8> I can speak about onboarding and knowledge transfer from the viewpoint of our clients. Usually they give us access to their past tickets and we have an hour long conversation where we ask a million tailored questions. Then clients put us in a sandbox to play where we can't hurt anyone. To fill knowledge and capability gaps, our ops managers pose questions to in-house teams, usually over Slack, but it can be anything. Once everyone is comfortable, they let us out into the world. :)

On the back end, I wish I could brag a little about this, but it is our "secret sauce" so I'm just going to have to say it's proprietary and I believe the beginning of something great.

To directly answer your first question regarding edge cases, it's simple: we don't do them, opting instead to let your in-house team do the complex edge cases. Over time though, we inevitably end up doing some of them as we find commonalities across clients (shipping exceptions, insurance disputes, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Assuming your approach to handling the 80% is very systematic and process- oriented than I suspect you are destined for success.

Having spent a couple years in enterprise support, I would guess that less than 20% of the workforce carried over 80% of the weight. This was my first experience working in a support organization, and at first I assumed it was due to unusually lacking management, but after meeting people in similar roles elsewhere I think it's par for the course.

Support seems to suffer from the Peter Principle[1] more than the other enterprise departments. The few competent people who were around me were almost always using the support role as a steppingstone to learn a new technology, with no long term plan to stick around, nor any desire for promotion within the organization.

Like many new hires, I starting identifying process issues that occupied a lot of time that should have been spent more efficiently. I even documented the issues and proposed changes to improve organizational efficiency to management, who said "good stuff, thanks" but then went on fighting fires instead of preventing them in the first place. These were very basic improvements easily understood by anyone with a technical mindset who spent a week or two observing our support process. A couple _years_ later and I hear nearly identical ideas are finally being phased into the process. I take no credit, because the people with whom I shared the ideas have moved on.

This turned into a bit of a rant, but the gist of it is I see a huge opportunity for disruption of the customer support process for any company with regular case intake. For the sake of everyone who ever needs to obtain support, which is all of us, I hope your team succeeds!

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)

<comment><USER8> I know exactly what you mean! I worked for Marriott in support for one of my first jobs and automated myself out of it in about 2 weeks so I could play games on company time. People call in, I push 1-10 and go back to playing while I make small talk on the phone until my scripts executed. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the idea, but you guys really miss the mark on costs. I don't know where you got the idea that any small business or startup would be okay paying this. Definitely out of reach for 99% of the businesses out there.

      </comment><comment></comment><comment>--
      From the website:
      </comment><comment></comment><comment>--
      $999/month
      Starting at $3.50+/case for most everything

      Starting at $1.25/minute for a voice operator

      8 hours of coverage, 5 days a week

      </comment><comment></comment><comment>--

My small project handles about 30 cases per day, I spend about an hour on the phone with customers, .

Suddenly I'm at $6,399 MINIMUM.

Nice try I guess.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure how you arrived at that figure, but it seems a bit high for the use case you described.

Now might be a good time to clarify our pricing a bit and state that our pricing is not a one size fits all model. We analyze our clients ticket and call histories and find a price that works for both.

The $999 is a minimum spend and from that we deduct cases and voice minutes. The minimum covers training and overhead to ensure we're not losing money for clients that are too small. We've also found that, in our experience, companies who tend to spend less than $999/month are sometimes still at the point where their support tickets are full of a lot of edge cases and are best handled in-house.

We're aimed at small and medium companies, not individuals running small projects (yet). Someday in the future hopefully, but we're not there yet.

<comment><USER10> I arrived at the figure by using the numbers I also shared in my post. I didn't know that the $999 was a minimum though, i just added it as a fixed cost.

If you aren't ready for my small project, you aren't targeting small business. We have a small team and the revenue to support it, which is well into the average revenue statistically for small business.

If you don't hire within SF, your numbers don't make sense.

<comment><USER8> We updated the website so it's a bit more clear.

And for further clarification, your bill would probably be slightly higher than the minimum, but quite honestly, we wouldn't feel comfortable taking you on as a client for quite some time.

As we grow and move downstream, we'll lower prices and expand our offering. It sounds like you're just downstream; nothing to get upset about. Just wait and eventually we'll make sense for you too.

<comment><USER10> > It sounds like you're just downstream

How would you know? You haven't asked me any questions at all? All you've done is make assumptions and then tell me you didn't want my business.

<comment><USER11> They haven't asked you questions, but you have shared information about your support usage patterns. So, I'd guess that they're still working with lighter loads and plan to go larger from there. They didn't say they didn't want your business for good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of a recent negative experience with Apple Customer support. I had an issue, and they bounced me around to several different people for pretty much no reason. Then they harassed with me "Senior" Apple advisers after the issue had already been resolved. It's pretty amazing that a company as big as Apple still has no idea how to do customer service. Looking forward to someone teaching them how it's done. Then again I also feel that it might be even more complicated for a third party to support me with that...

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the perspective! To be fair, we can't claim to have any experience running operations at the scale of thousands and thousands of agents - <USER3> think we know a way to get there someday soon.

As a related tangent, one thing we do for a few companies is essentially serve as air traffic control. Even if we can't solve all of the issues and some issues need escalation, we help make sure that it's only one hop away from the right group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Incredibly optimistic about the future for HiOperator. Having run a 100+ agent contact center, they are solving some complicated challenges that many growing companies will undoubtedly face.

</comment><comment><USER14> They seems to run an interesting tech stack with Elm + Elixir + Phoenix [https://github.com/HiOperator/](https://github.com/HiOperator/)

Disclosure: knew this since just yesterday I was searching for Elm jobs to add to my wesite [https://www.jobsinnew.tech/post-49/](https://www.jobsinnew.tech/post-49/)

</comment><comment><USER15> does any company provide the inverse? I would love someone to call, wait on hold, and talk to a customer service agent for me. keep calling until they fix the problem.

<comment><USER8> [http://www.getservice.com](http://www.getservice.com)

We originally approached the customer service problem from this angle, but found our approach better suited to our vision.

They are great and I've used them before.</comment></comment>